Sears Box

I'd had this old Sears gift box for years.  It held cards and notices and pictures from long ago.  I'd brought it with me from my mother's house when I left for college and shortly thereafter when I got married.  I'd been organizing pictures and this was at the bottom of a cedar chest.  I don't remember all that was in it...probably letters and cards from those early years; some of my school papers from high school I think.  I kept those and tossed the box.

Memories from Spain

Back in the 90's I attended a meeting of the International Standards Organization in Madrid, Spain.  I was the editor of the ISO 8583 standard that defines how to exchange credit card messages for authorizing and settling transactions.  The meetings lasted a week and as was my practice, I would fly in the weekend before to do some touristing.  This trip I traveled to Toledo (Toe-Lay-Doe) where I wandered narrow cobbled side streets of tiny shops.   

I bought a set of steak knives that I still have, as Toledo was supposedly known for its cutlery; I would never have been able to bring those home on the plane today.  I paid a pretty penny for some saffron spice too. There's a frilly fan on my bookcase and the usual bookmark and thimble I would collect when I traveled.  We toured the Prado Museum in Madrid where I saw original El Greco and Picasso paintings in brilliant colors and have the book to remember them by.  

I picked up the sunny blue and white sundial tile in the picture because I liked the message, Carpe Diem, and the colors and the multi-purpose use as a decoration and a sundial. I put it in my courtyard out front and it eventually ended up by the backyard fountain.  It was trampled a couple of times and is rusted and cracked and is being trashed.  Goodbye good memory.

Run, Run, Run

5K race bibs

A few years ago I ran in several 5ks.  The passage of time and lack of activity had packed on the pounds and I had to do something to chase them away.

I've never been able to do something without a purpose; there had to be a goal in mind and it had to contribute to something more than just the activity itself.  Thus, 5ks, an activity that would contribute to weight loss and provided measurable benchmarks of improvement.

The best I did in any of the races was 41 minutes.  Since a 5K is 3.1 miles, I managed to do about a 13 minute mile.  Not stellar by any means, but an achievement for me, someone that spent my required time in P.E. classes volunteering to keep score to avoid any exertion.

In June of  2012 I took a trip to Aravaipa Canyon to a B and B with my BFF.  We hiked the canyon and I remember feeling strong and confident as a result of those races.  I'd been wearing a step tracker for a long time and tracking my food intake.  On that trip I was unable to connect to the tracker and broke a streak of consecutive days of tracking. Funny, it was incredibly frustrating and demoralizing. I ran a couple more races the next year and then gave up, adding back some pounds and losing flexibility in my back.

In 2014 I tossed all my bibs, thinking I'd still remember those accomplishments but in reality I think I was getting rid of the evidence of having given up.  See, running in races is not like taking a college course or completing a project.  It's a continuing test of your abilities and it can be a celebration of just living, without a goal, without judgment, without an end.  It might be time to revisit the outdoors on foot.

World Travels

When I worked during the 80's, 90's and up until 2001, I got to travel internationally - a lot.  It started when my company wanted to install ATM machines in airports all over the world and later wanted to have banks sell their product.  I was lucky enough to be the person that explained how it was done to the bank's business and technical personnel.  Then, the financial industry wanted a standard way of talking to the ATMs and sending transactions so I met with international banking organizations and we hammered out standards.  Of course, this worked best face to face so I racked up thousands of airline miles, meeting up in a different host county once or twice a year.

So here I am years later digging through memorabilia and I find my foreign currency change purse. Back before the Euro, each country in Europe issued its own currency.  When I travelled, I would buy some of the local currency when I arrived in a new country and try to spend it all before I left.  What didn't get spent ended up in my stash at home. I spent a couple of hours sorting out the coins by country of origin, including a little surfing to identify some of the tricky ones.  Here's the list of countries:

coins from my travels

• Austria
• Belgium
• British Caribbean
• Canada
• Costa Rica
• Denmark
• England
• France
• Germany
• Hong Kong
• Japan
• Mexico
• Netherlands
• Portugal
• Singapore
• Spain
• Taiwan
• Thailand

Okay, some of those were vacations (British Caribbean, Costa Rica, Mexico) and there's some missing (Australia, why don't I have any from there?)

My son has a coin collection so these will go to him with the countries identified.  Time for this traveler to make new trips!

Letting go of dreams

Many, many years ago I designed a sewing room in my house.  I worked with a carpenter and specified all sorts of nooks and features for my sewing.  Back then, I made most of my own clothes and outfits for my toddler.  When it was installed I bought this wallpaper to put up around the room. I loved this pattern.  I imagined it in the room, complimenting the paint of the cabinets.  I dreamed of making curtain tiebacks in the pale green and accent pillows in the peach colors.  I didn't get the wallpaper up in that house, but I stubbornly removed the built-ins and had them re-installed in my present home.  And the wallpaper came with me.

These rolls have sat on various shelves or been stashed in closets now for over 25 years.  I still love this wallpaper.  It wouldn't go anywhere now, even in my office/sewing room where it would clash with my closet shades.  It's a lot of work as I recall, to put up wallpaper and like any decorating project, it spawns a cascading wave of other changes.  And yet, I have a very hard time letting them go.  See, they represent a life I once had, a life I wanted at the time.  Keeping them around gave me the feeling I could still have that life if I would just put up the wallpaper.  And keeping the rolls said that some day I'd have the time to put it up, to realize the dream.  Getting rid of it is admitting to what feels like failure, a lack of will to finish something I started.  It says to me that I can still do what I said I would do and I would experience the pleasure of accomplishment and be able to enjoy something I thought was beautiful and reflected who I was.  I was someone who surrounded herself with delicate prints in muted colors that reflected a calm demeanor and feminine sensibilities.

Here's the truth - who I am is someone who dreams and has a hard time letting go of those dreams when they are no longer necessary or applicable.  And the harder truth, holding on to old dreams takes up space in the here and now and none of the dreams are realized, not yesterday's or today's.

I've thought of seeing if someone I knew would want them, giving me a chance to have them put to good purpose and maybe even see the wallpaper installed, thought not in my home.  Passing on the dream, so to speak.  But that doesn't work either.  Everyone has their own dreams waiting.

So, they are going to Goodwill, part of my purging my surroundings of things that no longer serve me.  It will free up some new shelf space that I'll use for genealogy files, my newer passion.  It feels like a weight off of my shoulders though there is a tug in my heart.

Little boxes on the hillside

"Little boxes on the hillside,

 Little boxes made of ticky tacky,
 Little boxes on the hillside,
 Little boxes all the same."

             

Notes: words and music by Malvina Reynolds; copyright 1962 Schroder Music Company, renewed 1990. Song Lyrics to Little Boxes

This song played through my head when I pulled out these recipe index card boxes.

Four index card boxes

For a long time, before I started a blog for it (Rooms with Windows), I would keep a record of the books I read on 3x5 cards in one of these boxes, alphabetized by title.  At the end of each year I would pull out the cards and transcribe the notes to a spreadsheet to create my annual reading list (can you say "anal retentive?).

Even further back, before my beloved Palm Pilot, I kept the business cards I collected in a couple of these boxes.  I still have a much larger (think, Michael Jordan-size shoe) box full of business cards which I've thought about using to create wallpaper in my office (I know, how geeky-nerdy can I get?).

The green plastic one I picked up at an estate sale.  It's full of recipes, mostly from the 60's and 70's which means "oleo" is an ingredient and there are fifty variations of jello desserts.  I can't imagine why anyone would not want to keep their family recipes, even ones evidencing such an obvious sweet tooth, although maybe diabetes was a contributing factor to the loved one's demise and these would be a bitter reminder.

The Christmas design is a box of recipes from my step mother that she no longer wanted.  There's a story here; recipes written on church bulletins during the potlucks or directions for dishes that may have been a family favorite from her first husband's side of the family.  There a lot of sweet desserts with pineapple and coconut featured prominently.  It makes me think I grew up in an age where sugar addiction was a concerted effort put forth by our home bound mothers.

I've picked out a few recipes to try though I don't know if I'll really get around to it.  At this point in my cooking life I'm pretty confident I can create something edible with not much prompting from a recipe.  I think too that the recipes we collect are more about wanting to emulate the cook than the food she'd prepared.  Maybe her happy family, satisfied husband, or well-groomed children could be replicated if we nourished our family with the same foods.  Then again, maybe recipes represent a burst of enthusiasm for creativity in a daily mundane task that now is either completed unconsciously or omitted entirely.  

These little boxes full of dreams of order and happiness, plans for pleasing and memorable meals are going to Goodwill.

A fallow season

Here at the start of September I'm without a contract for work.  In the meantime, I'm looking for things to purge and found these aluminum drinking glasses.

aluminum drinking glasses

I ordered these many years ago to remind me of my Grandmother Schwab.  See, we went to visit her back East only a couple of times when I was a child, maybe when I was 9 and then again about 12, I'm not sure of the dates.  She lived in the same home on Mansion Street in Coxsackie, NY, which her and my grandfather rented until they died.

Her kitchen always smelled of fresh baked goods.  It had high ceilings and linoleum floors.  There was a woven calendar on the wall and one of those 1950's kitchen tables with the matching armless chairs.
I was given a picture recently of her kitchen at Thanksgiving in 1971, with her and my Uncle Tom.  He passed away last year, the last male Schwab.

 She kept a cookie jar on the counter that always seemed to be full of chocolate chip cookies.We'd have those cookies with ice cold milk out of her brightly colored aluminum drinking glasses.  I'd had a set of the red/blue/green ones similar to hers but they weren't quite the same.  These are the same shape.


I loved my Grandma very much, even though I only saw her in person as a child a few times and then as an adult when I traveled to the East Coast on business occasionally.  She was a "blessed are the meek" person, as my Mom would say, because she was a gentle spirit who would always laugh at my Grandfather's teasing.  My love for her was a reflection of my own Mom's deep love for her.

The glasses are going to Goodwill but the memories remain.