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Went to the first session of Flash I tonight, but the instructor never showed up. Car trouble or something. Had a fun weekend with friends – happy hour on Friday with Joel, Valerie, Kim, and Brittney, which then turned into several hours hanging out at their house and playing board games and talking and eating semisweet chocolate chips. Saturday went to dinner with Bruce and Leslie at Trinity Hall. Sunday night met Brittney for ice cream. Shopped for Doc for his birthday. Nearly bought a full set of Asian Crackle dinnerware from Pier One, but then found out that it is neither dishwasher or microwave safe. I bought one set and am abusing it to see just how non-safe it is, or if it will work out. It’s 40% off, so it’s hard to pass it up.
For A Poet
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold;
Where long will cling the lips of the moth,
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth;
I hide no hate, I am not even wroth
Who found earth’s breath so keen and cold;
I have wrapped my dreams in a silken cloth,
And laid them away in a box of gold.
— Countee Cullen
I’m going to start writing down my stories so I don’t forget them. True life stories, of things that happened to me, memories, that for whatever reason I don’t want to forget. Things that are fresh or at least still live near the front of my mind, but probably won’t forever.
So here are some of my early memories:
For preschool and kindergarten, I went to a tiny private school called Applewood Elementary in Houston. I don’t remember much of preschool, of course, except that it involved a lot of glitter and glue and colored popcorn, and learning Spanish. I can still count to ten, I know some of the colors, and I can sing two songs phonetically, including “La Cucaracha.” We made Christmas ornaments, one of which I still have — a little styrofoam boot that I stuck red sequins and pearl-tipped pins into. We also drew on colored construction paper using q-tips dipped in bleach. Wow, was that safe for a 4-year-old? Maybe not. Mom did some substitute teaching for my class. I thought that I was special and so I went and sat in her lap behind the teacher’s desk. We sang lots of songs at school, including one that went “If all of the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a rain it would be. I wouldn’t care if the sun would never shine; I’d keep on eating raindrops all the time.” I looooooved thinking about that song.
In kindergarten, my teacher was Mrs. Walls (whom my mom still keeps in touch with). In her class we got to play Red Rover at recess. I think that once I peed my pants because there was no teacher in the room, and I had to go, but I knew I wasn’t allowed to leave the classroom by myself. Also, the stalls had no doors in this bathroom. In this class we once got to make some candy — we melted chocolate chips and butter, and poured it over those little crunchy Chinese noodles. I think that we called it “worms,” or something. Mrs. Walls had our class over to her house once (which was only 2 streets over from my house). I can’t remember why, but we were in her backyard eating watermelon. She lived on the bayou, so that was behind her back fence. I remember her backyard being extremely large and long, but that may be because I was pretty small. She had a cement back porch/deck with wooden trellising and vines covering it and providing shade. She must have known that I didn’t like watermelon because she gave me a coconut popsicle instead.