Today it’s time to decorate the tree!  Can’t believe B2B will be here in only 8 more days!!!!!!

I almost threw these out on Monday.  They were in the “moved these twice and haven’t used them yet” pile.  I think I was motivated to try and clear some space out to make room for all of the baby stuff.  Or maybe it’s because Laura has been watching Hoarders.  Anyway, everything else made its way to the dump / recycling bin / goodwill.  And out of all of it – all of the stuff I’ve been rationalizing a “some day” use for,  I kept these.  I didn’t even try to find somewhere to put them.  Five rolls of the stuff have been sitting in my finishing space for the past three days.  And now, well… at least I know why they’re still here.

I missed garbage day last week because of the holiday.  So, this morning, I gathered up all of the recycling and trash to make a run to the town transfer station.  There was a lot of trash.  And a lot of recycling.  And it was nothing compared to the mess at the transfer station.

I’ve found myself having imaginary conversations with my future child these past few weeks.  They usually start when I’m waiting in line for something, in a mall or a crowded place and I catch sound bites from other people’s dialogue.  I wonder how I’ll answer that question or explain that situation when I get asked.  I even got a bit of a dry run over the Thanksgiving break with my brother’s youngest son.  I got to educate him on man-eating Great White Land Sharks at the Norwalk Aquarium (he’ll never look at a snowy egret the same way), demonstrate the finer points of invisibility and explain that I was actually able to run long distances (out and back) so incredibly fast that to him it just appeared that I hadn’t moved.

But, as I tossed my own junk onto the mountainous pile of garbage at the dump, I thought, what will I say about this?

I’m sorry this happened on our watch.  I’m sorry we were too stupid to believe the truth and then too lazy to do anything about once it became apparent.  I’m sorry this is what we’ve left you to deal with.  I’m sorry you will have to live with consequences that we were only warned about.  I’m sorry we were too ignorant, too full of greed, too caught up in ourselves to realize the truth until it was too late.  A truth that even the people who lived here long before we did knew a thousand years ago:

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

- Native American Proverb