contents of the bag by the door

a little over a year ago now i cleaned out my desk at the office. i remember feeling excited and anxious - cole was due in about a month and i was definitely ready to go home, watch baby shows and wait... i was more tired than i thought i'd be at that point and it was all i could do to get through the day at work without a lunchtime nap, despite the fact that my job was one that required me to sit on my butt in my comfortable chair and make pretty things on my double-wide monitor all day. (side note: i really miss that monitor.)

i didn't want to leave my maternity leave replacement with the kind of gross, messy desk that i was used to, knowing that i wouldn't want to have to work around someone else's personal stuff for a whole year, and also knowing - hoping really - that i wouldn't be back in the same way anyway after the year was up.

so i did my best to tidy up. organized stuf, cleaned off the glass whiteboards, took home boxes of portfolio pieces and personal papers and old notebooks and copies of how magazine, unplugged my super-scary vintage clown lamp and eventually lugged all that stuff home. the last thing to be touched was that drawer. you know the one - the place where all the odds & ends live - things that you don't feel like dealing with yet aren't ready to let go. eventually, down to the wire and tired of tidying, i just shoved everything that wasn't ready to be tossed or recycled into a tote bag and called it a day.

for the better part of the year that tote bag lived in the storage room on parking level two of our building, collecting dust. then, about four months ago, i needed something from the box that held the bag and brought it upstairs. it hung on the door handle of our laundry closet ever since, because dealing with the contents meant i'd have to spend a few good minutes figuring out what needed to be done with all that junk - minutes that i'd rather use to do pretty much anything other than organizing more piles of junk into new piles of "this is totally not junk".so, today, tired of looking at the bag and feeling like it was another tedious task on the to-do list, apparently even below taxes, i opened it up and emptied it out. what was inside?

• a decaf mighty leaf teabag
• a japanese bunny paper clip
• a 1/3 roll of strawberry mentos
• two types of dental floss
• a piece of coral brought back from the keys
• some hot pink knee-high socks
  
• a book about maneki neko, asian lucky cats
• a business card case
• a mars eraser, scribbled with a 'm+j' on it in our early days, which is why i don't toss it
• a sheer but still too-red smashbox lip gloss
• four hair elastics - the kind that suck
• an undeveloped roll of actual film. i haven't had a film camera in years, so i'm really curious
• a paper-holder from the company i worked for about six years ago
• seventy cents worth of canadian tire money
• an emtpy travel toiletries pot
• a magenta sharpie and a green marker
• several pen refills
• miscellaneous reciepts from ikea and london drugs
• notes that jamie had doodled for me
• the air-plug for my yoga ball, which has gotten more action being inflated and deflated over the years than any actual excercise-related activity
• the usb cord to a digital photo frame
• a bottle of not-sold-in-canada aleve
• a green bird whistle
• an eames house of cards deck
• the 'n' new driver magnet from my days as an overaged new driver
• a glasses-wiping cloth
• a button, from what i don't know
• a crapload of pennies with a few odd nickles and dimes

so, yeah. in other words all just mostly junk. and an odd look at what i thought was essential over a year ago. :-)