2008 Day Seventy Three

I played hookey today. I needed a mental health day. I cleaned the house, worked on beading projects, surfed on my computer and treated myself to coffee. Connected with Debbie and made plans for Saturday night for the four or six of us to meet up at Opa for dinner.

M caught an earlier flight by 2 hours. I drove out to the airport to pick him up. His flight was only 10 minutes late. From there we drove back through town and went to Chilis for dinner. My kitchen is too clean to dirty it up with dinner preparations. Now I am too full to live.

****

More memories.... We had other family friends that did not live on our street. One of the first ones I remember was Jim and Fran Marta and their son Jimmy Joe. One time when my parents were away they left me with the Marta's. Fran would make us Ovaltine every afternoon and Jimmy Joe and I would watch Creature Features. Those movies would give me nightmares. I would dream that the 50 foot woman would be peering through the bedroom window or the Thing from the Black Lagoon would be standing in their backyard dripping of lake slime. Jimmy Joe showed me how to use a tin can phone that he had between their house and his friend's house that lived next door. Fran was a crafter and I was fascinated that she had a whole room just to do crafts in.

We spent alot of Christmas Eve's at the Marta household. Every year I would ask Santa for a horse. One year my parents surprised me at their house with a green parakeet for Christmas. I named him Danny Boy. I loved that bird. He was crazy. He would wolf whistle and break out of his cage if anyone was making toast and fly over and crawl all over you until you shared some with him. We had another neighbor, Mrs. Otradavich who was the ugliest woman you have ever seen. She would come down in the morning to have coffee with my mother and she would say the only reason she would visit is because that bird would wolf whistle at her. He would bob his head up and down and dance back and forth on his perch if you sang The Yellow Rose of Texas. For some reason he really liked that one song. That bird lived 16 years which I have heard is a really long time for parakeets. And even though he was not a horse, I loved Danny Boy the bird.

The kids from our neighborhood would get together on Christmas Eve and we would go door to door and sing Christmas Carols. We really thought people would like to hear kids who could not sing chime out cheesy Christmas songs. Some did and showed us by sharing goodies, hot chocolate and some even gave us money and then some would slam the door in our face or just not answer. When we went to the Marta's my brother, Steve, would go with Jimmy Joe on a big bobtail truck to go caroling. My Mom would never let me go on the truck.

Other friends included the DiBernardi's, the Green's, the Barry's, The Ayers and the Gronenboom's.

It's time for American Idol so I will have to continue more tomorrow.