Chemo tomorrow. But tonight...

Is there psychological significance to the fact that I drew my mother without a nose (which she had) but with a beauty mark (which she did not have)?

I've been going through my stuff for a while now... paring it down, throwing it away. I've had different methods. For a while I was throwing out three items a day, whether it was an old envelope of photos, a favorite t-shirt from a previous decade, or a crumpled receipt from the corner of a drawer.

I don't think anyone wants to be burdened with my ephemera. Eric will want some of it, I'm sure... but no one needs my report cards from junior high or a 1972 birthday card from my grandparents.

Report cards, birthday cards, notebooks... old junk jewelery and beads and seashells and candles and poetry and sand dollars and on and on.

After finishing my initial cancer treatment in 2002, I went through all of my old journals and diaries. I read them a bit, but then I threw them into a roaring fireplace. It was wonderful. The next day I pulled the spiral wires out of the ashes, and I was so glad to be done with all of the bullshit.

I was all growed up. I'd been a happy person with a happy life, married to the great love of my life, for a long, long time. Those notebooks had been full of angst and heartache and old, old, shit.

The sort of housecleaning I'm doing now is different.

Here are the earrings I wore when I got married, and there's the Wooly Willy keychain from my Christmas stocking, circa 1991.

I wasn't aware I was such a collector until I really started looking. It's time to divest, and as unceremoniously as possible.

This is an interesting place to be.