  Sleep. That's what I should be doing right now. But, uh, obviously I'm not. Why is that? No really, why am I not sleeping? I don't know. Any input would be accepted with open arms (unless it's dumb, and then I'll laugh at you).
Okay, brainfart of the weekend. "Oh, hey, Mom, what do you say I help you clean the storage room in the basement so I can move those huge boxes out of the middle of the living room. " Big mistake. BIG. This task may never end. There's crap in there from before this house burned down. Just a little history lesson for you. My aunt and uncle used to live here. They moved in here after it had been rebuilt after a fire (where a woman died--a fact that I was not aware of until a few years ago, but quite frankly explains a few of my childhood nightmares).
Several years later, they moved to a farm out in the middle of nowhere (which is really everything within 45 minutes of here) and a year or two later, my parents moved in here. Anyway, in the fire, a lot of stuff was left behind that belonged to the woman who died in the fire.
She had no family, so this stuff was all just cleaned and put back in the house (things like old coffee cans filled with nails and those kinds of things that don't burn). Yeah, this whole home transaction from burned down to my aunt and uncle living in the house was about five or six years before I was even born. That's how old some of the shit in there is. Oh, and just to give you a visual, all of the beams in the ceiling of the basement are the same as those in the house that burned down. They weren't replaced. They're charred and if you touch them, they smell like burning wood. At some point, I fully expect the house to collapse in on itself.
Anyway, from about 8am until mom stopped to make dad dinner at 5:30, we were in there moving shit around. She refuses to throw anything out. Now, a few weeks ago, I mentioned that dad was the packrat. I was wrong. They both are. Jeez! There is an entire 5-shelf unit with doors with just old jars in it.
Empty and not used for years. And not old canning jars. Just old jars that used to contain something they bought in the store. Jelly jars, pickle jars, peanut butter jars. Just miles and miles of jars. No dice on trying to get those thrown out. Because we "might" need them someday. Probably 476 cans of old paint down there. Right next to the furnace. I bet that's still good. Except that there are colors in there for things mother claims she painted, but which I've never seen.
Boxes upon boxes of old wallpaper. Because she might want to touch up the paper that has been on the walls for close to 10 years in some parts of the house. Okay, first of all, no. And second of all, wallpaper is of the devil. I hate wallpaper. I hate wallpaper paste. I hate the smell of it, and I refuse to have it anywhere near me. If this shit falls off the wall, we're painting the shit. Christ, even she hates the wallpaper in the living room. I hated it as soon as she rolled it out on the table. I've papered far more walls in my lifetime than any one human being should be forced to do, and I will not do it anymore.
Just no. No more wallpaper. I refuse. When she turned her back, most of it went in the trash. Don't tell her. I suspect we'll be at this basement storage room cleaning business until the end of January or one of us drops dead or lights a match in there. At this particular moment, I'm not sure which will come first. 
