These area few of my fav...er...things.

*Scooter's old EpiPen.

*Wedding gifts still in the box from my grandmother and my aunt along with sweet notes from each of them expressing best wishes for the newly wed couple that was us 25 years ago.

*A sock craft that Hopper made at least 15 years ago that looked like a possessed scarecrow.

*Our tax returns from 1997 and 1998. 

*A 35mm camera from when we were first married.

These are just a few of the things I found when sorting through boxes of craft stuff downstairs today. Granted, not all of them would be categorized as crafts, but they were in boxes on the side of the room that has boxes of crafts stacked to the ceiling that came in from the storage pod on the driveway. These were just some of the the things I found today.

I started a new collection of expired medicines that I'll collect until there is another medicine roundup in town. We dropped off quite a bit of medicine at the last medicine roundup a couple of weeks ago, and I know I'll have quite a bit more by the time there's another one. The EpiPen went into the latest collection of expired medicine.

The wedding gifts were put aside for now. I'll be keeping them, but my mindset is on crafts right now, and I don't know yet where I'll be putting them just yet. I am so glad I came across the cards with the sweet words of my grandmother and my aunt. They brought back wonderful memories of  2 very beautiful women that I miss so much. I'm so very thankful I had them in my life.

The sock craft Hopper made so many years ago had me second guessing myself for awhile. It was a head made of a sock that had yarn hair and felt facial features with stickers for eyes. It had a green felt scarf tied around it, and that was it. It was just a head. It was horribly stained, and I thought about washing it for a moment or two. I wondered how it would fare in the washing machine but figured it wouldn't hold up well. So I considered washing it by hand, but then I looked at it again. It was downright ugly and half scary looking. I could think of no reason I would ever display it, and I realized that as a result I didn't need to wash it. I had a small breakthrough and threw it in the trash. I had several small breakthroughs throughout the last few days, but that was the biggest by far. I look forward to seeing what other breakthroughs I might have in the rest of the boxes.

The taxes? Put in the bag of shredables. I've always struggled with which paperwork to keep and what not to keep. So while it was fun seeing what our income was in 1997 and 1998, we didn't think it was necessary to keep the records any longer. I still had a slight twinge of regret over not keeping any of it, but by the time I acknowledged it, the papers were already in the bag. I could leave them there.

Besides. I'm thinking that the more paperwork we have around that has social security numbers on it, the higher the risk of identity theft. So in the long run, I was thankful we made the decision to get rid of them. 

Speaking of identity theft...enter the 35mm camera. 

When I was 9 months pregnant with Bugster, we got base housing for the first time. We went to some sort of introduction meeting where different aspects of living on base were discussed. During the course of the meeting, we were advised to engrave Hubster's full name and social security number on any electronic device we owned to make it more recoverable, should it ever be stolen. We could check out an engraver through the military police to mark everything, so being the dutiful military wife, I did just that.

At this point, I don't remember what all I marked, but I shudder at the thought of electronics that we've disposed of over the years having my husband's full name and social security number engraved on them! I'm just glad that it was 24 years ago, and well before the age of computers and rampant identity theft, and that hopefully any electronics that still have his information on it has long since been buried deep under mounds of trash in a landfill.

The 35mm camera I came across today was one of the things I'd engraved with almost everything needed to steal my husband's identity. Thankfully, I remembered to check the bottom of the camera before sticking it in the box of stuff to be donated. My heart skipped a beat when I saw the data on the camera and how close I came to sticking it in that box without a second thought. 

Thankfully, I was able to gouge the offending information from the bottom of the camera without too much of an issue. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled. I don't want anything like that to slip through my hands and find its way into the wrong hands.