I was looking for a jean jacket for my upcoming dance recital, and I found the winter coat I just donated. I donate regularly to Goodwill, but I’ve never seen an actual donation being sold again. It’s for sale for about the same amount I bought it for at Give and Take Resale. 
Category: All (-ish)
The End of Edge Performance Fitness
We gathered at Edge just like we always did on Saturday morning. People arrived, by car, bike, on foot. We stood in groups, caught up on the news, waited for the clock to move to 8:00. The crowd was bigger than usual this Saturday and instead of starting the warm up automatically we kept chatting as our numbers grew and grew. By the time Bill got our attention, there were more than 50 of us.
It was the last workout at Edge Performance Fitness.
Matt joined first, but we’ve both been members of Edge Performance Fitness since early in its history. He started in June of 2009, after discovering Edge during a Sunday Parkways ride. He was hooked, liked the camaraderie of the classes and the friendly people. When the gym was just getting started, sometimes Matt would be the only one in the class, which he joked was his own personal training session. I came along in November of that year, after Matt kept badgering me to join. And we did our final practices for the TSDP at Edge, which you can see in this video. (Original post here). I liked how bare-bones the gym was. No TVs, no rows of machines. People came to their class, did their workout and went home sweaty and sore.
Over the years, I moved through different phases of classes. My most regular class had a variety of names over the years. We eventually just started calling it the Saturday Class. Every Saturday at 8am, Matt and I would get ourselves out the door and to the gym. At first we rode bikes, because we were car-free. When he got a car, we kept riding bikes, then eventually started driving. There was a period where the New York Times’s Ethicist column was published in the paper and I would read the question aloud so we could discuss it.
When we got to Edge, we checked in with our friends. There were many regulars who came to the Saturday class, and many more people from the weekday classes who would appear on the occasional Saturday morning. I will miss seeing them.
One thing the Saturday Class taught me was non-attachment. Mostly because the instructors eventually got tired of working on Saturday mornings and would move on. Here’s a list of our trainers and what I remember about them:
Jordan, who usually had us do a Spiderman circle and a Superman fly thing.
Mark, who was from the short-lived martial arts phase of Edge.
Chris, who treated women differently than men and thankfully didn’t last long.
Kevin, who would say, stuff like, “start easy, by maybe grabbing a 35 pound weight…”
Todd, who was impressed that we never complained because he was used to working with athletes from University of Portland.
Becky, whose workouts were endless variation on the lunge.
DeeAnn, who really taught Pilates, but would fill in occasionally. I always enjoyed her classes because they involved a lot of stretching.
Elizabeth, who liked to work us on the TRX.
Scott who loved to create complex obstacle courses which he would patiently walk us through and then when we would start running, would just as patiently redirect the three people who would set off in the wrong direction.
Kayla who had clear workouts that were sneakily hard.
Eric who made everything look incredibly easy, even though we could tell it was tough.
Blake who loved tabadas, and came from the same phase in music history as me.
I took classes in the Loft, too. DeeAnn taught me to love Pilates, even though I still find it weird. Rae introduced me to Restorative Yoga (my favorite of all the classes) and kept me busy on New Year’s Eve.
Kate Fisher was always the heart and soul of the gym, and also the owner. When people would say, “You go to that Boot Camp place? That looks intense!” I would laugh because Edge was the opposite of intense or intimidating. Kate made Edge a friendly place, where you could get a good workout. When I started, four women would carpool every morning from Oregon City because they liked Kate so much.
Bill was the other partner in the gym. He kept things going by putting that accounting background to use and kept the enthusiasm up with his hearty greetings.
One of the reactions when I told people the gym was closing was, “Well, what’s the next closest gym?” But it’s a moot point what the next closest gym is, because no gym will be like this gym. It was a place to workout, but it was a place of community and I will miss it greatly.
We ended every workout by clapping. For us, for the instructor, for having finished the damn thing, it was never really clear to me why we clapped, but I loved it. Our last workout was long, closer to ninety minutes than sixty. It was more crowded, with over fifty people rather than ten to twenty. But as always it was organized and as tough as you wanted to make it. There was good-nurtured teasing from those who liked that, and friendly encouragement from those who liked to encourage. We were sweaty and tired by the end.
When Kate called time for the last time, we clapped like usual. But our clapping didn’t stop like it usually did. This Saturday, we kept clapping. Clapping for us, for Kate and Bill, for the ephemeral nature of something so unique we probably won’t experience again. Clapping for yet another good workout. Clapping until Kate waved us off, saying “thank you” to all of us.
Here are some parting photos:
Sometimes the classroom becomes a bike track.
Oh, K/1. What a marvelous place you are. This class has been studying bikes. They have created a bike track to show what they’ve learned. 
Here’s the green track. 
Here is where the blue and orange tracks cross.
After creating their tracks, the children created a scavenger hunt, so people can find objects that the class learned about.
Not actually made a pie.
This is one of those objects which purports to make a difficult process easier, but actually just makes it harder. If you’ve ever worked with pie crust, you know how temperamental it can be. And sticky. I’m guessing this works well 5% of the time, and the other 95% just causes a lot of swearing. Plus, you have to store it somewhere. My recommendation is to: Stay. Away.
Tidying: some results
Here are all the sorted letters and photos back on their shelves. And Tim Riggins lookin’ good.
Marie Kondo thinks that everything should have a resting place, which I’ve been pretty good at.
And she also thinks that you should surround yourself with pretty things. This grotty-looking empty Greek Seasoning container has been the holder of the rings for the Magic Bullet (there are a lot of smoothies consumed in this house) for some time now. But now I have replaced it with a clean glass jar filled with sushi rice and oat groats I was never going to eat. It’s prettier, and has more weight to it too.
Here are two shelves looking tidy. The cookbook shelf has long held cookbooks. Now it holds fewer cookbooks. In addition, the journals that were stashed behind the cookbooks have been moved to the bookshelves. Or where the bookshelves will be. Also, the second shelf, which held cassette tapes and LPs, now holds the mid-brew kombucha jars, which previously stayed on the ground in shopping bags. This is much better. And there is a hook for my work bag. It doesn’t have to sit on the floor anymore either.
Tidying Photos and Letters
Today was a big day of tidying. 7:00am to 7:30pm. I was exhausted by the end. But I got a lot done. Here are some results.
Not shown: the gardening/building things tidying. Gardening went okay on the day before, but all the building things overwhelmed me and I stopped when I was four items in. Two hours this morning left me with a clean and organized shed full of only items I actually use to build things.
Photos! They used to be stacked all higgilty-piggilty in a drawer, but now they have been culled (goodbye 4000 landscape pictures that don’t cause awe) placed in envelopes by subject and all fit in one magazine file box. ONE. They were taking up the better part of a drawer in my dresser. A drawer that would never open very easily because it was too full. While I was sorting, I reflected that I actually see the photos I take more now then when I had film photos. My home computer’s screen saver cycles through my photo folder, so I’m always treated to a random slide show of photos taken since 2007. Sometimes it’s fun to watch and try to identify the pictures. I’m pretty good at remembering. My film photos? Fun to look at, but not looked at too often. So I kept only the important ones. I sent a few off in the mail to friends, too. They can feel free to discard them if they feel so moved.
Marie Kondo is shaking her head at this next picture. Here I am sorting all my letters carefully. Kondo believes that the main joy is in receiving and reading the letters and they should be discarded after that. The historian in my heartily disagrees. And the non-historian in my disagrees. So I’m keeping them. ALL of them.
Well, I did throw out the SPUH (Special Person You Have) letters from Cottey. It was a secret pen pal thing, and I found it weird, both when I was the first year student being written to and when I was the second year student writing to “my” freshman. I cannot recall either SPUH, so I let those letters go. Also all the obligatory PEO letters which mostly referenced how much they enjoyed the letters I wrote them, but said little else. To bad they didn’t send me back the letters I wrote that they so enjoyed. I’d be interested to know what I said.
I started this project last year (?) when I found a stash of letters and journals from my first years at college. I would do a little sorting every morning. That fell by the wayside and so I knew I needed to sort everything at once. It took hours. What is on the table was what was sorted before I started. That Rubbermaid container was what I had to get to the bottom of. The hardest? Several piles of 100+ printed out emails. I’m happy I printed those emails–including all of the early courtship emails between Matt and myself–because they often have both my emails to the sender as well as their reply. And it was from the early email years, so they were very letter-like. Now my emails would be really boring one sentence back-and-forths. But then? Letters. They were nicely labeled with the senders name, but they took FOREVER to sort.
Here are some other things I found in the box:
As I child I discovered the front section of the Idaho Statesman that covered the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It was in the box of my Grandmother Collins’s jewelery, and I thought that it was a great idea to keep historic front pages. Here’s one. This was when the Multnomah County Commissioners voted to approve gay marriage. It was a very happy time. Also short-lived. The statute was overturned and the marriages were later found to be invalid.
My sealing wax. I love the idea of sealing wax, but the modern mail sorting machines don’t love the actuality of sealing wax. You can see my orignal sealing wax, bought for me as a gift in elementary school from Hallmark. (Thanks mom!) And you can see a newer incarnation bought from a catalog during college. 
Before I realized I could just take pictures of the funny comics, I thought it was fun to clip them and keep them in random places. I thought this one was rather appropriate for the day’s work. 
I once was born. And look at the cute 70’s-era card that identified me to the gazing masses who used to just wander though to look at the babies. This is a handy card to have a picture of, because it’s one of the few things that identifies the time of my birth. It’s not on my birth certificate, because I recently checked. I like that only the mother’s name is listed on here. She’s the one who did all the work. The phrase “We’re having a baby” as said by modern-day men, really bugs me. It’s not you, buddy, who is having the baby. You are both becoming parents, and that’s great and I’m quite certain you will be very supportive, but only one person in the room is actually having the baby.
My acceptance letter from Cottey! And, just for fun, the tuition and fees schedule. You can’t get even a public university education in Oregon for that rate right now. 
I love this clipboard, which I broke by bungee-ing it too tightly to my bike. But then I cleverly fixed it. I’m pretty sure no one would have quite the same level of affection for this clipboard, and we already have two working clipboards in the house, so this fella went into the trash. 
What to do with my Grandfather Collins’s American Legion hat? I wore it while sorting, deciding if I should keep it or not. It was quite warm (who knew?) but I kept having visions of wearing it in pubic and being attacked by irate American Legion people. So I reluctantly put it in the Goodwill pile. Notice all the magazine files behind me? That’s me being done sorting all the letters! 
My Grandfather Collins was born in 1897 and this hat is OLD! They moved from Mackay to Boise before my dad was born in 1941.
Okay, I’m feeling a little guilty about giving up the hat. I think this one might get pulled back from the brink. That load of Goodwill hasn’t gone yet.
I love this photo so much, I’ve contemplated ordering a copy from the Oregonian. It encompasses both youth and art with perfect composition. 
Not kept? The many pages of dot matrix paper printed from the Tandy Computer. It’s early writing and stories, but they are not interesting enough to read though to find if there are any gems. I had some fun unspooling the pile and then into the recycle it went.
Here are all the boxes and containers I have emptied. They are hanging about for a bit to see if they present a need, but if not, I’ll set them out for people to claim this weekend. 
So ended today’s tidying.
City of Roses Motel being wrapped in Orange now.
Requiem: Uncle Tom’s Chair
I have an Uncle Tom. A Great-Great-Uncle, actually. Well, he’s dead, but I did have one. And he had a chair. This really great pink chair with excellent bones. After Uncle Tom died, it sat in my grandparents’ basement, which, when they died, became my Aunt’s basement. I can remember sitting in the chair reading and thinking, “someday, I’m going to have this chair in my house and I will sit and read in it.” And indeed, all of that came to pass.
I liked how the chair fit my hips exactly, and I was charmed by the spring that had come loose, so the seat was a little askew. Eventually, the cats took over the chair. Antares decided it was a great scratching post. I held off getting a new chair, because I was afraid they would adopt the new chair as their scratching post, just as readily as they did this chair. But I have acquired a new chair, so this chair will stand by the side of the road until it finds its new owner.
Requium: skirt, belt and hat
With tidying comes discarding and it is time for these favorites to go.
I got this skirt from my roommate in Somerville, who got it from her cousin Diana. I wore it a lot over the years and often received compliments. Originally, the hem was very uneven, so much so that when I took it to the tailor to even out she had to get out the official hem marking device and mark her way around. Its still a fun skirt for Contra Dancing, but it’s tighter in the waist than it used to be, so it’s time to find a new owner to love it.
Another stalwart from the Massachusetts days is this fabulous Deerstalker which I bought in a thrift shop in Somerville. I could tie it quite tightly and keep my head warm for the cold walks I took every morning at 5:30am to get to work at Whole Foods. I feel great affection for this hat, but have not worn it, even once since I moved to Portland. There just isn’t a Deerstalker’s amount of cold in my part of Oregon. 
I suspect I purchased this belt at Newberry Comics, a local chain I didn’t like because it tried too hard to be an Alt Record Store, when actually every location looked exactly the same. I did love this belt though. Who wouldn’t like to wear flames on their belt?
Closet renovation.
I forgot to take a “before” the before picture, but it’s time to change up my closet. For years I’ve been looking at the space above the shelf in my closet and thinking that it is wasted. Plus, I’ve been reading the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and she says you should throw away all your old letters and journals. Marie Kondo and I disagree heartily about this, so I need a place to properly store such things. A place that is not a Rubbermaid Container that sits on the bottom of my closet, overflowing and taking up space. Today, we utilize!
Here’s me flat on the floor so I can take the before picture.
Above the door to the closet too! That space can be used.
One trip to Ikea, 30 minutes of precarious balancing and drilling et voila! Three shelves are now installed, bring the closet shelf total to four.
Then it was time for the purge, KonMarie style. I put all of my clothing on the bed (she says the floor, but I ignored) and checked each item to see if I loved it.
Shoes too.
It turned out I did not love very many things in my closet and so bags were filled for Goodwill.
Here’s the stack of things I’m coming for soon.
And here’s the partially finished project. I now have room for 30 magazine files, and my sewing machines are tucked away above the door. The meager amount of clothing I have left has been carefully hung in the closet, or folded and put away. And Tim Riggins has been restored to his place in the closet.
And look! The side of my bed is no longer taken up by a dresser, a laundry hamper, a yellow chair serving as a secondary nightstand. Now there’s a bed (awaiting clean sheets) and a nightstand. It feels much more spacious, and now I don’t have to sidle out of bed every day.
Even better? I realized that the awesome bottle brush lamp that sits on the top of my desk can easily sit on the dresser and now I have light in the closet!
