Say it ain't so.

Oh God, help me now. I've gone and purchased a scrapbook. Actually, I purchased two...because I can't decide what I'm doing/what I need. They're like the ones everyone is "expressing themselves" with by using their expensive die cutters and "embellishments" and ribbons and acid free adhesives. I find the whole scrapbook-as-craft/art phenomenon a little bizarre. All those books about how to perfectly display the one photograph you put on a 12x12 page by "designing a layout" using gobs of decorative paper and little metal "elements" and stickers and 3-D flowers made of paper and glitter? And phrases such as "Dandelion Days" in cutesy handwriting? Those books piss me off a little bit. And yet I'm in love with all the paper and embellishments and stickers. Dammit.

I have two ancient "magnetic" photo albums filled with memorabilia...some of it is very important to me and some of it, well, I can't remember why I kept it. The adhesive on the albums is seriously killing some of my stuff, so I decided it was time to jump on the acid-free, lignin-free, PVC-free train (even though it won't make much difference since all of the stuff I've saved is mostly made of acidic paper and will eat itself over time).

So, yesterday afternoon (while watching eighth blackbird win their first Grammy via live web-cast (yay!!)) I emptied my magnetic albums into five or six file folders, each about two inches thick saying, "Damn. Why do I want to save all this stuff? Crap." over and over again. I think I'm going to be going through it carefully and making some choices. Or not. Some of the choices were made for me because the stuff was permanently glued to the page by the adhesive.

Anyhow, most impressive was my ticket collection. I had no idea. I knew I had a lot, but I have a LOT. I have theater and movie tickets from 1989-present. It took hours, but I put them into piles by date (because they came out of the albums randomly) and then I put the piles in date order and then I put them in envelopes for temporary storage.



Damn these tickets! And yet, don't they look cool?! It was fun putting them in date order because it gave me a sort of physical sense of time over the last...holy cow...nearly nineteen years. Some of the events I remember clear as day, others I have just a vague memory of.

Well, they're all going in a "safe" scrapbook soon despite my fears that this will just encourage me to save more stuff.

Bring on the pretty paper!