catheroominations

when we were little, my sister and I used to take the fancy purple outfit off our donny osmond doll, and disrobe cher of her tiny bob mackie wanna-be dress, and place the two naked dolls in bed together in our barbie camper.

peter brady is 48 years old today.

ok, fine. technically, it’s christopher knight who is 48 years old today. peter brady is not a real person, but a pop culture icon.

finding out he’s nearly 50 years old though…that makes me feel old. but then I remember that I got carded buying wine on saturday, so nevermind.

don’t you miss the days when your mom would make your lunch when you were a kid? I do. other kids always wanted to trade me for their icky lunch.

my mom always had the variety pack of lunch-sized bags of chips. sometimes I would take my potato chips out of the bag and put them between my peanut butter and my jelly. my sandwich was almost always on white bread, and I used to love how it would stick to the roof of my mouth, especially when I had deviled ham sandwiches. I loved that meat spread product. now it kinda reminds me of catfood, but back then, yum-frickin’-ee.

and (oh, god, I’m old enough to say this) in my day, we didn’t have those baby carrots, or the readymade bags of already cut carrots and celery. oh no. my mom had to peel and cut them herself. and we also didn’t have zip-lock bags. she had to wrap the longer side of the baggie around the outside of the contents to “fold” in the freshness.

I got those pudding snacks…the ones not in plastic, but in the short little cans that you peel the lid off of. they probably stopped making them after so many children slashed their tongues on the lids. if pudding snacks were not on the menu, then it was zingers or hostess cupcakes. sometimes I even got foodsticks, which no one remembers, but I lived for those things.

my drink of choise choice was those small bottles of orange, purple, or red punch. remember those? they were super sugary, and the edge of the bottle was so sharp, you had to use a straw most of the time. the straw also helped to avoid the colorful mustache.

as we all know, lunch bags were much cooler than lunch boxes, once you hit third or fourth grade, but my mom didn’t give me those regular brown bags. if the bag was brown, she decorated it. sometimes I got cool ones with prints on them. I seem to remember yellow ones with smiley faces on them, but I might be making that up.

yes, my mom’s school lunches were boss. (note to self: look into starting a business where a mom-for-hire comes to your house every morning, makes you a delicious bag lunch, and hands it to you as you leave for work.)

as much as I hate to end this flashback to my childhood on a sad note, one not-so-happy lunch-related incident cannot be overlooked. it occured while I was in kindergarten. I was walking down the aisle on the bus getting ready to start my day in mrs. freeman’s class, when I tripped and dropped my lunchbox (cinderella, I think). it spilled open and my thermos rolled out. when I picked it up to put it back, safely behind its metal arm that snapped shut (which apparently wasn’t so strong afterall), it sounded like my punch was full of chipped ice. unfortunately, it wasn’t ice…it was shattered glass…crushed into tiny pieces, like my childhood bliss.

if wallace & gromit were around when I was little, I think gromit would be my invisible friend.
but they weren’t around then, so my invisible friend was pinocchio.that poor little puppet made of pine. whenever I got into trouble (which was almost never, of course), I would blame pinocchio. my mom would say, “who left these toys out”? and I’d tell her, “pinocchio did!” and then I’d cross my eyes to look at my nose, making sure it wasn’t growing. also, I didn’t like just any pinocchio. it had to be disney’s version. I also preferred him in wood, not as a real boy (figure that one out, freud). when my mom took me to see the movie when I was just 2 years old, none of it scared me, not even monstro the whale. I loved it so much that I made her sit through it a second time. it was during the second screening that I pretended to grab pinoke out of the screen and plop him into the chair next to me, so he could always be with me forever and ever.

thirty years later, I finally got to meet my invisible friend, in the flesh…er in the plastic. in this picture, he’s all embarrassed because I just told him that the whole “lie and your nose grows” is a crock.

oh, how I loved the movie xanadu when it came out. first, the roller skating…so cool. add olivia newton-john, and I was in 12-year old heaven. I wanted to be a muse. I had legwarmers (and who didn’t) and roller skates (which were orange), but I’ll bet no one else remembers the issue of family circle (or maybe woman’s day) that showed photos of all of olivia’s hairdos from the movie, and instructions for how to recreate them. my mom brought it home one day, and I tried as many of them as I could. this look was my personal favorite. those fabulous barrettes with the ribbons woven into them, softly sweeping my locks…too hot.

June 30, 2005