Garage Again

Yesterday four friends gathered for a massive re-organization of my garage. I think the garage is bigger than any room in the house. All that space! All that stuff! What is it? My dear friend, K, has filled her van twice with recyclable oddments. More to go.

Some of it has just been sitting there for a long, long time. I am finally ready to let go of much of it.

A few treasures emerged. The insignia from my father's Navy uniform cap. The course notes for an Algebra course he taught as a graduate student at Ohio State. (Along with some Ohio State notebooks from the 1940's that are near pristine condition with the unused paper in better shape than some modern tablets inside the house.

My friends worked their way to the far-back upper corner and a voice called out, "Peggy, what on earth is this? It's a table with a hole to put the kid into it". I thought for a second and hollered, "oh my Gosh! You've found it! It's the baby Tenda." Features in pictures of my sister when she was little. Papa said that he had looked for it and never found it. My sister, the same one in the pictures, ditto. It just had been so carefully tucked, so long ago that it had been in hiding. Now I will have to figure out what to do with it! Is it an antique, a treasure or something that no one will want?

Wow! The garage will not yield a whole lot more. There is a stove that needs to go. A cedar chest. A cedar armoire full of what are now very probably antique clothes. And all of Papa's tools.

Now if I could just diminish my library.

I am very tired, since I sat outside in the wind and supervised all day yesterday. I am also deeply grateful to everybody who helped. Thank you.

Spring Fever in January

I think the temperature hit seventy this afternoon. I spent two hours outside keeping a friend company while she whacked a large bush at my front gate. Hurray! This is one of those projects that I have been wanting to see done for so long that I can't remember and I am almost ready to "cry for happy."

The sun is shining in. I am sitting here with my knitted hat off for the first time in at least two months and the knitted wristers aren't necessary to type. Sun shines in the window and music plays on the headset.

It wasn't until I was outside that I realized just how cranky I had become from being inside for so long. The days are also lengthening and a bit more sunshine helps so much.

The garage is too full, much too full. What does one do with an old "mangle" ironing machine? There was a time when I could whiz through much of our household ironing sitting in front of that machine. The beautiful mahogany cabinet that, fortunately, has been covered since Papa put it out there was so full of stuff that my friend could not budge it. It now awaits the summer when she will return from sailing. I would so like to retrofit it as a media cabinet for the living room.

There are bicycles, old wheelchairs, a cedar armoire and a blanket chest as well as a child's crib all neatly tucked away and helping to fill a space that for decades actually held a 1955 Chevy Bel Air two door sedan--slightly smashed by a falling tree limb as we drove home from Mass one Sunday. Five minutes one way or the other and the tree would have missed us. Such is life's timing!

The Chevy has moved on to a new owner who is happily restoring it. I would like to see a few more items move out this year. Maybe having the central space of the garage as a space is a goal for 2009; modest sounding but more daunting than it seems.

I am grateful for time spent outside, for that bush moving on, for my friend's help and I will be grateful when there is less stuff in my garage!