Last night I took about 1 1/2 hours to do some cleaning. I sorted through some old drawers and my desks, doing some organizing and throwing a bunch of unnecessary stuff away. I tossed course catalogues for MS degrees in anthropology from places like Boston and Oregon. I kept old letters from people I pray I'll never see again. (I may reevaluate this decision.) I looked through old letters from Rice. I found the discussion we had on paper we had during one of our few really, really bad fights. It made me laugh. He's really changed so much, and that's okay. I threw away calendars from 2002. I looked through some pictures. I found some of my father's poetry. (He's really a pretty good poet.) I found some notecards, Post-It notes, looseleaf paper. Threw away some magazines from before and just after Avadore was born. Threw away catalogues Rice brought back from when he went to Detroit in the late '90's. (I spent the week eating salads and watching Mulder and Scully and going to class.) I found a Han Solo action figure Rice gave me for Christmas one year (Look! I got you Harrison Ford for Christmas!"), that I hadn't forgotten about, but I don't look at a lot. I tossed my glasses from the early 90's. They were huge. Fashionable then, definitely aged now, and one of the lenses was always falling out. I tossed some class notes that I know I'll never need again, keeping a few pages that may be useful down the road. It's good to purge. More purging on the way.

So I sorted through a few different life stages and sent much of them packing. It's a new phase now. And I like this one a lot. Time to make room for it.