10 little minutes a day. That’s all that is required for my all-about-me Wellness Challenge at work. Here’s to another 10 minutes….

Yesterday I mentioned my family moving to Odessa to the house on Petroleum. We lived there for the rest of my childhood. Boy, it was a fun childhood too. We always had dogs as kids. We had Sugar, Honey, and Buffy. We had Sugar until shortly after I moved out. I remember getting her…sort of. We had a blue pick up and kids were allowed to ride in the bed then. Sugar was a tiny white furry little fluff ball and I have vague memories of my big brothers not wanting to let me pet her but it didn’t take long until she was a kid favorite. I don’t really remember what happened with Honey and Buffy, just that they were given away.

Sugar was a sweet girl. She was mostly an outside dog, I think. We sometimes took her on trips with us to see family and she would get very excited when we got close to home. She was a medium size mutt who was white and fluffy. We had a centerblock fence around our property and she would jump up on the lower level and sit, letting us love on her and pet her. I am sure my brothers have even more memories of her than I do. It’s actually kind of making me sad I can’t remember more about her than that.

Subject change…

We played outside a lot as kids. There was a pool a few blocks away that we would swim at in the summer. I think it cost a quarter. There was a convenience store near-bye that was great for a Slurpee or some candy and across town, way across town as I recall, there was a great book store called the Book Nook where we would get comics and books to our hearts content. I remember the ladies that ran the store smoked a lot and it seems like it was next to the Cloth World store. Once my parents took the three of us kids to the movies and while we were at the movies they went to the Book Nook. When they picked us up there were tons of comics in the back of the blue truck for us to pick from. That was a great memory.

We rode motorcycles when I was a kid. My mom had a Honda that they painted red. She sold Avon and had an Avon sticker my dad fixed to some metal that she had on the box in the back. My dad also had a bike that had a sidecar on it for us kids so we could all ride and go camping, and fun things as a family. We did put a lot of miles on those bikes as a family. We were part of the TMRA motorcycle association and participated and family friendly rallies and organized events. Of course I remember little of those days too. I do remember getting soaked more than once in the rain, getting pegged by grasshoppers, waving at truckers as they passed us and having to pee in the middle of nowhere. Remember those little ladder things that went up and over the fencing? Yep, good times! You wouldn’t believe how much you could pack for a family of five on two motorcycles and a little trailer. Sometimes we would ride so long that I couldn’t feel my butt for hours and my face felt like it was still vibrating from the ride a hour after we stopped but there was nothing like surfing the wind with your hands, flying down the road and enjoying the view.

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