MonkeyPants

House Reprieve.

It looks like we’ll be moving in the summer. Or maybe not. How’s that for definite?

It turns out the man who owns the house is some kind of lawyer guy, who just expects people to do things for him. He is expecting Marilyn, the top-floor neighbour who is in charge of the house, to get the place assessed and put it on the market. She has lived here for twenty years. She’s not too eager to get the ball rolling.

She figures it’ll go on the market some time this spring. Of course, even if it sells the first week it’s for sale, she is going to ensure that we have three months’ grace after completion. That’s the law, I think. So we could be moving in the summer.

On the other hand, the person who buys our house might not want to do much with it. It will take several thousand dollars’ worth of work to make the middle apartment habitable (there are leaks all over, up there). Marilyn’s place and our place are leak-free. Hell, they’re even kind of cute, as piecemeal renos go. Mike Holmes would have a fit, but we are not inviting him over.

But now, I’m looking around. There are several trips to the Sally Ann in the works, because, man, how did I get this much stuff? Fran calls me the Decluttering Queen, but I’ve got a lot of clutter, for all that.

Books are one of the main sources of clutter, and most of them I cannot part with. However, I have a few earmarked for removal: 100 Low-Fat Pasta Sauces (I bought it on a whim, truly thinking I’d give ‘Roasted Roots with Lassi’ a whirl. Oops.) Okay, that’s the only one I have been able to decide to part with, but still. It’s a start, right? I might need my 10-lb art history textbook one day. Ditto Joseph Campbell’s book on world mythology. That one’s fun to dip into, actually. And I just couldn’t respect myself if I dumped Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. I mean, who could?

Random crappy art prints are another group I must let go of. None of them are useful to me, as I have (mostly) framed, original or limited edition prints on my walls. I’m not an art snob, but E’s family and my family have produced some credible artists, whose work I enjoy seeing. Of course, there are also the fiascoes from E’s brother, but I’ll live.

Knicknacks: I do love my collection of glass frogs. They look pretty in the sun. And there will come a time when the cat doesn’t feel his sole purpose in life is to knock them on the floor. So I should keep them, right? Right?

Maybe I should just back a truck up and shovel random things in until I’m tired.

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