The story of Anthony

You could tell just by looking at him he had had a hard life. He was weathered and worn and dirty. He was street smart and rough. And he certainly wasn't sure what was going on at his house when we, the adults and youth of Westminster Presbyterian Church showed up that day. He knew though, that he didn't need any help. He knew that and told us that for sure, several times.
As we began work, we watched him kick the dog and curse it out. That was the beginning of our introduction to Anthony and his use of language. As we got to know him, we also realized that he had quite the vocabulary. He would let all sorts of words fly. He was no stranger to shit, or damn, ass, or hell. He had no embarrassment about using these words around us. It was as if those were things every person said on a daily basis.
"Do you get to cuss?" he asked one of the kids from our youth group... "my grandma let's me cuss." And yeah, we were no strangers to those words, but never coming out of a four year old mouth. Yes my friends, Anthony is four years old.

You see, God chose our little group of youth to work on several houses in Ruidoso Downs, New Mexico. We went to the Garcia house where we painted and helped repair windows and doors. We met twin boys there named Jesse and James and their cousin named Jasmine. We got to know these kids and love them, but our attachment to Anthony was quite different.

Anthony lived with his Grandma and Grandpa and his 10 year old aunt and his little sister. We think his mom lived there too although I don't think any of us saw her. Dad was in jail and according to people who knew, he was a bad bad man and would be there for a long time. Anthony was in need of serious male role models in his little four year old life, so it was no surprise that he attached himself instantly to 14 year old Aaron.
Anthony became Aaron's shadow, working hard to convince Aaron to quit doing that work on the house, "leave it to the girls to do," and come play with him. He wanted Aaron to ride bikes with him and skateboard with him and talk about boy stuff with him.
He was Aaron's buddy. And Aaron was so good with Anthony. So sweet, so kind, so giving, so understanding. And they worked together pretty well. When Aaron got breaks from work, he could be seen adjusting Anthony's bike seat, or talking to him about not hitting the dog, or other people.
Before we left that Wednesday, Anthony had invited Aaron to spend the night with him. When Aaron kindly declined saying that he was going to have to go out to dinner with the group, Anthony invited the whole group over to dinner and to spend the night saying, "I got crackers. You guys can eat dinner here."
The next day, we were ready for work once more and there was Anthony ready for us to be there.
He was still in yesterday's outfit and as dirty as ever. He followed Patrick and Aaron around like they were movie stars.
He was there to hold nails and move things that were in their way. He liked Patrick, but Aaron had really become his best pal.
That Thursday, Cathy, the minister from First Presbyterian Church Ruidoso came to check on us. Anthony was sitting on a roll of wire inspecting our work and she sat on the hard, hot dirt to talk to him. She asked him if he knew why we were there. He didn't. She said that these kids and grown ups had been sent to his house to help him and his family. "We don't need no help," was his answer.
She said that these people came all the way from Texas to make his house better because they had been told to come by God. God, she explained, had brought us there. She then told him that whenever he needed help, no matter when, all he had to do was find a steeple. She drew one in the sand, and told him that he needed to look for a cross on the top. Whenever he needed help, was hungry, or didn't feel safe, he needed to find a place with a cross and a steeple and he just needed to walk in the door and say, "My name is Anthony and I know you will help me". She told him her church was the one right across from McDonalds but he didn't have to go there... He could go to any church and say that.
"My name is Anthony and I know you will help me."

At the end of our day, the last day of work there, we tried to prepare Anthony. We wanted him to understand that we, (most importantly, Aaron,) weren't coming back. As much as we tried, it was impossible to reason with that four year old mind. It was impossible for him not to feel like one more person was leaving him and his life. As Aaron said goodbye, Anthony kicked him, punched him, and angrily said, "Go then. Go away." But as we were packing up and walking back to the van, he ran up to Aaron and quietly said, "Could I hide in the back of the van and go with you?"


That evening, we were blessed by a concert at the church from California Baptist University. At one point in the evening, they looked at our youth kids, sitting in the front row and said, "so, we hear you are from Texas... what are you doing in New Mexico?"
Cathy then stood up and told the congregation about the community action project and how we had come on our mission trip to fix homes that would have been condemned. She praised our kids for their hard work and then said, "but tonight, we need to lift some big prayers up for Anthony. Anthony adopted this group and they adopted him this week and he needs some big prayers."
She handed the microphone back to the college choir expecting them to begin a prayer but they didn't pray. Instead, the leader of the group said, "we could pray for Anthony, but we don't know him very well. We think you guys should do the prayer," and handed the microphone without hesitation directly to Aaron.

Sweet sweet Aaron stood up and started in his teenager voice, the best prayer I have ever heard. It was a true conversation with God about Anthony and how much he needs His help in the world. At that very moment, I was so proud to know Aaron and so honored to have met brave, courageous Anthony and to have been a part of letting him know that he is a precious child of God.

New Random Thoughts...

I am a big drinker.
Although my New Years friends might disagree with me, I am not talking about being an alcoholic. I am not announcing to the world that I need to go to AA... it is not that sort of deal.
I love to drink things. I think I love to drink things more than eat.
It used to be Cokes. I just couldn't get enough of those full powered things with all of the caffeine, all of the sugar, all of the kick.
Then, I went on South Beach and sort of lost my taste for real Cokes.
Not like I won't drink one every once in a while, but not all the time like I did before.
During the summer, it was Iced Tea all the way, baby. That Mr. Coffee tea maker was working overtime on me.
Now, Dr. Pepper is the key... that new Diet Cherry Vanilla is my drink of choice lately.
Yummy.
And oh Sonic.
Let's all just sit a minute and reflect on the greatness of Sonic.
(I am a true believer in the idea that Sonic should just stop their food selling all together and just focus on their cool drinks and ice cream treats. Why do they even bother with the nasty grease fest they call food?
Yuck.)
What is it about Sonic that just gets me?
The ice maybe, I don't know a single person who has opposition to the ice... and I know lots of people who have opposition to lots of random things... LT, you know who you are.
Maybe it is the size of the drink, the cool cup, and the fact that when you order the route 44, they bring out an actual bucket of tasty goodness.
Oh, just a trip down memory lane here, I can remember when I was first introduced to the greatness of Sonic drinks back in Alpine, Texas when I was about 9 or 10, they sold these fountain drinks in actual half gallon milk carton sort of containers. The BEST!
oh, I digress...
Whatever it is about Sonic, I love them. I actually get up a little early on Fridays, get cash if need-be that week, just so I can treat myself to the Sonic drink in the morning...lasts me all day!
So, needless to say with all of the drinking going on in my neck of the woods, I have to pee quite a lot.
Like, all the time.
B says I have kidneys the size of LeSueur Peas. (They are the best you know...)
Hmm.
I don't know about that, but I do know that I have seen my share of bathrooms.
Bathrooms really fascinate me.
I dig them.
You can tell a lot about a place by its bathroom.
The absolute coolest bathroom I ever saw was in San Francisco, California inside an Italian food joint.
The restaurant itself was just the coolest... lots of pictures of the rat pack, very low lighting, no menu, just a list of food on the chalkboard... I was expecting to see the Sopranos hanging out there, doing some Badda Bing Bid'ness if you know what I mean.
And oh the bathroom... It was like walking into someone's house.
Curlers were on the counter, all sorts of lipsticks were out and around, makeup was strewn everywhere, Sinatra was playing in the background.
Wow. The best.

As corny as it sounds, I even like those Macaroni Grill, Papasitos bathrooms, where you get a little language lesson for your peeing pleasure. Sort of a nice little touch and a nice conversation starter when you ask the folks at your table in Italian, "Does this bus to go the zoo to see the monkeys?"

In all of my bathroom fascination, I have noticed a few things about me and my personality.
Once I have visited a certain bathroom, I feel the need to frequent that same stall each time I go back.
You can be sure to find me in the second bathroom stall at our local movie theatre's ladies' room. I gotta keep up with who loves whom and where I could find a good time if I so desired...like my own little novella right there.
Kroger, it is the first one on the left, closest to the sinks.
Sams, well, I look for the cleanest one in that joint. Ugh.
So, what I wonder is, do other people like bathrooms as much as I do?
Are others as dogmatic about their favorite stalls?
Could others write essays about the pleasures of drinking Sonic drinks?
Huh, I might need to research that one to see. I am sure there is a kinky scary website I will regret looking for.
:)

Butterflies
I have been smiling a whole lot more lately. I think it has to do with the butterflies.

You see, B and I went to a retreat called Cursillo, about a month ago. It was a great spiritual retreat focused on food, fellowship, scripture, and God and His Grace in our lives. In all, I think B and I walked away from the whole weekend with a great sense of peace and understanding about God, that we may not have had before.
We felt great.
The butterfly was a symbol of this weekend. Each day of the retreat, we got all kinds of little gifts left on our pillow. The first night, we got a caterpillar magnet. The second night, a chrysalis, the third night, a butterfly. It was meant to represent how we were changing spiritually throughout the weekend.
At first, I considered it quite a cheesy little mascot, but once I let go, and gave in to the cheese, I could really soak in symbolism of it all...or maybe it was just the lack of sleep throughout the whole weekend. Who knows.
Anyway, the day after the retreat, it was back to work and back to the grind of school. Funny though, the first thing I noticed, were the butterflies. Not real butterflies mind you, not yet anyway, but there were butterfly clips carefully pulling back locks of first grade hair, there were butterflies colorfully embroidered onto jeans, butterflies sequined onto tops, sweaters, shoes... It was as if each of my 12 girls in my class all called each other on the phone to coordinate the wearing of the butterflies. They were everywhere.
Every once in a while, I would look at one of the butterflies adorning the fashionistas in my class and smirk a little to myself. Like God was talking directly to me...reminding me with little hints.
And then, the news came. The first grade team leader came in with some bad news. "We have a huge problem. You see," she explained, "we usually study caterpillars in the Spring, but for some reason, they came early this year. We are going to have to teach butterflies now...today!"

I tried to look as serious as I could. I understood that to her, this was a huge huge problem. To me this was as if at that very moment, God had knocked me to the ground and said, "See, You have come a long way... spread your wings!"
Finally, by the end of the conversation with this woman, I was all smiles from ear to ear. Needless to say, she couldn't figure out why.

Since that day, the first graders and I have watched the caterpillars eat and eat and eat. We have watched them form the chrysalis and we have watched them emerge so delicately with their wet floppy wings, ready to begin the new phase of their life. We watched them anxiously go into that beautiful blue sky and we laughed and rejoiced.
We even warned them of those mean birds as we let them free.

My job as a teacher, my job as a friend, my job as a daughter and wife is to watch, guide, and help those whom I love to grow, change, and spread their spiritual wings and I hope they will do the same for me. Till then, I just look for butterflies and smile.

Wardrobe Malfunction
Last Thursday we had a wardrobe malfunction. I have been through a lot in my nine years of teaching, but never a wardrobe malfunction of this magnitude, I tell you. So, it was a rainy day on Thursday. One of those rainy days where you secretly thank your parents for those swimming lessons because eventually, you know you will need to practice your back stroke in order to get from the car to the front door of the school. The kind of rainy day where you don't even bother to curl or even brush your hair, knowing that by the time you get to work, your hair will be beautifully stuck to your head in a nice wet pattern.
I think you get the idea. It was rainy. So kids were coming in late, things were sort of crazy to begin with. Aaron's parents and I were trying hard to get the crying, flailing child into the classroom, Jacob needed to go to the bathroom for the third time at 8:05 am, and then it happened. The very faint sound of magic... we heard it... a fairy princess noise. Close your eyes and imagine the Disney sound of magic happening... over and over and over. This is what we heard. It was very faint, very quiet, and certainly very mysterious at first. It was clear the rest of the first graders had heard it too. Aaron even stopped crying and flailing to listen for the sound. If you'd have walked into the classroom, you would have really wondered what was going on. We all sort of were walking around the room, searching for the origin of the magical sound, putting our ears on backpacks, lockers, people's pockets, even on Aaron and his dad.
Then, the noise stopped. "Whew!" The source was still an enigma, but we could live now... the magical noise was gone and the kids could finally sit at their desks to read books. Five minutes later, all of the soggy children had finally been dropped off at school, when the magic started again, this time louder and more insistent that we find the origin.
At one point, the noise had driven some of the children so crazy, they were wandering around the room putting their ears to anything that could possibly make the noise. Finally, I noticed one child laying flat on the floor with her ear pressed toward Julie's shoes yelling, "It is here!"
You see, Julie's new princess shoes were so cool. They lit up and flashed a cute little light when she walked. That, she knew. But they also had a cool button on the tongue of the shoe that you could press to make a magical sound. Poor Julie didn't know that her shoes made this noise, so she was just as surprised as I was to see her classmate's ear plastered onto her shoe!
The noise got worse.
Louder and louder the magical shoe sound became, certainly not seeming so magical anymore.
No matter what we did, we couldn't get them to turn off! So I had to make the phone call to her mother.
I understand that parents get a bad feeing when their child's teacher calls them at work, so I tried instantly to reassure Julie's mom that things were ok, but that her shoes were, um, "so magical, that they won't stop". Her mom, finding me rather silly for calling, thought I was talking about the cute little flashy light and she was really wondering why I had bothered her at work to tell her about Julie's flashing shoes.... until I let her hear the magical sound.
Julie's mom assured us that she would leave work, go home, and get some new shoes. Can you imagine having to tell your boss that you need to leave work because the rain had caused your child's shoes to go crazy?
I can' t. But I wouldn't have imagined ever having to deal with such a wardrobe malfunction or the magical sounds of Disney shoes. Every once in a while, I can close my eyes and hear them, over and over again. I have a feeling all of the first graders in my class will, for a long long time.

Switch?

I am a Mac girl. I have always been a Mac girl. I come from a long line of Mac lovers.
I can remember the first time my dad came home with a computer. It was like the size of a shoe box, it seemed, but it was amazing. It required a huge disk in order to work, and could be carried with an actual handle. it was the neatest thing my whole family had ever seen and so easy to use. We didn't need too many instructions to figure out that thing called a mouse.

Then, we got a little more advanced in our thinking, and got bigger and better Macs. I can acually remember my dad saying to me, "you don't need a color printer... the screen isn't in color, so why would you need a color printer?" hee hee. Just picking on my dad there... He very quickly changed his mind and decided that the color printer and monitor were great. My dad packed up the whole family several years in a row and took us all to the MacWorld Conference. There we were in an ocean of glasses wearing, pocket protector having, geeks and we loved it.
We were just as geeky as the rest, oohing and ahhing over the latest in Apple's vast catalogue of wares.
We were on top of the Macintosh world, looking down at all of the IBM losers on the planet.
We laughed when those PC people were cheering for their Windows. "Ha, We had windows back in 1980. It was called, Macintosh ... " Probably OS 1 or something... who knows.

We were the Macintosh family for sure.
Then enter B. You know how they say opposites attract? Well... he was a PC guy all the way. I think my family had their doubts about us for a while. Who could marry someone who was such a PC person? He could have been green with polka dots and that wouldn't have mattered, it was the PC thing that was the issue... that and he liked Fords, but that is a different story. Eventually, my family saw through the PC lover exterior and began to see the great guy he was inside.

For my birthday, B, going totally against his PC beliefs, bought me an IMac. Now, our office is the best of both worlds, the Dell on one very messy desk, and the IMac on the opposite wall, on a slightly cluttered desk space. Seperate, but equal. We live in peace, although we didn't think it would be possible.
We actually have played on each other's computers quite nicely. I have learned to get along with his computer without too much struggle, and he has learned to play on my computer without any more bad words. He still works hard to turn me to the dark side of the PC world. My heart says no.

I am in the market right now for a new computer. My old IMac has had it. It doesn't have the "stuff" to do what I want it to do anymore. I am in need a new system. Of course, my PC friends and my sweet PC husband have all suggested that I make the big leap to PCs.
I will now admit that (listen to me carefully because I won't admit this often) that I have grown accustomed to B's computer. I won't say I like it, mind you, but I have grown accustomed to it.
I like the fact that with it, I can do all sorts of things that maybe are still not available for the Mac, so I will admit that I contemplated that "Dude, you are getting a Dell" concept for a while.
A Dell would certainly be cheaper, would certainly do as much as my new Mac, if not more. So why was I hanging on to the idea of a Mac? Why was my heart tearing when I seriously considered getting the PC. I don't know if it was the idea that I would eventually turn into one of THOSE "PC" people I looked down on in the past, or if it was the memory of how I felt the first time my dad came home with that little tiny computer and told us it was called an Apple.
I still remember loving that computer from the second I saw it.

You'll be happy to hear that I ordered one of the new G5s from Apple. It is back ordered now and I have a feeling it will be totally out of date by the time it actually arrives at my house.
But, I will keep the family tradition alive.
I will keep the Mac movement going... at least until I need another new computer.

For the love of Urban Legends

I’m not sure when it began. It could be when that cruel cruel older girl blurted out her thoughts on that Santa fellow and my life as I knew it was shattered for a while. Or really, I think it actually began with the cookie recipe. I don’t know if it was the fact that it was a great recipe for cookies or the idea of one person “sticking it to” the big bad corporation, but that Neiman Marcus Cookie story had me. You know the famous “you had me at hello” speech? The movie of my life would have the line, “you had me at grated Hershey bar…” If you are clueless so far… you can find the recipe here… http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blbyol19.htm
Whatever it was, I loved loved loved the recipe, the story, the idea. I made and froze the 200-gazillion cookies. I copied the story and the recipe for anyone I thought would ever want it, who would stand up like Norma Ray, pump their arms in the air, and yell for the rights of the worker, the regular guy. (I am talking about the right Ray person right? Norma Ray= Sally Field character…Martha Ray= woman with the big mouth right? Either way, you know what I am talking about.) The idea was romantic, fabulous. And then my friend one day, out of nowhere, ate one of the cookies, laughed and said in an off-handed sort of way, “You know this is an urban legend”.
I have often caught myself walking down the hall, the mall, the street, whatever, imagining a certain soundtrack of my life. At that moment, I would add some rockin’ music as we ate cookies and then quickly, timed so well, add the sound of the scratching of a record as the music abruptly comes to an end. Yeah, it was that dramatic. Call it naiveté, call it stupidity, I don’t know what it was, but I felt it was dramatic.
I couldn’t even imagine it would be anything other than the truth.

Thinking back on it now, it shouldn't have been such a shock to me.  I should have known all about urban legends and myths. I was truly the subject of several legends/ myths going around my dad’s circle of friends and co-workers. He used to travel, making speeches about the tragedy of teenagers and middle school. He used to make up stories that fit the subject at hand, and of course they would be all about me. None of them were true, mind you, but they were all great stories. So great in fact, that years later, people from these workshops would meet me and happily try to reminisce with me with one story or another of me and my childhood. Finally, I couldn’t help it. One day I just quietly said, “You know, that really didn’t happen.” Yes, you can add the same record scratch sound effect if you wish, thank you.
I never thought about it till now, how I was the evildoer who burst the bubble of some unsuspecting naive person too.
So, it was either the fact that I was the subject of erroneous anecdotes, or that my life came to a screeching halt one day with something we now call “the cookie incident,” but something changed in me.
I became obsessed with urban legends. I love them now. I follow them, read about them, learn about them, study them, send the snopes website to anyone who insists on sending them to me via email. I have a fascination with them. I always wondered where they came from. Could anyone in the world just make one up and have it travel to worlds beyond? Could I one day, be in the grocery store and overhear someone talking about the urban legend that I made up? OH, I think I MUST create a very good urban legend. And of course, I won’t tell you guys what it is… that would burst your bubble now wouldn’t it? You will just always have to wonder. Until then… I am composing an email right now about a friend of a friend of a cousin of a brother who knew a guy who used to have his own soundtrack in life… I will have to work on it but it will be huge, I tell you! Huge!


For any check on an urban legend:
http://www.snopes.com (it is the best!)

I woke up thinking about the trash. Not a normal thing, I know, but it was early, and I wasn’t about to let the stinky stench of the watermelon rind take over yet another room in my house. So I woke at 6 a.m. with purpose and a mission.
And as B took a shower, I snuck outside and drug the trash down the driveway, where it inevitably tore and leaked chicken and melon juice all over my feet.
After cursing and hobbling to the curb, I looked around and noticed the unusually cool morning and decided I needed to walk. B thought I had totally lost my mind, but since he thinks that on a daily basis, neither one of us worried too much about it.
Now mind you, I love to walk. I love to smell the fresh clean air and enjoy waving at my neighbors… even the insane tai chi lady down the street. So, this was really great. I made plans in my head to wake up at 6 a.m. every morning! I could do that! Yeah, I would become part of this “walking in the morning” crowd. And then something… uh, brought me back to reality in such an evil way… trash day. And then I began looking at the trash. Mind you I said AT and not IN… I am not THAT crazy! How can one household eat that many pizzas? What kind of alcoholic lives here? 6 bottles of rum seems a bit excessive, don’t you think? Ok, so finally by the time I got back home, I had gagged back some choice words and a little bit of throw up and entered my house, vowing to Never walk the neighborhood again… at least not on trash day.

So walking was out, I needed something to do with my energy and summer bordom, so I decided to take up yoga again.
Well I, once in my life, believed myself to be pretty good when it came to the yoga stuff. I could speak the lingo, baby. I knew the difference between warrior and triangle pose. I could not only say the words “downward dog” without snickering, but I could actually do it in a semi public place without feeling too stupid. I wasn’t a yogi by any means, mind you, but I could do my share of the yoga poses.
But then, I got cocky… “too simple” I thought. I need a challenge. I am bored with doing the same routine all of the time… making fun of Sara Ivanhoe’s yankee accent could only last so long. So I did my research and found just the right one for me.
Power Yoga from MTV. What was it I wasn’t getting? The POWER part? Or the fact that it was from MTV? Uh.. don’t know.

So I put the new yoga DVD into the machine today and tried my luck at the new tape.
You ever seen an epileptic chicken? This was exactly what I looked like.
“Put your leg into the air, now swing it down and go to warrior pose, then downward dog, then sun salutation, then back up all the way on your feet arms in the air…” in a span of 10 seconds!
Needless to say, I was a failure at that fun.
I am thinking I will just maybe wake up early and walk only on NON trash days… Maybe I will just wake up at 6 a.m., kiss my husband goodbye, and go back to sleep for another three hours and do that easy yoga at let’s say, noon? Sounds good to me!

Summer

So, what are you doing this summer?

Me, just going crazy thanks.
It happens every year you know. I finally figured it out. During the months of August through May, I go, like a worker bee, nine hundred miles per hour in all directions. I make lesson plans, I create poems, I develop forms, I organize, I teach, I read, I learn, I go…not to mention cleaning the house, folding clothes, cooking dinner with B, etc.
I have gotten to the point where multitasking is my business. Being a teacher does that to you. “What, you have a cut? Let me get you a Band-aid. You need your pencil sharpened? I will do that on the way to get the Band-aids. Well, if you are feeling sick, then go to the bathroom, don’t throw up right here! You are supposed to ride the bus today? Let me write that down so I won’t forget… Where did that sticky note go and what did it say on it?” You get the idea. And at home, it is even worse. I CAN’T watch television and not DO something else. Going to the movies is painful since I KNOW I can be doing five other things while watching that movie. Now, in that multitasking, comes losing your mind. How many times have I walked into a room and completely forgotten what I came in for? How many times have I sat down at my computer to realize I had gone in that room to look for the remote control 45 minutes before? Multitasking makes you stupid. Really. So, now that it is summer, my life is a little less complicated. Things, as a matter of fact, have come to a screeching halt. And I am left with this feeling of guilt like I should be doing so many things… No more multitasking to do…so why am I still losing my mind?

Every year, the summer starts off this way. I get to that screeching halt and go a little crazy. I start to email and call B like every 5 minutes, or as long as he can stand it. That’s not very long by the way. He told me once that I needed a hobby. Bugging him sounds like a great hobby to me, but he disagrees. So, for now, I will try to read my trash novel WHILE watching old re-runs of West Wing. The monument to slactitude is getting bigger as we speak and I think the cat has been lost for um… two days now in the middle of it. So I have plenty to do.
Maybe I will even start doing more of this blog thing…
The only thing is… I need to figure out what I can do while I write blog entries to really make myself feel like a multitasker. And maybe I can let myself go a little crazy too. I can run around and get band-aids and sharpen pencils and write myself sticky notes just for the heck of it… and feel like I am back to being the queen of multitasking. Or maybe not.

Being Brave

I was hungry I told my mom,
“Can I have some spaghetti?”
My brother said that he was going to warm it. My mom said, “Are you sure?” He said, “Yes.” He warmed it five minutes.
I was going to put it on the dinner table. It was so hot. The plate fell in my lap.
I was crying because it hurt.
My brother was laughing. He thought it was funny. “Ha Ha.”
I was scared my dad was going to whip me.
My Auntie came to my house. She said she was very sorry. She said, “sorry”.
My dad buyed me a medicine. He rubbed it in my legs.
I went to school. It was not hurting me. But then, it was hurting me. I went to the nurse. They gave me ice.


This is the book that was written by one of my first graders. She calls it I Got Burned.
I loved it so much because it showed from such a small writer, the pain and helplessness she felt at the time. It also shows her outlook on things. Amazing.
Here is the real story.

My young friend was home one Saturday night and was hungry. Her second grade brother offered to make her chicken noodle soup and warm it up in the microwave. It was in that huge warming up machine more than 5 minutes although there is speculation that it was maybe 10. Either way, it was WAY too long in there.
My first grade friend tried to take it to the table and spilled it on herself.
The chicken soup, you see, had created third degree burns on her little body. But no one bothered to help her. No one bothered to look. So she cried.
Can you imagine? She must have cried for hours.
And then it happened. No one in her family took her to the doctor. No one even made an appointment. It was a holiday on Monday, so she didn't come to school, but she didn't go to the doctor either. She just cried.
She wasn't at school on Tuesday either, although no one is quite sure why.
Wednesday, she came to school with a limp. Her tears had dried but her pain remained. She was so brave.
That was when we noticed. That was when we saw the burns. That was when the horror of it all was relived to us with every word that she told us.
No one had taken her to the doctor until we came along.

I love this child for sharing this story with me. I love this child for going through such an emotional time in her life and being so brave. I love her for writing about it. I love her for always remembering but being too young to hate about it. I love her because she was one we got to help. There are so many we can't.

I think B is the strongest, bravest person I know. He is not afraid of anything or anyone. He would fight lions for me if I asked him, but that day she told us the story, I was convinced that I had met someone braver than him.
I hope that everyone, at least once in their life, will get to meet someone brave and strong. Big or small, young or old, we can all learn from someone brave like that first grader, I know I did.

This is taken from You're a Good Man Charlie Brown by Charles Schulz
LUCY:
Linus, do you know what I intend. I intend to be a queen. (Musical fanfare.) When I grow up I'm going to be the biggest queen there ever was. And I'll live in a big palace with a big front lawn and have lots of beautiful dresses to wear. And, when I go out in my coach all the people...

LINUS: (interrupting her)
Lucy!

LUCY:
All the people will wave, and I will SHOUT at them. And...

LINUS:
Lucy, I believe queen is an inherited title. Yes, I am quite sure a person can only be queen by being born into a royal family of the correct lineage so that she can assume the throne after the death of the reining monarch. I can't think of any possible way that you could ever become a queen. I'm sorry Lucy, but it's true.

LUCY:
And in the summer time, I will go to my summer palace and I will wear my crown in swimming and everything. And all the people will cheer and I will SHOUT at them. (She pauses) WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T BE A QUEEN!!!!!!
There must be a loop hole... this kind of thing always has a loop hole. Nobody should be kept from being a queen if she wants to be one. It's undemocratic.

LINUS:
Good grief!


LUCY:
I know what I'll do. If I can't be a queen, then I'll be very rich. I'll work and work until I'm very rich and then I will buy myself a queendom.

LINUS:
GOOD GRIEF!

LUCY:
Yes, I will buy myself a queendom and I'll kick out the old queen and take over the whole operation myself. I will be head queen. NOW switch channels.


JOB WANTED: QUEEN

I have been in a job search recently. This is part of my delay in posting a blog entry for such a long time. Funny how when you have a job, you feel comfortable enough to look for something just a little bit better. So I have been on interviews and having lots of talks with people I know about jobs and “openings” and such, and it has been a real drain on me, both emotionally and physically. My friends are just about sick of hearing about this job situation and would rather I shutupalready and make a decision. And as sweet and understanding as B is, I know he will be happy when this is all over.
So, anyway, the other day, during one of the interviews, I got the age-old question… “What do you see yourself doing in five years?”
Ugh. They might as well have said, “What do you want to BE when you grow up, little girl?”
We ask little kids all the time, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” and all of them have an answer. “I want to be a doctor, fireman, teacher, superhero”. When they don’t have an answer, it is strange. But yet, when we are grown up, most of don’t have an answer to that question.
There are so many professions in the world we could have, so many things we could do. How do we decide what we want to BE for the rest of our lives? Are we always supposed to drift through our life not really knowing what we want to spend our days doing?
Shouldn’t we all fit in a niche and stay there? Who knows.

The other day, for hat day, I put on my trashy, super shiny, Dollar Store tiara. It was fabulous. For one day, I was at work and I finally figured out what I want to BE when I grow up.

When I was growing up, I spent my days taking orders for imaginary food, lining up my stuffed animals so I could read them stories, dancing on Broadway, practicing my Emmy/Oscar speech, and making tickets for people to pick up their dry cleaning. I am not quite sure why I decided to become a dry cleaner for a while, a little bizarre if you think about it, but oh well. I knew, if someone asked me, that I would always answer “teacher” if I were going to be truthful. But a little part of me wanted to be a queen!
I have never considered myself a “girly” girl. I don’t love flowery anything. I hate ruffles and am just now easing myself into wearing pink without throwing up.
I don’t wear a ton of make up and don’t really understand lipstick. So, it really surprises me that I LOVE tiaras and “intend to be a queen” someday. Now, I am sure this job would be as draining as my current job. Too many people to please. Too many decisions to make. Too many stresses. But somehow, the idea of getting to wear a tiara the entire time would outweigh all of the negatives of the job.

Unfortunately, there are no openings for queen right now. My current job does not make enough money to “buy myself a queendom” so I will keep teaching. I will keep going to interviews, and maybe during one of them, I will quietly slip on my cheap tiara and dream of being interviewed for the position of queen. I am sure I could ace that interview!

Spring Fever
When it hits you, it hits you, whether you like it or not. I like to call it Spring Fever, but you can call it whatever you want.

I don’t know if it was because it was the last few days of my oh-too-quick spring break, or if it was just because the sun had finally come out after too many drab and dreary days, but I got the fever… bad. It was as if walking outside, catching a whiff of fresh air and seeing the sun, made me become a different person. And I got that feeling of needing to do something, even though I wasn’t really sure what you should do. I just knew that whatever I did, it needed to be something big! Suddenly, I had the craving to drive. No time, no place to go but Kroger, but I was ready… ready to drive.
I hopped in my white SUV, popped on my magnetic sunglasses, rolled down my window, turned up the tunes, and drove like there was no tomorrow. OK, so it was less than 5 miles, but I was driving!
All of a sudden, I became the blonde chick in the yellow car in American Graffiti.
I am sure, to a passerby, I looked just like some thirty-something soccer mom, but in my mind, I was back in my twenties… (maybe 25… old enough to drink, young enough to not creak when I get up from a chair) and driving a red, maybe yellow, convertible. I had long blond hair that would flow in the wind and I was cool. So cool. Pat Green and I were jamming as I drove, in my imagination, through the hill country, through the bluebonnets, over the back roads, into spring.
“Seems like you need a little hill country, a little back roads driving, a little bit of that old top down.”
I was singing like an American Idol contestant… well at least one from the top 5.
It was grand. And then I pulled into the Kroger parking lot. And for a second, I faced reality and the dream had faded slightly. I was back to being a suburbanite in my SUV with music too loud, and people staring at me like I was crazy. But in my mind, it was still Spring and I was still fabulous, maybe just a little less now that I know people were watching me. I practically skipped into the grocery store, gave money to a man in uniform, (ok, so he was just a boy scout selling candy bars but work with me here… I am dreaming) and smiled down every row, thinking about what was awaiting me when I finished my chores. Another ride down the hilly countryside… Just me, my long flowing, curly hair, and spring, driving, smiling, and looking fabulous!

The Pursuit of Cool

To steal words of Chuck Sigars from The World According to Chuck, “I love, love, love my memory key”. I love that I can I carry super secret information on my key chain. I love that no matter where I am, I can whip out my handy dandy thumb drive, put it into any USB port in a computer anywhere, and show off photo’s from B’s birthday. I think the best thing is the look on people’s faces when I pull it off of my key chain. Makes them think that for one fleeting moment, I am the coolest person they have ever met.

It’s not that I crave cool or anything. Isn’t that what makes someone cool… the fact that they don’t care if they are or not?
As a matter of fact, I considered myself to have a semi-coolness about me. I am hip on the Nick and Jessica’s spoiled antics. I love the Fab Five and their slobby straight man makeovers. I can argue the pros and cons of Lucas and Payton finally getting together. I had heard rumblings of a breakup before Tom and Penelope actually announced to the world. I was clued in. I like to call that “pre-cool”. I listen to the White Stripes and Fountains of Wayne. I’ve got it going on you might say, or so I thought.
And then one day, you flip the channel after watching a When Harry Met Sally for the 100th time, and you find that thing called TRL and you realize you have no chance in the race to be cool. Might as well just stop trying.
Tattoos are cool. Did you know that?
And putting rings in part of your body besides you ears is “the bomb”. Thongs, both for the feet and the butt are the coolest, even in the winter. Showing the thongs is the key to all happiness, once again, even in the winter. There is an actual show where people spend all kinds of money “pimping” someone’s ride instead of just buying a brand new car. Amazing!!

OK, so I am not as cool as I once thought. I plan to keep by butt and my toes fully covered and I don’t even like earrings, so I can’t see punching holes in any other parts of my body. I will keep my “ride” un-pimped thankyouverymuch.

Maybe I shouldn’t try to compare myself to teenagers. I shouldn’t try to keep up. For goodness sakes, if you think about it, half of the stuff they think is cool now, I used to play with or wear as a kid. Care bears are back. Friendship bracelets? Been there…know how to tie those knots. Tube socks with stripes and short shorts with piping up the sides… not cool when I was ten, not cool now.

I think I’ll just live in my pre-cool world where Stevie Ray Vaughn and Cheryl Crow still make me dance around the house and feel cool. My world, where One Tree Hill and Law and Order can live cohesively. Where, every once in a while, when I pull out my super cool technology to show to the world, I am the Queen of Cool. That is good enough for me.

We have hard wood floors in our house. They are real hard wood floors, not the kind you have to sand down twice a year like my grandfather had years and years ago, but the kind you can clean by rubbing a nice clean sock on the spill. I don’t have to think about the upkeep of the floor, really. I just spend a few minutes on them every once in a while, with an actual mop, and I forget about them for the next several days. Considering the level of slactitude in my house, it is amazing that it even gets done once a week. Needless to say, I like them, I am glad I have them, and they are considered very special when visitors see them, but I don’t really think much about them on a daily basis. Who would really? I am sure there is some internet site out there about someone’s obsession with hard wood floors…

My grandfather was in town recently, and we had quite a few conversations about our hard wood floors. I hadn’t really thought much about them till those conversations. Funny how you our thoughts work when you really focus on something.

I have also been thinking about my grandfather lately. Again, funny how you our thoughts work when you really focus on something. He is a hard man, who had a hard, hard life. You can tell by his calloused hands that he was no stranger to working hard. He is hard to talk to, not because he has nothing to say, but because you have to scream at him to have him hear you. As hard as he is, there was something soft about him, a shine in his eyes, like the shine on the hard wood floors, I don’t remember noticing until this visit.

He didn’t want to come on this trip, I know. His bones ache and his arthritis is so bad, that travel is not fun for him. He is set in his ways and likes his own space, so the trip was not his idea of a great time. So the fact that he was actually coming was a big surprise to everyone, I think. But as the trip progressed, as he visited with family and friends and talked about old times and times to come, I could see that spark in his eye. He was actually glad he came, I know. And I am glad he came too.
You see, my grandfather, like those hard wood floors, is tough, and a relationship with him is something I take for granted, something I hadn’t worried too much about maintaining. I realized this weekend, that family is the most important thing to him. It is the thing that makes him shine. I also realized that I needed to not just rub a clean sock across my relationship with my grandfather, I need to get rid of my slactitude and work hard at polishing and maintaining my relationship with him. Maybe one day, I can stand back and look at my relationship with my grandfather and admire it, like I now admire my hard wood floors.

The Monument to Slactitude


Busy is one thing but this is ridiculous! All of us are busy. We all have things in the world that keep us from doing what we are supposed to do. We all have priorities and we all have things that we just don’t want to do. Ours, is the laundry… well, and vacuuming, but that is a totally different story.

You see, every week we have a routine. The dirty clothes start piling up and the stench is unbearable, and we start the laundry process. It is pretty simple really, divide and conquer we say. All the whites, all the colors, all the sweaters, all the “unmentionables” all divided into their separate but equal groups and then we do loads and loads of laundry. For two of us, we wear a TON of clothes… or so it seems.
So then, we quickly and stupidly fling the clean clothes on top of the bed in the extra bedroom to be dealt with later. Out of sight, out of mind, I say. Normally, we spend our Sunday nights watching Law and Order and folding and hanging the clothes. (Admit it… you can always find some sort Law and Order show on cable… if you can’t, you just aren’t looking hard enough… but I digress). So, we usually work together to get that chore done.
Some days, we will sneak in and fold and hang the clothes for each other. This is our little way to show each other we love each other. Then the other one walks in pretending to be mad that it all got done. It is a silly little game, but we like it.

Anyway, this sort of folding activity usually happens every week, and our universe is back to normal. For some reason though, we haven’t folded clothes for a long, long, long time. So now, every morning we go dumpster diving through “the monument to slactitude” as we pray to the laundry gods, hold our breath, and dive in, looking for the matching sock, or that just right underwear. It is no shock now days to lose the cat for two days and realize that she had created a nest inside the monument to slactitude. Tuesday morning, I went in search of pants, and saw a pair of legs sticking out of the monument. Instead of striped socks and ruby red shoes, I saw bare feet and some very hairy legs and the faint voice of B mumbling to himself about our high degree of slactitude. Obviously, we are not proud of the slackers we are, but at times, we find the monument so humorous, we can’t stand to actually demolish it. Today is the day though. Today is the day that the monument falls. And the universe will once again be back to normal.
Or, maybe I will wait a little longer... There is a good Law and Order marathon on A&E!!