Drinking mold only makes you stronger

I ate lunch outside again today. I had some potato salad and half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Actually, it was peanut butter and low sugar jelly on flax seed bread. What is this world coming to!?

The last few days I have been reading a book for a book club. The book is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. It’s a captivating memoir and very much reminds me of a cross between A Child Called It and Lovely Bones. Why do I love books about screwed up kids? Anyway, in the book the author recalls memories from when she was as young as 3 years-old. The memories are so vivid [granted in one she sets herself of fire while cooking hot dogs in her favorite pink party dress. That’s pretty memorable.] I was sitting there thinking if I could recall vivid memories from when I was that little. At one point in the book she remembers a poem off of a sugar daddy stick. My memories are not as detailed, more big picture.

I remember, when I was 3 or 4 my mom taught me how to blow a bubble with bazooka gum. She was sitting in a rocking chair and I sat below her on the floor. We chewed gum for hours that day until I could finally blow that bubble.

I remember, my mom watched Days of Our Lives every day from 1-2pm, I remember thinking the people on that show kissed in the yuckiest way I had ever seen.

I remember, one night I was in my parents’ bed and they thought I was asleep, so they watched the movie Piranha Part 2: The Spawning [1981].I thought that was the scariest shit ever. I was definitely older than one, so my parents must have waited until either it was out on video or it was showing on TBS.

I remember, I had two tea sets, a plastic one and a glass one. I usually played with the plastic one because I was afraid of breaking the glass one. I kept the sets in the bottom drawer of my white painted desk. Mom said, for sanitary reasons, I was only allowed to have "pretend" tea in the sets [aka water]. One year, I got bonnie bell lip balm for Christmas [you know the candy cane shaped tube filled with flavored sticks]. I crushed the lip balm up and mixed it with water in my plastic tea pot. That way, I could serve my friends [and my little brother] flavored tea. I was the most hospitable child on the block until my mom found out. She said that was a good way to get sick. She cleaned out the tea set and made me promise to never do that again or she would take them away.

When I was five and we moved into our new house, I got the lip balm cane again. This time we used my brother's GI Joe canteen to give the troops flavored water. That lasted for quite a while until one day the water came out green with black flecks. We asked my mom to wash it out and she freaked when she found the entire inside of the canteen was covered in mold. I can still remember the smell of that canteen, stale plastic and orange soda chap stick. I never got another lip balm candy cane from Santa ever again. He must have been watching.