Technically it is a dress, but Pooky calls it her butterfly shirt. There is nothing special about this dress. Its a stripped cotton dress from Target. She has others. But is obsessed with her butterfly shirt. The moment she wakes up she wants to wear it, actually taking it out of the laundry basket a couple times. She has thrown tantrums if she can't wear it, or its in the washing machine. So, one Saturday evening, after one of the many Christmas parties I went to, I trecked to Target with Kindra to do a little shopping. Lo and behold, the dress was on clearance! I had thought I would buy one more, just to have a clean one to wear and one to wash, but ended up buying two. In my defense the second one is in a larger size, so as she grows she can still wear her favorite dress. According to Pooky, she looks like a princess in the dress, usually complete with crown. Am I weird for wanting to go back again and get a few more "spares" ? I might be, but the next week I did go back and buy more. She now has a total of four! I swear over Christmas while we were in California she wore one every single day! This is her on Christmas Eve on the way to dinner with family.....
6790 Obispo Ave Long Beach, CA 90805 That house has been in my family for almost 70 years. My Grandpa and Grandma bought the little house way back when they first got married, and the twenty acres surrounding it. My Grandpa built most of the current house himself, and its rather large now. Over the years they raised their three daughters, my Aunts Gloria and Janet and my mom. They had their first dates, prom, Christmases and all those other growing up experiences in that house. As time went on most of my family has lived in that house at one time or another. My mom moved back in when I was in 5th grade, I lived there with my brother every other year until high school, when I decided to stay. I've called every room in that house my bedroom at some point, painted the walls different colors more than once. I remember using the sheets to make a fort under the dining room table with my cousins. The same table that has been in that dining room since before I was born, the table all of our holiday dinners have been eaten on for as long as I can remember. I believe that table moved with my brother to his new house. Its the house I called home when Ashley was born, having repainted her room a pretty yellow. While my brother was in college it was a bachelor pad, you treaded carefully, not sure exactly what might be growing in the corners and always brought your own toilet paper because college boys had interesting hygiene habits. As kids we played in the yard, explored the garage and its many hiding places, there was a tree house in the big tree out front, until we had to cut the tree down because the roots were disrupting the plumbing. I remember how the house always smelled the same whenever I came back from being away for a while. I've crawled through the attic and the crawl space under the house. When my brother got married, it was the house he brought his wife home to. Thankfully that caused my Grandpa to replace the olive green carpet that had been in the house since the 60's. We were all sad to see the familiar, holy, worn carpet go, but defiantly glad to have something less that 40 years old to walk on. My brother finally bought his first house and moved in back in August. Since then my husband has been helping give the house a much needed face lift, with new tile in the bathrooms and kitchen, freshening the carpet and what not. My Grandpa is living there alone for the first time ever, on his way to living at the nearby retirement home as soon as an apartment is available for him. When he moves the house will be sold. I have known that is why Gary has been fixing the old place up, but it got me thinking last night about everything that house has seen, everything it has meant to our family. Am I weird to feel sad that we are letting it go? It will feel strange not to go down for Christmas there. We all have keys to the back door and everybody comes and goes regularly, I don't think I've seen somebody knock to enter since I was a kid. I wonder if the new family who buys it will wonder about the history of the place?
I love my friends. Heck, I love the fact that I actually HAVE friends! But I was particularly grateful the weekend before Thanks Giving. My dear husband was home that Saturday, so I took advantage of the chance to do my grocery shopping sans kids. I made my holiday shopping list, complete with Thanks Giving turkey, pie makings and cookie ingredients. I swung through Starbucks on my way to my trusty Wal-Mart, not the least bit annoyed by the Saturday holiday shoppers. I slipped my ipod into my pocket and bopped along to my Christmas music as I wandered aimlessly through the holiday section, looking for cookie platters and other useless Christmas items I would feel the need to have after Thanks Giving was over. I took my time poking through all the turkeys until I found just the right one. I chatted cheerfully with the check out clerk, walked out to my car, and like a responsible woman shopping alone, I put my purse on my front seat, then locked my car doors while I unloaded my cart. Since I had no pockets I set my car keys inside the back of my car.....then slammed the back shut, with my groceries, purse and cell phone inside, and no kids to let me in! Okay, deep breath. I go back inside Wal Mart, feeling rather strange not to have anything in my hands, and asked if there was a phone I could use. Of course, Gary's cell phone was off, he wasn't answering the house phone and I didn't know anybody elses phone numbers because they were all in my cell phone. I even tried calling Gary's ex wife, thinking she could call Jacob and have him to get his dad, no luck. So I dialed 411 and started running down my friends names, nobody was listed!!! Until I got to Alicia, my dear anti-Walmart friend. She is very adamatly against Walmart and Sam's Club. After she stopped laughing at me, we remembered her daughter was a friend of my neighbors daughter. After much text messaging and calling we determined that my neighbors daughter was not answering, so no luck. Thankfully she decided to come get me so I could get my spare set of keys from home. Only problem with having someone who is anti-Walmart pick you up is they have no clue where Walmart actually is. She went to one and had to call another of our friends to ask where I might actually be! All in all it took me five hours to do my grocery shopping, on the up side my milk didn't go bad because it was freezing cold outside :-)
