(no subject)
Yesterday I went to visit Shirley's aunt Helen. Since I grew up with Shirley, I'm pretty much a part of their family. Until recently, her mother, Grandma Dorothy, lived with her. Grandma died a couple months ago, at the age of 130 or so. She was a cranky old thing, nicer to strangers than most of her own family, and in that respect, I wasn't considered family. She loved me, and I think it drove Shirley a little nuts. But Grandma and I corresponded via snail mail over the years, shared a mutual love of Japanese culture. To this day, I still feel a little badly that I never really went to visit her to look at the pictures and hear the stories of her trip to Japan. But she set aside a kimono for me, and a cherry blossom table runner. I got a little teary-eyed that she'd thought of me at all.
Anyway, so Helen is still in the process of sorting through Grandma's belongings, having relatives and friends over to sift through what's left, taking what they want. That woman had a ton of stuff. She was an avid crafter to the end, with a whole sewing room full of supplies. Supplies that she no longer needs, but apparently, just kept buying shit. It was all fairly well-organized in plastic bins and vertical drawered storage containers. But there was A LOT. And Aunt Helen, more comfortable behind a shotgun than a sewing machine, needs to get rid of all of it. I don't get to see her so very often, and still feeling guilty over missed opportunities to spend time with people, I headed out to help with the cleaning and removal efforts. Plus, I'm not one to turn down free craft supplies.
So I looted her fabric stash and sewing room, brought home a giant box of fabric, some beads, rhinestones, threads, notions, googly eyes, ribbons, scissors, a glitter glue gun...and I hardly made a dent in what she'd acquired. Along the way, I found lots of half-finished projects as well as miscellaneous items that no one knew why she'd saved or for what purpose. I do enjoy looting, so I had a good time. But as I sifted through her craft items, it occurred to me that I had a very similar room full of shit back in my own home, and didn't really need to add more to it. How much of this would I even use? And how much would sit around as nothing more than the ingredients of an idea that would never materialize? I couldn't quite shake my morbid feeling that someday, people will be picking through this stuff (in addition to the stuff I already have, and what else I may inevitably still acquire as the years pass), my remains, my relics, wondering why the hell I'd saved it.
Still, I took it, with the firm resolution that I'm going to spend more time crafting again, and actually finish the things I start.
Soon.
Really.