Tag: Iowa

Mix tape memories: The Memorial Day edition

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Yes, it’s another mix tape post.  Have you ever heard the song “Sullivan” by Caroline’s Spine?  It’s a great song.  I was driving home from work one day a couple of months ago, one of my high school mix tapes blaring over the two screaming toddlers in my back seat, and this song came on.  I did a little happy dance in my seat as the opening chords sounded through the speakers, remembering the first time I’d heard the song.

I was with my friend, Christy, and we were driving…somewhere.  To the Rollerdrome, maybe?  Or cruising Uni?  Or maybe we were just bored and cruising the loop one day after school – I dunno.  Regardless, we were together because we did everything together back then.  Christy had recorded the song off the radio.  One minute we were rockin’ out to “Save Yourself” by Stabbing Westward and the next, Caroline’s Spine was singing about the five Sullivan brothers.   To this day, I find the placement of those two songs rather ironic.

Where’s an ark when you need one?

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I shot this picture of a submerged field through the window of our truck as we were heading down to visit Seymour’s parents for the weekend. The rain bands on the window blurred the image and gave it the neat effect; the only processing I did to this was adding Instagram’s Lo-Fi filter to make the blue of the water pop out a little more. Even without it, the grass still glowed that green.

I love this image, but…

Scenes from the courthouse

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Only in Iowa can it be 80° one day and snowing the next.  While it wasn’t 80° where I was yesterday, it was in other parts of the state, according to two of my friends down in southern Iowa.  And rumor has it that the temperature dropped 40 degrees in four hours.  That’s pretty quick!

So, to recap: The weekend and the first part of the week were sunny, warm, and absolutely gorgeous, leaving us all thinking that winter skipped spring altogether and decided that summer should just follow directly this year.  But now Winter, she’s a-back.  With a vengeance.

Me no likey.

I took all these – and a few others – over the course of the morning.

Winter in Iowa

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Snow Cat

Snow Cat (Photo credit: clickclique)

I’ve had it with winter.  Specifically, I’ve had it with all the white crap Mother Nature keeps dumping on us.  I nearly got stuck at work yesterday because the city does such a lousy job clearing the streets, and the same thing happened again today.  After narrowly avoiding the embarrassment of having to ask my boss to give me a push, what happened?  I came home and promptly got stuck in the mouth of my driveway, with the back end of my van sticking out into our very narrow street.

I was stuck so tight that after the kids and I tried to get out for about ten minutes, I went across the street and asked the neighbor for help (Seymour wasn’t home yet).  It took the two of us a good half hour and maybe a little more to get my van free.  The city I live in (yes, I know, it’s a small town, but that’s how we refer to our municipal government) doesn’t do any better when it comes to cleaning streets than the city I work in.  So in short, I’ve had it with winter.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  When the sun shines on newly fallen snow and it sparkles like a thousand diamonds, I love it as much as the next person.  I appreciate the beauty of snow.  However, I hate dealing with it.  I hate driving in it.  I hate shoveling it.  I hate cleaning it off of my car.

But at times like these, I often think of a joke my dad shared with me once.  It’s about winter in Iowa and, given the trials I’ve had with the snow today and the fact that it was three years ago today that I lost him, this seems like a good time to share it again.  I’ve posted it before, but here it is again in all its snowy glory:

Dear Diary. . .

I’m inspiring – Part II

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Hi there, folks!  How’s it going?  I hope you’re all keeping warm.  Iowa is currently back in the deep freeze after a lovely thaw.  I have to admit, that week of 40-degree days was lovely.  I really do live in the wrong state when it comes to winter.

But that’s not what I meant to write about tonight.  In the space of a couple hours earlier today, I was nominated for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award twice!  I was nominated for this award back in August and if you’d like to see what I had to say then, you can find the post here.  I’ve spent the last hour or so trying to decide if I should do it again, but since two people were nice enough to nominate me, I decided, what the heck?  Why not?

VeryInspiringBlogAwardSo, without further ado, many thanks to the lovely Tricia Drammeh and Maegan Provan, who were kind enough to nominate me.  Tricia is a wonderful writer and it is a privilege to know her – if you’re not already following her, you should be!  And Maegan is a new follower here, one I’m sure I will enjoy getting to know.  Thank you for the love, ladies!

And now, without further ado,

Strange times

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Yesterday, the courthouse groundskeeper was busy putting up fresh evergreen garland around the lampposts that dot the square.  Today, he was busy mowing the lawn and it felt like spring.  I know it’s Iowa and the weather will change at the drop of a hat, but dude – it’s November.  Get with the program.

Just don’t swear.  You can hold off on that till after New Year’s.

(c) 2012.  All rights reserved.

 

Onward and upward!

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That’s right, things started looking much better for me in my twenty-fourth year.  Much better, as a matter of fact.  The whole year was pretty stellar, really.  See, my birthday is at the end of January.  Shortly before my birthday, I signed up for Yahoo! Personals.  I had gone to a wedding a few months prior for a couple who had met on eHarmony.com.  The groom and I had gone to high school together and I thought, “Hey – if Seth can meet such a nice girl online, maybe I can find a nice guy myself!”

I had a few first dates, but nothing that really went anywhere.  Then one day, I was scrolling through matches in my area and came across a guy who was a few years (okay, six) older than me and hailed from my hometown.  I had no idea who this guy was.  My hometown has a population of 1800 people, so everyone pretty much knows everyone else.  The first thought that ran through my head was, “Who is this guy and why don’t I know him?”

I clicked on his profile and read through it.  That was when I had my second thought: “I need to know this guy!”  He was a former military officer and a single father who was “not looking for a mom” for his daughter.  He was also a self-professed Star Trek freak.  Could this guy be any better?

So I sent him a message.

Clear the roads!

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It used to be that at age sixteen, you could get your driver’s license and hit the road, but when I was a teenager, Iowa passed a graduated licensure law.  What it amounted to was that at sixteen, assuming you had passed driver’s ed when you were fourteen and then passed your driving test down at the DMV, you would be granted a restricted license. You were not allowed to drive between the hours of midnight and six a.m.  You would receive your full (unrestricted) license at seventeen, assuming that you hadn’t been involved in any accidents or received any speeding tickets or anything during the preceding year.

What does all this have to do with a post about the age of eighteen?  Well, when I was twelve, my dad stopped driving and sold our car.  He’d been suffering from seizures (which had been misdiagnosed for years as TIAs and weren’t correctly diagnosed for many more years) that would cause him to lose his vision sometimes, so he voluntarily gave up driving.

Sort of.