The disagreement was nothing major, but we have found a new ingredient that I very much like, and Lauren incorrectly is not so much a fan of. The ingredient in question: capers. Neither of us had ever (knowingly) had them before tonight; delightful little fellows they are. But even the disagreement over capers couldn't detract from something very important about this dish - it's delicious. We just may have to make it from now on by taking half of it out before adding the capers - you know, until Lauren realizes she's wrong about them :)
After our dinner, we decided it was time to get back to business with this whole "getting rid of half our stuff" deal. And what better way to get back on top of this than to tackle (cue ominous music) The Corner from Hell!!!!!!!!!!! Here's what the corner previously looked like:
Scary, I know. I sincerely apologize if any of you had small children in the room when you viewed that picture, I hope they someday can get over the horror. But, after a few hours of work, we managed to make a dent in the corner. I'll walk you through this... you enter our dining room, look towards The Corner from Hell and all the horror contained within it, and instead, you see this:
"Amazing!", you think, "these are clearly the two most talented 'halvers' in the history of halving!". You see that the bottom shelves are still lined with old course packets from college classes from almost a decade ago, but the overall change is so drastic, you are willing to forgive that. You then decide to take a look in the neighboring closet (the closet Styx?), which had previously looked like this:
(There was more - so much more - but the horror... it was... too horrible) And now, you see this:
The left side... still horrible... but the right side - it's almost empty! You cannot even say enough about the work that has been done by these people - you are so impressed by them you want to pay them thousands of dollars just to clean your living room! And then... you turn around:
"OH NO!!!!!!!!", you exclaim, as all the good feelings you just had flee your body quicker than a sane person can change the radio station when a Miley Cyrus song comes on. "It's like someone has pulled the metaphorical stopper from the metaphorical wine bottle, and pure evil has escaped to take over the entire world!!". And then, someone taps you on the shoulder and says "I think you've been watching too much LOST". You calm down. You look that person straight in the face... and then poke them in the eyes (the groin of the face). "NO!!!!!", you scream, "one cannot watch too much LOST!!!!! I must watch more LOST!!!!!!". Then, out of nowhere, Lauren says "enough about LOST, Brett - this is arguably the most ridiculous blog post you've ever written, and half the people reading this won't even know what you are talking about. Now get back to writing about The Corner from Hell or I'm going to delete all this and do it for you". And thus you are saved.
So, here's what's going on. That corner and closet were filled with things from years gone by, things we just couldn't part with. In the boxes, bags, crates, and baskets that inhabited that area are things from my childhood like baseball cards, comic books, medals and trophies; stuff from my several hospital visits in my teenage years (while this was a terrible time in my life, it was a significant one that very much shaped who I am today); articles and course packets from classes we really enjoyed in college; and a variety of other stuff that we just haven't been able to get rid of over the years. But now, we're really going to go through this. We knew this corner (and closet) was going to be a big project - perhaps one that took course over a few days. And after really getting into this, we know it's definitely going to take a few days, if not a few weeks. This one is going to be especially tough for me, as it is going to be difficult to get rid of some things that while I can logically say "why do I still have this?" and I know they've been stuffed away in that closet for years, there are parts of me that have held on to these things for a reason. Discovering those reasons are going to be interesting, and are very much going to dictate what things stay and what (hopefully) many things go.
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