Guess what I found?

My sticker collection. Heavy on the unicorns.
By showing this I am truly revealing myself as a girl of the early 80s, aren't I?

Oh yes, I have my collections too, so I ought not to be pointing any fingers. I used to spend hours sorting these, arranging them, looking at friend's albums and trading.
I was a completionist. Look at all the slight differences. Why yes, they are ALL sparkly.

These fabric style stickers were known as "satins" and fairly coveted. Unfortunately whatever glue they used didn't hold up so well.

So shiny. So 80s. So unicorns. Did I really have this deep a unicorn obsession? I remember it was a major part of my collection. So were bears, hearts, rainbows, and butterflies. There were even some scratch-n-sniff in the pile. Oh the memories. I sure loved the sparkly.

The pinnacle of stickerdom: the highly sought-after "liquids", made of liquid crystal. They change colors when you press on them. I think they use liquid crystal for more useful things now.

Guess I wasn't picky. If it was shiny and stuck to things, it was in my collection. A little Lisa Frank action on the bottom left, as I'm sure the connoisseurs will instantly recognize

Crossover! Christmas unicorns. Check out the one with rainbow on the upper left: unicorns, Christmas, AND RAINBOWS!!1!

Somewhat creepy metallic bears. The round one was actually some kind of thick metallic foil. Unlike the satins, the metalies are still quite sticky-strong.

Of course I never actually STUCK them on anything. sigh. I'm giving them to Mom to use in entertaining my nieces. Someone else should enjoy them and actually stick them on things. Except the pirate flag, that one's staying with me. And maybe a couple unicorns mumble mumble.

Traveling

I'm in Utah, visiting my Mom (note to thieves: K the love monkey is still in Portland, holding down the fort and feeding the cat.)

Utah is not really the place I want to be right now, but Mom needs the company. My brother does live nearby; so does my cousin and her large family. But that's not someone to just have around the house to talk to, any time you feel like. Even if we're sitting in the same room, knitting & reading, at least there is someone there. And you aren't just cooking for one.

I am solidly in suburban Utah, which is my least favorite part of Utah. OK, fine, there are a few farms still left around here. For the moment. Otherwise it is strip mall/residential 'burb hell. I prefer my urban walkable areas. YMMV, of course. Oh yes, and it SNOWED this morning. grrrrrr

The pregnant lady ratio is very high. It is also somewhat disturbing to me that I'm the same age as at least some of the moms of the teenagers I see. Also disturbing? These:

What is it with the big eyes? I know about the manga girls blah blah blah but these are just creepy. Also spotted across the street: a Tangled poster. Yikes, too much eye for one day.

Sigh. I seem to be stuck in grumpus world today. I am cleaning out Dad's office. It's hard, in both the way you'd think and other ways. So, public service announcement: If you have packrat tendencies, please please do me a favor and reconsider: do you really need all those pens? We are up to 10 staplers now, and that's not including the little portable ones.

I have a packrat habit all my own and right now I want to just go home and throw it all out. When Dad finally retired and they moved, he spent months going through and organizing this stuff. He told me this while we talking on the phone, last year. Right now I have an overwhelming urge to go out and just live and not buy any more crap. It's a horrid cliche but but I don't care: any day anyone can just walk out their door and be hit by a cement truck, metaphorically or otherwise.

And now of course, it's not just physical things you leave behind, but a whole computer, hard drives, and CDs full of files. He was in the middle of scanning in all the family photographs. There must be thousands. I'm trying to figure out where he left off. And here's hard #3: looking through all these old pictures, including snaps of me at 11, 14, 22.

I wish I hadn't been such a fuckup in high school and college. I wish I hadn't been so afraid, so self-conscious. There was so much I could have done and didn't. My head was messed up, sure, but I didn't even bother trying to put it together. Not like it's all that great now, but I at least have some kind of concept of myself. I have also dialed the self-loathing far back, which (quel surprise!) helps quite a lot. Maybe I've just gotten to a point where I just don't really care any more, but that's nicely freeing, actually. I look at that girl in those old photos and just want to shake her up. Stop being such an idiot.

Anyway, nothing I can do about it now, except learn.
I need some cute. Who else needs some cute? How about some hot chicks?

We went to the IFA for some fruit trees, and the store was full of a persistent cheeping. Mmm, bring on those google searches.

This year's cherries

From Thursday. A friend and I walked down to waterfront park at lunchtime to admire them.


The weather finally broke last Thursday, the 31st. It's been up and down since then, but at least it feels like SPRING. My sinuses say it does too. And yesterday it was honest-to-goodness sunshine all day long (never mind the frost the night before)

Not a cherry, but a beautiful old tree near where I work, covered in big white blossoms.

I might have a bit of a blossom fixation right now. Please don't hold it against me.