Progress Progress PROGRESS!!!!

Major leap forward yesterday with the delivery of the dumpster.  Steve, whom I should start calling Saint Steve, spent a couple of hours helping me haul stuff out of the basement and garage, including lifting stuff I couldn't begin to budge, like the bags that years ago started out containing powder for cementing tiles to floors and walls and have long since contained actual cement due to the humidity in the basement.  I kept working for maybe another hour after Steve left and now, as you see above, the dumpster is mostly full.  And I should have taken a "before" photo of the inside of the garage, because huge amounts of stuff came out of there, too: I had never looked too closely at the back of it, but it turned out that Jerry's packratitude was in full evidence there too: why my sweetie never recycled or threw out those little plastic pots that seedlings come in but instead piled them all in the back of the garage, for instance, I'll never know.  There was also a small pile of beer cans crushed up in a corner, and I told Steve that some previous resident must have left them there, because I can't imagine Jerry would have done that instead of recycling them - and then last night I was finishing up a can of soda and got up to put it in the box where I collect things for recycling, and as I was walking I crushed the can, and thought "Jerry always crushed cans before putting them in recycling," and my mind flashed back to the crushed cans in the corner... and I realized, No, previous residents would not have left a small pile of beer cans in the back of the garage!

Today's goal is to finish (FINISH!) clearing out the basement so it's ready for someone to come in and de-mold it.  On Wednesday a truck from that charity I mentioned will come get furniture and other things I'm not saving.  (On Tuesday I go see the Lin-less Knicks play the I VERY MUCH HOPE Rose-ful Bulls.)

Progress.