Happy Place

Happy place, I miss you. I miss our visits and our fun! I miss the laughter and the carefree moments we shared.  This adult stuff;  getting up to go to work, paying bills, making dinners, laundry, deciding what to wear, watching my weight, dealing with loss of metabolism, bodily repairs starting to creep up, and hearing people in MY generation starting to fade out isn't much fun sometimes! What happened to disco? The Barbie town home? Barbie's corvette? PacMan in Kroger grocery stores? Flash Gordon? Telephones with wires that connected to the wall?  Well, I actually do enjoy our phone technology these days rather than being stuck for hours to the wall.  What about 'going around'? Remember that crap?  What was that anyway?  A guy asks you to 'go around' and that was the official sounding to a 'relationship'! lol  So cute!!  What did we go around? The carnival grounds? The school campus? Weird when I think about it.  I did have a couple of boyfriends who asked me to 'go around', but that only lasted one to three days, respectively.  Junior high love...what did we know? A kiss on the forehead was the sweetest feeling to have.  Tender, sweet crushes!
Some of my best memories were those spent with my hairbrush and record player! I would play my 45's on the garage sale record player my grandma Eva bought for me and use my hairbrush as a microphone.  For three hours a day I was the disco diva in my grandma's living room singing along to each of my thousands of records! Yes, I went there! Records...and singing with a hairbrush. For those of you who act like you don't know what those are, here is a picture:

The top record is a vinyl record that usually had plenty of songs to sing a long to, the bottom was considered a 'single' which was only one song.  But... you could flip them over and have access to more songs! Cool! I mean, Groovy!  I was always a country girl at heart.  I love the old country like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Merle Haggard and many others.  Today old country is George Strait and Garth Brooks! lol  I'm super old!! Anyway, the music I played on my record player was some really good stuff! Commodores, Jackson 5, Grease, Donna Summer, Earth Wind & Fire, and even some old rock and roll like Rolling Stones, Led Zepplin, and Aerosmith.  The rock and roll was few and far between.  I needed disco so I could sing and roller skate in the driveway! Ahhh...roller skate.  I mean, I even wore the roller skating outfit that matched my 'boot' skates as I skated to the tunes of KC and the Sunshine Band, Boogie Shoes.  Such a fun time! But God forbid I tip my foot forward even just a tad...the big round 'stopper' would touch the ground and I'd go head first into the cement! A helmet was never worn which now explains the loose screws in my head! Here is a picture of what my skates looked like:

When I wasn't roller skating in the drive way, I was giving Barbie a very extravagant life.  She had the love of her life who loved her back! Ken was a lucky doll! Barbie had it going on!

The best clothes, best figure, was sweet, caring and lived like a rock star in her Barbie town home! Barbie must have really loved Ken! He didn't offer her much except good hair and a great smile! He wasn't very well built, if you know what I mean, but he loved her unconditionally! I mean, what else could he do? She could have run off with GI Joe who might have been 'built' correctly, however, she loved Ken.

I didn't have a GI Joe, so I wouldn't know for sure if he was well built but....look at those arms! I'm pretty sure he took care of business!   Anyway, Barbie's town home was like 30 stories high and fully furnished! Bitch! But everyday, I would help her clean her town home, room by room.  I'd stick her into her elevator and pull the string on the other end to elevate her floor to floor.  She had cleaning supplies on each floor so carrying them around was unnecessary.  (Now I know where my OCD started). Barbie and Ken lived a great life together.  They drove a corvette, had a pool, lots of clothes and vacationed in far away places like my mom's kitchen, and bathroom.  Pics:

All these things/toys usually came at Christmas time.  Aah, sweet Christmas time.  I would wait for my mom to get out of work on Christmas Day then we'd all gather 'round the fake tree that stood about 4 feet tall.  Seemed really big when I was a little girl, but in reality, it was a short, stubby artificial tree in which we had to put together each year.  All the limbs were color coded so that we wouldn't have any trouble with the assembly process.  As the years went by and the colors faded we often struggled with putting it together and eventually settled for a pretty jacked up tree! It was ok, though.  We covered the errors with a ton of stupid silver icicles and the ugliest garland that could have caught on fire with the millions of multi colored lights that Grandma put on that tree. One word: Griswolds.  Surprised it never did catch on fire! That thing was a total fire hazard!  Anyhoo, Christmas would come around and I'd make out like a bandit! The last thing on my mind was a fire extinguisher. 
I had neighbors that I would play with on a daily basis.  Life was about waking up, scarfing a bowl of cereal (if we had any) and throwing on a pair of elastic waistband shorts and a Popeye tee shirt! "Dammit MOM!! Were there no button up shorts?" Oh, and they were probably plaid! Total Brady Bunch style.  Frown. I'd race out the door to see who was outside waiting to play.  I was usually the first one out so I'd spend time in my neighbor's tree.  They didn't care! So, each day I would try to climb a little higher.  One day I climbed up so high, high enough where the limbs were not too stable.  Why did I do that? Who knows? Bored? But, nonetheless, I was in the tree, stuck and unable to move for fear that the limb would break and I'd be in trouble for breaking my leg! I'm not sure how I ended up on the ground, safely that day but I did.  I probably had to completely block that day out! I probably got my butt whooped for not listening!
Gone are the days when I used to take a dollar worth of quarters and walk to the Kroger grocery store, pretty much in our back yard, to play Pac Man.  I was very good at this game, so I thought, until this one kid introduced me to the 'banana' screen! I didn't even know that existed! I only made it to the blue screen- I think it was an apple??  I don't remember! All I know is I loved playing Pac Man, even if I wasn't that good. 

Every year I was invited to go with my cousins to Astroworld.

(This is a picture of the CYCLONE! NOT my happy place...)
Astroworld was situated in Houston, Texas and was a whole 5 hours away from home so I'm not sure why it seemed like it took days to get there. I guess the speed limit being 55 could have been one good reason.  Today, we can get to Houston from Corpus Christi in like 20 minutes thanks to our new speed limit of 500. I don't remember much about the car rides to Houston. For some reason they have been blocked out of my life. I'm sure it had nothing to do with David torturing me all the way there and back! lol
I remember I wanted those glow in the dark necklaces sooooo bad and finally, one summer, my uncle bought me one! A green, beautiful glow in the dark necklace that you bend to activate and freeze to keep it going for days! It never made it to the freezer- David threw it out the car window!!!

Bye, bye necklace...that I only had for 1 HOUR!!! lol  I'm proud to say I was able to upgrade the following year to a triple colored necklace that David NEVER had the pleasure of holding in his dirty little hands! lol
Gosh! What about the ever fun Lemon Twist? Or Big Wheel?

Looking at these toys makes me just wanna be a kid again!  I used to win lemon twist competitions but always flipped over in my big wheel! I'd take off and go all up and down our streets, not a care in the world that there could have been a pedophile lurking.  The joys of being a child, NO CARES! These are the wheels that got me around! I was the cool kid with all the cool stuff to play with! lol
I have so many 'happy places' that I can go to and remember, but my true happy place is with my family.  My entire family! Best family EVER!!! So, it's safe to say I'm still creating 'happy places' today that I can go to in years to come.  I may not have the Barbie town home or Big wheel but I can always get the best disco, old country or even old rock and Motown music at hand, revisit great movies like Grease, Flash Gordon, and sitcoms like Three's Company and Alice.  I hated Mash, which is kinda weird being that I thought G.I. Joe was a total hunk!  I've even managed to create the best memories of my adulthood with my boys! I can think back to when I would just cradle them and love on them. Unconditional love. That was and still is a very 'happy place' for me! So, here's to all the great memories tucked away in the back of my head and all the new memories being created for rainy days!!! Cheers!

~Ms. elastic plaid pants herself...
P.S. what memories do you have?