Cardboard. I never want to feel cardboard again.

So I thought tonight I would show y'all photographic proof of why I can't seem to blog more often than I do.

As I told y'all before, our office is going through a remodel.  Next Friday is the day my floor moves.  We move to a temporary space for 3 or 4 months, then we move back to our floor after it's been completely gutted and rebuilt from the floor up.  Fun!  But this coming Monday is our deadline for getting every single file folder bar coded and boxed up to send to our off-site storage warehouse.  One of my bosses has been with my firm since 1999.  I have been bar coding and sending off files from way back in 1999 that the 2 assistants he had before me did not bar code.  In addition to packing up every single thing down to every single paper clip in my own office, I work for two partners and an associate and I have to help all three of them pack up every single thing in their offices.  I have been packing for almost 4 weeks already.  We only have one more week to pack.  And this is what my office still looked like when I left at 7:00 tonight.  I wish this was photoshopped but this is honest to goodness what it looks likes right now because I have been packing almost 15 years worth of files.  And my boss never throws away a piece of paper:

And this is what it looks like in the hallway outside of my office and our file room has already picked up about 5 or 6 times in the past month and this is what my office mate and I bar coded and packed up today.  And there are 15 more boxes off to the right of this photo:

And oh yeah, by the way, we still have to get our regular work done too.  And this is how much space I have on my desk to work right now.  Yes, I have that 5 square inches in front of my keyboard to work from:

And by regular work, I mean those stupid, stupid, stupid huge overnight mailings I get to do all the dadgum time.  We've sent out 160 overnight packages in the past 3 days.  This is only about 45 of them:

And on the weekends when I'm not having all of that crazy fun (although I did go into the office and pack boxes all day one Saturday and didn't even get paid for going in but I had to do it for my own sanity), I go to my dad's house and try to work on getting it cleaned out.  And his mean, greedy wife hasn't moved out yet.  My brothers, one of their wives and I were out there weekend before last to sort and clean out my dad's tools from the garage.  Where the bag of charcoal is sitting?  This is how much space we had to work in.  All four of us were in here.  All of those boxes are my dad's wife's stuff:

This is from the driveway looking into the garage.  Those are all the wife's boxes.  And yet she's upset we took a couple of pieces of pyrex because she says she's, and I quote, "lacking in furniture and stuff".

And this is in my dad's office/studio area in the basement where we've been trying to go through his things.  His things are all behind all of this incredible amount of shit:

And this is actually a fairly large and nice sunroom.  When it's not full of all of her shit.  Since she's "lacking" in stuff, you know:

And this is the state of my dad's dining room right now:

Now do y'all see why I might sound completely mental sometimes?  Because this is what my life is full of right now.  Piles of shit everywhere. Except when I go home at night.  I'm super glad I come home to this where I can be at peace:

Only right now there is a helicopter that has been buzzing over my house for about 10 minutes.  Some cop cars went flying up the street super fast about 20 minutes ago, so this means there is probably someone dangerous wandering my 'hood that they are searching for.  So that's awesome.  Because yesterday did y'all hear about the guy who walked into the megachurch here in Atlanta and shot someone dead who was leading a prayer group?  They arrested the murderer one block from my office yesterday afternoon.  And today they arrested an armed burglar about 1/2 mile from my office after shutting down a highway and bringing out the helicopters looking for him.

Yes, it's just always peace and calm in my world lately.  I am in serious need of a vacation far away from anyone who knows me.  And as far away from packing boxes and helicopters and police cars as a person can possibly get.  I am going on a trip soon but I don't really want to announce when and where on my blog.  But trust me.....it's somewhere you've most likely never heard of and I can assure you that you wouldn't go there on vacation in a bazillion years.  I have to go there for a family wedding.

 I don't know what in the heck is going on with blogger tonight (particularly under that last photo of my bedroom).  First it wouldn't let me hit enter to start a new paragraph.  Then it did let me but even though I hit enter only once, it put about 50 blank lines in but it won't let me take any of them out.  Because apparently blogger thinks I don't have enough nonsense to deal with in life right now.

Okay, winners of the song contest.  Y'all, after this post and the last one with all of the pictures, and the fact that it's 10:30 and I still have to clean out the litter box (because as hard as I try I cannot convince my cat to stop taking so many dumps), I'm just going to list the songs but not go look for the videos to post, okay?  Do y'all understand?  If not, ask me if I care at the moment because I do not.  Also, I just heard something that sounded like the bar on my front gate hitting the driveway.  But the helicopter went away so I'm going to pray they caught whoever they were looking for and didn't just give up and he's not hiding in my backyard or something right now.  I did go look out the window and I didn't see anything.  But honest to goodness, if a bad guy is behind my house or under my back deck, could he have picked a more exhausted person's house to hide at?  Right now I am honestly thinking, "Fine.  Hang out in my yard.  Just don't come in my house and be gone by the time I have to leave for work in the morning please.  I really cannot handle one more thing to deal with at the moment."  Also, did I mention the power went off down my whole street around 8:30 tonight?  TWICE within a minute?  I may or may not have been sitting on the toilet peeing when it happened.  Y'all, my bathroom is very dark when the power goes out. 

When do I get a vacation????

First Place:  Sadie for Madonna's "Dress You Up"

Second Place:  Mary Lou for Mitch Ryder's "Devil With A Blue Dress"

Third Place:  Just Paula for Shakira's "Costume Makes The Clown"