Tag Archives: nostalgia

Things That Are Awesome, Vol. 47

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The weekly roundup of internet awesomeness:

  1. These are so cool: Minimalist Vector Portraits of Cultural Icons.
  2. Here’s the Arrested Development reunion photo the world has been waiting for.
  3. And one more thing from the Bluth family: Arrested Decision 2012. So, so good.
  4. The Ten Commandments of Air Travel. This should be required reading before anyone gets on a plane.
  5. Adele sings the new James Bond theme and, as expected, it is fabulous.
  6. As a history major, Midnight in Paris fan, and nostalgically-inclined person, I loved this article: The Perks of Being Nostalgic.
  7. Not going to lie: this Google Chrome Ad makes me teary-eyed.
  8. Holy cute: 40 Fantastic Animal Costumes. I love them all.
  9. I have always been bitter about Rose not making room on that damn door, so this is awesome.
  10. Mr. Rogers defends PBS. Just beautiful. What a wonderful man.

(Image via Entertainment Weekly)

Back in the Day: Little J and Me

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On the advent of her second 21st birthday, here’s a picture of me with my little sister. I particularly enjoy the fact that, back in the day, we both knew how to rock a pretty amazing bowl cut. Some other shared childhood memories:

  • Playing “school” in our basement. I always forced the poor kid to be the student.
  • My cousin and I were terribly jealous that she was chosen as the flower girl for our uncle’s wedding in lieu of us. Thus, we made it our mission to terrify her of messing up during the wedding. Nice kids, we were.
  • Making an elaborate haunted house in the basement for her birthday party.
  • Collecting beanie babies, Barbies, and American Girl dolls (she was a Samantha; I was a Molly).
  • That you could tell her pretty much anything was chicken and she would eat it.
  • And many, many more (some of which must be omitted to protect the innocent. Or not-so-innocent).

Back in the Day: Grandma Lois + Me

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Today would have been my Grandma Lois’s birthday. She died in February 2006, and I still cannot believe that it has been five years. Five years. Seriously?

Because, as I was thinking about some of my favorite memories of grandma, I could not believe how vivid they were. As the saying goes, it seems like only yesterday…

  • Whenever I would ask my grandma how old she was, she would never give me a straight answer. Instead, she’d either say “Old enough to know better” or “Younger than springtime.”
  • When I think of my grandma’s cooking, I think of two very different things – either her chocolate chip cookies (unbeatable) or how she’d dress salads (oil, vinegar, garlic salt). I know that’s not a revolutionary combination, but nobody did it better.
  • You could tell right away if grandma had been to a place because you smelled her perfume lingering. It was very distinctive. I remember once, my mom picked me up from school, and the first thing I said was, “was Grandma Lois in the car today?” And, sure enough, she had been.
  • We used to play so many games with her. I remember especially playing Old Maid – and how delighted she used to get when my grandpa ended up as the Old Maid (this seemed to happen a lot).
  • I remember Grandma used to be completely baffled that my cousin Misty and I collected troll dolls – she thought they were so ugly! As a joke, we bought her a birthday troll doll, which she kept displayed in her fancy cabinet with her Lladros.
  • Some things grandma loved: Jackie Collins romance novels, any Detroit sports team (especially the Pistons and Tigers), and the Game Show Network.
  • Another thing Grandma loved was QVC – she was always watching and always shopping (I think she even called in and made it on the air a few times). Every year, she would buy my mom and all her daughters-in-law earrings for Christmas – and she generally ordered these from QVC in July!
  • Speaking of Christmas, Grandma loved it. She loved Bing Crosby holiday songs, and she loved the whole present opening ritual (sometimes I think she was even more excited about opening presents than we kids were).
  • She religiously played the lottery, and every night had to make sure to check her “numbers” (in Saginaw, they come on after Jeopardy, but before Wheel of Fortune). I was shocked when I recently discovered that Aggie Usedly still reads out the lotto numbers each night. Who knew she was still around?!?
  • Grandma loved to crochet. Her specialties were crocheting covers for clothes hangers and making dishtowels. She used to make the dishtowels in bulk and then give bags of them to people when they came to her house.

If I kept thinking about it, I’m sure I could recall more and more. The point is, she was a special woman, and she is missed. Love you, Grandma.

Back in the Day: School Memories

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In honor of my first day of law school (gulp), here’s a picture of a long ago first day of school – I believe it was my first day of third grade, and Janelle’s first day of kindergarten. And also, here’s a look back at some of my memories from elementary school. It was hard to narrow down the list, but I thought one per school year would be fun:

  • Kindergarten: Every year, on the Friday before the Michigan vs. Michigan State game, we had to wear the colors of our favorite team. My dad went to MSU, so I arrived at school clad in green and white. Unbeknownst to me, all my closest friends came from families who rooted for Michigan – so I was the odd one out. During recess, they all sat in the reading train and wouldn’t let me get in with them because I was wearing MSU colors! Kids can be so cruel.
  • First grade: Our desks used to be clustered in groups of 4, with all of us facing inwards at each other. One afternoon, while we were reading our Weekly Readers, one of the kids in my group threw up, and it got all over everyone’s desks. I know that’s gross, but that’s the only first grade memory that jumped out at me.
  • Second grade: My teacher (Mrs. Maidlow) loved pigs – she had a collection of figurines, posters, and other knick knacks. So, my best friend and I (suck ups that we were) went to the park, collected a bunch of pink colored stones, and glued them to a piece of cardboard in the shape of a pig.
  • Third grade: We had to research a historical character and then dress up as them to give a presentation. I was Pocahontas, and my report mentioned something about how Pocahontas went to London and sailed up the Thames River. But, I could not for the life of me remember how to pronounce “Thames” – I was terrified to mess it up in my presentation, and I’m pretty sure I did, even though my mom told me how to say it like 10 times.
  • Fourth grade: I went to a small school, so if you were advanced in a certain subject, there wasn’t really anyone extra available to teach you. A group of 4 or 5 of us would go into the hallway to work on more advanced math on our own. I remember we used to waste so much time/do so many sneaky things out there. Also, my fourth grade “boyfriend” asked me out in the hallway during math time – only not directly, he asked it and had the message passed down the row to me. Ah, young love.
  • Fifth grade: We had a multiplication battle with the fourth graders, where each class stood in a line and then two people at a time came up and had to race to be the first to solve a multiplication problem. The loser sat down; the winner went to the back of her grade’s line – and the last class standing won. Fifth grader after fifth grader lost, until it was just me against like 15 fourth graders. And I beat them, one by one, and won the competition for the fifth grade. Triumph.
  • Sixth grade: I went to a Catholic school, and we used to periodically have to go to confession. Our entire class would go to the chapel, and then we’d each go in, one by one, to confess. This took quite awhile, and you had to sit there in silence while others took their turns. To pass the time, my friend Keri and I started to time peoples’ confessions. Our teacher caught us, and needless to say she wasn’t pleased.

Back in the Day: Dad + Me

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I have tons of old photographs, and I’ve been wanting to do a “Back in the Day” series to chronicle some of my memories from, well, back in the day. Since it’s my dad’s birthday today, I figured I might as well start there. Here are ten of my favorite memories from my childhood:

  1. After dinner when I’d go play outside, my dad would call me over and then spray me through the window with the sink nozzle.
  2. Once I asked my dad if we could “drive through” McDonald’s. So, he drove through the parking lot, pulled back out onto the street, and then took me home. Very Amelia Bedelia of him.
  3. Dad always used to take me on “secret” ice cream runs. Shields Dairy Bar and Fuzzy’s (both in Saginaw) were among our usual spots. My favorite ice cream flavors were Blue Moon, Superman, and Mint Chocolate Chip.
  4. For Christmas one year, dad handmade Janelle and I dollhouses for our Barbies.
  5. Every night, either my mom or dad would read to me before bed. With dad, I generally read the Boxcar Kids series or the Goosebumps series. Our favorite Goosebumps book was “Night of the Living Dummy.” Remember Slappy the dummy?!?
  6. One time, my dad placed an order at a drive-through in a Yogi Bear voice.
  7. While up north with family one summer, I remember my dad buying a squirt gun at Meijer’s and then ambushing my Uncle Mark in the parking lot with it.
  8. One time, my dad cut a hole in the bottom of a plastic contain, stuck his thumb up through it, dumped some ketchup on it, and told me he had cut his thumb off. Gross!
  9. Dad used always tell me and my friends Eric and Kyle that there was a dinosaur in our basement.
  10. Dad loves roller coasters, and he made me love them too. His rule? You must keep your hands in the air for the duration of the entire ride.

Looking at my list, the common theme seems to be my dad playing practical jokes on me. You can’t say he doesn’t have a great sense of humor. Happy birthday, popsicle.

Greek Salad Pita Wrap

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Ever since I went to Greece 3 years ago, I’ve been obsessed with 2 things: feta cheese and tzatziki. Since that trip, both my mom and I have started cooking Greek food a lot more and thinking back nostalgically on the food we ate while there. Sadly, nothing quite compares to the quality of the feta and tzatziki in Greece, but this recipe, which includes both (the yogurt mixture is tzatziki-esque, if not outright tzatsiki) is pretty good.

The recipe is from the August 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Living. The only thing I add to it is some pan-fried chicken to make it a bit more substantial. And also, I highly recommend doing as the recipe says and wrapping parchment paper around your wraps – it definitely makes them much less messy to eat.

Here are all the components:

And here’s the completed wrap:

I still wish I could have a nice, fresh chunk of Greek feta, but since I can’t – this will have to do in the meanwhile. Enjoy!

Hamilton Lake

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First, a compilation of last weekend in four instagrams.

Delicious food:

Pretty flowers by the water:

Beverage consumption:

And some fireworks:

Last weekend, my mom’s side of the family had a mini-family reunion at Hamilton Lake, Indiana, where one of my uncles has a lake house. The weekend wasn’t terribly eventful, but was a relaxing mix of eating and drinking a lot, swimming in the lake, getting a terrible sunburn from the aforementioned swim (that part wasn’t so relaxing), reminiscing around the dinner table with family members, reading outdoors by the water, and watching one surprisingly potent fireworks display put on by my cousin.

Throughout the weekend, and now thinking back on it, I felt such a powerful sense of nostalgia. Watching the little kids play endless hours of capture the flag and other games of their own invention, I felt nostalgia for my own childhood. I thought of our trips up north when I was a kid – feeding the ducks, water balloon fights instigated by my grandma, spending countless hours swimming, roasting marshmallows for s’mores by the fire, building sandcastles – and felt a powerful notion of wanting to go back, back to a time when I had no responsibilities and relatively few worries.

And as we sat around the dinner table on Saturday night, and I listened to my mother and her brothers tell stories about their own childhoods, I felt an even more powerful pang of nostalgia – that is, if you can call it nostalgia when you feel sentimental about a time and a place and a childhood that wasn’t even your own. Listening to them reminisce, I couldn’t help but construct a version of the neighborhood they grew up in as an idyllic place – where everyone had a bunch of kids, and all those kids played together, forming a motley, close-knit tribe that spanned several blocks, where the kids ran wild outside, hopping on their bikes and riding to wherever something exciting was going on, and where one half of my family got their start and so, in a way, I got mine too.