Archeological Dig

     I cleaned off my desk yesterday. Not this one with the computer. I'm here everyday and there's nothing here but the monitor, keyboard and a few essentials, like my Thesaurus for when my head is stuck and my Bible for good quotes for people on Facebook.
     No, the desk in question is a small roll top that is in the living room. When the pile of things on the desk is too tall for the roll top to roll over it , it is time to do something.

Here are a few things I found:
    Mazzio's coupons that expired last December. Now I'm hungry for Mazzio's pizza but I don't have any coupons. We only eat what we have coupons for.
     Old, outdated receipts from Lowes that I saved so I could take their survey and get a $5000 gift card but you only have a week to do it even though I know exactly what I would purchase with that $5000.
     Two self-addressed, stamped envelopes. I guess I never sent me anything.
     A 2011 purse calendar.  I'm trying to learn to use my phone calendar so I suppose I forgot it was in there but it is a very soft leather so I put it in my purse anyway. I love the feel of leather; I will just take it out and run my hands over it sometimes.
     A box of business cards that say "Pat Carey Designs".  t's been about a decade since I did much of that.
     A list of people who brought food and flowers when I had all those surgeries a few years ago.If I still have the list maybe I never wrote the Thank You cards I intended to, so if you didn't get a Thank You from me I guess I owe you a Sorry card. Sorry!
     Enough free return address labels with puppies, flowers and snowmen on them to last longer than I will ever be at this address.
     A box of checks that will last longer than the address labels, even. Can't remember when I last wrote a check. I'm sure you think it is because I'm so up-to-date that I do everything on-line, but no.  I stopped using checks when banks got so smart alec that you couldn't write a check and then run get money from your husband or somebody and deposit it before the check got to the bank. I just use cash. When there is no more cash in my purse I know I am done so I go home.
     A wad of deposit slips because the ones that came with the checks are long gone.  I keep getting a bunch from the bank to keep in my desk but then when I get to the bank I don't have one so I use theirs. I wish they were worth money. Then that running between banks thing never would have had to happen in the first place.
     A Valentine for "A Cute 2 Year Old Boy" with Grover on it.  Sadly, there hasn't been a cute two year old boy around here for fourteen years now. I try not to waste anything but I'm pretty sure my grandson, David, would not appreciate it any more, even though he is still pretty cute. But sixteen.
     A Bas Mitzvah card. Well, when I first found it (not so easy here in the Bible Belt, so I grabbed it while I could) my friend in California had a little girl that I knew would do a Bas Mitzvah someday.  It happens when Jewish girls are thirteen, just like Jewish boys do a Bar Mitzvah, only with more flowers and pink stuff. Anyway, Melinda is about twenty-five now and I don't know any other Jewish girls, but it seems a shame to just toss the card. If you can use it, let me know.
     School pictures of two of my grandkids. I am waiting for the ones from the other two so I can put them in the frames in front of the school pictures from last year. I keep piling each year on top of the last one. I may have to change the frames for shadow boxes by the time they graduate.
     A really cute school picture of Dennis when he was nine.  It is one of those two inch ones so I don't have a frame. He looks kind of ornery in it, as a matter of fact. Wish I knew what he was thinking.
     A Rolodex that had belonged to Dennis's mother and now I use it.  If you don't know what it is, it is like the Contacts section of your phone only on real cards. I probably only use it at Christmas now but it has lots of info in it. I can't bring myself to pull out the cards of the people who have died. The older we get the more of them there are.
     A notebook with a calculator, a tape measurer and graph paper in it so I can come into your house, measure off your rooms and tell you how to arrange your furniture. Or what furniture to buy from me.The last  furniture store that I worked for has been closed for the last few years. I don't know what that says about my salesmanship. Oh, wait. They didn't close until after I was gone. I was probably propping the place up the whole time.
     And last, an engraved name plate that says "Patty Carey" that sat on a cubicle when someone else was the  boss of me, so that people who came by could tell I was a real person. It has an awful lot of dust on it.