onetwothreefour...

 
...GO!

But before launching into the actual unpacking of things, I took some "before" pictures with my trusty DSi. This is what I'm up against:

the dining room (angle one)

the dining room (angle two)

the living room

the blue room

My original idea for this project was to unpack one box every day, but today's marathon unpacking session made me rethink the concept. It's compelling to keep going, especially when I open a box to discover junk contents.

Speaking of junk, the shredder got a real workout today (yay!):

• Car insurance cards from January 2007.

• Directions marked "Jason" and "Robert." I have no clue who these people are.
  

• Written on the back of a book of checks bearing my last address: "Joe Danny Phil Bryan 9:30 Wednesday" ("2 pm" crossed out underneath) ... Joe who? And what kind of meeting was that?

• Daily itineraries from a hotel in Mexico. I don't need to keep them to remember how much fun I had with my old friend Jim Wadsworth, but finding them conjured the memory of the desk clerks saying, "Enjoy your stay, Meesuss Wadswortt!" Ha!
  

• A note dated 6-26-07 stating "Let's not neener." Now might be a good time to mention The Wall. At our house, when people say unintentionally funny or stupid things, we write them down and stick them on a big-ass piece of butcher paper. Sometimes people say funny things when we're not home, and we'll text them to each other, or jot them down to stick on The Wall later. Sometimes we forget to follow through. I'm pretty sure that "Let's not neener" is something someone said to a kid during Day Camp that year.
  

 I also discovered:

• The power cord for my BBE Green Screamer pedal, and several other guitar pedals I didn't know I had. I stuck them on a shelf with my tiara, yep.
  

• Enough rogue books to realize that organizing the bookshelf will be a priority for this project. I keep all my books in boxes because, you know, I might decide what to do with my life and then move somewhere, someday, and I wouldn't want to have to pack up those books again. They say acknowledgment is the first step, so here it is: I live here and it's time to put my books on a shelf where they belong.

• A Gladware box of detritus belonging to Andy Dicus circa summer 2006. Batteries and checks with his old Chicago address, mostly. I kept the batteries and tossed the rest. Hope that was ok, library ghost friend.

• Tons of cds people have given me. Confession time: I do not have a reliable method for listening to music. My iPod died last year. The cd player in my car hasn't played a burned disc since 2005. I don't listen to music in my room because I'm hardly ever in there. My computer is too old and slow to run iTunes while running any other programs, so I don't listen to music in the blue room, either. In May 2008, I had an epiphany: I'm a musician, I like music, I miss having a soundtrack to life, I need a record player again. So I bought one. It's still in the box. And all my records? Are still in boxes. I fail myself this way a lot.

I had a moment of panic today when I opened a box and found the minutes from the CCRCC meeting right before what we are currently calling Big Calamity. I thought I'd find a bunch of things that would remind me of that awful 10 weeks. A total overreaction; there was nothing heart-wrenching in there. Just an index card with his dress shirt size (a measure of my sentimentality that I kept it even after stuff exploded) and, I am not joking, a piece of chewed gum folded into a piece of scrap paper. How did this not get thrown away? Was I saving it for some sentimental reason? What the eff?

The blue room is on its way to being ready for the next step of the project, which is to move all the crap in the dining room and living room in here:

new and improved blue room

Done for today, and feeling like such a different person than the Jen I just encountered in those boxes. No spiders yet.