In world that sometimes seems cold and heartless, where bad behavior gets rewarded too often, it’s wonderful to see the story of a waitress who was given a $16,000 college scholarship for being kind to an elderly gentleman who needed help cutting up his breakfast. The story speaks for itself.
Has some ever been kind to you?
Image: Mattel
Barbie dolls came up yesterday on the trail, with a couple of gals saying they had never had them when they were growing up. It caught my attention because some new Barbies have been released onto the market this week, modeled after inspirational women, among them an Amelia Earhart, a Frido Kahlo and a Katherine Johnson.
This has made me think of my history with the doll. In my early years I was the oldest of two however my younger sister was born with a heart defect and didn’t have the corrective surgery until she was almost two. She was frail up until that point and I wasn’t allowed to play with her much. We also moved homes quite a bit during my childhood (some due to my dad’s work and some due my parents’ continual wanderlust). I learned pretty early on to entertain myself and let my imagination go with whatever I was doing.
I had a couple of Barbie dolls – at least one of them was inherited from the older sister of a friend – and I enjoyed them quite a bit. Back then there wasn’t a mountain of plastic silliness to go along with the Barbies. No Malibu Barbie houses or Barbie & Ken matching convertibles. But what I did have was CLOTHES. A friend of my mother was a big knitter and sewer and I was the beneficiary of that talent. I had masses of clothing for my dolls and not the cheap little bits of cloth that you could buy for Barbies in the store. I had knitted sweaters, a-line skirts with poodles, shorts, t-shirts, dresses with little stoles, a beautiful white wedding dress with a train. No shoes, but lots of everything else.
Since I needed a place for my Barbies to live with their beautiful clothing, I turned my dresser into a Barbie house. I cleaned out the middle section completely for this house. Because I didn’t have any “real” Barbie furniture, I drew and cut out furniture from paper and pasted it onto the walls of my two-story Barbie house. My dolls were living the life of Riley.
I still have my Barbie house dresser – it’s in the attic. I haven’t used it as a dresser for decades but every time I think about getting rid of it, I look inside, see the remnants of my Barbie furniture and I can’t bring myself to let it go.
Did you have a favorite childhood toy?
Last week my Scientific American came with a big “LAST ISSUE” notification. I’ve been putting off renewing it; it’s a little expensive and, truth be told, I don’t always understand what I’m reading. But it was an interest I shared with my dad and I’m sure I would miss it.
Do you have fond memories of any magazines?
Watched a fabulous special about the Great Wall of China today. Just one place on my very long bucket list.
You have to decide right now. You leave tomorrow. Money is no object. Where do you want to go.
I’m not much of a movie-goer – too cheap and too fussy. I prefer to wait until movies come around on the small screen; if it’s dreadful I can turn it off and not feel badly about wasting time and money. It it’s good, I can watch it again!
That’s just one of the reasons that I don’t pay too much attention to the Oscars. Most years I haven’t seen any of the nominees. In addition, I’m still not over the 1977 Oscars in which not only did Network win for Best Picture over All The President’s Men but Faye Dunaway won Best Actress beating out Liv Ullmann in Face to Face. Faye Dunaway. I’ll pause for dramatic effect.
So I doubt I’ll be watching the festivities this weekend. I’ve actually seen one of the movies this year as YA chose it for our Christmas morning movie; The Shape of Water isn’t something that I would nominate but since I haven’t seen any of the other movies this year, I guess I shouldn’t judge.
Do you have a favorite movie? Oscar winner or not.
Time to celebrate.
We’ve officially made it over a year on our own and now we’ve covered the cost of the Trail for the next year. 261 posts. We average 1,085 comments a month with an all-time total of 131,623 comments. Every week we average between 850 and 1,000 views and a whopping 806,982 total views over the years with 6,276 followers. Our most active time of day is 9 a.m. I think the baboons are thriving!
We’re celebrating. What would you like to see at the party?
Most of the people I know are thrilled to get a few days of above freezing temperatures at this time of year. Not me. I chose this climate. My family visited relatives in northern Wisconsin quite often when I was a child and I always knew I wanted to live here. I chose a college because it was in Minnesota and after wasband finished grad school in Milwaukee, we headed to Minneapolis even though neither of us had jobs yet.
I don’t mind the cold – until I lose my winter attitude. Once we have some warmer weather, my body decides that it’s ready for spring, a return to shorter sleeves and flip flops. Then the cold weather DOES get to me. So even if it’s 35 degrees out, I’m still wearing my gloves and big knitted scarf and pretending Mother Nature is still bringing on the chill. Once my body has made that transition, there is no going back!
How do you handle the last weeks of winter?
I didn’t grow up watching sports. We didn’t follow any teams and even though my parents were avid tennis players, we never watched tennis either. None of my sisters nor I did any sports except what little we were required to do in phy ed.
So it was a surprise to me when I first watched some Olympic coverage in college that I enjoyed it. Not enough to follow sports throughout the years, but more than enough to spend the two weeks of the Olympics in front of the television. Sports that I would NEVER watch any other time seem interesting during the Olympics (think bob sled, pole vaulting, skiing, swimming).
As a young married in Milwaukee, in a teeny apartment, wasband and I were excited to watch the 1980 Winter Olympics but we had a teen little black & white television. To celebrate the Olympics we splurged with a Rent-a-Center color console for two weeks. It took up most of the living room, but we really enjoyed it and watched the Olympic coverage constantly. After the Olympics, back the tv went.
These days I actually watch a couple of channels at a time. Men’s team ice skating on one channel and downhill skiing and luge on another; I switch back and forth at the commercials or whenever the commentators get verbose. I don’t really have a big preference for either summer or winter Olympics. I have favorite sports in each, but nothing that tips the balance for me one way or the other.
What gets a gold medal in your world this week?
You all know that I’m fascinated by coincidence and the baader meinhof phenomenon. I don’t know why, but it won’t surprise you that it’s happened to me again.
Last weekend, while watching some cooking show (something about how you’re eating it wrong?), there was a snippet about slurping noodles. The theory is that slurping makes the noodles taste better because the increased air in your mouth allows the flavors to mingle and develop.
Then last night I started watching “I’ll Have What Phil’s Having” (thanks BiR for the suggestion). The first episode is filmed in Tokyo and Phil spends one whole afternoon and evening going from one noodle shop to another. In the first of the shops, the owner/chef tells Phil that he needs to slurp the noodles and then explains how they will taste better with the extra aeration! This is amazing to me to hear this tidbit twice in a week when I’ve I’ve never heard it before.
How to you like your noodles?
One of the worst things about being sick is the lack of energy. For me, this translates into watching more tv than usual, which is difficult for me because at any given minute, I can’t find anything worth my time. I detest reality tv – all of it. I also don’t like shows in which competitors are thrown off (which is all the dancing shows, lots of the cooking shows and the grand-daddy of them all: Survivor. I don’t like most cop shows – too dark and intense. Ixnay on most situation comedies and sports doesn’t do it for me either.
If you tally this up, about the only tv left is nostalgia tv… those couple of stations that are re-running shows from “the good ole days”. Perry Mason, Barney Miller, Andy Griffth, even MacGyver – I’ll watch these any time instead of American Ninja Warrior or Judge Judy.
In addition to the couple of already existing channels, there’s another one that has shown up the last couple of months. They caught my eye last week with the made-for-tv Perry Mason movies and a lot of old Dick Cavett shows from the 80s. I ended up watching Perry Mason ALL weekend. They also run Laugh-in, Wonder Woman, Gunsmoke and even Kung Fu, which I haven’t seen for decades.
So why am I willing to watch all these old shows again? Do I yearn for my youth? Am I too old-fashioned for today’s tv trends?
Trail Baboon 