Day 40: More Books, and The End

It's interesting to go back and read through the first posts of this series and reflect on what my life looked like just thirty-nine days ago.  At first glance, little has changed, and yet, so much has.  I don't spend five extra minutes every morning rummaging through my dresser drawers, trying to find a pair of socks or a shirt I actually do wear.  I don't feel bad every time I look at my bookcase, taking note of all the books there I'll never read again, or that I've never read and will probably never read.  I don't cringe when look under my bed, or in my closet, or in the stairwell.  These things I once held so tightly to, these tangible memories and regrets and to-do's, they're gone.  And my life is a little less complicated.  The burden is a little lighter.

This forty day experience started as something different to do for Lent.  I had honest intentions, sure, but I don't think I really understood the effect it would have, the change it would bring.  The plan was to give away one thing a day, or even a category of things each day.  But by the end of this forty days, I am practically tossing things out the door.  The ones with a story have made it onto this blog, but the skirts and the sweaters and the papers and the hangers and the CDs (more of them) and the jackets and the old and unused underwear I should have gotten rid of a long time ago, they simply got added to the pile, no fanfare given.  I started this challenge, unsure if I would be able to finish.  I just didn't know if I had enough to give away.  As I looked around my room day after day, though, I began to search less for what I could give away and more for what I'd be better off without.  Some days, it was harder to see than others.  Some days, I could've given it all away.

Reaching out towards this intangible simplicity, I felt it was only right to go back today, to spend my last day reevaluating the place where it all began.  On "Day 1: Books," I got rid of a huge box full: things I'd never read and things I'd never intended to read.  But I wasn't really being honest with myself that first time through.  I was so caught up in what the bookcase of a woman of my education level and literary interest should look like that I couldn't see the bookcase I really wanted to have, full of just the books I use, just the books I love.  But I see now that books aren't things to store on a shelf.  They are living, breathing works, dying to be held, to be bent, to have their pages read.  And this holds true for all things in life.  They are there to be used, to be cherished, to be taken with a grain of salt.  Because, if we're being honest with ourselves, all we really need is water, food, a change clothes, and the memories we hold in the folds of our gray matter.  The memories that remind us that we are loved.  The memories that teach us how to love.  All the rest is lagniappe.

Day 39: Superbowl Papers

I missed it.  I missed what I had been waiting my entire life to see.  I missed the second half on-side kick.  I missed Tracy Porter's victory-sealing interception.  I missed seeing baby Brees being held up as the Saints were handed the once-impossible Lombardi trophy.  I missed running the streets of the French Quarter with every other Who Dat that had spent the season thinking that maybe, just maybe, this was our year.  I missed it all.  And it still hurts.

It all started well.  Hours before the game actually began, we wandered the streets of the French Quarter, pulling colt-colored (blue) beads off passers-by and instigating a "Peyton on the Ground" dance party on Royal St. that drew a significant crowd (it was big enough to make it onto YouTube, anyway).  I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, but I was only a couple of drinks deep, and I felt fine.  No, I felt great.

I made it through the first half, no problem, but somewhere between the two-minute warning and the end of halftime, it hit me.  I remember feeling sleepy, and a little later, I remember finding myself seated on the bar's bathroom floor, head in hands, trying to get the world to stop spinning for just a second.  I couldn't miss this.  I couldn't miss this.

But the bar wouldn't let me stay there, and I ended up being driven to a friend's house to sleep it off.  A lot of that night is hazy, but I clearly remember my friend shouting, "They won!  They won!" as she helped me into the bed, the small TV in her room blurrily showing me for a second the confetti falling on the field.  And I remember that at that moment, I wanted so badly to go back to that afternoon.  I wanted so badly to wake up from that irreparable nightmare.  Sixty-seven years of losing, and the year we finally make it to the Superbowl, I couldn't manage to stay conscious long enough to enjoy the win.  And now, all I could do to dull the pain was fall asleep again.

When I finally woke up, hours later, I cried.  I cried in the bed.  I cried in the bathroom.  I cried in the living room, in front of relatively new friends I didn't even know that well.  They kept trying to tell me I should be happy; we won, after all.  Plus, they reassured me, it happens to everyone; everyone drinks a little too much at one point or another.  But did it have to be that night? I begged.  Did it have to happen then?  Did it have to keep me from seeing the most important game in Saints history?  I cried when I woke up again the next day, and I cried when I finally watched the second half on DVR at my parents house that afternoon.  These were no tears of joy.  Regret filled every salty drop as it streamed down my face.

The newspaper was filled with Saints stories for weeks before and after that fateful Sunday.  I kept most of them, even though they just made it more painfully obvious that I had lost a once-in-a-lifetime moment and would never get it back.  I have held on to these papers for more than a year now,  I think in the hopes that someday I would be able to show them to my children as proof that it really did happen.  That someday, I would be able to look back on it with joy.  With no regret.

But today is not that day.  Today, I find my tears once again hitting these dusty old pages, wishing that things could have been different.  Going over and over the events of the day, picking out every little thing I could have changed that would have kept me in that bar, kept me in that game, kept me from missing pigs fly and hell freeze over.  No, today is the day I admit to myself that I won't ever get that day back.  Today, I let myself feel for the last time the weight of those inked pages and the memories they hold that I never had.  Today, I start forgiving myself.  Today, I try to move on.

Day 38: The Shedding Snuggie

I was gung-ho about snuggies from the start. When all of you blanket purists were deriding the snuggie and its glorious genius, I was there recounting all the times I've fought a blanket to stay on while I tried to read.  I will admit, they look pretty stupid, but how fashionable do you expect to make what is essentially a backwards robe?  Comfort over beauty, people.  These things were a gift from God, a God who hates it when he's trying to drink hot chocolate and his arms get cold because the damn blanket won't stay up.  Still, with all my verbal support for the snuggie, I never actually bought one.  Much like noise-canceling headphones and tans, I simply resigned myself to envying others who had one.

Then the snuggie went viral, and out came the knock-offs.  My favorite of the knock-offs was the slanket.  I would guess, judging from the byline on their website (supposedly, "The Original Blanket with Sleeves"), that the name is meant to be a clever fusion of the words sleeves and blanket, but to be truthful, it sounds a lot more like the words skank and blanket hooked up after a party.  When I hear the name slanket, I cannot help but envision an at-best mildly-attractive "lady of the night," reading paperback romance novels on the porch of a bordello, her fake nails getting caught in the cheap seam-work of her slanket's sleeves as she imagines herself whisked away by some handsome gentleman, like in Pretty Woman.  In my imagination, every prostitute is Julia Roberts or wants to be Julia Roberts.  Also in my imagination, there is a Colonel Sanders on every chicken farm, surveying the prospects as he puffs on a cigar.  But don't judge me based on my imagination, or on my delusional ideas about how chicken farms are run.

By Christmas that year the Snuggie debuted, the commercials were coming on constantly.  There were people buying them up left and right, and even more people making fun of them.  I was neither, but I ended up with one anyway when a student handed me a large box marked with a knock-off name I can't even remember.  Despite the lack of brand name, and the fact that one of my coworkers got a Saints-themed snuggie (the jealous has not subsided), I was thrilled.  No more tucking edges, no more cold shoulders (the literal kind, anyway), no more contorting my body to keep up a blanket!  Just pure, blissful couch-worthy warmth!

After raving to my roommate about it and calling my mother to tell her the good news (you'd thought I'd won twenty bucks in the lottery), I settled into my old hand-me-down couch to watch a television show or two and quickly found out two things they don't tell you on the box.  First, this blanket with sleeves is like North Face's best arctic-weather sleeping bag.  The thing traps in every ounce of heat your body puts out.  Before the first show was over, I was crawling out of it, gasping for cold air on my poor, overheated skin.  Second, this blanket--a knock-off's knock-off--sheds worse than a cat lady's feline fan club.  After pulling the thing off me, I stood up to find chunks of the tan fabric clinging to my clothes.  It took half a lint roller to get it all off, and the rest had to be swept up off the floor.  I tried washing and drying the thing, hoping that would get the rest of the excess "fur" off, but instead, I ended up with a full lint trap and my clothes once again coated with the stuff.

Eventually, I had to retire this blanket with sleeves, and yet somehow, it did not end up in the trash.  When I found it today in the stairwell we use for storage, I accidentally held it up to me and came away with a few more lint balls.  Now more than ever, it's clear to me, I am destined to a lifetime of delicately handled hot chocolate and awkward reading positions, all to get that perfect balance of comfort and warmth.  Sorry, snuggie, it just wasn't meant to be.

Day 37: College Comforter

There is nothing better on a cold night than the weight and warmth of a familiar comforter.  It may be the only thing I like about winter.

Like so many other things, my bedspreads have changed as I've changed.  They are yet another reminder that I am not a kid anymore.  For most of us, childhood is a time of hand-me-downs and parental choices, and through most of my years at home, I just used whatever blanket my parents bought me or whatever I could dig out of the linen closet.  There was a brief episode in high school when I had a bedspread of my own choosing (a thick, blue comforter), but after year or two of having it, my parents let me bring it to the dry cleaners and that was that.  Despite days of airing it out on the fence (and drying it out, after I forgot to bring it in and it got rained on), the chemical smell never came out.  Finally, when the summer before college rolled around, my mom brought me to Linen N Things, and I picked out something new: a red, purple, and blue plaid comforter.  I was so excited about it, that I got a set of purple sheets to go with it.  (Needless to say, no guy accidentally picked up my comforter instead of his on move-in day.)  My roommate and I tried to go the route of dorm room coordination when we talked on the phone that July, but after sharing the details of our two very different color schemes, I think we mutually agreed, though not in so many words, that we really didn't care.  The end result was a room full of color, contrasting nicely with the black-and-white Bob Dylan poster (the musician, not to be confused with Bob Dylan, my roommate's fish) and the simple color scheme in her poster of The Who.

Somehow, though, when you "grow up," a colorful room does not connote the same medley of posters, bedspreads, rugs, and hand-me-down furniture assembled to distract from white walls and hours of reading and studying.  It is a deliberate selection of complementary hues.  It radiates class and style, and more money than work study will ever get you.

I guess that puts me somewhere in limbo.  Sure, my desk matches my bedside tables, and my rug complements my more adult comforter, the headboard, and my drapes.  I have a diploma and a painting from France hanging on the wall.  But there are still four different shades of wood amongst my furniture.  There are still flags affixed to the wall, really bad family photos on display, and a floor lamp being used as a towel rack.  Transition.  One day all my things will match.  One day...such is the life of a young adult.

Day 36: Manuals, Locks, and a Few Floppy Disks

I keep everything.  And the manual to everything.  And the Spanish manual to everything.

This untamed pile of papers, disks, locks, cords, bags, and used batteries reeks of amateur hoarding.  Here on my floor is the assembly information for a desk and chair I had in college, the booklet that came with a TV I gave away last spring, the receipt for those speakers that broke, a mouse pad I haven't used in four years, random wires that go to nothing, the packaging material for my smoke alarm, and six floppy disks from middle and high school marked "Do Not Discard"...that I will now be discarding.  (Sorry, teenage self, but without a floppy disk reader, it is worthless to keep your 10th grade science fair project papers. Plus, if I wanted to know that RoundUp weed killer wasn't harmful to humans, I could just check the label.  Or the website.)

Day 35: Two Jeans and a Corduroy

Finally, the day comes when I stop and realize that it's pointless to keep pants that are a size too large, and not at all flattering.  Recently, I have found myself spending inordinate amounts of time digging through this section of my closet, trying to find one of the two pairs of jeans that actually fits decently.  No more.  If there's only one pair of blue medium-wash GAP jeans in there, it shouldn't be too hard to find the Perfect Boot Cut version with the safety-pinned right belt loop.  I won't have to analyze all the pockets and re-read all the labels twice.  I won't have to bring in a flashlight to check for wash variations.  I might actually have time to dig beyond the top of the clean clothes hamper for a shirt.

Day 34: Hieroglyphics Set

Fun With Hieroglyphs, A Poem

This is the hieroglyphics set
I bought in third grade
From a Scholastic catalog
With twenty dollars I took
From my mother's wallet
Without her permission.

This is the hieroglyphics set
That came in the mail
To my teacher at school
That I snuck back home
And opened in the living room
When my mother wasn't home.

This is the hieroglyphics set
That my mother caught me with
In the living room
When she came home early.

This is the hieroglyphics set
That got me into a world of trouble
And taught me never to steal
And taught me never to lie
And taught me never to incur
The wrath of a mother
If I could help it.

This is the hieroglyphics set
That my mother let me keep.

I have no idea why.