random thoughts – Day 1,903 – (Monday) – old notes and mowing

The rain and intermittent sunshine have produced a lush backyard lawn and the third mow of the season took place tonight. Psychologically, it felt better that it didn’t occur in May. In terms of homeowner workload and mowing, I greatly prefer the drought periods and fewer mows.

After work and before the mowing, there was another round of life-sized Jenga. More packed items and boxes were slipped into in the spaces between already placed boxes so they didn’t require any extra room. A solution was found for the smaller of the matted and framed photos when I spotted the stiff bubble pack bags the frozen items came in with the pandemic grocery deliveries. They smallest of the large photos fit into the largest of the padded bags and the corners could fold over for extra protection. The finished package is slim enough to fit in between the various totes that tend to have a wider top and slightly tapered bottom.

Boxes are still being gone through and the discoveries are fun. Exciting, even. One box opened on Saturday was full of microcassettes with interviews I did with story subjects and background sources while working at the weekly newspaper in Tennessee. There were also several years of tarot and psychic readings done for me by a friend in Tennessee. The cassette recorder wasn’t in the box with the tapes, but today, the recorder was found in another box. Now I feel compelled to set them aside and carve out some time on the weekend to have a listen.

The former car music collection.

A Market Basket shopping bag held all the CDs and cassettes that used to live in my beloved Honda CRV. There was a pull out drawer under the passenger seat that was stuffed with music, plus storage slots in the dashboard for CDs and tapes. The CD player held multiple CDs which were rotated at whim. I really miss the six-CD player and cassette deck and my ability to listen at will to Canadian bands, local bands I had seen and liked, and even music by friends. 

Another box held checkbook registers from accounts going back to my first checking account in college and then with a series of banks that no longer exist. I was diligent with notations of expenses and thought (knew?) I would someday find it fascinating to read the details of my early financial life. That won’t be possible now, because I chucked them into the trash.

If only I could muster that level of strength regarding the box of date books, planners, and journals. In my 20s, I was convinced I had the most boring teen years of all earthlings, but when I flipped through my little Hallmark date books, obtained annually from Baron’s card shop in Fitchburg, I was amazed at all the things I did in high school. According to those little date books, I was always doing something – ballet, work, babysitting, shopping, going to dances. From a distance, it looked more exciting than when I was living it and feeling bored and restless. It will be fun revisiting those little books again, but this isn’t the time. There is still a lot of work to be done.