After having worked a few hours every day for six days, my normal routines have been disrupted. It is time to completely switch my mindset again, and get back to the routines that make an isolated life bearable. It is hard work, adjusting to such extremes changes!
This morning I am back to my two hours of standing in the morning. I spend two hours on my feet, doing domestic tasks, and working on the computer from a standing position. Of course, there is great appeal to working on the computer from a standing position, now that I have a beautiful desk on which to work.
The new desk triggered a flurry of organizing and purging. Two of the filing cabinet drawers have been emptied, sorted, and the contents worth keeping refiled.
Emptying and sorting through storage units is always a lot of fun. For instance, I found an old tin in one filing cabinet drawer, in which I had stored a variety of business cards. This collection started back in the early 1970s, so some of these cards are over forty years old. Of course they are no longer relevant for contact purposes. But my oh my, I had a wonderful time remembering all the people and activities that these cards represented.
There was a business card belonging to my uncle, when he was a real estate salesman; he passed away years ago. The card from the Investigations Officer, who investigated and charged the wealthy foreign student who uttered death threats against my children, allowed me deep feelings of gratitude to the universe, that my children lived through the ordeal, even if my career was taken down by it. There were happy memories of haircuts elicited by the business card of my favourite hairdresser Michael, and from that same period of time the whimsical business card of my friend Annie, who is now living another life in another time in England. The business card of the young man who gave me my first mortgage brought back memories of being turned down by credit unions, and bank, after bank, after bank, for a mortgage. I walked into the Royal Bank of Canada with no hope, and within thirty minutes I had bought myself my first house, and a safe home for my girls. The young man had good instincts and was willing to take a chance, which paid off for both of us. These are the paths into the past that I walked yesterday.
Now the business cards are all filed, and stored away for another possible trip down memory lane. The cards are meaningless to anyone else. We are like snowflakes, similar in so many ways, unique in others.
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Worldly Distractions
Weather
-7°C
Date: 4:00 PM EST Tuesday 4 February 2014
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 102.9 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: -6.9°C
Dewpoint: -11.5°C
Humidity: 70%
Wind: SSE 5 km/h
Wind Chill: -9
Quote
“One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.”
Rita Mae Brown
[Depends on what you manage to forget!]
Because I have oodles of attic and additional storage space, I also have oodles of boxes with memorabilia. It’s fun to have a mission in search of something and discover little nuggets that trigger memorable events or people.
Last summer I attended a fabulous workshop and gathered some of my smaller items of memorabilia and incorporated them into a piece that now is installed on a wall. That all may sound grand and wonderful, but a smidgeon of me wishes I’d kept them hidden in boxes for future discovery. I know that sounds weird. In fact, I’ve deconstructed portions of the piece for that very reason. 🙂
The rising sun looks similar from my station on the planet. Lots of trees, but with no snow at the moment.
I have slowly weeded out most of my memorabilia. The house was too small and the living space to vital to be buried in memories. Too bad. I miss going to my grandmother’s house and watching her pull out ancient treasures. Oh well.
Reenie, I love hidden treasures. In my living environment I like simplicity, lots of white, open spaces…
I love to look at the artful way in which other people arrange their treasures, it is lovely to look at. I cannot accomplish a satisfying “full” look with my treasure, I couldn’t display them with that kind of flair. They are all separate voices for me, from different times, places, lives, they just won’t go together in any coherent way in my heart, and so my eye cannot weave them together either. And so they are kept in their treasure boxes, where I might find them again one day, and remember.
Tom, we have a litte house in the city, which we purchased almost four years ago, to move into, but we didn’t move. Now we are renovating the poor little thing, which is becoming the cute little thing as time goes by. It is small, around 640-680 square feet of floor space. Right now it is filled with the extra furniture we have held onto over the years, there are no treasures there. It is a joy to spend time there though, everything seems to simple, and it is. If we get to move there we will be weeding out most of our belongings, I will have to make tough choices.
My Grandmother’s house too was full of treasures! We loved to go through the closets, finding dresses from the 20s, horse harnesses from the farm days, ration books from the war, wow, how wonderful that was!
The other day I came across an old list, of names and telephone numbers that my first love had given to me, asking me to call them to invite them to one of his gigs. I remember talking to all of those people, most for the first time, and how wonderful it was to meet them! So yesterday I took the list to the little wood stove in the basement, and set it on fire in the stove, and as it burned I said a prayer for my first love, now passed, and made a wish by the light of the flame, for more good times to come. I won’t forget the list, or my little ceremony. I am thinking that sometimes treasures in the heart are all that I will need to take me into the future.
It looks like we have a lobster trap cake with peaks of white frosting on it. Greetings from Salem, MA!
Bex, I see you have had some weather!! It is only cold here, the snow missed us, but all good people to the south of us seem to have experienced quite a storm! Pretty though, and amusing!