Day 20: Straightener

I have always had naturally straight hair.

So why I ever went out and bought a hair straightener is beyond me. Did I hallucinate waves in my hair? Did I mistake it for a curling iron? It's like me buying a hard top for my non-convertible or getting a product that would make my skin whiter. Have you seen my skin? It's already plenty white.

Here's to the redundancy of this straightener, and to finally getting rid of it.

Day 19: Bags

It turns out that you don't need to be old, wear monochromatic clothing, or even have a shopping cart to be a bag lady. All you need is to receive presents or buy a few things, and after a while, the bags begin to pile up: inside of closets, inside of umbrella stands, inside of empty ceramic pots...even inside of other bags.

The problem with bags is that they're so useful. Depending on their size and durability, they can hold a variety of items and serve multiple functions. They're not like scented candles or bookends. They are infinitely practical. Last week, for example, my class cut up plastic bags to build parachutes. While outside, some of the students ran around using their bags as kites, and others tied bags under their chins like bonnets (both were told to stop). I used a bag to hold the parachutes and another to hold trash. By the end of the day, we actually ran out of bags, and I wished that I had hoarded them better. (I know, a low point for me.)

But this bag of bags on the floor, this Russian doll of practicality, has sat in a side closet for ten months now, untouched, and so it seems that too many bags is possible, that bags are not infinitely useful if they are not used at all. That it's high time that the closets, and the umbrella stands, and the ceramic pots be emptied, and the bags be brought out to the light. They may not have limitless usefulness, but they just might be able to hold my next delivery to Goodwill.

Day 18: Candles

You know it's bad when you find a scented candle hidden among the flour, oil, and breadcrumbs in your pantry. Can you see it?


I don't think I agree with the long-held theory that children believe their teachers live at school. If their idea of me is anything like my idea of the dentist (and I like the dentist), then it's not so much that I live at school as that I do not exist outside of school. That is to say, the only place that I have ever seen my dentist is at his office. I have gone to the same dentist for at least twenty years, and I've never seen him in anything but scrubs. I know he has children, but I've never seen them or even seen pictures of them. I imagine he lives in a nice house. I imagine he has hobbies. But I don't actually know anything besides that he is a nice man, a dentist, and that he has a lot of fillings for someone who spends the day talking about how to keep your teeth healthy. Sure, you would think that the fact that I've usually got some tool stuck in my mouth would mean that the conversation would center more on him, but not so. To me, he is simply a dentist. End of matter, case closed.

Children must look at their teachers in much the same way. Sure, they know a little about me. They know my full name, they know my favorite color (green), they know that my age falls somewhere in the 20 to 40 year-old range (because that's as specific as I'll be). They know my favorite word is defenestration (the act of throwing someone or something out of a window), and that I know a little something about football. A few of them have seen a member of my family at one point; a few others have seen me around town. But pretty much everyone has family members, shops at a grocery store, and goes to Mardi Gras parades. Really, all they know about me comes from our interactions at school. I don't like whining or tattling. I don't give out candy, I can draw pretty good circles but not so straight lines, and I know a lot about math and science. There is usually at least one typo on every assessment I give, and I'm willing to hear them out as long as they're willing to respect my decisions. But none of that gives a clear picture of what I like to do. It's nothing like seeing me play kickball in gold tights, or run a meeting, or shoot the breeze with friends. It's nothing like seeing my messy room, or hearing me scream at a Saints game, or even reading this blog. It gives kids little idea of what a teacher is really like outside of school.

Then the end of the year rolls around, and it's present time. Despite the fact that they spend almost as much time with me each day as they spend awake at home, the kids are just as clueless as their parents when they choose teacher gifts. And what's the go-to gift for people you don't know? Candles. And not just any candles. Not the kind of candles you could decorate a table with or actually use on a birthday cake. No, scented candles. Like they assume that every teacher wants their (non-existent) kitchen to smell like green apples and pralines. As much as I don't, I hold on to them anyway. Sure, I've managed to re-gift a few along the way, generally to people whose extra-professional lives I find similarly mysterious, but mostly they find their way to a table, a stove top, a ledge, or a pantry (don't ask, because I don't know how it got there). I don't know who actually uses scented candles on a regular basis, but I hope they exist. I imagine they would be the same sort of people who buy cucumber melon body mist at Bath and Body Works and debate the merits of Linen Fresh versus Outdoor Fresh fabric softener. Like hunting dogs, they have extra powerful noses, and like carpentry shops, great fire insurance. Occasionally, I hope, they shop at Goodwill.

Day 17: Bookends

The summer after sixth grade, my parents drove me up to Natchitoches, Louisiana to drop me off at a one-week gifted camp. Natchitoches, also known as the City of Lights, is not known for much else. It has a small college called Northwestern State (not to be confused, mind you, with the Northwestern University) and Louisiana's School for Math, Science, and the Arts, a boarding school of sorts. Outside of their joint campus, but before you meet the seeming vastness of Walmarts and strip malls that overtake the town, there is a quaint little downtown area. There, in a small brick-front store, I found this set of matching Noah's Ark bookends. To be honest, I have a hard time remembering why I thought I needed to buy them in the first place, much less for the thirty dollars the price tag on the box states I spent on them (a lot when you're eleven and your only income source is washing dishes or sheets, or worse, venturing out into the shed at night to feed the dog, where you know you saw a rat run along one of the shelves). The bookends are cute, I suppose, but more the kind of thing a woman buys when she's pregnant with her first child, before she realizes that babies really only care about things they can eat or play with. It's harder still for me to understand why I held on to them for as long as I have. Sixth grade was a long time ago, and they have no particular sentimental attachment. The time I spent in Natchitoches that summer was fun, but I really only remember designing a basketball gym and a golf course. Oh, and that I was one of only two girls in the basketball group (please, did you really think I'd be part of the sorority that was the swimming pool group?) and that our golf course included little golfers with names like "Leopard Forest." Oh, and I remember listening to my roommate sing opera, which now seems like a weird thing for an eleven year old to do. I remember her being pretty well-endowed, too (to my non-existent chest), and that she would tie up a towel between the bed and desk to change behind. I think she was from Alexandria. I remember a boy asking me to dance with him the final night. He was really cute and nice and listened to the same kind of music I did. He tried to drag me out onto the dance floor, but I refused, instead clinging desperately to the chair I was sitting in. No lie, that chair made it halfway onto the dance floor before he gave up. And to top it all off, I woke up the next morning with a crick in my neck after head-banging with friends at said dance. Serves me right. Poor boy.

I guess there are a few memories hidden in these old bookends yet. May they grace the home of a new mother-to-be, or the room of some other strange pre-teen who has no idea how to relate to the male species or, for that matter, how to properly head-bang.

Day 16: Purses

Wallets and purses and handbags, oh my!

A few of these were used quite often back in the day, but most were gifts from people who didn't realize that I'm a one purse and one wallet kind of girl (even if it doesn't match what I'm wearing). So, it's time to admit that will never use these wallets, purses, and handbags again, if I ever used them in the first place, and add them to the outgoing pile.

Day 15: Graphing Calculator

Most people don't have two graphing calculators. In fact, I would venture to say that most people don't have even one.

I got my first graphing calculator my freshman year of high school. It was a hand-me-down from my older brother, who somehow managed to convince my mom that he needed a whole new calculator (a year later) and that I should be stuck with the old one. Not only is it demeaning to still have second-hand items forced on you past elementary school, but I found out later that the connection feature was broken. The metallic tip on the transfer cord had gotten stuck inside of the calculator sometime before it came to me. So not only was I stuck with a hand-me-down, I was stuck copying the quadratic formula program manually into my calculator instead of playing Tetris during study hall like everyone else.

Then, sometime during my senior year of high school, one cheap, red lollipop and I managed to screw it up worse. As I was leaning forward to type something into the calculator for homework one day, lollipop in mouth, gravity took hold and a nice stream of sucker-infused spit ran down right onto the keypad. I don't remember if anyone else saw it happen, but it was disgusting. Like, really gross. Worse, I was pretty sure I had just broken my calculator. Then again, that would mean I'd need a new one, right?

Wrong. Some hand-me-downs just won't die. They are the cockroaches in the world of sibling possessions. The calculator graphed and calculated just as well as before. All I got out of the lolli-spit incident was sticky keys and the occasional ant.

When I left for college, I tried to pawn off the calculator on my younger sister, pulling the same trick my brother had pulled on me four years prior. Only this time, it didn't work. She got a fancy new one, and I continued to be stuck with crap. Yet more proof that I would make a terrible lawyer.

Finally, a few years ago, I resorted to simply asking for a new graphing calculator for Christmas. I recognize that that is an incredibly nerdy thing to ask for, but you have to understand that I am incredibly nerdy person. Plus, it's easier to balance my checkbook when I can see everything I've typed in before I press enter. So when the time came, and I was handed a "number-related" present, I was a little more giddy than is appropriate for a non-math major. I pulled off the wrapping, ready to stare through hard plastic packaging at the subtle curves of my new, state of the art TI-83. But instead of plastic and shine, the calculator just lay there in a recycled shipping box. I turned it over in my hand, dingy gray, scuffed plastic and crevices filled with glue residue, to find someone else's initials scratched into the back. Usually, I try really hard to look excited about a present, even if I don't like it, but I couldn't. Fate (and ebay) had screwed me once again. I'm all about reduce, reuse, recycle, but that cycle has to start somewhere, and for once, I wanted it to start with me.

Now stuck with two crappy calculators, it seemed only logical to keep both of them and use them equally often. Clearly, though, that logic was faulty. It's like keeping two dead-beat boyfriends because they're equally dead-beat. I guess I could just get rid of both of them and buy a new one myself...but where's the fun in that?

Day 14: Microphone

Readers, meet my childhood doll, Mary. Mary, readers. No, I know what some of you may be thinking, but you've read the title of this post. You know it's not her. No, this is not Mary's final hurrah. Simply by virtue of having made it through my brother's toy-decapitation phase early in life (poor Barbie), she has earned total immunity from all future purgings. Instead, Mary is playing Vanna today. Sure, the dress is not so glamorous, perhaps, but you must admit her face has a certain Elizabeth Taylor quality to it (as does her slow aging).

Too soon for Elizabeth Taylor jokes? Probably.

In my last semester of graduate school (there were only two, but it makes me sound smarter when I say it that way), I bought a laptop. It was my second computer and a huge relief to have something portable to work on my thesis with. Before the laptop was the iMac. It was my first computer, and I loved it. To this day, it chugs away at snail's pace in my parent's entrance room, its once spacious 40 gig memory now burdened with my younger brother's countless video games and music. While quite the new thing in its day, one of the features it nonetheless lacked (in addition to a floppy disk drive) was a strong internal microphone. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, but one of the projects in a college class I took was to create a digital story. Think, slide-show with voice over. So I decided to invest in something that could capture my voice at a higher quality. Unfortunately, this microphone did not do the trick. There were compatibility issues, or maybe just cheapness issues. Either way, I ended up recording the voice-over for "A Weekend Alone in Paris" on my iMac's wimpy microphone. The sound quality isn't great, but I often wonder if maybe my voice just sounds like that. To avoid any definite answer (I'm pretty sure I don't want to know), that digital story will just have to stay hidden in the folds of my overly-complex computer filing system for now. Perhaps for a later viewing. Perhaps for a later purging.
Since that project, the microphone has sat in a drawer, its existence justified by the thought that I'll be ready, should I ever need an external microphone. It didn't work the first time, though, so I'm not sure how I've managed to convince myself of its necessity for this many years. They say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I think this microphone might be proof that this label suits me a little too well.

Day 13: Floppy Disk Drive

And you thought the VHS tapes were old school...


This afternoon at lunch, a friend asked what I was giving up today. I honestly hadn't thought about it yet. Some days, I have a backlog of items ready for the purging. Other days, it's harder: what can I give away that's substantial without giving away something I really DO need? Some days, I consider giving everything away. But then I'd end up broke from buying it all back.

***

If you're wondering why I've kept an external floppy disk drive all these years, it's not because I have a secret fetish for items with contradictory names (seriously, floppy disks are not floppy). No, I kept it...just in case.

In addition to competitive natures, large heads, and the desire to be even vaguely related to someone famous (or infamous), a "just in case" attitude runs strong in the Olinde family. Case in point, a few years ago, one of my aunts was visiting my grandparents at the same time I was. I walked out with her at one point to get something from her car, and when she opened her trunk, I was in poor-packer's awe. The trunk was full to the gills with various outfits, boots, shirts... Anything she might need, she explained, for whatever situation came up. She was only there for the weekend, but she could've been there for months, if she needed to be.

What I choose to keep among my worldly possessions follows something along those lines. Pretty soon, I will probably get the courage to get rid of the German notes I've kept from high school (just in case I ever started learning German again) and the various necklaces and bracelets I've kept hidden in a drawer (for when I find something they go perfectly with). But these moments rarely come. In reality, German is probably tot to me, and those necklaces will never be my style, no matter how much love my grandmother spent on HSN buying them. Likewise, I don't expect there will be a day when I find that long lost copy of Oregon Trail from the 90s and think to myself, "Where is a floppy disk drive when you need one?" And if that day ever does come, well, it wouldn't do me any good anyway. I can't remember how to enter a command in MS-DOS to save my life. And I don't think my computer can either.

Day 12: Vanity Mirror

A few years ago, there was a fad of lists that circulated through the online world that attempted to pinpoint you based on obvious stereotypes, lists like "You know you're ghetto when..." or "You know you're from Idaho when..." As I took the mirror down from my dresser to place it in my lenten outgoing pile, I thought to myself: "You know you're vain when..." I can imagine it, a long list at the bottom of an even longer series of forwarded messages, stuck in my spam box, dying for me to mark it "not junk" so it can be read and quell any growing suspicions that I just might care a little too much. Say it with me: I am not vain. I am not vain. (Is it vain to say that?)

You know you're vain when...

• You own a vanity mirror. (Ouch.)
• You wear makeup when you exercise. (Only if it's already on, I swear!)
• You have more mirrors than you can use. (Umm...)
• You have more photos of yourself on facebook than of your friends. (Phew, that's a no.)
• You turn the radio up loud and dance in front of your full length mirror. (Do they actually expect you to fess up to these things?)
• You buy more produce for facials than for salads. (People really do that?)
• Your computer's background display is a picture of you lifting weights. (That's a no, and 4/7 is still failing right?)

If all the mirrors I already had in my room weren't enough, I went ahead last summer and bought myself this vanity mirror. I thought it would make it easier for me to apply eye liner or to tweeze, but mostly it just makes my pores look really, really big and blinds me with its side lights. So to save myself from diminishing self-worth and permanently dilated pupils, this mirror gets the boot.

Day 11: Movies

I know. I can't believe I still own VHS tapes, either.

Several years ago, I bought a number of DVDs at once, planning on building a full-fledged movie library by the time I was old enough to own my own house. I didn't get very far, though. It turns out that time goes by pretty quickly, and that movies actually cost a significant amount of money in large quantities. Beyond that, though, I've finally begun to realize that the movies I keep are much like the books I've left dusty in my shelves all these years. They rarely get any use, but how could I not have a collection of them?

[Scene opens; friend looks in a cabinet below television, then another, then another until all the cabinets have been discovered to be bare]
Friend: Wait, you don't own a single movie?
Me: No, I don't really like re-watching movies, so what's the point? It'd be a waste of money.
Friend: But every normal American with a television has at least one movie. Name someone else you know who doesn't own a movie.
Me: Well, technically the television is my roommate's...


Truth is, I should get rid of all of my DVDs. I haven't watched most of them in more than a year. But there are some I just can't let go of. Not yet anyway...

Das Leben Der Anderen (The Lives of Others)
Damn those Stasi, or whatever they're called!

Pride and Prejudice (BBC)
Every self-respecting woman owns or wishes she owned this. If she says otherwise, she's in denial.

How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Matthew McConaughey isn't Colin Firth. But he'll do.

Toy Story 3
Favorite movie trilogy of all time. Star Wars and the Godfather have nothing on this Pixar masterpiece.

The Holiday
Another chick flick. Don't judge.

The Office, seasons 1-3 (not BBC)
I'm pretty sure every normal American needs unfettered access to at least one good "that's what she said" joke. Name someone you know that doesn't.

Day 10: Socks

In college, I knew a couple of girls that would walk around campus, wherever they went, completely barefoot. Beyond the obvious concerns--broken glass, stray nails, being stared at, residue from college activities like post-binge vomiting--I knew I could never bring myself to do the same. I just love socks too much. If I didn't have to do my own laundry, I might walk around in just socks, wherever I went. It would be worth the stares, though I think the possibility of vomit residue would still haunt me (no sock is thick enough for that). My anxiety about being barefoot, and in turn love of socks, probably stems from childhood, like all things. As a kid, my mom used to yell at us to put on our socks and shoes when we went outside so we wouldn't get worms. We would ignore her demand, and we would get worms. Eventually, though, we learned, and followed at least half of her directions, only to be fussed at about how dirty our socks were and all the holes we'd get in them. But they were just so comfortable, just the right balance of protection and freedom.

Years down the road now, I mostly wear socks in the house or inside shoes, but they nonetheless manage to become worn, dingy, and faded. Then there are the too-large and too-small socks, a common problem for a woman with long and slightly narrow feet. Like all collections, my sock drawer needed to be reevaluated. Half have found a new home in the garbage.

Day 9: CD player

One day in middle school, my friend Danika and I were sitting around my room listening to the radio, and a new song called by a girl named Britney Spears came on. "This is pretty good," I said. "She sings well. Is she black?" Then, if my memory serves me correctly, Danika looked at me like I was an idiot. Britney was no Brandy or Destiny's Child. In fact, she probably shared more in common with Hanson: white, blond, and hopelessly doomed to an on-and-off career of bad pop music. "Hit Me Baby One More Time" was the first and last Britney song I ever liked, and the last time I ever tried (out loud, anyway) to determine someone's race by his or her voice. Later, Justin Bieber would teach me that gender was no given, either.

According to manufacturer information, I got this CD player at the beginning of high school, years after I first heard that Britney Spears song. At the time, CDs were still pretty new to me. I got my first CD (Temptations Greatest Hits) in eighth grade and purchased a variety of music after that. The beginning of high school was around the time where my boy band phase (BSB4Life) met my Christian music phase (Jesus! Yeah!). Cassette tapes, like VHS tapes, were still a viable form of recording, and the 3-in-one radio/cd/tape component allowed for mixed tape creations. Personally, I was never any good at making mixed tapes. I usually don't recognize a song until the first words have been sung, and by that point, it's too late to hit the record button. Who wants a mixed tape of partially-recorded songs?

When senior year of high school came around, I got my first computer and spent innumerable hours on iTunes instead. No changing cds, no fast-forwarding to the right song on the tape. I could shuffle and skip and even burn CDs with my fancy CD-R drive. When I left for college, I lent the CD player to my sister for safe keeping (actually, I gave it to her...and then took it back years later). By the end of college, I had a laptop and an iPoD to play my music wherever I wanted, cord-free.

For the past three years, the CD player has sat somewhere in my room. For a while there, I would crank up the radio while I cleaned my room and bathroom, singing along to those same B97 airwaves that graced its simple antenna years before. But then Pandora came along, and I could give Britney Spears and the Black-Eyed Peas the thumbs-down, and never have to endure another "Imma Be" or "Circus" again.

It's funny how new technology makes old technology obsolete. Eleven years ago, this was a tizight CD Radio Cassette-Corder. Now it's a bookend on a bottom shelf. Somehow, I don't think it will end up like the record players people still keep to play old vinyls. Somehow it seems to me that this silver-purple machine will never be the kind of antique people rummage for at garage sales and on reality television. For now, though, it works, and surely someone still has an old *NSync tape they're dying to play one more time.

Day 8: Blouses

As I ended my t-shirt phase, I moved into a phase of colorful blouses: ones that sat on my shoulders and ones with French writing, some tight and some looser. There are even a couple of strapless shirts mixed in there. But let's be honest, they were all doomed from the start. The tight were too tight, and the loose, too loose. The strapless, well, there's just so little to hold them up that wearing them feels like I might inadvertently flash someone at any moment. Considering the limited amount of time I spend indecently exposed on Bourbon Street (oh wait, that's never) or at friends' get-togethers (still never), I suppose I have two options: visit a plastic surgeon for some extra support, or give away the shirts. All other considerations aside, the latter is clearly more cost-effective. Option two, it is.

Day 7: T-Shirts

Up until probably the end of college, I was the queen of t-shirts. It's been a few years since then, but I've still managed to hold on to enough t-shirts to merit two dresser drawers. Most of my t-shirts have some kind of history or sentimental value. The green shirt at the left was my elementary fieldtrip shirt in 6th grade, and the Landrieu shirt was given to me by a former student. The black and yellow shirt to the right was bought during my "I love batman" phase, and I got the "Wie Geht's Dir Heute?" shirt at a German language camp in high school. But my favorite shirt of all time is the one smack in the middle. My stand-in godmother, Becky, gave it to me when I was a kid, and I wore it so much that it's basically see-through now. I hate to let it go, but what good does it do me at the bottom of a dresser drawer? So, to Goodwill it goes.

Day 6: Toiletries

I'll try most things once, particularly when it comes to beauty/toiletry items from Walgreens. I have therefore amassed a large quantity of disappointing items that I couldn't stand to throw away...until now.

Day 5: Birdhouse

In middle school, we used to do an art project in the spring to sell at the Crawfish Boil. It was one of those projects where you make something that your parents feel obligated to buy so the school gets money. My friend Bethany and I painted this birdhouse in seventh grade, and I always thought we did a really good job for two non-artists.

Who knows, maybe the person who finds it at Goodwill will actually put it out, and a bird will live in it. It'll have to be small bird, with a thing for geometric patterns and bright colors, but you never know.

Day 4: Box o' Memories

Today, I dropped off my day one books at Latter Library. As I asked about where to place the books, the woman leafed through them and abruptly turned to me.
"You went to NOCCA." "Yes." "The Creative Writing program." "Yes." "With Brad Richard." "Yes."
I remember saying something in my first post about books representing my life and personality...but I had no idea they pinpointed me so specifically.

When I said yesterday that I was an optimistic pack rat, that was no understatement. When I was younger, I used to think that I was going to be a great writer somewhere and win the Newberry Award for some stellar piece of fiction. So the next stop in that train of thought (obviously) was that someone was going to want to compile my letters and papers for a closer look at my life and work. I mean, who wouldn't want to know what my friend Danika and I used to write about in our shared journal in middle school? (Boys, celebrities, the usual...just in case you were curious)

Needless to say, I am not a great writer somewhere with silver Newbery seals on the front covers of my esteemed works. Mostly, I keep the papers and the knick-knacks now for their sentimental value or to share with my children and grandchildren someday (For example, I know they'll be totally rapt when I teach them how to play Pogs, so the pink Pog tube with the dog sticker on it stays). But today, it's out with the old stuff I just don't need any more: christmas cards from years ago, disposable-camera pictures of random Italian monuments, those little crosses you make on Palm Sunday with blessed palm leaves.

And so, a tribute to a few things on their way to the trash/recycling...

2003
I was in a bad mood the day we moved my things into my first year dorm room, so my mom bought me a smoothie...and this. Who knows what the pills inside actually do to your body, but this packet sat nailed to my wall my entire first year of college. Call it the placebo effect or whatever you want, but that was a good year.

2005
If I remember correctly, this story started out as an AIM conversation and somehow turned into a fantasy short story about a woman who lives on an island and helps a man that was shipwrecked on the beach, who is also the first man she's ever met. Not award-winning material, but it was kind of fun to write.

2007
On Monday April 16, 2007, a Virginia Tech student named Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people and then himself. In honor of those lost, UVA's Catholic Student Ministry hosted a vigil service. The homily was awful and insensitive, but when another priest, Fr. Luke, stood up to speak, he managed to save it all. We were so thankful, we wrote a song for him, called "Holy Back" (to the tune of "Sexy Back"). We never gave it to him, but hopefully, he knew his words were appreciated.

2000's
Confession: I am OCD when it comes to tracking my finances. But you would be too if you'd paid as many overdraft fees as I have. Still, it's 2011, time to let the college receipts go.

2007-2008
The walls were really thin in the apartment I lived in during my graduate year at UVA, and the guys that lived next door had interesting taste in music. Everything from Kanye West to Cher to the Sound of Music. In this notebook, the girls and I wrote down every song we could make out, starting with "Total Eclipse of the Heart." As a parting gift that May, we typed up the entire list and gave it to the guys. And they cracked up.

2005-2008
As my part-time job in college and graduate school, I substituted and worked as an assistant at the International School of Charlottesville, a small preschool not far from where I lived. In addition to making wonderful friends there (Geraldine! Virginie!) and learning to speak French much better than when I started, I received a lot of wonderful drawings from the kids there. This picture is from Emilie, one of the teacher's daughters, and a student in a class I worked with.



Papers and string and newspaper clippings and bags and letters and pictures.
Gone but not forgotten.

Day 3: Shoes

Shoes. It only seems right to keep moving through my closet after a day of dress purging. I was surprised there weren't more shoes to get rid of. Apparently, despite the fact that I wear my black pumas all day almost every single day, I still manage to get the other shoes in here and there. Still, it was high time to let go of a few lovely pieces of footwear. None of them have been worn in more than a year. All of them hurt my feet. Not sure why I kept them in the first place...

(Who am I kidding? They're cute, and I'm an optimistic pack rat. Of course I kept them way too long.)

Day 2: Dresses

There's nothing like staring into your closet year after year and telling yourself, "Sure, I'll wear that again one day" when you know you probably won't. After moving some of these items through more than four different houses and apartments, it was grand time to look at each of them carefully and ask the honest question: "When is the last time I wore you?"

Here is a final tribute to a few of the dresses that got the boot.


The beaded blue floor-length dress.

My third year of college was the first time I ever really fell in love. A couple of weeks after we started dating, we went to UVA's Restoration ball, and I wore this dress. He was appropriately in awe, and the guy I had a massive crush on before him (that had broken my heart the year before) looked like a sucker when he saw us together. I haven't worn the dress since then. I can't imagine it being part of a better memory.







The French countryside dress.

I found this French-made dress in the second-hand section of a clothing boutique in Charlottesville just before May of my final year at UVA. I had to buy it. Not only did it fit well, but it seemed right to wear a French dress to get a French degree. I graduated in this dress, said goodbye to some of my best friends in this dress, and years later, I watched two great friends get married in this dress. Now, it's off to make memories with someone else.







The humble mirror dress.

Confession: I have never worn this dress outside of my house. But I have tried it on in front of my mirror more times than I can count. It is one of those dresses you wish you could wear, but you never get the guts to walk out the door in. Sure, it's not much to look at on a hanger, but it can hug curves like nobody's business. Now, it must go on to someone with less inhibitions than me...or at least someone with a great trench coat.







Moon River Express

In early high school, I learned how to play Moon River on the piano. It was an absolutely beautiful song, and to play things up for the recital, my piano teacher thought it would be a great idea for me to dress up like Audrey Hepburn. I found this dress at Express: a little black, reversible dress that fell nicely and made me look better endowed than I was. It was perfect for the occasion, and I may have worn it to a dance later that year. I have had this dress the longest. It might be my oldest clothing item, and all the more reason to say goodbye.



So, with these dresses, I give a final hurrah to all I experienced in them. While the dresses may be gone, I hope that the memories never leave.

Day 1: Books

Yesterday, I was at a bar with a few friends, celebrating the end of Mardi Gras, and when we got to discussing Lent and this idea of giving away a thing a day, one of the guys asked me what I thought I would give away first. I honestly hadn't thought about it. I'd spent so much time mulling over things I could give away without too much pain, that I hadn't really decided on any one thing to start with. And somehow, the first thing seems the most important. It seems symbolic, like everything after that will be as superficial or as meaningful as it is. So this morning, as I stood in the corner of my room and surveyed the vast landscape of unused things, I decided that the first to go had to be the thing closest to my heart.

In graduate school, I took an education class called "Teaching Writing." In name, the class was meant more for teachers than for writers themselves, but the professor emphasized the importance of writing to understand and experience what our students would experience. I wrote a number of different things in the class, but the one I remember best, and the one I submitted for our class anthology, was a piece about Katrina. Now what you have to understand is that, every time I try to write about when Katrina hit, I cry. Not a tear-stained cheek, but a good, honest cry. More than five years later, that event and those feelings still have the power they had in 2005. They're not provoked very often anymore--New Orleans looks a lot like its old self in many ways--but writing about it brings everything back, and I usually abandon Katrina stories a few paragraphs in when I realize that I can't do it justice. I can't make you feel what I felt, and for that matter, I have a hard time letting myself feel what I felt again. The only successful piece I've ever done on Katrina required no punctuation, no thoughts, no feelings, no tears. I think I would call it a poem, but it was more like arranging a bouquet: a sad, but hopeful bouquet of the things I yearned for most when the city flooded and I was stuck at school in Virginia: miles away from my family, miles away from my home, miles away from my books.



I have always thought of my books as a necessary part of me, something painfully space-consuming and heavy but necessary to move around with me to every new house I live in, a commentary on my life and personality. I have kept them for comfort of their presence, old friends on tired old shelves. So for day one of this Lenten purging, I am giving away books. Not all of them, of course, just the ones that, if I'm being honest with myself (and that can be hard), I will never actually read or re-read. It is a little like spring cleaning my Facebook friend list: who do I never talk to? Who was I never really friends to begin with? Who did I meet but never really hit it off with? Surprisingly, each book in the box made the next book easier to take off the shelf. Now, with a box full of estranged old friends ready to be donated to the library, I feel good. Not just relieved, but like I just finished a good run...and want to run a little more.