Quarantine Chronicles Day 44: Music CDs, a flip phone and other relics from a kitchen excavation

I ask David, my sainted publisher, a question. He tells me to ask Andrea, the Post’s supremely gifted advertising director because A) says David, she’ll have the answer and B) says David, she’s lonely.

So I call Andrea and, yes, she is sort of lonely. She’s been in lockdown about a week less than I have. She asks me how I’m doing. I tell her I’m fine but after 44 days I fear I might start running out of ideas, especially since I’m looking ahead at Day 116, or so. No one knows when this little assignment ends.

Andrea wonders if I ask people for suggestions. I say no, because, well, to be brutally honest, I don’t always like other peoples’ suggestions, like, “Why don’t you get COVID and write about what it’s like in an intensive care unit, shivering with fever and gasping for breath?” Yeah, maybe later, around Day 72. Andrea suggests I clean out a closet or a cupboard and, while I’ve already cleaned out my secondary and tertiary liquor cabinets, I suppose I could do a sequel and take on a couple more.

My wife last weekend was complaining about one of the upper kitchen cabinets that’s packed with music CDs and baking products.

“I don’t even know what’s in there,” she said, perhaps pointedly.

So I decided to tackle that little project.

The obvious solution was to simply throw out all the baking products and turn the cabinet into a repository for CDs that I will probably never play again. In fact, the only CD player I have these days is my car.

But, as obvious as that solution is, I guessed that it might not go over so good with the house baker. So I tossed the CDs. Well, most of them. Some of them. I took the pile that I’m saving out to the garage, which is really a kick-the-can-down-the-road sort of solution. Whenever I get the courage and strength to tackle the garage, I’ll probably end up bringing the CDs back in the house and throwing them back up in the baking-goods cupboard.

Emboldened by how quickly I cleaned out that cupboard, I proceeded to another one, which is just jammed with paper and craft products. I pulled out a few huge shoeboxes of over a million colored pencils, a few thousand markers and a cache of Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils. I threw out almost everything but the Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2 pencils, because, while I never use pencils, they’re the finest pencil ever made and I’m not going to throw them out.

I also found an award I won back in 2009, an era when I was winning so many awards that I used the certificates to light cigars. The certificate was no less worse for wear than its recipient. And it’s a poor reflection on my shape that I threw it out. But it was a good award.

I also found a Verizon LG flip phone. Damn, I loved that phone. My daughter, Hannah, marveled at it when I dragged it to the surface. “Where’s the touch screen?” she asked. Forget the touch screen, it didn’t even have a camera. “It’s a phone,” I said. “I used it to make phone calls.”

Like a coal miner, I hacked away at the cupboard some more looking for daylight. I had already almost filled a trash bin with enough stuff to open my own stationery store, if there’s even such a thing as a stationery store any more. Flip phones, stationery stores. I had tunneled back to the 1980s.

Another strata uncovered some books meant to teach you how to do algebra. Stupid books. I tossed them; they didn’t work. I should’ve taken them out behind the barn and shot ‘em.

I’m going to be honest, for once. I got about a third of the way done with the cupboard and it was like ordering a whole salad at CPK when you should’ve just ordered a half: You eat until you’ve grown a pant size and the salad still looks like a whole salad.

I straightened some things up a bit, but it still needs a lot of work. I’ll save it for later. It’s only Day 44. When this is all over, the house will be spotless and everything will be organized. I might even throw on a second floor or at least finish the attic—just to keep stuff in.

And, look, I was just “being sarcastic” about not wanting column ideas. My next 82 are wide open for subject material, so, please, give me a holler with requests or suggestions. My email is [email protected], or find me at Facebook and Twitter @grobaty.