A few reasons why life doesn't totally suck

[annathepiper]

mamishka sent me a Spike calendar by way of a thank-you gift for looking after her cats! THANK YOU MIMI! Mmmmm purty pictures of James Marsters mmmmmm... (now I'll just need to make sure I have a place to actually hang the thing, if I'm going to be looking for a new job soon ;p :) ).

And my little brother sent me a box full of old stuff from my childhood, which he had rescued from the home of our erstwhile stepfather. It was vaguely amusing to see my old report cards from elementary and middle school (and see comments from my teachers such as how I should keep up the good work as it would lead to an "interesting future"), as well as some of the pictures from my pre-mutant-bad-haircut-and-awful-glasses phase (I was a cute little second grader, if I do say so myself)... but what was more interesting was my Baby Book, which although it has way fewer notes than I would have liked in it does have a whole page of notes written by my mother. I apparently, if these notes are to be believed, was cooed over as a petite baby; someone I do not remember was quoted as saying she thought my "little bones must have been imported". Mom wrote that I called her "Ommy" and was much relieved when I finally started talking and repeating a lot of what was said to me circa age 2 years and 9 months. And I apparently had the chicken pox at age 5, though Mom wrote that this was a mild case.

I have vague memories of having the chicken pox. If I was age 5, that also had to be the same year that the tornado hit Louisville, and I have a definite memory from then as well, of us all huddled up in the closet of my bedroom since that was the center part of the house.

solarbird, spazzkat, ssha, and risu were all charmed at my tiny baby footprints, too. Only one baby handprint, though. And my little hand must have been all bunched up at the time, because I can see a palm and only itty bitty stubs of fingers. Dar thinks I should scan them in.

Worth a considerable amount of giggle value, though, is my ninth grade yearbook. This was from the first of five high schools that I attended, and the one I actually liked the most if nothing else because I was still able to do the Band thing, then: DuPont Manual, in Louisville. Paul says all the kids in that yearbook looked like all the kids at HIS high school, which isn't too terribly surprising given that he was in Virginia and I was in Kentucky. Dar says we all look like we're in 1962 rather than 1984, which is the actual year of the yearbook. And I was simultaneously deeply amused and deeply horrified by the gushy commentary I scribbled by all the pictures of the guys I thought were cute -- though I apparently was quite partial to someone named Michael, apparently enough that I wrote him in as my Boyfriend on the list of things about me at the front of the yearbook, and for the life of me I can't remember a thing about him. Nor do I remember being part of the Freshman Steering Committee at that school, but I'm in there in the picture.

And I definitely didn't remember that the very last page of the yearbook had a poem. BY ME. Like, printed as part of the yearbook, as opposed to something I'd just written in there. OH THE TEENAGERNESS OF IT! It was quite silly and quite sappy, and all about bumping into some unidentified, gorgeous blue-eyed guy by the lockers (who, considering the gushy commentary scribbled elsewhere in the book, come to think of it, was very likely a thinly disguised Jeff Young, the trumpet player I thought was totally swoonable at the time and who I did in fact remember prior to getting my hands on this yearbook again). That Dar remarked that the last two lines were actually kind of funny and showed a bit of self-awareness is only tiny compensation. ;)

Last but not least, included in this box was an old Elvis songbook. Which is now falling apart completely, and which has an OH THE 70'S! godawful cover design... but well hey, it's 100 Elvis songs! And I actually understand guitar chords now, so I dove into it last night and happily started playing around with some of the ditties therein. And taught myself the D11 chord while I was at it. Though I think I'm going to have to get another songbook just to have one that's in better condition and one with a less godawful cover. ;)