Adventures from Home: Game Night

One of the best things about the Schultz house – and all my Wisconsin friends can attest to this – is game night.  Game night isn’t a particular night; it’s any night when we happen to play games.  Board games, card games, even Twister.

During my last trip this past June, one of the first things we did was have a game night.  And lucky for us, well lucky for him too, The Great Ecclestone joined us.  Game night is fun when it’s just part of the family; it’s super fun when friends are involved. 

The Great Ecclestone walked into the house as Daddy was yelling from the family room to someone in some other room and Katrina was stomping down the hallway muttering loudly to no one in particular while Mommy yelled back to one of them from the computer room.  The Great Ecclestone smiled, “nothing’s changed around here.”  He was right, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Game 1

We decide to spare The Great Ecclestone’s ears, especially since he’s a professional singer, and opted for board games over Beatles Rock Band.  First on the list, a new game that the family got for Christmas last year.  I spent Christmas in California so I hadn’t played this game yet, but Mommy and Munchkinhead had. 

“Last Word” is a boisterous game that involves quick thinking and shouting over your neighbor in order to be the last person to give a correct answer before the timer goes off.  Correct answers are words that start with the letter given on one card and fall in the category given on the other card.

I thought I had a pretty good “m” word for “things found on the internet” when I said “mommy.”  (She likes to play a lot of Farmville and Café World.)  But, I was really impressed when Munchkinhead tried to answer “Mozilla.”  I say tried because she couldn’t quite pronounce the word and had trouble spitting it out.  (Bay Area and internet-y friends, remember we’re playing this game far from the tech-focused coasts, where most people probably don’t even know what Firefox is, let alone Mozilla.)  I think we gave it to her anyway just because it was so brilliant an answer.

I have no idea who won, which means it probably wasn’t me.  But,  I do remember we had a ton of fun playing that game.

Games 2 & 3

As the night wore on and the Amarula began to run low, the standards started to come out.  Someone wound up with a giraffe on their head, sitting positions were exchanged for lounging and out came the household classics, “20 Questions” with Reifenberg Rules (the rules in the box aren’t as much fun) and “Whoonu”, the game from Cranium where you try to select the things you think your friends will like most. 

It’s amazing how much you can learn about people you’ve known all your life, or all their life as the case may be.  For example, I had no idea that mommy likes sailboats.  I put the card in the envelope to get it out of circulation and because I had nothing better, and then bam, she rates it super high.  She loves sailboats.  Who knew!?

Brown Velvet Sandals

I wasn’t expecting the second post in my shoe series to be another obit, but life is full of surprises.

I’d been debating taking my brown velvet sandals to Goodwill for sometime, but not having any good replacements already in my closet,  I was hesitant.

These sandals, much like my black wingtips were a product of the Spice Girl era and my Bakers infatuation, or perhaps better said, my Bakers era and Spice Girl infatuation.  Round 4” heels and a thick platform front, soft velvet crisscrossing over my foot and wrapping around my ankle.  They were comfortable, but clunky.

I didn’t get them for any special purpose.  No, by the time I bought these shoes I was long past the basic-shoe life of my youth and beginning the collection that would eventually turn into the Great Wall of Shoes, producer of Shoevalanches.  These I bought not because there was a special occasion or a certain outfit, but because they were cute and I had an allowance or a job.

The item I remember wearing them with most was a brown stretch-velvet skirt I had fashioned out of a large piece of fabric.  I’d wrapped the fabric around me, held the edges together out to the side and made a seam a few inches long down from my waist.  Hemmed up all the sides and the result was a long skirt with bias drape accentuating a high slit. 

My best memory of those brown velvet shoes was with that brown velvet skirt, but it wasn’t a brown velvet skirt that day.  It was a brown velvet shirt.  I was going to a sorority event that I happened to be around for on a visit home from Zambia.  I’d gained so much weight in Africa that practically none of my clothes fit.  The best I could do for a fancy-dress event was to wear that skirt as a tube top with a long red skirt designed to be a petticoat for a formal dress. As an undergarment, the petticoat skirt was made to fit at my hips.  On this evening, it was snug at my waist.  A strange combination to be sure, but it totally worked, and those brown velvet sandals helped bring it all together.

So, I was debating about keeping them or passing them along, but I didn’t get a chance to decide.  Not very long ago, the decision was made for me.  I was walking to work from the bus stop.  My left shoe was making an odd noise and I felt a shaking under my toes that seemed odd.  “What is going on with my shoe?”I thought.  As I picked up my leg to take a step, my velvet-wrapped foot rose in the air.  The platform stayed on the ground.

Luckily  I had my gym bag with me and could put my gym shoes on right away.  Now, I just need to find some new brown sandals.

Adventures from Home: Congratulations Grad!

One of the great things about going home over Fathers’ Day weekend, and one of the reasons I chose that weekend to go, was that I got to see a whole bunch of my relatives at my cousin’s graduation party!

Emily, one of the youngest cousins (and Mommy’s god-daughter), graduated from high school this June.  A great reason to have a party!  There were balloons and glow bracelets, both of which I put on my wrists.  The tables were scattered with bowls of snack food and little metallic graduation hat cut-outs that my aunties delighted in hiding in everyone’s purses, camera cases and knitting bags. 

The dinner spread was a true smorgasbord of standard Schlaikowski delights.  Little wienies, a pickle and olive plate, Auntie Gail’s taco dip, fruit salad, coleslaw, buns and some sort of gravy soaked meat to put on the buns, potato and tortilla chips, and a stack of crackers and cheese.

It wasn’t a super hyper dance-crazed party or anything like that, but it was still a ton of fun.  Our little first-cousins-once-removed provided so much entertainment only the most stubborn teenager could be bored.  They ran in circles, climbed up walls and played fetch with a large, neon pink, stuffed dolphin.  That was all in addition to their usual just looking cute.

I didn’t have a dolphin, but I was content to just play with my food.

(That worked better when my hands were smaller, or maybe I need bigger olives.)

It was a great party and wonderful to spend time with my large family. :)  Huge shoutout to my godparents for arranging it and being fabulous hosts!  And, Congratulations Emily!

Homecoming Wingtips

A new series.  It will bore some – *yawn* shoes, and they aren’t even sneakers *double yawn*.  But, there’s at least two people who will enjoy; thank you Pretty Little Munchkinhead and Renzephyr.  And I feel like writing about shoes.  This first post is also a bit of an obituary.

Growing up, Mommy did a very good job of keeping us practical, sensible, frugal.  (Little did I know she was even repressing her own desire for cute, fun shoes.  The things you learn when you grow up…)  We generally had about 4 pairs of shoes, give or take.  A pair of white dress shoes for summer, a pair of black dress shoes for winter, maybe a pair of brown dress shoes, too, and a pair of white canvas shoes for everyday wear.  Sometimes we had other types of tennis shoes; sometimes we had some dress sandals or some jelly shoes.  But, those were the basics.*

Then came high school, and everything changed.  Sophomore year homecoming, my first big dance.  I didn’t go freshman year.  A boy I didn’t like asked me to go with him.  Not wanting to go with him, but not wanting to hurt his feelings, I told him I wasn’t going.  A group of friends asked me to go with them, I told them I wasn’t going, too.  I wanted to go with them, but I had to stick to my story.  Mommy tried to convince me otherwise, but I was stubborn in my refusal to everyone.  Sophomore year, I just had to go.

My dress a beautiful silver, shiny here, dull there, an ever-changing pattern of texture as I moved.  Of course Mommy made my dress.  A pattern of hers from the 70s.  I should have listened to her when she said to just cut off the extra length and make a smaller hem.  Now, when I see the dress, the large hem looks like an odd seam on the thin fabric.  At the time, it didn’t bother me at all.   I loved my dress.

I had a beautiful dress; I just needed beautiful shoes to go with it.  Off Mommy and I headed to the mall, and there, at a store called Bakers, we found those beautiful shoes.  So, so many beautiful shoes at Bakers.  It would soon become a favorite store of mine.

The shoes we picked out were black wingtips, a retro style on a 3” stacked heel.  Big and clunky, but big and clunky was the thing.  (Thank you, Spice Girls.)  We pulled out the thick black laces and replaced them with silver laces made from dress scraps.  Platforms for a 1970s pattern; that worked pretty well.

Those shoes then became my everyday school shoes for the rest of the year.  We put the black laces back in.  I remember sitting in Kuj’s trig class coloring in the dots on the wingtip detail with my silver gel pen.  And after that wore off, with my copper gel pen. Both colors looked good on the black shoes.

The shoes, in better days.

By the end of high school, the heels were so worn down that there was a 1.5” difference between the inside and outside of the heel on the back.  in college, I found a good cobbler who was able to completely rebuild the heels and I got several more years out of those shoes.  Many years in fact.  It wasn’t until just a few months ago, 15 years after Mommy bought them, that they finally left my closet.

The heels were starting to feel wobbly; the stitching was coming out the sides.  I had other black shoes with stacked 3” heels that served the same outfits and were in better shape.  They weren’t completely done, but they had gotten to dress-up-box-only state.  So off they went to Goodwill.

I got a lot of good use out those shoes. :)

 

*Of course, this isn’t counting the heaps of twirling, parade, ballet and gymnastics shoes that could be found in strewn around the house in random places.  But those don’t count.

Adventures from Home: Daddy’s Day

“Trains, planes and automobiles,” we would always say, laughing. Describing how all three of us had come home for whatever adventure or holiday.  Alfred would drive, Munchkinhead would fly, and I’d come choo-chooing in.  But not this time.  This time it was only planes and automobiles.  I suppose you could add feet if you count Katrina’s walking out of her bedroom.  But no matter how we all got there, the important part was that we were all home.  Home and going to church together.

You see, it was Father’s Day – which is a special enough reason – but, this was an even more special day.  Daddy was worship leader. 

Mommy, Alfred, Munchkinhead and I shuffled into a pew behind some familiar heads and beamed proudly at the back of Daddy’s head in the front pew across the aisle.  “That’s our daddy"!”  we thought. Well, not Mommy; but you get the idea.

Suit and tie, microphone in hand, Daddy stood up front welcoming everyone.  He always looks so spiffy when he wears his suits. I think I especially like it because seeing him in a suit reminds me of when I was little and he’d come into day care to pick us up. From across the room we’d spot him coming in the door, the tall guy nicely dressed in a suit.  And here he was again, easily spotted from across the room; the tall guy nicely dressed in a suit.

There was a guest preacher that day, from a different denomination.  She seemed pretty nice.  Reminded me a lot of a kindergarten teacher. Although, for some reason, most female pastors remind me of kindergarten teachers.  my current pastor in Cali may be an exception.  I was super excited to hear Daddy’s children message, but the guest pastor got to do it instead.  Oh well, Daddy still did a great job and it was wonderful to be back in church with my whole family.