True confessions time: I’ve actually been kind of afraid to check the results of the What To Do With Garfield?? poll. I mean, what if the winning answer was “Chuck It!”? Was I really gonna be able to put him in the trash? After all, this is me we’re talking about, who is utterly horrified by the concept of landfills. Who tries in vain to figure out how to repurpose hole-y sweat socks and who devotes actual brain space to whether or not toothpaste tube caps are recyclable. Besides, no matter how lame the project, I’m pretty sure I have never, ever thrown out something I’ve made… and I’ve certainly never thrown out anything I made that had a face.

Fortunately, weighing in at 27% of the vote, “Chuck It!” was juuuuust edged out by “donate to a school or library or….?” which garnered a very respectable 30%. So here’s what I am going to do: I will finish the pillow and donate it to our local library, where I might go and pay Garfield a visit whenever the mood strikes which will be, of course, exactly never. But it’s the knowing that I could that definitely- if inexplicably- helps.

The key element here is that I really do have to actually finish the pillow in order to make this into an object our library, or anyone for that matter, might actually want, and- surprise!- I don’t know how to do that. Which come to think of it is pretty much how Garfield and I got into this mess to begin with. Back to square one?

No! Or not without a fight anyway. I’m determined to break the cluttering cycle, and if I learned anything from my experience in the Hell Room, it is that indecision and inaction are the loving parents of each newborn piece of clutter. So if you’ll pardon me, I have a date with my sewing machine… in the Hell Room in the Art Room. Wish me luck!

Or Garfield, wish him luck. He might really need it.