I really thought I would get through the garage today. Got about half way. It's deep out there. We don't actually use the space as a garage. It might stay cleaner if we did. We use it as a teen hangout space. We sort of made-over the space about six years ago. We insulated and finished the walls and ceiling, cleaned and painted the floor and layed down rugs, and built a big shed to house the lawnmower and all the other junk we had out there. Then we put some furniture in and gave the space to Cam and Ben. We had an old pool table out there at first, but that soon made way for the garage band gear. Cam plays guitar and Ben is a drummer. We thought the drumming might be a phase at first, but it's not. He's good. And it turns out the drummer's house is almost always the default practice house - too hard to move the kit around. So we have done our best to accommodate them. I'm not sure how many different band iterations have passed through this garage. We've had just about every genre you can think of going out there at one point or another.

There have been a couple girl vocalists involved over the years, but in our world the teen band scene is dominated by boys, and boys are hard on a space. Tina used to say to me, "Have you seen it out there?" My answer is always, "No, I don't go out there." And it's better that way. It's not something I want to see most of the time. But about once a year I round up the rakes and shovels and implements of destruction and dive in. The idea is to return the space to livable conditions. I thought about taking some before and after photos, but... the horror... the horror!

Ben swore that the mess was all Cameron's and when Cam moved out he would keep it clean. And he is better about the occasional straightening up, but over time, bad things happen out there. When I started at it today I wasn't sure if I was cleaning out a music store or a used sporting goods store. There were 10 guitars (about half of those are ours), 2 keyboards (we don't own any keyboards), 5 snowboards, extra bindings, 6 or 7 half assembled skateboards, miscellaneous helmets, gloves, other junk.

On top of all that, Tina and I have been piling our junk out there. We do not have enough room in this house, and stuff piles up fast. I started out thinking I would be able to sort through it all quickly and and make a combination Goodwill/dump run, but the task was beyond me. I did manage to clear out the worst of it and identify a lot of things that could go back to the homes of their owners, but I'm going to be out there again tomorrow.

The payoff for the little boys was that I uncovered the stash of Cam and Ben's Fisher-Price Little People collection. These are the old-school Little People that they don't sell anymore because children can choke on them. Cam and Ben (and Tina and I as well) both survived them so we're willing to risk it with Kai and Shen. Plus a pile of wooden puzzles we had put away a couple years ago because Kai wasn't ready for them. Now, the stupid thing, we let them have them now. We've got two birthdays and Christmas in the next month. This pile would have been more than enough for any of one those events. They were in serious heaven. So now we have all this "new" play fodder in the mix, and the birthdays and Christmas are still coming! The horror... The Horror!