Penguin, Pirate Ship, Construction Worker and Cowboy

Day 345: Penguin, Pirate Ship, Construction Worker and Cowboy

There's something old-fashioned, almost quaint, about these little plastic figures. I wonder if my father played with toys like these back in the 1940s. Maybe a few survived until he left for college in 1957, just as these few survived Sam's mock battles, barters and forays.

Granted, plastic (and all its environmental bads) isn't so old-fashioned. Just yesterday, I heard about a woman who attempted to give up plastic for Lent. Toothpaste, shampoo, toilet paper - she was able to live a fairly normal lifestyle except for a few staple items. I guarantee, though, that every mother would rather have toy soldiers made from plastic than from lead. Let the Doldrums be damned.

Today I'm not worrying about lead toys. We've decided to allow Sam to drive himself to Wixom tonight for two soccer games. Just under eight months with a driver's license. I hope and pray that he paid attention in driver's ed to those dire warnings about speed limits and merging.

Time moves inexorably forward. Kids grow up and leave home, parents get older. When the kids are little, you keep lead out of the toybox. You pull over when the babies unfasten their seat belts. You choose G movies and Teletubbies. You make sure they wear hats and mittens, warm coats and boots. You sing them to sleep, perhaps occasionally catching them under the covers with a flashlight. You watch their grades, feed them a home-cooked meal, and drive them to soccer games. It's a lot of work, and in some ways, it's the easy part.

Later, you let them drive themselves, a half hour on the freeway on a wintery Saturday night. You let them choose their college and their major. You give them unlimited screen time. You can't make them read, or eat right, or sleep the right number of hours. You can't make them do their homework, or walk the dog, or get to class on time. You don't choose their friends.

Next thing you know, they are stronger, faster, smarter than you. They see better, think better, reach farther. You're like Wile E. Coyote, chasing the roadrunner off a cliff, legs pumping for a just a moment before gravity takes over.

Free fall.

Egyptian Remains

Day 344: Egyptian Remains

I think it's fair to say that these Egyptian remains were more a process than a product. Emma Jane had some fun painting them when I brought them to her, a souvenir of a mom-alone trip to the Field Museum in Chicago. This was back during her mythology obsession days, when she read things like Greek Gods and Heroes for fun. Once the painting was done, she lost interest in the objects. I don't think I'd be hurting anyone's feelings if I got rid of them. 

Meanwhile, I'm off to Muncie to collect the real girl for spring break. (Did I say spring? It is -5 outside.)

Owner's Manuals

Day 343: Owner's Manuals

Cleaning and organizing the last attic shelves, I found very little to get rid of. Interestingly, I did find an actual missing shelf. Now that it's back where it belongs on the built-in, there is a bit more order to it all. 

Office Supply Trash

Day 342: Office Supply Trash

This stuff is trash masquerading as office supplies. These objects were together in a little pod of things that my next-door-neighbor Barbara left when she moved. You remember, back six or eight years ago, when I told Barbara that I would take anything she couldn't bring herself to get rid of. I promised either to use it, or get rid of it myself.

Barbara couldn't bring herself to get rid of these, and so I kept them, too. The mailing envelope is tattered and torn and would need lots of tape to make it usable. The tape, however, is not sticky.

I wonder if unwillingness to get rid of something is contagious.

Staplers

Day 340: Staplers
Think of all the resolutions a person could make to become happier and healthier. I've got several myself. A half-hour of yoga every day. At least seven strands of needlepoint a week. Forty-five minutes of aerobic exercise six days a week. Reading a minimum of three articles in The New York Times every day. Daily dog walks. Twice weekly dog brushing (that last one is new). And, of course, the stuff project.

I wonder, sometimes, if the structure and busyness of all these resolutions masks deeper things, like nail polish over grass-stained nails. I've adjusted quite nicely to Emma's being away. Will I miss her more when the stuff project is over?

I consider myself quite lazy. I never try to do my best. I only try to do the minimum. In my mind, this is strategic. Why do more than is necessary to accomplish the goal? This is why a doll boot or a few books or a broken WaterPik suffice. Or still more office supplies.

Office supplies. They are still coming out of the woodwork. Why do we have three of them? Strangely enough, all three work. I elected to keep the retro gray one. The other two went into the Gardens to become part of the office supply shelf.

Lazy or strategic, many days I would rather just go home and crash with a cup of hot tea and a steampunk romance.

Harpo's Hair

Day 339: Harpo's Hair

Before

After

Saved this in horizontal orientation
15 times but blogspot won't take it

The first time Harpo got a haircut, the groomer kept the clippings in a plastic grocery bag. She thought I might want to knit a sweater out of them. Not.

Since then, he has learned to hate haircuts. Hence the long delay, hence the pleasant little note. I actually bought one of those ridiculous fleece coats for him, thinking it might mitigate his embarrassment. Unfortunately, the medium was too small, and the large was too large.

Hoping the weather warms up son.

Misfit Toys

Day 338: Misfit Toys

Who remembers the Island of Misfit Toys? Those who do will know that the toys were all charming, and cute, and sweet, in a quirky kind of way.

A train with square wheels.

A wind-up mouse in a set of nesting dolls.

A train with square wheels.

A polka-dot elephant (how moderne!)

A pink fire truck, a blue bicycle, a blue car and a white rocking horse (perhaps it is discrimination on the basis of color?).

A bird that swims, a bear that flies, and an airplane that doesn't.

A cowboy who rides an ostrich.

A Charlie-in-the-Box.

The toys I am getting rid of today include:

A plastic figure with no head.

A plastic wig with no doll.

A black plastic combat boot, one inch log.

A grey plastic wheel with no vehicle.

Five dominos from three different sets.

A single pink popping bead.

An off-white plastic mystery thing.

Good luck finding loving homes, misfit toys.

Pollyanna and Other Books

Day 337: Pollyanna and Other Books

I scraped these last few books off an out-of-reach bookshelf like plaque from a molar, and moved another couple of good ones down where I can reach them. All the while, I'm asking myself, what's the point? I'm feeling again like John Krakauer almost at the summit, passing all the dead bodies and garbage, inviting myself to open the door to reason and drop this silliness now, while I still have something to read.

Not to mention wooden spoons to stir the soup, a few mementos of the kids' childhoods, and an antique or two.

Twenty-eight days to go, dead in the middle of one of the coldest snaps in recorded history, and isn't it ironic that the stuff project will end on the last day of winter? Between my two jobs and the $2.5M I'm trying to raise for a bicycle trail and strategic planning and a volunteer gig or two, I'm dreaming of the day when I don't have to come home from work, find something I don't need or want, and write about it.

I'm thinking, too, about how, if I'd spent a similar amount of time each day writing a novel, I'd probably have finished one by now. Of course, finishing a novel is no big accomplishment. I've already written two plus a children's book, and all three are stuffed in a RubberMaid bin in the basement, dusty, another few things I can't bring myself to get rid of.

My mystery novel was actually a damned good idea: Downsized to Death, about a young management consultant on a project (sound familiar?) and all the whacky characters she meets there. What could be a better idea for a series? Every four months, a new location, a new agency, a new murder. I've got a whole store of whacky characters and crazy stories from my consulting years.

Just last week, I was talking about a project at a county coroner's office where a corpse fell out the back of the coroner's van on the freeway during the project. Once, I got to see an animal control office stick a broom up a pit bull's butt. Another time, the undersheriff of one of the largest sheriff's departments in the country told me that the undersheriff is like the sheriff's underwear: he gets covered in shit while covering the sheriff's butt. I remember an elected official in a major county office excusing himself to go to the bathroom adjacent to his office during an audit interview; somehow he lit the bathroom garbage on fire so that after he came back, the room started to fill with smoke and the smoke alarm went off.

You can't make this stuff up. I even had a book agent who agreed to try to sell the book. Unfortunately, she thought the mystery I'd written came across more like the second book in the series, and wanted me to write the first book before she'd really begin shopping it around. I ran out of steam before the prequel was complete.

Well, if I'd spent time this year trying to sell my books rather than getting rid of stuff and writing about it, maybe I'd be published by now.

The trick is, though, that I wouldn't have. I might have made a resolution to do it, but in fact, I would have come home tired, or late, or preoccupied early on, and given myself permission to skip it. Then I would have skipped it again, and again, and within a month or two, I would've forgotten all about it.

Whether you have readers or not, if you make a resolution to publish a blog post every single day, and you don't, it's embarrassing. So I haven't published good stuff every day, but I've published. And I've gotten rid of something too.

Even if it was only Pollyanna.

Growler Bottle

Day 336: Growler Bottle

Why is wine hoity-toity and beer low-brow? I can discern many more nuances and flavors in beer. I can even tell a good beer from a bad beer when I taste it on its own, with nothing to compare it to. I have preferences. Michigan has over 100 microbreweries now, and, if it's not too patriotic, ours are among the best in the country.

A growler, though. That's a bit too large for one person to swallow. I guess that's why this refillable growler bottle from our favorite Ann Arbor micro-brewer has gotten dusty in the cupboard. Time to get my $5 deposit back.

Meanwhile, Sam and Rich are coming home from Florida tomorrow, so I've got one more night on my own. Would it be too decadent to have apple pie and Bell's White Winter Ale for dinner? Otherwise, I'll have to go out in the (very, very) cold to buy something healthier.

Mysterious Wooden Game

Day 335: Mysterious Wooden Game

In fifth grade, Sam designed a presidential election board game. The year was 2008 and Obama was running against John McCain. The game resembled Chutes and Ladders in that you rolled a die and sometimes randomly got to leap forward or get pushed back. If you landed on a trivia square, you drew a question card; if you answered correctly, you got another roll of the die. We made the question cards out of cut-up greeting cards and researched the elections on the web. There were questions about delegates and electoral votes, primaries and past presidents. We drew the game board on poster board, which I had laminated. Sam did this just for the hell of it, because he loved board games and played them almost every night. I daydreamed of his selling the game design to Hasbro or Mattel, but he wouldn't even take it to school to show it to Mrs. Pryce, his exuberantly kind and sensible fifth grade teacher. 

This is why it will be very difficult to get rid of most of the board games in the cupboard. Though we rarely play now - when we do, it's usually an electronic checkers board - each of the games in the cupboard is powerfully evocative of Sam. We've probably played every game at least 25 times, and some of them a hundred times or more. Most painfully, Clue, which requires three players and which Emma gamely (so to speak) played several times a week for a year. How many times can you work up an interest in Miss Scarlett and the dining room and the lead pipe? Also, Sorry!, which was fun in the beginning when it reminded us of Carol Burnett but got old pretty quick, and Aggravation, and Simpson's Monopoly, only slightly less stultifying than regular Monopoly. We still play backgammon with a real board sometimes. 

Sam is in Florida now, looking at colleges and thinking big thoughts. I'm keeping the games so I'll have them ready to play, when he comes home during the semester break, and later, just for a visit. I'm keeping the elections game to play with his boy some day, just like he's always saying. 

Bowl of Batteries

Day 334: Bowl of AA Batteries

Used to be, we put limits on screen time. Screen time included television, computers, videos, and video games. We didn't have smart phones back then. Half hour a day when the kids were really little. Around fourth or fifth grade, we upped it to an hour. 

I believe it was Emma's sophomore year in high school that we took away the screen time limits, thinking that they should have an opportunity to learn how to manage their time while they were still living at home with adult guidance. I thought about my friend Sarah, how she never had a t.v. in the house growing up, and had to go to the neighbors to watch Saturday Night Live or Dallas so she could keep up with the conversations at school. Once she grew up and got out on her own, she really, really liked to watch t.v.

Batteries are necessary for remote controls. Once we took away the screen time limits, all of a sudden, we began going through AA alkaline batteries. According to the EPA, batteries contain heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, and nickel, which contaminates the environment when batteries are improperly disposed of.

I am fortunate because I can take them to work, throw them in an eight gallon plastic bucket with a lot of other used batteries, and they will magically be properly disposed of. However, not much in alkaline batteries can be recycled. At one point, we did buy a charger and rechargable batteries. Much better for the environment, but somehow, that system broke down.

Middlemarch and Other Videos

Day 333: Middlemarch and Other Videos

To use Adrienne's term, after two days and many hours of non-stop strategic planning, my brain is applesauce. I'll not be blogging (much) today. 

Little Bag of Toys

Day 332: Little Bag of Toys

I remember being eight years old and imagining, really imagining, what it would be like to be 18 years old. I was standing in the laundry in our house on Frederick Drive. The door to the garage was open, and the garage light was off. I remember telling myself, "Someday, I will be 18 years old." I wasn't 100% sure I'd get there. The Cold War was on, and I thought the odds were pretty good that I'd get vaporized first.

Our lives, and what we do, and who we know, and what we own, are fleeting. These little toys have already bloomed and withered like spring ephemerals, while the kids grew up and grew interested in other things. This is a truth I prefer not to ponder.

Lately, many of my cohort have aging parents, ill or dying or already passed on. So I've been thinking and talking a lot lately about the detritus of a life, a full house of stuff that needs to be sorted and distributed, sold or thrown away or given away, and how for most people, stuff has a lot of symbolism and sentiment attached to it.

Sometimes siblings fight over what's left. As though the stuff will stand in somehow for the parent who's gone. Or perhaps the children never got enough - love or stuff or structure or recognition - and this is their last chance for sufficiency. Or perhaps the children are still competing with each other to the very end, still trying to even things out, still trying to be on top. But then, sometimes the siblings get through it just fine, dividing the goods with kindness or declining to take anything. Sometimes the deceased can't let go, leaving detailed instructions about who gets what.

Sometimes there are no instructions at all, and sorting it out takes years. There was a house across the street at Gros Cap, up in the U.P., that we watched fall into ruin while the siblings fought about who got what. Eventually the house disappeared altogether, like a reflection in a rippled pond.

We've got bits of stuff around our house, souvenirs of ancestors we don't know, or ancestors we did know. A chipped FiestaWare bowl and an old Shaker desk, a bone china cocoa set and a heavy crystal vase. Lonely single survivors of somebody's long and forgotten life.

Now I sometimes imagine what it will be like to be 80 years old.

I'm pretty sure that I'll take a neat, clean house for granted. I probably won't have a basket full of homemade ugly sock dolls or little plastic toys. I'll have more aches and pains. If I keep doing yoga, I may be able to keep up a pretty good walking pace. I'll most likely be an orphan by then, and I bet I dream vivid dreams about my parents. Some of my good friends will be dead. I'll watch more t.v. than I do now; I won't be working. I might not see very well, so I'll listen to books on tape. I might be a grandmother. I might have a small, walkable dog, or I might have a cat, or I might live in an assisted living facility that doesn't allow pets. I might be lonely.

Eighty is only 30 years away. I remember 30 years ago very well. Thirty years seems like nothing.

I'm not 100% sure I'll get there.

Toy Trash

Day 331: Toy Trash

Amazing. The basket of tiny toys I found yesterday, underneath the pinball machine and felt soccer field, yielded a jade disk that has been lost for years. Tina brought it back for me from a trip to Australia, and I wore it many times over many years before it went missing. I noticed it was gone, and then, some time later, I noticed it around Emma Jane's neck in her sixth grade picture. The leather thong is missing, but...yeeha! The stuff project is all worth it!

I sorted the basket into a number of piles. At the end, this was left. Things so broken or forlorn, I can't even package them in a Ziplock bag for a Kiwanis kid's grab bag. 

Broken Christmas Ornament, Dead Batteries, Plastic Man, Tiny Handmade Whip & Golf Ball

Day 330: Broken Christmas Ornament, Dead Batteries, Plastic Man, Tiny Handmade Whip & Golf Ball

Listing out all these little toys feels a little like intoning the names of the dead. Somebody conceived of these things, designed them, built a mold for them, harvested the natural resources from which they are constructed, hired staff to manufacture them, and then distributed them to retail establishments. Somebody - somebody I know - bought them.

Lately, they've been in a square shallow basket under a home-scale pinball machine alone with dozens of other forgotten toys. A godsend for a sentimental mother who was up in the attic, sorting through the basket of stuffed animals and rejecting the idea of getting rid of one of the six child-made ugly sock dolls. But no, I just can't bring myself to do it.

Thirty-five days to go and counting.

Winter Scarves

Day 329: Winter Scarves

I spent a good fifteen minutes staring at the bookshelves this morning. My dad suggested that I get rid of a book a day through the end of the stuff project, a scant 36 days from now.

But books flow into the house like water through a window screen. A single book isn't in the spirit of the stuff project; if I get rid of only one per day, I'll end up with a net gain. My rule has been to get rid of at least five books to make it count.

Well, I couldn't find a single one that I want to get rid of. I'm at a tipping point. To get rid of five more books would require a revolution in my personal library philosophy.

The books that are left fall into these categories:

(1) I like looking at them (art books)

(2) I enjoyed reading them so much, there is a good possibility I will read them again

(3) I enjoyed reading them so much, just looking at them gives me pleasure

(4) I haven't read them yet and I intend to

(5) They don't belong to me.

Although I can appreciate the clutter-free peacefulness of dozens of empty shelves, I'm just not ready. These two wool scarves, which have been hanging from a hook in the basement all winter, are a reprieve.

Thirty-five days and counting.

Watercolors and Beaded Pouch

Day 328: Watercolors and Beaded Pouch

The end is near. Thirty-seven days and counting. I find myself often contemplating the final seven days of the stuff project, a scant month from now. What have I learned? What has changed?

It hasn't been what I anticipated. For starters, I imagined that the entire theme of the year would center around saying goodbye to Emma as she left home and entered the next phase of her life. That part has been so much easier than I imagined, partly because she's doing so well, and partly because she's not really gone. Between texting, and calling, and Facebook, and visits every couple of months, she's still part of my every day life, but minus some of the frictions of cohabitation.

I thought it would be a lot harder to find 365 things I don't need or want. Like today. This watercolor set and the little beaded purse have gone unnoticed in a drawer, even after 328 days of scourging. I don't even know what the white elastic thing that was with the other things is. No one would call our house spare, even today.

I am aware of my desire for stuff now in the way that meditation makes me aware of my breathing.

Has it changed me? Has it changed my house, or my family, or the way I use things? I'm thinking about it.

Refrigerator Magnets

Day 327: Refrigerator Magnets

The blush comes off the rose with refrigerator magnets after a while. At first, you notice them and rearrange them into interesting shapes. After a while, they're just visual noise.

These are on the fridge at work now, looking interesting to new sets of eyes.

Or at least, so I hope.

Sewing Machine Oil

Day 326: Sewing Machine Oil

Another item Barbara couldn't bear to throw away when she moved out. I just noticed it on my tool shelf. An item this old isn't a tool any more. It's a piece of Americana. Or perhaps an antique. Or perhaps even art.

With that in mind, I had a suspicion my sister would like it. Yes, she said. She does.

Camel-Colored Pea Coat

Day 325: Camel-Colored Pea Coat

I'm taking a page out of Jeff Plakke's playbook and getting rid of something that's really nice. I haven't worn this coat all winter, and I'm pretty sure I'll never wear it again. I got two great coats at the start of the season, and they fit better and make me feel cuter than this one.

Still, this one is almost new. It's high quality. It looks professional.

Jeff says he's teaching himself to let go of good stuff by imagining the person on the other end of the transaction. The one who gets the find.

Who doesn't love a good Salvation Army find? I got a great pair of Dansko shoes once. A pair of J. Jill pants with the tags still on. An Anne Klein mustard-colored felt jacket. A pair of stoneware bowls, oven safe. Bake-King cake pans with the pivoting cutter like my mother used to have.

If nobody wanted to give away the almost new, high quality, professional-looking stuff they never wear, I'd never get a good find. By giving away this coat, I'm keeping the good find karma flowing.

When this is all over, I'm celebrating with a thrift store crawl.

Bunk Bed Ladder

Day 324: Bunk Bed Ladder

I wish I had a photo of this bunk bed ladder when it was clothed in needlepoint yarn. It was a writhing sculpture. A wicked witch with psychedelic hair. An invitation to touch and stroke, ten thousand strands of color, streaming like a waterfall.

The bunk bed ladder was the vehicle that brought Suzanne's yarn to me, by way of my sister, Suzanne's daughter-in-law. I am grateful that three daughters and a daughter-in-law never took to needlepoint, and so I inherited the yarn from a woman I hardly knew. The needlepoint yarn was a legacy of her lifetime of art. From the yarn flowed to idea to make my own patterns, which transformed needlepoint for me from paint-by-numbers to an effort of self-expression. For an art history major to begin to make her own art - however amateur the design - is a radical shift.

The bunk bed ladder was better in concept than in reality, though. I find the yarn easier to manage separated into a couple dozen color-coded transparent boxes. The yarn gets less tangled that way. I can carry the box to the light and choose the exact right color of cream, or light blue, or pink. Strands don't come loose and entangle themselves in the vacuum cleaner. They don't get dusty, or faded.

I'll miss having the profusion of color throbbing from its corner of the attic. But it's function over form for me. This time, anyway.

World Cup Games on VHS

Day 323: World Cup Games on VHS

When I was a kid my grandfather used to tell stories about the way things were when he was a boy. Once, he snuck his mother's wool blanket out on a camping trip. The boys made a bonfire on the beach, and the blanket got singed. He hid it in the bottom of the cedar chest, but the smell of smoke led her to it. Boy, did he get a whipping! Imagine that: ten-year-old boys camping on Lake Michigan, alone with a bonfire. Another time, he was riding on a horse-drawn double-decker sleigh in Muskegon. The sleigh crashed; everyone on the bottom died, but he was thrown clear. Back in those days, he said, a Baby Ruth bar the size of a football only cost five cents.

When my grandfather was a boy, the stars throbbed in the sky like pinholes to heaven. People went to bed when the sun set, and got up with the sun rose in the morning. The city streets were mostly unpaved; sometimes, they were paved in slippery red brick. Bicycles were new. People bought food from familiar shopkeepers or farmers, and put it in a basket to carry it home. Store bought bread was a special treat.

I got a look at my grandfather's college application a couple weeks ago, pulled from the archives at the Bentley Historical Library. Handwritten, and including a self-assessment of his intellectual capabilities, industry, and scholastic achievement. A couple of sentences about the latest book he'd read, and a postage stamp sized photograph of himself.

When I was growing up, I felt so modern. My grandfather never had t.v.! Not even a radio! No telephone! He didn't have a car! Didn't need one...no interstate! Women couldn't vote, interracial marriage was illegal, and my grandfather played both offense and defense with a real leather helmet and a hand-stitched soft leather ball!

Now I have teenagers, and in their eyes, my own childhood is as quaint and obsolete as my grandfather's was to me. Remember how exciting it was to go to the video store, choose whatever movie you wanted to see, and bring it home to watch it? Remember when a 50 pound personal computer that wouldn't quite fit in the trunk of your car replaced that old manual typewriter, and your word processor allowed you to edit without having to retype the whole thing? Remember when answering machines allowed people to leave a message, even when you weren't at home? Remember when cable t.v. gave you better reception and no advertising?

Wow, that was cool!

Suddenly, I'm more sympathetic to my grandmother, who used always to tell us about her friends and their diseases. Every kid's favorite topic. The days tick past, and I don't notice that wrinkles are a little deeper, or knees a little creakier, or hair a little grayer. Mine, and yours. But lately, I've been to more funerals than in my whole life before. My friends' parents are getting sick, or dying. Once or twice, it's my own friends who are sick, or dying.

The older generation is the front line. I've been soldiering away in the back phalanx, taking it one day at a time. Soccer practices, oil changes, breakfast, vaccinations, budget season, choir performances, Christmas, grocery shopping, car trips, thank you notes, elliptical machine, solitaire, haircuts, diaper changes, yoga classes, driver's training, weddings, coffee dates, trips to the library, toilet plunging, junk mail, cooking, sleep.

And now the front lines are starting to falter, and it's sad, and it's scary, and it's just life. Moving and moving on, like a river. Always changing. Always the same.

Hair Stuff

Day 322: Hair Stuff

Nothing more to say today.

A

Last of the Bee Stuff

Day 321: Last of the Bee Stuff

Our mission-related groups are coming on Thursday afternoon, including Ann Arbor Backyard Beekeepers, aka, A2B2, a group I am proud to say I named. An opportunity to get rid of the very last of my beekeeping stuff, a medium box with a single frame and some honeycomb. I used it as a demonstration at the Things with Wings event at the Gardens last year, and it's been sitting on top of the bookshelf in my office ever since.

Meghan (my former beekeeping mentor) will put it to good use. At least I still have a dozen jars of honey.

Electric Toothbrush Bases

Day 320: Electric Toothbrush Bases

Repeat yesterday's post. Two bases for electric toothbrushes, no electric toothbrushes. Realization that teeth can be cleaned very well with just two minutes of brushing with the old-fashioned plastic toothbrush the dentist hands out for free.

Broken Water Pik

Day 319: Broken Water Pik

The stuff project has made me suspicious of single-purpose appliances, especially ones that use an external power source and that have a perfectly sensible alternative. In June, I was sorely tempted to use part of the Sur la Table birthday gift certificate from my parents to purchase a machine that turns tap water into soda. I used all my self-control to focus on cooking classes, an excellent non-stick frying pan and a couple of really good knives instead. Iced tea is a perfectly good cold beverage, and if I really want soda, I can just buy a bottle (and recycle it when it's empty). This way, I won't be giving away a soda machine in a couple of years, and I can cut a tomato without losing the seeds.

Over the years, we've resisted the urge to buy gas powered yard equipment. We've turned up our noses at our neighbors' power mowers and leaf blowers, with their stink of gas, noisiness and lack of personal grit. Working up a sweat while doing yard work is healthier, more environmentally friendly and provides visible evidence of our moral superiority.

Our days of moral rectitude are over. Rich went out earlier this season and bought a bright red 21 inch Toro snowblower with a 35-foot throwing capacity, a four horsepower engine and the capacity to clear nine inches of snowfall in an eight-car driveway. Woohoo! Yesterday, twelve inches of snow fell, and he and I each spent about a half-hour removing 100% of the snow from our driveway and sidewalks, including the entire driveway apron. In past years, all four of us would have spent a good four hours clearing off the snow - or more likely, two of us would have spent seven hours, and two of us would have spent an hour each, max - and we still would have had to catapult the snow mountain at the base of the driveway like Tough Mudders climbing a greased wall.

Yes, it was loud and it stank. But it was fun, and it was fast. Me and my Fusion slid out of the driveway this morning like butter.

Go power tools!

We may just stay in Michigan after all.

Drawerful of Razors and More

Day 318: Drawerful of Razors and More

When we were in high school, my brother would always finish the Dorito's and put the empty bag back in the cupboard. I had the experience again and again of reaching into the cupboard for some delectable treat, only to find the package empty. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise to me to find the drawers and cupboard of the upstairs vanity full of junk so useless, it is fair to all it garbage.

Such as these dull razors, a single hair roller, a suction cup to hang an unidentified item, and a lid.

Sam asks how I can possibly blog about garbage, and there's a certain embarrassing truth to the question. On the one hand, I'm hitting rock bottom here. On the other hand, how could a person keep a drawerful of garbage. Especially when there are only two tiny working drawers?

Spongebob Squarepants Toothbrush Holder and Cup

Day 317: Spongebob Squarepants Toothbrush Holder and Cup

Jackpot! The vanity in our upstairs bathroom needs to be replaced, which means everything in it has to go. This will take care of at least a week of the stuff project.

Dusty in one of the drawers, this Spongebob Squarepants toothbrush holder and cup. No, it is not a vestige of early childhood. Sam received it, new in box, at his forum's white elephant exchange his freshman year at Community. The white elephant exchange to which I forced him to take a funny old thing from our house - a neon blue liquid-filled squishy rubber ball with soft droopy spikes and eyes that bulged when you squeezed it, like a cross between a water balloon and a soft porcupine - instead of a new thing as he had requested. By definition, I told him, a white elephant exchange is an exchange of funny old things.

Silly me. At a teenager white elephant exchange, embarrassment must be avoided at all costs. He was the only kid to bring a used thing, an embarrassment that he will be still talking about in psychotherapy in the year 2050.

A white elephant exchange - in theory so eco-friendly, so hilarious and so low-cost as to be a completely egalitarian team-builder - is a non-starter for high school kids. Conformity or death! This is why the franchise Plato's Closet, which buys and resells gently used teen clothing, is a great idea, while Style Encore, which does the same but for women, is a bust. Adolescent girls all wear the same size and like the same style. Grown women wear a wide variety of sizes and an even wider variety of styles. One is great business, the other a recipe for bankruptcy. You can see this exquisitely painful conventionality from the audience of every high school performance, which feature 97 girls with long straight hair, two rebel girls with short haircuts, and at least three girls above 5'8" with hunched shoulders.

Individual style is an ironic artifact of mass production. One hundred fifty years ago, no one had individual style. Everyone had homemade. Were adolescents peer-identified and conformist back then? Who knows? I suppose they were mostly married with children and chapped hands, a little underweight and with only a dress or two in the closet.

Well, times have changed. It's probably a good thing to get rid of this ever-smiling reminder of Sam's humiliation.