Category: misty watercolor memories

Growing up I lived on a very idyllic cul-de-sac with a very idyllic name, “Silverbell Court”. There were about ten houses on our little street, everyone had young kids, and no cars ever really cruised down it, so we could just run all over the place and safely play. And all summer long,  that’s what we did. We went barefoot until the pavement burned our feet and then we either went in for shoes or switched to playing in the grass. We cut through each other’s back yards and we climbed trees in the one place in the ‘hood with trees tall enough to climb – a hill that backed up to several of the backyards (not mine, but my BFF Erin’s) on our court. On this hill, and in one other yard on our street, there were wonderful, productive mulberry trees. So, burned into my memory of a childhood summer is the sweet taste of fresh mulberries.

We’d hunt for the berries that were ripest, taste-testing to decide which color was best, daring each other to eat the ones we knew weren’t quite ready. The juice stained our fingers and our teeth and our tongues and we savored every bite. The mulberries were not quite public domain, but we thought they were. So you may say those sweet berry-filled moments were semi-stolen.

These days, if I want any sweet berry-filled moments to myself, they have to be completely stolen.  Like “hiding-from-my-kids” stolen.  Which is why you might sometimes catch me  in the corner of the kitchen with the gate closed, leaning up against the window, or heck even hiding in the bathroom if I’m really desperate, having a little snack in the afternoon.  Like a chocolately-fruity kind of snack.

What do you do when you need a sweet, quiet moment alone?  The folks at Pepperidge Farm, maker of my favorite cookie, the Milano, want to know!  They’re celebrating the release of their brand-new Strawberry Milano cookie (which is so FANTASTICALLY amazing, by the way) with a super-fun sweepstakes – all you have to do is tell them what you do for a “Milano Moment” and you could win a BUSHEL of the new Strawberry Milano cookies!

Emily and I are “Milano Mavens” helping to spread the word about this new faboo Strawberry Milano cookie (why yes, we DO blog for cookies!  See our pretty faces in that pretty Milano widget on our sidebar??) and we couldn’t be prouder to be a part of it.  So head on over to The Pepperidge Farm Milano Facebook page where you can “like” Milanos, enter the sweepstakes to win a bushel of Strawberry Milano goodness, and download a 55-cent off Milano coupon!  (You all KNOW how I feel about coupons!)

And while you’re at it, tell me my dears, what lengths do YOU go to in order to get a “Milano moment” alone?

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Photo by beautifulcataya on Flickr

FYI, Emily and I are proud to be “Milano Mavens” and yes, they are paying us in more than just cookies.

Well, today is Emily’s birthday.  Her 31st to be exact.  And since last year was the time for me to jubilantly celebrate us once again having the same beginning number to our ages, this year I thought I’d just share a fun birthday memory.  Because after all, dammit, she’ll always be younger than me.  And now, she is also irritatingly skinnier.

But anyhoo.

Emily’s birthday would often coincide with the opening weekend of our favorite amusement park, Kings Island, which was about an hour away.  (Since Emily is a “fun mom” she still often goes there with her kids in the summer.  Since I am NOT, my kids have never been there, and they can go when they are old enough to walk around the place by themselves.  Or, when Emily feels sorry enough for them to take them. )  We loooved Kings Island, and on Emily’s birthday I was often the lucky Chosen Friend who got to accompany her.  So I have some really good memories of that place that involve her, and specifically two rides, a roller coaster called “the Racer”  and  a ride which defies description called “Skylab”.

The Racer was a super-rad WOODEN roller coaster that had two tracks with two trains “racing” against each other.  One went backwards and one forwards.  (If you ever saw the “Brady Bunch” episode where they went to Kings Island [and SHAME SHAME SHAME on you if you haven’t!!!] this is the roller coaster they rode and looked terrified on.) As I recall, they were both really fun, if you like being shaken to death at 60 mph.  We LOVED them.  The backwards one literally made me feel like I wanted to die, but in a good way.  If that’s possible.  Because the Racer was kind of an old stand-by, and had two trains running at once, sometimes the lines wouldn’t be too long and we’d ride it over and over again as many times as our sturdy little pubescent bodies could take it!

As awesome as the Racer was, our true amusement park ride love was the Skylab.  May it rest in peace.  I searched ye olde internetz high and low for a good pic of the Skylab, but all I could come up with was this lovely photo of that hallowed ride at night time, which I ripped off some guy’s You Tube (WHICH, I might add, was made up of STILL PICTURES and BROCHURE pages set to music of his “solo trip” to Kings Island in 1987.  I am happy Emmy and I never ran into him when we were there.  EEP!!)

So this is the hallowed SkyLab.  Basically a giant circle full of interconnected (rainbow-colored) cars that starts out flat and raises up completely perpendicular to the ground while spinning at warp speed.  You rode two to a car, so the person in front was literally smashed against the person in back like twins in the womb.  You couldn’t tell where one person started and the other ended.  Since it was always about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit on any given day at Kings Island, when the Skylab finally spun to a stop, you were still adhered together by sweat once the G-forces let up.  And it. was. AWESOME!  This was the other ride Em and I rode as many times as possible, and my heart goes “pitter patter” when I think of it.  (Although looking at that photo, my stomach lurches. How on earth did we DO that stuff over and over??  And how did we manage to get our cheekbones to slide back into place after the Skylab spun them out to the tops of our ears?)

I loved going to Kings Island with Emily on her birthday, but since I am now Old and No Fun At All, I think we need to come up with a new tradition to celebrate!  What’s the 30’s-mom equivalent of roller coasters and deathly-fast spinning wheels?  A double espresso and one of those massage chairs at the mall?  Help me out with ideas for a new tradition!

Oh, and Happy Birthday, Cousin!  Here’s to many more decades of cousin fun.  I love you!