Organizing, cleaning, and cleansing

After a few false starts, I finally got the attached garage clean enough to install the overhead hanging racks I purchased back in December.  I tried to install them myself but found quickly that it is a two-person job and it is best if the other person is someone who is very good at installing things in a straight line.  Even so, my handyman, Mark made a goof or two (quickly resolved) that vindicated me that this isn't the easiest thing to do.

The thing about these racks is you can either put a lot of light stuff or a few heavy items on them. Each rack can hold 500 lbs.  Optimally, you want to put things you don't need to get to very often, like the Christmas tree.  I could put a couple more things on these shelves, but for the most part, that's about all I can do for now.  There are some plastic crates that need to go away, some stuff for goodwill, and a Farm Table that no one in the family needs but we are not allowed to get rid of for sentimental reasons.  


Update from the future:  I managed to find the invoice for this purchase I thought I would put it here for posterity.  

Product	Quantity	Price
4' x 6' Overhead Garage Storage Rack - Hammertone, 24"-45"	2	$359.98
Subtotal:		$359.98
Discount:		-$36.00
Shipping:		Free shipping
Payment method:		Credit Card
Total:		$323.98

I've been working on clearing a lot of the clutter as well.  I have this box called Memory Vault.  it contains a crapload of stuff from my early Emo years.  I wish I had the good sense to just chuck it but I have to look through it first.  I've already thrown out my Jr High memorabilia.  that wasn't a good time for me and most of the people I knew then had no redeeming values.  I also chucked most of my Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity stuff.

Now I'm in the process of scanning a lot of documents that I haven't looked at in years so they can live, unread, in electronic format.

Take this photo.  I'm connected to about 20 of these people on Facebook (not including the ones I deliberately defriended over politics) but only interact with 3-4 per year.  I didn't do a stellar job of staying in touch in the pre-internet days, but keeping in touch is a two-way street and they certainly didn't do much either.  And that's okay.  Not every friendship or relationship is meant to last an eternity.  I just wish I had realized that sooner.  

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At Least We Tried

Cindy and I were what I thought were good friends in college. We kept in touch post-NMSU then suddenly she stopped writing letters or returning emails. Through the grapevine, I heard that she was mad at me for some reason. I asked mutual friends to see if they could find out what I had done to earn her wrath but no one knew. She wouldn't talk about it. I made one more attempt in the mid-90s to see if she was up for re-connecting and as I understand it the response was no thanks.

For some reason, I friended her on FB a few years ago. I was surprised when she accepted. We don't comment on one another's posts too often, though we sometimes wish each other happy birthday and occasional congrats on major life milestones, assuming the FB algorithms comply. I think this is probably as good as it gets this late in life.

The other day I reached out to Cindy because she was going to be in Batavia, IL for a few days. 


hey, I would love to see you since we will, in all likelihood, never be in a closer proximity....but I also get that the logistics are not in our favor. Perhaps Chance will favor us some other time and best of luck with...


At first, she said there was no chance of being able to get together.  Then she said there might be.  But after examining it more closely, the window was just too tight to try to get together.

Still, that she tried says a lot.

I love seeing the pictures of your wonderful kids. I’m so happy for you and your beautiful family.

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These old letters are pensieves and horocruxes

I've been working Project Ancient Letters since September of last year.   These letters have lived in a box that I've carried around from apartment to apartment, condo to house.  These old letters bring back memories long forgotten. 

Some people can look at that box and just say yeah I don't need these anymore and toss them without reading them.

Some people will re-read them but still throw them away. 

Then there's me. My original plan with these letters was to re-read them and then pitch them.   But someone suggested that I scan them which seemed ridiculous at the time.  But then I realized that I have free access to an industrial sized scanner at the office and had no set timetable so why not.  I'm certainly becoming very good at working that scanner.  If my current job doesn't work out, I guess I can find work at a Kinkos.

These letters were very much like Pensieves (or Horocruxes in some cases), transporting me back in time. 

I just scanned the last ones before the end of last year, so now comes the next phase.  Returning them to the senders that I'm still in touch with.   I'll keep a few that have some special meaning for me, at least until the next time I need to clear some clutter, and the rest get bonfired.

It's interesting how people will reference something I obviously wrote in a previous letter, or perhaps mentioned on the phone, but it is just vague enough that I cannot tell what we are talking about.  I can see traces of when my confidence started to erode and my depression setting in.

If I had the bandwidth, I'd write a post about some of the key writers.  Maybe I still will even though I've already returned some of the letters to their senders.

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Decluttering physical and symbolic clutter

When ever we drive up to Michigan, I start to think about all those road trips I took in the 90s back to Kirksville.  There wasn't really anyone here who I could carpool with so it was just me.  Driving for 7+ hours.  

Leaving NMSU back in my college years was somewhat traumatic for me.  While I did initially struggle in college, by junior year it had finally seem like I was making positive forward progress navigating the world that is higher education.  I had a good group of friends.  I was doing okay academically and repairing the damage to my GPA that my clueless freshmen self inflicted.  I even had a girlfriend.

Alas I had to leave because of finances and also because there were no more classes for me to take unless I changed majors.

For years I tried to get back there.  To Planet Kirksville and the life I had to leave behind.  I would visit Kirksville while my friends were still there and later St Louis even semi seriously considering relocating there to be with them.

I spent a lot of my 20s struggling because I didn't have the support structure here that I had there (or thought it had there).  It wasn't until I built something solid here that I was finally able to let go.

I spent a lot of time and energy holding onto something that didn't exist anymore and probably didn't really exist in the first place.  And had I been able to let go sooner, I probably would have had a better 90s and 2000s.

NMSU memories

I'm really digging this song.   It's called Photograph by Ed Sheeran (in case the link ever breaks). It's obviously not the most original song title nor would you guess that was the title from the lyrics but it is an appropriate title nonetheless.

We keep this love in a photograph
We made these memories for ourselves
Where our eyes are never closing
Hearts are never broken
Times forever frozen still

It makes me think of Freshman Year at NMSU and Kimberly.  And Michelle.  And the heartbreaks we caused each other.  When I got home from college, I never really talked much about my time in Kirksville,  mostly because to backfill in all the necessary details would have required reliving it and I was still going through my own version of PTSD.  I was really ill-prepared for college and serious relationships and I paid the price.

So you can keep me
Inside the pocket
Of your ripped jeans
Holdin' me closer
'Til our eyes meet
You won't ever be alone
Wait for me to come home

When I first started blogging, it never occurred to me to mine those stories from college for content because I was working under the early paradigm of blogs = online journals going forward, not backward.  I certainly wasn't going to re-read all my personal journals either.  By the time blogs arrived, I had finally worked through all the drama, angst and pain of college and replaced it with the drama, angst and pain of my 30s still trying to figure things out.

When I'm away
I will remember how you kissed me
Under the lamppost
Back on 6th street
Hearing you whisper through the phone,
"Wait for me to come home."

   

Speaking of NMSU, I found this in a box of old stuff at my mom's house last summer.  It was given to me by Michelle.  She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed sorority girl.  The prototype girl that I would meet many more times in life but never quite understand why this type liked me but the brunettes I chased after didn't.

Michelle was a hot mess in need of more therapy and love than she could ever hope to receive.

Kimberly broke my heart, and I broke Michelle's.

Something changed somewhere during my time at NMSU.  When I first arrived I had confidence and the ability to win Kimberly over and steal Michelle from a guy named Jeff.  But by the end of my time there I lost my confidence.

One thing that comes to mind is that the majority of the people I hung around with freshmen year were gone from my circle (and even campus) sophomore year.  I still saw a few people but most of my time was spent with Alpha Phi Omega.  

I think what I'm trying to say is that about the time that I lost/stored away this pendant, is about the time I struggled with getting girlfriends.  It's like I forgot how much someone once was into me, and that it could ever happen again.

Obviously, I found the power somewhere else.

RIP Debra L. Fink

The following is something I wrote and posted circa January 2000 on what passed for my blog before blogging was what it is today.  I'm cutting and pasting and hope that the content is clear without messing with the formatting.   

On March 24, 1998, Debra L. Fink left home to run some errands. Her parents never saw her again. By midnight Debbie -- 28 -- was dead from a brutal beating to her head and face. Her body had been dumped under evergreen trees next to a used car dealership on Lindbergh Blvd. (Maryland Heights, MO).

According to information gathered in newspaper articles and interviews with friends and family, Debbie met James D. McCollum at a bar she often frequented.  They played a trivial pursuit type video game for a while, and then went bar hopping.  Debbie's parents and local authorities believe McCollum tried to force himself on Debbie. When things didn't go his way, McCollum started beating her. He was picked up on March 29, 1998, charged with first-degree murder and held at St. Louis County Jail without bail.

I first met Debbie at a Pundit staff meeting at NMSU. We were both wanna-be journalists trying to make names for ourselves as writers for an alternative newspaper on an otherwise mainstream Missouri college campus. Naturally, we became friends.

We also joined -- separately -- a co-ed service fraternity patterned after the boy scouts called Alpha Phi Omega.  It was in this organization that I got to know Debbie a little better.
I had the benefit of being spoon fed the details of Debbie's death. First I heard that a friend had attended Debbie's funeral. Well, that could mean she died of some sickness. But I investigated and got an email paraphrasing the details. So I knew she had been killed. Then I asked a friend at a Springfield newspaper to look into the matter. And I got the knowledge that I can never unknow. Debbie's parents didn't have this luxury. They went from thinking their daughter had gone off on one of her usual rebellious tirades to finding out she had been taken from this earth in a most unnatural manner.

It would be so easy to hate McCollum. Create a demon in my mind's eye and label him Jim. But that won't bring Debbie back. In the press release, it says that Jim surrendered without incident, which is journalismese for "he really wasn't a bad guy except for this beating a girl to death thing." Jim McCollum didn't wake up that March 24th morning with the intention of beating a person to death. That doesn't exonerate him from his crime, but it should provide some perspective.

Debbie wrote me once, asking if she could maybe visit me in Chicago. I wrote back that it probably wasn't a good idea. At the time, life at home had become hell.  I think that was the last time I ever heard from her. I always thought I'd run into her at a friend's wedding or some type of NMSU/APO reunion and have a chance to explain and reestablish our friendship. Now, thanks to my own shortcomings, and a guy I never met named Jim McCollum, I never will.

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Some thoughts about my College Days at NMSU

While I do a lot of my blogging over at ChicagoNow, I've decided that this space will be used for much more personal entries and stuff that I'm fleshing out here and might appear there once the kinks are worked out.

My first year at NMSU, I was in a three person dorm room.   My two assigned roommate were very different from me and from each other, at least as far as three 18 year old white guys can be.   I don't have the energy to come up with aliases for them so I'll just use their initials.

CH was taller than me and from a well-to-do suburb of St Louis.  In fact, almost everyone there that came from St Louis actually came from a suburb of St Louis, usually in St Louis County.  CH came up with a bunch of friends from high school so he basically already had his social infrastructure established.  He was a nice enough guy and friendly, but any chance we had of bonding was circumvented by his friend MM.  MM lived one floor up and was from another well-to-do suburb of STL.  The story was that these two went to the same high school even though they were in different suburbs.  I'm not sure how it all worked out.

Anyway, MM was in no way, shape or form interested in making new friends at college.  He had his high school friends here, and his girlfriend back home (they both had GFs back home and went home as often as they could since it was only a 3+ hour drive).

The other roommate was MW.  MW was essentially a hick from Southern Missouri.  I had no idea at the time but Missouri south of STL might as well have been a separate country.  This is where the rednecks who supported the Confederacy apparently lived and inbred.

Like I said, we got along alright but didn't spend too much time together relative to our time there.  MM was in the army reserve and gone at least one weekend a month.  CH went home every chance he could get.  They both transferred elsewhere after our freshman year and we didn't even try to keep in touch.  I've googled them on occasion and checked LinkedIn and Facebook.  However, they have common enough names and apparently no immediate Internet Footprint for it to be an easy find and I'm not curious enough to devote more than 5 minutes on a dull afternoon to the task.   

Not even by a Long Shot

Forgiving and forgetting are not skills I over excel in.  Quite the opposite, unfortunately.  I'm just not wired to forgive people who have dicked me over and I'm afraid to forget least it ever happen again.

Back in college during my last semester at NMSU (now Truman State University) a couple friends were not getting along. What they were fighting about isn’t important, but it is amusing so I’ll share. Cindy was pissed at Linda because she made out with Jane’s boyfriend. Jane and Cindy were BFFs and felt Linda’s indiscretion was, I don’t know what exactly since a few years later, Cindy and Jane’s ex-boyfriend did the horizontal mambo themselves.

Also, although they broke up, Jane’s boyfriend got off (no pun intended) relatively Scott free. And was rewarded with sex with Cindy a year or two later.  The make out session occurred in late December and it was after that semester that I came back home and was out of school for 9 months until I went to UIC and finished my bachelors.  I'd hear bits and pieces of the saga in letters and phone calls and have pieced together the following.

Cindy gave Linda the cold shoulder for the entire Spring semester. She did everything she could to make Linda’s life uncomfortable and unpleasant. We were all in a service fraternity together and the requirements -- besides the whole in friendship, leadership and service thing -- would force them to be together on various projects.  The funny thing is, Jane didn't really care especially since she was gone.  She transferred to another school because she completed her program at NMSU.

Then at the end of the semester, Cindy had an epiphany or something because she apparently apologized for how she treated Linda. I wasn’t there so I don’t know if it was one of those fake apologies or a sincere one.

I asked Linda about it once, and she said something like -- keep in mind, I'm going off more than two decades of old memories here: 

It's nice that Cindy apologized but it doesn't really undo the sixteen weeks of hell she put me through to get here especially since this is my last semester.  Linda was transferring schools as well. 

FWIW many of the curriculum at NMSU were two year pre-programs designed to get you started and then ship you off to a school with a full program.  I was ambitiously attempting to become an electrical engineer and failing miserably at it.

I checked once and could have sworn these people were all friends on FaceBook, except maybe Jane and Linda or the ex. I checked recentlyand found that Linda isn’t friends with Cindy or the ex, so I don’t know if there was de-friending involved or if I imagined the whole thing in the first place.

I was thinking about Linda's declaration the other day and the story that goes with it.  Over the years I've had perhaps more than my fair share of falling out with friends.  Sure, I'm the common denominator so that's my demon and I face it more often than I like.  Still, in most conflicts, rarely is one side 100% to blame.  Today there doesn't seem to be a point in the future when my catholic friends and I reconcile our differences.
Still with enough time, anything is possible.

Cindy and I were what I thought were good friends in college. We kept in touch post-NMSU then suddenly she stopped writing or returning emails. Through the grapevine, I heard that she was mad at me for some reason. I asked mutual friends to see if they could find out what I had done to earn her wrath but no one knew. She wouldn't talk about it. I made one more attempt in the mid 90s to see if she was up for re-connecting and as I understand it the response was no thanks.


For some reason, I friended her on FB a year or two ago. I was surprised when she accepted. We don't comment on one another's posts too often, though we wish each other happy birthday and congrats on major life milestones. I think this is probably as good as it gets this late in life.

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