Yes! It worked...

Having a single login for e-mail and Blogger (single address) has some drawbacks, but it does mean I can easily log on to Blogger "remotely" (not at home).

The trip up was uneventful. I've done a few things, got my hair cut, did the necessary shopping. I'm doing some knitting and crochet but I also spent a fair amount of time helping my mom clear space in the garage. (It's complicated. My dad decided to vacate his "emeritus office" at the university but there was still stuff up there. He decided to do so after the department chair offered to have professional movers box up and move the stuff - as an enticement to open up that office for a new faculty member coming on). So anyway, we went through boxes. There's a lot of stuff left; boxes and boxes of old paperwork from his research that he will have to deal with, and also all the old O gauge trains that he inherited from his parents (and will probably never do anything with, but whatever).

We DID find a box of my old stuff - some of the first stuffed toys I had made. But mice had gotten in the box, so I just tipped it in the trash without looking too closely (it would have made me too sad). I did rescue one thing that was on top of the box, undamaged, and can be cleaned up with weak bleach water - when I was in kindergarten or first grade, we made little wooden tugboats. It's a very simple thing, just blocks of wood glued together and then painted, and with thumbtacks nailed in for 'windows.' I decided to keep it because it can be cleaned up, it's a memory of my childhood, and anyway, it looks kind of "folk arty."

I THINK we made them the year we had Mr. Gerhartstein doing his student teaching with my classroom teacher. I don't remember a lot of my teachers' names, but I remember his - I think partly because it was an unusual name and partly because he was a man, and I had very few male teachers until junior high.

I have to admit, I feel sad if kids today don't get to do those kind of art/craft projects in the primary grades. I've heard from friends with kids that at least some primary schools have got very competitive and want things like "kids can read by first grade." (I don't know. I was an early reader, learned on my own around 4, but I remember having friends in first grade who were still working on phonics). And a lot of times the "approved" or "tested" subjects seem to squeeze out other stuff. (Again, I don't know: I had a good but somewhat relaxed time in the early grades and I think I got a better background than some people did. Of course, my parents also did a lot of "enrichment" stuff at home and we always had books around). I think pushing "art projects" instead of, say, research papers, is not entirely appropriate in the upper grades, but for the wee children, I think it's nice once in a while to make stuff, or even do things like baking cookies (if that's possible in a classroom setting). (And baking can teach fractions; I know I got comfortable with using them by working with recipes when I was a kid - my mom let me bake cookies a lot and even make cakes and help with cooking dinner)

At any rate - the garage isn't EMPTY (and if it had been up to me alone, we would have disposed of more stuff) but it's better than it was, and we managed to open a few of the "mystery boxes" that the movers wound up packing when my parents moved from Illinois - one had a lot of old ceramic and terracotta plant pots in it, which my mom can use, and it also had a nice old garden statue of a little girl that came from my grandparents (and it is now out in the garden).

I also found (most of) my old shell collection - I had a collection of sea shells when I was a kid (like, first and second grades, and I think I did a science project on shell-animals when I was in fourth or fifth grade). We're going to try to figure out a way to safely pack them so they won't break (they are all in plastic specimen cases but might need some padding) and mail them to me (there's no way I can carry them  back). Some of the shells came from Florida, a few were purchased specialty ones, and a number of them were collected (with permission from the park ranger) on a trip to Cape Cod. (He even gave us a little piece of a whelk egg case from a collection he had). We went in March, when almost no one was there, and I think he was interested to have someone who cared about sea shells and wanted to ask him questions.