Well, I've had way too much time alone lately and when my mind is idle it starts to wander. Lately, I've been taking trips down memory lane. My memory isn't really much of a steel trap or anything, it's more of a mushy, swirling vortex of thought-snippets. 
I guess we could start with my Raggedy Anne and Andy lamp that was in the room I shared with my sister when I was very young. Apparently, I was fascinated with the light bulb and the fact that you could just push the little black plastic lever and *click* it was on and *click* the light went out. One evening, I decided that it would be interesting to find out what would happen if I unscrewed the light-bulb and light up a penny instead. So, I carefully removed the light-bulb, put the penny in where the light-bulb should have been and held it there because it wasn't a perfect fit. A quick flip of the switch and you can guess what happened. A little shock-aroo for yours truly.
I should give a little back story here: I grew up in the middle of nowhere. My dad worked, a LOT, but didn't bring home much money. He had bought a shack on 11 acres a bit before I was born and had been building a house in it's place. My dad isn't an architect. He's very handy, creative, and intelligent however, and after 15 years and a little help here and there, we had a beautiful home. Ok, backing up again... my mother stayed at home with the kids: me, my older half-brother who left to live with his father when I was 9, and my sister who's over 3 years my junior. For some of those years, my Great-Grandma Ruby lived on our property in a trailer, she's my mother's father's mother. She had a candy dish and often gave us ice cream cones when my sister and I visited her. Rainbow Sherbet was the usual flavor and she always had a hard candy that I know as "Sourballs" in the candy dish. We had a variety of pets over the years: Sheba and Shamus, a mother-son doggie Australian Sheperd/mutt duo; Nicky, another mutt who was obsessed with barking and digging, we eventually gave her to one of my uncles, Champagne, a fat, mean cat that Grandma Ruby started feeding so he'd come live with her; Maximillion, a fat orange cat that we got when my sister was about 4, he was a really nice, laid-back cat, we'd put him in doll clothes and pose him for pictures and he never seemed to mind; Julee, a grumpy, grey barn cat that I got for free from an ad in the local newspaper; a gorgeous, silky, chocolate brown cat named "M" and her 4 kittens who were discovered in my dad's shop, he took a liking to M (and named her) but said we had to get rid of her kittens when they were ready, we gave them away at a swap meet and I don't think that M forgave us and disappeared shortly after, she was nice to people but hated the other animals anyway; at different times we had Hooshka and then Kooshka, Alaskan Malamutes, the first one my mom found at the grocery store on Christmas eve, my mom would never pick up and take home a stray animal either, by the way, anyhow the dog was smart and a sweetheart but maybe overly-friendly, he got loose one day and went to play with our neighbor's pet ram, yes, a pet RAM, and got butted through their fence, the replacement dog wasn't as smart and was quite lazy but still a nice dog, he was purebred and though my dad bought him for my mom I ended up taking care of him with feeding and grooming and such. At some point, we got a used above-ground pool that my dad rigged in order for it to be in-ground (at least partially in-ground, anyway), by using his back hoe and digging a huge hole, filling the bottom with sand, etc. He also built a nice deck attached to the pool. We had bicycles, hula hoops, roller skates, jump ropes, pogo balls, etc to play with. I enjoyed building "obstacle courses" with these materials and was quite bossy to my sister about how things should go.
As I mentioned, my brother left home when I was 9. I don't really remember much about him except that he was tall, thin, and didn't like me much. I recall "indian rug-burns" on my arms, a lot of yelling between him and my parents, not being allowed in his room, pine cone fights, falling off the back of the motorcycle he was steering, him being upset that I could climb our rope swing like a little monkey and he couldn't make it all the way up. We had this toy van that you would normally operate yourself by sitting on it and pushing with your feet. One day, he started pushing me while I was steering around the house, eventually we got to the kitchen with the slick tile floors, he pushed, I steered, I slid straight into the edge of the kitchen table with my forehead. I still have a scar where I received 6 stitches from that incident. I remember that he would go in his room and listen to what my mom considered to be "devil music". I think it was the Scorpions or Def Leppard or something equally hardcore (haha) though he may have been dabbling with some Ozzy at that time as well. This is hearsay but from what I gather, he got into the wrong crowd at school and was smoking cigarettes and stole some money from Grandma Ruby so he was shipped off to Portland to live with his dad and step-mom. I guess things went better for him there. After he was gone, I got his bedroom so my sister and I didn't have to share a room and our bunk-beds anymore. My mom even let me pick out wallpaper. Keep in mind that I was 9... I picked out teddy bears holding primary colored balloons on a shiny white background. I didn't realize at the time that she wouldn't let me take the wallpaper down until we were getting ready to move and I was 15 years old. I also got to have carpet- baby blue berber from the remnant store, a big move up from the linoleum that was in the shared room!
As previously mentioned, I grew up in the middle of nowhere. I wasn't good at making friends. I didn't have cool clothes, I had a string of horrendously bad haircuts, I finally got braces that eventually helped my teeth but had a huge mouthful of metal for quite some time, my mother didn't allow me to do any sports and I wasn't overly athletic anyway, and she didn't encourage me to have friends over or drive me to friends' houses so I spent most of my time hanging out with my sister, when she could stand me, or being alone. Summer breaks were often excruciating for me. I read a lot of books, played outside when I was able, played the piano, and did chores. I had to invent my own fun. We got most of our clothes from thrift stores, which wouldn't bother me now but was terribly embarrassing at the time. One of our only nearby relatives, my great aunt, El, would often come with us for these thrift shopping trips. El was such a dear person to me. She always called me her friend and was genuinely delighted by my presence in general, which was a rarity for me. I recall her body being shaped strangely, she was short, probably 4'11" or so, and very round but she had thin, spindly legs. She was also short on cash, her and my uncle lived on whatever social security was giving them and wasn't allowed to spend anything extra. When we got birthday cards from her, she'd include a stick of gum and like a 5 dollar bill in it. We weren't allowed to mention the money so we'd have to write back a thank you letter for the stick of gum only. She had a cookie jar that was shaped like a baby brown bear licking it's lips. The cookies were usually the ones that are chocolate flavored on one side and vanilla on the other with icing in between and a hole that went through the middle. She often dyed her hair in various shades of honey-blonde to light brown. One time though, her hair ended up being purple. Guess who clued her in. Me. She actually thanked me for it because she couldn't tell and figured if I hadn't said anything, everyone would've been laughing behind her back. She wrote me letters here and there when I went off to college and eventually moved to the east coast, I was awful at replying. I still have the last birthday card she sent somewhere and it still chokes me up. She died a couple years back, I found out via a voicemail left by my mom. Who does that?! "Hi honey. Sad news. Aunt El died. Call me!" Ugh.
Yikes, I've spent a couple hours writing this and should be cleaning the kitchen and stuff so I'll try to write more later. I hope that I'll keep up with this, though its doubtful. I know how I am :)
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