My Retainer

I told you to stay tuned and you did!  And you all thought I was being silly.  Here it is, my retainer.

These gross invisiline retainers were new and exciting when I got my braces off in eighth grade, but zoom in on this: I have really sensitive gums.  That razor sharp rock solid plastic shredded my mouth and I begged for the traditional style of retainer because this thing was killing me.  My dentist (who I never liked and thought was kind of a jerk, but everyone else thought was just SO awesome and SO kind and SO charming) told me problem solved after her shaved some of the edges down.  Problem not solved, Buttplug.  It hurt me!  I announced "This hurts me and I'm not going to wear it.  Give me the other style because I'm not wearing this."  They didn't give me the other one, and guess what!  I didn't wear it. 

So PSYCH!  This is actually my SECOND retainer because my teeth moved after not wearing the first one and my mom had to buy me a second one, which I loudly declared I would not be wearing during the entire process.  My mom was so mad, and I don't blame her, but when you're 14 there is little concept of the ratio of pain level to financial cost.  So all my teeth moved, I barely wore the retainer (exactly like I said) and my retainer found it's way into my box of things that for reasons I can't explain, I should not get rid of.  Maybe because I knew it was so expensive I felt like I should keep it.  And you know what?  I got WAY more compliments on my teeth after they spread back out than I did when I first got my braces off.  I had to have braces to correct some grinding issues, not because my parents wanted me to have a parallel smile.  Even though I have some "girl next door" teeth now and not perfectly aligned teeth, the grinding is fixed so alls well that ends well.  

Good bye, retainer!  I never liked you and now my guilty conscience about not wearing you is cleared with throwing you away.  Take that, Dr. Larry Levin.  You never made me feel comfortable and might be one of the major contributions to why I am irrationally afraid of going to the dentist.

How The Tiny Grinch Stole Christmas

I received a really awesome Grinch stuffed animal for Christmas once.  His heart lights up and grows three sizes.  My mom still brings him out at Christmas time and I think my niece and nephew like him now.  He was really soft and he was big.  There is little cooler than giant stuffed animals when you're a kid.  Maybe fireworks, ice cream cones, giant cardboard boxes and days off from school because of snow.  Big stuffed animals have got to be in the top five.

My Grinch plush pal came with a miniature version of his famed Dr. Seuss book.  I have the normal size of this classic, so I decided I didn't need the mini version anymore.  I see my Grinch stuffed friend every Christmas when I go home, and I always find myself absentmindedly holding him at some point. He is a very huggable shape.  Check it out, it really is the whole book.

Also, a note on stuffed animals, and to tie into my post about working at Target, I have an extremely soft and warm spot in my heart for stuffed animals.  I think they all have little stuffed animal souls and it makes me feel crushed when I see them mistreated.  When I zoned toys, I used to set them all up so they were facing out and no one was squashed or neglected.  I recall walking around Christmas time late at night through my Target with a stuffed German Shepherd under my arm.  Maybe that was why I couldn't toss this.

Purging Your Stuff Is GRRRRReat!

You may not be able to tell by this still photo, but Tony The Tiger here is a bobble head.

My friend Brian gave me this Tony The Tiger bobble head for my high school graduation among a few other things, most of which were from Newbury Comics, a suction cup dart gun, a really pretty journal that I used in college, Tony, and I can't remember what else.  I have had Tony sitting on my desk amongst the clutter on every desk I've had since he gave it to me.  9 Years of him looking at me while I write and saying "Hey, Melissa!  That last sentence was Grrrrrrreat!

I share a desk now and there had to be some sacrifices made.  I had to get rid of all of my stuff (Yeah RIGHT.  It's packed for when Julie and I are financially well off enough to have an apartment in which I can have an office and have whatever the hell I want on my desk.  Read: Queen Amidala Barbie, my favorite rock, my mini pirate ship etc.)

Tony, however, holding only the value that someone I like gave it to me, didn't make the cut.  Brian, your gift was well loved beyond what you probably paid for him.  Tony can inspire someone on that big desk in the sky.

Anything But Clothes Costume

What is a State School Education without exhausting every theme party there is?  Sometimes "Friday" is not reason enough to drink the same beer with the same people so you have to jazz it up.  I attended many variations of the "Bross and Hos" theme ("Golf Pros and Tennis Hos", "CEOs and Corporate Hos", The very creative "Egyptian Hos and Pharohs" and the famous and to the point "Pimps and Hos".  I was a pimp at that one in a three piece red suit from the salvation army).  But I always liked the more creative themes.  Anything But Clothes is typically an excuse to wear something that falls off easily so you can catch the same nip slips from the same people while drinking the same beer, but I took it up a notch and was glad most of the other partygoers did too.

I slaved for hours on this dress made of duct tape.  I used a dress I already had as a pattern and worked all night.  I had to cut myself out of it and tape myself back in when I took it off, but it was totally worth it.  I was one of the only girls who could sit down, go to the bathroom, get my costume wet (it was raining, we all smoked then) and easily take it off and put it on.  I had to put on all of the girl's shoes because I was the only one who could bend down.  

Here is my dress in action.  It was January of 08.  That's a monopoly game on Elizabeth, cigarette and beer wrappers on EB and I don't really know what on Liana, it kind of looks, oddly enough, like clothes.  

It was fun and I have enough photos and blurry memories from the party as well as the know-how to make a new dress out of duct tape, so I think I can get rid of this one.  I suspect the occasion to wear it again will not arise.  If it does, I'm getting another color and making a pattern.

Shrek Cake Topper

Following that depressing Fart Rant, I had to pick something I'm GLAD I threw out.

I have never had a Shrek cake.  I have never made a Shrek cake.  I don't recall seeing one, although it's possible.  I can't recall because I never really cared enough about Shrek to remember a Shrek cake.  Don't get me wrong, Shrek is funny.  I went to see the second one in theaters because something else was sold out and I remember I laughed like crazy.  But I don't think I need this Shrek cake topper.

It is reminding me of something pretty much unrelated that for a school project on the literature of the bible (not as weird as it sounds) my group and I had to make a Genesis cake and we used a Luke Skywalker Action figure to be Adam and a Princess Barbie to be Eve.  Let that idea roll around.  

Air "freshener"

I think it's safe to say I don't need this in my adult life.

Becky gave it to me.  It was either a gag in with my Christmas or birthday present, I don't remember which, and I never opened it.  I don't know if it smelled like farts or not.  I hope so.  

I've been sitting here trying to figure out how to end this post and make this witty and funny and a little about personal growth or at least about moving on or making fun of my old self or having a pleasant walk down memory lane, but I can't stop thinking about how hilarious farting is.  I can't BELIEVE I never opened this.  I think farts are hysterical and I don't care who knows.  I'm mad I threw this out.   Reformed Hoarder's remorse!

pffffft.

Tip Cups

I worked at Bart's Homemade in college for about five years.  It was predominantly an ice cream shop, but it also was a coffee and espresso bar and we had sandwiches and bagels and home made cream cheeses and pies and cakes and stuff.  Bart's was right in the heart of downtown Amherst just as going green and buying local was becoming trendy.  It was all counter service and I spent arguably more time there than anywhere else.  The only two rivals would be with the UMass Minuteman Marching Band anywhere in the US and Canada (any time spent with them felt like a place) or in my gross college party house.  But I think Bart's has got to be up there.  

I still talk to my boss occasionally and I met some of my favorite people from that time in my life there and had a lot of important life moments there and learned a lot there about business and about food and about coffee and about myself.  I also learned my new favorite managerial tactic from my boss there.  It was very hard to get fired, but it was easy to be forced into gross cleaning projects.  I regularly forgot to defrost croissants and bagels. Therefore, I had to spend ten hours on my hands and knees in snowpants and snowboard goggles with a cup of hot water and a paint scraper cleaning the freezer floor.  I don't think it had been done since the eighties. You could either take the cleaning project, or you were fired.  If you did your project like a man and didn't bitch, all was forgiven until you did something else dumb, or showed up late, or were particularly sassy.  I thought that was good discipline.  

We were an akward family there and we fought like siblings and we smoked countless cigarettes out the side door with the hair dressers and I must have consumed gallons of diet soda and it is the place I developed and honed my burger relish recipe and probably single handedly kept me from starving.  I found out I liked breakfast sandwiches working there.  I find that so hard to believe I didn't know I liked egg sandwiches.  I didn't know I liked a lot of things until my boss, Tina, told me to stop being a wuss and try it.  

These are my tip cups that were kept in my mailbox.  We used to tip out and leave our money in these.  It was how I afforded cigarettes for the most part.  And sometimes beer.  And any weird items I found lying around or gifts from the particularly bizarre Bart's customers would be kept there.  Everyone had one and we'd decorate them as days went on.  It was always weird when someone quit and they took their tip cup and it was no longer part of the line up. 

Bart's closed not too long ago.  Maybe a year or two (you saw the keys to it).  I think I can get rid of my tip cups and call it good.  

Oh, and here's an apron I stole from Bart's, too.  I also threw that out.  I have a cute one now that my mom bought me.

Star Wars Things Are Hard To Get Rid Of 3

It's no secret that I love Star Wars.  I don't need to explain it anymore.  And I know everyone is expecting me to go straight for the comments about what a fox Princess Leia is in Return of the Jedi in her prison bikini, but I'm going to have to disappoint.  Han Solo is the reigning fox of the Star Wars Saga and everyone from gay ladies to straight dudes can find some common ground here.  He's very cavalier about his hunkiness which makes him all the hunkier.  He's a bad boy with the ever talked about heart of gold, sort of, for a little while after he learns his outlaw lessons, and there's a reward involved, and he does cool stuff like shoot guys with little pretense and makes witty comments that every action adventure team needs someone who is kind of hunky to make.  

So it's obvious that it would be damn near impossible to put a miniature Han Solo wall calendar in the garbage.  Especially if he's being so sexy like this January pose.

And how about July, Ladies?  Lock up your padawans.  

Cool it down, Decemb- WTF?  Of all the buff and hot possible screen shots of Han Solo they go with this?!  Yeah, don't worry, the one of him frozen in carbonite is in there and all the other greats, but I refuse to believe there are only eleven calendar worthy pictures of Han Solo available and they picked this one as a send off?  Damn.

I have decided to put Han in the recycling bin.  Seeing as this calendar is for the year 2000 and is relatively small and not very collector worthy (I wrote my birthday in it. Stupidstupidstupid) It can hang on the inside of some nerd's locker after it's recycled and made into a Hunger Games calendar.

The Goodwill Fairy

When I first moved to Portland I lived in a two family house with seven other friends and five other cats.  I drank a lot, worked a little, devoted full days to my tan and otherwise got into summertime twenty-something "I don't want to grow up" hi jinx.  There were lots of pranks, the favorite being "pretend you're asleep" whenever anyone comes home.  There were drinking games and late night dance parties and fast food eaten on the floor with too much sauce and twice weekly Michael Jackson "Thriller" dance practices.  One of my roommates was particularly superstitious.  I recall her doing a ward for evil spirits burning sage in all the corners of the ceilings one night my first week there, and if I wasn't a complete Buffy Aficionado and hadn't seen Willow and Tara do that like, a million times I would've headed for the hills.  Instead I made fun of her out loud but felt secretly a little safer.  Y'know. Just in case.

So one day when I wasn't looking, this weird ceramic cat appeared on top of my bookshelf.  We had really high ceilings so I didn't notice it way up there at first, but once I did, I picture messaged it to everyone all "are you missing a ceramic cat?"

No one owned up to it and most of them were really shitty liars and pranks usually got ruined in minutes because no one could stop laughing.  Like the time Jamie hid baby clothes in DJs laundry.  So I became totally freaked out by this ceramic cat and began to believe it was haunted and it's so creepy and weird that I should think anyone would be weirded out by it.  I refused to touch it or move it.  I once held on to a Ouiga board for YEARS and moved all over the country with it because I thought getting rid of it would be bad juju and I'd wind up like Robin Williams in Jumanji until I learned the only safe way to get rid of it was to give it to someone else.  I wouldn't even let anyone open it.  I only ever played it one time and it spelled out full names of people, including me, and it was only me and one other girl playing it and I think she was too freaked out by it to have been moving it.  I hope Goodwill counts as giving it away, cause that's what I did.

And SPEAKING of Goodwill, this haunted phantom cat statue was actually purchased at the Goodwill very near my apartment and was put on my bookshelf by Jamie's boyfriend (Jamie is too short) and they kept the straightest faces I've ever seen.  I felt a fool, and didn't realize I still had the cat until now.

Good bye, fake curse.  I hope you find my Ougia board and you two can cancel one another out.

I'm Twenty!

Ah, my twentieth birthday. 

This is a delightful home made pin that I wore stuck on my shirt for the whole evening.  Jess threw me a party at her apartment and all of the usual suspects were there.  Also, I was in a sling because that was the decline of my bad shoulder.  I was also wearing a cheesy cowboy hat that I thought I could pull off, and so did my mother since she was the one who gave it to me for my birthday.

Typical binge drinking occurred.  Many many cans of cheap light beer followed by somehow returning to our dorm.  I recall that EB and I had managed to lock ourselves out of said dorm and I was rolling around on the floor outside of it yelling "I'M TWENTY!" until the RA came and let us in.  "I'M TWENTY!" became the rallying cry of my clarinet section a year later and I'm not sure how.

Also, I was wearing this on top of my cowboy hat:

Trendy Bitch

Around the time I was a senior in high school, I started to shed some of my anti-cool cool ways.  I let some of my more mainstream friends highlight my hair for me instead of letting the summer sun do it naturally.  I started buying jeans and khakis at the gap rather than wool old man pants from Goodwill.  I would wear a collared shirt under a sweater instead of a long sleeved shirt under a t-shirt with a local ska-punk band screen-printed on it.  I put on the occasional mascara and socks that matched and didn't have weird stuff all over them.  I liked pop and rap music. I enjoyed social outings that involved beer or driving around aimlessly with groups of people I only kind of knew but liked well enough. 

 I received this hand crafted jewelry message from a friend who wasn't quite there yet.  I think it was supposed to be funny, but looking back on it, maybe she was just jealous I wanted to go out and do stuff instead of do stuff on the internet.  Wait...  Crap!  The circle of life!

Fact

I don't think I need this ribbon to prove this to any of you.  I don't think I need to advertise it, either.

I'm pretty sure Ben was handing these out at a party at Jon's in college once.  I have a vague memory of a lot of girls wearing them.  Most of the memories from Jon's are kind of vague though.

Zoning Out

I worked at Target for a hot minute when I was 21.  This is my name tag.

There were aspects of that job that were miserable.  Team stretches and huddles, my direct supervisor, the customers and the fact that all of the Target stores have one thermostat and it's in Minnesota (honest truth) are the few that come immediately to mind.  However, sometimes I liked it.  I was all for zoning.  It started three hours before closing and you were assigned an area of the store and you had to make sure every single item was correctly on the shelf.  I worked hardgoods which is everything that isn't clothes.  If  you were lucky and got assigned something like yard and auto, most of those boxes are big and zoning takes no time.  However, if you were the poor sap assigned to health and beauty, you had to start zoning as soon as you showed up.  That's when it would take a turn for horror.

You ever stop and look at how tiny boxes of toothpaste and vitamins and eyeliner are?  Yeah.  Somebody gets paid to make sure they are all in a perfect little line of the shelf.  I was almost always that person because there were no other girls on the hardgoods team and for some convoluted reason, they felt it would be more interesting for me to line up bottles of shampoo than it would be for boys to do so.  

Newsflash.  Whether it's office supplies, dishes, towels, Nerf guns, seasonal items, cans of soup, bars of soap, xbox games, barbies, motor oil, free weights, basketballs, duvets or boxes of cereal, it all sucks to spend hours on end setting in neat straight lines.  Whether you're a boy or a girl.  It all becomes colored shapes that need to fit evenly and most of the time, don't.

Vanity Plates

Despite the fact that I am into cycling and I'm very tacky about it (my mountain bike has a custom eye-searing, hot pink paint job with a glitter top coat),  I thought I could let my novelty bicycle license plates see the recycling bucket.

Let's check these out.

I have never been to Nebraska, Missouri, Wyoming (I think the "Big Shot" is Wyoming, I already threw it out so I can't remember) or Arkansas.  I do not know where these came from, nor do I have any particular attachment to Nebraska, Missouri, Wyoming or Arkansas.  Also, I'm sorry for Arkansas that theirs is "Hog Wild".  That seems unfortunate somehow.

I set the California plate aside because it seemed festive, but I chucked the others.  Also, I have the firm memory and pride of being the D.A.R.E Essay contest winner for my class to keep forever so I don't need this license plate.  That's sarcasm in case any of you were thinking for a minute there that I was being honest.  I already showed you the clothespin.  I am beyond thinking I was cool.

Although I'm struggling with the Violence part of the D.A.R.E. plate.  I know it stands for Drug Abuse Resistance Education (hello, essay contest winner), but now it says violence too?  Shouldn't it be D.V.A.R.E.?  I guess that's not catchy enough.  I remember even at 12 I thought it was lame and something like an after school special.  It was even taught by Officer Quimby.  Whose last name is Quimby other than the guy from Inspector Gadget?  

Jack And The Beanstalk!

I hope it is clear by these two photographs how clever this home made craft is.

This was not for school.  This was a for-fun art I made at home.  I would love to tell you to look at the fine detail and see that this must have taken hours on end, but there is no detail.  I clearly did it in pencil first and then added the Crayola Washable marker afterwards (wouldn't want to make a mistake) and I didn't even try that hard on the house.  No chimney or anything.  No other allusions to the story, now cow in the distance, no angry grandmother, was she the grandmother?

I never really cared about the Jack and the Beanstalk story.  I thought it was kind of lame.  That perplexes me as to why I would have been compelled to make this tricky surprise foldable art.  Frankly, I pretty much always thought of Mario and the beanstalks in that.  My sister and I did make a lot of Nintendo art.  Becky used to draw pictures of Rupees and I would be Link and fight my way around the downstairs looking for them.  Maybe I got bored of Mario Art and decided I would make another beanstalk art (I can't think of any other than the two?).

My motives aside, I also felt I should keep this whack craft mixed in with all my other sentimental items.  I will let Jack climb to the recycling plant at the top of the beanstalk today.

Two Dolla Dolla Bill

If by Stuff I'm Getting Rid Of, I mean stuff I'm putting in the bank and spending, then yes.

I found this two dollar bill in one of the boxes.  The back of two dollar bills is pretty cool and I wish all of our money looked that ornate.  I guess it does, but in a more boring way.  I used to think two dollar bills were cool and rare and extravagant in some way and I associated them with my dad cause he was always teaching me about neat things that most people overlook.  Now I associate them with strippers, so I tossed this bad boy in with my tips and deposited it.

Bar tending tips!  Not stripper tips. Yikes.

Melissa + Erik

I cannot believe this on so many levels.

Erik was my boyfriend in early high school.  He was cute and he was cool and he was a red head and he was a year older than me and and regardless of the fact that he treated me far too well, I treated him like crap.  I still feel bad about it.  I think it's pretty clear that I treated him poorly since I didn't have the decency to write this on anything like the paper bag cover of my world history book, I wrote it on a clothespin.

But not just any clothespin!  The dorkiness of this deepens when you learn that we used clothespins to hold our music down during outdoor band rehearsals and performances.  At first I assumed this was from marching band, something near and dear to both Erik's and my hearts, but then I remembered we had flip folders.  So it must come from graduation practices outdoors, or even the performance of Pomp and Circumstance at the big event itself.

Alright, that all seems legit, but here's the thing:  Erik and I never dated during a graduation.  So either I was pining for him and wanted him to be my future boyfriend, and thus secretly declared my affection on this clothespin for all surrounding clarinet players and third trumpets who sat behind me to see, or it was the FOLLOWING graduation, which seems unlikely because I'm fairly sure I had moved on to another doomed high school relationship by then.  I'm sure I will find Chris's name inked on something like a plastic orange spoon.  I'll keep looking.

Erik, I'm sorry I treated you so badly and wrote that we should be together on my music paperweight.  You always deserved better than that.

Primate Surprise

Someone in my family is just as weird as I am (could be any of them). 

My father is on a kick about cleaning out the attic.  We have tons of books that I didn't want to get lost to Good Will because I would like to have my own library of books that I loved growing up.  It's important to me.  Not important in the way that a Ginger Spice Lollipop wrapper is important, important in the real way.

So one of the books mixed in with all of our Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High and classics like Huckleberry Finn and Great Expectations was Planet of the Apes.  I'd never read Planet of the Apes, and it looked nice and short, so I stuck it in my "To Be Read" pile next to the other short and skinny books like Animal Farm and The Communist Manifesto (I'm on that train where I'm reading all the stuff I said I read in high school, but really just read enough about on the internet to get a B-).  Much to my delight, when I opened up Planet of the Apes, this was the bookmark left behind by the last person who read it.  I love that this happened, but I don't think I need to keep it.  Also, those are not monkey stickers.  They are heavy and kind of cardboard and have evidence of being glued to that piece of card stock.  This wreaks of Becky, but she would have been too old to make that if she was reading that book. 

iHoard

Much like every 20-something, iHave both an iPod and an iPhone.

Unlike every 20-something,  iHave the box to both sitting on my desk, and have done so for years.  My iPod is at least three years old.  And iAlready gritted my teeth as iDisposed of the box to my previous iPod.

iKept the literature from both boxes and filed that away with all my other electronic instructions but iThink it's time that iCleaned up my act and iRecycled some of these boxes.  iHave issues, but iDeal by writing about them on the iNternet.  Wait, that's not one of them?  iMsorry.

All Locked Up With No Place To Go

Every key on this keyring goes to something that no longer exists.   Keeping these was some twisted way of remembering each of them.  Let us begin.

The two black circular keys go to my old Volkswagon which I'm fairly sure we've talked about already. I drove that car for seven years.  It was so green and it always kind of smelled but it got great gas milage and had a pretty good sized trunk.  I love that little car so much.  It sang "La Cucaracha" when you left the keys in the ignition.  

The two small bronze keys, one square and one roundish, both opened the front door at Bart's Homemade in downtown Amherst.  The round key was the original, and then Tina changed the locks.  I don't remember why but I think I could come up with a number of reasons.  Being a CM (counter manager) or if you were one of the lucky few who opened the store (You had to be there before 7 AM which on college time is the middle of the night) meant you got to have a key to lock up or open the place.  It also meant that if you were downtown and stayed at the bar past last call, you could just go to Bart's to go to the bathroom.  And maybe eat chips and fountain soda (sorry, Tina).

The square black key goes to my dad's old Ford Explorer bought in 2001 that the dealership claimed didn't have the firestone recall on the tires.  I think that wasn't completely true as he had a blow out and totaled the car.  I remember I borrowed it once to pick up a drum set when I was 16 from Notre Dame Academy (all girls Catholic school) and thought I was so cool.

The silver oval key goes to my mom's nissan maxima that I learned to drive in.  It was also in a car accident, but that car was awesome.  I remember I accidentally drove it 100 miles an hour to the kingston mall listening to Radiohead's Amnesiac (sorry, Mom).

As for the little circular silver keys?  I'm pretty sure those go to a lock I lost.  I don't really know about those.  

MeLLissa Pappas

This is the name tag that was stuck to the side of my desk for my entire third grade year.  South River Elementary, Mrs. Graff.  Graf?  I can't remember.  And do you know why it doesn't bother me that I can't remember how to spell her name?  Because she can't spell mine either.

MeLLissa Pappas.

BURN!

I was young and fragile (I think I was 9) and I never thought that my teacher, the one who TAUGHT ME EVERYTHING and showed me what to do and what to read during quiet reading hours and sent me over to The Alamo building for science enrichment and showed me how to make a cardboard box to show me a solar eclipse without burning my eyes out and sent me to music class in the PA room to learn all about two part harmonies and lined me up for recess and gave me the building blocks of multiplication and long devision and took away my pencil with the times tables on it (it was orange and I'm kind of shocked it's not mixed in with all this stuff) COULDN'T GET MY NAME RIGHT?

I remember finding it the last week of school when we all cleaned out desks out.  Mixed in with all the Lisa Frank notebooks (stay tuned!) erasers shaped like animals and bugs and cars and rainbows purchased with nickels and dimes at the school store and pencils in every color and shade was the lie Mrs. Graf(f) had been telling all year.  I pulled the name tag off my desk and stared at it in horror.  I never saw it.  It was on the FRONT of my desk so SHE could see it and obviously she knew how to really write my name, I was in love with learning at 9 and was totally a self-declared teacher's pet, shame free, and she never even thought to tell me she messed up huge.  I mean, fix it some day after we left for the day!  Five seconds it would have taken her.  I stared in shock as I packed up all my art supplies and rulers and pencil sharpeners.  I remember Erika laughed.  I was heart broken and it made my third grade career feel like a lie.

Good bye cruel memory.  Joke's on Mrs. Graf(f).  I can't remember how to write in cursive anymore.