HALLOWEEN STUFF/JUNK AND A SPIDER

Happy Halloween

That's about as creative as I'm getting this year. We (okay, it's 95% Phil) has been cleaning out the spare bedroom and that is scary enough! We have, I'm guessing, several thousand books and a whole lot of other "stuff," which my nephew, Cameron, says is "good stuff" if it's yours. If it is viewed by someone who doesn't have a emotional attachment to it, it's "junk."

So Happy Halloween, and I hope your scary day is not accompanied by a room full of scary stuff/junk, like mine is.

Here's my Pinterest Halloween board.

I'M STUFFED

I found a bunch of my old clothes in the spare bedroom, which used to be Hillary's room, which "poof," almost overnight turned into a junk room--when she got married and moved away, years and years ago--and now it's time to clean it out. And guess what? Some of those clothes even fit--they used to be too tight. How did that happen, I wonder. So I hung them in my closet and now my closet is stuffed and I need to clean it out and I don't want to but if I don't I won't be able to find the new/old clothes and if--by some miracle--I do find them they will be wrinkled and I'll have to iron them and I hate to iron and so what's the use of finding them in the first place? I think I have a self defeating behavior. Besides run-on sentences with no punctuation.


The closet. Can you see how close the hangers are? Those clothes are positively gasping for air. The hangers on the far right are Phil's. See how nicely they are spaced?

I have 27 black items. How am I ever going to wear 27 black items?
I have 17 white shirts. Who in their right mind has 17 white shirts?

And there, on the far, far left are the darling clothes I bought when I only had a few pounds left to loose--okay, twenty. That was about a million years ago and I still have the clothes. They still have tags on. Will I ever get back to that impossible weight? sigh They are still darling. Still stylish. Still too skinny.

This is level two. The every-day-knock-about clothes. They are stuffed just as tight. Oh my.I don't even dare count the shoes.

And some of the clothes are in the dirty clothes or in the to-go-to-the-dry-cleaners stack. Where will they go when they are clean?

I should have left Hillary's old bedroom/the junk room alone.

JUNK WE KEEP, VOLUME ONE

Utah is a beautifully state. We have a little bit of everything. Mountain streams empty into rivers which feed lakes. We have deserts, national parks, wonderful cities, quaint towns--some so small they are merely a string of houses with a minuscule post office. photo by Pamela Stubbs
Photo by Ryanee Walker
Photo by Alvin Sherman
Photo by Shaunna Fuller

We have lots of land-owners/homeowners who keep their property and homes in pristine condition. Lawns that look like velvet, gardens that are neat and beautiful. But I have been noticing that sometimes people keep "stuff." Stuff they must think has value. Stuff that is simply junk.

Here's some stuff/junk I have seen lately. This will be an ongoing feature as I attempt to see my own stuff as junk and get rid of it. So, for me, this is a motivational post, although these junk-keepers make my garage full of chairs and boxes of Gourmet magazines look pathetic. These junk owners are serious!

This stuff/junk was so intriguing... that I zoomed in for a closer look. What is all that stuff? The only things I recognize is the cinder blocks. And maybe a motorcycle or maybe it's parts of more than one motorcycle.
This looks like a defunct swamp cooler. Swamp coolers are used in Utah because it is such a dry state. Therefore, the owner may think he can fix this one.

Here are more cinder blocks--we must really value cinder blocks in this state--, firewood, tread-less tires, an empty spool that held electrical wire and a couple of coolers.

A truck topper that has seen better days. And a fan. When the hot weather returns I wonder if the owner will come out and clean the fan off and bring it inside. He should talk to the guy with the defunct swamp cooler.

This is the favorite of this set of photos. I hope I can remember where it is so I can go back in the summer and see if they have tidied things up, although from the look of the blinds maybe they will not tidy things up, maybe this is the perpetual state of affairs--or maybe they have a toddler who is a blinds-messer-upper. I think this family has high aspirations to be shabby chic. I hope they make it.

THE TRACTOR FAMILY

This is Great Grandpa tractor. Look'it the blade on that sucker.I crept closer......he snarled so I hightailed it. This is Grandpa Tractor. He has seen better days.

The person who took this photo did so from the car...while driving...and ought to repent.

This is Poppa tractor. He is in his prime. He is teaching baby tractor a thing or two. Cousin truck and boat are snickering in the background. "Don't 'cha know you can't teach that baby nothin'? Those little ones never listen."

This is Momma. She is expecting. You can tell by the bulge around her middle.

I took these photos while shooting for a post I'm going to call, "Junk People Keep." I'm sure you can hardly wait. You won't believe some of the things people keep. Including me! And if you don't believe it just ask Gilmore Girl. She'll tell you.

THE CHAIR FAIRY--PHIL'S POINT OF VIEW

I went to the mailbox and on the way back I saw two chairs in front of the garage door. Now whom do they belong to, I wondered. I’ll bet Lynne has something to do with it.

She knew all right. She bought them at a garage sale...oh, excuse me, a trunk sale--at Thanksgiving Point, mind you. As if anything bought at Thanksgiving Point was a good idea. And excuse me again; she said the "Chair Fairy" brought them. Did she think I would be charmed by her winning smile and adolescent cleverness? Not today.

She thought the chairs would be great to add to the garage full of junk we already have. Not today. Not tomorrow, either. Not ever. We need to start getting rid of the junk, not bringing more in. When will I ever convince her of that fact?

So we had a quiet discussion about the off chance that we did not need more junk. She did not think it was a quiet discussion. She said I was yelling. I do not yell. I am focused. Very focused.

Finally, in a pathetic little voice she said she'd give them away. That did it. The pathetic little voice gets me every time. I think she was serious too; she'd give them away.

The chairs went to the garage, next to the four black ones with the rush seats. Who knows when they were added to the junk-filled space that I laughingly call a garage. The chairs do come in handy. Not as handy as six folding chairs would be, six folding chairs that match, but folding chairs would be the sensible thing. No one ever said my wife was sensible.

"Here, son,” I say. “Sit on this chair. It's nice and sturdy."

I see her smile. She thinks she’s won and that I think her chairs are a good thing. I’ll let her keep her illusion. I guess I’ll continue to scrape ice off the windshield all winter while all her chairs—and who knows what else she has squirreled away in the garage--have a nice dry home.

I’ve decided to try and make my mind think that folding chairs are overrated. I might as well as there is another grandbaby on the way and the toddler grandson will have to give up the high chair for a real chair. I have a feeling that Lynne is keeping her eyes open for one—not a sensible folding chair but a sturdy, interesting one that doesn't match any of the six we already have.

I think I'll go take a nap. Or get on the roof and blow something off with the leaf blower. Blowing things off the roof makes me feel like I'm in charge. And the view isn't so bad, either.