The scenic route, not so scenic latley

 Usually when I drive home from work and take the scenic route there is always something that catches my attention. I don't often take this route because I want to get home. I can ask myself the same question over and over but I can not give myself an answer. Get home to what? laundry? dishes? yard work? puppies and kitties? I do try and get home to let the pups out but taking  ten extra minutes after work to drive through town really isn't going to matter to the pups. They are always at the door eager to greet me.

 I like to ride through town, there is a little park with a fountain and there are always people there sitting talking, kids playing. It's nice to see that. I usually see folks riding their bikes or walking down the street pushing a stroller, hometown USA. Main street is lined with old buildings most of them are antique stores. I remember back in 19..er.. back in the day ( I am not giving my age away) there was a five and dime store with a little diner where you could get ice cream. I loved going in there with my mom. Sadly it burned down after it became an antique store. I knew I should have bought that mirror I had my eye on before it turned into dust.

 The coffee shop usually has folks sitting outside reading, sipping coffee or talking. Its nice to drive through and just absorb all the past and present. It is a get a way from the daily news feed I get via twitter that somehow recently makes me think how lucky I am to live here.

 My usual drive through the other day brought little satisfaction. I'm sure the heat and humidity had a lot to do with it. I even drove home with air on. I tried rolling down the windows but hot air blowing in my face isn't really a good way to de stress.  The park was empty even the fountain wasn't pumping its usually display of colored water. Not even a candy wrapper blowing in the wind. Ghost park. Main street was the same. There were cars lined up and down the one way street but I didn't see anyone walking or shopping. Were they inside in the cool air watching me? Zombie apocalypse?

 I decided to drive through the old neighborhood where I used to hang out. Homes for sale, homes in desperate need of repair. No kids outside playing. I pulled over and turned on some MP3 music to get me the rest of the way home. My last peaceful glimpse was of the church steeple rising up above  the trees. I pulled over to take a picture but the humidity kept fogging up my camera and I did not want to take a photo through the windshield. I made it home to the barking pleading faces of my puppies. I did a stop, drop and roll and let them jump on me and greet me in their usual fashion.

 I think I may need to wait a bit, when the weather starts to cool folks will come out of their air conditioned caves and then I will be writing about the fall and and sweet breezes. Until then I'm going to sit in my own air conditioned cave and do what I do.

A Kirby vacuum and some old keys

---

I recycle, repurpose, upcycle—basically, if it can be glued, painted, or turned into a questionable piece of home décor, I’m your girl. I’ll do anything to keep stuff out of the landfill. Noble, right? With that said… I currently have 4600 square feet of what some might call “treasure” and others might call “a cautionary tale” crammed in my basement. My three-car garage is stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey. The cars live outside now. They know their place.

Every closet in the house is bursting at the hinges. Sometimes I feel like I’m living in a live-action episode of Hoarders R Us—minus the mystery feces and three-year-old tuna sandwiches. Although, I did once find something fuzzy in my daughter’s toy box that I thought was a dead mouse. I screamed like I’d just seen spider and called my dad downstairs. He took one look, casually picked it up (while I dry-heaved in the corner), and said, “Looks like a sandwich.” I’m sorry, what? I almost threw up all over my newly scrubbed floor. 

People are always giving me stuff. I’m not sure if they genuinely believe I can turn it into a gold mine, or if they just don’t feel like dragging it to the dump themselves. Either way, this is one of those stories—starring one lazy human, a vacuum, and my ex-husband. Buckle up.

So one day, my ex-husband (emphasis on ex) shows up with a Kirby vacuum cleaner that someone at work gave him. “It still works!” he says, all proud like he brought me a puppy or a diamond ring. It was an older model, but it looked decent…until I unzipped the bag cover. No bag. Just...the ghost of everyone else’s skin cells who’d ever vacuumed a carpet. I’m talking straight-up DNA soup. If I said it was “nasty,” that’d be a compliment. I tossed it into the back of the truck and hauled it to the dump like a bad habit. Good riddance.

Fast forward a couple days. I take the 150-step walk to my dad’s house to say hi. Donna tells me he’s been puttering in the shop. I find him out there, eyes sparkling like he just found buried treasure. “Come in, come in! Sit down!” he says, like he’s about to unveil a cure for arthritis.

He disappears down to the lower level of the shop, then comes back up beaming. “Look what I got! Some lazy ass threw this brand new vacuum away! Probably just didn’t want to change the bag!”

I slowly turn my head. Cue horror movie music. I know that vacuum. “Hey… that’s MY vacuum!”

He laughs as I tell him the tale of how I’d acquired and then dumped it like a hot potato. I demand it back—obviously. He grins and says, “Oh, I just sold it for twenty bucks! Works great! All it needed was a good cleaning.”

A cleaning. That’s all. Twenty bucks. And I’m the environmentalist here?!

We spent the rest of the day at his shop, sitting with a giant bowl of old keys between us. For hours we brainstormed brilliant ideas for those keys—art projects, wind chimes, maybe a weirdly menacing necklace. Spoiler: we didn’t do a damn thing. But the keys are safe. I think. They’re either in the garage, the basement, or possibly the upstairs closet… no, wait—maybe under the bed? I’ll find them. Someday. Probably when I’m looking for something else entirely. Like my sanity.