Meg tagged me for this last week but I didn’t get to post it last Saturday. Now I realize how totally appropriate it is to post today. I’m thirty-three today. I haven’t accomplished a lot of what I thought I would. But I have accomplished many things I never thought about either.

Spending my childhood in a snooty suburb in Alabama I never thought I’d end up in a kitchy 70s suburban house in New Mexico. Never dreamed I’d be so happily married to an adorable computer geek with uncontrollable dark curly hair and baby blue eyes. Didn’t consider that I’d end up with a houseful of pets. Or a degree in sculpture. Who’d have thought I’d obsessively take up knitting in my early thirties? And no one would’ve ever guessed I’d have such a head for history, be so good at understanding tax codes, or have an instinctual knack for the stock market.

But all in all if you’d asked, say, the eighteen year-old me what she thought I’d be doing at this age the only thing she’d be surprised about is that I wasn’t growing a better garden and hadn’t made the back porch into a pottery studio.

My present to you..

Since I gave this song away for my birthday last year I thought I’d upload another birthday-themed song. If one can’t violate copyright laws on one’s birthday then life just isn’t worth livin’.

And here’s the Childhood Meme..

Things I miss from my childhood (in no particular order).

Summers at Nana’s Farm.
My grandmother had a farm in a tiny town outside Holly Springs, Mississippi called Red Banks. There were chickens and cows and she tended a respectable vegetable garden. I would spend at least one month of my summers there. Nana was a busy lady but always had something fun and interesting for us to do. One summer I rode a horse every single day. I miss Nana’s hands (although sometimes I see them in mine), her kindness, and the special non-judgemental love she had for most people, her grandchildren in particular.

Friday nights at Gringo’s and Saturday mornings at the ballpark
Before he retired in ‘99 my dad was a confirmed workaholic. And there was no more stressful time, it seems, than working for the phone company in the late seventies and early eighties. He and all the other programmers and computer security guys seemed to work hard and, to quote a bad deoderant commercial, play hard. Friday nights were usually spent at a Mexican restaurant called El Gringos. It wasn’t quite as authentic as what I eat here in NM but for Alabama it was remarkably close. Our waitress was a hilarious diminutive Mexican immigrant lady named Rosa and she served some kick-ass cheese dip.

Saturday mornings were spent at the softball park in Homewood watching Dad play with his team of other Bellsouth (or South Central Bell depending on the year) guys. They were all pudgy and middle-aged and looked ratty with no common uniform but every year they kicked all those younger guys’ asses to the championship. We used to call them to the Grateful Dead of softball teams. After the game in the morning well into the afternoon the guys would stand around drinking beer out of red solo cups under the sign that read “No alcoholic beverages in the park” telling their softball version of front porch fishing stories.

Saturday morning cartoons
In the late seventies you were almost guaranteed to be entertained by cartoons from seven to eleven-thirty am when “Land of the Lost” came on and cartoons were effectively over. Sure, there’s the cartoon network and Nick toons and Boomerang channels with cartoons 24-7 but it’s not quite the same. Rarity makes things valuable.

I can’t think of any more for now and I need to go get dressed and I wanted to try the first part of Clapotis again so I’ll add more as I think of them.