1/11/2025: Everything That Was and Everything That's Gone (part 2)

This is a continuation of yesterday's log.

For some details I didn't think of off the top of my head until looking for the few pictures I have of the inside of that room and other corrections on things I have already described: the doorframe was white. The light switch plate, also white, was to the left of the door in the small gap of wall between the door and closet. A thick white baseboard went around the perimeter of the room. My middle school and high school yearbooks, and a plush dog I got from middle school promotion, were also on the shelf.

Now to continue. Somewhat blocking the bookshelf corner was a blue Ludwig Breakbeat drumset I got for around $200 from a longtime friend(?) of my father's. I had dragged my feet to finish the setup (I didn't receive any hardware with it) because I was frankly not in a hurry at all - in my head an instrument was something that lasted forever if you took care of it and so I felt that even if I didn't do it immediately, it would be there later for when I did have the time. It ended up being mostly complete, hardware bought used for cheap but almost no cymbals; the only cymbals were the hi-hats, I believe inch Zildjian ZBT(?)s. An extra tom, maybe 12 inches, was added to the kit via one of those Pearl mounts; it didn't fit perfectly, but it worked. That tom, and a floor tom (maybe 15 inches), were what had started this whole thing, as I had gotten them for free when they were to be disposed of, and I, hater of throwing anything functional away, took it upon myself to complete a set. They were a dark reddish-brown color made by a company called Empire, and they weren't of the most outstanding quality or condition but as stated - functional. The high tom had Remo heads that didn't have issues, though perhaps a little old, and the floor tom had unlabelled clear heads; the bottom head was broken, though, and it was missing several drum key lugs and proper feet, so it sat to the left of the kit on the floor towards the door and acted more as an extra table for small objects I hadn't yet sorted. The missing lugs had been replaced, but I didn't want to pay more for the feet, especially since I was running out of room in that area anyways. Underneath the kick drum was a small Chinese rug patterned I believe with butterflies, although I may be misremembering and the butterflies could have been the other much larger rug that had laid in that corner for many years in my childhood but had been rolled up when cleaning. Regardless, the smaller rug, bordered with white-or-cream colored tassels and was a sort of beige and dull red-and-brown, maybe 2 1/2 feet wide by four or five feet long, was being used to keep the kick from sliding; like a lot of other things, the thought lingered in the back of my head that it was not a good item to use for that purpose, as the kick's feet had spikes of a kind pressing into such a good rug, but we really didn't own any cheaper rugs for a purpose like that and we were not about to go buy one just for that if we had something else that worked. And yet after all of this, I did not actually play this kit much in the short time I had it, about a year and a half, out of time constraint and the man that moved into the room downstairs who never really left home, and so I felt ashamed to disturb him with loud noises like that.

Before I left to never see it again, just days ago, the other objects around the base of the drums were a pair of thick marching-style drum sticks, a clear plastic container patterned with construction vehicles and yellow lid (bought during the close-out of a certain dollar store chain), and a clarinet in a case (plastic, but rather well-manufactured for its price and so it didn't look obviously plastic - it had a dull sheen and texture that made others think it was wood at times). The clarinet was used mostly in a short stint in middle school and sporadically throughout high school as I thought I'd be forced to march drums if I continued in the school band, and my stature made that very difficult; the one parade we joined the high schoolers in then left large, dark bruises all the way up my thighs from the ill-fitting snare harness that ached for days on end after, so I thought it would be unwise to continue with that. Nevertheless, I found my alternative that didn't require either - honestly, I did not particularly care for clarinet at all, and I still do not; I don't even like most wind instruments generally. Inside the clarinet case were a bunch of unused Vandoren reeds (I think strength 3, as they were too firm for me but I had never resolved it) and a stick of cork grease - I had lost the cleaning cloth I had with it originally, which was red, so there also tended to be paper towels inside the case.

On the other side of the drumset and bookshelf, towards the white French doors and shutters that covered almost the entire north wall, were the storage boxes I mentioned yesterday. I am inclined to say there were about 5 plastic boxes stacked on top of each other, as it totalled to about 5 feet tall, tall enough to be unwieldy but tall enough to have items placed on top. At the very top were a multi-colored pastel plush Alpaca found in a trash can somewhere near the beach, as it was missing an eye but otherwise clean, and a newly acquired large plush of the Vtuber Ina from Hololive. The alpaca had a string-and-paper eyepatch I made and wore a Christmas Santa Claus hat that I had received in a gift exchange; at times it had my graduation tassels and other items wrapped around its neck, although those were moved into the closet with the full gown and hat. I think they sold that kind of plush in grocery stores nearby for a while; I faintly recall seeing them on the very top of the shelves where all the other random promotions and decorations were. The Ina plush I had gotten from a claw machine first try while my friends watched, which I was very proud of. Inside the boxes were a variety of things, some only vaguely sorted. At least one was full of art and school projects I liked that were sorted into beige file folders by "era." Another was full of crafts I made in late elementary school with the same friend that made the plush on the bookshelf, mainly cats made out of craft pipecleaners. Another had all kinds of small toys and trinkets. The one towards the top of the stack was for a while used as a "to be sorted" box and was thus full of random papers pulled out of my backpack. I don't recall the details of the rest. At the base of the stack to the right was a 4 gallon cardboard chemical box from the shop; I think it was also full of papers but I don't remember already. On top of it was more paper that was intended to be sorted or thrown away and some school notebooks I haphazardly removed from my bag once they were no longer needed, but didn't want to outright throw away.

Down that wall between the bed, large yellow-ish curtains with rather old-fashioned floral patterns covered the shutters even further. They hung from a brown, wood curtain-rod. I believe they were sewn together by my grandmother on my mother's side, who really didn't tend to do things like that for us, so it was probably one of the only things she had made in the house. At the end was a Mahjong table chair with no cushion. Stuffed animals were usually on it; as of before I left, there were a large and somewhat rectangular orange cat won from the one county fair I went to and a Build-a-Bear red panda; the red panda was the basis for another one of my middle school mascot characters. It wore a karate ji. Also there briefly was my father and I's main childhood stuffed toys; those were evacuated and are still alright.

Backtracking a bit, the base of the bed had a dark brown-wooded foot bench with cream and pink-ish floral patterns on the fabric on top. I found it extremely uncomfortable, so it was used mainly as a table of sorts. There were some clothes and another tin of baseball cards in a metal cookie box from probably a not-too-far Chinese bakery, a dark red-brown color with a textured design on the top and a clear window inside. To the south was another Mahjong chair without a cushion, though it might've been from a different Mahjong table set. That chair was always piled with clothing. At its base was another cardboard box with clothes on top; I think there were some signed baseballs and a large quantity of colorful gel pens inside. At least one baseball was a pre-game foul from a game I went to; the signed ones were obtained by my father, but I never could figure for sure who had actually signed them; one of them was signed by Gaylord Perry with a personalized message.

It is about noon. I am running out of stamina to write for now, so I may return to add more later, or I will write another log tomorrow. What remains is the southern side of the room and the rest of the closet's contents; I do not believe I have the sanity to think of the rest of the house in such detail at this time, so I will hope that someone else in the family is more determined to do so; at the end, my room was simply mine, and it is the only one I do not think the others have a complete memory of, especially since I do not even have one.