Nicole's box (pretty much NSFW)

...
First, a little post-craft-series catch-up. The sister advised me to add my fabric-and-sewing things to her trunk of fabric-and-sewing things. When I asked her what to do about the too-big-to-be-a-scarf that I was crocheting for Eric Foreman in 2000-whatever, she said she could use the string if I didn't want it, so I turned:

this

into this

Not bad for a non-knitter, eh?

And then suddenly I got really excited to unpack the remaining boxes. What's in this one? Will this one have my long-lost art projects? How much ex-boyfriend stuff could possibly be in that purple trunk? And so on. I must've turned a corner when I finished the craft series.

So I started in on these:

photo albums and yearbooks

and turned:

this

into this

I was ready to keep going until I looked through the photos and saw how young and happy I was, at all the different points of my life so far. And then, a note dropped out of one of the albums.

I can assume, because it was folded tent-style, that I had made myself a little reminder to divvy up my paycheck in a particular way. That's my handwriting there on the first three lines. Someone thought perhaps the note was meant for him, though...

outside

inside

Oh, when I saw this the first time, I laughed and laughed, and when I saw it this time, I laughed until I cried.

And I thought there was no way I could possibly go on with this project now. I felt so much disappointment and sadness over all the things that might have been, and looking through those pictures at all the people I have loved and who have left (friends, boyfriends, people now deceased) and ... not to be maudlin here, but there are moments when it seems so much easier to stay home and just stop... trying... and this was one of them.

Fortunately, I wasn't stuck in the drowning place for long; the sister found a box of mine in the den. The contents happened to coincide with the albums I was thumbing through at that exact moment:

Nicole's box

Why do we call it Nicole's box? Well, here is a picture of her creating the things that lived inside:

circa 1999

Let's have a look at the contents today:

are those boobs?

is that a torso?

Oh right. This is a box of pornographic clay figures that Nicole made and that I have been carrying around with me for 10 years. Why? You know, because they're funny and I miss her.

in their original form

There's no great lesson here, no nugget of wisdom to buoy me along or make me feel the weight of loss any less. But you try to stay depressed while you're scraping your friend's clay genitals out of a tin your mother gave you.

I bet you couldn't do it without laughing either.

(p.s. Nicole, if this post is offensive to you now, let me know and I will take it down. You filthy pervert.)