April Fool's!

This year I am again participating in the April A to Z blogging challenge. I decided this year that I would tackle it as Aging by alphabet.
 And since we are starting with A let's start with April Fool's.

You woke up one morning and got ready for work, and there, in the shower drain, were these white strings. Where did they come from? Could it be hair? Surely not.
It should be the dark, dark strands you are used to looking at, now they are white. What gives? Where is my hairdresser's number? What did she do to me? Now how did that happen? Who put bleach on my pillow? It has to be a joke. I am way too young to have this white hair. Surely it is just a few. I can just pluck out the rest.
Um, that's not a good idea. What else can I do?
Shoe polish. That would work for this morning. Um, the wax kind is hard to stay in place. Maybe, I have some liquid kind.
Forget it. Maybe the ones left in won't show.
I know my reaction is foolish. But, really, I am not ready to be old.
I won't be old.

And where did my dark hair go?
It has to be a joke.
That's it. It's April 1st.

April Fool's.

Childhood Memories

As I stood looking out my living room window this morning, I was taken back to my childhood.
Not that I had a scene like this when I was growing up, but I drew a scene like this. Over and over.

When I was in grade-school we had art time in every grade We would get out our crayons, no markers then, and the pale yellow, I think it was called manilla paper, but I remember calling it vanilla, drawing paper was handed out and we would draw. I don't remember if it was always free-hand or if we had specifics to do. I think it was a way to keep the kids entertained before moving on to the next subject of the day.
I am sure that there are teachers out there that taught years ago that could tell me it was on purpose that we did this. I do know that we handed in some of them, and it may have been a weekly, rather than a daily thing.
I just know I drew houses. I loved putting down the long rectangle and then drawing a line above and attaching that to the rectangle with a triangle at each end. ( Now, pretty sure that in first grade I did not know the names of all of these shapes, except the triangle. That I got to play in music.)
  Anyway, I would then draw the windows and doors.
I had a pretty door with a fan glass in it so the light would come in. I had two small windows with shutters and then, I had a big picture window with curtains draped back and a table with a lamp in the center.
If I could go back and look and my drawings over the years I would find copies of that picture. I always put a tree in the yard and it was ALWAYS bare of leaves so I could draw the tiny little twigs that held the leaves in the summer time. Later in life I discovered I was drawing oak trees. I also liked Walnut trees because they didn't have the little twigs.
  It has taken me 51 years of marriage and many houses to fulfill that drawing.I now have the two smaller windows on each end of the front of the house and my big bay window with the curtains and the table with lamp. This is a new house to us. We just moved in this summer and it has taken me a while to realize that I have fulfilled my childhood dreams of the house with draped curtains and a lamp in the window.