Thing Number Twenty-Five | Outside

the garden structure at the North Hollywood or Burbank (can’t remember which) apartments, that we accidentally flooded  |  going up a ladder with a beekeeper and meeting the bees that were living in the wall of our apartment building  |  playing Star Wars with Scott Road’s Star Wars action figures in the flower beds  | Yosemite vacations  |  playing outside at Jen’s house with the orchard and the rabbits and the poor dogs that had to be penned up because we were afraid of them; why were we afraid of them?  |  never going into Grandma’s backyard—scary!  |  loving Grandmother’s backyard, filled with all those poppies and the bougainvillea that grew over her roof and made an LA police helicopter think her roof was on fire when it was in full bloom  |  the playhouse in our backyard that Dad built from my Avon commercial earnings—loved sleepovers in the loft  |  reading inside too much and being kicked out of the house to go get some vitamin D  |  swing sets and plastic pools  |  plastic poncho slip-n-slides  |  picking up pieces of roof  as a punishment  |  summer camp at Forest Home or Pine Summit  |  standing in line at Knott’s Berry Farm or Disneyland, long before the advent of misters  |  going up on the roof with Dad to hang out while he was fixing the swamp cooler  |  going up on the roof with Dad to watch meteor showers  |  weeding the sideyard garden  |  cheap dates with Jon to city parks  |  much more expensive dates with Jon to out-of-state parks  |  watching our house go up on the parcel of land we’d chosen  |  designing our backyard (it’s still not perfect but, hey, work in progress)  |  walking from our house to the circus in the adjoining field  |  watching Beasley wiggle through the fence slats of his enclosure  |  playing with Beasley in the backyard  |  stargazing in the backyard  |  barbecuing in the backyard (one time Justin called the fire department)  |  watching the 4^th of July fireworks from our backyard  |  taking care of our backyard—love my roses and trees  |  missing Beasley in our backyard