Also on the property was a small recreational vehicle we called “the trailer.” It was pink, and it had a “real” living room, and two small bedrooms. Sometimes our parents would let us kids sleep in the trailer, sometimes we slept in the log cabin. I think that I preferred sleeping in the cabin because at least then I had my own bed. When we slept in the trailer I had to share a full size bed with my sister, and she was a restless sleeper that tossed and turned and kicked – a lot! Besides, when we slept in the trailer we could hear the parents talking and laughing and the noise made it impossible to fall asleep.

About twenty years ago my parents sold both the cabin, and the trailer. I really wished that they had let me buy the cabin from them. I liked the rustic feel and the relaxing frame of mind that I always felt when we were spending our summer days there. I don’t know if I will every get that same feeling anywhere else.

You may think that I’m being a little bit crazy here, and to be honest I would normally have to agree with you. But when I saw these mailboxes all gussied up like that my mind wandered to memories of wonderful vacations that I had spent in luxurious surroundings. Thoughts of Norman Rockwell settings of a time and a place when life was less frenzied, and more serene. Odd, I know, but there it is!

Back when I was a newlywed, my husband was taking classes to become a paramedic he brought home some special vials that had hearts on them, and a big heart shaped sticker to put on the refrigerator door. He told me that the idea was people that have medical conditions that emergency response personnel should know about where supposed to put information about that condition in the vials and put the vials in their freezer. The emergency response personnel were trained to look at the refrigerator door for that heart sticker and if they saw it that they would look in the freezer for that medical information. Part of the reasoning for this was that freezers are insulated and would resist burning in a house fire, so that would be a great place to keep something important.

From my point of view that’s a good idea, except that my refrigerator doors are always filled with magnets and shopping lists – I’m not sure that anyone would see a heart sticker on it! But that was back in the 1980′s and I don’t have any idea if the rescue people still hand those out or not. And my hubby at that time is now my ex-hubby and I’m not very inclined to call him up just to ask him about it, so I may never know.

Well, ever since I worked for a Hotel Bathroom Supplies & Restaurant Supply Company myself back in 1972 and 1973 I have had an interest in where people can go to get those types of supplies at a wholesale price. The place that I worked at did not advertise that they would sell their products to walk-in customers, but people walked in just the same and bought things from the company.

I decided to try to look up the company I used to work for on the Internet, and I couldn’t find them online. I wonder if they’ve gone out of business! I did, however find the website of the PeachSuite Wholesale Hotel Supply & Restaurant Equipment Company and found myself spending quite a long time looking at the different flatware and stemware and thinking about how even after all of these years I am still using the same flatware that I bought back in 1972 from the company that I worked for. I’d say that was a good investment, wouldn’t you agree?

When I have the need to take a look at my resume to update and edit it, I find myself thinking back to that first full-time job. That was where I learned that if I wanted to take a break I had to be smoking a cigarette. And that if I were so brave as to correct my boss’s terrible spelling and grammar on a letter that he wanted me to type up that he would get really angry and threaten to fire me even though I was right and he was wrong. I learned a lot of real-life lessons back then about how unfair life is and that biting my lip and holding my tongue was a very hard, but very important thing to do if I wanted to keep my job.

From time to time I find myself thinking back to that job, and remembering that even though the people there were difficult to work with, that the place really did have good prices, good quality, and a good selection of things that are not normally available to the retail customer going to a mainstream department store. So when I decide that I want to buy something for my house that just might be available from a place like that I will go online and see if I can buy it from a website like the PeachSuite Wholesale Hotel Supply & Restaurant Equipment Company website. You can find some really cool items on there, like a seven-piece pie cutter for under ten dollars. I think that is a great little gadget to have!

My grandmother took me to the department store where she worked and found a lady to do a bra fitting for my first bra. I was embarrassed at first, but the lady worked with my grandmother and they were friends and they both fussed over me like mother hens and helped me get over it. She explained about the different types of bras and had me try on all the different styles so she could teach me about the difference between a shelf bra and a underwire bras, padded bras and even sports bras.

There is a reason that bras, slips and underwear are referred to as women’s foundations. If you have the right fitting and right color undergarments, you have shaped your body to be the most attractive when you put the rest of the clothes on over them. So you have a good foundation and everything you add afterward will be the best fitting and complimentary to your figure.

My favorite style of bra is the balcony bra, which is sometimes called the shelf bra. The reason they are called that is because of the way the give you an uplight but still expose some of the decolletage. So this bra is very versatile and very sexy. The balcony was not the first bra that I bought as a teenager, but it is a big part of my adult lingerie collection.

When we first moved into this house, one of the first things that I put on the wish list was to carpet the living room. The previous owners had put tile on the floor, and although tile is easy to keep clean, I felt that the room felt stark and uninviting. My husband was very good at finding other things to spend our money on though, for the first couple of years of our marriage and of living in this house. Until the year our first baby was born.

Suddenly he became quite aware of just how cold the floor really was. After all, he was sitting on the floor a lot, playing with the baby, and he could feel the coolness for himself. That really wasn’t an issue in the summertime, but summer is really short here and winter is really long. Once the baby started crawling it was fairly obvious that we needed to do something about the floor. Fortunately my hubby got a bonus check for Christmas that enabled us to go to town and buy some new carpeting. The carpet that we bought was a multi-colored sculptured carpet called “English Leather.” Although I’m not normally a big fan of brown tones, I liked the warmth of that carpet because there was a reddish quality to it, and it reminded me of the color of the riding saddles and bridles at my cousin’s farm where I had spent some time in my youth. So just looking at the carpet gave me a “warm and fuzzy” feeling, with memory triggers of some of the best times of my life.

Right around that same time we bought a brand new vacuum cleaner because the carpet installer told us that we should have a vacuum cleaner with a beater bar in it if we wanted to extend the life of the carpet. He explained that the right way to vacuum a carpet was to vacuum back and forth over the same spot four times before moving on to the next area. He explained that we needed to do it that many times in order to loosen up the dirt particles so that they would get sucked up into the vacuum. He also explained that a lot of dirt is very sandy and that sand is very sharp. Letting the dirt stay in the carpet will shorten the life of the carpet fibers because every time you walk over it the friction of the carpet fiber over the dirt wears down the carpet fiber. I think that was good advice, the carpet has lasted a very long time!

Anyway, there are several photos of the sisters wearing matching dresses for special holidays that we all got a kick out of. We were all wearing identical dresses, each of us wearing little hats that were held onto our heads by really tight clamps, and holding Easter Baskets in front of us. You can tell by the look on my face that I was not happy to be in that picture. When my sister asked me about the facial expression I explained that the hat our mother was making me wear pinched my head really hard and hurt like the devil. I can remember I kept taking it off and my mother would get angry and make me put it back on, even though I told her that it hurt my head. I can remember getting a spanking over that stupid hat. Makes me wonder why I don’t hate hats even now!

At first I was going to just toss the sock in the trash, but then I decided that I will try to darn it to repair it.  In this economy, I’m trying to pinch every penny and stretch every dollar.  It’s been a few years since I’ve darned socks, but it isn’t hard to do.  So I’ve put the sock aside for now, will try to get to darning it this evening after supper.

I found that when it ripped and I was looking at the rip, thinking about darning it, memories of my step-mother teaching me how to darn socks came to mind.  I remember how she had a wooden bulb to use as a form to put inside the sock while working on it.  I don’t have one of those; I’ll just use a light bulb.  I find it interesting how often small and seemingly insignificant things will trigger a memory of a person!

Recently I’ve been seeing the local ski club has been trying to organize a couple of Ski holidays in Whistler. To be perfectly honest I didn’t remember that Whistler was the site of the Winter Olympics a few years back. If I were thirty years younger I would jump at the offer to be part of the trip, which includes a chartered bus, ski accommodation in Whistler, all meals included and discount whistler lift passes.

But I am now a woman who has too many physical frailties to be able to go downhill skiing any more. Although from time to time I get to thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I got the chance to go for one more day of skiing, even if it was the bunny slope, I would love to go. And feel the rush of adrenaline that I get when I look up the mountain from the lodge and see the slopes waiting to be conquered one more time.

If the jeans ripped, you either patched them up somehow or just wore them ripped.  At some point the jeans were eventually shortened into “cut-offs” and the bottoms were allowed to fray into a fringe. 

We were cool back then.

When I look at the current generation of teenagers that spend big bucks to buy and wear jeans that have already been ripped for them I get totally disgusted with the laziness of those teenagers. Instant gratification to the maximum! Too lazy to wear your own jeans until they are worn out, you have to get your jeans pre-worn out for you? Oh puh-leeze……