It's like how I'm still getting all the stats lovin because I once used the phrase "cows in precious little gingham dresses." I always feel kinda bad when I see I got another hit on that one. Like once a week, someone somewhere in the world is thinking about how much he loves cows, and he just adores gingham, and looky here, ana-ng.diaryland.com feels the exact same way!! So, he clicks on the link, and he finds out that I don't actually like cows, especially when they're wearing cute widdle dresses, and a little piece of him dies.

In my brain, there are like 40,000 people crying themselves to sleep every night over this. He thought he'd finally found someone who understood about the cows and their need for prairiewear, but it was only me. You just can't trust anyone.

***

My bedroom is full of stuffed animals right now. It's kinda wierding me out. I never thought I'd be the girl with stuffed animals absolutely everywhere. That's creepy, right? NO ONE should be my age, and have stuffed animals as the main bedroom decor.

A few Grovers here and there, that's cool. That means I'm all retro. Grover is in fact the coolest damn Muppet ever. Grover can kick your ass, biznitch. He is what it is, and he is where it at. But my room looks like I'm about 8, and I'm not totally sure what to do about it.

(Now that I think about it, most 8-year-olds probably have fewer ashtrays and condom wrappers scattered among their stuffed animals, but you see where I'm going with this.)

See, my parents decided that my childhood was taking up space they required for other purposes. They told my sister and me to come and take anything we wanted, and the rest was going away.

Friday night, I went home, and started digging through the bins. 90% of it was stuffed animals. That doesn't seem right. We had board games, didn't we? I remember Legos. I know I used to have a lot of books. Where did all of that go?

I'm not really complaining. If there had been more stuff that I wanted, I would have taken it, and I really don't have anywhere to put it. It's better, really, that all I had to do was look at 40,000 fuzzy little faces that meant the world to me 20 years ago, and tell them all no.

It was depressing, really. Most of the stuffed animals, I didn't want. A lot of them, I didn't even really remember. My parents saved them for me for so long, for nothing.

And then it was depressing, because there were a few that I did remember. "Ooh! It's Amanda! I'm totally taking Albert, and Amanda was his girlfriend, so maybe I should take her too...No, stop that. Small apartment. You collect books now. Are you saying you would rather have this one doll, or all the Diskworld novels?"

So, I ended up taking only the ones I couldn't bear to leave behind. Albert the bunny. The Paddington that my mom made. I knew I wanted one Cabbage Patch Kid, just for posterity's sake, and I even knew it had to be Alice, but then I just couldn't bring myself to abandon Andrea. She wasn't even a real one, but I loved her so much.

(God. Just listen to me. Does this entry frighten you yet? I'm still a sarcastic badass. Really. It's just hard to maintain an edge in circumstances like this.)

So, I took them all home with me, and I'm not sure what to do now. I don't want to keep them out, but I don't really want to put them in a box at the back of the closet quite yet either. Seeing them all again has reminded me how much they meant to me once.

I didn't have a lot of friends as a kid. But I had a city, filled with animals. Paddington was the Mayor, and Puppy Chow (don't ask) was his deputy. Sometimes, Albert ran the grocery store, but sometimes he got sick of being around everyone else and went off and had adventures all by himself. (He went all the way to KitchenLand once, and brought back snacks for everyone else.) Albert was the one who found the city originally, but he gave it to Paddington, because he and Amanda wanted to go on a date instead.

(OK, this is going to get scary again. Maybe I should stop before I embarrass myself.)

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