I'll meet you on the other side of the world

I love it when we get that oversized yellow postcard, the one that tells us the Epilepsy Foundation is coming through to do a pickup, so hurry up, clean out those closets! I'm always trying to winnow down the clutter here, and today I spent some serious time cleaning up the mounds of laundry and whatnot that are invading our lives. The shapes at night were starting to frighten the cats, you know.

This is something my sister and I share, something we know our mother has too, and maybe it's a disease--the pack rat nature. Since this summer, I have avoided collecting trinkets, mementos, instead decided to use a camera to document my experiences, my blog, keep memories this way, rather than in a shoebox I rarely open. For the most part, I am winning, though it doesn't appear so! Why is it so hard to toss the brochure in which we first selected my husband's tuxedo for the wedding? There are plenty of photographs of him in the tux. Shouldn't that be enough? And all the art projects I've started! The brayer and linoleum blocks, the stash of yarn and fabric, the sketch book and watercolors. I'll knit myself into a frenzy, then lose interest, tire out. I burn myself out; I cannot blame the rest of the world.

So this is what I've been doing over winter break--cleaning out the cobwebs. I need to ride the spurt, to allow myself this time, though some of my cleaning out might include reading a stack of old New Yorkers before I recycle them. Can you blame me?

What have you been up to in this between Christmas and New Year's time?