Memory Lane Monday #21

I took a road trip this Memorial Day weekend--literally and figuratively! My carmates (or should I say new-van-mates? I traded in the Uplander last week): Princess, Gman, and my mom & dad made the looong drive to Enterprise, in southern Alabama on Saturday--I lived there for 9th-12th grade. It's the one place we lived in all my military-brat days that I truly did not want to leave and consider to be "home".

Enjoyed a BBQ and pool party that evening at my folk's friends' house--John & Debbie Railsback. Their sons Travis & Shawn are my age--Shawn and I were friends in Germany first, then our dads were both sent to Ft. Rucker, Alabama at the same time! Few military brats get to go to school for 7 years on 2 different continents with the same person!

On Sunday morning I had brunch with my girlfriends from high school....although honestly, we couldn't tell that 21 years had past! We had sooo much fun traveling down Memory Lane together!!!! Unfortunately it was too short and incomplete with Alison not being there (she was very ill). But we'll definitely be planning a REAL get together soon!!!

May 1989, l-r: Alison, Cynthia, Cathy, Marissa, me
May 2010, clockwise from top: Marissa, Cynthia, Cathy, me



After brunch, the folks, kids & I packed back in the van and drove to central Alabama for a surprise 50th Anniversary celebration for some dear family friends my parents have had since I was 5. It was wonderful to see them again!

Long trip, short time, but oh so very worth it!

Memory Lane Monday (#20)

(I have no images or the ability to get images right now as my computer is kaput and I'm using an ancient shell of a computer that is 3 steps above an old Commodore 64.)

I made Pillsbury Orange Rolls this weekend for the kids. Something I do about once every 3-4 years. But every time I even see these in the store, I'm instantly thrown back to high school.

Marissa, Cathy, Alison, Cynthia and I were all great friends, and thanks to FB still are. I doubt you'd ever see one of us by ourselves back then. We all called each other's parents Mom & Dad because Mr./Mrs. Lastnamehere just didn't fit. Whenever we had sleepovers at Marissa's house, her mom ALWAYS woke us up with the smell of Pillsbury Orange Rolls in the morning. Marissa's mom was your typical proper Southern Lady....although, at the time we just thought she was old-fashioned. I remember her as always being sweet and all about proper young lady etiquette. Hard to believe it's been almost 13 years since she passed away. Princess's middle name is in honor of her, as well as my Grandmother.

It would be nice to to go back in time for just one Saturday night...the 5 of us having a sleepover in the basement TV room at Rissa's house, knowing Orange Rolls would be there in the morning.

Genetic Puzzles

Gman, Princess and Craig were working on a puzzle today. Didn't take long before Princess and Gman bailed and left Daddy to finish it. Lo and behold...
Craig: Hey, there's a piece missing!
Gman (comes running back over): I've got it!! I've got it!!

Little dude was holding it so he could put the last piece in!

What is it with males and hiding puzzle pieces?!?! My brother did it when we were kids. Craig says he used to do it when he was a kid. And now my 4 year old son is doing it.

There has. got. to. be. a gene found ONLY on the Y-chromosome that drives them to do that!

Memory Lane Monday (#18)

I stopped by my friend Carrie's house this morning. She was doing some "attic cleaning" and found a box from her childhood. She asks me, "Did you ever do any L'il Missy Beaded Dolls when you were a kid?" I had no idea what she was talking about until she showed me. Yes, I did!!! I didn't have near as many as she did, but I did have a couple. One of them was this one: Wintertime Wendy

Memory Lane Monday (#17)

My dad was in the army for the first 18 years of my life. We moved every few years, resulting in a lot of friends over the course of my life! I've lost track of so many of them over the years. This picture is from my 13th birthday sleep-over in Stuttgart, Germany. We had plans that we were all going to work together when we grew up. For years, I wanted to be a pediatric nurse in a hospital nursery. Kristie wanted to be an OB/GYN, our friend Sarah was going to be a pediatrician....etc, etc, etc. We all had it all worked out!

Top: Andrea, Kathy, Michelle, Amy L.
Bottom: Me, Kristie, Jenny and Amy W.
I lost track of all these friends within a year of moving since most of us moved that same summer. About 11 years ago, I started searching for them and found Andrea after I started calling every one in Pennsylvania with the last name "Bertz"--I eventually found a woman who said "I think I have a cousin that was in the Army that had kids. Could be him." I found Kathy and Kristie a few months later. We had a reunion in Chicago. I think this pic is from 2000. We had so much fun!!! Didn't feel like 20 years had passed!


I found Jenny and Amy W. later that year and we had another reunion a year or 2 later. But Amy missed her plane and didn't make it. Ironically, none of us work in a hospital or the medical field...except Kathy who is an EMT.

Raw Talent

My father is an amazing handyman. Over the course of his life, he has held jobs that involved fixing cars, building houses, fixing/building helicopters. I don't think there's much of anything he couldn't fix. I enjoyed working with him on various projects while growing up (except the aforementioned repairs on Red Fred.)

My mom is quite the seamstress. She sanity checks me on projects that I'm doing from scratch. She is my go-to-person on sewing questions, especially for the directions that come in patterns, because those things are written in a language only Lilliputians can decipher, and I don't know any Lilliputians.

Due to these great skills & knowledge bases my parents have passed on to me, I generally label myself as moderately crafty and an okay "handyman". My mathematical & logic-thinking brain has served me well in tackling new projects, at the very least enabling me to be able to figure out what questions to ask. And I do have the common sense to know when a project has gotten over my head (And I don't do anything with electricity or plumbing, but I know to turn them off if there's work to be done.) I think I generally fair well on projects. My errors usually come from getting in a hurry or something that wasn't foreseeable.

Several years ago, my dad taught me how to hang drywall. He reminded me of the old adage "Measure twice, cut once." Perhaps he should've told me: "Measure twice, remove measurement device, cut once."

Memory Lane Monday (#15)

While looking for the picture of Red Fred for Memory Lane #13, I found this pic. I'd forgotten, but I guess I've been taking pictures of funny signs for years! I was about 13-14 yrs old, taken in Garmich, Germany.
As you can see, that chair lift is WAY UP IN THE AIR! The text at the top of the picture is the English version...."Do not rock chairs! Do not jump off!".....DUH!

Memory Lane Monday (#13)

A few weeks ago, Ann talked about her first car and it got me reminiscing about mine. Technically, I guess my first car was the banana yellow Gremlin that my father bought for me. I learned to drive stick shift on that one and then refused to drive it ever again. My father swore he'd never buy me another car. I was okay with that.

I introduce to you, my beloved "Red Fred," the Plymouth Sapporo. At the time, I insisted on driving a stick shift. I bought him in 1987 or '88 and he was actually 9 or 10 years old, but as you can see, in pretty good condition. He made the drive to Panama City Beach for my Senior Trip the summer of '89.
Since I'm sure my mother will probably chime in with this story, I guess I'll beat her to it. I took a corner going too fast once and bent the tie-rod into a pretzel. My punishments:
a.) I had to ride the cheese-wagon to school until my father fixed him.
b.) I had "assist" my father while he fixed Fred. And he would yell and cuss every time something wouldn't go right.

I used to name my cars, all their names involved their colors.

• Red Fred
• Blue Jay-- Datsun B-210 (also called "The Stealth B-210 Bomber" by my dad because my mom got pulled over in it for driving after dark without the headlights on)
• D'White--Honda of some kind or another
• I had a blue Corsica next, but I don't remember it having a name.
  
• Green Hornet--Grand Prix
  

Memory Lane Monday

We recently went to my folks for a visit and my dad was sprucin' up the motorcycle he bought last year. It reminded me of this pic from when I was little. It was taken 1-2 months before my 2nd birthday. We lived in Ft. Lewis, WA then.

Memory Lane Monday

This is my Great-Grandma Elizabeth O'Haver. The greatest woman to ever live. She was wise, sweet and funny. She played Canasta and Chinese Checkers with her granddaughters and great-grands, and she did not believe in letting the younger generations win. I interviewed her for a college history essay once. She told me about how she would hitch up the wagon to go down to the creek to cut ice blocks in the winter and pack them in sawdust to keep for summer when she and G-G'pa lived in S. Dakota. She ran their Mom N Pop store while he worked in the mines.

The photo wasn't dated, but I think it was taken when I visited the summer of '89, which would put her at 90 yrs old.

Country Mouse, City Mouse Tales

I am a city girl married to a country guy (in his heart anyways). While, I don't think I could live happily more than a 15 minute drive from the grocery store/shopping/movies/etc., sometimes I think it would be nice to live where people know you better than the occasional wave. Craig recently told me a story from his high school days that truly exemplifies the small town life and the simplicity thereof.

He was driving home from a date or practice or something one night in his red T-Bird. The Sheriff came up behind him with sirens & lights, so he pulled over totally baffled as to why the Sheriff was after him. Apparently, news was a red T-Bird was stolen that day in the next county. (In Kentucky, you aren't from a "town" unless its' population is like 100,000+. When asked where you are from, you give your county name.)
So, did the Sheriff run his plates? No
Have Craig get out of the car to undergo questioning & possible search? No
Sheriff walked up to the window & asked: "Who's your Dad?"
Craig answered.
Sheriff: OK, get on home.

And there you go. That's simple. You know who the good ones are just by knowing who their father is.

Memory Lane Monday (#1)

I love the Friday Flashbacks that many of you do, so I'm starting my own.

In early 1990, I briefly moved in with the Youngs in AZ because my folks thought moving from warmish Alabama to 2 feet of snow in Colorado was a good idea.

Jane can go last and tell the answers, but for everyone else:
What's in the box? And why would Rob & Josh do this to us?

Curly Top

Princess finally let me curl her hair with the sponge curlers she begged me to buy months ago. Remember sponge curlers? It looked sooo beautiful!
BEFORE & AFTER

My mom used to do my hair with those all the time when I was little, mine were pink. My dad had to do them once for school pictures because my mom was in the hospital...I think it was 3rd grade. He tried so hard!

"Twins"

In keeping with the "twins" theme Kim & Jane started, of things not necessarily identical twins, I finally found the pics I was looking for:

Jane and I are cousins, only 10 mos. separates our ages, and usually half the world separates our homes. I describe her as the sister I never had, & Craig describes me as the sister she doesn't need. We actually look nothing alike, but whenever we were together, we frequently ended up in similar/identical outfits for some outing. The purple skirts were our Vanity Fair Outlet bargains when she came out to Alabama one summer. The blue skirt outfit was for our double dates with actual twins when I came to visit her in Utah--we just both randomly had similar outfits, no planning on that one. Somewhere there is a pic of us, about age 10, both wearing red knickers at the SLC Zoo.

Dream cars

Al, like all young people, has a dream car. For him, it is a Lamborghini (although I don't think he'd recognize one if it ran him over). Despite Craig's and my insistence that it'll never be in there, he constantly picks up copies of the "Auto Trader" and "The Nickel" to see if there's one for sale. Aren't all high-end vehicles sold this way? ;-)

It does remind me though of when I was about 12. I lived in Germany then, and all my classmates dreamed of owning a European sports car... most dreamed of a Porshe since it seemed the most likely obtainable one for a kid living in Germany. For me though, it was a red convertible Ferrari. (How ironic that I don't care to ride in my mom's convertible now.)

I spotted one this week, sitting at a red light, and was able to get a pretty good pic of it (by flipping a U thru a gas station and rushing back around.....yeah, I learned a whole lot from my Driver's Ed. DVD....can't ya tell?)


Al and I actually spotted it a few months ago, but weren't able to get to it for a pic before it drove off. Funny thing is....we spotted it parked in a prime parking space in front of Walmart. Mmmmm...if Ferrari drivers shop at Walmart, maybe there really is a slim chance of Al finding a Lamborghini in the "The Auto Trader."

Black eye liner & pink eye

Actually 2 totally unrelated stories:
1. If you look at your google/blog profile and click on one of your entries, it sends you to a list of other people who listed that same item in their profile. Out of curiousity, I wandered thru the lists for some of my answers. The lists for Maroon 5 and the movie Dead Again put me in with some crowds that I TRULY have nothing else in common with...I'm not Wiccan, pagan, or anything else many had listed. Wouldn't they find it hysterical to find a mini-van drivin', mom of 3 in their mix. When I saw these lists, it sparked a memory of Laura, Amy and me in Park City at a Love N Rockets concert--we were the ONLY people at the concert who did not apply an entire stick of black eye liner all over their face in preparation for the concert. And I even went with my sweater tied around my neck. (And despite my recollection of these details for this story, my memory is not what Laura claims it is)
2. The brighter side of the raging case of pink eye I woke up with this morning:

• It really brings out the blue of my eyes
• While at the pharmacy, I ran into a former co-worker I hadn't seen in about 4.5 yrs
• On the way to the pharmacy I saw this!!!