Friday Five (LJ) December 25 version

I was never good at doing Friday Fives on Friday, but here’s the latest one (from Livejournal).

1. What one food most reminds you of your childood?
Is Japanese food an acceptable answer? If not, then probably udon. Or maybe homemade chow mein with scrambled egg strips in it, that was how Bachan made it. :3

2. How old were you when you learned how to ride a bicycle?
I was nine years old (or maybe ten, it was during the summer anyway) and I taught myself! Without a scratch. I even remember my bike, it had a teal paint scheme and pink handlebars and seat and white wheels.

3. How old were you when you stopped believing in Santa Claus?
Eight years old, third grade, I remember some classmate was talking to other kids at his table saying he saw his mom doing Santa one night. Er I mean doing Santa’s job.

4. What was your favorite television show/cartoon when you were little?
First answer that comes to mind is Ren & Stimpy. :P I could also say Rugrats or The Simpsons (that one has lasting power, wow), but R&S was the first I thought of. That might have been the first show my brothers and I would watch regularly on TV in its scheduled slot (Snick!), rather than whatever we had on VHS.

5. What is the youngest age you remember being and do you have a specific memory of when you were that age?
Preschool age, three or four, and a memory from preschool: the teacher and his aide had just put us down on the carpet for our nap and drawn the curtains so the room was dark. The aide asked the teacher if he’d like a Coke, she was going to grab a Coke. I thought, ‘Lucky, they get to have soda whenever they want.’ :P I’m an adult now too but I can’t have soda whenever I want! I have to remember all the sugar and carbonation and, depending on the soda, the caffeine that’s in those things. Ugh.

nearly impossible

Darn, I keep running out of time to write here. Mrr. Maybe I should watch less Clean House every day … ? *gasp* Nevar!

Oh well. Notes to self: gas, facial regime, reviews.

Just to make this more of an entry, and less of … something junky that I’ll want to delete in a few months …

After about half a year (more?) of regularly watching Clean House on weekdays, I’ve decided to “take a big girl pill” and am getting rid of two childhood dolls! The reason I was keeping them was because … they were from my childhood.

Well, the pink doll I kept because I found while viewing a home video that I got it for my first Christmas. (Still having reservations about getting rid of it, but I have to look at it when I get home.) The purple doll I kept because I thought Mum told me one of my aunts bought it specially for me, and it was handmade. I had to rethink that when I saw a JCPenney tag printed on it. (JCPenney didn’t print tags on socks, right? This doll was made from sock-ish material.)

Now that summer’s here (or at least a week or two for me, then it’s work for the rest of the summer), I’ve got free time for my annual cleaning out and reorganizing of my closet, and I will more mercilessly look at the things I’m keeping and try to free up some dearly needed space.

Then my room can show off how I am now becoming an adult! (Another line from the show, excuse me, I have Clean House fever…)

quarter life

Over the weekend I remembered when my brothers and I were young, grammar school or middle school. We were out with Grandma and Grandpa for some reason or another, and Hidek asked them for a quarter for the machine that dispenses little toys or candy. They gave him one, but he asked for another one to spend because this one had his birth year on it and he didn’t want to spend it. (If you get a coin with your birth year on it, it’s good luck!)

Later (maybe a week or two) Grandma and Grandpa dropped by with a whole container full of coins that were minted in the years we were born. They said we had to separate them and we could have them. After we thanked them and got our coins, we didn’t know what to do with it all. The specialness was in randomly getting a coin with your birthyear, not collecting them and hoarding them. With all those “special” (to us) coins, they lost their fun.

(It was very sweet of my grandparents to do that, don’t get me wrong. Whenever they found something that we liked, they would tend to deluge us with it though. Too much grandparent love!)

I don’t know if we deposited them in our savings or if we turned them in for bills. But after I thought about those coins it dawned on me that as I get older, coins from my birthyear will become more and more rare. And I still want that specialness! I want that this coin is as old as I am feeling. So right then and there I decided to find coins with my birthyear and save them. I have a penny and a dime. Still need a quarter and a nickel. But no one better find these coins for me!

a memory I didn’t know I had

I was reading the X-Entertainment blog tonight, and he mentioned Wuzzles. I had no idea what that was, but it intrigued me so I searched the term and found The Wuzzles TV Show on Retro Junk, through Wikipedia.

Nothing on the page really showed me anything interesting (except that Tress MacNeille was in it, hahaha!), but I hit play on the video, just to really be able to get a visual of these two-in-one animals. The Wuzzles “logo” came onscreen and I thought, hey, that looks sort of familiar, but I must be thinking of something else. But then, the characters showed up, and I realized, hey! I’d seen those things before! I remember the bear-butterfly and the moose-seal and the crocodile!

I probably didn’t watch the show though. I remember some of the characters’ designs, but I don’t remember one whit of plot or location or anything really.

It’s just weird, remembering something that you didn’t know you knew. I read the description of two animals in one, I saw the little picture of the characters, and nothing clicked, so when the video tickled my brain, it was weird.

Just thought I’d share this trippy show, and how old I really am, to somewhat remember it. *grin*

life

New layout. I can assure you that I have no clue where the inspiration for it came from. I was just doodling in 452 while he was going over CSS. XD;

Last part on life: Lately I’ve been getting flashes of memory randomly. One I remember, Saturday night Daddy was watching some post-game yakking about a basketball game, and when one commentator said “stood” (or “still,” not quite sure) I saw the exhibit at the L.A. Zoo with the meerkats (?), and how they all stand on the top, and then there’s this cave-y “underground” maze you can wander through.

I think yesterday, I don’t remember what brought it on, but I remembered Jichan and Bachan’s house, the driveway by that tree with the orange fruit things. Persimmon. I remembered it from the perspective of a child, when the yard was bigger and everything.

I’ve heard that your life flashes before your eyes before you die, but I’m sure that’s all in one instant, right? So what does it mean when you get bits and pieces of it over some course of time?