wide awake and nostalgiac

It is almost 2am and I can't fall asleep. I am not sure why I am so WIDE AWAKE, but while I wait for sleep, I am thinking about nostalgia. In fact, I have been thinking about nostalgia a lot lately. I had mentioned that fact to Mummy Dearest a while back and she said that I should blog about it, so Mummy, this is for you.

Dictionary.com defines nostalgia as: a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland, or to one's family and friends; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

I am not entirely sure what has sparked this recent need to delve into thoughts of my former life; maybe it's Dad being gone and me missing him, who knows? But I'm there. Stuck in the middle of it.

Embracing my nostalgic-ed-ness as of late has meant delving into the familiar and strange in a variety of ways:

• Roomie M and I decided to watch Little House on the Prarie from Season I on. We are almost done with Season 6 and really realizing that they could have done all 9 seasons in about 1.5. And is it just me, or is Laura always running away from sticky situations?
• I went through all my boxes of high school stuff today and looked at old pictures, old stories I'd written and old weird memorabilia--things that I have clung onto for 12 years: a bookmark, random notes, postcards.
• I searched through boxes of old dishes--the dishes that my family used when we were young and which were given to me for my first apartment by my parents. It almost seemed that I could trace our family's progress from a struggling, young family into times of more stability by looking at the different dishes. I wanted to take pics of all of these lovely old dishes, but I didn't have my camera with me...maybe later.
• Upon cleaning my room the other day I began to find little baggies upon little baggies of buttons. The kind of buttons that come with new shirts and pants, as replacements. For some reason seeing all those buttons made me think of the button bucket that my Mom had when we were kids, so I cleaned a big glass jar and threw in my new found dozen or so buttons. Far from my Mom's slew of buttons, but 'ya gotta start somewhere. Finding those buttons reminded me of reading these two Marytree blogs about buttons: Buttons One, Buttons Two.

Well, as it boils down toward 3am I guess I should go to bed. But before I go, I leave you readers with one of my favorite poems from my favorite poet. "Nostalgia," by Billy Collins.