Childhood Summers

A woman was lamenting to me this week that she couldn't find Scrabble in the store. It wasn't that they didn't have the game, but they didn't have the original version. This led to me bringing up how my siblings and I use to play Life growing up. We'd finish the game and they'd plead with me, "One more time! Just one more!"

"Fine."

With the end of the school year approaching, and this conversation, I'm thinking a lot about my childhood, especially the summers my siblings and I shared together.

As the oldest, I got the job of babysitting. My siblings still give me a rough time about how many chips I gave them for lunch. Is it my fault 12 chips is a serving? Talk to the bag. Mom said one.

Most days were filled with cartoons, putting on skits we made for each other (we were truckers, police who arrested people for owning dirty socks, etc.), playing board games, and the like, since we had to wait until the parents arrived home to play outside.

I remember some of the crazy things we played.

If Dad was mowing the yard while we were out, the moment we saw him coming around the corner we'd yell, "Mower monster!" Then we ran to the swing set to climb on for "safety."

Another game we played was simply called "Hunter." It was a tag-like game my brother made up. Everyone but the hunter pretended to be an animal. The hunter would follow us around, shooting us with our brother's Nerf bow and arrow. The last to get shot and die was the winner and next hunter.

I have a lot of fond memories. Three of us crowding around the sink to brush our teeth before bed. Spending a Saturday night watching movies we rented from the video store and eating Mom's no bakes. Dad dropping a perfectly timed movie quote into any given situation. My brother playing guitar and singing. My sister and her keyboard. My other sister and I singing into perfume bottles and head banging to DC Talk.

I love those peeps. <3

I shared a room with H. She could make steam come out of my ears and promptly follow it with an innocent, "What's wrong, sissy?" This, I believe, will help make her the awesome lawyer I know she will be.

Get it, girl!

Side note: Later we shared the bedroom room with C as well. We had a twin bed and a bunk bed. It was tight, but I wouldn't trade that time for anything.

My brother. He had a cool red toy car he drove around, always using our dad's name as his pretend name. He stomped on bees. He was Emeril Lagasse, yelling "bam" as he cooked Beanie Babies in raccoon skin cap.

He's still pretty cool.

C is the baby of the family.

She was always putting on dance shows with the neighbor girls and making chalk drawings on the driveway. When she got her own bedroom she painted it three different colors to go with her multicolored bedspread. I don't know how she did it, but it worked.

(Me with sock puppet Geena.)

At the end of summer we often asked Dad to put up the tent in the backyard. Right before school started we'd sit in the tent coloring, eating snacks, and putting on puppet shows.

Seriously, was anyone's childhood as cool as mine?

On to what I'm reading...

I just finished To Best the Boys.

"I've been out with boys, showing them my ankles, Mrs. Mench."

I read this in less than a week.

My husband said, "You're done already?"

I was like, "Yeah. Honestly, I'm surprised it took me this long."

Now it's back to Siren's Fury.

I had this weird dream while reading TBtB that I had Nym's storm summoning abilities and they weren't working right. I could practically feel the rain on the air in this dream. It was kind of freaky.

All I know is, not having control of your abilities is super annoying. I was getting hard core angry in this dream. Didn't matter that I spun up a cyclone. It didn't come fast enough. And where is that lightning bolt!

Grr. So frustrating.

Song I'm listening to:

Fearless by Jasmine Murray

"I wasn't given the spirit of fear.

I was given the spirit of love."

Much love, J <3