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Location: Northern California

Monday, September 04, 2006

 

Odds, Ends, Beginnings, and Do-overs


Happy girl
Originally uploaded by marytsao.
I just did two wonderful things:

1. I unsubscribed myself from three Yahoo groups, including Flylady, thereby ensuring that I will receive a hundred less emails every day.

2. I deleted fifty emails from people I didn't know without reading them. Bye bye.

Doing those two things made me feel very, very good.

***

Emily starts preschool tomorrow and I have been in a cleaning frenzy for the past three days.

I do not know if those two things are related.

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Fall is in the air. I can feel myself rushing to get things done before winter sets in. Even though winter in my area simply means the need for a long sleeve shirt and a fleece instead of a tank top with your jeans. Winters here are not what you would call brutal. It's not like I have to can the last of the summer harvest to make sure we have enough food for when the snow piles as high as the barn.

Nevertheless, the upcoming quarter promises to be busy. I've got travel plans already for October and November as well as a plan to do NaNoWriMo again in November. December is the month I turn into a combination Santa Claus and Betty Crocker and between Christmas cards, cookies, decorating, shopping, and partying, I'm hoping to find a bottle of xanex in my stocking.

***

I got three quotes for our fence and I'm happy to report that the lowest bid came from the company whose representative impressed me the most. It's like the stars were aligned or something. Now if we can get them to schedule and finish the work by the first weekend in October, that would be grand.

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The dumpster we rented last Thursday is almost full. About 1/2 of its contents is trash from our side yard (old strollers, broken furniture, etc.) and 1/2 is garbage from Mike's office.

***

I am pushing my husband to clean out his office so that I can give him the office of his dreams. Sometimes I feel like a shithead for pushing him to go through boxes of old stuff from six years ago, but I know he will be much happier when he has an office that he can use to host poker night. He has said as much.

I know he doesn't want to do this work, but I also know he will be happy when it's done.

And he seems to be responding to my approach, which basically is to rent a dumpster and start tossing things. Actually, I don't toss anything that isn't an empty box. I'm just the organizer, decorater, painter, and coach. Only he can say what gets tossed. Honestly, I don't even understand most of what he owns. Or why some of it stays and some of it goes.

For example, why would anybody would want to keep a pair of rainbow flip flops from 1980? They're sixteen years old. To me, that's a reason to toss them. To Mike, that's a reason to keep them. Such value! See how long they've lasted?!

Again, I am only here to provide support and to organize items that we are keeping. For the record, we are keeping the flip flops. They now reside in the bedroom by his other shoes instead of at the bottom of a cardboard box, underneath 30 feet of ethernet cable, a book about Windows 98, five T-shirts that he made for a fraternity party in college, and a plastic bag of receipts from 1996.

***

Hey, ladies. Does your husband have any ex-girlfriend memorabilia that he still hangs on to? What do you do with stuff like that? I have one file folder filled with letters and faxes and two boxes filled with photo albums that contain photos of my ex. I guess I could toss the letters, but dealing with the photos is trickier. Not all of them have him in them. And it feels weird to systematically remove a person from my life. I mean, he was there in my life, whether or not photos exist. Life contains no do-overs. Unfortunately.

So, two questions, if you don't mind:

1. Do you have items (letters, photos) from your life with an ex? If not, was it because you threw them out?

2. Does your husband have items from his past? Does he know you know about them? Does the fact he has these items bother you?

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