Monday, December 22, 2008

Boredom breeds nostalgia

There's not much to do with 8 inches of snow sandwiched around a thick layer of ice. I've started stroking out and going a little bit stir crazy. I did all my Christmas shopping at QFC, Hallmark, and Walgreen's; all are within walking distance of the house. I can't even take the bus to Target because they've shut down where I live. I've never missed work, the gym, or Christmas crowds this much in my entire life. I could go into more detail about which parts of my life are crumbling around me, but I feel that might be a violation of basic interweb conduct.

Using this past week to write more would have been a fabulous idea, but what am I going to write about? All I can focus on is snow and how much I want it to go away; how I want to stop talking about it, but I can't because it's stopping any chance at a normal life in the foreseeable future.

So I dug my Super Nintendo out of the closet and have been honing my Super Mario 3, Mario World, and Donkey Kong Country (best. game. ever.) skills. I've finally finished the two books I was in the middle of (Sarah Vowell and Laurie Notaro.) I've walked to the store at least 20 times and taken almost 400 pictures of the same damned branches covered in snow. I'm all caught up on my Tivo and have started watching The X-Files and Arrested Development from the beginning.

Final sign of boredom and the coming apocalypse? I cleaned out my closet.

This is a supreme undertaking. I'm not the best organizer, but quite possibly the best crammer of things I don't know what to do with in tight spaces. My closet had bags and bags of crap piled many many feet high, much like the snow outside, but less pretty to look at. And not surprisingly less aggravating to deal with. Good news? I found all kinds of things I'd thought had been lost forever. Bracelets, pictures, purses, books: it was like going shopping in my closet. Of course there were also bags and bags of garbage and recycling. CD cases for CDs stolen out of my car years ago, boxes for DVD players and batteries, shoes that should have been thrown out long ago.

What has kept me occupied for the last hour and prompted me to write, you ask? Why, my old yearbooks, of course!! I've had my 11th and 12th grade yearbooks around, but had lost track of the ones from my freshman and sophomore year. I was geeking out for a bit, remembering people I'd long forgotten and looking some up on Facebook. There were boys I had crushes on that were not as cute as I remembered (and some that were way cuter!) Friends that, upon reading what they wrote, I realized they were way more clever than I ever knew and I wished I'd kept in touch better. Most of the inside jokes I don't have any recollection of: there's talk of "Mushroom Head" and wombats; and as I was turning pages, I said out loud, no fewer than 3 times, "Isn't he dead now?" and that kind of ruined the nostalgia for me.

So, yet again, 1994-1998 will be stored, in book form, shoved in the back of the closet. But don't worry, those memories will be resurrected in a decade or so, most likely in a fit of total boredom in the midst of the next 'arctic blast.'

2 comments:

Nicole Janelle said...

Oh come now. I've cleaned since then. Like once a month or so it gets a thorough cleaning. I'm just constantly finding ridiculous crap like alligator heads and tiaras and drugs.

Dani McNeill said...

Eight-year-old you would be totally pumped to have any or all of those things. Well, except the drugs. I imagine that 8-year-old you was a bit of a square.