on heat, good scents, and musical memories

It's been hot. Like really stinking hot. My town is not supposed to be hot. At least not until September. But it's been stupid hot. One hundred plus. At one point today, the temp gauge in Eleanor read 118 degrees. Granted she was parked on a blacktop in a parking lot for about 45 minutes because even though I was just dashing into Michael's we all know a dash is a bit more than a dash and it costs a bit more as well.

So yeah, it's been hot and I've been busy with work stuff and I love it all but am feeling the itch itch itch to get crafty and bloggy about things other than weather. I also really need to tackle the pink room. It is so much more worse than it ever was. I'm afraid there may be furry crafty monsters living in there. Furry crafty monsters who sleep on vintage sheet scraps, wrapped in garlands, who enjoy a good children's book or two but lack the motivation to reshelve all those stories. It's like a tumbleweed of craft crap and it just keeps on growing. I'm a little bit afraid of what I may find when I dig in but also excited. It will be like Christmas morning what with all the little bags from Micheal's and World Market tucked into nooks and crannies full of things I thought would be perfect for that project or this and then of course completely forgot about any project at all. Ooof!

I've also missed words. Wonderings and observations. Questions and thoughts. I have them...late at night as I gaze upon my favorite channel (ahem...pinterest) clicking this way and that. Sometimes I jot down an idea or a question but then I lose the piece of paper I wrote it down on or I wrote it down in the dark and have no idea what I wrote (note to self, writing with your right hand is not as legible as you might think).

The one thing I do remember is that this heat keeps me up and restless. I can't sleep for the sticky even though my eyeballs are fuzzed and dry. So I plop down on the sofa with the lights dimmed, headphones on, gazing at the computer screen as I listen to the same album over and over again. The familiarity of the heat, posture, and voice crooning in my ears takes me back to highschool to summer nights when I would sleep with my head practically hanging out the window of our third story dwelling and my boom box whirling under my pillow my favorite tapes over and over again never really letting me fall asleep because if I did I would miss the next song or the next or the next. And then when I did doze off the click whirr of the tape either turning off or turning over would startle me awake and I would decide I needed to listen to a different album and everything was a new listening adventure.

I remember the heat, the hot San Fernando Valley heat. I remember the hum of the streetlight outside my window and the orchestra of cars speeding up and down Victory Blvd. I remember the faint scent of salt and sand from the beach, chlorine from the pool, Wet N' Wild lipstick lingering on my mouth, and the Cinnabar lotion I wore.

And now, as I sprawl out on the sofa with a vintage pink sheet cool under my skin I can feel the mysterious hot heat, I can hear the hum of the refrigerator as it struggles to keep up with my ice consumption. Thanks to meds I can smell the mulchy goodness of the garden, the faint scent of Mr. Bubble (my favorite summer soap) on my skin, the sliced apple on the counter, Burt's Bees on my lips, and the still lingering scent of the pikaki I rolled on my wrists this morning on my way out the door to run errand after errand after errand in this hot, hot heat.

My favorite part of it all is when I put the laptop on the coffee table, turn off the lights and settle down for a god listen worrying that I will fall asleep and miss the next song, and the next, and the next.

circa

the witch-baby has wedged herself on my lap. she is nestled and purring and up against the keyboard. my left leg is now all tingly asleep and it is difficult to type. she keeps butting her head up against my left hand. but, if i shift, she will jump down and i feel all cozy like.

it's the first of the month. time to do the bed. i had to visit my flickr stream to make sure that what i wanted to do hasn't been overdone. one of my favorite things to do is use the slideshow option coupled with a random tune from my iTunes. not just my slideshows, i like looking at group streams and other things. it's always a kick when the first song that pops up is perfect. the song that popped up for the bed shots was Morning Has Broken by Cat Stevens...see? nifty!

so, as i sit here looking at flickr, cuddling with the witch-baby, answering emails and enjoying a morning cup of coffee (which i am now out of), i have the shuffle on, on, on iTunes. it reminds me of a jukebox and i've always wanted a jukebox! a song pops up that i cannot remember the last time i heard it and i know every word. it was a favorite, a big favorite and when i first bought it in the early nineties, it was on cassette. cassette! so when the song pops up, i can immediately remember which tunes come before it and after it and i remember the physical act of getting up to flip the tape over unless i was in the car and then it automatically flipped sides. it was like a woosh of a flashback! i can remember the vintage dresses i wore when this album played. i can still lip-sync along like a wannabe member of the band. i can remember it all and it was odd that it was more than fifteen years ago. i still feel like that twenty year old. i may not be as thin or as vintagely ensconced but i'm still her, you know, without the not-good-for-me boyfriend and the bookstore job that barely paid for all the ramen i ate. really, i am. and it makes me wonder, do we carry inside of us all of the wes we were? i mean, are we really any different from our earlier selves? do we all see our young faces in the mirror when we look and will we always be young at heart?in case you were wondering what the song was it was Hoof by Mary's Danish from the album Circa which came out back in 1991.

words & pictures: school lunches

Pip over at Meet Me at Mike's has started a nifty blog along inspired by Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird. Since I have oodles of papers for school to write that I am so very good at putting off, I thought that maybe adding another assignment would help get those words out. All you have to do is post a picture and write a little somethin' somethin'. I almost went with a haiku for my first post but I couldn't figure out where to start so you get the ramble, ramble.The kick off theme is school lunches, here we go!

I was a free lunch kid. In grade school they would put our little white cards up on the lip of the blackbird to collect just before lunch time. The cards were white with red and black writing and had little boxes on them that got punched out with each meal. My school served breakfast and lunch and if you had a white card you got it for free. Most of the kids in my class got a card so it wasn't too big a deal but man oh man, did I envy those kids walking out to a separate lunch area with brown bag lunches and those fabulous metal lunch boxes shaped like school buses and such. Pizza day be damned, I wanted desperately to have a lunch box with a peanut butter sandwich and ding-dongs tucked away inside. I think my mom was able to pack me a lunch only once and I had to brown bag it but I didn't care, I got to sit with the kids with all the variety. It didn't matter that the jelly on their sandwiches had seeped through the sticky white bread. It didn't matter that their apple juice got warm or their zinger got squished. This was the life and I wanted to be a part of it.

Eventually I ended up working in the cafeteria for my free lunch. Free lunches by way of the meal plan were awkward by the time I reached fifth grade and if you worked in the cafeteria you got a free lunch and it was cool. Sometimes, you even got a special lunch if Roberta the cafeteria lady liked you and you didn't really dig the burritos. If you were fast, you got to do trays which involved pulling down a tray and adding a plastic wrapped napkin and spork combo. Sporks! My cousin & I started a spork collection there were so many different colors. Each spork came numbered and we made it a competition to see who could get as many in sequence as possible. I liked the blue sporks and kept my collection in a sticky-tacky yellow tupperware container small enough to cart around with me but large enough to house my growing collection.

By the time junior high rolled around, I was selling my lunch tickets for half the cost of a hot lunch and using my dollar to buy a carton of milk and the best frosted brownies ever! I can still recall that flavor if I close my eyes and breathe in slowly. When I got to high school, I made my cousin bring me brownies home they were that good! Don't think too poorly of me, after my first semester in junior high, I formally quit the free lunch program and managed to sustain myself with sandwiches from home. I didn't have any friends to eat with in seventh or eight grade so I got a job working in the library at lunch time. It was easier pretending to be busy than being lonely and odd. Ninth grade got much better as I found a small group of girls willing to hang out with me and I even managed to maintain those friendships once we went to high school.

In high school I bogarted my friend's G.I. Joe Lunchbox. She had altered it to be a snarky commentation on the military and I loved it. Then my brother picked me up an old Scooby-Do box and I scored a Hardy Boys box in perfect condition for fifty cents. I was finally one of the cool kids with a lunchbox. Granted, I was seventeen at this point and considered quite odd but I didn't care. Every lunch period we would sit in our small cluster and eat. That is unless it was Pizza Day when I would have my mom order us a pizza from Hungry Howie's and we would have it delivered to our spot. Two for the price of one. All the leftovers were passed along to my cousin or the nice guy on the basketball team that I had been in school with forever. One of my gals and I would switch off who made lunches. Sometimes I would make our lunch, roast beef sandwiches on toasted whole wheat toast with american cheese, mayo and lettuce. And sometime she would, turkey. It was a nice system and then I got addicted to carrot sticks and ate so many I turned orange. Literally.

For a long time after that, people would get me lunchboxes and I still love them but have nowhere to put them. Inside, I tuck (stuff) away mementos (junk) and put them up on a shelf. When I got this box down to photograph it for the post, I realized I hadn't peeked inside in years. Here's what I found:

*wooden nickel celebrating the centenial of Rockford, Ill.
*picture of my highschool buddy, Margie who I miss dearly
*photo of me back when I lived with the Jimi fanatic
*1992 newspaper clipping on Nick Cave
*letter from my favorite pen-pal, also missed, Amuah if yer out there, Hello!
*real Nottingham Lace edged hankie, in package
*1980's pic of my cat with a comic bubble on it
*an even earlier pic of my mom in a fabulous bathing suit & sunglasses

Lidsville really IS the kookiest!

Everybody cut loose....

I woke up this morning with the music from Footloose in my head. Actually, I woke up with the entire opening sequence in my head. Maybe it was that movie that began my obsession with pictures of feet...in shoes, of course. Aack. the song is still in my head. What a great movie. Especially for the fourteen year old jek who saw it. I didn't dance when I was in junior high. I was too shy. We had dances all the time but I never went. Once I had finally made a friend in the ninth grade we plotted to go to a dance and I remember writing about it in my diary. I even sketched out the outfit I was going to wear in all of its pink & gray glory. I even think I planned on wearing my hair in a pony tail. A side pony tail. Oh wait, I just checked my diary and I didn't sketch it out, I did sketch out my plans for a Surf Punks Halloween costume. I loved the Surf Punks. Does anyone remember them or were they just a California band? Here's what I wrote about my outfit (errors and all). Apparently it was peach, pink  & gray. Sheesh. Please note that I was fifteen and I am sure we were all little lumps of anxiety and self-pity:

"The Romance Dance for Valentines Day. I'm wondering if I should go? I guess I will. Even though I feel funny about he way I dance. Krista wants me to go. (But what should I wear?) I wish I was pretty! Oh, why couldn't I be pretty and have perfect eyes and teeth? Why? If I went to the dance I bet nobody would ask me to dance unless they were desperate! And if that weren't enough, I found out my grades for the year...History B, English A, Math C, Science D, Typing C and PE C. Bad! Terrible! Grotesque! Disgusting! and don't forget AWFUL!

Hullo again! I can't wait to go to the dance. (The dance is this coming Thursday, February 7.) I'm going to where a faded pair of LEVI'S with my peach & green & white striped shirt and the animal sweater that Lynda gave me plus my grey boots and pink socks, I sure hope I don;t make a fool of myself, and I hope there are dance tickets left! Nothing is happening so I guess I will ******Sign Of ****

P.S.
I want to go see That's Dancing"

Of course I didn't go. I chickened out and then my mom was in the hospital. Seriously though, peach and gray and pink? The shirt was an oxford shirt with a white collar, I have no idea what the animal sweater was. It wasn't Animal from the Muppet show, I know that at least. My problem with dancing back then was that I grew up watching Elvis movies and while I did enjoy watching American Bandstand, I preferred to dance like a go-go dancer in Clambake and well, that was just weird. I got over my fear of dancing when I was around 16 or 17. The bulk of my dancing was done at the Goth clubs around Los Angeles with a bunch of early secret L.A. raves thrown in. I decided to go with my gut which ended up with me doing the swim or the twist at a goth club. It would embarrass my gothic almost-boyfriend who bedecked himself in velvet and lace. All in all we had so much fun back then. The mister and I dance. We don't go dancing but we dance. We dance in the living room, at the supermarket, on the street corner. One of our first non-dates was spent at the mister's place dancing to Vince Guardaldi a la Peanuts style. At our wedding, we polka'd and in the market we swing.

If only we weren't both sick right now I would pack up a picnic lunch and go to the park so we could eat, nap and swing dance under the eucalyptus tress. Make sure you make time for dancing. It is always a good thing.

Chalkboard Memories

The other day I traveled down to schoolsville with the Soon-To-Be-Mama Bean to prep her classroom for her sub. Her first grade class sits amidst a Mondrian inspired box of a school. The doors were a vibrant yellow and a portion of one wall matched my living room…sonic green. There was a rainbow grid rug front and center and everything was so new and shiny, including the white boards. White boards? Ya gotta love advancement. Mama Bean threw a 10 pack of dry erase markers onto a desk and their happy colored caps made me swoon. How fun it must be to write a lesson so full of color and pizazz yet it made me think about my college classes and their lack of the classic blackboard…or green board. I felt all nostalgic and immediately thought of Ellen Tebbits as she ferociously clapped erasers in a silent competition with Austine her once best friend. It reminded me of how thrilling it was when Mrs. Sasada, my fourth grade teacher would pull out the colored chalk and let us select a color to write a word on the board. My left-handed penmanship always sloped every-which-way leaving a shadow of pink chalk across my palm. Oh how I loved the texture and cake like quality of the markings across the pine green of the board.

When I was 5 years old, my granny taught me how to draw stars on my own private chalkboard that hung in my pink girlie bedroom, the one I once shared with my sister and her hippo collection before my Dad took her away. Granny got the board for me and it was hung on a wee stretch of wall between my bedroom door and the closet that I was sure Frankenstein’s monster would come out of some night. I remember the sound of the chalk, classic white, as we drew up, down, left, right, and down again, over and over and over. There were stars all over the place. Later, I have no idea how much later, I would steal away the candy colored chalk to color a ballerina in a coloring book when my Mamos took my crayons away. I remember huddling on the floor on the far side of my bed, belly pressed against the stale scratchy buffalo-like shag carpeting, scribbling in defiance as angry tears rolled down my face. I remember thinking; “Take that! You told me I couldn’t color but I am!” I felt so wicked. I think it was the first time I was “in trouble” and it was the first time I was defiant. I don’t really remember any other moments like this as a child with my mother. I do remember moments like this as a young adult with a not so good-for-me boyfriend but that’s a story for another time.

Standing on my tip-toes as I stapled sky blue paper to the wall for the Mama-To-Be’s bulletin board I could recall many grade school memories. Mostly they consisted of the the wonky lighting, playing Heads Up, Seven Up, blowing bubbles in my chocolate milk, and printing on that fabulous grayish paper with the light blue dotted lines. But most prominent in my memories are the many blackboards I gazed upon with faint memories of math problems and the staccato of the chalk as it struck the board. White boards may have taken over but I am so very grateful for my memories, for Ellen and for whoever it was who invented chalkboard paint!

Quilty-crafty and memories

One of my dearest and niftiest friends is going to have a baby. The wee B.Birdy is due in a few weeks and the baby shower was two weeks ago. I am a far from a subtle gift giver and can get kinda crazy but I think I reigned it in pretty well. The mister and I made the new-family-to-be a nifty circus themed baby quilt.

I pieced it and stitched and the mister helped me pin and all that jazz.

We added a treasure trove of polka-dot ribbon tags all around the edges for the little miss to roll or crawl to when the time comes.

 

 All I can say other than how pretty it is, is that wrestling all that fabric into your sewing machine is enough to cause you to growl and say things you probably shouldn't while making a pretty pink baby quilt.


I also presented them with a small assortment of circus themed books. Babies can never have too many books. I don't think anyone can have too many books except for The Leets who is probably shaking her head as she reads this saying "Jeksa? I think I may have too many books!" and I would tell her that yes, maybe she has one or two too many.

 

All this quilty stuff reminds me of all the tiny doll quilts I am seeing pop up all over the internets. These tiny quilts remind me of my Mamos and the gifts she used to make for me to give to the little girls whose parties I was invited to. As a tow-headed tot I was invited to a lot of birthday parties. We were flat out poor folk and well, my mother had an exquisite eye for beauty and hated the stigma of poor that hung over our heads so she always went a little all out when it came time for birthdays. The year I turned six was the year of the doll kit. She made these adorable cookie cutter shaped dolls about eight inches tall. Arms and legs akimbo with sweet embroidered smiles and long yarn hair braided into pigtails. Each doll was dressed in tiny handmade dungarees and plaid shirt with itty bitty buttons or snaps down the front and came with a nightgown, robe, and party dress. The dolls were lovingly placed in a wicker basket that Mamos turned into a bed with tiny pillow and matching quiltlet. All in all a very beautiful and sweet birthday gift. My dollie had brown hair and her quilt set was all navy blues and purples. It was made from a faux quilt print but all that sweetness wrapped up in a basket was magical to me and my friends. I still have the quiltlet but sadly cannot find my dollie. More than a decade ago before my Mamos died I tried to get her to make them again. I told her that people would start to turn to simple handmade items for gifts, that the whimsy of what she made would trump a beanie baby any day. I wish she had made them. I've been hashing them out in my head and have attempted them on my own but all it does is make me miss my Mamos more. She would have loved the internet and I do believe the internet would have loved her.

Happy Birthday Mamos!

Today would have been my Mother's 66th birthday. I miss her so much it still hurts and overwhelms me at times. She is around the same age as I am in this picture. I have no idea when they started filming for the flick. Her best friend's husband at the time was a producer for Universal and got them a gig as extras for a short while. This was a great big thing for my mom as she adored films so very much and was disabled with Lupus but was in the middle of a good period where her health soared and she was able to be productive. I don't remember much from this as I was only 5 or 6 but I do remember her smiles and laughter. She told me the lights almost knocked her out...Lupus doesn't do well with a whole lotta lights, brightness and activity but she had such a good time running around and hanging out with some guy in a hawaiian shirt named Bobby. Yup! If you ever find yourself watching New York, New York, keep an eye on the two ladies seated at the table behind Liza just before the champagne fight starts. That's my mamos and her friend! She told me how they had to spend hours pretend speaking and they could only say "Tomato". Later I would follow in her footsteps as an extra in The Doors. I had just recovered from a hellish chicken pox experience and had lost both my voice and had an ear infection. I was seated way way way in the back of the theater where Jim gets arrested on stage and spent most of my time reading my smuggled copy of The Vampire Lestat and then lipsynching "Light My Fire" when filming was happening. I was sad that I couldn't talk to anyone and mad that they put me in a dorky outfit which I of course restyled more to my liking the next day and no one noticed. If you watch The Doors and search search search for a girl in a giant white floppy hat with red polka dots, that's me! I did get to wear crushed velvet bell bottoms and eat all the donuts I wanted and Oliver Stone stepped on my foot while Kevin Dillon asked me if I was okay...oh and I got paid too! So, whoo-hoo!

When my mother was alive we would go thrift shopping on her birthday and then after she died I would go thrifting by myself holding a mental commentary of what she would like, not like, etc. I have school all day today so can't go but I did go yesterday and I think she was with me in spirit or maybe I'm just a little nutty. My mom was one cool lady who had a hell of a life. I am amazed at what she went through and sometimes I wanna knock some sense into her head but I can't. She did the best she could and with everything that was stacked up against her, I think she did a pretty good job. I am so grateful for what she taught me. I wouldn't be the me I am without the life we had. I love you Mamos. Wherever, whoever or whatever you are I hope you are at peace and eating some very good cake! Happy Birthday!