Not Dead...

...just cold. Curled in his hole he may wait for days for the sun to come out. The weather is changing and rain is predicted for Easter weekend. We take the same walk through the field just about every day, yet there is almost always something new if we keep our eyes open. Ozzie never even knew the snake was there...too busy investigating other holes and clumps of grass.

Now that our kitchen is finished and every single box is unpacked, we spent a few minutes shoving the last of the cardboard in the recycle bin. We are now exactly poised on the cusp between being perfectly organized and beginning to accumulate more stuff. It will happen as inevitably as night follows day.

Neatly arranged in the garage are two plastic containers filled with pictures that we have no place for, but I'm not ready to get rid of-- pictures of weddings, grandkids and family gatherings. There are plastic bins with Christmas decorations, and camping stuff, and there is the Christmas tree itself. There is a large cedar chest full of newspapers from momentous events dating back to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, crammed into acid-free archive boxes-- the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, 9/11, the election of Barack Obama. And there are wedding gowns, a box of OilMan's high school memorabilia and piles of the kid's artwork going back to when they wrote half the letters of their names backward.

The cast off furniture, the broken tools and kitchen items, the hideous vases and useless "decor items", the incomprehensible or outdated electronics, the clothing that didn't fit, the myriad what-was-I-thinking items have all been recycled, given away or taken to the dump. The few remaining things in their plastic bins wait for OilMan to stash in the garage. (This space, with its metal cabinets, secret pull-down stairways to the attic , and rafter-height shelves, is his domain.) He insists that he will remember what he did with them. Since he can't even remember what he did with his phone five minutes ago, I find it hard to believe that he will remember for a decade what he did with his mother's wedding dress.

Nothing will halt the inevitable, but at least I will try to think hard before buying anything, about where its predecessors wound up....