Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Coughing up a lung, unpacking
This is one of those viruses where the improvement is incremental. I know yesterday was better than last Friday because I had no fever, no chills. I know last night was better than the night before because I got to sleep without a cough drop in my mouth. For the past four or five days, I’ve been able to lie down without feeling my lungs collapse into a layered pastry of velcro. And this morning, I had the energy to unpack.
I brought in six or seven boxes from the garage, most of which were labeled ‘kitchen, store,’ meaning these were low priority items that could be left in storage as long as necessary. There’s a futile feeling associated with such unpacking; after all, I have a fully functional kitchen now, so anything I might unpack is, at the very least, unnecessary. And so I’ve had to decide what to do with another two huge pyrex casserole dishes, another three frying pans I never use.
Some things are useful. I found our electric can opener, our Belgian waffle maker, our bread machine. I also found the base of a Cuisinart (nothing else left, just the base), an old mark-up board written on with indelible marker, a wire rack for barbecuing fish (which I’ve never used), a joke drinking mug, a caulking gun.
And so forth. I threw a bunch of stuff out, and I put more stuff out into the garage for eventual donation. I kept the mini-Bundt pan, the fajita iron, the bamboo forms for making sushi. We keep all our wedding china, naturally, but we’ve had perhaps two or three occasions to use it over the years. I broke one of our wine glasses from the wedding china sets — I doubt it will be missed.
I don’t know what impulse led us to grow over the first two decades of marriage, but at last we’re finally shrinking.
Still. I haven’t found our flatware — I know it’s out there somewhere — and I haven’t found the one thing I tend to think symbolizes our decades of uncontrolled growth: an aebelskiver mold I bought in Eugene, Oregon. I even used it once. So, yeah, there’s at least one more box of kitchen stuff out there, along with countless boxes of books.
Oy, the books: we had a built-in bookcase in our master bedroom in Oregon, and nothing like that here. I have no clue what I’m going to do with all of our books.
Time to drink more water.
D.
Glad you are feeling better. Hearing about your toomuchstuffitis eases the pain of mine. Goodwill is my good friend. I also suffer from stuffthekidsleftbehinditis which is incurable.
We can’t bring ourselves to sell/give away all of Jake’s Thomas the Tank Engine stuff. Figure the kid’s gonna give us grandkids eventually, right? And they’ll need trains to play with, right?
I’m waiting to call Goodwill — want to get everything unpacked first.
Used bookstores will take those books off your hands, and you might think about giving stuff to the children’s hospital. I can see saving Thomas the Tank.
Over the summer,I gave away a bunch of crap to Goodwill …all the freebies from casinos. You know what I’m talking about.
I feel too attached to most of our books. Ridiculous, and now that we no longer have tons of bookshelf space I might just have to come to terms with not hanging onto every last book.
Let the be free!!! Books want to be free out circulating in the world, being read by many people, sharing their ideas and allowing readers to temporarily shift into another world.
Books languishing in a bookshelves (or worse – trapped in dark, crowded boxes in moldering garages – or in the B-field case, sweltering) are not happy books.
Doug, don’t be so selfish! Let them go. Give certain of them to people you think might like them. Give others to the library. Ask senior citizen facilities if they might want some. What about other places where people have lots of time and little to do? I have a friend here who was a librarian in a prison in North Dakota (I picture her shushing the guys from Fargo – even if that did take place in Minnesota.) – maybe there’s a prison that could use them.
As you can see, I’ve got the zeal of the converted. I finally got rid of my books, except for some art books that I bought in St. Petersburg on Russian art, when we moved out the U.S. My brother-in-law got most of the science fiction/fantasy, but the rest were donated to the library.
Of course books that you use all the time, you plan to read to or pass on to Jake, or have huge sentimental value must be treasured and kept. The books that you read once and won’t read again – out!
Now if only I can get rid of my weird kitchenware (I did finally pass on the fish poacher, which was hard, since it had been something of a touchstone “I don’t have too much kitchen stuff, because after all I don’t have a fish poacher!” and then my friends pooled together and got me one. I even used it once here in Geneva.). I’ve several times eyed my blini keeper, but then relent, since I did get it in St. Petersburg and I can’t buy another here and it is (oh, let me be honest here, I have to say could be) useful for tortillas.
Good luck with unpacking!