Old and new

 No luck finding my plush Garfield at home; as I said, I half-remember donating it to a rummage sale at our church shortly before we moved to Illinois, so that might be what became of him.

It's OK, I have the little one I ordered from Etsy now. And I'm glad I did.

But I also found this in a box of odds and ends in the room that was mine when I was in grad school:

Little stacking "acrobat" Garfields. (Funny; Garfield was known for AVOIDING physical activity). I am pretty sure these were a premium item in those "fruit snacks" that kind of straddled the line between candy and a "healthy" snack. I think there was a Garfield brand of them at one point? Anyway, they were a "prize" in a box of something and somehow I managed to grab three of them (despite my younger brother having been a big Garf fan when he was a kid - maybe these were late enough he didn't care as much any more? Whereas I have never lost my love of this kind of little plastic tat that comes free in boxes - I miss cereal box prizes). 

I did, however, in the cedar box that I thought I had Garfield in, find my old Pink Panther. Which I thought I had not kept, because he had gotten pretty worn.

Here he is new, when I got him in 1977 or 78:

He smelled musty despite having been stored away where mice couldn't get at him (ironically, that's how I lost the two stuffed mice shown there), so I decided - well, I didn't know he still even existed before I found him, it was worth the risk of washing him, if he didn't survive it wouldn't be a horrific loss because I didn't think he even existed still.

I tied him up in a clean pillowcase to protect him, and washed him, gentle cycle, in a load with a couple of not-too-dirty (just used for blocking knit items or drying my hair) towels. And then ran him through the dryer once (in the pillowcase and on low heat) and then hung him by his tail to dry the rest of the way.

"I survived, babies!" 

(Yes, there is another version of that, using a rougher b-word, but I don't think Pink Panther would speak like that if he spoke. I imagine him as sounding Rat Pack cool, maybe a little like Sammy Davis, Jr., and "babies" would be in keeping).

I won't swear to it but I think his color is brighter after the wash and he is fluffier now. I'm pleased how well the washing worked - I was afraid the foam-chunk stuffing in part of his body would disintegrate, but it did not. So I carried him back with me. (In that photo, he's sitting on a big chair at my mom's; that's one of those woven/jacquard blanket things featuring the Cubs that my brother and his family gave to my dad a number of years back, and my mom keeps it on a chair where he liked to sit.)