It’s been an interesting year. I spent the last couple of hours of it curled up in the snug, with Tigra and wine, with the other cats periodically checking in to make sure I wasn’t scared of the fireworks. Not a bad way to see in the new year.

I’ve gone for four or five work trips – training users on software, rolling Windows 7, assorted other bits and pieces. I’ve changed roles internally, and moved into a department I’ve wanted to be in ever since I started at this company. So far it’s going well.

I’ve danced, joined a performance group, entered Nationals, gone out socially, started teaching. I am proud of my dance achievements this year.

Operation 2012: Clean/Organise/Tidy All The Things has continued. We’re still not great at keeping the kitchen immaculate, but we’re a lot faster at returning order to the chaos (as the underlying mess isn’t present now). The spare rooms are usable, the garage is mostly free of crap, the usual dumping grounds for junk have remained fairly junk free. It’ll take time, but we’re on the right track.

I haven’t mentioned much of it online – some things just don’t belong on the Internet – but Tobermory’s had ongoing health issues, which created work issues, which he’s dealt with like a champ. It’s a work in progress, but I am damned proud of what he’s achieved personally this year. And I am proud of the way we have worked together as a couple. It’s been hard yards, but we can both be proud of the outcome.

It’s been a complete shit of a year on occasions, and there have been amazing highlights too. I’d like 2013 to be a bit less dramatic; but on balance I’m proud of my 2012. That’s a pretty good way to exit the year.

This has been the LOVELIEST Christmas.

Christmas day, we had the usual suspects for dinner, five altogether. Boxing day, we had seven; then the 27th, a pair of friends with three kids dropped in, for a further excellent dinner.

There has been lots of food and ham and puddings and ham and more food and we don’t want ham again until at least Easter, seriously, and fruit mince pies – I still have 1.5kg of fruit mince jarred up, will it keep until next xmas you think? and excellent company, and games of the card, computer, and beach-ball variety, AND I still don’t have to go back to work until the 7th Jan and I am a happy woman.

I’ve cleaned some things, but not all the things I want yet. Still, I’m happy with the overall success of Operation 2012: the house is still a bit of a problem in certain areas, but I feel more on top of the overall operation. Life-management is always a work in progress.

I’ve also had the time to be crafty. In the last couple of days, I’ve finished these two. It’s continuing to be a good vacation.

It’s been a mildly productive weekend. Mount Washmore has been re-vanquished, and new laundry hampers obtained. One is black, one is white; the uses should be pretty obvious from there.

We actually operate three hampers; darks, lights, and my delicates slash stuff I’m going to wear again but isn’t clean any more. It works well.

I also got my crafty on. Coming up to giftmas, I knew I’d have to reorganise the cards, envelopes, wrapping stuff, etc etc etc. Last time I juggled the snug, I’d tidied via the method of “put things in a drawer, worry about it later” and last night was “later”.

After four shelves in my Expedit were rejuggled such that their contents were a) accessible b) sensibly arranged, five drawers ditto, I was left with a pile of tidy things. Two large Tupperware containers were called into service, and two Pringles tubes have been modpodged with fabric, sealed, and commissioned for the purposes of holding tape. Said tape was previously corraled in a ziplock bag, which did work, but made the drawer an absolute arse to rummage through.

I also bought some decent eyeliner, for the first time ever. One of the things that became apparent with the round of dance performances in the last month was that either my makeup-application abilities were sorely lacking, or my actual makeup was sorely lacking. I bet on the latter, bought some decent brushes, a gel eyeliner; found the makeup mirror hiding in a drawer in the spare room (why?), repaired it (the plastic support frame had cracked), and this morning experimented with my new eyeliner.

A webcam is not really an ideal source of eye photography, but I’m quite pleased with myself. Eyeliner! where it belongs! unsmudged! Hooray!

The garage now contains both cars, and does not contain any of the following things:
* a couch
* a coffee table
* large piles cardboard, misc
* rubbish, misc
* two dvd players [dead] (also, why?)

The living room has similarly had all of it’s misc: crap removed.

Admittedly, the misc: crap has been moved into the spare rooms; but the spare rooms are presently in a condition whereby both beds are usable (which beats where we were last time I updated re: Operation 2012). A LOT of stuff went out in the inorganic collection.

Mum visited during October, and was lovely enough to help me tackle the garage and the spare rooms. Most of what’s left just requires a bit of time, which is something I simply don’t have enough of.

This weekend, Tobermory and I attacked our bedroom. We’d been growing unfortunately attached to the floordrobe, I have a jewellery cupboard which didn’t contain any of my jewellery on account of it migrating elsewhere, a dresser piled up with crap, the floor hadn’t been vacuumed in I don’t even want to contemplate how long, and I couldn’t GET to my bits of the walk in wardrobe because of Mount Foldmore.

The floor has been vacuumed, which was a bit of a mission in vacuum for a bit, pop the foot off, use the suction to clean the foot, vacuum, pop foot, clean foot, etc; but the cat fur is actually removed. The heaters have been put away for the summer. The floordrobe has been removed from the sides of the bed, and washed and/or put away and/or stuck in the hamper for washing later. We had a hamper frame hanging about, so I turned two pillowcases into a hamper… sack… thing. So now we have three hampers; “normal washing” which my beloved handles, “delicates that I have to wash”, and “clothes that don’t need washing yet but aren’t clean either”. At least if it’s corralled in a hamper, it’s not spreading itself around on the floor. We also attacked and vanquished Mount Foldmore. I can walk! on the actual FLOOR!

When I unearthed three handbags from the pile, I decided my handbag storage also needed an overhaul. The wardrobe has a storage shelf, up very high; the handbags are now all hanging off that. Hopefully it continues to work.

Operation 2012: Tidy All The Things appears to be working.

One of my goalposts was that I would be able to clean/tidy a given room without needing to throw things away to achieve this tidiness. In the snug (my craft room), the bathrooms, and the kitchen, this point has been achieved. The kitchen gets a bit of a waiver if the things being thrown in the trash are food-wrappings; otherwise, we’re just about there.

The garage will reach that point just as soon as the couch is gone and this years’ inorganic collection has happened. The laundry hit that point months ago, and only fails on the basis of dust bunnies out of the lint catcher from the dryer.

The living room is still a problem, because the excess things in that room (non-trash) need to be put… somewhere, and somewhere doesn’t exist yet. It’ll happen as soon as the spare rooms are sorted.

The spare rooms are still a problem, in large part due to “oh god, 35 boxes from the UK oh god”, and the bits that weren’t my Expedit being stuffed whereever they fit. Still. Progress has happened, and progress is the important bit, right?