Stuff and Nonsense

This is a profoundly moving experience, this moving. In the midst of it, I find myself pondering some deep and important questions.

For example: how many pens does one person actually need in her life? Is two enough? Is eleven too many? How about two hundred and eleven?

Apparently, I have a pen fetish. You should have seen me trying to dispose of some of the approximately 211 pens I found mostly in the top drawer of the rolltop desk, but also in dozens of other places. I had to try each one of them on a piece of scribble paper. If it worked, I cringed: should I keep it or give it away?

The only easy ones to release were mostly from resorts and car rental places and plumbers. They’re the kind with the clicker button on the top. The part that’s supposed to clip on your shirt pocket rubs uncomfortably on that soft place between my index finger and my thumb. It upsets me and distracts me from whatever I'm writing. So I got rid of those. Most of them.

I had to save all the stick pens from the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas. I don't think they had the same kind the last time I was there, but they were the best crossword puzzle pens I’ve ever found -- long and smooth with no protuberances, and perfect points with black ink.

Which reminds me of a story. When I was a little girl, I used to sort of fall into whatever book I was reading. While reading Heidi, for instance, I wore a long flannel nightgown and carried a candle upstairs to bed for weeks. I would've sold my little brother for a featherbed and a goat.

I think it was during Little Women that I taped an ostrich feather to a ballpoint pen and wrote with that until I saved enough allowance to buy a fountain pen, then I taped the plume to that and wrote with it for the whole summer. If I held it just right, it made this scritchy sound that instantly transported me into the mid-1800's. I still love fountain pens.

Then there are Sharpies. They are a serious problem when moving. They come in so handy, even if you only use a couple of them.  But can anyone toss out Sharpies that still write? I can't. See what I mean? A pen fetish.

The Pen Drawer, after I went through it -- twice.

And what about paper? How much paper does one human female need, really? How many pads and reams and boxes are enough, and how many are too many? What if it’s colored paper, or the kind that looks like parchment? What if it's in tablets, all clean and new? Or notebooks, all full of expectations? Is it marginally insane to want to keep it all? I have no idea.

I do know one thing: I made a terrible mistake when my son was young and I put “Sticky Notes” on one of my Christmas stocking-present lists. Packets of them appeared in my stocking every Christmas until this past one, when fortunately he asked if I needed any more. A few days ago, I opened the top drawer of one of the other desks and found about 100 little yellow sticky note pads, many still in their cellophane wrappers. What do you do with those? Can you donate them to some charitable cause? Is there a Third World country with a severe shortage of sticky notes? Email me immediately if you know of one.

It’s not only office supplies that I’m pondering, either. What about all those tiny envelopes that say “Extra Buttons” on them? What do those buttons go to? They’re nice looking buttons, but they don’t seem to match anything I have. I don’t believe I’ve ever in my life opened one of those envelopes and used one of those buttons. Still, they seem too pretty to just throw away. Shouldn't someone start an Extra Button Orphanage?

I’m packing as many charity donations as possible in bags, because I have attracted way too many of those, too. I’ve used quite a few of the canvas tote bags with handles, sort of like two-gifts-in-one, for giveaway stuff. I had really a lot of those, and I still have some left.

I’m trying to use the paper shopping bags with handles, but that’s harder. Some of those bags are really fine, with slick heavy paper and good flat bottoms and logos on the side from Chico’s or Nordstrom. Then there are the little bitty ones. They’re so cute, aren’t they? I have too many of those, too. I haven't a clue where they came from, but once they enter my space they usually stay on indefinitely.

I have a great big one from Abercrombie & Fitch that I believe came with a present I bought five or six years ago for my son. I don’t remember what was in it, maybe a jacket, but the bag has soft wide mesh handles and is really sturdy and I’ve been saving it for something ever since. It does have a guy on the side of it with no visible clothes on, so I’ve never really been tempted to carry it around in public.  Not a bad idea though, now that I think about it. Maybe it’s a beach bag for San Pancho...hmmm...

Of all the deep and important questions I've been pondering this last week, this is the major one: what is it with women and empty boxes? 

Maybe not all women are this way, but plenty I know are. They are the ones whose first remark upon removing the colorful wrapping paper from a birthday present is, "Can I keep the box?"

I'm guessing it's a disease passed through female DNA strands.

I come from a long line of women who keep empty boxes full of empty boxes full of empty boxes. It is functionally impossible for any of us to throw out a good box. By good, I mean any box of any material that is clean and straight and has a top.

My mother is worse than I am. When we were looking in her closet for sandals for her to take to San Pancho, three out of four shoe boxes on her top shelf were empty. But I'm not one to throw stones. You should see all the small cardboard jewelry boxes I found in my room. The little tiny earring-size ones, the slightly bigger bracelet-size ones, the necklace-size ones that still have flat white cotton in the bottom. I get the twitches when I think about throwing them away.

I will toss them out, I promise. Because I'm not going to do what my aunt did and move from one house to another with a giant box labeled "Empty Boxes".

Honest.

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Comments

[Thelma]

A couple weeks before Xmas I filled two grocery bags with empty boxes, which I then placed in my trunk. I did some grocery shopping later and when I opened the trunk to place the food, I impulsively removed one bag of boxes and left them next to the cart retrieval (surely someone would want them). As for that other
bagfull, a woman present at a holiday tea, sitting across from me, said she was wondering where to get some empty boxes. And to her went that bagfull.
I do have a few left...but I don't have many post-it notes around. And not many good pens.

[Candice]

Now let me get this straight, Judith. You want me to mail an empty box full of empty boxes full of empty boxes to TUCSON? That's a better outcome to this post than even I had anticipated!!

xo
C

[Judith]

Candice,

I'll take all the small jewelry boxes for the Gallery . . . people are constantly asking for them. You can mail them via slow boat to our Tucson address, and I'll bring them back by car in July. I am serious!

Judith

[Candice]

Thank you, Gretchen! You're so kind.

I notice no women readers have yet admitted to having Empty Box Syndrome. Come on, 'fess up. It's not only my family, is it? Or is it...?

xo
C

[Gretchen]

Oh this is just SO priceless, and talk about striking a chord, singing the same tune, Snap, Bingo.... I was thinking that if the buttons were properly sewn onto a piece of pre-hole-punched metal they would make an excellent musical instrument, rivalling a washboard. I must be older than you, because recently I completely alarmed myself as I had to go out and PURCHASE pens. I don't think I have ever bought a pen, but I worked in a school.
The visions of little Candice in her long flannel nightgown tiptoeing up and down steps with her candle and trying to yodel... lovely.. I did get goats when I got older, but I still have trouble with the yodeling.
You are a beautiful writer, you manage to scour up memories inside us and let them dance in the sun.
That naked-man beach bag is going to be a hit.

[Candice]

Oh, all of you and your delightful comments make my life so much happier and easier these days (and always)!

xoxoxo
C

[Allen]

Tracy wants to be carried around in that A&F bag! She says "He's just my size...I mean IT'S just my size!". Once again...you given us another week of amusement. Gracias!

[Adrienne]

I really enjoyed this blog Candice. I laugh at you, with you, at myself, and with all of us.

[Curt]

Those button bags! Yes. Finally, a use for them. Shall we start a San Pancho collection. Surely there are folks who can use them. And do they really need to match?

If you're looking for a really good, long-lasting, black ballpoint pen, see my best friend when you arrive. She has several hundred from a previous life.

[Travis]

I have yet to find a pen in Mexico with which I can write a decent grocery list. Bring them all. In a box.

[Char]

Thanks for the smiles on a gloomy gray day...oh yes, I can relate!

[Dee]

Ah, yesss, the pens! Jim has magnetic fingers or sticky pockets when it comes to acquiring pens. We have pens from auto repair shops, banks, and hotels we've never even visited or even heard of, from towns hundreds of miles away. It's a mystery.

[Jeanne]

I don't know - those jewelry boxes may come in handy :) And yes, a naked man beach bag would be cool!