A wink and a smile.

I promised no more holiday posts.  I lied.  This past weekend, while making the big transition from loads of dusty boxes to neat and tidy clear plastic bins for storing holiday ware, I came across yet another box from my parents, this one full of the not-so-memorable remnants of Christmases past. 

For the past five years or so, my perfectly organized and frugal parents have been in the process of unloading all that they deem unnecessary in their lives.  My brother and I serve as both the grateful children and the Goodwill intermediaries in this process, depending on the item.  Let's just say a trip to Goodwill is often among the "bunch of errands" I'm running.

At one point, while Hub and I still lived in Denver, every visit my parents made in their mid-sized sedan included a trunk full of stuff, mostly toys and room decor left over from my childhood.  When Hub and I packed to move north, busy Hub and perpetually pregnant me were too weary to sort through the disintegrating boxes, held together with the same tape that once secured the original contents, like the first microwave ever sold to the masses.  So we put the whole lot on the moving truck and hauled it to our rental where it sat for another two years, and then finally, here, lovingly known as:  Casa Does Anything Work Around Here?  But that's another story. 

I'm only now getting through things.  Please, don't get me wrong, many items are truly cherished and I can't believe I have them.  Like photo albums of my babyhood, or the plastic play dishes I used for mud pies, or the hand-embroidered advent calendar that caused me to almost eat my daughter alive when she casually tossed the pieces around the living room. This most recently opened box, however, contained at least 20 battery operated candlesticks that my mom picked up cheap at Walmart, some figurines from her former hairdressing clients, and at the very bottom, a felt cozy. 

One thing for certain about my mom:  the lady can sew.  She made my prom dresses in high school, sewed dolls from scratch (complete with day and evening wear) and upholstered any number of chairs in my parents' home.  Most recently, she made a carpenter's apron for T for when he's fixin' things, and sewed a Little House on the Prarie-style nightgown for Dee, that she is gaga over. 

Mom also specializes in cozies.  For the uninitiated, a cozy is a fitted fabric covering, most often found on tissue boxes.  My mom always travels with her book cozy (leather with built in book mark) and I always travel with the faux leather jewelry cozy she made for me (featuring six separate jewelry compartments).  Mom has made a customized trash can to match the beige carpet in her car and I recall a navy blue cozy with tiny white flowers for our video cassette recorder with a window for the digital clock.  Ahhh, to live in a seemingly dust free, tailored world....

Anyhoo, when I reached the bottom of the box, I found a serious blast from the past:  a form fitting toilet seat cozy.  For the guest bathroom only, mind you, and note the zipper:

Hub, who must go through some medically directed counting ritual to resist wearing surgical gloves before changing a diaper, cannot stand to look at this particular Secret Santa.  The germs!  The horror!  If Hub had his way, we would have torched the cozy on the spot.

I can't think about those things.  It was a different era, right?  Plus, I genuinely have a little more affection for this particular Secret Santa.  My mom put some serious time into making it.  Did you see the silver accent thread?  And the holly berry sequins?!  While I didn't remember the cozy until I saw it, I seem to recall thinking it was cute, like free-Scholastic-book-order-posters-of-tumbling-kittens, cute.  Also, I have faith that the cozy, while meticulously embroidered, was washed since it's hey day in the 1980's and again before its latest storage spot in the microwave box.  Still, we won't use it, and I can't think of any reason to keep it beyond some strange sentimental attachment on my part.  Perhaps I'll keep it around to treat Hub's borderline OCD...and zip it up for his 40th birthday.  Just so he knows he's hit the stage of cozies and middle-age.