Top 10 Tuesday: Songs of Summer

There’s something about summer that time travels me back to my youth. Sweating in the hot sun. Eating popsicles on the front porch. Running through the sprinkler. Listening to summer songs on my dad’s car stereo as we drove around town. Just like certain smells can harken memories so can sound, especially those summer tunes that were so apart of growing up. Now that I’ve discovered Blip.fm I’ve been able to relive those moments, right here on my computer. So for Oh Amanda‘s Top Ten Tuesday post today I give you, in no particular order, the Top 10 Songs that make me thing of Summer (and I take no responsibility it these tunes stick in your head):

1. Hot in the City, Billy Idol
2. Summertime. Summertime, The Jamies
3. Summer in the City, The Loving Spoonful
4. Here Comes the Sun, George Harrison
5. Car Wash, Rose Royce
6. Let’s Go Trippin’, Dike Dale & The Deltones
7. Going Up the Country, Canned Heat
8. Summertime Blues, Eddie Cochran
9. Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay, Otis Redding
10. In the Summertime, Mungo Jerry

What songs make you think of summer?

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Why the Lie?

Maybe it’s just me, but I love perpetuating the myths of the Easter Bunny, Leprachuans, the Tooth Fairy and others with my kids. These fantasy characters were a wonderful part of my childhood that I love to share with my own kids. They ARE childhood.

And of course like with our own childhood, they will grow-up and their belief will be overtaken by reality and skepticism.

I may not like to admit it but I do know someday my kids will stop believing in some of these characters, if not all of them. It’s a sad reality. I’ve even started to notice some doubt in my 8-year-old daughter (though some things I’ve done haven’t helped). So what happened on the weekend shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise.

My 8-year-old lost another tooth. She placed it in the Tooth Fairy jar (we have a small jar with little fairy sitting on top) and placed it on her dresser that night. Before I went to bed I took the tooth and replaced it with money (Yes we leave money. That’s a different blog post to deal with).

The next morning we slept in. I was surprised my daughter didn’t rush in telling us about the funds the Tooth Fairy left behind; she would usually do this, waking us up at the crack of dawn. I thought perhaps she had forgotten to check but when I went by her room I noticed the Tooth Fairy jar was empty.

So curious, I asked my daughter:

me: Did the Tooth Fairy visit you last night?
8yo: No. Well, yes. She came and took the tooth but left no money.
me: Really? Are you sure? Did you check to see if it fell on the floor?
8yo: I looked everywhere, no money this time.

My daughter proceeded downstairs as if nothing happened. Now I know in the past I’ve been negligent about the Tooth Fairy’s visits but I know I took the tooth and left the money. I know I did.

It’s obvious she took the money. What I couldn’t figure out is why she wouldn’t admit too it. She still gets the money. My only thought is she was testing me. She’s probably already figured out that the Tooth Fairy isn’t real; that mom and dad replace the teeth with funds. Maybe she wants to see my reaction, see if I admit that the Tooth Fairy left the money, because I left it.

But I can’t bring myself to admit it. I can’t be the one to break the fantasy. She may have her doubts and that’s fine but I don’t need to be the one to confirm it. We still have two younger kids who haven’t even experienced the Tooth Fairy yet. I don’t want them to be jaded before they’ve even lost their first tooth. I don’t need my 8-year-old in a fit of anger with her brother or sister to blurt out ‘And the Tooth Fairy isn’t real. Mom leaves the money. She told me so.‘

Even when my 8-year-old returned with substitute Tooth Fairy money from her dad (trying out her story on him too I suppose), I still kept tight-lipped.

The fact that my daughter had doubts about the fairy didn’t bug me so much. Even testing her doubts to see if I or her dad would fess up didn’t bother me much either. I have to admit it was pretty ingenious. The ongoing lie was bugging me. Okay, she did her test and didn’t get the result she wanted. Now she should admit to the money being left, say she found it after all. The fact that she kept telling the story and on top of that accepted additional money from her dad, these things bugged me.

Eventually my daughter felt guilty and admitted that she did get money (though she admitted to her dad and not me). In return she had to work with her dad in the backyard building a shed before the rain arrived. We also agreed that perhaps the Tooth Fairy not leaving money for my daughter (see, I had to still believe the original story since I wasn’t suppose to know about the confession) was a sign that my daughter was too old for Tooth Fairy visits. Any teeth left to fall out could just be tossed and we wouldn’t have to worry about the ritual anymore,  until her brother or sister get bigger.

I knew I would be disappointed when my kids were old enough to not believe in some of the childhood fantasies we’ve brought them up on. I guess I didn’t know the lesson would hurt me so much.

Top Ten Tuesday: My 10 Favourite Candies

Moritz Icy Squares. I loved these melt-in-your-mouth chocolate squares. You use to be able to buy them individually for 5-cents. There was no caramel or peanuts or nugget to detract from the pure joy of placing a square on your tongue and just letting is slowly melt away. It was the best 5-cents every spent. You can still buy these now.
Last Tuesday I talked about the Top 10 Things I Learned from my Daughter’s (and my) First Sleepover. Writing the post and reading the comments had me thinking back to my own sleepover days (and I’m sure I was older than eight). Perhaps it’s just me, but when thinking about fond childhood memories I can’t help but think about candy. I remember walking to school and passing a small store that sold penny candy (though I don’t remember any of it costing a penny). So this Tuesday for Oh Amanda’s Top 10 Tuesday meme I thought I’d share with you my Top 10 Favourite Childhood Candies.

1. Moritz Icy Squares. I loved these melt-in-your-mouth chocolate squares. You use to be able to buy them individually for 5-cents. There was no caramel or peanuts or nugget to detract from the pure joy of placing a square on your tongue and just letting is slowly melt away. It was the best 5-cents every spent. You can still buy these now.
2. Pop Rocks. These were great to give an unsuspecting friend. The candies were small and came in a small envelop but you sure got a good bang from them. These little candies would start to explode in your mouth. The more you had, the bigger the explosion. We use to stand around, mouth open, with these things popping; they sounded like fizzy pop. I guess in those days it was cool to eat with your mouth open.
3. Gold Mine Gum. Even at a little tyke I was a sucker for packaging. I loved that this gum came in a little canvas sack which eventually switched to a thicker paper, but still a drawstring bag. The pieces were varied and small and yellow, suppose to be like gold. And who doesn’t like chewing on gold.
4. Licorice Pipes. Nothing was off-limit to us as kids. Remember Popeye cigarettes (which eventually changed to candy sticks instead of cigarettes), but my tobacco candy of choice were those black licorice pipes with the red candy sprinkles in the pipe part, for that realistic appeal. I’m still a huge fan of black licorice.
5. FunDip. This was the ultimate sugar candy. You had a bag of flavoured sugar powder that you ate with a stick – a stick of solid sugar candy. Yum! If this didn’t keep you bouncing for the rest of the day, nothing would. I remember getting those double bags where one side had one flavour and the other side had a different flavour. This was great for sharing too as friends would just put a licked finger into the bag. Yah, the whole germ thing didn’t seem to faze us then.
6. Bottlecaps. One of the few hard candies I really enjoyed. Similar consistency as those candy bracelets and necklaces you can still buy now (and the ones they sell now are probably leftover ones that didn’t sell when we were kids). I remember these pressed circular candies coming in a bag. You would get a variety of flavours (and they were colour coated that way too). Root Beer was my favourite and actually the only flavour that really stands out in my memory.
7. Zotz (or later Lotsa Fizz). If you liked Pop Rocks, you probably also liked these. They were sold in strips with each candy wrapped individually. The candies would be hard on the outside and fruit flavoured but when you got to the inside it was full of fizzy powder (which I later found out was baking soda). I would love to suck on these candies to the point of the outside coating getting weak enough to let the fizzy fun powder seep through. The fizzy sensation with the fruit flavour of the hard candy was a kid’s candy dream.
8. Lucky Elephant Pink Candy Popcorn. Okay, this maybe doesn’t qualify as a real candy but it certainly was a treat I remember. I loved the boxes it came it. It was almost like Cracker Jacks but not as sugary or hard coasted. It didn’t get stuck in your teeth. Instead is was just pure sweet pink popcorn goodness.
9. Cherry Blossoms. Chocolate and cherries. Is there no better combination? I loved these. When you bite into the little mound of chocolate a sweet cherry syrup would drip out (and down your chin and on your clothing usually) and buried in the middle a wonderful cherry. This was so much better than just eating a cherry flavour filled chocolate. I loved the mix of consistencies from the hard chocolate to the liquid cherry sauce to the soft chewy cherry itself. Thank goodness you can still buy these.
10. Country Store Old Fashioned Taffy. I’m not a big fan of taffy, it sticks to your teeth, but the Country Store Old Fashioned 3 flavoured taffy (it had a strip of chocolate, a strip of strawberry and a strip of vanilla) was more of a softer chew candy. It came in a long strip. Sometimes we’d all buy one and tear a piece off then you would let it sit in your mouth and eventually it would melt away.

These are just a few of my favourites, in no particular order. I’m sure I ingested lots of others. And there are certainly popular candies on my ‘Yuck’ list, like Thrills Gum. I never understood someone who wanted to chew on soap.

What are your favourite childhood candies?