154 Hidden Court

Twitterature - March 2014

2014-03-15T12:55:00.000-04:00

Linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy for Twitterature!

Yay books!

Sometimes you get really lucky and find a string of books that keeps your attention... then sometimes you read winner after winner and the birds sing and the sun shines and... well you get the picture. It was a good book month for me, and I can't wait to share!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy - In a near future post-apocalyptic setting, staying alive is the only goal, but the father and son main characters have a relationship that transcends that. Equally beautiful, touching and disturbing, this book really struck me as one that will stay with me for a long, long time.

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant - How have I gone all these years without reading this beautiful, wonderful book? This is one I skipped when it was popular because, well, because I was a snob and didn't want to read what everyone else was reading, but it's been on my to-read list for years. And it was so wonderful. This fictional story of Dinah, daughter of Jacob, is one of the most astoundingly beautiful things I've read in a long time.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion - This story was super cute and held my attention to the last word. Don is a professor of genetics who is pretty set in his ways. He decides it's time to find a wife based on a certain set of very specific criteria... then he meets Rosie, who is absolutely none of those things. What happens next is predictably unpredictable and touching and funny and wonderful. I picked this one based on MMD's reviews and she was spot on!

The Returned by Jason Mott - This was probably my low reading point for the month. The tv show based on this book has been ALL OVER THE MEDIA, so I thought I would give the book a try, and it was only ok. As a matter of fact, it was so meh that I skipped the tv show too.

The Maid's Version by Daniel Woodrell - This super quick read (it's only about 150ish pages) is about Alma, who is telling the story of a long-ago explosion at a local dance hall to her grandson. She is the only one who knows what really happened on that long ago day, and by retelling the story she pieces it together for the readers.

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain - I saved the best for last! This is a fictionalized account of Hadley Hemingway, first wife of Ernest Hemingway, and their early years together. I've always been a huge fan of Hemingway's work, but to me Hemingway was - in my mind - a fully formed brilliant author. This background into his early years when he was a struggling writer trying to find his voice was an amazing addition to what I already knew about him. I can't say enough good things about this book. After I finished it, I fell down the rabbit hole of research into his life and that of his first wife and what happened to them in later years. I picked this title based on the recommendation of Moira at Hearth & Homefront from last month's Twitterature, and she loved it so much she started a whole new series called Book Club Bites with this title as the first feature. It's an amazing concept so be sure to check it out!

That's what I've been reading for the past month. Now I'm off to read all your fabulous Twitterature posts to get some ideas of what to read next!

I'm so bored.

2014-03-05T07:18:00.002-05:00

"Mmooooommmmmm, I'm SO bored."

It's like nails on a chalkboard for me.

Yesterday was day ohmygahIlostcountIhavenoidea off from school due to snow, ice, cold and stupid winter, and we are all pretty over it, as is the rest of America, if my Twitter feed is any indication.

I can deal with most of it just fine. I can deal with the little boys with too much pent up energy. I can deal with the disrupted schedule. I can deal with the running, the yelling, the fighting, the trapped inside business. I can deal with the near-constant requests for snacks and drinks.

But "bored" is my Achilles' heel. I don't do bored.

See, here's the thing (which may call my parenting abilities into question - don't worry, it won't be the first time). I will read stories, watch movies, play board games and build things with my kids all day long, but when they start up with the "I'm SOOOOO bored" business, Mama playtime shuts right down.

I think it's good for them to get bored, because I think it's good for them to figure out - on their own - how to get un-bored.

It's a life skill that many adults don't seem to possess - this ability to keep yourself amused, motivated and happy without someone else pulling the strings.

So I think it's good to let my kids get bored sometimes, and I think it's good for them to have to figure a way out of that feeling on their own. Once they manage to get past the initial shock, there is usually some grumbling, maybe a little bit of whining. But once they realize Mama means business - "Go find something to do. I don't want to hear about how bored you are," they wander off.

Sometimes they find a game to play on their own, without me. Sometimes they ask to watch tv or play a video game, and I let them. But sometimes, well sometimes something magical happens.

When they are just so bored they can't stand it and none of the usual distractions will do, they start to use their imaginations. They begin to create things. They dress up, play pretend, act out scenes, make art, write words.

They use their own brains and feelings and actions to move themselves from "bored" to "amused."

It's an amazing thing to watch.

And it's a skill they will use the rest of their lives.

So yeah - I don't do bored. There is too much to see and do and experience in this vast and wonderful world to let "bored" eat away at the finite time I have. And as this skill and ability grows for them, neither will my kids. And that is a beautiful thing.

Someone brought a gun to my kid's school, but I'm not really upset about it.

2014-02-26T05:28:00.000-05:00

When Zachary came home from school Friday, we immediately went into "hurry up" mode like we often do in order to make it to his 4pm tae kwon do class, which is several miles away. I did the hurried "How was your day?" bit in the car, but the rush rush rush of moving from one place to another - always somewhere to go, somewhere to be, it seems, kept me from delving too deeply below the surface of general "What color did you get to? (on the behavior chart)" and "What did you have for lunch?" kinds of questions.

It wasn't until later that night - much later, in fact, that I started digging through his backpack, past all the random scraps of paper, broken pencils and other unidentifiable things to see if there was anything I needed to sign or send back that I saw the letter.

It read:

"We want to make you aware of a situation that occurred today at SCHOOL'S NAME.
A lower primary student brought a small BB gun to school in a backpack. The BB gun was not functional and there were no pellets/BBs. A student reported the incident to his/her teacher at the end of the day and in order to control unnecessary rumors we wanted to make parents aware of what happened.
No threats were made and no students or staff were in any danger at any time. As a precaution, the situation is under investigation by school staff and proper authorities.
As always, our primary concern is the safety of our students and staff. "

I read it a couple times before it really registered with me what it was saying.

Someone had a gun at my kid's school.

I felt that weird hotness across my face and the heaviness of my legs that accompanies sudden fear, and I had to sit down.

I'm not one to overreact in most situations, but still. A gun. My kid's school.

Scary stuff.

I wanted to be angry. I wanted to lash out. I wanted to blame someone. I wanted to call and email and march and demand answers, but I couldn't. After the initial shock passed, I couldn't really muster up more that a vague feeling of unease.

It had happened. It had been dealt with. No real harm was done.

I called Zachary to me and we talked some more about his day at school. When I asked him if anything out of the ordinary had happened, he talked of a nosebleed a classmate had had on the bus and something new that had been served in the cafeteria.

This thing - this thing that could have been so massive - wasn't even a blip on his screen.

This was last week, and I've thought about it a lot since then, but not with the anger I first imagined I would feel.

Even if I were angry, I didn't really have anyone in particular to be angry at.

I can't be angry at the school or the teachers or the principal. By all accounts it was handled swiftly and appropriately.

I couldn't really be angry at the kid. Even though he or she was the one who brought this BB gun to school, I know all too easily how this could happen. Last year, unknown to me, Zachary sneaked some Pokemon cards into his backpack and took them to school, which he knew wasn't allowed. They were confiscated by the eagle-eyed bus driver and returned at the end of the week with a note saying next time she would keep them. Fine by me. Zack knew he wasn't supposed to take them to school in the first place, but he did anyway and it totally slipped under my radar. It was easy enough for him to do with Pokemon cards, and a "small BB gun" is probably easy enough to hide in the same way.

I could be angry with the kid's parents, I guess. I really could. But I don't know their story. I don't know what they have going on in their lives. What I do know is that in the area in which I choose to live, guns of all types and sizes are common. Very common. I live five miles from a major military base, which means guns galore. It's also a rural area, and hunting is just... understood. Where I live, kids grow up knowing how to handle firearms. Kids go hunting. And yes, kids play with BB guns. Despite any feelings I may or may not have about it, it just IS. I understand that is not the norm everywhere, but here it is. Maybe it was lax of the parents to have this BB gun in a place where the kid could get to it without supervision. Maybe not. Maybe the kid broke through 15 locks to get it. I don't know the whole story, and I never will.

Guns are as common as Pokemon cards here. As much as I WANT to be angry, I completely understand how it could have happened.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about it since last week, so I think I understand the significance of what did and did not happen, but at the same time, mostly I'm just relieved that it didn't turn out to be a bigger deal than it was.

Everybody is safe. Nothing terrible happened, except in the overactive imaginations of a few teachers and parents. Everyone is fine.

And it's hard to be angry about that.

Overheard.

2014-02-24T04:55:00.000-05:00

I spend a lot of my time sitting on hard plastic chairs, waiting for my kids to be done with things.

Last Monday was no exception. Well, for me anyway. Even though it was Presidents' Day, school was in session and Cooper had his regular Monday morning thing at the local library.

I dropped him off at the classroom door and found a seat in the corner. Not long after I was joined by not one, but two dads that I didn't recognize. However, since they both came attached to two little girls I DID recognize, I assumed they had the day off work or some such and had brought their kids in.

I'm smart like that.

Both these guys were salt of the earth, good old boy types who looked like twins in their Levi's, flannel shirts, work boots and gimme caps* and it became apparent almost immediately that they knew each other from somewhere.

After a brief awkward nod/notquitesmile greeting I studiously avoided eye contact because Pleasedon'tmakesmalltalkwithmePleasedon'tmakesmalltalkwithmePleasedon'tmakesmalltalkwithme, but I shouldn't have worried. These guys had plenty to talk about with each other.

I sat there, not really paying much attention to what was going on around me, lost in my own thoughts as I often am and pretending to read a magazine that I had no real interest in, when I caught a few of the words that were being exchanged between these men. Instead of discussing sports, or hunting, or cars, or whatever else I imagined these two good old boys might have in common, they were discussing... dresses?

"Well, her dress for that pageant was pank," said Guy One, "But not like baby pank. It was more like a bright pank. And it had that ruffly bidness all up under it so it looked twirly all the time." he went on.

Guy Two nodded seriously. "We thought about pank," he said. "We ended up going with kinda a green color one. She wore it once already, last year at Little Miss Happy Sunshine (I totally made that part up because I can't remember where she wore it before) but she really likes it because it's got all them sparkly thangs all down the front of it. Ya know? Whatsit called? SEE-KWENTS? "

Hmmm.

What I had before me was apparently the rare species of Redneck Pageant Daddies. Who knew such a thing even existed in the world?

By the time I worked out what they were talking about, they had moved from pank dresses with the ruffly bidness on to their opinions on pageant hair, pageant makeup for little girls (they are both opposed, by the way, but both defer to their "women" in these matters) and pageant judges.

"Sometimes I think it ain't how ya look or how ya do, I think it's about who ya know and who your granddaddy is," Guy One said with a little more force than was necessary, but Guy Two heartily agreed, citing at least two examples of winners who probably shouldn't have won, but who happened to know suchandsuch or soandso and that's probably why.

By this time I was listening intently to everything these two guys were saying to one another while studiously trying to appear that I wasn't listening in because it was such a fascinating juxtaposition to hear these quite manly men having such an intense and earnest conversation about their little girls in beauty pageants.

The talked the whole hour about their little girls, proudly discussing wins and solemnly excusing losses. They covered the entire gamut of pageant intricacies, then covered it again, their attention and conversation never straying from this thing that was so clearly important to their four year old girls and so by extension, to them.

Sometimes people can still surprise me, and sometimes I get a fabulous and swift lesson not to judge a book by its cover, or a good ole boy by his gimme cap.

And sometimes, if I listen really carefully to the people around me I can learn really important lessons, like about how people really care about what their kids are doing, or how awesome random daddies who are spending their Monday mornings sitting in hard plastic chairs can be, or the difference between baby pank and bright pank.

And sometimes, if I really listen, it's pretty darn awesome.

* A gimme cap is a baseball style cap, also known as a trucker's hat, that sports the logo of a feed store, a car dealership, a brand of dog food or the details of an event like, say, a mud pull or a rodeo. They are called this, I assume, because they are given out for free as advertisement. Seriously, look it up. It's a real thing.

This boy...

2014-02-20T04:51:00.000-05:00

Something that made you smile ~~this~~ last week.(Close enough, right?)

I try not to be one of those moms... you know the ones. The ones who think little Johnny is the smartest/brightest/cutest/bestest kid in the whole darn world and who think that YOU need to think that too.

But here's the truth: My boys whine. They smell weird sometimes (ok, a lot of the time). They don't always follow directions on the first (or second, or third, or fourth) time they are asked. They're messy. Neither one has one single iota of musical ability. Zack has weird ugly feet and Cooper will probably be bald before he's 25.

And until about a year or so ago, I would have said that Zachary was the clumsiest kid in the entire world.

But then something happened that changed all that.

We enrolled him in tae kwon do.

The changes have been gradual - so gradual in fact that I'm not sure I realized just how far he has come until this week.

This past week R took him to a practice session where he got to put a lot of his knowledge and skills to the test. I usually try to go to all these special things, but this time I stayed home since I'm still having some eye issues and I just wanted to rest.

R texted me a video of Zachary doing his board breaking routine, and to be honest, I watched it, then watched again and again before I really understood that this confident, graceful, athletic kid was MY kid.

If you can't see the video click here.

I've watched this video over and over, and over again, and every time it makes me smile.

That's MY kid. And he's awesome.

What made you smile this week?

Overwhelmed.

2014-02-19T05:34:00.000-05:00

Our heating and air conditioning system is slowly going out. Someone is supposed to come Monday at 10 - or is it Tuesday? - to give us a quote on a new one. The dashboard light keeps coming on in the car, but then it goes off so I'm not sure what to do about it. We have an appointment next week that overlaps with something else. I need to figure that out. I was planning to make spaghetti for dinner, but I really need to run to the grocery for some salad to go with it. I really need to move that load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. I have to get all Cooper's paperwork together to get him registered for kindergarten next month. Zack hasn't finished his homework for tonight - I need to check on that. Oh man! I forgot to pick up lightbulbs when I was out earlier, and I think we are low on paper towels. R's birthday is coming up - I have no idea what to get him.

These thoughts and a million more just like them swirl through my head every day. Some days, just the basic logistics of life seem like too much to manage. Go here, do this, take care of that, deal with this, then just when you think you have a plan in place - BAM! Life throws you a curveball in the form of an unexpected this or a broken that.

Sometimes it all just seems like too much.

Sometimes it IS too much, and I feel so overwhelmed by it all that I don't know how to manage.

Some days I don't manage, choosing instead to procrastinate or ignore it all or hide my head in the sand and hope it all just goes away.

It never does, though.

Then I'm left standing there, dripping wet sand on the rug and still needing to find a plumber, schedule an appointment, make dinner, whatever.

I think I used to be better at this sort of thing. For more than a decade I managed a big bookstore, complete with scheduling and ordering and repairing and customer servicing and hiring and dealing with all other manners of chaos, and I was pretty good at it.

Now all I have to manage is my house and the logistics of my little family of four, and I feel like I can't even deal with it sometimes.

I used to have a staff of forty people, all with different personalities and strengths and weaknesses and quirks and I was able to deal with it just fine. Now the two children that I have birthed and raised myself seem like too many to handle.

I used to walk my 20,000 square foot bookstore with an eagle eye, picking out every single book out of place, empty spot and area in need of housekeeping, but now my little 1,900 square foot house is constantly dusty, dirty, messy, piled with things.

I used to be responsible for ordering thousands of dollars worth of merchandise and supplies, always keeping the top titles in stock without running out. Now I struggle to keep enough milk, or bread, or eggs, or whatever in my house to feed the four of us.

I used to be better at dealing with things, I think. Maybe it was out of necessity. Or maybe I've just used up all those abilities. Whatever the reason, I just seem to be having a hard time getting things done lately.

My to-do lists grow, only to be ignored. Other times I can't even seem to be bothered to write down the things I know I won't do, or to list the things I probably won't go out to buy.

Sometimes I feel so inundated with the stuff that needs my attention all I can do it ignore it all.

The problem though, is that the longer it's ignored, the more urgent it becomes, then I find myself scrambling, always scrambling. It's a feeling I hate more than anything, but somehow lately I keep putting myself in that position by my inability to just GET STUFF DONE.

But all of it - the stuff that needs to be taken care of - waits for me still.

Asleep.

2014-02-17T05:08:00.000-05:00

I don't always sleep well. I can usually GO to sleep ok, then when 2am rolls around I'm wide awake and thinking of every bad decision and awkward encounter I've ever had. The next day's to-do list swirls through my mind like so many angry sheep. It's not every night, but it's often enough that there are a few days each week when I think a mid-afternoon nap might be in order. Sometimes I even try to take one, but something about my farm girl brain is hard wired to not allow sleep in daylight hours - ever.

As a result, there are days I exist on coffee and a short temper to get me through until bedtime, when I get to try it all over again.

Sometimes when 2am becomes 3am and then 4am and I just give up and get up for the day, I see posts from people on Facebook and Twitter about insomnia and I know it's not just me. It seems to be a fairly common occurrence among the people I know. As adults, we all seem to struggle from time to time with getting to sleep or with staying asleep, and the common theme that I see and hear it that for whatever reason, we cannot shut our brains off.

It really sucks that as a society we are all so busy and stressed and absolutely exhausted that we just can't sleep well.

It hasn't always been this way for me. I don't even remember having problems sleeping when I was a kid. I maybe had a few less than restful nights in high school, but only a few. The same is true with college. I stayed up late on purpose sometimes, studying for tests, but when it was time to sleep I could sleep, no problem.

My first restless nights definitely came as an grown-up. Once I was on my own in the world, dealing with jobs and bills and people and things and just... LIFE, the sleeplessness really took a hold on me, and it's been there ever since. Like I said, it isn't every night, or even every week, but when it happens, it happens hard.

One of the things I miss the most about being a kid is the ability to sleep totally unencumbered by life. My kids are great sleepers, and can fall asleep at a moment's notice where ever they happen to be. Cooper is especially notorious for falling asleep in odd places.

He sleeps in cars.

He sleeps on the couch.

He sleeps on me (and other people).

He sleeps at the grocery store.

He sleeps... well, wherever.

I'm always amazed. He will be in the middle of a sentence, the middle of a meal, whatever. But if he's sleepy, he sleeps.

How amazing that must be - to have so few worries or responsibilities that you can just drop off wherever and whenever you feel the urge. And how freeing must it be to know that if you sleep, someone will be there to look out for you, to keep you from falling, to keep you safe, to carry you to bed if you need it.

I hope he never loses this ability. Sure, it might be a little awkward to doze off in the middle of math class or whatever, but the underlying feeling of safety and security and rightness with the world is something I hope he is able to hold onto as long as possible.

But I know it won't last long. Just like it did for me, life will start to get in the way. Realities will take over. Uninterrupted, blissful sleep will be replaced by an occasional worry or problem or frustration and someday he will be the one who is up at 2am, then 3am, wondering why it's so hard to sleep at night.

So for now, I'm going to let him make the most of it. If he needs to sleep in the cart at the grocery, I will carefully put him in the car. If he falls asleep on my lap as he often does, I will sit so, so still so I don't disturb him.

This time of freedom from worries will pass quickly, and I want him to enjoy every minute of it, even though he doesn't even realize it's happening.

Twitterature - February 2014

2014-02-14T10:21:00.004-05:00

I'm linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy for Twitterature!

January was a pretty bad reading month for me, so I'm thrilled to say I actually found a couple winners in February!

However, I didn't really read them. I had eye surgery the middle of January, and it didn't go quite as expected, which means that reading - my lifeline, my one real passion, the only hobby I really care about - has been off the table for most of the past month.

So... I discovered audio books.

And I'll be completely honest here. I have enjoyed them. But I don't LOVE listening the same way I LOVE reading. However, given my current circumstances, they are serving the purpose of keeping me from quietly going insane, so I'll take it.

I can see well enough to read again, providing I crank the font size on my e-reader up to ginormous size, but I can't do it for long or I get a terrible headache (and I've been using the few good hours I get with my eyes each day to blog and read blogs and comment on blogs - well, you get the picture) so audio books will probably be my best friends until this ridiculous eye business gets straightened out.

Anyway, I did find some good stuff last month. Here's what I read (well, sorta read).

Help for the Haunted by John Searles - I actually read this book right before my surgery, so it was the one book I read read for the month. Sylvie's parents are in the unusual occupation of helping lost souls find peace. Well, they are until they are murdered. Much of the story revolves around what Sylvie did or did not see on the night her parents were murdered. I could have probably done without the violence, but the storyline about lost souls and the fascinating and quirky characters kept me interested.

The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd - I loved loved loved this book, which is loosely based on the life of abolitionist and women's rights activist Sarah Grimke. The story follows Sarah and the fictional slave Handful through their lives together in Charleston in the early nineteenth century. They grow up together, but so separately, and the friendship that develops between them is unexpected and beautiful.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - I have a terrible habit of not wanting to read things that are ridiculously popular. I think it comes from all my years working in the bookstore and having such huge runs on a certain book that I would lose interest in it before I ever read it. Lately I've been trying to pick a book every month that I skipped on purpose over the years and this time it was the Lovely Bones. It was beautiful in parts, sort of boring in others, and overall I think I would have enjoyed reading this one more than I enjoyed listening to it.

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith - I'm trying to listen to this one now, and I'm not that far into it but so far I'm not loving it. I'm going to keep going for a bit, but I'm afraid it might be abandoned before long. I really think this one might be a case of a boring narrator for the audiobook, and not the book itself. I may move this one back onto the list to read instead of listen to.

And that's my month in books. It's not as many as I usually read, but listening to books seems to take a lot longer than reading them.

Do you listen to audio books? If so, do you think the narrator makes a difference?

The beginning.

2014-02-13T05:26:00.000-05:00

A blog post inspired by the word: love

When I first noticed him, I disliked him on sight.

He seemed kind of snobby. Disinterested in the Literature class we shared. He sort of acted like he thought he might be too good to be there. He wore ties to class, for goodness sake. I mean, who does that?

After my initial assessment, I didn't really pay much attention to him. After all, it was college and I was there to LEARN.

It was a small class, though, and after a few weeks we were chatting occasionally, casually, like you do. The semester passed in a flurry, like first semesters at college are prone to do, and I didn't really spare much of a passing though for this guy who was maybe not as horrible as I first thought, but who was really just not my type.

And then it was the next semester.

And he was in my first class.

And my second.

And my third.

I found out much later that he had bugged a mutual friend who had finally broken down and given him my class schedule, then he switched all his classes around to get into as many of mine as possible even though we had totally different majors and he didn't really need the credits for those classes.

Creeper.

But I guess it worked.

We became friends. We shared notes and studied together occasionally. I would proofread his papers. We walked to class together sometimes. He wasn't as stuck up as I had originally thought, but other than our shared classes we just didn't have much in common.

One day in the middle of class the back popped off my Mickey Mouse watch. I had been having trouble with it, but in this particular day I could not get it fastened back on. I turned around and whispered to him, "Can you fix this?"

He took it from me and I didn't think much about it again until class was over. "Hey, did you get my watch fixed?" I asked him as we were gathering up our books and papers and notes to leave. Instead of answering, he have me a strange look and took off RUNNING.

"What an absolute weirdo," I thought. Also? I was pissed because he had just stolen my favorite Mickey Mouse watch.

He showed up in my dorm late - LATE - that night, and sheepishly handed me a jewelry store bag from a store that was in a city over an hour away. When I looked inside it, there was a brand new watch exactly like mine. Also in the bag were all the pieces and parts of my old watch, which he had apparently shattered into a million pieces when he was trying to get the back on it for me earlier in the day.

I asked a lot of questions about what had happened, and I finally pieced the story together. He had borrowed a car and driven to a local jeweler, who told him my broken watch was absolutely, positively not repairable, and not only that, it was several years old and a discontinued model.

So he spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone calling every watch store, department store and jewelry store in town, then in the next city over, and the one after that until he found someone who had a watch exactly like mine, then he drove three hours round trip to get it for me.

That's when I knew.

What I felt then wasn't love - that would take time to grow - but I knew then that this guy was worth really getting to know. And he was.

That was over 20 years ago.

We have had our fair share of ups and downs and downs and ups. We've got a mortgage and two kids and enough fish to start a pet store. We argue. We make up. We do it again. Neither one of us is perfect. We've shared joy and loss and heartache and fun. We drive each other insane sometimes, in the way only people who have been together for as long as we have can, but it's all so terribly worth it.

I still have that watch that he broke into a million pieces that day. It's more important to me than shiny jewels, fancy cars, or big houses could ever be, because that tiny little broken thing was the true beginning of something bigger. Something greater. Something lasting. Something forever. Something completely and totally whole.

His memories.

2014-02-12T05:09:00.000-05:00

I sighed when I heard his little feet patter across the floor.

I had once again gotten up early to write, only to be joined almost immediately by Cooper, who seems to have a sixth sense that alerts him the minute I open my computer.

He wandered into my office, all warm and cozy in that rosy, half-asleep way that only only little kids seem to have. He climbed into my lap and kissed the tip of my nose like he always does first thing in the morning and last thing at night, then said "Good morning, Mama. Can we look at our memories now?" He snuggled against me and sighed a happy little sigh, because in his world he could not imagine that I wouldn't want to do the same thing, or that I would deny him this simple request.

To look at his memories.

That's what he calls pictures. He has for as long as I can remember. It isn't something that I taught him or something that I have ever said to him. But to him all the pictures stored on my computer are his memories, and he will happily sit for hours looking at them, commenting on every single one. "Oh I remember that day! Don'y you remember, Mama? We had such a good time!"

I opened up my picture file and we looked. We looked at trips to the park and the zoo and the beach. We looked at fabulous shots taken with my "fancy" camera and blurry iPhone ones. We looked at family vacations and ordinary days spent at home and everything in between. He gasped with joy and commented on each and every one. "Look Mama! There we are making a craft! Aw, I remember that time we went there, don't you, Mama?" and so on. And so on.

After about an hour and without any warning at all, he sighed and stretched and turned around from his perch on my lap to give me one more kiss on the tip of my nose - an extra one on this day. "I like looking at our memories. Don't you, Mama?"

And I really did.

I really, really did.

Snow days.

2014-02-10T05:35:00.000-05:00

Snow Day 1: It may not be as bad as I feared. The natives, though somewhat restless, remain in high spirits and have not shown any signs of hostility toward me. In fact, they seem to be tolerating my presence quite well. We have plenty of supplies laid in, and I'm hopeful that this forced sense of togetherness will serve a greater purpose and will bring us closer together. It may not be as bad as I feared.

Snow Day 3: It is as bad as I feared. The natives, grown bored with me and all my "silly little games" have begin to turn their aggressions on me and even worse, on each other. Riots are happening regularly now. There is a definite sense of animosity in the air. Luckily, our supplies are holding strong, but I fear what might happen if staples begin to run low. There may be a free for all, or even worse, a revolt.

Snow Day 4: Things took a definite turn for the worse today as the in-fighting grew so great that it could not be contained. I've holed up in a seemingly safe place but my defenses are weak at best and I assume that their ability to break through is imminent. Also, several important supplies are beginning to run low and I fear for my safety.

Snow Day 7: The natives seem to be growing in both number and size. I know this is merely my exhausted mind playing tricks on me, but it really seems so. The natives have been able to break through my defenses and have surrounded me. Their demands, once gentle requests, grow with each passing hour. They ask for things I cannot give them, but I believe they know this. I believe they have resorted to mind games - emotional warfare if you will - and I feel myself weakening under this attack.

Snow Day 10: Supplies are at a critical level. Since the last time I was able to write, conditions have deteriorated rapidly. The natives are definitely in charge now, and although the in-fighting has been kept to a minimum, that is only because they have decided to pool their own resources on a full fledged attack on me. I fear for my safety and my life, and I do not know when or if I will be able to write again.

Snow Day 12: Abandon hope, all ye who enter here...

Candy necklaces

2014-02-06T05:11:00.000-05:00

I've been having a problem with the Disqus commenting system that has prevented some of you from making comments on my blog over the last couple weeks. Everything looks ok from my end and Disqus support assures me it's fixed, but if you're still having issues would you please tweet me @mjaj74 and let me know so I can try once again to figure it out? Thanks in advance!

A favorite candy when you were a child. Is it still a favorite?

When I was a little girl, the closest store to our farm was owned by an old lady named Gertie Barger.

Miss Barger (I can't recall ever hearing of a Mr. Barger) was a former schoolteacher who ran her store out of a dilapidated old house that had wildly sloping plank floors, wooden shelves of dusty canned goods, and a couple freezers toward the back.

My parents shopped there occasionally. It certainly wasn't their store of choice. The prices were high, the merchandise was often outdated and the selection was poor.

They went sometimes anyway though, because Miss Barger would extend credit to my family. We were tobacco farmers, and that meant most of the cash our family saw came once a year in the winter when the crops were sold. The rest of the time we were cash poor. And Miss Barger would let us buy things on credit.

I remember going into the store with my Mama on many occasions. Miss Barger was a tiny, bird-like, stooped old lady with big beehive hair and cat-eyed glasses who wore dresses with baggy nylons or sometimes polyester pant suits, and I was utterly and completely terrified of her. She watched every single thing that happened in her cluttered little store with an eagle eye and was never hesitant to point out a misbehaving child, or worse, an impolite one.

While Mama would shop for canned goods and flour and other staples that she would then beg on the good graces of Miss Barger to put "on our account," I usually stayed close by her for fear that Miss Barger would have a sharp word for me, but occasionally I would venture over to look at the dusty cardboard trays of candy. There were Hershey bars and candy cigarettes, Sweet Tarts and Sugar Daddies, Jaw Breakers and Now and Laters, and my very favorites - candy necklaces.

After Mama had finished shopping and Miss Barger had painstakingly written down every bag of dried beans and every pound of cornmeal in her spidery handwriting on the ledger she kept behind the counter, and if I had not been rowdy or displeased her in any way, she would pull out a box of candy from behind the counter and offer me my choice from it. If I was very lucky, there would be a candy necklace there, just for me.

I could always tell that Mama didn't really like me talking the candy, but she never told me no.

I would thank Miss Barger properly, sometimes at Mama's urging, then rush to the car to rip the plastic packaging off so I could put my necklace around my neck. I would usually bite down hard on the first candy, crunching the two pieces that split from around the stretchy string with my sharp teeth. After biting a couple more off, I would start to suck on the next little pieces, leaving orange and blue marks on the white string where my mouth touched it.

I wasn't greedy with my candy necklaces. Sometimes I could make them last for days, only eating one of each color at a time - first blue, then yellow, then green, then red, always saving my favorite orange for last. In between my nibbles I would wear it as an accessory, the candy beads becoming sparser and the stretchy string getting grimier with each passing hour and day.

I completely lost my taste for candy necklaces around the same time I was old enough to understand all the reasons why we ever even shopped at Miss Barger's store in the first place. It was also around that same time that I started to realize that Mama didn't like me to take the candy not because she didn't want me to have it, but because it was so very hard for a proud woman like her to be put in the position to accept help in any form. Another realization about that candy hit me much later - it was in a box behind the counter because it was so old and outdated that it could no longer be sold, only given away.

Growing up poor is very different from understanding what poverty really looks and sounds and feels and tastes like, and for me, poverty will always have the sugary sweet taste of a candy necklace.

Talking about feelings.

2014-02-05T04:34:00.000-05:00

I've always been fascinated by language and how it's used and over the years I've read article after article that explains how women use more words every day than men - some studies suggest that it's thousands more. I can't say for certain that this is true in every single instance, but I can tell you that from my experience that when I ask my husband a question he usually uses as few words as possible to get his point across, while I might go off on a tangent about something else entirely, or I might start randomly waxing poetic about a situation that happened six years ago.

My boys - especially Zachary - are for the most part just like my husband in this. Sometimes my conversations with Zachary go like this: "How was school today?" "Fine." "Just fine? Nothing exciting? Nothing bad? Nothing new?" "Same as always, Mama."

These kinds of conversations tell me a couple different things. 1) I need to ask better questions and 2) Zachary is a person for whom a few words will usually suffice.

And that's totally fine.

Except for the times when it's not.

At some point in their lives, my boys are going to need to express their feelings, their innermost thoughts, their emotions, and it's my responsibility to teach them the language that's necessary to do that.

It's really a two parter. Then need to know the right words to express how they're feeling, and maybe more importantly, they need to know that it's ok to use those words to convey their emotions and feeling to others.

We live in a society that prizes "strong and silent types." We live in a society that teaches people - but boys especially - to "suck it up" and to "act like a man" and to "never let them see you sweat."

But that's not what I want for my boys.

Imagine the frustration that you would feel if you have a certain emotion and the need to share it but the words that describe it have never been made a part of your vocabulary, or worse yet, that you were taught to believe those feelings weren't necessarily meant for you.

How would you react? How would you feel?

Anyone who has spent more than a minute around a toddler has seen this play out. The feelings are there but the vocabulary and maturity to express those feelings aren't developed enough to correspond, so there are inevitable tantrums. Crying. Hitting. Acting out. It's frustrating for everyone.

If boys and men really do use thousands fewer words per day, then it's my responsibility to try to teach my boys the right ones. I want them to know the exact words necessary to express everything from angst to irritation to boredom to anger to joy to elation to bliss and back again. And more importantly, I need them to understand that it's ok to let people know that they're feeling that way.

The privilege and the responsibility of this fall squarely on me.

I have no clue what I'm doing, by the way.

I have always been conscious to speak to them using vocabulary that I want them to know. I use words like "sympathetic" and "receptive" and "optimistic" and "courageous" and "determined" and "discouraged" and "embarrassed" and "resentful" and a million more every day. I look for opportunities to ask questions about how they feel about certain things. Sometimes it's sparked by a real life event, sometimes by a movie or a book, but I'm always on the lookout for an opportunity, then I help them work through the words in their repertoire until we find the right one to describe their feelings about it. Then after we find the words, we can better discuss those feelings. It's something. But it never feels like enough.

It's just one little thing out of a million and one little things that I'm responsible for teaching them. When I try to think of all the things they need to know to go live and be happy and healthy and productive boys, then eventually men, it seems so overwhelming that it's almost insurmountable.

But I keep trying.

And by sitting here, typing my own feelings out in a sometimes nearly incoherent string of thoughts and feelings, it helps me feel just a little more prepared and a little more capable of taking it on.

It still never feels like enough.

But I keep trying anyway.

Eight.

2014-02-03T04:11:00.000-05:00

Today you are eight.

You're five years from being a teenager. Halfway to driving. A decade from adulthood and leaving home, spreading your wings for the first time.

But that's all so far in the future. I don't want to dwell on it too much. There will be plenty of time for those things later.

But today, you are eight. And I always want to remember what eight looks like.

Sometimes I like to just sit and watch you. I want to try to memorize the way your thick, unruly hair always stands up at the crown, even when you try like crazy to get it to lay down. I never want to forget the way your blue eyes (so, so much like mine) sparkle when you talk about the things you love. I want to always remember the tiny little dimple that only shows up when you're laughing so, so hard at a funny story or joke that you have to tell. I want to be able to call to my mind that little sprinkle of freckles that peppers your nose so very lightly that no one else ever even notices.

This is the only time you will be eight. The things you love, the things you do, the way you look, they are ever changing. So I try every day to memorize them. To capture them. To freeze them in a photo or a memory so that I will never lose that part of you.

Sometimes you get so annoyed with me - and rightly so. "No more pictures, Mama!" It's followed by a sigh, and occasionally an eye roll, much more befitting someone who is twice your eight years, but I never do what you ask. I feel a need, an urgency almost, to capture as many moments of your life as I can.

The days seem so long sometimes, but the years are flying by. Just yesterday you were born. Today you are eight.

Today you are eight, and this is the only day of your life that you will be exactly that age. In the midst of the mundane day to day things, like laundry and preparing meals and homework and driving here and there and everywhere, I try so hard to memorize it all. It's fleeting, this life, and every minute, no, every second is precious.

And so are you.

Today, you are eight.

I'm a SuperStah!

2014-02-01T09:18:00.000-05:00

O. M. G.

Mo from Momfeld has bestowed this prestigious honor on me. I haven't been following Mo long, but when I ran across a post or another of hers a while back, I knew right away she was my people. Snarky sense of humor: check. Ability to make me think: check. Ability to make me laugh out loud: check. Yep, my people.

Anyway, she gave me this award, and while I'm thrilled to accept it, I did want to know where it came from.

So I started to trace it back. (I'm an ISTJ, remember? I can't help myself.)

So anyway, here's what I found:

Mo got the award from Life Breath Present who got it from Alphabet Salad who got it from joyofnine9 who got it from Good Time Stories who got it from The Always Believer who got it from Belsbror who got it from Kintal who got it from Radical who got it from Twinkling Star who got it from... I don't know. The trail grows cold there, but that's ok. So did my attention span.

So anyway, without further delay, here are the questions that I need to answer in order to accept my Emmy... er, whatever.

What is the funniest thing about you? Well, I'm a bit of a smart aleck, and I consider myself very observant. As a result, I have a running commentary about the world going on in my head ALL THE TIME about what's happening around me. This means that I often laugh out loud at totally inappropriate times. Honestly, I think I'm the funniest person I know, but most of it stays in my head, where it rightfully belongs.

Who is your favorite personality? Hmmm. I don't really do "personalities." But I like people who make me laugh. And I love snarky people. Ok, I've go it! Robert Downy, Jr. In addition to being IronMan (big win!) he is so full of himself sometimes that you can't help but laugh at him.

What is your lucky thing? I don't really have a lucky thing, although I consider myself to be a person who has a lot of luck. A great deal of it is bad, though. That still counts, right?

What is your favorite weather? SPRING!!!! Is it spring yet? Seventy degrees, sunny and with a slight breeze ruffling the leaves is really the only weather I adore. Here in Kentucky we get that for approximately three hours every year before the humidity sets in to stay. By the way, this has been the longest winter of my life. Is it spring yet?

A name that you want to give me. A name for Mo? Let's see. "Authentic." I think Mo is one of those people that you could sit down to have a cup of coffee with and she would be EXACTLY the same in real life as she is on her blog. That's incredibly brave and it's something I strive to do more of every single time I write.

There you have it! My acceptance of this fabulous award is now complete.

And for my nomination, I nominate...

YOU!

Yes, YOU! Stop looking around behind you. I'm talking to YOU!

Go forth, write yourself a post and answer these questions as you see fit.

I think that anyone who shares pieces and parts of herself on the internet day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year deserves to be commended and called out for it.

YOU are a superstar!

My eyes! My eyes!

2014-01-30T04:49:00.000-05:00

Share one of your "did that really just happen to me" life moments.

This is a really long post. Sorry. In my defense though, it's also a really long story. So there's that.

In the midst of the craziness that is Christmas morning with two little boys, my husband pulled a single gift bag out from under the tree.

"I only got you one thing this year," he said, almost apologetically. "And it's for your birthday, too."

Since my birthday is just a few weeks after Christmas, this is not unheard of, nor is it something to apologize for, necessarily.

When I took the bag, I thought for just a moment that it was empty, but upon opening it I realized that it contained a single piece of paper.

It was a gift certificate for LASIK surgery.

I was ecstatic.

I've worn glasses since I was a kid. They're not an option. They're not a fashion accessory. I could never wear them on the days I felt like "sassy librarian" and take them off when I needed to do things like run or swim or go outside in the rain. My eyesight has always been quite terrible, and except for a couple years as a teenager I've never been able to wear contacts, because my eyes are chronically dry. (This is foreshadowing, people. Pay attention here.)

I've been tied to my glasses for the better part of 30 years, and my desire to get rid of them has been around almost that long. It's not a cosmetic thing. It's never been a vanity issue. Seriously, I'm one of the least vain people I know. I never minded how I look in them, but they're thick and heavy and my nose sports a permanent bump where they've rested for decades. My desire for LASIK has increased dramatically since having my two very active, very daredevil-like little boys. I want to be able to keep up with them. I want to ride all the rides and run into the ocean and play in the rain and go down the BIGGEST water slides without fear of losing my glasses - or worse, without them on and without being able to see what's happening to me.

It's scary not being able to see.

Everything with my surgery happened quickly. I was seen quickly for a consultation and all my preliminary test results showed that I was a prime candidate. I asked a LOT of questions. A LOT. Some of them I asked over and over, so I guess my anxiety was evident. Finally one kind woman smiled, sighed, placed her hand on my shoulder and said, "You don'r need to worry. I'll be there with you every step of the way and most people are seeing at LEAST 20/30 by the next morning. This is going to be fine. JUST FINE." (Insert ominous foreshadowing music here.)

Except it wasn't.

I thought this would be the last picture of me in my glasses. Also, I realized on the way out that I was in the men's room. Oops. I TOLD you I was nervous.

When I arrived at the surgical center, I was a nervous wreck. I don't do doctors much. I prefer the martyr route whenever possible, and elective surgery is so far out of my comfort zone it all seemed surreal in my mind. But I have promised myself to practice more self-care this year, and this surgery was completely in keeping with that.

I was taken back to the surgical waiting room the get prepped, and when the intake nurse asked me if I wanted the "nerve pill" before surgery I laughed hysterically for just a minute then said in all seriousness, "Can I have two?"

I had read lots and lots and lots about what to expect (and the "nerve pill" calmed me down dramatically) so I was cool as a stir fried cucumber when I laid down on the table. The doctor started the procedure on the right eye and even in my totally blind, nerve pill induced state of floating I could tell by the tone of his voice that everything was not necessarily going according to plan.

He started the left eye and just a minute into the surgery I heard him say, "I'm not going to be able to complete the procedure on this eye."

WH-WH-WHAT?

This was definitely not going according to plan.

They got me upright and into a room to "rest for a few minutes" and the doctor finally came in and talked to me about what went wrong. I apparently have a condition called Epithelial Basement Membrane Dystrophy which, long story short, means that when they were doing the surgery, my corneas, which should have remained attached, were possibly floating around the OR until someone could catch them and shove them back into my eyes. It's a genetic condition, usually asymptomatic (except for dry eyes, oops) and is usually never detected or diagnosed unless there is trauma to the eye.

You know, trauma like, say, LASIK.

Follow up appointments were made (SO. MANY. APPOINTMENTS.) and I was told that my vision would most definitely not be improving by tomorrow. Or by next week. As a matter of fact, it could be months before we got all this sorted out.

The entire time, I'm sitting there thinking "Seriously? This is happening? REALLY?!?!? I'm going to be functionally blind for MONTHS?!?!?!!?"

It's possible I may have had a slight meltdown in which it's possible I may have shrieked "You blinded me! And I paid you to do it!" and it's possible I may have received a, um, refund. I guess blinding is free. But whatever.

The next week was possibly one of my least favorite in memory. I couldn't see to read. I couldn't see to watch tv. I couldn't see to do normal household/life functions like preparing meals, or doing laundry, or plucking those chin hairs that spring up overnight. I couldn't see. My computer just looked like a big gray blob. My kids were just blurs of color and noise. I did listen to a couple audio books and I could see to use my iPhone if I held it exactly 4.5 inches from my left eye and closed my right one. I took full advantage of that by taking about a million pics of myself in various states of eye wear. See?

At one of my (many) follow-up appointments, right after my doc told me with something akin to awe and glee that he's been doing this for decades and mine was BY FAR the worst case that he's ever seen of this particular condition, then started quibbling with me about when I needed to come back for my next follow-up appointment, I may have (mis)quoted some Blanche DuBois ("I am currently dependent on the kindness of strangers to get me places!!!") and it's possible that he thought that was extremely funny and it's possible that now I just get to show up whenever I feel like it with the promise that he will see me immediately.

In any event, what was supposed to be a really quick thing that changed my quality of life for the better has - so far - not been. I'm two weeks past surgery now, and my vision is slowly improving in my right eye, and slowly getting back to it's former (horrible) vision in my left eye. The biggest problem I have at the moment is that my eyes don'r work well together because of the huge difference in vision that I have in each one.

Fun times all around.

It has occurred to me that this is sort of a recurring theme in my life. I usually eventually get to where I want to be, but it's NEVER a straight shot from point A to point B. That would be too easy, and I apparently don't do easy.

But even though I know that, I'm still sitting here, functionally blind in one eye and unable to see out of the other, wondering, "What the HELL just happened?"

Lost things.

2014-01-29T04:55:00.000-05:00

I am the finder of lost things.

I am the steward of lost loveys, the maven of misplaced toys, the caretaker of wayward video games, the overseer of missing but favorite t-shirts, the guardian of important yet elusive papers.

It is not a role I particularly relish.

I get frustrated when the stuffed kitty is missing at bedtime and my four year old can't possibly sleep without it.

I get annoyed when the video game my seven year old wants to play is nowhere to be found at precisely the moment that he decided none of the other 376 games he has will possibly do.

I feel irritated that I spend so much of my time looking for other people's stuff.

I start too many sentences with "If you would have put it back where it belongs..." and "It's where ever YOU left it..." and "You are responsible for your own things..."

Then I huff and sigh and nag and stomp around while trying to help them find whatever it is that's lost in this moment, because after all, nothing is truly lost until Mama can't find it.

But I still resent the amount of time I spend looking for other people's stuff. I always know where MY things are. I've tried and tried and tried to train the boys to put things where they belong. I've made places for everything. I've stressed the importance of keeping things put away correctly a million and one times.

Still, something is nearly always missing.

I wonder sometimes what I would do if I had those extra few minutes back every day. If instead of searching for lost things I could read a book, or drink a cup of coffee, or clean the oven or whatever small task that I deem important enough at that moment.

But then I hear it once again. "MAMA! I CAN'T FIND MY (whatever it is)! Can you help me?" and I sigh and get up and go on the hunt, because even though the missing item is just a little thing, insignificant in the bigger picture, if I start to discount all the little things and deem them unimportant and unworthy of my time, someday all too soon my boys will begin to believe that what's important to them isn't important to me.

So for now, and for as long as it will take, I will continue to search.

Easy S'mores Dip

2014-01-27T05:11:00.000-05:00

The boys love s'mores, and to be fair, so do I. What I don't love, though, are all the steps involved. The toasting, the roasting ,the assembling... It's fine for campfire time but sort of a lot of trouble for a random snow day afternoon.

So I improvised.

And my new favorite thing was born.

Printable Recipe

WHAT YOU NEED:

1 cup chocolate chips (milk chocolate chips make it more authentic tasting, but I prefer semi-sweet)

2 tablespoons milk or cream

1 cup marshmallows (mini ones work best, but I was out so I used the big ones cut in half)

graham crackers, teddy grahams, pretzels or animal crackers for dipping

WHAT YOU DO:

Preheat the broiler on your oven to the highest setting.

Put the chocolate chips and milk in a microwave and oven safe dish, and microwave in 15 second increments, stirring between, until the chips are melted and it stirs smooth (about 45 seconds total).

Top the chocolate mixture with the marshmallows and pop into the preheated broiler for just a minute. Watch it closely. It really just takes a minute for the marshmallows to toast. As you can see in my pic above it's really easy to let it go just a little too long. Oops.

Serve with graham crackers, teddy grahams, pretzels or animal crackers for dipping.

YUM.

He feels silly, oh so silly.

2014-01-23T04:51:00.000-05:00

8 things you said to your kids this week that maybe other parents did not say to their kids.

1. Zachary, why is your hair all... blue?

2. So what you're telling me is that you had the ball of the blue silly putty in your hand, then you decided to lay down with your head propped on your hand but you neglected to put the silly putty down before that? Is that what you're saying? Really?

3. Seriously? That's silly putty in your hair? SERIOUSLY?!!?!?!

4. Oh for the love go upstairs and get in the shower while I Google "what will get silly putty out of hair."

5. Hey Zack, how would you feel about some WD-40 in your hair? I'm guessing it will burn. It might eat some skin off too.

6. Ok, fine. No WD-40. Let me see what else the internet has to say.

7. Zack, we don't have any baby oil, which the internet says might work, but I have this really old foot massage oil. Let's give this a try.

8. Wow! It actually worked! I'm sorry you smell like feet and old people, but at least your hair isn't blue anymore.

P.S. I could not make this stuff up if I tried. And the really old foot massage oil did work like a charm.

Life is for the living.

2014-01-22T05:49:00.000-05:00

Funerals are a funny business, really.

They're not for the dead so much as they are for the living, the ones of us left behind.

I've been to plenty of funerals in my lifetime. Too many, really. Many were for the countless aunts, uncles and distant relatives that I've lost along the way. Many have been for friends and parents of friends and coworkers and other people gone too soon.

I've attended the funerals of both my own parents.

I attended a funeral (well a visitation, really, but the basic concept is the same) this past weekend, for the grandfather of one of my best childhood friends. He was an amazing man who had a long, full life, and when I was a child he was the closest I ever got to a grandfather of my own. I spent hours and days at their house as a kid. He took me sledding. He built us secret clubhouses to hide from the rest of the world in. He told the best, funniest stories that didn't always have a point but nobody really cared because he got such joy from the telling of them. He pulled my car out of a ditch when I was learning to drive. I sat across the dinner table from him a million nights eating the best spaghetti I've ever had, or ever will. He was a World War II veteran, a POW who came back with very little hearing but still managed to play the most beautiful bluegrass music I've ever heard. He died at home, surrounded by people he loved, after a very short illness. By all accounts he had a long, full, blessed life.

When I walked in to the funeral home I was struck, like I always have been, by how funerals are very social affairs. Everyone comes. There is much talking. There is much crying, much laughing, and much catching up. They are places that your presence isn't really noted, but your absence certainly would be.

They are for those of us who are left.

As I stood in line waiting for my chance to pay final respects to this great man, I could hear the conversations all around me. Many were about him. People were sharing stories and memories of their time with him, but invariably the conversations always made their way back around to the living. To life. To those of us who are left. Even in the hour of time set aside to honor and pay respect to this wonderful man, we were all (myself included) preoccupied with all the little pieces and bits of things that make up life. The urge to bring things back around to the living is strong, primordial even.

That's the way of it, really.

That's the way life is.

It's for the living.

It's for those of us who are left.

Travellin'

2014-01-17T09:12:00.000-05:00

Hello!

Today you can find me over at Shell's discussing how life begins when you turn 40.

Also, if you haven't had a chance to check it out, Fadra deemed me Blogmas worthy with a post I wrote about finding myself as a stay at home Mama.

Happy Friday!

Drunk. A southern tale of loss. I mean lost.

2014-01-16T08:26:00.000-05:00

I had shiny new post all set to go for today, but because of circumstances - vague, yes I know - I decided to repost this gem instead.

Write a post inspired by the word: lost.

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it."

William Faulkner

I am a book nerd.

Always have been. Always will be.

I was reading novels by age six, had read everything in my elementary school's library by age nine, and for many years, had a career in retail bookselling.

My house looks like a library threw up all over it.

My kids know that they can always tear me away from Facebook with a request to read to them.

I. Love. Books.

They smell good. They feel good. Sometimes, if you're really drunk and lick them, they taste good.

So it only makes sense that when I was in college, I took a lot of upper lever, good-excuse-to-brush-off-Physics-homework-because-this-is-for-CLASS literature classes.

One of my favorites was a Hemingway/Faulkner seminar, which was led by not one, but two of my favorite professors. I had discovered the joy of William Faulkner in high school when I read Light in August for the first time. Joy. Pure joy. Faulkner was brilliant, and tortured, and alcoholic, and even though I didn't understand two-thirds of it, I thought it was wonderful.

When my Faulkner class planned a trip to Oxford, Mississippi to visit Faulkner's old haunts and stomping grounds, I was in Heaven. I felt so... smart. So... in touch. Clearly, no one had ever understood Faulkner the way I did. It was like we were soul mates, and if being soul mates with a long dead Southern author of questionable mental facilities and obvious alcoholism was your thing, then I was your girl.

We spent the first day touring the old Faulkner homestead and visiting the gravesite, and dinner was at a quaint local restaurant where the Prof procured large amounts of wine for the mostly underage students - gasp! After dinner, we were left to our own devices and were planning to meet up again at 8am the next day for breakfast and to visit the loveliest bookstore in all the world. Having never been a drinker and feeling the effects of the wine, several of us decided to pay Steve, the legal-alcohol-buying-aged Teacher's Assistant, to go to a nearby liquor store for us so we could continue the festivities.

Alcohol in hand, drink on, we decided to trek across town to revisit the cemetery and maybe sit around Will's grave and be brilliant and tortured.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure TA Steve pocketed most of our cash and bought us the cheapest large vats of alcohol available, but that's another story.

Anyway, we made it to the gravesite, and sat around saying things that were brilliant and funny only to us. After all, we were ACADEMICS. "Yo Momma is a fish" was one particularly amusing anecdote that made its way around the group about fifteen million times - and by the way, have you ever tried to say "Yoknapatawpha" three times fast while drunk on rotgut whisky? I thought not... We sat for hours, sharing our liquor with Will (read: pouring it onto his grave), quoting his work, and finally around 2am, decided to call it a night. We were on our way back to our rooms when the story gets fairly interesting, for me anyway.

For some reason, and I'm fuzzy on the details - imagine that - I decided I needed to tell Will one final thing, and with an assurance of "Go on, I'll catch up," - famous last words if I've ever heard them - I split up from my group and backtracked to the grave. I guess I told Will what needed to be said, and tried to catch up to my friends.

Oops.

It was 3am, I was in a cemetery in an unfamiliar city, I was drunk, and I was LOST.

Drunk + Lost = Really Bad News.

I'm not really sure what I did the next 5 hours.

I have vague memories of magnolia trees and unfamiliar street signs.

I have no memories of encountering anyone at all.

What I do remember is waking up the next morning, in my room, still drunk and running WAY late for breakfast.

I made it to breakfast, unshowered and wearing most of the previous day's outfit, drank some coffee and stumbled through the rest of the day.

No one from my group remembered seeing me after leaving me at the cemetery.

How I made it back to the room is, and always will be, a mystery.

But the good news is, I learned some really important lessons that night. 1) Never mix wine and hard liquor, 2) Never trust a TA named Steve to pick out your alcohol and 3)Never, ever wander around Oxford, Mississippi at 3am without a wingman.

These are lessons I'll take with me to the grave.

Mine. Not Will's.

Twitterature, January 2014

2014-01-15T05:50:00.000-05:00

Today I'm linking up again with Modern Mrs. Darcy for Twitterature.

Ah, January 2014.

The month that will always be remembered as the month I didn't finish anything.

Sigh...

See, here's the thing.

I have a list of hundreds of books I want to read. I even occasionally have an hour or two here and there that I CAN read. And I tried to read. Really I did. But on my list this month are quite a few books that I started, but didn't like well enough to finish.

It's sad, really. Something or another made me pick them up. Something about them said "READ ME!" And I tried. Really I did. But if you're here for some fabulous recommendations, I don't have them this month.

Maybe you can use my list as a cautionary tale of what NOT to read.

In any event, here it is.

The Drowning House by Elizabeth Black - Sad photographer Claire comes home to Galveston to try to fix her screwed up life. Everyone she knew as a kid is still there, still doing exactly the same things. It doesn't work, by the way. She's still sad. Well, at least it hadn't worked by page 70ish, which is how far I made it.

Identical by Scott Turow - These identical twins went really different routes - one is a senator and the other is in prison for murder. I never made it past the first (horribly dry) courtroom scene. Bangs gavel.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes - Time traveling serial killer? Sure, why not? Except, um, not. It was super boring and I don't think I made it past the second chapter.

Damaged by Alex Kava - Maggie O'Dell, a character I usually like for a quick mystery read, finds a torso in a cooler that has washed up somewhere and then... I totally lost interest. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the problem here.

Shut Your Eyes Tight by John Verdon - Tortured cops and even more tortured serial killers usually perk me right up when I'm in a reading slump. Sigh... Not this time.

Still Life by Joy Fielding - Casey's in a coma, but she can hear everything that's being said around her. P.S. It's all a big conspiracy. The end.

Seriously. I really do read good books sometimes. Just not right now.

What recommendations do you have for me? What is a book that I absolutely won't be able to put down?

On ancestry.

2014-01-13T05:32:00.000-05:00

A few weeks before Christmas I fell down the Ancestry.com rabbit hole. I signed up for the two week free trial and during the time of the year that I'm usually busy decorating, wrapping and baking, I was instead looking at 1940 census records, birth records and death records, marriage certificates and records of burial.

It was fascinating.

I found hundreds and hundreds of relatives, both living and deceased. I found proof of things that I had heard as a kid and found a few things that were a complete surprise to me.

I've always been interested in family history, but it always seemed so daunting to try to research it myself.

I'll have to say, this was a pretty easy way to go.

I did run into a glitch when I realized that it would not let me input two different marriage dates to the same person. YOU DON'T KNOW ME ANCESTRY.COM!

Ahem.

By far my favorite find had to do with a great uncle I tracked down.

I remember my Mama talking about spending time as a child with an uncle named Dooney. That's what she called him. Uncle Dooney. Uncle Dooney this, Uncle Dooney that. He sounded like a really nice guy, so it was important to me to track down the records for him.

I found him alright. His name? Duane. But pronounced Dooney. As in Du-An-E.

True story.

Strong names aren't really a thing in my family, I guess.

Let me tell you another story.

When I was a kid, I had an aunt.

Her name was Mad Lou.

Well, that's what I thought her name was, anyway. In my defense, so did my siblings and cousins.

Someone once came around my cousins' house looking for "Mattie So-and-so" and they claimed no knowledge of such a person.

I was a teenager before I realized her name was really Mattie Lou and people just kind of ran it together when they said it. "MadLou called today." "I ran into MadLou at the store." "We're going to go see MadLou tomorrow." You know, as you do.

She WAS kinda crazy. It seemed like a fitting name.

But back to now. During my brief foray into family history, I learned quite a bit about those who came before me, but I ended up with more questions than answers. Someday, someday, someday, I'm going to have the time and resources to really dig. For now, though, I'll just have to be content with the tidbits I've found so far.

No matter how you pronounce it, it's still family to me.

Do you do any genealogy research? Are you interested in your ancestry?

This is not a sponsored post. At all. Really, if it were, I would have had more than a two week free trial, don't ya think?

Gone... and forgotten.

2014-01-09T05:09:00.000-05:00

List 8 things you think people forgot how to do.

Initially I cursorily dismissed this prompt, thinking it would be difficult to think of eight things. For some reason, though, I kept coming back to it so I decided to try to jot down as many things I could think of in five minutes.

Just off the top of my head, I came up with around 30 things.

Apparently, it wasn't so difficult after all. However, in the spirit of brevity (not one of my strong points, I know) I did manage to narrow it down to eight. Here they are, in no particular order of importance.

Work on cars. When I was a kid, I would see my dad, my brother, my uncles and cousins and neighbors covered in grease, under a car hood ALL. THE. TIME. When I got a little older, I saw friends and boyfriends doing exactly the same thing. At 17, I had changed my own oil, changed a tire, and had a basic understanding of what was happening every time I cranked my engine. But then I kind of forgot, along with the rest of the world. Part of it probably has to do with how much more complicated cars have become. They're really more computer-oriented than mechanical these days. Another reason is probably that it's just easier than it used to be to have some 15 minute oil change place do it for you for $29.99 than it is to spend the time to do it yourself. Whatever the reasons, I certainly don't see many people in my neighborhood under the hoods of their cars on the weekend doing basic maintenance.

Use things made of paper. Paper maps are outdated before they're even printed. Actually, they're seldom even printed any more. The same is true of phone books. Encyclopedias? My kids don't even know what those are. When I was a kid my mom bought me a fabulous set of encyclopedias and I read from it nearly every day (GEEK ALERT!) until I had read them all the way through. Those things just don't really exist any more, since the dawn of the internet and computers and constant online updates made them obsolete.

Write in cursive. I remember being in third grade and wanting SO BADLY for my handwriting sample to be chosen as the best in my class so it could be entered in the competition at the county fair. Alas, my dream was never realized, but still, I could write in cursive. It's not even part of the Kentucky school curriculum any more. Not long ago I tried to teach Zachary to sign his name, thinking that was a fairly important skill but after several poorly constructed attempts I gave up. He can just make an "X" or something. Even my once-neat handwriting has devolved into some weird mish-mash of some cursive, some printing, and some totally made up looking letters that I like to think of as my own personal font.

Spell. 4COL I 4got if U R cmg 2day or 2mrow. Sadly, this makes perfect sense to me (and probably to you). I'm one of the last holdouts who insists on typing out every single word that I text, much to the dismay of several of the people on my contact list. I will absolutely insist that the boys learn the proper way to spell, too, before I allow their spelling to degenerate to the current socially acceptable level. I will admit, though, that spell check has pretty much ruined me, too. I just give unfamiliar words a couple tries before I give up, highlight it and right click.

Do math in your head. Long ago I could do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in my head. Like, with big numbers. Now, not so much. I have a calculator on my phone, one on my computer, and I really just don't try that hard any more to work it out before taking the easy route. Remember in the Little House on the Prairie books where Laura has to do long division in her head and out loud? There's no way I could do that. No way at all.

Keep private things private. I'm going to blame social media. I mean, I NEED to blame something because it's bad. Really, really bad. I'm not saying it's everyone, but I unfollow/block and/or hide people all the time who can't seem to keep the most intimate details of their lives to themselves. I want to see cute pics of your kids, what blog posts you're calling out, even what you had for lunch is fine. But really, there's an invisible line about what should and what should not be public knowledge. As an intensely private person myself, I sometimes am just dumbstruck by what people choose to share. I thought about listing some examples, but I can't even go there.

Memorize phone numbers. I still remember the number at my childhood home, plus the numbers of several of my friends, the elementary school I went to and the time and temperature number at the local bank. However, I cannot tell you the phone number of my friends and family that I talk to and text nearly every day now. Because my phone remembers for me. That part of my brain is now being used to store even more lyrics from country music songs of the seventies and eighties.

Unplug and just... be. When I go to Zack's one hour tae kwon do class, I panic if I don't remember to take my nook, my phone AND my iPad, because I might need them. If I'm sitting down to watch tv, chances are I'm also playing Candy Crush on my phone. In the 30 minutes or so it has taken me to write this blog post, I have checked email (twice), checked the weather channel, and fallen down the Pinterest rabbit hole when I went to look for a graphic. Sitting still has always made me twitchy, and now more than ever I have ready entertainment at my fingertips. I know it's not just me. I struggle with this every day and if what I'm observing in the world is any indication, it's a pretty widespread thing.

What do you think people have forgotten how to do?