light the corners of my mind
Fourteen years ago today, I married my best friend. Since then, we’ve lived in three homes, adopted one cat (still healthy as ever), visited four countries (plus Hawaii), had a son (who graduated Pre-Kindergarten last night), and still remain best friends.
I love you, Aaron. Happy Anniversary.
P.S. Thank you for the anniversary flowers!
This is my elementary school t-shirt from the 1986-1987 school year. I was in fifth grade when I got it; in the photo above, I’m age 41 and wearing it again.
I remember I was so mad when Memaw bleached it and the collar and sleeve rings went from dark blue to brown. I also remember that it’s in such good shape because it didn’t fit me long afterward. (Puberty was not kind; I gained some 20 pounds over the course of my seventh grade year, and another 20 in eighth grade.)
A few days ago, I decided to revisit my box of old t-shirts that I’m saving for themed quilts (or just because). I discovered that I’m almost ready to order a Totoro-themed quilt or a rock-band-themed quilt, I’ve got a ways to go for Connor’s superhero-themed quilt… and I discovered that this shirt from 5th grade I’d been saving is a size large.
So I tried it on. And it fit.
Mind. Blown.
So, even when I’m feeling down for having recently regained ten pounds of the 80 pounds I’d lost, I still have this: I can wear a shirt I wore on a Gifted class field trip to Cape Canaveral when I was ten.
Who remembers Scour?
I have vivid memories of working at my college job, sitting at my desk in the office next to my co-worker, Jeff, and one of us getting a song stuck in our head. Off to Scour, to download and listen to something random, like the theme from the A-Team, or some esoteric 80s song, or some freedom rock (turn it up!).
Did I know it was shady? Sure. Did I care? Nope. It was available, and there wasn’t exactly another avenue for me to quench my immediate musical desires back in 1999, and it was before the days of packet-sniffers that would throttle bandwidth or flag me for peer-to-peer activity, so…
Fast forward 18 years to 2017.* When I get Billy Ocean stuck in my head, I pull up Spotify on my work laptop — I pay a subscription fee of about $10 a month for Premium — and search for “Caribbean Queen.” I get an entire compilation album of Billy Ocean’s greatest hits, and I listen to the sounds of elementary school for a good half hour. Unlike some 20 years ago, though, I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for a 3MB mp3 to download over the 10/100 BaseT ethernet connection.
And it’s completely legal.
*Side note: I still can’t get over being 40 years old and so vividly remembering multiple decades.
For this year’s retrospective, I’m going to lead off with the most important things:
(As recorded every night before bed)
If I’d consolidated some more specific things, like “working out” and “kickboxing,” the list might look a little different, but not by much.
Other notable one-off things that made me happy:
This evening, as I was wondering what I’d post on my blog, I got a notification that I’d been tagged in a Facebook photo by Aaron’s cousin Megan, whose wedding we attended back in October.
I immediately got up from the couch and went into the family room to retrieve our wedding album and snap a photo of the posed portrait with all the cousins. I posted it in a comment: “What a difference 13 years makes…”
But then I kept flipping through.