Bring your attention to the photo of the two dogs and the destroyed photo albums. Around 2014, I came home to find the living room littered with chewed books. My two dogs, Napoleon & Jazz had ripped apart all the books on a bottom bookshelf. This included two of my high school years books, Kristen's baby album, the Europe album, our family album 1996-1998, a large photo book on astronomy that was so destroyed I can't determine the title. I'm able to write about this today because I didn't kill my dogs, although it took considerable discipline. I alone labored too many hours to count creating the family albums. I do find it interesting that the High School years destroyed were mine and not Tom’s and the only the two destroyed were my most miserable HS years. There is a message in that somewhere.
At first, I was so angry that I almost threw everything into the garbage. But I did not have the heart to through away the photos of my beautiful baby Kristen and the photos of the Sacre Coeur, in Paris and the old coin Justin found at the carousel. I dumped everything into a big tub and put it in the basement and moved on with my life. We continued to have wonderful adventures, we traveled, graduated and each had moments in the spotlight.
Now I’m getting my daily exercise bringing up tub after tub from the basement revisiting the old adventures and achievements. “I can do this,” I say to myself, huffing and puffing. I can organize the past fifteen years and reconstructed the damaged albums. I had not planned to take this time right now to organize, but it is best to make the most of each situation.
Being positive is not my natural state. I work hard to be positive. It is easy for me to be sarcastic, whiny, and cut-throat mean. If you have witnessed that part of me, I am so sorry. I have discovered that those qualities are not productive for me. I do feel it can be beneficial to let the “bad-side” out, like venting a pressure cooker. For this reason, I spent the last 2 days moving tubs ALONE, crabbing about all the crap that has accumulated in this house and I’M THE ONLY ONE CLEANING. I do my venting alone. I choose not to subject others to that. Play the music extra loud, while you complain. My neighbors think I’m doing karaoke.
COVID made me clean, crazy times. This is great!
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