the fossil shell

The layers of past lives, lived poorly, were a little depressing. Buyer’s remorse? Or maybe it was just the mopping.
I felt like the shipwrecked sailor who couldn't figure out what to do first and wound up lying on the strand until he was saved. Before I could get a clean surface to even set down my bags, I had to vacuum, but there was only a leaky shop vac. So I had to mop. And I needed to paint a surface to put aerobed on. So I had to tear up old linoleum and carpet. To take that out I had to take out a closet that had been built on top of it. It may have been jury-rigged of shoddy materials (like everything else except the structure itself), but it was seriously built. And then there were the moldings and carpet tacks to come out. And then I had to mop some more.
I found some disused items: a single dangly earring, cat litter pan liners, five mugs from Hospice of Ozark Medical Center, two crayons, negatives of an unknown couple, an ice pick. A toilet (or “commode,” as Bear calls it) and an old truck that won’t start grace the great outdoors.
The snail fossil was found in the yard by Mike, the previous owner of two years, the day we signed the papers. “How great!” I said. He handed it to me. “You keep it,” I said. “You keep it,” he said. “It’s yours.”