It's Memorial Day. Thank you, Veterans, and others who have given your lives in service.

I am not a Vet.  I don't have anywhere to host a barbecue today, and I haven't received any invitations to attend such things.  So I have spent a good chunk of today "shredding" - earlier in my ebay career, I would shred old bills and whatnot (pretty much anything that had account numbers or social security info) and use it as packing material when shipping out dolls.  Got out of the habit as I acquired more bubble wrap, especially when I'd learn that a doll I'd shipped had arrived broken.  Erp!

But there were still all those papers, receipts and bills and such, accumulating in a big box.  And I have yet to go through the file cabinet and see if I can eliminate anything else, like I managed to get help doing before this move.  So I sat down in the living room today with the personal shredder I had been "given" when my former roommate moved out all those years ago (basically, she just needed to not take things home with her, and that was a useful item, so I accepted it as a gift.  THANK YOU, former roommate who has not given me permission to identify you here).

I made pretty good progress through the box, but there are dividers between the "teeth" that have degraded over time, and sometimes the papers go through looking more "chewed" than "shredded," and I have to sit with tweezers, pulling paper strips out of spaces where the dividers are completely gone.  It's sort of like the metal shredding teeth are vertebrae, and those teeth are separated by plastic cartilage, and the two spinal columns work in tandem to eat your paper.  My cartilage is wearing OUT!

So I have a much smaller stack of paper that needs shredding; I have files that could probably use a cleanse but will likely have to wait until after the move; I have a dead shredder that won't go (was never gonna go) back to LA, and will get replaced by a slightly-more industrial design.  Ah, me.

Time to celebrate progress, and give thanks for useful lives ended (as well as those other useful lives that have still managed to survive), with wine and coconut cheesecake!