Earring - 0009 - Spring is Right Around the Corner

Then close your eyes and tap your heels together and think "spring is right around the corner." Not one for winter getting me down, I have to admit that this is a long winter. It's probably because we have a week of cold and then a few days of nice weather. With the weather as it is, road trips watching for bald eagles has not been appropriate. It's been too darn cold and if I get stuck somewhere, I don't want to have to wait around in the weather for someone to come and help me. So today I decided to have Donna help me via her earrings and wear a pair of earrings that spoke "Spring" to me...

Between the colors and designs, Spring was part of my life today. It changed the whole atmosphere at work too! The sunshine probably helped some but deep down I know it was the earrings. Donna had beautiful, long black hair and I'm sure these just accented everything about her. Her husband, Chuck, was a lucky man to have her and I know Donna felt the same way about him. Like these earrings, they were a good match for all types of weather.

This morning my sister and I talked about our playroom in the basement. Pretty sure our brothers, who were all older than us (the youngest was seven years older than me and the oldest was 13 years older than me). used the basement for play but not when my sister and I got it as our playroom. It was a huge room. All of our toys were there. Mom made sure we had old blankets and sheets to play with to make forts. Sometimes mom would even help us get a fort started. The only thing better than an inside fort is an outside fort during summer. That's a whole nother story. Mind you that I used the term nother which spell check does not like. It doesn't matter if it likes it or not, that's a word we grew up with and I'm sticking too it.

One of our favorite activities in our basement was to play school. We had so many old schoolbooks you would have thought we were a school. Dad used to take us to the dump. Back in the 1950s everything was thrown in dumps when you didn't need it anymore. After a while, if no one took the items, then they were burnt. Funny thing is about the dumps is that it was in areas where no one lived. Now one of the dumps has new, expensive houses sitting on top of it. Well anyway, dad went to the dump every week. Mom gladly sent my sister and I along with him. We had a blast because you never know what you can find.

One summer, the schools had dumped out their old books. I still can't imagine why they did that because there is always someone who could use the book. Some of these books were textbooks and some were library books. I still have a couple of those books. One of them is a geography book and the other is a book of poems. Dad would only let us take so many otherwise we would have filled the car with books. These books filled our bookcase and it made quite the school for us. We had a couple of old desks that dad rummaged up from somewhere, probably the dump.

Ann would come over and we would play school. We couldn't always agree on who would be the teacher because we all wanted to be the teacher. Guess we must have taken turns. We played school until it became too much commotion for mom who was upstairs.  That probably means we were pretty noisy and it meant that Ann had to go home. When we played in the basement, our snacks were usually Kool Aid and a sugary treat on a plate.  The reason it got noisy was that even though it was only the three of us, we pretended there was a whole classroom of kids there. It was always their fault when it came to the noise.

Another game we played was church. My sister wanted to be a priest and I wanted to be a nun. Ann was Lutheran and she was fascinated when we played church. Susie loved giving communion to us. She really did want to be a priest. Think she is disappointed because it was unattainable for her.

Every once in a while, one of the brothers would come downstairs by us to make us mad. They would do silly things that bothered us. My brother Roger was the worst when it came to that. He was the youngest of my brothers. Now we are very close but I never thought we would be because he picked on me so much growing up.

Tomorrow's earrings are already picked up and I can't wait to wear them.