you're not going to slow it down

 So currently I am hardcore KonMarie method-ing most of my house. It took a little while to get into the 'get rid of it' zone but I'm feeling it now. I've done clothes, books, etc. My closet is organized, I donated an entire large trash bag full of t-shirts and kept only the ones I feel excited and happy to wear (as most of what I wear is T-Shirts, fuck you ex) I'm already enthusiastic about there being no possible way for me to build up an 'all day laundry-athon' anymore.

Speaking of my ex, that's where I'm like struggling is you know, still discovering things I no longer have that I was pretty sure I once did, and digging through pictures of us together from ... eons ago. Physical pictures. I've decided I'm starting to really fucking hate physical pictures with a wild passion. Digital photos are fine, easy to put up, just as easy to delete once that phase of your life is over. Physical photos crawl out of the depths of your belongings from 10+ years ago, oozing back into your life and then you must sit down and manually sort them back out. I found two old albums full of photos from the late 90's, early oughts, cosplay shit, all the shit, and when I look at them it's no wonder my self esteem was terrible (still is about a lot of things; esp. my body which must always be completely covered by at least three layers, never shorts, and only just recently have I been able to wear tank tops (but ONLY with 2 further undershirt layers). I look at the old pictures of my ex flirting with legitimately everyone, and I know I was the one taking the pictures. I was a stupid teenager at the time, but she was always shopping for the next thing. Of course I constantly felt like shit. When the next person didn't manifest, she just dropped herself into WOW and refused to emerge until I might as well have not existed. 

It was a time. And now the beginning of that time might as well have come back and slapped me in the face. I keep one picture up on my wall of me & her to remind me not to forget what kind of lovely face it can be that hurt me, and what I looked like when I was being hurt. The rest I was extremely unprepared for.

There are some pictures in there of my cats (at the time) that I want to keep, and some family photos that worked their way in as well. Else I'd have dumped the whole lot into the trash unsorted. 

Next; Living Room, Kitchen and Garage. I want to find a new solution for my Dungeons & Dragons stuff in the living room. Right now it's all together & near the place where we play but it looks like garbage and I don't care for how it's currently displayed. I may co-opt the rack that currently has a bunch of extra kitchen appliances (the stuff that doesn't get used as often; rice maker, Ice Cream Maker, etc) and find a way to make that work. The cook books will have to move as well, but I think once I dig into the cabinets in the kitchen I'll find a bunch of shit that can go directly into the garbage. 

Like that old box of Bpal samples that I have from 10 years ago. I know it's there somewhere....

Signing off

I hardly ever use this thing for anything but author-work, but today I encountered a metaphor for life that I figured I would talk about a little. Feel free to skip.

Being the standard american mix of races, I have eaten a lot of pasta in my life. I rarely if ever have time to make my own sauce, and so for the longest time I used jarred sauce. My favourite, if anyone else remembers this, was Five Brothers. That was some of the best pasta sauce I've ever had. Several years ago - probably longer than that but I only felt the lack in about 2005 - Five Brothers disappeared off the shelves.

I felt the loss keenly and I have been making my own substandard pasta sauce since then, stubbornly refusing to switch over to another brand because I had a loyalty to Five Brothers.

This week, I just did not have time to make pasta sauce. So I bought some Bertolli, because the commercial jingles catch in my head. (They are sung to the tune of Opera, I can't help it.) To my surprise, it was quite acceptable, and eerily familiar.

It turns out that in 2002, Five Brothers changed their name to Bertolli. I've had the internet at my disposal all that time and I never thought to look up what had happened to my favourite brand of pasta sauce.

I suppose the moral of this story is that sometimes the answers are there if you look for them.