  The California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board has still not made a decision on my husband's unemployment. They're saying maybe by next week. When the rent check clears, we'll have approximately $300 left. So I'm sitting here looking around our apartment, and cataloguing in my mind the things that are down south in storage, and thinking about what could fit in the car, what things are important enough to take with us. Trying to decide if the things that have emotional ties are more important, or if the things that would be more costly to replace (computer, printer) should take precedent. Perhaps the more expensive gifts from my parents (microwave, mixer, digital camera.
) The silverware? The pots and pans that I bought with my high school graduation money? Certainly the graphics I've spent hundreds of hours on would go on a CD to be sure to keep, as would the conversations I've logged with friends. And we'd need room for our IRS papers and other important documents. My clothes and shoes. Some of those would go along, some of it would be left.
I don't wear them all anyhow. Do I keep the books? They're easy enough to be replaced, but there are so many of them. I want to at least keep my favorites, and my web-programming ones. The sex toys could be gotten rid of, I guess. I don't use them very often as it is.
Keep the clamps and the smaller items. The WAHL massager definitely would be packed. Of what's in storage ... The quilt my grandmother made us for our wedding. Our wedding albums. Leftover wedding trinkets.
Marriage certificate. Small gifts my husband gave me when we still loved each other. These things don't hold much meaning now, but they're a part of my past, and my grandmother spent so much time on the quilt, I'd hate to lose it, if only for her sake. For my husband's part - some photo albums and childhood trinkets his mother sent us several years ago; he never opened the box, it was something I opened when I was packing things to be put in storage. His late father's dress sword from the service (I forget which he was in). His original birth certificate.
Newspaper clippings his mother had saved about him. A few legal papers. More clothes. More books. My cookbooks. All of the recipes I'd collected over the years.
More pots and pans. The things that wouldn't fit in the car - television, desk, elliptical. So many things collected in the past six years. A few things from my childhood. Not much of it irreplaceable, but all of it with some emotional attachment. All of it just things .
And I look around and wonder, can I leave it all behind? Could I? Start over completely from scratch, nothing to my name, things in storage auctioned off to the highest bidder. I'm a Taurus, you know, we're quite materialistic, needing the things in order to feel whole. But when it comes down to it, they're not that important. Take the $300, put the necessities in the car, and drive as far east as we can, hopefully making it to my parents' home before we run out of money.
Not that my husband would go for that - I've already mentioned it, so I know. I think he'd sit here and rot before seriously considering losing the things . Not even to save himself would he do it. And because I didn't listen when I should have, didn't save myself when I could have, I'll go down with him. For better or for worse - it's what the vows said. I guess I've lived up to them now.
signed - Me 
