MattOnFire

Those who have been keeping up with this lil’ bloggy-blog know that Wifey and I are buying a house. We close in T-minus 2 weeks, so I’ll be spending the next 14 days packing up our mountains of candles and unopened pilates workout DVDs with a ferocity that can only be described as “throwing a lot of crap away when Wifey isn’t looking”.

It’s amazing when you start going through years of belongings and find little mementos (and some old, stale Mentos – The Freshmaker™) that open the floodgates of brain storage, immediately sending you into full-scale reminiscence mode. Some examples:

A Picture of Chauncey

Chauncey was my dog for a few years. He was a Bichon Frise. I named him after the public safety officer at my college who tried to have me thrown out of school after I told an RA that I wanted to drink juice out of a glass bottle in my dorm room. It was a big misunderstanding that still, to this day, makes no discernible sense. Anywhoos, Chauncey (the public safety guy) and I became sort-of friends. Turned out he played in a bluegrass band and invited me and check out him and the rest of Taylor Made (Chauncey’s last name was Taylor – see what he did there with the play on words?). Chauncey was a nice guy… kind of older-brotherish, if your older brother was kind of slow and played bluegrass music. I haven’t seen him since college. So a year or so after I graduated I got a fancydog and named him Chauncey. I don’t have Chauncey the FancyDog anymore. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

A Keychain from the Bahamas

I’ve never been to the Bahamas. But my old co-worker, Marsha, has. She brought me back a keychain. Marsha was fun to work with, and is a great director. She’s still holding down NBC12′s morning show and runnin’ things like a champ. She’s funny. One of the best parts of working at the station was listening to Marsha tell stories about all her mens.

A Salt N’ Pepa CD

I don’t know where this came from. It certainly wasn’t mine. I swear. I think it’s Wifey’s. The first and only time I saw the Wife sing Karaoke was when she performed a rousing, drunken, rendition of Shoop. This was probably within the first couple of months of us dating. She knows all the words, most of them correctly.

A Post-It Note

A few years back, the then-girlfriend – now-wife and I had an idea. We wanted to start a business. A bookstore. A children’s bookstore. We did research. We posted a little note on the inside of our computer desk that reads the name of our would-be venture. Once Upon A Moonbeam. The note was to remind us of our goal. She drew little stars on it and wrote the name all frilly. I’m looking at it now and wondering why we never went through with it. Maybe someday.

1st Generation iPod

10GB. Mac-only. Firewire. Original box, packing materials, documentation. I was so effing cool when I bought this. I was even one of those turds who clipped it (because it used to come with a belt clip) to my waist and walked around town listening to whatever was cooler than cool 8 or 9 years ago. Because of the iPod, I had an uncontrollable urge to find new music. And thus started my life as a Pirate. Limewire was running on my G4 24/7 downloading music that I wanted to hear. Most of it got deleted, eventually, because there was no such thing as good music in 2001. Or 2002. It’s a documented fact. But because of my love affair with a brilliantly-designed music gadget, I rediscovered my taste in music and have been looking for new bands and new sounds ever since. So, anyone wanna buy a 1st gen iPod? I buffed out all the scratches. Like new! Original box!

I really could go on and on with the little doo-dads and knick-knacks and Buffalo Bills jerseys and whatnot… but I won’t. I really need to get this crap into boxes (or the trash can). It’s tough to pack quickly, though, when a lifetime of memories flows through each item.

I feel like I’m on Hoarders up in here.