Simple Solutions to Silly Problems

Recently, Dwight got moved to a different location in my room.  For those of you that don’t know, Dwight is my printer.  I wrote about him last in a post called Dwight, which was a story specifically about him.

I love Dwight.  More like I have a love/hate relationship with him, but I get along with him well enough on a daily basis.  I became inspired to move him to a different spot when I saw that one of my close friends put her printer on top of her cabinet instead of on her desk. 

Dwight just so happened to be sitting in front of my window and I figured I would be able to see much better if I moved him somewhere else.  I walked across the hallway to my room and unplugged the cords from the outlet and my computer, then pulled some boxes, empty coke bottles, and an extremely dead plant off the top of my cabinet to make room for Dwight.

Unfortunately, the plant died quite a few months ago.  It lived a healthy and wonderful life and before I knew it, it turned brown and withered away to nothing.  But I still kept the pot of dirt it was growing in.  Perhaps I’ll plant some flowers in it spring quarter.

Once the space above the cabinet was cleared, I lifted Dwight on top of it.  I didn’t realize how heavy he was until then.  I ended up putting him on the right side of the cabinet and then I realized plugging him in every time to print things off was going to be a slight inconvenience.  Then I shrugged and decided that I didn’t care, since I don’t use him often enough for it to really matter. 

I printed off something for good measure, just to make sure that it worked.  I have to stand on my bed and hold my laptop while I print things off—if anyone ever walks in while I happen to be printing a document, I’ll just have to deal with looking like an idiot.

Oh, the sacrifices I make.

After I was satisfied with the change, I sat down at my desk.

I thought I could see out the window before, but now I can really see out of the window. 

I can't believe I didn't think of this months ago.  

My Flower Memories

When I was a freshman in high school I saw dried flowers hung on a wall at a friend’s house.  Her mom had dried them and was keeping them around for decoration.  I was captivated.  I wanted to dry my own flowers and keep them for a bit of sunshine on a sad day.

So I started drying all of the flowers I received on my birthday, from various celebrations, from shows at school, on Valentine’s Day…any flowers I received were dried and placed on the bookshelf in my room. 

Eventually they started to pile up, but I enjoyed their preserved presence too much to throw them out.  At the same time some of the memories from certain bouquets were like a thorn in my side.

Remember whom those were from?  Remember what happened after that?  Remember what was said to you?  Remember this, remember that…. Remember? 

It took a strong emotional force to finally make me get rid of flowers after a certain point.  Letting bouquets of flowers sit in my room for months provided beauty, but also hurt at the same time.  In a way they were just piles of break ups, dates gone wrong, and dances that ended in tears. 

Looking back I wonder why in the world did I keep some of them around so long?  

I should have thrown them out the moment it was over.  But I didn’t because I cared too much about when everything was going right, and I remembered too easily all the times that went well.  At one point those flowers were everything, and then just around the corner they weren’t anything but I didn’t know how to get rid of them.

I especially remember throwing out a certain bouquet.  I had told myself many times, get rid of it already, you don’t need those flowers anymore, but I never walked over to pick it up and carry it to the trash can.  I don’t remember exactly what happened that made me march into my room one day and purposefully carry them to the dumpster in the garage, but I did.  And once I threw them out, I felt lighter.

If I remember correctly I ended up throwing out the rest of the bouquets that had been resting on my bookshelf as well.  I wanted a clean slate, I needed to start over and collect new memories, memories that would hopefully be happier and easier to look at. 

However, the cleaning process happened again about a year later and I once more cleared away all the flowers I had collected.  I didn’t want to keep them around anymore.  That time it was a little easier though, because I was getting ready to leave for college and start a completely new life.  I wasn’t going to leave a bunch of dead flowers around that wouldn’t mean anything to my sister. 

Now that I’m here I’ve started drying flowers again and hanging them from my dorm room ceiling by the window.  There’s not really a better place to keep them.

I have a bouquet from Pike Place, a bouquet from when my Dad visited me and took me out to the best dinner of my life (which you can read about in the blog post Eating Happiness) and a bouquet of roses from when my boyfriend and I made our relationship official. 

 I am fond of them, and I am fond of their memories.  And looking back I was fond of all my other flowers at one point too.  Which makes me realize, no matter what flowers I end up throwing out I’m sure I’ll get new ones that mean just as much, maybe even more.

I just hope I won’t be parting with the ones I have anytime soon.