Nanny's house in Connecticut

I am bored on a bus in Peru right now...massive traffic jam on the way to Puno, allegedly caused by some race cars...so I guess I'll get lost in some memories.

Nanny lived in the States until after Grampa Les died. Her house was two levels with a dark wood paneled stair case. One of those kinds that goes a couple steps up, has a landing where you turn and continues the rest of the way up along the wall. As a child I was quite convinced that there was a secret door just a step or two above that landing that led to a different world. That world looked suspiciously like Fraggle Rock, now that I think of it.

JJ lived next door with his grandparents. We liked going to visit Nanny so we could play with JJ. He had this triangle red bum scooter that you sat on and wiggled and it would ride up and down the driveway. Mom and dad bought us each one when we got back to Canada.

There was a beach close by where we found these long tubular sea shells. Nanny said the seagulls smash them open on rocks and eat the slug inside. Dad used his cigar to smoke one out to show us. I remember that it smelled and I felt bad when they chucked it onto the water and a gull grabbed it. Seemed to me that it was doing just fine until we came along.

Then mom told us about how when she was a little girl, she was at the beach in England playing with her favourite doll, throwing it into the air and catching it. A seagull swooped by and snatched it out of the air and flew away with it. They chased it as far as they could but weren't able to recover her doll. I recall that story breaking my heart.

A blog of frogs

I had a host of frogs throughout my childhood. Here are the stories of some of them:

Chuckie, or perhaps it was Ernie: I found Chuckie the toad while biking one day. There were some boys at a playground throwing rocks at him, trying to kill him. I went over there to save him, but I don't remember if there was an altercation of sorts or if the little assholes took off when I approached (they were younger than me), but I collected him and road home one handed. He ended up having a nice set up in the aquarium below the fish. It must have been a terrifying day for that poor guy, first a stoning, then strangulation on a bike, and finally forcible confinement. I tried to make up for it by supplying all the crickets he could eat, but I eventually returned him to wense he came.

Ernie, or perhaps Chuckie: this toad I just found and tried to relocate in my backyard. He likely wasn't impressed as I don't believe I saw him again.

Mr Ed: he existed.  That's all I remember of his life tail.  (<-- that's a pun, not a spelling mistake) (Yes, I know that toads don't have tails, but they did as tadpoles, so my pun is still correct)

Prince: my tiniest toad was a firebelly given to my as a Bday gift from Chris o'flarity. He required a very tropical and warm tank, which I painstakingly outfitted for him. Alas, he too made a break for his original habitat (which was a great deal further away in the tropics somewhere) and his blackened dehydrated body under the bookshelf was found months later.

I had too many frogs to remember their names...or perhaps they didn't hold the same fascination for me.  I know there was at least one "Kermit" in there, so lets assume they were all named Kermit.

Sarah, myself, and possibly a Kermit

Kermit 1 and 2: abducted from the pipe under the foot of my grandma's driveway in St George. These two unwilling buggers were sequestered in my first turtle home (plastic circle, small bridge and palm tree with a lid). Before running out to play one afternoon back in Brampton, I kindly thought they'd like some fresh air and sun so I put them out on the deck to enjoy the afternoon.
Later my mom found their boiled bodies floating in the little turtle river. That is when I learned about the greenhouse effect.

The Albino Kermit's: bought from Big Al's pet store, I decided to bring the ugly little creatures to school. That's where they died.  I think from starvation because I never really figured out how to feed them.

Kermit 3 and 4: when we dug a fish pond for our backyard I really wanted frogs to live there too. Apparently they didn't agree because they , like all the others, left. I was beginning to sense a pattern about the strength of amphibians internal homing devises.

Smiley: Smiley was a lime green tree frog. The kind that needs plants, water, heat lamps, and a very controlled environment. Read: this guy was going no where! He was super cute and very shiny, very enjoyable to look at and poke. But that was the extent of his attraction. He did nothing. Hung glued to the side of the aquarium. Blinked for pleasure.
I later brought him back to the pet store for credit towards my iguana.

More on that another day.

Operator

My nanny was babysitting us while my parents were on vacation and Trevor and I were watching tv in their room. For whatever reason he dared me to call the operator, so not being one to back down from a dare (especially an easy lame one) I did. On the other end of the phone, it sounded like the operator said "hello creature", to which I replied "hello stupid" and hung up the phone. Silly me didn't consider that operators by the nature of their jobs have access to both phones and phone numbers, proven by the fact that she promptly called back. Instead of answering the phone and thwarting her attempt to yell at me, I chose instead to hide behind a chair. Of course my nanny answered the call. She apparently didn't care whether or not the operator had called me a creature...she was pissed.

It was poor timing for a dare as well, as my parents returned that night. Again, that chair was my refuge until dinner when I thought enough time had passed that nanny had forgotten about the call.

She didn't, and it became dinner table conversation.

Earliest Memories

Here are a few of my earliest memories, in no particular order or relation. That's what you're going to get from this blog...a spattering of nonsense that probably doesn't interest anyone but me. And potentially anyone I happen to write about. I'll try to keep the bitchy-teen-angst infused comments to a minimum this time.

We had just moved from Georgetown into our new Brampton house, which would have made me three. Our basement was unfinished, dark, and potentially full of monsters. Trevor, 6 at the time, was scared to go down there and as an act of defiance and bravery, I decided to upshow him and go down there, alone, in the dark. It was terrifying and I was pretty sure I was going to die, but well worth it in the end. This was probably the turning point in our relationship.

Again, basement story:

The neighbourhood kids were all in our basement, and as dumb kids do, we were running the circular path around the stairs for no particular reason. As I ran by, I accidentally knocked down a 2x4 into the path, but as the race was on, I didn't want to stop and pick it back up. In fact, I probably prided myself on a successful obstacle for the next runner to overcome. The next runner was unfortunately my toddler little sister, who stepped on the board and got a nail through her little shoe, into her little foot. I feel TERRIBLE!!!!!

That last story I held onto in shame until just last year, when I finally felt it was time to tell Sarah what I had done. She obviously didn't remember, as she was really young, but upon confirmation with our dad, he said that it didn't happen. Perhaps she just fell and there was no nail, or maybe there was a nail and she narrowly missed it...or maybe I dreamed the whole thing up. Don't know, but it's still a memory. So onto the blog it goes.

The day I got Blackie:

Mom had told me that I could get a kitten as soon as the fences were put up in our backyard. I was sitting in the kitchen looking out the patio doors, emphatically telling her that the fences were there, but I still didn't have a kitten. I was really angry about it and sulking my five-year-old face off.
Aunt Marg and likely Nanny opened our front door, as they came over every Wednesday for lunch. I was too sulky to go say hi, so I just sat slumped in the kitchen against the back wall. When I looked over, Aunt Marg was carrying a little black kitten and handed him to me. I vividly remember that moment, and how happy she looked to be able to give him to me. I felt nearly sick with guilt for being so angry at my mom.

Why is it that my earliest memories are charged by guilt?

Proof that I'm a thoughtless and unfeeling person:

When Grampa Les died, he and Nanny lived in Connecticut. Mom and Dad only took baby Sarah to the funeral with them and left Trevor and I with Aunt Caroline and Uncle Lambert for the weekend. I was probably about 4 if Sarah was a baby. It was the first time they'd been away from me, and it was over my birthday. I remember being very excited to spend a sleep over weekend with A Caroline and U Lambert, because they had a pinball machine in the basement and the little mushroom houses for their smurf figurines. Before Mom and Dad left us there, they gave me a birthday present to open. It was a girl-transformer, which transformed from a cat into a lipstick. It thrilled the shit out of me. Grampa Les, who?

Random, the day I became a "Big Girl":

One afternoon before I was old enough to go to school, I asked Mom to take me to the park. I decided to test her to see if she'd let me into the stroller and was really surprised when she let me. Feeling pretty pleased with my lazy ingenuity, I took the stroller ride congratulating myself the whole way. Until we passed my brother's friend Lindsay. She was 3 years older than me, and someone who I considered a "Big Girl". I was humiliated at being caught hitching a stroller ride, and never rode in one again.

Random, possibly the origin of my bathroom insecurities

More on the subject of Lindsay, she was an only child, had two cats, and super long hair. Though I wasn't aware of this word at the time, to me she seemed very bohemian. Once when all the kids were playing hide and seek, I thought she was going to go hide in the bathroom, so I followed her in there. She wasn't in there to hide, and didn't seem to mind taking a poo in front of me. Also very bohemian. She explained that when you got to go, you got to go, and once her mom didn't poo for a very long time and the doctor needed to sit his hand up her bum and take the poo out. I really wish I didn't know that story. When I went to high school and Lindsay was there, that story was all I could think about every time I ran into her, with her cropped green hair. Confirmed: Bohemian.

Short and Sweet...wallpaper:

My first room in the Brampton house had strawberry shortcake wallpaper. I was quite convinced that it was scratch and sniff, and used to sniff the different characters all the time. In fact, I remember giving it a lick, just to confirm whether it was also tasty wallpaper; it was just regular wallpaper flavour.

I haz a blog

Though I've never had one before, I'm pretty sure I started the whole blog movement when I used to let all my friends read my diary.  I have blotchy recollections of sitting on bunk beds at camp, having my diary passed around the girls so they could read my account of what we did that day.  Sometimes that got me in trouble...I never put it together that you cannot write bitchy-angsty-adolescent comments about your friends and then expect them to understand you were just in a bad mood that day when they read it later.  Mostly the diary pass-around was a way of looking for attention in an "aren't I clever", "don't I write well", "look at me, look at me, look at me" kind of way.

Like many people, I'm sure, joining the blog movement so many years after it ceased to be popular, I was inspired to do this while reading "The Happiness Project".  Which I thoroughly enjoyed (despite the shitty circumstances which led to me needing to read about how to be happy) although this is less a project of happiness and more of a way to document my memories rather than call attention to me in a "look at me, look at me, look at me", "aren't I clever", "don't I write well" kind of way.  I have a shitty memory and every now and then a spark of something will come  back at me and I try desperately to keep it filed at close hand.  But I never succeed in that.  Now that the internet and the good people at Apple have created the iCloud, everything I ever write or post will live on in eternity, long after my memory expires.

So here we are.  First post.  One thing I need to look into is WHO is reading this, HOW did they find it, and do I actually want them to read it?  I think I'd prefer to keep this to myself, except for the odd few friends that I want to look at me and think that I'm clever and a good writer.