Excess Baggage

One-a-Day Redux
Day Thirteen:  In Your Bag

It's a small, black, spiral-bound book, a fraction of an inch wider and shorter than a 3x5-inch index card, with letters of the alphabet printed on the tabbed edges of its pages. Stuck between its pages are sticky notes, scraps of paper, corners of envelopes--oh, here's a videotape label--and business cards, all bearing addresses or phone numbers, not all placed in their proper alphabetical sections.

I don't remember when I bought this little book, but it's been in my purse for years and years. Hm. My mother's address is in here, but it's the address of her new house, not the one she lived in for 38 years. She moved into the new house at the end of '97 or the beginning of '98, I'm not sure, and lived there until she passed away at the end of '99. Looks like I got the book sometime in that period.

A lot of people's addresses have been scratched out and replaced by newer ones. A lot of other people in here have moved, too, but I haven't bothered to change their addresses. Their current ones are on my handy-dandy, computerized address list. Also, I see that more people in the book have died than I realized: aunts, uncles, a couple of Mother's cousins. Sad.

Here's the business card of the woman to whom I promised to give all my business-related books; glad I found it. I've been hauling two boxes of those books around in my trunk for over two years now, thinking I'd drop them off on my way to or from someplace. For some reason, when I think of dropping off the books, I always decide to wait and do it another day. I need to call her and see if she still wants them.

Ha! Here's an entry for "Linda Carr." That's a fake name. The address (on "Key Street"--also fake) is the code number to get a replacement key for my Toyota Camry. I never needed to replace that key, but I did eventually need to replace the car. That was in 2005, a week before Hurricane Katrina.

Here's an old shopping list:  speaker wire with male/female connections, blank videotapes, and bags for both the heavy-duty vacuum cleaner and the little, quick-job one. This list must have slipped between the pages by accident. I wonder if that happened before or after I needed the list.

I think it's time to retire this little book, to make sure I've transferred every still-relevant scrap of information to the list on my computer, then print that list, fold it so it fits neatly in my wallet, and leave the little book at home. In a drawer. It won't take up much space, and I'm too sentimental to throw away the reminders of all those people and places.