The kit to order first

Umm — The Book Kit

Umm — The Book: the cover, coil-bound at the left edge

64 illustrated pages that interview you — 54 scenes, a few of them spanning more than one page. It is written as a museum — The Museum of You — and a curator walks you round and asks the questions. Some are funny. Some are quiet. A few will stop you for a while. It also carries the parts of a person a book cannot hold — a blood and saliva card, a cheek swab, hair with the bulb attached — which is why it is ordered first: those are the only lines with somebody else's lead time on them.

Not on sale yet. This page is the specification, not a shop. ⚠ This one arrives assembled — every line below is in the box when it reaches you, so there is nothing here to source, price or chase. One price for the whole thing, and the list is here because what is in it is worth knowing, not because it is a shopping list.

What's in it

Item	Qty
*Umm — The Book*	1
*Umm — The Workbook* not in the total	1
Loose sheet: the Drawer Card	1
Loose sheet: "The Other Half" card	1
Loose sheet: paper ring sizer	1
Loose sheet: the supplies page	1
Pigment-in-oil print pad	1
A stocked commodity, not a converted card — ExcelMark and others sell them ten to a pack, so there is no vendor to find. ⚠ Quantity 1, and the pouch arithmetic does NOT carry across: a pad is durable and reusable, where a reagent pouch was one-per-card-plus-a-spare. ⚠ It is pigment and it marks what it touches; the maker says rub to remove it from skin. Archival life unverified — see question 8
*Umm — The Book Box*	1
Where the plates live while you fill them in, and the firm surface you fill them in on. One compartment for the pages you have not done, one for the pages you have — so the box always tells you how far through you are without your having to remember. The Workbook rides in there with them.
QIAcard FTA Indicating Mini, 2 sample areas	1
⚠ Sold only in packs of 100, at $500. Until we assemble the kit there is no way to buy one, so a single person ordering this today buys the whole pack — which is the single strongest argument for the kit existing at all.
Sterile DNA-free foam applicator swab	2
Single-use safety lancets	2
Safety Lancets x 2 (21G x 2.4mm)
Glassine envelope, ≤4.25in × ≤2.75in	8
Foil barrier pouch, ≈2.5 × 4in, zip	1
Indicating desiccant packet, 1g, cobalt-free	1
Unbuffered acid-free tissue	3
Ribbon, white, pre-cut	1
Split from one row 2026-08-19. Blue and pink shared a line reading `1 ea`, and the subtotal counted that as a single ribbon. Two rows, so somebody buying it themselves can buy the one they want.
Ribbon, black, pre-cut	1
Sterile nitrile gloves, individually packaged pairs	2 pr
Alcohol prep pads	4
Tweezers	1
Archival label sheet	1
The protocol sheet	1
Flyer: Umm — The Memorial Case	1
⚠ Three reasons the paper points home, worst first: affiliate programs commonly forbid their links in offline material and that is UNVERIFIED against current program terms and must be checked before anything prints; a printed sheet outlives any vendor URL, and a short link can be repointed while ink cannot; and a landing page sells the furniture better than a paragraph on a flyer can
Flyer: Umm — The Volume Kit	1
⚠ The one flyer with a timing problem to solve: it has to sell something the reader deliberately should NOT buy today. The honest framing is D35's own — somebody who has just filled the book is the most motivated buyer there will ever be for somewhere beautiful to put it
The kit envelope	1

Assembled by us, delivered not priced yet

⚠ Not priced yet.

Also recommended

Ordered direct from other people, at their prices. No link here earns us a commission.

Colored pencils ≈$9.00 They are artist-grade rather than classroom, because every page is drawn to be colored and cheap pencils would misrepresent the plates. If you want to go further than the set we ship, there is a real difference between the tiers and it is worth understanding before you spend forty dollars on tins.
A pencil sharpener ≈$1.50 ⚠ Moved out of the kit 2026-08-19.

Also recommended $10.50

⚠ ordered from third parties, prices theirs and subject to change

Before you open the envelope inside

⚠ It contains single-use lancets, which draw blood. One use, never shared, and disposed of as sharps. Do not use one if you take anticoagulants or have a clotting disorder without asking a clinician first — ask at your next blood draw instead, and use the saliva circle on the card.

⚠ It contains a print pad for the fingerprints — a pigment held in an oil base. It wipes off skin with a dry tissue, but it is pigment: it will mark cuffs, sleeves and tabletops. Fingertips only. Not on lips, not on broken skin, not near eyes, and follow the instructions that come with it rather than these — they are the manufacturer’s, and they govern.

⚠ Small parts. Keep the whole kit away from children, and do not leave it out between sessions.

None of this is medical advice, and we are not clinicians. If anything here worries you, the answer is a doctor rather than us.

Other ideas we have collected

Things that are worth doing but do not earn a page in the book, so they get instructions and a link instead. Mostly body and trace — which used to mean they lived on a different page.

Body and tracehand cast in alginate (too large for a drawer; if you're only going to photograph it, photograph your actual hand instead) · hand-in-hand cast, one per pairing, disproportionately treasured · full-body 3D scan · ear photographs · nail clippings · dental impression or bite registration (largely redundant with the dental X-ray, and nobody wants to store it) · traditional life-casting of the face, if you'd rather do it the old way than etch a crystal.

Why these are clean affiliates and D17 is not threatened. D17 rejected an Amazon parts list for the kit, because the kit's whole value is that somebody else assembled fifty fiddly components. These are the opposite: complete boxed products a buyer would otherwise spend an evening researchingthe same test that admitted the safe and the crystal (D42, D48). What we usefully supply is the recommendation, not the fulfillment.

Biologicalthe hairbrush or comb, which is the best fallback for hair-with-bulb if the person has already died and grooming is no longer possible: bag it whole, don't clean it · toothbrush · pathology tissue blocks, which your hospital may still hold from any past surgery or biopsy and can sometimes release with authorization · baby teeth.

Recordsmedical implant serial numbers (pacemakers, joints and implants are laser-etched and registered).

Senses and objectsworn unwashed fabric, air-dried fully then sealed in glass with silica · a pillowcase · lipstick as a DNA source.

Textannotated books and marginalia: your mind working in the margins, reactions nobody was meant to see. Keep the physical book; photograph the marked pages.

Objectswallet contents, photographed in place. A wallet is an unintentional self-portrait: what you carried, what you kept, what you tucked in years ago and never removed. Photograph it laid out before disturbing the order. ⚠ Redact before you store or share — do not photograph credit or debit cards at all, and obscure the numbers on a driver's license or Social Security card. Treat these images as public. Moved here from the item list by D47: it needs a camera, so it gets instructions and no page.

And the other half of thinking about it properly: things we researched and decided against →