Cleaning Day Off

June 6, 2005

I took today off, and mostly puttered around the house. Cleaned up some, and sweated a lot. I really need to get that AC unit set up soon.

I got up super early, and went to Target to run some errands. I greatly prefer doing this when there are less people around (although there are a surprising number of people shopping at 8:30 in the morning).

For all that I did, I only really cleaned up the front kitchen area. I guess this is what I get for letting the place got to pot. For now, I’ll be consolidating small pockets of messiness, and work through the apartment room by room.

One thing I did end up doing was clear out a few boxes of old letters/pictures. I sifted through a lot of correspondence, and by the time I lifted my head again… an hour had gone by. I found birthday cards, christmas cards (I’m a pack rat it seems), old library cards, notes about books I should read, letters addressed to both me and ex-girlfriends, cassette tapes, old teaching syllabi, quizzes I wrote for the Composition classes I taught.

All in all, I sifted through several years of my life, of my past. It was neat to see some things I haven’t seen in a while… but I also had to force myself to stop, as I wanted to read each and every thing I came across, and try to remember it.

It wasn’t a bad nostalgia thing, either. Much more positive. A lot of discovery, and a lot of delight in the re-discovering.

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition. On the right is a random first draft of a poem I had completely forgotten about. On the left was my application for a job at COSI (Center of Science and Industry), in Columbus, OH. This must have been right near the time I was about to finish grad school, with an Master’s of Fine Arts degree in Poetry and a desire to make slightly more than minimum wage.

Okay. Check this shit out. I think these were the glasses I wore… in college. That’s right, you heard that correctly. College. Have I mentioned on here that my vision is pretty terrible? These fuckers make Coke bottles look svelte. I added my current pair of glasses for comparison.