Wedding Planning Moment of the Day

After L&R's wedding this weekend, I spent some time going through my room in Florence. I "cleaned it out a few years ago," which basically meant that I only have half a closet of clothes at home, but I decided I needed to make some sort of a dent. I still have a ways to go--I mean, what do you do with old trophies, stuffed animals, and empty photo albums?--but I'm getting there.

This Sunday I went through my college tubs, earmarking everything that was ready for charity including my original Forman (weighs about 50 pounds... glad we lugged that home), a digital camera the size of a lunch box, and my floral bedding set from school. I saved a few little things, like a ruler from my grandfather's insurance business and the last gift card I ever got from my sweet grandma.

Bolstered by my success, I moved on to my room and starting culling books from my roughly 36 shelves. Out went multiple copies of Sarah Phillips, puritan conversion narratives, and any other book that I didn't want to move four times in the next 10 months.

I love looking back at books and trying to remember what I was doing, and who I was, when I read them. Tucked away in one book, I found a piece of paper that told me exactly:

M,
Do you like F5? I think he's cute. I really want to go with him. Do you think he likes me?
A

The scary part of this is not that it's in big bubbly hand-writing (the clear marker of a middle school exchange) or that M and I had a code that named everyone by number and letter so we could gossip freely without the risk of the note being found, but rather which book this particular note was found in. While I was writing pining (and altogether not heartfelt) love notes, I was apparently reading Schindler's List, the big old unabridged version. It was a dogeared, borrowed (and never returned, sorry Nancy) version, which I think makes it worse.

Ah to be young and capable of total thought isolation. One minute, cute hats and movie dates, the next death camps and war tactics.

B heard the whole thing on the phone and still wants to marry me. I count myself very lucky.