jesse + moving = a good time

i love my boyfriend. but my boyfriend doesn't know how to pack. he also doesn't see the importance of packing until the night before (something i grew out of after college), or the importance of cleaning.....ever.

so in my last few days as an unemployed woman with abundant free time i "offered" (aka demanded) that he let me help him. so after four years of living together, forbidden to touch his sacred (aka dirty, unorganized) shelf, i finally got my hands on it. talk about yet another way for a girl such as myself to get off. i dusted, i categorized, i threw away-with permission- those things that i didn't understand why he was keeping. shelf after shelf i made things better and then finally made my way to the bottom shelf where the mystery box was sitting. this mystery box had been plaguing me for the last 4 years...what was i about to find?

after dismissing the pile of junk on top of the box, and dusting what had been sitting there, stirring up my allergies for the past forever, i opened this box first to find multi-colored christmas lights. and they worked!! this made me happy, realizing that after we move in to our new apartment it will then be time to decorate for christmas! and now that we will have a stairwell, what better place to put the pretty lights? but my giddyness wouldn't last long, for in the same box that held the glorious lights were old packs of gum, 10 batteries strewn about not labeled good or bad, old papers, his graduation cap, many other miscellaneous items, and, last but not least: 4 old mouse traps. and at least one had been previously used with its tell tale stains in about the right area the rat's head would have been smashed.

disgusting right? these are some of the many things that were put in the garbage last week after my thorough....i want to say...."investigation"? i think i washed my hands raw and went through about an entire box of tissues after this excavation of dust and crap. and to be completely honest- it was so much fun!

not only did we find old memorabilia of his, and some old notes from me here and and the playwright to Monty Python's "Spamalot" there, we also found an old Cristmas card from Jesse's little sister Rebecca that was entitled, "The Store of Christmise." it was awesome. i read the "christmise store" outloud phonetcially and by the end we were laughing so hard we were crying.

and on top of that, my favorite thing about the physical process of moving so far? the fact that jesse has enough stuffed animals to fit into a 3x3x3 foot box. yep- its true ;)