It's the deshit.

The deshitting (decluttering) continues apace.
I have just about an entire plastic tote's worth of tea. Seriously. It's a bit out of control. I had no idea how much I had. And I tossed anything not sealed or that I knew was freakishly old, and anything with caffeine. I had an entire cupboard full of tea in my tiny kitchen! Ridonkulous.
Part of it is the amount of knitting swaps I do. I get a lot of tea in them and it's always good and then I get a new swap and have a new favorite.... I kept 5-6 varieties out in a red gingham tin I unearthed and the rest is into storage for now! Also in that tote was a big ass cast iron dutch oven and lid, though. So it's not wall to wall tea. And some metal mixing bowls, and some recipe books.

And from the garage The Man has removed a reel mower (we had two, do not even ask), that was snatched up. Our kitchen table? Spent 2 days outdoors. It was super cute handpainted by me when I was really in a whimsicle fuckery (props to regretsy) phase, but the table was free from a friend's basement and was really too large for the breakfast bay, so it gots to go. It went today. Our electric snow blower (oh,the Wisconsin snow laughed at that one!) that the starter sort of caught fire when I was using it? Someone started to look at it, but when hubs walked by they ran away. So we put a sign on it saying it was broken and free. Gone.
Garbage pickup is Wednesday for us, and the city will take a LOT of crap, so we just put stuff on the curb and if it's gets taken, sweet. If not, the garbage guys will deal with it.

I just went out and helped figure out some keeping/tossing stuff and guess what I realized. Ok, so remember how when this "500 year rain" happened, I wasn't even home? So I never actually SAW my neighborhood in the worst of it? I saw many neighborhoods near mine that were terrifying, but not mine. Well, MY GARAGE FLOODED. That is so fanfuckingtastico. It looks like 2 inches of water at the front of the garage judging by the water line on the things I had stored there. I know, it's been a month, but I avoid my messy garage, it's the manly domain and he likes it to be ferociously slovenly. He walks in, takes whatever tool, power equipment, mulch, dirt and drops it 2 feet in front of the door. A huge pile of shit builds up and then he complains that he can't find anything. So he was sorting through the junk and came to get me to rule on a few items. He held up this little table I had out there to say "keep or toss" and I just looked at the legs thinking "where did that come from? it was in the house up until a few months ago? What did I spill on it to go exactly two inches up every leg of this table? And cover it with grass and yuck?" and he kept asking me where to put this stupid table while my mind was just trying to absorb all of that at once and process how bad it must have been and then I just stood there looking around and seeing that everything has a 2 inch water line on it. A second table, a bookshelf, a carpet steamer, my plastic bin of calcium chloride for the roof, the wheels on the garden cart.....the whole damn thing flooded.

It is completely amazing that we did not end up with more than 4-5 feet of water in our basement now, we could have been flooded all the way up to the first floor and then some. Because it took us so long to get home and the gates were opened so dumping into the lake could begin, the street was empty when we got here. I knew it had been up over the curb, but ...wow. I'm pretty glad I didn't know until now....I think.

But there appears to be no real damage, it was all crap stuck in a nasty garage so it must not have meant too much to me. Aside from possibly the starter on our electric mower which went out about 2 weeks ago...... The transformer was probably sitting in water and gave the mower a jolt while it charged and after a few charge, use cycles..kaput on a 1 year old mower. Black and Decker already replaced the starter for us with a better one, so now I feel guilty. But only slightly.

But mainly, OH MY GOD HOLY BALLS OF SHIT, MY GARAGE FLOODED. It's a shitty, tiny gross bare studs detached building. and it's elevated maybe 4 inches on a concrete pad. You have to step carefully over the threshold or take a header into sharp, oily, dangerous yard implement hell. And it's set back from the street further from my house, ON A HILL and my driveway? Is like 5 car lengths long. Not big cars, but we very comfortably parked three there for 2 years when we had three cars and had plenty of room left. The water was THAT FAR UP PAST MY WHOLE DAMN HOUSE!
It kind of gives me the vapors. I have to get the hell out of here before I end up in a curled up in a corner pulling my eyelashes out.