Fanflower’s Weblog

While other parts of the country have been enduring tornadic weather, we’ve been riding out our own personal whirlwind of activity for the past several weeks, playing a minor role in getting Joel and his family moved to Houston and cleaning out our own accumulation of what can now only be called “crap” that for one reason or another we decided to save for possible later use over the past 30 years. It was a task well over-due. We’ve regularly disposed of things throughout the years too, so how did we amass all this stuff?!

After pulling what seemed like a never-ending supply of boxes full of once treasured toys down from the attic and sorting through them, we have officially decided we were insane to have bought the quantity of Barbie dolls, Beanie Babies, and other plushie toy animals that we did. We were just as guilty with He-Man, Superfriends, Thundercats, Transformers, toy trains, Matchbox cars and the like, but with the exception of the train set, most of the rest of those were disposed of years ago. Joel’s clothes and odds and ends from high school, college, and Army days, however, were still taking up a good portion of our attic space. They managed to sort through all that before they left for Houston.

There are still a number of attic boxes yet to be sorted through, but they’re mostly holiday decorations we’ve acquired over the years. It looked like the house had been turned upside down and shaken for several days, but I think every inch of it has finally been cleaned out. We also got out and trimmed all the shrubs and some trees, planted flowers, and Steve cleared brush out of the yard near the creek. I hardly recognize the place. Blake put a few items on eBay for us and we took umpteen loads to Goodwill. The rest I hauled out to create an unsightly, humongous pile at the front curb for trash collection, which was finally picked up today. Yay! The girls were a huge help. We worked the girls to exhaustion over the weekend planting and cleaning up the yard and pool, I spent the last two days cleaning carpets while they attacked their bedrooms, and finally by 10:00 last night, we wrapped up anything that needed to be done before Ali leaves today with Matthew to help him drive his car to Chicago for the summer.

I’m sunburned, stiff and sore in every joint and muscle, but today is peaceful. Finally. The problem is, it’s really just the calm in the eye of a hurricane.