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amazing. i can now shuffle across my room in wool socks.
i cleaned out my room.
over the course of these three days since i got sick, i've spent my time cleaning out my room - an odd experience. i'd started the project about a month ago, and it had been going along at a very slow (nonexistent) crawl. and then i was going to be stuck in my room for 5 days (Thursday - Monday). i figured i might as well put the time to some use.
i can say this of the experience: "what a long, strange trip it's been."
specifically cleaning out my closet.... so many clothes from ages ago.
*tiny* shirts from my California days - ranging from 5 to 9 years ago (has it really been that long?), when i lived in L.A. for four (three and a half) years. a Dodgers shirt that could fit my sister pretty well - i'm keeping this. it reminds me of the house where we first lived, with the 4 or 5 other families/single people/married couples. we all lived on the second floor, in the multiple bedrooms, and the house was surrounded by cats.
everywhere, cats.
before i started going to school, i would get up every morning at 6:30 and watch Tom and Jerry on tv, eating breakfast cereal with milk dripping down my chin.
i was 5 and a half.
of course, when i had to go to school, to first grade, i wouldn't get up at 6:30 for anything. =). nor at 7. nor 7:30.
i remember pretending to still be asleep by falling off the bed....
(of course i was a Logical Child back then... just as logical as now, in fact)
and the last apartment we lived in before we moved to the hotel on Long Beach in preparation for moving to North Carolina. the Dodgers shirt reminds me of that place, too.
there was a pool.
and for a while, we had two silver tabby kittens - we were keeping them for someone, i think. they always loved to crawl under the couch - *into* the couch from underneath it.
they slept on the computer - brother and sister.
and my room.
a desk my father had made, where i sat each evening and did Russian writing exercises, or else i wouldn't be allowed to watch my hours of tv.
i shared that room with my parents - i had a mattress on the floor on one side of the room, and they a huge double bed on the other. i made forts that took up the entire room - two-story forts, sometimes, all by myself.
my parents were studying at USC then, and were also teaching assistants, and engineers, and they were very rarely home. during the summer, i would spend whole days in the house, or i would put on my rollerblades and blade the mile or two to USC in the L.A. sun. especially pretty during the early autumn, when the leaves were everywhere - i would collect them, then eventually throw them out.
i remember the blast of cold air that i encountered every time i walked into the Caprelein Hall building where my parents worked.
i remember blading down the halls of that office building...
i remember biking down the halls of that building, too, on my mom's huge (for a 7-year-old) bike, singing songs from the Lion King... =)
i remember tinkering around in the huge workshop area there - three stories high, all inside that office-style building. cranes, drills, saws, everything. metal fillings on the floor, on the tables, coffee cans full of bolts, screws, nails. a fence - chainlink, 9 feet or so tall - surrounding one corner of that place, the corner with some desks in it.
earthquake engineering - my parents helped design the concrete blocks that hold up the L.A. freeways - the ones that DON'T collapse during earthquakes.
and once, while i was home alone, my parents at USC, there WAS an earthquake. 6.8 on the scale. i remember diving under the table, and staying there for half an hour after the quake had passed.
i hated being home alone after that, for years.
and the oil painting lessons.
every Saturday, 10 o'clock, the long (about an hour) ride to the artist's studio. two Russian painters, both very good, both with exhibits in various parts of the world. the only lessons i ever took - oil painting, age 7. i still have my paintings from then.
this is why i don't throw out the Dodgers shirt.
but other things from that time i did throw out, for my parents to give to my sister or to throw away - a pink shirt with a mouse on it, reading "sweet as can be." a white shirt, with an angel on it in pink, white, gold, and black, reading "i'm an angel." a sweatshirt i used to wear all the time back then - light blue, with an orange and white kitten on it with a mischievous smile, reading, "TROUBLE is what i live for."
and then things from North Carolina... my old soccer jersey, my soccer shorts (EEP so short!), the shirt of my 6th grade class, with the picture of all three of us (my class) on the front and the signatures of all my friends on the back. i've never worn it and never will, but i can still clearly remember the faces of my friends - the boys, Lee Miller, David Frieberg, Kyle Ash, Corey, Steven, and the two girls, MB (Mary Beth Miller, Lee's sister), and Gray Miller, in no way related to the other two Millers. i remember coming back to that school when i was in 7th grade - some of my friends from then were glad to see me, crowded around, asking me how was middle school, how was i doing, and some just stayed back.
i remember the couches - blue and fuzzy, where me and my friends gathered after school and talked or read or screwed around, making each other laugh and every once in a while forcing the teacher to come over and separate the tangle of small children.
soccer - twice a day, if not more, one game during recess and one or more during afterschool. i was good back then, though deathly afraid of the ball.
i remember starting the Revolution during recess...
the recess games were split very simply - the boys on one team, the girls on another.
the girls mostly crowded round their goal, gossiping, unless the boys managed to get through the throng and close enough to the goal to shoot, at which point Laura - the tallest, always wearing huge clogs that hurt like hell if she kicked you with them - would usually charge the offending male and either make him scatter - or not.
i hung around midfield, mostly, doing nothing for the most part except watching and occasionally coming up the ball and clearing it hard towards the guys' side.
and eventually, i got bored.
REALLY bored
of being on the girl's team.
so i switched.
and caused a vast uproar.
i enjoyed myself immensely =)
the girls were confused, the guys were confused, the teachers were amused.
and soccer during recess at the Montessori School of Raleigh suddenly got a whole lot more interesting.
because now you never knew who was on which team.
guys would spontaneously decide to help the girls, and girls would switch to the guys' side.
i eventually got bored with that, too.
but by then my friends had joined the Upper Elementary group, grades four through six, and i played with them.
tag, hide-and-seek, running around playing what i can now identify as Calvin Ball - truly the epitome of all random games. =)
and the afterschool games.
of soccer, outside, even when it drizzled.
and the games of Sit-Down Ball, inside, with the gatorskin sponge ball. simple rules - you get the ball, you can't move, only pivot. you get hit with the ball - you sit down. if you're sitting down and you manage to come by the ball (catch it, or it rolls to you, or whatever) you stand back up. you don't have the ball - you run around trying not to get hit by whoever does have it. if you throw the ball and someone catches it, sitting down or not, you're down. the game is played until only one remains standing.
i sucked at that game so badly...
until i spontaneously, one day, figured out how to catch. =)
my, what fun i had wreaking havoc.
and then i learned to throw properly.
and then the game was spiced up - two balls, one red, one yellow. you get hit with the red, you're down. yellow - you're out.
more fun than ever...
other games, too, many all of which i can remember perfectly.
and all from two shirts found in my closet.
and this is how cleaning out my closet went. long thoughts, remembering the various placed i'd lived, while i stuffed old clothes into a 3-foot cube box.
but enough of this nostalgia.
i'm sure i've bored everyone to death by now.
13 more hours of soldering tomorrow (today, technically).
and then schoolwork. (BLAH).
long weekend.
over the course of these three days since i got sick, i've spent my time cleaning out my room - an odd experience. i'd started the project about a month ago, and it had been going along at a very slow (nonexistent) crawl. and then i was going to be stuck in my room for 5 days (Thursday - Monday). i figured i might as well put the time to some use.
i can say this of the experience: "what a long, strange trip it's been."
specifically cleaning out my closet.... so many clothes from ages ago.
*tiny* shirts from my California days - ranging from 5 to 9 years ago (has it really been that long?), when i lived in L.A. for four (three and a half) years. a Dodgers shirt that could fit my sister pretty well - i'm keeping this. it reminds me of the house where we first lived, with the 4 or 5 other families/single people/married couples. we all lived on the second floor, in the multiple bedrooms, and the house was surrounded by cats.
everywhere, cats.
before i started going to school, i would get up every morning at 6:30 and watch Tom and Jerry on tv, eating breakfast cereal with milk dripping down my chin.
i was 5 and a half.
of course, when i had to go to school, to first grade, i wouldn't get up at 6:30 for anything. =). nor at 7. nor 7:30.
i remember pretending to still be asleep by falling off the bed....
(of course i was a Logical Child back then... just as logical as now, in fact)
and the last apartment we lived in before we moved to the hotel on Long Beach in preparation for moving to North Carolina. the Dodgers shirt reminds me of that place, too.
there was a pool.
and for a while, we had two silver tabby kittens - we were keeping them for someone, i think. they always loved to crawl under the couch - *into* the couch from underneath it.
they slept on the computer - brother and sister.
and my room.
a desk my father had made, where i sat each evening and did Russian writing exercises, or else i wouldn't be allowed to watch my hours of tv.
i shared that room with my parents - i had a mattress on the floor on one side of the room, and they a huge double bed on the other. i made forts that took up the entire room - two-story forts, sometimes, all by myself.
my parents were studying at USC then, and were also teaching assistants, and engineers, and they were very rarely home. during the summer, i would spend whole days in the house, or i would put on my rollerblades and blade the mile or two to USC in the L.A. sun. especially pretty during the early autumn, when the leaves were everywhere - i would collect them, then eventually throw them out.
i remember the blast of cold air that i encountered every time i walked into the Caprelein Hall building where my parents worked.
i remember blading down the halls of that office building...
i remember biking down the halls of that building, too, on my mom's huge (for a 7-year-old) bike, singing songs from the Lion King... =)
i remember tinkering around in the huge workshop area there - three stories high, all inside that office-style building. cranes, drills, saws, everything. metal fillings on the floor, on the tables, coffee cans full of bolts, screws, nails. a fence - chainlink, 9 feet or so tall - surrounding one corner of that place, the corner with some desks in it.
earthquake engineering - my parents helped design the concrete blocks that hold up the L.A. freeways - the ones that DON'T collapse during earthquakes.
and once, while i was home alone, my parents at USC, there WAS an earthquake. 6.8 on the scale. i remember diving under the table, and staying there for half an hour after the quake had passed.
i hated being home alone after that, for years.
and the oil painting lessons.
every Saturday, 10 o'clock, the long (about an hour) ride to the artist's studio. two Russian painters, both very good, both with exhibits in various parts of the world. the only lessons i ever took - oil painting, age 7. i still have my paintings from then.
this is why i don't throw out the Dodgers shirt.
but other things from that time i did throw out, for my parents to give to my sister or to throw away - a pink shirt with a mouse on it, reading "sweet as can be." a white shirt, with an angel on it in pink, white, gold, and black, reading "i'm an angel." a sweatshirt i used to wear all the time back then - light blue, with an orange and white kitten on it with a mischievous smile, reading, "TROUBLE is what i live for."
and then things from North Carolina... my old soccer jersey, my soccer shorts (EEP so short!), the shirt of my 6th grade class, with the picture of all three of us (my class) on the front and the signatures of all my friends on the back. i've never worn it and never will, but i can still clearly remember the faces of my friends - the boys, Lee Miller, David Frieberg, Kyle Ash, Corey, Steven, and the two girls, MB (Mary Beth Miller, Lee's sister), and Gray Miller, in no way related to the other two Millers. i remember coming back to that school when i was in 7th grade - some of my friends from then were glad to see me, crowded around, asking me how was middle school, how was i doing, and some just stayed back.
i remember the couches - blue and fuzzy, where me and my friends gathered after school and talked or read or screwed around, making each other laugh and every once in a while forcing the teacher to come over and separate the tangle of small children.
soccer - twice a day, if not more, one game during recess and one or more during afterschool. i was good back then, though deathly afraid of the ball.
i remember starting the Revolution during recess...
the recess games were split very simply - the boys on one team, the girls on another.
the girls mostly crowded round their goal, gossiping, unless the boys managed to get through the throng and close enough to the goal to shoot, at which point Laura - the tallest, always wearing huge clogs that hurt like hell if she kicked you with them - would usually charge the offending male and either make him scatter - or not.
i hung around midfield, mostly, doing nothing for the most part except watching and occasionally coming up the ball and clearing it hard towards the guys' side.
and eventually, i got bored.
REALLY bored
of being on the girl's team.
so i switched.
and caused a vast uproar.
i enjoyed myself immensely =)
the girls were confused, the guys were confused, the teachers were amused.
and soccer during recess at the Montessori School of Raleigh suddenly got a whole lot more interesting.
because now you never knew who was on which team.
guys would spontaneously decide to help the girls, and girls would switch to the guys' side.
i eventually got bored with that, too.
but by then my friends had joined the Upper Elementary group, grades four through six, and i played with them.
tag, hide-and-seek, running around playing what i can now identify as Calvin Ball - truly the epitome of all random games. =)
and the afterschool games.
of soccer, outside, even when it drizzled.
and the games of Sit-Down Ball, inside, with the gatorskin sponge ball. simple rules - you get the ball, you can't move, only pivot. you get hit with the ball - you sit down. if you're sitting down and you manage to come by the ball (catch it, or it rolls to you, or whatever) you stand back up. you don't have the ball - you run around trying not to get hit by whoever does have it. if you throw the ball and someone catches it, sitting down or not, you're down. the game is played until only one remains standing.
i sucked at that game so badly...
until i spontaneously, one day, figured out how to catch. =)
my, what fun i had wreaking havoc.
and then i learned to throw properly.
and then the game was spiced up - two balls, one red, one yellow. you get hit with the red, you're down. yellow - you're out.
more fun than ever...
other games, too, many all of which i can remember perfectly.
and all from two shirts found in my closet.
and this is how cleaning out my closet went. long thoughts, remembering the various placed i'd lived, while i stuffed old clothes into a 3-foot cube box.
but enough of this nostalgia.
i'm sure i've bored everyone to death by now.
13 more hours of soldering tomorrow (today, technically).
and then schoolwork. (BLAH).
long weekend.
no subject
so enemies beware
well ive never seen a king of beasts
with quite so little..hair
im gonna be the main event
like no king was before
im brushin up, im lookin down....
im workin on my ROAR!!!!
(: