Why To Begin?

Why start a blog?

The idea started on yet another “cleaning” of the attic.  My husband complained, “Why can’t we get rid of these things!? Bins and bins of books, high school journals and notes. For what?!”

Yep, I’m the wacky wife who keeps unused items neatly packed away in a literal storage space in our home! Insanity!

Yet my husband sees nothing absurd about how he hyperventilates and gets hives THINKING about items just sitting there in the attic. 

I have gone through my Memory Bins over the years and wondered what I’ll eventually do with all this stuff. Leave it all for my kids? I can just see my sons reading random journal entries about my disgust of chimpanzees or references to the Love Boat and why there are safety pins attached to notes. It's all lived, but not explained. . 

It becomes overwhelming. 

Overwhelming as in, the bins that contain my kids’ childhoods for example.  Years of life on micro vhs tapes in bins, unorganized; can’t watch them because we need some kind of adapter from 15 years ago and oh my God I’ve failed as parent!

This is the time in attic cleaning when I make a valiant effort by throwing some old curtain rods onto the give away pile then zoom out of there. 

So really my husband and I share the same angst about the attic, but my tactic is to just run away and not think about it. 

Later that day, I was telling my teenage sons about something funny I had read in my journals about a high school boyfriend. 

16 year old: "Oh is the boyfriend who years later realized he was gay?"

Me: "Actually no, this is another boyfriend who later realized he was gay."

13yo: "Is it the one you stole the shoe from and then you and Reb buried it? 

The shoe

16yo: "Man, you guys were crazy..."

Me: Listen! It was the 1980's! 

Then it hit me. Haul out the journals and notes and attempt to explain (defend) my life as a GenXer.