Before eating dinner on Thursday, Henry and I hung out in the living room while my brother Corey and Chooch hung ornaments on the tree. Corey took a break and acted like it had been decades since he moved out of our mom’s house (and not just barely over a year) by rifling through all the drawers and cabinets.

“I forgot I used to hide stuff in here,” Corey giggled as he pulled out two photographs from the old roll-top desk that my mom uses more as an aesthetic piece of rustic art than functional furniture. “I used to take horrible pictures of you and then hide them, haha.”

I vaguely remember being bombarded by surreptitious  camera flashes. I do not remember ever seeing this pictures*** though, but I suppose that’s the point.

The sad thing is, while I’m sure I would have hated them then, now I’m wistfully thinking, “Aw, before pregnancy morphed my body into a fleshy bag of potatoes.”

My eyebrow was pierced in the hair-dye one, so that means these are from 1998.

Baked beans?

I still enjoy a good catalogue.

Corey also unearthed my old summer health class folder, the same one you’ll not remember I used as an instructional manual on resuscitating my dead rabbit, Rudy.

The front of the folder informs the reader that “Erin <3’s Andy” though it is suspiciously penned in boyish handwriting.

There was really no point to this other than to remind myself that life is too short not to laugh at ourselves.

[*** “This pictures” –  I love how stress makes me type like English is my second language. Or maybe that’s more retardation than stress. Who cares at this point.]