Purging the Hoard

Kohl Vial of Likely Lead Poisoning

2011-02-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

I bought this at a vintage clothing store about eight years ago before I learned that lots of kohl has lead in it. So I looked and oh, boy is it ever sparkly, so I'm glad I only used it once. Or twice. Maybe.

So if I did anything really weird about 6 -7 years ago, I'm going to say I was suffering from lead poisoning. Right. Moving on.

There's really nothing I can say to 'sell' this thing. I can't really recommend anyone actually use this kohl. You know, like in your eye.

But as a shelf sitter it's wonderful. It's a pretty terra cotta clay thing that seems to be a travel souvenir from Egypt or some such place. It's got a mass-produced-but-not-high-quality feel to it.

The Kohl Vial of Likely Lead Poisoning is just over 4" tall and 2" wide, and has a tiny mirror on the front. That's so you can see you giving yourself eye cancer. There is a good amount of Kohl left inside, but again, I can't recommend sticking this in your eye.

Probably not safe around children, either.

So yeah, put it on the high shelf.

The Quartz Burro of PackRatism

2011-01-22T14:03:00.002-07:00

“Begin at the beginning,", the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop”
-Lewis Carroll (author of Alice in Wonderland)

Once upon a time, when I was around four years old, my parents took me to a rock shop. They had observed my interest in rocks (because I assume every small child plays with pretty shiny things they find on the ground) and naturally, wanted to encourage such interests in me that might create a future geologist or something science-y. Boy, were they wrong.

I can't remember where we were going that day, perhaps to my grandparents' general store a couple of towns away... but there appeared on the road ahead, a creaky old shack that had ROCKS painted in huge blue letters across the front of its' faded pink facade. We rolled up in the station wagon (this IS the 70's, by the way) and picked our way across the cluttered yard through metal sculptures, large rocks and dirty cats, into the interior of the rock shop.

It was actually a series of rail cars and sheds, cobbled together and strung with cobwebs and extension cords, and smelled like ages of cigarette smoke. The afternoon sun burned yellow shafts through the dirty windows, alighting on glittering rocks lining the rickety shelves. It couldn't have been more magic to a young girl like me.

The proprietor was an old, large bellied, bearded man in denim overalls, with round glasses perched on the end of his nose. He was sitting at a bench, cleaning something under a large magnifying glass, when we came in. The cowbell attached to the old screen door announced our arrival with a squeak and clank. He looked up from his work, over his glasses, and said "Mornin' folks," and I saw that he was chewing on an actual corncob pipe.

My young mind attached to this as being evidence of his Santa-ness. So I asked him, "Are you Santa?"

"Me? No. I'm Harvey," he said with a smile, somehow talking around his pipe. He got up from his bench, dislodging a dusty cat in the process. It dashed out the screen door as my father trailed in behind us. Clank, clank.

"But you look like Santa." My mother used this as a teaching moment to explain that even though people may look a certain way, it may not be true what you think about them. Of course my father thought all of this was terribly funny, and he joked how it was a good thing Harvey didn't look like the easter bunny instead.

So, his non-Santa-ness being firmly established now (even though I still had my doubts) he proceeded to rummage around loudly in various drawers, while drawling on to my mother about how he's got all these 'specimens' as he called them, from ALL OVER THE WORLD! THIS one's from Mongolia, and THIS one's from Brazil, and THIS one's from Assbackistan, and many other places I had never heard of. To me the world was still pretty small, so he pointed out on a map where the rocks were from, while holding them up in a sunbeam, turning them to glisten and sparkle.

One of them, to my amazement, made rainbows all over the room! Such wonder in rocks. He was sure doing a good job of selling me on collecting, because of course I had a whole box of pretty things I wanted within minutes. I'm sure he played this game with every single kid who walks through those squeaky screen doors, too.

"No, honey, you can't have them all. Just pick one this time." My mother, the voice of reason. I whined of course, because I wanted them ALL, but settled on a small geode with dense purple crystals inside - to me it looked like a stone bowl filled with rock candy.

As he was wrapping my geode with newspaper, he asked if I knew what a burro was. "Is that when animals make holes in the ground?" I answered.

He laughed, "Ha! Well, yes, but there's a different kind of burro than that," and handed me a wad of paper with something small, but heavy inside.

"We really can't afford another..." my Mother started to say, but Harvey put up his hands to stop her.

"No, no, this is a gift - it's just a small thing. It's made of quartz." As I unwrapped the paper, the milky smooth creature appeared.

"This is a 'burro'? It looks like a dog. With bunny ears." I replied. Not tactfully.

"Well, it's not a perfect likeness. But it's close. A burro is like a little donkey. This comes from Peru," and he once again, showed me on the world map where we were in relation to this new place. "They use burros down there for all kinds of things, but mostly as pack animals. They carry stuff because they don't have many cars there."

"Have you been there?" I asked.

"Yes, many times. And I even rode a burro."

I couldn't imagine why someone would go somewhere 'many times' unless they had a reason.

"Are you sure you're not Santa?"

At this point, my parents were growing impatient to leave, and they thanked Harvey for all the time spent teaching me about other places. My mother joked that I'd probably either become a geologist or a packrat from this. As we let the screen door bang and clank shut behind us, he called out, "Come back again!" and we did, many more times. But those are other stories...

Well, I did not become a geologist, but I did end up with a huge box of rocks along the way. I've come to believe that the little pack animal Harvey gave me that day started my collecting habit. He knew exactly what he was doing. It is for that reason that I must pass on this beast of burden (aka the "QBP") to another. It has been thirty-five years in my keeping.

It is time to stop carrying all this extra stuff around.

So who wants to be the next caretaker of The Quartz Burro of PackRatism? Maybe it will help you carry your extra stuff for a while...

One of 'those' projects...

2011-01-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

Yep, it's still here. My poor little untouched-in-over-a-year blog. Not that I thought it would GO anywhere, much like the piles of crap around my house that just seem to shift from room to room.

Ever have one of 'those' projects? The kind you keep putting off and moving around because it's so huge it gets in the way of OTHER projects? Yeah, so selling my stuff is one of those projects.

Every time I think about it I don't even know where to start. So many projects are like that.

Rolling drawer carts

2009-08-21T21:17:00.003-06:00

I'm a firm believer in an organized system. I helps when you want to find something like pinking shears in your sewing kit. But what box is the sewing kit in? In what room?

In my craft room, up 'til now, my organization centered around a few of those rolling drawer carts you always see in craft magazines touted as a 'great way to organize your tools, paints and craft supplies.'

Don't believe the hype.

I've just reorganized everything out of those three lumbering, always-in-the-way, hinky-wheeled storage units. All of that stuff takes up MUCH less shelf space than I thought. Those carts just take up too much valuable floor space in my tiny room. They can't be stacked either, of course, being wheeled and all.

I'm going to keep the tall one to organize my gardening supplies, but sell the other two.

The Shed

2009-08-16T19:50:00.003-06:00

It has taken two years and and three months to clean The Shed.

We inherited The Shed with this house. The Shed came complete with other people's stuff, much of it disorganized and already filling the dusty old shelving units. So we had to move it all into a corner to cram our own things in.

Now, it is a generous 10x12 size, but what was left behind was basically everything you need to run a small stained glass shop. In addition to the many tools both power and hand, none of that glass could be stacked or, have things stacked on top of it. It created much unusable space within The Shed.

Today, it is all finally out of The Shed, and the original items we wished to store in there are now finally in place. The owners of the stained glass items mentioned when they moved out, 2 years and 3 months ago, that they'd come back for it in a few months.

I guess having twins really puts a huge dent in your free time. Not that I'm angry, but my partner & I just came to the end of our patience in enabling even more hoarding behavior and packratism. It's all outside wrapped in tarps on pallets now.

Box of Rocks

2009-08-13T20:38:00.001-06:00

I've been collecting things as long as I can remember. I started with rocks. A visit to a rock shop was a quick and harmless gift my parents indulged me in quite often. Relatives would send rock samples to me that they had found, mined or bought from their local rock shops. I ended up with a reasonably sized and labeled rock collection by kindergarten. Which of course, went to show and tell days at school.

And everyone, teachers included, were amazed by the various specimens, and would handle them as if all were made of fragile glass. We turned the crystal structures in light beams to make rainbows on the walls. We played with lodestones and made iron fillings dance across a table. We wondered at the formation of geodes with their tiny forests of crystals hidden for millenia. We peeped at each other through the holes melted through fused sand made when lighting hits the beach. And because we had a good teacher, we learned exactly how hard it is to knapp a piece of flint or start a fire with it.

And I learned that a collection of things is much more powerful than those very same things if they are all separate. The collection gives context. And to children, simple rocks can be a great tool for learning complex concepts about appreciating differences. Every single rock in my collection is different, like the people on this planet. I wanted to collect them all, so that everyone could see something they recognize in there.

But the problem with rocks, like people, is there are just too many to collect. I now have a large wooden chest full of them, which is almost too heavy for me to move. Because there is greater impact in a collection, not individual specimens, my wish is that this box of rocks eventually finds a new home in a museum or University.

More will be said about the box of rocks soon, as I start photographing and sharing memories of the rocks themselves. Mostly I'm still coming to terms with the fact that it too, should pass from my hands soon.