Another brilliant sunset yesterday, with more orange than purple. Today’s sunset was bright, too, but this is the best I could do from the office window. The only way to avoid the power lines in the picture is to go upstairs, but the giant magnolia tree tends to obscure the view:

I watched this morning from the office window as the garbagemen heaved more than a dozen bags plus an assortment of boxes and odds and ends into the back of the truck. You’re probably wondering how on earth a person can accumulate that much rubbish — in fact, I was wondering that myself last night. It’s as if David kept every shred of paper in his life and threw it all in boxes to follow him around. David graduated from Penn State in 1989 and lived in three homes (not counting his mother’s) within about 45 minutes’ drive from each other, so he probably didn’t put much thought into minimising. Just imagine the volume of paper after 16 years! Especially considering how much paperwork can be collected from Civil Air Patrol alone: since it’s an auxiliary of the Air Force, you can’t sneeze without filling out reams of forms and consulting procedure binders. All of which, of course, David kept since the day he joined in 1999.

Speaking of sneezing, Hugh sneezed in my face this morning. Nothing like a spray of cat snot to start the day — there’s that much dust swirling around in this house.

Helma invited me for a fish supper, so I’ll do one more trip to Salvation Army and then I can finally have a break from the grunt work.