Growing Older But Not Up

Abbey Road

2012-02-02T18:04:00.003-06:00

Last night, I was going through some of the pictures from our trip to Europe as I'm want to do whenever I want to relive those fun filled days. Teen Angel and I are still on a bit of a London/Paris high. She bought red current jam the other night because it reminded her of our breakfasts in London, and I keep listening to Duffy and David Gray on Pandora. Sigh. Anyway, I thought I'd share one of the more fun things we did on our trip. Among all of the historical sites and museums we visited, we made time on our last afternoon in London to take the Tube over to the neighborhood where Abbey Road Studios is. It seemed a bit low brow, given all of the historical sites we'd been too, but heck, we're pretty low brow, so off we toddled to that end of town. And I'm glad we did, because it was a hoot.

I thought it might be a little hard to find because it's in a residential neighborhood nowhere near downtown London, but it wasn't difficult at all. We just followed all of the other folks on foot, trucking to the same place. Apparently, we weren't the only ones who packed Sharpies in our luggage for a visit to that little corner.

It has become tradition for visitors to sign their name on the concrete wall and gates in front of Abbey Road. And thousands do every week.

I've read that they repaint that fence every few weeks, providing a clean white pallet for the next round of tourists. There were few clean spaces in the paint when we were there, but we found room to scratch our names among all of the others.

Teen Angel also wrote the name of her cousin who died in 2000 and the name of a friend of hers who is a HUGE John Lennon fan. And we doodled a few other messages.

It was great fun, and all around were people doing the same thing. I'm normally opposed to graffiti, but there was something about this that just seemed so appropriately Beatle-like. And it is great fun to read all of the messages and signatures by people from all over the world. Beatle fans apparently come from all parts of the globe.

And what about the iconic crosswalk? Well, we had plans to photograph ourselves in the crosswalk. In fact, I wanted a photo so I could PhotoShop our heads into a picture of the White album cover, but we realized as soon as we got there that wasn't going to happen because that intersection? Busy. Extremely busy. The traffic through there is steady and fast, and you literally have to risk life and limb to get that shot.

Some people tried.

But few really succeeded. This group came close.

They were lucky enough to catch a bit of a gap between cars, but not without making some drivers mad. The people who live and work in that area understandably get frustrated with all of the tourists plugging up the works in that intersection all day long, so they don't have much patience with picture takers. We saw cars come dangerously close to a couple of folks, so we didn't risk it. But we sure enjoyed watching others do it.

I'm glad we made the trek to Abbey Road. It may not be as historically significant as the Tower of London or Tower Bridge, but it sure is a cool piece of pop culture. And we can say we left a little piece of us in London. Including our hearts. Seriously, somebody pass the jam. I need a British fix.

These Are The Days

2012-01-31T18:24:00.001-06:00

Daddy lost a sister this week. As I'm typing this, he and mama, along with several other relatives are riding in a rented van toward Moline, Illinois where they will lay to rest my aunt Ruth. Yes, we are again saying goodbye to a loved one on that side of the family, just a few months after burying two uncles. I know it's that season of life when age is catching up with daddy's generation, but the reality of that is very troubling to me. I just hate losing all those folks who colored my childhood with their presence and influence. More and more their presence is my life is more memory than contact.

Daddy's almost the baby of the family, and not until recently did I begin to realize that means that as long as his health is good, he will likely witness the deaths of most of his siblings. I can't imagine how difficult that will be, especially since he and his brothers and sisters are so close. Growing up poor on a farm in southern Illinois, they relied on each other for everything. They scratched out a living and made their own entertainment. Together. They shared clothes, shoes and toys, and the older kids helped the younger ones. There were chores and hard times but lots of laughter, and when you listen to them tell stories about their childhood, it doesn't take long to figure out that they were richer than many others who had more money.

The call about aunt Ruth came early yesterday morning, although I actually saw a family post about it on FaceBook before mama had a chance to get hold of me. Since then, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the deaths in my family in the past few years and the stage of life I'm at right now. Time is flying. Way too fast. Loved ones are slipping away, and my hair is grayer than it used to be. God bless Miss Clairol. Life is moving so fast I sometimes feel as if I might just fly off the face of the earth if it doesn't stop spinning so hard. I feel the soldiers of time crawling over my back and running me down. There's so much to do. So much to experience. And there are people who won't be there to experience it with me. My emotions have been all over the place in the past 36 hours as I process this.

Driving down the road this afternoon, I was caught by surprise by a single tear that slid down my cheek unexpectedly. A single tear for the ones lost, the weariness I'm feeling from taking care of Papa T. and the things I would do differently if given the opportunity. Opportunities not taken. Words I can never take back. And yet there are smiles, too. Smiles for the dares and challenges accepted, for the people who enrich my life and the memories they've given me. If I close my eyes, I can recall warm summer nights in grandma's yard, sprinkled with the laughter of my cousins as we played hide and seek and the light of captured fireflies flashing in a fruit jar. I hear the voices of aunts and uncles solving the world's troubles and cranking out homemade ice cream. I see and hear it all and smile. Time is moving quickly folks. These are the days we must savor. We must hold them in our heart.

Quotography-"Wildlife"

2012-01-30T17:49:00.006-06:00

For lack of anything rowdy like bears or raccoons, I'll go with the common grasshopper. He's one of my favorites, actually. Or so it would seem based on my photography folders. For the other wonderful entries, hop on over to here. Get it? HOP on over? Never mind.

My First Newborn Shoot

2012-01-29T19:47:00.000-06:00

It was two, actually. Little Miss E. cried through the first one, but she had a lactose issue so I didn't take it personally. So, we had a second shoot. Both had some poop, major poop. And a lot of laughs. Newborns...not easy, but totally worth it. So much fun photographing this little one...both times.

How Many Days Until Spring?

2012-01-26T17:56:00.002-06:00

We've had some chilly rain the past couple of days. It's wet and dreary here, and truth be told, it makes me a tad bit grumpy. This morning was even grayer and gloomier than yesterday, but I did perk up for a little bit around 7am because, even though it was cold and nasty, I do love a good photo op that involves fog. These are from the city park. And these would be why the bottoms of my pants have been muddy all day.

My Favorite Sign on Bourbon Street

2012-01-25T18:40:00.001-06:00

And a huge *@# beer had nothing to do with why this picture is so fuzzy. It was low lighting and poor exposure. I promise.

The Year of the Sinus Drip

2012-01-24T18:19:00.002-06:00

The Chinese are calling this the year of the dragon, but they're wrong. It's the year of the pneumococcal bacteria. At least around our house anyway. Just two months after Papa T. spent eighteen days in the hospital with pneumonia, Hubby has walking pneumonia, oh yes he does. To the tune of four prescriptions and a shot in the butt. A shot which apparently was a little painful given the current tenderness of his backside. Funny, he didn't think it was very humorous when I made a joke about him being a pain in the arse. The doctor wanted to put him in the hospital yesterday, but Hubby politely declined with the promise to get a chest X-ray Thursday and to consider the hospital if things have not improved by then. Or if Papa T. stomps on his last nerve one more time. Whichever comes first. When Hubby called me with the news yesterday, I rolled my eyes toward heaven and said, "Really?" Great googly moogly. We can't have everyone around here healthy at one time for more than thirty days at a time. It's enough to make a gal wanna hibernate until cold and flu season is over. Or the next Matthew McConaughey centerfold is published. Whichever comes first.

I knew we were gonna have sinus issues the minute we landed in Nashville last week and realized just how annoying it can be to go from the 80 degree tropics to a 30 degree climate. The pressure in my head started soaring as soon as our plane hit the ground. I went into neti pot overdrive, and Hubby developed a stopped up nose almost immediately. It took about three days for his cough to develop, and it's been downhill since then. The poor man is coughing like a forty year chain smoker. He sounds like that lady who works the shoe counter at the bowling alley whose diet is mostly whiskey sours and Marlboro's. I knew he felt bad Sunday when he actually mentioned he was going to the doctor Monday if he didn't feel any better. His willingness to go to a doctor is the equivalent of Israel calling up Palestine and saying, "Can't we just get along?" In fact, I thought about calling an ambulance then 'cause he was obviously hitting a low point. For as long as I've known him, he has NEVER willingly gone to the doctor. It's always been by force. I think Papa T.'s pneumonia showed him though, that things can go south very quickly and it's best to take care of yourself instead of trying to tough it out. Because, hey, after age fifty, toughing it out doesn't really work so well without a few antibiotics.

So, for the next couple of days he plans to take his medicine and see what happens. I'm hoping the drugs do the trick, and he doesn't end up in the hospital 'cause I'm not namin' any names, but someone around here is C-R-A-N-K-Y when he's really sick. As in gripe and groan and whine to the nth degree cranky. I feel bad for him because no doubt the exhaustion he feels on a daily basis from taking care of Papa T. was a factor in his illness, and there's no letup in sight on that front. He has enough to deal with without being sick. Poor baby. And let's hope that mess isn't catching. That's all I need is a week in bed. Although, I'm only one case of flu away from my goal weight. Just kidding. Sort of. No, really, I'm kidding.

The year of the dragon is supposed to be a lucky year. Let's hope 2012 is a little better for us than 2011. And may it be full of eggrolls. And shrimp fried rice. And pressed chicken. May the year be full of blessings for everyone, including good health. Or a Matthew McConaughey centerfold. Whichever comes first.

Psst...I was born in the year of the dragon. In fact, I'm a wooden dragon. If you have time, read this article about dragon babies. Yikes, it fits me to a tee. Right down to the Miss Bossy Pants part.

Quotography-"Sadness"

2012-01-23T18:32:00.001-06:00

The picture is from Pere LaChaise Cemetery in Paris. If you ever get a chance to visit that cemetery, please do. It is a fascinating place. Now, to check out the other entries this week, hop on over to here.

Down on the Corner and out in the Street

2012-01-22T17:36:00.001-06:00

As I roamed around the French Quarter last weekend, I was captivated by the spirit of the people there. From the vendors in the French Market to the trolley drivers and shopkeepers with their lyrical twist on the southern drawl, I was fascinated by the colorful spirit of the folks who inhabit New Orleans. Polite and animated, they were so much fun to be around that I found myself accidently trying to talk like them. It is an atmosphere not unlike Times Square but with a more laidback feel. There is no hustle and bustle. Just a lot of friendly people celebrating life. Somebody, somewhere is always having a good time in New Orleans. I mean where else can you get your picture made with someone dressed as a voodoo priestess who will also give you directions to Cafe DuMonde? We stopped in a store looking for a cold soda, and I ended up talking to a man dressed in full makeup and costume as a jester. He was eating a ham sandwich and flagged me down to ask if I was in town for the photography convention when he saw my camera. I walked out of there thinking you don't see THAT every day.

Around Jackson Square, in the heart of the French Quarter, are dozens of tarot card readers, musicians and artists plying their trades, especially in front of St. Louis Cathedral (which is a lovely church by the way).

There are painters, selling their work and showing their talent.

There are street performers who stand out and those that blend in.

Everywhere there are people trying to scratch out a living by using whatever talents they have.

We saw the same thing in Mexico.

And it occurred to me how brave these folks are. Granted, some of them, like the fortune tellers, are scammers, and some are just desperate, but most are chasing a dream or at the very least, trying to make the most of the skills they have. It takes a lot of guts to put your work out there for every stranger to see. It's like standing naked in front of the world and asking for a verdict from the court of public opinion. You may get some praise, but you also get criticism, and in the case of the court jester, scorn from those who think you're nuts. It made Hubby a little nervous when he found me talking to that guy, but I found him to be sane and extremely articulate.

How many of us have the nerve to put ourselves on display like that? Those of us who write do it all the time, and I don't know about you, but it makes me very uncomfortable to share some of my writing with people I know. It's easier on the internet I think, to put it out there for people you've never actually met in person. You don't have to look them in the eye or run into them at the grocery store. You can hide behind a blog banner or a pseudonym. People you know will tell you what they think about your work. I want to write a book someday, but if I ever do, I'm going to have to work through the anxiety of having friends and family reading my work.

So, I tip my hat to the folks who stand on the streets of their hometown, sharing their work with us strangers who wander by with time and criticism to spare. Go right on being naked and doing your thing. You never know when that court jester is going to be the next Marcel Marceau. Of course, he could be the next patient at the loony bin, too so you might want to carry some pepper spray just in case.

Photo Friday Challenge-"Pristine"

2012-01-20T17:33:00.002-06:00

1. pris•tine/ˈprisˌtēn/

Adjective: 1. In its original condition; unspoiled.

2. Clean and fresh as if new; spotless

For the other entries, hop on over here.

On the Sunny Side

2012-01-19T18:35:00.001-06:00

On the last morning of our cruise we had to be up early in order to get dressed and eat breakfast before they started emptying the ship at 8am. After a week of sleeping in under cool, cozy covers I was not eager to get up with the alarm. In fact, I am never eager to get up with an alarm clock. My body is quite happy to naturally come alive around 9ish and ease into the day long after the sun has come up. Alas, life and work do not allow me to do that, since I regularly have to get up at 5:30am. I see a lot of sunrises, but only under protest.

So, last Saturday morning was no different. I pulled myself out of bed, slipped on some clothes and headed to breakfast with my feet hit the floor happy in the morning husband. He almost always bounces out of bed like Tigger, which annoys me to no end. I figured I might as well take my camera with me in case the sunrise was pretty, and I was not disappointed. When we hit the top deck, the eastern skies were somewhat golden, and I was suddenly wide awake in recognition of the opportunity that lay before me. Hubby went to the restaurant, and I dashed to the balcony rails to start shooting. I ran all over the upper part of the boat, looking for the right angles and ran into a middle aged Asian man doing the same thing. With our cameras clicking away, we danced around each other, strangers on the same mission. We exchanged the occasional shout of, "Ooh, look over here!" and "Check out this angle!" I never got his name. I kind of wish I had because it would have been fun to share our best shot with each other later. I would have sent him this one.

And after I had exhausted every opportunity I could to capture the sun sliding up the side of that New Orleans river bank, I leaned over the rail and tried to soak in every detail about that moment. One last look without the lens so I could fully appreciate the sounds and smells. The colors and the movement of the boats slipping through the water made me think of a Train song, and I let that roll through my head for a minute or so. And then I slipped back down the steps in search of my husband, begrudgingly grateful for having yet another sunrise forced upon me.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

2012-01-18T17:16:00.001-06:00

Where to begin? Do I start with the details about our brief stay in New Orleans and the craziness on Bourbon Street, how I slid six feet across the deck of the cruise ship on my left butt cheek or the story about how Hubby and I got kicked off the jet skis in Cozumel? So much fun, and so little time to write it all down. Also, that big purple bruise on my fanny? Too personal to show you a picture of it, so how about an overall rundown of our trip instead?

First, let me say I love my family. They are more fun than a hurricane at Pat O'Brien's. There were nine cousins and their spouses on this trip, and all eighteen of us had a ball. It was great to spend time with them, and I'm so glad we made the trip. Even if I am still trying to get my body clock back in order. We ate together, partied together and spent a lot of time just getting to know each other better. I can now name the preferred drink of each one of them. And hey, why didn't someone tell me sooner about the lovely combination of peach schnapps and grapefruit juice? I love it when I can say I got a full serving of fruit with each drink. Just like V8 without the nasty carrot aftertaste. I digress.

Hubby and I got to New Orleans the day before our ship sailed because I just don't trust the air carriers to get us anywhere on the designated day anymore, especially when there's a cruise ship departure involved. It seems like there's always an issue with just about every flight now days. Plus, we wanted to spend a little time goofing around New Orleans. We arrived Sunday afternoon. Along with every redneck in the south. It was the night before the BSC football game between LSU and Alabama. Whew, Lawd. Nawlins was crazier than usual. Bourbon Street was a sea of purple and red, and screams of "Go Tigers!" and "Roll Tide!" rang in our ears all night long. Add in the bead throwers, the zydeco bands and the occasional transvestite, and it was just about the most fun place in North America. The people watching could not have been any better. And can I just say I love the people of Louisiana. They are friendly and fun, and they embrace their uniqueness. Good people, they are. And boy, do they love to throw a party.

Because I booked a hotel room after they scheduled the game in New Orleans, we had to settle for a room across the river in Gretna. While we've stayed in swankier places, it was clean and decent and certainly better than driving thirty minutes out of town to better available rooms. Given other options in the future, the Quality Inn would not be my first choice, however. They did provide us with a free shuttle ride to the free ferry which dropped us off at the NOLA riverfront, so we saved a bundle on cab fees. As Johnny Cash says, there's a silver lining behind every cloud. We whooped it up on Bourbon Street, slept that night to the steady drumbeat of Alabama fans drunkenly traipsing up the motel steps and hit the boat the next morning. Actually, Hubby hit the boat. I checked in and then spent a couple of hours roaming around the French Quarter taking pictures. When I got back on the boat, the whole fam damily was there, and we immediately started living it up.

We spent the next five and a half days lying on the Lido deck, lying on beaches, dancing and basically enjoying every amenity the boat had to offer. Especially the food. Oy vey, the food! I must say I got used to having an exotic dessert every night, and my body was wondering where the breakfast buffet was this past Tuesday when I went back to work. To say that my colon was disappointed with Cream of Wheat and flax seed is an understatement. However, it was happy to be home. I'm the only person I know who can go to Mexico, eat six prunes off the buffet every morning and still get constipated.

Hubby and I got kicked off the jet skis at Cozumel after we turned over our jet ski. A couple on another jet ski flagged us down and asked us to get help since they had a mechanical issue with theirs. We said sure, turned toward the beach a little too hard and promptly landed in the ocean. We flipped it back over and were about to get back on it when the jet ski dude came flying up in a boat, made us get off and ordered us to get in the boat for a ride back to the shore. Which is how we got a free ride on the parasail boat. I considered asking him if we could get a parasail ride but I figured he wouldn't find that nearly as funny as we did.

I earned one of those little plastic Carnival Cruise trophies during the Last Man Standing competition on the Lido deck on our last day at sea. We had to do goofy relay races, including that thing where you put your head on the handle of a bat, spin around the bat ten times and run. The boat was rockin' pretty good that day, and when I stood up from spinning around, I immediately took off running instead of getting my bearings first. I'm that competitive, don't cha' know. I mean who doesn't want a plastic ship on a stick to sit on his shelf? As I started to run, I took a spectacular tumble and slid several feet across the deck on my left hip. Honestly, it was one on my prettier falls. Certainly prettier than that spill I took before Christmas. If I were younger I might have been more embarrassed about doing it in front of so many people, but I'm old enough that I just don't care. Also, most of them were two sheets to the wind, anyway. I bounced up, completed the relay, and our team won, thanks to the loud cheering from the section known as my family. My left hip felt a little sore Saturday and by Sunday I had a big purple bruise the size of a grapefruit. But it was worth it because hey, plastic ship on a stick!

Hubby's injury for the trip was banging his head on a rail on that double decker tour bus we climbed on in Progreso. He hit it so hard he saw stars, and it wouldn't have been so bad, but every time we came near power lines on the city tour we had to duck because they hang so low there they'll strangle you if you don't. He was dizzy from throwing his head between his legs so much. It appears though that Corona numbs a headache. Especially when they cost $1 apiece at little roadside stands run by gentlemen named Martin. The other highlight of that little bus ride was right before we got on when some crazy looking guy flashed some drugs at me. I was like, "What the heck?" I want to know why he thought I looked like I might be interested in buying his little white powder. A friend of mine says it's because I'm skinny, and drug users are almost always skinny. Seriously? The whole thing was pretty funny and just one of several humorous moments along the way. It was a great week. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, even the big spill, and I can't wait to see everyone's pictures. We discussed plans to do it again next year, especially as we neared the end of the trip and everyone was facing much colder weather back home. (Note to self, wear socks when flying from a warm climate to a cold one.) We made many memories last week, but more importantly we had a great bonding experience. Oh, and I got a Got Milk T-shirt on the boat that says, "Got Margaritas?". Life doesn't get any better than that.

Setting Sail....Right After I Exfoliate

2012-01-04T18:21:00.001-06:00

Hubby and I leave this weekend for a trip to Mexico, and Teen Angel will be staying at home. Let that sink in for a moment. Our teenager. At home. Alone. For a whole week. I feel comfortable putting this on the blog because very few local people read this blog and every one of them who does is already on a list of people who are supposed to take turns circling our home at regular intervals to make sure there are no parties going on and that she is at home at an appropriate hour. Okay, not really, but we're telling Hubby there is such a schedule so he won't worry so much. He's a basket case about leaving her, his dad and an ailing dog all in the hands of other people. He likes to worry. It's his thing. Not mine, so I'm packing and counting down the days until we sail. And that would be four, thank you.

We are taking a cruise with several of my cousins and their spouses. It's an attempt to keep the closeness our parents have felt over the years, given that their generation is dying off and it's soon going to be up to us to keep our family tight. We talked about that responsibility back in the summer and decided the best way to start was to sail on a cruise ship to a warm climate in the middle of winter and drink lots of margaritas. There might also be some limbo and dancing involved. Look out, Mexico! The first time I was there I almost won the limbo contest. Good thing I didn't. The prize was a bottle of tequila, and let's just say I'd had all of that I needed. Hence the second place finish. Why does alcohol make you more limber? Tell me that, Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Anyway, I didn't let myself get too excited about it until this week 'cause around here you never know what kind of mayhem is going to upset travel plans, but it seems maybe we're getting close enough that I can actually believe we will be sailing the Gulf in a few days. Well, there was that brief moment of excitement about two months ago when I scored cheap plane tickets for us. Other than that, I've just been holding my breath that Papa T. would stay healthy and wouldn't end up in the hospital this week. We haven't taken him out to eat this week because all we need is to drag home a good case of the flu. He seems to catch every bug that crawls by. We've been bathing in the hand sanitizer, too. More than usual. I also danced around some squirrel bones, recited a voodoo chant and said sixteen Hail Mary's. No flu. No flu. No flu. If you say it over and over again fast enough it sounds Cajun, doesn't it?

We are spending Sunday night in New Orleans, which should be interesting. It's the night before the BCA Championship Game, so Bourbon Street should be at a fever pitch of rowdiness. As daddy says, it could be a good place to get your arse whooped. We'll try to blend into the crowd, enjoy the festivities and stuff ourselves full of beignets without stepping on any toes. New Orleans is a cool place, and it's been a long time since we've been there. Who dat!

To say I haven't done any worrying this week would be a tad inaccurate. I walked by a full length mirror yesterday in shorts and a sleeveless shirt on my way to the treadmill when I realized just how white my body is. It's so white you could print phone numbers on it. And there's nothing I can do about it now. I'm just hoping there are so many Michigan and Canadian snowbirds on that boat that no one notices the shade of my legs. Also, I just realized two nights ago how dry my skin is. Normally, I wouldn't worry about it until early April, but I am in lotion overdrive right now. I should buy stock in Gold Bond because I'm certainly upping their sales. And I probably should have had my roots touched up. There is a fair amount of gray around my temples, but I won't have time to get to the barber, so I'm just gonna hope it's not noticeable in the bright glare of the sunshine. Plus, there's always a hat.

I'm hoping for a good trip. We've cruised before, and while an all inclusive kind of trip is my favorite way to see that part of the world, we enjoy cruises, and I think it should be a real hoot to goof around with the family. And truth be told, Teen Angel is probably counting the days until we leave because she's looking forward to her freedom and opportunity to goof off around here. Won't she be surprised when she finds out about that armed security guard and the chastity belt Hubby arranged for her.

I Hate Goodbyes

2012-01-03T18:19:00.001-06:00

My neighbor is dying of cancer. In fact, he may have passed away by the time this posts. He is mostly unresponsive and is under palliative care, which is a fancy way of saying they're just trying to keep him pain free. Mr. John has spent the last two years battling cancer, and he put up a good fight. Better than most. In fact, I don't know anyone who has fought cancer harder than he has. He lost a leg in the process, learning how to use an artificial limb and tearing up the neighborhood in his motorized scooter. I nearly fell over back in the summer when I looked outside and saw him mowing with the riding mower. I just knew he'd turn over the dadgum thing and cause great excitement, but he didn't. And although it often terrified her, his wife got used to his shenanigans and would just shake her head and pray for the best. He would zip up and down the street, talking to all the neighbors and giving Hubby all kinds of advice on yard work. He volunteered at his church, and back in October, he spent his weekends helping out at the local pumpkin patch and laughing with all the little kids who came there for Halloween pumpkins and hayrides. The Vietnam veteran was unstoppable. Until last week.

His cancer resurged recently, and he'd been undergoing experimental treatments when he developed a fever right before Christmas Day. Not wanting to be in the hospital at Christmas and during their 30th wedding anniversary he held off going to the doctor until he knew it was inevitable. Sure enough. They sent him from the Veteran's Hospital by ambulance to another hospital for more intensive care. He knew his time was up, and he started preparing his wife for the inevitable. He's actually been preparing her for months. He spent most of the past year, getting things done around the house to make it low maintenance for her when he's gone. He spent a lot of money on rubberized mulch, so she wouldn't have to drag and scoop mulch around their extensive landscaping. He paid for new windows, gutters and other improvements that were going to be needed in the next few years. He sold stuff he couldn't use anymore to eliminate some of the stuff she'd have to go through and sell. And he talked about dying.

I think he talked about it to help take away the fear for her. He wasn't afraid. He never was. Or at least he didn't act like it. I really think he had little fear. He is a Christian man who is strong in his faith, and it showed in his war against cancer and in his surrender this week. He confidently told his wife a few days ago, he was ready to go.

It also showed in the way he lived his life these past few years. He and his wife traveled and did things they wanted to do. He volunteered at many activities and basically enjoyed each day. And he didn't complain about his disease. If you had never asked him about his leg or scooter you wouldn't have known he was sick. I've often pondered the matter of fact way he has dealt with all that has happened to him in the past two years. If I am ever unfortunate enough to have a terminal illness, I hope I have the courage to put up the same kind of fight. Was he perfect? No, but he was good. I will miss seeing him fly across our yard on that scooter to find out what's going on whenever Hubby is in the middle of a project. He and another elderly neighbor stood at the edge of our pool last year, overseeing and debating its construction while the workers dug the hole and moved dirt and concrete. I wish I had taken a picture of them.

Last year, we bought Mr. John's Christmas lights. It was a pretty elaborate set of life sized nativity figures, complete with camels and donkeys. He had reached the point where he couldn't maintain them anymore. He helped Hubby put them up in the yard last November, and it made him proud to see them on display. I hate that we didn't get them up this year. With Papa T.'s hospital stays and life's craziness, we just couldn't find the time to set them up. I know Mr. John would have enjoyed seeing them one last time. We plan to have the displays refurbished this year with new bulbs and to do a little electrical work so that it's easier to set them up in the yard. We want them to be ready to go when November rolls back around. And when I'll look at that bright glow of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and all those camels I shall think of Mr. John, a life well lived and a life well ended. I should be so lucky.

Oh, The Cuteness

2012-01-01T17:11:00.002-06:00

This is my favorite photo that I've shot lately. It's from a pregnancy shoot I did with a great couple.

And guess what? Baby E. was born the day after Christmas. Guess whose doing some newborn pictures soon? Yay! I can't wait. I love holding and smelling babies that I don't have to raise.

Pretty Soon I'm Gonna Have to Give her a new Blog Name

2011-12-30T17:17:00.000-06:00

'Cause she's barely a teenager. Guess who's nineteen today?

Wasn't it just yesterday she was crawling across the floor and playing with my pots and pans? Somebody stop the clock.

Fa La La La La

2011-12-27T17:48:00.000-06:00

You better get all prayed up, brothers and sisters, 'cause hell is freezin' over. I went shopping yesterday and found three, count 'em, THREE, pairs of jeans that fit well. Of course, I had to try on eighteen pair, but nevertheless I found three pairs of jeans I really liked. It's a dadgum miracle. Buying jeans is right up there with buying bras and bathing suits. I'd rather get jabbed in the eye with a red hot poker than try them on. And don't even get me started about the lack of comfortable, well made pantries for women who fall somewhere between hoochie mama thong and granny panty. You just can't find a good panty these days. I was beginning to think it was just me, and then I struck up a conversation with a 40-something stranger at the underwear clearance rack at Wal-Mart who was complaining about the same thing. I felt much better about myself afterwards. However, a couple of minutes later when I was squatted in the floor looking for my size in the Hanes cotton low rise briefs, I witnessed her nearly get into a fight with a lady who walked up to her and said, "Karen told me at the cookout you wanted to whoop my a**." And then the other lady said, "Noooo, I said I didn't want to be around your a**." They went back and forth with some attitude, and there was some ugliness tossed around about panty lady's recent stint in jail, so perhaps she hasn't always made the best choices. However, I do not believe that incarceration should affect your ability to judge a good panty, so I still feel confident I'm not alone in my frustration to find adequate drawers for the middle aged woman. By the way, the police were called to that little catfight before it got out of hand, so I slipped around the corner and down to the grocery department before I witnessed something I had to testify to in court. That was two days before Christmas. So much for peace, love and kindness for your fellow man.

Teen Angel and I spent yesterday shopping. We didn't buy much because the sales were somewhere between fair to middlin'. I saw better buys before Christmas, but we did find a few bargains, and I scored big time on some capris for our upcoming cruise. Plus, we had some tasty Chick-Fil-A and good conversation. All was right with the world. It was a nice way to wrap up the holidays.

Christmas was good. All was calm, and all was bright. That's not always the case with Hubby's family, so we considered it a successful holiday. Santa was better to us than he should have been, but he didn't get too carried away. I got a new rolling hard case which holds all of my cameras, lenses and photography gear. No more lugging around three backpacks. Also, I got a new suitcase with 360 degree wheels. I can't tell you how excited I am about that. That one made it on my wish list this year after Teen Angel and I lugged our suitcases across Europe, up and down steps in buildings without elevators and across crowded airports last August. Exhausted, we were sitting at the airport in Paris for our flight home, when a lady in high heels went gliding by us with her spinner suitcase, pushing it effortlessly and acting like it was the easiest thing in the world. I looked at Teen Angel, pointed at her suitcase and said, "I'm gettin' me some of that." Besides, I needed a new suitcase anyway. Hours later, when we picked up our luggage in Dallas to go through customs, mine wouldn't roll right, and it was like draggin' a dog without legs on a leash. I finally stopped and looked at it and realized that one whole corner, wheel and all, was busted off that bag. I didn't know whether to thank the baggage handlers at Charles DeGaulle or Dallas International. I had to drag that heavy thing through customs, recheck it and drag it through the Nashville Airport with one wheel. It was a joy, I tell ya'. On the bright side, the bottle of French red wine we had shoved down in the middle of the bag made it through both flights in one piece. Salute!

I'll get to use that new suitcase in a couple of weeks when Hubby and I take off for Mexico. We are taking a cruise with several of my cousins and their spouses, and it should be fun, fun, fun. There are a million things to do between now and then to make sure that Papa T., the diabetic dog and Teen Angel are all taken care of while we're gone. We are spending one night in New Orleans before our ship leaves port, and it should be interesting. That happens to be the night before the LSU-Alabama BCA Championship football game. Every redneck in the southeast will be in NOLA, trolling Bourbon Street. I told Hubby it should either be very exciting or a good opportunity to get in the middle of some kind of street fight. You know us, we seem to find excitement wherever we go. I better where my clean underwear incase I'm in some sort of accident. Let's hope I find some decent new drawers before we go.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-23T18:48:00.001-06:00

I didn't get Christmas cards done this year. They kind of went by the wayside in the midst of all the work, family and photography craziness I've had going on. I did manage a little verse that I jotted onto plain paper and mailed to our friends and family. It was the best I could do. I will share it with you my internet friends because you all brighten my life and make it richer. Some of you I feel as if I've known for years, and I would mail this to all of you if I knew your real names and addresses.

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. May you find joy in this season and many blessings in the new year. Now, get off the internet and go do some Christmas!

O Christmas Card, O Christmas Card

We meant to make a Christmas card, so pretty and sublime

but we couldn't get our act together and now we're out of time.

We even took a family photo, with plans to share with you

but frankly, it was crappy, and simply wouldn't do.

Our hair was kind of messy, our smiles were quite a wreck,

When Olan sent it to us, we said, "Mercy, what the heck?!"

We scrapped that plan and bought some cards, with plans to add a note

a letter telling about our lives, our plans, our year, our hopes!

But things got kind of crazy, we didn't get it done

And Christmas is a week away, this card thing isn't fun.

"Oh, snap!" we said. "What should we do? How shall we cover our butts?"

We decided to whip up a poem, something cheery without any smut.

Hang onto your seats, this is gonna be fast, we've got more shopping to do,

Christmas is kicking our fannies this year, did it come this fast for you?

The year's been good but kind of wild, it kept us on our toes,

It had some highs, some big adventures and even a couple of woes.

We laughed, we cried, we chased our tails, we even traveled the world,

we rate it an eight on a scale of ten, with two thumbs up and a swirl.

We gazed at Big Ben, saw the Eiffel Tower, and flew to the Big Apple in May,

we bought fake purses in China Town, even learned to pronounce si'l vous plait.

T.A. graduated high school, her honors were high, she made her parents' hearts swell,

She's studying nutrition to be a dietician, let's hope she finds work that pays well.

'Cause her parents are broke from purchasing books, and buying her new shirts and pants

not to mention the bucks that we blew in August when we took our graduate to France.

We lost Mama J., two uncles died too, we had to put the cat down,

we shed lots of tears for the ones that we lost and had our fair share of frowns.

But we patched up our hearts, said a few prayers and dusted off our blues

'cause life goes on, work's never done, and sometimes this place is a zoo.

Mom's taking pictures, weddings and such, it gives her some traveling dough

And Dad stays busying looking after his pop, 'cause he needs lots of care don't ya' know.

The year ahead will probably be crazy, we hope it's a good one for you,

with blessings and laughter and lots of good cheer, maybe a surprise or two.

We wish we had something besides this plain paper, with nary a pretty design

but we didn't have time to get to the store, so plain will just have to do this time.

May God bless you and keep you in the palm of his Hand, and calm all your worries and fears

Merry Christmas to you, Happy New Year too. Maybe our card will be better next year.

Love,

The Hula-gen's

Hallmark, you're killin' me!

2011-12-22T18:46:00.000-06:00

I have only two emotions during the Christmas season, blissfully happy and sad to the point of tears. There's no in between, and I can jump from one to the other in a heartbeat. I'd like to blame it on my mixed up hormones, but I've been this way for several years. The death of my nephew probably has a little to do with it because Christmas just isn't the same after you bury a child. However, I think I just have to chalk it up to me being me. As my grandma used to say, I'm just tender hearted. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I just can't help it. Those of you familiar with the Meyer's Briggs Personality Test will find it no surprise that I'm an ENFP. For those of you not familiar with that test, just know that it means I'm off the charts in the "emotional" part of my personality. Gold star, A+ with a smiley face on my paper off the charts. I'm an empathizer, a sympathizer and a sap. I'll laugh with you, cry with you and take on whatever emotion you're likely to be feeling at any time. Which means I can be moved to loud laughter, tears or jeers without much effort. And sometimes it drives my family crazy, although they've gotten somewhat used to me crying at the drop of the hat. They just shake their heads when I cry in church or at the movies or while watching a touching television commercial. Sister mercy, that commercial that's running right now that features the soldier in some far off country reading the Christmas book his child has recorded is killin' me! Killin' me. And I don't dare linger over the Hallmark Channel. Stopping on that channel is just asking for trouble. In fact, when there's a Hallmark Hall of Fame special on CBS, Hubby just groans because he knows I'm going to want to watch it, and I'm going to cry before it ends. I have to keep tissues in the house just in case there's a Steel Magnolias marathon on TBS. As Truvey says, laughter through tears is one of my favorite emotions. And that pretty well sums up the holidays for me.

I find plenty of joy during December. There are get togethers with loved ones, parties with friends, and I love the children's programs. I ran the audio/video booth at church the other night during the preschool program, and it was a doozy. I haven't laughed that much in weeks. They were just cute, cute, cute. But at the same time all of this is going on, I can't help but see the stark differences between the haves and the have not's as daddy calls it. Christmas is an economic divider. No doubt about it. While some are blowing money to the four winds on lots and lots of presents, there are so many people who just don't have money to buy necessities. Some of them can't afford their electricity or their medicine.

There are children whose Christmas dreams will be disappointments. A local gentleman who portrays Santa at local events came to our Stuff the Truck event. He's a wonderful fellow who has a radio call-in show for children who want to talk to Santa. He gets calls from all over the world each Saturday, and recently he asked a young caller what he wanted for Christmas. The little boy asked why it would matter because he didn't get anything last year. Not one single present. It broke my heart to hear that. It broke Santa's, too.

I've seen people in recent weeks who literally had no food on their shelves at home and had no idea how they were going to feed their children. While I'm sitting around dreaming about how I can wrangle a trip to Italy, there are those who don't have enough to eat. And there are those who are alone. A FaceBook post by a friend this week made me think about the number of people I know who lost parents or loved ones this year. Just this morning, I talked at length with a friend who lost her mother. It was about the fifth time this Christmas season that I shed a tear or two. I haven't even begun to think about the emotions that will be rolling through my soul on Christmas Day when Mama J.'s not around. Christmas was a very big deal to her, and Sunday will definitely be different for us than it has in the past as we feel the family circle on Hubby's side getting smaller and smaller each year.

And I'm not really sure where I'm going with all of this other than to say I hope you have noticed, too. You all seem like good folks, so I imagine you have. I hope in the midst of all the hustle and chores and shopping madness, you've noticed the folks among us who are in pain this season. The people who are spending their first Christmas without a loved one or dealing with the dysfunction in their families. When I went to Al-Anon, I learned very quickly that Christmas is a combustible time for many families. There are many people out there, some that are likely your friends, who are just trying to get through the 25th. I can't help but think of that line in that old Emerson, Lake and Palmer song, Father Christmas, "They sold me a dream of Christmas". Movies, television and stores sell us the idea that the holidays are joyous for everyone and that our families, homes and gifts should all be perfect. We can never measure up to that image of the season, and frankly, I've quit trying. I love Christmas folks, but I feel your pain.

I'm lucky, I have a wonderful family, and I find true joy in family and church at Christmas. When we're together this weekend, we'll get to talking about old times, and my peeps will probably make me laugh. Laugh until I cry.

Sittin' in the Kitchen

2011-12-20T17:56:00.002-06:00

People fascinate me. I love talking to people, quizzing them about their past and generally just learning what makes them tick. Maybe it comes from working in journalism all those years. Or maybe I'm must nosey, but I love learning new things about people, especially those I've known for a long time.

Last Friday, we went to the tiny town of Hazel on the Kentucky/Tennessee border to meet Papa T.'s brother, and sisters-in-law for lunch. We met at the only restaurant in town, Anne's Country Kitchen, where they have some great catfish. It's a good thing their food is good, 'cause it helps you to overlook the fact that the building hasn't been dusted since 1987. It's the kind of place that serves hot coffee, plate dinners and mile high meringue on their coconut cream pie. While we waited for our food, I quizzed Aunt Kay about her brother, Byron who is a well known record producer in Nashville. We've been hearing Byron's name thrown around on awards shows over the years. As mama says, he's a pretty big deal. I knew what he did but I had never heard how he made the leap from the family farm in Puryear, Tennessee to making records with some of country music's biggest stars.

It seems Byron got a guitar when he was young and plucked his way through his teenage years with a little band that played at local events and clubs. He eventually won a songwriting contest that earned him a trip to Nashville to record it. The song didn't get him any real attention but it did get his foot in the door with the recording industry. He wrangled an introduction to some performers, and eventually Charley Pride hired him as a songwriter. He worked for Pride for many years and along the way honed some producing skills. One day, he was approached about producing songs for a new, up and coming singer who was expected to do well. He accepted. That singer was Tim McGraw. Yeah, that was a good decision. He produced Tim's first hit, and that was the start of a long and prosperous business relationship. Tim got hitched to Faith Hill, and Byron started producing her music, too. In fact, he won a Grammy for co-producing her big album Breathe. He was Billboard's Producer of the Year in 2000, 2001 and 2002. Not too bad for a country boy, huh? A little while back, he was asked to take on another promising act that record execs had high hopes for. Again, he said yes. Their name? Sugarland. The man knows how to pick 'em. Just a few years ago, he started a recording company with Tim McGraw, so he's doing pretty well these days.

I was completely fascinated by his story, and obviously, Aunt Kay is very proud of her baby brother. She loves to share tidbits about him. Not in a bragging way. She would never do that. It would be unseemly. Aunt Kay is very genteel. Picture Olivia DeHavilland as Melanie in Gone With the Wind, and that's Aunt Kay. Always sweet, always gentle and never boastful. She's a southern lady through and through, so she would never toot Byron's horn very loudly, but she's thrilled with his success. And it's led to some interesting experiences for her, like that time she went to a baby shower at his house in Nashville and met Faith Hill.

But the icing on the cake Friday came near the end of the Byron stories when a friend of hers walked by our table and said, "Hey, there's one of those famous Gallimore Sisters that I saw on the internet." He started talking about a video of her he saw on YouTube, and I almost fell out of my chair. I didn't even know she knew what YouTube was. Come to find out, when Aunt Kay was very young, she used to be part of a trio with her sister, Carol, and her cousin, Annie, that performed at events around the community, had a weekly local radio show and even sang at the Junior Grand Ole' Opry at the Ryman Auditorium. Carol still lives in Puryear, not far from Aunt Kay, but Annie's been traveling the world for years under the name of Rattlesnake Annie, recording music and sharing a microphone with people like Willie Nelson. Last fall, Carol, Annie and Aunt Kay were sitting around the kitchen table, when Annie broke out a cheap recorder and recorded them as they sang together for the first time in years. Aunt Kay doesn't think this is a very good recording because they were just goofing around, but obviously, the ladies know how to harmonize. (Aunt Kay's in the middle.)

Now, I knew Aunt Kay had a great singing voice because I heard her sing a few years ago at a family wedding shower. I was bent over the refreshment table at the back of the tiny church we were at, when I heard her and her two daughters comment on a religious painting on the wall. The picture reminded them of an old hymn they used to sing in church, and the three of them spontaneously broke out into that hymn. It was some of the most beautiful harmony I'd ever heard, and I stopped in my tracks to listen.

However, I had no idea she used to perform publicly, and not only that, she dropped this little nugget on us Friday. Back in the spring, she made professional recordings of some songs with her old trio buddies. She has no idea when or how they are going to be released, but I found it very exciting. Not because she might get some kind of airplay for it, but simply because she's still nurturing a talent that she used so much when she was young. Can you believe it? Aunt Kay, the sweet beautiful lady who spent the last fifty years quietly raising her family in the country town of Puryear, used to perform at the Grand Ole' Opry and is now on YouTube. You just never know what you're gonna find out when you ask someone what they've been up to lately.

Around the World

2011-12-19T18:32:00.002-06:00

One of my favorite things about late December is the Year in Pictures post that MSNBC does on their website. You can find them here, and I encourage you to check them out. There are actually several such posts on various websites around the world, and I enjoy everyone I see. I could sit and look at those pictures all day long, studying the composition and the lighting and trying to figure out what shutter speed the photographer was using or more importantly, what was going through her mind as she snapped the shot. So many of them are graphic and emotional, capturing a significant moment in history involving a war or a natural disaster. I can't help but imagine what it would be like to be standing behind the lens at that exact moment. To personally witness such a spectacular moment, and as soon as I snapped the frame, know that I had just captured an important glimpse of mankind's triumphs or failures.

In fact, I think about it often. I dream about traveling the world and photographing its people. Not posed pictures with special lighting or effects. Just honest pictures of everyday people in their natural settings. Children in Africa. Dancers in Bali. The women of Afghanistan, and fishermen off the coast of Italy. Oh, I'd also want to capture the sights and sounds of exotic places. Sunrises in Tibet. The blocks in the Great Wall of China. Whales off the coast of Alaska. The Eiffel Tower in the snow. But it's mostly people I crave to capture with the lens. The people of the world.

They say the difference between people who dream and people who make those dreams come true is a plan of action. I believe that. I dreamed of seeing the Eiffel Tower and the streets of London, and I made that happen with a plan this past summer. I'm not sure how I'm going to find the money to travel the world and take pictures when I retire, but I'm working on a plan, brothers and sisters. I'm working on a plan. In the meantime, I'm honing my skills, looking at other people's pictures. And dreaming. Always dreaming.

What I've Been up to the Last Couple of Days

2011-12-16T17:06:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was one of my favorite days of the holiday season. For the last four years my employer has challenged area schools to collect canned good for local food pantries. The school that collects the most pounds of food per student wins $1,000. One school gets a nice prize, we gather more food than we could ever buy with $1,000 and the kids get a wonderful lesson in giving. The first year we did it, I was in tears before the end of the day because of how touched I was by the children's generosity. Of course, I was also having an emotional time with Sissy, and Christmas kind of makes me cry anyway (I'm such a sap.) Nonetheless, it was a very moving experience, and since the Challenge has grown each year, it's just a wonderful day when we collect the food. The linemen help me. We get two trucks with lifts, some pallet jacks and extra collection bins and we hit the streets for a day of holiday spirit. Arriving at each school is like opening a present. We open the doors and peek into the hallway for what is almost always a great surprise of more food than we expected. I can't tell you how joyous it is to walk into a school and find food stacked up on the floor and spilling out of bins. Joyous, I tell you. Joyous. It's the usually the day of the year when my Christmas spirit starts to kick in, thanks to all those kids. This year was no different.

This year, we had ten schools participating. When we were finished gathering up food, weighing it and loading it into a semi trailer, we had collected 22,520 pounds of food. Yeehaw! We filled that semi trailer full. And rather than rattle on and on about it, I thought I'd just share with you a video I made from snapshots our crews took along the way. And ya'll, I'm so proud of myself. I made it all the way through the day without crying. Although I did get a little misty when I launched into that little pep talk with those fourth graders about the power of one person when he joins with others to work toward a common goal.

I don't know whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt

2011-12-13T18:23:00.001-06:00

Pray for me, brothers and sisters, that the wheels don't come off my wagon this week as I'm busier than a one legged man in a butt kickin' contest. And if you find my mind, let me know because I apparently lost it about last Thursday. I spent two days last week looking high and low for a gift card and a DVD that I bought online and had tucked away for safe keeping until I could wrap them. I looked through all of the other gifts that the wonderful Amazon fairy has been sending to my house. I searched in drawers and cabinets. I emptied the 50 gallon recycling bin onto the garage floor and dug through every piece of cardboard and paper we had. And we had a lot.

I finally decided I had accidently thrown away both small items. And then one of them came in the mail the next day. And the other showed up the following day. It appears I just imagined I had received them and tucked them away for safekeeping when they hadn't even gotten to my house yet. Oy vey, pass me some eggnog and make it spiked. I should have my shopping privileges revoked.

Oh, and if you see the gift card I bought at Sears the other night, let me know. I put it away for safe keeping, and now I can't find it. I think.

Another Goodbye

2011-12-12T18:07:00.001-06:00

We had to put the cat to sleep today. Sabrina's condition deteriorated over the weekend to the point that we felt she was becoming very uncomfortable. In fact, I was almost afraid to check on her this morning for fear that she had died in the night. She had lost so much weight in the last two weeks, and she stopped eating this weekend. Her breathing was very labored. We called the vet this morning, and when he came to the house at lunchtime, he confirmed what we had expected. It was time to let her go so she wouldn't suffer any more. Her big yellow eyes looked at us pleadingly, as if to say, "Make it stop". So we did. And boy, was it difficult. It was one big sob fest as the vet started the anesthesia. Our pets are our family. Some folks aren't that way, but we are, and we don't apologize for that. They bring us great joy, love us unconditionally and make our lives better. We try to show them great love and kindness in return. We gave Sabrina two good years, and hopefully, that helped to make up for the first eight that weren't so good.

Sabrina was Sissy's cat. That's part of why this is all so painful. Sissy adopted Sabrina after Sissy's son drowned. It was a way for her to liven up her empty home and give her some much needed company. It didn't work that well, though. Sissy embraced her depression, and spent eight years spending money and using all sorts of vices to fill up the empty hole that was once her heart. It didn't work, and when Sissy killed herself, she left Sabrina, who had basically been a stranger in her own house. Sabrina never really got much attention from Sissy, and she was left for long periods of time in the house with food and water but without company. She was bounced around a couple of kennels for long periods of time each time Sissy moved. It wasn't a great life for her.

We weren't looking for another pet when Sissy died, and we initially looked for a new home for Sabrina. But she was an older cat and pretty unsociable, so no one wanted her. We knew if we took her to a shelter she'd end up euthanized, so we reluctantly gave in when Teen Angel begged to keep her. Sabrina didn't even like us at first. I think she didn't know how to receive love and attention. She had never had any toys, so she didn't know how to play with them. We would shake a toy mouse at her, and she'd look at us like we were crazy. Initially, we left her at Sissy's house where we'd visit her every day and then we brought her to our house where she stayed in Teen Angel's room for a few weeks. She was scared to leave Teen Angel's room, especially with the dog around. Eventually, she got the nerve to venture into the rest of the house, and we kept trying to show her some love. Then, one day, it was if she'd made up her mind that we were okay and that she'd be okay, and she climbed up on the sofa and made herself at home. She never looked back. For the last couple of years, she's been Teen Angel's buddy. She's been sassy and irreverent. She has smacked the dog's jaws on numerous occasions and she has given us a lot of laughter as we watched her priss around as if she owned the place. She would daintily dip her paws into the water bowl and dab her wet paw to her mouth instead of drinking out of the bowl. She would sit just so from her perch on the back of the couch, and she groomed herself religiously. Teen Angel and I, on a daily basis, would make up conversation based on what we thought she would say if she could speak. "Ooh Nana, can't we get rid of that dumb dog?" and "Is that cream I see in the refrigerator? I do loves me some dairy." We have gotten a lot of joy out of her, and while she was never an extremely loving cat, she had obviously begun to love us and would cuddle against us at night or crawl into Hubby's lap for a good nap. She was an interesting cat, and we were very attached to her.

I don't know if this would have been any easier if she had not been Sissy's cat. There is obviously an emotional attachment there that made this situation unique. Taking care of Sabrina was a way to cope with Sissy's suicide, and letting go of Sabrina is almost like letting go of a little piece of Sissy. We've had so much loss in the last few years that it's hard to take any loss at this point, especially so soon after Mama J's death. It starts to feel as if you don't have much control over your life and that about the time you think you've gained control again, it slips from your grasp in a slippery kind of way. Kind of like when you pick up a chunk of hard sugar with your fingers. It's hard when you first touch it, but the minute you grasp it, it drops into a thousand tiny kernels that fall through your fingers, and there's no way to catch them before they spill. We spilled many tears today when we laid Sabrina on her soft pillow in that sunny window she likes so much and stroked her while the vet injected her with the drugs. She drifted off to sleep, leaving us with an empty spot in our hearts but hope that she learned what love was all about before her life ended. The ground on our property is very hard right now, despite all the recent rain, so we are having her cremated and will figure out what to do with her ashes later. Ironically, the funeral home that provides that service is the same one that handled the funeral arrangements for Sissy's son. It's funny how life turns. And it's funny how you just don't see some of the curves ahead until you're right in them. How we negotiate those curves is what's important, and while we'll muddle through as always, I'm ready for a good straight stretch of road.

Here Kitty, Kitty

2011-12-08T18:05:00.000-06:00

When you have a blind dog, funny things happen. Jack has adapted pretty well to his loss of vision, but he still has issues getting around sometimes. Like last night, when he was sniffing for crumbs in the kitchen floor, hoping someone had dropped a tasty morsel while fixing or eating dinner. From the living room we could hear was him bumping repeatedly into the cabinets like a steel ball in a pinball game. He did it so much it got funny. Sometimes he gets stuck in a closet or bathroom and can't figure out how to get out so he gets mad and starts barking in a dammit kind of bark. And if you're not careful when walking him in the yard, he'll run into a tree 'cause he gets so excited about going outside that he runs without caution. If they made helmets for pets, we'd buy one.

Well today, Teen Angel texted me this picture of Jack snoozing on Sabrina's bed, next to her kitty toys and a couple of feet from her water bowl.

While the cat is in the habit of stealing Jack's pillow because she's ornery that way, he NEVER EVER wants anything to do with her, let alone her bedding. I mean never. From the moment we moved her into the house, he has pretended she doesn't exist. So this picture means one of two things, either he got lost and wound up in the wrong bed or someone's having an identity crisis.

Word of the Day-"Humiliation"

2011-12-07T18:25:00.001-06:00

hu•mil•i•a•tion

Pronounciation: hyoo-mil-ee-ey-shuh

Form: noun

Definition:

1. an act or instance of humiliating or being humiliated.

2. the state or feeling of being humiliated; mortification.

Origin:

1350–1400; Middle English < Late Latin humiliātiōn- (stem of humiliātiō ). See humiliate, -ion

Related forms:

re•hu•mil•i•a•tion, noun

self-hu•mil•i•a•tion, noun

Synonyms:

2. degradation, dishonor. See shame.

Used in a sentence: "The humiliation Hula felt when tripping on a rug in a dark hallway and falling spectacularly while going to pee was nothing compared to the embarrassment she felt when she realized it had been caught on the security cameras at work."

From now on, Hula will turn on the light when dashing through the building at night.

iHeart Faces Photography Challenge-"On Your Feet"

2011-12-06T16:26:00.000-06:00

It was either this or the one of her wearing my red cowboy boots. What a fun bride!

For all of the other wonderful entries, trot on over to this place.

On a Wing and a Prayer

2011-12-05T17:24:00.002-06:00

Has it really been Thanksgiving since I last posted? I think that's the longest I've gone between posts since I first started this blog four years ago. I have just had a couple of the busiest weeks of 2011 at work and home. Whew! This is always a busy season for me at work because of the holiday related community events my employer participates in, but sister mercy, it's been busy at home, too. Yesterday was the first day since before Thanksgiving where I could just sit for a few minutes, unwind and make a list of all the little things I need to catch up on. And that list covers a whole page. So what's new? Dear Lord, please send me two extra legs and more hands. Amen.

Here's what the Hula-gen's have been up to:

-We got Papa T. out of the hospital and back home with some physical therapy and home health. About the time we thought he was back on the right track, he had a very light stroke that sent him back to the hospital for two days. Fortunately, there was no damage to his speech or mobility but it certainly did give us a bit of a scare for a few hours. And it happened while I was in the middle of shooting a wedding, so I couldn't leave and help Hubby at the hospital. Aye, yi, yi. It all worked out though, and Papa T. is back home feeling pretty good and may I say just a little sassy.

-The photography business has been very busy in recent weeks. I had four family shoots and a wedding all squeezed into a three week period. I spent every spare minute this past weekend editing photos and uploading them to my photography site. I am now caught up, except for the wedding, and those pictures aren't due for a couple of more weeks, so I'll be working on those over the course of the next few nights. Weddings are hard work, but I do love seeing the bride and groom enjoy their big day. It brings back good memories. I'm lovin' the photography for pay thing even though it does consume a fair amount of time. Can you say vacation money? Dear Lord, thank you. Amen.

-Speaking of vacation, we are going on a cruise in January. It's been planned for quite some time, and we'll be on the same cruise as several of my cousins and their spouses. It's going to be a blast, and Hula was very proud of herself for scoring $62 planet tickets for the flight to our port city, New Orleans, and $59 tickets for the flight home. But she got a little greedy and was holding out for a great deal on a hotel room in New Orleans for that night before our boat leaves port. And then LSU got a spot in the BCA Championship game. In New Orleans. On January 8th. The night we're staying there. And suddenly the hotel rooms got scarce and expensive. Holy hurricane, Batman! A room at the Marriott Convention Center that was $149 a night three weeks ago is now $445 a night, and most of the mom and pop bed and breakfast inns have a four night minimum stay that week. After an hour and a half on the phone and online I managed to find a room for $111, three miles from downtown New Orleans in a hotel that is not next door to a crack house. I'll take it. It's better than renting a car at the airport, driving out of town to a hotel and driving back in the next day. And we won't have to stay with Madd Maxx and his family in Baton Rouge, which was going to be Plan B, even though he doesn't know that yet. We're still close enough to the French Quarter to boogie on over there if we want, and it occurred to me today that perhaps we should actually try to go to the game. Whatever we do, I'm sure New Orleans will be rockin' that night so it should be interesting.

-In the category of bad news never seems to be far away these days, we got word last week that Teen Angel's cat, Sabrina, has cancer. In fact, she doesn't have long to live. Her lungs are full of tumors so she probably has only days left. She doesn't seem to be uncomfortable yet, so we are keeping an eye on her and lavishing her with lots of attention. One of two things will likely happen in the next week. She will either start to hurt and we'll have to put her to sleep or she will die in her sleep. Every time we walk into the house we run to check on her and hope she hasn't died. This death watch thing is kind of hard. It's compounded by the fact that Sabrina was actually Sissy's cat. Sissy adopted her as a kitten right after Sissy's son died, and we adopted Sabrina when Sissy died. There's a unique attachment there, and it just makes losing Sabrina even more difficult than it normally would be. Dear Lord, please stop with the bad news. It's getting old. Amen.

-And on a really positive note, one of the things we do at work this time of year is to hold a two day event with the local hospitals where we try to stuff a semi truck full of canned goods for local food pantries. The event started last Tuesday with a bang, and then quickly slid downhill when the weather turned to poo. It rained early, turned to wet heavy snow, sleeted, rained some more and then turned very windy. As in it turned over our pop up tent. It was just miserable, and as I huddled with the other volunteers in the back of that cold wet semi last Tuesday night, I thought we were certainly going to go home with much less food than expected. But then the sun shined the following morning and cars started streaming to the truck. Hours later the truck was full, and we had more than 17,000 pounds of food. I couldn't believe it. I guess that's why they call it faith. Dear Lord, thanks for the affirmation that the world is not going to hell in a hand basket. Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving

2011-11-23T17:16:00.000-06:00

For those of you traveling, may your journey be safe and may all of you have a blessed holiday. I hope you all are "home", whatever "home" may mean to you at this point in your life. Peace.

Psst.....Don't you miss John Denver?

Simple Gifts

2011-11-22T18:34:00.000-06:00

There is a row of five trees on one of the main streets in town, right in front of our local health department. They are large and provide a great deal of shade in the warm months, but they aren't that noticeable. Until fall. And then they put on quite a show. Those ginkgo trees turn a stunning shade of yellow that coats that whole side of the block. For a couple of weeks they shimmer and shine and light up that little section of downtown until they shed their lovely coat and get naked for the winter months. When in their prime, they beg to have their picture taken, and of course, I oblige.

But it occurred to me the other day how subtle and quiet they are for the other fifty weeks of the year. How funny that something so plain and simple the rest of the year could bring such joy and beauty to my life and the lives of others for just a handful of days. It made me think about the other things in my life that are that way and how perhaps, I take them for granted. Simple pleasures that beautify my days and lift me up.

For instance, Teen Angel's laughter from another room. I love it when I'm sitting on the couch, and I hear her chuckle in her bedroom over something on TV or the phone. How poor is the man who lives in a house so big he can't hear his peeps in the next room?

The warmth of my dog's body against me when he snuggles with me on the couch. The unconditional love of a dog is why I will never truly be a cat person.

The brightness of new grass in the spring. It's so green. Vivid even, and it's as if a big eraser has wiped winter from my front yard.

Taking pictures of other people. I think I've figured out why I enjoy taking pictures for people. Whether it's a bride dressed as a princess, a family celebrating a new baby or parents marking their child's birthday, people having portraits made are usually marking a special moment in their lives, and it's a privilege to be a part of that. I feel like an invited guest when I look at them through the lens. This Saturday, when I shoot a wedding, I will be the only extra person in the room when the groom gets his first look at his bride in her wedding dress. What a special honor to be entrusted with that moment. Maybe I've just been lucky and worked with only great people so far, but I have really had a lot of fun with each and every photo shoot I've done, and I've had several lately.

The touch of my husband's hand. It's not uncommon for him to grab my hand when we're walking across a parking lot or into a store. And sometimes when he crawls wearily into bed at night he lays his hand on top of mine as I drift off to sleep. That touch says so much. Likes those ginkgo leaves. Sparkly and warm and beautiful. Even if the moment is fleeting. It's memory is not.

Oh, Hula, where did the week go?

2011-11-21T18:19:00.000-06:00

I looked up and suddenly it was Monday morning. And I wasn't sure how I got there. Seriously. I had a three day weekend, but I ran the entire time, starting at 8am last Friday. I finally sat down last night around 9:30am and said, "Self, what was the name of that hurricane that just rolled over my fanny?" Just for fun I decided to name him Phillip 'cause that was the name of the ex-boyfriend that was the biggest pain in my backside way back before Hubby and marriage. He was about a category 4 and left my heart in quite a shambles. I stumbled across a picture of him on Facebook not too long ago, and he looked old and haggard, so I was pleased that the hex I put on him on 1986 must have worked. That noise you just heard was Jesus smacking me up the side of the head. He's probably starting to think I'm slow.

Try as I might, the feeling that the next month and a half is going to overwhelm me is starting to creep into the recesses of my feeble brain. I'm trying to pace myself but Lord have mercy, that train called the Holiday Express is picking up speed. I have several big projects at work involving multiple volunteers which will all culminate during the holidays, and when you combine that with the family Christmas festivities and a dose of what the heck do we do about Papa T. in the midst of everything, it is enough to make me want to curl up in the corner with a 2 liter of Coke Zero, a Pall Mall and reruns of Gene Simmons' Family Jewels. And I don't even smoke. Did I mention I have a droopy bra strap today, too? Somebody remind me to buy new underwear after Christmas.

As I type this I'm baking cornbread so I can dry it out in time to make dressing for our Thanksgiving meal. We have decided the time has come to relieve mama of having to do most of the work. We've been dividing up the dishes over the last several years, but she ends up being the one who does the most cleaning and baking so we told her this year to just show up at SuperCop's house with a ham, and we'd do the rest. I'm on dressing, cranberry relish and pie detail while Mrs. Scrubs, SuperCop, HandyMan and his girlfriend are doing the rest. SuperCop is frying a turkey breast in that new fryer of his, so y'all say a prayer that he doesn't burn down his garage in the process. Nothing puts a damper on a holiday meal like having to call State Farm. Mama tried to downplay the relief in her voice when I told her we were taking the reins this year, which told me we should have probably done it sooner. Oh, she pretended to be a little let down that she wouldn't have to clean up a kitchen, set the table, peel sixteen taters and roll out a gallon sized pot of chicken and dumplin's, but I could hear her humming the Hallelujah Chorus under her breath. We didn't let her completely off the hook, though 'cause it is not a holiday meal in our family without her ham. We cook a turkey at Thanksgiving but that's really just for looks. We nibble on it, but we're pork people through and through, and Mama is queen of the hams. I mean that in the best way possible.

We will gather with Mama and Daddy Wednesday night because of everyone's work schedules, and then we'll take Papa T. to my brother in law's house Thursday. That's two more pies to bake. Just call me Mrs. Smith. I actually love Thanksgiving. It's like Christmas without all the pressure and hoopla. You don't have to worry about gifts, you don't have to spend and arm and a leg (unless you're traveling) and you get to wear your stretchy pants without shame. Can I get an amen on the stretchy pants?

After Thursday, things will get really crazy for me at work, and somewhere in the next few weeks I'll have to do some Christmas shopping. Amazon here it come! I am not a Black Friday shop 'til you drop person. There is nothing at the mall I want that won't wait until 10am. Frankly, there's nothing at the mall I want, but my family does like a couple of presents under the tree, so I'll make an effort at some point. But it won't be on Friday morning. Teen Angel will be there at some ungodly hour with bells on while I will snooze in my bed until the dog wakes me up.

I'll put up the Christmas tree Friday and do my best to keep up with the crazy mishmash of events that will unfold in the next few weeks whether I'm ready for them or not. Somewhere in the midst of all the fanfare and busy- ness I will try to find some quiet time to reflect on the season and to look ahead to next year. I doubt things will slow down much after the first of the year as Papa T's care is still pretty intense, and I don't see that changing any time soon (another post for another day), but it should get a little better once January arrives. We have a little vacation planned then, and we're sure to need it. In the meantime, I'm battening down the hatches and hunkering down for this wave of craziness. My blogging may be a little erratic in the next few weeks, but if you miss me, check the cellar. I'm probably riding out the storm down there in my stretchy pants.

Word of the Day-"Thwart"

2011-11-15T18:15:00.001-06:00

THWART

Pronunciation: \ˈthwȯrt\

transitive verb

Definition:

1a : to run counter to so as to effectively oppose or baffle : CONTRAVENE b : to oppose successfully : defeat the hopes or aspirations of

2: to pass through or across

Origin: Middle English thwerten, from thwert, adverb

First Known Use: 13th century

Synonyms: BAFFLE, BALK, BEAT, CHECKMATE, DISCOMFIT, FOIL, FRUSTRATE

Antonyms: ADVANCE, CULTIVATE, ENCOURAGE, FORWARD, FOSTER, FURTHER, NURTURE, PROMOTE

Used in a sentence: "Hula's attempts to do her Christmas shopping early this year were thwarted by the fact she can't remember where she hid the two lone gifts she bought on clearance immediately after the holidays last year and hid from her family." It appears she hid them from herself as well.

iHeart Faces Photography Challenge-"Autumn Splendor"

2011-11-13T16:49:00.001-06:00

Well, I wanted to use a bridal picture I shot recently, but we are still hiding those from the groom, so I'll use my favorite little person instead. I still can't believe this little stinker is three years old.

For the other entries, just pop on over to this site.

Hold Your Breath!

2011-11-11T17:47:00.001-06:00

I got my mammogram last week, and while I don't mind doing it, I'm always a little amused by the whole process. I'm sure it's not remotely funny if you're dealing with a health scare, but on run of the mill mammogram days I can't help but smile when I do it. Some women claim that it hurts. I've never had that experience, but perhaps you need more boob for that. The office that does my mammograms is wonderful. They are very caring and professional, and I get to wear this spiffy robe throughout the whole thing. They don't make you wait around forever for your results either. Within a few hours of mine, I had a text message saying mine was A-okay. Of course, that text was from Mrs. Scrubs who works in that office, but they were always prompt and doting before she started working there.

I guess it's a lack of maturity on my part because in all honesty, every time I step up to that mammogram machine, that old saying about gettin' your tit hung in a wringer goes through my head. Over and over again. Throughout the whole lift this arm, move forward, don't breathe thing. It's all I can do not to laugh. Then there's all the tugging and pulling, the mashing and smashing. I started to make some smart aleck comment to the nurse the other day about pulling taffy and then I thought better of it. Believe it or not, I do manage to stop this mouth from running overtime on a rare occasion. (And that noise you just heard was my husband snorting.)

Among the other thoughts that went through my head the other day was God bless the flat chested woman who has to endure the nurse trying to stretch every inch of flesh she can in between those two plates. And where's the lattes? Every other professional office is trying to wow me with their customer service these days by offering me a milky coffee I'm probably paying too much for, so why can't they? Oh, right, it's supposed to be about the TEST. Which brings me (finally) to my point. If we can spend so much time on figuring out ways to make medical tests much more pleasant like robes, and potpourri and mood music, why can't we spend a little more time on improving the tests themselves? There is probably a lot of research like that going on now that I just don't know about it, but it sure seems to take a long time for us to find a better way to probe the human body. Take the rectal thermometer and babies. How long did we use that method before someone finally said, "Let's just use the temperature in the ear and adjust our scale accordingly." I remember a time when I was a kid and mama would holler at me to go get the thermometer, and she'd have to remind me to pick up the oral thermometer, NOT the rectal thermometer. Wouldn't that be a bad mistake?

And then there's the way we come up with the ideas to begin with. Who decided that the best way to determine body temperature was to shove a glass capsule full of mercury up your backside? It's an issue that plagues us in these modern times. I'd love to have been seated at the table when someone in the group of people studying the colon said, "Hey! I got it. Let's give someone explosive diarrhea, clean 'em out real good and then run a camera up their fanny! They're gonna fart like crazy when it's over with, but I think it'll work." I'm not even gonna' touch on the issue of pap smears except to say that those little brushes may LOOK like Q-tips, but they don't FEEL like Q-tips.

A man is credited with developing the mammogram, which does not surprise me. No woman would have ever volunteered for getting her tit caught in a wringer...I mean, mash her boob really hard between two plates. I suspect that if we developed a prostate test that involved mashing the genitalia of a man between two plates and telling him to stand on his tiptoes and hold his breath, we'd have a better test within months. Now, wipe that visual image out of your brain with some eye bleach.

No doubt about it, medical care is invasive. It's humbling to be poked and prodded in the name of staying healthy. Just ask Papa T.. And I will gladly line up for my mammogram each year. But barring any surprises, I am just two and a half years away from my first colonoscopy, so I'm hoping they've developed a better way of performing that little chore before I have to have one. Besides, contrary to what I tell my family, I do not fart rainbows.

Photo Friday Challenge-"One"

2011-11-11T15:47:00.000-06:00

If only there were only one of these in my yard. Check out the other wonderful entries here.

And it was a Good One

2011-11-08T18:29:00.001-06:00

Papa T. got to come home this afternoon. Yay! He had to come home with oxygen. Boo. And that could be permanent. Oh my. We're not sure yet. We'll just have to wait and see, but it's definitely a possibility, and if that's the case, Lord help us all 'cause that oxygen tube up his nose has been a thorn in his side since he got to the hospital. He hates it. But as Hubby says, it is what it is, so he may just have to get used to it. Easier said than done probably. We're hoping that now that he's home, he will actually improve. His progress at the hospital had plateaued, and the doctor was a little stumped by that, but we really think that he will improve now that he's back to his house, his bed, his surroundings and his routine. And UK basketball. Go wildcats. One thing's for sure, we will celebrate for the next few nights with some of his favorite dinners, which basically means any combination of home cooked vegetables with a side of any kind of bread.

It has been a long seventeen days, and some of those days were good, and some were downright depressing. Taking care of old folks is hard work, and it can be very stressful when there are issues like blindness and dementia involved. Daily, I spent the drive to work praying for patience and strength and healing and a sense of humor. Five mornings ago, when I was having a particularly stressful spurt and I was more than a little tired, I caught myself asking the good Lord to give me a good day. And when I realized what I was doing that old Don Williams song rolled through my head. Before you know it, I was singing Lord I Hope This Day is Good for about three miles. And I don't know all the words, so it was a lot of "Lord, I hope this day is good" and a fair amount of humming. I thought how appropriate that song was for this particular moment in my day to day life.

"Lord, I hope this day is good. I'm feeling lonely and misunderstood" and "Lord, have you forgotten me?"

How honest is that? And it's a real toe tapper, so that was kind of uplifting. I downloaded it from Hubby's CD collection, and I've been playing it since. It shall be my theme for the time being, and that leads me to the question of the day, my friends. What song would be the soundtrack for YOUR life right at this moment? Shout it out 'cause I'd like to know. And in the meantime, here's to home cooked vegetables and heartfelt music. Yay!

Oh, Bother.

2011-11-07T18:39:00.000-06:00

It's been a busy week at the Hula-gen ranch. Papa T. is still in the hospital. This was day sixteen, and he cannot get home fast enough. He is much, much better, but his pneumonia has been a bit slow to clear up. More worrisome than anything though, has been his thinking skills. This whole bout of sickness has done a bit of a number on his thinker. Most of the time it's been due to his low oxygen level, but sometimes he gets fuzzy when his oxygen is fine, and we're not sure why. He'll start a sentence with one thought and wander into another. As Winnie the Pooh once said, "“When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” Papa T. has always been a bear of very great brain, so it has been frustrating to see him so confused. Yesterday he was completely out of his head. Today he was clear as a bell. We're just not sure what to think about it. Nevertheless, his lungs are clearer, and we're hoping he might go home in the next day or two. Please, Lord, let him go home. We are all tired of the hospital. These past two weeks have certainly verified for me that I have no business working in the medical field.

Hubby is worn out. His patience is shot, and he needs some alone time that doesn't include napping in a hospital chair. He's a good man to take care of his parents so well, but it is hard. It really does take its toll after a while. One of these days, I'm going to write a book on taking care of the elderly. It will be an honest account of the stress, frustration and humor involved in nurturing another human being. I want people to know that they are not alone when they feel all of those mixed emotions. God bless people who make a career out of it. As far as I'm concerned, they get the Fast Pass into heaven.

I had one of those don't give a fig days. I suspect it's just welling up from a very tired place somewhere within my being, and it shall pass in a day or so, but right now, I just can't get too worked up about anyone else's problems. I'm too mired down in mine. I'm a bit snippy, too. I noticed it right off the bat this morning when, less than a half mile from my house, I glared in the rearview mirror at the SUV tailgating me and hollered at its driver, "Do you want to buy the arse of my car?!" I must have looked like I meant business because he backed off. Way off. And to be completely honest, I'm still not sorry about it. What's that line in the Rickie Lee Jones song, "A little lonely, a little sad, a little mean." Ha.  That's me, minus the lonely and sad.

What makes us that way sometimes? Why is it so easy to resort to mean and ugly when we're feeling sorry for ourselves?  Papa T. had a couple of days like that last week. In fact, we had a little come to Jesus meeting last Wednesday 'cause his attitude was all wonky, and it was making us and the hospital staff very cranky. But I get it. I get why he was taking it out on us because I'm guilty of doing the same thing. I just don't like it when someone does it to me. Will there ever be a day when I'm mature enough to get past that kind of behavior and just clamp my mouth shut when mean and snippy is at the back of my throat? And listen more than I speak? Probably not. If only I could be more like Pooh. “If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.”

On the Mend

2011-11-02T18:01:00.001-05:00

Papa T. is still in the hospital, and he has a way to go before he's truly well. The poor man has been through the wringer in the past week and a half. As the doctor explained it, we got Papa T. to the hospital just as his pneumonia was starting so it had to settle in and get worse before it got better. And it did get much worse. In fact, about last Thursday, we were starting to worry that he wasn't going to get better. His oxygen level was really low, causing him to be very confused and to talk out of his head. You never knew what he was going to say. At one point, he was trading two cows for a sitting hen and another time he was hiring teachers. His speech got somewhat slurred, and we got scared.

He has slowly gotten rid of a great deal of the pneumonia, but he's weak and will need some rehab before he can go home. Shhh. Don't tell him that just yet. He's going to have a fit when he finds out, and it's best not to upset him until we have to. The bottom line is that in a couple of days they will likely move him to the rehab floor of the hospital where he'll stay several days, and when he goes home he'll have to have some nursing care. We've already hired someone to sit with him at nights while he's in the hospital because one thing's for sure, Hubby can't hold out much longer at this pace. It's just too overwhelming, and it's time for more help. The doctor says it will be five or six weeks before he's back to normal, which prompts me to say to all people over sixty, GET YOUR PNEUMONIA SHOT. Sister mercy, it's crazy how fast pneumonia can overtake a senior citizen. It really scares me. My uncle who recently passed away developed pneumonia after a fall, and after several days he started looking and feeling good, sat up in the bed and laughed with us and then his family was told the next morning he had less than a day to live. He was dead within twelve hours. That s**t kills, so don't fool around with it brothers and sisters.

It looks like we have several more days of sitting by his bedside, trying to convince him to eat hospital food and getting acquainted with every nurse who works the third and/or sixth floors of the hospital. If we're lucky, they'll have that roast beef special in the cafeteria at least one more time. Ug. I took one look at that and swore I was back in college as it definitely looked like something good ol' Winslow (Winslop) Cafeteria served up back in the day.

We've already had plenty of time to experience just about every aspect of the hospital in the past week and in the doctor's offices in the adjacent building since I had my yearly physical there this week, and I have a couple of suggestions for the folks in charge.

1. Can we not get a better hospital gown? I know the patient has to be accessible, but those gowns reveal way too much way too easily. I've seen more of Papa T.'s lower half than I ever wanted to see. I love him, but there are just some things better left to the imagination.

2. Is there a reason patient doors aren't closed more often? Everybody else has on that same gown, and just going from the elevator to Papa T.'s room every day for the past eleven days I have seen more hoo hoo's and wee wee's than I can count. And they don't offer eye bleach for hospital visitors.

3. Is it really necessary to put someone on a cardiac diet if he's tip toeing toward death's door, and you want him to eat SOMETHING, anything? Really, how much does trans fat matter at a time like that? If you want someone to eat so he can get his strength back up, for the love of Mirtle, don't give him dry chicken and tuna salad every day. I'm thinking of sneaking in a little serving of green beans cooked in hog jowl with a biscuit for Papa T.

4. Don't they make some kind of seat warmer for those exam beds they make you lie on in the doctor's office? I was laying under my lovely paper gown at the gynecologist's office yesterday (and can I just say my jewelry accessorized very well with that gown), freezing my patookus off and wondering why on earth they can't heat those things. I mean, we heat car seats now. Why can't we apply that technology to those beds? You don't have to use them on people with a fever, just those of us with thin blood.

5. Also, doctor's office staff should probably quit trying to be so politically correct when handing you those crazy paper gowns to put on. The nurse gave me a "vest" and a "skirt" yesterday. I promptly ripped the vest which was certainly thinner than a Bounty paper towel, and then I had trouble covering up both cheeks with the so called skirt. I told the doctor that I had cocktail napkins at home bigger than that skirt and offered to bring them next time. She didn't think I was nearly as funny as I thought I was. Perhaps, I should have offered to trade her two cows for a sitting hen. Maybe that would have made her smile.

The Boo Review

2011-11-01T18:08:00.001-05:00

Here's a little video someone made about the trick or treating event I told you about yesterday. I thought you might enjoy seeing it. Keep in mind that this is all done by private home owners. Oh, and the guy in the red vest is our mayor. The gentleman standing next to him is a friend of mine who is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, even when he's not building mad scientist labs.

Boo!

2011-10-31T17:41:00.002-05:00

In recent years, one of our busiest residential streets in the heart of town has developed a trick or treating tradition that has grown to the point that the city shuts down about a half dozen blocks of that street to safely accommodate all the little goblins and ghouls that will traipse through there tonight. They expect somewhere around 3,000 kids to show up. Whew! Wouldn't you hate to buy candy for that many kids?

It started when a couple of houses on the block got a little carried away with decorations, and before you know it, everyone else was getting into the spirit and now, every Halloween, the yards are filled with elaborate decorations that even include a real coffin or two. Some of the houses start getting ready a couple of weeks prior to Halloween, giving you sneak peeks of what's to come. Since I run on that street just about every day during lunch, I get to watch the decorations come together, and today that street was a beehive of activity as homeowners got their houses ready. Some houses go the traditional route:

Others create mazes that will likely be kind of dark and scary at night.

Others, like my buddy D. and his wife, build mad scientist labs, complete with old freezers and fake body parts.

In fact, there were fake arms, legs and heads scattered up and down that street today, tucked into bushes and peeking out from under flower beds.

My favorite house changes themes each year and they usually lean toward whimsical. Last year, they went with Peter Pan. This year, they teased us for the last several days with a big sign in the yard inviting everyone "to tea", and today, Alice and her buddies were setting a table and getting ready for company.

So cool. The Hula-gen's do not go to extremes like that, although I might throw on Teen Angel's bumble bee costume for answering the door to trick or treater's. With Papa T. still in the hospital, we're lucky we have candy. Thanks goodness I bought it two weeks ago because I had coupons. And thank goodness, we won't have 3,000 visitors. I didn't have enough coupons for that many goblins.

A Bigger Prize

2011-10-30T16:51:00.001-05:00

Thursday, we had the Business and Professional Women's Luncheon where they named the winner of the local Business Woman of the Year award. I was one of sixteen finalists. Hubby and Teen Angel were there, along with mama and daddy for moral support. You couldn't keep mama away from something that recognizes one of her babies. In fact, if it had been some kind of election, she would have wrapped up enough votes for me to win two weeks ago. She's been campaigning for me since the nominations were announced. Despite her efforts to tout my achievements to anyone in three counties who would listen, I did not win. Another very well deserving colleague of mine did, and I couldn't be more happy for her.

I did not expect to win, and that's the gosh honest truth. Hand to God, I was just very honored to be included on a list with such wonderful dynamic women, and it was great to have my family there to share that joy. It truly was an honor just to be nominated. My family though, was convinced I was going to win. Hubby swore the day before that I would. Right before the luncheon, daddy so cutely whispered to me, "Now the only one I'm worried about is Mrs. ****. She's got a pretty good resume." And THEN after the winner was announced and had made her speech, mama leaned over to me, patted me on the leg and said, "Well, you're number one in OUR book." And she meant it.

And that, my friends, is why it didn't bother me that I didn't land on that podium last Thursday. I had already won before I walked in the door.

Revealed

2011-10-28T17:55:00.004-05:00

Happy-Because he loves nothing better than to snooze in the chair with his best bud, especially if there's a good western on TV.

Sleepy-Because you can count on two hands and part of one foot the number of hours he has slept since Papa T. landed in the hospital Sunday.

Grumpy-Because, well, because she's just a bit of a bee-atch. I think she's harboring a grudge because of how much we made fun of her swollen teat this summer.

Sleepy, Happy and Grumpy. You figure out which one is which.

2011-10-27T18:29:00.001-05:00

In case you were wondering if we're still enjoying the Big A** Chair....we are. Well, some of us are, anyway.

Anyone Smell Beans?

2011-10-26T18:29:00.001-05:00

So, last night I read Super Cop's comment about my post on throwing up in the car when I was a kid and got just as tickled as he did. In fact, an hour later when I was laying in bed trying to go to sleep, I got to laughing about it again and laughed so hard I shook the bed. Fortunately, Hubby was so exhausted and sleeping so soundly he didn't notice, but I had to put my hand over my mouth to keep from cackling out loud and waking him up. I had forgotten how annoyed Daddy was with me that day and how much he griped about it when it happened. As I recall I threw up right after we got in the car to go home, so everybody had to deal with the smell and mess for most of the thirty mile drive to the house. Nice. All because I didn't have the sense to realize that if you eat a hot dog right before you try to set a personal record for Tilt-A-Whirl rides, that dog is likely to come flying back up later. Or that I probably should have given everyone a heads up that maybe we might want to wait a few minutes before getting into the car so I could throw up OUTSIDE the vehicle. But ya' know, when you're a kid on an amusement park high you get a little addled. It was the one day of the year we got to ride all of the rides in that park free, and I took full advantage of it. If memory serves me correctly, that was also the year one of us won a sleeping bag with pictures of Dots candy all over it during the picnic's Bingo games, so the excitement was overwhelming.

Now, some of you without children might be wondering why daddy wasn't a little more sympathetic to my plight, but those of you with children fully understand his response. It was one of those moments when your children have driven you crazy all day, danced on your last nerve and then pushed you right over into delirium. The things that can fly out of your mouth in those moments rarely make sense.

There's no accounting for your reaction to some of the things your kids do. I've had many of those moments myself, so that's probably why I find it so funny now. Honestly, I found it pretty funny back when I was driving my parents crazy. There were many times when I clamped my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing out loud at daddy's response to something we did, or anything that caused a mess daddy had to clean up. Like that time we stopped at Stuckey's and Super Cop begged for the large grape drink, even though he couldn't drink a large drink. He whined until he got it and then promptly spilled it all over the floor before we got to our table. Nothing brings down a road trip like spilling a sticky drink in front of a restaurant full of people. To this day I cannot see a grape soda without smiling.

One of the times I saw daddy get the most frustrated was when we were headed to my aunt's house for some kind of family meal, maybe Thanksgiving. We had a large crock-pot full of baked beans in the back floorboard, and daddy turned a corner too sharp and turned over the crock-pot. Baked beans were everywhere, and for some reason us kids thought that was funny. I mean, who doesn't laugh at beans? Daddy, that's who. There we were, pulled over to the side of the road with all three of us kids rolling in the backseat and daddy flinging beans onto the ground and swearing like a sailor. The fun didn't end there though. He was never fully able to get that bean smell out of the car. For as long as we owned that Chrysler, whenever it rained and it was damp outside, you could get a faint whiff of beans in that car. And every time we smelled beans, we would laugh and say, "I smell beans." Daddy would say something not family friendly.

And then, there was the time Daddy had a little trouble fixing the brakes on the car. He did all of the repair work on our cars, and I seriously did not know until about age thirteen that you could pay someone to fix your car. Whenever he worked on the car, one of us was expected to stand close by and either hand him tools like a surgical assistant or hold the work light above his head with your outstretched arm like one of those infernal lawn jockeys. The best job though came when he put on new brake shoes or pads because that required him to be under the car while one of us sat in it and pumped the air out of the brakes. That basically involved scooting up to the edge of the seat, hanging onto the steering wheel and mashing the brakes with the enthusiasm of a jack rabbit until you couldn't press the pedal to the floor anymore. It was great fun. On one particular day I was the designated pumper, and daddy was having a terrible time trying to work on the brakes. I could hear every word he said and in between pretending like I was driving and playing with the cigarette lighter I picked up on his growing frustration. He finally bailed out from under the car, threw a rag on the ground and shouted, "I wish Ralph Nader that this emission control thing shoved up his a**!" It was a great moment in family history, and I slumped over and buried my face in the seat so he couldn't see me laughing.

Teen Angel has been laughing behind my back for years, and I have no doubts she will laugh in the years to come about stupid things I've said or done when she was growing up. I've had more than my share of delirium during her growing up years. In fact, if I had to guess which moment tops her list of my goofiest gaffs right now, it would be the time when she was approaching middle school age and had told one butt joke after another. I finally got my fill of telling her to stop when I barked out, "Enough with the butt cracks!" I paused, realized what I said and started laughing. And I'm not really sure, but I think I caught a faint whiff of beans at the same time.

The one Where Papa T. Professes his Distaste for Chicken

2011-10-25T17:52:00.000-05:00

In the interest of keeping things lively around here, we like to work in a trip to the emergency room every now and then, preferably when the ER is at its busiest. Despite a great Saturday evening that included Teen Angel taking him to dinner, Papa T. woke up Sunday morning feeling like he had been run over by a bulldozer. He hurt so bad he was moaning, and had he not had a fever I would have blamed it on the jumbo sized platter of catfish and gallon bucket of coleslaw he ate the night before. We thought he might have an infection of some sort, so we loaded him into the car, throw up bucket and all, and headed to the hospital. By the way, why is it you can go for years without transporting a nauseous person in your car, and the minute you buy a new car, somebody has to puke while riding in it? I rode in the backseat with him all the way to the hospital, shoving the plastic garbage can under his nose every time he groaned. It took me back to that time when I was about twelve and got sick on the way home from the company safety picnic due to a hot dog and too much Tilt-A-Whirl. Tip: Do not eat a hot dog covered in ketchup and ride the Tilt-A-Whirl seven times in a row. And then drink a big Pepsi.

We made it to the hospital without any big messes, and much to our surprise, Papa T. had some pneumonia, probably a result of that bad cold he had a couple of weeks ago. He was very weak and achy, so they admitted him, and he'll likely be there for several more days. And I'm not namin' any names, but when all of this is over, somebody is gettin' a pneumonia shot whether he likes it or not. Although, after the catheter incident, getting a needle anywhere close to his body will be a big achievement.

This means a week of running back and forth to the hospital, which really isn't as bad for me as it is Hubby. The poor man is exhausted from staying at the hospital. He has the brunt of the work. Teen Angel and I just fill in the gaps as needed. It also means a week of erratic meals. So far this week, I've had for dinner: Popcorn, Sunday night and a salad with a side order of mashed potatoes last night. That still beats the steady stream of fruit salad, tuna sandwiches and chicken breasts Papa T. is getting on his cardiac diet. I don't know where hospitals get their honeydew melons, but they are like green bricks. Papa T. is not the most patient of patients, so it should be an interesting few days. If I'm lucky, tonight's special in the hospital cafeteria will not be tuna.

iHeart Faces Photography Challenge-"Let Them Be Little"

2011-10-23T15:57:00.002-05:00

How fun is this challenge! Hop on over here for the other entries and a few smiles.

Twiddle de de, Look Who's Three!

2011-10-21T18:33:00.001-05:00

I have no idea where the last three years have gone, but I turned around the other day and Special Delivery was having his third birthday. Great Googly Moogly!

And while he seems to be growing up right before my eyes, that is not facial hair around his mouth folks, just blue frosting.

Roar!

2011-10-20T17:56:00.001-05:00

Because of his vision and hearing issues, Papa T. is pretty limited in his entertainment options. They pretty much amount to books on tape, which get a little old, and debating politics with me and Hubby, which is downright dangerous. He also spends a fair amount of time with the radio, listening to talk radio and various ballgames. He's mildly entertained by local high school football, but he's about to get really wound up because basketball season is about to begin. Around these parts University of Kentucky basketball is huge, and he is a card carrying member of the Big Blue Nation. As in he's been known to jump out of his recliner and say bad things when the Cats lose. Kentucky is ranked number 2 in the nation going into this year's season, and he couldn't be more excited. We ordered him a subscription to Cat's Pause, the team's monthly magazine, and a copy of the 2011 Wildcat Yearbook, thinking he would enjoy that. And the yearbook arrived in the mail the other day.

And because I apparently have the best enunciation in the family, I have been elected to read it aloud to him. All 300 plus pages. Folks, by December, I may be the only person who doesn't watch college basketball who can recite every stat on each Kentucky player. Ask me how tall Eloy Vargas is. Go ahead.

These Old Walls

2011-10-19T17:53:00.002-05:00

Driving through the countryside on the way to the little cemetery where we buried my uncle we passed by this old store.

Even though it's tucked in the middle of nowhere with just a grain bin and a couple of houses for neighbors, at one time, it was a very busy place. When I was a kid, daddy would sometimes take me there when he stopped in to see his farmer friends and fill up his gas tank. Regular or ethyl? Those stops usually resulted in me savoring a strawberry Crush and a Hostess cherry pie while he played cards with his buddies. If those old walls could speak they would crackle with the voices of farmers chewing the fat and solving the world's problems over lunches of ring bologna, crackers and ice cold Pepsis drawn from the chest cooler that hummed in the corner. They would spill the secrets of country wives picking up sugar and gossip and the bark of the neighborhood dog who reigned over the long gone porch. If I close my eyes and listen hard enough, I can hear the ding of the gas pump bell and the slam of the rusty screen door. And I can taste the stickiness of that cherry pie on my fingers and the tingle of that liquid strawberry as it slides down my throat.

I Just Drove By

2011-10-18T18:07:00.001-05:00

Why is it we want certain things connected to our childhood to stay the same? Is it comforting for some things to be immune to change, to remind us of that wonderful time of life when most of us had fewer worries and challenges? As I drove to my uncle's funeral in my old hometown yesterday I drove past my grandparent's old house. I had not done that in a long time, and I felt like wading through memories a little.

For the last twenty or so years of their lives, grandma and grandpa lived in town, having moved from the family farm for their senior years. When grandpa passed away, grandma stayed there until her health forced her into a nursing home for the last months of her life. Her house was a small green structure with a wide front porch flanked by matching hydrangea bushes. It sat on a quiet street, populated mostly by widows who tended to their flower beds and kept their yards neat. It was nice, the badge of people who were not wealthy but were proud for carving out an honest living in between the Great Depression, a World War and Watergate.

When I was a child we were usually there at least once a week while Daddy mowed grandma's yard or helped around the house. I played up and down that street, bouncing between the nearby tennis courts and the alley that ran behind her house. There were a couple of kids who lived on that street and grandchildren who visited their grandparents, too. We played in backyards, chatted over fences and made playhouses out of carport sheds. It was a time when kids could play out of the sight of their parents for hours on end without the fear of abduction or the distraction of computer games. Occasionally, the ice cream truck came by and brightened our day. I have fond memories of time spent on that street. It was an enchanting place for a little girl who grew up out in the sticks with few neighbors and nary a Wal-Mart in sight.

As I turned down the street yesterday, I slowed to a stop and took a minute to absorb what has happened on 9th Street in the last decade or so. Now, I know nothing ever seems as big or grand as it did when you were a kid, but things really have changed there. It seemed so different. Run down even. Some of the homes are in disrepair, including grandma's. The beautiful hydrangeas are gone, the yard was a mismash of broken toys, and the neat little white house that used to sit across the street was gone. It seemed dirtier. The pretty brick home that used to seem so fancy when I played there with my friend K. now seems small and common. Gone is the old grocery store with the big screen door just up the block where us kids trudged up the hill with penny change in our hands to buy small pieces of candy. Time has changed the street so close to my heart, and that heart got heavier and heavier as I eased up the street.

Later at the funeral, my mind drifted briefly back to the other changes that have occurred in that small town of 6,500 people since I moved away 25 years ago. Storefronts have changed, the full service gas stations have moved aside for self service convenience stores and familiar buildings have disappeared.

On the twenty mile drive to the cemetery, the town gave way to trees and pastures as we rolled through the countryside. I saw parts of the area I haven't seen in a while but remembered as the miles ticked by. The stomping ground of my youth. My uncle was buried in a small rural cemetery that sits close to a nature preserve, the same cemetery where my other uncle was buried just a couple of weeks ago. It was a beautiful October day, the kind of day when the sky is sparkling blue with wispy clouds and the foliage is the prettiest colors in the crayon box. The weather was fitting I thought, for a man who loved the outdoors and the farmland of his southern Illinois upbringing. Perfect even. And as we drove along, every car in the oncoming lane pulled to the side, out of respect for a sweet, gentle man they didn't know but honored because it was what they were taught to do. A good old fashioned tradition that you don't often see anymore. And when I say every car pulled to the side of the road, I mean literally, every car along the thirty minute drive. Some turned on their headlights.

As we turned onto the narrow dead end road that leads to the cemetery, cheerily named Sunflower Lane, John Denver came on the radio and Back Home Again serenaded me. I smiled at the irony of that moment. When I hopped out of the car I automatically hit the door locks and then almost laughed out loud at the ridiculous need to lock a door anywhere within fifteen miles of that place. My uncle was buried with military rites since he was a World War II veteran. With the sharp crack of the rifles and the words, "A grateful nation", the soldiers honored him with their words and prayers as they gently laid the American flag in my aunt's weary hands. Most of the gentlemen were elderly, performing their duty at the funeral very seriously but very gently. Not a sound was heard while the commander spoke, except for a lone cough from the crowd, and I couldn't help but be grateful for those men who, on any given day, take time out of their lives to honor one of their own in front of grieving families. It seemed such an old fashioned and honorable thing to do. And it occurred to me on the drive home that while the buildings and streets of my childhood have changed, the people haven't. They are still hard working, common folks who hold onto traditions and rituals that are dear to them, and they care deeply for those they love. My uncle died peacefully at home because his wife and daughters worked very hard to take care of him there during his last days. Some things change on the outside, but the things that count the most don't, and for that I'm grateful. This is the stock from which I hail, and for that I'm proud.

iHeart Faces Photography Challenge-"Pink"

2011-10-16T15:54:00.001-05:00

For the other entries, hop on over to here.

I'll Take Public Transportation for $200, Alex

2011-10-13T18:05:00.000-05:00

I have started this post a half dozen times and stopped because I feel a little silly writing about my life when the best I have to offer is that I managed to get my books back to the library on time and I finally got around to shaving my legs. Things are very routine around here, which is actually quite an achievement since it's usually a bit of a roller coaster. I have no major excitement to report except for the fact that the truck has crapped out on us again. But I guess that's what happens when you drive a 1983 pickup truck. I don't run as well as I did back in 1983, either. The scary thing about that though is that our other vehicle, the 2001 Town and Country van, is starting to near the end of its life, too. We like to say we drive vehicles until they drop, and that's the honest truth, but we're beginning to think the van is close to dropping so we've started car shopping, and I've decided to take the defibrillator with me the next time we price cars.

Hubby reads about six car magazines a month, so he keeps up with auto trends. My car research is done during my bathroom reading and even then Motor Trend has to compete with the Farmer's Almanac and the Word Power quiz in Reader's Digest, so I don't really pay much attention to the new styles or prices. He's been telling me that new and used car prices are out of sight, but I kind of let it go in one ear and out the other 'cause nothing bores me more than a dissertation on motors and fuel mileage. Except for the Western Channel. Anyway, I just didn't realize how expensive cars have become since we last bought one ten years ago. Until we went car shopping last weekend. Holy mother of Mabel! It's a wonder more people aren't riding bicycles.

We rolled onto the lot of our favorite Chrysler dealer Saturday because Hubby had his eye on a Chrysler 300. A salesman was on us faster than a jackrabbit on a date, and pretty soon we were test driving a sweet little ride. We drove two 300's. One was fancy, and one was plain. We made the mistake of driving the fancy one first because once we'd zipped down the road in that little number we really weren't interested in the one without the heated seats, the heated and cooled cup holders and the peppy engine. BIG mistake. Then we drove a sporty red Charger just for the heck of it, and before we'd gone two blocks down the road we knew THAT wasn't going to work. Hubby's knees were up to his chin, and there was no room for Papa T. in the back, and well, that's a problem 'cause he doesn't like riding on the roof. We need a sedan that's easy for Papa T. to get into, that gets decent gas mileage and gives Hubby that smooth ride he's looking for. Really, I don't know why he doesn't just go ahead and get a Buick. He already gets AARP magazine. The 300 seemed to be a good choice for us.

Back at the dealership we went inside for the cost discussions. Now, understand, this particular dealer is someone we've worked with several times. He knows we just want his bottom line price, and he doesn't fool around much. He just lays it out there, and we decide whether or not we can afford it. We asked him to give us a price for purchase and another price for leasing the car. He diddled around with the numbers, and then gave us the news. Because there is no interest on leasing a vehicle right now, the monthly cost would be virtually the same. $670 for 72 months. I tried to keep my composure as a bit of pee trickled down my right leg. I smiled and nodded. Hubby smiled and nodded. We gave him the hmmm, we'll talk about it and see line and then sauntered to the van, where we got in, shut the doors and shouted, "OH MY GOSH, $670 FREAKIN' DOLLARS A MONTH?! ARE THEY OUT OF THEIR MINDS??!" And then we drove in silence for about five minutes, until we could wrap our brains around the idea of how expensive that really is and the fact that some people would actually make payments for six years on something that doesn't come with at least three bedrooms and two baths. I couldn't believe it. And neither could Hubby. It practically took my breath away. In fact, for hours afterward, we'd look at each other and go, "$670?" Needless to say, we did not take that deal. And we decided to look at slightly used vehicles. We'll go back to the tactic that has worked well for us on the last two vehicle purchases. We'll find a program car or a used car that comes from someone who trades theirs in every couple of years and leaves the dealer with a really nice car that's still under warranty and has had some depreciation knocked off of it. We will NOT be getting a brand new car. Unless the money fairy lands on our house in the next few weeks and waves her wand and shakes her fanny hard enough for $100 bills to fall out of her butt. Besides, even if she does, I'm gonna need that money for heart surgery now.

Well, I'll Go Far as to Admit That I Like the Colorful Skies

2011-10-12T18:25:00.000-05:00

So, I'm not really an autumn fan, but it does make for some beautiful sunsets around here. Don't push it though. The flip flop days are still over. For now.

Hula's Word of the Day-"Assault"

2011-10-11T18:38:00.000-05:00

as·sault

Pronunciation: noun \ə-ˈsȯlt\

Definition:

1. a : a violent physical or verbal attack b : a military attack usually involving direct combat with enemy forces c : a concerted effort (as to reach a goal or defeat an adversary)

2 : a threat or attempt to inflict offensive physical contact or bodily harm on a person (as by lifting a fist in a threatening manner) that puts the person in immediate danger of or in apprehension of such harm

Origin:

Middle English assaut, from Anglo-French, from Vulgar Latin *assaltus, from assalire

First Known Use: 14th century

Used in a sentence: "Hula violently assaulted the toilet paper dispenser in the public restroom when it repeatedly refused to give up more than half a square of paper at a time."

Okay, perhaps that's an exaggeration. Or not.

iHeart Faces Photography Challenge-"Hands"

2011-10-10T21:27:00.000-05:00

I love this picture of Teen Angel. So reflective, so soft. Oh, if only I could keep her this way for the next few years. She really is going to grow up, isn't she?

For the other entries, you can pop over here.

Surprise!

2011-10-09T18:37:00.000-05:00

Please ignore the fact that this picture is out of focus, crooked, underexposed and generally bad, but Mama showed up at her surprise birthday party about five minutes before I had my act together, and I barely had time to turn on the camera before she walked in the door. I didn't get to focus, check my settings or even turn on the flash. Never mind all that. It still gives you the general idea of her reaction.

Girlfriend didn't have any idea there was a party for her until she reached the bottom of the church steps and saw everyone sitting there waiting on her. We got her. We got her gooood. Ha!

Happy Birthday, Mama!

2011-10-06T18:31:00.001-05:00

To the best mama ever. And by the time this posts, we should have already surprised her with a big ol' party. Tee hee. I love a surprise. And so does she.

It's About Time we had Some Good News Around Here

2011-10-05T18:25:00.000-05:00

Although you probably can't tell it from this picture, that, my friends, is a teeny tiny baby.

I'll spare you the details, but let's just say it took a year and a half of determination to create this little being, which will be Special Delivery's baby brother or sister. Super Cop and Mrs. Scrubs are having a baby!

Hula's going to be an aunt! Hula's going to be an aunt! Insert happy dance here and cue Elton John with that whole Circle of Life number he does.

Do you miss me yet Paris?

2011-10-04T18:38:00.002-05:00

Because I certainly miss you. Sigh.

We're Probably Not Nearly as Funny as we Think we Are

2011-10-03T18:32:00.000-05:00

Date: Saturday, Oct. 1, 2011

Location: Cracker Barrel, Western Kentucky

Time: Approximately 5pm

Hula: “What is the vegetable of the day?”

Server: “Lima Beans.”

Hubby: “Ooh, lima beans. I love lima beans!”

Hula & Teen Angel: “Really?”

Hubby: “Yes! I might get two orders of them.”

Hula: “Really?? You like them that much?”

Hubby: “Yes!!”

Hula: “Hmm. You seem awfully excited about this lima bean situation.”

Hubby: “I am!”

Papa T.: “I like lima beans, too, but I’m not gettin’ ‘em.”

Insert uproarious giggling from Hula and Teen Angel here.

About ten minutes later....a rousing round of whooping and hollering goes up from a large party at a table near the Hula-gen’s.

Hubby: “I wonder what that was about?”

Hula: “They heard there was lima beans.”

Insert high five between Hula and Teen Angel here.

I Just Thought This Was Cool

2011-10-02T16:56:00.004-05:00

I loves me some macro photography because that lens allows you to see so many neat things that are invisible to the naked eye. Like the bees in the sunflower fields. Those fields were FULL of bees. Everywhere you went among the blossoms, you could hear the hum of big bees and little bees zipping around. But they didn't bother you as long as you didn't run amuck and flap your arms like an idiot. Why? Because those fellas were knee deep in pollen. See his little legs? Coated.

Happy, happy bees, drunk on yellow dust. Cool. I just thought you'd like to see it, too.

Just the Petals

2011-09-30T17:42:00.002-05:00

Mercy Me

2011-09-29T18:42:00.000-05:00

The other night Teen Angel and I were sitting on the sofa talking, and somehow we got around to the subject of how I used to read to her every night when she was young. In fact, it was something I started before she left the womb and continued until sometime in her fourth grade school year. The last books we read together were Harry Potter books, and over the years our favorites included the Berenstein Bears, Corduroy the Bear, Little Critter, The Velveteen Rabbit and the hilarious Junie B. Jones. Reading a story every night was mandatory, and when she was little, if you were tired and tried to skip a few words to get through it quickly, she would say, “No,” and turn back the page insisting I read it the right way. Even though she couldn’t read, she had those books memorized and knew if you missed one little word. She loved those books, and that time together each night was one of my favorite parts of being a mother.

As we reminisced the other night, she jumped up, ran to her room and pulled out one of her old books, The Spooky Little Ghost. She read parts of it to me, laughing and imitating the way I used to read to her. I was always a bit dramatic, you see. “Here’s the part where you’d get all excited,” she said, raising her voice, and as she read and giggled I got a bit lost in the moment. I was listening to her, but my mind was running down memory lane. I thought about all those nights we read and chatted, and how fast those years flew. I thought about how grateful I am that she and I are close enough that we can sit and talk and giggle like we did back then over the same books. And those memories brought me great joy.

It was also a reminder to focus more on the day to day joys of life. I supposed the grief I’ve been dealing with lately has left me dwelling on the not so fun parts of life. In the midst of mailing death certificates, writing thank you notes for funeral flowers and fixing broken radiator hoses (again) it’s been easy to get mired down in difficulties and challenges. I have forgotten how blessed I am and how much joy is actually in my life. Long after Teen Angel got up off the couch and went about her business, I sat there and forced myself to count my blessings. There were many. We are all healthy, we’re financially stable, Teen Angel is doing fine in college and Papa T. is adjusting okay to living without Mama J. I told myself that I should make a list more often of the things that bring me joy. Even the small things. Today’s list?

-Hubby loaded up Papa T. and an old buddy of Papa T.’s and took them to one of their favorite restaurants for some lunch together and storytelling about old times. His buddy doesn’t see well enough to drive, so Hubby had to chauffer. Papa T. seems to want to have more of a social life, and that’s exciting.

-Mama and Daddy are headed to a bluegrass festival for a little weekend trip together, and I love that they enjoy each other as much as they when they got married. They especially enjoy music together, and daddy plays guitar with a band at the local veteran’s hospital and senior centers. They are happy, and I like that.

-After a meeting at church last night, I was reminded yet again of how caring and dedicated my church family is.

-My brothers are especially happy in their personal lives right now. (Maybe more details on that later.)

-This song makes me dance in the kitchen:

-And the blooms on the sunflowers just up the road are hangin’ in there.

Perhaps, I should make it a habit to write this stuff down every day. And read that before I go to bed.

Among the Blooms

2011-09-27T18:36:00.001-05:00

"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting."

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

He studied me as closely as I studied him. I wondered what he was thinking.

Falling Into Fall

2011-09-26T17:22:00.000-05:00

One of these days, I’ll get those sunflower pictures posted, but it won’t be today. And it probably won’t be tomorrow. No siree. Nor was it yesterday nor the day before nor the day before that because I’m in the midst of a computer change out that involves moving some massive files from one unit to another and changing my PhotoShop and Lightroom registrations from one computer to another. There’s the slight issue of being unable to find an important software registration number and the need to get some external hard drive set up and oy vey, there I am with my picture files scattered between a desk top and a laptop until I get it all sorted out. Of course, this likely wouldn’t be an issue if I didn’t have 9,598 pictures. And I did not make up that number. So for today, you’ll have to settle for a post with no pictures, only words, because it’s been five days since I’ve posted and if I don’t get something up soon, my aunt M. in northern Illinois will be calling to find out if I’m sick.

The Hula-gen’s are bumping along at what could be deemed an acceptable pace. We are all healthy and walking upright today, so that’s considered great success around our house on an average day. Papa T. is doing okay. He is able to stay by himself with lots of help. We have settled into a routine of Hubby waking him up around 7am, getting his breakfast and making sure he’s up and about. Then Hubby checks in with him by phone throughout the day with visits to the house around noon and three o’clock. One of us takes Papa T. dinner around 6pm and Hubby goes back to tuck him in at 10pm. People keep commenting on how much work that is and asking us how we do it. (Or why we do it, which I don’t even bother to answer.) All I can say is that if you’ve ever been involved in elder care, you understand. You just do what you gotta do until you can’t do anymore. For now, that’s working, and we’ll go with that plan until we need to do something else. We’ve learned not to plan too far in advance.

On my side of the family, we buried my uncle last week, which really hurt, mostly because I loved him so dearly but also because I realized how much more of that there is to come in the next few years. I have another elderly aunt who is not doing well and an uncle whose time is very limited. I like this time in my life because I’m comfortable with who I am and where I’m headed, but I don’t like saying goodbye to the people who nurtured me in my childhood. It’s funny how naïve and rosy your outlook on life is when you’re young. You just don’t fully realize that one day you will look up and will have become the older generation.

Speaking of older, mama has a big birthday coming up in a couple of weeks. Big. Really big. I can’t tell you which one ‘cause she’d thump me up the side the head if I put it on the internet, but let’s just say she’s only two years older than Keith Richards but looks a heck of a lot better. I’m sure we’ll have a good time celebrating, but I’m curious if she remembers which birthday this is. Ever since I was eight years old I’ve been asking her how old she is only to have to wait on her to figure it up. She doesn’t keep track of that kind of thing, and as I get closer to fifty I’m starting to understand why. First of all, you don’t like to admit your age, and second, you can’t always remember it. Hand to God, someone asked me the other day how old I was and I automatically spit out a number three years lower than the real thing. I really wasn’t trying to lie. I immediately corrected myself but felt like an idiot ‘cause I looked like I was trying to shave some years off my age. Nope. My age was just temporarily lost in my head somewhere between sixteen computer passwords and last week’s grocery list.

I felt really old when I ran today. My running schedule has been in a shambles for about a month and a half thanks to the trip, jet lag, Mama J.’s death and an especially busy work schedule. I’ve really had to focus on family matters since Mama J. died, so exercise has taken less priority, and boy, did I pay for it. I got back on the wagon today with a three mile run that I felt in every muscle fiber I have. It just confirms that this running business is never going to be easy for me. However, I shall continue slugging away at it as I’m not ready to give up dessert, and my metabolism gave up on me about three years ago. About the only good thing I can say about today’s run is that the weather was nice. It really was beautiful and just slightly cool.

The weather has started to change around here. While we’re still having some warm days, cooler temperatures are slipping into our nights, the mornings are a bit foggy and wearing flip flops can be a tricky choice, depending on the time of day. I have so many friends who love autumn, and they encourage me to embrace it, but I do so grudgingly. All I can see is winter around the corner. I hate wearing layers of clothing. I hate wearing socks, and I especially hate the gloomy skies. I’m not making any promises, but I’m going to do my best to enjoy the colorful foliage and the bright blue skies. They do make for pretty pictures. In fact, I did a bridal shoot at the sunflower fields last week, and it was wonderful. It was kind of a spur of the moment thing. We had planned to do the shoot early next month at a different location, but when I was standing among all of those bright yellow flowers last week, I couldn’t resist calling her and pitching the sunflower idea. So there we were three days later in the middle of thousands of blooms with a big old wedding dress, a veil and an upholstered chair from my bedroom. Oh, and my red cowboy boots and her granny’s red tennis shoes. And a very nervous mother who worked really hard to keep that beautiful dress from getting dirty. God bless her. Never mind the small crowd milling around taking their own pictures. The golden sunlight was lovely, the bride was a fantastic model, and we came away with some great shots. I’d show you some pictures, but we’re keeping them hidden from the groom. And I have to figure out how to get them out of my computer.

Those Little Moments That Make You Gasp

2011-09-21T18:36:00.002-05:00

About the time I get all frustrated with the good Lord and start arguing with him about the way life is going, He puts something like this right in front of me:

And shuts me up.

Color me Yellow

2011-09-20T17:59:00.002-05:00

About a mile from my house are three sunflower fields, and when I say fields, I mean FIELDS. Not small patches, but big spreads. There are acres and acres of sunflowers planted in a wildlife refuge in three separate plots. They stretch as far as the eye can see in one direction and farther than you want to walk in another direction. They are just stunning. I first found those fields two years ago. I stumbled upon them when the flowers were in bloom and thought I’d died and gone to heaven. They were so gorgeous I literally lay on the ground beneath them and giggled at their shiny yellow faces. Last year, I anxiously waited all summer for those flowers, and drove out there in August to find....corn. Corn. Tall stalks of plain old corn. I’ve never been so disappointed in all my life.

Last Saturday I saw a post on Facebook that they were in bloom again, and I nearly broke my neck trying to get there. As I rounded the curve right at the first field and saw those thousands of golden blooms, I hollered, “Woo hoo!” out loud. Honestly, nothing makes a photographer happier than a big old field of sunflowers. I spent an hour shooting pictures and went back Sunday for more. And I called a bride that I’m shooting pictures for in October and November and told her to grab her dress and head my way this week so we can take bridal pictures in those fields. Won’t that be fun? I ran into several photographer friends at the fields this weekend, and several other people stopped their cars long enough to snap a picture or two while I was out there. It’s quite a popular place right now.

I’ll be sharing pictures of the flowers with you this week, but in the meantime I’m showing you the self portraits I took there Sunday. They were simply to express the joy I get from that place. Good thing I was by myself. They might have hauled me off to the nuthouse if I’d been caught jumping up and down in the field all by myself.

iHeart Faces Photography Challenge-"Sun"

2011-09-18T15:47:00.001-05:00

Going Home

2011-09-16T18:23:00.000-05:00

I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on our trip to Europe and what I learned from that adventure. Plenty I would say. Since I’ve come home I’ve tried to expand on all that wonderful French and British history I soaked up across the pond. I realized I have so much to learn! There isn’t enough time to squeeze it all in. I can be on the phone on hold and will Google something I saw on the trip and read more about it. I can’t get enough. The Tower of London, Hotel de Ville, Moliere, Napoleon, Marie Antoinette…and the list goes on and on. Fascinating. My high school history teacher would be so proud. Finally.

But that trip taught me a lot about myself. Travel does that. It helps you to find your strengths (boldness) and your weaknesses (foreign language) and shows you how self sufficient and resourceful you can be. It was one of the big reasons I wanted Teen Angel to take this trip. I wanted her to see just how capable she is. She is a quick thinker and can adapt as circumstances dictate. I like that. And I think she began to understand that just a few days into the trip. I was rather proud of the way she handled herself on the trip.

The most important thing I learned about myself though, was that I like home. Don’t get me wrong. I love traveling, and I can’t wait for the day I’ve saved enough money for a tour of Italy (I’m looking at you 2015). I definitely think I could be the backpack across Europe type of gal. I don’t need much clothing or fancy hotel rooms, and I could go for days with a Eur-Rail pass and good shoes, but it did feel good to get back home.

Home. Where iced tea comes in bucket sized glasses and I can drive anywhere I want to go. Where biscuits and jelly come with a chicken dinner and people speak to strangers like they’re old friends. But most of all, it’s where my family is.

All my life I’ve lived in the same basic area. I bounced across the Ohio River after college, but aside from college, I have always lived within thirty minutes of my parents, brothers and various assorted relatives. When I first graduated from college, I had dreams of moving to another city, but my career started here, and stayed here. Over the years, I had job offers in Nashville, Cincinnati, Louisville and Memphis, but by then I was married and had made a deal with Hubby that we would stay here to take care of his parents when they got old. Sometimes, I felt a tug of regret when I turned down those jobs, but over the years I’ve come to realize that was a blessing. I ended up in a great job where my stress level is much lower than it used to be, I’ve stayed close to many family members and Teen Angel got to have a close relationship with all four of her grandparents.

She never had to go to daycare. When she was little she spent her days at Mama J.’s and Papa T.’s and really felt like that was her second home. When Mama J. passed away, I was glad Teen Angel had gotten to enjoy her grandmother so much over the years. It certainly made up for any bumps I had along the way by living next door to my mother in law.

I realized today that I was fortunate to live so close to my many cousins, aunts and uncles. I said goodbye this afternoon to one of my favorite uncles who was not expected to live through the rest of the day. For years, he and his family lived near Chicago, but they moved back home after retirement, and I’ve been able to see them regularly for years now. I know you’re not supposed to have favorites, but I have many favorites, and he’s one of them. Such a nice, sweet man with a patient loving heart and a quick wit. I love him dearly, and his death is a bit sudden. It comes during a rough month for us, and frankly, I’m tired of burying people.

As I drove away from the hospital, I thought about the cousins I have who live away from here and how that distance limited the time they could spend with certain family members, including my grandparents, and how they have fewer memories of those folks. I am lucky. I was here to see my grandpa tend to his strawberries. To watch grandma make biscuits and tend to her flowers and to have my granny at my college graduation. I was here to laugh and joke with Uncle P. at family dinners. My life is richer for those experiences, and I am glad for that. For me, home truly is where the heart is, and it feels good to be home. I can’t wait for future travels and adventures abroad, but I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but here.

My Colors are Changing. I Think.

2011-09-15T18:20:00.001-05:00

There are a handful of things that have made me feel less than youthful in the past 24 hours. First, I found the cordless phone in my purse yesterday morning, where I had apparently placed it when I went to bed the night before. I’d like to blame that little mishap on stress, but frankly I just had a brain fart. All of my FaceBook friends over the age of fifty recognized themselves in that incident, so I’m assuming it was an age thing. And truth be told it’s not the first time I’ve done something like that. Just for the record, aiming the cell phone at the TV and punching the talk button will not change the channels on the TV. Also, pointing the cell phone at the car door will not open the door, unless you have the appropriate phone ap. AND pointing the cell phone at the garage door does not shut said door. Or so I’ve heard.

I read yesterday that Stevie Nicks, who has a new album out (did I just say “album”?) is 63 years old. 63!? How is that possible? Just goes to show what hair color can do for you.

Then I heard on the radio that they are remaking the movie Footloose, the movie of my freshman year in college. The movie with the soundtrack that kept me dancing for hours at fraternity parties. The movie that caused my friend B. to bust a stereo speaker. Or was that Purple Rain?

I’ve always heard that if a fashion trend comes around a second time in your life, you are too old to wear that trend. I think the same can apply to movies. I can’t do Footloose a second time. I might throw out my back.

And THEN, on my way to a work related event this morning I heard Culture Club on the radio and for some reason that really had me rolling down memory lane. Perhaps, because the event I was headed to was at the college I attended, and I sure did loves me some Boy George when I was in college. I sang Karma Chameleon down the parkway and had lots of happy thoughts about those years. Until I counted up exactly how long ago that had been. I had to count twice to make sure I had the right number.

After the event, I tortured myself by driving around campus to see how much things had changed. Half of the campus seemed new, the highway through town is twice as wide as it used to be and the Delta Sig house is just a memory. Ouch. Getting older was supposed to happen to OTHER people.

Further proof that it’s happening to me is right here.

I came across this picture last week. It’s from my senior year in college, the day before graduation. It was taken at the honors ceremony for the journalism department, and my parents, Handy Man (look how cute he is in his little deck shoes) and my grandma were there. It reminds me of how life renews itself. I was so proud my grandma got to see me graduate from college. It was a big deal to her, and she died a couple of years after that. My mother looks so young in that picture, and yet, she seemed so much older to me at the time. And I am now exactly in the same spot she was then. Teen Angel will likely transfer to that same college in another year, and I will be approximately the same age as my mother in this picture. How is that possible? I think of myself as so much younger at this age than I thought she was then. I’m sure Teen Angel thinks the same way. Next thing you know, she’ll be buying me a Jitterbug phone so I can keep track of it. And a mu mu like Boy George's.

Word of the Day-"Addle"

2011-09-14T18:40:00.000-05:00

Pronounciation: ad•dle ( d l)

v. ad•dled, ad•dling, ad•dles

Definition: To muddle; confuse:

1. To become confused.

2. To become rotten, as an egg.

Origin : Middle English adel filth, from Old English adela; akin to Middle Low German adele liquid manure

First Known Use: 1682

Synonyms: DIZZY, ADDLED, ADDLEPATED, BEDEVILED, BEFOGGED, BEFUDDLED, BEMUSED, BEWILDERED, BUSHED [chiefly Australian], CONFOUNDED, CONFUSED, DAZED, DISTRACTED, DOPEY (also DOPY), FOGGED, MIXED-UP, MUDDLEHEADED, MUZZY, PIXILATED (also PIXILLATED), PUNCH-DRUNK, PUNCHY, RADDLED, SHELL-SHOCKED, SILLY, SLAPHAPPY, SPACED-OUT (or SPACED), SPACEY (also SPACY), STUNNED, STUPEFIED, ZONKED, ZONKED-OUT

Antonyms: CLEARHEADED, UNCONFUSED

Used in a sentence: "Hula must have been somewhat addled when she went to bed last night as she found the cordless phone in her purse this morning right next to her Blackberry."

A Pop up for the Pooch

2011-09-13T18:26:00.002-05:00

Y'all, this is the kind of silliness that goes on at my house when I'm at work all day.

Apparantly, KOA Campgrounds set up some kind of facility for dogs. In our living room. Wi fi and electrical hook-ups not included. Don't ask me what Hubby is doing. I have no idea. And neither did Teen Angel when she texted this picture to me.

When was the last time I blogged?

2011-09-12T18:14:00.001-05:00

Y’all, the world has spun so fast and so far in the past few weeks that I don’t know whether to scratch my watch or wind my butt. I feel like a pancake in the road, run over by life’s madness. It’s a bit like a Road Runner cartoon, only I’ve discovered it’s not so funny to be the coyote. Interesting, but not necessarily funny to be the one peeled off the pavement between every act. It makes me wonder why the coyote didn’t just shoot that damn road runner after about the second round of dynamite. Anyhoo, despite the madness, things are settling back into a routine around here, and hopefully, things will be calmer in the weeks to come.

Papa T. is doing fine. He is lonely at times, but his spirits are good, and he’s determined to do as much for himself as possible. Except for the dinner thing. He’s not willing to give up my cooking, which is fine by me. I don’t mind cooking for someone who raves over everything that’s put before him. Besides, he would survive on Coke Zero and peanut butter crackers if left to his own devices, so we’ll keep wheelin’ the meals up the street. In my quest to make sure he gets the appropriate amount of green vegetables and fiber, I have introduced him to dishes he’s never eaten before, and it’s very fun to watch him sample each night’s entree, unless of course, I’ve phoned it in and presented him with a tuna salad sandwich. NO ONE around this place gets excited about tuna salad. Except the cat, which is a good thing because Mama J. left us with eight cans of tuna and twelve cans of chicken.

Mama J. also had thirty cans of green beans and thirteen cans of asparagus in her kitchen cabinets. We have no idea why. She didn’t cook. I continue to be amazed at the things people leave behind when they die. Take it from someone who has cleaned up after two dead folks, if there’s something you don’t want someone to know about you, get rid of it NOW. Somebody will find that mess when you die. If you’re lucky, it’s just green beans and asparagus. If you’re not, you may leave your relatives wondering why you needed so many Fleet enemas. And you know they’ll talk about THAT at family get-togethers for years.

Papa T.’s birthday is Friday, and all he wants it to go out to eat, so we will oblige him with a trip to Cracker Barrel, his favorite restaurant. A restaurant isn’t even on his radar if it doesn’t serve cornbread, so Cracker Barrel it is! I predict he will not order anything that involves green beans, asparagus or tuna. I also predict he will have two slices of cake. I just a man who embraces cake.

The rest of us are back to our normal routine of school and work. The busy season at work is upon me, so I suspect January will be smacking me in the face before I know it. In the meantime, I’m holding on to summer as long as I can. She’s slipping through my fingers, though. We’ve had cooler weather lately, and people have been talking about how nice it is that fall is just around the corner. I’m trying not to panic, but you autumn lovers just don’t understand how hard it is for us summer babies to let go of the shorts and flip flops. It’s not that I don’t WANT to like autumn. It’s just that it reminds me of how soon winter will be here, and THAT my friends, is downright depressing. There’s nothing that ticks me off faster than having to wear a coat, so I’m dragging my feet into September and refusing to give up my sandals or put the cover on the pool until there is frost. I’m also avoiding Hobby Lobby and places that I know are covered in autumn leaves or cheery turkeys. And lest I need any reminders that technically there are still a couple of weeks left in summer, I just have to reach around and scratch the six mosquito bites on the bottom of my left butt cheek that I earned at the softball park Saturday night.

On a positive note, I learned Friday that I’m a finalist for the city’s Business Woman of the Year Award, so you know what that means. I get to shop for a new suit! We have a luncheon next month, and it is truly an honor to be lumped in the same category with fifteen women who are remarkable, so I will actually need to polish my shoes for this event. The jury’s still out on wearing hose though, especially if they’re from the ACME Company. I don’t need any explosions that involve nylon and my nether regions.

Ready for Some Good News

2011-09-06T17:27:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it seems like everything goes to pot at the same time. That’s not really true, but it sure seems that way whenever several bad things combine to overshadow the good that’s going on. I really am trying to stay positive right now, but health issues among friends and loved ones has me concerned for several folks. The prayer list at church is a mile long, and so many of my friends are dealing with death. It’s been a rough couple of months for many folks that I know. Janjanmom unexpectedly lost her father in law about a week after we lost Mama J. A well known member of our community died suddenly of a massive stroke even though he wasn’t even fifty years old, and the obituary section of the local newspaper has a familiar name in it every day. It’s just crazy.

Some of my current worries involve daddy’s brother who fell more than a week ago. He needed to have surgery to repair his arm, and now he’s in ICU because his kidneys just aren’t waking up from the surgery, and he has pneumonia. He should already be in the midst of physical therapy. Daddy’s sister, who suffers from dementia, is not eating and frankly, is just not doing well. I’ve gotten reluctant to answer the phone ‘cause I just don’t want to hear any more bad news. My stomach truly clenches each time it rings and I see Mama’s name or Hubby’s name on the caller ID. And while these folks are my biggest worries, there is another member of our family who is ailing too, and I have yet to share that with you.

Our ten year old miniature schnauzer, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, has been very sick for several weeks.

In fact, he almost died on us a couple of times, once while Teen Angel and I were in Europe. He was diagnosed with diabetes about two months ago, and we are still trying to get his blood sugar regulated. About the time we think we have it figured out, his sugar bottoms out and we have to reconfigure his insulin. He requires two shots a day, one in the morning and another in the evening. Now, I know some folks wouldn’t go to that much trouble for a dog, but we are crazy dog people. Jack is family. We share every part of our home with him, and while we don’t treat him like a child, he is a treasured member of our family, and we make no excuses for that. Jack loves his peeps, and we love him. He bonded with us from the day we got him, and he has brought us much joy. I’ve had dogs all my life, and I’ve never had a dog that tried as hard as he does to communicate with me or be so close to me. It is not uncommon for Hubby to wake up and find Jack spooned up against me with his little head on my pillow. We are all very attached to that dog.

One of the hardest parts about all of this is that the diabetes took his vision. Quickly. It was gone within a couple of weeks. He could see fairly well when Teen Angel and I left for London and was completely blind by the time we came home. It was quite a shock to come home to his weakened condition. While the vet tells us that blind dogs adjust very well, it is painful to watch him wander around the house and bump into things. Everything that I read on the internet tells me that it’s usually harder for the owner to accept a pet’s blindness than it is for the dog, and I believe that. If we could find him a helmet to protect his little noggin’ we would. He does seem to be adjusting to his surroundings. He loves being outside because he has room to romp and run without running into stuff, as long as we keep him on a leash and watch out for him.

In fact, he likes to go for walks more than ever now. He finds his way into the concrete curb along our street and trots fast enough to take your breath away.

The vet says he could live for two or three more years IF we can get his blood sugar stabilized. That’s a bit of a big if right now, but we are getting closer. I hope we can. We’d love to have him around for a little while longer. And honestly, I just can’t bear the thought of losing another loved one right now. Besides, who will keep my feet warm this winter if Jack isn’t around?

Exhibit A from 1969

2011-09-01T18:12:00.000-05:00

I have decided that my inability to trim bangs and keep them straight is genetic. Obviously, Mama couldn’t get it right either.

By the way, this was my favorite dress in kindergarten. I remember thinking, "Orange paisley makes me feel GOOD."

It's an Inherited Genetic Disorder, Trust Me

2011-08-30T18:45:00.001-05:00

Two of the Hula-gen’s will giggle at silly stuff, like:

Subway performers who play The Chicken Dance. Loudly. With a tuba.

People rolling around in giant hamster balls.

Cute little British ice cream trucks.

Cute little nuns taking pictures of Notre Dame.

Street mimes with no head and a flirtatious streak.

Things that spin when you sit on them.

And especially automated public toilets that wash their own floor after every use.

Really, we can’t seem to help ourselves, so please don’t tell us any flatulence jokes in public. If we can spend ten minutes entertaining a man from Texas with our delight over a French public toilet, we cannot be trusted with anything as dangerous as a fart joke.

A Few Tips

2011-08-29T18:31:00.001-05:00

I did all of our travel arrangements for our trip to Europe. I first looked at going with prepackaged deals or with specific tour groups but I kept hearing that we could do so much more for our money by scheduling everything ourselves, and that turned out to be true. We probably afforded two extra days of vacation by making all of our own bookings. It was a lot of work, however. The upside to that was that I learned a lot in advance about where we were going and the attractions, history and amenities of those places. That was a good thing. A time suck on the front end but well worth it in the end. So how did it all work? For the most part, really well. We had only one bobble along the way, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Here’s a rundown of the good stuff.

Affordability and flexibility: By booking our own stuff, we were able to make our own schedule and adjust it as necessary. If we were in a museum we especially enjoyed, we could stay as long as we liked. If we were at a dud, we could bail and move onto something else without having to wait another hour on a bus full of people. We had a lot of control over our time and our money, and that’s a very big deal on a vacation like that. Or any vacation, for that matter.

Museum passes: Most of the museums in London are free, but for the attractions that weren’t I bought our tickets online before we left. In fact, I started the trip with a big manila envelope full of vouchers that had to be redeemed at different places along the way. (I kept two copies at all times in case one envelope was lost, and I kept the emails in an email account I could access from London or Paris. Obsess much, Hula?) This was a tremendous time saver. For example, the morning we got to the Tower of London, the line for tickets was a mile long. We walked right up to the group ticket window where no one was waiting, showed our vouchers and walked right in. This happened on several occasions during our trip. The key to this is knowing exactly which attractions you definitely plan on seeing, because you will lose money if you don’t use the tickets.

It also ensures that you get into things that sell out quickly. I bought our Buckingham Palace tour tickets online about two weeks before we left. It’s a hot ticket this year, with Kate Middleton’s dress on display, and there weren’t many time slots available when I bought our tickets. The day we walked up to the booth to redeem our tickets, they were turning away people right and left because the tours were sold out. We would have never gotten in if I had tried to buy them at the door at any point during our stay in London.

Also, sometimes when you buy several tickets through a single tour vendor, you can get a bit of a discount or find a coupon code that saves you money. Just be sure to check the prices at the official venue sites. Some vendors jack up the regular rates quite a bit.

I also bought Paris Museum Passes before we left. Those passes get you in to just about every museum in Paris, including the Palace of Versailles. We would have spent far more on individual tickets for the attractions we saw than we did on those passes. They were worth their price in time savings, too. At many places, you simply waved your pass and went straight to the security line. We probably saved an hour and a half to two hours at the Louvre, just by skipping the ticket line. It also allowed us to pop into a museum where we wanted to see only one or two things, without worrying about paying an admission price that might have been a deterrent had we paid that individually. If you plan to stay a few days in Paris and see several museums, I highly recommend the Paris Museum Pass, especially during the high tourism season.

Subway passes: We relied on the Tube in London and the Metro in Paris for most of our daily travel, with some other trains in between. We utilized daily subway passes in London which worked well. Prior to the trip I had bought subway passes for the Paris Metro that allowed us unlimited usage for five days. We picked them up at the tourism office when we got to town and wore those suckers out. They came in a little cardboard pouch that we put in our money belt and we just whipped them out whenever we needed them. And we needed them a lot. One day in Paris, we literally lost count of how many times we got on the subway. We think it was seven. The passes also covered our train ride to Versailles and would have covered our Metro ride to the airport for our flight out had I not said to heck with lugging this freakin’ luggage up and down any more steps, I’m callin’ a shuttle. Best 50 Euros I spent in France, other than all that money I spent on ice cream.

And can I just say, the London Tube is spotless. You could eat off the floor of those subway cars, and that is not an exaggeration. New York and St. Louis could take a lesson (or four) from the British, although I honestly do not see how they are going to handle the extra subway traffic from Olympic tourists next summer. It’s already packed.

Airfare: I looked at twelve different online booking sites, getting various prices. Right before I booked, I went directly to the American Airlines site to check their prices and darn if they weren’t $30 cheaper per ticket than all the rest. I booked directly through them. Moral of the story-don’t assume Orbitz, Expedia or one of those is always the cheapest.

Lodging: I booked a really nice hotel in London through Booking.com, many weeks in advance. It turned out to be a great buy and in a really good location. Sometimes really nice deals do happen on the internet like they’re supposed to without buying them blind through Priceline. Lesson? Don’t be afraid to scour really nice hotels for deals. Sometimes they actually offer them.

In Paris, I rented an apartment. I didn’t even know this was possible until I stumbled upon it in a hotel review on Trip Advisor. I had booked condos this way in the US, but never thought about doing it overseas. For less than I would have spent on a tiny, mediocre hotel room in Paris (Geez, hotels are expensive there!) I got a nice apartment in Ru Cler within walking distance of the Eiffel Tower that gave us the opportunity to live like the French and have a quiet place to go to each evening. We could have cooked there if we wanted, but we didn’t. We had a fridge, a TV and free international calling. I called Hubby every night, and that helped to ease his anxiety level over his girls wandering around Europe without body guards. It also saved us a lot of money on international calls. I just didn’t call him much from London. I did sign up for international calling on my cell phone before I left. That meant I paid 99 cents a minute instead of $6 a minute for the few times I used my cell phone. I will cancel the international plan when the charges for this trip have been paid. This is a very common practice, and I don’t feel bad about doing it as the cell phone bill could practically qualify as extortion each month, in my opinion.

I ended up booking the apartment through Vacations in Paris, which is headquartered in the US. I paid in American currency, and they mailed us the key to the apartment before we left home. We were able to go straight from the train station to our apartment, drop our luggage and run to the Eiffel Tower. Vacations in Paris was great to work with. I looked at their properties online, made my selection and looked at it on Google Earth to make sure it wasn’t in a crappy neighborhood before signing the papers. It was great. I highly recommend it. You can also use VBRO for Paris rentals. Who knew?

Money-We exchanged most of our spending money at our local bank before we left. They gave us a rate as good as we would have gotten at most European banks or kiosks, and we had money in our hands for cabs, subways etc…as soon as we arrived in London and Paris. The other option to save on this item is to simply use ATM’s to withdraw it from your checking account while you’re there. However, I wasn’t keen on the idea of using my debit card around town, so I felt better getting cash ahead of time.

Money belt-Yes, they are a bit cumbersome. Yes, they make you look about ten pounds heavier ladies, but they are worth the trouble. Paris is right behind Rome and Madrid when it comes to pickpockets. It really is a bad problem there. While I certainly don’t think it should deter anyone from traveling there, I would NEVER, EVER carry money, credit cards or ID around that city in anything but a money belt. Why? I had my phone stolen on the Metro while it was in my front right pants pocket.

The phone didn’t fit well in the money belt, and I didn’t really feel like it was safe in the small backpack I carried, so I uneasily put it in my pants pocket. I wasn’t real happy with that idea, though. As we were entering the subway turnstile at Pere La Chaise, a guy ran up behind me, started shoving me into the turnstile and screaming that he didn’t have a ticket. I thought he was trying to get in free. Frankly, after having been jostled and shoved by 13 million tourists that week, it pissed me off that he was pushing me around, plus it hurt. I elbowed him as hard as I could and pushed my way through the turnstile. He took off the other way, and as soon as I ran my hand into my pocket I realized what had happened. In the middle of broad daylight, right in front of a ticket booth where a Metro employee was working and right under a security camera. I may or may not have said some ugly words.

We reported it at the closest police station which is how we ended up looking at mug shots in the middle of a beautiful Paris afternoon with a cute police officer who spoke excellent English. He basically told us that pick pocketing is as bad as ever there and that they’ve had a real problem with the pick pockets becoming more violent. Basically, they will use as much force as necessary to take what they want from you, especially jewelry or expensive electronics. The majority of thefts on the streets and subways of Paris are phones these days, and they are especially fond of iPhones. They call it “pickin’ apples”. Bottom line, we weren’t hurt, we didn’t have any money or other valuables stolen and a phone is easy to replace. It could have been a lot worse had I not been wearing the money belt. All of our valuables were tucked under my pants. You would have had to have grabbed my hoo hoo to get any money off of us, and that’s the way I will travel from now on. Money belt? Totally worth looking ten pounds heavier.

By the way, I did not have any valuable information in my Blackberry, and I was really glad. I never use it to access any financial accounts, and I didn’t have any pertinent information regarding our apartment in it. I had actually stored the front door code to our building in the memos section under a fake heading of “work locker” in case I lost the phone, and I was really glad I did that. I don’t think anyone would have recognized what that code was. All of the other information regarding our apartment was on a typed piece of paper in the money belt next to my Fruit of the Looms, thankfully. As soon as we left the police station, we high tailed it back to the apartment, called to have all of the phone’s service shut down, and I used Teen Angel’s iPod to change my FaceBook password. We also took off all of our jewelry and tried really hard for the rest of the trip to not stand out as American tourists. That’s pretty hard to do for two really white girls from Kentucky, though. We were under no illusions about our appearance. For any of my Blackberry contacts who get a call from some weird sounding French guy in the next few weeks, please ignore him and hang up. Unless of course, you’re interested in talking to a Parisian thug.

Like I said, that was the only bobble in our trip, and while it was upsetting at the time, it wasn’t horrible. Heck, we were off to dinner shortly after that. Everything else went swimmingly. If you’re looking to squeeze as much as possible out of your vacation and don’t mind a lot of research and homework on the front end, then don’t be afraid to book your own arrangements. The internet is a wonderful thing. If, however, you would rather someone else do all the work, then call Triple A. Just be sure to join first, so you can get the discount on their packages. And please, wear the money belt. Seriously. Wear the belt.

A Little Bit Softer Now

2011-08-25T18:18:00.002-05:00

I don’t know if it’s the sadness I feel for Mama J.’s death or just the sheer exhaustion I’m feeling right now, but everything seems so loud. People are talking too loud, the radio is too loud in the car, and all I’m craving is peace. A few minutes of solitude, where no one is making a sound, no one is talking to me, and I don’t have to talk to anyone else. Just quiet. And my thoughts. And gentle music.

I’m out of words right now. Perhaps, because I don’t want them cluttering my mind.

Hula-gen Family Fun Fact #78

2011-08-24T18:16:00.000-05:00

Five pounds of Hula’s and Teen Angel’s respective weights can be directly linked to Amarino’s Parisian Gelato, which has not only ruined American ice cream for us forever, but has left Hula frantically searching the internet for just the right cantaloupe gelato recipe.

Think the neighbors will notice if Hula puts a goat in the backyard for the goat’s milk this recipe requires?

Items Crossed off the Bucket List

2011-08-23T18:48:00.000-05:00

Taking my picture in a traditional red British phone booth.

Standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Seeing the Mona Lisa in person.

Gazing up at the Venus De Milo.

Strolling among the cafes and shops of Paris.

Shopping along the Avenue de Champs Elysees.

Seeing Monet’s Water Lillies in all their glory.

Witnessing firsthand the beauty of the rose windows in Notre Dame Cathedral.

Check!

Almost Golden

2011-08-22T18:21:00.001-05:00

Had Mama J. lived she and Papa T. would have marked their 50th wedding anniversary this December. On the way to the cemetery Saturday, Papa T. joked that she would have wanted to have a big celebration for that, and he’s right. She would have, complete with floral arrangements and matching tablecloths. But it’s like I told him, fifty years of marriage is worth celebrating. Their partnership has left me with an example of what marriage is about.

Their union was no more perfect than anyone else’s. I don’t think you can have a “perfect marriage”. It’s just too hard to work through the day to day of raising a family and sharing a home without some bumps along the way, but their marriage was unique in that Papa T. knew at an early age he would go blind as an adult. Mama J. knew that when they got married and agreed to support him when he eventually lost his eyesight. Glaucoma robbed him of his dream to be a veterinarian and of caring for the family farm. He changed his college major to education, figuring he would always be able to earn a living that way, even when he lost his vision. He was right. He had a very successful career as a teacher, administrator and eventually the superintendent of a local school system. Mama J. was right there beside him the whole time, making sure he was sharply dressed, that he didn’t show up for work in one brown shoe and one black shoe and generally took care of little details that could have made him less professional in the workplace as his eyes started to fade. In the last few years, when his eyesight left him, she was still making sure he got what he needed, administering his eye drops on time and reading the newspaper to him each day. Even though she hated sports scores. It wasn’t always easy for her, especially as her health declined, but she did it. In her death, he lost his eyes and ears, and that’s going to be hard on him.

As I pondered this during my run today, it made me think about marriage in general. In the past year, I’ve gone to a few weddings, and at each one I couldn’t help but think to myself that those newlyweds had no idea what lay before them. Marriage truly is a partnership. Help mates get us through life’s ups and downs. There are good times in marriage; the birth of children and grandchildren, great vacations, home purchases and just the fun of having lively family dinners together. But there are so many hard times, too, and it’s those hard times that break or cement a relationship. A successful marriage is sharing in the good times and the bad. It’s helping your mate pick out a casket for his parent, propping them up during grief over a loved one or a lost job. It’s trimming the fingernails of your elderly father in law when your spouse is afraid of hurting him. And it’s holding your mate’s head over the toilet when the flu has taken control and wiping up the mess that comes with that. Surviving those things gives you a connection with your mate that deepens your love for each other as the years pass. Life was not always easy for Mama J. and Papa T.. Besides the glaucoma, they buried two children, two grandchildren and a great grandchild along the way. But they had many good times together, and that will sustain Papa T. in the months ahead. Those memories will prop us up, too. We’ve had several laughs in the past few days about things Mama J. said and did. One day I’ll tell you the grilled cheese story. But for now, I’ll simply ponder the time between the beginning and end of their forty-nine years together and hope to do so well.

How Quickly Things Change

2011-08-20T19:08:00.000-05:00

It's funny how you can be on top of the world one day and in a deep valley the next. We had been basking in the glory of our trip and rushing around trying to get back into our regular routine when devastation hit us like a boulder Wednesday. Hubby went to Mama J.'s and Papa T.'s house Wednesday evening to take them dinner, just like he does every night, and found Mama J. dead. We tried CPR, but she was gone by the time he found her, and the EMT's confirmed our fears shortly after they arrived. They believe she probably had a heart attack.

While she had not been well for a while, she certainly wasn't giving us any signs of anything out of the ordinary, and we were completely shocked by her death. We're still in shock. We laid her to rest today, and for the next couple of days we will try to eliminate some of the complete exhaustion we're feeling. I haven't been this tired since I gave birth to Teen Angel.

Our next step will be trying to decide how to best care for Papa T.. We're not sure yet how we're going to do that as we don't really like for him to be alone at any time, and we can't be with him 24/7. I'm sure the good Lord will show us the way. We're just trying to take it one day at a time. This is a difficult time, especially for Hubby and Teen Angel. Hubby and his mother were close. Teen Angel and Mama J. shared a special bond, and TA is without one of her best friends. It all seems so unfair. We've had so much tragedy in this family in the last ten years. But it's not for me to ask why. We'll simply put one foot in front of the other, and move forward. Your prayers are appreciated, brothers and sister.

A Few of my Favorite Things

2011-08-17T18:18:00.001-05:00

People keep asking me what my favorite part of the trip was. Honestly, I think it was just the fact that I got to share so many neat experiences with my daughter. I think it’s one of those trips we will always remember and appreciate that we got to do it together. Even if she won’t admit that now, I suspect she will when she’s older.

As far as things we saw or places we went, I would be hard pressed to pick just one thing that stands above the rest. We squeezed in as much as possible, and I’m still trying to process it all. There was history on every corner and an ooh or ahh at every stop. Teen Angel brought back a postcard from every activity we did to give to a young friend of hers who collects postcards. On the plane ride home, she wrote on the back of each card what we did at that location and some thoughts about that activity. As she sifted through them, she said, “We did a LOT of stuff.” Indeed. We ran from early morning to late at night, trying to see all we could see. If memory serves me right, this is the list of things we did:

-Buckingham Palace tour (It’s only open in August & September. Kate Middleton’s wedding dress was on display.)
-Dinner at The Grenadier (Creator of the bloody Mary)
-Tower of London
-Westminster Abbey
-Big Ben
-Parliament
-St. Paul’s Cathedral
-London Eye (at sunset)
-Wicked Performance
-Train trip to Salisbury & Stonehenge
-Wrote our names on the wall at Abbey Road Studios
-Eiffel Tower ride to the top
-Arch of Triumphe
-Notre Dame
-Saint Chappelle
-Musee de Orsay
-Pere LaChaise Cemetery
-Musee de L’Orangee
-Musee de Louvre
-Lunch at Jardin de Tulleres
-Shopping in the Latin Quarter
-Window shopping at the Champs de Elysees (actual clothing purchases on Ru de Rivoli where it’s cheaper)
-The Catacombes
-Paris Beaches Festival
-Palace of Versailles
-Sitting on the law of the Eiffel Tower, watching the sun go down and the tower lights come on

And that list doesn’t include all the wonderful meals we had (or the theft of my phone, but that’s another post). When I look at that list I marvel at how much we were able to work in, given the long lines (thank goodness for the Paris Museum Pass) and all the subway rides in between. And can I just say Teen Angel and I are masters of the Tube and the Metro. We literally wore out those subways. It was just one adventure after another.

I have to say the most magical moment was probably our trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We arrived in Paris at lunch time last Monday via the “Chunnel” or Eurostar Train from London. We dropped our stuff at our rented apartment and immediately walked over to the Eiffel Tower. The line was terrible, and it was a loooong wait to get tickets and to eventually get to the elevators to ride to the top. As we got on the last elevator up it started to rain, and we were immediately disappointed. It was blowing light rain on two sides of the tower when we arrived at the peak, so the crowd gravitated to the two dry sides, making for a very crowded view of Paris. However, about five minutes after we got there, the rain stopped. I moved to the other side of the tower to take some pictures, and soon Teen Angel hollered over to me, “Do you see the rainbow?” “What rainbow?” She pointed behind her, and there was this big double rainbow stretching over Paris. It was glorious.

It felt like the good Lord has placed it there just for us. Of course, all of the other tourists probably felt the same way, but that didn’t change the way I felt. It was OUR rainbow. Our Paris rainbow, marking the moment we got to celebrate a bucket list item accomplished. We rode back down the elevators, feeling very satisfied.

We then walked down the street to the Arch of Triumphe, and while staring at it, we noticed other people looking in the opposite direction, pointing and taking pictures. We turned around, and there over the Avenue de Champs Elysees were TWO double rainbows. Two! Unbelievable.

Again, it was if they were there just for us. Honestly, I felt like pinching myself to see if it was real or if I was just imagining it. It was a great way to start our Paris leg of the trip.

And to end the trip, we went back to the Eiffel Tower at sunset on our last night, sat on the lawn and along with several other folks scattered on the grass with picnics and wine, watched the sun slide into the ground and the lights on the tower come one. Over and over in my mind, I kept thinking, “I can’t believe I’m sitting on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower.” Magical, I tell ya’, just magical.

Color me Exhausted

2011-08-16T17:46:00.000-05:00

Well, we made it home safe and sound late Saturday night, exhausted but pleasantly so. We had a great trip. It was the trip of a lifetime, and we experienced many wonderful things. Especially French ice cream. Holy mother of Mabel, the ice cream from Amarino’s in Paris is to die for! As in I could have taken a bath in it.

I have so many stories to share that I don’t know where to begin, and I have lots, and lots of pictures. Exactly 959 pictures. Don’t worry, I won’t post them all (Facebook friends will eventually be able to see them all). I had to go back to work yesterday, and Teen Angel started college yesterday, so we barely had time to wash our underwear before the normal grind began again. We are still somewhat jet lagged, and we have so much to catch up on that I will simply hit the highlights in this post and share much more with you in the days to come.

A Few of our Favorite Things

The politeness of the British people (please mind the gap)

The Beefeaters at the Tower of London

Writing our names on the wall at Abbey Road Studios

The rainbow at the top of the Eiffel Tower

Sainte Chappelle

Amarino’s cantaloupe ice cream

Things we did not Like

Having my phone stolen in the Metro

Being crushed by the incredible crowds at several tourist sites and the rudeness of many line cutting tourists

The map at the Louvre (the definition of useless)

Magical Moments

The double rainbow at the top of the Eiffel Tower followed by the two double rainbows at the Arch of Triumphe

Sitting on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower at sunset watching the tower lights comes on

My first bite of Amarino’s cantaloupe ice cream

Things From Home we Missed

Hubby!

Thick toilet paper

Big bathrooms

Vegetables cooked with a dab of bacon grease with a side of buttery biscuits

Iced tea with LOTS of ice (I made Hubby stop right after we left the Nashville Airport Saturday night and get me a large iced tea.)

Again, it was a wonderful time, and I’m so glad Teen Angel and I got to share that trip together. It was an adventure we’ll never forget, including the whole mugging, stolen phone incident. I would love to return to Europe and visit several other countries, but I will admit that right now I’m glad to be home. That’s the thing about travel. It reminds you of why home is home. It’s great to be back with family, to not stand in line for anything, to DRIVE instead of riding the subway and to move at a much slower pace. Yes, we are more relaxed around these parts, and I have decided that I’m okay with that. Just as long as I can sneak out into the big wide wonderful world every now and then for a little adventure.

Bon Voyage!

2011-08-03T22:19:00.002-05:00

The OCD Gene

2011-08-02T17:31:00.002-05:00

Hello, my name is Hula and I’m a control freak. And my husband is holding his breath while reading this, wondering if by some miracle of God I’m about to admit that I might be wrong about something. Let it out, honey, I don’t know if I’m ready to go that far yet. It’s hard enough to admit that I have issues with control. Although, I have managed to admit to him twice in recent months that I was mistaken about something, much to his surprise. And mine. Don’t let it ever be said that I don’t try to work on my flaws. But let’s not tell him I was mistaken Saturday night when I insisted it was NOT Jim Carrey’s voice behind Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. And please don’t be jealous of how exciting our Saturday nights are around here.

Back to the control thing. I’m not sure where this compulsion comes from. I’d like to blame it on all those years I produced live newscasts and had to shoulder the blame when something went wrong in a show for which I was held responsible. But it started before that. I remember at our wedding rehearsal when the preacher asked me to come down out of the audio booth and take my position as the bride since I could not walk down the aisle and run the audio, too. Never mind that the person running the music was a radio deejay or that I had already dubbed all of the music to coordinate perfectly with all aspects of the ceremony, including my entrance which was to coincide with the final timpani crescendo of Pacabel’s Canon in D. God bless daddy for following his cue on the wedding day as missing it would have prevented us from arriving at the altar on the final notes of the song and would have made me twitch throughout the ceremony. Obsess much, Hula?

It permeates several aspects of my life. At the risk of embarrassing myself, this would probably be a good time to admit that I’ve planned my funeral and will leave strict instructions for my family on how it should be conducted ‘cause I can’t stand the thought of being put to rest with the wrong music or attitude. I would really prefer my funeral to be a celebration of my life, complete with tropical attire and leis, rather than some mopey affair with that God awful music the funeral home drags out. Insert shudder here. Which reminds me, do you think it would be tacky to have them play Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress at my funeral? ‘Cause I really think that would be a hoot. If I’m REALLY honest, I will admit that if I develop a terminal illness, I will be tempted to hold my wake before I expire so I can attend and make sure it all goes as planned. And I am well aware of how ridiculous that sounds.

I don’t remember being this way as a child. It’s not like I used to line up all of my toys in a methodical way, although I would get cranky if my Salmon Pink crayon went missing. In fact, I was quite the slob as a child, and I played with anybody and anything. My brothers will tell you I liked to run the show when it came to us playing together, but I think that was more of a “bossy big sister” kind of thing than a need to control my surroundings. I don’t remember being a control freak in high school either, although I’ve always been one to formulate a plan and follow it. I always finished my homework on time. I graduated college in exactly eight semesters, never having a class before 9am and never taking any classes that didn’t count for something. I went right to work after college and followed the exact career path I had planned, up until about age forty.

Despite a wonderful childhood with no trauma or abuse, somewhere along the way, I developed this need to control certain things. Not everything. I’m perfectly capable of sitting on a beach for a week without a specific plan of how I will spend the days. I typically don’t sweat the small stuff on a day to day basis, and don’t fret if the day doesn’t go as I thought it would. Not enough clean underwear? Okay, throw on the swimsuit and go for a swim. No cream? Use up the skim milk and live with runny Alfredo sauce on the noodles. But give me a project or an event, and I’m large and in charge. For the last few months, I’ve been in charge of training the volunteers to run the new AV system at church. Even though we’re 95% through the training process, it takes all the strength I have to sit in the pew and stay out of the AV booth in the balcony on the days I’m not scheduled to work. Seriously, it makes me very uncomfortable to not be up there pushing the buttons; even though my brain knows the importance of letting people get the blessing they want from doing the jobs they volunteered for.

And this trip to Europe? Aye, yi, yi. I’m about to drive myself crazy with the details. I did all of the planning for it, opting not to use a travel or booking agency because I knew we’d get more for our money that way and have a more flexible schedule. We should be good to go. I’ve done my research, bought online tickets to avoid lines, printed maps of certain things we want to see and printed directions for things like getting on the right Metro line from the airport to our apartment. But I can’t stop checking and rechecking the details. I think part of it is a lack of trust in booking stuff online. I called our hotel in London Friday to make sure they had the reservation I made through booking.com, and the lady at the hotel acted like I was silly for double checking. Call me crazy, but I couldn’t stand the thought of arriving at our hotel at 8am Friday after having spent hours on an overnight flight and finding out during the height of the summer tourist season that the hotel did not have our reservation. I had a big sigh of relief when I opened up my email Sunday and found a message from American Airlines telling me they look forward to having me fly with them this week. That meant one less person I needed to call and confirm they still had my reservation.

I have left our online receipts on TWO emails accounts that can be accessed from any country in case I need to print them over there. I have in hand TWO printed copies of all the receipts, and I locked our passports and Paris apartment keys in the home safe to prevent them from being lost in a theft or a fire between now and Thursday. Never mind that if we have a fire in the next two days, we’ll be staying home. I have list after list of things I don’t want to forget. Flashlights for the Catacombs, a Sharpie for writing our names at Abbey Road, umbrellas and on and on and on. I had to go through my lists Saturday and throw away the ones I don’t need any more. When I get on that plane and actually get in the sky I know I will start to relax and enjoy the trip. And I truly have tried to build an itinerary that allows us to see as much as we can while still having some flexibility to change our minds about certain things, but sister mercy I’m going to drive myself crazy between now and then. For instance, I know I will check my purse at least three times on the trip to Nashville Thursday morning, making sure I haven’t forgotten my wallet and the folder of receipts. How do I know this? Because I do it every time we fly out of Nashville on a trip. After the first check (some ten minutes out of the house), I try to make myself stay out of my purse, but I end up pretending to dig for a mint while I’m really taking a peek at my wallet. It makes me crazy that I make myself crazy. I’m going to try to be really good and not be so obsessive these next few days, but honestly, if you gave me a chip for 30 days of good behavior, I’d just be checking my purse every now and then to see if it was still there.

iheart Faces Photography Challenge-"Landscapes"

2011-07-31T16:44:00.002-05:00

I guess I'm just in a New York state of mind. This is near the Statue of Liberty. It seemed rather odd to not see the Twin Towers sticking up in the midst of that.

For the other wonderful entries pop over here.

Around the Corner

2011-07-29T18:41:00.001-05:00

Around the corner from the World Trade Center site, smack dab in the middle of all the construction is the fire station that houses the 911 memorial. If you didn’t know it was there, you might walk right by it with all the construction hub bub, but if you visit that area, make sure you stop by there. It’s a beautiful memorial.

And the firefighters leave the door up to talk to folks passing by.

They’ll even let you stick your head in the door. Be sure to say hello. And thank you.

Ground Zero

2011-07-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

I was reading this morning about an effort by an atheist group to remove a steel cross from the 911 memorial under construction at Ground Zero. The cross is a piece of mangled steel pulled from the 911 wreckage. We saw it in New York City this spring before it was moved to the museum site this week.

To the atheist group all I can say is, “Have you been to Ground Zero?” Seriously, I’m with the memorial committee on this one. Their response to the group’s lawsuit yesterday was this: “It’s a symbol of spiritual comfort for the thousands of recovery workers who toiled at Ground Zero.” And I agree. The cross is one of the many tangible articles people latched onto for comfort during those early days after the 911 attacks. If you visit the site, you’ll see that.

When we toured that area this spring, we had a guide, and I highly recommend that. It was a far more meaningful experience than it would have been if we had simply pulled up in a bus, hopped off for a look see and a few pictures and headed off to Times Square. Our guide was a lifelong New Yorker who used to work in that part of the city.

He lost friends in the attacks, including Father Mychel Judge, the firefighters’ chaplain whose death is documented in one of the iconic images of the attacks. This guide was a fantastic gentleman who only recently had the emotional strength to return to work in that area. He gave us a very personal account of the event and its aftermath, and I’m so glad our kids, who were only eight and nine years old at the time of the attacks, got to hear his stories.

We started our tour at St. Paul’s Chapel, a fascinating centuries old church that has stood undamaged through historical fires that wiped out everything else in that area and was literally untouched by the fall of the Twin Towers. It feels like a very sacred place, from the very old cemetery out back:

To the items inside that are left over from those days after the attacks when emergency workers were housed, fed and cared for in that small church:

There are prayer cards of folks lost in the rubble, and they were a very vivid reminder to me of those days right after the towers fell when people stood in the street with pictures of their loved ones, desperately looking for family and friends.

We also spent time around the corner at St. Peter’s Church where firefighters laid Father Judge’s body on the altar after they pulled him from the rubble. And of course, we watched the rebuilding that is taking place down there.

Everywhere you look at Ground Zero; there are clues as to how strongly people clung to faith to get through that horrible event. Whether you believe in God or not, you simply can’t deny that it played a role in recovery. To the American Atheists I say quit trying to rewrite history. Like it or not, some of us are God fans, and you can’t change that.

Favorite Flicks

2011-07-27T18:43:00.000-05:00

I was reading the new movie section of the Pioneer Woman’s website the other day, and from a marketing aspect I find that a bit of an odd addition to her site. But she didn’t ask my opinion before she did that, now did she? Imagine that. Anyway, I did find it interesting to read her post about movies that always make her drop what she’s doing and watch them. It made me stop and think about the movies that grab my attention each and every time they float across my television, and even though my movie viewing time could probably fit into a thimble these days, there are some flicks for which I will let dinner burn. Or stay up way past my regular bedtime. Or eat into my valiant efforts at keeping up with the laundry. I thought it would be fun to share them. It was either that or rant about the sorry state of the U.S. government right now, and I figure we all have enough rant in our lives, so movies it is!

In reviewing this list, I realized two things: First, they’re all total chick flicks. Secondly, with maybe one or two exceptions, Hubby could probably predict every one of these. Of course, I could list his too, but all I’d have to do is write down everything starring John Wayne, putting the ones with Maureen O’Hara at the top. I have many favorite movies, many of them shot before 1970, but these are the ones I can never pass up. Here we go folks. Feel free to share yours. I’m starting at the bottom and working my way up.

8. Forrest Gump-I just love this movie. I love how Forrest never gives up on his love for Jenny and how he finally gets his girl. The screenplay is just fantastic, and who can’t recite at least ten lines from this movie? Also, I want to live in that big white Alabama house with the wraparound porch. Minus the humidity. I always tear up when Jenny dies, and I actually drop the tears in the exact same place every time, “I miss you, Jenny”. Me and Forrest Gump? We go together like peas and carrots.

7. Gone With the Wind-I guess because I was raised on this movie. Mama was a fan, and I remember going to the movie to see it in the 70’s when it was trotted out to theaters again, and there was a fifteen minute intermission between two hour sets. As an adult, the racial stereotypes make me cringe, and I know that it contains a lot of historical inaccuracies, but gosh darn it, I still love that movie. Scarlett O’Hara was a headstrong and independent businesswoman before it was cool, and I always wanted a prom dress like that red velvet number Rhett makes her wear to Ashley’s birthday party. Truth be told, I’d put on that dress today if I had a place to wear it.

6. To Catch a Thief-Two words: Cary Grant. I still think he’s the epitome of sexy. He was funny, handsome and sharply dressed. The only person who comes close to that these days is George Clooney, and he’s no Carey Grant. I’ll watch anything with Carey Grant. I’m a big Grace Kelly fan, too.

5. Rear Window-I love, love, love Jimmy Stewart and I always wanted to be Grace Kelly. Cool, sophisticated and stylish, she was the glamour queen I wanted to be. That black and white number with the wide brimmed hat she wears in that movie? Fantastic. And the sexy chit chat between her and Jimmy is just great. I’m a huge Alfred Hitchcock fan, so I get excited any time one of his movies is on, especially this one.

4. The Rocky Horror Picture Show-Don’t laugh. It is a part of my past, and I guess it will be in my heart forever. It’s campy and goofy and really just a bad movie, but I was in college when this was big, and I used to attend showings of it in full costume. My very gay friend, G., made the perfect Frankenfurter, my buddy V. was Columbia, and I played Magenta. Keep in mind I had a long curly perm back then. We trotted around to different theaters, throwing toilet paper, dancing the Time Warp and having an all around good time. In fact, one time we ended up in the middle of a riot. Remind me to tell you about that some day. G. has been dead for many years now, a victim of AIDS, and watching this movie brings back great memories of those good times. I know the soundtrack by heart and play it often in the car. Call this one guilty pleasure #67, but I think it’s more about the memories than the movie.

3. Bridges of Madison County-I don’t know why, but I am a sucker for this movie every time. I think it’s because it explores that issue of women losing themselves in their families and what happens in their heart when they give up their dreams to nurture their kids and husbands. Whether they admit it or not, I think all women struggle with this (the dreams part, not the adultery) at least a little, and this movie presents it in a very down to earth way. Never mind that I adore Meryl Streep. This one makes me cry, too when she sees Clint Eastwood in town and watches him drive away. Sniff. I get misty just thinking about it.

2. Fried Green Tomatoes-What is not to love about this movie? I’m a sucker with a flick about strong southern woman, and this could probably tie for the #1 slot on this list. I will watch it EVERY single time it comes on. Fannie Flagg is one of my favorite authors, and while this isn’t my favorite book of hers, it IS one of the movies I can’t resist. The casting is wonderful, and I adore Jessica Tandy. I cry when Buddy gets hit by the train, I cringe when Ruth gets knocked down the steps, I cheer when Idgie is acquitted and I cry when Ruth dies. And I’m not even worried about spoiling it for you because I know you’ve seen it, too.

1. Steel Magnolias-No surprise here. Again, chick flick about strong southern women. I have lost count of how many times I’ve seen it, but it’s got to be dozens. Hubby likes it too, although he has to leave the room when Shelby dies. I think that’s because he doesn’t want me to see him tear up. I, however, just roll right with it and have a big old sob fest every time. As Truvy says, laughter through tears is my favorite emotion, and this one makes me laugh and cry, laugh and cry. One day, when Teen Angel is raised and things have slowed down, I’m going to return to community theater, and I’d love to be in a production of this. I want to play Truvey. I’d better hurry though or else I’m gonna be so old I’ll have to play Ouser.

PS-I just realized I forgot to add Driving Miss Daisy to this list. Sister mercy, is every movie I watch about people dying in the south?

Rollin', Rollin', Rollin'

2011-07-26T18:17:00.001-05:00

Weekend before last we went to Fort Campbell, Kentucky (Home of the Screamin' Eagles, those brave soldiers who rule the skies in Afghanistan) for Teen Angel's first roller derby bout. I'm proud to say that while they didn't win, they did put up a good fight. And I managed to watch the whole bout with at least one eye open. However, I'm still not over my fear of broken ankles or busted teeth. Forgive me, but it's gonna take this mama a little while to work through that. It's just painful to watch the child that you pushed through your womb and protected for eighteen years go sprawling across the floor every few minutes. I should be comfortable with all of this by about October. At the end of the season.

Oh, and if you're in need of a few giggles, Google the official registry of roller derby names from the teams around the country. They're a hoot.

Signed,

Over Protective Mama

Monday Ketchup

2011-07-25T17:39:00.002-05:00

Whew. That’s what I said yesterday when I finally had a chance to relax and catch up from the craziness of the last couple of weeks. For the first time in a week I cooked dinner, caught up on laundry and sat down to read a book. You could probably hear the sigh all the way to Milwaukee. Hello, Milwaukee? Can you verify that? Or are all you Wisconsin folks hibernating inside to avoid the heat, too? It has been hotter than Guam here, and I had to chuckle when I read the news stories the other day about record heat in Central Park. Ooh, news flash, now that it’s reached the Big Apple, the nation is officially hot. Some two weeks after the entire Midwest melted and oozed down the humid Mississippi River. Too funny. It’s been so hot here that I’m having trouble figuring out what to pack for our trip. The temperatures in London and Paris have been in the upper 60’s and low 70’s lately, and I’ve seriously forgotten what 70 degrees feels like. Do I need shorts or cotton pants? I don’t know since even the slightest amount of clothing on your skin feels like too much around these parts. All I can say is thank goodness I’m not pregnant or I’d be roasting in my sandals. Sister mercy, the hot flashes are bad enough this time of year.

Anyway, I suspect the next week will fly as we get ready for vacation and I play catch up on all the things I’ve gotten behind on recently. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Bad because I feel like I have sixteen things to do between now and our trip “across the pond” and good because that just means it will get here quickly, and I’m so excited my toes tingle. Or maybe that’s just because I sat on them for a couple of hours today while writing stuff for work. You know, once you hit middle age, you’re never sure if a tingle is a byproduct of excitement or another body part trying to go south. Speaking of south, if my fanny sags any lower I’m going to have to fly to Birmingham to pick it up. But that’s another post. In light of the need to “catch up” I’m resorting to the dreaded bullet points to share all of the things floating around in my noggin today. Forgive me for phoning it in, but it is what it is. And that’s all that it is. Really. I got nothin’ else today. Whew.

-I bought a duel voltage blow dryer for the trip, but after hearing 1,672 horror stories about melted outlets I’m scared to plug it into a socket in Europe. Therefore, I will likely have wet hair for ten days. Can you say braid?

-Am I the only one who has a fear of booking stuff on the internet and then having those reservations become lost in the system somehow, no matter how many times you double check them? Is that referred to as OCD?

-I bought two new pair of walking shoes for the trip and am trying to break them in. They came from the “comfort aisle” at the shoe store, and I can’t believe I’ve gravitated into that realm. Next thing ya’ know I’ll be sporting Birkenstocks. Somebody stop me. Please. Stop me. Immediately.

-While making our itinerary for this trip I decided that you could literally spend weeks touring chapels in Europe. I thought we had a church on every corner in the south but we got nuthin’ on Europe.

-Amy Winehouse’s death makes me sad. Not because I’m a huge fan, although I do like her music. But because it’s likely one more person lost to addiction, and those of you who have fought that battle with a loved one and lost know how painful that is. I just hate the way addiction destroys lives and causes so many people so much pain.

-The tragedy in Norway? Crazy. Have we always had this much crazy in the world?

-I’ve been a horrible blogging buddy lately. I can’t seem to find the time to read and comment on the blogs I normally track. So sorry, folks. It’s either skip the blog reading or feed the family and well, those crazy folks want food every day. What’s up with that? Anyway, I hope to be back to visiting your blogs very soon.

-After taking two weeks off of running because of the heat and frankly, a lack of motivation, I got back on the wagon today. I also went back to some weight training. Boy, did those weights get heavier since the last time I picked them up. And my feet? Not really happy with the decision. My love/hate relationship with regular exercise is more on the hate side right now. I’d kind of like to break up with the treadmill, but then I’d have to break up with mistress cake and well, that’s just not gonna happen.

-And on a positive note, Hubby has poker night tonight, which means I’m in control of the TV remote. And let the people say amen.

iheart Faces Photography Challenge-"Water"

2011-07-24T15:53:00.000-05:00

Photo Friday Challenge-"Vertical"

2011-07-22T15:53:00.000-05:00

Oh, sweet Liberty, of thee I sing.

For the other entries stop by here. Have a great weekend, y'all.

Jam Masters

2011-07-21T17:17:00.002-05:00

"I won't be a rock star. I will be a legend."

Freddie Mercury

These two? Legends in the making...every night. They just crack me up.

As Kenny Chesney says, That's the Good Stuff.

2011-07-20T05:55:00.000-05:00

People kept asking me Monday what kind of special thing I was going to do for my birthday. And I kept joking that I was going to bible school. Between work and bible school there was no time for official celebrations. For the last few years, Hubby and I have gone to the Jimmy Buffett concert for my birthday, but that just didn’t work out this year. At the very least we usually go out to dinner, but that didn’t happen either. We’ve just been extremely busy every night for the past week. We’ll probably go out this Saturday night. The funny thing is that even though Monday seemed like a very routine day, it was a very good birthday because of the little things that happened all day long.

As I drove to work early this morning I was thinking about the way Monday came down and I suddenly felt very blessed. I got to go to a good job. Mid morning Monday my parents stopped by to see me. At lunch time my brother and nephew stopped by and visited with me for a little while. In the afternoon, Teen Angel came by with very meaningful gifts and a box full of warm scones. A very sweet card from Hubby with some vacation spending money was waiting for me at home. Dozens of friends wished me well on Facebook, sprinkling messages on my Facebook wall throughout the day. A friend handed me a home burned CD that night of a Lucinda Williams album she had bought and knew I would love. Cards came with warm wishes from friends. And I got to witness the smiles and laughter of lots of children throughout the evening. Lots of sweet simple pleasures filled my day. All day long I had little reminders of the beautiful connections I have with the people in my life, and I went to bed feeling very satisfied with the day. It felt like a celebration, even if there was no dinner or dancing or bottles of wine.

So this morning, I smiled to myself as I pondered all of this during my commute, listening to the CD from my friend and witnessing the rising sun. I cranked up the stereo, sang with Lucinda and congratulated myself on a very happy birthday. I am blessed, folks. Truly blessed. And I don’t need a party to prove it.