Yes sir, Yes sir, 8 Bags Full

I'm STILL in the process of moving if you can believe that. I spent the past two days packing up more stuff that I should have packed long ago, and had the movers bring (pantry items, jackets, a crock pot and a stereo, dishes). I also did a lot of vacuuming, and washed one of my blankets about 3 times trying to get all the cat fur off of it.

I dropped off another bagfull of Sunny's clothes to a charity; I wish I could find a place that just GIVES AWAY donated items, rather than sell them. What's that about? The truly needy can't afford to buy clothes, no matter how cheap they're going for...and places like Goodwill aren't really that inexpensive anymore; you can get new clothes at Ross or Burlington Coat Factory for nearly the same price now. So where do the homeless or otherwise destitute go when they need new clothes? I also dropped off a set of mixing bowls, a frying pan, and a box of crayons; I hope they give that to some kid, instead of trying to sell it.

In all, I think I've also thrown away about 8 large trash bags full of useless stuff. It's amazing what we collect. I'm sure some of the things I carried back to Austin were useless too; but sentimental; or items that let me believe someday I will have a nice home of my own, the sort that Sunny and I always dreamed of.

I did find a couple of treasures though. Two books in the bookshelf belonged to Sunny. In one, about self esteem for gay people, Sunny had written comments and highlighted sections throughout. Patti, his ex-wife, had told me before that Sunny had been a completely different person when he was younger. Sunny had also talked about some of his wild and reckless days. I think reading this book was a real turning point for him, because the parts that he notated were about putting a stop to self-deprecating and self-destructive behaviors. He never got over the self-deprecation though; as anyone who reads the comments he left on this blog would see. The other book was "A Return To Love." On his blog, he listed that as the last book he read (although before he died, I know he had also read parts of Bill Clinton and John Kerry's biographies).

I also found a few treasures of my own; things I'd written long, long ago and forgotten. My frame of mind was so different back then. I think I was feeling spiritually abandoned, and definitely was struggling with my sexual identity at the time...although I refer to that in my writings only in the vaguest terms, and sometimes even tried to hide my homosexuality. I'll publish some of those items here in the future.

Oh yeah, I also discovered that we had 5 canisters of powdered chocolate (various brands and flavors), and half a carton of Abuelita Mexican chocolate (which I love). We really didn't drink chocolate very often...I wonder why we had all that? I brought it all with me though. I'm going to get fat(ter) drinking it all.