Let's talk trash. . .

I've been on a cleaning rampage. Mainly, I've been attacking my storage bin in the depths of my condo. Well not really depths. . just down the back hall from our main lobby.

The "significant other" has a mania about never throwing away the boxes of anything that once held electronics in case you might want to return something, so when I approach the tall metal cage that constitutes my storage bin,the first thing I see is the huge box that once housed my flat screen TV, followed by the fat square boxes that were home to my latest computer and printer.

With the warranty on all the above long since expired, I take a deep breath and trash the lot of them. Wow! That felt good.

Now I begin attacking the mountain of file boxes, all carefully labeled with a black Sharpie in my own handwriting. Organized, I am. Nostalgic. More than a little.

Opening a box labeled "Office Books", I recognize a throwback to my last official office space within Creative Directors Advertisng Agency. Suddenly I realize I actually had a life pre-Google. Here, well-thumbed and well-used, are hard cover copies of Roget's Thesaurus, Webster's Dictionary and Bartlett's Quotations. Also a soft cover copy of Windows for Dummies and a small handbook titled "Conversational Spanish". Not to mention reference books about local and national media, long since out of date.

When was the last time I went to the dictionary on the shelf next to my current desk to look up a word or the phone book to look up an address? Much quicker to click on Google and find the correct spelling or the answer to my most esoteric question. Incredible how dependent I've become on that bit of cyberspace to keep me in the writing loop.

The nostalgia part kicks in as I take more deep breaths and force myself to trash boxes containing files on long ago clients. Stealing a few glances into several of the fat folders on the way to the waste bin, I flash back on close to five decades of my life as a public relations maven.

Other bits of memorabilia remain in the bin. To trash or not to trash. That is the question. A 4 ft. tall pair of glittery cardboard scissors used many times over the years for photo ops at various ribbon-cutting ceremonies. An ancient pair of snow skis, long since replaced by more modern ones. Crutches from when I broke my foot visiting my grandson Adam when he was still in college in Gainsville. And a set of camping cookware from a long ago Thanksgiving hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

So when was the last time you took a deep breath and trashed that overstuffed closet or your version of my storage bin? It's fascinating how much we accumulate and how little we really need.

By the way. . anyone out there have a yen for some giant glittery scissors? I really tried, but I just can't get myself to throw them away.
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Reality TV at its worst. . . .

I've decided that Kris Humphries got lucky when Kim Kardashian dumped him after 72 days of married life.

I make this wise judgement after watching "Kim & Kourtney Kardashiam Take New York" on TV for the first. . .and I assure you. . .the last time, last night. I got bored with every other channel's in-depth dissection of the upcoming Iowa Caucuses and started channel surfing, stopping to linger on Bravo and this gawd-awful display of narcisistic family life that doubles as a hit show. Talk about boring. . . .the most exciting thing they do is shop.

In the episode I watched, Kourtney's live-in boyfriend,Scott, a total jerk by anyone's standard,buys an expensive grand piano for the apartment because he thinks it will look really spiffy there. That's despite the fact that neither he nor she knows how to play. When she demands he learn or return the piano,he,with great difficulty and the help of an expensive music teacher, masters one stanza of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", using his two index fingers. Everyone claps wildly.

They lose me at this point when Kourtney agrees to reward Scott for this inspiring achievement of musical creativity with "dirty sex" on top of the piano. Ugh.

I'll take the Animal Planet over the Kardashians any day of the week, but apparently not everyone agrees with me. Chalk it up to generation gap-itis. Or maybe just a short attention span.

Gee,I hope they washed off the piano afterwards. Mr. Steinway must be turning over in his grave.
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