Climbing up a woodpile to get away from a headless chicken.

Wanting to jump off the edge of a mountain when we were looking down at deer in the woods below.

Seeing the school bus full of kids going to the zoo drive by me and my grandparents while we were driving to the optometrist. They went to the zoo and I got a fucking eyepatch to wear over my lazy eye. That made headstart fun. Not.

Hiding under the covers in the bedroom I shared with my grandparents because I was afraid that Snuffleupagus was going to come out of the closet. The bedspread was pea green with little fuzzy-knobby things on it.

Getting an adult library card when I was in the third grade. Loving having the whole library at my disposal.

My little sister locking me in the bathroom when we were home alone. She knew I’d kill her if she let me out so she didn’t until Mom got home.

The way the hot tar bubbles on the road would pop when we stepped on them on our walk to the town swimming pool.

Grandma making us wear orange lifejackets to the swimming pool. We quickly taught ourselves to swim so we could ditch those things.

Learning to drive a stickshift. Deciding that I would never own such a vehicle.

The song that I was on when I danced with my first husband when we were in high school.

Listening to my sister-in-law give birth to my nephew. Thinking that I would have to have my ass knocked out if I ever had kids.

The way my nephew’s head felt on my cheek when he was a baby.

My niece’s little cone-head when she was born. She looked like Marge Simpson.

The horrible way my niece’s arm looked when she broke it under my watch and the way she bounced on the ground when she fell.

Holding Sylvie’s hand when we go places. I know she won’t let me hold it much longer.

What Sweety was wearing the first time we met.

The sneaky look on Sweety’s face after he scared the hell out of me by popping a straw on our first date. That’s when I fell in love.

LB’s face peeking at me over the edge of the bed the first morning after I’d met him. Waking me up to play and be Pink Ranger.

BB asking me if I wanted to see the surprise (engagement ring) that his daddy had hidden away for me. I told him no but he was dying to show me. We waited til Sweety got home to see it.

I wish I’d have had the sense to steal that hat when we were getting divorced. Damn.

Reading this and then the crappy follow up by the school over at Kat’s place really made my blood boil. I would go apeshit if one of the boys came home and told me that school personnel denied them access to a regular lunch. Utter bullshit.

I’m leaning heavily towards never birthing any kids, but if I were – I’d wait til Sweety and I were able to move away from here and go back to where I grew up. I wouldn’t want to stick kids in the school system down here. It’s just too big.

When you were a kid, did you like school lunches? I can honestly say that ours were great. It probably helped that our school only had about 175 kids in grades K – 12 and that someone’s mom was usually one of the cafeteria cooks. If you were still hungry and there was food left, you could go back for seconds. There were some kids that I went to school with that were flat malnourished and the teachers would come around and if it looked like you weren’t going to eat your hamburger, they’d ask if it was okay to give it to them. I don’t even think kids are allowed to share food in the cafeteria nowadays. Man, they made the best spaghetti. Good spaghetti with a layer of melted cheese on top. With garlic toast and green beans for the side. And the pinto beans? Help me, that is where my love for pinto beans and cornbread started. With a splash of Louisiana Hot Sauce. Mmmmm…

When I was a kid, we qualified for free lunches. When I was in kindergarten, I remember watching all of the other kids take lunch money to the teacher every day and I started to worry that I was stealing food since I never paid. So I went home and gathered all the change I could find (I stuck it in my coin purse that looked like a purple hippo) and gave it to my teacher the next morning. She looked at me like I was crazy and quietly told me that it was okay and to put the money back in my pocket and sit down.

We always had enough food to eat when I was growing up but there wasn’t really any money for extras. I can still remember how embarrassed and pissed off I was when, while swinging on the swings one day, some little snots came up and started making fun of my pants because they were ugly. (As a result, my kids now are not allowed to wear Rustler jeans from Wal-Mart. BB actually asked for some a few weeks ago and I pointed him towards something else.)

New clothes? When I was in the 4th grade I got a new shirt and I loved it. It was pink with short, white, lacy sleeves. (I even had my school picture that year taken in it.) I’d have Mom wash that shirt and wear it damn near every day. Well, every day til some snooty heifer a couple of years older than me started making fun of me for wearing it so much. (She’s not one of my MySpace friends today. Fuck her.) I’m still like that though. When I get a new t-shirt, that bitch is going to be worn for at least the next 4 times that I leave the house. Old habits die hard.

We usually eat at this restaurant for lunch and have a little boxed lunch, but for dinner you get all of these side dishes. I pink puffy heart (as Patti would say!) Korean side dishes. I’m pretty good about eating of bit of everything but there was this one bowl of something that we couldn’t identify. It looked like thinly sliced, fried onions with black sesame seeds dotting it. I like onions! I took a bite and realized that it was a bunch of tiny, whole fish. I do not like whole fish.

I recognized the taste as soon as it was in my mouth. When I was a kid, we used to get these bags of dried fish (little bitty fish) and I would eat them like popcorn. One day, I got to thinking that the fish were too tiny to have been gutted. And that there was probably a dried fish brain behind the dried fish eyes. So I asked my Mom and she confirmed that the fish were dried whole. The idea of eating fish guts and brains was just too much for me and that ended my dried fish eating career. Until today.

We were too stuffed to do anything after eating so we waddled on home. I stripped down and got a soft blanket and Tiny Dog and I took a nap on the couch while things digested. A nice way to catch your second wind.

Singing online (though I had to hide my face) has been a bit freeing. I’ve spent the past couple of days belting out the first line of Little Petter Cotton Tail whenever the mood hits. (I’ve thought about looking up the rest of the lyrics to the song but I don’t want the whole damn thing stuck in my head.) Sweety actually yelled at me today and told me to shut the fuck up. I think his intense hangover made him super sensitive. You have to be ready to enjoy my singing. Tiny and he shared some Crown Royal and ginger ale last night. They were both needy beings until they finally went to sleep. Stinky Dog and I were relieved when they did. We raided the pantry together.

I spent many minutes last night dinking with the template here. I think I’m finally pleased and will leave things alone. I like that the categories in the sidebar are now rolled up. That really pleases me. If you happen to go through the archives, you will now see that all of the old posts have a space between the paragraphs and I didn’t have to go through 1000+ posts and put them in by hand. It was just a bit of coding! Yay! It doesn’t take much to make my day.

I grew up in a minuscule town in Oklahoma. If you are yawning when you are buzzing by on the highway, you will miss it. I learned to drive on the dirt road where I lived. It wasn’t unusual to go hours without seeing another car on the road. I moved on to driving in the town where my Grandma lived after I became an accomplished dirt road driver. I think there are 3 stoplights there and the maximum speed is 25 mph. I didn’t ever drive on a road with a turn lane on it til I had moved away from home. I’d gotten married and moved to Texas. The first two weeks or so, I avoided the turn lane and would take the long way home so I didn’t have to deal with it.

We are going to be teaching BB to drive in the big city! Surrounded by people that drive like bats out of hell. I shudder to think of how nerve-wracking it will be to sit in the passenger seat while he navigates through traffic.

I’m really not in Kansas Oklahoma anymore.