I saw the saddest thing this morning - an old golden retriever curled up at the end of her driveway, sleeping - obviously waiting for her family to come home... or so senile that she falls asleep anywhere and everywhere... Poor old girl. She lifted her head as I drove past. She must be the best greeter ever - imagine coming home to that happy face every day? Heaven!
I come home to 2 happy dogs but they don't really care about humans (except the feeder-man aka K). Nash thinks that dogs are superior than humans and all most humans are is door-openers, feeders and head scratchers. Sometimes, if we're lucky, he'll actually retrieve something for us. Usually this highly-bred Lab will pick something up and then dance away with it cuz it's much more funny to run away than to cooperate.
Where was I last night?
Oh yeah, point # 46
46) when I was little, I also wanted to be a mermaid (or a dolphin) and practiced swimming with my legs together, like a tail. Funny that no one wanted to play with me after witnessing my 'practices', huh?
45) I used to collect dead birds that had flown into windows and bring them home to my mother. I was sure that she could resuscitate them and devastated when she admitted that, despite the my extreme faith in her, she could not
44) I read and re-read my favorite books over and over and over again until I could recite them by rote. Miss Happiness and Miss Flower, the Secret garden and Doll Island were up there, on my all time best. My brother liked Where the Wild Things Are which I only gained respect for as a teenager
43) I was a good runner/ sprinter and was the best in my age group for several years, at school. I was also the high jump and hurdles champ. A mean feat when you consider that I can barely see my own hands, never mind a bar 10 feet away. Running was a joyful experience that I couldn't get enough of
42) We had a stone wall that ran around the edge of our property and I used to climb to the top (9 ft) and walk the entire perimeter
41) 42 is strange because I was extremely afraid of heights - my brother and our friends would cross a RR trestle to go to another neighbourhood but I couldn't cross. I was too afraid - then I learned not to look down. I didn't like the idea of failing
40) my brother and I once made a raft and tried to float down the Simon river like Tom Sawyer & Huck Finn (I don't know which one I was supposed to be). We didn't get far and sunk into some very deep mud. My mother was not amused when we came home, covered in bog mud and stink
39) I loved the ocean and collected vast amounts of seashells. I still have a lot of them. Someone nicked my giant starfish, though... bastard!
38) I painted and drew prodigiously. I also wrote songs and poetry all the time, too. If we had had video games or a PC, I would have been a total geek-nerd-wannabe (or worse, a LARPer hee hee hee)
37) I was labeled a 'daydreamer' in school but the truth was that a) I was extremely bored most of the time & b) I was napping because I had stayed up late, reading. Sleeping with my eyes open is just one my many many useless talents
36) I was much taller than all of the other kids, including my older sibs... I recently found a photo of mt at around 8, towering over my brother (who was 9 at the time). As a teenager, I was embarrassed when people would comment about my height and wanted to be 5' 4" - 5'6" like all of the other girls... I tried to shrink but it didn't work
35) our radio or stereo was always on and I sang all of the time
34) my father once set fire to our kitchen when he tried to warm up soup. I was only 9 but I put the fire out. dad was recording in the living room and had forgotten about feeding us, I guess. He remembers the story differently than the rest of us
33) I was a free-range child and did not like to be indoors very much
32) I wished, prayed, dreamed about being kidnapped by gypsies... I wanted to live in a red & green caravan, pulled by a shaggy pony. K's mother used to threaten him with being kidnapped by gypsies but I wasn't as lucky as he... I'm still waiting on this dream
31) I actually enjoyed mucking out the stables and liked the quiet time afterwards, when I could feed the animals
30) I bothered my mother for a bunny for years and then I got one (Biff, who was very, very smart). We kept it in the fenced-in play yard with my friend's' bunnies. They dug (the bunnies, not the friends) under our play house and years later, when the playhouse was moved, the ground was full of tunnels and burrows like giant termites had cut through the earth. Our neighbours dogs escaped and killed all but one of the bunnies and I came home from school that day to find my mother and our neighbour trying to hide evidence of an obvious bloodbath. I loved bunnies ever since I got Biff and long for one, even now
29) my mother made the world's best french fries and used all sorts of veg to make them - sweet potato, regular potato, carrot and her favorite (but not ours), zucchini. We ate them with aioli- YUMMMMMM
28) I memorized all of my grandmother's clan stories and one of my party tricks was to recite them, randomly to any adult who would listen.
27) My cousin, Caroline Jane (who I think is gay but is deeply closeted - Dad, don't kill me) used to give us soda (which we hardly ever had) and encourage us to have burping contests. Then, she would report that we were very rude... the aunties were not amused. She only tricked us twice, then we caught on... we were very naive children
27) another cousin, our crazy Frank used to get us to jump off my aunt's garage roof in the winter, onto a snowbank. One spring, he got my brother to jump off, sans snowbank. Landing in roses is not as funny as landing in snow. After we stopped laughing, we took him to the hospital for the first in a long series of casts (we were very naive children)
26) I thought that my father had written all of the songs that he sang. Years later, I heard John Prine sing Sam Stone and thought, oooh, Dad wrote that. Checking the liner notes, I was sadly disappointed....
25) My father took me clothes shopping one season and was never, ever allowed to do it again. I bought a hooded poncho, a green and purple and orange granny gown and lace up boots with high heels. Not what my mother had in mind but I was one cool 7 year old... I had to make up for a wardrobe of navy and grey throughout my school year, I suppose
24) I couldn't sleep unless I had cold sheets and especially, a cold pillow case... my mother compensated by making me a cover that I could put in the freezer before bed. I still like a cold pillow
23) I danced all of the time (when I wasn't singing, writing, knitting, running, skiing or swimming). Some would say 'hyperactive'; I prefer 'behaviorally-challenged'
22) I liked to visit cemeteries and read grave markers... I was a morbid child
21) when I was little, my aunt made roast lamb for supper. An old lady who was visiting us shared that it smelt like the death camp she had resided in during the war years... I haven't eaten lamb since. This is on my list of 'things that you should never share with a 5 year old'
20) At dinner, we were expected to have an opinion on world events. I sometimes had to make something up quickly because I didn't always know that world existed. I had a rich inner life, I guess
19) my grandmother used to make us 'nursery tea' by filling our tea cups with lots of milk and sugar and just a quick pass of the tea pot. It made us feel grown up
18) she also had 2 cats, named Beanie and Bootie. She rescued them when my mother was teenager - they were under the butcher's steps and she brought them home in her basket of shopping. My grandfather said that this act of kindness was one of his favorite memories of her. They loved each other very, very deeply (which is remarkable when you consider that they married at 18 and were together for ever)
17) long after those cats died(at ages 22 & 25), she got another cat, named Timothy O'Rourke. When I asked why she had named him that, my mother told me that she named him after a boy that she had loved when she was back home. I thought that was sweet considering that she was 70 something...Grandpa Stan was long dead then but she didn't call the cat "Stanislaus"... maybe that would have hurt, to have her Stan back in cat-form. Timothy was probably just a happy memory that she got to hang onto...
16) my grandfather used to watch soccer on TV but it bothered my grandmother, so she bought him an ear piece that plugged into the TV. Every game, at least once, he scared the crap out of us by jumping up and down and pulling the ear piece out of the TV in excitement. Our nice quiet house would be blasted by screams of "goaaaaaaaaal" or whatever the hell those announcers were screaming
15) My older brother was my idol and I wanted to do everything that he did, good and bad. It got us into a lot of trouble from time to time. Of course, "a lot" is a subjective term and many kids wouldn't have felt that what we did was trouble at all, I suppose...
14) Once, when my brother went to camp, my mother asked for help to clean up his room before it was re-painted. We found a shoebox filled with squirrel tails. I never understood why he had them and how he got them... one creepy mystery, that was
13) I strongly believed that the 13th was a lucky day. After all, mein Z was born on the 13th... couldn't get much luckier than that
12) my parents are both fire signs and their kids were all water signs; my mother, the thoughtful astrologer once commented that she thought that her kids had doused the fire of their (my parents') passion. Way to make us feel wanted, mom ha ha ha
11) I once caught my cousin shooting heroin in my aunt's garage and never told anyone. He was a mixed up fellow, that guy...I was about 10 and I was fascinated with the process involved...sad thought, that.
so now you see that not only can I adequately bore you; I can explain why (in 90 reasons) why my family is odd... it only stands to reason that I would be odd, too. The sad fact is that I haven't even begun my 100 things about the adult me...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment