Secrets Of The Filing Cabinet

There I was... minding my own business... and getting ready to tackle emptying the roll-top desk so it could be moved. I really wasn't ready to go through it just yet. I just know it's going to take either a bulldozer or a blowtorch to get rid of some of the stuff we have in it, so I decided to try something smaller... the oak filing cabinet. In cleaning out the filing cabinet, I found a plethora of old memories, just waiting to be dusted off and tossed out. I cannot believe I kept these things this long... just more testament to the packrat I had become. I decided to start by taking the drawers out. Easy enough, I thought. I'll just have someone with more testosterone than me remove them. Ugh... what a mess. I cringed as I began to go through the accumulated junk. Wait a minute... maybe some of it wasn't junk!

I found the boys' old school records... pictures of them when they were in school... report cards. This is a no-brainer. Keep... keep... keep. Boxes of old Christmas cards that had yet to be used. Okay, I can keep those too. I'll just use them up. Who am I kidding? I hardly ever write Christmas cards because I just never get to it. Last year was the first time in memory that I actually got to the Christmas cards along with the rest of my routine during the holidays. So I kept them. I had an awwww moment when I found a card to the boys in my mother's handwriting. I read it and almost cried. Okay, I'm keeping that too. I found things that were addressed to the boys... a couple of letters from and an article about a monk that I used to go to for counsel and that I insisted Jason go to see when he was going through an angry spell as a youth... schoolwork that Rhys had done when he was very young... a prayer card from my Uncle Dick's funeral. I kept all that. A letter from President George H. W. Bush, addressed to Jason, with 2 photographs and his signature. I insisted that Jason keep that. He wouldn't, so I did.

What I didn't keep amounted to a sizable stack resembling a small mountain. There was a stack of brochures from Vermont. Once upon a time, Steve and I had toyed with the idea of moving there. I think it was around the year 1895. Chunk. Brochures from Gatlinburg. We visited Gatlinburg about 7 years ago and loved it. We always said we were going to go again, but we haven't made it yet. Chunk. Brochures from Seattle. Who am I kidding... with the amount of rain and overcast sky they have, I'll never make it past a week. Chunk.

Then there were items that were from very specific periods in my life. All the cards and letters from Mary Kay Ash, when I was a promising consultant and rising star selling the Mary Kay line of cosmetics. True, Mary Kay is/was a famous lady and did a remarkable thing with her business, but did I really need to keep all of this? Chunk. Pictures from when I WAS this budding consultant... keep. I can't believe I was that young or that thin. An old resume showing me as an administrative assistant long before I took up my screwdriver to become a computer tech. Keep. You never know, I might decide to do that again since I'm making a career change right now. Old "funnies" that used to be circulated around offices before the days of computers. Chunk. An old brochure and a letter from Moats Resort. DEFINITELY keep. A program from the 1999-2000 season of Opera Memphis, my last year as the Wig and Makeup Designer. DEFINITELY chunk. I don't know who most of those people are anymore. And they wrote such nice thank-you cards. All of which I chunked.

Then there were the instruction manuals from appliances I hadn't had since the Ice Age. Oh please, why am I keeping these? Okay, you got me. I was never THAT bad about wanting to keep those. That was Steve's phobia... that we would get rid of an instruction manual we would need. I got rid of most of them. I got the stack down to a respectable pile and put the keepers back in the drawers.

Maybe someday I'll go through it all again and get rid of more. But then again... the roll-top is tomorrow. God help me.

Nazdrovie'

Paczki Puta