Cleaning out my Closet

Music:

Couple days ago I decided I was going to try and find my collection of postcards so I could add my two most recent postcards (one from NYC and one that came with Moulin Rouge!) to the collection. I thought it might be an interesting journey so I decided to grab my camera and here is the result. It may take a bit to load due to the length of the post

You may even see some things that may bring back memories for you~

I started by looking in my box of cards. Which contains cards from birthday’s as far back as my 9th birthday, party invitations, mail from my friend Iris, parks maps for Hershey Park and Cedar Point, and random brochures and pamphlets.

When I laid them all out like that they covered half my bed, but alas no postcards. Yes that’s a Veggie Tale’s card if you recognized it lol it’s really old.

After that, I picked the closet as the next place to look for…took hours, partly because I was having fun looking through stuff I hadn’t touched in years. But our closet is a total mess and I shalt show you to save you from the pain it shall cause upon your eyes.

I found my fishing tackle box that I keep little trinkets in and found my stash of pressed pennies.

Surely you all have seen those penny pressers in places of amusement? I usually get one each place I go, and sometimes I get one each time I go to the park.

• 1 from Dorney Park in PA (been there once)
• 3 from Hershey Park in PA (been there at least 4 times)
• 1 from Busch Gardens in VA (been there at least 3 times)
• 1 from Watkins Glen in MA (been there once, about to go again this summer)
• 1 from Baltimore National Aquarium in MD (been there 3 times)
• 1 from Knoebels in PA (been there once, I hate that place)
• 2 from ships in Baltimore, MD
• 1 from New Jersey

I went through some folders and found something rather old.

I had to laugh when I found this because I’ve recently been watching Star Wars a lot and obsessing over Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen. I cut this article on Star Wars II out of a magazine in 2002, making me 11. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. And the folder was given to me by one of my mom’s D&D friends whom she used to play with on a regular basis (and you wonder where I get my nerdy-ness from ;P). My sister and I would sit in the room above where they would play D&D, and there used to be a grate in the floor and we’d watch them play through the grate.

Come to think of it, I’ve been randomly given a fair bit of nerdy things like that haha. Another one of my mom’s friends gave me this “CyberCene” “exclusive edition” picture thing from Titan A.E. (another sci-fi movie I loved when I was little). And a random guy in a video game store gave me a DVD with all the scenes from Xenosaga I on it for free, I said I liked the game so he gave it to me. But yeah continuing on with my search~

Not sure how many other little girls had these when they were growing up, but they’re porcelain birthday dolls. I have from new born to 14 years old, one for every year. I would of gotten them all out but I can’t recall where the rest of them are packed away. My sister and I used to play with them like you play with Barbie dolls haha course we didn’t do that until we got older, we didn’t have them in our reach when we were younger.

I really do need to find a better storage place for this:

Massive bag, with all my old equipment in it from my Tae Kwon Do days 4 years ago this month (or 3, I don’t know lol easy to get it mixed up). It has absolutely everything excluding my diplomas, my old belts -except you can see my black belt there- and photos. In that picture, you can see the following:

• My white uniform, there’s 3 or 4 more uniforms in there
• Breaking board, the blue plastic thing
• Kamas and that other weapon I can’t remember the name of (the long skinny stick thing)
• Sparring gear, can see the helmet there anyways
• Medals and a trophy

 I actually managed to lose my real medals years ago, slightly pissing, those medals you see are all from a tournament held by the school, not state-wide tournaments. From the only real tournament I participated in, I got 2 bronze and a silver if I recall correctly, might have been 1 bronze and 2 silver. But the school tournament, 3 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze. SHOULD have been FOUR golds but the retarded judge gave the gold to Cody even though his form on his push-ups totally sucked, it wasn’t very fair (but I beat him in push-ups on a later date and won a giagantic teddy bear haha).

I wish I knew all the categories I competed in :\ I need to find all my papers sometime. But the trophy is from participating in the tournament (so everyone got one) and I don’t remember what the “champion” was for exactly, probably for winning most of the categories I competed in. As you could tell, I was quite good at what I did lol I was in top of the school, teacher’s pet and everything. Lol I even had one girl say “Hi Pam” to me, and I was like “…Hi?” I had no idea who the hell she was ;>>

Before leaving the studio, couple months before, I was one of the select few chosen to apply for the Leadership Program, lowest belt rank there next to Cody. Cody was basically my… I don’t know if you want to call him a rival or not, but we were pretty even, both way ahead of anyone else in the school, he was my first boyfriend actually haha the teacher loved seeing us together. Didn’t last very long though (it’s was me not him, as usual lol). I got my black belt a year before most people get them, and he would of too if he had the money for it. My parents didn’t even pay for my black belt test ($200 I believe), one of my friend’s mom paid for it all because my parents didn’t have money and she apparently really wanted me to take the test. We never did get to pay her back…she and her daughter just randomly stopped coming to class a month or two before I stopped. That test was the worst thing ever, took weeks to train, the only thing I failed was push-ups haha, took me like 5 minutes to do 100 push-ups, supposed to do them all under 3 minutes I think. So many people where crying during the test because it was just so painful, doing 100 kicks in a row without being able to put your foot down, stuff like that.

Sorry really off-track lol. I really miss those days though. Even if the only reason I left was because I didn’t like it anymore. It was a lot of fun. Only time in my life when I got to see friends on a daily basis and hang out with them like a normal teenager haha. But I did find a better place to keep that huge bag, under my pile of teddy bears haha, it works though!

So next was to open this big flat plastic container where I found all my old calendars minus 1 which I cut the pictures out of (Crocodile Hunter one actually haha from 2002). I don’t recall if The Dog one was mine or my mom’s but it’s cute and I have it lol. I had another puppy one which I cut up sometime ago. The 365 puppies a year calendar is in fact in pieces, but I didn’t cut it up as much as the last two so I kept it. The Lord of the Rings one in the back is a poster calendar, one of two of my poster calendars. The other one being my Gackt one from 2007 which is too big to fit in there, and I still have it hanging on my wall.

Do you remember those glow-in-the-dark things you would stick to your walls and ceiling when you were little? And Zip Zaps? My Zip Zaps came with a collectable card from Inital D, had no idea what that was when I got those for Christmas years ago haha. I’ve still got glow in the dark stars stuck all over my ceiling I love them~ I have dolphins, flowers of all sorts, tons of stars and an outerspace set with planets and such. I remember it being a huge pain removing them from the ceiling in our townhouse before we moved here, because at that time, they didn’t have the same easily removable sticky stuff that they do now.

I used to actually like reading when I was younger, we had a lot of books, most of which were previously owned by my mom. But of course I had the books every kid had at the time, Goosebumps and American Girl -Samantha was my favorite- I always wanted my own Samantha so badly when I was little. To my surprise I did get a doll one Christmas morning: except it wasn’t an American Girl but a My Twinn Doll. Anyone remember those? They still make them of course, but they don’t seem to be as popular anymore, little girls stopped playing with dolls since then and started doing their own hair and makeup, quite sad, where’s the innocence in little girls anymore? It makes me want to cry.

My sister got her own My Twinn of course, the only official My Twinn products we ever got where little accessories. Everything else was for the same size doll, just not made by My Twinn therefore cheaper. My mom also hand-made matching dresses and pajamas for us both. My dress and my doll’s dress was blue velvet and my sister’s and her doll’s dress was red velvet. My doll now sits in a box somewhere of unknown origin and my sister’s is wrapped in a bag somewhere of unknown origin. My sister’s doll got ruined years ago back when we first moved here, our cats at the time peed on it and my mom wouldn’t put up with it and that’s when we got rid of Teddy, Florida and Oliver. My doll’s neck joint broke and a shoulder joint broke, guess you can’t say she wasn’t loved haha. And plus as I got older, dolls started to scare me more and more and with her head always hanging in an awkward way it creeped me out and I ended up keeping in her in the back of my closet for the longest time.

Massive collection of stuffed animals. Two fulls buckets and they’re still sprawled all over the floor. Some of them belonged to my mom when she was little, mostly the really old looking ones like that yellow/brown dog in the back, and the hawk next to Odie (which was also hers), and some others I could point out in there.

Back before Neopets was completely about making money, back when it used to actually be fun without ads all over the page. My sister and I each got some one Christmas few years back. You can also see the head of that giant teddy bear I mentioned earlier in the Tae Kwon Do stuff, he’s really huge, I have to take a comparison picture sometime lol.

I absolutely loved Doodle Bears. Another product that has died out because little girls aren’t as interested in dolls and stuffed animals as they used to be.

These are allof my special stuffed animals. Well except the Ewok and Gremlin, those used to be my mom’s but I just had to add them in. I’m sure you all know what a Gremlin is and can spot it in the picture (if you can’t, where the hell did you grow up?), the ewok however, is a creature from Star Wars, incredibly adorable, is the brown thing with the hood wrapped around it’s head on the left side.

Not all of those stuffed animals I remember where I got them, but I know I’ve had them an extremely long time. For example, the doll in the top of the picture (actually I think that might of been given to me from one of our babysitters), but you see the two bunnies there? One white the other blue, the lamb thing inbetween that, that my friends, is my oldest stuffed animal, I believe it was my very first stuffed animal, it has a noise maker in it even. Her name is Margaret, which is my middle name also lol. I could name off half the stuffed animals in here.

• At the bottom, the doggie, Patches, he’s very old, and very loved, still always sleep with him, he used to be pure white haha. He’s a TY Beanie Baby, as is Sparky, Tucker, and Fetch sitting on top of him.
• Sparky (the spotted one) was my very first Beanie Baby, his nose is all messed up from me chewing on it so much.
• The pretty teddy bear next to Patches, she’s nameless, given to me by my great-grandmother on my mom’s side.
• Above her is another teddy bear with a shirt “Pam, I Love You”.
• The weird thing next to him, I don’t know if she was from a popular TV series or something, her ears go inside her head though and her name is Sparkle.
• The bunny next to her is un-named also, but the one directly above it (it doesn’t look like a rabbit because it’s just a head), is Rupert, my grandpa on my mom’s side gave me him a long time ago and became one of my most loved stuffed animals, his tail is falling off and his back is stained brown with soda heh. I remember when my grandpa took us on a plane ride in a little plane, I was clinging onto Rupert.
• The other bunny, which also doens’t look exactly like a bunny cause the way she’s sitting, the purple one. Another TY Beanie Baby (I have a shiz load of them, I’ll take a picture of all of them sometime), I’ve had her for as long as I can remember but she looks brand new (still shiny if you can tell), she has a hole in the bottom of her so I wasn’t allowed to keep her until my mom fixed her (which my mom never did of course) so she was lost of to the depths of storage for at least 5 years and I only remembered about her in the past couple years. Her name is Hippity (my sister has one exactly the same, exact green, Hoppity).
• The doll below the blue bunny at the top, I’ve had that since I was at least 5, my sister has one too except her’s is pink. And for the longest time, we thought mine was the pink one and her’s was the purple one until we saw a picture of me laying on the steps in my grandma’s house holding onto the purple doll.
• There’s two other dogs squeezed in there: Andy who is actually a Petz (anyone remember that game?) dog, and Pasha whom I won at a game in some place similar to Chuck E Cheese’s

And that was the end of looking through the closet. And no sign of my postcards. I started getting frantic by then, then I realized the only place I didn’t look which was in my night stand drawer thing. And sure enough I found them.

Starting from the top, going left to right

• New York City
• Washington D.C.
• Put-In-Bay Ohio
• Deep Creek Lake, MD
• Deep Creek Lake, MD
• Lighting Racer roller coaster in Hershey Park, PA
• Cedar Point, OH
• US Brig Niagara, in Baltimore, MD
• USS Constellation, in Baltimore, MD
• The 3 animal ones are random, nothing special
• Delaware Breakwater Lighthouse
• Cedar Point, OH
• Moulin Rouge! came with the DVD
• Both Harry Potter ones are from an ex-best friend
• The one above Harry is from an ex-best friends
• Both Animal Crossing ones are from a gaming magazine I got years ago
• Madagascar one came with the movie I believe
• The bottom row is absolutely Spiderman 3, came with my DVD as well

The Spiderman ones reminded me, with my Spiderman 2 DVD, I got a Spiderman mask with it haha, I wish I hadn’t thrown it away though :\

So there was my journey of finding my collection of postcards! I half considered splitting this post into two sections but I didn’t really feel like it lol, hopefully it doesn’t take forever to load.