Opening the Time Capsule

** Quick Note:  For those of you wondering about NaNoWriMo, I did succeed in writing 50,000 words of my novel during November.  (Yea!)  But I am currently too overwhelmed by the enormity of what I have accomplished and the enormity of what I have left to do to discuss it yet.  So instead, take a trip with me Back in Time.  (Click here for some appropriate background music by Huey Lewis and the News.)  

My crazy Cousin Kelley and I love the Back to the Future movies.  Love them.  I honestly don’t know how many times I’ve seen Marty McFly fill in with the band playing “Earth Angel” at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance or watched Biff get a mouthful of manure or laughed at Doc Brown’s great expression when the model car catches fire.  (Click here for 43 seconds of acting genius.)

But it wasn’t just the dreaminess of Michael J. Fox or the excitement of hoverboards and flying Deloreans that got to us.  It was the allure of time travel itself, in all its glory, with all its complications.  One of my favorite parts of the trilogy is actually at the end of the second (and, let’s face it, worst) movie.  Marty is in the year 1955.  He has just watched the Delorean (with Doc inside) get struck by lightning and vanish.  Then, a Western Union courier arrives and hands Marty a letter from Doc, who is in 1885.  They have been carrying the letter around for 70 years, waiting to deliver it at that exact moment in that exact location.  I always thought that was so cool and wished there were a way to do such a thing in real life. 

Well, in December of 2003, Cousin Kelley and I did the closest thing we could.  We made a time capsule to be sealed for ten years, and this Thanksgiving we opened it.  (We made it nine years and eleven months.  I say, close enough.)

Time is a strange thing.  Kelley and I have been anticipating opening this thing for almost a decade.  The first couple of years, we still remembered everything inside and swore we would never forget.  Then, all of a sudden, somewhere around year seven, the contents got a little fuzzy.  The mystery deepened, the excitement sharpened, and Cousin Kelley’s pleas to open it early grew more frequent.  I held her off.

[Side note:  During the ten years between time capsule creation and time capsule opening, Cousin Kelley moved to Florida and then back to Texas.  When she moved back, she called me and left a loooong emotional voicemail about how they had packed everything up and were just about to drive away when she remembered to check the attic one more time and, “Oh my God!  Guess what was up there?  Our time capsule!  I almost left it in Florida!  You should never have let me keep it!”  I called her back and told her the time capsule was at my parents’ house in Richardson where it had always been and that I was never crazy enough to let her keep it and that I had no idea what was in that box in her attic.]

 

We were silly in 2003.  We still are.  I like that you can see my 

Toonces the Driving Cat poster in the background of my photo.

By the time we opened the capsule (the real one), we only remembered a very few things about the night we made it and the contents inside.

Here's my Facebook post from two weeks ago:

Next week, while I'm visiting my family for Thanksgiving, Cousin Kelley and I will be opening the time capsule (a.k.a. the lunch box) that we buried (a.k.a. hid in the top of my parents' closet) ten years ago when she was 23 and I was 27. We know there are letters inside (some of which will NOT be mailed to the recipients even though we pinky-swore we would), and a roll of film (thank goodness some places still develop those) and a cassette tape (thank goodness my mom still has a player that works), but we don't remember anything else. I CAN'T WAIT!

So here’s the thing.  After ten years, we expected to be wrong about the future.  What we did not expect was to be so very wrong about the past.

-- The time capsule was not a lunch box.

-- There was no cassette tape inside.

-- Every photo on the roll of film was taken inside the house in the span of an hour or two.  (We’d been expecting crazy settings and late-night adventures.  Our younger selves really dropped the ball on that one.)

-- There were no letters inside except the ones to each other.  (This is still mind-boggling.  Both of us SWEAR that we wrote letters to our current boyfriends and promised to give them to the guys no matter what, and for the past six years or so we have been dreading re-reading those awful things and planning a bonfire to destroy them.  And yet… no letters.  We were so confused by this that, remembering the 70-year-old letter from Doc in Back to the Future Part II, I had a brief panic attack that maybe we had written them and somehow mailed them already to be delivered to the boys in 2013, but Cousin Kelley assures me that is impossible.  Whew!)

So what was in the box?  Well, now, it wouldn’t be fair to give everything away, would it?  But I’ll tell you a little bit.

Inside the box were memories—photos and journals and poems and wicked little reminders of a snapshot of time.  There were smiles in there, and laughs, and lies, and a song by David Bowie.  There was proof of how much people change and of how much more they stay the same.  Oh and our favorite t-shirts from 2003.  That was an awesome surprise.

Mine says, "Hark the herald dillos sing."
Kelley's says, "Those with class drive fiberglass."
It was 2003, people.

Inside that box was a reminder of how lucky I am to have a Cousin like Kelley.  Because the biggest thing that we forgot was the coolest thing to remember—The time capsule was a gift.  It was my birthday gift from Kelley in 2003.  She gave me a box (personalized with photos of us), and two “About Me” journals for each of us to fill out, and a roll of film, and a promise—to turn that box into a time capsule at Christmas and lock it up for ten years.  What an amazing gift.  What an amazing Cousin Kelley.

 

We want to do it again.  We will do it again.  But a little bit of time needs to pass first.  I’m thinking 2015 might be a good year for TC2.  Maybe October 21, 2015—the day Marty McFly traveled to in Back to the Future Part II.  That seems as appropriate a day as any.  We’ll have to get a box big enough to fit a hoverboard.

But we shouldn’t be the only ones enjoying the fun and mystery and excitement of the time capsule.  You should make one too.  :)

Carie and Kelley’s Ten Tips for Making a Time Capsule:

1. Choose a small container.  It may be harder to fill than you think.

2. You don’t have to bury it.  That sounds messy.  Just find a safe, permanent location, preferably not in the home of any of the capsule creators.  A safety deposit box might be good. 

3. Don’t do it alone.  Make your time capsule with a family member or group of friends and make sure everyone contributes.  That way the opening of it will also be a good excuse for a reunion in case your paths have parted.

4. Be patient.  Ten years is the minimum length for a good time capsule.  Kelley and I actually tried a one-year one when we were younger and it didn’t work—we remembered too much and not enough had changed.

5. Take photos of things you know will change.  We took pictures of our cell phones.  Quite a difference between 2003 and 2013.  What will our phones look like in 2023?

6. It’s ok to make promises.  And it’s ok to break some too.  If those letters to ex-boyfriends really had existed, we would NOT have kept our promises to mail them.  And that is ok.  (Here we are reading our letters to each other.  Those were a good idea!)

 

7. Plan for the future.  This time, Kelley and I were able to develop our film and, had there been a cassette tape, we could still listen to it, but ten years from now?  I’m not so sure.  Don’t let changes in technology ruin your big reveal.  Take pictures with your phone or camera, then go ahead and develop them and , for good measure, make a CD of them too.  Put the prints and CD in your time capsule and delete the photos from your camera.

8. Don’t try too hard.  Don’t agonize over what will be memorable.  Everything will be memorable.  Fill the time capsule with the little details of life.  A list of what you did that day, your regular routine.  The receipt from the coffee you bought.  The name of the last song you heard.

9. When it’s time to open the thing, plan ahead and make sure you and your group have some privacy.  You will not remember everything that is in that box.  You might think you will, but you won’t.  Best to open it away from prying eyes and children. 

10. A time capsule makes a great, low-cost, creative gift.  Consider giving someone you love the gift of time this Christmas!

Some Distractions are Bigger (and More Terrifying) Than Others

I promise I’ll get back to writing my novel in a minute, but first… AAAAAAAAA!

The world of NaNoWriMo comes with all sorts of support.  There are forums, there are writing groups, there are inspirational pep talks by famous authors, there are meetings, there are apps, and there are at least a dozen tips and strategies for overcoming writer’s block and procrastination.

What there is NOT is any helpful advice about what to do when you sit down to write and see a GIANT SPIDER just outside your office door.

See how it appears to be getting larger in those photos?  Well that’s what it felt like in real life.  (And no, I did not get that close to take its picture, I just zoomed in on the first one I took.)

I know this is not the biggest of all spiders—trust me, I have seen plenty of tarantulas.  But this spider was different from the tarantulas because A) It was in my house, and B) I didn’t know what it was.

I thought for a moment the marking on its back kind of looked like a violin, so I thought it could be a brown recluse.  Then I thought it looked more like a lava lamp, so I thought maybe it was some sort of hippie type of brown recluse. 

Most of you are thinking, Who cares?  Squish it!  I can’t squish it.  When panic overtakes me, the idea of feeling that crunch under my foot or of squishing it but not hard enough to kill it but just hard enough to make it mad or the idea of it jumping at the last second onto my shoe and running up my leg all keep me from being able to move.  Plus, I hate to kill things and then have someone tell me it was harmless.  And, I wasn’t wearing shoes and didn’t think letting the thing out of my sight was a good idea.

When I see scorpions in the house, I put a glass over them and let my husband deal with them when he comes home.  It works for us.  So I decided to try that.  But scorpions are slow and dumb and spiders are fast and (I fear) smarter than I am.  After standing, poised over the thing with a glass in my hand, for several minutes hoping that a UPS guy or a solicitor would show up at my door (I will buy whatever you are selling if you get rid of this thing for me!) I finally trapped the little sucker.  And really made him mad.

However, that was not enough because he has to stay trapped for nine hours.  Sometimes, when I trap a scorpion, the cats play with the glass and scoot it across the floor.  I cannot risk this big, angry, intelligent, possibly deadly, definitely scary spider escaping.  So I put a brick on top of the glass.  Then I put a book on top of the brick.  Then I surrounded the glass with heavy books.   Then I took away the front book because I need to be able to see in to make sure he’s still there.

Well, the closest bookcase to the spider is the one that holds all my horror books.  So… what I made actually ended up looking more like a shrine to the creepy guy than a cage.

Oh well, as long as it works.

And now, I shall get back to work DESPITE the fact that terror lurks right outside my doorway. 

It may only be this:

But it feels like THIS:

[Note:  No one show this blog post to my mom or else she won’t come pet sit for me this weekend.  Also, no one show it to my cousin or I’ll never convince her to come visit me, ever.]

It's a Small World

A couple of weeks ago, my husband asked me, “Why did you put ‘a marble that looks like the earth’ on your birthday list?”

I had a hard time explaining to him why I not only wanted, but needed such a thing.  He came through anyway, because he is a good husband.

Instead of continuing to try to explain why a marble-sized world is such a wonderful thing, I will let these photos speak for themselves.

First:  The Obvious

It's a small world after all. 

I've got the world in the palm of my hand.

The world is at my fingertips.
(And I wish I had more attractive fingertips.)

I've got my eye on the world.
(Or the world in my eye.)

Next:  Alternative Origin Myths

 

The world was born in the head of a fish.

Gaia was actually a tabby cat.

The earth was sneezed out the nose of a dog.

Then:  Planet Under Attack!!!

AAAAAAAA!!!

This shall not end well for us.

And Lastly:  Some Random Pics of the World

See?  Next time your birthday rolls around, get creative with your wish list.

I’m not through being entertained by this.  Send me your puns, your plays on words, all your ideas for my tiny world and I will do my best to make them happen.

WAIT!!!

Before anyone chastises me for wasting time with my tiny world rather than working on my NaNoWriMo novel, I would just like to tell all you bossy-pants that I already wrote 2,000 words today (so there) and I deserved a break.  Also the cricket on my porch is driving me crazy and I had to get out of earshot of him for a while.  If I ever find him, I am going to crush him with the whole world.