Be amazed that I made it this long. All winter I was content not to be actively tending the garden, but once the impulse to grow things hit me again, it was a force to be reckoned with. I noticed my head turning every time I drove past the Lowe's in my neighborhood, just to glance at the garden center. I felt envy when my dear neighbor across the street came home with a new Boston fern. I often found myself standing on the deck, plotting and planning how many containers I want to put out there this year. I could feel the itch, but I tried to fight it. Today, I caved. I had a tool I needed to buy, and once I had it in hand, my feet carried me past the cash registers, toward the smell of soil and fertilizer and leaves. I guess I am entirely incapable of learning from the past, because I left there with a dozen new seed packs and a starter tray. I have a terrible history with seeds, but when the urge to nurture comes along, no logic or self-awareness is going to divert me. And if it works, by some miracle of a long shot, just think how much money I will save when I don't have to buy all those organic veggies at that organic veggie markup. But even if it fails, I will have gotten weeks or months of entertainment for about the price of a concert ticket. I win.
I have been trying to sort through the junk piled in my unused room upstairs for weeks. It was ostensibly an office, but no one has used it as such in two years. When the girls come visit, I always have to clear a hole in the debris large enough to set up a makeshift bed in the middle of the floor. I decided it was time to lighten the load up there, before the ceiling caved in to the kitchen from the weight of everything I didn't want to look at on a daily basis. I'm not good at making decisions, and that room was a minefield of keep or toss questions. You would think that living as nomads for decades would have made me a pro at letting go of useless clutter. When you have to put your hands on every item you own every few years, to carry it on and off of a rental truck, the impulse to travel light would be strong. But it is not. An opposite and equal force is in action, to maintain some connection to the past, some reminder of who you were when you were "there." I'm trying to pull against that one, to let go of the trappings of the past. I am who I am now, and no amount of old Russian language textbooks or fabric and notions from a failed business is going to drag me backwards now. I have a large laundry basket in the hall overflowing with stuff that I no longer need that I will donate, and I plan to fill it several times over from that room. Our plans for the future keep changing, but whether we move again next year, or stay here for a decade, I still only have a finite amount of space. I want to fit comfortably in my 1794 square feet. Now, who wants a slightly used office chair and a basket full of trashy novels? Anyone?
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