1 post tagged “glassware”

I've lived in Seattle for about three and a half years now.  I was reminded of this fact once more while cleaning out the basement this past weekend.  Josh offered to assist and, with the help of some Mission of Burma on the CD player, we managed to make quite a bit of progress.  A carful of recycling went to the dump, and a mini-mountain of garbage bags and Goodwill-bound ephemera is now standing by near the water heater.

But it wasn't until much later, Sunday night, that I ended up opening a couple of boxes that had remained sealed for almost those entire three and half years.  These boxes were the very first ones, labeled numbers one and two (of, er, 80-some-odd), packed in April of 2003 in my old NYC apartment.

They'd followed me from NYC to my Capitol Hill apartment, then to a Seattle storage unit, then to the basement of my house, where I'd passed by them a few times a week on the way to grab more TP or pasta or other rations from the storage room.  And yet I was always afraid to open them, remembering the tell-tale tinkle the last time I'd so much as shifted them from one spot to another.  There was broken glass in there.  But how many, and which ones?

Because in those boxes was a large number of vintage drinking glasses, the kind with flowers and fishes and other cool patterns etched or silkscreened on to them.  (I know, I know -- as if my record collection wasn't enough of a pain to deal with transporting and caring for.)  I'd broken enough due to carelessness throughout the years, but that's price to be paid for actually using and enjoying them.  But I didn't want to think about the movers dropping one of those boxes six feet onto a concrete sidewalk and everything inside going smasheroo.  Too depressing.

Turns out that my vivid imagination was much worse than reality.  When I opened up both boxes, I found that, yes, there were broken glasses.  Only three, which was good.  But two of them among my favorites, leaving me with just two (out of an original eight) of that pattern left.

Anyway, it was actually pretty fun unwrapping each piece from layers of bubble wrap or paper -- just like Christmas!  I had totally forgotten about all the cool glassware I'd managed to accumulate.

Now I can get rid of some of the boring glasses I've been using and stuff my kitchen cabinets full of these.