Lonely Vinyl Picnics

I could never rely on my brother to hang out with me in the summer.  Usually I was the loner 6 year old begging him to play, and he'd be refusing because I was little and boring.  I wanted to play dolls.  I wanted him to bounce me on the trampoline and push me on the swings.
What's not fun about that?

So, I'd pack up my vinyl crew in a basket, grab a piece of bread, coat it with butter, and slide out of the house with tablecloth in hand.  Picnics were the life.  Just me and my girls all laid back in the sun, eating our delectable fare and enjoying the grass.  But it was lonely, and I would start saying the word "picnic" to myself for fun because I wasn't having fun.  And then I would marvel at how the syllables of "picnic" lost their meaning after saying them 53 times in a row.  And I would then wonder how many other people had discovered the lost meaning of overly said words...if other 6 year olds thought the same way as me.

Probably not.

Back to the pictures.  We've been having a downpour of rain all week.  Our grass has turned into a flooded wasteland complete with rivers.  But this afternoon started to brighten up.  In fact, it turned out to be around 70ºF by noon.  So, visiting old childhood memories,  I grabbed a couple dolls, a tablecloth, and a basket for a picnic.

 This is me at six

This is my imaginary friend

These are my toys

This is my imaginary friend grabbing Rex

This is me and my imaginary friend playing with the Toy Story characters

Another thing I'd always do was build forts.  Except we never really had sticks big enough to make a tent as awesome as this one.  So, I'd stick to pillow castles.

I did have my group of imaginary friends, which is kinda pathetic.  There were three.  A good one, a troublemaker, and a weird, clumsy, unintellectual one with the name of a clown.  Funny to think about them now, as I haven't in awhile.  

I can't say that I miss their company, but at the time, they were good friends.