Potholes

I've become more and more convinced that recovering from a break-up is a long winding road of ever-constant potholes.  Just when you think you've gotten to a smooth stretch of highway and you're going to reach cruising speed...

THUMP!

Another pothole.

Of course, the pothole has taken the scorching hot cup of coffee in your hand and ceremoniously dumped it in your lap.  Strings of obscenities fly, private parts are being burnt to a crisp and your whole body is doing the freaked-out mambo of OMG!  HOT!  Owwwww!  Along with the search for anything that can dry your now dampened spirits.

Then you get pissed about the pothole.

Why's it there?  Why can't these people fix the road?  On and on it goes and becomes one long session of anger management therapy, wanting to throttle the dummy who made the pothole in the road and subsequently caused the burning of your private parts, ruining your clothes and otherwise ruining your moment.


My pothole of the day was my kitchen.  While my ex lived here, he loved nothing more than to clutter things.  You know this, I know this, we've covered it for how many times now?  Well, today, because my server is down in World of Warcraft, I've decided to take that time to really work on the apartment.  Today's bill of fare, the kitchen cabinets and counter tops.

Let's set this up for you.  My kitchen isn't the world's biggest.  It's big enough for two people to move around in fairly efficiently.  You add a third, and it's all over, someone has to go.  The counter tops and cupboards are not the most space efficient.  There's tons of wasted space and I've had to creatively deal with it over the years.  In the entire time the ex lived here, the kitchen became the catch-all for things that really didn't have space to be stored.  The corner next to my laundry room became a mass of tea bags, granola bars, bags of chips, you name it, if it was an odd or an end, it ended up in that corner.

For years, that corner and I have been at odds.  I tried so many times to keep it clean and organized, but the ex always seemed to screw it up in one way or another.  So, I eventually gave up and just let it go, much like I did the rest of the apartment.  You know when you're trying to stay organized and someone else just won't go along with how it's organized because they're a slob?  Yeah.  That's what I was dealing with.

I must have thrown out at least a half pound of tea and teabags.  I don't drink tea, I don't like tea and I most certainly don't serve tea.  So, out they went.  Then I went on to the numerous things that he left behind that I couldn't believe I was finding.  This is what I get for procrastinating about cleaning the kitchen.  All of the things I found should have been gone a year ago, but being as that my habits are fairly entrenched, I was screwed from the get-go.  So, I stepped up today and finally threw out the countless bags of Carnation Instant Breakfast (ewwwww) and other things that were hidden beneath a mile of other garbage, filling a garbage bag in the process. 

Before I get up to the high cabinets, let me relay some details.  I'm 5'5.  I'm a half-pint at best.  I'm not tall, but the ex was 6'4.  Guess who did all the stuff up high?  You got it!  Him.  So, today I grabbed a chair out of my bedroom closet to stand on so I could get to the cabinets and their contents that are too high for me to ordinarily reach.  Ok, wait, before you say "why the hell was there a chair in the closet?", you've gotta hear about this one.  We had a kitchen table for years that we really loved.  Finally, when his first wife sent over his furniture, which consists of a really long 12 seat dining table, our old kitchen set was dismantled and taken down to our garage/storage area.  Well, I don't know what is wrong with that man, but he hadn't bothered to take two of the chairs to our old set down to storage, so he put them in my bedroom closet.  Ok, are you getting the picture of what a tool this guy was?  I hope to goodness you are, because at least you're just having to read about it.  I had to live with it.  For 10 years.  It's ok, you can shudder, I do it every day.
 
So, with chair in hand, I take it to the kitchen to stand on it and clean out the cabinets that are far too high for me to reach.  What do I find?  Old spice jars, a cracked vase, a mason jar that has no purpose, two sets of hideous bowls his mother just thought we HAD to have, but then came the cherry on the cake.

When we were living in Montreal, his mother, demon spawn that she is, brings over this set of three foot long, I'm not even kidding, these things are EACH a yard long (if not more), and ugly as hell, wooden fork and spoon.  They're wall hangings for a dining area, I get it, my mom had a pair...back in the 70's.  So, what do I find on my plant shelf?  Like opening the door and finding Frankenstein on the other side, I find the gargantuan fork and spoon.  What the heck am I supposed to do with them?  They sure as hell aren't going on my walls!  I remember when I told my friends in There.com about this fork and spoon.  One guy popped up and said, "Yeah, you can chase people around like a samurai warrior with this giant spoon."  He subsequently threatened to make a 3D model of them as a hand-held prop.  They became this big running joke.  But, from the view from the top of the chair in the kitchen, there they were.  My eyes bulged out of their sockets, my body temperature rose as my face became red as a beet, my blood pressure started to rise and just as I was about to lose it and send them flying off the balcony, I realized that all of his belongings that are still in my apartment are just one long anger management course.  So, realizing that, I stepped down off the chair and went out onto my balcony to breathe in and out, relaxing enough so that I didn't do anything silly.  Truth told, I'm so tempted to toss it all in the garbage, as I should have done 7 years ago, but somehow, I think it would be better that he had them back.  So I guess their ultimate fate is to land in storage with the rest of the crap I found today.

So, making room and reducing clutter, I finally found room for my vases!  I was so excited!

Then it was on to my cabinet that holds my spices on the bottom shelf.  Y'all would have cringed as I tossed out so much stuff that was past it's due date.  Half of the cabinet is now empty.  Then, I went to the shelves above that, organizing my storage containers, discarding old plastic lids that went with containers that no longer exist, cleaning out piece after piece that has no use whatsoever, but the ex just HAD to keep them. 

Finally, I reached the cupboards above the fridge.  I knew what one side held, my wrapped crystal cobalt blue glasses my Aunt Bonnie gave me, but the other side, I had no idea what he had put there...well, as I opened the cabinet, I thought better than to continue because my patience was already frayed, my restraint had felt it's limits, so I let the two packages of Egg Nog goblets (with mix) alone.  Those, as you can guess, are going to Goodwill.

So, as you can imagine, I hit one hell of a pothole today.  If you've ever driven in Montreal or anywhere in Quebec for that matter, you'd know that every time you turn around, you're hitting a pothole.  So, as I sit sighing at the thought that I was actually stupid enough to import potholes from Montreal, at least my kitchen is well on it's way to becoming a clutter-free, well organized space.

I hate potholes.  LOL. But, it's one simple lesson, everything has nutritional value right?  The pothole I hit showed it's nutritional value as something distasteful and something I won't consume again.  We're always learning new lessons, right?