Junk

I have had a crappy day. No blown-out tires, no weirdos coming to my door, no water or power outages. But I got nothing done today except run a couple errands. I didn't get any more wool spun, didn't get any yarn done, didn't get a quilt block made. Well in my defense, it was a no-block, quilt-picture day but still, I could have made something up, and didn't.

I yelled at my husband today. He is a packrat of magnanimous proportion, and we just don't have room for it. Not to mention I have had more than 25 years of the mess, and I am sick of it. He packs home "stuff" that he is "going to do something with SOMEday" and the years pass, the someday never comes, and the stuff piles up like the Tower of Babel. I fully expect to come homr sometime and not understand a word he is saying.

The first house we owned, he packed the garage so full of stuff that I had a little pathway to the washer and dryer from the door. When we finally had to convert the garage to a master bedroom, bath, and laundry area, we had to have a 20-cubic-yard pull-car dumpster placed in the yard, and we filled it with all the junk.

A few years later, we moved to a house with a larger garage, and the property had a small cottage with its own garage. In the 8 years we lived there he proceeded to fill both garages with stuff. When we moved, my oldest daughter and I made 12 trips to the dump with my Ramvan seats removed and the van packed FULL. And we still had to leave some things behind when we moved.

We moved to a house that was 3000 sq. ft. with 6 bedrooms and one living room that we didn't even use. The downstairs was the same size. We eventually turned 1200 sq. ft. of it into a store, but the rest looked like a Goodwill Gone Bad. When we lost that house due to the septic system failing, I told him, most of this stuff we haven't used in YEARS. Someone is going to have to tear this place down. Let them worry about the JUNK we don't need. Our new house is small, and we don't have room.

NO! While I was at work, he surreptitiously brought van-fulls of stuff to the new house and stuck the stuff here, there, and everywhere. Our full-size back porch, which was supposed to house a couple cabinets and boxes of out-of-season clothes, Christmas Decorations, buckets of paints, and my fabric stash, became Junk Central. Once again we have a perfectly usable space that has only the barest thread of walkway through it. We were expecting a baby 4 months after we moved here, and I found the newborn baby clothes box, that I had put right where I could find it, when she was a year old.

My fabric bins are in the dining room, clearly visible from the front door (how attractive). The back hallway, which housed the washer and dryer when we came here, was supposed to have become the small storage area for my fabric and yarn bins, and the washer and dryer were to have been moved out to one end of the back, screened porch. Two years later, the dryer has made it out there. And thanks to my son-in-law Tony, 2 weeks ago the water heater made it out there too. But the washing machine is still waiting.

So, fed up to the bursting, I hollered at him, and took the kids to Youth Group. I went to Des' house with the younger kids, where we made homemade waffles, sausage, bacon, and eggs for dinner. The one thing I did get was a pic of Tony's mother's scarf that I knitted her for Christmas from a hand-dyed handspun and a blue strand of 100% cashmere. (here it is)

Then back to pick up the teenagers and home. Richard stayed back home, and I don't know what he got done. I hope for his sake, it was something.

Nikki, whose head is throbbing, and who is almost done ranting.