I continue to be bitten by the clear-out bug. Yesterday produced two giant bags of recycling as I purged my filing cabinet and the trunk of sentimental stuff, for lack of a better name.

I pitched a lot of old greeting cards. I laughed at a lot of old photos. I reminisced about trips I’ve taken and shows I’ve seen. I know I am biased, but I had some very cute babies and some hilarious small children with interesting fashion sense. (I still often repeat my friend’s words of wisdom: “Janet, no one will think YOU dressed them that way.”)

On the practical side, I fixed various filing errors, improved my system for keeping track of the paperwork for my parents’ trust, and sorted, sorted, sorted. The drawers of the filing cabinet even close willingly now. It seems to be a rule that everything I clean out has to contain at least one mysterious piece of technology. My system for dealing with those is to bring them to Brent for filing either with the other gazillion gizmos in his collection or for disposal.

All of which I did while procrastinating on a narrative problem. Today in my sense of virtuous accomplishment, I attack the challenge of reconciling two different versions of the same chapter while simultaneously moving the overall story arc along. If it goes poorly, I can find something else to clean out, I’m sure.