Quick Ten Things Because I'm Sleepy

I'm sooo sleepy, so this is going to be a quick Ten Things of Thankful:

1. It was warm enough at the end of the week that we were able to play outside barefoot.

2. Raisin Bran. I'm on such a Raisin Bran kick (why, I have no idea), and I've had it nearly every morning this week. Surely, it's good for me.

3. I'm a fourth of the way through the A to Z Challenge and I'm still on top of it. My theme is treasures from my childhood I found in my parents' house, and you should read my posts from it.

4. I had a long telephone conversation with my childhood friend Abbie. We haven't seen each other in over 12 years, but we are hoping to remedy that.

5. Bad news: the varmint in the attic is back. Good news: his days are numbered.

6. I wore flip flops to school last week for the first time this year.

7. We enjoyed watching the University of Iowa women's basketball team beat LSU to go on to the Championship game.

8. We enjoyed watching the University of Iowa women's basketball team play University of South Carolina for the NCAA Division 1 championship even though they lost.

9. I saw a bald eagle flying over our lake house yesterday afternoon. He was pretty high up, but the sun glints off that white head and tail and once you see that, you know it's an eagle. I watched this one chase a Canada goose out of his air space!

It's blurry, but you can see the white
head and tail feathers.

10. The weekend went fast, but I don't have any evening meetings or obligations all week, so I can get home, write my A to Z post, and go to bed early every night! Note: CAN and WILL are two different things....

Done! If you're where you will be able to view the eclipse tomorrow, be safe! We will have 95% obscuration (not my words), so it should be pretty cool.

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F is for Friends

 

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 don't know how universal this is, but every year, in the early fall, the traveling school photographers descend on nearly every school in the US. (I touched on this subject in last year's A to Z Challenge and you can read "D is for Dimples" here if you would like.) 

They aren't great photos, but they are a priceless record of the latest trends in hair styles and fashion.

I vividly remember that when the photo packets arrived at school and were handed out, we could hardly WAIT to cut out the small photos intended for sharing with friends and start trading. 

I think you know what I found in the closet.

Not all of the photos I found were dated, so I had to use the backdrop and color saturation to figure out the school year as best I could, and even that was a crap shoot. After way too much effort sorting and re-sorting the pictures, I decided to lump them together into three groups: elementary school, junior high, and high school, although the high school group might also include some 9th grade pictures, and while 9th grade is ordinarily part of a high school, in our school district it was part of the junior high. I did the best with the tools* I had to work with (as in relying only on my memory). 

Elementary School photos that range from second grade to sixth grade. My second
grade photo is in this group. Can you find it?

Junior High. I'm in here one time.

High School. Maybe some 9th grade/junior high. Three photos of me are in this group.

There is so much history with the faces in these photos. I grew up going to school AND church with some of these friends, and our parents were also friends. Some were classmates as well as neighbors. And then, there are those special few that you have never stopped knowing, all these many (MANY, like maybe 46 since we graduated) years, those ride-or-die friends that you know will always have your back (looking at you, Jan and Abbie). 

Let's face it, a group of people who survived crooked bangs cut by our moms and huge collars on our shirts will be friends forever. How could we not be? And I would be remiss if I didn't give a little shout out to Facebook for its part in helping us stay in contact with each other.

E is for Eek, I'm Old!

 

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.

Just going to put this here and hobble away on my walker....

D is for Master of My Domain

 

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.

We moved from our 900 s.f., three bedroom, one bath home to an 1100 s.f., three bedroom, TWO bathroom home the summer after I finished 6th grade. Our new house seemed huge by comparison, and with the second bathroom, my brother and I no longer had to share with Mr. Don't Touch My Razor and Mrs. Half A Can Of Aqua Net Hair Spray Every Day.

I was pretty low maintenance when we first moved into the house, but once I started junior high that fall, here came the baby blue eye shadow and lip gloss and hot rollers. I also camped out in there and got lost reading multiple chapters of books when I was "unavoidably delayed."* My brother was in high school and, it seems, had little patience for this, for one day, after an (allegedly) exceedingly long time in our shared bathroom, I heard him messing around outside the door, snickering and then running off, and I opened the door to find this sign taped to it: 

Believe it or not, considering its current condition, the
sign was made on a white 3x5 index card.

I was REALLY, REALLY, REALLY mad. First of all, I didn't know what "domain" meant. Second, whatever it meant, I knew it wasn't intended to be a compliment. Third, my mother was laughing at the sign, too, and I felt betrayed.

I can't believe I didn't snatch it off the door, and maybe I did (my brother will have to weigh in on that), but if I did, it was replaced, and the sign remained for the 7 years we lived in that house. Then sentimental soul that she was, my mom took it off the door in 1979, and damned if she didn't hang it on my bathroom door in their new house! I took it down last weekend and tucked it in a box and then hung it on MY bathroom door in my house.

Know what?

It STILL makes me mad to see it!

*If you've never read the book Cheaper By The Dozen by Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, get your hands on a copy, and you will find yourself quoting from it, too. 

C is for Communication, 70s Style

 

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.

When my kids were in high school and there was a bit of gossip to be shared, it would be all over the school within seconds. Ever watched a teenager send a text message? They are lightning fast! 

When I was in high school, we disseminated information this way:

Notes.  We wrote notes to each other.

Was it fast? Not particularly. Depending on the class or the teacher, you might have to write it surreptitiously, your piece of notebook paper slid under your classwork or inside a book. (There was always THAT teacher who took tremendous joy in confiscating notes and reading them to the class, but most of them really didn't care; they were just glad we showed up.) Then, unless the recipient was in the same class as you, you either had to entrust someone to deliver your note for you or pass it to them in the hallway while changing classes. 

I found boxes and bags of notes in the back of the closet last weekend. We are talking HUNDREDS of notes, and I kick myself for throwing most of them away before getting a picture of all of them, but I did open and read every one of them.

My best friend and I were voracious note writers, and the majority of the ones in my closet were from her (more about Jane in an upcoming post). We wrote about what boys we liked (usually unrequited), the antics of classmates, upcoming plans together, and how boring class was. We had our own shorthand for extracurricular activities that may or may not have been legal and used initials and nicknames, some so obscure I couldn't remember who we were referring to at the time. 

At the risk of sounding really old, I will go on record as saying that, while instant communication definitely has its advantages, the time it took to write and pass a note more often than not kept angry or hurtful words from being delivered to someone in the heat of a moment. The repercussions of hitting "send" on a text are far reaching; the information included in the notes I received from my friends ended in a box in the back of my closet.

B is for Becky With The Good Hair

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 loved dolls as a child, and I had the collection to show for it. I had dolls that danced, dolls that walked, and dolls that talked. I had troll dolls, Barbie dolls, Little Kiddles dolls (IYKYK), and I had baby dolls, and oh, those baby dolls were my favorites! I played dolls by myself, I played dolls with my best friend and next door neighbor Cherie, and I played dolls with anyone else who couldn't avoid me, such as my mom or my older brother Phil (although both my mom and my brother were curiously absent most of the time they were "playing" with me - hmmmm). 

This is Becky. She was my very first baby doll, and she has been loved so much. Her legs are barely attached. She could use a bath. Her hair looks and feels like a Brillo pad, and from the looks of it, she has had way too much back sleeping. I have no memory of what her original clothes looked like; her current outfit was a hand-me-down from Baby Tender Love. There are no identifying marks on her anywhere, but she does favor a Thumblina doll. 

And I love her.

Don't worry, Becky. Now that I have found you again, I promise to keep you safe.

Baby Becky

Back sleeping all the time will get ya.

This is a Baby Tender Love.
I didn't care much for her because
her arms and legs didn't move.

Newborn Thumbelina. Eyes are similar. 
I had one that I named Tina.

.

Shadowy photo, but I was more
concerned with omitting the cat 
from the shot (sorry, Nora)

A is for Annie Sweater

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.

Disclaimer: this is a SUPER cringey story

I fell in love, deeply, madly in love, when I was 14. I'd had crushes before: Davey Jones, Bobby Sherman, Barry Cowsill, but this time, it was true love, and his name was John Denver. Sure, there was a little age difference, but I didn't see it as a problem. What's 17 years? I could get married to him and still finish junior high, right?!

I saved my money and bought all his albums I could find, Rhymes & Reasons, Poems, Prayers & Promises, Aerie, Rocky Mountain High, Farewell, Andromeda, Greatest Hits (which turned out to be Volume 1, but no one knew it at the time). I sat by my record player for hours, writing down song lyrics (and it was TEDIOUS, because I could only write so fast, and I had to move the needle back over and over and over and I'm pretty positive everyone in the house wanted to KILL me). If one of his songs came on the radio, or if he made a tv appearance, everyone had to give me DEAD SILENCE.

I was a bloodhound at research, and let's remember that this was before the internet, like WAY before the internet. I devoured every magazine article I could find on him. and that's when it happened.

I discovered there was Another Woman.

Her name was Annie and he was married to her. My heart was shattered, if only momentarily, because (prepare for dark thought here), meh, something could happen to her, and then we could be together (interesting that this was my Plan A, as the idea of divorce never crossed my mind; at that time in my life, I only knew one friend whose parents were divorced).

His album Back Home Again came out in 1974, and Annie not only was on the front cover with him and was so pretty, but he wrote the most beautiful love song ever just for her. I gave up hope for a future with him (mostly, anyway).

I was shopping at the mall with my mom not long after this and found a sweater hanging on a rack at Montgomery Wards almost exactly like the one Annie was wearing on the album cover. It was a simple maroon pullover with a scoop neck, just like Annie's, and from that moment on it became known as my "Annie sweater."

I wore it often over the next few years, and then it got put into a drawer for what turned out to be the last time.

I continued to love Annie's husband's music. The very first concert I ever attended was to see him with my friend Teresa and her mom Betty. I saw him in concert again when I was in college. I cried when he died in a plane crash in 1997. His music still makes me happy when I hear it.

Tour book and ticket stub from 1975
John Denver concert at Kemper Arena,
Kansas City, Missouri

And then I dug in a dresser drawer last weekend and pulled out...my Annie sweater. 

Sorry that I kind of wished you dead, Annie, wherever you are.