Ouch....Right in the Feels

For years I've had this massive antique "sewing basket" that I've kept a metric shit-ton of personal relics from decades ago. This basket was traditionally used by German girls to keep their future wedding "stuff" in (it was a complicated thing) and afterwards was often used as a large sewing/craft box. When I was overseas I bought one that had been restored, fully intending to give it as a wedding present, but that damned thing is huge and not easily shipped.

Anyway, the basket is made of wicker, which isn't exactly a good thing to have around with three cats. I'm tired of keeping it safe under blankets and towels, especially since I never go through the thing. Last week I dug it out and started emptying the contents. Aside from a bunch of old pictures I have clippings, souvenirs, old letters, and a surprising amount of signed nude photos of porn stars. Evidently I had completely forgotten about my little "hobby" while I was in Bosnia of writing porn stars.

Heh.....now I do remember folks getting interested when I got mail.....

The pictures are starting to fade or stick terribly to the photo album pages so I've decided to just start digitizing everything. I've got a couple of good scanners, all the required software, and (unfortunately) time. As part of the whole process I'm organizing the pictures, tagging and where I can identifying individuals. Since I'll have digital copies I can more easily share stuff, keep backups, and most important, toss out old crap.

Seriously.....do I need to have a copy of my kindergarten report card? Not really....a digital copy will more than suffice for memory lane. Some of these "artifacts" really haven't held up so well and they are things I'd like to look at from time to time. An example is a poem written to me by a close friend in high school. At the end of my junior year I hit a really rough spot and things were feeling pretty bleak for me. It felt as if I'd lost everything and for those that know me I tend to not only wear my heart on my sleeve, I've got the worst poker face ever. Evidently whatever I was going through looked a lot worse than I remember it being, which is really saying something.

Anyway this poem my friend wrote has not aged well. She presented it nicely, but it has been folded over, stained, and the colors deteriorated so much in the last quarter-century (now doesn't that make me feel old). Now most of the stuff I've scanned gets some minor Photoshop work, mostly color-correction and scratch removal, but the poem needed a complete overhaul.

Yeah....I couldn't lose this....I dunno, maybe this is the reason I feel a friend's loss so acutely. Ok, I'm getting a bit verklempt.....might need to find those Bosnia pics to balance me out.