This is probably about post 189387.323 about our my long, slow crusade to rid The Landfill of junk before my children have to do it. Sometimes it seems like it is a solo crusade but the GG earned a gold star or two or ten today. I thought he was going to go to his office today but the power was out there and so he didn’t and instead, he unearthed a very heavy old metal desk from our basement and, after much hughing huffing and pughing puffing and blowing the man down, he and Mouse and I managed to get it up the Landfill Dungeon stairs and outside to its current resting place where hopefully someone will buy it off Craig’s List. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll put a “free” sign on it and move it out to the street. I think that’s the plan anyway. I hope I am still not looking at that rusting, decaying, squirrel-infested desk outside my house next spring.

Anyway, after weeks and weeks of weekend rocket trips to various places, we are actually home here on the Planet Ann Arbor for the weekend and the GG was on a ROLL! Moving furniture around and getting rid of unidentified objects from long ago. At least they were unidentified to me. The GG always usually knows what kinds of things unidentified pieces of electronical crap do. Multi-meters anyone? Kee-reist. And so, the desk is out but the beds are not re-bunked yet (don’t ask) but progress has been made.

And, y’know, I always try to tell folks that we have so much flotsam and jetsam because we have lived in this house for 25 years. But then I found something that I wrote in a word document back in the early 1990s. It is about a weekend when we took stuff to a garage sale at our friend Jim Carpenter’s (where are you, Jim?) place down on Seventh Street. An apartment where I had lived and Mark/Pooh before me. You can draw your own conclusions but I think we have been doomed to a life of Too Much Stuff since forever…

Oh, and Mouse drew both of those pictures. The first was originally titled “Non-poisonous Mushrooms”. The second is a self-portrait (I think). When I dredged this picture up tonight, I was thinking something like, “wow, lots and lots and lots of fingers! So she can do lots and lots of things!” But then she pointed out that there are actually *no* fingers on the person. Those are *flowers* in the background. What did I know? I am also wondering where the ears are but we won’t go there at the moment. No polydactyly here. Interesting concept though.

And so. Here is what I wrote about that garage sale so many years ago:

I am bound and determined that someday our decor will be upgraded from its current mix of “student ghetto” and “early in-law” and in preparation for that eventuality, we have been working on reducing our large junque collection. As a warm-up for serious shedding, we finally became a two-car family by selling our remaining ancient Ford Fiesta (over the loud objections of Elizabeth, who didn’t want us to get rid of her “baby car”). Then we moved on to the big project, a garbage (oops, that’s garage) sale, a joint endeavor with a friend who lives in a duplex that we (also Mark and Pooh) once rented. Our friend Jim, who has lived there for the last nine years, was given permission by the landlady to get rid of whatever he could so he unearthed tons of junk stored there for at least the last twenty years. A highlight was an old wringer washer that works and was happily carted away by some woman who obviously has more time than I do. We took a few vanloads over there ourselves and, fortunately, brought very little home. No, the notorious salmon pink vinyl chairs didn’t sell, although some character came by and suggested that the Henry Ford Museum was actually looking for “Naugahyde” furniture (I didn’t believe him). Bill endured the ultimate insult when someone looking for “porch furniture” actually passed up the pink chairs for an old black vinyl couch without legs and now permeated with an awful stench. (Jane, don’t get your hopes up – Purple Heart picked up the “Naugahyde”.)

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