Blog Chain: Pieces of Me

It's blog chain time again and I'm late. Despite being a short week thanks to the holiday, it's been a very long week.

This round was started by Jon.

Imagine the home(s) where you grew up, and start drawing a floor plan. As you draw, memories will surface. Grab onto one of those memories and tell us a story.

I tried to come up with one particular story, something to capture the essence of my childhood, but whenever I think of that house, it's a collage of small moments, a thousand little things.

Sharing a tiny bedroom with my three younger sisters. Torture for a teenage girl, but I survived.

Sitting in my older (and only) brother's room, planning a novel for which we never came up with a premise, much less any sort of plot. But it was going to make us rich and famous, of course.

Kittens, kittens, and more kittens. So very many kittens.

The summer monsoons followed by a plague of baby toads, which we gathered in buckets and brought home. I always loved those tiny toads.

Rain coming down in buckets. I used to sit at the window and watch it flood the road in front of our house until it flowed over the edge of the sidewalk. An Arizona thunderstorm is still one of my favorite things to watch.

The smell of orange blossoms from the groves that surrounded our street. We loved to play hide and seek (and whatever else we could think of) in those orange groves--totally against the rules--and never got in trouble because we never got caught.

Or hopping the fence to swim in the irrigation ditch behind our house--also against the rules and we did get caught a few times but that didn't stop us. I mean, it was an irrigation ditch. Hours of endless fun.

Hanging out in the kitchen with my mom, learning to make bread, and fudge, and pies. For being the diet queen, my mom always made the best fattening foods.

Many hours at the kitchen table with my mom, learning to sew, or just talking for hours about anything and everything.

And late nights with my mom and sisters spent laughing at nothing. A sound that still echoes in my thoughts whenever I think about that house.

What about you? Anything about your childhood home you want to share?

Be sure to check out Michelle's post from Wednesday and Amparo's post today. :)