sometimes, while at work....

I think about the strangest things. I even get more inspired than on my days off (in restaurant jobs that is) to think about forgotten things of my own life. To think about goals, plans, and childhood memories whilst I am sweeping a floor or doing sidework, or serving plates of sushi....

I have been thinking of my childhood. About Placerville- 3112 Roosevelt. I have been thinking about 633 Vista Avenue and the shag carpet in the front room, and the station wagons of our family and all the in between days of teenagehood and fairytale childhood. Here are some things I remember about those days.

Looking out my front bedroom/(office) window of 3112 Roosevelt on cold dark nights while going to sleep and looking to the streetlight that would go on and off, looking way up there on winter nights to see if those fat rain drops had turned to snow yet...(for only in the light could I tell the difference between the fluffy fall and the wet drop fall) and just wishing wishing wishing it would snow. I remember sledding one time it did snow terrifically- behind our house, behind Darin's mom's new house, on a hill that is now houses. I remember running past Rotary park in the snow, in jackets and scarves but chasing a PG and E truck down to see about something... perhaps an electric outage-I don't remember. I remember the smell of mom's apple pie and her in a fall apron when you walked in the big middle kitchen with the bright orange tile and dark wood. And the sound of the rain on the skylights. I remember learning to make apple pie there, too. And boxes of apples. I remember sitting on the deck in the back with Fluffy, on that planter thing on the left that was like a seat. I remember making whirlpools in the Do-boy pool (have no clue how to spell that). I remember Mom adopting trees, and cats. I remember that first little old man that lived next door on the right and the time Heather first front-hit and then backed into another car in one accident all at once. I remember driving over the front rock wall into the rosemary in my cabriolet on accident. I remember yummy treats on the counter, gifts from Heather and Mom, who were always giving gifts when you got back from somewhere or they got back from somewhere. I remember watching Exile over and over and over ( "I heard ya the first time") and the music from Yaz on that movie. I remember sneaking into dad's closet with HEather and ALWAYS borrowing dad's huge t-shirts to wear because we thought they looked SO awesome. I remember knowing moving to Placerville was the best thing that could have ever happened to our fam. I remember walking home from EDHS on fall days, stopping in to the Thomas Kincade gallery and looking at all the paintings with the spot lights on them and thinking that life was going to be so awesome. I remember those big fold out closet doors in the front hallway. I remember one time being terribly sad and angry and dramatic about something to do with home-life and mom and dad and running away to Rotary park and throwing my own self down a branchy embankment behind the snack bar, determined to never go home. I remember buying snacks at that snack bar, during baseball games that Joey had there. And Mikie maybe and even Matt? I remember running away at age 16, going to Sam's Town in Cameron Park and making little metal coin keychain thingies that said "runaway 1992" and something else. I still have them. I remember buying butter popcorn Jelly Belly's for the first time at Sam's Town. And some weird ass dance club they had inside there that I went to with possibly Jenny Smith or Kim and Heather and Chris Nicolls and Jeremy Nicolls.

I remember the H-Spot. Heather, do you? The place in the woods where all the kids would go to make bonfires and drink. And the mills....

I remember waving goodbye, morning after morning, living on 633 Vista Avenue, to Dad on his motorcyce as he rode in FRONT of the house and by the windowsill as me and Heather waited there, fresh up for school. I remember the woodpile out front, and frosty breath (in San Diego county?) on winter mornings waiting for Trish Mason to come get us and put us in the back of her pick-up to take us to school. (that memory could be a little mixed up). I remember the smell of the chicken ranches nearby, which I actually loved, and still do love. That weird, farty, smoky, earthy odor that was pungent and like nothing else. I remember Mom loved General Hospital. And she would make homemade tupperware popsicles, there was a black cherry flavor of Kool-Aid that made the best kind. I remember the sand box on the back deck of 633 Vista too, and weird groundcover plants that rose up the hill behind the swingset, some kind of ivy cactus flower or something. And the two rubber trash cans filled with dress-up clothes. Oh those were the days! We could be anything! Any princess or witch or little girl lost in the forest. I remember the garden up there off to the right hand side from the sliding glass door, and artichoke plants with huge purple flowers, and the scattered walnuts down by the trees that framed the street. I remember the trap-door spiders on the side of the house, they built webs over holes in the dirt, and I would stare at those for hours. I remember wishing that I could live in a tract house (how little I knew) and then being so glad when we moved back to the country in Placerville. I remember stepping in mud in the parking lot median before school at North Broadway and mom had to come and bring me new white socks to go with my black patent leather shoes which were also mudded, I was so upset, I had been crying and crying. I remember gazebos in Julian and the Salton Sea. I remember Matt and Mikie in diapers. I remember Joey ,even moreso, in diapers. I clearly remember Joey banging his head against the floor on purpose, about 8 months old, doing it over and over, for fun or perhaps strange bouts of anger, but not crying! I remember Mikie looking like a miniature man in a suit going to church on Van Maren, holding hands with Dad, I think he was about 4. I remember Mom in slips before church, putting on makeup and curling her hair and doing our hair and running about the house hectically. Oh what beauty that was.

I remember Mikie being the Littlest Angel at church. I remember the slide show that played and one picture was Mikie holding a fishing pole during a Father son camping trip. The sight of him on stage was so perfect, he was such a ham already! I remember driving to Music Circus with mom later, so excited for everything, going to practices and such during Mikie's performances there. I longed to be involved in any way I could. I remember going to practices with Mom and him (or performances too?) at the Christmas play in Carmichael and being so enchanted with the cast, their spirit literally filled my heart with hope and inspiration. I remember Mikie coming to Peter Pan auditons and Theatre El Dorado with Xochitl and me, and me not getting a part, but HE did! I remember those times with such inspiration. I swear- had it not been for the theater-artsy-ish part of my and our family's life that happened I would be on depression medication or really depressed right now. The theater gave me hope! The other actors did too. The beauty everywhere did, and the hustle and bustle of the performance anticipation. The costumes inpsired me, the music especially did, the colourfulness of the buildings as the skies fell into twlight and the lights in usher's hands did too. Everything around the theater part of my life felt like pure exuberance.

I remember Kim and Heather at 3112. And Matt building his record collection for the first time. I was so excited he liked The Cure. I remember going out to the forest to cut down Christmas trees, and family trips to Arizona to see grandma where I was party-pooper teenage girl USA. I remember lying in the back of the station wagon with all the kids, Joey probably just a baby, having laugh attacks as we drove through Lake Tahoe because me and all the kids were making up the STUPIDEST green eggs and ham Sam I Am poems ever. I remember hundreds of laugh attacks. Our family has been damn good at laugh attacks. Isn't it awesome. They aren't as frequent in my life anymore, but that's OK, because now when I have them I practically almost REALLY die, because I literally can't come up for air.

I remember listening to Man From Snowy River, as teenagers, with Heather in our cool seperate bedroom, with candles on, thinking we were so awesome. Actually, I guess we were. We loved this one violin part so much. (Heather Please put that album on your ITUNES and send it over to me via my ftp!) I loved Clancy's theme best. It will always remind me of Dad and mountain drives with the family in the fall time. We have always loved nature so much too, haven't we? The sight of wonderful golden auburn mountains, and green valleys, and cabin silhouettes up against the grandeur of it all- looking like tiny people houses. That valley over Mono pass. Dad dad dad, we love you to death. Those canyons and rivers that run by 395 on the way to Bridgeport... Jumping in ICE water at gurle creek.... fishing. That time me and the boys went camping at Green Creek, how we caught a bunch of fish. And then dad had to go and have that memory thing and then not remember even the next day how good we did fishing! But to feel glad to be a girl, to make things pretty in a tent, to make any ol' place nicer by making it feel like home, to make people who are scared be not scared. Oh to be a girl and to know what making things stay alive and content and comfortable is like. Truly it is wonderful.

Oh and Mom walking us indian style down 633 Vista, past the white peacock shanty, up another street to a park there. Swinging there, swinging at parks with the whole family and picnics at parks, and cooking marshmallows on the beach at Moonlight Beach and Oceanside Beach. Swimming in the ocean with Grandma Georgie and Heather. And all the other fam. Growing up by a real beach, how lovely and lucky! Feeding the ducks at lakes and ponds with the family. Caring for people and animals. Taking cookies to the old man next door even BEFORE 633 Vista Avenue. Taking cookies to Kent. Mom mom mom we love you to death.

And chasing Joey like a monster witch. And being the babysitter of Joey. And being the oldest. And Joey turning out to be effing unique and strange and weird and wonderful, even by about 7 years old. One HECK of a personality.

OH but we all do, don't we? Every one of us is just so very unique and so very much WHO WE ARE. Ain't nothing boring about THIS family.

Seriously. Tonight, at work, my mind got to thinking. And mostly it got to remembering the life I have had SO far. ANd SO far, thinking back, it's literally been a miracle, and amazing, and it's absolutely been wonderful. And the parts that hadn't been, well, they seem to be over for the most part, and what's left is- it's all just been wonderful. Because it is all SO BEYOND worth any emotional struggle I have ever had, beyond my dramatic-ness and truth-seeking fighsty-ness and what have you. Despite my faults, and any of our faults, we are all freaking wonderful. And the life we have experienced thus far is a pure privelege. And it is a charmed life, truly, it has been.
One filled with best-friend laugh-attack music-ocean any-time road trip day trip any trip, compassionate, singing on swings sisters,

and history-seeking guitar-playing theater-enchanted exuberant mothers that cast spells of real magic over her children's own existence;

and mountain-singing, john denver-whistling pine-tree backpack hardworking fathers that cast strength into his own children's veins,

and diligent, truthfilled, spirited, idea-inspired effort-seeking compassionate kind-to-the-max conversation brothers like Matt,

and wildly-inspired, fervent, childlike, emotion-full, brave and fearless, debate-oriented challenge-seeking actor singer humans-on-life brothers like Mikie,

and quiet, passionately-smiling inside, filled-by-emotion-and-yet-sarcasm-simultaneously, poet-breathing rule-breaking but wise traveler spirit like Fose,

compassion compassion compassion is the thing I am the most grateful for in my life.
But these memories are worth more than a hundred thousand trillion billion gold coins.

Anyone else remember anything good?