This is the cheerier entry. The earlier entry, which I wrote at school this afternoon, is below.I'm cheerier because I did something that made me happy. It was not something big or important, and what made me happy was totally inadvertant. Here's what happened:
Among my listed tasks for myself this afternoon was to go into the attic and look for something in my "treasure box." Now, I've said before that I have an unusual number of items from my childhood, many of which surround me daily, but I also have a treasure box. This was an idea I read in a magazine when my kids were little, so I made up treasure boxes for them and then thought, why not one for me, too? The basic idea: get a sturdy box, and as the years go by, put mementos of your children's lives in it. In the girls' boxes are their baby books, pictures they painted or drew, keepsake baby gifts that people gave them, the remnants of their "lovey" things. I'm not too fresh on theirs, although those are the ones I found in the attic. Mine wasn't there.
I wanted to look in mine because I thought my high school copy of Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars might be there. It was a little blue book, an intralinear translation, which means that when Mrs. Heffler assigned a passage to translate for Latin homework, I had it all there in a book. Heh. I only used it to check my work. (In fact, Latin was my best subject, and I enjoyed translating, so I probably did just use it to check, or to help out with a tough part.) Anyway, I wanted a copy of the book on my shelf of meaningful books and I thought my old copy would be better than a new one, which wouldn't have both Latin and English, and is by the way, very hard to find. My treasure box, I remembered, was on the top shelf of my closet. Ugh.
Yet I persevered, despite back and hand discomfort (see below), and removed everything that was in the way until I could reach the box, all the way pushed into a corner, and grab a handle. At which point the box tipped, and all the contents spilled out onto the floor at the foot of the stepstool I was standing on.
Shit. Or some much more colorful expletive. I don't remember now, exactly.
This is when it turned into a good thing.
I never quite remember what everything is in the treasure box (which is why I thought the book was there, but it wasn't), so looking into it every few years is something of a revelation. The thing that sits on top of all of it is a yellow and white seersucker Snugli. I guess these front-pack baby carriers are common now, but they weren't 25 years ago, and little R practically lived in that thing, despite the funny looks we got when we went out. The Hubs and I had a little choreography we did where we could switch the thing from one of us to the other without waking the baby. The Snugli is my tangible memory of when R was still a little baby.
After my parents died and the Sibs and I took possession of the various papers from our childhoods they still had, I wondered what had become of all my report cards. My mother had always saved them all, and I never found them. Til now. I guess she had given them to me long before she died, and they are all in the box, along with my elementary school class pictures, the group shots.
All of my Beatles trading cards are in there.
All of the term papers and reports and projects like that that I did in high school are in there.
The teddy bear my sister sent me for my 14th birthday when she was away at college and couldn't come home for my birthday is in there.
My college I.D. cards.
A picture I drew of Superboy when I was about 8.
A letter of apology I once wrote my mother for losing my temper, when I was about 9. (Someone must have made me do that. Or maybe I was just trying to get a TV ban rescinded.)
This one is hard to explain, but there's a cassette recorder in there that I bought the night the Hubs and I started dating again, after college. Let's just say my going out to buy it was instrumental in our running into each other that night.
The first picture my oldest nephew painted for me in pre-school is in there. It's just an open rectangle (the head) and a large blue spot in an upper corner. When I asked him what the spot was, he said, exasperated at my foolishness, "That's where you put the magnet!" Because pictures were only made to go on refrigerators, right? (He's 32 now.)
There's a little toy suitcase that my uncle bought me at the airport when I was 5, and in it are some clothes my friends and I made for our troll dolls in fifth grade, along with some bubblegum-machine toys, including little troll dolls and something called a RRAATTFFINKK. (It was spelled weird.) Some of those are still in their original plastic bubbles.
So I didn't find my book. But I found ... oh, you know.
More of the Same
My back is better today. I attached some of those heating-pad-like thingies to it this morning, and I guess that helped, even though I had to rip them off mid-morning because it was so damn hot in the library, I felt like I was melting into a pool of witchy goo. It's not all better, but it's less acute. What's acute is that I've done something to my right hand and wrist. I can type, and even use a mouse, but if I turn my hand or fingers, it's pain shooting up through the whole thing. Which leads to my next question, and considering yesterday's entry:
Is it like this for everyone? Am I somehow hyper-tuned in to the ordinary aches and pains of day to day living to the point that I think everything is a pain or a symptom and there's really not a damn thing wrong with me? Or are there really all kinds of little things that I'm aware of that are actual issues? In which case I really am falling apart. The answer, of course, is that there is no answer. How do I know that something I've been aware of always, or just for a long time, is actually not the way the human body is supposed to work? Conversely, how do I know that what seems like an actual problem of the moment for me isn't just the way everybody else's body is all the time?
As I've mentioned before, when you're a hypochondriac, you've always got something to think about. But I'm going to put that aside for a moment, and whine about something else.
The SCM has informed me that he will be out the day before what is going to serve this year as February break. We actually have no February break, just a few days off. Why will he be out? WAH! His vacation home is so far away that if he doesn't take the extra day, he won't have enough time to spend there! Really. I know a bunch of people who seem to have second homes, either at the Jersey shore or like the SCM, in New England, and they always get pissy when they don't have enough time off. I say, Let them eat cake! Anyway, the SCM seems to have forgotten that when they took away the break, they made it crystal clear that anyone who wasn't in on the day before or day after would be docked a day's pay. He won't be happy with that, but no one will help him fight it because a) the union approved it and b) the union president can't stand him because he's made federal cases before over things that he was wrong about, but doesn't otherwise support the union at all. In other words, he's a pest and no one else can stand him. So I think he's out on a limb on this one. If I can find the notice about not taking the days off, I'll show it to him, but not til next week. I don't need him all worked up over something when the Colleague is out and I'm stuck here with him alone.
Plato. Like Shakespeare, there is a number in the Dewey Decimal System designated specifically for Plato. (It's 184.) I ask you, why did some librarian in the dim mists of time put the works of Plato anywhere else? It's a no-brainer, people! (Today: Literatures of ancient Rome and Greece. Tomorrow: Ships. 623.82.)
Speaking of that insane place in which I work, one of the science teachers tells me today that they have been informed that six new science rooms in the addition they are building will definitely not be ready until next January, yet they are beginning the renovation of the six old science rooms this summer, as planned. Hmmm. For one, those new science rooms would be the ones on the same corridor as the new library, so I guess that settles any question about the library being ready before January. For another, where do they expect to put all those children for half a year, let alone, how do they expect to get away without providing them the required instruction? This should be interesting. Can anyone say LAWSUIT?
Speaking of lawsuits, have you seen that some genius is suing Apple because he's claiming that iPods can damage your hearing? Well. Duh. Doesn't anyone take personal responsibility for anything anymore? For one, it says in the iPod packaging that listening with the volume too high can damage your hearing. For another, Hey, it's too loud! Turn it down, moron!
Yesterday, cosmic provided the interesting tidbit that Western Union is no longer in the telegram business. Today, I noticed that TIme-Life is no longer publishing books. Wow.
Another kind soul provided this information, which puts the whole required-alcholic-beverage-per-day into better perspective. I've decided that if what I need are the flavenoids, or whatever they're called, I'm having a piece of Dove dark chocolate every day. Now that was a health article I could get behind.
