and we're off like a herd of turtles!

I reread this a few days ago. I go through my own blog annals to remind myself where I've been and how I've changed/grown. 

It's about a woman I never really knew but I've always admired and about her fancy dresses and costume jewelry. And news programs. It struck me that I've gloried in hat boxes but never in the charm and class and home-loveliness of my own mother. I've been trying to write my feelings on this but it seems I'm full of trite dribble. Let it be known far and wide that there are worlds I'll always wonder about (Milly and her typewriter secretary-ing and fancy shoe boxes) and there is a world I aspire to (my mother's).

because of the lighter that stuck to my purse

I wish we had piazzas instead of facebook.

Add them to the list of things which have held me in magical fascination since childhood.

List of childhood fascinations:
redwoods
dinosaurs
Fantasia
books
magnets
digging around in the dirt
fresh homemade bread
pesto
worms
Smith Family Robinson
Cinderella
drums
face painting
Aunts Ione and Milly
being oustide
geodes
barometers
dress-ups
piazzas

teenage wasteland

We sit in conference in my room. Me on my bed and a whole bunch of furniture and artwork that used to either be scattered throughout other rooms in the house or I had shoved into my closet as I was growing up.
There's the side table inherited from Aunt Milly that's actually made for a record player but I have long since stuffed full with books, notebooks, chunks of collected wood, and tchotchkes. There's the cupid lamp, the arm chair my mom would always tell me I was going to ruin everytime she caught me draping my legs across one of the arms. There's the tall bureau, the small bureau, the large vintage bureau, and the plastic lawn chair. There's the print of Whistler's The White Girl (which used to freak me out but now I feel drawn to her creepiness), the child's drawing (we're unsure of the artist as of yet. I feel like the tinfoil buttons taped on might be representative of something I might do but the nose connotes my sister's work), and the painting of the mad scientist I did in high school.
We're here, convening in my childhood bedroom wondering what to do with ourselves. It's not that we're at a loss as to how to spend the next two weeks. No, there's no worries there. I figured out that my dad doesn't like when I sing Sam Cooke's "Cupid" so I might enjoy pulling that out every once in a while. But the Upper MidWest is a place that will either wash you out or make you wonder about things. So I normally choose to wonder about things.

I rode my bicycle fast fast fast away from you for an hour or two. jolly nickles.

Enshroud.
Tonight I will curl up on my newly purchased mattress pad and bed frame. What's a girl doing being so responsible as to study finances, buy her own bed and bedding, and turn down invites to hang-out at house shows with boys she's always loved so she can do homework and write a documentary proposal?
It's the end of week three of the children and they finally have me convinced that I was the most normal child and not at all depressed or cynical as my sister sometimes jokes or alludes to.
Today as I hammered my bed frame together I decided the hammering went a whole hammer of a lot better when I thought "angry hammer, angry hammer." So I thought of all of my pet peeves and frustrations that I know don't have any eternal merit and so I let myself carry on in my normal happy fashion brushing things off my shoulders. But the hammering went so very very well when I thought, "here's to your meaningless flattery!" "here's to rejected internships!" "here's to my fear of speaking in languages in front of people!" "here's to your poisonous spiders!" Maybe if I made one bed frame a day I'd have arm muscles and five minutes more courage to stand up and shout "IT DOESN'T MATTER BUT I DON'T AGREE!!! NO!!!"

Huzzah!

ps. I call this page color "Milly"