Category Archives: NaBloPoMo

Perhaps I should leave for extended periods more often

After a brutally long eleven hour drive home, we pulled up to our much missed home to find it adorned with Christmas lights.  Two mini Christmas trees and a wreath adorned the front porch and door, welcoming us.

Inside, the house was clean and free of the usual toys and clutter.  On the kitchen counter sat a crystal vase that held wonderfully fragrant calla lilies.  The oven light revealed a rotisserie chicken and sweet potatoes, warmed and ready to be eaten.  After dinner, Tate dished us up chocolate chunk brownies that he had baked himself.

The dirty laundry had been washed and placed in drawers and closets.  The towels and sheets were fresh.  Groceries for the upcoming week had already been purchased and were even put away in the pantry and refrigerator.

It’s just a wild guess, but I think Tate might have missed us while we were gone.

I am an adolescent

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{snicker} Kum & Go. Seriously. Could there be a more ridiculous name for a gas station? The answer to that question is, “I think not.”

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We were watching an episode of the Duggar’s show, 17 or 18 Kids and Counting on TLC. (I really love this show, but I forget how many they have, can you blame me?!)

During commercial break, the first ad was for the Nuva Ring.

{hee, hee!}

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While visiting my family this weekend, my brother and his wife stayed at a hotel. Snickering, my brother told me that there was a sign where you put your key card in that said, “Pull out slowly.”

{HA!}

He’s obviously not a blogger or he’d have taken a picture. I blame him for ruining this blog post.

Ruby

My dad, home from Vietnam for one day, met my mother in a bar.

“He was wearing a suit, that’s what I first noticed,” she explained as I asked question after question about their courtship.

“You fell hard and fast, huh Mom?” my brother asked as my Mom smiled and nodded her head in agreement.

“This was even before I bought the Corvette,” my dad adds.

Shocked, I asked, “Even before you bought her a ring!?”

My Mom and Dad met in April and married seven months later on November 28, 1969. As my brother and I quiz them, wanting to know every detail of how their love came to be, I notice that they look at each other when answering the questions and finish each other’s sentences.

My parents recalled their first date, forgetting most of the details except that at some point they went to Dairy Queen. Most of the questions we ask, their answers are fuzzy. They do remember that there wasn’t an official get-down-on-your-knee proposal.

My mom did recall one funny detail, “Your Aunt Jeanie heard that we were going to go pick out a ring and showed up at my parent’s house wanting to see the ring.” The whole idea of marriage apparently was a surprise to my grandmother.

“When I got home Mother said, ‘well, show me the ring.’ My dad was on a business trip, I think. He called and Mother handed me the phone and said, ‘here, you tell him.”

“Well, what did your parents think, Dad?” my brother and I pressed for the details.

“I don’t think they’d met her yet,” my dad explained.

“You know, don’t you,” I asserted, “that this was completely crazy, right?”

And it was crazy. Meeting in April, marrying just a few months later, both of them so young, not even really knowing one another’s families. But crazy became 40 years, 2 children, and a mostly great life together.

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad. Here’s to 40 years, and to many, many more.

When you care enough to send the very best

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I drove away from him with tears in my eyes.  Instead of spending Thanksgiving together as a family, Tate had to stay behind and work.  Hours were spent strategizing, trying to figure out a way for him to come with us, but with the weight of responsibility sitting firmly on his shoulders we knew that he had to stay behind.

It wasn’t the same eating and celebrating Thanksgiving without him.  We talked on the phone a few times during the day, but I missed his silliness, his love of Redi-Whip on pumpkin pie, arguing about the edibility of pecan pie, and him.

I woke up to his picture this morning, taken from high atop his deer stand, catching a few hours for himself before going back into work.   It made me miss him even more.

Balls!

Scrotum turkey

I just wanted to wish you balls all a very Happy balls Thanksgiving! I hope your turkey is moist balls, your family is balls well, and that your Thanksgiving centerpiece doesn’t remind you of anything balls.

Happy Turkey Balls Day!

It’s Thank Your First Commenter Day!

Let’s all take a moment and give thanks to our host, Neil, for reminding us to remember our first commenters as we prepare for the most thankful of all holidays, Thanksgiving.

Though I still find it incredibly thrilling to see that I have a new comment, nothing really compares to the very first comments you receive. In the early days it was so amazing that someone actually read something that you wrote (and it wasn’t your mom or your English professor.)

I’d first like to give thanks to Heather, Queen of Shake-Shake, before she was actually the Queen of Shake-Shake. She was just a friend of mine I met in a playgroup. She was the very first person to comment on my blog. It was a comment she left on this beautifully written masterpiece, Finagling.

However, no offense to Heather, but since she’s a friend of mine, I feel like I actually should give some credit to my very comment from a stranger. Let’s all bow our heads and give thanks to Mommiebear2, from Who Cries Over Spilled Milk who also left a comment on the same post.

The comment she left:

“Like said above, a double stroller is awesome! My daughter was about 1 1/2 when my son was born (premature at that – 25 weeks) but somehow I managed, and you will too. :)

True words, Mommiebear2, true words. Thanks for the smiley face, too.

I remember sitting at my desk in our office, staring in amazement at my computer screen. I couldn’t fathom how she’d found my blog, but immediately felt like we’d be close friends forever. Unfortunately, we lost touch several years ago. I’m glad Neil had this idea, giving me the nudge to look her up.

So Mommiebear2 (and Heather), thanks for my very first comments!

Melissa, Lisa, Tracy, Belinda, Sonja, Deidre, Karin, and Lillian

I think the movies Toy Story and Toy Story 2 being played on loop for about 2 weeks straight at my house has made me reminisce about my childhood toys.  You know that flashback scene in Toy Story 2 where Jessie is telling Woody about her owner, Emily, who grows up ends up putting her in a box and leaving her as a donation at some collection site?  GAH!  The tears!   I see that scene and my heart feels so heavy thinking about my Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids and Melissa, my baby with an inexplicable plastic butt, just sitting in a box somewhere in my parent’s basement waiting to be loved again.

So anyway, this post isn’t supposed to be a downer.  I’ve either made you really sad or you’re thinking that I’m a bit off my rocker.   I really just wanted to talk about the dolls you played with growing up.  First I’ll tell you about mine, then you can tell me about yours!  And then we’ll brush each other’s hair and paint our nails with sparkly pink polish!  Won’t this be fun!

I had a giant basket full of Barbies, hitting pay dirt when I got a bunch of hand-me-down Barbies.  One of the inherited Barbies was actually not a Mattel Barbie, but an off-brand Barbie with swivel scalp.  One side was blond and with a simple twist of her scalp you could make her a brunette.  YES, TOTALLY CREEPY.  I always pretended she was evil and trying to steal Barbie’s husband (or boyfriend, depending on that day’s storyline).

Speaking of Barbie’s husband/boyfriend,  I never did have a hunky Ken, I had one with a crazy mess of black hair and Miami Vice like white suit.  He did drive a pretty rad purple Corvette and a giant yellow RV.  So he had that going for him, I can see Barbie’s attraction.

One of my favorite Barbies had to be Skipper, mine even had TAN LINES under her teal bikini!  Hello inappropriate!   I also loved my cowgirl Barbie who wore blue eyeshadow and winked if you pushed a button on her back.  She had a droopy eyelid because of her winking, but I thought it  made her look mysterious.   She looked so beautiful in her fringed black and white cowgirl pantsuit and cowboy boots, with her perfectly feathered bangs.  Really classy!

I used to love giving my Barbies names like Lisa, Tracy, Belinda, or Sonja with a “j”.  They were always taking turns  kissing and laying under the covers with Ken and then getting pregnant.  On a possibly related note, I watched a lot of General Hospital growing up.

As much as I loved Barbie and all her (s)e(x)scapades with Ken and Skipper and the evil lady with two-tone hair, I also loved my Cabbage Patch Kids.  I’m pretty sure that neither of my CPKs were acquired after a long wait in an elbow stabby line or for an inflated price.  Their names were Deidre Aggie and Karin Dodi.  I never changed their names because it just seemed wrong to me since that what was written on their birth certificates.  The claim that you could change their names and get a new birth certificate by notifying Xavier Roberts or one of his minions at the Cabbage Patch Hospital seemed like a shady deal.  I didn’t want to risk a name change for my girls and then have no PROOF of their actual name.  (My loathing and mistrust of red tape and bureaucracies obviously started at an early age.)   Also, Deidre and Karin were actually pretty good names considering some of the atrocious names given to my friends’ CPKs.

I really loved the whole romanticism behind CPKs and how they came from a “real” hospital and that you “really” adopted them.  Children from a cabbage patch!  So that’s where babies come from!

I do still keep in touch with one of my dolls.  Technically Lillian is a Puffalump.  She sat on my bed until I got married.  Now Lillian lives in Ella’s room where I like to think of her as the Woody of Ella’s toys.

Lillian

I could never put her in a donation box and abandon her!