Alien Tea Shoppe

Oh!  This Buzzfeed article that came across my feed this morning is so full of happy!   35 Awesome Toys Every 80s Girl Wanted For Christmas . The childhood my sister and I lived was actually pretty awesome in some ways, one of those ways was toys.  We had one insanely wealthy grandmother and another who was insanely good at purchasing super awesome toys.  So, while there were really bad things and troubling times and all that, one consolation is that we did have awesome toys... and quite a few of them! Girl Talk Date Line board game I had a somewhat mild interest in wanting this game.  The game I really wanted for some reason was Mall Madness. Fashion Plates We had those exact fashion plates.  They were a gift from the second grandmother to my sister... so once the newness had worn off I was allowed to play with them as well.  We loved those fashion plates. Barbie and The Rockers The first grandmother sometimes would buy us a ...

Like just about everyone out there, I have a Facebook account.  One thing I use my account for is to peruse a group dedicated to the history of my town.  It's fascinating.  Tonight, I wondered if there was a page like that for the town where my parents grew up.  I found one and was not disappointed. I'm looking through the groups photo albums and after ten pages I see something familiar.  Very familiar in fact because it is my family's home; the one where my mother and aunt grew up and I spent most of my childhood there visiting my grandmother.  Actually it wasn't even the house, just the greenhouse.  I exclaimed, out loud, "Holy crap it's me!", which is just easier to say than "Holy crap that is the greenhouse in the yard of the house where my mother grew up!"  It became even stranger because some commenter's were talking about my family. 228 East Kingston Str, Laurel, Mississippi This house was originally white, though the very top...

My 7 or 8 year old self with my first cat, Cash Mittens. Two nights ago, my sister ran downstairs saying, "Hey!  You sound just like that girl!  That girl from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation!  The one who said shittin' bricks."  Which for anyone who is not familiar with (can't remember) that film, Chevy Chase invites his entire family for Christmas and then there's 3 million twinkling lights he wants to put up on the house.  Randy Quaid plays the trashiest, countriest character of the brother in law, Eddie.  Eddie's daughter is Ruby Sue.  A girl who sounds about as country as you can get.  Apparently I sounded like Ruby Sue on this video. Needless to say, I had to see this.  So, I go upstairs & we start it over.  We had just gotten our video camera and my mother is filming the entire den.  You can hear my seven year old self from the kitchen, desperately wanting to open gifts.   "Oh, but you have to sin...