Flotsam and Jetsam Surface from the Past

News about the cat. We weighed her and she was 5 lbs. on our scale. She has more energy and is definitely acting like she feels better. She was extremely clingy for a few days. Mom called her “Velcro kitty”. She has always liked to sit in your lap or in front of the keyboard when you are at the computer. These days she will definitely not leave you alone if you are on the computer. When I’m at my laptop there is no room on the desk and the touch pad is directly in front of the keyboard, so she can’t sit there. Instead she drapes herself across my arms and makes it very hard to type. She isn’t here now, or I couldn’t type an entry. We are very happy that she is recovering.

I finished my full resume on the state site so I can take tests online and apply for jobs with Washington State. It took a long time to finish because I couldn’t just cut and paste from my resume file. They also wanted complete address information for every job in my employment history. I had to dig in a file to get addresses for my oldest jobs.

Mom and I spent some time today preparing a room for my brother-in-law who will arrive sometime late on Saturday evening. He is driving from Oklahoma. We want to make sure he is comfortable and feels welcome. I suggested a special recipe that we should prepare on Sunday to celebrate his arrival. It’s one we saw on Food 911. I want it so be a surprise, so I can’t say what it is. My sister reads my journal and I am sure that he also has the address.

We are also purging some stuff and preparing a donation for a charity that will come to our house next week. We have purged a lot of stuff since I returned in 2003. There is still more to go. I thought that since I have been moving at least every 3 years all of my adult life, which forces regular purges of extra belongings, that I didn’t have much flotsam and jetsam cluttering my life. As I have helped my mom purge, I have also gone through my own stuff and it is surprising what I have managed to keep. Since coming home, I’ve gone through several boxes of stuff from college and even earlier, like digging through archeological layers. Of course this older stuff was left behind at my parent’s home while I was traipsing all around. It is only fair that now I help Mom sort stuff out and get her house back. Some fossils found in the strata: two grade reports from middle school, my SAT score record, and judges’ evaluation sheets from the district solo voice contest from each year of high school (83-87).

Today in the spare room I stumbled upon a small stash of cards, letters, and assorted papers from my first two years of college. The only thing I am keeping is a beautiful card from my grandmother with a note with news about what she had been doing that week, just to keep in touch. I also found several letters from one of my few good friends that I had in high school. I was not social and had very few friends then. Unfortunately, we didn’t keep in touch after the first year of college because I accidentally stood her up when were both home for Christmas break. I had stayed up really late the night before (I sometimes had insomnia back then) and slept until noon or so the next day. We were supposed to meet at 9:00 AM or something like that. I called her and left an apology on the answering machine. I called her several times, but she would not return any of my calls. I wrote to her, too. She never accepted my apology. I paused, thinking for a minute about keeping them, before I put her letters in the bag of paper for recycling. I hadn’t thought about her in years. I wonder where she is. I hope she is well and happy. I suppose I should go to my next high school reunion and see if she is there. Oooh, maybe not. I can’t imagine enjoying the “haven’t I been wonderfully successful and look how cool I still am” competition with all the people who were little more than strangers to me even back then.