Everything

I’m posting later than usual today, so that means all of my Tuesday stuff gets to share a blog entry!

I have started going through boxes and piles in what will be the woman cave today. The woman cave will be in the room that used to be “the office” when David and I were both on the older desktop computers. David’s actual desk is in the basement. It needed brought upstairs, but it was not a job he could do on his own, so his “desk” was the door to the room on top of two stacks of totes he had old clothes in. When I first moved in, my Mac and I were in the corner next to the door-desk on my card table. Later my desk moved in when my furniture was moved from Michigan. It was cozy, but it worked.

What made it cozier was that my banker boxes, all of my office and craft supplies from Michigan, lined the wall opposite the door-knob desk waiting for shelving units to be assembled. I bought 2 shelving units to start. One I assembled and put in the “train room,” which was the guest room, but all of David’s model railroad stuff lived there. That shelf freed all my photo albums and scrapbooks from boxes and gave them someplace to live. Assembling the other shelf for the office had to be done in a particular order. David’s real desk had to come upstairs and be switched out for the door knob desk to make enough room to assemble the shelves and move the banker boxes to place the unit. That unit is the one in the kitchen annex now and I still need more units! LOL

But where claiming the room as my woman cave becomes more of a challenge is that since the laptops moved in and allowed the desktops to catch some dust, Grandma passed and a half year was spent cleaning out her house and settling her estate, that put more boxes added to the old office which became a storage room, my MS symptoms blossomed and took a year of running around from doctor to doctor to figure out what that was and start to treat it and the office/storage room sat untouched. Last year, just before Christmas we heard a loud boom coming from upstairs. Something fell. After locating both cats to make sure they were okay, David went upstairs. He came back and told me “you don’t want to look at it.” After years of supporting the desktop computer and the peripheral supplies and accessories, one of the clothing totes holding it all up gave up. It cracked, collapsed and slid the entire contents of the door top onto the floor blocking passage to my desk! Miraculously, nothing, except the one tote, was broken. Even a glass candy dish survived the fall!

So, as I embark on sorting my way back into the room, because right now I couldn’t access the Mac if I really needed to, I have those original banker boxes of supplies, the rest of the boxes from Grandma’s and everything that fell off the doorknob desk. I did take some before photos. I’ll want to scrap this whole thing after I finish and earn my superwoman cape!

As of this morning I have access to the room’s closet again. I’ve also decided where the shelving unit for the M&Ms collectibles will go. Eye on the prize, I can’t wait until that collection can be displayed again!

Tell Me Tuesday

Once again this week, I’m joining Suzanne at The Coloradolady for Tell Me Tuesday. This one was harder to think about than write about! This week’s prompt:

What is the most unique thing you own?

First off as people are all unique, I think every collection is unique. I could say my mug collection because although it’s not unique to collect mugs, the specific mugs in that collection are unique to anyone else’s collection. I have other things that are probably pretty common, but the story behind them is unique. So I’m going to show you one of my very special and unique because of the story things.

I just unwrapped this from one of my one storage boxes:

Anchor Hocking Apple Jar

These jars were a promotion at Dunkin Donuts. I did some looking to see if I could get help to remember the year, but it seems the apple jar is pretty unique after all! I guess that’s not super surprising. When I started unwrapping it, I remembered what it was and the fun story that goes with it, and I said a little prayer that it wasn’t broken. The glass is thin and it has a valuable and fragile feel when you pick it up. Perhaps they are unique, or at least rare to still exist.

It was a Christmas promotion that Anchor Hocking co-oped with Dunkin Donuts in the 80’s. In going through my memory banks, I think the three years Anchor Hocking and Dunkin Donuts did the glass canisters were 1984, 85 and 86. I own all three canisters and the apple was the first one. I think I remember that it was before I was 18 and that was part of the tease in the story.

As I’ve credited many times before, Dunkin Donuts was and still is the place where I hang out with my friends in Novi, Michigan. Anita worked the counters in the evenings during the week then. Her kids are my age, so she and Mom were peers and Mom was in on the joke too.

When the posters were up all over the store promoting the deal for Christmas that you could purchase an Anchor Hocking Apple Jar filled with Dunkin Munchkins, I was intrigued. I thought the jar was really cool, but a little pricier than my part time job could afford after gas and gifts for others. I asked Anita “What’s Anchor Hocking was and what do you do with the jar to help you anchor hock?”

I did know that Anchor Hocking was the brand. I didn’t know why it was a big deal that it was an Anchor Hocking jar. But, as was natural for me at the time, and still is, I was being silly. Anita joined in.

Addressing my Mom, “you never had 'the talk?'”

I realized they were ganging up on me. Scotty and John were there too and they just loved it when I got zapped. So I asked Anita if she was going to tell me what Anchor Hocking is and how one anchor hocks.

She told me, “You’ll find out on your wedding night.”

Our collective joke that Christmas was anchor hocking the verb! I’ve been married for three years and I still don’t know how to anchor hock!


Now, if you don’t think my apple jar is unique, please leave a comment telling me how to anchor hock!

Join us to tell us about your most unique things at Tell Me Tuesday at The Coloradolady!

Barn Charm

Morenci, Michigan

I got this green-roofed barn on March 26, 2006, while railfanning in the Motherland.

See more fabulous barns at Tricia’s Barn Charm at Bluff Area Daily.