Well, there's a mixture of hot and cold on the two home fronts, bitter and sweet; I always like hearing the good news first, so here it is; tomorrow, my grandma, uncle, and cousins will be rolling into town from Naples, Florida, and will be spending two whole weeks before my cousins go back to their mom's house in Kentucky and my uncle and grandma drive back down to the sunny state. I look forward immensely to the time I get to spend with them, as our visits are so infrequent.
As for the bad news, my dad and Heather have decided to separate. Heather and Hope will be going up to Colorado to see Heather's mom's wedding, but when they come back, there won't be much time before they move out, and I am still finding that quite hard to grasp.
I haven't really thought about it like this before, but our house is really quite big.
I want to give Hope my copy of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone before they leave, but my only copy seems to have been torn apart by dogs and age. I want to give her something to remember me by. What I really wanted was to watch her grow up, learn to read, write, like boys, etc. Okay, enough of dwelling on the negative side. . .
Last night, Shannon came over to my house and we decided to have a movie night; my mom drove us over to the hot-guy movie store, where we were hoping to see the semi-hot guy who works there, but instead, we ran into the guy there who, according to my mom, "resembles Curious George." The movies we rented were "Idiocracy," a comedy about the dumbing-down of mankind through poor education and the like, "Two Weeks Notice," a romantic comedy with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant, who is gorgeous, and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," which I've already seen, but my mom wanted to see it, so we ended up watching it with her. Earlier that day, I had gone on a bike ride to the Moravian church down the road, and then back through the hillier parts of my neighborhood to see if the famous dog, Daphne Weisner, was still sitting inside of her fence; she was not, and has not been the past few times I've gone to visit her. Her owner probably keeps her inside now so that weirdos like me don't stalk her dog.
Now for the memory: Ever since I was a little kid, I've been fascinated with the concept of a time capsule, a box with memories stored inside, buried somewhere like treasure. You see these sorts of things in movies like "Amelie" and even "Knowing," and it's always been a magical sort of idea to me. I've tried several times to do it with people; in fifth grade, a group of students agreed to help me make an elementary school time capsule, but that never worked out. Neither did the sixth or seventh grade attempts at a similar product.
Then, during my last visit to Florida (which I believe took place during the Christmas vacation period of 2007), my cousins (the same ones who are visiting) and I finally succeeded in making a time capsule.
Background: My cousins and I grew up in the "Spy Kids" era, and were enthralled with the ideas presented in these films. We used to pretend we were like the kids in the movie, and we would tip-toe around my grandmother's house on "secret missions" and that sort of thing. We drew little maps of the house, where dots would indicate our destination and stick people would indicate my mom, uncle, and grandmother, usually drawn hanging around the living room and kitchen. We would stay up really late in the bedroom that we shared, "fake-sleeping," and would sneak out of our room in the middle of the night for the pure thrill of being awake when no one else was. The whole point of it was not to get caught at it, and this would prove that we were good "spies."
Well, the last time we were together, we decided that, as we've long been too old to be doing stuff like the above anymore, we would preserve a memory of it, the preservation of which would be our last "mission." So, late one night, when everyone else was asleep, we found a shoe box, the perfect vessel for memories, I might add. However, we did not have many great "objects" to put in the box, as all of our old maps and the like had probably been trashed by this point. So, we each (Bethany, Autumn, and I; Tim was asleep) wrote down a particular memory of what it had been like growing up in the wonderful house of my grandmother's, back when one might say everything was "illuminated."
I also drew a sample map that would have been similar to any old ones we might have drawn. Then, we sealed the box, took it outside, and hid it in the depths of some bush near the corner of the fence (we didn't have a shovel, and the Florida earth is really hard and dry, what with the temperatures down there and everything). I'm not sure if it's still there, or if my grandmother found it, assumed it was litter, said, ". . .those hooligans always throwing trash in my yard," and put it in the dumpster. I intend to ask my cousins once they arrive.
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