When I was a kid, I loved rearranging my bedroom. I changed the bed from wall to wall and moved the dresser. It was so much fun for me. Unfortunately, my rug in my room wasn't attached to the floor too well and left that ashy debris that old rugs left behind, so the carnage that remained of my rug was the downfall to my rearranging habit. I'm surprised my mom let me do it as much as I did because we didn't have the money for a new rug, but she didn't care as long as I was happy with my room; which after each arrangement, I would always declare that the room looked perfect and that I wouldn't change it anymore. Then, I would rearrange it, sometimes just like it was before the last session, and then again, declare that my room was perfect.
I had a big, wooden canopy bed and a huge dresser, so this wasn't always an easy task, and I usually had to ask for help from the family. Otherwise, I would just push the furniture and drag the rug just a little further off it's tacked down path. That poor rug.
Now that I'm older and have a house all my own, I feel bad for my mom. We had an old house and we all took pride in it, and if she was still in the house that I grew up in, I would have bought a new rug for my room by now. I hated that rug and all it's black ashy stuff that was always coming up from the bottom. And God forbid if you tried to vacuum it; half of the rug would end up in the bag. But it was my room and my crappy rug!
I loved my childhood bedroom and all the little knick knacks that I collected over the years, but now I wonder what I'm supposed to do with all those things! I'm not too into Cherished Teddy collectibles and plush teddy bears. I feel bad for begging my parents for all these things that seem so frivolous now. Hopefully, I'm not a sucker if we ever have a kid, and continuously buy them things that they'll just leave in the house after they move out. Silly kids. Always want want. I was so that kid— "BUT MOM I NEEEEEDDDD THIS!!!!!!" Hopefully, I can force out a, "too bad" every now and then.
One thing that I always wanted to have as I grew older, even from a young young age, was my baby plate. Apparently, in our local hospital when I was a baby, the local business donated baby plates. Unfortunately, when I was in about third grade a few friends and I were fooling around in my bedroom and my one friend knocked it off the shelf in my room. I remember crying like a baby; maybe that was the start of the Dana Ugly Cry that I'm pretty notorious for. I even cried in front of my friends. I remember being so mad that my plate was broke. My mom said we could try to glue it back together but we never did; some pieces were just too far gone, but the plate still remains in a plastic bag in my hope chest at the end of my bed...
A few months ago I brought this memory back to mind and happened to just google search baby plates and to my amazement—the plates are still being made! They even make them in pink now for girls, but I had to buy the blue because that's what my original plate was. Now, it's pretty much a guarantee that I'm one of the dorkiest and sentimental people around, so of course I had to buy the plate and put it on a shelf in my home where it should have rightfully been all along.
Some things may lose their value as we grow older, but other things you just can't help but smile at. The sounds that an old music box makes, finding an old coloring book that you and your Grama did together, an old newspaper article, a candy dish... for this reason, I love scrapbooking my life with my hubby; movie stubs, concert stubs, cards, restaurant cards... I love being an old sap. Who cares if I cry at the drop of a dime; this world is meant for sentimental fools like me!
Do you have anything that means a lot to you from your childhood that you'd like to have back or that you're still able to cherish? I love the internet, otherwise my baby plate would only be a childhood memory in a plastic ziploc bag.
