Garden of Thought

I broke down and got a box of cherry turnovers from the day-old rack at the supermarket bakery and as my son and I were sharing this loot I commented how I always love cherry turnovers and cherry pie.  He asked why and I realized it's partly because I miss George Washington.

When I was a kid George Washington's Birthday was still its own holiday, not this "Presidents Day" thing we have now.  It came in February and the classes in school learned about him and the apocryphal tale of his chopping down the cherry tree and not telling a lie when his father asked him about it  - probably because much of the theme of this holiday was about teaching children about being honest as much as it was about history.  We had cherry pie and cherry turnovers and cookies shaped like little hatchets, made fake "powdered wigs" out of curled white construction paper and decorated with red, white and blue crepe paper.  He was the Father of Our Country and we were happy and proud about it.

I'd love to see George Washington's Birthday come back as a holiday again, it was a good one, honesty never goes out of style - a shame to have it fade away. 

Our furnace has been out since last week, which worked for a bit because it was thankfully nice and sunny during some of the days but it's getting to where our space heaters aren't quite keeping up.  Should be fixed by tomorrow, guess I'll haul in some firewood and use the fireplace after all - it's so messy I was trying to avoid it. Still, beats building a fire in the middle of the room!

Reminds me of I was a kid and one of the rentals we moved into had this huge burn spot in the middle of the wooden living room floor where some hippies had broken in and made themselves a comfy campfire.  My mom covered it up with a rug. The baseboard heat was wimpy enough she would sometimes bake something in the oven just to warm us up, so maybe the hippies had the right idea.

Digging around a thrift shop, I found a copy of the original "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" story that the movie was based off of and knowing how books become movies that may be something entirely different, had to take it home to read of course!  As expected, the faint resemblances between the story and the movie must have had its fans up in arms when the show came out. 

Had to roll my eyes at the predictable removal of the mother of the family, Mimsie Pott, poor dear was killed off in favor of the widower-romance thing apparently.  Truly seems to be an invention, though he did invent the toot-sweets and successfully sell them to Lord Scrumptious.   Also noted that Caractacus has been split into two people in the show with the invention of his father to cover his Naval Commander part... I'm halfway through the book and most of it has been discovering and blowing up a hidden arsenal of weapons a bank robber was keeping in a cave.  Don't remember that in the movie!  Would have been good.

Aside from all that, I rather like Chitty herself, cheeky thing flashing "Push, Idiot!" at them when they aren't quick enough to hit an unknown lever (and thus discover her wings) - she merely wanted out of a traffic jam, who wouldn't?

Hm.

Where the heck did 2013 go?  It kind of rated somewhere down under the donkey-glop and other compostable nouns as years go, so I can't say I'll miss it much but at the same time part of me is still mildly surprised that I'm living so far in the future from my childhood that it is going to be blinkin' 2014 and I'm not only alive, I'm surprisingly functional.  As the wags like to say "Where's my flying car?" - why aren't we all living off nothing but little blue vitamin cubes or at least getting to clear the dinner table by pushing a button to smash all the recyclable dishes like Jane Jetson got to?

One mild goal for the new year is to start communicating with people who don't happen to live in my own house a little better, i.e. occasionally posting something online that is more than a heart at Tumblr.  Somehow I drifted away - I can't even say why, but my online time was smaller and so it became 'deal w Etsy shop, deal w email, check weather, check news' and if I had a few minutes to play, I tumbld.  Tumblr has the distinct advantage of being quick ('click heart. Done.') and easy to do with almost no meaningful connection or conversation with anyone else.  This can be good for brainless stress-release time and is an improvement over spending an hour clicking a rock on Runescape but still... somehow I've allowed myself to become too isolated.  Peaceful, but isolated.

So here I am.  I hope everyone is well, I fear I am far, far out of date on the daily lives of many dear people.  I'll pick up here and there, at least that's the intent.

*mwah*
Happy New Year.

Thanks to tree-and-leaf, I've now spent the past half hour playing around with a meme, but I can rationalize that I haven't done any memes for long enough I'm surely overdue.  Besides, it made for some fun memories.

Here we go..

Embolden the ones you did before you were 11 ¾ (as far as you can remember!)
Italicise the ones you have done since then.
 

( I've done more of these than I expected )

 

A friend who likes to forward things to my email sent me one of those "remember when the world was better?" collections of nostalgic pictures, products and events with the indication that those were the Good Old Days and wasn't it lovely to remember when the World was Nicer.

Sorry. I don't remember Roy Rogers, Trigger or girls having to wear gym outfits like that... I don't remember old radio shows, neighborhoods packed with kids so there was always someone to play with or Davy Crockett hats. I know of these things - but because I had them second-hand, or re-run.

I do wonder if anyone has ever made up one of these for those of us who grew up in the 70s-80s and whose childhood had Monty Python, macrame, Stretch Armstrong, latchkey kids, Get Smart, Bonanza, 8-track tapes, scratch-and-sniff stickers, disco balls, bell-bottoms, super hairy men wearing lots of bling, feathered hair and the Bicentennial?

We've always had to live in the shadow of the Boomers. All my life the theme has been "oh, we used to have (fill in cool thing) but it was canceled last year." "Oh, you should have seen (cool thing) a couple years ago, it was great."

I can't decide if I'm weary of being left out of the Nostalgia Racket that companies are forever pushing on the Boomers, or if I'm grateful. It might be rather awful to have your childhood experiences on permanent replay for your entire life instead of being left to nurse your own little nostalgic bubbles on your own.

Anyone else for the 70s or 80s? Skip the wax coke-bottles and pass the pop-rocks!