I don't think I started out loving paper. I think the love of origami came first. Paper was just paper and didn't have any special capabilities until I learned you could manipulate it into shapes—shapes that could do something like fly or flap or spin or hold water. It was when I could turn a single piece of paper into an airplane, a flapping bird, a whirligig or a cup that paper became so much more than just a boring medium on which I could write.
From that point forward, I was on a mission for the best paper. Some paper was thin and crispy and was great for certain models. Other paper was bright and colorful and looked beautiful when folded into a box or ornament. Other paper was metallic—which was expensive and uncommon and unlikely to be used because it was so much nicer to look at and anyway, nothing ever seemed worthy enough for the ten inch gold square at any rate.
There was Japanese Washi paper and mulberry fiber paper and make your own paper that I destroyed a perfectly good blender making. There was thick paper and even wallpaper because some models are stunning when made with wallpaper believe it or not.
Paper collecting aside, the bottom line is you need the proper paper for the model you want to fold. The most beautiful model in the world will look like a fancy wad of trash if you don't pair the design with paper appropriate for the model's complexity and folding techniques. And this is something that takes lots of trial and error and then some more error until you start to get the hang of it.
But like so many things in my life, that's another story. This is about collecting paper. It's a funny thing, collecting a consumable. You collect it so that you might have options when you need it. But the more "valuable" or "rare" or even "special" a piece of paper is, the more likely you are to never use it. I have some papers in my collection that have been there for over twenty years. Wait, is that right? I just did a year calculation from some of the oldest papers I have. I remembered when and where I got them and yes, 1991 Germany trip was indeed over twenty years ago. That thing about time flying...so true.
Today I was cutting wrapping paper into squares for some upcoming holiday origami projects and I looked at, for what would appear to be at least the twentieth time now, some very old rolls of wrapping paper. These rolls still exist because the quality of the paper is so excellent it's been hard to use them up. It's that "I don't want to use it because then there won't be any more" logic which means it never gets used.
Today I had a different mental angle on the old paper. I thought if I cut it into small 4" squares to be folded with, I'd get a lot more enjoyment out of it than I would with it sitting in the the wrapping paper bin. Also, if I didn't get to using it soon, some nice family member might inadvertently use it up on presents and then it would just be torn off and thrown away. The inner-cringe I felt when that thought came on was just too much. "Save the paper by using the paper!" I thought.
As I cut up some of this ancient paper I thought back to the very strange store from which it came. It was in the mountains where we vacationed during the holidays with my parent's best friends. But the strange thing about the store was that it was a roadside store, selling yard things like those gnarled rocking chairs and bird baths and other things wholly unrelated to wrapping paper. And yet they had a lot of paper.
Someone must have hijacked a truck from a distributor because they had the same stock of paper for several years. After the first year when I realized how amazing it was for folding origami, I went back and bought more at the following year's trip. I think I bought even more the third year. At some point the roadside store closed. A new store opened though and I remember going in, futilely, to see if they somehow had a magic stash of wrapping paper still in the corner.
The Big Boy Update: Chopsticks. Last night at dinner the waitress gave my son a set of chopsticks rubber-banded together so he might have a chance at using them successfully. Unexpectedly, he was able to pick up food with them. Not every time, but enough times to know it wasn't a lucky grab.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: Formula out, milk in. We're done with formula. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but she hasn't had any formula for probably two weeks now. We weaned her to whole milk. She's also good at using a sippy cup with a straw all by herself at the table. Next step is to get her to a sippy cup at night for her bedtime milk.
Fitness Update: 5.75 miles. Wait, was that this morning? I tell you, by the time the children are in bed the morning runs seems more than a full day away. I've been trying out the Nike Fitness Kinect game (read workout) too and it's been interesting. It's a less-strenuous thirty minute workout that includes fun and challenging exercises.
Someone Once Said: Sometimes the best one can do about a weak point is not to call attention to it.
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