Sunday, June 12, 2011

Losing the battle, daughter is cleaning my house

We are kind of blessed and cursed this weekend.  The blessing is that our youngest daughter from Wisconsin is here for the weekend (or longer (I hope not).  The bad news is that she thinks I need to pick all of my memories from our storage trailer.

When we moved out of our house, we stored a lot of stuff in a 45 foot reefer trailer (minus the refrigeration unit).  Our intention was to fulltiime for a year or two and then buy a retirement house.  That was 18 years ago.  Today we're still happy to be on the road and lots of the "stuff" no longer has the value it once had.   Items such as a set of encyclopedias..   We used them often, but her feelings are that now if we have a question, see the Internet,.  So at the moment, the books are on the burn pile!  Doesn't that seem like a waste?

There were lots of other things she wanted to pitch that I put my foot down and said "NO!".  I know I won't use it again, but my old Air Force Uniform  just seems like something I want to hold onto.  There were lots of decisions that I made then that shaped the direction of my whole career.   In 1960, there was a need for "forward observers" in the Air Force.  Being engaged at the time, I didn't think it was the proper thing to do and put extra worry on my intended.  (Little did most of us realize the degree of involvement  we as a nation had back then in southeast Asia.   We got out of the Air Force after three years of service and today I'm not eligible for VFW membership.  But I always had a little desire to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, part of the training I would have received then.

Like all good engineers, I have lots of notes and scribblings on personal projects.   Her way of thinking says that it ought to be pitched.   Maybe I'll go straight to the pine box, but in the meantime, I expect that after we give up the fulltime lifestyle,  I'll enjoy some of those old projects.  So, yes, I want to keep those old notes and file folders.

Here it is Sunday and I thought she was returning home.  But I now find out that it is another afternoon of arguing the value of old books etc.   She also wants to burn the burn pile.  Then it is too late to recover items tossed in error.

We'll survive.

Gene

No comments:

Post a Comment