Love and Rockets

Love and Rockets

When the brainy and beautiful Little Squirt actually was a little squirt she provided the family with endless hours of  joy and entertainment.  The summer she before she turned four, the Love and Rockets song, So Alive  was pretty popular.  Samantha (a/k/a Little Squirt) had (and actually still does have) the loveliest long, shiny brown hair.  

One afternoon we were all at the family shore house in Wildwood, New Jersey.  My brother was sitting in the living room, in our grandfather's chair with little Sammy on his lap.  He was combing her long hair with his fingers and sang the first line of the song to her, "I don't know what color your eyes are baby, but your hair is long and brown..."  

Samantha put her little hands on her three year old hips, twisted to look at him and said, "Chip, my eyes are hazel!"

I hope you've enjoyed today's anecdote, with it's bonus 1989 music video and original artwork, which looks a little creepy, even to me, the artist!

Toast Girl

Toast Girl

As soon as my freshman year of college ended, I raced for the family house in Wildwood, New Jersey.  The plan was to work and save up as much money as possible to pay my rent and get me through the next school year.  However, it looked like my plans were going to be derailed when I got strep throat and spent two weeks sick in bed.  

As soon as I recovered and could go back to work, I needed to find a way to make up for lost time and went in search of a second job.  I found one at a beloved restaurant/arcade/miniature golf course, as a brunch/lunch hostess.  On my first day of work, I showed up bright and early and reported for duty.  But, hostessing was not in the cards for me that day. Instead, I was informed that the "toast girl" was out and I would need to fill in for her.  

The toast girl's duties were just what you'd expect.  The meal orders came in and I was to pop the necessary breads/bagels/muffins into the toaster. When they came out, I ran them over the melty butter machine and popped them on plates to go out to the diners.  I headed into the kitchen, was shown my station, given the basics of the job and set to work.

Not only was this my first day as toast girl, it was also my first day working in this particular establishment.  I knew no one.  Every single person who entered the kitchen, said the exact same thing to me, "Where's Megan?"  It turned out that Megan was the absent toast girl, but I had no answer for that particular question.  The restaurant was always busy, I didn't know who Megan was, that she was the toast girl, or even who any of the people asking the question were, for that matter.  I was concentrating on the incoming orders, and that bread just kept piling up on the little tray thingy at the bottom of the big toasting machine.  A few hours later my shift ended, I was assured that I'd begin hostessing the next day and was thoroughly glad to be escaping the dreaded question. 

My cousin AM lived (actually, she still has a house there), right around the corner and I decided to stop over before I walked home to say hello to AM.  I turned the corner and headed down Leaming Avenue.  As I got closer, I noticed AM's mom, my Aunt Angie and stopped to say hi. She asked about my first day at work and I told her that I wouldn't be starting as hostess until the next day and that I spent my first day on the job as the toast girl. Can you guess what she said immediately, in response? Oh, you know you can.

"WHERE WAS MEGAN?"

I Smell Birthday Cake

I Smell Birthday Cake

Before I start with today's tale, I just wanted to bring  to the attention of any reader, who may stumble across my little corner of the internets, that I am providing my own artwork to illustrate my anecdotes.  As can plainly be seen, not only am I not remotely an artist, but I am using a kiddie draw and color app on my nook tablet and a stylus, which is a pen with a cushy fingertip like rubbery doohickey on the end, to create my masterpieces.  I figure they will either get much better, or much worse as I go along.  Heaven help us all. And now, back to the regularly scheduled tale.

It was Christmas Eve, 1999.  My nephew Zack was 5 months old and my niece Carly was a month away from turning 3.  With a huge extended family and many many people to see and commitments to keep, ours was always a very chaotic celebratory schedule.  This particular year, my brother and sister-in-law's first in that home, was actually fairly tame.  We'd exchanged gifts and baby Zack had been put to bed and the rest of us were getting ready to head home.  Amy (sis-in-law) sent Miss Carly upstairs to put on her jammies.  While she was upstairs, Amy blew out one of those jumbo Yankee Candles  that she had burning on the island in the kitchen.  

I guess I should point out that the house had a very open floor plan, the first floor was a great room with vaulted ceiling on one side (living room, dining room, family room) and kitchen and hall to foyer on the other. The only thing breaking up line of sight was the staircase. It was a half flight of stairs with a large landing and then a turn with a second half flight of stairs to the second floor.  At the top of the stairs all of the bedroom doors were visible from the first floor.  Carly came out of her room in her little yellow blanket sleeper, ready to come down and say good night, when she stopped at the top of the stairs, sniffing at the air.  

"I smell birthday cake!" she announced loudly in her tiny baby girl voice.   

As we put on our coats and headed to pack up our cars with our gifts before heading home, there was little Carly, yelling for us to come back.  "But we didn't have cake yet."  It's true, the smell of a blown out candle should signal the cutting of a birthday cake, at least in the mind of an almost 3 year old.   How aptly that she had that thought just then.  Technically, we were there to celebrate a birthday.  We just don't usually serve a traditional birthday cake for Jesus.

Macaroni Messages

Macaroni Messages.... or not.

This weekend we celebrated my Mickey's nieces' birthdays.   The two girls, although 7 years apart in age, are only a week or so separated by birth date.  So, the family celebrates them together.  Mickey's sister Christine made a lot of seafood and spaghetti and clams. Considering that the little kids tend to prefer their spaghetti with butter, that was on the menu as well.

 Little Caroline had a bowl of buttered 'ronis and  a spoon and was enjoying her dinner.  At about the halfway point through her dish, she stopped and pointed out to me that on the side of the bowl some of the cut up spaghetti had formed what looked like the letters "C", "R" and "O".  I told her that I thought her macaroni was trying to tell her something. At first she was wracking her little four year old brain for answers. Her grandmother and I looked at the macaroni message and noticed that the letters formed part of her name, even in the right order.

Caroline took her spoon, stirred up all the spaghetti, including the "letters" on the side of the bowl and made sure they were completely erased and that the pasta was once again in random patterns in her bowl.  Then, she looked up at me and said, "It's not saying anything now."