Today, I received a text message from my friend, Carrie, who was in the throes of helping to clean out her eldest daughter's dorm room at college so that she can move home for the summer. And...naturally...I got to thinking (too much) about how exactly to describe this particular experience to someone who has never been through it. There is no word except "colonoscopy" that even comes remotely close.
Why...you ask?
Because both involve cleaning out crap, are necessary, can be embarrassing, totally devoid of enjoyment, messy, involve some level of agony, and when you finally survive the worst of it...you get a written report and a bill.
Today, Jill had her "check-out" scheduled at her dorm room in Tutwiler...which has been her home for the past nine months. I used to think that nine months was a really long time. I suppose that this was back when I was pregnant or something. Now, it seems like two weeks. She was just home for Christmas and now..."she's BAAACCCKKK."
I'm sure that I will get a bill from the University of Alabama for the non-stick dots that they just had to put on the closet doors to make them "cute." See, the package lied. The dots DID stick...and when the dots were removed...so were the last five layers of brown paint. Cost to us? I don't even want to think about it.
I guess being "cute" always has a price tag. Which is why, I suppose, there can only be one of us in our household being "cute" at a time. Tag...she's it. I don't have the energy anyway.
So, as she is preparing to come home...I'm thinking to myself. That's lovely. And then the second thought...where in the name of heaven are we going to put all of her stuff?
Unlike most mothers, who would probably keep their princess' lair exactly as she left it so that she would have something to come home to...David and I painted hers while she was going through sorority rush. It kept my mind off of the proceedings...and allowed me to FINALLY get rid of the heinous color combination of "neon rose" and a color called "citron" - which was just a fancy way of saying "ugly lime green." After year three of this particular combination...I began to rue the day that I actually encouraged David to paint two walls in one color and two in the other. Then, she hung about three hundred thousand pictures, plaques, cheerleading photos, ribbons, bulletin boards, calenders and other teenage girl necessities on the walls. When it was all removed, there seemed to be so much space...that we thought we'd added on.
She was not surprised...since I had been whining for her entire senior year (as I counted down the number of weeks until she left...sometimes because I was sad and other times because I needed to know that she was almost out of the house) and had sworn numerous times that the second she moved out...I was redecorating.
And we did.
Fortunately for her, she pledged her Mama's sorority - Phi Mu - because she came home to a Phi Mu pink room with black accents. I now consider it "my" room and she gets to stay there when she comes home to visit for a weekend (or summer). I never wanted there to be any doubt that when she left here last August that she was staying at the college of her choice...for four years...or until she had a reasonable game plan for getting off our payroll.
Although we love her with every fiber of our beings...we do not want her on our payroll after graduation. Having her room gone seemed like a very good way to start driving that point home. Not that I want her married off either. Have you priced weddings lately? We can't afford a wedding until 2016 at best. Hopefully, I don't have to think about it until then.
So, I suppose that the next 24 hours will be spent in cleaning out the boxes and bags of "stuff" that she has brought home from Tuscaloosa. Hopefully, we'll manage to get it all sorted by August when she has to go back.
Don't you wish that there was a company that existed that just cleaned out your stuff, eBayed what you don't want, gave the rest to charity and just brought you a receipt, and then gave your house a Merry Maids cleaning? I strongly hinted that I want Merry Maids for Mother's Day, but then again, people in hell want ice water, too.
Oh well. Back to cleaning out so that we can move more in. Egad. Later!
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