and we note our place with bookmarkers that measure what we've lost

i'm moving in about 12 weeks... usually i would wait another 11 weeks to start packing... but this time, i'm trying to be a little more productive... i am going to arkansas in a few weeks and thought i'd be good and take some stuff then to leave there leaving less here to try and get to tennessee in 12 weeks...

but i figured i'd go through everything first - see what i have, what i can get rid of and what i need to keep... so friday night, i was at home, going through old boxes, trying to decide which memories were worth keeping and which ones should be tossed out in the name of saving space and money in a cross-country move...

i had 4 boxes in my storage room... so i thought i'd start there... i feel like everytime i move, i throw away more stuff, knowing i'll accumulate the same amount that i throw out within a few months... so i wasn't sure how much stuff i'd actually want to get rid of...

4 boxes... all pretty full... by the time i finished, i had 2 boxes instead... pretty good for a first attempt...

as i sat there, looking through boxes of my history, it was hard to not get emotional... i wasn't crying, but as i pulled out one thing after another, it would have been easy to tell which emotion went with the memory...

smiling while me head is shaking as i pulled out my picture of rain from kindergarten... it's one of my favorite things from my childhood... i'm pretty sure i was a stubborn kid (you'd never know it now... :)...) and there were a few things that in my mind made complete sense and i was sure that i was absolutely right... one was skipping... in my head, i knew how to skip... but i really just gallopped... for some reason, i couldn't put my left foot out so my right foot always led... another one was my rain picture... my rain picture is a piece of dark blue construction paper with clouds at the top and flowers at the bottom (little pieces of tissue paper wadded up and glued on) with rain drops covering much of the page... my rain drops look a little different... i was sure that a rain drop should point at the ground... i mean, wouldn't it make sense in my 5-year-old mind? it looks like an arrow and arrows point in the direction they're going in... so there's my picture, complete with 25 upside-down rain drops...

a frown as i pulled out a jr. high yearbook... i let one of my friends use a permanent marker to x out people she didn't like... and now, i don't even remember which friend it was... i was so impressionable at 13 and 14 and 15... letting other people determine who i should like and be friends with and who i should dislike completely... how embarassing to see crossed out faces... i don't even want to keep it because i don't want other people to see it... i don't want a record of it, and yet, i feel i have to... if only as a reminder that i'm my own person and no one else has the right to tell me who i should like/dislike...

a smile (with a strong sense of pride) as i pulled out certificates and awards and newspaper clippings... at the time they didn't seem to mean so much... but reading judge's notes from piano competitions and reading the articles where i was interviewed about my involvement with true love waits and acteens, seeing my 5th grade math award and the 212/215 that i got on my term paper from my senior year of ap english... it made me feel good to see some stuff i've actually done right...

and then complete laughter as i pulled out a few things from high school... at some point during high school, we were at a restaurant (i'm pretty sure) and someone (i think it was my friend melanie) said something about a lady - with big hair - and a tap teaser... which was one of the fad-y infomercial things at the time... (around the same time as a flowbee) and i said, "that's my aunt..." and i was joking, but she didn't know that... so she thought she had offended me and it was funny... in fact, i think she still thinks i was being honest... so one of our big jokes in high school was about tap teasers... and we would say, "tap tap..." - and now i have no idea why it was funny really... because it doesn't sound funny... but marie cut a tap teaser ad out of the paper and gave it to me... at the bottom, she wrote, "IT'S HER!!!" under one of the "models," implying that it was the lady we saw at the restaurant... my "aunt"... it was funny to think about old times and laugh knowing that i had been a kid, too... having fun with friends whose friendship has suffered its share of bruises, but is still alive today...

after i finished going through, sorting and cleaning, discarding some markers of my history and holding onto some a little more tightly... i felt good... i remembered that i had "come from somewhere..." i have a personal history... i can see these instances that have shaped who i have become (and who i could have become, both positively and negatively)... and it was an experience that i needed... i've been struggling with ideas of home for so long that it was good to feel that sense of history...

my thoughts are random, but i wanted to get it out... i'm trying to put pictures of the ad and a comic strip that i found while cleaning up, but they wouldn't upload on this entry... so maybe in the next one... but soon...