Dictionary

Day 19: Dictionary and More Books
I used to open the dictionary at random just to see if there were words I didn't know on the page. My favorite book. The heft of it. Its translucent onion-skin pages. Fifteen definitions for every word. Alternate pronunciations. History.

I found this on the bookshelf when I cleaned it out. \Emma and my mom, at Halloween 12 years ago.
Aren't they cute?

But I haven't used a printed dictionary in years. They are a thing of the past. On-line, you can find every word or phrase under the sun. In the printed dictionary, some words are there, and some are missing. Like the S word. Or proper nouns.

Who needs the dictionary? There's an app for that.

I'm ruthless. A favorite historic mystery, Medicus, and its sequel went in the mail for a friend. A few old travel guides went to the Thrift Shop. Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker went to a single mom co-worker who has to get dinner ready for herself and her girls every night. Ditto Fromer's Guide to Chicago with Kids.

Half-empty bookshelf: a sight I haven't seen in many years. Must. Not. Fill. Shelf. With. More. Books.

Nail Polish

Day 18: Nail Polish

My mother would be proud. I spent three hours at the mall yesterday, looking for the perfect prom dress. We tried on dresses at Von Maur, JC Penny's, and Macy's. I went back and forth to the racks, looking for different sizes. I found matching shoes. We had coffee in the center lounge and talked about whether to buy the crenoline and mesh that made her love her shoulders, or the sleek and slinky that's trending.

It started badly, with my usual lecture about waste (you'd only wear it once!), and the clothing industry, and money. There were tears and disappointment. Just this once, why couldn't we have fun and enjoy being together? Why couldn't she be a princess and I the proud mama? Why couldn't I relax? I panicked. I couldn't relax. I couldn't. But, "Buy her whatever she wants," Rich said. "It's a ritual. A rite of passage." So I winged it. I pulled a dress off the rack, bright pink and heavy with beads. "I love this color," I said. And in a minute, it was alright.

Isn't she lovely, made from love?

Flashback! My mom would have loved for me to try on pretty dresses. Mom insisted that I have a special outfit to get married in, and patiently stood by while I rejected this one as too expensive and that one as too frivolous. In the end, my wedding dress came from the clearance rack at Macy's, and I only agreed to let my mother buy it for me because I thought I could wear it again. I never have.

Sorry I didn't let you come to my wedding, Mom! (We had only ourselves and two witnesses.) Thanks for not making me feel guilty. If I could do it over again, I'd ask you to sit in the front row, right beside Dad.

Can't post a picture of the dress
because Emma doesn't want
 to spoil the surprise

The other girls and moms in the dressing room at Von Maur made me proud of my own. One girl in particular was so rude to her mother and grandmother, I figured she must be in middle school. It turns out she was shopping for a dress for her boyfriend's graduation from the Naval Academy. Poor guy.

Emma was nothing but gracious, and grateful. She said she was glad we don't do this all the time, because it made the day more special. Back home, she modeled the dress for her dad, and stood up straight, and beamed.

It's true, Emma doesn't need another dress, or any other stuff. Sometimes we both count the days until she leaves for college. For me: the car will be clean! The bathroom will be clean! The living room will be clean! For her: no more nagging! But today, she's off to Chicago and Indiana with her dad, visiting colleges, trying to make that final decision. Sam is on a houseboat in Tennessee, having a blast with friends. And I'm at home with a poofy prom dress for company. The house is quiet.

I'm giving away a basket of nail polish in Emma's honor, because she loves nail polish, hair curlers, and poofy princess dresses. My own nail polish is drying out in the bottle while Rich and I run the final lap of this twenty-year long distance race - raising kids - for which we changed our city, our climate, our careers and our community. 

The kids may not be carbon copies of us. But the kids are alright.

Clocks & Watches

Day 17: Clocks and Watches

Everyone in our little family is punctual. Very punctual. While other mothers spend their mornings shouting at their children to wake up, get up, hurry up and get a move on, I am more likely to have to reassure them that we have plenty of time, that we will not be late, and that, even if we are late, being late is not the end of the world. 

Every room in our house has multiple clocks. 

I should shroud the clocks. I don't recall Anne Elliott and Captain Wentworth ever making an appointment for a specific time of day. I like to imagine that they retired when the sun set, woke when the sun rose, ate when the sun was at its zenith, and met in the afternoon.

I have five watches. One, a classy Citizen water-resistent high-end diamond-chipped piece, was a gift from the University upon my tenth anniversary of employment three years ago. It is the only watch I have worn since the day I got it. It is comfortable, attractive, and sells for $300, which means I don't want to lose it. The reason I have so many other watches is that I formerly lost them about as often as I lost cheap sunglasses. Which goes back to the china shepherdess. Maybe if I'd bought myself a classy Citizen years ago, I wouldn't have had to buy all those Timexes.

Three of the watches went in the give-away box. I'm not 100% confident that I won't lose the Citizen, so I'm keeping a Timex back-up. I also finally removed the mounted GE clock radio that I have hated since we moved into this house over eleven years ago; we put it in the car and drove it directly to the Salvation Army. 

I replaced the battery in our wall clock. For several weeks, it has said the time is 3:58.

Knickknacks

Day 16: Knickknacks

Knickknacks featured large in my childhood, especially Hummel figures, courtesy of a flock of Scottish ladies. Aunt May. Aunt Nettie. Aunt Bessie. Aunt Effie. Cousin Barbara. Auntie Mo. Grandma Abrahams. My mother. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in the backseat of the car in Windsor, Ontario with my 98-year-old Scottish great-grandmother while the U.S. Customs Department unwrapped two cardboard cartons full of figurines, looking inside each and every wee precious lassie, bathing baby with a bluebird in its hair and whistling hiker in lederhosen. (I'm sure the baby needed a bath, what with a bird defecating in its hair.) Luckily for my mom and me, Grandma wasn't using porcelain figures to smuggle heroin over the border.

Remember how Caroline Ingalls would carefully wrap up that damned china shepherdess, put it in the covered wagon, and patiently wait until the new fireplace mantel was built in the still more remote cabin so yet again the shepherdess could be unwrapped and put in pride of place? Remember how Laura, Mary and Carrie would have rather cut off their hands than pick her up and risk breaking her?

I admit it: I hardly have any knickknacks. I just like the word knickknack so much, I wanted to use it as a title for one of my posts. Knickknack. Knickknack. Knickknack. So I'm scouting around the house, looking for something on topic that I can get rid of, and here's what I found: a cookie tin that Nil and Jess left for us after they moved, a sewing kit Barbara left for us after she moved, an empty box that displays photographs, and a few Christmas ornaments that we never put away. Into the Goodwill box.

I bet if we had only one of each thing, we wouldn't lose so much. Like spoons (where do they all go?), water bottles, sunglasses, reading glasses, travel mugs and Tupperware. Admit it: you've all had to buy more of these because the ones you had got lost. So I'm launching a "Why So Many?" theme. Look for WSM in the title once a week or so. Starting tomorrow: Clocks and Watches.

More Bedsheets

Day 15: More Bedsheets

A man with a baseball cap, a friendly smile and a fringe of gray hair came over to ask me if everything was okay when I had the contents of my car spread out in the parking lot at the Holiday Inn. I explained about my project - getting rid of one thing a day for a year - and he laughed. "If I got rid of one thing a day, it would be 3,000 years before I ran out of stuff."

As I've imagined this project unfolding, I've fantasized about the lightness I will feel as my house is relieved of its burden of stuff. I've imagined that as the year progresses, it will gradually be harder and harder to find stuff to get rid of. I've joked that in a year, we might be living in a tent, with just two of every article of clothing, a camp stove, a mess kit, a sleeping bag, a toothbrush and a flashlight. I thought Rich and I might have some conflict as I cut deeper into the stockpile of stuff.

Then I noticed this:

More bedsheets! These have been tucked away on a high shelf, out of sight and out of mind, for years.  TJ has come and gone, spiriting away sheets for the animal shelter. I've since learned that the Thrift Shop or Goodwill can actually resell any textile to rag pickers, who in turn ship them to third world countries (if they're good enough to salvage but not good enough to sell on the resale market in the U.S.) or recycle them for home insulation (if they're trashed). I know what to do.

But that's not the point. The point is, I own a whole shelf of sheets I had completely forgotten.

Our pleasant modest house

Already day 15, and ideas for stuff to get rid of are crowding my brain. Teapots and tea cozies! Towels! Trays! Trinkets! Tablecloths! Single earrings, silver bracelets, watches! Nail polish, dental floss, perfume! Suitcases, briefcases, grocery bags! Furniture! Pens, games, puzzles! Embroidery hoops, yarns, fabrics! Water pistols, basketballs, badminton sets! Water bottles, vases, dinner plates! Watering cans, composters, tomato stakes! Coolers, canoes, greeting cards! Books! Books! Books! CDs and VHS tapes! Musical instruments and sheet music! Speakers, iPods, receivers! Rugs, baskets, space heaters! An entire rental house! Thermoses and travel mugs! Camping gear! Coffee pots, cocoa sets, food! Toothbrushes, plastic cups, cleaning supplies! Dog crates, leashes, bowls! Pots and pans! Cameras, computers, a GPS! Athletic gear! Hole punch, stapler, protractor, compass, ruler! Gloves, hats, scarves! Picture frames, posters, potted plants! Purses! Pillows! Coats! Flower pots! Binoculars! Shoes!

Look at my house. It's a nice house, but it's not a mansion. We have a nice life, but we're not rich.

Now I have a new fear. What if I get rid of something every day ... and nobody notices?

Dressy Dresses

Day 14: Dressy Dresses, Bathrobes, Shirts and Other Miscellaneous Clothing

I agreed to split the cost of a dress for the 100 Day Dinner with Emma, if she would agree to give away two dresses from her collection. The 100 Day Dinner is a pre-graduation celebration, which presumably at some point took place 100 days before graduation but, this year, takes place later.

What was I thinking?

Emma and I have been arguing about buying dresses since she was in middle school. My philosophy is that you can sidestep the moral complexities of the U.S. clothing industry by limiting yourself to thrift shop purchases. I hate the idea that what I'm wearing was made by a slave or a child. I hate the terrible toll textile manufacturing takes on the environment. I hate that textiles comprise 5% of our waste stream. By buying used clothing, I can get stuff cheap - designer stuff! cashmere! - while giving money to organizations, like the Thrift Shop, that help my community. And I'm not contributing to any societal bads.

It's really cute, but
it's unravelling

Plus, I never know if I'm actually going to like something once I get it home. If I get it from the Thrift Shop, it doesn't matter. Like, what was I thinking when I bought these ridiculous chartreuse velour pants a couple weeks ago? They're too short. They're too big. They're chartreuse. No problem! Back to the Thrift Shop! They only cost $2 and the $2 went to a good cause. I've put more in the Salvation Army bucket at Christmastime.

My philosophy works very well for a woman whose idea of styling her hair involves sleeping on it wet because the tangles create more body. 

I'm giving these away too,
because Emma's giving something
away doesn't really count

Emma, on the other hand, loves to dress up. She has three-inch heels in purple, red, beige patent leather and black. She has a train case full of nail polish. She knows how to blow dry her hair, apply eyeliner and depilate. She doesn't like to wear the same dress twice. Which is why giving away two dresses - one from the Activate the Cure competition and one sexy black lace number from tenth grade prom (thank God it's going!) - is no problem.

Before I had children, I thought they would rebel by voting republican or cooking meth. Silly me! In reality, kids find much deeper ways to differentiate themselves from their parents. Which is why I spent yet another evening standing outside the dressing room at Marshall's, dead on my feet and poised to state my preference for the green vs. the black vs. the blue lace dress. 

At least I know it won't be the last time. Graduation countdown: 66 days.

Mm Mmm Good

Day 13: Books

Epitome of elegance

Doubles as a press for
plant specimens

Mm mmm Reader's Digest meals

Books are a knotty problem. If you've read and enjoyed them, you might want to read them again. If you haven't read them, you might someday. They add gravitas to your decor. They tell people who you are. They keep you company.

I counted 38 shelves of books, not including the shelves in the kids' rooms. To make the task manageable, I plan to make each shelf a single day's task. As I go through them, I'll develop a policy for what to keep and what to give away.

Reference books are an easy place to start. Who needs reference books now that we have electronic brains? Recipes, health questions, translations: these can all be asked and answered more quickly and accurately on the web. Goodbye, 2007 Florida guidebook, 20-year-old Mayo Clinic family health book, recipe books, and Dutch-English dictionary from my sophomore year in Amsterdam. Hello, iPad.

Also on the reference book shelf, a two-cassette audiobook thriller by Faye Kellerman. Cassettes. Talk about scary.