Attacked first box of archives this morning while trying to get the fire going. Turned out to be mostly personal letters and neat stuff. Most of box is a keeper. Included a small article on clutter! Next box, please.

How many years in the past do things have to be? Not the issue, I guess. More like how much emotional attachment. Memories. Saturday morning gave me a horrendous look at how past memories can return with no expectation and like a ton of bricks. What was happening was mildly disturbing until my brain heard "RIGHT NOW!" (No one said it but I "heard" it.) I lost it. A near 50 year old memory of abusive husband reduced me to a blubbering mass of protoplasm. Felt run over by a steam roller the rest of the day, but reasonably functional.

We went to the library where I came upon a book, Unchained Memories by Lenore Terr, 1994, about just this sort of thing, and much worse memories, surfacing. It would appear that there is no way, short of brain surgery, to de-clutter ourselves of the good, bad or ugly. The inside cover blurb starts out, "Can a long-forgotten memory of a horrible event suddenly resurface years later?" I will read it as my brain is willing and able.

For now, I am back in the peace of the country after a busy day in the city yesterday. Building up the energy to go trim pots and do more organizing in the studio. We came within 15 minutes of getting a large and useless-to-me kiln out of the studio on Sat eve. I had cleared an exit path but R needed to get back to the city before his restricted license became a pumpkin - 9 pm and never on Sunday. Maybe today.I really want that space for shelves.

As we removed left-behind-by-others stuff from a building yesterday, I found some thin plywood, already cut to right size, that might serve as shelving in the bakery racks, if it is not too thin, in which case it will be fire starter.

So there is SRS mowing and we still have a foot of snow covering most everywhere and more to come in the next couple days.