Ick! Ick! Ick!

Mildew. Mice droppings. Destroyed memorabilia. Yup, that's my life this week. I kind of expected this. We had a leak in our garage. Okay - two leaks if you want to be exact, but who's counting? I cleaned up a little when it happened, but it was the dead of winter and I just didn't feel like being in the cold working in the garage in January.

Big mistake. Huge mistake. HUGE. Pretty much everything I've ever kept from my childhood is ruined. My parents and I collected dolls from countries all over the world. Not only did they smell like mildew, they were buried - yes, buried - in an inch of mice droppings! My precious tea cozy purchased in communist Soviet Union in 1971 was chewed up pretty bad.

I was sobbing. My guess is Tom was rolling his eyes behind my back, but he played the role of concerned husband quite well. It's not like I'd have taken them to Asia anyway, but I loved them and had saved them just in case I ever had a little girl. Now, I wouln't let her touch them with a ten foot pole. I wore gloves, laid them each in the grass and took photos. 

My two favorites were from Hong Kong purchased in 1967 by my aunt who lived there. Tom said I could just buy more. Hardly. They are hand-made - exquisite - or at least they were.

Worst of all maybe is my Barbie house. My parents made me a special house with working lights when I was a kid. It wasn't all that fancy, but it was special because they did it all themselves. I played with it for hours on end. I saved it for decades for my daughter. Tonight? It's in the trash pile waiting for bulk pick up. 

So now my goal is to buy dolls for Maisie in all the countries we visit - start her own collection. They'll be more special to her that way anyway - and hopefully - she'll have great memories of Team Hiems buying them for her. In a way it's a good thing because it's making me throw crap away that I really shouldn't have saved. I guess I hold onto it because my parents are dead. In some ways, it's all I have left of them. Onto new memories....

Wah. The day I've been dreading is here.

We have two houses. One is a rental that we'll keep til February. The other is a weekend house we've been trying to sell for the past several months. The rental house will stay as is so we have a home here if we return. Amazingly, packing it up and paying mover and storage costs wasn't all that cheaper than continuing to rent it. International movers would have to pack it all over again so why pack it?

The other house is 230-years-old. We gut renovated it and put a lot of ourselves into it. It's a weird house filled with old barn wood, strange doors and odd sinks. Even more so? It's filled with crap. Lots and lots of crap. For months, I have tried to find a tag sale person to clean it out for us, but we don't have fabulous antiques so nobody will touch it. I can't do it. I mean, I have two toddlers!

Somehow - just last week - I talked my two college-age baby sitters into doing it for us while we're gone. So before we go, not only do I have to buy and pack the crap we need, get travel shots and physicals and continue to cook daily meals, but now have to clean out all the crap we don't want in both houses. 

I have laid in bed for months thinking about it - sad to sell the house and a bit frightened to go through all the stuff. SO here it is? D-Day. Packing Day. Hell on Earth.

Rah.