Bad Thursday

Ok, bad news: I gained three pounds since last week. School started this week, and with all the trekking around on campus, the flights of stairs, the schlepping of books I haven't exercised one bit. Bad me. BAD. Also, I made microwave cake the other night. Evil, delicious, gooey in the middle chocolate microwave cake.

No more microwave cake for me.

Other bad news: I had to run four stories of stairs today to make it to Human Origins class on time. The first two floors were fine, but by the third I was slowing down, and by the fourth I thought there was a good chance I might either faint or have a heart attack. Bad knees and all I shouldn't have run the stairs, but I wanted to be on time, and I just think I need to be in better shape. I wish my knees weren't bad so I could go running like all the cute people do on campus.

Also bad news: I'm a pack rat. I've got this nice writing desk in my room that I don't use (except to hold my fish tank up) because to open the desk out you'd have to whack it into one of the bedposts, and the wood is really soft on the writing surface and all the letters I penned to my grandmother as a child have left deep engraving marks all over it. And it's full of stuff. Old stuff, since I can't get into it very easily. I started cleaning it today just because, and the farther I got the more I was wondering why I kept some of the stuff. And why in that combination. And in an anthropology-what-if-this-all-gets-covered-in-volcanic-ash-and-they-find-it-a-thousand-years-from-now way.

There was a whole dovecote of house plans. Photocopied from when I worked at the library for me to use as reference in playing The Sims. There were at least ten of those flat mailers the USPS uses that my pay stubs used to come in when I worked at AFCE years ago; they used them interoffice and never actually mailed them, and there was nothing in them now, so I really have no clue what I was thinking. Maybe folders? There was a weird drawer full of Girl Scout badges I'd never sewed on a uniform as well as two pens I'd liked but never found refills for, a red-leaded pencil, and two half used art class shading pencils, safety scissors. Another drawer held what might be EVERY fortune cookie fortune I ever got before I quit using the desk so much, every phone number I've ever been given, and all the bad poems I wrote as a teenager. A box of broken rings, real scissors, an empty eye glass case, a fish tank thermometer. Bad pair of 1970's sun glasses my mom gave me, which are now in style...

It's baffling. I don't even remember all the stuff. Of course, some of the stuff that I do remember where it came from, years ago, was because it belonged to someone else. All the books Charles gave me sit together on my bookshelf. Cliff's Harry Potter box from last spring is still next to my dresser. One of the desk drawers, the long wide ones below the desk, is entirely full of every drawing I've ever gotten from a friend who did art. Most of those are by John Fuller who used to throw away everything he drew and when I'd go over to his house I'd rescue it all. I've got a couple of sweaters in my closet I "borrowed" from Dad's house because he was getting rid of things after slimming down. I can get rid of all the bits of junk in my desk, like the floor plans and the broken rings, but I bet John's art isn't going to ever leave, much like I don't care how many holes get in the Las Vegas hoodie Dad got me when he first moved out there. It's sort of creepy in a sentimental way, I guess. I don't know. I don't find it creepy. Other people might.

So, lose weight, no cake, get in shape, quit keeping junk in my desk.