how 'bout the weather

One last blog to hit my mark. And hopefully, Prof. Renfroe, this gets in under the wire! The weather this year has been so different from other years in Charlottte. I have been here almost eleven years and I love the weather here. I think my fellow Massachusetts classmates can relate! But this January started off dark and cold and gave way to a chilly February. March didn't warm up much at all and we've had so much rain. That's a good thing since the rain helped end our drought. But April has been unusually cool - I've been wearing my sweats every day and usually by now I have shorts out. Is it me? I haven't been outside much because I work doggone long hours. I turned on the weather channel tonight to see what the weekend will be like and I'm happy to report 80s are on the way! woo hoo! I love the heat. I love days with sunshine and blue sky and there haven't been many this year that I can recall. Well, not much else going on. Weather good. Blogging done. Hope I made enough comments throughout the semester but I have to go figure out where that count is stored. It's been fun. And Andrew, I too enjoy saying, "Gotta work on my portfolio!" See you all tomorrow night. Bye for now. My portfolio awaits!

Auntie Anne

A lady of grace and dignity, Auntie was also a bit of a hellraiser in department stores if she did not get her way. She had been a nurse in the first world war and a school teacher for forty years so you didn't mess with Auntie even if she stood only five feet tall. When my mom was 14, Auntie took her in, giving her private voice lessons and enrolled her in a girl's boarding school where my mom flourished. She sent my mom to college but in her second year, my mom met my dad and decided to leave school. Auntie was none too pleased with what my mom did and disowned her. Every possession that Auntie had collected in her travels abroad went to the catholic church. She sold all my mom's costumes that she'd worn on stage - beautiful gowns from operas that my mom performed in were auctioned off to the lowest bidder because Auntie was furious with my mom for marrying a non-catholic and livid for getting pregnant out of wedlock.

But after my dad died, Auntie came around. The first year after we lost my dad, Auntie sent a truck load of toys to us. Not what we needed! We had just moved from Miami to New England and it was cold that year! We needed ski jackets and leggings and boots and warm socks, but we did have a fun Christmas that year. My mom explained that we needed necessities, not frivolities. And so Auntie obliged. She would catch us enjoying something and before long, we would see cases of it at our door. For instance, once we visited her little apartment in Boston and one of my sisters loved the canned rice pudding she served us. None of the rest of us liked it, only that one sister who to this day still has undeveloped taste buds... Later that week a truck pulled up to our house and delivered 20 cases of canned rice pudding. Plain, vanilla rice pudding, 24 cans per case. Those cans went out across our town for every food drive that year and the next. There was only so much rice pudding one girl could eat. None of the rest of us could stomach the pale yellow stuff. We stacked the cans in the cellar (it had a dirt floor so it wasn't a basement). We had a flood that next spring and I remember going down the cellar stairs and there were cans of rice pudding floating all over the cellar with labels unglued and fading and slowly sinking in the water. I took cans with no labels after the flood to school dances, to football games, every event that required canned goods was graced with a slightly rusted, silver can of rice pudding.

Once Auntie was visiting us and we ran out of toilet paper and she commented how we must go through a lot of it with such a large family. Sure enough! A truck stopped at our house with a huge delivery of toilet paper. We had to store it in the attic and in all of our closets because there was a pallet of toilet paper that had to go somewhere and the cellar was off limits. Every time I see a pallet of toilet paper at WalMart stacked up on the upper shelves, I'm reminded of Auntie and her ability to amuse us in her desire to help us. Had to give her credit, though, she was trying to provide us with some necessities rather than frivolities.

But that bolt of green denim had to be the most amusing. We had come in from playing outside and Auntie mused aloud how many pairs of dungarees we must go through in a year. A few days after her visit, here comes a truck with an entire bolt of green denim! My mom stored that bolt of fabric in numerous places around the house. She was unwilling to throw it away, but couldn't decide what to make with it. We would not surrender to green jeans even if the fashions of the wild sixties went to bizarre colors! We would not be Captain Kangaroo's sidekick. That bolt of fabric from Auntie became a tent our mother made, which became a memory we hold close to our hearts; a fleeting remembrance of friends and laughter and a girl who became a woman who still asks us today nearly forty years later, "how many mothers make tents?"

I have Auntie to thank for some of the threads of my childhood. Auntie is to thank for the woman who became my mom. Living with a mother who was mentally unstable, my mom was able to escape the turbulence and desperation that was her home life into a world where Auntie protected and nurtured her. Through her twenties, Auntie did not speak to her. Through her thirties and beyond, Auntie was there with her amusing quirks and hilarious deliveries of necessities. She was a little dynamo of a woman who saw the world change from horse-drawn carriages on the streets of Boston to airplanes that could carry one across country in less than a day. She lived from the start of the twentieth century until the end. I wish I had known her better.

The big green tent

And there we were desolute for something to do on summer vacation. Long days of weeding the garden were not satisfying a teenager's soul for excitement. My sister and I planned the whole thing and took it to our mother for approval. We wanted to invite two girlfriends each for a backyard camp out. We had a tent the family used each summer. It was large enough for six to sleep comfortably. My parents always slept in a pup tent. When we reached our teens, the boys also got a separate tent. Anyway, we took the plan to our mother and she approved. We were ecstatic and called all our friends.

She pulled out the tent from the summer before and it had been chewed up by moths. So what to do now everyone has been invited. She had a bolt of green denim her aunt had sent to make us dungarees (that is what we called blue jeans back then! lol) but we wouldn't be caught dead in green jeans. My aunt's pecadillos will make up another blog post! So she finds the bolt of green denim and designs a tent - with screened windows and a zippered door. My mom sewed all our clothes so a tent was nothing, just straight lines. While she was busily making the tent, my sister and I took care of all the household chores. My sister's girlfriend Sandy (who seemed to live at our house) helped my mother by holding the growing tent. Mom's sewing machine was a big professional Bernina so it could handle the heavy fabric. Sandy would 'walk' the material from the front porch where my mom had the machine into the living room and back. The tent became a big green monster! When it was finished we needed ropes wrapped around tree branches at each end of the roof to hold it up. We staked the corners at the floor. It was a massive tent that all of us could stand up in and not have to bend over.

Before long, my brothers were involved and we pulled out the other tent and it was in great shape. So my brothers invited their friends. We had four boys and six girls in the back yard all under 14 not including my younger siblings. We cooked outside. My mom charged everyone a dollar a day for food but we went through that by breakfast. We played in the pool and chased each other. I still had to weed the garden every day but it wasn't so bad with all my friends helping. One of my girlfriends had a transistor radio (pre-iPod days lol) so we got to sing along to great songs while we worked. And we figured if we got up early and got the weeding done by 9am, we'd miss the heat of the day. Maybe that's when I became an early bird. I"m up at the crack of dawn every day.

I wrote a story about that week and submitted it to a couple of magazines. It never went anywhere, but Sandy told us years later that our home saved her. She laughs when we get together to reminisce and she'll ask every time, "How many mothers make tents?" I'm not sure, but mine did. And it was a BIG green tent!

Animal Vegetable Miracle

Started reading Barbara Kingsolver's book for another class. Lauren, I think you would find it particularly interesting. It turned me off during my first read through last Christmas, but I pulled it out again now it's time to read more closely and write a reflection on it for class. I realized how brave the family was to leave their home in Tucson and settle on a small farm in Virginia with the goal of eating only things they could get locally. It got me to thinking about my childhood. We had a square acre of a garden and I hated it. As a kid, my main duty during the summertime was to weed that garden. Every single day I had a set number of rows that I had to complete. When I finished my weekly chore, it began all over again. I hated weeding, bent over in the hot sun is hard work. But we also had an above-ground pool. So that was refreshing after hours of weeding the garden. We had lots of fun in that pool. I'll write another post about a camp-out I had involving the pool. Fun times. But back to food - that garden of ours fed our family of nine all winter long. My mother canned tomatoes, so many tomatoes! And the corn tasted like nothing else! We would pick it, husk it, cook it and in less than 15 minutes we'd eat it. Yum. I think today's generation misses out on some of that hard work and good eating. Our little plots of land aren't big enough to grow enough to feed the family for a winter. And so Kingsolver takes her family back to her roots in Virginia to help her kids understand what it means to eat locally. It was a neat experiment that involved the whole family. And it has prompted me to plant some veges this summer. My little seedlings are sprouting nicely and I hope to have some fresh green beans and cukes this summer. And I have to thank Ms. Kingsolver for that.

How much is public vs. private

I've been debating with myself about posting a work-related topic, but every time I re-read my draft, I edit it a little and then hit the save now button instead of the publish post button. Why? It's just too sensitive. I wrote a long post about what's been going on in my work life lately (lots of churn and change and uncertainty) and it's too nerve-wracking to publish. If someone at work finds it, it's possible it would have repurcussions for my career. Negative ones, I might add. And so I wrestle with my feelings and opinions in private because I cannot write about it 'in public' on my blog. What's unfolding at work has caused me sleepless nights and chewed up nails. I am happy and grateful I have a job, but what's been going on really bugs me and I want to scream through the written word, but instead I just save it. Edit. Save it again. And so what is happening to me in public at work has to remain private. Or my feelings about it need to stay private, saved in draft form to never see the light of publication. It's a shame because my opinions are strong ones on this topic and I cannot voice them. Unless I want to lose my job and then that would begin a fully new post that a future employer might not appreciate. I'll just keep my thoughts to myself but it leads me to wonder. Just how much can be stated without fear of repurcussion> and does that mean we really have lost our freedom of speech. Food for thought....

Night at the Moulin Rouge

Ah, the joy of a good movie. And one with music is just a delight! Baz Luhrmann is quite the director and this is a topsy turvy look at a can-can theatre. With Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor singing beautifully, I find myself immersed yet again. This is probably one movie I can watch again and again and never grow bored with it. Yes, I am a hopeless romantic and I love musicals. Whether it is Sound of Music, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, or any number of wonderful productions from that bygone era, I love the toe-tapping music and the dancing! Some of the dancers of old were so beautiful to watch. Not only beautiful but fun! Who can't smile to see Gene Kelly tap dancing in roller skates? Or the amazing pairing of Cyd Charise and Fred Astaire in Bandwagon. I saw Astaire interviewed one time and he said Charise was his favorite partner. I hope the tv show Dancing with the Stars is bringing back ballroom dancing. It is beautiful to see a couple flowing almost effortlessly across the dance floor with a connection only those two have. Just lovely. But dancing and singing together blending two bodies and two voices to make a story with not only words but music, ah. Such is beauty. Thank you, Baz. That was amazing!

Living on a dream

There is a great Tom Petty song of the same name as my title of today's blog post. Living on a dream is what is in my mind. I want a simpler life far from the busy life I lead today. There are too many phone calls and a to-do list that stretches on interminably. Every Monday it hits me! I'm not living my dream.

Over the weekend I slow down and let myself relax. That's when I let my mind gravitate toward my dream. My dream is to one day to own a small piece of land with a view of the ocean from my front porch and a view of the mountains out my back patio. The one place that I have seen where that would be a reality is on the west coast. Once when I was in San Francisco for business I decided to stay over for the weekend and took an all-day bus tour down the Pacific Coast Highway and I fell in love. I took a pen and paper and my camera and captured every thought and moment of the day. One of the recurring themes of that trip was one day that will be my home! Except for the fact that I am married to a staunch conservative who wouldn't be caught dead living in CA, I would be there today! He wants to move to Alaska and my retort is not over my dead body. And so we are at odds as to where to move without dead bodies left behind... I've started telling him that I might just go to LA for a couple of years to work on my MFA at Otis and he can go live in Alaska for those years. We laugh. But it just might work out that way.

And so in my spare time, I surf web sites that feature land in California. It's my way of relaxing and looking to the future. My dream is to retire there, build a house high on a hill with a sweeping view of the ocean and soaring mountains behind me. Yes, it's a dream and it lives secretly tucked away when I'm on the phone helping someone with his computer issues or developing a web site for a team member. But on the weekend, my dream comes alive. I've even got something called a dream board where I stick up pictures of what I think it should look like. I will have a huge picture window where I can look out to the sea, where I can write undisturbed for as long as I want without my blackberry jarring my stillness. I'll turn it off forever!

But for now it's back to the phones, back to the busy-ness that makes up my life. Back to supporting my teammates who need help with their Sharepoint sites. Back to the emails and the reports. Tuck the dream away for now and get back to work! I have to work; I can't be living on a dream. But it sure makes life more interesting :)

Taking a red pen to my essay

I crossed out whole paragraphs of my second essay. I slashed and rearranged and moved parts from here to there. The thing about editing is, I enjoy it! Taking it apart and reordering whole sections and cutting out all the things that distract from the focus is fun. The editing process is at times more fun than the first draft. Having everyone's input into what should be changed is very helpful and I am so grateful for that. I fear my critiques have been painfully limited. My mind has been disturbed and my focus has been warped. My usually bright and lively spirit has been dampened with a work-related issue. I will blog about that in another post. For now, my red pen is getting its work-out. Be gone, paragraph! Cut! Paste! Bwwwaaaa, oh the power of the pen!!

Oh the joy of school

I ask myself why I didn't finish college when I was 19. I could have gone on two years and gotten my BA but instead got married and traveled a lot and had kids and a divorce and remarried. It wasn't til I turned 50 that I seriously committed to going back to school. Now I'm slogging through a couple of classes every semester. I just got back from talking to my advisor and I still have seven semesters to go. But it's ok. I love learning. I learn something every day at work, at school, at home, everywhere I go my mind is open to picking up new things. I not only love to learn, but I love teaching others what I know. I come from a long line of teachers so maybe that's why I have this love of learning inside me. I used to be a trainer and there is nothing more exciting than helping someone learn something new. So I will be at Queens another couple of years slogging through my studies, balancing work and school, having no social life to speak of. But I'm determined not only to get my BA but my MFA too so you'll see me around campus for awhile yet. Those of you who are graduating, be happy!! You did it when you were young!

Passion for Trivia

Trivia is my thing, dare I say my passion. I collect tidbits of information that most people would find relatively boring or useless. But for some reason, my brain easily stores oddball things and I love it. For instance, graham crackers were invented by a presbyterian minister named (what else!) Sylvester Graham. He and another puritan, Harvey Kellog figured people wouldn't abuse themselves if they ate bland foods. ("Self abuse" is puritan code for masturbate.) Harvey created corn flakes, which is pretty bland indeed. And totally useless information to be sure. That reminds me, I had a pig once named Sylvester and I know for a fact that pigs are smarter than dogs. Months that begin with a Sunday will always have a Friday the 13th. So why don't we fear Sunday the 1st? The space in FedEx's logo between the 'e' and the 'x'create an arrow. You'll never be able to look at their logo again without seeing it! I love trivia but drive my family crazy with my odd collection of knowledge. I'll pipe up and say strange things in conversation and get even stranger looks. Oh well. One day all these little tidbits of information stored in my brain cells will come in handy. But in the meantime, I'll just keep collecting. Did you know eating pie was banned in England for many years? Yup, thanks to Oliver Cromwell who banned it as a pagan pleasure. Oh ok, I'll stop now....

Growing old and feeling it!

In my adult life, I have moved 22 times and have moved all my furniture and belongings each time using the old U-haul. I suppose my total set of belongings never exceeded the size of a truck and I've gotten very good at purging and packing through the years. For some reason, my mom can't seem to part with stuff. I counted 78 boxes after I had already unpacked several boxes! My body had to move most of the boxes and had to get my brother to come help move a few that I just couldn't pick up. My body is sore and I'm feeling my age. I'm still trying to recover from the weekend - I not only moved my mother, I then came home and rearranged my house from having her here for seven months and painted one room too! My garage is beautiful now and my hubby is happily able to work out again.

Moving Day!

It's here at last! My mom is moving into her own apartment so I am taking a couple of days off from work (what a way to spend spring break huh!) and helping her to unpack her hundreds of boxes and get her settled. My brother is coming over this morning to take a few things over. My car is packed with stuff. The movers arrive at 9 and after they leave here, they are going over to her storage unit to load up all her belongings and take them to the new place. What a day ahead!

Charlotte's future

Driving around town this weekend, I happened to notice the uptown skyline is changing! There's a whole lotta building going on.

When I got home, I googled what the skyline might look like when all these skyscrapers are done. Fascinating stuff here with lots of links into other sites to give us a sneak peek of what our city will look like soon. One of the coolest links is a site that provides a 3D view of the city - baseball stadium and all!
http://www.charlottencus.com/charlottes-skyline-a-glimpse-into-the-future/

And there's talk of a Trump Tower in Charlotte too! Now are we getting into the big time real estate market with "The Donald" coming to town or what! http://www.trumpcharlotte.com/

Lovely spring!

I love the weather when it's like this! My brother Freddie used to have a little ditty that made all of us laugh. Of course we were just little kids but it was always fun. I remember the poem every spring. Enjoy!!

Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonder where the boidies is
The boidies on the wing!
How absoid!
Da wings is on the boid!

Things going round and round in my head

I'm writing about my mother but haven't even gotten started yet. That's on tap for tonight. I'm going to outline it while I watch Idol. Ok so you got me! I'm in the minority in this class because I enjoy that show. :)

But about my essay. My mom is really funny. I told her today she should be a stand-up comic. But what's amazing about her is how much pain she's suffered and still has that hilarious spirit within. That is the essence of what I want to capture in my essay. I hope it will be something lighter and more enjoyable to read. But I'm struggling with how to describe her life which has been filled with emotional upheaval and yet find a way to keep her story "hers" - well, time to go catch up on everyone's blogging and write.

My son David - the rocket scientist

David is my oldest son and he is a rocket scientist. When he was 3 and my mom asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, his response was a paleontologist. I'm not even sure I can spell it correctly! So here's the short version of David's life. He went off to study aerospace engineering at NC State after high school and discovered partying was more fun than studying. He left the program and went to App State, yup the party school. LOL After kicking around Boone for awhile, he came back to Charlotte and worked at Best Buy selling computers and then fixing them. But he realized his life was heading nowhere and went to CPCC and corrected his grades from State. He crawled back to the dean of the aerospace eng. dept. at State and begged to get back in the program. The dean gave him a semester's probation to prove himself. And he did - he graduated summa cum laude! Then he went to U of Maryland and got his Masters degree in aerospace engineering. But when he really decided to get serious (hahah), he enrolled at Univ of Arizona in planetary science. His thesis is about the late heavy bombardment. He had a research paper published yesterday in the scientific journal Nature. He is brilliant! And I say that fully aware he's my son and I am biased, but hey! A mom is permitted to gloat. This is a write-up of his research paper in case any of you are interested in reading about the asteroid belt. http://uanews.org/node/24237

my angst

My goal since I came to Queens in 2006 has been to finish up my undergrad work and enroll in the MFA program for creative writing. This class is making me question whether I'm a good enough writer to even consider that path. All my life teachers and friends have told me I should write and I have filled notebooks and scratched ideas on post-it notes all throughout my house. But in this class I feel a glaring gap in my writing skills. Maybe I'm just getting exposure to writers I've never read before. I am awed by their talent and feel that their craft supercedes anything I could write. Slowly taking this journey for the past three years, taking two classes per semester, I am almost at the end of the first half of my goal and suddenly I feel a lot of angst in my spirit. Have I chosen the right path? I feel so unworthy, so frustrated. Perhaps creative writing is not for me. I wonder if every writer has to go through a period of angst when they feel they just aren't up to par. Maybe these feelings drive a writer to push though the frustration and find their voice. Maybe I'm just tired and need a break from writing every day for the purpose of a grade.

Andrew won't beat me

Not to be outdone my our friend Andrew the blogger, I am going to post something new today too.

I have spent the last several hours not lifting weights or running, but rewriting my paper. Now I have to go to the store and get some ink for my printer and produce ten copies. Ten copies or nine? Anyway my printer is printing lighter and lighter words and now the last page I pulled off is barely legible. Cancel! Ah, why now. I have spent so much time editing and reprinting pages to edit that I now have to go read the articles to discuss in class tonight. Good thing it's a light load at work this morning so I can get everything accomplished.

Anyway my paper is now much more focused - just the first decade and mostly focused on my family and my dad and brother especially. I think the workshop really helped to zero in on what to write about. My first draft was much too expansive. This one I'm calling "My Two Freds" and I hope it reads better.

Thank you all for your feedback - very helpful with my rewrite!!

Live, Love, Laugh

It's a little cliche and overused but I see a lot of plaques and framed posters with this saying. Mostly they pop up at Kirklands, which is one of those stores I frequent more than others. I am not a shopper by any stretch. Shopping and I have never gotten along. But I actually bought a framed piece of art with that saying and it hangs in my bathroom - I like art in the bathroom. There's something about hanging a pretty picture there that takes the clinical feeling out of the place. And there's something about that phrase that I like. It is so positive. It feels warm. It makes me smile. I think about how much life I've seen and think I'm only half way along and certainly haven't seen as much as I'd like. I think about the people I've loved throughout my life. There are many. Some I remember and some I don't. And the people in my life that I've loved are they type who make me laugh. We need humor in our lives as much as we need art in the bathroom.

Revising

I have assessed everyone's input and taken a fresh look at my story. I figured the best thing for me to do in my essay is to keep it to a shorter timeframe - maybe just the first decade and find the stories and memories that formed who I am now. It seems like a completely different story now and I'm liking it better. Although like others have commented, it's just really tough to write about oneself..

American travel

Carissa's post made me recall a former job when I used to travel three weeks out of the month for seven years. I was a trainer for a software company and the owners were really cheap. So after a full day of work on Monday, I would fly out that night. Usually, on a recycled ticket so rarely was I flying as myself. This was long before the days of 9/11 and tight security. With a ticket in someone else’s name, I was a little nervous that the plane would crash and no one would be able to identify me. What's worse is I'd invariably arrive in an unfamiliar city, have to rent a car in the dead of night and drive to a distant place beyond the arriving airport.

What I found was how much McDonald's has created a homogenous American culture where "everywhere is the same.” My mom tells me about traveling in the 40s pre-Interstate and how it was so special back then. Every town seemed to have its own personality. Now we can go from Miami to Massachusetts and rarely see a unique spot along the way. Everywhere we go we can find fast food restaurants and nondescript strip malls along the Interstates.

But I’ve also found that when you find yourself lost in the dark of a small town, just look for the golden arches and you’ll find someone who can guide you back where you need to be. Unless you are in downtown Mobile, Alabama at two in the morning; then even McDonald’s is shut up tight. Streets are dark and you have to park across the street from the hotel because the hotel’s under construction. And the guy in the lobby has no security guard to walk with you from your car back to your room with your luggage. You find yourself walking through a dark parking deck worried for your physical safety and wonder if your job is worth this and you make a conscious decision to find another job.

At least that’s what I did that night in 1993 and began a new career where I wouldn’t have to travel so much. I love to travel now but on my terms, under my own identity and when I’m rested. After all, nowadays traveling is a job in and of itself passing through security, delayed flights and the edge that everyone seems to feel about flying.

Quicker way to read everyone's blog posts

Hey I wanted to tell ya'll about a place you can go to read everyone's posts and keep up with what's newly posted. http://www.google.com/reader

It's neat - all the blogs you are following show up (you might need a google id to get on and see it) but one page comes up showing all the blogs you're following. Then you can scroll through and read everyone's posts that you haven't read.

Saves time, it's efficient and you can keep up with who you want to comment on. I haven't figured out how to get in and make comments from the Reader. But then it might just be a "reader" and not a place to make comments.

Thought I'd share that little tidbit :) Happy blogging

My Rant about Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs

I'm not sure what to say about this book and I have to do a presentation on it! For me, it seems like Klosterman is really young and goes on tangents about topics that really aren't of interest to me personally. It's hard to get excited about things that I don't like - like television shows. I have two shows I like to watch. That's it. I'm not a big TV fan. Anyway, he goes on and on about this MTV show (which I'd never heard of - sorry I'm aging myself with this post!!) and he knows all the characters from every season and what gets me the most about him? He uses these on-screen personalities to typecast his own friends and acquaintances he meets. As though they aren't written lines to say and things to do that create reality drama....for pete's sake is the viewing public so dense they think this stuff is "reality" - puhleeez!!! Reality is dull and boring. If you had a web cam on me all day, you'd die of boredom. I think that's the case for most people because our lives just aren't that dramatic. It is when the drama occurs that we get stressed out and wish to go back to being dull again. Am I wrong?

And I suppose it's just difficult reading him after a spending a semester with 19th century writers. I love Dickens and the Bronte sisters and Austin and all of those writers who really told a story well. I mean Klosterman isn't on par with any of my fave authors of that century nor the last. And I'm reading some good authors right now for my memoirs class that just blow me away - Russell Baker is a wonderful writer and so is James McBride and they are current century authors!

I have to finish this book over the weekend and come up with something for a presentation. Ah me!! Ok, so I shall get off my pity pot and try to find something of value. I think I'll read Lee Gutkind's book "The Art of Creative Nonfiction" and perhaps find some art in what Klosterman is doing. I just need to figure out what I'm going to say when I get in front of ya'll next week!! YIKES!!!

Laughing

Some of your posts are hilarious and make me laugh out loud. Very healthy in this day of dire news being doled out across the airwaves. I love to laugh. I hate how I look when I laugh but c'est la vie! I haven't laughed very much this week. My job is on the line. Literally I could be out of work by the end of this week. It wouldn't be the end of the world but it would be pretty stressful getting out there and finding something else. I've been with my company for eight years and have had some really good experiences and gotten sorta comfy in what I do. So this week has been tough. My manager of four years was layed off, then my good buddy who has been my source of technical knowledge for the last six years was also layed off, and then my husband comes home saying his job isn't safe either...aaaack! I just want to scream: WHAT IS GOING ON WITH OUR COUNTRY!! Is is the bad news feeding the bad news? Has the 24-hour cable news networks finally spun us into this downward spiral of negative information? Who knows? I'm just tired of the negativity! I think it's time to skip the news and just watch American Idol. Oh - it's on now! Bye

Slim Pickins'

My mom is pulling together a bunch of stories about dating after 70. She is 86 now and has a lot of funny moments to write about. Like the guy Walter who picked her up for her date wearing a U-Haul uniform. Now to understand the humor in that, you'd have to know my mother. She grew up during the depression. In the midst of it, she was snatched up by her aunt and brought to Boston to live the rest of her young life. She took private voice lessons, attended the New England Conservatory of Music, went to poetry readings, went to college, and essentially lived a life of refinement from 14 onward.

When she decided to write these short stories, she had a hard time coming up with the title. I told her to call them Slim Pickins' because there were few guys in her age group from which to choose. She's decided to accept that fact and simply be happy alone. I think she still wants to have a 'significant other' but she is pragmatic. She can't take care of another man. She's done enough of that, first my dad when he was dying and then her third husband Don who slowly died from emphysema. She has done her share of care taking and is ready for someone to take care of her.

But her stories are funny and I hope we can get them published for a large audience to enjoy them. After all, with our population aging, they could be quite the hit!

Random ramblings about leaving winter behind

I am ready for winter to go and not just because I hate all the dead leaves that pile up in front of my front door, crusty, brown and congregating in the corner. My front entrance is covered in them. I get out the blower and watch them dance upwards and fly out to the yard. Then my husband comes home and asks why are all the leaves in the yard. Well, because. They look ugly on the front porch. I need to freshen up the front, it's a Fung Shui thing maybe. I want my little water feature and my wind chimes to have top billing, not those old brown ugly leaves. Plus, they just look messy.

Winter isn't bad here in Charlotte, but it's bad enough. We don't have snow piled up in front of the house in drifts of glistening white. I guess if we did, the snow would hide the dead leaves. But I grew up in New England where seven feet of snow on either side of the driveway seemed to be the norm. Growing up, I had enough shoveling to last me a lifetime and more. Here is how it would work. Our driveway was on an incline so the base was lower than the top near the garage. We would get out the shovels and push the snow downhill to the bottom of the driveway into the street. Some snows were light, fluffy and we actually had fun shoveling. But in New England we had a lot of heavy snows - those "noreasters" carry a lot of moisture. A noreaster blows in from the north Atlantic Ocean mixing with the cold from Canada creating heavy, wet snow that blankets the landscape and makes shoveling very difficult. Invariably as we would clear the driveway, the town's plows would come through and create small mountains blocking the driveway's entrance. Pushing that snow away to make a gateway into the driveway could prove more than difficult for a child's strength. I would get mad and curse at the snow plow - although never out loud. That language was not abided in our household. Many times I wanted to give the snow plow driver the finger but in a small town that would have gotten out quickly. So I'd push and grunt to get the heavy blocks off the driveway and turn around - no! The snow would still be falling and it would be time to shovel it all over again.

Yes, I'm ready to leave winter behind. But what is about the second of February that makes Americans faithfully look for a rodent's shadow. Each year I wonder why is it that we believe if a quirky little marmot sees its shadow in February in a little town in Pennsylvania, we will have more or less winter ahead of us? How does something like that get into our national psyche? What does it say about us as a people? Are we duped into believing something as silly as a rodent can predict the future? When did rodents become cute in our country that we create an annual holiday featuring them as the main star? I did some reading and discovered groundhog day started as a totally humorous folklore. I think someone was pulling someone's leg and it grabbed on like an urban myth. It is exactly six weeks until the first day of spring. "Therefore, if the groundhog saw his shadow on Groundhog Day there would be six more weeks of winter. If he didn't, there would be 42 more days of winter. In other words, the Groundhog Day tradition may have begun as a bit of folk humor," according to Don Yoder who wrote a book in 2003 called [well, what else?] Groundhog Day.

All silliness aside, I like to hope winter is behind us. On my way to class last night I noticed the plum blossoms are itching to burst forth. If the temperatures dip below freezing this week, spring will be short-lived. I like spring the best in Charlotte. Longer days, warmer temps and I can actually walk around without a coat. Maybe that is a big reason why I have such a disdain for winter. I hate wearing a lot of clothes. I like my uniform of tank tops and shorts that I normally wear from spring through fall instead of all these layers.

So we are another day closer to the first day of spring. I like it. Even if we celebrate with a goofy animal from a funny-sounding name in a northern state. Spring is on its way. Hurrah!

They believed it

I spent many hours on the telephone with girlfriends when I was a teenager. I'd sit on the floor in my mother's room leaning against her bed. We didn't have much to talk about, and many times we'd just eat snacks and watch tv together while on the phone. I'm not a big conversaltionalist, never have been.

One time I remember talking to my girlfriend Mary Anne on the phone one day when we were out of school due to a snow day. She and her sister were raised by a single mom who worked at the GE factory in the next town. Their house was quiet. In my house were six kids and two parents, an assortment of family pets and always someone's friend over. I always thought my personality was so different from my siblings that I must have been adopted. I was a quiet, introspective child, didn't talk much. My siblings are loud and boisterous and talk a lot.

So I was sitting on the floor with the phone in my ear and our conversation was dull as usual. It was snowing outside and cold and I was bored. I wanted to liven things up. I made a loud noise opening a drawer of my mother's bedside night stand. I gasped out loud. Mary Anne asked me what was wrong. I inhaled loudly. I told her I found some papers that looked important with my name on them. She asked me what they said. I told her something about blood type and something about adoption and something about sealed records. She completely believed me. The next day at lunch time in the cafeteria she told our other girlfriend that I had just discovered yesterday that I had been adopted. My other girlfriend didn't believe her. I told her I saw the paperwork and it had my blood type on it. Something about that made her believe. For the rest of that school year, my two girlfriends believed my lie. I expanded on it at odd times, told them I understood now why I was the only blonde in the family.

My mother tells everyone she named me after Mary, the mother of Jesus, because she wanted a girl so badly. I created a fantasy world where my mother adopted me out of fear she'd never have a girl. Once she did, she got pregnant with my sister. Why did I create such a bizarre story and expand on it over time? Maybe because I was the odd one out in the house. My siblings excelled and took first place in science fair exhibits, piano recitals, ice skating. They all had talents and outlets for those talents. I could sing, but my mother had been on the stage and sang opera so I couldn't compete there. I could ice skate but we couldn't afford lessons when I was growing up. I could play piano but taught myself and still have trouble with the bass notes because I never took lessons. Again, we could not afford lessons when I was growing up. But lessons were affordable for my younger siblings. And they got honors and praise for their efforts. That made me disappear even more.

The fact is the only paper I found in the drawer that day was a receipt from a drugstore. I was lying, or perhaps creating for myself another world in which I was the star rather than the one who blended into the background. Psychologists would probably have something to say about my desire for attention. But I did not attempt to get attention at home. It was best to keep quiet, stay out of trouble. But at school my girlfriends looked up to me as their leader, their star. This story seemed to lift me a little higher in their regard but I'm not really sure why.

The day before school ended for the summer, I told them I had made it all up. They didn't believe me. They thought I was lying.

Insomnia

Last night I went to bed at a good time, overtired and ready for a good night's sleep. Yet here I am for the last two hours surfing the net, reading, writing, and playing word games and totally wide awake! Why is it that every now and again, something wakes me up in the middle of the night? Was it a busy day? Oh yes definitely. Too much information to process in a sixteen-hour period and my mind cannot settle down even though my body is screaming, "Get some sleep! You're gonna regret this at work tomorrow." My husband was snoring. Loudly! He was the first one to wake me up. Then my dog started crying outside the bedroom door, so I got up and put her out. And waited in the chilly night while she explored the back yard at 2am. Then I tried to go back to sleep. I hit the couch but it was no use. My mind is too active. I need sleep. I crave it. There is a full day of meetings scheduled tomorrow, today actually. But I'm awake. Why?

Perhaps it is the uncertainty we live in. Economics. Downsizing. Layoffs. I stopped watching the news when my company's stock price went down from the thirty-dollar range to single digits. Perhaps at the bottom of this insomnia lies a fear unspoken or unmasked. It sits there waiting for me to peel back the layers. Thinking about it and pondering. What is this fear? Why am I wrestling with these negative thoughts? Why do I fear for my job? Yes, I am qualified to do my job. But many others are too. Yes, I am ready for a change. But I like my boss. I like my work. I don't want too much change. Maybe fewer tasks, more time to write - I blog at work, too. But I can't share that one because it is inside our firewalls. So many people at work are worried. I worry with them. It is inevitable at my age (I am older than the president!) without a degree (which is why I am at Queens) and a lack of math-ability (call it math dyslexia, poor training in elementary school, math fear, whatever! I don't do numbers) and I'm working in a financial services company, it is more than inevitable, that I will get a pink slip one day. I'm working my tail off to add value wherever I can. I've learned a lot on my own. I've networked. I've taught others. Yet with every transition, every re-organization, I find myself wondering if it will be my turn.

Maybe that is why in the middle of the night, I awaken, toss and turn, fire up my laptop and check into Facebook, read what my friends are doing. Try to forget that my workday is drawing near. We could see a lot of changes with today's announcement. I told my team not to lose sleep over it. No heartache necessary, we're learning to deal with change on a regular basis. And I'm not usually the fearful one with reorganizational announcements. They come so frequently of late. I don't know why I'm even thinking these irrational thoughts. It's not normal for me. Maybe because we had to write about our fears last week. They are bubbling to the surface and in forefront of my mind. I'm thinking about things that make me fearful. I've been out of work before and don't want it to happen again. Not until I can make it on my terms.

I'm dragging myself off to bed now but afraid I won't be able to sleep.

Write about Fear

Writing about my fears is easy. Facing them takes guts. Fears are personal, intangible. Fear lives within. No one sees it. When I was asked to write about fear, I hesitated. I moved my pen across the paper. Should I share this personal journey? Should I open up? I tried to think about my childhood fears. Sitting in a dentist chair. Waking up suddenly from a nightmare. Or what about some of my adult fears? Finding out my husband was having an affair. Universal fears. Things that touch the human condition, shake the soul. Should I share? Ok. Pen on paper scratching an outline of a fear I experienced.

2003 - a year that was supposed to be my bellweather year. My oldest son graduating from college. And not only graduating, but with honors, summa cum laude! And his major was aerospace engineering. Tough courses. Math and science. I am astonished a guy with such a mind came out of me. He was also getting married a week later. I was busting with motherly pride. It was the last year of my forties and life was really good.

Until.... I was drifting off to sleep one night in that twilight time of not asleep, not awake. I was doing a self exam like every woman ought to do regularly. There was something that should not be there, just a pea-sized thing. Hard. I ignored it and went to sleep, but it was gnawing at me. I slept fitfully. I din't tell anyone for three weeks. But it was there. I would not steal my son's spotlight. It was his year! He had worked so hard for this. I kept silent. But like all things ugly I sweep away, push out of sight, toss in the garbage, this would not disappear. I felt it during graduation, through the wedding, at the reception. There was this thing that I knew I had to face.

Finally, the whirl of life slowed and I called the doctor. He got me in that day. Time for an ultrasound now. I saw it on the screen. It was bigger and nastier and darker than it felt. It looked like a gargoyle without a face. Just this black spot looking back at me with a vacant stare. My fear caught me in the throat. The technician glanced sideways at me. She knew I knew, but she would not speak. I saw their looks. She left the room to get the doctor. Decided to do a biopsy right then.

My husband was nervous but quiet. We lived silently with our fear for another week while the biopsy was shipped out to be examined microscopically. It was not necessary to go back to hear the results. I told my husband what I expected. He was introspective as we sat in the room waiting. My doctor arrived with a large manilla envelope and stoic face. She was guarded, "This is not the news I want to deliver to anyone. It seems to be news I am sharing more and more."

A woman hears she has breast cancer. Is that the greatest fear of life? I think there are worse fears. Losing a child is a mother's worst fear; losing a breast is bad but not as bad. I lived through the cancer, the surgeries, the chemo. I am free. I am a survivor. It was a year I would not want to relive. It was a scary, fearful time. But I embraced my fears and learned about cancer. I learned mine was only stage two. Survivable. Life goes on. Happily I might add. I'm back in school determined to get this degree, maybe more.

Fears come and go. What do we do with them? Face them. Embrace them. Accept them. Nothing is as bad as it seems. Change is inevitable. The experience did not kill me, but made me stronger. Sounds cliche. But aren't cliches formed out of universal experiences.

Changes, Changing, Changed

Every so often I get this urge to rearrange the furniture in my house and it makes my husband roll his eyes when I say it's time. I have lived in this house for about nine years and every room in my house has undergone radical changes, all rooms except the bedroom. We have not touched the arrangement of our bedroom for a number of reasons. It is partly due to the odd configuration of the windows. Where would this fit or that go? Mostly we haven't moved things around due to the weight of our furniture. Solid oak. King sized. Huge. Heavy. "Impossible!" my husband would say, "too much work." But for at least eight of the last nine years, I have been pleading for change.

Last weekend I pulled out some graph paper, ruler, and a measuring tape. Change was overdue. I measured and calculated. I had not been able to do a decent vacuuming behind the bed for much too long. That says something about me I know. Housekeeping is not my thing. I couldn't dust behind the furniture so I'd throw my duster back there and let it fall down. I had to bend and stretch and gyrate to find the duster to bring it back to the surface knowing full well I couldn't get all the dust up. I might throw out my back moving the furniture, but at least I could get at those dust angels.

He came in to my office to inquire what I was up to and when I showed him what I was graphing, he rolled his eyes. "You're gonna kill me yet," and grabbed his back in mock pain. I laughed at his joke, but he knew I meant business. He saw my resolve.

"Time for a change!" I smiled. My conservative husband does not like change. He is routined. You can set your clock by his actions. We are very different. While I might take a different route to work every day, he goes the same way. While I might go to bed and wake up at odd hours, he is structured and has set times. He is predictable. I'm not. He hates moving furniture. I don't. Usually. The bedroom furniture is huge and heavy. But I am resolved.

The rearranging went quite nicely; better actually than both of us expected. It feels good to walk in the bedroom. We now have a corner with nothing in it. No other room in our house feels this spacious. I like the zen of it, the minimalist feel. The expanse of space in there feels good. It feels like the title of an essay I read for my Monday night class this week - "The Solace of Open Spaces" by Gretl Ehrlich. There is solace in the void. She went west to get away from things. She discovered herself out on the open range. She found the spaces within herself a solace.

My room feels as though the space is waiting for something. More change. More - something. It is going to stay empty for awhile. I'm tired of more. Aren't all of us? We have so much. Let it be. A phrase from Erlich's story comes to mind, "our affluence is strangling us." One of the biggest real estate booms right now is in storage units. Americans have so much stuff we have to buy space just to hold it. Space really is the final frontier. We want to fill it up with our stuff. Change it. Rearrange it. Fill'er up.

Writing my piece About Me for class this week, looking back, reflecting on my history, life has been nothing but change. Loss, movement, rearranging. A lot is being said these days about change. Change is in the air. We are ready for change. Change is on its way. It's unusual to hear these phrases bandied about, because for most of my life I've often heard just the opposite. That people don't like change. Changes are scary they say. People like to keep things as they are. I work at a company that likes to change, mix things up, "reorg" they call it. People get nervous. I ask why be nervous? Change is coming, they'll say. I stop and wonder about the fear of change. Me? I don't remember life ever being void of change.

Change is healthy. Rearranging clears the cobwebs and the dust angels. It brings a fresh perspective. I woke up in my rearranged bedroom this morning, peering out in the darkness and still half asleep. Which way is the bathroom? My mind had been trained for eight years to see things a certain way. It feels good to change.

Why I Write

Last night in class, I loved reading out loud the piece I shared with the class from Terry Tempest Williams, Why I Write. It felt as though the writer captured the essence of why I write. It has taken years for me to believe what I have heard all my life, "you're such a good writer." I don't know why it's hard for me to believe it. Writing seems to come naturally to me.

Sometimes it feels like there is an invisible pipe connected from my brain, to my heart, to my fingers on the keyboard. (I rarely write with a pen anymore.) The words form, they flow, in a natural rythym the words course through this invisible pipe and onto the page. I do suffer writer's block at times. Usually when I feel stress about an assignment, I worry myself to complete distraction. I put it away, try not to think about it, procrastinate, do everything but write. It's weird. But when I let go, move into a stream of consciousness, thoughts begin flowing, meandering, and I am making meaning out of air, of nothing, creating, it's like magic. I don't play sports, but I think it's like when Michael Jordan would get into his game. No one could stop him. He was in the zone. That's how it feels when the words are flowing through my magical invisible pipe. Writing just feels good. It feels right. Maybe one day I will have the courage to call myself a writer.

Curious whether any of you feel the same way?

My history of blogging....

My brother who is more of a geek than I am LOL started blogging long ago. He kept after me to start my own blog, but I felt what I had to say might not be of interest to anyone. But now and again, if something interesting happened in my life, I'd put up a post, then delete it and then create another one. This went for a year or so when I decided to start blogging some of the writing I was doing at school. But life is hectic for this gal and I could not make the time to keep it going.

I am hoping now that I have to blog for this class that I will get into a good habit this semester and faithfully put my random and sometimes quirky ideas into a format that others may ingest.

I shall go forth and blog...

Not many kids have a mom like mine. I mean how many mothers do you know who have made a tent for their kids? It was the summer I turned twelve. Freddie had been gone two years. Mom thought it best we all learn to swim and so we had a pool in the backyard. The summer days were dull back then. No video games, TV was black and white and there were only three stations to choose from, and we had chores. We usually got the chores done early so we could spend the afternoon swimming. We lived outside of town and our pool was an above-ground pool about five-feet deep and we had a great diving board. The pool was behind a privacy fence, so we’d stand on the diving board and wave and yell at anyone passing by and disappear behind the fence.

That was the summer Patti and I wanted to have a sleep-over with our best friends. My best girlfriend was Margaret from church, but we nicknamed her Werby. All of us had nicknames but hers was the best and it stuck. She had a sister Nancy who was the same age as Patti. But since our friends lived in the next town, we had to plan what would we would do from one Sunday to the next Sunday. With a large, flat backyard, lots of trees and seven acres of woods, we had the perfect spot to entertain our girlfriends and have a camp out.

We made a complete itinerary of things to do each day. As we were compiling our list, Chip and Patrick came into our bedroom and like most brothers began pestering us about what we were doing. Finally, a ruccus ensued and the noise brought Mom upstairs to intervene. Chip left the room saying it wasn’t fair if the girls were going to have their friends over for a camp-out in the backyard, they should be allowed to have their friends over too. Chip’s best friend was Cary. His mom was Mom’s best friend June and they lived on a working dairy farm. Mom didn’t think Cary could be spared but she’d find out. As we shared our day-by-day itinerary, she realized this was something we had put real thought into and as we talked, she appreciated it might be fun.

“But what tent will you sleep in? Remember the hail storm we had camping last year? The bigger tent was ruined and all we have left is the pup tent.”

“Well, you could make one,” I knew Mom loved to sew. “Didn’t Auntie send you all that green denim?”

That denim was a huge bolt of dark green material and would be perfect for a tent, Mom said out loud but more to herself than us, “None of you kids will wear green denim jeans.” Well yes, it may have been the sixties, but green denim jeans were for Captain Kangaroo’s sidekick, not little girls in elementary school.
Her aunt was always sending us things in bulk and that green denim was the latest in a line of large deliveries that would intermittently appear at our doorstep. Once when we were visiting Auntie in Boston, Patti remarked that she liked the rice pudding Auntie served us. Wouldn’t you know about a week later, a delivery truck pulled up and out came cartons, no actually cases, of rice pudding! None of us really liked rice pudding. Even Patti didn’t really like it, she was being polite. Those cases of rice pudding were distributed at so many school events that I’m sure the town fathers thought we all lived on rice pudding. Once Auntie observed that we must use a lot of toilet paper in a family of nine. We always had kids at our house so Auntie probably thought there were more of us than we were.Which was sort of true because Patti’s friend Sandi was always at our house. But wouldn’t you know it, not much later a truck came rolling up the street with so much toilet paper that we had to store it all in the attic.

“Yes, that green denim would be perfect, but I’ve never made a tent!” Mom laughed.

“Bet you could!” all of us knew when Mom set her mind to doing something, it got done. Mom made all our clothes, so we figured a tent was easy enough.
Mom picked up a pencil from the desk and began to draw a tent in the form of a house.

“I would need to make a pattern. I have some netting and that would be good for the windows. I’ll need a strong zipper for the door. And what about the roof and the floor,” she was talking out loud while drawing and thinking about the fabric she had.

“That’s a lot of kids to feed for a whole week. We’ll have to charge admission - say about a dollar a day. And if I’m going to be sewing a tent, you kids will need to help out with the chores.”

That was fair and as the oldest (and I might add the bossiest), I set about to divide up the household chores amongst us all. Even the boys got excited anticipating something besides chores and swimming all day long.
“I will have to call all their moms to invite them and explain about the admission fee,” Mom was certain the other moms would appreciate a couple of days free of kids.

The next morning we were out of bed early and I had breakfast ready for the boys.They all headed outside to weed the garden and feed the animals while we took care of the inside chores. We had a garden of fresh vegetables all summer and Mom would can tomatoes for spaghetti sauce in the wintertime. Our farm was not a real farm. We actually called it the Funny Farm because we had an assortment of chickens and ducks, rabbits, geese, goats, and a pig we were fattening up for slaughter. We had names for all our animals. The pig became a family pet named Sylvester. We would stand outside the back door and yell, “Suey! Pig! Pig! Pig!” and Sylvester would come scurrying down to the back porch. His favorite place to sleep was stretched out on the side of the pool wall where it was cool and muddy from the oversplash. We all cried the day Sylvester went to the slaughterhouse. It took me a very long time to eat bacon after that. To this day I get sick whenever I eat pork.

So Mom called up all of our friends’ mothers. She made a pattern and layed it out on the kitchen floor. She cut out the various sections of the tent and began to sew. Werby and I talked on the phone every day and we could barely wait to go home after church the next Sunday. It was Tuesday so the tent had to be made within the week. Patti’s friend Sandi practically lived at our house. Sandi’s home life was not anything to be proud of and even today has told my mom that time spent at our house was her saving grace. She’s gone on to being really big in Mary Kay and is on her fifth pink Cadillac so she attributes her some of her success to her life at our home. When she heard Mom was making a tent, she decided she had to see that for herself! And of couse, she would pitch in and help out as Sandi was just like another one of us kids.

Now instead of a girls’ sleep-over, it was turning into a week’s camp-out that consisted of Patti and Sandi and Nancy and Werby plus my little sister Christine and another neighbor girl but I forgot her name. Oh, it was Cheryl and her home life wasn’t anything to write home about either.

The tent would need to hold seven of us girls and all our stuff so it had to be fairly large, but there was plenty of denim thanks to Auntie. As Mom pushed the denim through the needle of the large Bernina sewing machine, Sandi would hold the fabric at the other end so it wouldn’t put so much weight on the machine. The sewing machine was on the front porch and Sandi would stand in the living room and walk the material onto the porch and pick up the other end to keep it from falling on the floor. It wasn’t long before the big green tent began to take shape. It had a floor made of left-over grey denim. And it was so heavy that it took three people to carry it outside. She made a casing along the pitch of the roof and strung rope through the casing. At each corner where the sides met the roof were four rings. Ropes went through the rings tossed over tree branches and pulled like pulleys to lift the tent up. When the tent stood upright, all the kids cheered! It had a zipper opening for the window with netting so the mosquitoes would not get in at night. The tent had a large zippered front door. It was large enough to stand up inside and at twelve I was already at my full height of 5’2” and there was room to spare above my head. And Mom had made it from scratch!

Nancy and Werby had a brother Paul and he wanted to stay over too when he heard about the big green tent. And Mom convinced June to let her two boys come over. June said they could stay over two nights, so the boys pitched their pup tent for Chip and Patrick, Cary and his brother Craig who was my age, and Paul, also my age in their little pup tent. Mom spent most of the night sitting by her bedroom window making sure no hanky panky would happen during the nighttime with so many twelve-year olds in the back yard.

We had a blast that week! We may not have had a full week camping out. I seem to recall rain and sleeping indoors. But it was close to a week. All I know is we made good memories for lots of kids that week. We had fun; we laughed and sang Beatles songs, teased each other and splashed in the pool for hours. We ate up everything in sight as we were hungry! Being in the pool most of the day worked up our appetites. We teased Craig, whose twelve-year old voice was changing. We would call out from the girls’ tent to the boys’ tent in a deep gruffy voice, “Hey, Gregg!” Then we would roll over in fits of laughter. We went for moonlight swimming sessions trying to be extra quiet. We’d tip toe through the dewey grass and slither into the water, but we would scare one another in the pool and fall into fits of suppressed laughter.

Finally it was either the rain or the weariness of a patient mother that ended the greatest week in summertime history. Everyone had to eventually leave and go back to the usual summer boredom. But that week is stored up in our memory banks forever. Although we have lost touch with many of those good people, our childhood recollections are rich with a mother who knew how to sew and actually created from scratch a very big green tent. Sandi still talks about it today, “Who has a mother who makes their kids a tent!”

And Sandi knows that sewn up in the stitches of that tent was Mom's love for her children, a lot of laughter in our back yard, and a childhood rich with happy memories.