Like Royalty

My childhood was charmed.  The first eleven years of it were especially wonderful when we lived in Village Green.  Village green is the name of the trailer park we lived in.  It was all so much like a dream.  Or a reality TV show.  Maybe some of each.  But I loved it.  

I recently decided to look up our trailer park on Google Earth.  Okay, that feels weird.  We never called it the trailer park, we called it the trailer court, so let's just get that out in the open so I can stop trying to remember to keep from typing what is actually coming out of my brain after long years of usage (i.e. trailer court) and translating it into the-rest-of-the-world-ese.

So Village Green was the trailer court (sounds so much more regal and so much less "white trash"*) in which I grew up.  And I decided to find it on Google Earth.  

I entered the address: 222 N. 1200 W., Orem, UT, and here is where it took me:

 I stared and stared at the area directly above where the address is written and couldn't for the LIFE of me make sense of trying to wander through those streets.  Wait.  Where is the park?  Where are half the streets?  And what, pray tell, is that huge parking lot to the left of it?  I don't remember any business in the area large enough to require such a huge parking lot.

I seriously looked up and down the street and zoomed way out and back in again.  I made sure I was looking in the right area compared to Trafalga Family Fun Center, which was just down the street.  Yes. this was the place.  What in the world happened?  Where was the place I had grown up?

Then, after turning the map and thinking and thinking for far more minutes than I care to admit,  I took a closer look at the parking lot.

Yeah.  Duh.  Not duh ME, of course!  Duh, Google Earth, who wrote my address out under the adjacent neighborhood.  How was I to know that the parking lot, which happened to be located exactly where I remembered the trailer court being, actually WAS the trailer court when the address was written so far off?  Sheesh.  

Once I got over that (I feel like an idiot again just thinking about it), I starting wandering in my mind through that trailer court.  And it was all there.  All the places I rode my bike and the hill on which I'd wiped out on my roller skates countless times.  My best freind's house and the park.  Oh, but the pool.  Looks like the swimming pool is gone.  Other than that, it looked like home.  And then I found home.  

In the lower left hand corner, with a brown roof, was the double-wide I grew up in.  The one that started out as a single-wide and, as our family grew, was transformed into a double-wide by my dad, who can do anything. 

Oh the memories!  Thousands of them flying at me in the most random of orders.  And so I realized that I need to put them down.  And so I'm going to.

This is the first of a series I will be doing about life in the trailer court.  I can't wait to get it all out.
*For the record, I really hate the term "white trash", especially when used to describe a person for the same reason I despise the term "loser".

Back to Blogging Basics

Oh, how I miss blogging.  I miss reading the blogs of friends who have quit blogging, and I miss daily reading the blogs of those who still do , and I miss posting more than once a month.  It's like a whole social network that seems to have fizzled out for me (and a lot of others).

There seems to be less to say.  I have fewer things that I feel like documenting.  I have the same, old feeling that nobody wants to read it, and if I don't really want to write it all that much, it's doubly pointless.  And, usually, I don't really want to write it all that much.  But I miss posting.  There was something therapeutic about typing out words that came from my brain.  But that all just seemed to fizzle out, somehow.

Remember the days of memes?  Everybody did them, one or two at least, until some people got bored of reading them (not me!) and other people got bored of writing them and they just sort of fizzled out?

And what about blog awards?  Not the real, many-people-have-to-vote-for-you awards that are still around,  but the ones that didn't actually mean anything very BIG?  Except they felt like something BIG because they meant someone read your blog and cared, and they made you love blogging and your fellow bloggers?  And even though, like the memes, they were a little childish, you still quite loved them?  And then they just sort of fizzled out?

Well, for a long time I have wanted to really sort of get back into a blogging mode (yes, really, sort of) and then, providentially, I received a blog award.  Did you read that!?!  A blog award!!!  It has been years!  But last week, Amy at How to be Superwoman awarded me the Liebster award!  And, even though it's a many-people-did-NOT-have-to-vote-for-me award, it still feels BIG.  And it brought back some of my old blogging feelings.  Thank you, Amy!

So with that introduction, I am going to pass along this award.  It's meant to go to blogs with under 200 followers.  I quite love that many of the blogs that I have read almost from their beginngings have grown to the point that they don't qualify for the award, based on this one criteria.  You guys are awesome!  And you're not getting this award!  :)  But here are the blogs that do!



The Craig Report  Funniest male blogger.  Father of seven, bishop, weirdo.
What do Worms Smell Like  Great photography and lovely thoughts to go with it.  Laura served her mission in Poland and then went home and married a friend of my family!  :)
Dreams of Quill and Ink  L.t. creates things using nothing but ordinary words.  Very, very beautiful things.  (plus she's about the nicest person ever).
The Days and Nights of Robierto  For the life of me I can't remember how I found his blog, but he's hilarious.  Case in point: go read his Blind Dates post.  Go!
because I really can't get enough of myself  Melissa is one of those very funny people with millions of challenges in life and the ability to make us laugh about them while also being a stay at home mother with a hundred creative online projects going.  I quite adore her.  And her blog.

This was just the motivation I needed.  I think.  To get me back to blogging, I mean.  Hope to see you all around more often!

Missed Her Sister

There once was a woman whose sister visited her in Poland with her four children.  They played and had fun for two weeks, after which the visiting sister left.  Her absence left the woman asking the question, "who's going to wash the dishes now?"

Having pondered this question without finding a satisfactory answer, the woman walked away from the sinkful of dishes and headed to the computer, where she decided to write down a few memories from the family-filled two weeks.

She recounted the sweetness of her nieces and nephew.  She remembered watching them play with her own four children and delighting in the quality cousin time, on this, the first time they had ever had cousins visit in their home.  She recalled the billions of hugs she had been given.  As a non-hugger, she was surprised at how much she loved all the love.

She documented memories of her sister washing the dishes, helping with the cooking, taking care of all the children and constantly looking for ways to be of help.

She thought back to a conversation:
Woman: I know it's weird that we eat in the living room, in front of the TV.  We're so Simpson-esque.
Sister:  Yeah... Wait, did they eat in front of the TV... No, they ate around the kitchen table!  You're WORSE than the Simpsons!!

She was amazed at how, after a week of eating things like cake, pie, cookies and muffins, her sister announced that she only had a few weeks left until her 40th birthday, and she wanted to be at her target weight.  The sister immediately started in on the Dukan diet (the one the woman's husband had used to lose 35 pounds in 6 weeks). She completely ignored the woman's next week of dinners and treats in favor of lots of yogurt, eggs, tuna, and oat bran.

The woman had lovely memories of a power outage, a patriotic holiday, castles, underground tunnels, old town squares, ornate churches and lots of ice cream shared with family.  She relived attending church in her own little branch--meeting in the missionaries' apartment--as it overflowed with children who all attended the one-class "Primary" in the living room.  

She didn't write much detail, but just the act of typing it up was nice.  And a little sad.  She missed her sister. And still didn't know who was going to wash the dishes.