Year in the life meme

If you want to play, leave the year of your birth as a comment and I'll give you a year to discuss. hess42 gave me 1996.

Actually hess42 gave me 1996 way back on February 7th, and I was pretty busy at that point, 2 weeks ago, so I figured I'd wait until I had some time to reflect on 1996. Since now and then, I've done some reflecting, and recalled a very few highlights. 1995 and 1997 are definitely more memorable, so I figured it was time to crack out my scrapbook from that era and see just what was going on that I missed. Those of you who know I scrapbook & have seen said scrapbooks know that I own, gosh, 5 huge albums that span the era of 1970-2000. So that comes out to something like 300 pages. Mathematically, each year should have about 10 pages, on average. So, I found 1992 and worked my way forward. Guess what? 1996 has a single page, about my rubberstamping obsession. I mean, I was seriously into rubberstamping, but it did not encompass my entire year. Other things were going on, I am quite sure of that. It's like a huge void in my life. There was another page in 1996, which was about my parents' vacation to Mexico.

By flipping forward to 1997, which I have said is quite memorable, I read a few notes that help to jog my memory about why 1996 is so bare. 1996 was the year I taught reading and study skills classes to college students at the U of I 3 days a week, worked 2 days a week at Pastoral Care and Counseling, worked 3 days a week at Clark Dietz Inc, took classes full time at the U of I, and worked frantically, late into the night to get my research data collected, entered, and analyzed.

The rubberstamping only made center stage in the scrapbook because I actually attended a convention with other rubberstamping fans. The other past time I vaguely recall engaging in was Heroes of Might and Magic, a break for eyes tired of looking at strings of numbers. I think this may have been the summer I was desperate enough for cash I tried to supervise a corn detasseling crew at 3:30 am. I say "tried," because after 3 mornings of it, then proceeding forward with the rest of my obligations, I was so sore and stiff, I couldn't even get my arms to bend far enough to fasten my bra, and I said there was no way I was that desperate for cash. 1996 may also have been the year I cut my toe on a mysterious shard of glass in my white dress shoes & spent an hour with a sterilized sewing needle digging it out of my left big toe, rather than go to the emergency room and wrack up a medical bill I could not afford.

Like I said, I'm making guesses on the last bits, because I don't have it documented, but I'm fairly confident it didn't happen in 1997 or 1995 ... and I know I lived on Church Street for both of those incidents. Oh, and that reminds me ... I think 1996 was the year that Theo, my rat, died. Yeah, there are lots of reasons why 1996 didn't get much press in my scrapbooks!

extra note, 6 hours after original post: I think 1996 was also the year I fell on the ice outside the Pizza Hut, just off Green Street. I remember my brown skirt flew up & I landed hard on my butt, but didn't injure anything. I gave credit to ages-past ice skating class, for falling successfully. I bring this up only because tonight I fell, not once, but TWICE, in the span of less than five minutes. Can you believe it??? I remembered thinking, "Gee, I haven't fallen on ice since ... hey, I think it was 1996, 'cause Dad got me that brown skirt in the summer of 1995." I, this time, give credit to 8 years of tai chi, for not breaking anything. My right knee took it hard, skinned up badly, thanks to the freakin' useless sand embedded in the pointy ice, hidden under a light gathering of snow. Shovel your freakin' sidewalks, people!!!