This all started with me organizing my financial documents. As usual, I had an appointment with my financial planner (aka my cousin) and waited until the last minute to organize my papers. So I called her, rescheduled the appointment, went and had a lovely lunch with a friend, and then went through each and every paper and made a big, giant pile of "Documents to Be Shredded."
Which I did. The Spazz gave me a hardcore, asskicking shredder for my birthday last year (yes, I am THAT old), but the downside to it is that it is very heavy. I'm still recovering from a knee surgery, so heavy lifting is kind of difficult, but it has to be done. And so, as I was dumping the bits of shred into a big trash bag, several bits scattered all over my just-vacuumed floor.
So I pulled out the vacuum again and this is where my story really begins.
As you know, I am a self-hating pack rat. I am constantly on the road to recovery but there are some things that I just can't get rid of (see my first entry: Hello Kitty Sandwich Maker). Several years ago, I went with my friend Gail to the Oxnard Strawberry Festival. I remember eating strawberry pizza and strolling through the gazillions of craft tents. Gail bought some kind of angel doll for her mother while I became mesmerized at the fairy princess crown stand. Some maternal genius created fairy crowns made of multi-colored ribbons and wire and I was sucked in. They were simple, but still very pretty and I found myself buying one and wearing it at the festival.
Those of you who know me should be laughing by now. My facebook quote says "I'm a fairy princess" specifically because of the irony. I am a potty-mouthed, jeans and boots wearing gal who wears little to no make-up and snarky t-shirts. But something about that fairy crown touched something deep inside me, a place dark and rarely seen by the outside world.
Does every girl want to be a fairy princess?
Where is this going? is your reply.
Yes, right, the household appliance. So I have kept this fairy princess crown since that time, which was at least 7 years ago, if not more. I never wore it. I've loaned it out for costumes, but mostly it hung on my doorknob. Recently I discovered that Lady Chewbacca Noelle (my cat, so named by my theatrical gay friend) loved this "crown" as a toy, so I and various visitors have run back and forth in my apartment, dragging the ribbons on the ground for the cat to chase.
(This activity did not provide enough exercise for any of the parties involved: Chewy is a 13 year old Himalayan with a smushed face so she runs out of steam pretty quickly when less and less air can get through those tiny little nares. The Giant Dwarf has a bum knee that appreciates her cat's low activity requirements.)
Just a couple of months ago, on a particularly hot evening, I discovered that if I put the crown around my air fan tower, the fan would blow the ribbons out and completely put Chewy into a trance. So that is where I left it.
Near the area where the little pieces of shred had fallen on the rug.
So I fired up the vacuum cleaner and began to suck up the rogue bits of paper when, all of a sudden, I heard a pop. What? I looked around. It didn't take much time for me to discover, to my horror, that my fairy princess crown had been swallowed by my gluttonous Eureka.
But it wasn't totally swallowed. It was stuck in the brush part, and at first I thought I could save it (for the love of goddess, it's a bunch of ribbon and wire!), but as I studied the machine, I realized I would have to remove it forcibly (and with scissors) to prevent me from having to buy a new vacuum cleaner.
So what occurred to me while I was cutting my beloved fairy princess crown to pieces was how so many of us stay connected in some way or another to a treasured part of our childhood. And how every girl, no matter how old, should have a fairy princess crown.
No, make that a Fairy Queen Crown.
