Bloganuary

My company is doing a daily blogging challenge for January, which I intended to participate in. I’m already blogging daily, so it will be no sweat! But then I forgot about it.

So, I’ve missed the first three days. Here are one sentence catch ups:

Day One: “What advice would you give to your teenage self?”

Do drugs. It’ll make everything much easier and more enjoyable for you.

Day Two: “What is a road trip you would love to take?”

I wouldn’t.

Day Three: “Write about the last time you left your comfort zone.”

I gave birth last March.

Done! Ok, those were easy. Now:

Day Four: “What was your favorite toy as a child?”

I had a doll named Leah who was my constant companion for many years. She was just a regular sort of baby doll with a plastic head and arms and legs, and a fabric body. The last time I saw Leah, her fabric body was absolutely black with grime, she had marker everywhere, and the middle and ring fingers of her left hand were bitten off (the same two fingers that I liked to suck on my own hand). I carried Leah with me EVERYWHERE until I was old enough to be shamed for it. I said she was my sister, and I became very annoyed and offended if people called her my “baby.”

We have lots of pictures of me at various ages with a giant purse holding all my toys and books (I was always afraid of being bored, which wasn’t an idle fear as an only child is often dragged on hours worth of dull errands and doesn’t have the coalition power to overrule things, so I did not travel light), and the purse would be zipped up almost all the way with Leah’s head hanging out of the gap, so she could breathe. My mom said that when I took Leah along to preschool, she worried about me being teased for it, but one day she visited and all the other kids were like, “Elizabeth, do you and your sister want to play blocks?”

(What my mom did not know is that this was because I was actually a bully in preschool, so it was sort of an “I am the one who knocks” situation, but that’s a bit much for this post, and anyway I grew out of it.)

Leah is currently in a box somewhere, and as my parents are moving in with me and we’re slowly going through storage, she will undoubtedly be unearthed at some point. I hope she has survived the long years, but I suspect time has not been kind.