Mommy’s Piggy Tales – The Preschool Years

I’m participating in a project called Mommy’s Piggy Tales where I’ll be writing stories about my childhood once a week for 15 weeks, starting with birth and ending with graduation in the hopes that my children, and possibly my children’s children, will one day appreciate it.

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Some people (like my husband) have incredibly clear memories of their early years and can describe in detail the places they went, what they thought about while they were there, what they were wearing, and what they ate in the car on the way to said place.  I am not one of those people.

I have just snippets of memories of my preschool years.  These years just seem to be vague impressions for me, but I do have a few, relatively clear memories.

I was born in <city, state>, but at some point we moved to <a different state>.  I don’t actually know when we moved, but I do know that my parents split up when I was 2 and we had already moved (at least I think that’s right).  I remember next to nothing about living there and my mom and I moved back to <original state> when I was 5 and then my dad moved back too, but to the other side of the state.



My clearest memory from early preschool is losing my first tooth.  I was at school and we were all getting on our cots for naptime.  They were those canvas cots with the metal frames and I must have hit my mouth on the side as I went to lie down because out came my tooth!  I guess I didn’t understand that you lose teeth as you grow up and I don’t remember what I thought about it, but I do remember that I THREW IT AWAY!  Thankfully, one of the teachers must have noticed that my tooth was missing and learned where it had ended up because she pulled it out of the garbage for me so I could save my first tooth for the tooth fairy.

One day, when I was 4, my mom took me shoe shopping.  (I have no memory of this day, but I’ve heard the story from my mom several times…)  As she was paying for the shoes, I tried to say something to her, but my speech was slurred and unclear.  My mom knew immediately that something was wrong and she pulled me out of the store without the shoes and headed for the doctor.

It turns out I had had a seizure.  After several tests, they learned that I had some scar tissue in my brain (possibly caused from a fall down some steps that ended with me landing on my head on the concrete floor – this will become a trend throughout my childhood) that was causing very small seizures.  I was put on phenobarbital which, according to my dad, made me bounce off the walls until my body had acclimated to it.

My parents get pretty upset when they remember this time. (I think I was pretty much clueless.)  My dad remembers taking me in for an MRI or an EEG as one of the worst days of his life.  I remember that he promised me ice cream afterwards.

Luckily, for me, the seizures were never (with one exception) very large.  I actually remember sitting in Second grade having one and no one even noticed.  Luckier still, they ended after a major event when I was 8.  Though it was a fairly short-lived issue that I barely remember, I still consider those experiences as a defining time in my childhood.



My most clear memories are of kindergarten and they make me laugh every time I think of them.  My kindergarten was offered through my day care, so I actually had no clue I was in kindergarten until I graduated.  I was too busy playing Wonder Woman with the boys.  This game consisted of the boys trying to get into the little play house out in the yard and me grabbing them by the wrist and swinging them around and around until they went flying off before coming back to try again.  (Do you remember how Wonder Woman used to do that?  She was awesome!)

The other game we played was “KISS”.  No, not kiss-ING…KISS, as in the band!  There were a few boys that were often there late like I was and they always wanted to pretend they were members of the band KISS.  I was a girl, so I couldn’t be in the band, but I could be a groupie!  They’d run around that daycare doing who knows what and I’d chase around right behind them, as any good groupie would.

Preschoolers are dorks.  Gotta love ‘em!

 

Linking up to:

Fabric Freaks Me Out

I’m freakin’ out just a little bit because I finally had time to order the fabric for my family room!  I’m so excited that it will be here soon and I can finally make the room look a bit more…friendly.  But I can’t figure out why I picked the fabrics I picked.

Lately the rooms I love feature seaglass colors: blues and greens like Kate at Centsational Girl posted about today.  I just love the Candace Olsen Office:

 
And this dining room:

And this blue living room (my file says this is from House To Home, but I don’t know the URL):

 
And I really love this bedroom Kate did for her daughter:

And these laundry rooms:

(The Centsational Girl again.  Clearly I just need to move into her house…)

And have you SEEN all the turquoise I’ve been using lately:  Here and here and here?

So, can someone please explain to my why, when I went to the fabric store, I chose these:

 

Don’t get me wrong.  I still love these fabrics, but now that I’ve ordered them, I’m concerned that they just won’t “stick” for me and that it won’t go with the rest of my house.  You know?

The thing I need to remember is that this is just pillows, curtains, and my ottoman – the things that are easy to change with the seasons.  Perhaps this is just my summer look…

Sprucing up the Garage - Painting the Door

As I posted yesterday, I spent Saturday morning cleaning out my garage and Sunday painting my garage door.  I thought I’d post today about how I did it.  This was actually one of the easiest projects I’ve ever undertaken (once the incredibly heavy door was taken down), so if you’ve ever really wanted to paint a door, but were too nervous to do it, read on:

First, we had to get down the door.  This is an exterior door, so it is solid and HEAVY.  Once we got it down, I behaved like a big girl and taped up the sides and the handle and deadbolt.  I used a plastic baggy over the handle and then just taped it down. 

(One note, the tape I used didn’t cover the entire width of the sides.  I forgot about that and wasn’t careful, so I got a bit of overspray on the sides.  It’s not bothering me much, but you should either use wider tape or be more careful than I was.)

Then I sanded the door to rough it up and get any major junk off.

It’s good if you can get some help…

Once the sanding was complete, I wiped the whole door down and went to work with my spray paint.  I used Valspar Mediterranean blue.

Since I figured any drips would really drive me nuts as I walked through the door every day, I made sure to put on several light coats.

(I did find that I started having issues with my first can of paint covering at all.  I think the nozzle was probably clogged a bit because the can still had plenty in it.  I switched to the other can and the paint came out in nice even coats once again.)

 
 
When I pulled the tape off the door handle, I realized that the tape had covered part of the door and that I had a white spot under the handle.  To fix that, I just sprayed some paint into a paper plate and touched it up with a small craft paint brush.

Since I was on a painting roll, I also pulled down the hand rail, gave it a light sanding…

And then just ONE coat of Rustoleum’s Ultracover 2x Spray paint.  That stuff covers amazingly well!

 
Once the door was dry, I had my husband and his friend put the door back up (good job guys!) and here’s how it looks now!

I’ve walked through it about 20 times so far and I smile at it every time!

I’m linking up to these parties:

How to Spend a Saturday – Cleaning the Garage

You may remember that I woke up Saturday morning very early (for me), raring to get going on cleaning out our garage.  Well, I actually DID go downstairs and start working on the garage.  Here’s what I saw Saturday morning:


 
Man, that is really embarrassing.  You can see that we were able to still fit a car in…barely.  The problem started last year when we cleaned out the garage.  We had a bunch of stuff left over that we needed to Craigslist, but we never got around to it.  That pile of stuff was right in the way, which meant we could never get in to put other things away, so those other things just added to the pile.  In the past several weeks, the problem had stepped up in a big way.

So, I got to work just putting away things that actually had a home.  Then I moved everything else out into the middle of the garage, so I could see what needed to be dealt with.

That actually looked much better, but felt even more daunting because now we had to decide what to do with these things.

By this time, it was late enough to go grab my husband and make him ask him very nicely to help me.  We spent most of the day Saturday working on this puppy and here’s what it looked like Saturday afternoon:



There’s still a Craigslist pile, but everything is actually listed and we’ve gotten rid of some of it already!

At some point on Saturday, I decided that the door to the house really needed some paint because it was all scuffed up and impossible to get clean.  For some reason, my husband had no problem with this and he helped me take it down Sunday in preparation for its makeover.  I even took off the hand rail and gave that some paint too!
I’ve got tons of pictures of this project that I’ll share tomorrow, but for now, I’ll just share the after:

 

How cool is that?  Of course, now something needs to be done about those big clunky stairs.  Hmmm…

I’m linking up to:

What? What’s That You Say?

Five minutes ago, I was lying in bed – just surfacing from sleep.  I had no idea what time it was, but I was feeling bummed that I’d have to get up any minute to go to work when I suddenly realized that it’s SATURDAY and it’s SUNNY and I bounded out of bed, even though it’s only 6:30 and I don’t even get up that early on a week day.  Isn’t it funny how that works? 

I’m actually very tired, owing to the fact that I didn’t turn out the lights last night until midnight, but I’m so excited to actually be able to devote some time today to getting the house back in order (and maybe doing a project) after two weeks of ignoring it all.  Up on deck for today is cleaning out our garage and I’m actually excited for it!

I keep thinking about that Shel Silverstein poem called “Saturday”: “What? What’s that you say?  You say today is Saturday?  Goodbye, I’m going out to play!”

Happy Mother’s Day – My Birth Story

I’m participating in a project called Mommy’s Piggy Tales where I’ll be writing stories about my childhood once a week for 15 weeks, starting with birth and ending with graduation in the hopes that my children, and possibly my children’s children, will one day appreciate it.

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My mom’s first Mother’s Day was a doozy!  It was the day I was born. 

 

My parents were sitting at home, watching a show about earthquakes when my mom realized she was in labor.  After a brief discussion, they decided to finish watching the show before they went to the hospital.  (As a child, I always wondered how they could have been so calm – I thought you were supposed to rush to the hospital, running red lights as you went – but now I understand that labor can take a while, so there wasn’t necessarily a need to rush.)

 

When the show was over and my parents knew all they needed to know about earthquakes, they proceeded to the hospital.  As they were walking up to the door of the hospital, they passed a homeless man in a, possibly, inebriated state.  “Haaapppy Mother’s Day!” he cried joyously to my mom, waving his arm in the air like a windmill.  (My mom’s re-enactment of this is quite good.)

 

When I was born, expectant fathers still waited in the waiting room for news of their new child.  As my father waited, he watched Ben Hur.  Apparently, it’s an even longer movie when you’re waiting to become a daddy, although my dad was actually pretty lucky because my mom was in labor (at least at the hospital) for only about 4 hours.  So, he didn’t have too long to wait.

 

My first name has been my name since well before I was born: my dad says he knew what he wanted to name a daughter since he was a teenager.  The first time he was allowed to see me, though, it wasn’t my name that popped into his head, but <a common name for men in another country>.  He didn’t know why he thought of that name, but that name became his nickname for me from then on.  It has gotten me some odd looks through the years, but I don’t mind a bit.

 

Since this was the days before ultrasounds, my parents didn’t know my gender, but my mom says she absolutely knew I’d be a girl.  Lucky for them, she was right because they had no boy’s name picked out.

 

They had a first name for me, but no middle name and they had no good ideas.  They really needed a list of potential names, but had no baby name books.  So they used the next best thing: the phone book.  They looked up “Johnson” because it’s a common last name and would likely have a lot of possibilities and read through the list until they found a name they liked.  So, somewhere out there is a <My Middle Name> Johnson whom I’m named after. Thanks to her!

 

My question now is: when you’re born on Mother’s Day, how do you top that the next year?

Setting the Bar High

I’ve been away from the computer for the last two weeks; getting ready for camping and hanging with visiting family.  My family is still here, but I just wanted to pop in to say THANK YOU to all of you who’ve left such sweet comments about our coffee table planter. 

The response to this particular project has just floored me!  It’s been featured on several different blogs, including The Shabby Nest and Blue Cricket Design.  I even made the Top 10 at The CSI Project!  Now I fear I’ll never be able to top that and perhaps I should just stop blogging now!

Well, I do need to continue posting because I’ve joined a project called Mommy’s Piggy Tales where I’ll be writing about my childhood for ten weeks.  Tomorrow’s assignment is to write about our birth and how we got our name.  I’m excited to write that post because those two events are stories that I hear all the time.  At least this week will be easy!

So, thanks again to you all and see you tomorrow!