Home

March 7, 2016March 7, 20166 Comments

That’s me on the bottom right. Thank goodness high-water pants haven’t made a comeback.

Home is where your story begins.

My story began in a modest red house on a quiet corner in a small town. But nothing stays the same for long, and when my little sister arrived a couple years later, that quiet corner became considerably less quiet.

And so it goes.

Many years (and even more plot twists) later, I left that modest red house with its white garage and its yard full of trees behind me as I ventured out into the world. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to go back to that little red house on the corner, but it was too late. I was too grown up.

Maybe you can’t go home again, but you can always take it with you.

You can’t go home again.

So I made my own home. Several times over, in fact. And while I think it’s true that you can’t go home again, that’s only because I believe that home is something we carry with us wherever we go. Home is in our memories. Home is in the way we look at the world. Home is the way we treat others.

Home is a state of mind, a way of being, a feeling that can’t be taken away.

When I think of home, I think of the warmth of my grandma’s kitchen. I think of the hustle and bustle that went into family get-togethers. I remember the after-dinner tea and cookies, and how all of those things came together the morning after my second wedding as we all congregated in the kitchen of my new home.

Home is family. Home is friends.

Tadpole and Bubbles like to get up to all sorts of shenanigans.

Home is where your heart is.

It may be a sappy cliché, but that’s only because it’s true. Home is where your heart is because, without heart, there can be no home.

Memories and feelings

February 10, 2016February 10, 20164 Comments

If you haven’t read Justine Manzano’s post about regrets and Facebook memories, go read it. Now. Without it, the following probably won’t make a whole lot of sense.

Read it? Good.

Her words about how “Facebook Memories are equal parts fun and annoying” sound so, so familiar. Mostly, I really enjoy seeing my Facebook memories because I’ve always tried to be very positive online. But sometimes even the happy memories remind me of a sad time (my youngest son’s birth, for example, was equal parts joyous and terrifying).

I’ll see all that positivity when I’m feeling down and think, “Why can’t I be more like that now? I used to be so positive. What happened?”

The thing about trying to wear such a positive face on the web, though, is that all the smiles sometimes make you see things through rose-colored glasses. You forget all the negative stuff that was going on way back when and how it affected you at the time. How it made you more of a black rain cloud than a ray of sunshine. After all, if everything looks so great, it must have really been that way, right?

It’s on the internet – it must be true.

And then…

Where my heart will take me

January 27, 2016February 4, 20166 Comments

Don’t stop believin’.
Let it go.
Be true to your heart.
Keep on movin’.
I’m goin’ where my heart will take me.

What do these five things have in common, aside from being fantastic songs? They’re words that I find inspiring. But more than that, they’re words I hope to live by in 2016.

Two more days. In two more days, I’ll be 32. While I officially surpassed my mother’s age back in August, it’s really just hitting me now, as I approach the first birthday she never reached. Perhaps this all seems a bit self-indulgent, but for some reason, I’ve always thought I would leave the world like she did – young, and with things left to do. There was – is – so much I want to accomplish before I die, and I had no idea…

First World Problems

January 3, 2016January 3, 201620 Comments

Mara Eastern recently described a lousy Christmas, and it reminded me of something similar that happened to me back around Thanksgiving. After leaving a lengthy comment on her post, I thought, “Hey! This might make a funny blog post!”

Thus the following was born. 🙂

Similar to ours

My husband’s been away for work during the week for the past two months, so naturally, he took a few homey things with him to make his hotel room feel less hotelly. One of those things was our very nice can opener. Silly me, I didn’t even realize it (or our salt and pepper shakers) was missing till he’d been gone for a month and I wanted to have chili. But I didn’t want to spend a whole lot on buying a new one since we already had a really nice one. Still, the craving for chili was not to be ignored. And since I needed tomato juice, too, I stopped at Fareway on my way home from work.

After wandering the aisles for a good ten minutes, I finally tracked down their cooking utensils. They had all of one can opener in stock that night, and at $1.97, the price was just right. Still, I had to wonder about its quality. But a trip to Walmart was out of the question because it would make me late picking the boys up from daycare, so I pushed my doubts aside and headed for the check-out.

Similar to el cheapo can opener

Twenty minutes later, I’d picked up Cricket and Thumper up from daycare and made it home. It was a blustery night, perfect for chili, and I couldn’t wait to have some. I got the boys in the house, grabbed the beans and hamburger from the basement, and set about making supper. While I waited for the hamburger to thaw, I decided to get the beans opened and drained.

But of course, nothing ever happens easily on a Monday.

I opened the first can of beans without any problems. I daydreamed about the delicious chili I would soon be eating; I could already smell the chili powder and the cooking meat. I could almost taste the soup’s spicy tang. I could almost feel the tomato juice’s velvet touch as I swallowed imaginary spoonful after imaginary spoonful.

But halfway through opening the second can, reality came crashing back upon me. Part of the can opener snapped off as I turned the hand crank. The whole thing fell apart in my hands.

Well, crap (and many other colorful words). Now what the heck was I supposed to do?

Perfect for opening cans of juice, but not so much for beans

By this point, the closest store was closed for the night. I considered using a church key to open the rest of the cans, but quickly discarded the idea. There was no way I’d be able to shake all those beans out of the tiny little holes a church key would make. Even if I could have shaken them all out, it’d have taken all night. Too bad I hadn’t been opening the tomato juice – then I’d have been fine.

*sigh*

Oh, can opener, thank you for not breaking on me!

I got my chili eventually, after spending a few more dollars to buy a decent-quality can opener, but I’m still annoyed about the stupid cheap one that didn’t even last five minutes. I hate wasting money like that, even though part of me knew it wouldn’t last. And now that it’s freezing cold here again, chili is starting to sound really good for supper tonight… 🙂

Have you had equipment malfunctions ruin a much-anticipated meal? How did you cope?

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2016 is treating you right! 🙂

Adventures in garage saling

November 25, 2015November 27, 20153 Comments

Score one for the savvy garage saler!

It’s amazing what brings people out on the town. There’s an apartment complex next door to our house and one of the tenants came over to see what we had for sale. “Whoa, it’s like a little store!” she exclaimed upon entering, holding a glass of questionable contents. “Oh, I love your lamp! I want this lamp. I’ll be back for it. You guys have exactly what I need, I swear. You really do. You have everything I need. I’ll be back. Oh, I love this lamp! I want your lamp.”

After several painful minutes of rambling, she left, only to return about a half hour later with her dog in tow. She wasn’t quite as high when she came back, thankfully, but still, when she went digging through the box of miscellaneous knives, my mother-in-law and I got a little nervous. Seymour’s mom looked at me and said, “No offense, but if she goes nuts and starts attacking, you’re on your own.”

I couldn’t help laughing at that.

Finally, the neighbor lady picked up one…

A letter to my son

November 11, 2015November 12, 201514 Comments

Today’s Writing 101 challenge was to reinvent the letter. The last letter I wrote was to my husband when he was away for work, so today I decided to write a letter to my son in the future. He may not be a man yet, but he will be one day, and I hope that, on that day, he’ll read this and smile.

leiabows Dearest Bubbles,

My goodness, how quickly you’ve grown! It can’t be possible that you’re a man now, instead of the tiny little baby I brought home from the hospital. Surely that was only yesterday?

Oh, who am I kidding? It was last month. I knew I should have tied that brick to your head sooner. 🙂

When I look at you, I still see the happy little boy you used to be. I suppose I probably always will, no matter how much taller than me you are. I hope that someday, you’ll have a house full of happy little boys (and girls?) of your own, but first, some advice:

I feel lucky

October 22, 2015October 22, 20156 Comments

dandy All kids drive their parents crazy, some more than others. Take Thumper, for instance. He’s my baby, the youngest of my four children, and the reason I can’t have nice things. He’s the reason I started sprouting gray hair before I hit thirty, the reason I’m sick of my own name, and the probable cause for any alcoholism his daycare teachers may suffer from.

But you know what? He’s perfect. He may be stubborn to a fault and have more energy than any one person should ever have, but he’s also the happiest four-year-old I’ve ever met. He has such a good heart, even when he’s feeling ornery, and he’s so stinkin’ adorable that I can never stay mad at him for long. I am lucky to be his mother.

For the record, I am lucky to be mother (and stepmother) to three other pretty fantastic kids, too. But I feel especially lucky to be Thumper’s mother, because I almost wasn’t, a fact I was reminded of last night.

We’ve been having…

Naked

October 3, 2015October 1, 2015Leave a comment

To begin with, go read this post by rarasaur. Trust me, you won’t regret it.

Finished? Okay, then.

I loved the first line. After all, how can you not love a reference to Pride and Prejudice? It’s only one of the best books ever written. But if you read the rest of the post (and the rest of her blog), it’s amazing. It’s simultaneously powerful and empowering, and I want so badly to be able to write like that.

To make people feel things. In their gut.

To feel things myself. And not in the way that I normally feel things, which is superficial, like someone doing a white-glove check to see how dusty my mantle is. I want to feel things with every ounce of my soul, every fiber of my being.

I’m tired of being enveloped in bubble wrap.

But I don’t know how to get rid of it.

Fear is powerful. And I think it guides too much of my behavior.

Time to do something about that.

Time to get naked.

What about you? Do you feel things in your gut, or do things wash over you like waves upon sand? Do you blog naked?

Photo 365 #35

September 11, 201410 Comments

I was 17 when the twin towers fell. It was one of the scariest days of my life, and I was nearly 1100 miles away from Ground Zero.

I watched the events unfold that day on the news. I saw the first plane hit just before I left for school, and I spent the rest of the day watching the news – no one seemed able to turn it off. Everyone was in a panic.

Propaganda abounded in the days that followed – I still have a few things that circulated after the attacks. “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” is still a favorite song, and every time I hear it, I’m reminded of the days and weeks after September 11, 2001, when patriotism was at a high point and all my friends wanted to enlist to kick Osama where it counted.

But these stickers also hail from that era, as do the ones beneath them. And every last one depicts a peace sign, whether it’s one like in this picture or a frog holding up two fingers. I was afraid the attacks on New York would hurtle us headlong into a war the likes of which hadn’t been seen in sixty years. I feared my home would be the next target. I feared a lot of things, but I also prayed for peace.

Even at 17, I knew that not all Muslims are the same, just as not all Jews are the same, not all Christians are the same, not all Hindus are the same. Extremists and terrorists exist in all cultures, all religions, and we shouldn’t judge the majority of a culture by the acts of the minority. I hoped that my country would emerge from the ashes of that day stronger and more resilient.

Tonight, after supper was cleaned up and Bubbles had opened his birthday gifts…

Memory alpha

July 1, 2014July 1, 201417 Comments

The story of my most prized possession is a difficult one to tell because there are many things I prize quite highly. I’ve never been able to choose a single thing I love more than all others.

As a kid, whenever someone asked what one thing would I grab if my house were burning and I was forced to flee, I always answered, “Puppy and Blankie.” (They’re exactly what they sound like – I know, I was so creative as a kid.)

bffs Puppy was a gift from my dad and I’ve had him for longer than I can remember. We share a telepathic connection, and he has always been there to comfort me when I needed it. Despite his advanced age – 210 in dog years – he doesn’t look half bad. Oh, sure, his hat is missing, and he’s had a few surgeries over the years (he’s had several nose jobs, plus open heart surgery and a spinal fusion)*, but his heart is as big as ever. And even though he no longer goes everywhere with me…