Yesterday's news

We continue to unpack from our move, and as a result we are tossing a lot of crumpled-up newspaper into the recycling bin. Gazing last night at the full-to-overflowing bin, I flashed back to third grade and our teacher Mrs. Bridgeman's brief seminar on how to throw away paper. Never crumple up paper when you throw it away, she said, because it takes up more room in the wastepaper basket. She demonstrated with crumpled and uncrumpled paper. If only I'd listened.

Makeup test

I love so many things about our new house, but there have been frustrations. One was that the bookshelf that held all my LPs is too tall for the ceilings. Last week I bought a replacement, but I found it doesn't hold all the records. It was time to do something I should have done a long time ago, donate records I don't want to the thrift store.

I went through the collection -- I have 1,000 or so -- and chose ones to get rid of. They include many oddities I won't miss, things I'm not exactly sure how I came to have, 101 Strings Play Beautiful Hawaiian Melodies, that sort of thing.

But I'm also getting rid of duplicates, and some of them brought me back 30 years. That's when the rockers Kiss were at a commercial peak. I loved them very much. (My mom took me to a Kiss concert in 1979, when I was 8.) My brother loved them too, and in the name of domestic harmony, my parents let us each buy our own Kiss albums, so that if one of us wanted to hear, say, the Rock and Roll Over track "I Want You," the other "Calling Dr. Love," we wouldn't have to fight over the vinyl.

All these years later, I find myself with both sets. I probably don't need any Kiss records, much less duplicates. Still, I dithered over relinquishing these totems of my childhood. But in these troubled times, the mood is right for downsizing. So adieu, duplicate Alive II. Adieu, duplicate Love Gun.

Actually, for some reason I seem to have three Love Guns. Maybe one was the neighbor kid's.