In flux: the gems of my closet
Though the picture is not the best, I will give you until the end of this post to figure out what is sealed in the baggie.
I am in flux right now. Though my lease at Apartment 3 expires on the 31st, I needed to temporarily move back into my parents’ basement now because I will be hard pressed for the time and effort in the coming weeks. This weekend I am attending a family reunion in Hampton. Following the festivities up north, my parents will host relatives all next week as they wait for another family reunion in Cedar Rapids. After that it would be time to move out. However, I have done all that and am currently admiring the mess I have made of my room.
Everything I own has returned to one place and organizing it all will take time. (By the time I have everything cleaned up, it will be time to move it out on August 1.) Making matters worse is the fact I painted my room at my parents’ place last week — a Sherwin Williams color called Vast Sky, which is not as deep as I wanted — and almost everything had been moved out, safe from stray flecks. For one whole week I have done nothing but move stuff out, move it back in, and then add more stuff. When I moved to Apartment 3 last year, I took nothing but essentials with me. I thought my move this week would be painless and light. However, one thing I learned while living and moving around in California is that you never realize how much stuff you have until you need to move it.
Regardless, my room is in shambles. Empty boxes are scattered here and there and their contents are in piles on the floor and my bed. I need to find space for it all so I can comfortably live here for two weeks. That means cleaning and rummaging through old stuff for things that are wasting precious space.
Tonight I found a one-gallon, Ziplock bag full of mementos from high school. I took a couple minutes to look through it and weeded out a lot of useless stuff I could recycle and shred. (None of it was important.) Some of what I found was surprising: an almost indecipherable letter from an admirer, City High’s fall 2000 athletic program, and my grades. I was amazed I had kept it all, and was even more surprised when I found the little baggie full of dead grass in a 10x13 envelope with others goodies.
As crazy as it sounds, the grass in the baggie is the fistful of turf I ripped from Trojan Field when City High’s football team beat West my senior year. I cannot believe I kept it — putting it in a baggie much like Mervgotti did. I knew I pulled grass from the field that night, but could not remember what happened to it. Well, it somehow managed to stick around.
What did I do with it? I put it back in the envelope and back in the Ziplock bag with all the other mementos.
