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Mom’s friend Linda Eshbaugh died last week. Mom drove up on Tuesday for the funeral. Linda had MS, and I don’t think that she was particularly aware of her surroundings towards the end. I didn’t realize that Joel and Mike had lost touch. Joel has a baby boy now — yikes!! This is the same kid who, with my brother in the midst of an awful teenage hangover, shot the remaining beer with a BB gun in the backyard.

Our vacation has been pretty nice so far. Too bad it’s almost over. We’ve kept pretty busy, but still had a lot of time to just relax, sleep, read, work on projects, etc. We finished our Flash class. The instructor was not that great at instructing, although she did know the subject matter fairly well. Had to take Neko to the vet — tapeworms (eeeew!). I got my hair cut again. Skip said that I did a really good job on the blonde highlights. Oh, and he can get me my special expensive conditioner at half price.

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Dana

My babysitter’s name in Houston was Dana. I don’t know her last name. She was, obviously, older than me, and I thought that she was just the definition of cool. It’s funny that I don’t remember anything about her, other than she had light brown hair and freckles. I think that I really idolized her in some ways. I felt so proud that I had a “friend” who was older and cooler.

Sesame Street Party

One year, I had a Sesame Street birthday party. It might have been my 5th or 6th birthday, I can’t remember. Mom made the cake and all the decorations. The party favors, which were used as table decorations, are something I will never forget. Mom took empty paper towel or toilet paper rolls, filled them with candy and treats, wrapped them in green crepe paper, and put some sort of yellow styrofoam ball on the top. These were the Sesame Street lightposts.

Babysitting the neighbor kids

To make extra money, Mom used to babysit neighborhood kids in Houston. One little girl who was younger than me, and I want to say her name was Roxanne although I don’t think that’s actually right, apparently liked to eat bugs. I think that she once ate a cockroach in the backyard. She also liked sticking her fingers into the electrical sockets. I think that Mom babysat the Schaffner kids from next door, and the Guarisco kids from around the corner. Robert Schaffner was my age, or maybe a little younger. His mom’s name was Dinah, and she was divorced. Robert had a little kid’s crush on me – he would write me notes calling me his girlfriend. His older brother’s name was Mark. They had a very large St. Bernard dog that would drool constantly. I think that the dog was taller than me, because I have this memory of looking UP at the dog drool coming towards my face. There were three Guarisco kids, and I don’t remember the boys’ names but the girl’s name was Michelle. She was younger than me. I liked going to their house because it was two-story, and we could slide down the stairs or play with their Slinky on the stairs. The boys also had a bunch of Star Wars action figures in a big Darth Vader case, that we played with. I remember one book on their bookshelf that I was fascinated with – a little tiny paperback book about chameleons. The colors were beautiful, and I was fascinated by the fact that there was an animal that could change its color to anything it wanted to. I wanted to be able to change MY color whenever I wanted.