mikao's world

the dark sacred night

i have been spending my last couple of days at home cleaning out my closet full of boxes from when we moved in '97. it is weird to not have a room at home yet still have a lot of stuff.

a few select items i have found while questing to throw out/give away/clean up have included the following:

a) my gym sweatshirt from junior high. i wore this lovely creation every other day during p.e. class for at least two years. this navy sweatshirt was adorned with red patchwork and embroidery all over the front, and at one point, had matching navy blue splash pants with a red heart on the knee. the shirt is moving on to a new home in a second hand clothing store.

b) my high school jewelry collection. this collection includes some real "gems," including the fake gold dancing people earrings i wore on the first day of ninth grade. these i am keeping for the memories, although they shall never grace my ears again.

c) all the books i have ever owned, except for those i have at school with me in Saskatchewan. the large majority are from my voracious reading years of grades 6-8 when i was a big fan of the baby sitter's club (claudia was my favourite, even though she couldn't spell and that drove me nuts), sleepover friends, and sweet valley twins (i liked elizabeth better than jessica, jessica was too prissy). the rest are all painting and drawing technique books, sewing, needlecraft, etc., and a few other odd assorted books in the mix as well. these i shall all be keeping.

d) thirty bucks. yes, that's right. thirty dollars. this was a welcome find. it is going straight to my summer road trip fund. america here i come. : )

e) lots and lots of shoeboxes. my family tends to be voracious shoe box collectors. they are always good for packing though. and putting shoes in.

f) my entire cassette tape collection. the first tape i ever bought was joey lawrence. he was the dumb guy on the tv show "blossom." but boy, could he ever sing... or so i thought.

g) two huge boxes of letters from pen pals. at one point, i had over a hundred pen pals. hey, out on the farm, we made our own fun! even if that included writing letter after letter to people we did not know. i actually did meet a few, and a German pen pal came and stayed with me for a couple of weeks when i was 15, that was neat. today, i have lost touch with about 99% of them but still get the odd letter occasionally from a few of them and emails once in awhile as well. and, just last week i discovered my old pal jenni has a blog of her very own, and i am looking forward to catching up with her in the new year.

and speaking of the new year, i hope everyone out there in my blogland has a great one in illinois, new york, ohio, missouri, ontario, or wherever you may be. enjoy the dark and sacred night.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
- George Weiss and Bob Thiele, "What a Wonderful World"