Reading: Witch Week

Moving: walked 2.7 miles

Watching: "American Pie"

18 August 2000: Aha!

And you have to say "Aha!" the way Rabbit said "Aha!" when he planned to steal Roo and replace him with Piglet.

Which reminds me, I recently saw a sentence that read along the lines of "The Governor was going to replace his own budget with the Legislature's." In context, it was obvious the Governor wasn't being all self-sacrificing and realizing another budget was superior to his but that the writer was reversing the roles of the replaced and the replacee. Grrr.

It looks like I get the rabbit my own self. I wanted my Christmas cards, and I would find them. I considered each box in the furnace room. The only suspect was the one marked "photographs," which unfortunately held only photographs. I did finally, after five years, unpack the happy sun birdhouse Nisou gave us as a wedding present that I have never wanted to risk outside an apartment. I will probably hang it on the Russian olive stump, where clematis or morning glory will twine up and around to shelter it. I returned to the space under the front stairs and checked every Christmas box again. I debated what might still be masquerading as unpacked clothing in the bedroom (whose closets are Going to Be Finished This Weekend).

The only unpacked boxes are those things that live in boxes: my wedding dress, professionally preserved; souvenir t-shirts we will neither wear nor part with (concert t-shirts circa Unforgettable Fire). These are all in the closet in the laundry area between the furnace room and under-the-stairs, and I considered them in one of my pacings back and forth.

I opened the two folding doors and looked. Unhesitatingly I tipped the green hat box down from its shelf and carried it by its gold braided cord into my study. "The French Shops, Filene's, Boston."

Years and years ago, before I moved upstairs in our parents' house, the shelf in the closet of what would become my room held all kinds of interesting stuff that intrigued my sister and me. One item was a box full of art supplies: stencils and bric-a-brac and a medley of stuff including a 16-pack of Crayola still its clear plastic box with a price sticker (29¢). Even more compelling than the supplies was their box: a hatbox. My memory tells me it was from Grant's, even though I know that that was a low-to-middling department store that wouldn't have had boxes for whatever hats it sold. Perhaps my memory tells me the box was from Grant's because the price tag on the crayons (which I still have) is from Grant's. Black and white vertical stripes with a red top, that box, and CLH and I argued passionately over it.

Years and years after that, after we were getting along and long after our mother decided the box would be hers as long as we fought over it, CLH gave me a Christmas present. She said I would love the package as much as the present. The present was a hat and the package was a hatbox. (She was right.)

Hatboxes remain a desirable aspect of any wrapping, when at all possible.

When I packed her Aspen apartment, I mailed what I could and shoved the heaviest stuff in the Terrapin to mail from Denver, a cheaper city to ship from. There was also a lot of stuff she thought wasn't worth packing: a halogen lamp (currently illuminating my study), white plastic stackers (which served as my nightstand for four years, up to when we bought our oak furniture for the house), and some Christmas stuff. Which she stored in a hatbox.

I don't remember why I wanted my Christmas card stuff in August, but I did and now I have it and all I had to do was distinguish among the hatboxes holding hats the one hatbox holding Christmas stuff.

There was one thing I wanted: a receipt from Amazon with someone's address. It wasn't there.

But I got my rabbit.