Thinner

I never thought it would be so pleasurable to give stuff away.

It’s not the satisfaction one feels from donating to a favorite charity. It’s the exquisite lightness of not having so much crap. Here’s how my day went:

I woke up a little after 6 and went out to the telephone pole to nail up my “FREE” signs. My last two “FREE” signs disappeared on Monday, thanks no doubt to some neighborhood busybody’s fear that free stuff might attract the wrong element. This time around, I hauled out the ladder and nailed my signs as high as I could. So far, my strategy has worked brilliantly.

Within an hour, my first customer arrived — one of my buyers from last week’s garage sale, back to purchase my hex tank. I’ve since decided not to part with the hex tank (see, I know myself too well. First thing I’ll do once we move into a new house? Buy a new fish tank) so I had to disappoint him there. BUT he took my big huge desk and our big huge wooden bookshelf.

I’d been married to that desk since 1981. No kidding. I bought it at the Ashby flea market for $25; my roommate Roger helped me load it into his pickup, haul it back to our apartment, and shlep it up the stairs. That desk was the beginning of the end for me. Up until that desk, I had been able to move myself without anyone’s help. After that, I depended upon the kindness of friends and co-workers. Please please pleeeeease pretty please help me with this sucker?

And the annoying thing is, I don’t think I ever used it much as a desk. In college, I preferred studying in the libraries. There were too many distractions at home (funny how that never changes). It always served as a support for something else: a typewriter, a computer, an aquarium, and lately, pillows for the cats. The cats loved that desk. They covered it with their fur and their marking spray and their dusty paw prints. And now they’re looking at me: How could you.

I am so glad to be rid of that desk.

A little later, Catrina and her husband came by for my Life Cycle, this bloody thing that cost me a fortune back in ’98 and never got much use because the seat makes my groin go numb. Can’t have that. Catrina took our box of remaining kids’ videotapes, too, even though she doesn’t have VHS.

“What do you mean, you don’t have VHS? Don’t tell me you have Betamax.”

The look she gave me? I might have been speaking Burushaski. “We only have a DVD player,” she said.

Oh.

Her mom has a VCR, thank heavens, so maybe the kids will get some experience with these oddly huge, clunky things, these veedeo-taypus. If they’re not interested, the box and its contents will end up with St. Vincent de Paul.

I hauled off a load of old medical books to the library; the first gal tried to refuse them, saying textbooks didn’t go over well at their book sales, but the second gal took the whole box. Then I went to the local mission and dropped off all of our old bed sheets. What can I say, I’m sick of them. We’ve had them forever and I WANT NEW SHEETS. And a new bedroom set, too.

Over the course of the afternoon, our 20 gallon aquarium disappeared from the FREE! pile, and so did our old filing cabinet, a glass table, a rusty tricycle, and an even rustier Tonka crane. There’s not much left in that pile, just a couple of office chairs that need reupholstering, two suitcases, and random small crap I’d say no one in their right mind would want, except we’ve already given away a few hundred pounds of similar crap. It’s amazing what some people want.

Remember our humongous RV garage?

It now looks like this:

And that’s a not-half-bad reflection of what’s been going on inside our house, too.

It feels good. Really good.

That stuff on the floor: 1970s-chic chandeliers. They’re spoken for, but I think there may be some disagreement between the guy who wants them and his wife, who regards his yen with, oh, bemusement is the polite term.

I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Anyone up for live-blogging?

D.