the World of Webmistress Ming

The wind blew, the snow fell, the sun came out and the ice crackled as snow meltwater ran down the street and into the gutters.

Except for the snowmelt that decided to fall INSIDE my house. Guest room, dining room and garage all got doused when meltwater overwhelmed the gutters today.

Considering that I spent the morning worrying about the exterior of the house, it felt like being kicked when I was down to come inside and find a big puddle in the dining room.

The wallpapered dining room, with the custom-painted ceiling and the hardwood floor borders.

There are times when I berate myself for "not getting enough done", usually in connection with writing and the Web sites.

Those times, I need to remind myself about the real job, and cut myself some slack. If I had a formal job description for my life as wife and homekeeper, it would fill pages and pages and pages--and the jobs are odd, odd and odder.

Take today.

Watch him go!

Answer:

Top row is cardstock, sorted by color. Middle shelf holds patterned papers, sorted by theme where possible, sorted by color otherwise.

Bottom shelf holds YEARS of Club Scrap paper and the last 18 months of Scrapgoods kit papers.

If I ever needed visual confirmation of the year's NO BUY watchword, here it is: twelve feet of paper.

I can't decide whether I'm appalled, exasperated or challenged by such riches.

It snowed, and it snowed ... and it snowed some more. All day yesterday, from morning 'til night, the white stuff came down on our desert community.

8 inches later, we're between storms. The one that will arrive tonight will bring strong winds in addition to another 2 to 3 inches of snow.

Enter Martini Boy and the snow blower.

Three years of scrapbooking neglect has come to this: I have a literal mountain of unsorted, stacked and hidden-away paper.

I've cleared the afternoon to deal with it.

The first admission is going to be the hardest: just how much cardstock, patterned paper and scrapbooking kit paper DO I have?

I know what I have that is currently sorted: close to 6 feet of paper.

That's six FEET of pieces of paper, all standing on end and touching. Most is 12-by-12, although a good part of my Years of Club Scrap Collection is 8.5-by-11.

It is a regular event in my day: an email comes in, over the transom, from some new blogger who wants me to do something for her.

In this gal's case, she wants me to republish one of her blog entries on my site.

Nevermind that she has no Google pagerank, that she only began her blog six months ago, or that she can't write her way out of a wet paper bag.

That's the norm for these kind of requests.

No, this babe has the insolence to want me to promote HER ... when she spends HER time promoting my competitors.

Huh?

No, I'm not three weeks behind the time. For me, this really IS the first day of the new year.

Holidays have come, gone and been packed away. Holiday parties have all petered out with Saturday night's Way Last Gasp gathering, and a blessed month of social freedom stands between now and late February's swing into social spring.

So here we are, 8 weeks out from the Thanksgiving holiday, and I discover yet another movie that serves to remind me of what I dearly, dearly wish my family could be.

Home for the Holidays.

Holly Hunter, Dermot Mulroney, Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning. It's meant to be the "everyman" movie for young (and not-so-young) adults returning to the primordial nest to observe seasonal festivities.

But the Robert Downey Jr. subplot brought tears to my eyes.

Gay son has married his long-time partner. Brings home a beard to hide same from family.

Lord above. The Pink Bridezilla really, really, REALLY loves being a bride.

A thank you note was eventually forthcoming.

[Two months after receipt of the gift, which I am given to understand is RECORD SPEED for today's brides, who have willfully misinterpreted the "one year rule" to mean acknowledgement of gifts, not sending of them, and yes, you may pass my smelling salts now.]

Thank you note included, what else, a photo of the PB and her pink-and-black-clad husband. Black tux, black shirt, pink vest and pink tie; he looks like a demented ice-cream salesman.