I had the best of intentions. When I took the christmas tree down in late December, I fully intended to get the ornaments tidied up and put away in short order. But then I found myself somewhat overcome by events.

And then it was January. And it was cold. And it was dark.

And events continued, unabated, at an absurd and frankly reckless pace. And time passed. And one day it became clear that the ornaments had been sitting in a pile on the chair on the porch long enough that a second, valentine-themed, dusting of objects had accreted atop the original, christmas-themed, heap. And I couldn’t ever quite convince myself that any vauge discomfort caused by the existence of the multiply themed pile was more pressing than the very immediate discomfort involved in sitting on the freezing porch for the unspeakable eternity that would doubtless be needed to sort it out.

But then, slowly, one grudging rotation of the earth at a time, it wasn’t quite so cold. And it wasn’t quite so dark. And the porch started feeling like a space I’d like to be, rather than a menacing if well furnished refrigerator. And, perhaps most importantly, I had a different project I needed to procrastinate on.

So I ventured into the basement for a supplementary bucket. For you see, the original bucket from whence most of the ornaments had come was already alarming full when I pulled things out of it for the tree. And that was before I made a whole bunch of large ornaments and a quite a few fiendish little friends, all of which needed bucket space if they were going to move off the porch. But there was no way I was going to be able to fit everything back in the original bucket. So I needed another bucket. Which is part of what stalled the initial tidying up project (in addition to the barrage of events). For you see, there was no room in the closet for an additional bucket. Or at least there hadn’t been, until last weekend’s closet purge and card catalog takeover.

Because look, these things cascade. They simply do. If you’ve never found yourself, bruised and blinking back tears, in the hardware store at 6am, clutching three specialized light bulbs and a caulk gun, whispering “I just wanted to make some fucking cupcakes,” then perhaps you won’t understand. But for me, these things cascade.

But, thanks to the card catalog colonization, the closet had a vacancy. And the basement had a spare bucket. And I had both a sunny afternoon where I wouldn’t need woolly leggings to fend off hypothermia and a different project I was avoiding harder than I was avoiding this one. And so I brought brought order to the porch and the buckets. At least for the moment.

Just in time to need to need to drag out something easter-themed out of the buckets and take pictures of it…