Things that I've found in the course of packing

Things that I've found in the course of packing

The days are waning here at the current Big Stupid Tommy compound. Doing a little bit of packing, here and there. I wonder at the amount of crap that I have. Where did I get it? Big Stupid Tommy got no money to buy crap with. Never has had any. Where the hell did this stuff come from?

It's actually not so bad. I've seen worse. I've helped move worse. But I gotta just stop and shake my head in disappointment at myself, just for being an even bigger packrat than I thought I was.

Among the items found while doing a cull over the course of the weekend:

--My Johnny Cash, American III CD, which I'd assumed lost for good. I still had the jewel case, but I couldn't find the CD itself. This was a while back. I figured that I'd taken it in the truck with me with the portable CD player and lost it there, or maybe I'd lent it to somebody at my old job, and hadn't remembered. I ended up getting a replacement. I found the disk under the nightstand in the bedroom. It was a little cracked.

--Five little foam baseballs with the Nashville Sounds logo on one side, and the Kroger logo on the other. They'd throw these out between innings at Sounds games. People would go apeSHIT for these things. But they'd throw HUNDREDS out. I don't think I ever tried to catch them, and just by benefit of sitting where I did, I'd get one.

--I've long suspected that there's a secret place to which all the pens in my house scamper to seek asylum. Even with all my concerted efforts to put all the pens in single, centralized location: a "pen cup" or even a "pen drawer," if you will. They'd disappear on me. I found 16 pens (16!!!!) behind the bookshelf in my bedroom. Including my Mayfield's cow pen, and my lucky camouflage pen.

--2 flashlights I didn't realize I still had. You can never have enough flashlights. Apparently, "enough flashlights" means one behind the books on a shelf in the closet, and one in the back of the cabinet next to the stove. That latter one may have been the stowing place for one of the former roommates. It'd been there so long the batteries had corroded.

--About 15 small, styrofoam cups. In the back of the same cabinet.
Never seen them in the long time I've been living here.

--The remains of Jeff, our old roommate. Mostly skeletonized by now. We just figured he was just out working, and that he didn't want us going in his room.

--On top of the kitchen cabinet, one very small, very dainty paintbrush. The artsy fartsy kind. With only a couple of hairs left on the brush itself.

--And I did an official count. There were 24 legal pads total. 8 of them empty. 4 with all pages written on. 4 more with most pages covered with writing. Six with various degrees of writing. One that's just a sad testement to OCP...it's a legal pad filled with Jeopardy scoring grids. And one that's just filled with frightening snippets, phrases and doodles, mostly done in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. I had to laugh at what's in some of those notepads. I'll probably share some this week.

I shoudl mention that posting might be a little light. It might not. I won't get down to the actual nitty gritty until this weekend. But if you're wondering, that's why.