How to look like a garden gnome (And other stories from 1974)

So, enough with all this slacking, agreed?  Agreed.  I believe I promised The Internet pictures and stories from 1974, right?  Well, okay.  I can do that.  Here’s what I’ve found out from scouring my mom’s hoard of old family pictures….


When 1974 began, I was about one and a half years old (and still mostly bald) (of course).  I used to go on lots of rainy wintery neighborhood walks with my Mom around our gray Seattle suburb.  But, hey, check out my snazzy red walking suit!




Yeah, go ahead and say it.  I can take it.  I looked like a beardless garden gnome.


*sigh*


Apparently, I was a dog person from the very beginning because I unearthed several shots of me running waddling through the streets with random neighborhood mutts.







Ahh, good ol’ 1974, when dogs could just roam the ‘hood without pesky hindrances like owners, leash laws, and litigious neighbors.  Those were the days. 


But anyway….


Our tour through 1974 is skipping Spring and jumping face-first right into the middle of Summer due to an absence of pictures.  Apparently, my parents misplaced their camera for six or seven months…. or they were just preoccupied with other things.  Like my soon-to-be-born little sister.  So,  here is my preggo mama (still rockin’ her bouffant beehive wig!) and me on my 2nd birthday.




I got lots of Noddy books and a Noddy doll that birthday, which were sent over from my relatives in England. 







Oh God, I will never forget those Noddy books!  I ended up with a whole bookshelf full of them and I remember feeling really uncomfortable about them.  In a nutshell, they could have been written by Paula Deen after a bank robbery, okay?  (What?  Too soon?)  The books were populated with “Golliwogs” in racist blackface makeup who lure Noddy into the woods and then steal all his stuff.  One of them was even named N*gger.  Yeah, his name was N*gger!  Unbelievable.


My mom wouldn’t read the books aloud to me and I remember her pulling them all off the shelves and hiding them whenever I had friends over, so, even really young, I definitely had the idea that they were bad books.  I just wasn’t sure why when I was little, but I supposed it had something to do with all the scary pictures of Noddy being robbed in the forest.  When I was about seven years old, I stumbled upon the old Noddy books and hid under my bed sheets with them, like a boy with a stack of stolen Playboy magazines, reading bits of them to myself when my mom wasn’t looking—and I was shocked at what was in them. 


These were children’s books????


In 2009, Noddy was, apparently, given a makeover and the Golliwogs were removed from the newest stories.  (It took until 2009 for that to happen????  Really????  Wow.)  I can’t seem to find my old Noddy doll on eBay or anywhere to tell you how much he sells for these days (although I’d really love to know), but you could buy the old Noddy books on eBay anywhere from $1 to $14 each, if you’re so inclined.


Okay, enough about Noddy….


For my birthday, I also got a huge orange baby carriage which, obviously, made me feel like hot stuff strutting around with it on the parquet floor.




My birthday cake, like most cakes in the 70’s, had a big, scary rubber clown head on it. 




Why oh why did people feel the need to befoul perfectly good cakes with gruesome clown heads in the 70’s?!  I’m telling you, I just don’t get it.  Nope.  Here’s a closer picture I borrowed from Etsy of some 1970’s cake topper clown heads.




*shudder*


As the Summer of 1974 rolled on, I could be found looking quite movie star-y, digging in my sandbox in my shades, handmade outfit, and Salt Water Sandals.




Did you grow up in the 70’s?  If you did, I’d bet my Bee Gees lunch box that you had Salt Water Sandals too, am I right?  Every kid I knew had them.  I had a red pair and a white pair. 




And if you grew up in Seattle in the 70’s, I bet you wore socks with your sandals too!  ;-)


According to my baby book, I was talking up a storm in 1974.  I said “bunnit” for bunny rabbit, “tombut” for bottom, and “alligator” for escalator.  On a related note, I accidentally asked my kid to “plat in the flug iron” instead of plug in the flat iron just two days ago, so at least I’m consistent. 


In early autumn of 1974, a very bizarre series of events took place which left me with no choice but to conclude that my parents had lost their wig-loving minds.  But…. we’re going to have to probe through those questionable moments in an upcoming post because—*sniffle*—I’m out of bloggy time for today.  I’ll be back soon, swearsies!




Wanna relive my discoveries of 1973?  Click HERE.  Or for 1972, click HERE.




© Coracabana

And that’s one more reason I shouldn’t have eaten those beans! (And other adventures from 1972)

Last summer, I spent five long, lonnnnnnnnngggggggg weeks loitering like a bum on my mom’s couch, 2000 miles away from home.  Sounds like fun?  Yeah, not so much.  It wasn’t my idea to be there.  At all.  I just got all tangled up in the spider webby, complicated, court-ordered crap involving Wednesday and my ex-in-laws—(or are they called out-laws now?  I dunno….)—because I’m Wednesday’s mama and I was ordered to be her rescuer-in-waiting, should things turn sour.   Which they did.  Duh.


(Yeah, it’s complicated, but don’t worry, I’m not going to delve any further into it.)


(You’re welcome.)


While I was stuck out there in Seattle, living out of a suitcase, with nothing to do for over a month but wait for Wednesday to need me, I decided to tackle a hefty task I’ve been meaning to do for roughly twenty years.  Remember how I was telling you about my parents’ pitiful photo-organizing skills which resulted in everyone in my entire family (but me!) completely forgetting about a trip we took to California in 1986?  (Need a refresher?  Click HERE.)  Well, I decided enough was enough.  Before any more memories could go *POOF!* and disappear like M&M’s near a chocoholic, I decided I would round up all the old family photos I could find, scan them all into my laptop, put them all in chronological order, and piece my childhood back together, picture by picture. 


People, this was not easy!  And, at times, it was most frightening!  Ever stumbled upon a full-on crotch shot of your mom giving birth to your little brother?  No?  Well, I have!  And, frankly, I have never been the same since!


(NEVER.)


(*vomit*)


(*twice*)


Most of the pictures (including the horrific beaver shot) (*shudder*) were found randomly crammed into cardboard boxes.  They weren’t labeled, dated, or in any sort of order whatsoever, just a messy hodgepodge of images spanning the 60’s through the 90’s.  Totally overwhelming.  And the pictures that did make it into the family photo albums were often even worse!  I don’t know what Mom was sniffing while she put the albums together, but absolutely nothing made sense.  I found pages mislabeled “Christmas” which featured an obvious Halloween party; and barren pages with no pictures at all; and entire albums that skipped back and forth here and there throughout the years, like Bill and Ted on a time-travelling acid trip.


Oy.


When I came back to Chicago, I brought the scanned clutter of my past with me on my computer with the intention of putting it all in a nice, pretty, labeled, sense-making order so I could preserve all the memories, say “HA!” to my slacker parents, and so Wednesday could laugh at my 80’s hairstyles and my 70’s pants.  *le sigh*  But….  It’s been seven months and I’m still trying to sort it all out!  It’s been taking some effing serious CSI work, my God.  I’ve been scrutinizing haircuts, coats, and shoes; counting candles on birthday cakes; matching up missing teeth in children’s smiles; looking for subtle changes in house décor; and Googling information on toys and books littered in the backgrounds of old photos, all to try to figure out when these hundreds of pictures were taken.  It’s been one massive, aggravating, puppy-kicking, pain in the ass—*snarl*—but, of course, I have loved every minute of it.


I guess I underestimated what a gigantic journey it was going to be.  When I started, I truly had no clue that I would learn so flipping much about my history and that I would spend so much time twirling around in dizzy circles inside old memories that I haven’t stopped to visit in a long, long time.  It sounds like a dumb cheesy cliché (and you know that clichés are the only time that I am NOT pro-cheese), but maybe you need to face where you’ve been to understand where you are going.  (I know.  Deep, huh?)  That’s part of the reason I haven’t been blogging or skipping through Facebook as much lately.  I’ve been busy in my past.  And I’d like to share some of it with you over the next several posts. 


We’ll be lingering in the 70’s around here for a little bit, talking about toys, TV, clothes, books, music, wigs  (yes, wigs) and just pretty much what life was like back then, sifting through scattered pictures and misty water-colored mem-ries of the way we were. 


Can you dig it?  Far out.


My parents grew up, met, and married in London.  In the late 1960’s, they moved to the US (first Atlanta, then Seattle) because my dad got a job with Boeing.  I was their first baby (and the first person in my family born in America).  I popped out into the world in the Summer of 1972.  Here’s a picture I found of my mom while she was pregnant with me.




Yeah, you read that right:  WHILE SHE WAS PREGNANT.  Mom looked fabulous, no?   I don’t know how she pulled that off, frankly.  I know I never managed to squeeze out even a mere millisecond of fabulousness while I was pregnant.  Instead, I just galumphed around in over-sized t-shirts, while oozing blubbery, nauseous, crankiness, and looking like Louie Anderson in drag the whole nine months.  How most unfair.


Being fabulous when you’re pregnant has a price though, I suppose.  After Mom sloshed down drinks at a party five weeks before my due date, I, clearly, took offense at her marinating me in alcohol and I kicked so hard that her water broke.  She went into early labor and then magically found herself the surprised mother of a five pound itty bitty preemie who failed the Apgar Test and had to be whisked away to an incubator immediately.  Oops. 


This was me the day I was born, looking exceptionally pissed off and already plotting my revenge. 




It’s a good thing they put me in mittens, so you can’t see the middle finger I’m brandishing there.  But anyway….


These days, everyone gasps in horror, of course, when they hear about Mom knocking ‘em back while she was pregnant, but she assures me that it was no big deal at the time because, hey, it was a party and that was the norm in 1972 and it’s what everybody did.  I guess life was like that bar scene in Hairspray back then.  (“Wow!  They’re so glamorous.”)  But I’m not complaining; I survived. 


Unlike these days when the hospital kicks you out the door 24 hours after giving birth, back then moms and babies got to live it up in the hospital for four whole days before going home.  (Again, so unfair.)  Once they got me home, Mom and Dad were eager to fatten me up, it seems, because here they are, shoveling baby food in my face while I was trying to sleep. 




I seem really perplexed by the whole thing—and rightfully so, I think, because, obviously, I was waaaayyyyyyyy too young to be eating solid food.  (Hell, I was a preemie, and I shouldn’t even have been born yet!)  But, again, it was the 70’s and there were no rules on… well… anything.  After eating?  Yep, they gave me a bath.  And I was most displeased.




This is me, after being force-fed and dunked in water, further planning out my forthcoming revenge.




(”Well, that settles it.  Now I am SO going to be a shit when I’m a teenager.  You have no-one to blame but yourselves.”)


But I guess I eventually got the hang of the whole eating thing, because I was as round as a beach ball just a couple of months later.




Mom thinks I’m laughing jovially with her in that shot up there.  But I’m pretty sure I’m really laughing at her sagging beehive wig.  My mom had a whole collection of bizarre wigs back then.  She even had a gray one!  (Seriously?  Who voluntarily gives themselves gray hair?!?!)  She seemed to have a different hair color and hairstyle each and every day of the week.  I wonder if I knew it was all the same woman or if I thought I had a whole battalion of mothers coming and going?….


Hmm….


Well, anyway….


There aren’t really any decent pictures of what my nursery looked like back then, but I know from the bits and pieces in the backgrounds of various pictures that there was a lot of yellow in it and that I had a cute hand-painted wooden Irmi Mother Goose mobile hanging over my crib.




I have vague memories of that mobile.  I Googled the heck out of it and found out that Irmi mobiles, lamps, and light switch covers were everywhere in the 70’s.  My one played Rock-a-Bye Baby and had cute wooden nursery rhyme characters hanging from it.  These days they sell on eBay for about $10 each.  Here are some close-up shots of the old, long-gone mobile that I borrowed from eBay and Etsy.










Ahh, the glorious 1970’s!  When people put wooden objects the size of grapes in their babies' beds and the term ‘choking hazard’ hadn’t been invented yet.  Fifty bucks says that was lead paint too.


I was about five months old when Christmas rolled around.  Here I am with my dad (who looked like a young Alan Alda) who gave me a teddy bear.




I still have that bear.  He’s a threadbare old man now.  Like, literally.  These days, he’s dressed like Dumbledore and sitting in my den.  See?




Here I am with my bear and the rest of my Christmas presents back in 1972.  Mom opted for a black wig that day, but I’m pretty sure that’s the same purple dress as before!




See the little pink doll just beneath the bear?  That was my Baby Beans Doll.  Baby Beans was made by Mattel in the early 70’s.  She had a vinyl face and hands with a floppy, soft body that was stuffed with orange plastic “beans”. 


According to family legend, Baby Beans wasn’t with us for long because, one tragic morning, my mom found me sitting in my crib, eating the plastic “beans” that had poured out when I had ripped open Baby Beans’ seams.  Whoopsie!  Even forty years later, Dad still loves to tell the harrowing tale of the Battle of the Baby Beans.  (Apparently, the next several diaper changes were quite beany…. and orange…. and interesting to say the least.  Ugh!)  Here’s a better picture of Baby Beans that I borrowed from eBay.




These days Baby Beans goes anywhere from $5 to $50 on eBay.  $50!  Can you believe that?  And that’s ONE MORE reason I shouldn’t have eaten those beans!



In the next post, I’ll be telling you what I’ve discovered about 1973—that magical year when I rocked out to the Stylistics, rode a motorcycle, discovered the joy of birthday cake, and taught my grandpa a valuable lesson on when NOT to play horse-y with a baby.





© Coracabana

On the road again…. (Part 2)

So, as we talked about in the last post, Scope, Wednesday and I took a big family vacation in Ohio a couple of weeks ago. (For part 1 of this story, click HERE.) Here’s what happened next….


DAY 3:


Our third day was kind of an odd one. First, we went to Milan (pronounced as “MY-lan” for some mysterious reason—????) where Thomas Edison was born.




We had hoped to take a tour of Thomas Edison’s childhood home, but they weren’t giving any tours that day. So, we took a quick glance around the cute little town square and then hopped back in our cars.








Scope’s sister wanted to go take a tour of the local basket factory she had seen advertised in a nifty-things-to-do-while-vacationing-in-Lake-Erie guide book she’d picked up, so we headed there next…. only to discover that the factory had long since shut down, so there were no tours to be given there either.


(Really, Milan?)


(Really?)


Okay. Fine. So we gave up on Milan and packed some quick lunches and headed over to Nickel Plate Beach instead.








The beach was all kinds of globs of giggly fun. Well…. at first. Wednesday was happily skipping through the water and collecting itty bitty shells on the beach.




Scope got his kicks posing like Superman.




And I was thrilled taking pictures of the lighthouse and this bizarre, lanky bird who was slowly creeping through the water.




He crept several yards out into the lake as if he was stealthily stalking something.




Then he just inexplicably turned around and walked right back to the shore. Fascinating and funny fella for certain! But anyway….


All was well and spiffy while I was on my feet, taking pictures and laughing at Wednesday and Scope and their beach-y hijinks. However, as soon as I sat down in the sand to eat lunch with everybody—*POOF!*—that all changed. Instantly.


There was a scent—nay, a funk—in the air at the beach that day that was hard to describe…. kind of like sweaty gym socks and burnt peanut butter mixed with old dead walrus. It’s pretty much what I imagine ‘Tan Mom’ smells like.




(Sorry.)


There was no breeze that day to dilute the sickening aroma of burnt dead things or to alleviate the suffocating heat. The food, the funk, and the temperature was suddenly more than I could take. A wave of nausea hit me like a tsunami and I leapt up and ran off the beach…. well…. as fast as a girl can run on loose sand while willing herself not to spew, anyway.


I had seen some trees and a patch of shade in the parking lot away from the beach, so I headed straight for that. It looked like heaven twinkling in front of me, I swear. But when I got there? Not so much. The funk was lurking there too. AND I was suddenly accosted by a ruthless gang of biting flies.


Nature, you suck!


No, really!


Scope and Wednesday rushed over to see if I was okay and saw me losing my battle with the demonic carnivorous flies, so we decided to go back to the rental house. The rest of Scope’s family had grown sick of the beach too and wasn’t too far behind us. And THAT was a very fortunate thing.


Upon arriving back at the house, Scope’s sister told me to go look at the strange sky looming off across the lake in our backyard. I went to check it out and she was right, the colors were simply surreal.




And they were getting more and more surreal as I stood there . So bizarre.




Even more bizarre? The majority of the ducks, which typically fled in terror into the safety of the water whenever we appeared at the lake shore, didn’t flee this time. They stayed put, huddled together on the rocks as the winds suddenly kicked up something fierce.




Hmm. Yeah. Something told me I’d better get my derriere back to the house, and fast. Something bad was coming and I was right in its path, perched precariously atop a pile of rocks with my camera like an idiot. So, I bolted back to the house just before the tornado sirens started wailing. And then—BOOM!—this is what hit.




It was like a hurricane out there! Tree limbs were slamming into our house as the rain came crashing in like a herd of spooked elephants. Mother Nature was throwing one mammoth temper tantrum and it was really quite alarming. Can you imagine if we had stayed at the beach when that sucker hit?!?! Yikes!


We came close to losing a glass door in the storm. It chose that particular moment to freeze wide open for no reason whatsoever. Several of us tried to reason with it in the rain, but it remained stubbornly stuck open, rattling dangerously in the wind…. until Scope got on the floor beat the pin right the heck out of the pneumatic piston, and then the bratty door gave in and closed like a good little door should.


(He really is Superman, folks. That pose on the beach wasn’t for nothing!)


After the storm passed, we decided to go out to dinner. On the way, I got this shot of a pansy in our front yard.




And I got this shot of a grain elevator being demolished on the side of the road.




(There’s something you don’t see everyday, huh?)


We all met up at i-5’s for dinner.




I got a kick out of the goofy little tiki dudes they had sitting outside. And the food? Awesome! I had teriyaki tuna, which was soooooooooooo delicious.


On our way back to the house, this sign caught Scope’s eye.




But, naturally, he reasoned it would be a million times more brilliant if the sign said ‘ducks’ instead of docks. True dat. So, I tried to help make that a reality.




*snicker*


[….to be continued….]





© Coracabana

Frosty the Sno—HOLY CRAP!!!!

So.


Say you want to go out in the snow and make a snowman with your kid but you realize you don’t have any carrots, coal or buttons to make the snowman’s face.


You might assume that using M&M’s and other candy would suffice.


But.


You.


Would.


Be.


Wrong.




Very, VERY wrong.




I’m still having nightmares. *shudder*

© Coracabana