I started that project. The big one. The one I have been dreading for about 5 years and officially procrastinating since Thanksgiving. No. I didn’t start a new exercise/diet/teeth whitening campaign. Are you ready for it?

I started cleaning out the garage.

See, my wasband (bless his heart*) is a pathological pack rat. He keeps everything. You know all those plastic cups that get dropped at ball games? Well, he takes them home. Hundreds of them. He goes through trash piles. He lives for garage sales. He accepts anyone’s toss offs. He. Collects. Everything.

Over the years he managed to completely fill up our two car garage, our crawl space, and our attic with his “collections.” And, you know, I didn’t really get worked up about it—really—until he moved out and left it all here!!

So we started that back and forth thing. When are you going to get this stuff? Later. Well, can I just box it up and bring it to you? Nope—I don’t want anyone to mess with my stuff.

Now, I know why.

Cleaning out the garage is like an archeological dig. Here is the layer from the car sales and NASCAR epoch. If you dig a little deeper you will discover the insurance sales and football era. Further still and you hit the financial analyst and baseball period.

It is sort of like opening a tomb. It feels like I am encroaching on sacred ground. Only instead of golden statues and dazzling emeralds, I am discovering ketchup bottles and broken glass.

As I shovel (sometimes literally) through all of this stuff, I can’t help but feel like I am mining the remnants of our relationship. There is a lot of garbage in there that makes it really hard to find the lovely parts. Perhaps, given time and lots of trash bags** I will be able to find a couple of nuggets to remind me of the pieces of our marriage that worked well. It is sweet to have a touchstone or two, but the rest has to go.

*As a southern woman, by invoking the phrase “bless his heart” I am officially declaring that I am not bashing him, but merely pointing out some odd quirk and that you should in no way take my comments as catty or ::gasp:: gossip.

** Not to worry all you pack rats out there, the bags are going to my wasband’s storage unit… not to the dump. I am determined to get this stuff out of my space, but it is his issue to deal with what ultimately happens to it all.