2002-03-10-8:21 p.m.

I cleaned up the girls' room last night.

Some people can maybe go in their kids' rooms and straighten up a little, hang up a few clothes, pick up a glass to take to the kitchen, make the bed. Not me. Uh uh. When I clean a bedroom around here it is a big project. The kind where you put on your goggles and gloves and borrow that vest thing from the hospital that you have to wear when you get an x-ray. It's heavy, but it makes you feel safe and gives you the confidence to face the job head on.

I emptied the trash and put in a new bag just for my girls. Because I know what they have for me in there - lots of trash. There are always lots of papers. I can't even remember what kind of papers because they were just so generic and unuseful they don't deserve to be called any certain kind of papers. Just lots of regular paper.

I threw away other stuff, too, like apple cores and comic books with the covers torn off.

I even threw away a game.

I remember the moment of decision clearly. I picked up one of the bazillion cards that go with this game and instead of automatically putting it in the "keep" basket, I considered. If I threw that card away, then the whole game would be messed up, maybe even useless. But there were lots of those cards there on the floor and I knew there were a few in the toy box in the living room, too. I knew that every single card that belongs to that game was somewhere in my house and if only we could get them all together then someone could actually play that game sometime. But if I threw the card in my hand away... Aha! Freedom! I tossed the card and suddenly all the other cards were just bits of trash and I started to enjoy finding them just so I could throw them away. I became a Game Killer. The person who kept every stray puzzle piece she ever found in a plastic bag just in case had become a Game Killer. It was very liberating and I highly recommend it.

I also threw away some b... b... you know - those things that have pages and you read them and they're sacred. I threw some of those. But don't tell my mother.

And there were lots of little crumbly things that the vacuum cleaner won't suck up. I don't really know what they are but my kids' rooms always have them. They come in all different colors and they're usually mixed up with pieces of dead bugs. I picked up a lot of those. That's probably my least favorite thing to do when I clean up a kid bedroom.

Some things that I can't bring myself to throw away are:

1) Legos, any type. I won't even throw away those tiny red square things that are brake lights for tiny little lego cars.

2) Unbroken crayons.

3) Dominoes.

4) Pencils. I can throw away markers, but not pencils.

5) Scrabble letters.

6) Pieces to the Arthur memory game.

7) Clothespins.

8) Lincoln Logs, even the small ones.

9) Dice.

Things I don't mind throwing away at all are Happy Meal toys and batteries.

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