Busy, Busy, Busy

It’s been a while since I worked a full work week. I didn’t quite work a full 40 hours. I worked 8 hours in the office on Monday, 8 hours cleaning out the storage area on Tuesday and then split my time between the two for 8 hours on Wednesday. Thursday I spent 6 hours going through old slides. I threw away nearly four trash bags full. The rest I sent e-mails out to 20 or more people asking if their gardens or arboretums wanted them for their archives. Today I put in almost two hours in the office boxing slides up to mail.

One day I joked that I was hired for this job because I’m so good at cleaning things out and moving. But I’ve never moved quite like this. As a writer (before computers), I thought I had a lot of paper to pack. But my scribbles are nothing compared to well over 400 tubes full of architectural drawings, schematics and topographical plots. I spent probably a grand total of 16 hours getting rid of papers, loading the back of my SUV up and taking the rolls to recycle bins. We still have 60 tubes left Ed and I lugged over to the office so Amber and Kara can go through them, scanning in what we need to keep. The rest I will load in the back of my SUV for one final trip to recycle.

Ed worked over 6 hours this week in the storage area, taking down the very well made shelves all the tubes were kept on. These were about 8 feet in height, screwed and bolted together enough that he could climb about on them like a jungle gym. They were NOT easy to get down. I even took my turn using the electric drill and took huge pieces apart while he returned the reciprocating saw we borrowed. But they are demolished…and the pieces should be completely gone before tomorrow is over. Just wish we could get rid of the 200 or more tubes we thought we could sell. But, of course, architects don’t use tubes anymore. Neither, I suppose, do many artists. I’m still searching Pinterest for some neat ideas…

There are a lot of things about the age in which we live that I’m sure our grandparents find baffling, our parents work hard to keep up with and even my generation shakes their heads at the next generation who are born with smartphones in their hands. All the instant knowledge we have within in our reach isn’t always a wonderful thing. But, it sure does make our grandchildren’s future look a little lighter. My grandkids will never have to clean out piles of their grandmother’s scribbles – they can just wipe my hard drive. And since I’ve already scanned all my photo books into my computer, they’ll never have to worry about that either. If they wish, they can wipe the zip drives. How easy is that?