I don't think I have started a journal entry with as much on my mind as I have today. And yet as I begin to type, I'm not sure of what I am going to say or how I am going to tell this story. It started a couple of weekends ago for me.
As winter in North Carolina is slowly turning to spring, I started to feel the pressure to finish some inside the house projects that have been in the process for many months. Mostly, the cleaning of the bonus room, bonus room closet, and bonus room attic storage. The bonus room has been my office for years. But since I, along with the rest of society has become more mobile, the need for me to work in my office is few and far between. The problem with that is that the room has become a catch all for just as long.
One of my strengths has always been my ability to clean up and organize things to fit into certain spaces. Picture trying to puzzle piece all of the items for a trip into a car trunk. For years, when rooms or closets became out of control, Lori would call on me to clean it up. I remember years ago as a surprise for her, I arranged her apartment closet for her. She reminded me for a long time that it was the best gift she could ever receive.
It's important to point out, that I do not go through the items I am cleaning. I stay focussed on putting things where they should go, boxing things up (without really looking at them) and essentially finding the floor. Lori as you might have guessed, was the opposite of me in the cleaning category. For her, nothing went back where it belonged. Nothing got hung back up or put away. When company was coming over, she quickly slid everything into the closest closet and closed the door.
Back to the bonus room. The problem I have been having with the bonus room has been the need to go through things. I don't like having to make decisions about what should stay and what should go. That would have been Lori's department. Which was easy for her, because most things came and very few would go. But now I have to make decisions about whether or not to keep Lilly's baby clothes, or that dress she wore to the wedding when she was 4. What do I do with all of the wonderful drawings that Lilly has made? How many stuffed animals do I keep? What about the baby books? Do I keep them? Then there are some of Lori's boxes. Which stuff is important to keep for Lilly?
Since these are questions I don't like to answer, I have over the years just boxed them up. "Lilly age 5" is a box that contains everything that Lilly made that year either in school or at home. "Lilly 4T" are bags of the clothes that Lilly wore when she was in that size. Which by the way was up until she was six. So I think you get the point. At this pace, we will need to add a separate storage facility just for these boxes.
The other problem with going through boxes, instead of just putting the box away, is that it is much easier to get distracted. The last time I went through a Lilly box, I ended up buying about 10 picture frames of varying sizes to frame the "artwork" I have been collecting. Once I got the frames home, I realized that there wasn't any matting on the large poster frames and the artwork just looked silly. I still have all of the frames and I still have the box of Lilly's work. No progress made.
So when I decided to get back into the bonus room, I was determined to make some progress. I first cleaned the easy surface level things. I put blankets back where they go, Christmas wrapping paper went back to it's place for another year, etc… Then I pulled out boxes one at a time from the closet and slowly fought my way through. I didn't get caught up in "going through" things as much as I removed the trash. It was similar to the way I keep up with email. It's intimidating to see 100 email in my inbox. But in just a few minutes, I can delete any of the junk mail, spam and subscription reading and quickly my inbox is down from 100 to 40. A much more manageable number.
As you have heard me talk about before, going through Lori's boxes is like finding a treasure box in the sand. You have no idea what's in the box until you open it and it is almost always filled with the most beautiful and priceless gems you could imagine. This time was no different than the others, with the exception of my attitude. Each time I found one of her notebooks, I put them aside, but didn't open them. When I found unmarked video tapes, I didn't rush off to play them. They went into a separate box. I was very disciplined in my cleaning, tossing away the stuff I knew did not have any emotional value to me or to future Lilly. Even when I found envelopes of pictures, I resisted the temptation to get side tracked looking at them. Things were going well until… I found the box of Lori's audio tapes. Cassette tapes to be specific.
Two bankers boxes filled with cassettes. I have known all along that she had them. As a matter of fact, I believe I referenced them in one of my first journal entries. They were audio tapes of the radio shows she did while we worked together in Florida. I hadn't thought much about them or about that time of our life until I saw them. The first tape I pulled out was labeled "Living for Today". The name of the show she created, produced and hosted. How perfect was the name. It epitomizes everything that was Lori. Under the stage name Lori Lyn, she co-hosted the show with Teresa Beverly. The show can only be best described as everything Lori. They talked about coffee. They shared recipes. They offered lists of tips on everything from gardening and decorating to workplace and relationships. It was the movie equivalent of a chick flick.
So I didn't think this would slow me down. I actually thought it would speed me up. How much better would cleaning be if I could be listening to Lori while doing it. All I needed was to find my cassette walkman from 1988. I know I have one. Which box would it be in? I started to rummage through the boxes quickly. Boxes in the closet, boxes in the attic. Not there? Check the garage. Nope. Check the cabinets and drawers in my office, check the shelves in the bonus room, look in the nightstands. Not there. I must have missed it. Start over again. I can't believe I can't find it. Well, I know I got a cassette converter for Christmas last year, maybe I can convert it and then play it on the computer. Crap. You need to have a cassette player to convert it. Okay, I know I have a cassette deck that used to hook up to my receiver. Maybe I have a connection to run from there to the speaker on my computer. I have at least 100 different cord connections, how is it even possible I can't find an RCA to mini plug? FInally! Plug it up. Nothing. I guess I have to run it through the receiver after all. Wait, maybe I can run it from the headset to the computer speakers. Back through the boxes. Now I need a 1/4 inch male mic cord on one side to a female mini on the other. I'm sure I have one of those. Success! It works. Unfortunately, the entire day is gone and there is no time to listen. I really should just order a walkman. I would prefer to listen to them in the car anyway.
The next day Lilly and I went to Best Buy. When I looked and couldn't find a cassette walkman, I hesitantly asked the rep who quite probably wasn't even born when I last used a cassette. He laughed. We left. That day, I ordered one online. It arrived 3 days later.
As I went back through the box, I was reminded that Lori was not only the founder of "Living for Today", but she also lent the female view to the "Breakfast Club", the morning show I hosted with another guy named Scott. In addition, she co-hosted a weekly show called "County Line Calendar" and another show called "Food for Thought". But "Living for Today" is the one that truly defined Lori's radio career. So that is the one I listened to first.
I didn't know what to expect. Would hearing her voice make me depressed? Would it make me laugh? Would it make me cry? I inserted the first tape and listened. The bumper music that starts the show brought back a familiar comfort and then she spoke. And I listened. And I smiled. And I listened some more. She was remarkable. I honestly didn't remember how talented she was. The show was entertaining. I laughed out loud a couple of times. She had me glued to my seat at times wondering where she was going with the topic. In short, if I was listening to this tape not ever having met Lori, I would have fallen for her in the first five minutes. It is amazing how much of her personality came out of the speakers that day. And it was even easier to fall in love with her all over again.
I listened to several tapes over the next week. Every one of them had me entranced with her voice. Ironically enough, it was one of the things she told me attracted her to me. Even when we first met, Lori would drive the tram while I gave the tour because she told me she preferred to listen to me. Later on, she would always ask me to read to her. If I wasn't so concerned with pleasing her, I would have turned the tables on her and asked her to read to me every once in awhile.
Most of the tapes were not labeled. But the fourth tape was. In Lori's handwriting was "Return after the Wedding". When I first read it, my thought went quickly to our wedding. But that was ruled out because we had left Florida years before we got married. After listening to it, I realized that she was referring to the wedding of my brother Chris. This tape has been my favorite so far. I'm sure that much of it is attributed to the fact that her show was focussed around personal experiences that I was involved in, rather than the regular show she did each day. But this tape had it all. It wasn't just about the wedding, because we had made the trip a journey that included several stops along the way. She told stories about the wedding. She talked about my family. She told stories about her family. She talked about my Grandmother and separately, she told a story about her Grandmother. She talked about my siblings and she talked about hers. She entertained me with adventures from our travels and shared her experiences and life lessons.
One of the things that amazed me most, was how well she and Teresa worked together. How great they sounded together. Lori recruited Teresa from the baseball diamond where her son played ball on the team that I coached. When you listen to them, you would think they were doing this for years. They finish each others sentences with ease. They each had different roles that they played out to perfection. At one point, Lori goes off on a tangent (which is just as entertaining as the story she was starting to tell) and when she realizes it, Teresa jumps her right back to the spot she left off. Maybe it's the radio guy in me that appreciates it so much.
Speaking of going off on a tangent, this one is intentional. I believe that most of you are aware of the many stories I have told about Lilly's daily outfit changes and obsession with dresses. For Christmas, I made a book about Lilly called "I think I'll Wear This Today… And Maybe a Few Other Things Too". It tells the story in pictures of a day in the life of Lilly as she manages to wear 34 outfits in 24 hours. So many times I say how much Lilly is like Lori. There are so many traits that Lilly possesses that couldn't have come from anywhere else. But the changing of the outfits was never one of them. Don't get me wrong, Lori liked her clothes, but I never felt that she changed outfits frequently for the sake of changing outfits. Boy was I wrong! At the end of a segment, Lori had me doubling over in laughter as she talks about changing clothes.
Without sharing everything that Lori talked about, would it interest you if you knew that in this less than one hour of the show, Lori mentions Rich Stadium, several detailed wedding events, glass bottles of Pepsi, visiting my family's houses and looking for a particular item in each house, dried flowers, the Bills, traveling tips, visiting her family, a story about both our grandmothers, she mentions a specific cousin of mine by name, gives a recipe and discusses some upcoming event that she is coordinating for the station. And I don't think I even mentioned half of the things that were talked about.
The other thing that was amazing to me, was that she never lost rhythm of the show. Even though she was talking specifically about her trip, she still managed to keep the show flowing the same as it would any other day. Not that I needed any more proof, but she is the most amazing person I have ever met. I am thrilled that I have so many specific things to share with Lilly as she grows up and to share with all of you. So when I decided to share the audio on this website, I thought it was best to share this particular hour with you.
I split it up into four segments that are each around 11 minutes long. I even included the commercials breaks. (they are short) If I didn't, you wouldn't be able to get the whole feeling that comes from the Lori experience, and you wouldn't know about the great sale that they had at Knick Knack Nook Jewelers. I know that it is quite a time commitment from what has already been a pretty long entry. But if you are so inclined to listen, when you are done, ask yourself the same question that Lori poses in the title of her show. Are you "Living for Today"? Click here to listen to the show.