In Which Grumpiness Has Its Rewards

Warning: mild profanity may ensue.

I don't know many immutable truths about parenthood, but I do know this:  If you find yourself wearing the Parent hat in this lifetime, you will at some point experience a weekend with your children that will make you think you must be doing everything wrong.  Even as the more reasonable voice of your intellect (I call this my Librarian Voice) says, "Well you know, dear, children will have their bad days and it's not all about what you've done or not done," you will believe in your heart that you have done everything wrong.

That was my weekend.

And between that, and a long winter, and the germ of the week, by yesterday afternoon I was Grumpy.

My natural response to Grumpiness seems to be to clean things out.  I'm talking about closets and drawers and boxes and bathrooms.  With the Grump-factor on overload, I am happy to tell you that I threw away or set out for recycling the following items, and more:

1.  All the clothes I bought lo these many years ago to wear post-baby.  I'm talking about Lands End t-shirts and yoga pants.  Reader, they are all GONE.  Do I hear a woot, woot!?
2.  All expired medicines, including a package of Benadryl that had never been opened and expired in the year 2000.
3.  All broken barrettes, and all barrettes that included any form of cute animal such as bunny, duckling, teddy bear, butterfly, just because I hate that kind.  Sister has not discovered this yet.
4.  All hole-y socks and undergarments.
5.  All sample packages from DHC, all having to do with anti-wrinkle something or another.  Goodbye.
6.  Any toothbrush or tube of toothpaste or bar of soap that even hinted of 'nasty.'
7.  The last half-package of Pampers pull-ups.  Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

I then moved on to my writing files, and here is where I must express my deep admiration for the verb "to shit-can."  Reader, there is throwing something away, and then there is shit-canning something.  Do you agree with me that to shit-can something is much more satisfying than to simply throw it away, or in this case, to delete it?  Delete does not begin to express it.

I went through my writing files and shit-canned all the poems I hate, all the poems I'm not interested in anymore, and all the poems that are boring, or stunted and destined to go nowhere, or otherwise undesirable.  Dear poems, it was fun while it lasted, but now let me introduce to my friend the Shit-Can.

I kept a few oldies for sentiment's sake. I kept a few that might have been better off shit-canned but that I still had hope for.  And I kept the best of my more recent work.  I still have plenty of poems to wade through, work on, and shit-can eventually if need be.

I feel unburdened, freer, and decidedly less grumpy.  And I'm never buying a Lands' End t-shirt again.  Amen.