Busy day. Sweaty, but not in a fun way. Today we attempted to clean out the Crafty Corner. The Crafty Corner is located in a little alcove right off our living room. (It's actually a good-sized alcove, about six feet wide, a few feet deep. It used to hold a Murphy bed! But not since we've lived here. We only know it once held a Murphy bed because, well, it's the right size, and there's still a little battered hinge thing set in the floor that says "Cal Wall Bed Co.") Anyway, this little alcove is just exactly the right size for the crib we're getting. Perfecto. Beautiful. Right? Right.

Except.

Except the Crafty Corner is full of things. It is called the Crafty Corner because, in theory, it contains craft supplies -- lots of fabric, patterns, a sewing machine, a desk full of miscellaneous supplies, glue, paper, sparkles, scrapbooking materials, sea glass, tape, and, well, you get the gist. But, if we imagine that the Crafty Corner is, say, a delicious dessert, like for instance an English trifle, then the actual craft supplies are merely the sponge cake at the bottom. So what, you might ask, is the equivalent of the fruit, custard, jam, and cream in this metaphor?

Crap. All kinds of crap. Every random box, or wad of packing supplies, or stray basketball, or anything else we’ve wanted to shove out of sight for the past few years. Bridal magazines. Extra clocks. Wrapping paper. Our fake Christmas tree. A camping couch. Lawn chairs. Boxes we brought when we moved that we haven't looked at in three years. (That last bit is the big one. We're talking about knick-knacks, umbrellas, back massagers, picture frames, and countless pieces of paper -- pretty much all the non-essentials that we were frantically tossing into boxes at the last minute when we moved from the old place. Nothing we need, but a few things it was nice to discover again.) The entire space was filled, floor to ceiling (though some of the space is taken up by a desk, which we're probably giving away). Today, we emptied the Crafty Corner. After hours of sorting and sifting, we ended up with five bags of trash, an enormous box and a couple of paper bags full of recycling, a big pile of stuff to give to goodwill, and a painfully enormous pile of stuff we want to keep but have to find another place for. Somewhere. Somehow.

We hauled away what trash we could, though there was too much for our bins, so we have trash and recycling stored in the crafty corner, to be spirited away as soon as the trash gets picked up next week. Assuming it gets picked up. The garbage strike in Oakland is ongoing. Though it's a weird-ass strike, with management locking out the union a couple of weeks ago as a "pre-emptive move" against a possible strike, though Union officials say they weren't planning to strike; they say they'd be happy to pick up trash while negotiating a new contract, and that management is trying to bust the union. Meanwhile, there are scabs hauling our garbage, though they don't know what they're doing, so it's slow and unpredictable.

Sorry, that paragraph got away from me. Anyway. Sweaty. Lots of work. Hot day. Dust everywhere. My sinuses are tore up from the clouds of cat hair and dust we caused. But we made progress! Measurable progress! This is a good thing. I kind of thought we'd never, ever clean out the alcove, and you know, if there wasn't imminent baby, we might not have.

The rest of the weekend was much more fun. (Well, for me. Heather had her gestational diabetes screening on Saturday, but I just wandered around Piedmont Ave. reading a book about unicorns. Shut up. It's a funny and erudite book from the '30s that traces the history of the unicorn legend. It makes me want to write about unicorns, which is tough, because, you know. Unicorns. Hard to get back to the mythic coolness of them, when they've been so thoroughly sugar-coated, despite the "sword stallion" movement to make them cool again. Wow. Lots of these paragraphs are getting away from me.) After Heather's appointment Saturday we went to Babies R Us and she tried out some rocking chairs (which we'll buy from a cheaper place online with free shipping, natch), and went to see Ratatouille, which required standing in line forever because it was the premiere of Sicko and we were at the Grand Lake Theater, famous cool liberal theater with a marquee that (famously) urges the impeachment of Bush and suchlike. So there was a line out the door and around the building. Fortunately the movie started like twenty minutes late so we didn't miss anything. Score! Then Heather bought Indian food, which made her happy, and I bought beer and ordered pizza, which made me happy, and general happiness ensued. I bought Shadow of the Colossus and slew giants last night and this morning. Also, we ate ice cream. And today, after all that cleaning, I made Tim's World Famous Mango Margaritas. Mmm. I drank two. On an empty stomach. Perhaps not the best plan, but it seemed a good idea at the time.

Good movie, good booze, good company, good housework, good food, good reading. If I'd done a lick of writing (besides a tad of freelance work), it would've been a perfect weekend. But near-perfection is good enough for me.