Oh yes…I went on a crash diet. After I reconnected with my high school crush after 30-something years. The pain of holding those Oh So Nice bluejeans in my hands just now was almost as bad as the memories they drew out of me.

So…recently my storage room raised its rent on me, which still isn’t much but I’d like to get it off me before I second-retire this coming September. It shouldn’t be too difficult with all the stuff I’ve decided I don’t need to keep anymore going to recycling. But I have seasonal stuff I still need a place for. Garden stuff for spring and summer, Halloween stuff for fall. My Christmas stuff has a place in the basement, but I might get off a bunch of that too since I don’t see myself putting up a tree here at Casa del Garrett (East) anymore. I’d rather spend the holidays in California with that side of my family now.

I have two cedar chests, one that’s been mine since I was a kid, that allegedly my maternal grandfather built himself. The other a very nice old Lane I inherited from mom. What’s in both of those I think I can let go of, and repurpose them for the seasonal stuff. I also have two old steamer chests I inherited that are allegedly from the trip from England to America mom’s side of the family took when they came here to live. One of those is in use for storing bedding. The other I have completely forgotten what’s inside of it, which is a good indicator that whatever it is I don’t need to keep it.

The fact is I don’t recall much of what’s in the two cedar chests and so just now I opened the one I used to have in my teenage bedroom, only to discover it packed full of shirts and bluejeans I cannot get into anymore, that I could as recently as 2008 – 2016. Those, uncoincidentally, were the years I’d reconnected with my high school crush and I went on a crash diet after he asked for a photo and I was too embarrassed to show him all of me. For about eight years after that I felt that I looked pretty cute. We had our nuclear war in 2016 and for some reason I gained all that weight back.

So I suppose I was saving those shirts and bluejeans on the off chance my waistline would drop back down to 30-31 inches. But that’s unlikely now. A shame because I thought I looked pretty nice in them once upon a time. You get that slight male hourglass (which I define as having a waistline that’s visibly narrower than your hips and chest) and a lot of things look good on you that Really Don’t if you don’t got it. All the low rise hip hugging bluejeans I just discovered in that cedar chest for example.

It all goes to one of those clothing bin drop-offs I see around here.

Sigh.