This 'n That on Monday

I am apparently not as young as I'd like to think. This is the message my body had for me this morning as my feet hit the floor. "Ouch" said my back and my quads and my hammies. "Oooh" said my triceps and forearms. The bottoms of my feet and my hands chimed in, as did my knees and neck. This all resulted from the heavy duty hauling and schlepping that constituted most of my weekend. XDO and I have finally gotten around to another movement of our little symphony, that being the division of the last of the stuff.

My house, though it is in town, is graced with "outbuildings." I have two garages and a wee little pumphouse. Somehow in our six years here, we have managed to fill them, plus the four rooms of our basement, with an incredible amount of junk. A lot of it came with us from the Big City. In fact we moved an entire rental truck full of just yard and garden down here....including rocks, dirt and landscape lumber, in addition to the usual tools, hoses and such. We also have more flower pots and garden fol-de-rol than any two people could ever use in a lifetime. The basement is graced with crap and crud related to toolage and painting and pets and projects that will never be completed. Much of this, too moved here with us. Since XDO moved to an apartment, all such remained behind and pretty much was not dealt with last year. But I am now a woman on a mission and I want my three outbuildings and my basement CLEANED! So it has begun. Into the piles we go..XDO, burn pile, Habitat's Re-Use Store, Goodwill, the dump, the city's hazardous waste collection site....and once in a great while, a "keeper." I am ruthless in this. If it does not have almost immediate use or great value-GONE! The back garage and pump house are sorted as are two rooms of basement. Some of it actually got moved to XDO's. Other piles await their final destinations. Some, alas is still at the bottom of those awful basement stairs! There are still two rooms of basement to be done. One that, thanks be, is small and almost empty. The other, *sigh* is full of tools and other accumulated detritus that has the potential for a bit of wrangling. I must remember it is only stuff. Stuff I paid for, stuff I feel ownership of and want to say "mine, mine, mine" about, but stuff none-the-less. And it ain't worth fighting over.

We were, for the most part civil with each other. I worked very hard to let my spirit be one of lovingkindness. I asked for prayers. I feel sad and weary today. My muscles are not the only things that hurt. I listened with my heart to the comments on my "String" post. You are wise my blog sisters, and echo what I hear from others. Yes, loving XDO is a hard thing. It involves letting things go and letting things pass. It means allowing for and not reacting to. It also means that I say no to some things and yes to others (and we aren't talking about hoses and hoes, here). It means I have to watch and listen and discern. It means I have to walk carefully amidst the shards of this broken thing we share.

This part will be done soon. There will be other parts. Lives wound together as long and complex as ours were do not come apart easily. I slid for awhile. Now I get to do some work on this again. Deconstruction. If you do it well, sometimes you can make good use of the bits and parts that come out of it. It's not all trash in the end and you end up with more than simply sore muscles and a burn pile.