And of COURSE I couldn't POSSibly live without THIS...

When we first moved in to this apartment, I was determined to find a place for absofreakinglutely every single thing and make this place FABULOUS, despite the fact that it actually isn't.


I arranged, rearranged, hung, squeezed, laid, and placed everything in the perfect spot designed to create the exactly right ambience and make everyone who walked into the apartment go, "WOWWWWwwwww..."  


After the livingroom and the kitchen met those standards, I kind of petered out and shoved all the excess baggage into the bedroom, where we walked around it, tripped over it, stubbed our toes on it, cursed at it and ignored it for three weeks.


Yesterday, I decided I couldn't take it anymore.  


I reluctantly started opening boxes and bags and was slightly (extremely) shocked and embarrassed by most of the items that I felt I needed so desperately that I actually took the time to wrap them and pack them, drive them 3000 miles and then haul up a flight of stairs.  (Okay, I didn't ACTUALLY do any of the hauling upstairs myself.  That was Dan and his brother's job.  My job was to stand there and panic, wondering where the hell I was going to put it all.)


These items include:


1.  A dusty, crumbled bag of sand dollars and random seashells that we probably have been dragging around since 1997.


2.  Pieces of drift wood.


3.  Rocks.  (Because, you know, sometimes there just aren't enough rocks.)


4.  Seven (7... yes, 7) dried up bottles of nail glue.


5.  1 empty tape roller, 2 half used lint rollers, a huge box of pads for the Swiffer Wet Jet I haven't owned in years, 3 phone chargers for phones we no longer own, two land line phones with no bases, packets of sunflower seeds (the kind you plant) that are half empty and expired in 2007... 


6.  An entire bag of random junk mail.  Because you can ever have too much of that, right?


7.  Two HUUUUGE bags of the kids' old stuffed animals which had been in the garage for probably 5 or 6 years.


8.  A "Go Warriors" sign from 2005.


9.  A bunch of newspapers that I very carefully went through, assuming that they held something of significance.  They didn't.


10.  Jars.  Jars and jars and jars and jars.  I do not can, I do not jam... why do I need 30 empty jars?


There is soooo much more, but my deepest shame came from the box I opened that contained a package of Venus razors and a box of OB tampons.
An entire box containing nothing but razors and tampons.


Did I assume one couldn't buy these items in New York?


Because running out of tampons and razors is simply not an option.  I have my priorities straight, fo sho.