Figures of speech

It's sniffle time of year again and I happened to sneeze as we were driving somewhere the other day. Aside: FYI, I am not, nor have I ever been, a dainty sneezer. Try as I might, I still worry about closed windows overpressurizing when I feel a sneeze coming on. It would seem it is physically impossible to re-learn to sneeze. Sort of like keeping your eyes open when you sneeze. Can't be done. Unless you know something I don't know... Anyways, this sneeze was a particularly enthusiastic blast and without much thought I said, "Excuse me. Almost lost my eyeballs on that one."

After a moment of silence, a small voice came from the backseat.

"Is that a figure of speech?"

De-stuffing

I've undertaken the massive project of de-stuffing my house. Partly the need arose because we've lived in this house BY FAR longer than we've ever lived in one location before. I didn't realize that moving had become a way to clean my closets up until now.

Partly, the need arose through the fact that I've been helping a friend get ready to move for the last three months. She has a lot of STUFF. Her STUFF is much higher quality that my STUFF but it still left me with the nasty feeling that this was going to be my life in 30 years if I didn't do something about it NOW.

So while SG was out of town I began by emptying our walk in closet. And slept in the studio for 3 nights.

I discovered something that I'd know for awhile but had managed to fairly successfully repress. I'm a packrat. Don't know why but do know I can't deny it any longer.

Or maybe I do know why. It defies common sense to say that I need 1 cup hook (for instance) so I buy a package of 6. I use one and leave 5 stashed in a drawer. After two years, I throw out/donate/pawn-off-on-unsuspecting-friends the 5 hooks. Then, one week after getting rid of them, I need 1. So I buy a package of 6. See how this goes?

So now I'm looking at 2 Christmas ornaments, a piece of blue plastic that broke off a toy train that I'm pretty sure we got rid of but hate to throw it out until I'm POSITIVE we got rid of it, a wooden star that came off the end of a wall hanging rod that served as a fairy wand when the star I'm holding came off but is still in the house somewhere, an odd sock (I've a basket for those somewhere) and a Ziploc bag of random buttons.

And I've only gone through one box so far.

Maybe I just need to move ...