Tag: requiem

Back in the day (c.1998-1999) I worked for Bread and Circus Whole Food Market, which was the official name of the Whole Foods stores in the Boston area.  I worked in Prepared Foods, which meant I wore an apron and a chef’s jacket every day. We worked right in front of the ovens and though most of the case was refrigerated, there was also the hot case.  I was always moving, whether to restock or to get a customer just the right amount of Mexican Casserole.  I also (and still do) sweat a lot.

So I always wore tank tops to this job, even in the dead of winter.   (I had a sweater I would wear over the tank top during transit to and from.)    One day, I put on a shirt with sleeves, thinking it would be okay. It wasn’t and on my first break, I bought this tank top from the nutrition area so I could make it through the rest of the day.

This is my last wardrobe item from my time at Bread and Circus.  I outgrew it years ago (I mean it fits, but really it just “fits”) but kept it because I liked the feel of the functional organic cotton, even if I was just brushing by it in my drawer.

Farewell soft cotton tank top.  You are an end of an era.

I found this red 50s swing cost many years ago and it’s been my go-to “theater” coat for years.  It’s got 3/4 sleeves, and it always makes me wish I had long gloves to go with it.  I love the button closure at the top and the material.  However, I have a good winter coat (that is actually warm) to wear to the “theater”, so I think it’s time for this coat to find a new owner.

I’m terribly sorry that I only have a blurry picture of the Recess Coat.  I bought this years ago at the William Temple Thrift store, because it was reversible.  I’m a sucker for a reversible coat.  It was also obnxoious in it’s fake fur nature.  It kind of sat around for a few years until I got the job at The Emerson School which came with recess duty as one of its requirements.  This coat then migrated to school and was always ready to keep me warm.  I always accesorized it with those $1.00 stretchy gloves from Fred Meyer and some chapstick.  The white card was my laminated “bug and a wish”* reminder to use with the kindergartners. With it, I wore a wool hat (which I am not getting rid of) that I bought at the Council Crest Thrift Store. This coat kept me warm during many a cold and rainy recess.  When the weather would warm, I would joke that I’d look like a crazy person, because I would still wear the heavy coat.  Because standing outside in shade for 45 minutes is still chilly, even on a sixty degree day.

As I do not have recess duty any longer, it’s time for this most excellent coat to find a new home.  Note that it took me almost two months to part with this coat.  We’ve had a good partnership.

*It really BUGS me when you [follow me around].  I WISH you would [stop following me around])

It was 2002 when I signed up to be an advisor for the Young Religious Unitarian Universalist (YRUU) group. That’s code for “high school youth group” at the UU church.  I had recently 1)moved to Portland, 2)joined First Unitarian Church. When I signed on, I was still living with my Aunt, Matt and I were flirting, but thing had gotten going, and I was temping at Wedbush Morgan.    By the time my first year of YRUU was done I had moved into a studio apartment downtown, Matt and I were a thing, I had quit working for Wedbush Morgan and started graduate school at PSU.

When I signed on, it was only me who had made a firm commitment, with maybe Jimmy, one of the current co-advisors, sticking around for another year or so.  By the time we started in the fall there were five adults total: myself, Jimmy, Frank, Chris and Eric.  Dana, the head of Religious Education for Youth, broke us in.  We had an amazing group of kids that year, with Kitty, one of the few seniors, setting the tone.  She loved the song “Take me Home, Country Roads” and we sang it a lot that year and in nearly all the years to follow.  She also realized that by pressing your hands together you could make a chalice, which is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism.  So that was cool and it went on the back of our sweatshirts.

On the front it said YRUU, which was not only the name of the group, but also an excellent question.  We had shirts or sweatshirts every year, but this first one remained my favorite.  For seven wonderful years I got to hang out with incredibly cool high school kids.  Seemingly a million things changed during that time, while everything also stayed the same.

It is with sadness I say goodbye to the YRUU sweatshirt, but it lives on in many happy YRUU memories.

My new 40-hour per week job means no more volunteering for Teen Lounge at the North Portland Library.  Today is my last day.  There were never many teens at teen lounge, but I did enjoy two solid hours each week to write these blog posts.  And I really enjoyed the setting.  The woodwork is beautiful, much darker in real life than in this picture.

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.

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?

One birthday, maybe I was 25 or so, I took a hunk of my birthday money and bought many magazines, then stayed in bed reading them.  I also picked up two pocket dictionaries, because I am a bad speller and they were handy to have around.  One hung out on my desk and one I carried in my bag for quite some time.

Of course, now I can just look up anything on my phone.  But it’s fun to look at the pages, isn’t it?

I went to school at a small women’s college in the small town of Nevada (pronounced Nuh-VAY-duh) Missouri. Back in my day, when you went to college, you had to open a checking account in your college town because it was before debit cards and if you weren’t going to carry cash around all the time, a checking account was what you needed.  I put off going to open my account on the special day they had for college students, and then had to force myself to go on another day. It was my first checking account, and seemed like a very big step and I wasn’t quite ready to make that step.

There were (I think) four banks to choose from in Nevada, and I chose Citizens State Bank because they offered a free gift if you opened an account with them.  It was a crushing blow to realize I’d sold my choice for a pocket mirror. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this token. However, it was for years my eyebrow plucking mirror as I could prop it on the windowsill and use the natural light to find the stray hairs.

I’ve just realized that this was not the last Citizens I banked with.  There was one in Massachusetts, too.

Is Citizens still there?  Apparently, it changed even before I left in 1995.  It merged in 1994 with the Mercantile Bank of Western Missouri which merged in 1998 with the Mercantile Bank of St. Louis National Association which became in 1999 part of Firstar Bank of Missouri, which merged in 2000 with US Bank.  And that bank still exists.

Someday someone is going to write about the many bank mergers of the 90s.  They were super annoying and I’m guessing they didn’t help ME any.  In Boston I had to keep switching banks because I would find a nice small bank and it would be gobbled up by some conglomerate that wanted to charge me tons of fees because I didn’t have a combined balance of $5000.00.

Oh Delia*s.  How I enjoyed your catalouges when I was in my 20s.  This is my last item of clothing from that company remaining in my closet; the company has folded.  These shoes were always fun to wear because let me tell you, many men really enjoy big, stacked shoes like this.  “Those shoes are amazing!” many men (always men!) in my age demographic would say.  Perhaps they are not as aware of the fluctuation in fashion and the shoes make them think back to their college years, when all the hot girls wore big shoes like this.

The delia*s logo: