so i was minding my own business, hauling stuff out of the shed to put out for the sale, when it became very hot and muggy and i had to start drinking water by the bucketful and i had a number of things put a damper on my enthusiasm. one, my wife told me of the brown recluse spiders living in the shed. two, it began to look like rain which made it seem quite futile to keep putting things on the driveway. three, she's trying to show the house, even have people over to clean it, so my pulling out & sorting of things is actually getting in her way; and, finally, though we got some signs posted on telephone poles in the area, even that was hot & muggy, and difficult, and i began to feel it might be better to wait until night when i have help from an older son, and it might ease up a little on the hot & muggy thing. actually this is pretty normal for southern illinois, and i'd like to say texas might be only half as bad, since the muggy part is just not there. but who knows? i can't speak for texas, yet. i'll let you know when i arrive.

one son said, he'd been waiting so long for the end of school, so looking forward to it, so counting down the days, even the minutes, that now that it's here, he's experienced a complete mental reversal and doesn't know what to do with himself. doesn't know what to do with his mind, actually, since laying around and playing stuff is not against his nature. it's the looking forward to stuff that he's really missing.

so these old telephone poles around town, they had these rustic metal staples put in them, and a few tacks, and a few nails, and i realized i'd driven by a few of them so many times, it was nice to grace them with a poster. they're pretty rustic fellows, standing tall as they do at prominent corners, holding "lost" posters and other kinds of things. as i sit here i notice, it's caused a few people to drive by already. sale's not until tomorrow morning at seven, but you can bet a certain crowd will be here at 6:30 giving it the once-over. it's actually a heap of junk we're selling; it's been filling our garage for years; it's hard to get out of there, and there isn't much point, since it might rain and all the area under the eaves, in front of the house, is already full. i'm taking a break, blogging, because i can't keep up the hot hot hauling all day long.

in a sense it's like cleaning out your past history, all your frustrations and desires, at least as they took shape in material things that somebody bought and maybe even used for a little while, at one point. some of it, i'm not even sure how i got it, and this is true at the office as well; we end up with it; we don't want to keep it; we're hoping someone will take it off our hands. maybe they will, maybe they won't. it could be a huge dump run.

on the other hand, bringing things out in front of the kids, actually makes them interested again, and gives some toy at least a minute of new life, while they skirt off into another room with the toy, and maintain that this is something they couldn't give away, that they wanted to keep all along. i myself, having just come from the desert, have got some sense of the enormity of trying to actually carry boxes and bins of junk down there, it's time to travel light, and unload this stuff as well as possible, so that someone here can actually use it. the clouds gather above; it's muggy. i feel the frustration of having, what, hundreds of pounds of unsorted stuff around the house, this is all stuff i intended to get out there, one way or the other. i don't know, now, what will happen. i'll drink my coffee, then, have to go to work for a spell, later. ah, friday. it makes me nervous.