Welcome to week 5 of my weird friend Mental Mama’s challenge 7 Weeks Of Weird.

Weirdest thing you collect.

I’m not a geologist, archeologist, petrologist nor lithologist, but I am a rockhound. In other words, I collect rocks. I always have. Ever since I was old enough to hold rocks in my chubby little paws, I’ve collected them.

Once a summer, my family took a trip by RV (caravan for you Brits out there), which is how I’ve been to every state in the continental US. We were Winnebago Warriors. Ours looked similar to this one:

My spot was above the wheelhouse at the front. When we were moving, I would lie up there and reach our destination before anyone else in my family since my spot jutted out over the driver’s compartment. I was the figurehead at the prow of our ship. I would be up there for hours just taking in the sights.

My sister was pissed that I got the coveted spot, but I get car sick if I can’t see where I’m going, so the prime real estate was all mine. It was my own little bird’s nest away from home.

Tucked into the sides of my nest were all the rocks I had collected from nearly every place we stopped. While my family was looking out at the magnificent vista of the Grand Canyon, I was searching the ground for the perfect little piece of it to take with me.

By the time I was a teenager, I had shoe boxes overflowing with rocks. I think there were three or four of them. As a teen, anything you do as a kid is just so uncool, so I spread them around the yard. Most of them are probably still there, though my family doesn’t live there anymore.

Old habits die hard. Scattered throughout my house, among the other random and strange things that inhabit my world, you will find rocks if you look hard enough: