T is for Time To Bring These Beauties Out Of The Closet....

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I have a friend who has been waiting for the other shoe to drop ever since I posted the link for "C is for Communication, 70s Style" on my Facebook page. She made this innocent comment:

I shall call this friend (and former roommate) Regina Flange. This is a photo essay showing what happens when:

a) you are really bad at blackjack

b) you are really bad at drinking games

c) you are really bad at drinking at all

d) the others playing the drinking game are aware of all of the above and cheat while you are in the bathroom with your cards unprotected, causing you to take yet another drink

A word about the room pictured. This was a furnished, two-bedroom apartment that we had recently moved into after moving out of the dorm. It had bright green variegated shag carpet (unfortunately not pictured) that totally clashed with absolutely anything else in the universe looked fab with the plaid tweed sofa in shades of brown. We moved in as the frat boys who lived there previously were moving out (and yes, that means it didn't get cleaned before we moved in), and as the guys were carrying out the last of their stuff, one of them said, "Whoever gets the bedroom on the right, just wanted to let you know the bed squeaks." Then he laughed himself out of the apartment. We did have fun living there (we lasted 6 months before finding better digs). We tried to cook, only setting fire to the kitchen once. We got scared when we had a mouse and had to run to the landlord's apartment to save us from whatever we thought a mouse was going to do to us. We temporarily adopted a stray cat who my parents then adopted and enjoyed for many years. We played lots of gin rummy. One of us spilled red nail polish on the bright green shag carpet, so when we moved, we put a chair over it and never had to pay for the damage. And we had exactly one evening of wild partying (it was soooo not wild).

These were taken B.B. (before blackjack)

D.B. (during blackjack and I was fake drinking)

D.B. real drinking

 

A.B. Guess which one of us lost the drinking game?

Oh, to be 18 again and in your first apartment!

S is for Secrets

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

Have I mentioned before I had a lot of dolls? I had a lot of dolls. 

This is Baby Secret. She has had a wonky left arm since I can remember. Her hair used to be in a ponytail, but I took it down and tried to make her wear it other ways. Note to doll manufacturers: don't make a doll whose hair can only go in ONE style. Baby Secret is mostly bald except for the hair around her hairline and a weird strip around the middle to make the pony tail. That was very disturbing to me then, and it's still disturbing to me now.

This is the back of her head with pony tail
 down and it's just wrong

Baby Secret was released by Mattel in 1965. I probably got mine in 1966. She whispered when you pulled a string AND HER MOUTH MOVED. I never thought of it as creepy, but in retrospect, yeah, I guess it was. Here's the commercial from 1966 to prove it (fun fact: the little girl is none other than Eve Plumb, aka Jan Brady!):

 

I didn't play with Baby Secret like I did with my doll Cindy. She wasn't a baby doll to me but more of a novelty. Most of the time, she was relegated to being a member of my doll classroom, but that's not all she was good for! I liked pulling her string and holding her against someone's face (usually my poor, patient mom's) and squealing with glee as Baby Secret chewed their cheek. I also liked sticking the end of my finger in her mouth after pulling the string and feeling her gumming it. It was also loads of fun to follow our cat around while pulling Baby Secret's string. Cats LOVE that....

Somehow, Baby Secret survived all this, plus a move to a new town while I was in college. She also survived the great basement flood, which got her relocated to my bedroom, and she survived my kids playing with her and is no worse for wear than anything I ever put her through. Sit back and enjoy a few words from her....

Tell me YOUR secrets! I'll never tell....

Fuzzy Thankfuls

 I'm spending the weekend running errands for my dad, trying to catch up on reading A to Z Challenge posts, and watching a documentary series on World War II. It's a full weekend! Now to get my Ten Things of Thankful posted, write tomorrow's A to Z, and keep wading through A to Z and TToT posts - whew!

On Monday, the toddler teachers at our school found an itty bitty kitten hidden under the protective cover on the sandbox. I saw a mama cat in our parking lot earlier when my class took a walk, but she was nowhere to be found. The kitten was brought to me in a shoebox, and I snuggled her into a soft blanket while we waited for animal control to pick her up. She needed some loving care and a foster home, and the humane society was just the place for her to get it. Don't think I wasn't tempted to keep her, but poor Nora wouldn't have been able to take another sibling!

Her little ears are still folded down.

She was hungry and wanted her mama and
was nom nomming the blanket

Shhhh! Baby's sleeping!

So I'm thankful baby was found.

I'm thankful the kindest man came to get her and take her to a safe place.

I'm thankful there are people out there who can foster kittens and not keep them all for themselves.

I'm thankful I know that I am not one of those people who can foster kittens because I WOULD keep them all and then Nora AND my husband would move out.

And I'm thankful for the Book of Secret Rules or the Secret Book of Rules that says if you're killing it with the A to Z Challenge and can't put two thoughts together to make a list of ten things of thankful. then you don't have to!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

R is for Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

I was never much for 'rithmetic. As I wrote in M is for McDonalds, I hid my hand and counted on my fingers when I had to add up an order back in the days before computers when we had to use an order pad, a pencil, and a tax chart. I was terrible at memorizing multiplication facts, and when we did the timed tests, like, every single freakin' day of fourth grade, my friend Liz and I would trade papers when we graded them and write in each other's missed answers.  I didn't know how to do long division correctly until I taught fourth grade and had a teacher's manual. I barely passed Algebra I and II in high school, and when no one made me take more math than that, I filled my schedule with English classes and drama classes and lightweight social studies classes such as Psychology and Sociology.

I always loved readin', although I hated when we had to read aloud in class, as I didn't like everyone looking at me. I loved the Ginny and Geneva books and the Cathy books by Catherine Wooley, as well as Jean Little's books. When I was in fourth grade, the librarian introduced me to the Laura Ingalls Wilder series, and I loved them so much, I bought the entire series, book by book. I still have them, and my kids read them and loved them, too. 

And 'ritin'? If I was predestined to be a teacher, then I was also predestined to be a writer, because I reveled in writing papers in my literature classes. I began keeping a journal in 8th grade and wrote in one nearly daily for almost 20 years.

In my cedar chest in my old room, I found this story from one of the English classes I took to avoid math:

"Z was once a piece of zinc, tinky, winky, blinky, tinky, tinkly, minky piece of zinc."

"Read it again!"

Grandma cast her eyes heavenward.

"Just one more time, please? Pretty please, with sugar and cinnamon on top?"

Grandma groaned, "All right, one more time, but that's all for today."

She began reading, with the little girl snuggled against her, "A was once an apple pie, pidy, widy, tidy, pidy, nice insidy, apple pie...."

As the little girl listened to her grandmother's smooth voice reading the alphabet, she thought about her grandma. When she was about three years old, she received a doll, a beautiful, baby doll named Cindy. Dyanne was sure Cindy was a real baby; well, sometimes, anyway. She was so sure, she had her grandma show her how to hold Cindy like mommies hold their babies. Grandma showed her once, but sometimes, Dyanne forgot how, and Grandma would show her again and again.

"H was once a little hen, henny, chenny, tenny, henny, eggsy-any little hen?"

Grandma knew how to do real baby things with Cindy. She taught Dyanne how to wrap a blanket around Cindy and how to burp her. Grandma showed her how to do these once, twice, again and again.

"N was once a little needle, needly, tweedly, threedly, needly, wisky, wheedly, little needle."

Every time Grandma came for a visit, she was confronted with Cindy and The Nonsense Alphabet Book. Every time, again and again. However, when Dyanne was seven years old, her Grandma died of cancer. She didn't understand very much, just that Grandma wouldn't be back to read to her, or show her how to hold Cindy the right way, not ever again. She didn't think about her Grandma a lot until several weeks later. She woke up in the night, crying, and her mother came to comfort her. Although she was seven, she understood the sense of never. It was a deep, dark, unreachable hole, untouchable to all.

"Z was once a piece of zinc, tinky, winky, blinky, tinky, tinkly, minky, piece of zinc."

My mom had kept a mimeographed copy of this little story that I had forgotten all about until now. Note: one thing I left out of the story is my grandma being there when I gave Cindy a haircut. I remember her saying, "Why did you cut off all Cindy's pretty hair?" And why? Because I thought it would grow back, of course!

Not my actual copy; mine looks much worse.

Cindy has been with me always. She has moved to apartments and houses
all over the country, spending her retirement in my little rocking chair. 
She is wearing my baby shoes, but some 30 years ago, I bought her 
a dress to replace the tattered one of mine she used to wear.
Photo cred to my husband, because I was out of town and needed
 a photo, and he nailed the shot in one try, although in all fairness,
Cindy is a pretty compliant model....

Q is for Quilt

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

My mother hated to sew.

Her aunt Edith (Ecie, as she was called by the family) was a beautiful seamstress. She made clothes for herself and her sister Daisy, as well as making clothes for my mom, including her wedding dress, which she made from a drawing my mom made of what she envisioned, and for me.

My mom did not get the sewing gene from Ecie, but in the 70s, probably as a cost-saving measure, she made herself some clothes. She put her sewing machine on the living room floor, so she could watch "Edge of Night" and "One Life To Live" as she worked, and she sat on the floor and operated the foot pedal with an outstretched leg. There was much snarling and swearing as she worked, but she did turn out some double-knit tank tops in all their glorious 1970s patterns and colors.

Quilting got a resurgence in the 1980s. My mom loved quilts, and she had many that had been pieced and quilted by her mother and Ecie, as well as some that dated back even further. These quilts were made with scrap fabrics left from making the family's clothing, as well as from feed sacks. The 1980s quilts were made with calico fabric in 1980s shades that had been selected and purchased just for the quilt project and were not made from random materials.

I do not know how she managed it, but a one of my mom's friends talked her into taking a quilting class. I believe the friend was able to convince her to take the class because, instead of piecing and sewing the design and stitching all of it together, and then quilting this voluminous  amount of fabric, they would be making a quilt one square at a time and quilting it as they went along, sewing each square together when all the squares were completed. How hard could it be?

My mom bought yards and yards of coordinated calico fabrics and cotton batting. She purchased a special wooden frame for making the quilt squares, and she set out to work.

Some time into the first square, and only a few days after starting the class and the initial excitement of making a quilt with the exact colors and patterns she had chosen, my mom remembered how much she hated sewing. Hated it. HATED it.

I found the quilt rack and fabric (already cut out into pieces and just waiting for her to sew them together) in a plastic bag in the back of my old bedroom closet a couple of weeks ago. I know she had high hopes of turning out a handmade quilt, and she meant well when she signed up for the class, but let's face it, she was NEVER going to make that quilt. She got mad and frustrated when she sewed a simple tank top with two seams and a hem!

The first (and last) square. She gets a lot of
credit for putting all the pieces together!

Perhaps the straw (or stitch) that finally broke
the camel's back....

This is how far she got with quilting the square....

My mom was no quitter. But she definitely wasn't a quilter, either!

P is for Picture Perfect

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

There were very few formal studio photos taken of me and my brother as kids, but I found two sets in the closet that are pretty perfect.*

Example 1 is from 1962. I was two years old; my brother was five:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

These photos were taken in 1973 or 1974, and I only know this because I remember having that dress in 8th grade, since I have ZERO independent recollection of having the photos done. They might have been taken during a session for a new pictorial directory at our church. I was 13 years old, and my brother was 16 or 17:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Approximately ten years later, in 1983, my brother and I had this photo taken as a gift for our parents. 

Could we have BEEN more 1983?! I'm wearing what was my favorite blouse and sporting a Pat Benetar-esque bi-level haircut. And yes, we color coordinated on purpose. My mom loved it, and it has been hanging in my parents' bedroom ever since.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So then who the damn hell are these two old people, anyway?

Ahhh, pretty as a picture!

*photo scanning cred to Nikki, because she will only read blog posts if she is in them

O is for Ouch!

 

I am in the process of sorting through everything in my parents' home, and in so doing, I have been looking through all my childhood memorabilia, the majority of which I hadn't seen since my parents packed up my belongings and moved them from the home I grew up in to this house some 45 years ago. My 2024 A to Z Challenge theme is based on the treasures I have found in the boxes and the drawers and closets. Join me on my bittersweet journey back to my childhood.

My brother is really good at gift giving. He always finds clever and unique items for me. I have several quirky pins that he gave me over the years that I still wear, and a pair of earrings that I love that are art pieces. This past Christmas, he got me this awesome t-shirt that has the phone number we grew up with printed on it:

I was in late junior high or early high school when my brother gave me a wax seal stamp with my initial on it, along with two sealing wax sticks, one yellow and one pink. As you might imagine from someone who was a voracious note writer in school, I also wrote letters to friends and family who lived afar, so this was an awesome gift! My brother showed me how to use it, lighting the wax stick, letting it drip onto the envelope, then quickly pressing the stamp into it. I loved it!

At some point, the wax sticks and the stamp got stuck away in a box and forgotten about, but one afternoon when I was probably a senior in high school, I found the items while cleaning my room. Unable to resist, I pulled out some matches, touched one to the wick on the wax stick, and before I could get a piece of paper ready, the wax dripped onto my bare thigh.

YOWWWWWW!!!

The drop of melted wax on my thigh was about the size of a pencil eraser but burned like it was as big as a dinner plate. I quickly slipped my fingernail under the edge and pulled it off my thigh. It peeled right off, taking with it MANY layers of my skin.

OW OW OW OW OW OW OWWWWW!!!

I had a raw, bloody, pencil eraser-sized divot on my thigh, and it REALLY REALLY HURT.

I limped downstairs to show my mom and get a little sympathy, but instead, all I got was laughter and a bandaid. The burn remained ouchie for weeks (I'm telling you, it was DEEP), and when it finally healed, I had nice little white scar the size of pencil eraser about five inches above my knee that, although barely noticeable, is still there to this day.

Signed, sealed, and delivered.

I wasn't going to replicate this by using actual sealing wax (besides, I didn't have any), so
I tried using the seal on playdough, but it was an obvious fail.

I got some satisfaction from using sticky tack putty (used for damage-
free hanging of posters or photos or the like on walls).