It was a dark and stormy night. Isn't that the way all stories are supposed to begin? If one begins a story It was a bright and sunny day it doesn't quite have the same oomph does it?

Fortunately, last night was indeed a dark and stormy night.

I was sitting in my living room pissed because the storm kept knocking out the cable and I couldn't get through this week's episode of True Blood without rebooting every four minutes. Can't I disappear into a world of vampires, shape shifters and telepaths for one damn hour!? Shit.

Somehow in the labyrinth of my techno shit, the Internet is connected in some way to the cable so fucking around on line wasn't an option either. I could send irritating little text messages to my ex boyfriend but that loses its novelty real fast when he refuses to engage in my bullshit.

So what's a gal to do?

Since I still had the lights, I decided I may as well be productive and gather up the clothing I wanted to drop at Goodwill this week. I emptied the drawers onto the bed and began sorting into three piles.

1. Awesome, I forgot I had that.
2. Charity or why the hell did I ever think that would look good on me?
3. No one would take this shit even if it is free.

What about underwear I thought? Does one give panties and bras to Goodwill or is that something that automatically goes into the trash when you are tired of them. I've always wondered that and have chosen to discard those articles of clothing rather than risk a worker holding them up by the corners and proclaiming...

"We don't TAKE used panties here".

How humiliating.

As I was sorting, I found a velvet lined box containing the things from my life I have wanted to save . Generally I am not a saver. I have a cedar trunk where I fling kids stuff in case they turn out to be savers but as for me...basically everything goes into the trash. Even the stuff I know I will probably end up buying again some day.

I open the box and I am slammed with the unmistakenable scent of a younger Christine. Love letters, cards that came with flowers, little trinkets given by old boyfriends that were no longer appropriate to keep out, the garter from my wedding to Jimmy's dad and a few petals of the bride bouquet. I was torn whether to unfold the letters fearing opening up old wounds with the pages. I thought about how this should be no big deal. How all this was in the past and it couldn't hurt me now. However, if the scent of the box hit me in the center of my being, what kind of damage could these memories do?

I tucked it back under some clothes for another day. A day I feel a little bit stronger.