Friday July 14th

Just one sentence..last night was the most painful and most disturbed night I have had. But no more about sciatica, Dear Reader--you must be fed up with it.  Maybe after I have seen the doctor on Monday...

I am horrified by all the 'stuff' we have accumulated. Closets full of it. Hanger after hanger with clothes on them that we almost never wear. Two bikes covered in plastic leaning against the wall. I will never ride again, and Joan probably not--so get rid of them! But we don't. Filing cabinets full of papers that are almost all out of date. And then tschokes--all those pretty little things scattered around all over the place--yes, we chose them because we loved them--beautiful glass vases, paper weights, stoneware bottles from my old house in Essex, lovely things---but what is to happen to them all?

These thoughts occur to me now because we have recently given vague consideration to the possibility that we might move to another apartment--there is a particularly good location with great apartments just over the District line in Maryland. But when I look at how stuffed our two apartments are here in VNNC, I quail at how on earth we would sort out what we want to keep and what could be trashed, and how we would get rid of surplus furniture. Sell? How?

I am sure there are services that specialize in dealing with these problems, but still--the idea of organizing a move fills me with apprehension. Of course, Joan is the great logistician, and I am sure she would get on top of it--but still...what to keep and what to take would seem to me to pose terribly difficult problems.

But, I guess, we would just have to be ruthless...

That's an interesting word--derived from the noun 'ruth,' meaning a feeling of pity, distress, or grief, which in turn comes from 'rue'--as in "he rued the day he took the job."

Late afternoon--maybe a thunderstorm on the way...