we're always off to war, my friends

Been away from blogging for awhile... and every day away just raises the bar.

Nobody is visiting here lately, not even Armenian pornseekers.

S'okay, I haven't been around much either, and visiting other bloggers hardly at all.

So, how to spectacularly return? This has become an obstacle that seemed increasingly insurmountable.

I haven't ever had anything to say although I sure have had some terrific commentators.

But pffft, no previous blogging glories. Going to slog back into it. So, holding my nose and hey, you hold yours too -- shall we dive into the murky bloggy backwater?

Where have you been lately? What is new with you?

Me?

I have been digging out basements and sorting out a 150+ years of history that was crammed into moving boxes and then packed away and forgotten about for many previous decades. The process of unpacking and sorting and discarding or (much more rarely) keeping has taken untold hours and burned up most of my vacation days for the year. Not done yet (sob). But damn close (victorious grin). And damn it, I have some grand old things newly discovered that I would like to share.

Just got a new scanner-printer which should work handily with the cursed-but-nearly-conquered digital camera , in order to capture images of all of the pre-Victorian through 1920s paper ephemera and strange artifacts that were squirreled away in my HOUSES*. Some remarkably amusing and curious stuff that I have discovered has made sorting out the debris nearly tolerable. Fascinating stuff that is worth sharing.

Heh heh. *Houses. Yep, doesn't that make me sound like a John McCain-ish bazillionaire? Got such an excess of housing that I just can't remember how many habitats and lord only knows what lurks in the closets and basements? Not exactly true.

We sold the old house, the one that I loved and had fully intended to move back into soonish, and that did break my heart a bit but now I am firmly, permanently residing here, in the middle of, well, you know. And that is that and no more looking back.

Except, the process of selling one house and moving squarely and entirely into the other one has meant dealing with a HUGE number of moving boxes. Some of these boxes have contents nobody has examined since the mid-1800s.

Repeating myself, but these moving boxes are/were really immobility boxes. Things not dealt with but merely tucked away. Decisions on contents were left "pending". Pending the onslaught of The (raging, resentful) Laundress. The boxes that did have a label or marking generally said "Miscellaneous" or "Assorted" or (scariest of all) "Fragile".

Boxes marked "fragile" or "delicate, handle with care" were typically on the very bottom of a heap, tucked in a corner, with the sides stove-in. Delicious contents in ruins, so many sad, shattered items discovered and disposed of and the sorry wastefulness just gnaws at me.

Other people might have been spending their vacations painting their living room a thrilling new color or visiting the Bahamas or prowling the halls of the Smithsonian museums. But me? Just shredding old medical records concerning long-dead ladies urinary tract infections and disposing of mildewed bed linens and cutting fingers on wastefully broken, formerly handsome glassware. Dismal stuff like that...

Nope. No secrets here. I have been visiting neglected basements and forgotten closets and shady corners and abandoned dustbins-- and fully intend to share the fruits of my labors. One of the painful and peculiar lessons is that almost ANYTHING is interesting, if old enough.

For example, in a box trapped behind the boiler in the old house, I unearthed a ratty, mildewed notebook, covers stripped off. Almost tossed in the trashbin, thank heavens I peeked inside and noticed it was a treasure, therefore sent a unique handwritten document off to another state's local historical society instead. It was the pre-Civil War minutes of a men's social club. The club was devoted to training the members in "gymnastics and military manuevers".

Getting ready for war, the membership were training themselves for participation in the Union Army. Beautifully written in copperplate script, in several different hands. My favorite part was a passionate (and correspondingly sloppily rendered) by-law, fervently denouncing members who guffaw or gesticulate when another club member holds the floor. Offending members to be fined 10 cents for the first infraction, 50 cents for the second. A third offense would result in expulsion from the club. At the back of the notebook, the membership roster had several members with enormous, exuberant, flowery "EXPELLED" written next to their names (those would be the fellow who couldn't restrain their guffaws and gesticulations) but most members had dates of enlistment and regimental troop info. The last entry in the notebook was 1863.

Another painful lesson: other than this blog, the only remnant of The Laundress that might be left behind is my formidable heaps of un-ironed washing and unsorted socks. No witty letters, no clever poems, no gorgeous photographs, no undiscovered oil paintings. No copperplate script anywhere.

Nope.

I haven't created anything of merit and have very little that will be left behind when I am gone. A few funny photos, posed with my husband and a couple dozen Pomeranian dogs in Montreal in the late eighties, with a mixed flock of endangered parrot species in Florida in the early 1990s? Maybe not even those photos are of future interest, since thousands of other tourists probably have the same basic images. Reading the contents of many cigar boxes crammed with witty, ancient correspondence and original poetry and news clippings and journals has humbled me greatly. Good lord, and I was already so very low!

Alas, I have sucked up wickedly large amounts of fiberglass insulation and coal dust and ordinary dust and assorted airborne particulates. My lungs are FRIED and the asthma (my anathema: hotly denied rotten lung issue) has spectacularly returned.

Nope, still not smoking -- haven't been for years now. Still thoroughly addicted to nicotine replacement products, which now have a frequent buyer incentive program (check out Nicorette's Quit Rewards) and gather oddly non-judgmental side columns (for example, in today's Science Times, check out The Nicotine Blast). Every night, I am resenting the fact that you can not pick up at least a tiny cannister of oxygen at the local drugstore. Can you buy this stuff on the internet? Why is basically purified air under the purveyance of the medical bureaucracy? Can you cash in your Nicorette Rewards for at a smallish amount of oxygen?? (Questions that need to be asked!)