Memory Lane

For the past week, we've been packing up and de-cluttering in order to get the house on the market.  Savers came this afternoon and picked up a very large pile of donations.  Mostly  baby stuff, like the changing table and diaper bag.  Strangely, I don't feel too sad seeing those things go.  We're quite happy with the "babies" that we have.  And we're almost to the home stretch where there will be no diapers anymore!

Brian and I have started taking separate trips down to the basement to go through things down there with a trash bag in one hand.  I've unearthed craft supplies that I forgot that I had.  For one thing, I found a sewing project that I started with my mom, a nightshirt for me.  I had to have started it at least nine years ago so it won't fit me.  Into the trash it went.

Then I made a fun discovery:  in a diaper box marked "sharp utensils" I came across every single on of my diaries!  I brought the box up to the kitchen table to marvel.  I also had another box containing letters from my high school boyfriend, B.  We dated for two years, and he was my first heartbreak.  I didn't keep these things because I still hold a candle, but because they were snapshots of the past, time preserved.  Plus his notes were always fun, with pictures that he had drawn of people we knew, jokes, and general sweetness.  I didn't go through the notes much, but I've already discovered that in the twenty years that have passed, I don't "get" all of the jokes anymore.  :)

So all productivity ceased and I took a stroll down Memory Lane, allowing me to do this:

70.  read all of my old diaries

I had diaries from 1988-2002.  I was in fifth grade in 1988, and 2002 was the first year we owned this house.   I was big on diaries, I would spend lots of time writing in one.  Sometimes it was theraputic, sometimes it was just about documenting things that I wanted to remember.  Some of it was good, and some of it was not-so-good.   All of it was intriguing.  The younger years are what one might expect, "I'm mad because so-and-so is no longer my friend" or "we had chicken for dinner."  Really deep stuff.  :)  As the years go on the content gets better and the writing improves.  There are a lot of Madonna lyrics in the teenage, junior-high years.  (Apparently this was before the music companies were required to carry age labels I guess....racy!)  

I was apparently boy-crazy.  Every entry revolves around some boy named Dave, or Mark or Pete or WHATEVER!!!  A lot of teenage angst.  I wouldn't repeat that time of my life over again for all the tea in China.  (So-and-so is mean....this so-and-so is trying to wreck my life.  I have no friends.  WaahhhH!)  Interestingly enough.... A lot of my "so-and-so"  friends from those years are still people that I am friends with today.  So I guess it all worked out!  Old friends are the best.    They also made me happy that I have BOYS.  No teenage girl drama in my house.  Though....if these boys are heartbreakers like their Dad was back in the day, I may have some teenage girl problems after all.

Brian got to enjoy some of this too.  He got ahold of the diary that I was keeping when we first met, and those first few months together.  That was fun to re-live for both of us.

Back into the box they go.  Maybe I'll find them again in 20 years and do it again.