Bo-Bo Knows Flotsam and Jetsam...take 2

This morning, Bo paced the hallway, lingering at the bathroom threshold, his eyebrows dancing the way they do when he's stressed. He had beach on the brain and his human ticket to a trot in the sand was cataloging junk she wished had washed down the drain with all her sloughed off skin.

Today I dove into my travesty of a linen closet. It's really more of an orphanage for all the things in my life that don't have any place else to go. Nestled in among the sheets, towels, light bulbs, cleaning supplies, and a pharmacy-for-two that could medicate a small nation, I found my long-lost Charlie Card (aka subway pass), my business cards, the rosary made from rose-petal beads I bought in Rome (complete with a trashy plastic case adorned with Pope John Paul II's grimacing mug), and a palm-size Ghiradelli tin containing three high-school writing medals I thought I lost eons ago. Apparently in one of the twelve moves I've made since leaving for college, these medals mingled with all the hair stuff I don't use (can we say electric curling brush, people?) and decided they were good, thanks. Clearly the rosary scores the what-the-hell-is-this-doing-here honors.

Anyway, here's what I'm happy to say goodbye to today:

• Number 13: Oil of Olay face cloths.
• Numbers 14: Noxema pump cream
• Number 15: St. Ives pore cleanser
• Number 16: Industrial-sized generic "mouth rinse" that I remember having in my linen closet two moves ago.
• Number 17: Nail polish remover
• Numbers 18: Rusty shower caddy
  
• Number 19: Deconstructed wire hanger. I cringe to think about the company this may have once kept.
• Number 20: Greyhound magazine. Proof that I'm a pet-store, magazine-rack sucker.
• Number 21: Plastic brush with hard plastic bristles. The iron maiden has nothing on the torture inflicted by "the tangler."
  
• Number 22: Plastic purple pick. This was Mike's instrument of choice when his hair was longer than mine. I still don't get it how it was useful.
• Number 23: Random button.
  
• Number 24: Turquoise scalp brush. Runner-up to the tangler.
  
• Number 25: Single white napkin. A waiter at a restaurant wrapped bread in it and sent it home with us for no discernible reason.
• Numbers 26: Goopy pen.
  
• Number 27: Stridex pads circa 1987. Remember Stridex?
  
• Number 28: White knit scrunchie. Remember scrunchies?
  
• Number 29: Purple plastic hair elastic. Please.
• Number 30: Cheap, white plastic banana clip that never really got the hang of holding my thin hair in place.
• Number 31: Fitted sheet circa 1972. This was one of my parents' wedding gifts. The set would be serviceable if Bo hadn't thrown up on the flat sheet at the start of a four hour trip home. We left the sheet in northern New Hampshire, so the fitted sheet can go, too.
  
• Number 32: No More Tangles spray detangler. I honestly think this might be the bottle I bought in middle school in response to the special brand of panic caused by the combination of spending the morning in a heavily chlorinated pool and the afternoon riding in a car with the windows rolled all the way down. This was the closest I ever came to dreads.
  
• Number 33: The "Easy Braid." A contraption designed to make French-braiding my hair a breeze. It did not.
  
• Number 34: Arbonne International Ginger Citrus sugar scrub. This was a part of a three-part gift I received from a client a couple of Christmases ago. According to the directions, I was supposed to use the scrub first, wash the oils away with the wash second, and follow the whole thing up with the body butter. The butter was love at first sniff--on the days I'm wearing it, I look for every excuse to get my hands near my nose. The body wash seemed pointless until I discovered it doubled as a bubble bath that smelled like heaven. But the sugar scrub was a big, sloppy mess. For those who have never had the pleasure, apparently a sugar scrub is equal parts oil and sugar so coarse it feels like you've traded your washcloth in for sandpaper. Even better, the oil coats you in a slime that makes water bead up on your skin. I reached for the body wash in a blind make-it-stop panic, but the slime layer was heartier than that! I'm pretty sure fancy scrubs are not supposed to be washed away with my favorite over-the-counter soap. This tub 'o fun can rest in peace.
  

Letting go of the sugar scrub has made me bold. Next I'll tackle the piles of make up I've accumulated despite my apparent allergy to making myself up. Like, ever.

Bo-Bo Knows Flotsam and Jetsam

Bo-Bo doesn't horde the flotsam and jetsam of life. No trinkets collecting dust, no clothes he hasn't worn in years, no crazy contraptions designed to help his hopeless fingers weave his hair into the French braid he never quite got the hang of. Maybe it's the whole being-a-dog thing.

I, on the other hand, collect more than I need of just about everything. Too many pages in the rough draft of my book, too many pounds on my bones, and too many products in my home. Talk about an embarrassment of riches. As someone prone to excesses, New Year's is always a dodgy time. Instead of resolutions I usually write manifestos (and if you know me personally at all, you know I'm not kidding). But 2009 will be different--one resolution instead of a dozen. I mean it! My 2009 manifesto clocks in at one, measly word: Reduce.*

Because I find that public humiliation is a good way to keep myself on the straight and narrow (in the inimitable words of Johnny Cash, "because you're mine, I walk the line"), I'm going to do an occasional post detailing the items I'm tossing, recycling, or bequeathing to the world in the form of charitable donations or gifts to people who will appreciate it more than me.

Now. Who wants a thing-a-ma-bob to help you French braid you hair?


FLOTSAM AND JETSAM...TAKE ONE!

• Number 1: 68 pages of other people's writing. Usually I file them away and keep them long after I've given them my two cents. No need given that I keep the electronic copies. Gone!
• Numbers 2-9: A veritable bonanza of expired medicines, creams, and prescription medicines. **
• Number 10: A 3-inch, thin metal rod with u-shaped pitchforks on either side. The best I can tell is it's from the center of a hair clip that's missing in action.
• Number 11: Stretched-out brown plastic hair tie.
• Number 12: Old plastic zippered pouch thing. No idea.
  

And that was just from the medicine cabinet. Oy! It's gonna be a long year...

* OK, yes. Reduce is shorthand for reducing pages during a second draft, pounds through healthier habits, and products in a room by room overhaul, but the way I figure it, even a three-for is progress. Baby steps, people. Baby steps!

** The expanded list:
2. Generic Ben Gay that expired in December...2006
3. expired tooth ache numbing "stuff"
4. expired canker cream (lovely)
5. sunblock that apparently stopped deflecting rays in 2006
6. expired cold and sinus medicine
7. expired decongestant (like that stuff doesn't make you feel loopy enough already)
8. expired prescription for penicillin from Mike's wisdom teeth extraction.
9. allergy itch cream my mother-in-law suggested I buy for the great mosquito attack of '05. The package was unopened...and expired.