Treasures have happy memories

I come from a family of pack rats. I even have it on my business card. So in some ways, I thought it would be easy for me to find all my treasures for this month's LOL project because I never throw anything away. But when forced to pick something I treasured, it became more and more difficult. I first went to the attic and dug out the box labeled "Genie's Goodies", confident I would find all my treasures in there. I found tons of memories, some good and some I'd rather not recall that often. I found lots of trivial bits from my first marriage, my old pocket knife, lots of old letters, some (empty) boxes of medical marijuana from my ex-father-in-law, and a giant pile of junk. In the end, I couldn't find much I wanted to write about. It mostly reminded me that I keep a lot of odd things for unknown reasons. These weren't really treasures since they didn't give me any real joy or happy memories, they were just things I couldn't part with since they chronicled my life.

My parents have recently started cleaning out the attic in their house. As all things in our family, it was left until it became an absolute crisis. My parents' roof has been in disrepair for years now and was beginning to leak. In order to get a new roof, some of the boards needed to be replaced as well as a few rafters. But to get to all of that, the entire attic had to be emptied. Instant crisis.

My parents took several truck loads of stuff to the dump and very few things were saved. Some were damaged from water or time, some were not worth keeping, a few were genuine treasures. About two weeks ago, my father called me and started off with, "you remember your stove and your other stove ... well, they're in the attic and I didn't know if you wanted them." I told him I at least wanted a picture so he could deliver them to my garage and I would dispose of them.

For context, these are the play kitchen pieces I got for the Christmas of 1981 when I was 4 years old. You can actually listen to that Christmas morning recording in a post from three years ago. It's fun, you should go listen just to hear my incredible Southern accent. If you're pressed for time, you can fast forward to 3:40 in the recording just to hear me scream "A STOVE!"

I asked Rich to drag in my play kitchen so I could photograph it. They were quite dusty but in much better condition than I would have expected. As I started washing them and sorting the contents, I was having a harder time parting with them. At first, I assumed they would be so gross they should just be thrown away. Then I thought maybe I would give them to the thrift store, but worried that with them being a bit worn they might get thrown away. No, these need to go to a good home. I kept scrubbing and sorting fake food products and realized that for now, that "good home" was still here.

I can't say that if the house were on fire, I would run back in to retrieve my stove and other stove and fridge. I didn't really find anything that I would run back in the house for. But going back and listening to that old recording and playing with my kitchen this afternoon has brought me so much joy, I can't imagine throwing them away quite yet. Maybe our little baby will eventually want to do some cooking and washing of his own in a few years.

Click the image to view the entire kitchen collection on Flickr

Living Out Loud volume 8: Little treasures

Before leaving for BlogHer I was trying to come up with a list of potential themes for the LOL project. I keep a list in my iPhone of that and lots of other brain chatter to try to organize it all. I had focused on the idea of talismen and what items are significant for people. I even read an actual paperback book (that doesn't have anything to do with babies or birthing) called The Things They Carried hoping it would give me ideas. (The book is decent, but only the first chapter talks about items soldiers carried.) And then I went to BlogHer and roomed with Laurie. She talked about the day she'd spent with Karen Woldrond and that she'd brought her treasures to share with Karen. As she carefully unwrapped these trinkets and set them on the nightstand between our beds, I realized that's what I was trying to describe. It's not talismen or good luck charms I wanted to discover, but I wanted to see the things that people treasure.

For the first time since this project started, I knew what the next month's theme would be before the current month was even over! I think this will be a tough one for me personally. I've tried very hard to not be emotionally attached to physical items. When Prince Siddhartha went on his six year path to understand suffering, he discovered that "unhappiness is the result of desire and attachment to material items," which let to him becoming the Buddha. But sometimes those physical items can remind us of larger parts of ourselves. Like so many things, balance is key.

For this month's project I want you to tell us about your little treasures. What are the items that if there were a fire and everything with a heartbeat was safe you would run back in to rescue? If you don't have any treasures now, did you have them when you were younger? Do you miss them or are they still with you? Why are they so important to you? Do you keep them somewhere in particular to ensure they're safe? Would other people recognize them as treasures or throw them away as junk?

Details include:

• Write something personal about yourself using the previous paragraphs as a guideline. Do not feel that you have to address each question above. The spirit of this project is to share something about yourself; I'm just throwing out ideas.

• It's by no means required, but it would be awesome to include photos of said treasures. Everybody loves photos!

• Once you have completed your entry and posted it, please email me the link at genie [at] inabottle [dot] org.

• If you do not have a blog to host your story, you can email me the story directly and I will add it here as a guest post giving you credit. The more the merrier!

• The due date for entries is Sunday, September 6th (the first Sunday of the month) at 5pm Eastern.

• Once I have collected all the entries, I will post a wrap-up to list them all and announce a winner. The winner will receive some sort of prize to be determined but all participants will receive fame and glory and a link on our Living Out Loud blogroll.

You all created our largest collection of participants last month, particularly with so many of you on the road for vacations and life in general! Go you! As always, I eagerly await to see what you produce this month.

Recap of 7th Living Out Loud project: By any other name

This topic was a challenge only in that I think I could write half a dozen blog posts about my name(s), but had to pare it down into something shorter than War and Peace. And as always, I learned all kinds of new things about folks based on what they wrote. Let's see what everyone submitted: Lisette's By any other name ... (note: I reminded her to fix the LJ security so everyone can read but she's on vacation this week so it make take a bit) Rachelle is a unique name, and I can see how lots of folks would say Rachel instead. But I'm a sucker for French names.

Becca's Daddy's little girl Again, hooray guest post! I'm sucking her into the blogging world! I consider it a special treat that I got to spend as much time as I did with her dad when we were teenagers. Becca's dad rocks as does Becca herself.

Jen's Short but sweet comment I give Jen a pass on posting a whole entry on this since she's been mired in pavilion repair and preparations for camping. But again, I'm a sucker for French names and honored she chose hers based on mine.

Donal's What IS my real name? I have known him as Donal for a long time before I even knew what his "real" name was. But it just goes to show that "real" is all relative. I also like the idea of letting people pick a name for themselves once they reach adulthood.

Julia/JD's They call me Julia so you don't have to When I was in second grade my teacher Ms. Young called me Jenny instead of Genie (there were 8000 Jennifers around that time) and it drove me INSANE. She stopped once I started calling her Ms. Yang.

Gina's Living Out Loud #7 I learned a lot reading this. I'm not named for anybody, so the idea of living up to a name is foreign to me. But I'd say Noni would be proud.

Candice's Me, myself, and I... oh, um, and that fourth one: my four names. Miinna is officially one of the coolest names ever. And I think there should be a whole book written on different cultures and what is "customary" to do about changing names after marriage. It's important to do what feels right and not just what "everyone" is doing.

Justus' So what's your real name? Interestingly enough, when Justus joined Facebook recently I wondered "hmm, is Justus his real name?". I guess it is. And as far as names go, Justus is pretty kick ass.

Megan's Our shared name It goes to show that you can always change your mind about a name at any point in your life. As someone who spent a lot of time pondering what to do with all my names after marriage (#1 and #2), I can appreciate all of this.

Deb's What's in a Name My cousin wanted to name her daughter Siobhan and we all said that she would either have to move to Ireland or join the SCA to have anyone pronounce it correctly. But it's still one of my favorite names.

Sarah's What's in a name? I think the h in Sarah is very important as well. It makes it seem like a softer spelling, like you're saying ahhh in a relaxing way. And I can also appreciate having a ton of names and wanting to keep them all.

Sharyn's Writing about my name Much like Sharyn, my aunt's name is Rebecca but we all call her Sissy. At one point she was concerned that we kids did not know her "real" name, but we know who she really is.

Orianna's By any other name It's fascinating to me how the title of Aunt can be as powerful as Mom. Titles are what we make of them.

Kim's No Full Name, Please I laughed out loud at "See: My strong dislike of the letter B which has no good reason." That and picking out names is agonizing and so fun!

Karal's It rhymes with Meryl My favorite line is "when I was 5, I wanted to be Sally — but I think I wanted to be Charlie Brown’s little sister more than I wanted to actually take her name." A highly googlable but super neat name.

Vic's Onomatology I first met him as squorch and then had to figure out who this Vic person was on FaceBook. But I'm curious where Ike came from.

Rich's Name? Which One? I must defend his Welsh name and demand that people not just throw in a few extra consonants for good measure when spelling it. Two dd's make a th sound and that's about it. And he didn't even tell you all the names I have for him.

And finally my own Who do you think I am?

Holy crap, people, you've blown me away with all the participation! 18 participants this month, seven of which are new to the LOL project! See how fun this is?!

I even started collecting this recap yesterday and it's still taken me a bit to sort it all out. As always, if I somehow lost your entry, let me know and I'll amend the recap.

With so many quality entries, I struggled the most on picking a winner this month. But as we all know, the writing and the comments and feedback are the big deal more than whatever I can provide as a trophy.

So this month, I pick Becca as the winner. Her prize is I'm sending her a batch of cookies because I have my own fond memories of hanging out in her kitchen watching Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman and making pounds and pounds of chocolate chip cookies. And she will always be her Daddy's "little cookie."

I already have the theme lined up for this month's project but I may not post about it until Monday or later. This project brings me so much joy that I just want to thank you all for playing along. I hope you get as much out of it as I do. I can't wait for next month!