Like sand through the hourglass...

So for some reason today I decided to tackle this enormous obstacle that has taken over a corner of my bedroom for the last couple of years and has grown so large it has started to avalanche past the bedside table and onto my pile of shoes, in the way, being trampled, and annoying me daily by reminding me of the things I let slip in the name of "no time to deal with this." It is a pile of artwork by my son and daily updates from his daycare provider that I have dutifully placed (thrown) into a GIANT Old Navy sack in the corner to be dealt with later.

I mean, I never wanted to throw this stuff out. It is priceless - all the gems of glitter and glue and crayon, every dot-to-dot and pre-school number and letter worksheet! All there! All of it! Since he was eight months old and began daycare (he's now four) with Ms. Nikki, the saint who enables me to go to work every morning without feeling like the crappiest mom on the planet for leaving her kid at daycare and going to work! Actually, I mostly think his life has been enriched 10-fold by his time with Nikki, but I'll save that for another post.

So anyhow, this pile 'o stuff also included every note Ms. Nikki has ever written about Fletch. Every diaper change when he was still in didies, every meal, every snack, every toddler snit with friends, every field trip, ride on the four-wheeler and deer encounter. Priceless! How could I have thrown this stuff in a corner for like, a few years? Well, you know how it is... "I'll get to it later" becomes a mantra and later turns into many milestones down the road. This bag of pre-school jewels has turned into our cat, Melee's, favorite bed (yes, it was all full of cat hair and several dead fleas) and like I said had turned into an avalanche so I couldn't ignore it anymore.

I got the hugest binders I could possibly find and lugged them home thinking, "This'll be a piece of cake!" What-eveh. What a mess. I am ashamed of myself!!! Like 3 hours later and after I exhausted the help of my poor tired husband, who kept creeping away when I wasn't looking and finally got away for good when I was shuffling through a mess of crayoned valentines, and daughter Gwendolyn, who collapsed into fits of laughter over the weird menus Nikki offers (donuts, pancakes and toast all in the same breakfast, for example) I finished. Sorting art from updates, that is. And nothing is in dated order except for the one, count em, 1 month (may 2007) that Matt sifted through. And I think I need like 20 more binders. And did I say I was ashamed of myself?

I did, however, discover in the pile: Golden curls, in a plastic bag, from Fletcher's first haircut; several stones from me and Matt's honeymoon to Yellowstone and the best surprise of all (for Fletcher) - two Hotwheels he had been missing for well over a year! Huzzah! Anyhow, I'll let you know how it all turns out...