Today I’m winning the Global War on Clutter. I didn’t wake up expecting to move hundreds of pounds of furniture and garbage, but that’s kind of what happened. It probably all started yesterday, when a red sleigh pulled right up to our front door and removed a very, very heavy pellet stove from our foyer. It was a smooth operation, but it was not without some unexpected musical entertainment:
This departure, coupled with the fact that come January 1 the town dump starts charging by the bag, lit a fire that left me sitting in a house that looks nothing like the one that I woke up in this morning.
Our house is relatively small, and as such it is nearly impossible to attempt to adjust one loose shingle without taking down the entire siding of the house and painting everything purple before you are done. As my brother wisely observed today “it has to get dirtier before it can get cleaner.” I’m glad he said that and not me, because it means that my Dad and brother don’t completely hate me for messing up their thickly settled (dust in this case, not the neighborhood) environs.
Because I’ve been lazy lately, here are a few pictures of the blur that became my day. You are lucky that my Dad didn’t snap a photo of my in my striped pajama shorts, bright blue wellies and my brother’s fleece…because that’s what I was sporting this morning as I loaded up the truck for the dump. I know, you are all profoundly disappointed by this fact…
See this hutch? It all started off with me thinking, “I need to take everything out and dust this thing.”
This is all the stuff that I pulled out of the hutch. I didn’t ask my Dad to help me go through all of it, but I was sure glad he did. It took a good ten minutes for him to examine and try to show me each individual memento: “Ha! Hey- check this out! You know what this is? World War II money manufactured by the U.S. in the event of a Japanese occupation!” While I appreciated that he was rediscovering long-forgotten treasures that had been buried under an inch of protective powder coating, I had to stick to my primary mission and stayed perched atop the desk.
This is where the hutch ended up: what used to be my room, and what used to be the computer room until yesterday (another story in itself). By only providing simple “before” and “after” photos, you really can’t gain an appreciation for all of the unscrewing, disassembling, lifting and reassembling that took place today, but you get the picture. I’ll just let you know that my brother did most of the hard stuff- namely executing my hair-brained ideas.
Well, I’m about 25 minutes into a dose of Green Death (Nyquil), so I should probably quit typing while I still judge my word choices as blog appropriate. As most of Cape Cod now knows, tomorrow is a big day for my brother and me. I already have a Thank You card poised to send to Mr. Jacobs, president of the Boston Bruins- but first I hope to have lots of good hockey stories come this time tomorrow.
Oh yeah, I guess that it’s New Year’s Eve too. Whatever- when you have such quality misadventures constantly going on all around you, it’s far too easy to lose track of the days. That’s probably why my Dad can never remember when it’s any of our birthdays.
“And I heard her exclaim as she drove out of sight…”