What I carried

 As usual, I brought back a few things with me from my mom's house. (As I noted: I should have looked harder for the stuffed Garf even though I ordered one from an Etsy seller, and it's now on its way, but if I did still have the original one, now I will have 2).

Because I couldn't find my old Garfield (if I even still have him), I did take another small stuffed stripey cat back. This is a "classic style" Tigger beanbag I bought sometime back in the 1990s (for a while, Gund was making these - I also have Eeyore, but had brought him down here when I moved). So I carried Tigger along (in this photo he is sitting on the opposite chair in the train compartment, next to my knitting bag and my copy of Wives and Daughters. 

She also gave me some more photos. A couple are snapshots from grad school, with some of my old officemates (John and Becky and Janeen) in them; I won't post them here because they're recentish, the people in them are all still alive (At least as far as I know.....) and they probably still look much like they did then. But this one is an old photo

 

Goodness, that one's probably more than 50 years old now. I was probably 2 or 3 in that photo. And that's my mom (wearing a suit she made; she still has it and I bet it still fits) and my grandmother. This photo is probably from the very early 1970s, either 71 or 72. 

It's funny because there my grandmother looks very much like I remember her from the 1980s. 

She also found this and even though I have no real reason to keep it, I WANTED it, I like having it, so I kept it:

An "Operation Read" certificate from 1977-78. It's certifying I read the "required" number of books during the school year, signed (Stamped) by the principal of my third-grade school (IIRC) and the district librarian. I don't even really remember this program; I just remember the schools encouraged a lot of individual reading; we used to have what was called "SSR" for Sustained Silent Reading - usually 15 or 20 minutes at the end of the day, and you could either bring a book from home, or bring in a library book, or borrow one from the classroom library. I liked it and I was important to me - of course, because I remembered it all these years. But I don't remember Operation Read.

I don't know if this was a very local thing, just in my town/at my school, or was more widespread. A quick internet search turns up nothing for "Operation Read 1970s" so I wonder if this is something my school district cooked up.

At any rate, one way in which I am "stereotypically" German is that I like titles and awards like this. (And I wish we still got certificates for things.....a few gold-star stickers now and then would help my motivation).

One of my friends on Twitter suggested I frame it and hang it up next to my diplomas in my office (except I don't have those framed and hanging) and see if anyone notices.