dianaschnuth

Tuesday 18 Aug 1998 | 12:05am

Fries and I helped Aaron move to BG on Saturday. Three trips: one with his box springs and mattress lashed to the top of the Land Barge, one with his loveseat, and one with his 7-foot sofa. The second trip his car stalled, and the third was in pouring rain. But he’s moved in now, and almost settled in at his new place. Basement apartment, yay! “The Schnuth Cave.”

During the last trip, with the giant couch, we were driving down Dixie Highway into Bowling Green. Any BG person knows that around Kroger, on North Main Street, the road tends to flood in heavy rains. We weren’t privy to that yet, though, and were confused by the police and general chaos happening by the Pharm. As I recall, it was reminiscent of a Bill Cosby skit:

“What’s the sign say?”

“The sign says, ‘High Water’.”

*sploosh*

We ended up driving over the submerged curb into the Pharm parking lot to skirt the massive puddle that was North Main that evening.

After successfully moving the sofa into the Schnuth Cave, I believe Kris declared that he was going down to BW3 (as it was then called) to get a drink.

Scans courtesy of Kris Fries. I’m so glad to have digital copies of these priceless memories!

[Posted on Flickr by dianaschnuth].


My drumcorps buddy Paul just started a Flickr account and, like so many new Flickrites, has started scanning and uploading photos from his past.

I had been using my Flickr account for artsy photos I was proud of… but Paul inadvertently made me rethink that decision. So, I’ve started scanning and uploading old photos of my own, starting in 2002. (I was going to start at the end of college in 2001 and work backwards, but 2002 was still a lot of fun.)

Expect more retrospective photos in the near future!

PS – Kris. I must borrow and scan your photo album with the photos of Aaron’s move out of Lake of the Schnuth. Especially the one with the giant long brown couch strapped to the top of the Taurus station wagon. Holy shit, that was priceless.

Aaron and I were talking about how it’s so easy to spend an entire afternoon or evening on YouTube, just surfing from video to video in a particular genre.

I just spent two hours watching clips of Sesame Street, The Electric Company, 3-2-1 Contact, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

I could go back and link to all my favorite stuff, but I think maybe you should just go and search on Sesame Street and see what you turn up. OK, I guess I do want to share a couple things…

• The Sesame Street closing credits I remember best. I’d forgotten that Fridays had different closing credits than weekdays, and I’d forgotten all about Barkley.
• I’ll Miss You, Mr. Hooper, where the grown-ups explain to Big Bird that Mr. Hooper isn’t coming back. (I’d always heard that it wasn’t long after this episode that David passed away, as well, but the cast had to explain it away, since they’d so recently had an episode about death. According to Wikipedia, though, Northern Calloway didn’t pass away until 1990.)

Everybody has their own favorite Sesame Street bits, but OMG. The King of Eight, the Ladybugs Picnic, the series on pollution (that totally freaked me out as a young child), the lost kid on the bicycle that passes all the crazy psychedelic shit, Bert doin’ the pigeon… Wow.

I am convinced that Sesame Street was and is quality television. I mean, the Electric Company clips I watched seemed kind of cheesy in that 70’s sort of way. The 3-2-1 Contact bits were actually OK, although they were initially meant for an older audience, anyway. But the Sesame Street bits pulled me in visually and with music, although some of the songs were pretty cheesy.

Oh, and did you know that a hurricane hit Sesame Street? Big Bird’s nest got all destroyed, and you can buy the DVD to see him deal with his loss and see how his friends help him rebuild his nest. Outside of the typically cheesy musical song-and-dance numbers, I think that kind of sums up one of the neatest aspects of Sesame Street: it takes real-life stuff that a kid might come across in his life, and has the grown-up characters explain it in kid terms. Death, hurricanes, holidays, the Beatles…

Buh-Buhbuh-Buh-Buhbuh, Letter B…

(Swear to god, I knew that version of the song long before I knew why it was funny.)

One of my earlist vague memories is of being held by my mother at an open door during a rainstorm. I remember the feel of the mist on my face, the sound of occasional thunder and the flash of lightning, the constant patter of rain, and the clean smell on the wind. As I got older, Mom would stand with me at the door, and I remember her telling me how pretty the rain is.

Mom had had a bad experience with a thunderstorm in her youth, and she consciously tried to make me feel calm and pleasant about thunderstorms. It worked — even now, I prefer to have the windows open during a good rain, to smell the freshness and hear the thunder and the water coming down.

There’s a nice, mild rain happening outside, with constant low rumbling thunder and a gentle breeze. I’ve opened the windows in the basement, where the overhang from the upper floor will keep the rain from coming in. The only thing that would make me happier right now would be a porch and a swing. That way, I could stick my feet out in the rain, like I did during those perfect rainy evenings at my apartment on South Main St. in BG, during the summer of 1999.

Right now, in this moment, I’m content.

I had thought maybe I would do a “Five Years Ago Today” entry, or ten years, or fifteen. (I’ve kept a journal of some sort ever since 1984, mainly at the suggestion of my mother at first, then kept it up to keep myself grounded and sane.) When I looked through my journals, though, nothing exciting really happened on or around September 26 in 2001, or 1996, or 1991.

As a snapshot: Around this time in 1986, I was ten years old. I was getting over a nasty bout of headlice, during which Mom had to cut off five inches of my hair, to make the fine-toothed-combing easier. I was distraught; when I pulled my hair around over my shoulder, “it barely came to my elbow!” Cry me a river.

Also in September 1986, I joined Girl Scouts. I also read the Star Trek novel Uhura’s Song for the second time. I’ve read that same battered copy literally dozens of times since, and can quote several passages as well as I can quote Monty Python.

Fifteen years ago, in 1991, I was quite the church-going lass. For example: I was reflecting on a lesson on gratitude, and decided to write my high school choir director a letter of appreciation for all she was doing for the choir. She ended up receiving the letter on a day when she really needed the pick-me-up, which did my little Freshman 15-year-old heart good.

I was also interested in composing, and had high aspirations for my music. I’d given a copy of one of my choral scores to the aforementioned choir director, and she said she was going to have the choir sing it… but she never did.

Ten years ago, in 1996, I was hanging out with Aaron and with the Mary/Mark duo. I had also started my personal homepage, giving out my “Di’s Unegotistical Homepage” weekly award to none other than Jeffrey Zeldman Presents. I was also missing my late stepdad, Tom, who had passed away almost one year before. Aaron was always supportive and understanding, and helped me be OK with being all weepy about it sometimes.

Five years ago, in 2001, I had one semester left of my undergrad. I had just moved off-campus, and wasn’t journaling much — on paper, anyway. I may have done some “Talking To Myself” on my trusty Mac, although I’m not inclined to hook that bad boy up right now to see what’s on it. (Yes, I still have it — or at least, a later incarnation of it. I believe I upgraded to my PowerPC 6500 after the year 2001.)

Edit: I actually do have my Word file of random ramblings on my PC, transferred with all my half-finished short stories. The entry for September 26, 2001 begins:

I should learn not to talk wedding with Aaron over the phone. It’s never a good thing. He always gets "realistic" on me, saying such confidence-boosters as "I’m going to have to get a second job," and "maybe we should just go down to City Hall," or my personal favorite: "We’ll get married… eventually."

I’d forgotten that I was thinking about wedding planning at that point, too. Another good quotable from that entry:

I’m so upset, in fact, that I’ve just spent the past two hours researching cost-cutting tips on the internet instead of writing my four-to-five-page script for Video class. And Aaron always says, "graduation comes first, then getting a job, then getting married." I know, I know. Life won’t stop while I try to find a job, though, and it certainly won’t wait for us to plan our little wedding. Or decide when it will actually be held.

What struck me as I was browsing these entries was how I’ve changed throughout the years. It’s obvious through my writing when I became the person I am today, for the most part. I matured through high school, as does everyone — I was painfully dorky in my Freshman year of high school, in retrospect. By 1996, my writing flowed a lot like it does today, and my brain seemed to think much like it does now. I know I was less responsible, more self-centered, less realistic… but I think that, by age 20, I was “me.” Maybe even before that.

That makes me wonder: when I get even older, will I still agree that I was “me” by age 20? Or will I have reached some sort of personal epiphany between now and older that makes age 20 seem even more childish?