Thursday, May 30, 2013

Flowers in the Attic

Remember that book/movie? Yeah?  Me too.  Thanks a lot V. C. Andrews.  Thanks for the memories.

Anyway.

When Carl moved in to this house in 2004, there was still a lot of stuff left in the house from the psycho previous owner. Furniture in every room.  Clothes hanging in the closet.  Cross-stitch and family pictures on the wall. Laundry in the laundry baskets. And an attic full of stuff.

It is now 2013, and the time has finally come.  We have finally, FINALLY decided to clean the attic out. 

We are talking classic old attic treasure trove of horrors here.  This is the kind of attic where you open large trunks and suitcases gingerly, because there could be a petrified red-headed stepchild in there. YOU JUST DONT KNOW.
Here is one side, mostly cleared out of the boxes of stuff.   Just imagine it stuffed to the gills with moldering cardboard and randomness.  Yes, that is a barrel in the background.  I am pretty sure that it never held booze.

The creepiest stuff is the kids stuff. 

If you aren't familiar with V.C. Andrews books, the covers always featured some angelic girl with perfect hair looking through a cut-out window. You would turn the front cover, to reveal on the inside page that the girl was surrounded by her OBVIOUSLY crazy family-a severe, stiff-looking great aunt clutching her shoulder with bony white claws, an older brother lurking in the shadow behind her with too much white showing in his mad, mad eyes...


This is what that girl is wearing:


Most of the boxes that we pulled down were full of books and china and old National Geographics.  The ocasional box of dry-rotting linens.  But occasionally, there was a box of pictures or other sentimental knick knacks.  Actual bronzed baby shoes.  Oh.  And and the attire of an ENTIRE wedding party.  


Apparantly, this guy-who tried to have us evicted for no apparant reason in 2010, when I was pregnant with Liam-he does not give even one shit (let alone two) about his own family either, and what they might want with this stuff.

We plan to have a big yard sale this weekend.  We cleared our consciences by making a phone call to one of the adult children of said insensitive monster of a "human" previous owner, and she-the adult daughter-was in fact very happy to come and collect her mother's china and her own baby pictures.

The Piece-de-Resistance of this whole junk mine:

... 
.......
My feelings exactly.

What you can't really enjoy via photography is the fine dust covering everything here.  You can see a little of it on the floor in this last one.  You know the thing that people say about dust being mostly dead people-skin?  Well, the dust in OUR attic is people-skin, powdered mouse poo, powdered dead bird, for all I know, actual powdered dead people. 

We are attacking this like its all a bio-hazard.  Masks, gloves, etc.

Regardless, the whole process has been very cathartic.  We are exorcising some demons, and carving out more space for us, which is a huge relief.

Back to the purge.  I'll let you know how it goes.