Today Mike took Evan out

Today Mike took Evan out for a few hours so I could clean in peace. Evan is afraid of the vacuum cleaner, so having him out of the house when I use it is often the best thing. While I was cleaning our bedroom, I found this tape Cara made me when I turned 16 (yes, I have a ton of mix tapes from high school under my bed, I'm not ashamed). Anyway, I immediately popped it into the stereo and was in hysterics for the next half hour. The tape is half music, half her just talking to me, and it had me in tears. I was immediately 11 years younger--this thing is priceless. It made me smile.

I have kept a lot of stuff like that. I have a mess of tapes, old letters, postcards, all that stuff. I keep it all in a box under my bed or in my hope chest in the bedroom. I don't look at any of it very often, but it's all stuff I could never part with. There is a whole shoebox just for Mike, big bursting envelopes of notes from Cara and Lauren, bags of letters from Intercom and my trips to Kentucky, folders full of other cards and bits and pieces. I even have a tape of a radio show Mike and Henry did at Duquesne once (it was Mike and Eric's show, but Eric was gone that night I think) and at the end of another tape is a bunch of voicemail messages from my first year of college from Lauren and Mike. These are my little personal treasures.

The reason I'm telling you this is because I've started a box under Evan's bed of all the cards he's gotten since he was born--congratulatory cards for his birth, baptism cards, birthday cards, valentines. Just in case he's as sentimental as I am, I want him to have the chance someday to decide if he wants to keep all of this stuff or not. He probably won't, but better safe than sorry.

As soon as they got home this afternoon, Evan went down for his nap, so I should finish cleaning while he sleeps. I'll be careful not to throw out anything important.