This weekend has become the weekend of the great purge of the crap in the basement. Two years ago, threes things happened that made our basement situation hit critical mass.  We remodeled the kitchen and the family room.  EVERYTHING was moved down in the basement.  The family room was mainly the kids’ play area which means lots of toys.  Besides the kitchen remodel, Garbanzo’s parents left the country, and forced upon us a lot of their shit.  They used the phrase, “It is family stuff you have to keep as it has been in the family forever.”  I had to marry an only child.  The last thing: Garbanzo stopped teaching elementary school and started teaching middle school.  He had an enormous classroom library.  And, guess where it ended up? Yep, in the basement.

We got a small dumpster delivered on Friday, so we can just toss everything we need to toss in there. 

Derek and Garbanzo started early. They loaded all of the construction debris into the dumpster first thing.  Then, we went off to the soccer games.  After we came back and ate lunch, we started on the basement.

This is how we work together.  I go through everything and sort it.  Then, I tell Garbanzo what to do with it.  I discovered early on that letting him go through things would mean more kept than gotten rid of. Bossing him around seemed to work better.

When it got late, he went over to get fish & chips.  Turns out, we are literally around the corner from THE fish & chips place in Portland.  Yet, we’ve never eaten there. 

It was great! They even serve it wrapped in newsprint. My friend who works at Adidas says all of the Europeans working here say this place is the most authentic in the area – right down to the newsprint.  Garbanzo couldn’t eat there.  They have a sign that basically says “vegetarians: everything is fried in animal fat.” He did try the deep fried beets.  The girls loved those.

But, he did bring back dessert for us.  Spotted Dick.  Served in Queen Anne custard.  Ahh…that number of jokes that made….