After being gone for the most part of three and a half months to Austin, Orlando, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and India, I am now home for a good stretch.

[Ms. Jen knocks on the nearest wooden object, which in this case is a chair.]

In late March, on my mom's birthday, her mother, my grandmother, passed away. In the intervening three months since, as my aunts, sister, and mom have worked to clean out grandma's apartment and get her estate settled, more and more things have entered my apartment. Things as small as tiny bird figurines and as large as a three bay couch. A much wanted couch, but it arrived the day I was departing for India. A mild panic ensued to try and rearrange furniture and the other newly arrived objects to make way for a couch nearly as long as my living room, as well as try to get to LAX on time.

I returned from India ten days ago to find there was only a small amount of room to get around in my place and now after recovering from jetlag, exhaustion, catching up with work, and an epic case of the hives, I cleaned my apartment today. By cleaning, I put things to right, determined what needed to go to my storage, what needs to be returned to its proper owner, and what needs to be put into the Closet of Doom for moderate ease of access.

I still need to rearrange the furniture in the living room, pack up one bookcase of books, notebooks, and sketchbooks, and take a whole load of things and one futon to storage. Once this in done, I will feel like my peace of my place is back. Although, after today's spree, I feel more than three-quarters of the way there.

Conquering the mess on my office desktop is next, after more blogging.