'A' is for All About Me

Today is April 1st - April Fool's Day, and the beginning of my journey through the Blogging From A to Z April Challenge. The object is to post each day, except for Sunday, using the appropriate letter of the day as the beginning of your subject. In that spirit, here are 18 Random Things About Me, your host for this stop on the tour!

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Thank God, no although Nancy Sinatra was popular around the time I was born.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? March 18th. But that doesn't mean anything, I might cry an hour from now, who knows?

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? I love my handwriting, except when there is a paper to be written. God Bless Computers and why didn't we have them when we were in school!?!?

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Turkey or Roast Beef

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?  I have two prime-time drive commercial-driven consumers, both in target demographic ages, but I still can't get the Nielsen people to ask my opinions!

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? I'd like to think so!

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM? Only when I'm being sarcastic.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Nope, but my Happy Husband does, can't wait for that surgery to come around. 

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? There isn't enough money or tequila in the entire world to make me jump. I have an extreme fear of unconfined heights. 

10. FAVORITE CEREAL? Peanut Butter Bumpers. An Organic peanut butter cereal that puts Cap'n Crunch to shame.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? Nope!

12. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? It depends on my mood. Most times I will order chocolate chip, but I might go with Cherry Vanilla or Chocolate Raspberry if I'm feeling crazy.

13. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? Their eyes, followed closely by their hands. Those two things can tell you a lot about a person.

14. RED OR PINK? uh, neither.

15. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? I can be very lazy, especially if I am working on a new storyline.

16. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My daddy. He died more than 20 years ago and not a day goes by I don't wish I could pick up the phone and ask his opinion on things.

17. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE COMFORT FOOD? Macaroni and Cheese made from scratch, with real butter and real cheese. (I have great cholesterol thank God!)

18. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Blue jeans and Cowboy boots, what else is there to wear on a wintry spring morning?


There you go, a few pieces of useless trivia to start this month's project. Stop back by frequently, I don't know that I have 26 topics worthy of blogging about but I intend to find out!

"A Hard Candy Christmas"

I'm not by nature a country music fan. Most any style of music is fine as long as it has a melody and harmony. But I must admit I have always admired Dolly Parton. Even before I knew what she sang I appreciated a small woman with a big heart, and the tribute she always gives to the place she came from - the mountains of Tennessee. Today I appreciate it even more, as this morning a piece of my childhood, my elementary school, burned to the ground.

It was a grand old building that had fallen on hard times. Built long before I arrived in the late 1960's, it had been used as a training facility by the police for a while.  Closed and vacant for more than five years, it became a dumping ground for appliances and furniture and anything else no dump would allow. Several years ago some alumni went into the building to document the decay and damage inflicted by both time and men. Everyone agreed it would be the last time. It was too painful.

This was the front entrance. In my mind I can still see the line of yellow buses standing in the steaming afternoon sun, windows down, all waiting in anticipation of the children, loud and gleeful, pouring out the door and down the stairs. I still see the cars waiting for their riders, and the safety patrol with their orange straps directing the chaos. I watch the walkers heading in groups of three and four, vanishing into the pine wood between the school and the subdivisions where most of us lived.

Here is the front office, where the secretary checked us in and out of school, allowed us to call home when we forgot something, or let us do the daily announcements. I still see the desks and counters, see the curtains fluttering as the principal comes from her office or the infirmary calling parents for checkouts. Still remember when the most difficult decisions were which team would pick you for dodge ball.

 

 

Closing my eyes I can see my first grade teacher standing at that blackboard, trying with all her patience to make seventeen 5 and 6 year old children be quiet when the sun was shining and the playground was calling our names.  Where the punishment for excessive talking was to write reams and reams of pages about "I must learn not to talk in school" which I must admit to her credit I did finally learn. I can feel the excitement and joy of reading groups, of knowing that in books I found a place where I could fit in, no matter how alone I felt.

 

All good things come to an end, no matter how hard we try to help time stand still. But we close our eyes, and the pictures come back, the laughter on the playgrounds and the hum of fans buzzing in un-air conditioned rooms, where the feel of chalk dust on our fingers mixed with the smell of old hardwood floors polished to a gleam in a building that was already old when we were young, and we know the truth about memories. The heart remembers, especially when you still have those friends whose bonds of friendship were forged in a time and place that even today we remember with smiles and laughs. And as we smile, the embers of our building grow cold, and our heart beats hot for the grandeur that was once our elementary school.

 

 

 

Good bye Eastern Elementary. Once an Eagle, always an Eagle. We will always remember those we met here.

 



Wait..What..Not Again!

As June progressed, I finally got all the turnip greens out of my garden, and it seemed things were well on their way to a fabulous summer. I peeled and chopped and canned zucchini and summer squash while dreams of mountains of beans, rivers of sweet peas and bushels of tomatoes danced him my head. Once again, Mother Nature had other plans.

That's right - we have another drought on our hands. Just as my corn was tasseling and the bean pods were plumping, the rains went away. For more than three weeks, not a drop fell from the heavens. When the grass starts crunching under your feet, then you know it's dry out there.

So, I harvested my cucumbers (apparently they like it hot!), and squash and monitored the damages. Both my helpful hubby and my father-in-law pronounced my garden dead on more than one occasion, only to see me harvest baskets of potential pickles. My corn popped inside the husks but the beans popped out in full force, leading to a basket so full I had to have my son carry it to the house.

At last I relented and pronounced the harvest done. Some seeds were extra prolific (Squash of all kinds, cucumbers, pole beans) while others never ever popped through (carrots, peppers, peas). But for what did come up I reaped gold.

My final tally for the first Reece garden is: 20 quarts of beans, 15 pints of pickles and pickle relish, 5 quarts of summer squash and onions, 10 pints of lemon honey jelly, 8 pints of zucchini pickles, and 3 quarts of pickled butternut squash. All in all not a bad haul.

The tomatoes came in slow and never in any great quantities, so I just shared them with friends and co-workers. We got 5 full grown pumpkins, which were ready by the end of July. I am saving mine for Halloween. The biggest failure was no watermelons. I love watermelon in the summer. This year I had to resort to grocery store melon. Boo.

I gathered seeds from all the produce that I could and I intend to try again next year. No winter garden, I'm not ready to fight another battle against turnip greens. No, we are going to plow, rake, plow, rake, and hope for cleaner dirt next spring. I had a lot of fun, recalled a lot of good times with my father, and I wouldn't trade a callous or twinge in my carpal tunnel for anything else. Good times from the simplest thing - a new memory to join the many from childhood.

Thanks for listening to my summer saga. It might not sound like all that much fun, but trust me. It was a blast.

Spring Showers Bring...Road Trips

Once the great Turnip Green disaster of 2012 was averted, I thought for sure my garden was on its way. Seedlings were popping up, squash and cucumber vines began sending out their first runners, and my pumpkins appeared to have been set into pure fertilizer. Visions of fresh vegetables danced through my head at night, and on Sunday mornings I couldn't wait to be on the road to measure the week's progress. Then - another crisis.

From Mother's Day until Father's Day, I was out of town. Not for business, not for fun, but for family issues. First, my 92 year old mother lives with my brother and his family. My sister-in-law was getting a well deserved break and would be gone for two weeks. Since my brother has odd hours (he's a doctor), my sister and I decided to split the assignment between the two of us. So for ten day I 'baby sat' my mother. It was wonderful.

I had always been a Daddy's girl,. My mother and I get along, but I'm a strange child (it says so in my baby book). Only when my dad died early did Mother and I finally come to a mutual place from which to base our adult relationship. When she could no longer drive herself around, my brother moved her into his house in South Carolina. It was the best thing (did I mention she is 92?) and we all agreed it was time, but afterward I discovered it hurt.

Spending ten days sitting with my mom, talking, working crossword puzzles, watching every game show on television, fixing her meals - it was glorious. For really the first time in my adult life we related and bonded and discussed past history which cannot be undone. When Memorial Day weekend rolled around and it was time to go home, I was so sad I didn't even listen to the radio the entire three hour drive. I wanted to just savor the moment.

Well, the next day I returned to my little slice of vegetable heaven, only to discover nothing had been done in 10 days. Okay, in gardening terms, ten days is an entire season. The weeds were taking over. I lost my carrots, my lettuce, my peppers, everything that wasn't a squash, pumpkin, cucumber or beans had simply been overwhelmed. For five hours I pulled and grunted and cursed (again) my city-slicker hubby, but as the sun began to sink over the horizon there was a semblance of order in my plot.

Then, less than a week later, my aunt died. Back out of town I go, knowing that when I returned there would be more weeds to wrangle, plus they were cutting hay that week. I prayed no one would run over the pumpkins, which by this time had already started to bloom. Returning six days later, I raced up the expressway only to discover - more zucchini and summer squash than Carter has Little Pills (obscure 60's reference - look it up!).

When I say zucchini, I mean green blimps! These monsters were at least 7 pounds a piece and as long as my arm. Nothing close to the grocery store zucchini. My first thought was: did I plant the wrong seeds? But then I looked at summer squash and they were enormous yellow pillows! You think I am kidding? One summer squash made a casserole that fed three people for four days! My hubby asked if I bought the seeds from some mutant source. They were huge and they didn't stop coming for weeks. Even my usually eager town friends were saying no thanks, we've had enough.

Harvesting everything that was ready took two extra large storage tubs from Wal Mart. After some more weeding (those turnip greens were stubborn little twits), I left knowing that upcoming weekend I would again be out of town - this time for a family wedding in Ohio!

Well, the gardening fun didn't stop there. Next time, we will discuss who knows more: my city boy husband, or me?

What A Bummer...

This summer hasn't exactly been the greatest summer of my life. My ninety year old mother had to be moved quickly into my brother's house and we have been coming to grips with a life that will be ending sooner than later. Others in our family have been dealing with equally life changing issues and it has brought me to the following realization:

No matter where we are on the timeline, there is no rewind button.

As I watch my children growing, I am flooded with memories of myself at their ages (23 and 14). At 14 I was in high school, dealing with acne and boys and Algebra. At 23 I was working for a living, dealing with boys and acne and COBOL. No matter how old I get those memories are just as vivid now as they were then.

Which brings me to our recent loss, an employee of more than 12 years succumbed to rapidly advancing cancer. He was diagnosed on 2/15/11 and died 7/3/11. While I have known and seen many people go through various forms of cancer, this was the fastest downhill slide I have ever personally witnessed. And the real bummer... this was a wonderful man.

A true Christian, devoted to his church and his family. A good man on all accounts, but mortal, just like the rest of us. But the peace he and his wife exhibited during that last month was unlike most. With the security of knowing they would meet each other again for eternity both husband and wife met death head up, unlike most of us who run kicking, screaming and bargaining with God for more time.

If life had a rewind button here are a few days I would like to either relive as they were or have an option for a re-do:

1 - The day I spent extra time on the beach before driving home to Atlanta from Destin with first degree burns on my body. I then got stopped by the police 10 minutes from my home and almost got thrown in jail for being 'mouthy'. Of course my body temp was over 100 degrees! You be all nice and polite when your body is on fire.

2 - The night my dad died. My husband and I had gone out with friends and when the phone call came in the wee hours of the morning I didn't answer the first two times they called. It wouldn't have made any difference in terms of being there when he dies, but I wish we had gone to the hospital instead of going out. Wisdom though, only comes with age and experience.

3 - The birth of my son. I was too scared to enjoy the 'wonders of childbirth'. First children get the short end of the stick on this matter - their mothers aren't overprotective, just panicked they will do something wrong and their mother-in-law will get the chance to snark on them.

4 - My 48th birthday. My husband forgot my birthday.

5 - Our last family vacation. No explanation at this time required.

Unfortunately there isn't a rewind button, so all we can do is make the best of the days before is. Too much looking back isn't good for our futures.