preliminarily considering lots of weird crap and toys

 
Not three days in and I'm already somewhat annoyed. Aches and pains, in the head a little, and the coffee tastes weird. But I'm a girl with a purpose, a woman on a mission, and I have 45 minutes before I have to move on to the next obligation, so let's get unpacking.

Today's goal is to finish assessing the boxes in the blue room so I can spend tomorrow moving things in here from the dining room. Some things I found include:

• Cat toys, for the cat who can no longer come inside (stupid jerky pisser).

• A tub of Legos. Should these go in the garage sale / donation boxes? For now, I put them with the other (people) toys.
  

• A box of used cell phones to donate. I don't remember where to do this, though.

• Partial contents of a previous utility drawer. Lots of useful stuff: tools, fuses, doodads and whizbangs. Looking forward to gathering all those types of things and keeping them in one place.
  

• Posters. And posters. And so many flyers from shows. And posters from record stores. And then there's the NKOTB paraphernalia. Yikes. Can I sell it on eBay?
  

• A real score! For my birthday 2007, along with my ability ring and a bunch of other goofy fun Hot Topic-y goodies, Jewbles (the brother-in-law) gifted me with a "hand-held gaming system" purse-style case. I had no hand-held gaming system at the time. But my new DSi fits perfectly! Cool!

• A generic LITE-BRITE-type toy, lacking extra pegs, that still reads "The Spark" from our cd release party... in 2003. You know, I am probably too old for this reaction now, but whenever I think about getting rid of some of these toys, especially things that glow or blink or vibrate, I think "but these would be so fun on acid/ecstasy/mushrooms/etc." I put the LITE-BRITE-thing in the garage sale / donation box anyway.
  

• Several trophies from middle and high school. You have to keep these, right? Right? Should they be displayed somewhere?
  

• Exactly one garter holder thingie. There should be four. And I have no clue if there was ever a belt.

Consolidated a weird pile of knick-knacky things into two boxes of knick-knacky things. I love to display little mementos and pictures and funny convenience store items (Ol' Glory energy drink? Big Red soda?) but when I don't have enough room, I wish I had the nerve to smash them all.

Added a second garage sale / donation box. Full of weird crap. Should probably just toss it. A hazard of completing this box task publicly is that the "garage sale" stuff (anything weird or with unknown origins) has the potential to be recognized by a potential gifter who might, potentially, be hurt by my callous tossing of said gift. So here's this: if it's important and I've forgotten, please tell me. It takes a village to raise a woman.

The big question now is: what the heck is in these two huge tubs? Maybe sheets and towels and such? I thought I had unpacked all those. I'm pretty sure one of the containers used to have jackets and warm-making things in it, and maybe still does. We'll have to wait to solve the mystery, though, because tomorrow, all the dining room crap comes in here. I've organized the blue room so that the dining room boxes will go in front of all the knickknacky crap and the mystery boxes. Which is too bad, because there's finally room to move around in here:

the even more new and improved blue room

the less-impressive-but-still-tidier other side of the blue room

Still no spiders.
 

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.
 

a need, a project, an idea, a mission

 
In 15 years, I have lived in four states and eleven houses.

I've lived alone, with family members and soul mates, with lunatics and boyfriends, with friends and strangers and couch-surfers and pets.

Those spaces have ranged from scant (like the closet I called home in 1994) to ample (like the downtown loft I ran from in 2001).

I've collected things. I've created things. I've been given things. And I've packed them all in boxes and moved them, like checkers, from place to place, often without unpacking them at their next destination.

It's time for some housekeeping.

This house was my parents' house, until they were seduced by cleaner carpets, a bigger kitchen, and no adult children underfoot, and they got the heck out of here. My little sister stayed behind, and now the two of us share the house with her husband, three cats, a tiny dog, a fish, and 15 years of my life packed into boxes.

But not just boxes. Also trash bags, plastic trunks, frayed suitcases, and weird piles of weirdness.

Sentimental weirdness.

I've been avoiding the project (almost three years in this house, jockeying the boxes from room to room as we needed space), in part I think because I haven't wanted to be reminded of my "once-potential, squandered" and also because I am a sentimental sap and I'm not so sure I want to revisit all that history.

But I started today, and tonight, I had an idea: to help catalogue all the pieces and memories, and to help keep me from abandoning the project once started, I will write every day until all of the boxes are unpacked and their contents are organized, discarded, repurposed, or set aflame.

Let's hope there aren't very many spiders.