Less junk in the trunk

Well, cleaning out the trunk took me a lot longer than a paltry naptime hour, I'll say that. Mentally prepared though I thought I was. There was a giant sucking sound in my living room for about 8 hours yesterday. It was the sound of the emotional vortex I found myself dragged into everytime I opened a journal to check its start date or see what pictures there might be tucked into it. It was the sound of me cracking the file of love letters, of me opening my horrible high school scrapbook, of me unexpectedly finding pictures of my favorite aunt, dead as of a year and a half ago, of me sorting through the pile of detritus left from my first marriage. Oy. But it's done now! And here's what I managed:

1. I tossed out all my college notebooks except for one, only pausing to look through a few of my old papers. Holy crap, did I really once know that much about American labor history?! Or life for women in Renaissance Italy? Or Chinese classical poetry? Apparently so. But not any longer. So sad. (Interesting aside: the one college notebook I saved was from one of my Chinese literature courses, taught by the man who was not only my favorite professor but who would also be my father-in-law for 3 years. He's retired now, but he's still Sister's grandfather.)
2. Tossed out all my old love letters and any bad poems written to me by a certain ex-boyfriend who considered me his muse. I can't believe I even still had that much of his stuff lying around. So THAT was a good riddance. Unfortunately, I dimly remember cleaning out my trunk once before and also purging it of Husband's love letters to me back in the day. You know, we used to date during college, long before I married my Ex. I sure wish I'd held onto THOSE love letters. I suppose I thought it was rude to hang onto them when I first married the Ex...
   
3. Threw out not only my old art projects but also a few paintings from the same ex-bad-poet boyfriend above. I should mention that Husband knew and hated this particular ex-boyfriend back in the day. So those paintings would never have been hung up in this household, let me tell ya! Not that I would've wanted to since they, like the poems, also sucked. What was up with me and these lame artist types anyway?
4. Saved letters I found from a certain good friend who spent a couple of years in France. You know who you are, my friend! I haven't read them yet, but maybe when you and Mommygoth come over next we can look at them and laugh.
   
5. Saved all things related to my marriage with my Ex--a couple of unused wedding invitations, our guest list, all our wedding photos, well-wishers' cards that came in after the big day, a quilted wall hanging that some old hippie friend of the Ex's parents made with our names on it, a watercolor my Ex painted of his own face. These things I saved for Sister. However I feel about her dad, I think she'll appreciate having them someday. I think what I'll do is pack them into a box with her name on it and stash them in the attic to give to her when she's older. I'm hanging on to the crystal wine glasses and the bit of china we received for her, too. In the Sugar household, we'll soon be using Husband's parents' wedding china as our own soon anyway. I mean, when we use china at all. Which is really seldom.
   

That's it, then. I expected to feel drained afterwards, but actually a nice side effect of reading some of that old stuff was that I suddenly felt my 23-year old self again. Husband and I had quite a nice little romp afterwards. (heh heh)