Using My Imagination at Stillwood

Hello, y'all!

We're now in the Stillwood house, the one behind the Dairy Queen, we always said. The same gang: me, my parents, my grandma, and Pudge. You walk in and you're in the living room. To the left through a walkway is the "computer room" attached to the dining room w/ the door to the backyard. Pretty much a big circle, to the right through another walkway was the kitchen. To the left you had the hallway to the room and straight ahead was the walkway back to the living room. Down that walkway, on the left was my toy room/my Dad's Dialysis supplies room and then my parents/my room. In the middle was a closet and on the right was my grandma's/Pudge's room and the bathroom.

This house had a nice front yard and a reasonable size backyard, enough for just Pudge and I. If we were too bored to play with our toys, we'd head out to the yard. We would play "factory" all the time. Which was flipping over my bicycle (w/training wheels, but it was lopsided so I stopped riding it) and using the pedal to move the wheels. Why...no idea, but it was fun. I never learned how to ride a bike from them on, still don't. We'd get bored of that too and complain so much. One day Bill(my aunt/Pudge's mom) was over and she heard us complaining. She told us(I'll never forget bc she always brings it up), "use your imagination, y'all are kids!" We had no idea how to do that. Then she told us to play Jurassic Park or something, by putting a broom down and walking across it to escape from dinosaurs. We had no idea what she was talking about because obviously uh no and 2, we'd never seen Jurassic Park. I'm the only one who'd venture out to the backyard. What's interesting is, I found a lot of "treasure" back there. I used to find so much jewelry, coins from Canada and China, and random knick knacks, it was so cool and fun!

Thinking of the living room sparks many emotions. Many memories pop up. One being my grandma staying out late until 5 something in the morning just partying it up with a friend. My mom was so mad, but Pudge and I stayed up watching cartoons and eventually The Upside Down Show (which was the best!). Another being my dad got hurt whenever he played soccer. He used to be on a team and one time he hurt his knee and had to get crutches. He'd need our help, but because we were young we didn't really understand, the severity. He'd get so mad at Pudge and I because we couldn't help him correctly. Next would be, I remember this is where I had one of my firsts fights with Pudge. He was getting favored more from my grandma and I finally had it. I went outside to cool off and well that wasn't enough and I stormed inside, yelled at Pudge's face/while he was being coddled by my grandma, and went to my room. Another memory is whenever my friend’s brother had to use the restroom. He was there with his dad and my best friend…earlier that evening we went on a fishing trip. He’d never been to my house so, I had to show up where it was. I didn’t know what to do afterwards, I was like would he get lost…would he make things awkward and roam around, I didn’t know. So, I waited in the living room anxiously with my dad, who was there watching soccer. I knew he knew something was up because I never just sat there and watched soccer with him, haha. I wonder if my dad knew I liked my BFF’s brother at the time, because…omg.

More memories stem from the living room, but I need to move on. I’ll bring them up later on! In the computer room, that’s where Pudge and I spent a lot of time in the computer. We used to watch so much YouTube back when it was great! Our videos we’d watch over and over were: Aqua’s Barbie Girl MV, Smosh’s Pokémon Theme Song Lip Sync, and more. The corner where the desk was at, was covered in my drawings. I was/am the art kid. I’d draw Pokémon, Nintendo characters, and original creations. I also use to watch my mom use the laptop a lot. She’d be editing her MySpace page, on Neopets, etc. I also spent a lot of time on there: on YouTube/writing lyrics to songs bc I didn’t know how lyric vids worked, browsing PhotoBucket, and my Abacus lessons. In between the computer/dining is a nook type of area, that’s where our Christmas tree went. One of my favorite Christmas’ happened here. Santa gifted me an iPod nano. Literally one of the best gifts ever! In the dining room, I remember having one of my first get togethers for my birthday. I invited my cousins from my godmothers side. We celebrated by having Chick Fil A and cake. It was also a pool party because we just got an above ground pool, we were basically rich in my mind. It’s interesting whenever they were singing happy birthday to me, I remember tearing up. My dad was hugging me from behind as I was waiting to blow my candles. This was one of 2 times I teared up, at my birthday cake moment. 

In the kitchen, I remember having my first Starbucks Frappuccino…Vanilla Bean, still my fave. I also remember having my first coffee with my grandma here. She’d make me a small mug of it, mainly milk in it, haha. Here is where my mom spent a lot of her time at, she was a baker. Had her whole business and everything. I miss the sound of her mixer and the smell of ingredients. She’d end her baking career when she turned 40, more on that later. 

Speed run on the rooms! In the toy/dialysis supply room, it was always such a mess. Pudge and I had too many toys and we’d leave them scattered everywhere. The dialysis supplies took up most of the space, since they were many boxes stacked. One night, we heard a really big crash. We literally thought a car ran into our house. Turns out all of those boxes fell over and caused a ruckus, lol. I apparently used to sleepwalk/talk here, I don’t remember. I miss watching MTV in the room, in the morning as I woke up and got ready for school. I learned and got start helping with my dad’s dialysis machine. Even though it was a sad situation, I made it fun in a sense because I was helping with everything…I was young. He got diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease a couple years back at Rundberg, I think, more on that later. 

One last memory…our front we had a trailer parked. It was teal and rainbow with polka dot and stripes. It was my mom and aunt’s snow cone trailer. They sold snow cones for 2 summers I think. It was quite popular the time it ran. Everyone liked it at my school, sorta made me “popular”. They had sooooo many flavors even pickle flavor. It was even featured in a photo shoot with a model and everything. My mom’s hand is famous because there is a pic with my mom handing her a snow cone! 

There are still so many memories that I needed to mention or go into more detail but I feel like I was already rambling a couple of paragraphs in. So much happened here it…I miss this house so much. Onto the next, the Round Rock house! Hopefully you enjoyed this blog…it took me forever to finish it.

Until next time,

Zelly :)