t-13: projects to pass the time

I've been a bit bored and antsy today. It's a holiday, but the Vol-in-Law had arranged to meet a student. I've been wanting a needle point project. Something to do to occupy my hands while I watch tv and wait. But when I looked about a month ago, the only ones I liked cost around £50 ($100) - and I didn't like them that much. I also looked in a cheaper place near my house, but everything was a bit twee and tacky. I was starting to think of going back to the £50 middle class needlepoint store. But I didn't want to venture into town on the Underground on my own this close to my due date.

Then I remembered that I had an unfinished needlepoint project in our "craft cupboard" in the room that used to be our office.

Our house is very small. It's a little terraced house, in the middle of the street. We have two bedrooms, both small, but one smaller than the other. This second smaller bedroom is where we used to have our computer and office equipment and a lotta, lotta books. Plus a closet full of junk that we've moved from house to house in over ten years of living together. You know, old photos, craft stuff, window envelopes I took from a temping job. We called it the craft cupboard, because when we first moved into the house I had a neatly organised shelf for paints, brushes, and various textile projects.

We'd moved the PC downstairs a couple of weeks ago but we hadn't quite cleared out the room completey to make room for baby and all his stuff. And we certainly hadn't touched that closet of horrors. It's so bad now, that when I take something out I have to get help to stuff things back in. But I wanted that needlepoint project, so I bit the bullet and started pulling things out.

I found it, and in the process I managed to throw away some stuff. Not enough, I didn't manage to clear any actual shelves. I mostly threw out faulty PC equipment and old plastic bags. Oh, and a clothing labelling kit from when the Vol-in-Law went to boarding school, in the 80s.

Both of us are pack rats, I admit, but we are each deeply suspicious of the value of each other's stuff and probably over estimate the amount of the other person's stuff. The ViL has more than me, because this is his country. In fact, one day boxes and boxes of his childhood stuff arrived at our house, sent by my in-laws - whom I could have killed. They have two houses and were in fact still storing their other child who was over 30 at the time. I thought if they had room for her and all her stuff, surely they could have spared me his last remaining boxes of crap.

Anyway, the ViL asked me if I had thrown away any of his stuff - and I said that I had only thrown away mutual items and things I knew to be trash. But he starts poking through the bag and says "You're throwing away that fabric pen?! I've had it since I was 12."

13 days til baby Cletus - and we have at least until he starts crawling before we have to clean out that closet, right?