Dumpster Diving Through My Life, Courtesy of the World Wide Web

Unlike many in my family, I'm not a pack rat. Or at least, I'm not a saver of "things" just because "things," particularly if I can't see a specific use for them in the foreseeable future. Yes, this has bitten me in the behind a few times, but overall, I'm good with it, and I do find myself--as I age-- letting go of even more of those things as I come to terms with what I can reasonably see myself accomplishing in my declining years. My "graveyard of dead windows," which came into being not long before I retired, when I decided to start replacing all the windows in the house, is one such example. I got rid of most of the remaining ones over the past couple of months by taking a few of them at a time out to the side of the road and waiting (not for long) for others to pick them up, and now I am down to just a few small ones which I actually might use for, say, a(nother) prospective chicken coop, or a small shed somewhere. I gave away my concrete mixer and the log splitter a couple of years ago, and I'm no longer the girl (like the guy in the Newfie joke), with enough lumber in her barn to build a new one, should the original burn down.

Hell is going to have to freeze over, though, before I get rid of the tractor, the chainsaws, and the ATV.

And yet, I do guard my sentimental favorites ferociously, something that's occasionally been difficult over the course of my life, due to our moving around the world so much when I was a child, due to things often getting lost in the ensuing melees, and due (not that I'm bitter) to a much-loved mother who has had no equal in my life when it comes to pressing her children's buttons, or leaving permanent emotional scars by depriving others in her family of attachments to friends or familiar things, whenever it suited her agenda. Mum died in September of 2014, after a long struggle with dementia. In 2009, I spent almost six weeks in the UK clearing out the family home after Mum was moved to a wonderful nursing home, a prospect which I went into with at least a little bit of glee, thinking, "at last I'll come face to face with some of those beloved childhood objects and memories I've missed for so long." But after which, and after more than a month of coping with the disaster, distress, and filth in which my mother had lived her final years (no thanks to the NHS, but that's another story), I'd found almost none of them, and the very few I'd come across were unfit for any sort of human purpose. I came home with almost nothing, other than a severe case of bronchitis brought on by the dirt and the mold, which occasioned yet another two weeks off work.

Years before I made it to the UK to clear out the house, I'd been trying to find—such things as one sometimes does to confirm that one's childhood memories are actually real—Little Chick Chick, a Tiny Tales Book (there it is on Amazon today) from my early years. I wrote about it in a previous post here, one which I reposted on my blog:

I remember reading only one really childish picture book, although surely there were more. That book was Little Chick Chick, a tiny paperback about a small chick who disobeyed his mother, got himself lost, and ended up spending the night all alone in the pouring rain, hiding underneath an empty tomato soup can by the side of the road. Fortunately for my own mother’s sanity, his mother hen retrieved him the next day, slapped him upside the head with her wing, and all ended well. But before this happy outcome, and at each sight of poor Little Chick Chick shivering and desolate next to the tomato soup can, the two-year-old me would cry floods and floods of inconsolable tears.

Eventually, my mother became so rattled by my outbursts that she took to hiding the book. She would hide the book. I would find the book. She (and subsequently I) would read the book. And off I would go, into uncontrollable sobs, again.

And then, she consigned Little Chick Chick to the [fireplace] flames and that was the end of that.

My mother never stopped telling me the story, with particular attention to how much I'd irritated her, and how heroic she'd been in getting rid of the thing.

Thanks, Mum.

Twenty-plus years ago, while trolling through eBay, as a relatively new member, and putting in "Little Chick Chick" as a search term, I found it! I threw out a ridiculous amount in my "bid," and I won it! When it arrived, via Federal Express, I--a fiftysomething-year-old woman at the time--wept like a baby when I came to the part about the tomato soup can providing shelter for the wet and struggling Little Chick Chick.

Honestly, if anything in my past precipitated my prediliction for saving strays, whether four-legged, two-legged, feathered, furry, or balding, I expect this was it. Not all attempts have turned out beautifully, but enough of them have that it's never stopped me since.

I've passed the story of Little Chick Chick along to my granddaughter. She can bear the burden of it going forward. Which is as it should be, LOL.

Since then, I expect--on a dozen occasions or so--I've "found" internet memorabilia from my childhood and youth, which has made me happy to acquire. In much the same spirit as Little Chick Chick, I've found Pookie (something of an analog to Dumbo, except that in this case, the flying creature with big ears is a bunny), The Adventures of Skip the Squirrel, and a few more. As well as some Royal Doulton Bunnykins stuff, and some Wedgwood Peter Rabbit mugs.

My most recent score, however, has been a bit more contemporary and relates to The Pillsbury Cookbook, not the first edition (1963), but the one that came out a bit more than a decade later in a three-ring binder format. It was the cookbook that informed my college years and the first years of my marriage, and which I found useful and reliable in terms of any sort of basic cookery information.

My own copy of it was so overused that--several years ago--I found it almost hopeless. Pages stuck together. The three-ring binder mechanism had so loosened up that pages regularly fell out willy-nilly, and I spent hours trying to get things back together in the right order.

So I resolved to replace it.

I ordered a new one. A new edition. Hardbound. Wonderful.

When it arrived, I threw the old one in the trash. And I immediately looked--in the new book--for Sunburst Lemon Bars, my absolute favorite recipe from the old book. (There are about half a dozen such well-loved recipes, as well as numerous useful tips on cakes, pastry, and many other topics.)

The recipe for Sunburst Lemon Bars wasn't there.

I've never been accused of waffling. And I didn't here. I picked the old book up out of the garbage and returned it to the kitchen, and took the new one--post haste--to the local Goodwill.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought to make some Greek chicken lemon orzo soup (that's not what my old Pillsbury Cookbook called it, but that's what it is), so I had a look-see. The pages were so stuck together I couldn't even read the list of ingredients.

So I thought to myself: Life is so much simpler than it used to be: Let's do a search!

And I found it. A pristine copy of my 1980s Pillsbury Cookbook. (And yes, the first thing I looked for was the Sunburst Lemon Bars. They are there!)

Here's the "Pancake" recipe page from my old Pillsbury Cookbook. I'm saving it, pack rat or not. You can probably tell I've made them a few times. (No judging on my math errors, which evolved with time. All I know is that my reputation as the best grandmotherly breakfast-maker of all time is largely based on this pancake recipe.)

Am I the only person who searches out these sorts of comfort memories and ways to assuage them through the Internet?

Or do others have them too?