TALES FROM THE LOFT – PART 2

The loft has stories to tell.

“What's this?” Hallie asked as she moved through the storage loft. “My CD cases! You kept my CD cases?! Throw them away!”

Obsolescence 

“We should throw away CD cases?” I asked incredulously. (I still have mine.)

“Yes, throw them away! We don’t need them,” said Hallie.

“Here’s one that still has the CD in it,” I said. “Shouldn’t we go through them?”

“No!” said Hallie emphatically. “We don’t need any of it.”

I guess this explains why people are making coasters out of CDs. And here I’ve been trying to find a CD player. I’m tired of not being in control of my listening pleasure.

Continuing our search through the loft, Mike took advantage of Hallie’s help to get rid of obsolete printers and a portable TV set from the ‘90s. We just hate to throw things away. We were both trained to treasure stuff.

Among items not found was the baby afghan in progress that I stored 15 years ago as I readied the guest room for a visitor. I don’t know what happened to it! And Hallie didn’t find that super-cute set of snowmen Christmas lights either. Where could they be?! If only I could get up there. . .

But I did tell her where to look for my girlhood scrapbooks, and she found some of them. These provide a pictorial history of my youth, which I don’t necessarily enjoy reviewing. I also have school memorabilia, including documentation of piano and flute performances. So, on Friday (April 29), while Mike rode to Troy, OR, with friends, I tackled my scrapbooks, tossing certificates of accomplishment, adjudication sheets from music festivals, recital programs, etc., etc., etc.

The photos were harder. It’s not a surprise that the black and whites from the ‘50s aged better than the color photos from the ‘60s and ‘70s. And many weren’t all that good anyway. Of course, in my youth, I plastered them all down with glue, and today I know that photos are better preserved if kept in boxes. I discovered a few images that I’d like to have in my digital collection. However, removing them from the paper is a challenge. Sawing between the photo and the page with a piece of dental floss works sometimes, but for the most part, I just gently pull them off, hoping that more of the page remains on the photo than vice versa. This is still a work in progress – many decisions to make about stuff that matters very little in the scheme of things.

Grandma Ina's comfortable old rocker

Well, the trip down memory lane is just tedious. 

Mike returned from his motorcycle jaunt early afternoon. Then he installed new springs in our old rocking chair, a half hour job that took two hours. That’s the way it goes. KW