two truths and a lie

I guess I am not meant to be a blogger since I have only averaged one entry per month over this past year. I guess I just don't have the time to keep updating. It's a few days past Christmas and we are snowed in with our first real storm of the season. I shovelled out 3 cars with the help of some neighbors and their snow blowers..and as much as I love the simplicity of shovelling, and the exercise from shovelling, there was no way I was going to get Nate's little go cart of a car out from under the wall that the city of Albany plow drivers had built up around it. We don't own a snow blower. We have a huge shed/pool house out in the backyard and we could possibly buy and keep a snow blower in there if it wasn't already full. "Full" isn't actually a good word to describe the shed. The truth is it is kind of empty but the space is not use able. There is a large sheet of plywood lying across one set of shelves and I suppose it could be moved somewhere which would make those shelves available for storage, but no one has ever moved it. There are many crates and buckets full of miscellaneous rusted tools, drills with no bits, trowels of every size, painters tape, broken bits of wire...these all belong to the KING OF CLUTTER-my husband. He will argue that he needs all of it. He says that he plans to sort it out and get rid of the junk, but it has been 5 years and we still have to leave the patio furniture on the porch because it won't fit in the pool house/shed. The basement is full of his stuff, his office is full of his stuff (including: drum roll here...a 44 inch printer) and so I think I have to throw in the towel and give up my quest to be clutter free. I only control about 1/4 of the clutter in this house. The closet in our bedroom is full of my "junk"; the stuff I can control. The contents of that closet break down like this: 40% holiday items,20% empty boxes that I can't reach to throw them out, 20% family photos and school memorabilia, and 20% books. I hate sound defeated after only one year, but clutter is an American phenomenon and it is hard to combat it. I remember when we moved back into our house after we had a fire 12 years ago. There was no junk drawer! We had no junk to put into a junk drawer! Then I brought home a little trinket from a baby shower and it seemed crass to throw it away so I put it in the bedroom closet and now it has colonized. I did enjoy staying out of Target, Walmart, Bed, Bath and Beyond for a few months and now that I went Christmas shopping in those places I remember that I don't really like to shop anyway. The title of this blog comes from a community building game that is popular in education now. The game is called "two truths and a lie" and you play it by standing up in front of the classroom and telling three statements about your self. Two statements are true and one is a lie, then the other kids guess which one is the lie. Well here are my three statements;see if you can figure out which one is the lie? 1. I have nothing left to say about this topic so I will end my blogging. 2. I have nothing left to say about this topic but I probably won't end my blogging because I can just ramble about other stuff. 3. The printer is actually 48 inches long-yes that is a 4 foot long printer!