Peanuts Death Trip of 2012

Loyal readers may recall that while I was home for Christmas this past year, I spent hours digging through all of my junk to prioritize what I wanted to keep, throw out, and donate. It turns out that Andrea and I were able to buy a house before July even with the new baby in tow, but my parents would not be driving my stuff to me. Since they are incredible people (and probably just as excited to get the stuff out of the house I was to get it), they shipped the boxes to me, labeled "A" to "AA" (that's right, the number of boxes went past "Z." If only the letter "peeb" was officially recognized [see image below for example], then they could have stayed in the alphabet proper).

Special thanks to Rob Ribera for the image!

It's taken a few weeks, but the house is finally in a state where I feel comfortable introducing new clutter (I swear, there will be pictures coming!) to the space. I'd already dug out all of my books because the first priority in any home is displaying everything that shows what great taste you have (so books, movies, and records and to do this, I had to build shelves). The excitement of rediscovery was amazing. Baseball cards! NES and all of my games! Old stuffed animals! Nearly everything made the cross-country journey without incident. Except...

My mom is big on gifting collectibles. I have a ton of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Young Frankenstein figures from Sideshow Toys (still in the box!), loads of Simpsons miscellany, and almost as much Peanuts-related paraphernalia. Well, formerly almost as much. Like I said, not much broke on the trip, but if something did break, it was Peanuts. The first thing I noticed was Franklin's head rolling around at the top of a box. I knew this to belonged to the "Heroes" scene (which can be seen here. I have no idea if the seller will get the asking price.) Upon further exploration of the box, which also featured a tiny broken Linus snow globe (there were sparkles everywhere!), I found, wrapped in newspaper, the shattered remains of the rest of the gang.

Even in death, the celebrate.

In another box, I found a picture frame that featured figures Charlie Brown and Snoopy on either side, except only their feet were still attached. Of course, all of the broken stuff was glass or ceramic and probably got knocked around a bit even with the careful packing (though why none of my other glass possessions broke is anyone's guess). I held out hope for my foot tall sculpture of Charlie Brown pitching. My dad has a similar sculpture in his home of Linus waiting in a pumpkin patch for, who else, The Great Pumpkin. These sculptures are large and heavy and seemingly sturdy. Sadly, even though he was packed amongst stuffed animals, Charlie Brown didn't make it unscathed:

Charlie is doing his best Jim Abbott.

All the rest went into the trash, but I think I can mostly salvage the big sculpture. Given that I'm immensely attached to stuff, I'm pretty broken up about this (see what I did there?), but I guess it's more space for some other trinkets.

And that, friends, is the story of the Peanuts Death Trip of 2012.

Why Yes, I Am Alive

I've been off the map for going on three weeks now. There's no doubt that you've all been chomping at the bit for more of my patented mind nuggets and I've failed you. This post will do little to quell that hunger aside from assuring you that there is a light on the horizon.

Surprisingly, buying a house and moving into it is a time consuming process. There's the pre-move prep (which I've already touched upon) and an endless list of things you want to do and the things you have to do (hello, home inspection report). The effort to prioritize the fun with the practical is taxing to say the least and that's before trying to decide if we can afford it (I'll give you a hint: no). And we can't forget the projects that crop up all last minute like and jump to the front-burner. It almost feels like in Tetris when you're trying to fill the screen with those blocks but they keep disappearing when you make a completely row*. Our progress keeps disappearing.

Andrea and I still aren't completely moved in even though it's been about a month since we closed. In addition to the odd jobs mentioned above, we've also been unpacking slowly to assess our Stuff. Do we need this much Stuff? Why do we have several of that Stuff? When was the last time we use this Stuff? There's some Stuff I've never even seen before. Toss that into the yard sale/Goodwill/trash pile. Intelligent people would take care of this before they move so they don't pack a bunch of Stuff they don't need. But doing that would take an organizational level that doesn't exist in our lives right now (possibly even before).

Finally, any time I'm at work, Andrea can write her night off. It's her and the baby and the baby hates productivity. It might be his least favorite thing in the world, next to the car seat and getting changed. So one of these days the house will be set up and we'll invite you over and I'll start writing more specifically about the move, the baby, movies, and general rants against humanity. It will all be worth it, I promise.

*That is the point of Tetris, right?

Digging Through My Past

Yesterday, I posted an artifact from my archives, which basically means that I found it in a box of my junk still being stored at my parents' house. I doubt that I'm alone in utilizing my former residence as current storage (at least all of my junk is relegated to my old bedroom, unlike someone else I know), but as a approach 30, it's starting to feel pathetic. Also, my parents came up with a plan to drive my junk out to me if I purchase a home before my wedding in July. The fear of filling my potential home, which will be much smaller than my parents' place I can assure you, with my excess garbage (which doesn't even count my fiancee's stuff at her parents' place) was enough to compel me to dig out the non-essentials (surprisingly little. I'm a sentimental man. What can I say?).

I did a modest version of this years ago that apparently got rid of all of my high school memorabilia (oh! the lost love notes!) and some undergrad stuff, but this more thorough pass was kind of enlightening. Firstly, having a child on the way helps to justify keeping all of those toys and stuffed animals that have been sitting around in a closet for 15+ years. I liked them when I was a kid! Plus, nothing quite matches the awkwardness of digging out old, framed pictures of myself with ex-girlfriends while my pregnant fiancee is lying on the bed behind me (that goes doubly for the mug that features a picture of myself and my undergrad girlfriend at Madrigal together). Fortunately, finds that stuff amusing (as well she better since I hang out with some of her exes now and then! Don't worry Ian... you're top-notch!).

A lot of time was spent reading old comments on college papers and, if the paper wasn't too long, re-reading that. Dear lord, I was a bad writer as a freshman (I know, I know... WAS?). I was tasked with writing "journal" entries for an Extended Orientation class on supplied topics and every one reads like Ralphie's Red Rider BB Gun report in A Christmas Story.


I'm scrapping most of those old papers (unless my mom decides to see what kind of student I really was in college), but hopefully there will be some more golden nuggets from my past when I finally have to unpack those boxes. Of course, a friend of mine has the Holy Grail of personal memorabilia: an apology note for knocking her down written on awesome dinosaur paper.

As I already mentioned, I'm very sentimental. I have a difficult time getting rid of inanimate objects (and animate objects, for that matter). It's even more of a struggle if the person who gave me said object is important to me. That's partially why I hate getting cards. They're just pieces of folded paper, but some people take a fair amount of time picking out an appropriate card and they kind of stand as a representation that someone was thinking about you in their spare time even if cards are generally saved for special occasions. I tend to have to blindly grab a pile and throw them out (generally after a few years of piling up and going through each of them first because you never know when you'll find money stashed in one!). This last experience doing this was relatively painless until I found two that made me balk at tossing them. They were cards of condolence from when my dog, Farley (the best dog ever), died. To top it off, one was from an ex-girlfriend. So many emotions. Ultimately, I tossed them with only a slight tinge of remorse, but mostly because it reminded me of how much I miss my puppy (hell, all of my dogs that have died).

Going through my boxed up history was an exciting, surprising, amusing, and emotional experience. It's kind of a shame that we get rid of so much of our history in the process of condensing our lives and joining lives with another. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about posterity (I keep a journal and wonder what future generations will think about it), I feel like each item I throw out throws a shadow on who I am in regards to the future. As someone who tries to be practical, I know it's necessary. I just hope I don't get rid of too much that rediscovering my past is no longer exciting (I hope I don't sound too narcissistic, I'd go through all of your stuff to learn about you in a heartbeat. What do you say? Tomorrow at 3?).