Place Spouse Part One: Cemeteries
It has been a while! My last post was a few years back, and at the time we were thinking of moving to Minnesota. Update: We did not move to Minnesota! Instead, we moved back to Florida, and I am home! I made the most of one amazing year in my hometown, Lake Wales, Florida, where my great-great grandmother, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my father, and I were all born. Right about the time of the Covid-19 shut down, we moved an hour and a half north. I already miss my home town, but my new town is pretty cool, too. In a beautiful book by Stephen Becker, called The Last Mandarin, the main character refers to the city of Peking (now Beijing) as his “place wife,” the most loved, while other special places could only be referred to as mistresses. This is how I feel about Lake Wales. It
Minnesota?
Born and bred, raised and reared — I am a Florida girl, though I haven’t resided there in over twenty-four years! Throughout a year in Wisconsin, five years in Northern California, and long enough in the OC to raise my kids, I have always thought that eventually I would be back in Florida. I’m not sure why I thought that would be the case. I was happy in Wisconsin. I’ve been happy in California. Yet, Florida tugs at my heart with the strings of generations of my family and memories of friends. My California friends ask incredulously if I still want to move back to Florida even after last week’s hurricane. Well, of course I do. Or do I? I am married to a minister; we don’t get to pick and choose where he serves. He is called by a congregation in a certain area, and he has the opportunity
Woefully Under-read
I’m not even sure “under-read” is actually a word, perhaps because I am so under-read, but I am truly woeful of my lack of readness? Come to think of it, my vocabulary might be lacking as well! I discovered my malady after my friend Jeff, who just happens to be an awesomely cool librarian, texted me “Bronte was a genius.” He was in the midst of Wuthering Heights and was expressing his admiration. I answered, “Yes, the Bronte sisters were geniuses.” What a snarky thing to say, as if I actually know more than he does. I received my comeuppance (All you non-southern people should know that this is, indeed, a real word). I received my comeuppance when Jeff asked me to send him two lists: Top 20 must-read 19th-century UK novels. Same for American Lit. but 19th and 20th centuries pre-1940. At this point, it ocurred to me that I wasn’t
For the Love of Veggies
When I was a little girl, my much-older brother came home to central Florida for a summer visit, and we decided to garden. It was to be a vegetable garden fit for a king, and in the process my brother would teach me how delicious hard work could taste! We dug up half the back yard and spent hours upon hours yanking out roots and digging up rocks. When the soil was clean, we hired ourselves out to a local horse ranch, shoveling manure out of the stalls and filling the back of our dad’s pick-up truck. All that manure was then shoveled into our freshly-tilled garden plot. We hoed and turned and watered down, wading in slushy, smelly goodness, until the soil was ready to go. We planted everything under the sun and reaped a harvest the likes of which I have not seen since. And that was the
Eating Up This Book
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss — brilliant! Thanks to my teacher-friend Dean Leigh for passing it along to me. This beautiful book is about punctuation. Isn’t that wonderful? Now, don’t roll your eyes at me. I understand that most people do not appreciate nor care to read about punctuation, but I do. A well-constructed sentence is a piece of art, like a building of the most exquisite architecture, and it is a delight to parse that sentence out and see how it is put together. What parts make up this beautiful whole, and in what order? Yes, I was that child who enjoyed diagramming sentences. I still enjoy it. All those lovely lines — straight and slanted, perpendicular and at angles — are satisfying to behold. I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw its clever cover, those pandas slyly erasing the comma from “eats, shoots
Like Comforting Rain
I lie in bed watching trees, buffeted, straining in the wind, and back-porch chairs skidding across the concrete toward the garden, where they topple and lie like corpses after battle next to my beloved collard green bushes. I can practically hear the greens calling to one another, “Bend! Bend! Bend, or you’ll break!” So, I decide to take their advice. I will my hips to move and heave my legs over the side of the bed. My feet take me as far as a chair in the living room where I check my email, coffee in hand. Most people I know who suffer from arthritis, fibromyalgia, or other auto-immune problems tend to loathe humidity. Maybe it’s my Florida pedigree, but I thrive in humidity. There is nothing worse to me than dry, Santa Ana winds. But my collard greens are right. If I don’t bend, I break. So I dress
Isn’t an Education Compensation Enough?
The first college football playoff is in the history books. The playoff system resulted in a number two and a number four team playing each other for the championship, and it was a great game, the battle of the “O’s”! It was also, for me, a thought roller coaster. Not being linked to or particularly enamored of either team, I was ready simply to enjoy my viewing experience. I didn’t have a dog in this fight, so I was free to enjoy other people’s, well okay they weren’t dogs. They were young men, but it doesn’t seem quite right to say I was enjoying other people’s young men. Hmm. Okay, that was certainly a can of worms that I shouldn’t have opened. I love watching well-played sports. How about that? Before the game, I read a few articles by some sports writers here and there. Sports writers are some of
Call Me Ma’am
“Would you like ketchup, Miss?” the child said to me as he handed me my burgers and fries. Miss? Miss? He was my son’s age. Why was he calling me miss as if the roles were reversed and he were an older man speaking to a young lady? I had just waited 45 minutes in the In n Out drive thru line, but I didn’t mind because In n Out is the best. Great food — great service. He was a cute kid in his little white outfit with the red and white hat and the apron pinned on with a giant safety pin. I liked him, but he just called me “Miss.” I paused, too shocked to speak. “No, thank you,” finally escaped my lips. “Okay. Have a good day, Miss.” I drove away and went home to tell my family of this horrible incident. My daughter tells me
Wedding Singer: Previously Old, Dusty, and Wonderful Part III
I started a post a year and a half ago. A year and a half! A year and a half! I finally logged into this infernal blog monster today and discovered I had started this post and never finished it and didn’t even bother to worry about it. Poor, abandoned words — ideas that don’t matter any more and maybe never mattered. It was even a part three. I neglected to finish a trilogy! Gasp! A year and a half? Oh yes. That’s when my eldest went off to college and tuition payments happened. That’s when I started making a little money writing stuff for people that meant much more to them than it did to me and editing other people’s writing that the arrogant author in me decided was not as good as my own. Be honest, now. All writers have a certain level of arrogance. Otherwise, why would
Old, Dusty, and Wonderful: Part II
Another flashback to high school: me and a group of friends listening to music. Chris P. was a huge Police fan, and he asked, “So, in ‘Don’t Stand So Close to Me’ what’s the book by Nabakov?” No one knew. We weren’t into asking our English teacher, who I am sure would have known, and whipping out an iphone to ask Siri was not an option in 1980, so we shrugged and went on with our lives. Of course, as an English major in college, I did discover Nabakov and Lolita. I still wonder if my high school classmates ever figured it out. It was an interesting book, but this post is about the falling-apart paperback I recently rescued from its long-held position on the back of the book shelf: Pale Fire. Nothing like Lolita, this book begins with a poem and continues with the extremely strange and often rather dull explication of the
Technology is Making Me Fat!
Curses to you Netflix. You should go far, far away and stop enticing my children with your alluring offers of a free month — a free month to get the watcher hooked so he can’t conceive of ever letting go of this addictive subscription. This is the way it works: My son accepts the offer of a free month of Netflix, and suddenly we are all watching garbage we never could have seen (or have already seen and should not watch again). There are bad horror movies, bad Leslie Nielsen movies, bad reality TV shows — it goes on and on. My teenagers, who have never been allowed to have TVs in their rooms, watch these shows on their laptops, their giggles oozing under the doors and flowing to my room, making me wonder what is so funny. They hook up the Wii to the TV in the living room,
Dusty, Old, and Wonderful: Part One
They sit and gather dust year after year. They are boxed and moved every time the family relocates. Occasionally, I bring myself to rid the shelf of a few of them. I tell myself, “I can garage sale this; I can donate this; I will not miss this.” The problem is that ridding my life of these items is like throwing away a chunk of my identity. They are who I am. Sometimes I am real; often I am fantasy! I am a book person — I have always been a book person. From the moment my mother read The Poky Little Puppy to me for the first time, I was hooked. I was hooked as I read Mandy to my pet fish. I was hooked when my older brother sent me a volume of Dylan Thomas I was much too young to understand. Throwing out a book I once enjoyed or studied or wrote
PAL
47 random acts of kindness for her 47th birthday; standing on the street corner handing out money for 57 minutes on the 57th anniversary of his birth. And the crowd goes wild. One cannot help but read about these people on the internet, see them on television, or hear about what a great idea they’ve found. Practice random acts of kindness; it will do you good. While I do admire these people and their resolve to give rather than to receive on their special days, I hesitate to call what they are doing “Random Acts of Kindness” (RAK). They are rather, “Planned Acts of Generosity” or PAG. That is not to say that these wonderful people are not kind or generous or loving. On the contrary, these humans are terrific models of niceness for the rest of us. The “RAK”, however, is something entirely different. RAKs are truly random; they are simple kindnesses, favors, actions of love that flow
One Good Reason to be Married
Rodent disposal is a man’s job. Call me sexist, if you will, but I will move out of my house before I scoop up and throw away a dead thing with a long icky tail. When the husband is out-of-town, the job is passed along to the son. Never mind that it was 2:30 in the morning and that my husband had driven home from a conference six hours away to make it just in time for our daughter’s high school graduation. Never mind that he was exhausted. I woke him up any way because rodent disposal is his job. Jack the bad dog bounded out of the house, barked ferociously, and did not come back inside. I got out of bed, went to the back door, and peered out into the dark back yard. I couldn’t see him. My immediate thought is always that my dog will be coyote food,
Levi’s
What does it mean to be socially aware? Once I am aware, can I or should I change my behavior? If I change what I do with the best of intentions, will I achieve the desired outcome? Today, I am at a loss for what to do. On my birthday, I visited Kohl’s, gift card and coupon in hand. Finally, hours alone to shop with no whining teenagers, no “Mom, are you done yet?” I chose Levi’s shorts, and I love them. Even my daughter thinks they look good, and that is a miracle. They are comfortable and cute and just the right length. And they are Levi’s, an all-American standard. Except they aren’t. Imagine my surprise when I looked at the tag before laundering my new purchase and noticed with despair that these wonderful shorts were made in Pakistan. “Pakistan” I told my daughter, “where terrorists are harbored and