Slowly becoming minimalist.

Doug and I are slowly decluttering our life. I was always one for trinkets and toys, and Doug was, too. Over the past year or so, though, we've done some major purging of stuff (the Salvation Army must love us), and the trend continues outside the house. We called a tree company a couple of weeks ago to get quotes on cutting down/trimming back several of our trees. We opted to go with trimming them back, except for all the trees in the front of our house. Those, like many of our old clothes, stuffed toys, books, and knickknacks, are gone.

Here's the front of our house before the tree work :
Here's the front of our house after the tree work:
Now, I'm not an advocate for keeping the front bare like this, but I will say that I like it. I like all that overgrowth gone. I like having the blank slate. I like that we can do whatever we want to the front of the house, and make it more of our style. I like that. Now Doug and I have to agree on what to do there, and hopefully pretty quickly. The house does seem a bit exposed.

And let's see, what else. I discovered today that my former therapist is in a book. Kristin Hersh has written a book about one pivotal year in her life, and it happens to be a year in which Leslie was in the lineup of Throwing Muses. Leslie, my former therapist, was the bass player for Throwing Muses at this point. Weird, right? I remember learning that Leslie was in Throwing Muses - it was well after I had started to see her. I think at that point I began to view her as more of a cool person, a friend, and not a therapist. Maybe that's why I'm no longer her patient. We bought the book. Let's see if it's a good read.

And, in other news, Meggie is continuing her social behavior. She has not become a lap cat, but she definitely spends more time with us, near us, and sometimes even on us. She's such a good kitty. Her nose is cold and wet, she sheds like you would not believe, and she's such a little carnavore (hide your chicken, because she's relentless), but she's allowing us to experience her specialness more often now, not just when we're in the basement, and we are enjoying this more social side of Meg. Speaking of the brown one, she's coming over right now to sit on my computer. What a love.