Since I don’t have any exciting photos to put in this posting, I’m going to dovetail my previous entry by showing you an even less exciting video:

So after having been emboldened by my first endeavor on hockey skates, I’m back to home improvement. You don’t scare me Armageddon Cellar, I’m going to clean you out! Although I don’t feel like I did that much today, I’m still pretty drained. In principle, today involved pretty mundane stuff: evicting disgruntled spiders, attacking bolts that are rusted into concrete, and using my very own screwgun to wage a campaign of deconstruction on any item that I saw fit to destroy.

Oh yeah, I also got sidetracked and organized the stockpile of doomsday food. Among many other things, did you know that we have the following items occupying our pantry:

319 packets of ramen noodles (chicken and beef flavor only)

16 cans of corn

30 cans of beans (some French cut green, regular green, and bizarrely some wax beans)

5 cans of peas

2 cans of sauerkraut

13 cans of corned beef hash

13 cans of cream of chicken soup

4 cans of cream of mushroom soup

20 cans of assorted soups (chicken noodle is the favorite though)

30 cans of albacore tuna

8 boxes of French onion soup packets

Have you ever read McCarthy’s The Road? I have, and if these are the dining choices that I get when the world turns gray, I’m totally fine with rushing to the front lines and seeing what the afterlife holds (note the paucity of alcohol in this list).

I think it’s no secret that people don’t like going through their old stuff because it’s such a mentally taxing exercise. Attics and basements bear a remarkable resemblance to a person’s psyche, and the last I checked we humans will do just about anything to obscure this aspect from our day to day life. It takes a lot of mental energy to dust off and haul into the light sentimental objects that will be placed on the Chopping Block of Eternity:

Keep it or trash it?

I have to hand it to my father. He is doing a commendable job of discovering things (yes, more than the expired food) for the first time in decades and making this very decision dozens of times a day. Personally I find it easy making such judgments with relative detachment because none of this is my stuff. I haven’t spent seven decades collecting these objects of sentimental (and in many cases monetary) value. Trust me, if I used my hard-earned salary to buy and pay off a house where I could place all of my earthly treasures, I’d sure be pissed off if my daughter came home and started recommending that I throw most of it away.

But that’s kind of what is going on right now, and I have to say that it’s difficult for me as well. I love my Dad, and I also know that all of this stuff is a part of my own history too. The problem with us humans is that we love our stuff. It’s like God created us so that we could create commemorative objects. Problem is, there’s just not enough room to house and appreciate every scrap of wood, metal or liquid that is serving as a remembrance of something past. We don’t need to keep (or even buy) everything- that’s why we were given brains….at least until Alzheimer’s comes along.

Incidentally, I have a few boxes of my own that are hibernating up in the attic. Do you think that I want to go through those? Not in a million years. In fact, if my father decided one day to climb up there and purge his house of my possessions without my examination, I’d probably feel compelled to visit the package store and reward him with a bottle of Glenlivet. I’ll stick with poking around his own mind, thank you.