things I have forgotten about my childhood

I got an email from my parents this morning:

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Pipe replacement & living room hole in wall: A Discovery!

So with a small leak in a basement pipe it turned out not to be easy to remove and replace it without making a foot wide hole in the living room wall behind the white bookcase (also one in your bedroom closet, but smaller). This meant removing the books and case. Lo and behold, a ring with a scrolled message turned up behind some books. It's a big amethyst sort of ring with a square of paper:

"Oh, Person of great stature, thee hath found thee mystical amber ring. Thou is heir to the throne of thee jewls Unlock thee secret and you shall rule all. Watch for the tigers eye."

Vicky thought it a hoot, but I suspect it must be your doing.

Love, Mom

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After giggling extensively to myself over tiny!Liz's ideas of how to be Cool and Mysterious, I wrote back:

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I have no memory whatsoever of that note or ring, but I did go through a phase of designing fantasy epics around sets of gemstones (which was kind of hilarious since I knew NOTHING about gemstones) so yeah, probably me. I also recall being fascinated by that bookcase as a kid -- I think because it had a cutout for an extension cord? -- so it's not terribly surprising that I'd use it as a hiding place.

I clearly had no idea how to do archaic grammar, though. Yowch. (Also amethyst and amber are not remotely the same color or structure, but that bugs me less than the grammar fail.)

Can you bring the ring and paper to Ithaca in July?

Love, Liz

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I am not kidding about the jewelry-based fantasy epics, by the way. The one I remember best was about the... uh... Songstones of Myrr, I think? Anyway, Mom had a necklace made of about twelve green glass 'stones,' each set in a silver frame. There were five small ones on each side, and then a big stone with a dangling teardrop-shaped pendant in the middle. The big stone's frame looked an awful lot like a harp, which is where I got the 'songstone' idea. The notion was that the necklace was stolen and the stones separated, and a different fantasy species had to go on a quest to get each one back. So there was a stone for the unicorns, and one for selkies, and one for gryffins, and one for elves, and one for harpies, and so on. The last was for humans, of course, and when the necklace was brought back together it would... do something big and important; the details escape me, going on thirty years later.

I never did write any of those jewelry epics, but it's kind of fun to look back and wonder what might have been. :)

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ETA: Mom wrote back:

We can bring it - but you'll have to tell us where to find that tiger's eye it says we have to watch for...

:DDDD

spring cleaning, part one

I intended to scrub down my back porch yesterday, but the weather forecast betrayed me and the morning and afternoon were filled with steady rain. :(

So I tried again today! ...And I got half of it done before my wrists declared mutiny and I figured I'd knock off for now. Assuming decent weather, I will try for the other half tomorrow. (Hopefully in the morning, so I can then wash my yardwork/housework clothes along with the rest of my laundry, because they are going to be disgusting by the time I'm done.)

I think the boards should be dry enough by now that I can spray a temporary circle of anti-squirrel gunk around one of my plastic lawnchairs, and let my peppers sit on the chair for a few hours of delicious direct sunlight. :)