Surely it is safe to throw this out by now... or is it?

My thoughts on "clearing out the clutter" were, partly, that if we hadn't touched it in several years, we wouldn't miss it and don't need it. 

So, I've begun the painful process of throwing out, re-purposing and recycling. I've watched the TV shows, listened to the experts, read the self help books. I know what I'm doing. For sure! I think...

Take, for example, my (well, our) sleeping bags. They are down filled and they are dusty, and possibly stale smelling. Haven't been used in years, since we left California. They were expensive, but, unused and just hogging up closet space in a "much too small" condo...
and yet... hard to recycle these.

Would anyone else know (or care) that I won the money to buy them at a slot machine in Reno, Nevada?

~~~~~~

One of the TV experts told me "Just because you clean it out or throw something away, doesn't mean you love the people attached to those memories any less." You won't be throwing out the memories, just putting the tangible object(s) to better use. 

That, I think, I do understand on some level.

Then why is it so hard?

• Let's see, three bookshelves full to the gills of dusty books. My collected works of Shakespeare? My old autographed Lee Smith books? I have already taken boxes to our "Friends of the Library."
• Miles of photo albums. Boxes of photos and negatives. Boxes of collected postcards.
• Dozens of Fiestaware coffee mugs in every color, in a packing box under my spare bed.
• Dozens of drinking glasses, mostly stolen from places we've been. Too many to get in the cabinets. How many drinking glasses do two people need anyway?
• A whole storage container of Beany Babies, practically new.
• Music CDs. hundreds. not all in the correct cases.
• Shoes. In a continuing effort to have comfortable shoes, I've managed to amass several dozen unlikely suspects which are now crowding the floor of my closet.
• Framed photos. Much to many for the wall or counter space I now have, while they looked fine in the big house in Citrus Heights. Oh Well. Now in boxes, which I lack space to store. Who wants to store them anyway? Much too much.
• Sheets. Somehow we have too many and lack a linen closet. But, we do need some sheets. How many for two people? and which ones? We have two sizes of beds in the condo. Why is nothing simple?
• Beach Towels. They are huge and we lack the linen closet. We do not use them. Haven't in six years although we do have a pool. I think I've been in it twice. Maybe 3 times. Share the excess with Amanda and Todd for their pool?  Keep them for another decade in hopes of that elusive retirement when I'll certainly use them? Ha.

2010 Rio Grande Gorge Bridge - 2nd to the New River Gorge Bridge in height

Hey - there is Mr. Ed!

This is quite a bridge! Not nearly as pretty, in my opinion, as the New River Gorge Bridge though.
We got to see this the day we went to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico. We drove about 10 miles from Taos and found it, way in the middle of nowhere. There were Native Americans people selling things near the bridge, and we saw a tarantula. It is high desert area in climate. There were cool hiking trails near the rim, but, wary of falling with my broken elbow, I didn't venture out on the trail. This time anyway. Someone mentioned a bridge in Colorado that is cooler than this, I will have to look it up and make sure we find it on our next trip through Colorado. This was fun to see, a pretty cool bridge. I like the detail of the New Mexico symbol in the bridge shown in the last photo - This is on their state flag and license plates, very pretty.

Now we are in the Waiting mode - the infamous "2 weeks"

The guys from Home Depot came in and tore out the old cabinets, and now have hung the new cabinets. They have placed our appliances back into the proper places. Condo is a lot better now. Maid came in and helped run the vacuum and clean up.

I should show you the spare bedroom, stacked to the 6 foot level with boxes from u-haul with our kitchen goods. It will all never go back into that space. Ed packed the kitchen himself, my elbow is healing.

Still to be done:

• hardware on the cabinets;
• countertop install;
• sink install;
• faucet install;
• pendant lights installed.

The man from the Stone and Tile yard came yesterday and measured. They will now order the granite slabs and when they arrive and we inspect them, then we can have them installed. 2 Weeks??

We're eating out.

I have to go back to work Monday. I can hook my own bra now! And do my hair again.





Note we have lots of DRAWERS - not large cabinets like the old cabinets.

These two shots were after ripping out the old, but before installing the new cabinets.

2010 November - Let the Kitchen remodel begin....

The first two cabinet doors will have glass with mullions. So we can see the Fiestaware!!

The new cabinets are Thomasville Eden in Maple, painted finish is River Rock. These are full overlay, 5 piece front cabinets. These are a simple, Shaker style cabinets, clean contemporary lines.

The pulls we selected are stainless bar pulls.

The new sink is an Elkay 18 gauge, single bowl in a D shape. Yay!!

The new faucet is a Delta, single hole, stainless, with a pull down sprayer and a soap dispenser.



Ed is packing up our current kitchen stuff.

The counter tops are currently formica and will be granite. Note we currently have NO sprayer! I have missed it!!

Note the bar area, which we will make a little deeper so we can have two barstools there on the living room side and use that for eating if we like.

There is the bar area again.

Note the bowed shelves and the back corner of the actual cabinet box coming apart. The new cabinets are solid wood. (Made in the USA!) Yay!!

In order to keep costs somewhat in line, we are not replacing the appliances, which are all working fine. We might purchase a new fridge at a later date, but we can shop for a bargain on that. We are making the opening a bit larger, as the current fridge is very small.

2010 New York City Marathon weekend

This is in Central Park East, at 59th and about mile 25 of 26.2.

This is after Joey crossed the finish line! He is still on his feet!!

This was about 77th street and first avenue in the upper east side, Joey had already done about 16-17 miles here.

This is just about half of the reading room.

Joey and Ed giving me the tour of the New York City Public Library.

The New York City Public Library and Joey in the fall. Nov. 2010. Beautiful day before the race.


Walking in NYC is always fun, I love looking up. See the wooden water tank on the right side of this photo? Those are everywhere there, still in use. Also note the neat archway on this building. Really fun just to walk. If not people watching, then building gawking.



This little hotel was the nicest place to stay, about 5 minutes from Joey's apartment. We liked this one so well, we may stay there again. It was called the Hotel Giraffe, named after a gentle creature.

2010 Sandia Peak, near Albuquerque New Mexico

This was our last day in New Mexico, so we went to ride the tram at Sandia Peak. We had seen the exit for this at least 3 different times as we drove across the country back and forth between San Francisco and DC or WV. We really never had time to stop before.
I'm glad we got to, it was very interesting!

First we drove up the back side of the mountain to Sandia Crest, so we could see what that looked like. It was cold up there! That side had a lot of antennas, and some trails that would have been cool to walk. We then drove around the mountain, took about 45 minutes, and found the foothills and the tram.

Be sure you click on the photo, as it should link to the my Picasa photo web album.
Enjoy!!

Taos Pueblo, New Mexico October 2010

This is part of the original pueblo in Taos, the oldest continuously inhabited pueblo (village) in existence. These are original rooms, or condo like dwellings, that have just been re-mudded over the centuries. The are still inhabited, and the residents that choose to live there do not have running water - they bring in water from the creek that runs through the pueblo. They use their own pottery or just buckets or jugs now. They do not have indoor plumbing and they do not allow electricity in this part, although they do have electricity in other (newer) parts of their village.
You can see an outdoor oven in this photo, they place cedar logs in the oven every morning, let the wood burn up, sweep out the ashes then place the bread and things to cook in the oven for about 45 minutes to an hour. Ed remembers Grandma Gallo doing this in her brick oven in WV.
We note they are using propane in some of the newer adobes, for light and heat in some of them. This original old church has propane lighting and heat now. It was beautiful inside too, but no photos allowed.

It is an awesome place to visit. Our guide was a young native boy, very cute with jet black hair, blue eyes and both ears pierced. He wore modern dress (mostly black clothes) and told us he is attending the University of New Mexico studying environmental studies. He was a great public speaker and was very interesting to listen to. He was not paid by the tribe, so we tipped him. We paid a fee to the tribe to enter the grounds and a fee to use my camera. We were allowed to enter some parts of the place, some natives are open for business and selling their art work and pottery. The rooms are small and traditional entry was through a hole in the roof, with you climbing a wood laddder. Now most homes have a small doorway. Smaller openings conserve heat and cool.
They get about 40-50 inches of snow there in winter.