Happy Vernal Equinox + Spring Cleaning

With the first day of spring now upon us, I can officially call my continued purging of all manner of stuff from around my home spring cleaning.  I recently read Dave Bruno's "The 100 Thing Challenge" and it really helped me to think about some of the things that I had been holding onto in a different way.  I'll post another time with more about the book and what I found to be helpful, but I wanted to go ahead and share a couple of those hard-for-me-to-let-go items with you now.

Back in the late 1990s my parents gifted my brother and I each with a set of our very own golf clubs.  At that time I didn't know how to play golf, so I took a lesson and was happy to hack my way through 18 holes with my husband - who was then my fiance - or with my family (I can remember one time that the five of us were on three separate fairways even though we were playing the same hole...good times!).  If I'm honest with myself, I can count on one hand the number of times I've played golf in the last 11 years.  I haven't played even once since having children.  I don't have any burning desire to go out and play golf.  I don't know that I'll ever even play again.  So why have I been I holding onto them?  I'm not entirely sure.  The more I thought about these clubs, the more it became clear to me that there was a much better use for them than just sitting around in my garage.  Just because I had the space to store them didn't mean that I should continue to do so.  Well, I'm happy to report that this week my golf clubs made their way to a new home - I donated them to First Tee, an organization whose mission is to "impact the lives of young people by providing learning facilities and educational programs that promote character development and life-enhancing values through the game of golf."  A very good place for them to be, indeed!

If ever I'd like to play a round of golf again, I'm sure that I can find someone to lend me clubs for the day or I can rent them - I really don't need my own.  

The next item was harder to let go.  In my head, I'm an acoustic guitar player.  In real life, not so much.  For years I desperately wanted a guitar so that I could learn to play and nearly a decade ago my sweet husband bought me one to help make that dream come true.  I took lessons and even got to the point that I could play a simple song or two.  Fast forward almost 10 years to the here and now.  My lovely guitar sits in my house where it has not been played for most of that time.  I couldn't play a simple song now even if something important was riding on my ability to do so.  Unlike the golf clubs, I still have a desire to play the guitar and I think that I might pick it up again someday.  Might...not will.  Yes, I would still like to play, but there are a lot of things that I would like to do and there are many of those things that I am more likely to do in the near future.  So after debating with myself on this, I decided that - like the golf clubs - someone else could be getting use out of the guitar right now.  So on Friday this guitar and its accessories made their way to a new home with the YMCA music program.

If the time comes that I'm ready to try playing again, something that I know will be years down the road (if at all), then I can evaluate if my interest is serious enough at that time to buy another guitar.  And hey, I can always find one second hand!

On an entirely different note, I'm sure that many of you heard the news that last night would boast a "supermoon" during which time the occurrence of the full moon coincided with the lunar perigee (the night during which the moon is closest to the Earth and occurs once every 18 years).  We just happened to be at the beach for the weekend to cheer on my husband while he ran a marathon, so we were fortunate enough to see the lunar perigee over the ocean.  What an incredible experience!

As the moon was rising around 7:30pm EDT.

Just a short time later around 7:45pm EDT.

The moon, no longer looking reddish, reflecting on the ocean around 9pm EDT.

The waves were quite large this morning after last night's supermoon.

I hope that everyone had a magical weekend and I look forward to joining you for another week of Project Simplify with Simple Mom!

"There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls."  ~George Carlin