late-century anthropomorphized dehydrated fruit

There are some things from your childhood that just make you smile.
Passing a house recently, i was stopped dead in my tracks:

Are those hand-cut wood California Raisins?!?

Why yes, yes they are.

How have i not noticed them before; i have been past that house before.
Maybe there are new owners who just put them out?
Why would they have just put them out?
Have they been around since 1986? Cause if so, they are in good condition (except the guy all the way on the end who is missing his face).
Anytime i see a California Raisin, A Claymation Christmas Celebration comes to mind.
I remember watching it with my parents.
It was certainly different from the other Christmas offerings at the time; i think it might have even won an Emmy.
It had the best version of We Three Kings ever.
There were jazzy singing camels.
In sneakers.
How can that not make you smile?

You know, i think i might have a VHS of that special taped off the tv in 1987 in my closet.
Gotta go look...

woohoooooo, i heard it through the grapevine...

feeling the age

This month has been very nostalgic for me as i started college 25 years ago, which seems strange since i remember with absolute clarity going to St Pete Beach on the first night and watching the Perseid meteor shower hip deep in the Gulf of Mexico. There are two friends of mine that i met that day; i have now known Skip and Greg for over 25 years. It boggles my mind.
Even weirder is that today is a double birthday in my family: one of my nephews is 30 and one of my great-nieces is 9. I remember that boy being born; he was my first babysitting job. How am i even old enough to HAVE multiple great-nieces, much less one that is almost in double digits?
It seems crazy  to me today.

"i'm being chased by a snake in a fur coat"

I have never seen a dog chase its tail in real life.
I always assumed that it was one of those things used in cartoons and comics that doesn't actually happen.
This morning i was enlightened and delighted.

BTW, the title of this post comes from my all-time favorite Garfield comic strip.
(i think somewhere i still have the original that i clipped out of the paper when it was first published in the early/mid-80s)

always keep a quarter handy

 Driving through the neighborhood today i saw a lemonade stand.
A full-blown, plastic tablecloth over wood and cardboard, hand drawn sign, lemonade stand.
You never see those any more.
I love lemonade stands.
I love the sincerity of a kid on the corner who believes that they can make it in this world one quarter at a time.
I love that it smacks of summer.
Rea and I once decided that we were going to make a fortune with a lemonade stand. Until, alas, we realized that we had no lemonade. But belief in an idea is hard to quell at that age so we sold grape Kool-Aid instead.
When i see a lemonade stand i have to stop. I mean, when else in your life can you make someone really happy with 25 cents?
I drove around the block, pulled up alongside the stand, hit my hazards and jumped out with that precious quarter. He smiled and said thank you; his mom smiled and waved from the porch while i sat in my car and gleefully drank what had to be the worst lemonade ever made.
Best 25 cents i spent all week.

inexplicable aloha

I have done several yard sales to purge studio overstock culled during this huge studio revamp NikCo is currently undergoing.
[side note: anyone need glitter? anyone?]
Generally i have done an excellent job not looking at or purchasing other people's stuff.
Sure, i dropped 50 cents on a metal palm tree that i am going to refashion into a dragonfly and i bought a rubber stamp set that i have been eyeing for months and happened to find at 60% off, but that isn't really so much compared to how much stuff i have been able to off-load.
However, i did i have a moment of buyer frenzy at the SIA yard sale. You see, many of the members donated items to be sold, with all if the proceeds going directly to the club.
Margaret has been joking for months about a fabric Elvis she was bringing to sell. What is not funny about a fabric Elvis? It is exactly the kind of thing one would hope to find at a yard sale. Every time she mentioned it i envisioned a black velvet Elvis and was secretly excited to see it, but knew that it wouldn't be in the Niki price range (free to nearly free).
The SIA table ended up directly across the parking lot from me; after the first few hours of setting up and taking care of customers (would you like glitter with that?) i was able to take a little break and noticed Elvis propped up at the edge of their canopy.
Not a black velvet painting at all, he appeared to be a poster sized tapestry of the Aloha From Hawaii concert.
Oh, dear.
I have a real soft place in my heart for the Aloha From Hawaii concert.
It was the first satellite simulcasted concert, you know. Back in the early 70's that was a big deal.
We owned the double album. When i was in kindergarten it was only half-day. My mom would pick me up at lunch time and we'd listen to records while making lunch. Elvis was in heavy rotation in our living room, especially that record. We'd sing along while she let me stand on a chair to help stir the soup or watch the hotdogs boiling away. To this day it is my favorite Elvis album.
And there he was in all of his fabricky, spangled, leied, white jump-suited glory.
Since it was bigger than anticipated i was sure it was out of the Niki price range.
Time passed and i couldn't stop staring.
It is impossible to explain. I felt mesmerized, like i had been put under a spell.
One side of my brain was all business and practical:
Niki, snap out of it!
You don't have any poster sized space left anywhere in the apartment.
You can't afford it.
We are here to get rid of stuff and make money.
The other side was all:
 ELVIS!!! I LOVE YOU, ELVIS!!!
Margaret came over at one point to look at all of the crafty goodness i was selling. Though she did not bite on any supplies, she was interested in some Quirkees. While conversing i casually asked about the price tag on Elvis so that i would stop thinking about it.
I have it marked $10, but would consider any offers, she replied.
TEN DOLLARS?!?!?!?!
She really liked a pair of owl earrings with water tourmaline that were $8 so i suggested an even trade - the owls for Elvis - and she agreed.
Elvis was mine and i didn't even have to pay for him!
I mean, yes, technically he cost me $8, but there was no real cash exchange as Margaret just gave the SIA table the money.
After she finished looking at all of the other tables, Margaret picked up Elvis and brought him over to me.
As she got closer he got bigger. And bigger. And bigger.
Holy Schnikes!
Elvis is not poster sized at all.
He is basically life sized.
Oh my gracious, where am i gonna put that? and Mine, mine, mine, mine! competed in my head.
Much like the birthday glitter, Elvis was equal parts delightful and terrifying.
But i have no buyer's remorse.
Oh no, i am happy as a clam, people.
I just need to find a place to put an Elvis that is almost bigger than me.

...the mighty, mighty Girl Scouts...

Make new friends,

But keep the old;

one is silver,

and the other's gold.

Happy Birthday to my friend, Lynn. She and i met in second grade, in Brownie Scouts. No matter how old we get i always picture her in my head hiking and singing silly songs. [by the by, we were celebrating at this awesome restaurant called Friendly Farms, where instead of individual meals they bring family-sized bowls and platters of food to share; cool]

we don't need roads...

This weekend was the 25th anniversary of the release of Back to the Future. In celebration, there were 2 showings of the movie at AMC theaters all over the country. BttF is my friend Ron's favorite movie, so of course we had to attend one. There was trivia before hand for a copy of the BlueRay (released today) and commemorative posters. Here's Ron decked out in his favorite Back to the Future shirt (you can't see his keychain or the background on his phone and you can't hear that his ringtone was Doc Brown saying Damn. Where is that kid?) obviously humoring me with a picture before the show. It was really fun to watch a movie from my childhood on the big screen and it was especially great to see it with him.

Help - i'm trapped!

Someone call my work phone - quick! I got back from my shows pretty late, but TM Amy was still at her desk. She had been captivated by the site www.imremembering.com because someone had posted it on a blog she reads. As i sat down at my desk to do paperwork she called out a few things she was seeing from the 80s and 90s that she remembered. After i finished work and got ready to do some backlogged blog posts i thought I'll go to the site and look at a few things. It's an hour later and i can't stop looking at all these pictures of stuff from my youth and squealing with delight. Amy just left about 5 minutes ago saying It's okay, there are only like 50 pages or so. Crap! I'm on page 23. Help me, people. Pull me out of my nostalgia.