Contents of My Closet

The Beanie baby collection did not pay off as I hoped

Unbeknownst to be, I'm feeling a little stressed. I know this now because I sprouted a cold sore. I was in Tahoe over the weekend to visit family. It's not uncommon for me to get a cold sore after leaving my parents, and I don't think they necessarily stress me out, but something is going on.

This time, it had to do with barely getting any sleep because my kids kept waking up throughout the first night, and I made a fatal mistake of window shopping on amazon prime for over an hour, then closing my laptop and rolling over to catch some sleep. Disaster plan for anyone hoping to quickly drift off. I laid there for a couple hours contemplating any possible decision that might come my way within the next ten years.
After I finally did start to fall asleep, one kid woke up, then the next, then the other one woke up again, then the other, etc. Was I a grouchy ass the next day? You bet. George and I came back to Sacramento, and Kiki stayed with my parents for her first personal vacation. She reports no desire to come home, and is living life like the spoiled only child she aspired to be.

Traveling in Tahoe used to involve a lot less traffic. This never ending winter and the Waze app have put a wrench in quick weekend trips. Tahoe locals had, and I mean had, secret routes to navigate through town on jam packed ski weekends and holidays where tourism is peaking, and the main road is gridlocked.
I wont even mention these routes, in the hope Waze becomes nonexistent, and Tahoe locals can reclaim our secret routes. So Waze initially allowed a group of San Franciscans a luxury to get out of Tahoe without the stress of sitting in a 4 hour traffic jam. But then everyone started using this app, and the locals-only route got just as backed up as the main road, so basically no one can get around that town on busy weekends unless they are willing to sit in their car for a couple hours. Don't drink anything before heading to the grocery store. In fact, you'd make it to the grocery store and back faster if you chose to go by foot, rather than car. Or even by bike, in a blizzard, would be faster. How to spot these city slickers with undeserved knowledge, well the first sign is they are driving a brand new $40,000 SUV that doesn't have four wheel drive, a tell tale sign of someone who works in Human Resources at Google.

George and I are driving back to Tahoe today to pick Kiki up, and we'll quickly come back tomorrow. Tahoe, I love you, but I can only see you on the off-season. Plus, I'm reading the signs my body is telling me, which is to feed my need to isolate.

Yesterday I went through several boxes of crap from my adolescence. We moved to Tahoe before I started sixth grade, and last year my parents sold their house, and left me with my entire closet's contents.
It's a common concern that digital pictures make it much less likely to print, and although you might take thousands of more photos than the times of 35mm, there is much less physical content being produced. After sifting through a box of probably four thousand photos from middle school through college, I am so glad for this shift in modern lack of photo printing. Printing a couple pictures a year will better suit my lifestyle of not owning a hundred thousand pictures when I die.

I started going through them, and realized, I need to throw 99% of these pictures away. I just need to find the time to go through them all, and pick out the handful worth saving. My little sister suggested just throwing them all in the trash and save myself that time.  I also have a chachki problem, and have so many little trinkets that all carry overinflated sentimental value. Like a shoebox full of rocks, and an envelope stuffed with the fortunes from Chinese food cookies.

I found a small trove of Beanie Babies, and after seeing a link on Facebook a couple months back about the goldmine some of these cuties sit on, I did a bit of online research, and discovered none of the beanie babies I have are worth any money. Egh. That would have been an exceptional outcome to the day I wasted. While doing this research, I realized how off mark my targeted ads were. I was being shown pictures of luxurious $185 PAJAMAS! Even when I can spend $185 on pajamas, where a profit goes to saving the world from corporations massively manufacturing shit to sell to people online, I will easily refrain from any temptation. I would rather drive down the road, and throw $185 in the gutter before buying pajamas for $185. Its not because I don't think I deserve luxury, its because I'm better than that ridiculous "luxury" being sold.

I also used to be a big collector of clothes, and saved various stuff in boxes. Some of the items were vintage, but after sitting in my closet for ten years, all of the clothes stunk up like a goodwill dumpster. Now that I have an extra closet, I figure I might as well, dust this shit off and hang it up amongst the loads of other clothes I don't normally wear. My energy efficient washer is not powerful enough to wash the musty stank away, so I have to double wash them.

It was funny though, going through some of the stuff. Like I found a vibrator thats never been taken out of the box. I thought I threw it away because I worried my parents could discover it if I died unexpectedly. But, I didn't, I hid it in a Shag Rampage purse that stinks like beer from all the bar counter tops it rested on. I will likely donate it, so my kids don't find it after I die, but who knows if it would even works since its over ten years old. A tax write off, is a tax write off.

I also found a collection of berets, every card or letter written to me, and a bunch of journals from my early twenties that make Sylvia Plath look like Rainbow Brite. What was I so sad about, well I can tell you after I read three novels I wrote describing it.

I am reading Jenny Lawson's memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened. She was talking about how much she hated high school, and I could commiserate. She acknowledged that some people really did enjoy high school, and they were most likely cheerleaders. I was a cheerleader, and I can say high school was so torturous I'd happily black it out from my memory, but luckily I documented the entire four years with a couple thousand photographs.

I thought her describing high school as "the absolute low you can benchmark your life on," was a positive way to look at things. Because really, every things been uphill since.

After making it though five of the boxes, I was overwhelmed by what was left and stacked them in the corner of my garage. There is always the possibility this never ending rain will flood the garage. I will certainly not loose any sleep if I have to throw the boxes away because of unrecoverable water damage. Fingers crossed. I have yet to find a video camera I hope was run over by a bulldozer. But until this is confirmed, I can ponder its existence during web surfing induced insomniac nights.

Sentimental Value digital photos. Why must I take a screen shot every time I catch 11:11