Long Drives To Nowhere

The Bunny Saga

2008-06-19T15:48:00.019-05:00

Mandy’s love of bunnies began in the fourth grade when her teacher purchased one as a class pet. Mr. Cousins brought in a bunch of animals for the classroom one day: snails, fish, gerbils, a bird, and a baby bunny named Honey. Mandy was determined that at the end of the school year, when the teacher was giving lucky students the pets to take home, Honey would be her bunny.

(this photo is of Honey fully grown)

She didn’t have too much competition for the rabbit. Only one other boy had his sights set on it, since probably not many parents would give their children permission to keep it. So all she had to do was edge out Mario, her arch-rival of sorts during the elementary school years.

Mandy was a ruthless opponent. She volunteered to take the bunny home over the weekends. She brought in carrots and hay on a regular basis. She eagerly forfeited her lunch hour when the cage needed cleaning so Mr. Cousins wouldn’t have the chore of doing so. By the time Mario caught on and began asking to take Honey home over the weekends, he was about two months too late.

At the end of the school year, while names were being drawn from a hat to determine the winners of the frogs and the fish, Mandy was automatically declared the new owner of the baby bunny.

She spent the next several years with her constant companion. Honey learned to use the cage as her litter box, so she was granted free reign in Mandy’s bedroom. They watched TV together, and they sat side-by-side while Mandy played video games.

Sean built a pen-tagon in the yard for supervised daytime romps in the fresh air, and we marveled as the instincts kicked in and burrows were dug and filled with grass.

Honey died suddenly. We are not sure if she ate something which impaired her digestive system, or if she fell prey to uterine cancer as so many un-spayed females do in captivity. It was one of the most horrible things Mandy has ever had to go through. We raced to find an emergency vet still open on a Saturday night while Honey seizured and faded away. To this day I have a hard time thinking about it and it brings tears to my eyes, so I’m sure it does the same to Mandy.

*******
A few weeks later we got Muffin to try to dull the pain. She was an adorable baby, a lionhead rabbit with cute little tufts of fur around her face and her tail.

Mandy and Muffin didn’t develop the level closeness that she had shared with Hon Bun, because by this time Mandy was dating and no longer spending every moment of her life in her room. Although Muffin doesn’t let Mandy pick her up or even pet her much, she enjoys our company, and will come to hang out with us as we sit and chat together on Mandy’s bed. She’s a good little girl.

(full-grown Muffin)

Remember that I said “girl.” This becomes important.

*******
Around Christmastime this past year, we noticed some suspicious behavior. Mandy seemed to be up to something.

She had stopped at home to get her cell phone. Sean called me at work, because he noticed that she had rummaged around in her room and left in a hurry. He looked out the window to see her escaping with some sort of contraband under her coat.

“I’ll call her cell and see what’s going on,” I told him.

When I got no answer, he called me right back.

“I can hear her phone ringing in her room. She said she came home to get her phone, and then she didn’t even take it with her. I know she was hiding something under her jacket.”

By the time she came home later that evening, we both had those raised eyebrows and those questioning looks that most parents perfect when their darling children hit puberty.

“Okay, so do you guys wanna know why I’ve been acting weird today?”

“Ah, sure. That would be great.”

She unzipped her jacket and revealed a white baby lop-eared bunny. “Kurt got it for me for Christmas. I was afraid you guys might be mad. His name is Jack.”

You can see where this is going…

Jack and Muffin fought a bit at first as Muffin learned to share her territory with another rabbit and they worked out who would be the boss. But soon they were fast friends.

And more than friends.

We noticed that Jack was starting to chase Muffin around the bedroom. And although she ran, she didn’t run very fast. We could see that she was just taunting him, flirting with him, pausing and waiting for him to catch up…

We made Jack an appointment right away. But we were too late. By the time he had his required pre-checkup and his appointment for the snippity-snip was scheduled, I noticed something moving in the cage.

“Wait a minute… wait a minute… what was that?”

“What was what?”

“Something moved in Muffin’s cage.”

Mandy was alarmed. “Like a rat?”

“No way. It had a white ass.”

Yes, by the time we had found the two little babies, they were covered with fur, eyes opened, and they were running around the cage. They must have been very obedient little bunnies, because although we spent time with the rabbits every morning and night - feeding them, sitting with them, talking with them - we had never heard a peep from the cage.

Mandy named them Kyle and Sweetie.

Kyle is a skittish bunny, running away if you try to pet him or if he hears an odd sound. But he’s warming up to us.

Sweetie is just the opposite. She enjoys being pet, comes running to see us when we enter the room, and even enjoyed sleeping with Mandy up on her pillow when Mandy was still sleeping in her own room (I’ll get to that…)

What was most alarming was that Muffin was already weaning the babies, and Jack hadn’t even been snipped yet. Jack’s doctor agreed – Muffin was probably already pregnant with the next litter.

Luckily, the next litter was just one little baby, who we very creatively called Baby.

After Jack’s appointment, we figured we were set. Five bunnies. And Mandy wanted to keep them all.

(big daddy Jack)

But guess what? Jack must have hit Muffin up one more time before the surgery. One night at around midnight, Mandy found two naked baby bunnies back behind her bed.
And because Muffin kept climbing up on her bed to get to the babies, and because all the bunnies were becoming noisy in the night chewing on school papers and books, thumping little warnings to each other and running around, Mandy moved into the guest room.

She still wants to keep all the bunnies, but she wants them outside. So she begged her grandfather to come in for a visit from Ohio and build her a large, secure bunny enclosure in the back yard.

He’s due to visit in a few weeks. I’ll keep you posted…

An Afternoon Hiking & Meeting Henry

2008-06-05T14:38:00.025-05:00

“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.” ~Eleonora Duse

It was forecasted to be a beautiful day, so I got up early, put my hair in a ponytail, laced my sneakers and headed out with my camera and tripod. I was on the trail by 8:30.

I had the whole day to myself, so I meandered along the woodland paths leisurely.

I paused for a while at the dog cemetery. There was something very sweet about this place. It was evident that these pets were cherished family members. And given recent events I could certainly relate to that.

I paused again at a little waterfall. I love the sound water makes as it trickles over the rocks and gurgles into the pool below.

While photographing the waterfall, a red-sided flat millipede caught my eye.

And so did some mating mosquitoes on the bench where I sat to take a break.

Of course I had to spend some time at the pond.

There were lots of frogs and snakes to keep me occupied (and keep me vigilant as I stepped between the weeds).

When I reached the easternmost part of the trail, the dense trees gave way to reveal a sunny sky, a glorious river breeze, and the perfect bench from which to enjoy both. I took off my shoes, removed the pony tail that was tugging on my scalp and rolled up my dampened sweats. What a perfect resting spot.

It was then that I realized my camera battery was completely drained. In my haste to get out and enjoy the day, I’d forgotten to charge it.

Well that was okay. I packed everything up and headed back up the trail. I had been here before, and I would be here again. No matter.

But then, on my way up the trail, something caught my eye!

About 9 years ago while hiking with Mandy, we spotted their rubbery eggs littering a hillside above a cove along the river. The babies had already broken free and made their way down into the reeds and seaweed below. I made a note in my journal of what we had found there at the end of June. “Next year, we’ll come back in time to see them hatch, or at least see some of them descend into the water.”

And I’ve always remembered that. Usually in August, or maybe even July I think of it. But I never remember in June, so I’ve never gotten to see them.

And now 9 years later at the beginning of June, I had stumbled upon one on the trail.

I was amazed I'd even seen him at all. He was motionless, and he was so tiny! It was the sort of thing that Mandy would have noticed. She’s the one with the eagle-eye, spotting fossils as we walk, or interesting insects, or animal bones.

I have to call her, I thought. She’s the only one who will understand both my excitement at finding him and my disappointment over the dead camera battery.

“Aww! How big is he?”

“Well, if you hold out your palm, and then curve it up into a little cup, he would fit inside the cup.”

“Awwwww!”

“I’m going to wait here a while and see if I can trick my camera into taking one more picture for me.”

“Okay, Mom, good luck!”

I did actually coax one more shot out of my camera, but the settings were all wrong and it came out completely black in the dark of the forest.

Now what?!

I had to call Mandy back. She would talk me out of this. It’s stupid, and it’s selfish… But she didn’t answer.

Am I really going to do it? I think I am. Damn it! I absolutely hate hate hate when people treat nature selfishly. I never want to disturb the wildlife. Even when I’m photographing something for a while, I’ll move on after a few shots, just so I don’t make it uncomfortable. I never want anything to be nervous, or feel threatened…

Or be removed from its natural habitat.

But there I was, taking my camera out of the camera bag and putting the little baby snapping turtle inside.

I wasn’t going to keep him, though. I was just going to bring it home, charge up my camera battery, and then bring it back. I’d been waiting nine years to see one of these things!

I was so ashamed…

Mandy was actually happy that I’d brought him home. She had really wanted to see him. We put the little baby on a plate of water while the battery was charging. It looked like he took a drink.

While we weren’t looking, he crawled off the plate and hid under the trail map.

When the battery was charged, I took the turtle outside to take a few photos in the yard. I mean, I had a baby snapping turtle! I should be able to get a decent shot of him, especially since he hardly moved at all.

I tried taking his photo in a few different places. He had such big beautiful eyes! And he stayed perfectly still. This is totally wrong. I’m using him. I have to bring him back.

After only a few snaps of the shutter, I went inside to grab the camera bag.

“You ARE going to bring him back, aren’t you Mom?”

“Of course! I just came in to get the bag.”

“You’re not thinking of keeping him, are you?”

“No. I don’t believe in keeping wild animals as pets.”

“Promise?”

“I promise. I’m bringing Henry back right now.”

“Mom!!! Don’t you dare name him! Then you won’t want to bring him back!”

I was laughing. “I didn’t really name him; I’m just messing with you.”

Mandy fixed up a plastic container with some moist paper towels inside. It fit perfectly inside my camera bag so I could smuggle Henry back into the woods.

But when I went outside to get him, he was gone!

I looked everywhere. Mandy helped me. I thought instinct would direct him to travel downhill, so we focused our search on the side of the yard where it sloped into the trees along the border. The area within the trees was blanketed by an accumulation of leaves. With his instinct to hide, we were never going to find him.

After a half hour or so, we gave up and went in the house.

“I’m so mad!” I said.

“Me too,” said Mandy.

“I knew I shouldn’t have taken him. I knew it was wrong. I mean, not that he couldn’t survive here. But this isn’t where he’s supposed to be.”

Mandy and I sat in the living room and watched some television. I had promised myself I’d do nothing but fun stuff on my day off, no cleaning or yard work, but the wind was taken out of my sails. I ended up doing the dishes, clearing the counter, and gathering up all the recyclables.

With my arms full of emptied grapefruit juice bottles and a few cans, I headed out to the recycling bin, which was still outside by the street since garbage day. I set everything down so I could flip the overturned bin and fill it up.

And there was Henry hiding in the handle.

He’d walked all the way from the backyard to the end of the driveway, probably about 40 yards or so. If I hadn’t noticed him when I did, he would have crossed the road and been long gone. I couldn’t believe how far he’d traveled!

I was so happy to have found the little guy. I know I wasn’t supposed to take him, but I was definitely supposed to find him. Five minutes later we were in the car and on our way back to where Henry belonged.

But I had a dilemma. I was surprised at where I’d found Henry on the trail, because he was not near any of the streams or ponds, and the river was quite a distance away. Should I put him back exactly where I’d found him? Maybe to repay him for the ordeal I’d caused him, I’d bring him closer to the water.

I walked along the embankment of an offshoot of the river, a slow-moving inlet which was marked as a wildlife sanctuary. The bank was so steep, though. I decided to follow the trail for a ways until it dipped down near the water.

Once I’d found the perfect spot, I set down the camera bag and lifted the lid. Henry was ready to go!

I took him out and placed him under a tree.

The water was only about 5 feet away. Surely he’d find it. I decided to put a big oak leaf over him. Back at home he'd preferred to be hidden under the trail map. Maybe the leaf would make him feel safer.

I started to walk away, but I turned back. Maybe I should face him towards the water so he knows which way to go. I put him on the other side of the big tree root, facing the water. Then I put the leaf back on top of him.

Goodbye Henry. You’re a good turtle. Thanks for today. I actually felt a little sad. Mandy was right – I shouldn’t have named him.

I walked all the way back out the trail that ran along the inlet. When I got to the end, I stopped.

I wonder if he’s moved yet? I walked all the way back in. His little head was outstretched from beneath the leaf, looking in the direction of the water.

I decided I’d sit and watch his journey, feeling like a proud mama watching her child go off to kindergarten. Just wait until he finds that water!

As the tiny turtle climbed over little sticks and rocks and leaves, he occasionally tumbled and flipped over on his back, but he immediately righted himself with a quick twitch of his head. He’d pause for a bit, look around, and then resume his expedition. Finally, he reached the rocks at the edge of the water…

And then he was in. He dug his way under the seaweed and muck with his tiny clawed feet, and then his little head popped up above the water. He burrowed his way under the vegetation again, and then up came his little head, over and over. Was it possible for a little turtle to be happy? He sure seemed to be.

Good luck Henry…

“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.” ~e.e. cummings

Memories of Butchie, Part 1

2008-05-29T10:53:00.014-05:00

Dogs' lives are too short. Their only fault, really. ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull

It was a cold Saturday night in February. The ground was covered with layers of ice and snow, but with powerful swings of the pick Sean was able to break through the frozen ground to the softer earth down below. He and Brian hollowed out a perfect hole, free of rocks and roots, to be Butchie’s final resting place.

“I don’t want any roots bothering my boy,” Sean declared, his voice cracking.

Although his footprints were still visible in the snow outside my back door, my most loyal friend of the past 14 ½ years was gone.

********
He wasn’t even my dog at first. Amanda and I had moved away to California when Brian was just 9 years old, and my mother tried to fill in the emptiness left in his life by getting him a puppy. Brian named him Butch after his favorite scene from Lady and the Tramp, where the dogs are served dinner behind the Italian restaurant. Tramp had different names, depending upon the restaurant at which he was dining, but the Italian guys called him Butch:

Joe: Here's your bones, Tony.

Tony: Okay, bones. Bones? Whassa matta for you, Joe? I break-a your face-e! Tonight, Butch-a he's-a get the best in the house!

Joe: Okay, Tony! You the boss.
Tony: [Showing Tramp the menu] Now, tell me, what's your pleasure? A la carte? Dinner? [Tramp barks]
Tony: Aha, Okay. Hey, Joe! Butch-a he say he wants-a two spaghetti speciale, heavy on the meats-a ball.
Joe: But Tony, dogs don't a-talk.
Tony: He's a-talkin' to me!
Joe: Okay, he's a-talkin' to you! You the boss!

Butch was a hyper little puppy, so my mother signed him up for obedience school. Although he was a fast learner, he didn’t get enough exercise or attention in those early days. My mom brought him to all of Brian’s soccer practices and football games at first, but once he was a full grown bucking bull of a pup, she couldn’t handle him at the sidelines any more. He had to stay home alone all day, then every night while they were out at practices and games.

By the time I moved back from California, Butchie was an unruly one-year-old. To make matters worse, he was gated in the kitchen, because something about the new carpeting my mother had installed throughout the house made him want to hunch up and take a crap.

Amanda was afraid of him when we first moved back. She was just over two years old, and the very first night back in New York she woke up screaming.

“What’s the matter Little One?”
“Butchie!” she managed to say through heaving tears.

Oh, man. I was afraid of this. The poor little thing was terrified of this animal. He was twice her size and knocked her over whenever he came within a foot of her. And so she was having nightmares already, probably of him biting her and tearing her up or something…

“What happened,” I asked her.
“He… he… he took my piyyow!”
I stifled my laugh. Amanda’s pillow was one of her most treasured possessions. Since I’d imagined the line between dreams and reality to be blurred at the age of two, I very dramatically called down the stairs, “Butchie! You Don’t Take Amanda’s Pillow! That’s Not Yours!”

This seemed to satisfy her, but the next morning she woke up screaming again. This time, I wasn’t quite as horrified. I was actually quite curious to know how her mind was working.

“What’s the matter Little One?”
“Butchie!” she managed to say through heaving tears.
I gasped. “What… did he… DO?!”
“He… he… he took my DONUT!” (Another item cherished by my toddler.)
“Well I am going to yell at him!” And I called dramatically down the stairs again, “Butchie! You Don’t Take Amanda’s Donut! That’s Not Yours!”

After that, she never had another nightmare about him, and they became the best of friends.

But there was still the issue of his lack of socialization. I tried to take him for walks up the street, but he tugged so hard that it was difficult to keep both he and Mandy’s stroller on the side of the busy road. So that was out.

I would try to wear him out in the yard, but he needed to be leashed at all times since the yard wasn’t fenced in. I would kick the ball around with him and try to get him some exercise, but he was young and needed much more.

If you wish the dog to follow you, feed him. - Unknown

Brian eventually trained him to go around the yard without a leash on. Whenever he walked him, he carried a bone in his pocket, so Butchie stayed right by his side. When they got back to the house and into the back door, Butch would get the bone. Eventually, we could just let him out and watch him from the window, and he’d always come back for that bone.

That made it easier to play with him in the yard.

He obsessed over his popped soccer balls and popped basketballs. Before they popped, he would get his teeth stuck in them and have his mouth stuck open until I pried the ball out of his mouth. Once they popped, he would whip them back and forth so hard that he’d be pummeling himself in the face with them. And he would chase them up on the hill until he was thoroughly exhausted and I made him stop and come in the house.

When I found a soccer ball at the pet store with rope around it, it seemed like the perfect toy. He could carry it around easier and I could throw it. But man, did he pummel himself in the head with those things even worse. He loved those balls.

To a dog, motoring isn't just a way of getting from here to there, it's also a thrill and an adventure. The mere jingle of car keys is enough to send most any dog into a whimpering, tail-wagging frenzy. - Jon Winokur

When I finally got a car, our options for playtime increased: I took him for rides. It got him out of the house, it was something different and interesting for him, and I could walk him where I didn’t have to worry about the road so much.

The river was a favorite place for all three of us. It seemed he could smell the river long before we got there. Either that, or he recognized the road that lead to our little patch of sand on the Hudson. By the time I was within a few miles of it, he’d be dancing back and forth in the back seat from one window to another, because he knew where we were going.

I used to have to park near a garbage pail, so when he barreled out of the car he wouldn’t rip my arm off. Dogs always mark a garbage can, so there were plenty of sniffs there to keep him occupied while I rolled up the windows and locked the door.

Whenever we got to our destination, he was so excited he’d have to take a crap. Eventually I recognized the pattern, so I would park far away from other people so they wouldn’t give me that “You’d better clean that up” look. I was always prepared with my plastic bag. But it was still more polite to defile the weeds than the sand of the beach the kids were playing on.

While there, he would happily spend the entire time fetching sticks from the waves.

When I’d tell him “no more,” he’d pick up his stick and bring it into the water himself. When he dropped it, it would start to float, and he’d quickly snatch it up again. He would drop it again, stare at it for a moment as it bobbled in the waves, and then snatch it up before it got away.

Or he would go into the water and bring out every floating stick he could find, and the bigger the better. He'd try to drag an entire tree from the river if he saw one. It wouldn’t be long though before he’d drop the stick at my feet again, desperately wanting another throw.

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semihuman. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog. - Edward Hoagland

He and Amanda had a favorite game at the river. I’d throw two sticks, one for her and one for Butch. They’d both dash into the water to get them. Butch would only chase after his own stick, and Amanda would only chase hers. Then it would be a race to see who got back to me first. And Butch was fully aware of the competition. He’d be swimming his fastest, shooting her sideways glances as they swam neck and neck and raced out from the waves.

He would chase sticks until he literally made himself sick. One day at the river he threw up and almost passed out. I don’t know if it was heat, exhaustion, or too much river water.

The dog is the god of frolic. - Henry Ward Beecher

Back at home, I got Butchie used to being let into the livingroom with us at night. Eventually, he was given run of the whole house all day and there was no more gating. That helped with his behavior at home.

But he was still a cut up. He didn’t like us all sitting around on the couches watching TV. And he knew what would get us up: He’d steal our shoes. He was smart about it though. If he wanted to get me up, he would steal one of my shoes, bring it over to me and stand there staring at me, wagging his tail. I’d reach for it, of course, and he’d duck out of the way. Eventually there would be a chase, and everyone would be laughing at his antics and he couldn’t be happier.

If he wanted to get my mother off the couch, he would show her one of her shoes. To get her up faster, he’d show her one of her high-heeled work shoes. That never failed to get her attention, although she wouldn’t be laughing.

He could show Amanda any shoe and she’d be pissed. It’s fun, when you’re the youngest in the household, to have someone that ranks below you and you can scold. So any shoe would get her up, and any attention was good attention for Butchie.
Another favorite activity was fetching the newspaper. At first, my mother would bring him outside to the driveway with her when she got the paper, and she’d put it in his mouth so he could carry it in. Eventually, all she had to do was open the front door and say, “get the newspaper!” He’d happily retrieve it and bring it into the house. We’d have to offer him a bone and get it out of his mouth fairly quickly, though, or he’d start tearing into it. This always got a reaction out of us, and that was always his goal.

I think he found it hilarious when I would try not to laugh at him and try to make my girly voice really low: “Heeeeeeeeey! You... Drop it!” He would freeze in his play-bow and just wait. If my mother laughed, the chase was on. If I couldn’t hold my mad face and let a smile slip, the chase was on. Many times, our newspaper reading began with page 3 or 4 since the first few outer layers were torn to shreds.

But he could always make us laugh, and he knew it.

********

He has told me a thousand times over that I am his reason for being; by the way he rests against my leg; by the way he thumps his tail at my smallest smile; by the way he shows his hurt when I leave without taking him… When I am wrong, he is delighted to forgive. When I am angry, he clowns to make me smile. When I am happy, he is joy unbounded. – Gene Hill

What's Going On

2008-05-16T09:56:00.010-05:00

Hmm… where to begin? Quite a lot has happened over the past few months…

My best friend died...

My mother got a new puppy from the shelter...

I took a wonderful vacation…

The bunny population in my daughter's room increased...

I threw a big party...

And I've had quite a few photo shoots...

Each of these headlines will become a separate post in the coming

weeks, so the details are forthcoming.

I'm also going to be working my way around the blogosphere

and saying hello to all my friends.

I've been busy, but I've missed this place...

Spotting

2008-01-19T13:30:00.000-05:00

"It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important." (Doris Lessing)

Back in dance class, we were taught to “spot” when we were spinning.

Spotting is where you keep your focus on a particular spot in the room, and as you spin you whip your head around in order to keep that point in your focus for as much of the spin as possible. There’s a part of the rotation when you are not focused on your target, but this is brief, because as you spin you whip your head around and refocus on your spot.

Spotting is the secret to successful turns. It keeps the dancer oriented and aware of her movement and direction. It also prevents disorientation from a lack of focus and diminishes the dizziness from spinning.

I think spotting is the secret to success in life as well.

There are plenty of things that compete for my attention as I twist and twirl through existence…

There are the bills and the laundry, the furniture that needs dusting and the malfunctioning computer that needs repair…

There’s a mountain of negativity in the world and on the evening news.

There’s the guy who cut me off on the highway, and the snotty inattentive waitress at the restaurant, and that automated call that comes through at dinnertime every night with “a very important message for the cardholder.”

There are always errands to run and appointments to make.

And then there are all the little surprises that creep up on me when I least expect them and really make my head spin…

But I try not to let less important things consume me and set me spinning out of control. It’s not that they don’t receive some of my attention, but they don’t monopolize my focus. I can’t focus on everything, or I’ll end up dizzy, or back in bed with the covers pulled up over my head.

Though I may turn in different directions during the course of my day, or my week or my year, I try to remember to refocus on the spot.

For me, the spot is filled only by the ones I love most and the things that are important to me.

My family is there. They’re my main focus. They’re the reason I do everything that I do. My husband, my daughter, and my dogs comprise the bull’s-eye of my spot.

The rest of my family is there too, in a ring around my bull’s-eye. And my extended family and my husband’s family are in another ring. I have a ring of close friends, too.

I think at the end of the day, all that really matters to me are the ones I love, and the relationships I have with them.

There are other things I care about, of course. I care about my job, but only because I need to make money to help support my family. It's not one of my central rings.

I’m passionate about photography though, and I’m still working towards making that the main money-maker. Photography gets a ring in my target.

And there are causes that I care about, like homelessness and hunger and animal welfare. I’m going to try to make a ring to do some good this year, even if it’s only making donations. I’ll see what I can do…

I have to remember to include myself somewhere in my spot, because it’s easy to forget what I need. My needs are simple though: I need exercise, I need to be creative, and I need to spend quality time with those I love. I’ll have to remember to give myself a ring in my spot this year.

Even if everything else becomes a swirl of deadlines and to-do lists and problems and inconveniences, it’s my goal for 2008 is to keep my priorities in sight, maintain focus on the things that are most important to me, and make sure I am truly devoting quality time to them and enjoying them. The year will be gone before we know it, and I don't want mine to have been a blur.

"Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security, guidance, wisdom, and power." (Stephen Covey)

Believing in Santa

2007-12-27T16:04:00.000-05:00

(I know I'm a little late, but I'm still in the Christmas spirit...)

I grew up believing in Santa.

One Christmas Eve when I was very young, my brother and I heard him knock over an ashtray in the living room. We didn’t get out of bed though – we were too afraid. We knew he only came once we were asleep, and we didn’t want him to catch us awake.

So we just laid there frozen in our bunk beds until we finally dozed off again. But for years, that was proof that he was real.

****

Throughout elementary school, I had the hardest time falling asleep on Christmas Eve. I would just lie there, wide awake in my brand new footy pajamas (every year we received new pj’s so we’d look presentable in the Christmas morning photos). Every once in a while I would turn over and look out the window above my headboard.

No reindeer on the roof.

No sight of them in the sky.

I would lie there waiting for him for as long as I could, but I’d eventually doze off sometime after midnight.

In the morning when I ran downstairs to check under the tree…

“He came! He came!”

And I would wake everyone in the house.

One year it was my brother who woke me. It was about 3:30 in the morning and sure enough, the presents were overflowing from beneath our twinkling tree. Duane woke me up first, and then the two of us ran to wake Mommy and Daddy.

“He came!”

“He did?”

“Yeah! Can we open presents? Please??”

“You can each open one, and then we’re going back to bed until the morning.”

My mother chose two from the pile that looked identical. One had my brother’s name on it, and one had mine.

Inside we each found tape recorders and three-packs of blank cassettes.

My parents went back to bed, and Duane and I set out to master the buttons and record our voices onto the tapes.

“Well… it’s Christmas morning,” Duane announced in a voice that was scratchy from a winter cold. “Mom and Dad went back to bed, and me and Tam are playing with our new tape recorders that Santa brought us.”

“I wanna talk!” I whined from the background.

“Okay…”

My brother slid the recorder over to me, and I sang a song I learned from Bugs Bunny:

“I wiss I was in Dixie... Hooway! Hooway! I wiss I was in Dixie… Hooway!”

Lots of giggles followed, and then the loud click of my brother stopping the tape.

We stayed awake playing with our tape recorders until the sun came up. And when my parents finally got out of bed and made some coffee, we were allowed to see what else Santa brought…

****

When I was a little older, we used to call a phone number advertised on TV to hear a story read by Santa. I’ll never forget the year we called at around 9 o’clock on Christmas Eve. Santa didn’t answer – it was Mrs. Claus:

“Oh my goodness,” she said. “What are you still doing awake? Santa is on his way to New York right now!”

I think our eyes shot out of our heads and ricocheted around the room like superballs. “Santa’s on his way here right now! We gotta go to bed!”

****

Duane was in 5th grade when his friend John caught his parents putting the presents under their tree. And he told Duane, and Duane told me.

“There’s no such thing as Santa, y’know.”

“There’s not?”

“Nope.”

“Well I’m not telling Mom and Dad that I know.”

“Why not?”

“Cuz then I’ll only get half as many presents.”

You see, about half of ours were labeled “From: Mom and Dad” and the rest were labeled “From: Santa.” I figured if I let on that I knew, there went half my stuff.

I was no dummy.

****

Christmas isn’t quite the same once you don’t believe. It’s fun to get all the presents, of course, but it’s more fun when you believe that something magical happens while you’re sleeping.

I was fourteen when my little brother was born and the magic was rekindled in our house.

When he was eight years old, Mandy was born, and so the magic continued on.

It wasn’t easy with her though… she was an extremely inquisitive child. I had to have very creative and consistent answers to her questions, consistent handling of such things as wrapping paper and handwriting, and even some serious acting skills.

“Mom….. this present says Santa, but it’s wrapped in YOUR wrapping paper.”

My face looked shocked, then even more shocked, then a vision of pure amazement…

“He… touched… our… stuff??? Oh my gosh! I wonder what else he touched!!” I started looking around the room.

“You think he used our tape and scissors too?” I asked. “I wonder if we can fingerprint this stuff?!”

She gasped. “You think he could have done it without his gloves on?”

“I don’t know! This is so cool! Are there any others he wrapped with our paper???”

And so another hole in the amusing charade was filled in, and the magic lived on. Mall Santas, flying reindeer, how the dogs sleep through it all… I creatively explained every piece of the puzzle, or at least presented a sound hypothesis. And when I just didn’t know how to answer, I’d say, “You know, I’ve always wondered about that too. What do you think?”

In the fifth grade she figured it out after seeing a movie on TV. And with that, all the magic collapsed liked dominoes, one after the other – the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny – everything gone in one fell swoop.

She was even a little annoyed that I had lied to her.

Of course, the holiday isn’t really about presents or Santa, and my daughter knows that.

But every year Mandy says to me, “You always made Christmas so great, Mom. I miss when I used to believe.”

And I tell her someday, when she has a child of her own, she can revive the magic all over again.

****

"Christmas--that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance--a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved." -Augusta E. Rundel

Landscape in Black and White

2007-12-18T14:12:00.000-05:00

So here I am in another frenzied phase at work, and I haven’t had much time to post or visit my friends’ blogs. But when I saw the most recent challenge over at The Round Robin Photo Challenges, Black and White Landscape, I thought, “Well I can do that!”

I’ve made it a point to get out with my camera on the weekends these past few months. The fresh air does me good. I am a solo adventurer, of course, because my daughter is often off with friends and my husband works weekends.

At first it feels a little lonely as I get out of my car, gear up, and head up a trail. But in no time I am immersed in the sights and smells around me, and photographic opportunities abound. Soon I begin thinking, “It’s a good thing I’m alone because I could drive someone crazy, stopping so much to take pictures.”

Plus, I end up taking especially lengthy hikes when I’m unaccompanied. Freedom to do what I want...

Of course, my family worries about me while I’m off gallivanting. My daughter will call and check on me. My husband will call ten times as much. But why? I could run into a psycho on the street or in the mall much easier than I could out on the trail.

A recent phone call sounded something like this:

“Where are you?”

“Sam’s Point.”

“Where’s that?”

“Cragsmoor.”

“Where’s that??”

“Remember when we took that really long motorcycle ride?"

"Yeah..."

"We passed it.”

“Who are you with?”

“No one.”

“So someone could just jump out of the bushes and grab you.”

“Well that would be impossible, since I haven’t seen another human being in about 2 hours!”

(Ooops! Wrong thing to say…)

But hey, long hikes alone make for great shots. Here are a few I’ve taken recently. I think translating them into black and white gives a completely different feel…

These are from Sam's Point Preserve:

The area is home to one of the best examples of ridgetop dwarf pine barrens in the world:

From the 1920's until the 1960's, the area was home to a home to a thriving summertime industry of huckleberry pickers. Some of their shacks still remain...

Another recent excursion was to Olana, a Persian influenced home built between 1870 and 1891 by Frederic Church, a major figure in the Hudson River School of landscape painting:

Not a lengthy hike, but a lovely drive. This is a pond on the grounds...

I will be back soon with a Christmas-inspired post, and I will try to make my rounds and visit you all...

Thank You, Uncle Happy

2007-12-07T11:24:00.000-05:00

At dawn on December 7, 1941, naval aviation forces of the Empire of Japan launched a military strike on the United States Pacific Fleet center at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, drawing the U.S. full-force into World War II.

Pearl Harbor Day always makes me think of my grandfather, even though he wasn’t there.

********
Seventeen years earlier, two young boys were playing in a small yard behind a small house in a small town in the suburbs of New York City. Anthony, who everyone called Happy, was 9 years old at the time, and he was keeping an eye on his three-year-old brother Joe (my grandfather).

As many 9 year olds do, Happy fancied himself a very grown-up boy. A responsible boy - almost a man. And as such, he decided to demonstrate his manly prowess by chopping some wood like his father or his big brother Tom would do.

There was an ax in the cellar.

Joe looked up to his big brother and followed him closely, tethered with the invisible twine of wonderous admiration. He followed him to the cellar, where the ax leaned against the cool damp stones of the basement wall. With the mighty instrument in hand, Happy headed out to the wood pile with little Joe in tow.

“Here Joe, hold this wood up for me.”

Happy lifted the ax up above his head and quickly realized that it was much too heavy for him to handle. But as he was already committed to the swing, he brought the menacing blade down and landed it on the wood with a deep thud. Almost right where he wanted it.

Almost.

He had chopped off half of little Joe’s small, dirty, three-year old ring finger on his right hand. Blood was spurting in every direction.

Joe ran into the house crying and shaking the source of his pain. The blood splattered this way and that as the little hand shook and little Joe cried.

Their mother was screaming as she tried to figure out where on his blood-covered body Joe was hurt. When she finally found the wound, she quickly wrapped his hand in rags and took him on the Charlie cars to Dr. Brooks in town. The doctor sewed up what was left of the finger, just below where there should have been a knuckle, and it healed just fine.

********

But it was still a bit sensitive as Joe sat in the back of a Chevrolet Coupe, heading to New York City with a group of buddies to sign up for the Navy. He was 19 years old.

They found the enlistment office easily enough, and they got their physicals and completed their written tests.

But just as Joe took the pen in his right hand to sign his name on the dotted line, officially enlisting in the United States Navy, the registrar said, “Whoa! Wait a minute – don’t sign. You’d better go back home and get your other half a finger first.”

Joe and his buddies had planned to sign up together and stick together. But since the Navy turned Joe down, none of the other guys joined either. They all piled back into the Coupe and drove home.

Looking back, my grandfather thought maybe that man had saved his life. It was 1939, and he probably would have been sent to Pearl Harbor for four years of training.

********

Joe lived with a friend in Connecticut for the next two years. He worked at a foundry with steam presses and molds, making rubber gears for airplanes.

In 1941 he had his appendix taken out. He was on sick leave from work for 6 months after his operation, so he came back to New York during that time. And that’s when he met my grandmother.

But the news of Pearl Harbor inspired the nation to action. “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory” President Roosevelt told the citizens of the United States. So early in 1942, Joe was on his way to military training in Camp Wheeler, Georgia. I guess the Army wasn’t as concerned about that stubby ring finger, especially now that the country was at war.

After training he got his shots, he got his teeth and eyes checked, and was sent up to New York Harbor. On February 8, 1943, my grandfather boarded a ship to go to war. He served in the Signal Corps in North Africa and Italy until the war finally ended in 1945.

********

President Roosevelt called December 7, 1941 "… a date which will live in infamy." 2,333 lost their lives, another 1,139 were wounded, and Americans’ commitment to isolationism was cast aside as they entered the war with fierce determination.

I have nothing but gratitude and respect for all of those who have served our country, and for those who continue to serve today.

But on the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, I always end up thinking about my grandfather, and the stories he told me of his service in the European Theater Operation.

I also think about chance and fate.

Our paths through life are directed and redirected by both decisions and accidents, and maybe even forces unseen. So many maybes, so many “what ifs”…

What if my grandfather had enlisted in the Navy and gone off to Hawaii for training? Maybe he would have been one of the casualties of that fateful day. Or maybe he wouldn’t have.

But maybe if he’d join the Navy in 1939 he wouldn’t have met my grandmother and started the chain reaction that resulted in me.

Or maybe if he didn’t get appendicitis he wouldn’t have come back to New York and met my grandmother and started the chain reaction that resulted in me.

Maybe I’m here today because 83 years ago my great-uncle Happy chopped off my grandfather’s finger with an ax.

Or maybe I would have happened anyway....

“There is no such thing as chance; and what seems to us merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny.” Friedrich von Schiller

Random Musical Memories

2007-11-27T12:35:00.000-05:00

I grew up on music.

My parents had a huge collection of albums and 45’s – everything rock-n-roll from the 60’s and 70’s: The Beatles, The Doors, The Kinks, The Mamas and the Papas, The Guess Who, The Four Tops, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, Bad Company. You name it, they had it. Even some disco, like KC and the Sunshine Band and Earth Wind and Fire. And a little bit of country too.

We spent a lot of time listening to music, enjoying the latest tunes on the radio or putting an album or a stack of 45’s on the turntable. We had a collection of 8-tracks too.

Funny… choosing which 45’s to play and in which order was kind of like making a mixed tape (which would become a favorite pastime a few years later). The 45’s needed to be set up on the plastic spindle adapter above the turntable (because 45’s had an opening in the middle the size of a half-dollar, whereas albums only had an opening the width of a pencil), and as each single-song record finished playing, the turntable arm would lift and move out to the side, the next record would drop down and then the arm would move back and lower the needle right onto the beginning of this new record. Pure genius.

These 45’s were my favorites as a young kid in the 70’s:
No Sugar – The Guess Who
Bad Leroy Brown – Jim Croce
December, 1963 (Oh What a Night) – The Four Seasons
Stay – Frankie Valli
Let Your Love Flow – The Bellamy Brothers
Dream Weaver – Gary Wright
Happy Together – The Turtles
I Can See Clearly Now – Johnny Nash

If you look closely at the photo of me with my cousins, you will notice that we are not gathered around that big console television to watch TV, but to listen to the 45's on the turntable on top.

********

I remember dancing in the living room. I made up whole dance routines to Play That Funky Music (Wild Cherry) and Get Down Tonight (KC and the Sunshine Band).

Funny how the lyrics go right over your head when you’re young.

And I remember my father teaching me how to do “The Bump,” which was basically just swaying side to side and bumping hips with a partner to the beat. Of course his hip was up too high for mine, so sometimes his bump would hit me in the shoulder and send me to the floor, but that made us both laugh.

My big brother and I had an old record player on the floor in our little bedroom. It was in a big hard case like a suitcase. We used to load an album onto the turntable and close the lid and take turns dancing on top of it, performing for each other on our tiny little stage. And if we jumped around too much the record inside would skip.

Skipping was the worst. When our records got too scratchy we used to tape pennies to the top of the arm, right above the needle, to weigh it down and hopefully keep it from skipping. But sometimes I miss all the clicks and pops of those old records. There was some character in those old scratchy recordings.

********

Some of my favorite times as a kid were when my father would strum songs on the guitar and sing to us, and if we knew the songs we would sing along. I had a favorite request – a song called “So Tired” by the Kinks. I liked the song and I liked the way my father sang it. But it wasn’t one of his favorite songs to play, because he had to slide his fingers across the strings and they’d get sore after a while. I always requested that one though, and he always played it for me. And My Maria too. And Take Me Home, Country Roads - I used to follow along in the songbook, singing the words to that one as Dad played.

Sometimes he would record us all singing. Once we were trying to record In The Still Of The Night – my dad singing and playing the guitar, and me singing the backup “Shoo-doop shoo be doo”. I was only about 6 years old, so my mother whispered the shoo-doop shoo be doo in my ear so I wouldn’t miss the words or the timing. But all those SH sounds really tickle when someone is whispering them in your ears, so I kept giggling. I don’t think we ever got through the song.

********

When I was in 6th grade I got my first boombox for Christmas, which meant I could have music in my room. I’d had music in my room before – big console stereos that we found in the garbage and got working for a while, but the speakers on those didn’t sound so great.

The new Sanyo boombox, on the other hand, sounded awesome. And with a three-pack of blank tapes from Caldor I was taping the latest greatest songs from the radio, diligently waiting for the DJ to stop talking so I could hit Record, and then pressing Stop before the talk resumed. I would wait for hours for a specific song to be played. Maybe it was Billy Squier. Maybe it was Madonna. Maybe it was the Go Go’s, or Journey. Maybe it was Huey Lewis and the News.

But I would wait up until midnight if I had to – you know how hard it is to have a song in your head and not be able to hear it. With the instant gratification of internet, kids don’t have that problem anymore (and actually, neither do I). But back then it took a lot of time and patience to make the ultimate mixed tape. There was always taping songs from your record collection, of course, but there’s nothing like having a new favorite song.

********

My brother and I used to get a weekly allowance, usually $5 each. It’s funny to me, looking back – it seemed we didn’t have enough money to heat the house or even to go food shopping sometimes, but somehow my parents managed to give us money every week. Well, not every week. We didn’t get the allowance if our rooms weren’t clean. Hmm… now that I think about it, they probably didn’t have to give us much money after all.

But if I didn’t spend my allowance during bowling night, I would save it up for new records from Caldor. Caldor had new billboard charts every week, one for each genre of music. The top 20 were kept in a wooden shelving unit near the register with slots numbered 1 through 20. A song’s ranking on the billboard chart corresponded to the numbered slots. I spent a lot of money there.

********

I remember walking into my mother’s bedroom once when I was younger and fully into good ol’ rock-n-roll, and she was listening to some kind of disco song. “What the heck are you listening to, Mom? Rock Lives, Disco Dies.”

“Well I like all kinds of music. Disco is good to dance to.”

I wonder if she ever regretted keeping me open-minded on the music front? My father may have. My bedroom was right above the living room, and as I got into the dance music of the 80’s my father became convinced that I spent 5 years listening to the same song, over and over, morning noon and night. The incessant sound of it thumping above his head was like water torture as he tried to watch Three’s Company, Sanford and Son, The Dukes of Hazzard or The Love Boat. Occasionally, he would get the broom from the kitchen and knock on the ceiling with the handle. That was the signal for many things - pick up the phone, come down for dinner - but usually it meant “turn down the music”.

I’ve remained very musically open-minded and have even expanded well beyond the genres introduced to me by my parents. Mandy’s taste in music probably covers just as wide of a spectrum, as she can wake up to techno, chill mid-afternoon in her room to some alternative rock and fall asleep at night to new age or classical. We regularly introduce each other to new songs.

Music does something for me. Not that I don’t enjoy silent times alone with my thoughts – I certainly do – but music is passion and emotion and life. Sometimes it mirrors the way I’m feeling; sometimes it heightens my mood and pulls me out of some sadness or stress. It’s soothing at night before bed, it’s invigorating while I’m cooking or cleaning, and it’s company while I’m driving in the car or walking around the lake.

And so many songs spark memories for me. I think that’s what my next few posts will be about…

Joy, sorrow, tears, lamentation, laughter - to all these music gives voice, but in such a way that we are transported from the world of unrest to a world of peace, and see reality in a new way, as if we were sitting by a mountain lake and contemplating hills and woods and clouds in the tranquil and fathomless water. (Albert Schweitzer)

The Return Of LeedleDee?

2007-11-08T12:31:00.000-05:00

I’ve never really had a nickname, or at least not one generally known by anyone outside my immediate family.

My father is one of the few that uses my middle name, calling me “Tamma-Jean!” or sometimes just Tamma.

My little brother (who was born when I was 14) and I call each other by only our middle names, he calling me Jean and me calling him Joseph. No real reason.

I also used to call him Big Bri Stud, because as a pre-schooler he was constantly eyeing up the pretty girls (of any age, usually blondes) and hitting on them. My high school boyfriend had taught him to say “Hey Babe, what’s happenin’?” at the tender age of 3, so he was always a hit with the ladies. But over the years Big Bri Stud has gotten shortened to Big B. Or sometimes I just call him B.

My big brother was 1-1/2 when I was born, and he loved me. To my mother's dismay, he would sneak into my crib and try to hold me and sing me songs. At least he wasn't smacking me. That came later during The Teasing Years.

And as a toddler he called me “LeedleDee”, because he thought that sounded like a song. That was my first nickname: LeedleDee.

He called me LeedleDee often as we were growing up. He said it with a sneer during The Teasing Years. Those years ushered in new nicknames as well, such as Slammy and Meathead. I liked LeedleDee better. If memory serves, I simply called him Duane the Pain, or sometimes just Jerk or Idiot (said through tears, of course).

When my brother entered high school, he got a nickname of his own. My parents had named him after Duane Eddy, the guitarist my father loved so much. But he had never liked his name, because the show What’s Happening had come out in the 70’s with a main character named Dwayne, and that was perfect ammo for elementary school kids.

I’m not quite sure what my brother did in high school to earn the name “Doctor Love,” but I am quite sure there is more to the story than a simple fondness of the song by Kiss. To this very day, he is known as Doc. Most people don’t even know his real name and they get confused at his job when I call and ask for this “Duane” person.

In the days of my grandparents and even my parents, everyone had a nickname:
Lukey Lou (our crazy neighbor)
The Ground Mole (my uncle)
Beetle Bailey (another uncle)
Dob (my grandmother, and I have no idea why)
The Pheasant (my great-grandmother)
Tank (another guy from the neighborhood)
Mimi (my aunt)
Porky (my father’s friend)
Twinkie (Porky’s son)

One of my grandfathers was called Tiny, because he was so thin. My brother has a friend called Tiny as well, because he’s the size of a Mac Truck.

I’ve got a cousin named Buddha and a friend named Sully.

My father has two drinking mugs that he got when he was in the Navy. Both display the emblem of his submarine. But I remember asking him once when I was little, “Why does one say ‘Peachy’ on the back and the other one say ‘Tiger’?” He pointed to my mother: “Peachy!” And then he pointed to himself: “Tiger!” “No way!” They both nodded their heads. “Ooooooh…”

But for the benefit of us kids, my father gave himself a new nickname. “You know what you kids should call me?” he proclaimed one day. “Super-Fonzie-Austin.”

“What??”

“Super for Superman. Fonzie, because I’m cool like the Fonz. And Austin for Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. Super-Fonzie-Austin - that’s my new name.”

So we would giggle as we called my father Super-Fonzie-Austin. Soon after, he decided to add Genius to the end of his name. And so besides being known as “The King” (another self-nomer) throughout his castle, he also became known as Super-Fonzie-Austin-Genius.

“What should mommy’s name be?” we asked.

“The Old Bag” he joked.

That one always made us attack him, and a full-blown wrestling match would ensue. I was the more aggressive one though. “Go get him, Tam!” my big brother would say, pushing me toward the infidel who had insulted our dear mother, yet maintaining a safe distance from the melee.

I would run across the living room toward him at full speed, fists flying, and try to land as many punches as I could before he finally wrestled me to the floor, turned me around, and locked my head between his knees so he could continue watching TV. He never even had to get up out of the recliner. I’d still be karate-chopping at his legs, but I’d eventually admit defeat.

That “Old Bag” thing got him in trouble once, though. My little brother had just started pre-school, and he wasn’t feeling well. They needed to call my mother.

“What’s your mommy’s name?” they asked him.

“Mommy.”

“What does your daddy call your mommy?”

“The Old Bag.”

They got quite a chuckle out of that one over at the pre-school. My mother didn’t know whether to be mortified or hysterical with laughter.

But I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a nickname, a real nickname that everyone knew. Friends have called me different things over the years like Tamma-Lama or Tammie-Tam or Tabitha. Boyfriends have had pet names for me of course, and my husband does as well. My daughter and I have a million different silly names for each other.

But I’ve never had a real nickname. Perhaps I’ll take a cue from my father and name myself. I just have to come up with something good…

Wild Horses

2007-10-19T08:57:00.000-05:00

It was the middle of the night, probably 2 in the morning, and Mandy was on her way to the bath house to use the restroom.

Our campsite seemed to be equidistant from the two closest bath houses, so one day I counted my steps to each one: 96 steps to the one on the left of us, 96 steps to the one on the right. But for some reason Mandy preferred the one on the left.

As I mentioned a few posts ago, the light from the full moon reflected so brilliantly off the white sand on Assateague Island that we never needed to carry flashlights. One could easily distinguish the narrow roadway, the other campsites, the bushes and the dunes no matter what time of night.

So Mandy was walking alone in the dark without a flashlight, heading for the glowing building 96 steps to the left of our campsite. The salty breeze made her blond hair billow as she walked.

She could hear the waves crashing on the other side of the dunes and the occasional sanderling flying overhead. We had never realized that these little sea birds hunt both day and night, racing toward the retreating waves to feast on tiny crustaceans and sea life left behind on the sand.

But otherwise, the night was still and very peaceful. All the campers were sleeping soundly, their bodies weary from another day in the sand, surf and sun, their campfires finally reduced to glowing red embers.

Mandy became aware of a gang heading toward her from up ahead on the roadway. They weren’t speaking, but the moonlight informed her that there were quite a few of them. Teenagers, she supposed.

She continued on in the direction of the bath house, the light from it silhouetting the silent parade as it approached and creating long shadows which now touched her feet.

Within moments she was completely surrounded. They looked her over. They nudged her, obviously curious to know who she was and why she was walking alone down the road that apparently belonged to them.

As Mandy’s eyes focused, she came to the delightful realization that she was completely encircled by a group of wild horses.

After a few more nudges and a snort or two, they were off. Their meeting was brief, but it was the sort of magical encounter that makes you smile and wonder if you’re dreaming.

****

One of my favorite memories from our first trip to Assateague five years ago was the time I woke up early to use the restroom and decided to steal a quick peak over the dunes. I’d wanted to see the beach completely uninhabited, but what I’d found was even better.

The weather had been quite hot and humid that week. And so before the campers had arisen from their tents to brew some instant coffee and shake the sand from the beach towels drying on their picnic table benches, the horses had decided to overtake the beach.

There was a herd of white horses with dark brown patches walking through the surf.

There was another mixed herd farther up the beach doing the same.

There were groups of two or three horses standing here and there, squinting in the hazy sunrise.

There was a mother standing guard as her foal rested on the sand.

And standing there with her eyes wide and her mouth agape was a fool who had gone up to the top of the dune in the early morning without her camera.

It’s hard to run in the sand. It’s even harder to run in the sand at 6am when you haven’t even sipped that cup of instant coffee yet. But there I was, running urgently yet sloppily with sandaled feet and no caffeine, back to my tent to retrieve my faithful companion of those days, my 35mm camera. I tried to rouse little Mandy, but she wouldn’t budge.

By the time I'd returned to the beach, some of the herds had moved much farther down the shoreline or back to the dunes. But I was able to capture the mother and her foal, as well as a few other groups of horses that had remained for a while longer.

This was the sort of scenario I had been hoping to duplicate on my next trip to Assateague. I was ever-vigilant, checking the view over the dunes at all times of day, and my camera was always on my shoulder.

*****

But it never happened that way on our recent trip. For some reason, the wild horses were scarce during the day.

I was able to track a few to the mosquito-infested marsh on the other side of the island and get some photos, but I didn’t see the herds like last time, and I didn’t see them on the beach.

They seemed to mainly come out at night like bands of hooligans dominating the campground. Campers carefully secured their food and hid their coolers, but the ruffians knew where to look.

In fact, a cooler with a tough latch is no match for a wild horse with his sights set on a midnight snack. We discovered this our very first night.

We awoke to the sound of whinnying, of pans crashing on our picnic table, and of incessant banging on the cooler. Even in my dazed state I knew they were focused on the cooler, the one with the latch that was on the ground next to my father’s truck. “They’re not getting into that thing,” I thought.

I thought wrong. They’d eaten all the tomatoes and all the carrots by the time my father’s girlfriend Jackie got up to investigate. Other, less desirable food was strewn around on the ground with holes ripped in the packaging by probing teeth. Henceforth, the coolers and all snacks were kept in the truck. We were much more prepared for their subsequent nighttime visits.

They were entertaining to watch though, exhibiting playful, almost frisky behavior at night. They chased each other up and down to dunes and whinnied and stole food. It looked like fun.

*****

Our time at the campground was over too soon, and we packed up and headed for Ocean City for some boardwalk time and one night in a hotel.

Of course, there was still the problem of my car's battery light. The alternator was history, and it was just a matter of time before my battery was too. Luckily, it lasted all the way to our hotel on 26th Street and died there in the parking lot.

There was an auto parts store in town and my father is handy, so it didn’t take long to get my little car working again (once we had the right tools, that is). So after some food, some shopping for school clothes, and a good night’s sleep, we were on our way… home sweet home, here we come…

But it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Being someone who drives an older-model car and accustomed to checking the gauges, I noticed that the car was running hot about an hour into the 5 ½ hour trip. Hmm, that was strange, especially since I had my oil changed and all fluids checked before setting off on this journey.

I pulled over and bought some coolant, refilled the reservoir, and set off again.

Half an hour later the gauge was almost up in the red. As it turned out, there was a leak. I found some empty jugs around the next gas station and filled them up with water – no sense wasting money on coolant that will end up on the roadway like a trail of breadcrumbs to my house. If only I could make it all the way home…

Well, I couldn’t. I made it most of the way, within an hour’s drive. Triple A got me the rest of the way there, but the whole ordeal took about 12 hours total. A flatbed towtruck lowered my car into the driveway at about 5am.

I had the old car repaired, and it will wait in the garage for Mandy’s 16th birthday. It will be fine for around town.

And as for me, I’ve got something new – brand new, with that new car smell and everything. I haven’t had a new car in 10 years, so I'm pretty excited!

I may even have to plan another road trip...

More from the Farm

2007-10-11T12:41:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are some more of the photos I took at my brother's farm a few weeks ago...

This one is probably my favorite - looking out from one of the barns onto the fields...

Here's a few from inside the big barn featured in the last post:

The room originally used for hay is empty...

The other rooms have stuff in them, because my brother is a pack-rat with too many projects on his list, most of the projects being cars...

This is inside the silo, looking up...

And this is on top of the barn...

Like any farm, there are stray cats that my brother and his girlfriend are now feeding and taking care of. This one has chosen my brother as the center of her world...

This one has chosen his girlfriend to follow around and meow at...

Surprisingly, Pete hasn't eaten either one of them yet.

Pete absolutely loves the farm, loves running through the fields and following the tractor all day.

My mother spent most of the day riding around the property on the tractor's one fender.

A cushion has been affixed for comfort...

I got up there for a ride too...

The bench featured in the last post is a very good resting spot...

It overlooks a tiny pond...

Group shots are always fun...

I may try to go back to the farm this weekend.

It's my new favorite place :)

Photos from the back yard

2007-10-07T16:06:00.000-05:00

As many of you know, I've been going through a tough time lately. One thing that I find very therapeutic is taking photos.

The theme this week over at Round Robin Photo Challenges was suggested by me: Back Yard Photography. When I'm feeling uninspired and don't know what to do with myself, I always know that I can take my camera out into the yard and find something to photograph.

Usually it's the critters that catch my eye...

But this past weekend, I needed to get away from the house, get out of town,
get some fresh air and clear my head. So I didn't take any photos in my backyard.

Instead, I took them in my brother's back yard.

He bought a farm in central NY a few years ago, and shame on me for not getting up there for a visit before now. He used to rent it out, but this summer he's been using it as a weekend getaway. And hey, I needed to get away... Of course, I brought the camera and had a good ol' time...

Besides, he has cooler things in his yard...

Of course, I still had my eye on the little things, like this snail in the pond...

Overall, it was an awesome day and just what I needed. I can't wait to go back.

Next post I'll share some more from my farm photo safari...

Camping at Assateague

2007-09-18T10:33:00.000-05:00

There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned road trip… just kicking back, seeing the sights, chatting, laughing, and eating. No deadlines, no responsibilities, no work. Just the excitement of the journey and the anticipation of reaching a destination.

Fresh-baked muffins from Hannaford, and coffee coolata and chai tea from Dunkin Donuts for breakfast.

McDonald’s fish sandwiches and French fries for lunch.

Skittles to snack on in between.

Wrappers and crumbs all over the car.

But there’s nothing like new technology to make the trip more enjoyable… Mapquest tells me how long I’ll be on each highway so I know when to start looking for the next junction. EZ Pass works from Maine to Virginia so I don’t have to mess with quarters or even slow down for tolls. And satellite radio saves me from the insanity of long stretches of thoroughfare through which no radio signal can be detected.

Still, it’s the company that makes a road trip enjoyable, and long talks with Mandy are a truly pleasurable treat. Especially now that she’s a teenager, and her time expenditure with family has decreased as time with friends increases (as it should). But it’s nice that she can still enjoy a weekend away with me and appreciate the place that I have circled on the map…

****

We have been there before. It was about 5 years ago that we first camped on Assateague Island.
The first three days of that earlier trip were spent running around Washington D.C. visiting all the usual attractions. Traffic leaving the city had delayed our departure quite a bit, and we had been lucky to arrive at the front gate of the state park just before closing time. The tent had to be erected by the beams of the car headlights. We could hear the ocean but not see it as I drove the extra long tent stakes into the sand. Sleeping bags had been unrolled, and two weary campers had quickly passed out in the fresh salty nighttime air of the undeveloped island.

The next morning we had been so excited to finally view our surroundings. Unzipping a tent flap, we had our first glimpse of the wild horses grazing right outside our window. It was the first of many encounters with the wild (yet semi-tame) inhabitants of that sandy tract of land off the coast of Maryland.

Between the amazing photo opportunities with the wild horses and the curious deer, the uncrowded beach and awesome boogie boarding, I’d always hoped to return.

So when my father and I began discussing where we would meet up for our summer excursion together, I mentioned Assateague. Although it isn’t anywhere near either one of us, he and his girlfriend living in Ohio and Mandy and me in New York, they were up for the trip.

****

Sometimes, no matter how much you plan, things can go wrong while you’re on vacation.

You envision relaxation, quality time, summer sun and summer fun, and you get them. But every now and then you also get some tests thrown in for good measure, just to see how badly you want that summer fun…

Like when I started to erect the tent, and I realized that there was a pole missing. You know, the one whose sections won’t come apart anymore, so it doesn’t fit into the tent bag? It was still at home, of course, leaning indignantly against the corner of the garage, arms folded, eyebrows raised – yes, I admit it, completely forgotten.

So I got into the car and drove up the road to the camp supply store to buy a new pole, and while I was driving the battery light came on. The battery light, of course, should not come on while I’m driving. (Dad would need to replace the alternator before I made the trip home).

And when I brought the replacement pole back to camp, I quickly discovered that there was just no way it would work in conjunction with the other poles.

In the meantime, the ocean wind was transforming the tent into a wild, unruly parachute. And as I tackled the disobedient mess to prevent it from escaping down the beach, I snapped one of the smaller fiberglass poles and finally admitted defeat.

So I bought a new tent from Wal-Mart, because I refused to entertain the thought of sleeping in the same tent with my father and his girlfriend. Besides the fact that both Mandy and I value our privacy and personal space, I just couldn’t imaging sleeping shoulder to shoulder with the man who snores a song only a warthog could appreciate.

We put up the tent by the light of the moon.

Yes, this was how my first night of vacation began.
Tent? Broken.
Car? Broken.
Oh and by the way, Mandy? Major cramps, so she was broken too. But at least we had Tylenol with Codeine.

And hey, the new tent was cool, and we were camping on the beach and the weather was glorious.

So we took long walks on the sand, tiptoeing past the scurrying “ghost crabs” and occasionally reaching down to collect some small treasure offered up by the waves.

We built sand castles and took naps.

We rode our bikes to the camp store for scoops of soft ice cream.

I loaded up on bugspray and ventured into the marsh on the other side of the island to photograph the horses grazing on the tall grass.

The nights were incredible. There was a thick blanket of stars overhead every evening; not a cloud in the sky. And since the full moon reflected so brightly off all the white sand, we never needed to carry flashlights.

We roasted hot dogs over the fire my father proudly built every night, and later we toasted marshmallows for dessert.

Nighttime walks on the beach were an entirely different experience, something magically eerie. The moon illuminated just enough to show the way, but the night still cloaked enough of our surroundings to make it feel mysterious and exhilarating. And with the view slightly veiled, our other senses came alive, soaking up the sound of the waves and of the birds hunting for crabs in the silvery darkness, the smell of the salty ocean mist, the feel of the cool sand massaging our feet as we walked.

We could see the lights from Ocean City twinkling in the distance, a reminder of just how far we were from the crowds of the boardwalk...

(Next post: more about the horses)

Camping

2007-09-09T12:30:00.000-05:00

Throughout my childhood, going on a family vacation meant one thing: Camping.

My parents never had a whole lot of money, so there were no flights to tropical locales, no tours through bustling city streets, no visits to distant lands.

We owned a tent. We would pack up the car with sleeping bags and pillows, peanut butter and jelly, bug spray, flashlights, fishing poles, jiffy pop, a propane lantern and the camp stove, a Frisbee and a deck of cards. And, of course, the dogs. And we would set off for a campground in the Catskills to reconnect with earth, water, air and fire.

Camping trips took place every Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend. Often we’d go together with my Uncle Mike and Aunt Ronnie and their 6 children, which meant my brother and I would have cousins to play with. They had a pop up camper, which we thought was the epitome of luxury. When they upgraded to a bigger camper, my parents bought their little pop up, and thus we moved up in the world.

It seemed to always rain on those holiday weekends, so there would be 2 kids and 2 dogs and 6 cousins slopping around in the mud for 4 days and bringing it all into the tent and the camper. Everyone and everything would be dirty and wet and cold.

And we loved it.

We’d bring bikes to ride around the campground, and there were enough of us to furnish the feeling of being our own little gang. We’d play tag, or maybe play catch with a softball and our well-worn dusty mitts. My cousin Jenny and I would get lost for a while to explore a mountain creek or a rocky bluff, and occasionally the campground’s game room with our pockets full of quarters.

Of course there would be the usual teasing and fights and sibling rivalries among the kids, but at night we’d converge to toast marshmallows on long thin sticks over the campfire, eyes and smiles illuminated by the flickering orange flames.

It was exciting to be outside after dark, surrounded by the sounds of crickets and frogs, by campfire smoke, by the twinkling fireflies and a sky full of stars.

We would giggle and tell stories and make up new lyrics to the “Diarrhea song” as our bouncing flashlight beams headed up the dirt roads and paths, moving erratically toward the mosquito-filled bathhouses. After one last pee, a quick brush across our teeth and a splash of water over our faces, we were off to snuggle deep down in our sleeping bags and doze off to sleep.

Those were the vacations of my childhood.

********

I never had a whole lot of money while I was raising my daughter. I brought Mandy on her first camping trip when she was two years old.

We’d practiced in the middle of the living room under tents made from sheets and couch cushions, so she was elated to finally be camping “for real”. She sang to herself as she collected buckets full of pinecones and acorns from around the campsite. Doing things outside – eating, sleeping, even peeing – made them that much more fun. For my little nature-girl-in-training, camping was the perfect vacation. And we took many perfect vacations.

And even when we had the resources to take flights to tropical locales, tour through bustling city streets and visit distant lands, we still took camping trips too. There’s just something about camping, the reconnecting with earth, water, air and fire, that can’t be duplicated in a hotel room.

And so over Labor Day weekend, Mandy and I packed the car with sleeping bags and pillows, peanut butter and jelly, bug spray, flashlights, fishing poles, jiffy pop, a propane lantern and the camp stove, a Frisbee and a deck of cards.

And we went on vacation.

(to be continued...)

Summer Escape

2007-08-28T05:24:00.001-05:00

I'm on my way to one of my favorite places.
My toes are itchin' for soft sand
And my head needs a rest.
I'll be back soon with lots and lots of photos.
I'll stop by to visit you all when I get back...

Kids at the Bar

2007-08-14T11:30:00.000-05:00

Having children makes you no more a parent than having a piano makes you a pianist. – Michael Levine

I hate hate hate when I see a kid in a bar. It’s not an appropriate environment for a child. They absorb every aspect of the bewildering spectacle with their innocent, impressionable little eyes.

I don’t care if you came here straight from your softball game with the team and you weren’t planning on staying long.

I don’t care if you think your little 5 year old is having a ball galloping around the dance floor to the overplayed tunes of the garage cover band.

Didn’t you notice that she almost got stepped on by the big drunk guy who was backing away from the bar with a pitcher in each hand, yelling to the bartender that he would be right back for two more?

Didn’t you notice your little one stopping and staring, mouth agape and eyes wide with astonishment, at the young couple leaning against the pole, her kissing and clawing voraciously at the man's neck, him clutching her barely-covered breast and eagerly grinding into her?

Don’t you see the other patrons shooting looks of disgust at you? They came here to let loose and have a good time, but those who aren’t already inebriated are now hesitant due to the unwelcome presence of your adorable little buzz-kill.

Don’t you realize that it’s 11:30 at night, and she’s rubbing her eyes as she walks in circles around the bar looking for you? It’s bad enough that you have subjected an innocent, doe-eyed child to this loud, clumsy, sticky den of beer and expletives, but to not even be keeping an eye on her is absolutely unconscionable.

I get so disgusted by people sometimes.

And what about the bars? I’m sorry, but if it’s 21 to get in, then it should be 21 to get in. Period. I’m sure if I showed up at our favorite watering hole with my 15 year old in tow, we would be turned away because she’s too young to be admitted. So why is it okay for a pre-schooler? Is a toddler any less vulnerable to the pandemonium of adult night life?

********

Maybe I feel so strongly about this because I was once the kid at the bar.

For those of you who are familiar with my blog, you know that I speak very highly of both of my parents. I was (and still am) blessed to have them, and I have few complaints about my upbringing. But I’ve never said it was perfect.

My mother was the champion shortstop on the local pub's softball team when she was in her 20’s. More than once the players ended up back at the Trails End Tavern for a victory celebration after the game. And since I was at the game, sometimes entertaining myself on the swings and the monkey bars, sometimes cheering on the team from the bench, sometimes off picking flowers for mommy - I ended up at the bar.

Yes, the team had use of the back room, so we were somewhat isolated from the other patrons.
But all the women were drinking and laughing and carrying on. I have an image in my head of my mother’s friend Kathy on her knees up on the table, shaking her very generous maracas and everybody howling and cheering. I probably didn't understand most of the conversations or the jokes.

But when they wanted to discuss something that even they had the sense to deem inappropriate for my little ears (I understand this in retrospect, of course), they asked me to get them pistachios out of the vending machine. The vending machine was out in the bar, so I would have to leave the relative safety of the back room, traverse the chaotic span of cacophonous drinking and merriment, around the guys playing darts, past the shuffle board bowling game and the cigarette vending machine, and over to the tall red machines with the nuts.

I remember thinking I was being very helpful as I slid the quarter into the slot, turned the metal handle, and received the red-stained seeds in my outstretched cupped hands. I felt proud as I brought them back and presented them to my mother’s friends, who thanked me and kissed me sloppily on my head and told me I was the best.

I thought it was fun at the time, and maybe I felt special to be out with Mom. But I do remember the cigarette smoke burning my eyes and throat, and I was always a little fearful of the drunken people because of my uncle, who was an alcoholic.

I was also a little worried that we were going to get in trouble with Dad.

Once we arrived home after midnight, and after I was put in bed I heard my parents arguing. My father was furious that my mother had me out at the bar. It was a really bad fight; my mother was crying. I remember thinking that I should go and tell my dad that it was okay, because I had fun being out. But I was afraid, and I stayed in my bunk and just listened and cried a little bit for Mom.

I remember other times when my father showed up at the bar and took me home. I was disappointed because I was having a good time with the girls and didn’t want to go yet. But I could tell that Dad was angry. He didn’t say much when he was angry.

Now that I’m older I can obviously see that my father was right.

When the subject comes up these days, my mother falls back on the fact that she was so young when she had us. “We were babies having babies,” she’ll say.

Hmm… I was about the same age, just before my 22nd birthday, when I had Mandy. I’ve never brought my precious girl out partying with me and she has never had to step over my passed out, hung-over body to use the toilet in the morning.

It’s an issue of maturity, not age.

But hey, I'm sure I'm not a perfect parent either. So I just nod my head and agree. “Yes, Mom, you were very young when you had us.”

Oh, well. Eventually my parents grew up. Although it was my father that didn’t approve of drinking or swearing around us kids, he was the one who had to learn patience and to keep his temper in check. They were both young. They both had their shortcomings.

It’s kind of funny to me now, actually, that I knew them both when they were young and immature. They watched me grow up; I watched them grow up.

But sometimes I wonder who my guardian angel was back then.

The Faces in Your Crowd

2007-08-09T11:10:00.000-05:00

Please note: Images illustrating this post were inspired by the recent challenge over at Round Robin Photo Challenges, which was mannequins! I thought I could combine this challenge with a post I was writing yesterday, so I set out with the specific goal of finding mannequins to represent different ethnicities. This was no easy task, because:

1) Most mannequins at the local mall are white.
2) Most mannequins at the local mall do not even have heads. I’ve come to the conclusion that mannequins with heads must be more expensive than those without. Those with realistic hair must cost an arm and a leg, or several of each as evidenced by the number of mannequins sans limbs.

Anyway, on to the post…

********

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. - Andy Warhol

I watched a few minutes of a show on the Discovery Channel the other night about the prison system in the U.S. I didn’t watch the whole thing; it really wasn’t my kind of show. I tend to steer more toward history, science and nature shows, sometimes travel. Generally not toward anything that I might find disturbing, like plastic surgery or high tech weapons or The Simple Life.

The prison system seems like a nightmarish underworld that I would find frightening enough to induce cold sweats in the middle of the night. I turned the channel.

But this snippet I watched as I perused the Tuesday night prime-time offerings got me thinking...

They were discussing prison gangs and how prisoners “stick to their own” while incarcerated, meaning there’s a white gang, a black gang, an Hispanic gang, an Asian gang, etc. No one crosses racial lines; to do so is a death sentence, viewed as something akin to treason.

I was wondering how much that relates to our society in general. Do we all, for the most part, stick to our own? And when we don’t, isn't it viewed (by some) as an act of betrayal? Aren’t things said like “he’s trying to act black” or “she thinks she’s white”? Isn’t interracial marriage viewed by some as a rejection of one’s own race, culture, or heritage?

I went to a VERY white high school. I don’t know if even 10% of the student body represented minorities. It was probably less. So race wasn’t really an issue in my school, for the simple fact that the handful of Asian kids, black kids, Indian kids and Hispanic kids was just kind of rolled in with the rest of them. There were no factions in the cafeteria or anything like that.

(But oh, the gay kid suffered some despicable abuse at the hands of some nasty low-life bullies. That’s a whole other story.)

My high school boyfriend went to a different school, where his three best friends consisted of two black kids and a Puerto Rican kid. Even the teachers at this respected Catholic institution, which was in a very diverse area, called him a “whigger” for keeping such company. This was an obvious display of disloyalty to them, a blatant slap in the face of his white brethren. They expected him to stick to his own.

So how is it at school nowadays?

Mandy tells me a lot about her new high school and the kids she hangs out with. I'm familiar with all the names, even if I don’t know all of the faces yet.

When she received her yearbook a few weeks ago, I asked her to show me all the new friends I’d been hearing about this year. We sat together on her bed as she flipped excitedly through the pages, pointing out the nice mix of kids that are her friends and telling me stories about each one.

She hadn’t previously mentioned to me that so-and-so was black or so-and-so was Hispanic. She had never classified anyone this past year as being her “Asian friend” either. The stories she told me were just about her friends, no qualifiers necessary. As it should be.

She had mentioned to me once, though, that one of her friends is gay.

“Does anyone know that he’s gay?” I asked.

“Yeah, pretty much everyone. He doesn’t, like, hide it or anything.”

“Do the kids bother him about it at all?”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Well, I was just wondering if they teased him at all about being gay.”

“Why would they?”

I told her a little bit about my high school friend and the appalling treatment he endured.

“That’s horrible!” she said. “No one does anything like that.”

“Well that’s good!”

“People just are who they are, y’know?”

Exactly.

But I wonder about us adults. Do we stick to our own? If you flip through your address book, or your buddy list, or the contact list in your cell phone, what do you see?

And if you are segregated in your social circle, do you think it has anything to do with the environment you grew up in, or your neighborhood, or the place you work? Do you think we could be hard-wired to seek out what is familiar to us? Or maybe we just behave as we were taught, or shown by the example set for us by our parents.

I know mine is a diverse crowd, more so than that of my parents. And it seems that Mandy is blind to the color barriers that divided the generations before us.

I think change starts at home.

"If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too. If you spend all your money on yourselves and tithe no portion of it for charities… your children won't either. And if parents snicker at racial and gender jokes, another generation will pass on the poison adults still have not had the courage to snuff out." - Marian Wright Edelman

Through Thick and Thin

2007-08-06T05:31:00.000-05:00

I just started walking. What else could I do? One foot in front of the other; that doesn’t take any thought. You just do it. You walk.

My feet were transporting me up Main Street.

I don’t recall paying at the counter as I left the building, or coming out into the light of a day that was going to be different than all those that preceded it. Things would be different from here on out. I think I was calm and polite to the woman who handled the transaction and handed me the receipt, but it was all a blur now.

Shock and confusion were like a warm liquid seeping through my body, from the area right behind my eyes, down my neck and my back, through my extremities and right to my fingertips and toes. I was alone and numb. It’s a good thing my feet knew what to do. They walked…

Main Street was humming with cars and people scurrying about. It was a sunny day, and I enjoyed, as always, contemplating the flocks of birds that ricocheted across the sky between the brick buildings of downtown. What made them change direction so suddenly? And how did they all move in unison like that, maintaining their tight formation through abrupt movements? Was there one bird leading the others, redirecting the energetic mass of fluttering wings this way and that? Or were they merely dancing across some hidden currents of air rising up through the bricks and concrete?

Ah, yes, this is good. Distraction will get me home. One foot in front of the other…

But then what will I do?

I know. I’ll call my mom.

My mom… hmm. I smiled in spite of myself. My mother is an opinionated, thick-headed Irish woman, and if she’s had a glass of wine she can get downright belligerent on you.

Oh, and she is never wrong. Not a chance. She will argue a point until the cows come home, even if halfway through the dispute she realizes that her argument is complete folly.

And she must have the last word! It’s enough to make you need some wine of your own.

But let me tell you something, my mother is truly awesome.

I will never forget the day I made that call to her.

I was just beginning my senior year of college, a time when I was enjoying every minute of my life.

I had befriended an entire cast of strange and entertaining characters at the bar where I was a cocktail waitress four nights per week, and it seemed a new misfit joined our odd little play every night.

Other weeknights plus Saturdays and Sundays, I worked for the local newspaper in a cluttered, disorganized office that pulsed with energy as we raced against deadlines, worked into the night, and stole snippets of sleep here and there on the threadbare green couch in the middle of the studio.

By day I was absorbed in my classes, traversing the grounds of the university from one lecture hall to another, occasionally hitting the campus gym for a spin on the stationary bike, sometimes stopping in the food court for a snack to enjoy on the grassy hill outside.

I enjoyed my friends. Since it was senior year we were all living in apartments off-campus around town, most of us within walking distance of each other. The house I rented with two friends on Cleveland Avenue had a front porch and a cute fenced yard in the back. I used to lie on my belly on the lawn reading Ann Rice novels while my guinea pig “Wheatie” munched grass in a tight line around my perimeter. When he was done he would climb into the sleeve of my t-shirt and take a nap.

My life was good. And it was all about to change.

It wasn’t an easy call to make, that call to my mother. I’m sure she could hear the shakiness in my voice, the hesitance in my words.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Um… ah… I’m pregnant.”

I was thankful that I had someone I could turn to for help, or even just advice, because being the only one that knew, even for the hour that it took me to walk home from the clinic downtown, made me feel so alone.

There was a reason she was the first person I called. My mother has common-sense, and she’s level-headed and calm. And I knew that she would be there for me, without missing a beat.

I wasn’t wrong. She spoke very calmly as she laid my options out on the table. They were the options I’d already been mulling over in my head all the way up Main Street, down Grand Boulevard and over to Cleveland, but they became more tangible once she uttered the words. Hearing them spoken aloud made them more manageable somehow.

She said if I didn’t want to go through with it, she would help me. If I chose to welcome a new member to our family, she would help me. Of course there was adoption as well. She said the hardest part is making a decision, and once I made up my mind about what I wanted to do, we would take it from there.

Hearing her voice on the other end of the line, the voice that had quietly guided me my entire life, I felt brave, and strong, and capable. She had given all those qualities to me.

The most important thing my mother told me that day was that everything would be okay.

And she was right. Six months later, I gave birth to my baby girl, the light of my life.

Thanks, Mom, for being there for me during the biggest decision of my life, and for all the years after. A single mom needs a guardian angel, and you are mine.

A mother is the truest friend we have. – Washington Irving

I Rock

2007-08-02T10:13:00.001-05:00

“Mom, you rock! Don’t ever change!”

That’s nice to hear from the kid that I’ve poured the past 15 years of my life into. And no, it wasn’t uttered on the way to the concert I took her to recently, or because I let her stay out an hour later than usual with her friends, or after I gave her 20 bucks as I dropped her off at the mall.

It was actually after we finished a chat about boyfriends and relationships and life. I love that Mandy still talks to me about things. It’s gratifying that she trusts me, and appreciates my understanding ear and occasional advice.

Deep down, we all just want to be appreciated, don’t we? I know I do.

So I was extremely honored to be tagged with the Rockin’ Girl Blogger award by one of my favorite bloggers, my friend CS of Another Tangential Thinker. Granted, she tagged me with it about a month ago and probably thinks that I’ve forgotten about it, but I really am delighted!

But am I a Rockin’ Blogger?

Well, I’m not so sure about that. My blog isn’t all that rockin’… I tend to stay away from the controversial stuff, like religion or politics, or any of the hot buttons that get people to go from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye. You know what they are.

Additionally, I don’t curse much on here, haven’t posted any naked photos of myself, I don’t recall launching into any rants… not much of a rebel, am I?

No, I'm not one to rock the boat. I prefer to float along peacefully, taking in the sights, reflecting on the ones I’ve already seen, smiling at those who are traveling with me and recalling those with whom I’ve traveled before.

I’m not so sure I’m worthy of a Rockin’ Girl Blogger award. I’m just not that cool.

(But I’m honored that CS thinks so - Thank you!)

However, I think all of the women whose blogs I frequent are Rockin’ Girl Bloggers. Although I don’t come around to your blogs as often as I’d like (I will when I become independently wealthy and leave this cubicle life far, far behind me), I truly think you’re all so talented and your writing always brings me back for more. My sidebar is full of Rockin’ Girl Bloggers. (Rockin' Boy Bloggers too, but I don't think I've been authorized to distribute any of those.)

Many of you have already received this award, but if you haven’t, come pick it up! Here it is…

I’m telling you, You rock! Don’t ever change!

And for those of you who employ the "leapfrog method" of finding great blogs, I encourage you to check out my Favorite Destinations. There are so many wonderful writers out there...

The Blonde With The Big Boobs

2007-07-28T09:23:00.000-05:00

In college I had a gorgeous, bubbly roommate named Cheri. She was the kind of girl that other girls watched out of the corners of their envious eyes as she went bouncing by. A luscious waterfall of blonde hair shimmered like a silky golden blouse, blue eyes sparkled like the glitter from art class in the 2^nd grade, and that smile, that perfect white smile framed by adorable dimples – a jury of her peers would most certainly find her guilty of possessing an unfair advantage.

Not surprisingly, the guys were helpless against the pull of her magnetic north to their south poles. They would follow her around like the pied piper’s hypnotized mice.

But when she opened her mouth, the enchantment was quickly broken. No one in the world could love themselves as much as this babbling Barbie doll. Her endless narcissistic chatter effectively reversed her intense magnetic pull, repelling all but the shallowest of suitors.

But as I got to know this flawless mannequin in a v-neck sweater and a mini skirt, it became obvious that she was desperately searching for a few crumbs confidence and a shred of evidence that she truly was this wonderful girl she spoke of. Every word uttered from those shapely pink lips was a plea: please see how amazing I am, please affirm that I am the most beautiful and desirable girl you know.

Many of her narratives began with, “So I walked into the bar, and this guy nearly fell off his chair – ‘Wow! Who’s the blonde with the big boobs???’”

She so often described herself this way, as the blonde with the big boobs, that eventually that’s what we called her. She was no longer Cheri; she was The Blonde With The Big Boobs.

She loved that nickname. Although she'd feign annoyance when we said it, her brazen eyes sparkled with delight.

I always wondered, though, did she really even see herself this way? Or did she see herself as The Worthless Girl Who Dates Arrogant Assholes, or perhaps The Trailer Park Kid From A Broken Home, or The Loser Who Dropped Out After Freshman Year.

Or maybe she really did see herself as The Blonde With The Big Boobs, and she felt that was all she really had going for her.

We ultimately became close friends, my patience with her nonsensical prattle paying off as she let down her “I’m So Beautiful” wall of protection and let me in. The stories of how she floored all the guys on campus with her stunning good looks eventually settled down. She was a sweet girl underneath her blanket of pretentiousness.

I’m sad to say that we lost contact after college. I think about her often, and I worry for her, and I hope that she’s okay.

I remember you Cheri, and you will always be My Beautiful Friend With the Smile That Lit Up the Room.

“If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.” - Fritz Perls

Hello?

2007-07-20T09:47:00.000-05:00

I dialed again. Panic was starting to overtake my normally calm demeanor. It was 10:30 at night. Why hadn’t I heard from her yet?

Ringing… ringing… ringing… ringing… ringing…

“Hello?”

Damn it! I hung up the phone.

I sat. I stewed. I hit redial.

Ringing… ringing… ringing…

“Hello?”

My jaw clenched. My eyes narrowed. I tried to control my breathing.

Deep breaths, that’s it. You know everything is okay.

But where was she? How did I know she was okay? I’m not normally one to worry, but let’s face it - I was just hoping, trying to convince myself that she was alright. The truth was, I had no idea because I couldn’t speak to her.

I hit redial. I waited.

Her voice, converted into small packets of binary data, traveled from her cell phone to a nearby wireless antenna, switched from our wireless carrier to the landline phone system, sailed over the traditional phone network, into my house, into my ear…

“Hello?”

I hung up.

I think I’m gonna lose it.

I hit redial again. I waited.

“Hello?”

It was maddening. I probably called 30 times over the course of an hour.

I dialed again.

“Hello?”

Pause.

“Mandy?” I asked hesitantly.

“Hi, Mom!”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at Adam’s.”

“I’m coming to get you. I’ll be there in 10 minutes.”

When she got into the car, I asked how her day was. She told me about the mall, and who was there, and how they walked to Burger King and then to Adam’s house. I listened. I commented. I wasn’t going to slam her with a barrage of frustrations and scoldings and punishments the moment I saw her.

“By the way, where’s your cell phone?”

“In my bag.”

“I called about 30 times.”

“Sorry. It was downstairs. We were upstairs eating ice cream.”

“Listen, you know I need to be able to contact you. I need to know where you are.”

“I know.”

“And another thing…”

“Yeah?”

“You need to change your message.”

Laughter.

“Oh you think it’s funny, do you?”

More laughter.

“You have no idea how close that message had you to getting grounded.”

Roaring laughter now.

“I mean, the voicemail wasn’t even triggering consistently. Sometimes the message kicked in after 5 rings, sometimes after only three. And you always answer the phone the same way, so I kept thinking it was really you when I heard the Hello. And then when the Hello finally was real, I almost hung up on it because I thought it was the fake Hello.”

Choking, doubled-over laughter. “I wish I could record this conversation!”

“Have you noticed that every time I’ve called you recently, there’s a pause after you say Hello? I never know which freakin’ Hello I’m getting, you or your stupid message! I don’t know whether to speak or not. It’s making me insane.”

“But it’s so funny!”

“Change it. Every time I call you I feel like a damn fool.”

“Mom, admit it. It’s the best voicemail message ever.”

“Change it. I’m not kidding.”

Adolescence is a period of rapid changes. Between the ages of 12 and 17, for example, a parent ages as much as 20 years. ~Author Unknown

Robby and the Pencil Point

2007-07-13T12:55:00.000-05:00

When I was in the second grade I had a little crush on Robby M. He had a crush on me too. Nothing had been said, but a girl knows these things.

He would rub my arm, and then smack someone else’s arm and say “You have Tammie Odor! I quit! No backsies!” So of course, a big “Tammie Odor” fight would ensue…

“Tammie Odor! I quit!”

“Tammie Odor! I quit!”

“Tammie Odor! I quit!”

The boys would chase each other, lunging and dodging, slapping the Tammie Odor around. The girls would just stand there and watch, arms crossed, heads tilted to the side, eyebrows raised. Boys were stupid.

But then Robby would pick me to be on his kickball team on the playground at lunchtime. And he would pass notes to me that said “Who do you like?”

He would try to make me laugh during music class.

He would sit at my table during lunch. He said he liked my Muppets lunchbox.

During a class trip, he wrote R+T in the fog of the bus window above his head. He even drew a heart around it.

One day the two of us got in trouble for talking during Mrs. Rogers’ class, so we had to stay in for lunch and work quietly at a round wooden table in the back of her classroom. We sat on the small pastel chairs, opened our reading comprehension workbooks, and started filling in the blanks, circling True or False, and drawing lines from the word to the matching picture.

Sometime after Mrs. Rogers stepped out of the room, a small argument erupted between us, which led to an all-out battle. The brief focus of my elementary school affections jabbed me in the thigh with a pencil, piercing my white tights. I was absolutely enraged.

I poked him in the eye.

By the time Mrs. Rogers came back, Robby had an ever-reddening eye full of eyelashes, and I had the point of a #2 HB in my leg.

We were sent first to the nurse, then to the principal’s office.

It was the first time I’d ever been sent to the principal’s office. Mrs. Waldron was old and stern in her white ruffled shirt, buttoned high on her neck, and her drab, floor-length skirt. Her eyes were two different colors, and it seemed that one of them never really looked at anything. The hallway rumor was that she had a glass eye. I surmised that it was the brown one, because the blue one was bloodshot all the time. We were given a talkin’-to and a warning, and we were sent back to class.

So Robby and I hadn’t even reached the point of confessing our young love, and the relationship was over. A week goes by so fast…

I never got that pencil point out of my leg.

I made several attempts at removing it over the years with a pair of tweezers and once with a sewing needle, but to no avail. It still floats around inside of me, hidden. I can’t feel it, but it’s there.

Occasionally, it makes its way to the surface. I’ll notice a little dark spot on my leg, just below the skin. But it refuses to be removed, and my efforts just send it deeper into hiding.

That is, until the next time it worms its way up to poke at the underside of my skin. A sly, secretive reminder of a love from long ago.

And that’s the way it is with those expired love affairs. You don't feel them anymore, but they never entirely go away. They’re inside of you, a part of you.

Every once in a while, they resurface for a moment. Sometimes they just smile and wave at you, and you think, “Aw, I remember that. Those were some good times.”

Other times, they sneak up on you and try to squeeze your heart, try to make you remember what you felt like when you were caught in their grasp, or how you felt when it was over.

Over time their power over your heart diminishes, and the little reminders floating through the currents of our insides carry no feelings at all. They’re just memories.

But we learn from those past experiences. We learn about people, we learn about ourselves, about love and what we want out of life. Maybe they even make us better for the next time.

They help make us who we are.

"You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love by loving. All those who think to learn in any other way deceive themselves." - Saint Francis de Sales

Mrs. Garrison

2007-07-02T10:05:00.000-05:00

When I was very young we lived in an apartment building on 6th Street. Mrs. Garrison lived on the third floor of our building for a while, and then she moved to an apartment up the block from us – not too far, still within walking distance. She used to babysit for my brother and me. Sometimes if my brother had plans with friends, I would have her all to myself.

She was really old. I mean, to a 5-year-old, 75 was really, really old. She wore old-lady dresses and old lady shoes. She had a large hump on her back where her spine was curved, and she kept her pure white hair tied up in a bun.

I remember once when I was staying overnight with her, she took her bun down to brush her hair. I had never seen it down. It was so long and white.

“Mrs. Garrison, you look like a witch!” I laughed.

She looked in the mirror. “Yes, I guess I do!” she laughed. I didn’t mean any offense (you know how little kids just blurt out whatever they’re thinking), and none was taken. She put her hair back up in a bun, and she put mine up in a bun too, so I could be like her. We admired ourselves in the mirror. I had never seen my long hair tied up in a bun before. I liked it.

********

Mrs. Garrison was afraid of thunder and lightening. She and I had that in common. Whenever it stormed, she would come downstairs from her third-floor apartment and stay with us until it passed. She didn’t like to be up so high. It always made me feel better that I wasn’t the only one afraid of the lightening. And I recall even feeling the slightest bit brave, because I knew that staying with us made Mrs. Garrison feel better. I felt like I was helping her, protecting her. We got through those storms together.

********

There was a black velvet painting of Elvis on the wall in the living room.

I was 7 years old, sitting at the kitchen table drawing pictures with Mrs. Garrison when her son stopped by.

“Did you hear?”

“Yes, I heard,” Mrs Garrison said in a low, solemn voice, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.”

“Hear what?” I asked.

“The King is dead.”

“We have a king?”

“The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll!” said her son. “Don’t you know who The King is?”

I didn’t know, but they sure did. It was a sad day at Mrs. Garrison’s.

(Side note: whose parents or grandparents cut out the newspaper article when Elvis died? I have all the Elvis clippings in the box of papers from my grandparents, along with the moon landing two page pictoral from the New York Daily News, and a bunch of recipes my grandmother was saving.)

********

Mrs. Garrison was old, but she was energetic and fun. Much more energetic than my grandmother, who was younger but very overweight and mostly just sat around and watched her “stories” in the afternoons. Mrs. Garrison and I took walks to the lake to feed the ducks, and up to Angie’s Delicatessen to buy new coloring books and nice new crayons. Oh, how I loved a new box of Crayola crayons, with their vivid colors and perfect tips. My favorite was Magenta, although at the time I misread it as Mag-neta.

When my favorite stuffed animal, a little white lamb, got so threadbare from its constant companionship with me, the neck ripped into a wide gaping hole. My grandmother said it couldn’t be fixed, so I carried my wounded lamb around that way for weeks with the stuffing hanging out.

But one night when I stayed with Mrs. Garrison, I asked her if it could be fixed and she said “Of course it can!” She got out her black thread (it was the only color she had) and stitched it up. The black stitches kind of stuck out on my dirty little lamb, but he was no longer injured or losing stuffing as we walked, and I was so happy.

Mrs. Garrison was the best.

Some of the caregivers from childhood (babysitters, teachers...) fade away from our memories over time. But the ones who gave you their full attention, the ones that spent quality time with you, and made you smile, maybe even made you feel loved… those are the ones you never forget.

Details Details Details

2007-06-28T11:30:00.000-05:00

I chose the theme over at The Round Robin Photo Challenges this week: Focus on the Details!

Sometimes when I'm feeling not-so-inpired to take photos, I find that I just have to look a little closer. Zooming in on something can reveal interesting details that you may not notice at first glance.

I checked out a local hiking trail recently. It wasn't all that picturesque, but I enjoyed photographing the details of an old barn along the trail. I loved that the barn was blue, instead of the usual red...

and I like how the color weathered around the old hinges...

and the colors of the planks on the wall most exposed to the elements...

Even the old rusted farm equipment made for interesting compositions when I got up close to it...

Of course I spent plenty of time photographing the birds...

And the chipmunks running around...

But when they weren't cooperating, I focussed in on some of the old logs they were hiding out in...

I may go back again and see what else I can find. But this time I'll make sure I smother myself in bugspray so I don't have to run for my life on the way out of there. The tripod, camera bag and backpack were all slowing me down as I tried desperately to escape the onslaught of mosquitos...

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." - Henry Miller

Special Memories

2007-06-24T13:00:00.001-05:00

In celebration of her 25^th birthday today, my friend Silverneurotic is hosting a blog carnival. Her blog buddies were invited to share their most “vivid or special memories of the past 25 years.”

Hmm… 25 years ago I was 12 years old. A skinny tomboy of a kid with a love for Nancy Drew books, her various pets (cats, dogs, hamsters, gerbils, fish… you name it) and building forts in the backyard. I’ve been trying to record lots of my childhood memories here.

But what would qualify as the most special from the past 25 years?

Although I have lots of happy memories from the decade between 12 and 22, the best adventure of my life began 3 days before my 22^nd birthday, the day my daughter was born.

One of the many advantages of being a single mom is that your precious little offspring ends up being a lot like you.

If mine didn’t come into the world with an innate love of nature and sense of adventure, she developed both qualities soon thereafter.

I remember taking her to the local pool when she was three months old. I set up her little bouncy seat in the shade under a tree, and she wore her little pink sunglasses and beach hat, and she had a blast watching the leaves blowing above her head in the breeze. A woman approached to tell me how brave I was to take my baby out by myself. She said she was afraid to do much of anything with her kids when they were so young because she didn’t think she could handle everything by herself without her husband.

Geez, what would she have thought of…

All of our roadtrips to Maine...

and Massachusetts...

and Rhode Island...

when we didn’t even know where we were going to spend the night, and many times ended up sleeping in the car. We always brought our pillows just in case.

Or what about traveling to New Mexico, and hiking in the middle of nowhere, or driving our trusty rental car over 70 miles of dirt roads to explore the Anasazi ruins?

Or the white water rafting in NM and Colorado...

Or all the camping?? We camped along all 105 miles of Shenendoah National Park...

and so many other places in Colorado, New York, Maryland and Pennsylvania...

Even now, we love to set off and drive, just the two of us, and explore some local trail or historic site we haven't seen yet...

But probably the greatest thing about the past 15 years is watching her grow from an adorable, chubby-cheeked and curious baby into a beautiful young woman.

I can only hope that the next 25 years (God willing...) will be just as awesome, filled with more special memories made with my daughter, and now with my husband too :)

Butterflies on the Lilac Tree

2007-06-21T14:21:00.001-05:00

Well I'm a little late in posting my photos for the most recent challenge over at The Round Robin Photo Challenges, but I'll put them up anyway. The theme was "Freaks of Nature", and if you couldn't find a freak of nature you could post photos of butterflies.

So I went out into the yard, to the big lilac tree to see what I could capture for the challenge. These aren't the best butterfly photos, but it was a fun challenge anyway...

A Whole Bunch of Bull

2007-06-21T14:04:00.000-05:00

Wow, I can't believe so much time has passed since I've posted...

I have one more question to answer from Kiyotoe:

In what ways are you a typical Taurus and what ways are you different? (I'm a classic Taurus myself).

According to Wikipedia…
“Taurus is the second sign of the Zodiac and associated with material pleasure. Individuals born under this sign are thought to have a calm, patient, reliable, loyal, affectionate, sensuous, ambitious, and determined character, but one which is also prone to hedonism, laziness, inflexibility, jealousy, and antipathy.”

Hmm… let’s take it one at a time…

Material pleasure – this is an interesting one, because although I love to get a new shirt or a new pair of shoes as much as the next gal, I’ve spent so many years without money that even now that I have it, I have a hard time spending on myself. And if I do, I still prefer a funky $20 necklace to a “real” one for ten times that amount. I also end up buying cheap $10 sunglasses and sifting through the clearance racks if I buy anything at all. Spending the weekend at the mall really isn’t my thing, either. Although I do like to have a nice home, and I enjoy fixing it up and making it look nice.

Calm – definitely. I’ve been told that I have a calming effect on those around me. And at work, no matter how busy, how tight the deadlines, I am calm, cool and collected while everyone else is frazzled.

Patient – definitely. Perhaps even to a fault.

Reliable – I think so. I think I’m someone that people can count on. A little ADHD makes me forgetful, and so I live with To Do lists and sticky notes and reminder emails that I send from my work account to my home account and vice versa. So it isn’t always easy for me to be reliable, but I am.

Loyal – definitely. I’m fiercely loyal and protective, especially with those closest to me. My love and friendship are steadfast for those closest to me.

Affectionate – definitely. I’m always hugging my daughter and my husband, and even the dogs get lion’s shares of belly rubs and back scratches. I like to hold hands. I often reach out and rub Sean’s shoulder or massage the back of his neck while he’s driving or while we watch TV. Touch is very important to me. Kisses too. Especially neck kisses.

Sensuous – “Highly appreciative of the pleasures of sensation” (according to freedictionary.com) – absolutely. As mentioned above, touch is so important. Even the feel of soft, freshly-bleached sheets on the bed, or fuzzy socks when my feet are cold, or a cool nighttime breeze – love it! But there are the other senses too… My eye is constantly searching out aesthetically-pleasing visions, whether in nature, or in the way shadows play off a chair at an outdoor café, or in the crumbling bricks of the industrial part of town, or in the local art museums. I’m constantly moved to grab my camera. And I’m a huge music fan, nearly any kind of music. And food… yeah, big fan of food too :)

Ambitious – pretty much. I wouldn’t say I’m that person who fights tooth and nail to claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder. I do work hard each day while I’m here, and I take pride in a job well done. But I don’t arrive early and work late, nor do I worry about work once I leave the office. I think I was ambitious enough to reach a certain level, and now I’m happy where I am. On the other hand, I do work two other part-time jobs, so maybe I am ambitious…

Determined – definitely. I work hard for the things I want with the confidence that I can overcome any obstacles I encounter along the way. Even in little things I have an incredible amount of determination to draw upon. I can get a huge air conditioner from the basement to a second-floor bedroom and put it in the window by myself, and it’s not because I’m all that strong…

Hedonism – “Pursuit of or devotion to pleasure, especially to the pleasures of the senses.” Geez, I see nothing wrong with that - why does this word have a negative connotation anyway? Okay, another definition says “an ethical system that evaluates the pursuit of pleasure as the highest good.” Hmm… I don’t consider the pursuit of pleasure the highest good, nor is it the basis of my moral code. I value many things above it – love, respect, responsibility, right-and-wrong, truth, common sense, the Golden Rule. I’m probably much too giving of a person to be considered hedonistic, which I think leans toward selfishness. Selfish is not a word you could ever use to describe me.

Laziness – nope. As I mentioned above, I work 3 jobs. I take care of the needs of everyone in my house (including the pets), I take care of the house itself, the yard… I am busy from the moment I get out of bed in the morning til the moment I finally collapse on the couch at night.

Inflexibility – nope. I guess I can be stubborn about things that are important to me, but for the most part I’m a flexible, roll-with-the-punches kind of person. I can switch gears without much of a fuss. I’m more of a nurturer and a people-pleaser, and so I view being inflexible as a selfish act.

Jealousy – not really. I’m sure I can be as much as the next person. But I have no problem with my husband commenting on someone else’s good looks (I’ll comment too), or chatting with other women. I don’t get freaked out if he goes out with the guys without me. In general, I think I have enough healthy self-confidence not to feel overly competitive with others. I’m not one of those people that feels disappointed when someone else succeeds, or hates someone for being better-looking than I am. I would definitely be jealous, though, if I thought my husband felt an emotional or physical connection with someone else.

Antipathy – no, I don’t think this one applies either.

I’ve also heard that Taurus folks love nature and natural things, and that is undeniably me. I love gardening, hiking, picnics – anything outdoors. I help turtles across the road, nurse sick animals back to health, capture insects in the house and release them outside (I know – I take it a bit far).

I’ve read, too, that us bulls make decisions with much thought and consideration. Oh yeah. I never dive into anything. I usually have to investigate all the options, do a little research, and weigh the pros and cons before I make a decision. Which can be a little frustrating when I’m out to dinner and can’t decide what I want from the menu.

Another article I read said Taureans have a preoccupation with honesty, and wow, that is so true of me. I can forgive and forget a lot of things, but I’ll always remember that time I was deceived by a lie. And even if I wasn’t deceived – how dare you! I think I’m extremely truthful, and therefore I absolutely expect it from others. Because of that, I may even trust when I shouldn’t. But long, long ago I read this quote, which I thoroughly agree with:

“It is more shameful to distrust one's friends than to be deceived by them.” (Duc de la Rochefoucauld). I live by that.

My Magical Wardrobe

2007-06-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

Another question from Kiyotoe (yes, I realize it's taking me forever to post my answers!)...

If you had your own magical wardrobe (like Lucy), describe what we'd see on the other side.

A magic wardrobe – what fun! The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was one of my favorite books as a child and became one of my daughter's favorites when I read it to her.

As long as I’m crafting the basics of my hidden world, let’s start with the fundamentals:

There are people over there, but they are different. Children are not mistreated...

No one kicks dogs or abuses animals...

No one goes without necessities like food and shelter.

Ying and yang still exist on the other side, but inhumanity is absent: people have more respect for each other and for life in general.

Per standard Walt Disney animated classic rules, all animals know that I am intrinsically good, and I can communicate with them.

And perhaps I’ll even have an animal sidekick to pal around with, as most Disney heroines do. Well, I guess my dogs can fill that position. Especially now that I can talk to them.

When I take my dogs for a visit through the wardrobe, the big guy finds that his old joints don’t ache anymore, and the little guy’s cataracts disappear.

Maybe there can be some crazy flora and fauna I’ve never seen
and I can go nuts with my camera!

And there’s something in the air on the other side…
there’s a light sweet fragrance, and it stimulates endorphin release. Everyone and everything seems a bit happier. Maybe it’s coming from those crazy flowers…

Oh! And cupcakes aren’t fattening. They’re actually considered a health food.

When I was young, I was absolutely smitten with the idea of magic carpets, so they will be one of the standard modes of travel. The others will be bicycles and your own two feet.

Ah… perfect – a map, waiting there for me on the other side of the wardrobe.

Now I can go explore…

My Theme Song

2007-05-31T13:35:00.001-05:00

Okay, it happened again.
Work got in the way.
It has been extremely busy around here!

But I still have some questions to answer from Kiyotoe...

The first time I heard "Dream On" by Aerosmith it became kind of a theme song for me (it was like 5 years ago, I know, I'm late).....what song could best serve as a "Tammie Jean" theme song and why?

The great thing about music is that it can be interpreted in many different ways depending on who's listening to it, their life experiences, the effect the music has on them. A song can mean something to one listener and something else to another.

There are many, many songs that speak to me. I love music... all kinds.

A friend of mine asked me recently what would be on my personal soundtrack. Funny - Dream On was on my list. The emotion is his voice is amazing, and the message of “dream until your dreams come true”… Ah, gotta love it. It’s actually been a favorite of mine since I got Greatest Hits on vinyl…geez, I think I was like 10 or 11 at the time.

But my soundtrack also included Here Comes the Sun by George Harrison. Whether the song is about getting through hard times in life and seeing things through to a better day, or if the message is simply “here comes the sun and it's alright”... Either way, it’s a definite on my soundtrack.

Another must-have is Right Here Right Now by Jesus Jones, a song (to me) about savoring the moment, living everyday, and feeling alive.

And I’ve always loved the Soup Dragons remake of I'm Free. That was my mantra all through college. “I’m free to do what I want any ol’ time.” (Plus I love the reggae break in the middle.)

But if I had to pick one main theme song to define who I am, it would have to be Drive by Incubus. It's probably not my favorite song of all time, but the words fit me. “Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there, with open arms and open eyes.” To me, it’s an affirmation to be your own person, to take the wheel and drive yourself instead of letting your fear decide your direction. Live life on your own terms. Don't be afraid to head against the current or let your fear of what "the hive" will think influence your decisions.

I’ve always made sure I've had both hands firmly on the wheel in my life:

I had no money to go to college, but I worked out a payment plan with the Student Accounts office of a major university so I could pay my tuition on a monthly basis (by working three jobs).

Although I excelled all my academic subjects I chose to pursue art, for which I’ve always had not only talent but passion.
I had a child out of wedlock fully aware that I would be an “only parent”.

I moved 3,000 miles away from home in the name of love and then subsequently back in the name of family a year later.

I’ve road tripped alone with a highway map and no set plans, watched the sun set on a beach while sharing wine and cheese with strangers, and slept in the car when I couldn’t find a room. (Always travel with a pillow).

I opted not to date for 7 years while I raised my daughter so that I could focus my attention on her and my career without the distractions of a new relationship.

I traveled extensively, just my daughter and I, when I was absolutely broke, charging everything on the credit card in favor of making memories over practicality. (No, I’m no longer in debt, and I have photo albums full of the wonderful adventures I took during my “poor” years).

I said “no” to a marriage proposal that didn’t feel right, and I said “yes” to one that did after only 6 months of dating.

I’ve never looked back with regret.

I’ve always been the one in the driver’s seat. This song is my song. Carpe diem.

S'more Questions

2007-05-09T11:35:00.000-05:00

Today I'm going to start answering the questions crafted for me by my friend Kiyotoe...

What's one thing you learned from your parents that you hope to pass on to your daughter?

One word: determination. Both of my parents are hard workers, but my mother’s determination is unmatched.

My mother married my father, her high school sweetheart, and gave birth to my big brother when she was 19 years old. I came along 18 months later.

My parents had no money when I was growing up, but my mother worked hard to better herself (and her earning potential) every day.

When I was 5 she used to bring home vanilla milkshakes from her night shift job at McDonalds. She quickly moved up to working in a small restaurant, and then to a more upscale restaurant where she could earn better tips.

She worked many hours so that she could make some extra money to pay for classes at community college. Six years later she had her 2-year associate’s degree.

In the business world, she worked her way up from filing and data entry to a high-level executive assistant who can command an impressive salary.

But there were times that she would return to waitressing on the weekends to earn extra money, like when she wanted to send me to dance classes or summer camp. My mother has always been a hard worker with a can-do attitude, and she has been an amazing example of determination for me and my brothers.

I hope that I can be that example to my daughter as well. It's important to me that she realizes that with hard work and determination, no goals are beyond her reach.

Someone has given you the voicemail number for the little girl in We Should Have Been Friends (my favorite post to date). What is the message you leave for her?

Hello, my name is Tammie Jean. I’m sure this call seems out of the blue, but I remember you from when we were young children.

You may not recall that day we met on the playground while our fathers were playing softball, but I’ve never forgotten it. It was my first experience with the ugliness of prejudice and to my continuing disappointment, I bowed to it and decided not to play with you anymore.

I would like to tell you that I am truly sorry for the way I acted that day. I allowed my fear of what others might think to influence the way I treated you, behavior that is not only uncharacteristic to the way I am now, but even to the person that I was back then at 5 years old. I immediately regretted it and have ever since.

I’m hoping that you’ll allow me to take you out to lunch so we can sit and chat, and so I can apologize to you in person. Besides, I’ve always thought that we should have been friends, and I’m hoping that you’ll give me a second chance.

Making a list and checking it twice...

2007-05-05T16:09:00.000-05:00

Today I'm going to finish up on CSL's interview questions...

So, how many of the things on your "checklist of good ideas" from the end of last year have you kept?

Ooh… what a good reminder! I haven’t checked in on that list in quite a while. As I look it over, though, I realize I haven’t been doing as poorly with my intentions for this year as I’d thought.

I have been spending more time with family and friends. Sean and I have been inviting people to dinner here and there, and we’ve been meeting friends out on the weekends pretty consistently. I haven’t seen my cousin’s band lately, though. Maybe I’ll give him a call.

I’ve also been sending real emails to my friends over the past few months. I haven’t been calling my relatives on Saturday mornings, though. Something else to do now…

I’ve been taking my lunchtime walks, and I’ve been walking around the lake on the weekends, so I can check off exercising. I don’t have time to be any more serious than that.

Hmm… I haven’t been keeping the brain sharp like I intended. No Spanish, no crossword puzzles, no reading lately. Darn. No belly dancing either. I need more hours in my days.

I haven’t started putting my photos into albums. But I have been cooking quite a bit. So that one gets a “check”.

Yeesh. I haven’t been creative every week. Did I really think that every week was feasible? More like every once in a while. I like to mess around with an altered book here and there.

It feels less serious than “I’m going to make a painting” or something like that. Plus, it kind of supplies its own ideas sometimes, depending on the words on the page.

I liked the words on this dog page...

I should really get back to drawing though…

I haven’t been typing the war letters in either. I have so much more to catalog, too. In addition to the letters, there are newspapers from 1945 declaring the end of the war, and lots of crazy postcards...

But I have been taking pictures every day and aggressively pursuing photography. Checkmark that one. Hopefully I can make it a full-time gig and quit the 9 to 5 like I planned.

Thanks for making me look over my list! I’d better get going on some more of these…

Do friends and family members read your blog, and if they do – does that shape what you choose to write about?

No, no one reads my blog. I wanted to start out with it just being my own, personal, secret place to log my thoughts and memories. I didn’t want the thought of an audience to influence what I write. I will probably let my husband in on it, though. There’s always more that we can learn about each other, so it might be a excellent catalyst for future discussions.

I asked someone else this too, and am ceaselessly curious about it as a phenomenon of the blog world: What is it that draws you to another person's blog and keeps you visiting?

Well I think there are several things that draw me in, as well as a few that keep me away. I generally stay away from the big debates, like politics, religion, abortion rights, gun laws. I’m usually on here while I’m at work, and I’m not seeking a break from the daily drudgery only to end up in a “heated exchange of ideas” (read: argument). I also usually stay away from some of the pop culture posts. I have no interest in what Britney Spears is doing this week.

I think the blogs I frequent represent people I could see being my friends “on the outside”, people that I can relate to in some way. They may have nothing at all in common with each other – one might make me laugh, while another makes me think, and another makes me say “I would have done the same thing” or “I’ve thought about that too.” My friends in the real world aren’t carbon-copies of each other, and they aren’t in the blog world either.

Sometimes it’s just one sentence or post that interests me initially, and that prompts my return for a few more posts or to read back through some earlier ones to get a “feel” for the blogger and what they’re about. I enjoy getting to know the people on here, and I enjoy honest exchanges of thoughts, ideas, and personal stories.

Thanks so much for the fantastic questions CSL! If anyone would like me to interview them, let me know in the comments :)

Next, on the the interview questions from The Dragon :)

My Favorite Subjects

2007-05-04T09:26:00.000-05:00

Well, let's lighten up a bit today, okay?

Question number two in CSL's interview: You occasionally post some really beautiful nature photos, although not enough of them to my way of thinking. What is your favorite sort of thing to photograph.

As I look over the subfolders within “My Pictures”, the largest are probably those labeled:

Travel

Flowers (yes, even dandelions)

and Critters

(and there are many, many subfolders in each of those).

Nature is what inspires me to drop my fork (or my book, or my toothbrush…), grab the camera and run outside. Maybe it’s because the light is coming through the trees and illuminating the daffodils just so, maybe it’s the call of the pileated woodpecker that likes to come and land on the rotting tree stump in the back yard, or maybe it’s a planned event, like “I’m going to go look for spiders in the garden.”

I love that I don’t have to venture very far to take great photos; there are opportunities everywhere, right outside my back door.

"The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." (Henry Miller)

I've always taken photos just for fun, and sometimes to preserve a vision to later draw or paint from, but it's never been for profit. However, because I’ve been desperate to get out of the drudgery of my 9-5 and the hellacious daily commute that goes with it, I’d been trying to think of an angle…

Well, I think I’ve found it. And I love it. And, believe it or not, it’s been keeping me busy every single weekend, and during the week too, at night after work. So maybe someday soon I will be able to leave Corporate America and just be a Photographer. I’m working on it.

So here’s how it started: I took some photos of myself to give to my husband. Nothing raunchy, but definitely flirtatious - artistic with a dash of enticement. Little surprises for him to open with his email when he got home from work.
He loved them.

I told Steffy, a friend of mine, what I had done. She thought the idea was brilliant. Could I take her photo too? Absolutely!

Her husband loved them.

But what was immensely rewarding to me was Steffy’s reaction to her own photos. She used to be extremely overweight, she told me. She had always been exceedingly self conscious of her body. She has stretch marks; she’s self conscious of this and hates that.

“That’s what Photoshop is for,” I told her. "And creative lighting. We'll only highlight the parts you like."

When she saw the final results, she said it was the first time she had ever felt sexy in her entire life. Steffy is 49 years old.

Around the same time, another friend of mine had some boudoir photos taken professionally by a local photographer. The poses were nice, the outfits were alluring, and the pictures were horrible. Her face was blown out by too much flash while the rest of her was obscured by shadow. She paid good money for them, and they were mere snapshots from my perspective.

If I had doubted my photographic abilities up to that point, I had just given a boost of confidence. Not just from the fact that this guy made money from taking these crappy pictures. What really pushed me over the edge was that my friend loved the photos. She was overjoyed with them.

And I could do so much better…

So I’ve invested in some local advertising, and it’s becoming clear very quickly that I’ve found my niche.

And I love it. I love choosing the best shots, and perfecting each one into its own little masterpiece of light and shadow and human form. I love that I can make people (men and women) feel comfortable in my presence and relaxed enough to let their guards down. I love that I can give them a boost of confidence and make them feel good about themselves.

And I love when they see their final photos. Their eyes open wide and their mouths hang agape as they exclaim, "I look gorgeous!"

So in answer to your question, I guess it’s a tie.

To my husband’s continual dismay, I will always be the lunatic out in the yard, prostrate in the mud, photographing a frog, or a beetle, or a mushroom.

But I’ve discovered a new love for photographing the human form and lovely soft-lit portraits. Everyone has something beautiful about them, and I enjoy proving that to people who may have their doubts about their own beauty.

My Friends Butch and Scruffy

2007-05-02T12:25:00.000-05:00

“We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults.

Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.”

(George Elliot)

The current theme over at The Round Robin Photo Challenges is friendship. My best friends in the whole world are my amazing 15 year old daughter Mandy and my wonderful husband Sean. But I don’t generally post photos of them here.

Hmm… so who’s next in line? My adorable sons, Butchie and Scruffy.

They don’t mind the posting so much. They are undeniably exhibitionists, given the things they do in public.

And they are undeniably my friends.

They are always happy to see me.
When I get home from work at night, they run in circles and wag their entire bodies.
When I am sad, they know it, and they’ll simply cuddle up next to me quietly and keep me company.
They expect very little from me, other than daily food and water.
But they delight in my company – my presence alone will make their ears stick out, their eyes brighten, and their steps bouncy.

Their unconditional love is a gift.

But it’s not so easy to snap a photo of either one of my boys.

Scruffy needs to be under my feet at all times. When I try to back away from him to frame up a shot, he comes running. Try to snap a candid of him sniffing around the yard and he does the same thing the moment he notices me. And if he’s not directly next to me, he is seated with his back to me, guarding me from anyone who dares to approach. Not that he would know what to do with advancing enemies, but he’s always got his eye on them just the same.

So my only option for getting a photo of him this week was to be in the shot with him. Although he’s 15 years old, he’s constantly moving, so I set up the tripod, set the timer for 20 shots - one every 5 seconds, and crossed my fingers. Most were blurry, but two came out pretty decent…

Butchie, on the other hand, is downright camera-shy. Or is it camera-weary? He used to tolerate my picture taking, but now he’s just plain fed up with me. If he had the ability, I believe he would stick his fingers in his mouth and stretch out his cheeks like an annoying 8-year-old just to mess up my shots. He’s tried sticking out his tongue at me, but alas, I am undeterred. When he sees the camera come out, even before I’ve turned it on and raised it up to my eye, he’s gotten up and walked away. Seriously.

So the only way to snap a shot of him is when he’s half-asleep on the couch and too lazy to get up…

Or as he's rubbing he head on my knees in an attempt to persuade me to rub his ears...

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend.

I have no wealth to bestow on him.

If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward.

Is not friendship divine in this?

(Henry David Thoreau)

A Dream House

2007-04-30T10:39:00.000-05:00

Today on the way to work, I was thinking about my dream house. I have many dreams...

I would love to have a house on the shore. I would fall asleep to the sounds of the waves and the ocean breeze caressing my face, and wake up to a glorious sunrise, with the sun sparkling on the waves like thousands of tiny diamonds. And I would begin each day with a walk on the beach, breathing in the salty air and feeling the sand between my toes.

But I would also love a house in the mountains, hidden from the world, surrounded by old-growth trees and animals everywhere. There would be an amazing view from my deck, overlooking the trees and the mountains in the distance, and maybe a little meadow full of wildflowers. The deer would come to greet me in the early morning, because I would feed them apples or some other sweet treat and they would learn to trust me. I'd be like Snow White, feeding the birds from my hand and yodeling down the well! And I would begin each day with a walk through the trails, breathing in the cool air and feeling the moss beneath my feet.

I enjoy solitude and privacy, and natural surroundings. Oh and some sort of view. When we were camping in Pennsylvania last year with my dad, we spent the evenings sitting in chairs around the campfire, looking out onto the grassy hills. Occasionally a deer would walk by, or a fox or a racoon... and of course there were lots of birds. And it was so relaxing to just sit and watch. So my dream home would definitely have a place to sit and look out.

Of course, when I was young, my dream house was one where I had my own room. We lived in an apartment, and I had to share a room with my brother. We had bunkbeds and lots of toys everywhere and no privacy.

We moved into a small house when I was in 2nd grade. I remember our first day there, sitting in that empty room on a box full of books. I just sat and smiled. This was MY room. I could set up all my stuffed animals and toys, and put pictures on the wall, and I could listen to whatever music I wanted. There was even a closet for my clothes.

That old house made everyone happy, and it was great to have our own yard, too.

I helped my mother plant flowers in the front and a tomato garden in the back. My father worked on things out in the garage, my brother worked on his minibike back by the shed. My mother liked to cook even more in the new kitchen, and she made spaghetti sauce from the tomatoes in the garden. I built forts up on the hill and read books up in my room. And since we had a yard, we were able to get a puppy, which was the greatest thing.

And so I look at the house I live in now. Sure, there are some rooms that still need painting, and we need to redo the bathroom upstairs and refinish the hardwood floors. And I'd like to have a deck or a patio on the back so I could sit and look out on the yard, and we could have barbeques out there.

But I am able to plant flowers in the front and tomatoes in the back.

Mandy has her own room, where she can hang pictures on the wall and listen to whatever music she wants.

We have a nice yard where the dogs can run and sniff around where the deer trekked through the night before.

And there are closets for our clothes, and a garage for our toys.

I enjoy cooking dinner in the kitchen at night, while my husband is upstairs on the computer, Mandy is upstairs on the phone, and the dogs are under my feet, waiting for me to drop a scrap of food.

And I begin each morning with a walk around the lake, breathing in the fresh spring air, smiling at the other early morning walkers as we pass on the road.

I think I already have my dream house. Life is good.

Missing Chapters

2007-04-21T11:37:00.000-05:00

Sean got a new brother about a year and a half ago. Not a new baby brother. A new big brother.

It's funny how you can think your story reads a certain way, but then you find out there were some chapters missing.

********

Sean’s father had been married before. Everyone in the family knew that. There was even an older sister out there somewhere. No one had ever spoken to her, though. No one knew where she was.

The family has always had an old black and white photo of her in a tiny oval frame. She was about three years old in the picture, and she was wearing a little white dress. This was all they had of Rebecca.

One day, when Sean and I were both in the office on our computers, he mentioned something about the long lost sister. He said he felt like there was a missing piece in their family, and he wished he could track her down.

Why don’t you Google her?

“I’ve tried. I just come up with thousands of sports results, with her first name in one spot and her last name in another.”

“Don’t you know that you’re supposed to put quotes around the words you want to appear together?”

“Huh?”

“Put quotes around her name and try again.”

So he did. And he found her. Just like that.

Rebecca seemed a little hesitant to communicate at first. She had always known that she had some step-siblings out there. But she hadn’t heard much about her biological father, and what she had heard, well, I guess her mother hadn’t spoken very highly of him.

But lately she’s been talking more with Sean’s younger sister, and they even met up in Boston over St. Patty’s weekend last month. So the connections are being made.

And she had a bit of information that no one in the family had ever known: Rebecca was a twin. Her sister had died when they were young. No one even knew.

********

It was just a few weeks after finding Rebecca that we received the phone call. It seemed Sean wasn’t the only one who felt the longing created by a fractured family.

We had just gotten back from dinner, and Sean was checking the voicemail. With a confused look on his face he brought the phone to me. “You have to listen to this.”

A thick southern accent came through the receiver: “Hi. My name is Steven G, and I’m from Charlotte, North Carolina. I’m looking for information on my father, TB. If you have any information on him at all, please call me back…”

“Um… Honey? He’s looking for information on his father… His father is your father… This is your brother!”

The thing about it was, though, everyone knew about Rebecca. Although they had never met her, and they hadn’t known about her twin, they did think of her often.

Steven, on the other hand, was a complete surprise.

And since Sean’s father had passed away 8 years ago, there was no one to answer the questions.

Sean emailed Rebecca: “Guess what? You’re not the oldest anymore.”

********

Steven had lived most of his life believing that the man who raised him was his father. Why would he think any differently? He came from a big happy family. But after serving his country in Desert Storm, someone brought it up one night when the family was gathered together at his mother’s house.

“You should tell him! He could have died over there.”

“Hush!”

“Tell me what?”

And so somewhere in his late thirties, Steven learned that his life story didn’t read quite the way he thought it did. Well, for the most part it did, except that he had missed the prologue. And no one had ever told him that his story had a prologue at all.

It took him a few years to decide what to do about his prologue. But eventually, he got enough information from his mother to track the family down and make that phone call.

Unfortunately, he never got to meet his biological father.

But believe me when I tell you, you have never seen anyone happier to have found his new family. Steven is the sweetest guy.

He came up to visit and meet everyone just before Christmas that year, and he was absolutely overjoyed. Hugs for everyone. Christmas presents, too.

“C’mon, let’s start catching up on everything we missed growing up.”

“What do you wanna do?”

“Well we’ll each pick something. I pick Snowball Fight.” It was time to start writing new chapters.

********

Then we went to North Carolina to visit Steven last summer. While we were there, we got to meet Steve’s sons. The crazy thing is, Steve’s oldest son doesn’t just LOOK like Sean’s father; he looks like he IS Sean’s father (when he was young). Genetics are pretty amazing.

I wonder if any other new siblings are going to surface?

You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~Desmond Tutu

Round Robin Photo Challenges

2007-04-18T10:54:00.000-05:00

Recently I stumbled upon a blog called The Round Robin Photo Challenges. This looks like fun!

Each member has a turn submitting a topic for the next photo challenge. Past topics have included Animals, Reflections, Cold, My Hometown, Transportation, Nostalgia… Then members have time to go out and take pictures for the challenge to post on their blogs on the agreed-upon posting date.

I like the idea of this site, because I think the suggestion of a theme will encourage me to pick up my camera and take more shots, maybe even of subjects I hadn’t previously considered. And I always love to see how different people interpret the same theme.

The most recent challenge theme is actually wide-open. To celebrate their 2 year blog anniversary, members were asked to choose any topic from the past challenges. “Nature” was a no-brainer for me. I’m always inspired when I step outside my door, from the flowers and bugs in my garden to the hard-earned panoramic view at the end of a long hike.

My husband thought I was crazy when I spent the afternoon hunched over my tripod, waiting for the bees to land on the new flowers I received as Easter gifts. But I liked the results:

I'm looking forward to future challenges!

Water, Water Everywhere...

2007-04-17T14:03:00.000-05:00

Nearly 5 inches of rain in a 36 hour period. That's a lot of water.

So there's water in my basement.

The sump pump gets clogged with debris as it tries to keep ahead of the water bubbling through the cracks in the cement floor. Every time it clogs, the water level quickly rises to the point where it's threatening the furnace. I had to babysit it all day yesterday, and keep pushing the water toward the pump with a snow shovel since the floor is uneven.

There are big puddles in my yard.

Though it's not nearly as bad as it is for the people that live near the creek.

The creek itself is a raging torrent.

As a kid, my husband used to jump off that pipe into the creek below. Of course, not with the waters raging as they are now. But I think it's crazy either way.

People were stopping on the bridge all day to have a look.

Even though it was starting to get dark, everyone was making their way to the bridge to view the turbulent waters below. Cars were stopped on both sides.

And I was one of them. I needed a break from dealing with the water in my basement.

Five inches of rain persistently finding its way back into my house, despite my best efforts to keep it out, was driving me crazy.

I can't imagine what it must have been like

for the people in New Orleans.

The Rising Blogger

2007-04-17T11:22:00.000-05:00

I'm very honored to be presented with an award from Judd Corizan of The Rising Blogger. The goal of this new blog is to award specific posts that are worthwhile reading, whether they are funny, creative, thought-provoking or insightful.

The post chosen from my archives is We Should Have Been Friends, a story about my first brush with racism. You should check it out :)

I commented today on The Rising Blogger that I love the idea of this blog. Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing out on a good blog because the latest post didn't necessarily draw me in. I think I'll really enjoy this roadmap to great posts and find some great blogs in the process.

Thanks, Judd, for the recognition! And keep up the good work with your blog - I have a feeling that I'll be checking in with you often...

Monster Madness

2007-04-13T10:35:00.000-05:00

As a child, I loved scary movies. I loved being scared. From the time I was in pre-school, I would sit on my father’s lap (for protection) and watch New York's Chiller Theatre on Channel 11 and Creature Feature on Channel 5. I loved those old horror movies.

My big brother would watch too, from the safety of the area behind the couch.

Chiller Theater began with a claymation hand rising up out of a swamp. I remember my father saying to me, “You know there are six fingers on that hand?”

“Really???”

“Yup, count ‘em.”

So every time that show came on, I would count the fingers. He was right. And somehow, knowing that the hand had six fingers made it all the more creepy.

Here’s a link to the video on youtube: Chiller Theater

The only thing missing is the creepy voice that says “CHILLERRRRR!” after the hand gobbles up all the letters. It set just the right tone for the start of the “monster movies,” as I use to call them.

Sometimes we watched the movies while eating Swanson’s TV Dinners. Being able to eat in the living room was such a treat! My mother would get out the tray tables, and we would have Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots and a gooey dessert out of little crinkly tin trays. What fun!

Then my mother would pop some popcorn in a pot on the stove, shaking it the whole time so it didn’t burn. Later they came out with popcorn machines that turned the kernels and the oil for you. Microwave popcorn wasn’t around yet. Actually, neither were microwaves.

So with our TV dinners and our popcorn, we would sit on the couch, watching our little black and white television. We would eventually upgrade to a big console color television by the late 70’s. But of course, for those old black and white movies it didn’t really matter so much.

I remember watching the The Blob, The Crawling Hand, and Day of the Triffids, which was about an alien plant race I think. Monster movies like Godzilla, King Kong, and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.

And those abnormally large critter flicks like the one with the giant ants, or the one with the gargantuan spider.

That one with the spider haunted me, because just as the massive monster arrived in the town, and started crushing houses with each step of his giant spider legs, our antenna went out and the television screen went to gray noise. So I never knew if they got him or not. That made me feel quite unsettled. He could still be out there, you know.

But it wasn’t just the monster movies. I also loved The Twilight Zone. And ghost stories. And the Nancy Drew mysteries that had phantoms or haunted castles.

Even the comedy creature features like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I liked Abbott and Costello to begin with – throw in a monster and I was enthralled.

Same with Bugs Bunny cartoons. My two favorites of all time were the ones with the evil scientist and Gossamer in the big castle.

I used to go around quoting the line, "Did you ever have the feeling you were being watched?" from Hare Raising Rabbit.

And I just loved the idea of vanishing cream in Water Water Every Hare, and that slow motion chase when the evil scientist and Bugs are both floating high on ether: “Coooooome baaaaack raaaaaabit.”

My favorite TV show was Land of the Lost.

I ate Frankenberry and Boo Berry cereals. My brother ate Count Chocula.

My favorite ride at Disney World (at age 7) was the Haunted Mansion.

I even favored monster vitamins.

As I entered my pre-teen and teenage years, I still had a love of horror films: The Howling, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween.

The Exorcist. Scariest movie ever.

The Shining. Well, that runs a close second for me. It's not just the bloody stuff - it's the creepy stuff. It's the freaky little twins. Man, they were creepy.

Even Salem’s Lot scared the heck out of me. I can vividly recall the vampire nightmare I had, with a little child vampire floating outside my window, tapping on the glass for me to let him in.

Once I became a mom, horror movies lost their appeal. I don’t like to be scared anymore – real life can be scary enough. I don’t like to see blood and guts. I turn my head away at yucky scenes, or change the channel, or even leave the movie theater.

But then again, those old movies were different. They were more about the suspense than the gore.

I wouldn’t mind munching on a bowl of Frankenberry cereal and catching Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

Or one of those Bugs Bunny cartoons with Gossamer.

Actually, that sounds like the makings of a good Saturday morning.

Happy Friday the 13th!

And You Can Dance...

2007-04-10T16:13:00.000-05:00

"And you can dance...
For inspiration...
Come on...
I'm waiting…"

I finally got up the courage to get up on one of the raised blocks above the dance floor and tear it up. I stood next to them with my friends, dancing a little and waiting for one to free up.

Then, just as “There's Always Something There To Remind Me” ended, some girls jumped down and my friend Dina and I jumped up. Woo hoo! We got ‘em!

My favorite Madonna song started thumping through the sound system, and there I was with my teased hair, my black lace tank top layered over white and pink tanks, fingerless lace gloves, my pink star earring dangling from my ear, and every awesome move I could pull out for my big debut up on the blocks. The strobe was pulsing and I was working it. I was in my 8th grade glory.

“Get into the groove, boy you’ve got to prove your love to meeeee…”

I couldn’t really even see the kids down below me. The lights were flashing in my eyes, and I just pretended I was in my room dancing, the way I would when I used to sing into my hairbrush to my Pat Benetar album. A lot of things made me nervous at that age, but I knew I could dance.

And then… what luck! Another favorite song started pulsing through the speakers… “I said you wanna be startin’ somethin', you got to be startin' somethin’…”

Suddenly, there was a sharp tug at my arm.

“Get the hell off there!” my brother barked. “All the guys are looking at you!”

My big brother smelled like beer. I jumped down off the block and stormed away. He would probably get into a fight later too, because he was so stupid when he was drunk.

********

When my brother and I were kids, my mother used to drive us to the roller rink every weekend. On Friday nights they had a DJ and dancing, and on Saturdays it was roller skating.

And my mother would always say to whomever would listen, "It's so great that they have someplace for the kids to go, to keep them off the street." She would proudly drive us and all of our friends there, and then she’d pick us all up at 11 o'clock and bring everyone home.

From 5th grade until 8th grade the roller rink was the place to be, every single weekend.

It was many, many years later that I enlightened my mother as to how crazy it was there. Kids would sneak out the back door to drink and smoke in the woods behind the building. Not to mention the kissing and whatever else was going on down the many trails that lead into the darkness of the trees.

And there were huge brawls that would happen both inside the club and outside in the parking lot between kids from our town and those from the neighboring town.

Of course I stayed out of trouble, but my brother never did.

Fights? Check.
Beer? Check.
Cigarettes? Well, he never became a smoker, but I know he tried them. Check.

I recall having my very first brush with peer-pressure behind the roller rink. Everyone was creeping out the back door. I usually never did, because I was completely entertained by the music, the dancing, and the sodas and fries from the snack bar.

Besides, I didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and didn’t have a boyfriend. What was I going to do out there? Probably just get swarmed by mosquitoes. I’ve always been very sweet.

I found it a little intimidating too. I was never really popular. Who would be out there?

Usually, even though a bunch of kids would be outside, there would always be someone inside for me to hang out with. So I generally remained in the safety zone.

But on this particular night, it was absolutely dead on the dance floor. The red and orange booths around the snack bar were vacant. There weren’t even any girls crying in the corner over the boys that didn’t like them or pay attention to them or ask them out or whatever. None of the usual fun or drama of a teenage hot spot.

Everyone was outside.

My friend Dina kept begging me to go out there with her. I was convinced she only needed me with her just long enough to find Jay, the boy she had a crush on. Then I would be standing out there by myself like a loser. I was right.

Find Jay? Check.
Ditched by Dina? Check.
Standing there like a loser? Oh yeah, totally. Big ol’ check.

And to make matters worse, the only kids standing right there by the back door, within the radius of light whose edge I would not exceed, well, who else? Some popular girls from my grade. Girls who never spoke to me before. Girls who looked like they could kick my @ss.

But then the most unexpected thing happened.

“You wanna drink?” Sarah offered me a swig from the bottle of vodka she had most likely smuggled from her parents’ liquor cabinet. Sarah, who had never spoken to me before. Sarah, who could probably kick my @ss.

“No thanks.” I had hoped that was audible. I thought it was audible. I wasn’t really sure though.

“Wanna cigarette?” Woah. Vanessa had offered me a smoke. Vanessa could definitely kick my @ss. No question.

“No thanks. I don’t smoke.” I was pretty sure, with that seemingly innocuous declaration, that I had eternally cemented my loser status. Don’t drink, don’t smoke – what do you do? (to quote another classic 80’s tune).

“That’s cool,” Sarah said. “I’m trying to quit.” Geez, this chick was in 8th grade and she had already been smoking long enough to want to quit.

“Really? When did you start smoking?”

And so I was standing outside the back door of the roller rink, chatting casually with Sarah and Vanessa. They probably wouldn’t even speak to me at school on Monday. It would probably go right back to the well-rehearsed, school-girl dirty looks I was used to seeing from these two cooler-than-thou chicks. But for that moment, I was hanging with the cool kids. It was almost like I was a cool kid. Cool.

My brother showed up a few minutes later with a bloody lip from the latest parking-lot skirmish. “Mom’s here. We gotta go.”

Poor Mom. The things she didn't know... although she was probably better off.

Links to Music

2007-04-07T14:08:00.000-05:00

Well I added some links from imeem.com to the music in the last post. You may have to be a member to listen - I'm not really sure. But it's free to sign up and it's very easy to find music in there and make playlists for yourself. It's a fun place to poke around.

The Musical Se7en Tag

2007-04-04T10:02:00.000-05:00

Well I must say, now I feel like I'm an official member of blogland. I’ve just received my first tag ever from my friend Houseband :)

I haven’t really gotten into the whole meme thing… I feel like my whole life revolves around schedules, and I just can’t bring myself to participate in the Monday this or the Thursday that. But a meme about music? Now you’re talking about something near and dear to my heart.

I grew up on my parents’ extensive collection of vinyl, which covered just about everything in Motown and classic rock from the 60’s and 70’s. But my musical tastes are quite diverse, as I’ve always been very musically open-minded. I will listen to anything, from alternative rock to classical, old standards to techno, R&B, jazz, new age… you name it. I even went through a major reggae spell after our recent trip to Jamaica.

The rules of The Musical Se7en Tag are to cite seven songs or CD’s that you’ve listened to recently, write something about them, and then tag seven others to do the same. I think I'm going to leave the tagging part open-ended... please feel free to participate!

I was going to tell you about a CD I made recently for myself, with some of my favorite songs of all time. But you’ve probably heard them all before. Well, maybe not. Maybe I’ll save them for another post.

For the meme, I’m going to share some songs that are new to me. I love love love to hear new music. My favorite songs are like old friends, always there for me, always capable of bringing out some joy, a memory, a smile, or maybe just some head nodding to the beat. But new music, well, those are my new friends, and new friends are fun to meet and get acquainted with!

I’m addicted to my satellite radio. I still haven’t gone through all the stations yet, but I will eventually, I’m sure, during my hour and 15 minutes of driving each way to the office and back. This little radio is the only thing keeping me sane right now with all this commuting.

And here are seven songs that made my ears perk up this past week:

From Channel 20 – Octane (Pure Hard Rock)
Sweet Sacrifice by Evanescence

Sweet Sacrifice

Amy Lee’s voice is startlingly, hauntingly beautiful. I just had to stop and listen.

From Channel 21 – Alt Nation (Alternative Rock)
Dig by Incubus

Dig

Incubus is one of my favorite bands ever. Their lyrics are usually more intelligent than the average band, and they approach even well-explored topics like love from a fresh perspective. The words to this song really speak to me. And I enjoyed the multiple meanings of the word Dig: "we all have something that digs at us; at least we dig each other" and "dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me."

I Think I’m in Love by Beck

I Think I'm In Love

This song has such a groovy feel. And I just love the vulnerability of the main line: “I think I’m in love, but it makes me kind of nervous to say so.”

Flathead by Fratellis

Flathead

This one is very up-tempo and completely wakes me in the morning! Well, as much as I can be awake before my first cup of tea or coffee that is. I didn’t like it at first, but it definitely becomes infectious!

From Channel 28 – Faction (Punk, Hip-Hop, Hard Rock Mix)
The Brooklyn Way by The Lordz

The Brooklyn Way

This song has such a cool vibe – “Spread love ‘cause it’s the Brooklyn Way.” It definitely got my head nodding...

From Channel 33 – Area 33 (Trance & Progressive House)
Reflect by Maor Levi

Reflect

I love Area 33… most of the songs have little or no vocals. I feel like they’re my movie soundtrack, the background music to my long, long drive up the highway. I could probably name 5 more tracks that have captured my interest recently from this station.

But this particular song is particularly hypnotic – ideal for getting lost in my thoughts, escorting me calmly through the traffic jams, or as the perfect accompaniment to those on-the-way-home daydreams.

From Channel 34 – Boombox (Breakbeats, Electronic Rock & Mash-Ups)
Work It Out by Jurassic 5 featuring Dave Matthews

Work It Out
I’m a big Dave Matthews fan, so I very interested to hear his collaboration with Jurassic 5! This song is very chill, and I appreciate songs that have a calm, groovy feeling while I’m dealing with the chaos of the commute.

So there they are – that’s my seven. I’ll hope you’ll give one or two a listen. Maybe you’ll even make a new friend.

Memories of Bowling Night

2007-04-02T15:30:00.000-05:00

My parents were both into bowling. But my father was much more serious about it, so serious that he wanted to be in an all-male bowling league. Why? Because men are better bowlers, he said.

So this was not a fun little pastime that they enjoyed together. My father joined his serious Wednesday night all-male league, and then, not to be outdone, my mother joined her all-female Wednesday night league at a different bowling alley.

And so Bowling Night was born.

My big brother Duane and I enjoyed Bowling Night. Sometimes Duane would go with my father and I would go with my mother, but that turned out to be way too boring, because it could take 3 hours or more for them to play all of the games. So most of the time my brother and I would stay together, going with my mother one week and my father the next.

While we were there, we were the helpers. If Mom or Dad needed a soda, we would go get it for them so they didn’t miss their turns. At the end of the night, I used to fetch my father’s bowling ball from the lane, shine it up, and put it in his bag for him while he tallied up the scores and changed his shoes. I remember one year, when his team couldn’t think of a name, they ended up calling themselves The Tams, named after me.

All the bowlers in both leagues used to love us. We were well-behaved kids. This guy Al in my father’s league was my buddy. He used to talk to me all the time and tell me stories and jokes. And there was this little trick he would play on me: when I was about to sit down, he would pull my chair back and I would fall on the floor. Everyone got a chuckle out of it, even me.

One night I decided to offer Al a chair while he was watching the other bowlers and waiting for his turn. I pulled over one of the nice big padded winged-back chairs.

“Sit here, Al!”

Somehow, when that large, balding, grey-haired man hit the floor with a tremendous thud, and his drink splashed up and all the ice cubes went all over the loudly-patterned carpet, somehow it just didn’t seem to be the cute little joke I thought it would be. Al seemed to come down a lot harder than me, the scrawny little 7 year old that I was. I hid in the ladies room where no one could get me. It took Al quite a while to coax me out of there from the doorway.

Duane and I usually got hot dogs or burgers with fries for dinner, we would sit up on the swivel stools, just like eating at the diner or up at the counter at Woolworth’s. Some nights we even got ice cream sundaes, or banana splits. Those were my favorite things to get because they always came with real whipped cream and a cherry on top. Yum!

The other great thing about Bowling Night was that it was also Allowance Night. Every week, as long as we kept our rooms cleaned, we would get $5 to spend however we wanted. We could play video games, buy candy, play air hockey… with five dollars we were nearly rich. Of course, our rooms had to pass Inspection before we went out. If we didn’t pass Inspection, we didn’t get the five bucks.

And if all that wasn’t cool enough, Bowling Night was on a school night. So we were up late on school nights, running around and playing games. It was our night out, too.

One night while at Dad’s bowling alley, we discovered that right next door was a slot car raceway. To my brother, this was absolutely the most awesome thing ever. You could rent a car and a controller for a half hour and race your car around the track.

It was just like the AFX race sets Duane used to get for Christmas, only bigger. And way cooler. The corners were banked just right so your car didn’t go flying off the track. This was very different from AFX, which came with these yellow flexible plastic guardrails that went around the corners to keep your car from careening off the plastic roadway. But of course they didn’t work as intended, and our cats would attack the cars and start swatting them around the living room with their paws while Duane chased them, yelling that they’d better not wreck his best car.

Yes, my brother was in heaven down in that slot car raceway. Pre-pubescent boy heaven.

I was too intimidated by all the older guys around there to actually race a car myself, but I liked watching Duane race. Occasionally, if his car did jump the track, I was there to put it right back on so he didn’t waste one precious minute of his racing time. After all, he was spending his entire five bucks on this.

So what did I spend my five bucks on? Up at the counter at the raceway, they sold great big prismatic stickers for $2.00 each plus tax. I thought they were the coolest things I’d ever seen, much cooler than any stickers that the other kids put on their brown-paper-bag-covered books. Yes, I blew my money on stickers. I remember buying these cat stickers in every available color, and I specifically recall this green square prismatic sticker which simply bore the words “Macho Man.” Ah yes, it was the 70’s. And my book covers were the coolest at school.

Around here, many of the bowling alleys have closed down. The one where my mother used to bowl is now a supermarket, and the one where my father used to bowl has become a huge arcade. I don’t even think that either of my parents bowls anymore. There are still bowling alleys around, of course, but there seems to be less of them. Is it less popular now, or are there just more recreational choices?

Funny thing is, that slot car raceway is still there. That place has die-hard fans.

“We all have our 'good old days' tucked away inside our hearts, and we return to them in daydreams like cats to favorite armchairs.” - Brian Carter

Rambling in Barcelona

2007-03-28T13:07:00.000-05:00

Sean and I enjoyed a trip-of-a-lifetime Mediterranean cruise for our honeymoon. I've already blogged about some of the fun we had in Venice here. Today I've been thinking about Barcelona…

********
Because it was the final port of our two week trip, we feared we might be too exhausted to explore another city, but Barcelona turned out to be a surprising treat.

After checking in at the Hotel Barcelona we decided to head first to La Sagrada Familia, the Roman Catholic basilica worked on by Antonio Guadi. Although this work of art is still in development, it was magnificent to see.

Then we sauntered down Las Ramblas, Barcelona’s famous pedestrian walkway lined with restaurants, shops, street vendors and performers. I love people-watching, and Las Ramblas was a fabulous place for this diversion.

We had lunch in a Spanish fast food restaurant. What I really wanted was some real deal, bona fide Spanish fare.

“I want to eat in a place where I have no idea what the menu says.”

Well, we were in the middle of a tourist trap, so although we did find some Spanish food, the prices were high. And the menu included big photos of the food next to the names. No matter… I was most interested in people watching from the windows upstairs while we ate and sipped sangria.

We found a table on the second floor that overlooked the river of people and colorful markets on the street below.

Then we decided to explore the Barri Gotic (Gothic Quarter), the older section of the city.

After weaving our way through narrow passages and graffiti covered alleyways, we came upon an archway over the street which was illuminated perfectly by the moody light.

It was then, reaching for my camera, that I realized my bag was not on my shoulder. I’d left it in the restaurant. Besides my precious camera, the bag contained all of my identification, the very same identification that I would need to board the plane in the morning and return to New York.

We ran. We ran up the winding alleys and passageways and through crowds of weekend shoppers. We were gasping for breath but we didn’t stop.

Since Las Ramblas is a haven for pickpockets, I didn’t hold much hope for finding my little brown backpack. The thought of being stuck in Barcelona made my chest tighten up and my head feel dizzy – I hadn’t seen my daughter in two weeks! But I kept running. So did Sean.

We could see the restaurant up ahead. Sean was bee-lining for it; I was scanning the crowd on the street as we neared our lunchtime eatery. If anyone was holding my bag…

We dashed up the stairs to the second floor of the restaurant. There next to the windows was a woman, an employee of the restaurant, holding up my bag for me and smiling.

“Gracias! Thank you so much! Muchas gracias!”

********

For dinner, we had reserved a spot at Tablao Flamenco Cordobés for a dinner buffet and flamenco show.

The dinner was an enormous buffet of Mediterranean specialities, and I was intent on sampling each one. The quality far surpassed what one usually expects from a buffet-style dinner. Everything was delicious! And the attentive wait staff ensured that the wine and champagne glasses never emptied.

After dinner we were lead into an adjoining room full of ladderback chairs snugly surrounding a small stage.

The tiny theater was engulfed in the din of many languages until we heard that first sensual strum of the guitar.

From that moment on, we were mesmerized.

Each dancer had their solo time on stage as the others sang and clapped.

They stamped; they frowned; they made intense eye contact with the crowd.

Their gestures were bold and passionate, their steps intricate and concise.

We were close enough to the stage to see the sweat beading up on their brows as they exuberantly performed their numbers.

The energy was intoxicating.

Each dance intensified with colorful spins and stomps and strums from the guitar until building up the final swing of the arm, stamp of the foot, and shouts from the crowd of “Ole!”

What an experience! We would love to return someday.

Make That Money...

2007-03-27T11:24:00.000-05:00

A cocktail tray makes an excellent Frisbee. If one is adept in the handling of a Frisbee, one can fire a cocktail tray at someone’s head with deadly precision and accuracy.

********
I had to work my way through college. I had three jobs.

The first was ad designer for the school newspaper. I put in some very long hours over there, but the atmosphere was enjoyable and the staff was totally cool. It was actually one of the highest paying “campus jobs” available. That wasn’t saying much though.

The second was babysitting. In one of my art classes there was a young mother. She used to talk about her two-year-old son all the time. Then one day she mentioned that she couldn’t wait to see him.

“Where is he?”

“He stays with my parents while I go to school.”

“Do they live nearby?”

“About three hours away.”

“So how often do you see your baby???”

“Every other weekend.”

Turns out the problem was her 8:30am classes. She couldn’t get anyone to watch him during that time. Oh, and the other problem was she had hardly any money. So I offered to watch him in the mornings. She paid me $1 per hour. It was worth it.

My third job was cocktail waitressing at one of the local hotspots. Now that was a fun job! I got to meet a lot of people, I made great tips, and I didn’t spend money going out and drinking like everyone else I knew. My friends would come in and hang out with me sometimes, and if it wasn’t too busy I would be dancing or chatting with my usual customers.

We wore cute little outfits too: white tuxedo shirts with red bow ties and cummerbunds, and little tuxedo shorts. I could often be seen running down our street in this outfit, trying to catch the bus to work. My roommate joked that I was known on our block as The Running Girl.

At the end of the night, the club owner would give $200 to the staff so everyone could go out to the diner and get breakfast. We were like family.

And after that I’d sleep for an hour or two, and then take the 7am bus to go babysitting for little Najee.

Somehow I was able to squeeze my classes in there too.

Well one night when I showed up for work at the bar, there was a meeting in progress. We had a new owner, Alex, a man who had been one of my frequent customers and always kind of gave me the creeps.

At the meeting, Alex let us know that he wanted to keep the current staff intact. Well that was a relief. He also handed out, to the cocktail waitresses only, a new piece of uniform. Instead of wearing the tuxedo shirt, he wanted us to wear these sleeveless, backless tuxedo shirts with our red bowties and cummerbunds.

I looked at this thing in disbelief. There was very little material.

“I’d like you to wear these for our grand reopening this Friday night."

“Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.

“Oh, you’re going to look very nice in this. You’ll make a lot of tips.”

“I can’t walk through a crowded bar wearing this. All that skin showing is an invitation to the drunks to touch me.”

“You’ll be fine. That’s what bouncers are for.”

“Can’t I just wear my regular shirt?”

“Just try it. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to wear it again.”

So I tried it. Begrudgingly.

It used to be a pretty classy place, but I could see that it was going to go downhill pretty quickly under his reign. Alex had advertised a wet t-shirt contest. The place was a mob scene.

Just as I had expected, as I worked my way through the crowd taking drink orders, I often felt a hand across my back. And guys put their hands on my back while they were talking to me. I was constantly being touched, and it was freaking me out.

Then, while taking orders up near the stage, amongst the patrons who were shouting “Skin to win!” to the contest participants, a hand grabbed hold of my cheek. No, not the one on my face.

I didn’t even see who it was. I just seized the hand and lead it out of the crowd, through the tables, over to the other end of the bar near the stairs. I gave the hand to Colin, our 6’7” bouncer.

“I found this where it doesn’t belong. Please throw this idiot out.”

Then I marched into the back room, absolutely fuming, and starting cashing out my tip jar. I was going home.

Alex came rushing in moments later to try to smooth things over. I think my enraged expression, no doubt reminiscent of the Exorcist, told him everything he needed to know. He kept a safe distance.

Or so he thought.

“Okay, I know, you don’t have to wear the shirt anymore…”

“I told you I didn’t want to wear this thing!”

“But you look so nice!”

A cocktail tray makes an excellent Frisbee. If one is adept in the handling of a Frisbee, one can fire a cocktail tray at someone’s head with deadly precision and accuracy.

Unfortunately, some people have outstanding reflexes. Alex ducked out of the way in time, and the tray crashed into the rack of pots behind him.

“I’m going home,” I said. He didn’t argue.

I was back at work the following night, wearing the old tuxedo shirt. So were all the other girls.

Needless to say, I’ve already started a college fund for Mandy.

"Please, I’m begging you.”

2007-03-26T10:21:00.000-05:00

When he saw the phone bill, he grabbed his cell phone and smashed it on the floor.

We have 3 cell phones on our plan, one for Sean, one for me, and one for Mandy, our teenaged daughter. We have a certain amount of minutes to share, and a certain amount of money that we feel is enough to throw towards cell phone usage. And that’s it.

When we received last month’s bill it was abnormally high, partly because we had exceeded our minutes, and partly because I had been making calls to Mandy while Sean and I were vacationing in Jamaica. So Sean gave Mandy a warning that she needs to limit her usage before nine o’clock during the week. Nights and weekends are free, and we only really need it for emergencies anyway. “When you’re at home, just use the house phone,” he told her.

It was the first time we had ever gone over.

So when the phone bill arrived this month, and it was $330 more than it should have been (bringing us up to a whopping $417), my dear husband became a raging bull. And his cell phone suffered the brutal consequences.

Sean wanted to withhold Mandy’s birthday presents next month to repay the overage. I said I’d rather have her work off the excess phone charges. Not giving her any presents just makes a sad birthday and doesn’t necessarily teach her anything. Doing chores around the house might give her a better understanding of just how long it takes to earn the kind of money that she wasted chatting on the phone with her boyfriend. $330 worth of vacuuming, mopping, dusting, and scrubbing the bathrooms is a lot of work. In another week or two there will be yard work to do as well. It will probably take her until the summer to repay the money, even at the very generous rate of $10 per hour. Sean agreed.

********

The next day Sean went to Best Buy to plead his case. He showed the guy behind the counter his mangled mess of a phone and explained that he needed a new one.

“Did you… drop it?”

“No.”

“What happened?”

“When I saw the phone bill, I grabbed my cell phone and smashed it on the floor.”

“Well who used up all the minutes?”

“My teenaged daughter.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Listen, you have to help me out here, man. From January until now, I’ll be spending about a thousand dollars on the cell phone bill. I just can’t justify another fifty bucks to replace my phone. Please, I’m begging you.”

“Alright, let me see what I can do.”

So he went into the back and came out with a new phone.

“Here you go. I’m just going to tell them that it wasn’t working properly and needed to be replaced. I feel for ya man. Good luck.”

Once again, honesty is the best policy.

"You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance."

– Franklin P. Jones

13 Going On 20?

2007-03-23T10:53:00.000-05:00

I was the best babysitter in the neighborhood.

I started babysitting for the Summers when I was 11 years old, caring for their 6 year old boy and 2 year old girl. Nancy and Greg Summers liked to go out and party, so they called me almost every weekend.

They paid me $2 per hour, which I later found out was highway robbery but at the time I was thrilled! A girl cannot survive on hand-me-downs alone. One night of babysitting could buy me a new shirt from Caldors.

I still remember the first top I bought with my earnings; it was a white sweatshirt with the collar cut off, a la Flashdance. Two weeks later I had saved up for some new dark Jordache jeans, tighter than tight like a second skin. This was definitely a step up - I was in style!

And so this little arrangement went on for years and years. Word eventually spread that I was a nice responsible kid (and cheap, apparently - who knew?) and I ended up with several families racing to be the first to book me for a Friday or Saturday night.

“Sorry, I’m babysitting for the Summers on Friday night and the Slotnicks on Saturday night.”

“Then put me down for next weekend, okay?”

********

One night when I’m 13 years old, the Summers are going to a party with Joey, Nancy’s 21 year old brother. He’s a dead ringer for John Stamos, and I had actually heard all about him from the other local babysitters. They all think he’s gorgeous.

Nancy tells me they will probably be out pretty late, maybe 3am.

“That’s no problem,” I tell her, calculating how much money I’ll be making.

“It’s okay if you fall asleep on the couch. We don’t expect you to stay up the whole time.”

After games are played, movies are watched, teeth are brushed and kids are sent to bed, I settle in under a blanket on the couch to watch some TV and doze off.

At about 2:30 am I hear a knock at the door. I figure the Summers have forgotten their key, so I get up to let them in. I see Joey standing there through the glass, and assume he has gotten back first. I unlock the door and shuffle back to the couch, half asleep, to wait for Nancy and Greg.

Joey comes in and sits on the chair. He tries to engage me in conversation as I stare blankly at the Mary Tyler Moore Show, lying on the couch under the blanket, still heavy-eyed and sluggish.

“So this is what’s on in the middle of the night,” he says.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“It is sooo cold in here.” He’s right, it’s sub-zero in their house tonight. I’ve been shivering the whole time.

“Yeah, it’s freezing. Do you know how to work the space heater?”

“No,” he says, moving over to the end of the couch, down by my feet. “Maybe we can snuggle to keep warm.”

Whoa. Now I am awake.

“Nancy would kill me if she knew I was here.”

Okay, now I’m REALLY awake. I can smell alcohol on his breath, and that makes me even more nervous.

“Why are you here then?” I ask him.

“I came back to see you, Tammie.”

I am scared to death, but I am trying to remain calm.

“You’re too old for me,” I tell him, turning my attention to the television.

“Why, how old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“You are not!”

“Yes I am.” I feign interest in Mary Tyler Moore. I’ve never even seen this show before. But it doesn’t matter, since I can’t hear a word they’re saying. My heart is beating so hard that the blood is pounding in my ears.

“You don’t look thirteen,” he says.

“Well I am.”

“You don’t act thirteen.”

I sit up as I turn to look him at him straight in the eye. “I’m a thirteen year old girl. I’m in 7th grade. And I think you should go back to sitting in that chair over there while we wait for Nancy and Greg to get home.”

“That’s okay,” he says, getting up from the couch. “I’ll leave you alone.”

He lets himself out the front door. I relock it and turn on all the lights. Nancy and Greg are surprised to find me awake when they get home at 4am. I never tell them what happened.

********

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. – Eleanor Roosevelt

A Walk by the River

2007-03-22T16:36:00.000-05:00

Mandy and I got outside for a bit today for a walk by the river...

A few close-ups of the ice...

Little Boy Blue

2007-03-21T10:31:00.000-05:00

When I was young I was a little frightened of my uncle, who was an alcoholic. Sometimes he stayed with us for months at a time, and sometimes even when he wasn’t staying with us, we would get that knock on the door in the middle of the night, which meant he was drunk and had nowhere to go.

So when I was awakened by knocking and crying, I just knew it was him, and I was paralyzed in my bed in our little apartment on 6th Street. I wanted wake my mom and dad, but to get to their room I would have to cross the living room where the front door was rattling from incessant pounding. I was too afraid.

I laid in my bed listening to that knocking and wailing for what seemed like the longest time. Finally, I gathered up the courage to get out of bed and go wake them up.

As I ran toward the living room on bare tiptoes, mom and dad were just coming out of their bedroom. I stood frozen in the entryway, wide-eyed at what I might see when they opened the door to our apartment.

It turned out to be our neighbor from across the hall. She was cradling her tiny baby in her arms and crying.

“He’s not breathing.”

My dad took the bundle from her and laid him on the couch, and he began to perform mouth-to-mouth on the baby while my mother called the ambulance. And the distraught neighbor stood sobbing in her powder-blue nightgown, her hair in a low ponytail, mascara running down her cheeks.

I don’t know how long it took for the paramedics to get there, but I can still see them entering our apartment in their sanitary white coats, black medical bags in hand. I stood watching from the doorway as they worked on the fragile baby for a while, and then they took him away.

It was a few days later that I overheard my mother on the phone, saying “the poor little thing didn’t make it.” And I remember blaming myself… What if I had gotten out of bed sooner? Could the baby have been saved?

********

After the birth of my daughter, my mother and I were talking about the importance of CPR and knowing what to do in case of emergency. I hesitantly brought up the baby from across the hall, wondering if she would recall the incident. “Oh, remember that? The poor little thing – he was blue when she brought him over. Your father tried to save him, but the little guy was long gone.”

So after 16 years of blaming myself I finally felt a bit of relief.

But to the little baby boy from across the hall, I wanted you to know that I remember you, and I wish there was something I could have done to save you.

“If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.”

– Mercedes Lackey

Fessin’ Up to My First-Grade Crush

2007-03-19T14:34:00.000-05:00

When I was in first grade, I had the biggest crush on Mike H. Actually, I think it started in kindergarten. It may have even been love at first sight. How could it not be? He had the biggest blue eyes and curly blond hair. He was adorable! Yes, it probably started in kindergarten.

But it wasn’t until first grade that I made my big move.

I grew up in a very un-country-like suburb of New York. We did not own chickens or cows. If we ate corn on the cob, it was because we bought some from the A&P, not because we had it growing out in our fields. My parents were Mom and Dad, not Ma and Pa like on Little House on the Prairie, which was my favorite show as a child. (I always wished I was as pretty as Mary Ingalls. And I thought it totally sucked when she went blind, but she was still pretty.)

But even though we weren’t “country folk,” every kid in my area learned how to square dance at school. It was an entire unit in gym class, usually held over the winter when we couldn’t go outside. Slim Sterling was the square dance caller, and his arrival at school marked the beginning of six weeks of learning to do-si-do, promenade, and allemande left. Oh, and six weeks of holding the sweaty palms of the boys in class.

“My car’s name is Rollscanardly,” Mr. Sterling would tell us every year. “’cause she rolls down one hill and ‘canardly’ make it up the next!” Oh yeah, he had a bunch of corny jokes that he would throw in while he was calling, and they were the same ones over and over. The kids giggled at him when they were young, but groaned when they were older.

He would purposely mix things up during the dance for the older kids to confuse us and try to catch us out of step.

Bow to your partner. Now bow to your corner. Now swing your corner. Swing your partner. Do-si-do your corner. Do-si-do your... corner again. Allemande left!

Secretly, I always looked forward to the square dance unit. Oh I would moan and complain all the other reluctant kids when ol’ Slim showed up, but I enjoyed it. It was fun!

In the early grades we didn’t learn all of the complicated steps. We just did a lot of “Clap Clap Bow” and other simple moves, but we did dance with a partner. And here’s the important part, how we would find our partner:
1) Slim Sterling would ask all the boys to form a big circle, holding hands and stretching the circle out as big as it would go.
2) The girls would form a big circle outside the boys’ circle.
3) Everyone would drop hands.
4) The boys would be asked to turn and face their partner in the outside circle.

This is how it went in kindergarten.

So in first grade, I already knew the drill. I remembered it from the year before. And when Slim asked the girls to form a circle outside the boys’ circle, I made a mad dash to align myself strategically behind Mike H. When he turned around, oh! Look at that! I was the lucky girl that got to be his partner.

The other first grade girls were jealous. “Lucky!” they sneered at me with narrowed eyes. I was not the only one infatuated with that angelic face.

I tried not to smile too wide. I tried not to make it obvious that I had known exactly what I was doing. My cheeks may have gotten a little flushed though, as we stared into each other’s eyes, making sure our moves were coordinated: Clap, clap, bow. Clap, clap, bow. Stamp, stamp, turn yourself around.

********

At my 15 year high school reunion, Daniel F. confessed that he had a crush on me in the 5th grade.

“Aw, I think I knew that, Danny,” I said. “You always had a certain shy smile for me. That’s very cool of you to tell me, though - you made my night!”

“I think everyone should ‘fess up tonight,” Daniel said. “I mean, after all this time, who really cares? Maybe everyone would be happy to know someone had a crush on them.”

“That’s a great idea! You know who I have to ‘fess up to? Mike H.”

So I found Mike H. in the crowd, and I told him about the square dancing with Slim Sterling. He was laughing, smiling really wide, and maybe even blushing a little. “That is so cool.”

“Okay, now it’s your turn. Go find somebody and ‘fess up.”

********

I think everyone would benefit from hearing a kind word every now and again. Not just "I used to have a crush on you," although that one is certainly delightful to hear. Even "I always looked up to you when I was a kid" or "you have such a nice smile" or "you always make me laugh - thank you" could brighten someone's day.

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much. – Blaise Pascal

Single Mom on Match.com, Part II

2007-03-15T11:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday’s post was a brief account of my becoming a single parent and my first attempt at Match.com. It ended with my future husband emailing me through the service and me ignoring him. A year later, I decided to try again and I renewed my subscription.

My tag line read: Adventure Girl seeks Adventure Boy. Hee hee!

I was still only checking my email account once a week and having a little trouble keeping up, but Sean’s email and profile stood out to me.

His tag line read: Clark Kent Looking for a Phone Booth.

I replied to his email, and he responded right away. So we chatted for a while through the email that first night…

**********
Hi Sean,

Thanks for your email! Your profile did pique my interest, and I'd like to learn more about you. What do you like to do for fun? What kind of dog do you have?
Hope to hear from you soon...

Tammie

**********
Hi Tammie.. Thanks for responding. Lets see.. for fun I travel a lot.. love the water ..love the sun...I have a timeshare in Aruba.. and love it there. I play golf - not too well, but I play. My dog’s name is Scruffy and he’s a 12 y/o cockapoo. So what are you up to tonight? Sean.

**********
Hi Sean,
That was a fast response! I'm only online every few days, so tonight I'm just checking the mail :) I like to travel too. I've never been to Aruba, although I've heard it's beautiful. Do you snorkel or scuba dive there? I just got into snorkeling this year, and I'm planning on getting certified for scuba. What are you up to tonight?

Tammie

**********
I was thinking of making some popcorn and watching a movie...would love company... how fast can you get here? Yes I LOVE to snorkel. What are your passions?

**********
Hmm... popcorn and a movie... very tempting!! I enjoy anything outdoors - hiking, the beach, biking - you name it. In April I took my daughter to snorkel with the manatees in the Crystal River, Florida. It was fantastic! We were signed up for scuba class and completed all of the course work, but we both had major colds that week and couldn't go under. We snorkeled instead, and I can't wait to go again!

I would say I'm most passionate about travel and photography. I love to go anywhere new - spontaneous day trips, weekends away, and those week-long excursions that are a wonderful hiatus from the daily grind. I just got back from camping in Canada on Lake Erie, about 1/2 hour from Niagra Falls. The next trip may be to Maine. There always has to be a next trip in the works - something to look forward to. What do you like to do for fun?

**********
I'm a fairly physical person.. I like anything outdoors.. even in the winter depending on the company. Yes I bought the DVD "Final Destination 2".. and I make a great bowl of popcorn and I share well :) Do you read? Like movies? If you had to pick the only vacation you would get for the rest of your life where would it be and whom would you bring? Am I on that list? :) What would you do for a Klondike Bar? S.

**********

Even in the winter? Do you ski? I just tried skiing this past winter for the first time. Not bad for my first time out - I'm pretty athletic. I'm going to start earlier next season.

Only one vacation?? You're hurting me. I love it out west - the Rockies, the mesas, the arid climate. But I love the ocean, too. I've never been to an island, and I haven't been to Europe... I don't think I'm qualified yet to make a decision like that, but I promise I'll work on it :)

Who would I bring? So far my daughter has been an excellent travel buddy and an Adventure Girl of the highest order, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't consider an aspiring Adventure Boy.

I do like movies, and I do read when I'm in that mode. Sometimes I'll have three books going at once, other times I put them all away so I can work on some artwork. There aren't enough hours in the day.

What would I do for a Klondike Bar? Have I mentioned that I'm an Adventure Girl?

Something tells me we could stay up all night talking...

**********

Well my profile does say I'm looking for someone who could keep me up til 4 am talking.. so this may work. To be very to the point.. I do visualize a family in my future… a premade one is GREAT but would love to add to it.. What are your feelings on that? S

**********

Oooh… the serious questions (usually reserved for after midnight)... Actually, I'm a fantastic mom and enjoy every minute of it. I've always thought that if I ever married, I'd gladly have more children (and I'd have a built-in babysitter!). And if not, at least I have my sweet girl, who is absolutely precious to me.

Now you have to answer some questions! Do you read? Who would you pick for your one vacation? What would YOU do for a Klondike Bar? What kind of dog is a cockapoo???

**********
Yes I love to read.. but seems like I only get the time while on vacation. A cockapoo is 1/2 cocker and 1/2 poodle. I on the other hand am 1/2 Italian, 1/4 Irish and 1/4 English. Well I go to Jamaica in October with a bunch of friends.. but my dance card is empty for my trip to Aruba in January. The whole Island is very family friendly, that's why I love it. Take care Tammie...hope to hear from you soon, Sean.

**********

I'll write back tomorrow. Have a great night...Tammie

**********
(The next night…)

Hi Sean, Did I mention I don't go online very often? But you've got me back on the very next day! I really enjoyed our email chat last night :) How was your movie?

I'm 1/2 Irish & 1/2 Italian, my dog is a yellow lab.

Some other random little-known facts about me: I know how to pitch a tent and start a campfire, I've been in a major earthquake, I have a mean round house kick, and I make perfect pancakes. I graduated 4th in my class from high school, I like rollercoasters but not ferris wheels, love popcorn with a movie and sugar cookies with a glass of milk.

What else can you tell me about you? Hope to talk to you soon...

Tammie

**********

Do you know a good caterer? :)

If you’d like to talk a little before we elope.. you can call me (phone number removed to protect the innocent). I’m up til at least 12 every night.. I’m off to watch that movie I never got to last night.. but please call.. I'd love to hear your voice :) S

**********
Soooo…. I called. We spoke for hours. We chatted for hours at a time every night for the next several nights. Then we decided we’d better meet to make sure there was Spark before we became too emotionally invested.

We met within a week of that first email at a restaurant near me for some appetizers and drinks. After chatting and laughing for hours over some soggy mozzarella sticks and yummy cocktails (he had a gin and tonic, I had a woo woo), we kissed in the parking lot. No, Spark was not a problem. We definitely had Spark. Sparks were flying like crazy.

On our 3rd date, we actually said the L word!

Within 3 months Sean had purchased a ring and asked Mandy’s permission to propose.

Three months after that, on the Natural Bridge in Aruba, Sean asked me to marry him. Mandy, who had kept this big secret for 3 whole months, was there to snap the pictures.

Mandy was also my maid of honor when Sean and I got married 10 months later.

Single Mom on Match.com, Part I

2007-03-14T11:13:00.000-05:00

I was a single mother from the day my daughter was born, during my senior year of college. I knew it would be that way, just the two of us.

Not that I didn’t try to work things out with my boyfriend, her biological father. Heck, I gave it more than the ol’ college try. I gave it way more time, patience and leeway than I would most relationships. I thought I owed her that.

I even thought I owed him that. Or maybe it was more selfish. I know I didn’t want him to ever be able to blame me for calling things off between us, or for being the cause of our little family unit being separated. If Mandy grew up not knowing her father, it wasn’t going to be my fault. I gave him every chance in the world to step up to the plate and be a responsible, contributing part of our relationship and her life.

It didn’t work out. He left us. And other than a few sporadic dialogues where he tried to use Mandy as some sort of pawn with which to try and get back at me, I never heard from him again.

I dated here and there. I even had two very serious relationships that I thought would lead to marriage. For one I moved across the country. For both I moved us in, and we functioned as a family unit. Both men loved my daughter with all their hearts. Neither relationship worked out.

My daughter was and still is everything to me. When she was four years old and entering pre-school, I decided that I didn’t want her to be adversely affected by a string of serious relationships that ultimately failed. I didn’t want her to feel as if one father figure after another was abandoning her.

So I swore off dating. Not that I was swearing off men, or loosing faith in finding someone out there that was The One for me. I hadn’t become jaded and bitter. I just decided to take a break and concentrate on being the best mother that I could be. I’m a secure and independent person. I’m not needy. I didn’t feel lost without a partner.

So it was just the two of us for the next 7 years.

But then Mandy entered the 5th grade. There were Girl Scout camping weekends and sleep-overs with friends. There were weekends when she was out and about, and I was home alone watching a movie.

I wasn’t meeting anyone in particular as I went out with friends or through work. What to do? Join a club? Take a class?

A friend at work suggested Match.com.

So I tried it. It seemed fun, kind of like shopping.

At the time, I was checking my email account about once a week on the weekends. During the week was just too busy with work, and then helping Mandy with homework, preparing dinner, bedtime stories.

By the end of the first week I had received some emails from potential suitors on Match.com. I didn’t have time to answer them all.

By the following week there were more. I started to make a list of those I had replied to and those to whom I still owed responses.

By the third week the list was longer. By the fourth week I gave up. If I can’t keep up with emails, I reasoned, I don’t have time to date. So I cancelled my Match.com subscription.

Somewhere in there, during that month, my future husband had emailed me. I had never replied.

And so I was single for another year.

I spent that year taking care of Mandy and focusing on my career. Oh, and getting out of that debt that is so easy to accumulate when you’re a single parent from a young age, with no financial help. That took a while.

When I felt like I was in a good place, debt paid off, career going well, Mandy entering into the 6th grade as a happy and confident young lady, I took stock of my current dating situation. Or more accurately, the lack thereof. I had nothing going on. No prospects. No nothin’.

So I decided to try Match.com again. Maybe this time I could keep up.

I found some interesting prospects. There were a few guys that seemed well-rounded, intelligent, and open to the fact that I was a mother. I even met one for coffee one afternoon on my lunch break. Sparks didn’t fly, but he was nice enough.

Meanwhile, after contacting me that first time, my husband-to-be had found someone to date and had left Match.com. He came back to it a year later, though, when things didn’t work out.

He noticed my profile and decided to try again...

Tomorrow... Part II.

Mini-Me

2007-03-13T11:57:00.000-05:00

Last night I picked Mandy up from hanging out with her boyfriend.

Yes, she’s fourteen years old (15 next month) and she has a boyfriend. At first I thought it was so cute! She came home one night from the local arcade, all smiley and blushy and giggly, and she told me that this boy Mike had asked her out.

“What did you say?!”

“I said yes!”

“Woooooow! Mandy has her first boyfriend!”

Little did I know that it would be a long-term relationship. They’ve been together for over a year now. Actually, a year three months and two days if you ask either one of them. Had I only known, I might have considered telling her that she isn’t allowed to date until she’s sixteen. Hindsight is 20/20.

I mean, my first relationship lasted a month and a half. For our one-month anniversary Jarod gave me a little silver chain with a little silver “T” on it. I had never gotten a gift from a boy before. I was smitten! I couldn’t wait to see what he gave me for our “two-month”.

He dumped me two weeks later. First love was so fleeting for me.

But I do like Mandy’s boyfriend. He’s a nice kid and they are best friends.

So anyway, we are in the car last night, and she is telling me about this girl Pam at school that she doesn’t like. Pam is best-buddies with Mike’s ex-girlfriend, and she’s always so “fake.” One of those high-school girls that pretends to be your friend just so she can gather up enough dirt on you to throw in your face at some later time, hopefully in front of all the popular kids.

You remember these girls, the ones with their noses high in the air. The ones who will kick you when you’re down, or at least point and laugh. The ones who always try to hang out with the in-crowd and act so cool, so it makes you wonder what they’re up to when they come over and start talking to you.

“I know the type,” I tell her.

“She says stuff like, ‘Soooooooo, how’s the BOY Fa-RIEND’ all exaggerated and everything,” Mandy tells me.

My reply and Mandy’s reaction to her own story were identical: “Oh Puh-leeze!”

We even said it the same way and at the same time. It was probably one of those instances where you’re supposed to smack the other person and shout “jinx” or something like that. I forget how it goes. It’s been a long time since I was in school.

Anyway, I’m chuckling at this aligned response. We’ve done this so many times before. Mandy is just shaking her head.

“Congratulations, Mom. You’ve raised a little YOU.”

My Friend Michael B

2007-03-05T11:47:00.000-05:00

In June my sister-in-law is participating in the Rock and Roll Marathon in San Diego to raise money for leukemia. My husband donated $100 from us, but he was a little hesitant at first to tell me the amount he gave. I don’t know why – he knows I’m a generous person. But what he didn’t know at the time is that I have a big soft spot in my heart for leukemia research…

********

My best friend in nursery school was Michael B. He was a bubbly blond-haired boy, and perhaps even my first crush. He always had a smile on his face and he always made me laugh. When he was in school, we were inseparable.

But there were times when he was out of school for weeks at a time.

Once when he came back from a long absence, he was wearing a hat. It was a cute little beach hat with white, blue and yellow stripes. Underneath it, he was bald from the chemo treatments he was undergoing for leukemia.

In nursery school, we were taught to put our coats on by ourselves. The technique was to place the coat on the floor in front of us, upside down. Then we would bend down and put our arms through the armholes, and make a big circle up over our heads, and our coats would miraculously be on.

Well when Michael tried to put his coat on at the end of the day, his hat came off. One of the boys took it and ran. A big chase was on. Everyone was in on it, pointing and laughing, teasing Michael about his bald head. But he was all smiles as he ran around after them, because that’s the kind of kid he was.

I ran around too, flailing my arms and jumping up and down, until one of the kids finally threw the hat to me. I ran over and put it right back on Michael’s head, and the game was over. We were best friends, you know.

Sometime the next year I was with my mother, visiting my grandmother’s grave at the church near the playground. Just a few steps away was a headstone with a baseball and a bat carved into it, which looked much different than all the other headstones decorated with flowers and crosses.

“Ooh, I like this one,” I said.

“Oh, that’s poor little Michael B from your nursery school,” my mother said.

I was speechless. Just wide-eyed and speechless.

I realized a few things that day, at the age of 6. I realized that anyone could die, even a little kid. I had always thought that dying was something that happens when you get too old. This new knowledge put a fear in me that kept me awake many, many nights throughout my childhood.

I also realized that my best friend was gone.

I remember you, Michael, and I think of you often. I will never forget your smile, or your sweet blue eyes, or your laugh, or your courage.

********

If anyone would like to donate to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, here is the site where my sister-in-law is collecting donations. I’m proud of her for the effort she is putting into training for this event and for collecting money for this worthy cause.

Young Love in 1942

2007-03-02T12:28:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned a few days ago in "Baked Ziti Night", I became the keeper of a box of letters exchanged between my grandparents during WWII. As a tremendous mass of primary source material, I’m hoping to make something of this time capsule of love and American History, and so I’ve begun the tedious process of typing each letter into my computer.

In doing so, I’m gaining new perspective on my grandparents, Ida and Joe, their relationship with each other, and the kind of people they were as young, vivacious teenagers “going steady.”

Except they weren’t both teenagers. It turns out that my grandfather was much older than my grandmother, and this caused some problems for them when the age difference came to light.

Apparently, my grandmother got into trouble with her parents one night when she stayed out too late. In response, my grandfather hand-delivered a letter of apology to Ida’s mother.

Here is Mrs. L’s response:

Dear Sir,

I received your kind letter and I am sorry to say I did give Ida Mae a couple of cracks with the switch I had. I am not well and it is a worry on me when she is out late at night as I would lose my life if anything happened to her. I knew you didn’t know her age and that is why I kept talking to her all the time about coming in early. Millie told me not to worry a lot because you were a nice fellow but you know how mothers are. Now you said you liked her a lot and I know you are a good sport or you wouldn’t of wrote me this letter and I am going to trust you. I’ll let her go out with you and speak to you at any time but Joe please have her back at the house at 9:30 and don’t be afraid of anyone saying anything to you. So don’t feel bad about it, as Ida Mae knows it is her fault. She should of told you her right age.

There is no more explaining to do. Everything is O.K.

Mrs. L

P.S. Joe next week is the black out so she has to be in at 9 o’clock.

My grandfather was still troubled by the whole situation, and so he did what many did back at that time in New York. He wrote a letter to Doris Blake.

Doris Blake was a syndicated columnist for the New York Daily News. In addition to her Beauty Hints column, she also wrote a daily column, first called Doris Blake’s Answers and later Doris Blake’s Love Answers. This was one of the first advice columns to employ the letter-and-response format that is so common today.

She was also the author of many informational pamphlets, including Getting and Keeping Boys Interested and How to Reduce: New Waistlines for Old, and several books geared toward women and women’s issues.

June 2, 1942

Dear Miss Blake,

I have been going with this girl, whom I learned to love very much, for a little over half a year. When we met she told me she was seventeen. I was twenty, but didn’t know whether she knew it or not. She now reveals her age as fourteen, but undoubtedly looks to be seventeen or over. The difference in our ages is about seven years. I would like to know whether I should stay with her, as I would, disregarding the age or should I try to forget her. Your answer may mean our happiness later on. Being that I love her as I do, I try not to show it so that she’ll lose interest in me.

Thank you.

Sincerely yours,
Joe

I don’t know whether this letter ever appeared in her column, but she did send a letter in response, post-marked two days later:

June 4, 1942

Dear Friend,

The girl is much too young too young to think seriously of any young man. You should seek the companionship of young women closer to your own age.

Sincerely,
Doris Blake

Luckily, my grandfather did not take her advice. Within a month he was shipped off to Camp Wheeler, Georgia, to prepare to fight in WWII. The rest of this big box I have contains their correspondence over the next several years while my grandfather served in Italy and North Africa.

When my grandfather returned in 1946, they married and bought a house . My grandmother was 17 at the time, and during the war years this was a common age to get married. My father was born in 1949, the first of 5 children.

And the rest is history.

The Warm Back Seat

2007-03-01T14:16:00.000-05:00

When I was young I lived within walking distance of a lake. In the winter, we couldn't wait until the red flag at the water’s edge was exchanged for a green one, which meant the ice was thick enough for skating.

Once the lake froze over, everyone in my small town would be there on the weekends. I would see my cousins and kids from school. My parents would see friends of theirs, too.

Every year for Christmas, Santa would leave a new pair of skates under the tree for me, so I would be ready when the green flag went up. When I was very young, I got the “double-blade” skates. It was a proud day when I moved up to single-blade skates.

I was always happy to have nice new white skates when it was time to head down to the lake. Of course, some of the other girls would have big, colorful, fluffy pom poms with bells on their skates. That made me jealous! But my skates were always new, and nice and sharp because my uncle sharpened them for me.

It was always a special treat if we could be there at night. The lake was lit up by the streetlights. And when you’re young, it just seems so cool to be out at night.

Sometimes there would be a big bonfire on the edge of the lake. We would go there to warm up our fingers and toes if we didn’t feel too intimidated by the teenagers that were hanging around over there.

One Saturday when I was about 6 years old, my mother, father, big brother and I were all down at the lake after dinner. We were skating for quite a while, when my parents announced that it was almost time to go.

“You can have one last skate.”

“Can’t we stay down here a little longer?” we begged.

“No, we’re tired and it’s getting cold.”

“How ‘bout if we stay down here and you guys go back?”

This, of course, was a different time. A time when you didn’t have to worry about leaving your kids down at the lake. Or maybe you did, but my parents were just too young and naïve to realize that. Either way…

“You’re going to get cold…” they warned.

“No we won’t!” we said together.

Well, yes we did. It was only about a half hour later, and we were freezing. It was time to take off the skates and walk home.

I always had trouble lacing up my skates, so my father would do it for me. He would make them really tight, and even double-knot them. Which was great.

Except now that we were trying to leave, I couldn’t get the knots out. He usually helped me take them off, too. And if I couldn’t get the skates off, I couldn’t walk home, because that would ruin my blades.

My brother, who was 8 at the time, was already done with his skates and had his boots on. I was still struggling with the knots. It was really frustrating because to pick at the knots, I had to have my gloves off. My fingers were red and numb.

“C’mon, hurry up!”

“I can’t do it!”

Then I started crying.

“Whatsa matter?”

“I gotta go pee!”

He tried to get the skates off for me too, but after skating for so long, the knots were tight and even frozen from the snow.

Someone saw me crying and came over to help. “Aren’t you Tammie? I’m a friend of your mom’s.”

She got my skates off, helped me put my boots on, and even offered to drive us home. Her husband was warming up the car.

This was a time when you could accept a ride from a stranger. Well, not a complete stranger, someone who knew your name and seemed to know your parents. Or maybe you couldn’t, but we were just too young and naïve to realize that. Either way…

My brother climbed into the car first, and I got in behind him. It was a really nice car! Much nicer than anything my parents owned. It was a big, brown luxury type of car.

And the seats! Oh, they were covered in this amazingly soft, plush, velvety brown material. And the car was soooo warm. When I climbed in that back seat, I just smiled.

And then I peed.

Right there on the nice plush seat. And it felt so good to pee, I couldn’t even stop. I just wet myself, and I was so relieved.

We were at our apartment in under two minutes, riding in that nice warm car.

“Here we are!” said the nice lady.

“Thank you!” we said as we got out of the car.

Yeah, I just smiled and said "thank you" and left. Never said a word about soiling their nice warm back seat. I’m sure they figured it out.

Samson Syndrome

2007-02-28T12:47:00.000-05:00

When Mandy was young, she slept with her long blonde hair up in a bun so it didn’t get in her face. (She still does this actually, and so do I). In the morning after breakfast, I would bring her over to the closet with the mirrored doors, and we would sit on the floor together while I brushed her hair. She would admire herself in the mirror for as long as the project might take, and we would chat.

Why didn’t my mother ever do this for me???

When I was growing up, my mother had long brown hair that reached all the way down her back. It was long and straight and shiny. So was mine. Except mine wasn’t so straight or shiny, because it was usually all knotted up.

(This photo is from the 3rd grade. I think my mother brushed my hair for this, because it looks like my barrettes are evenly placed.)

Probably once a week my mother would sit me down and start tearing into what she affectionately called The Rat’s Nest. This was a ball of knotted hair at the back of my head. It didn’t take long to develop. Heck, one night of tossing and turning in my bed and my hair was wrecked. I never knew about sleeping with my hair in a bun.

She used to threaten that if I didn’t take care of my hair, she would cut it all off.

The problem was, I knew nothing about the finer points of hair care. Sure, I brushed it. But I only brushed what I saw. I didn’t see the back. Or the “underneath”. I slid the brush down the visible surface of my hair. In the front. That was it.

I would cry when my mother started tearing into my hair with a comb at the end of the week.

Sometimes I would try to conceal The Rat’s Nest. When I realized it was there, I would carefully brush and smooth the surface hair over it. She always seemed to notice, though. Perhaps because there was a huge smoothed-over lump on the back of my head. Kind of like an elephant hiding under a throw rug.

Sometimes my mother would bring me to my grandmother’s house on the weekends, and my Aunt E would brush The Rat's Nest out for me. She brushed carefully. It never hurt when she did it.

When I was in 4th grade, my mother decided she’d seen enough of The Rat’s Nest. She took me to the salon, and my hair was cut short. It wasn’t too bad, though. I didn’t mind it. And my mother went on and on about how easy it was to take care of.

“Just wash it and go,” she would say.

My hair was getting pretty long again by the end of 5th grade. I was a cute kid. I had a few admirers. I thought maybe I might be one of the prettiest girls in my class. Boys snuck notes into my desk. A boy named Jamie wrote “I (heart) Tammie” on the fogged window of the school bus. Then David, not to be outdone, wrote David + Tammie = (heart). I blushed and looked out the window.

Then sixth grade came. In our school district, all three elementary schools converge into one middle school, and 6th grade is the first year you go there. This was a huge big deal. We would meet a whole bunch of kids we didn’t know. There were new boys to have crushes on, and new girls to give dirty looks to.

We were to be thrown into the social gauntlet.

Mom took me to get my hair cut again at the beginning of the school year. “I don’t want it cut short,” I said.

“You need something easy to take care of,” she said. “Besides, I’m the one paying for this, not you.”

That’s when I got The Boy Haircut. This is how I started the 6th grade.

No need to worry about admirers any longer. Or popularity. Or anyone wanting to be my friend.

Bad enough the acne was starting.

Bad enough I wore the same hand-me-downs year after year until my ankles were peeking out of my jeans and my socks were showing and everyone asked "Where's the flood?"

Bad enough everyone was wearing white Nike high-top sneakers with the laces undone so you could make the proper scuffing sound as you strutted down the middle school hallways with that perfect scowl that says “I’m cool and you wish you were”, and I was rockin’ those grayish-blue no-name sneakers with suede insets straight off the Caldor’s clearance rack.

But The Boy Haircut too?

“This is perfect!” my mother beamed. “Just wash it and go!”

Great. My life is over.

We attended a boring family gathering soon after I got The Boy Haircut, and one of the older relatives I didn’t know thought I was my older brother. “I haven’t seen Keith in so long!” she said. I glared at my mother.

I never got my hair cut that short ever again. In fact, I started paying for my own haircuts with my babysitting money by the 7th grade. By then, my hair was growing out and I feathered it back or curled it into those banana curls that framed your face like Farrah Fawcett.

But it didn’t matter. First impressions are everything, and I started my first year of middle school looking like short-haired, zit-faced, ankle-showing dorky mess.

It would be a very long time before I had to worry about a boy noticing me again.

Leaves and Twigs

2007-02-27T12:56:00.000-05:00

This miserable thorn in my side called "Work" is keeping me from blogging today.

So instead of a fun little post about the history of me posing as a hoochie mama in photos...

Or a rant about my mother making me get my hair cut short when I was young...

Or the tale of meeting my husband on match.com...

(those are all upcoming, by the way)

I'm just going to post a few recent photos I've taken around the yard:

I'm A Winner!

2007-02-26T14:58:00.000-05:00

I entered a contest last week over at Steve Novak’s My Brain Hates Me, But I Hate It More (see my link to the left... not sure how to put links in my posts yet - sorry!). This is one of my favorite blogs, and I encourage anyone who hasn’t already found their way over there to go check it out. And read back, too. This guy is hilarious.

The rules of the contest were simple: Write the name NOVAK on a piece of paper and take a picture of it. No Photoshop. He asked that we grab his attention and cater to his sense of humor.

If you read my recent post about cleaning out the old house, you know that I have a bunch of old toys at my disposal.

I had soooo many ideas for this one!

I considered lining up a bunch of Barbie dolls to moon him, each one holding a letter of his name above their little pink plastic butts. Let’s see… Wonder Woman, Farrah Fawcett, The Bionic Woman, and all three Charlie’s Angels. That actually left me with an extra, since there are only 5 letters in NOVAK. Perhaps one of the Angels could be spanking Wonder Woman. She’s hot.

He did say to cater to his sense of humor. And so many of his laughing-so-hard-I-can't-catch-my-breath posts have some sort of “questionable” content. Sooo... perhaps a threesome with 6 Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman and Wonder Woman, one of them bent over his name. Big Foot can watch. Hee hee!

I also found these freaky Spawn creature action figures in a box up in our old attic. I think they look funny driving in the pink Barbie convertible. Maybe I could make a little NOVAK license plate? Hmm…

Or maybe I could make a police lineup, and each toy could hold a different letter of his name. I could use a Barbie, a Spawn, GI Joe, maybe a Ninja Turtle and He-Man. “By the power of Grayskull!”

No wait! I can set up an entire dirty scene from Caligula, with Ninja Turtles and Charlie’s Angels and… Wow, this is all so wrong.

I also considered going in a completely different direction. Since Steve has a twisted sense of humor, I considered making a little altar to NOVAK, like I’m obsessed with him in a deranged, stalker/slasher sort of way. There could be candles, pictures of Steve, and maybe a little voodoo doll with NOVAK written on a piece of paper and pinned to his belly with great big pins. I even found a freaky little doll that would work perfectly. Now we’re talking!

But then there was a recent post by Steve in which he expressed his fondness for the Muppets. Oh, there it was. I had to do it…

And guess what? I won! Yeah!

Here is the winning photo. It’s not family friendly, but then again neither is Steve’s blog.

Thanks Steve! This was fun!

A Night in Venice, Part 2

2007-02-23T12:02:00.000-05:00

If you missed yesterday’s post, it was Part 1 of my Venice story. In it, my husband flashes his package for a bunch of awe-stricken Venetians in the kitchen of the Hotel Cavelletto. You should check it out.

***

So it seems that my husband’s weak bladder has resulted in a stroke of good luck for us. As the last couple on line, instead of sharing our gondola with another couple, we have one all to ourselves.

We snuggle together under a plaid woolen blanket at the back of the craft, just beneath where Roberto, our gondolier, is perched. Sean uncorks the champagne and pours us each a glass. We toast to each other and drink heartily. This ride will only last 30 minutes. We need to drink up!

Besides, it is a little chilly, and the champagne will give us that nice warm feeling.

“Salute!” (sa-lootay) Roberto calls out. Cheers!

We offer some champagne to Roberto, but he confesses that he has already imbibed plenty of vino prior to arriving at work this evening. He removes a bottle of red from his coat and takes a hearty swig. This should be fun!

“You are honeymooners? Congratulazioni!” He tells us.

As the caravan of gondolas exits the station, Roberto is already causing a commotion.

“Antoniooooooooo!” he calls up to another gondolier in a very Tarzan-ian manner. “Antoniooooo! Te amooooooo!!!”

Yes, he is amusing himself by telling Antonio that he loves him. I can’t be sure, but Antonio seems to be replying to shut the hell up.

It is a beautiful night. As Roberto maneuvers through the narrow canals, he is teaching us some basic Italian.

“Say ‘te amo’ (I love you) to your bella,” he tells Sean.

“Tay yah-moah.”

“No! ‘TE AMO!’ Say it like you are Italiano!”

We both have to practice this a bit, but finally we earn a smile and a “Bravo!” from the young, drunken Roberto. He pats Sean on the back heartily.

Young Venetian woman are smiling from the windows above the canal.

“Buona sera” (good evening) he calls up to them. “Come ti chiami?” (what is your name?) The girls are giggling. Turns out Roberto is quite a flirt. He is writing down their phone numbers as he steers us around the corner and out of sight of the pretty girls.

Farther down, there are more cute girls standing on a bridge. Roberto is making plans to meet them for drinks after our ride. “A che ora?” (what time?) they call. This guy is good.

We are several glasses in. Is this the best champagne ever?

We are absolutely drunk by the time we enter the Great Canal. Roberto is pointing out places of interest. We are not entirely comprehending what he is saying. It’s all just too awesome.

These photos are a very good representation of what it all looked like through our fuzzy eyes.

We are all singing now, all three of us. Roberto has taught us a song that remains in our hearts to this day.

Ciao Venezia, Ciao Venezia, Ciao Venezia, Ciao Ciao Ciao!!
Ciao Venezia, Ciao Venezia, Ciao Venezia, Ciao!

Ciao can mean hello or goodbye, kind of like aloha. So I’m not sure if we are saying hello or goodbye to Venice. All I know is that this all seems like a dream.

So every few minutes, instead of pinching myself, I turn to Sean and shout “We’re in effin’ Venice Fother Mucker!” And then we are singing again.

We return to the gondola station, bid farewell to our Roberto, and sneak him a nice tip so that he doesn’t have to pool it with the other gondoliers.

“Grazie! Buon viaggio!” (Thank you! Have a nice trip!)

And now, onto our next mission. Our plan is so simple, yet we feel it is the absolute pinnacle of brilliance. Yes, we have downed a bottle of champagne. So naturally, here’s what we need to do: We need to find ourselves some more alcohol.

We find a small café in St. Mark’s Square. Funny, St. Mark's Square looked a little fuzzy too.

After perusing the menu for a while, we decide on red wine.

When they serve us the wine, they bring us a tasty little cracker assortment for free. We feel this is most certainly due to the fact that we are exuding coolness and an understated yet clearly evident importance. Perhaps we are some sort of royalty. We are sure that they do not do this for just anyone. We are probably experiencing illusions of grandeur at this point. No matter.

I am taking goofy pictures, as always. Sean says he’ll be right back.

“I have to find the Cucina.”

“Don’t you mean la toilette?"

“No, kitchen first. It’s more fun that way.”