Nothing to see here.

I went home this past weekend for the first time in two months. Given that I now live 400 miles away in Virginia, maintaining a blog about cleaning the room I grew up in is nearly impossible. I had such grandiose ideas about doing a mega cleaning that would give me some material to work with over the next couple weeks. I forgot to factor in that I was doing about a million other things this weekend. In reality, I think I had about two weeks worth of activities planned for myself. After about an hour and a half. this is what I came up with. I'll be honest, when posting pictures, I had to really look at them to remember which was the before and which was the after.

All those boxes on the bed are filled with old papers that can be burned or brought to the recycling center next time I am home. There just wasn't the time this trip. That blue bin and its contents are now down here with me, and that sweet pair of Heelys is, thankfully, staying put (I see you doing the math and realizing there's no way those were around when I was a kid. Yes, being 25 and showing up at the shoe store for a pair of roller skate sneakers is exactly the type of ridiculous experience you would think it would be).

I did feel accomplished when I came across this necklace. It belongs to my friend Todd and got packed up with my stuff when I left camp a few years ago. It has a degree of sentimental value for him and he'd ask about it periodically. I didn't want to tell him as time went on that I was becoming more and more sure it was lost forever. That is, until I was cleaning out a paper bag full of shoes and there it was at the bottom. Yup. I keep my shoes in a paper bag.

Books: The Next Big Heartache, Part II

I had a fun conversation over Facebook today that reminded me I had a draft of this post kicking around. Figured it was as good an opportunity as any to finish it up.  Since 8th grade, my favorite book has been William Goldman's The Princess Bride.  The photo below as taken when I was debating which of my multiple copies to take with me when I moved: The 30th anniversary version, which includes the first chapter of the "long lost sequel" Buttercup's Baby, or the first copy I bought, which has all my favorite passages underlined and notes scribbled in the margins in gel pen. (I could have also gone with the 25th anniversary edition, or the German translation, among others).

A quick update. I have moved to Northern Virgina, where I am currently enrolled in graduate program to become a (real) Reading Specialist. Like many of the moves I have made over the past 9 years, I arrived in town Friday and started class Monday (this used to be, "leave camp Saturday, move in to college Sunday"). I drove down here without knowing exactly where I was going to live, so I packed light. Three bags of clothes, my sewing machine, bedding, beading supplies, professional development books  about reading I already owned, some dishes

and one single milk crate of recreational reading.

As you may know, I have a hard time sorting through books. Combing through my collection and pulling titles to tie me over until I go home for a visit proved difficult. I wanted to bring a good balance of books I've already read and may want to reread (or at least like to leaf through now and then), and ones that I haven't read at all yet (meaning finding books that I own and  would be interested in reading, but for whatever reason, haven't yet). Here's what I ended up going with:

Read:

• Sin Boldly; Dr. Dave's Guide to Writing the College Paper, by David R. Williams
• Great book on essay writing. I highly recommend it to anyone in school or actively writing.
• A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (half read)
• Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut
• The Kid  Nobody Could Handle has always been one of my favorite short stories.
• Tough Sh*t, by Kevin Smith
• I read this over the summer. There are some great motivational chapters that kept me going through my job search.  
• World War Z, by Max Brooks
• What Learning Leaves, by Taylor Mali
• The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
• The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
• The Turner Diaries, by Andrew MacDonald 
• I could probably write a blurb about each of these, but this one probably deserves the most explanation. It became part of my collection when I discovered it on the shelves of a children's library which is stocked entirely by (sometimes clearly unsorted) donated books (some of you may just know it as Grube). I had just seen a documentary about American Neo-Nazis that referenced it. A sense of responsibility prompted me to take it out of the reach of kids. A sense of curiosity lead me to read it. I can't say I agree with, well, anything that is in it, but it does offer some very insightful passages, such as, "...one of the major purposes of political terror, always and everywhere, is to force the authorities to take reprisals and become more repressive, thus alienating a portion of the population and generating sympathy for the terrorists. And the other purpose is to create unrest by destroying the population's sense of security and their belief in the invincibility of the government." (51)
• Walk Two Moons, by Sharon Creech
• The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks
• Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus
• The Princess Bride, by William Goldman (obviously)

Unread:

• Going After Cacciato, by Tim O'Brien
• If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O'Brien
• The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck
•  Room, by Emma Donoghue
• Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
• The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman
• The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time, by David L. Ulin
• Eating the Dinosaur, by Chuck Klosterman
• Mother Night, by Kurt Vonnegut
• Bridal Bargins, by Denise and Alan Fields
• Rip the Page: Adventures in Creative Writing, by Karen Benke

Finished Since I got here:

• Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke

"...good luck movin up 'cause I-yyyyy-'m MOVIN OUT! "

I am leaving.

I am leaving for the summer, effective this weekend. After that, it is on to points unknown.

I still don't have anything lined up for September.

My cousin's kids are visiting our house this week. My sister's bedroom sleeps two. There are three of them. My mother suggested I simply clear a path to the bed in my room.

Let's picture that.

"Welcome to New Hampshire kids! After you long drive up from Kentucky by way of Vermont, one of you gets to sleep in this dusty hoarder's cave. Who wants to call dibs?"

I took it as an opportunity to finally clear out of my brother's room. Thus, now giving my parents two functioning guest rooms. The room is now essentially the way I found it two years ago when I moved back home.

And where, you may ask, will I be sleeping this week? This may not be an option....

I know. It looks as bad now as it did in October when this whole thing started. But consider, I have now condensed 20 years of childhood memories and an apartment's worth of stuff first into 3 rooms, and now down into one. I am getting there.  Whether or not I'll be around next fall for progress to continue is yet to be seen.

So Long for Now

From the last post: 

"Check back Sunday to see if I got back on top of things. Ooooo, the SUSPENSE!"

Did you indeed check back in a week later?  Did you notice there was no new entry? Did/ does that provide an adequate answer to the inquiry above? It did for me.

Some "official", but-you-probably-saw-it-coming news:

This blog is going on hiatus.

As I mentioned two weeks ago, spring is my busiest time of the year. For those of you who are unaware, my current position as an In-School Suspension Coordinator has been cut from the school district budget for next year. Even fewer of you may realize that this is the 7th year in a row that circumstances have lead me to spend the majority of April and May job searching- as in EVERY year since grad school. (Go here, here, and/ or here for more of the nitty gritty details.) The whole thing has become pretty routine at this point, and I dare say that so far this is one of my most successful job searches yet. I've landed multiple interviews already and been accepted into a grad program. All that being said, it is time consuming. Add to that a number of other time sensitive projects I have on the table, and this poor little blog has fallen by the wayside.

With my plans for the fall up in the air, I may actually be moving out of my parents house. Camp starts in 5 weeks. That means that I'll need to focus much more heavily on getting my current room back to its original "guest bedroom" statu.  Any (sporadic) posts in the near future will probably deal with that.

Thanks for the support. It has been a really fun project. I was genuinely surprised at how many people read it.

Here's the last picture for a while. This is the desk where I do my writing. It took me nearly two hours today to clean it out.

Backsliding like Nobody's Business

So, I was going to sit down and write, "Oh man, looks like it has been a couple weeks..." Then I saw that it has actually been almost two months.

And it shows.

Here's the disheveled room where I store my stuff:

And here is the squalor in which I have been living:

I tend to forget that spring is my busiest time of the year for me. I'm job searching all across the five states, getting ready for one of my last summers of camp, debating the merits of grad school, maintaining my long distance relationship on the cusp of being in its 9th year, vaguely planning a wedding, and working 10 hours a day.

Check back Sunday to see if I got back on top of things. Ooooo, the SUSPENSE!




(Sorry, just watched the "reality show" episode of 30 Rock. It is about the closest to melodrama I've seen recently. Wanted to jump on the bandwagon)

This is Why I Hate Progress Posts

I am approximately 26 weeks into this process. I've been meaning to do  "progress post" for weeks, but recently I've had to pull things out of their hiding places to sort/ clean them, so it looks just as cluttered as ever.

Today I promised myself I would post one. Progress posts, like the rest of this blog, are a means by which to hold myself accountable. I can't say they carry the "wow" factor I had hoped for originally, but I do notice all the things in previous pictures that are now long gone. 

This week, I also noticed all the things I already claimed to get rid of that are still kicking around my room. Uhg. I also did not bother to take bags and boxes of trash and donateable items out this time.  Oh well, maybe next month...

Sept. 30th

Oct. 30th

Jan. 22nd

March 13th

Now onto some before and after shots from the rest of the room.

Sept. 2nd

March 11th

Sept 2nd

March 11th

Sept. 2nd

March 11th

Sept. 2nd

March 11th

Sept. 2nd

March 11th

Sept 2nd

March 11th

Mulling Over Memory Books

My goal for the last hour was to straighten things up enough for a decent "progress" shot of the room. Had I been thinking, I would not have started by packing up all my old photo albums, school yearbooks and camp memory books. I basically just spent the past hour flipping through pages.

Of the thousands of photographs I could write about, this is one of my favorites. Here is a picture of my fiance from 1996. He is the one in the bottom right hand corner with all that hair.

It is not that I think the picture itself is stunning. I just get a kick out of the idea that I probably saw this hundreds of times while looking through my memory books seven years before we actually met.

If These Walls Could Talk

It is time to tackle the walls. Once again, plenty of memorabilia from high school and camp. I sometimes find myself wondering if that means that these were my glory days, or simply when my hoarding got serious.

First, this series of postcards that were lined up by the window.

I got these on the trip I took Europe in 10th grade. They were being given away for free in a skeezy basement bar in Munich. Now, I am not openly admitting that I had my first drinking experience on a school sponsored field trip (especially considering I now earn my paycheck hanging out with kids who violate school policy), but we did have time to "explore the cities" on our own in a country where the drinking age was 16. Coincidentally, this was the same trip where I missed a whole day of site seeing because a mysterious 24 hour bug left me puking all day.

Next, posters from my closet:
(presumably moved after I had grown out of them, but, shockingly, was not ready to throw them out)

 Mom did not care for the tag line of this poster, "Sex. Clothes. Popularity. Is There a Problem Here?". She most likely made her trademark groan of disapproval. As an adult myself, I can't say I would be thrilled if my 13 year old hung this in her room either.

 I never cared for this poster, I just couldn't ever get rid of it because it was a gift from someone else.

Posters from almost every play I was in during high school.

Ribbons from my one year on ConVal's Track and Field Team:

 I threw discus and shot put. Pretty sure that the "heats" I competed in never had more than 5 or 6 people. (Quote marks used because I legitimately have no idea if it is called a heat if you are not actually running)

Random ads, photos, and decor I thought were cool at the time:

Okay, the Dawson's Creek ad- not so random. I LOOOOOOVED the Dawson throughout high school and college. The frenemies, the love triangles, the worries that because you didn't make something of your  life by 17 you were a total failure- oh, it was like watching my life on the small screen- or at least that's what I wanted to believe. All that, and, I was constantly fascinated by how much James Van Der Beek looked like my older brother. I'm pretty sure my brother founds this comparison obnoxious and inaccurate. No one else really seemed to see it either. He was away at college at the when this show started, so I didn't have as much face time with him. This look-a-like thing was probably just all in my head.

Then there's this gem, for which there are no words:

Sadly, the shine from the flash makes it hard to fully appreciate the unicorns on the other side of that rainbow.

Lastly, there is a whole collection of Gotchs and other small tokens from my LC/ LIT years at camp. For those of you who do not know, these are the two years in our leadership training program. Leader Corps happens the summer after 10th grade. Your LIT (Leader In Training) year is the year you transition from camper to staff. It is similar to your year of graduation- a reference point in time that give other alumni a sense of whether or not you would know the same people. Coincidentally, this is the program I now run. It is like being the senior class advisor ever year. Best. Job. Ever.

 

"Amanda, is that human hair?"
No my friends, that is part of a weave that fell out of my friend Mariah's hair. If I had logical reasons for saving everything I'd saved over the years, this blog would not be as interesting.

 This head band was made for me after I completed Black Tag, one of our more secretive traditions. I'd tell you all about it, but then I'd have to kill you.

An I.D. bracelet my co-leader made for me. She made them for everyone on staff with their nicknames. I did not have a nickname.

My most valuable lesson of the night? If you leave scotch tape up for over a decade, there is no way you can avoid pulling huge chips of paint off with it.