Hi again!
I'm back! Feeling great, too! It's not quite time for chips and salsa yet, but getting there. The wisdom teeth thing wasn't too bad, the drive there was probably the worst part.
So anyway, I went through my hope chest yesterday. It had been a few years, and some of the things I have held on to for far too long made it out for good...others didn't.
There are obvious things you'd find; my high school diploma along with the little beanie hat that you wear on your graduation, stories and drawings from the girls, special awards they've gotten at school. A few things I made when I was ten years old. Some antique French picture frames, bought at a flea market in France. A pottery porcupine I bought near Alsace, France. My husband says it's an ashtray, I say candy dish.
"It might hold two or three pieces of candy," he tells me. There's the chipped snow white plaque that my namesake, Gracie, painted for me. It doesn't really go with my decor, but one day I'll find a spot for it. At the bottom, a new car brochure for a 1988 Honda Prelude...along with a pristine licence plate reading 'I Love my Prelude.' Funny that I hold it so fondly- I never owned that prelude. Even so, it's not something I could break free of yet. I set it back inside.
I have a little ceramic teapot, where instead of a spout, it has these giant red lips, and a Marilyn Monroe type mole. I also have the matching cups. I think my mother bought this for me when I was eight or nine years old because I thought it was funny. I sat in the floor and emptied the pot. Inside, some eighth grade junk. A few notes from friends I lost touch with, a poem I wrote for a boy named Roger, who never loved me back.
(It's funny, over a decade later, Roger ended up working with me for about a week, and we laughed about what luck he'd had. At fifteen or so, he just quit going to school, was in and out of school, married to a woman old enough to be his mother, and living in a park full of singlewides from the seventies.
"It's your fault," I was brave enough to say, "It's because you didn't love me. I put a hex on you!"
"Take it off! Please!" he said.
"Well, to take it off, you're going to have to bring me a live rooster," I said. We jokingly agreed he would. Unfortunately, his car broke down before he could get it to me, and with no ride, he lost his job. There I sat with my back to the old trunk yesterday morning, folding back the notebook paper with Roger's poem scralled in my sloppy cursive. I hope he's doing alright.)
Inside was also a note from a Secret Admirer. It said something like, 'I want you, I need you, I can't live without you! Love, Your Secret Admirer.' Chances are, it was some sort of joke, but since I can't be sure, I fold it and stick it back with the others. I find a tiny clear box beneath all the other stuff and give it a little shake.
Fingernail clippings. I don't open the box. Some are kind of long, and on some, remnants of polish. Was I going to glue them back on? Am I that strange? Certainly not. But am I strange for putting them back inside and keeping them? Does revealing this to you make me strange? Hmmm. I'm going to say it's not so strange, for now.
There's a huge vintage quilt, silk with a giant peacock embroidered in different colors in the center. I bought it years ago on Ebay; it's an old Asian thing, and I typically like old Asian things. Steven wasn't so crazy about it, so it makes about 1/3 of the trunk.
Some newspaper clippings. A couple old books. I read somewhere that people used to go to libraries to get high off the old books; there is actually some type of paper mold that makes that smell and gives people a high. I like the smell of old books, and they go straight to my face. I hold it back, because after reading that, it gives me a curious pause. I bring it close again and inhale deeply. It that gorgeous smell of musty books is such because it gets people off,
What better than a book high?
My own writings, you know, the gypsies...who knows when I'll be done with it and who'd buy it then?- are going good, but I don't type at the computer anymore. I do better freehand, then typing it in later. I don't really have anything interesting to tell you this week; having my wisdom teeth out is the biggest event lately. Oh, I'm going to Office Depot later to buy some boxes. That may be uneventful, you never know.I hope every one of you are doing swell! My love, my love my love to you all~
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