More Cleanup; Cute Animal Pictures; Jeff Visit

 Got into the swing of barn cleaning; one load to the dump on Friday and two on Saturday (so that's four loads in the week if you count the one last Sunday)

I have to admit to myself that going through stuff, dragging it to the car and then hauling it to dump is more of a mental/emotional thing than it is physical.  Timing it - I can sort enough stuff to fill the car full in about an hour.  Then it's another 15-20 minutes to take it to the dump and get home.

It's not like I *have* to do this.  I don't need the space.  But the barn is just one big cluttered mess.  I could ignore it when it was Bob's - not my circus, not my monkeys.  But now that it's mine - it's *my* clutter.  And it's weird owning so much stuff that I don't even know what it is.  It's taken me this time - almost four years - to get out of the mindset of this is Bob's stuff, and into the acceptance that it's mine.  And even the stuff that is still useful needs to meet the criteria of "is it useful to me?  Will I use it?"  So as I'm cleaning it goes into three categories.  1) trash (the biggest one), 2) donation (surprisingly big)  and 3) keep (quite small)

I have to allow myself to feel the memories.  The little desktop aquarium that I had in my office in the 90's.  The large collection of hamster wheels and water bottles, from the time that we had two mice that we thought were both females but one turned out to be a male and we ended up with a lot of pet mice for awhile.

And I have to whisper an apology as things go away.  I know how some of this happened.  Bob's parents, his father especially, were generous  - the type who would do anything for you, give you the shirt off his back.  But his father in particular was oddly unaware of boundaries, and also couldn't comprehend that if something wasn't important to him might be important to someone else.  When Bob was in high school, his room had a bunk bed. He slept in the lower one, and kept some of his things on the upper bunk.  He came home one day, and the upper bunk was empty.  When he asked his mother about it, she said they would be moving soon so she was cleaning up and tossed it - "you don't need that."   After we were married, we were going for his officer basic training to Texas for a few months, so we packed up a lot of our stuff and left it at his folk's house.  When we came back for it, we found that not only had they opened the boxes to see what was in there - but gave some of it away.
So I understand why he wanted me to leave his stuff alone.  And why he wanted to keep it all.   His parents didn't understand why he would want some of his things, so they threw or gave it away.   I'm taking his things - and throwing or giving them away.  It's damned hard.  So I can only do so much before I have to walk away again.

Fortunately at the dump they also have a covered area where you can put things that are still useful, that someone else might want.  So that's where the fish tanks and odd tools (like the splitting maul that I can barely pick up) go.  For the first few years I worried about the tools and equipment that I didn't even recognize - what if it turned out I needed them?  Four years later I realize that if I still don't know what something is for, it's unlikely that I need it.  And if I do - Lowe's probably has it.

Passing stuff on to someone else is easier than throwing it away - it lessens the guilt.  When I took my first load in on Saturday, I noticed that everything I had left Friday was gone.  When I took my next load Saturday afternoon, all the morning stuff had been picked up.  When I was offloading in the afternoon, a woman was there with her truck - and basically I ended up putting it all in her truck instead of the site, and she thanked me profusely (I assume that it will show up at yard sales or the flea market, and I'm fine with that)

Here's the before-and-after of this weekend's cleanup.

(the red thing is a parts washer, and too heavy for me to pick up, so it's on the "deal with it later" list).

To relieve the stress from doing this, I spent time cutting up a tree that fell behind the house and dragged it to the fire pit.  Saturday afternoon I had a nice fire going and could settle down and read for awhile.

On a lighter note, Jeff is back in town for work and we got to spend a few hours together today.  I forgot the selfie.

I do have a few more pictures from work.  One of the keepers came by on her way to take a baby bobcat to a facility in Central Florida.

Adorable, yes.  Cuddly, no.  He was snarling and hissing at us.  Which is good - he's going to be raised with other bobcats, and eventually released back into the wild.

On this same trip, Shelby was also going to return the two alligators that we use for education encounters, and exchange them for smaller ones.  But it was quite cold that day and we were all standing around looking at the bobcat Another keeper, Chris, was afraid that the alligators would get cold in their carrier.

This really needs some sort of "Florida Man" caption.

Finally, our education armadillo, Hank, developed some sores on his tail so he's living in the kitchen area for awhile.  When we're in there, he's let out to run around and explore.  It was quite cold that day, and in his running around Hank found the space heater and promptly crashed for a warm nap.

My goal for the next month or so is to get as much of the barn done, and as much of the yard cleared as I can before the weather turns warm again.  As the saying goes, what we do around here in the wintertime depends on whether or not it falls on the weekend.