May 1, 2007
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The Memory of a Clean Floor
According to The Writer’s Almanac: “Today is May Day, a day on which you should wash
your face with morning dew to keep yourself looking young and beautiful. You
should also gather wildflowers and green branches, make some floral garlands,
and set up a Maypole to dance around.” Woo! Let’s go! Perhaps we could stomp some dandelions to death along the way!
I finally know what those gold stars are for at the top of the comment section. Apparently, there is now some sort of Xanga “Academy Awards” going on. You could check it out, but beware that some of the pictures in entries are objectionable.
Today, I am a cleaning nut. The house was actually looking dirty–not cluttered and messy–but dirty. Ewww! So, I’ve pulled out the rug scrubber, have seriously mopped the floors (not just the usual “lick and a promise”), and have a big list of other things to do. Of course this day of sanitizing has coincided with a day where I actually have a lot to do on the computer for homeschool–typing of quizzes, questions, portfolio end-of-year reviews, and so on. I think I shall ignore the computer things, scrub all day, and head off to Gockle’s baseball game with a lighter heart and a buzz from Mr. Clean.
Memof6 asked me about childhood memories. In general, I’m a poor rememberer. Most of my memories come from photographs. Here’s one memory that isn’t. Once time when I was a wee-ish thing, I took the hand mirror from the bathroom one overcast Sunday afternoon and walked around the house, the mirror pointed to the ceiling. I kept my eyes on the mirror and felt like I had to take giant steps to clear the hanging lamps or the doorways.
What about you? Do you have lots of memories from when you were a little thing? What’s something you look back upon with interest?
Comments (25)
What a fun memory. A child’s eyes see life in a simpler way – such fun. One memory from my childhood is taking a book to read and climbing a tree that was near our outhouse to sit and read. I would stay there until someone would come looking for me. (must not have been too many smells from the outhouse either!)
Have a blessed day.
edith
ryc: lol 12:30 a.m.? yikes! does “to kill a mockingbird” take on new meaning?
i am blessed with many memories from early childhood. i attribute it to having moved so much, so the memories did not blend in with others–they were all in different houses! lol The earliest clear memories are actually from before the age of two! i remember my mom being pregnant with my sister because we had a watermelon patch at our farm house and i remember looking at the watermelon (i can still see my feet clad in white sandals beside it) and then looking up at my mom’s very large belly, while she and my dad were talking. i wonder if i noticed a similarity.???
My great grandma used to talk about May Day and the maypole thing where they all wore fancy dresses and danced around the Maypole. The rest of this comment is devoted to dandelions – My daughter (Fancy red) would be very sad to hear about stomping dandelions. When we picked up our camper yesterday she was ecstatically running through their HUGE yard picking the yellow buds. Then she fell asleep on the way home clutching the fistfull. They revived somewhat upon being put in water and are gracing our kitchen windowsill. She also is trying to make dandelion tea after her father mentioned this was possible. Being the sweet caring mother that I am (cough cough) I suggested we put her bowl of watersoaked dandelion leaves on the deck to make sun tea. One of my earliest memories is my great grandma (mentioned above) going out into the yard with her bowl and little paring knife to pick dandelion leaves for supper. I don’t make it very often but still have her recipe that uses that tangy sweetish/sour sauce.
I’ve also asked for help from non store employees a time or two but didn’t usually get that gruff a response.
Ugh, cleaning. I need to do more around here. Actually my house is fairly clean, but a lot of work goes into keeping it that way.
As for the piano, Annie want to paint it red and I want to add stencils to the finished product. It’s going to take a while to get there though. I think the thing that’s bothering me the most, cosmetically, are the wooden blocks that had to be inserted on the bottom to make it stand correctly because someone who will remain nameless removed the legs and the base support. Go figure!
God bless you Mary!
cynthia
One time when I was 6 or 7 my grandpa was babysitting us kids, we convienced him to let us dress him up as a girl. Hairbows, eyeshadow, lipstick, nail polish…the works. When we picked out a dress for him he drew the line; I don’t know if that’s because it would never fit or it was too far for even him to go. None the less I still remember how much fun we had that night!
Ah, yes, today is May Day! The day thousands of commies take to the streets and lament the fact that we aren’t all equally dirt poor. I’m surprised Chavez of Venezuela is willing to take the chance of letting all those people march in the streets. Things aren’t going so well these days in the worker’s paradise.
Ugh, cleaning. One of the worst things about it is that you just have to do it all over again way too soon. You should employ one of my favorite cleaning tips – stay in your pj’s all day, so that if anyone comes to the house and sees it dirty, you can tell them you’ve been sick. Don’t bother to thank me.
Memories? I do remember my dad taking me to a Howard Johnson’s for ice cream. (Yes, most of you are too young to remember HJ ice cream stores.) I had the man tell me all the 32 flavors and then ordered vanilla. My dad never let me forget that one.
My earliest memories from age four and under are rather violent, generally involving running, being carried rapidly hither and thither, recieving my earliest martial arts training from my older brother, fighting with cardboard weapons, finding a piece of chewed bubblegum on the sidewalk and taking it for someone’s discarded tongue, destroying Lego bunkers with Lego ballistic missles and sniping the survivors as they crawled away from the wreckage, and throwing wooden blocks at the space in which I presumed Satan to be standing (after hearing the famous story about Luther, which was when I was around six).
Actually, the earliest thing I can remember was my younger sister’s birth (when I was two), but it is a very vague memory.
Doesn’t it feel wonderful to get the house scrubbed from pillar to post? I love that feeling….of course, I’ve only experienced it a time or two (LOL)….but what a great memory it is!!!
I hope you get your dandelions under control. Your hardware story was funny.
I did a real grocery store blunder yesterday….I was in such a hurry that I walked into our little neighborhood market, got what I needed and proceeded out the door. When the lady stopped me, HONESTLY, I thought, “Oh, she’s probably asking if I want a bag.” (WHAT A DORK AM I??) I was so humiliated and started giggling obnoxiously due to embarrassment. I still can’t believe that I would gather my “loot” and head out the door…WITHOUT THINKING. The nice old man that held the door open for me was laughing. He was actually proud of himself, he said, “I can go home and tell my wife I’m a suspect in a crime!” (ha-ha.)
At any rate- I enjoyed your post!
-Cass
What have you got against Dandelions? I’m feeling a little persecuted here. (hahahahahaha)
Last year I had a beautiful bed of pansies my husband had planted for me. We live in the country, on a dirt road, which means we are prime candidates for unwanted pet drop offs. Someone dropped off 2 lab puppies and they chose my pansy bed for their bed/playpen. aaaarrrrrgggggggg.
And as for cleaning; I admit defeat. Dirt roads, cow pen and construction working husband and step son. DEFEAT!
My best memories are when I was young. I have the best parents, sisters, family in the world. Brother came too late; I was a teenager by the time he showed up. He isn’t in my childhood memories.
We went around the house looking down into a hand mirror too. I remember going to my granny’s house, and she always had a little arrangement that was seasonal on her record cabinet. She took ceramics and china painting, and had very pretty figurines of birds and things, that she would arrange around a piece of driftwood sometimes on top of a little mirror. For Christmas she had a caroler set she had painted set on the fiberglass snow next to the mirror which was now an ice rink.
Mr. Clean must be an interesting way to get your kicks. I’ll have to try that. My vague childhood memories consist mostly of me seeking to emulate adults, playing with construction vehicles, pretending I was a stormtrooper, etcetera.
I have TRIED all day to get into the cleaning spirit! I have only accomplished two rooms. Maybe I’ll get some drive after dinner.
I have lots of fond memories. I used to love to sit in my Dad’s lap and make him tell the story of the day each one of my siblings and I were born. On a naughty note, I ate my parents sugar wedding bells that they had saved from their wedding cake top. Yikes on many levels!
I wish I felt like cleaning. Cold, cold, go away, DON’T come again another day…
Childhood memories: We lived in many different houses as I was growing up. One had polished wood floors and an uncarpeted stairway. I remember sliding down the steps on my behind–for fun!–and then skating on the floor in socks. (I don’t remember a lot of furniture in there–so possibly we had just moved in.)
I am so jealous that you get to clean your house!!! I am still not supposed to be cleaning mine at all. I do clean up the kitchen, bathrooms, and our living/dining/office room. This is really getting old. And to boot, as soon as they say we can do something (ANYTHING!!!), the contractor will start and that will be a hopeless battle to clean until he is done. Isn’t life grand!
Childhood memories…here’s one you can relate to! We lived for one year in New Orleans when I was 8. Back in those days….(cue the nostalgia music)…kids were allowed to pretty much roam the streets. The public library was right next to my school/our church. I regularly walked there all by myself and came home with as many books as I could carry.
I do get maniac cleaning modes from time to time. So you aren’t the only one..
Looking back when I was little makes me teary up.. Times was so much simplier.. I should have taken my mom’s advice when I was growing up.. She would say.. Don’t try to grow up too fast.. Be a kid for once.. Cuz you can’t go back to being a kid anymore..
Now we are in adult life.. Cherish those kiddies memories are more precious than ever before..
I have a lot of childhood memories from like my kids age, but I do have a handfull of really early ones from my toddler years. I used to have reoccurring dreams about a house made of mirrors and would often think of 2 little dogs who seemed so real to me. This happened from as early as I can remember. Then, when I was about 12, I saw some dear relatives who, due to divorce, I had not seen since I was a very small child. It turned out that the house I had been dreaming about all of those years was their mirror lined living room, I even remembered where the furniture had been the dozen years before. And the dogs, only one of which was still alive, were their dogs.
I need to scrub floors. I have muddy floors throughout the house. But then I think, “Why bother? They’ll just get muddy again in a few minutes!” Shame on me!
My earliest memory is waiting on my swingset waiting for my cousin to come play with me, but he wasn’t home. (He lived next door.)
An interesting memory– one that has puzzled me to this day– is of waking up on my 5th birthday remembering that I had just celebrated my 4th birthday THE DAY BEFORE. Maybe I dreamt it? I don’t know, but I do not remember a thing from when I was 4 years old.
I just read your comment on Katia’s post about the mockingbird. The one we had (that she now has) often sang in the middle of the night! I loved to wake up & just listen as I dozed back to sleep in the wee hours of the morning.
When I was little my cousin and I were afraid of burglars. Every morning she stayed at my grandparent’s house, we would look out the window and point out all the things that had moved, or that we imagined had moved. Then we got some Snow White make-up kits for Christmas, and we smeared the lipstick on our stomachs for fake blood and lied on the livingroom floor with our stomachs exposed pretending to be dead so the burglar wouldn’t hurt us. I recall that memory vividly.
I have a bunch of “snapshot” vivid memories from childhood, with nothing in between.
Photographs are so wonderful… I’m glad my parents took photos of us kids when we were young… it’s hilarious to look back through, these days…
My summer job, in New Mexico. I’m leaving now because I’m homeschooled and I can
. I’ll be gone till august.
Oh, you creative little girl, you!! I have a vague memory of something similar to your mirror thing (great minds, you know!). Let’s see….. memory, memory, who’s got my memory!! ha! ha!
O.k., I do remember trying very hard not to step on cracks so I wouldn’t break my momma’s back. It was one of the hardest habits to break, even as I got older! And, we had this big tree (to me it was big) in the corner of the back yard that had a bit of a canopy (it was probably just a large bush without a lot of low branches) and I would take my “dollies” there with all their blankets and set up beds on the cinderblocks I found lieing around and on the bumpy roots that stuck out. I must have been pretty young, because, I don’t remember much about that tree in elementary school….. I think it was chopped down by then. Who knows….. maybe it was in a neighbor’s yard?
Glad you got so much cleaning done. I only wish you could have spent all your energy more profitably……. for example: by cleaning MY house!!!! ha! ha! Whew! With 5 days of being sick, our house is trashed!! It was already getting bad, but, this really put it over the top! Ah, well, nothing that can’t be righted in a couple good days of crackin’ the whip!! ;P
Gotta go be with my MAN!! He just got done painting our front door & needs me to tell him he did a good job! Have a great evening….. I might make it back tonight. Had any good c.c. cookies lately?
Aw, shoot! I missed washing my face in the morning dew on May Day, so I suppose I’ll get old and ugly now. Oh, well, at least it’s a excuse–I didn’t know!
Cleaning…no comment.
Childhood memories–I used to lie hanging head down from the couch (with feet up over the back) and pretend that I was walking around an upside-down house. Somehow I really loved it that way, maybe because all the “floors” were so nice and empty, with lots of room to run. You had to step WAY up to get over the doorways, but it was cool. (I was delighted as an adult to find that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle actually lived in a house like that, and they roasted hot dogs over the living room chandelier.
)I never thought of the mirror thing, and now I’m tempted to try it! 
I also had many houses with lots of imaginary people living in them all through the barn and woods. I once built a model of the Great Lakes (extremely inaccurate, but I was happy with it) in a mud puddle by moving gravel around and digging waterways. Luckily it was on the little-used lane back to the woods, so it stayed there for a long time. I also did a lot of acrobatics in the hayloft–too bad there was no one to see those grand performances! And I climbed trees–one of ours had six “floors” although I was usually scared to go up to the top floor. Thanks for getting me started on the memories–it’s fun!