I chucked the jeans into the laundry this morning and shall fold them and hide them inside the giveaway bag as soon as they're dry. The Vietnam Veterans of America will have driven off before they realize what they've got.

The project is turning out to be profoundly healing for me, if I can use such a woo-woo phrase. It's akin, I think, to what other people do in becoming middle-aged triathletes or marathon runners: an internal conquest, a breaking through previously-accepted limitations.

Also, I realized last night, it has a lot in common with buying myself a Mercedes for my 50th birthday: it's something really cool that I finally have the resources to do for myself; I have no expectations of it except that it will give me pleasure and make it much nicer to move about in the world, and if the parking attendant treats me with a little more respect, well, dammit, I've earned it.