So, I cleaned Jake's and my bedroom the other day...
Yeah, yeah, that's a pretty lame way to begin a journal entry... Except that Jake and I are both COMPLETE slobs, and cleaning the bedroom (which is a little bit bigger than a king-sized bed) really was an all-day task. And some of it was NASTY... Like, when I found a very hard brown and white object that initially appeared to be a tooth from a very large herbivore. In actuality, the "tooth" was not a tooth, and the white stuff ON the "tooth" was some sort of exotic mold.
Nasty.
So, after throwing the "tooth" in the garbage, I commenced to do the laundry. That was the worst of it, really. Jake and I don't like folding, or hanging, or whatever normal people do with their clothes. I mean, why bother, when it's just so much easier to throw them on the floor?
But the problem was, we just had too many clothes. I mean, stuff we NEVER wear. I have this wicked tendency to obtain clothes and then never, ever wear them. And a good half of Jake's clothes don't fit him... So, as I folded, I faced the difficult task of choosing what to give away, what to throw away, and what to keep.
(Of course, I couldn't manage to throw anything away... As a once and future dumpster diver, I don't believe anything ever REALLY deserves to go in the garbage can... My mom calls that habit "being a pack rat." Oh well. Anyway...)
I have so many articles of clothing that I just don't like. I mean, it's unbelievable, how many freaking shirts I just hate, but can't get rid of...
WHERE DO ALL OF THESE SHIRTS COME FROM!?
And therein lies the REAL dilemma... Every article of my clothing has some sort of sentimental value attached to it...
There's a white t'shirt that has "Java Joe's" printed on the chest. It's stained to hell, and it actually did sport a bloodstain on the shoulder when I got it, but I LOVE that shirt. It dates back to 1997, when Meg, and David, and all the nice people worked at Java's... I have no idea whom it belonged to, as I found it under a couch belonging to Marianne and Neil... They were moving. They were using the t'shirt as a rag. They said if I could get it clean, it was mine. So I got it clean enough to wear to bed. No bloodstains.
There's this gahd-awful ugly orange sweater. It found its way into my drawer via Peter, who regularly received gifts of clothing (some of it very nice, and very expensive), from people he refused to introduce to me. When Peter moved out of the Ghetto Palace, he left approximately five million tons of his crap, including this orange sweater. It's really heavy, and fairly uncomfortable, and besides, it reminds me of Peter, so I really should be able to toss this one in the Goodwill bag... But... Jake thinks it makes me look like Velma -- the geek-girl from "Scooby Doo." And Jake thinks Velma is sexy. So, sometimes (never without a sigh and a roll of my eyes), I indulge Jake's bizarre fantasies and wear the Velma sweater. With G-string underwear.
Aaron gave me the G-string underwear. I really don't know why. He never saw me wear it. I think it was supposed to moost my confidence in my own sexiness. It didn't really do that; it just made my butt-crack itch. But I think that's the one and only time a male ever bought me slinky underwear. Besides, butt-crack itching aside, they really are very cute...
There's the baby blue shirt that's textured sort of like a Triscuit cracker (what do you call that, anyway?). This was Chris's "grunge shirt." When Chris was the owner of this shirt, it sort of represented the two main sides of his personality: the side that was annoying and pretentious and shopped at the Gap, and the side that was slightly more rugged and knew every Pearl Jam lyric ever recorded. Admittedly, I liked (and still like) both of Chris's styles. I sort of bullied him into "permanently loaning" me his shirt. I think I told him it would help me adapt to Washington culture or something stupid like that. I think he gave it to me because he wanted me to think of him every time I did laundry. Well, I do, dammit. *sigh* Even if, someday, I grow to hate this shirt, I know I couldn't ever get rid of it. For now, I still love it.
My mom sent me this t'shirt that says "Okracoke Coffee Company" on it. The label says it's a size "medium," but after I washed it, it became a size "miniscule." I've never been to Okracoke. I'm not really sure where Okracoke is. I don't even drink coffee anymore (okay, except decaf). But my mom was on an adventure, and she was thinking of me, so I keep that shirt...
There's the blue skirt that's falling apart at the seams, literally... It's made out of this fake velvet stuff, and it's always separating from the elastic. I only paid ten stupid dollars for this skirt, but then I ended up loving it so much that I paid seventeen to have the laundromat people at the end of the street fix it up. But they didn't do a very good job, and it's falling apart again. But I actually do love this skirt -- not for any sentimental reasons, just because it's so warm and comfortable and pretty... And, okay, sort of nerdy, but whatever: *I* like it...
There's the other blue skirt -- the one I bought at Wal-Mart when Mike got a speeding ticket and it looked like he might have to go to court. I didn't have any "respectable" clothing, so I bought this nice, floor-length skirt, like the kind a nerdy junior-high English teacher would wear. But, I'd gained a LOT of weight in Santa Fe, when all of this happened. I mean, five or six inches at the waist... And then, when I moved back to Binghamton, and my so-called family decided I shouldn't be allowed to eat anymore, I lost all the weight. And so I started pinning the court-skirt together with safety pins so that it wouldn't fall down around my ankles... How could I bid farewell to what is probably STILL my one and only respectable skirt? I mean, despite the safety pins...
There's the Army beret that Jürgen gave me a year or so ago... I have no idea where he got it, or how, but I think he gave it to me because I kept threatening to sleep with a soldier just to get one of those hats... Jürgen wisely recognized that I probably meant it, and decided to save me the effort... Well, somehow, that beret got thrown into the dryer, and is now too tight for my head. But I couldn't POSSIBLY throw it out, or even give it away. I loved that hat. And once, Tom Robbins told me it was cool.
There's the pair of skater jeans I bought back in 1997, because my friend Marianne always wore skater jeans, and I wanted to impress her... Or something. I don't know. Anyway, I bought two pairs of skater jeans, one of which is notably missing. The other pair is stained to hell. They're missing about two inches off the original cuffs on the bottom. The top button got lost and they're now held together by a safety pin. And besides, who the hell wears skater jeans anymore, anyway? Especially after the age of 17? I don't know why I love these jeans so much. There's really nothing about them to love, except that when I bought them, lots of people thought they were really cool.
Anyway... I did manage to discard a very ugly pink and white shirt that I think I got out of the Evergreen Free Box. And a pair of sweat pants that hopelessly rode up my crotch. And a couple of other things that I dare not look at lest I change my mind and retrieve them, only to throw them, once again, on the bedroom floor... *sigh*
~Helena*