Whenever there was an unexpected mess to clean up or an embarrassing social confusion, my mom would sigh and say, “…only in the best of regulated households.  There was never an explanation to her remark but we all took it to mean that whatever it was could happen to anyone and we should just deal with it as best we could and get on with things.

Well… the attractive wooden box on the corner  of our kitchen counter doesn’t quite fit this category — but its contents might.  The box, I seem to remember, came with some fancy-schmancy food item in it — maybe smoked fish — which we soon enjoyed to extinction but kept the box.  I don’t know our intent, but it soon became one of those catch-alls for important items, especially small some-day-when-there’s-time projects.

Cocktail Fork with Bent Tine

Today I decided to clean it out and either prioritize the projects or get rid of them entirely.  Silly me.  Although I might be able to complete one or two of these plans — most of which were on Nyel’s ever-ending list, I fear most will go back in the box until someone more clever than I runs across them.  Here are a few that I can at least identify:

   A sterling silver cocktail fork, Hunt Club design, belonging to my mother, with one seriously bent tine.

      Numerous seed packets, some open and half empty with no indicators of how old they are or if they are still viable.

Seed Packets

A package of six individually wrapped bronze(?) keyhole escutcheons for the little keys that sometimes locked old-fashioned bureau drawers.  We have several such drawers with only small holes which originally held locks and (I think) these sorts of escutcheons  I’m sure Nyel had a plan but…

A clear glass paper weight embossed “COLUMBIA PACIFIC HERITAGE MUSEUM – Heritage Advisory Council.”  I was just wondering whatever happened to that group.  I I think we had an initial get-together — maybe at an opening exhibition — and I don’t think we’ve met since.  I wonder how many of us are still among the living…

A fat cellophane (actually what we used to call a “glassine”) envelope with these words printed on it in blue capital letters:  COLLECT U.S. COMMEMORATIVES: THEY’RE FUN; THEY’RE HISTORY; THEY’RE AMERICA.  I don’t know if these are something that were originally with my old (1943-1947) stamp album that I recently mailed to my friend Dick Hawes.  Whether  or not they are, I believe I will send them, also, to Dick for him to give to his friends who are, in fact, serious collectors.  I understand they gave that old album to a young boy who took it into his third grade classroom to show his friends and try to interest them in his newly found passion as a Philatelist.

So, there you have it.  Another day in Oysterville’s Fast Lane!