Using recycled and “found” items to make art is a pastime/hobby of mine. The problem is I consider it art but a lot of real “artsy” people do not. That’s okay with me. I am happy in my little space in the world.

I had just sat down to watch the Jets and Bills fight it out. Figured the first quarter was not important and by the looks of the goose eggs on the score board, I was correct. I walked out of the room to get a water and came back in to a Honda Civic commercial. It was absolutely awesome.

First off, it showed one person who always seemed to be in the same places as another person. The other person was always throwing trash at a can but missing and wouldn’t pick up, or throwing trash out the car window, or just dropping trash in the parking lot. The first person would pick it all up. The final scene is the litter bug coming out to his car to find a tree on the hood and a big tag under his windshield that quips “you forgot to pick this up” or something similar. I was fantastic. Will have to look for it on the web and post.

This writing might be more appropriately entitled the obis. It is a mess in my garage but now that the Volvo is gone, I am working slowly on cleaning it out and clearing out the kids’ clothing.

Any mother – and maybe a few fathers out there – of more than one children will understand. You spend so much money on clothing that is worn for such a short period of time. I always hated, even as number six was born, to throw out the girls’ clothing or even the boys’ clothing that he was never going to hit the right season and size to wear.

I have decided that I have too much – too many boxes in the garage full of “stuff,” too much clothing in the closets, too many material things. To this end, I am trying to get rid of stuff. I am not getting rid of the outfits that hold extremely special memories. I am keeping those in hopes of passing them on to the kids when they eventually have their own children. But the other stuff, the every day clothing, will be of more use to someone else than to me so off it goes.

I took five bags of clothing to goodwill yesterday. I now have four more started. This is, a good deal of it anyway, children’s clothing so three or four bags is a lot of clothing. Not to be deterred, though, I also cleaned out my closet. If it was summer clothing and I had not put it on at all this summer, it went.

Well, finally came across a box with enough memories in it I had to stop. The rest of them will be there, in the garage, for another day.

My sister and I are two years apart in age. We are closer to millenia apart in how we live and where we prefer to live. She left the area where we grew up about five years after college. She lived in the San Jose, CA area for ten years or so. Then, she lived in El Paso and Dallas before heading to Ontario, CA. Now, she lives in NJ. I have been the one who stayed on the east coast.

Anyway, now that she is only three hours away, you would think we would see each other occasionally. Not quite right. She is married to her job. She works a good 55 hour week on average and I am not the uptight workaholic. I am always going somewhere or taking the kids somewhere. The calendar fills up quickly.

She had to come up to the Wilkes-Barre, PA area for work Friday and will be there until late Monday. So I packed up the car – just with me and the 16 year old and a new shirt I got for my birthday on me for the first time- and headed south about 4:30 Saturday. Football was disappointing. Beth was in Wilkes-Barre. We were going to have dinner and talk a bit.

The trip down was beautiful. Some of the trees in the Endless Mountains have started changing. After the nip in the air this morning, my guess is a few more took that change to heart last night. The sun was out but it was not hot by that late in the afternoon. While there were lane closures, there were no workers and traffic moved right along. I took the camera with me but didn\’t stop and take any pics as it was not quite that pretty yet.

Dinner was uneventful. We ate at Bennigan\’s as Beth wanted to see the Rutgers game or what was left of it. She is also, despite having lived near San Francisco and LA, a Mets fan. She was very interested in the results of the Phillies game. We talked but did more watching during dinner than anything.

We went back to her hotel room and had a few sodas and watch a little of the USC-Washington game. We talked about what she is up to and what I have been doing, what the kids are doing, who is dating whom – typical sister fare.

All in all, a great fall road trip with the added bonus of seeing my younger sister.