Monday Walkadoodle

Ever have the feeling that someone, somewhere is watching you? That's how I felt on my weekend walk with the husband. Finally, we found the culprit. 

Someone in the neighborhood has a sense of humor.

I wonder what made the tree so happy. Maybe he found out a very Practical One was going to be home for spring break. Just sayin'...

When a post becomes a novel

OK… this is going to be a long yakkity yak even for me because this is my hot button topic. Plus, I have been up since 4:00 AM., and caffeine is a stimulant.

You might want to go grab a cup of coffee…

Ready?

This week, my next thing was to attack the book storage in this home. No small task I assure you. I love books. Back in the days when parents let their kids roam freely about the stores, my mother could always find me sitting on the floor in the book section. It isn’t just the adventure inside of a book that I love. No, I love the very feel and smell of a book. The older and more worn the book is, the more I love it.

Like this tattered little guy who has been loved for two generations.

I keep my books stashed in various places throughout the house. Hard backed, quality books get to be displayed. The soft backed or tattered books live like second class citizens either in a box, a trunk, or on the shelf behind the door in that den closet.

Yet those books are actually the ones that I love the most. I wouldn’t part with them although their organization has been the bane of my existence for two decades. Oh, I’ve tried to organize them. I even color coded the spines with tape way back when.

See?

But it didn’t work. They always ended up looking like this anyway.  

Sometimes worse. I gave up and just banished them behind a door.

But I love them.

One of my dreams is to own a quaint little book store like The Shop Around the Corner in You’ve Got Mail. Like Meg Ryan’s character I would specialize in children’s books. If you’ve ever clicked my profile, you might have noticed that I neglect to list my favorite books. There’s a reason for that. When asked, I’m always a little embarrassed to list them because if I am to be perfectly truthful, my favorite books are STILL those from my childhood. Nothing apart from the Bible that I have read as an adult has ever made me want to revisit it over and over the way that my favorite books from my childhood do.

And I developed that love long before I was an independent reader because of adults in my life who took the time to read aloud to me.

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It seems that as a culture, we’re losing the art of reading aloud. Our school days are so jam packed and cut so short that teachers lack the time to do what my wonderful teachers did when they quieted the class, usually at the end of the day or just after recess, and read chapter books aloud to us. If I close my eyes, I can hear Mr. O’Hara’s voice as he reads The Boxcar Children even today.

All evidence points to the fact that read aloud time is woefully absent in the home as well. I love it when I hear of young families visiting the library together and relishing the ritual of bedtime reading. I suspect, though, that they are a growing minority.

Reading aloud to children reaps multiple blessings. Not only does it engage the brain and create a better reader and learner, but it also teaches the simple discipline of stillness. I literally want to cry as I observe children today who can not sit for five minutes without self- centered participation, without piping in with their anecdotal tidbits, most of which if you listen, begin with the word “I”. Reading aloud teaches children to passively appreciate a voice other than their own. It teaches them, if nothing more, to sit still.

But there is so much more!

It promotes bonding. In essence, we extend the rocking years by replacing the lullaby with the words of a good story. Mom should read. Dad should read. Grandparents, if they can, should read to them too.

I have a friend whose grandson lives many hours away. She and her daughter have devised some wonderful cyber grandma time. Periodically, Grandma appears on SKYPE and reads aloud to her grandson while Mommy attends to daily chores. Sure, she would rather be holding him in person, but she decided to think outside the box. I would never have thought of that! How many Grandma Points do you suppose she should get?

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I love picture books, and some day I’ll post about my favorite picture books for children. But it wasn’t picture books that I found on my shelves the other day. Those are either secured in Innie Paradise or tagging along with the traveling teacher box. The books that I found on my shelves which took me on this detour off Debbie Drive were favorite chapter books, too prime for the reread to be relegated to the attic.

So today, I want to share a few family read aloud favorites.

I’ll wait while you refill the cup if necessary….

Well, of course...I’ll start with my all time favorite series of books.

In fact, my favorite book of all time is this one.



I have read it silently and aloud so many times that I can quote most of it. Someday, I’ll post entirely on this wonderful book which literally changed my outlook.  And by the way, the television series is a poor excuse for the masterful works of this author.  Grrrrrr. We’re huge Laura Ingalls Wilder fans here and overflowing with Laura books.

We even took the girls to visit her home and museum one summer...

Why, look! Here’s the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home ...behind my girls...

Beyond "Laura" books are many others. The 3rd grade teacher of The Practical One gets the credit for introducing what became HER personal favorite series of books.

 

And then there are these books. I believe the credit goes to her fourth grade teacher for them.

And for this one too

And these books, which are two of my favorites. 

Disclaimer: I never liked White's Stuart Little. I mean, a talking spider and a trumpeting swan I can get into, but a adventurous rodent notsomuch.

This is one in a series which begins with Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry. Miss Whimsy’s teacher read it aloud. She was hooked thereafter. 

And this one a classmate's dad volunteered his lunch hour to read to her 5th grade class.

Hooked again.

There are so many other great read alouds, but I promised myself that I would stop before this became a 1000 word essay…

Too late.

Summer of the Monkeys…Homer Price…Where the Red Fern Grows… EVERY BOOK by Beverly Cleary…good old Hank the Cow Dog…

Just a few of our favorites. What are yours?

He loves me... He loves me not...

They’re here.

Finally!

I was beginning to worry that the Georgia winter of 2010 had frightened all of the spring blossoms into permanent hibernation or something. These little fellows wake up every year, usually during the month of February. They were a bit late this year, but I had been watching… and waiting… for these jonquils.

They pop up in this field...

...beside this abandoned old house...

...along the 30 country mile commute.

Now to most of the people I know, a jonquil is about three steps above a weed. It’s a wannabe daffodil with that love it/ hate it smell of the narcissus.

But to me, it’s a favorite flower. It reminds me of my early dating days with the husband. I use the term  loosely because it hardly resembles the jet setting date life of this current generation.

The man and I met in college where we were both living on a ramen noodle budget. Since I was child number 4 of 4, and he was number 4 of 5, neither one of us was afforded the a limousine lifestyle. 

In fact, there wasn't a set of wheels between us. Our dates were limited to those places within walking distance and usually involved anything that we could do for free.

So every afternoon, weather permitting, we would take a walk.

And we ( that would be mostly I ) would talk. I would yakkity yak across the campus and  through the Athens side roads. (The man should probably wear a button of full disclosure that he knew exactly what he was getting when he married me…)

One afternoon, in the spring of our relationship, I noticed a patch of jonquils bursting into bloom. I  was delighted.  He called them weeds and said he wasn't at all fond of a jonquil, but then he  reached down and plucked up a yellow weed bouquet and handed it to me.  

And that's how it all started.

 In the months that followed, he helped himself to a variety of plucked bouquets, most of which were pilfered from random gardens along our talking route. While I talked, he did flower surveillance and a commando raid on some unsuspecting blossom.

It was an adventure.

Of course when the Duchess heard about the Great Plucking Adventure, she nearly fainted.

That is STEALING, Deb-rah!

 It was? Seriously, we never considered that gardeners would mind a random pluck or two in the interest of true love. Aren't flower lovers the ultimate romantics? 

Well, either due to guilt... or fear that there was an APB out for the phantom Romeo of Milledge Avenue… or probably because the newness wore off of the relationship… he eventually stopped the serial petal plucking.

But to this day, when I see a patch of jonquils burst forth in the early spring, I remember those walks and the skinny boy who used to pluck me flowers a when he couldn't afford  to take me to dinner.

And I pluck myself a bouquet.

Or two…

And it always makes me smile.

Sunday Morning Bloggadoodle

And THIS would be why I carry that camera of mine around with me wherever I go.

Yesterday, I walked into a local nail salon for some selfish Debbie doings, and I saw a young mother from my church. She had brought her little girl and a little friend to have their little toes painted as a treat. The little ones sat in the teddy bear chairs and giggled together as Mommy watched, a baby sister perched on her lap. I, of course, was delighted and launched into a yakkity yak about the precious moment.

She gave me “that” look of great distress and reported that she had left the house without her camera… She had even forgotten her cell phone. How well I could relate.

Not to fear. I whipped the shiny red Kodak out of the purse and handed it to her. Then, I offered to hold baby sister while she chronicled her princess diaries. (Magnanimous gesture? Or selfish ploy for some baby holding time? You be the judge…)

At any rate, Young Mommy got pictures of the moment.

Now, here’s my question: Does she get to keep the Mommy Points, or do I? I think at the very least, we ought to share them...

Now, that's just cute.

Have a happy Sunday!

Last things...

I’ve traveled Senior Road to graduation before. It was three years ago, when we walked it with The Practical One. Familiarity doesn’t make it any easier this time around. In fact, since Miss Whimsy is number two out of two… which translates to last… I think it makes it even harder.


The road to graduation is filled with “lasts”. I snapped this picture of Miss Whimsy in August as she whizzed out the driveway on her last first day of school. She smiled and waved as she always does. I smiled and waved back… glad that she couldn’t see the tears on the porch from her place on the road.

I cried because it was the last, the very last, time that I would line up a daughter by the fireplace for our traditional first day of school picture. I cried because I had a decent kid, a kid who still let me carry on my sentimental traditions though she was 17… and not 7. I cried because I knew that the next “first” day of school would be a day she walked alone. No hovering photo op mom… no fireplace photo… no breakfast basket full of Mommy Points to nibble along the way.

I cried because the goofy little girl who wore hair bows larger than her peanut head was leaving my nest. And I knew that my world was never going to be the same.








The journey down Senior Road is lined with little historical markers. We passed the last first day of school…and then the last cross country meet. Today, she left for her last trip to the State German Convention. Gratefully, Super Dad was home to oversee the project as we loaded Vera and company into the car, substituting the Vera large duffel, pillow, and blanket for the 50 pound book bag. More gratefully, he was there to hug me after she left. And I could see in his face that he understood.

I remember when this little girl whooshing off to her last German Convention was a baby. A friend, one who had daughters just a little older than my girls, talked of rocking her babies to sleep. She said that with her older daughter, she hadn’t realized that one night would be the last night for the rocking. She said that the last rocking night always came without warning, that your child never looks at you and says, “Mom, enjoy this tonight….because tomorrow, I’m putting myself to bed.” Thinking back to my previous rocking days with The Practical One, I knew that my friend was right. It had, indeed, come without warning.

So with little sister, I savored each night just a little bit longer. I treated each night as if it could, potentially, be my last rocking night.

And one night, it was. And I was so glad that I had cherished the moment.

So forgive me if I’m less than witty this morning. I’m having a Mommy Moment. It, like time, will pass.

Kodak Moments

So while I was snapping pictures in the den closet yesterday, I bumped into these:

I’m not a scrapbooker. Actually, I would love to be one. It looks fun to me, but I never have taken that particular plunge. I’m not a photo album gal either. Oh, I own them. I just never put my pictures in them. Instead, my old pictures live in that little colorful mountain of photo boxes… behind that door in that den closet. They are boxed by year and further filed by season, sometimes by event.

And I have a ton of them.

Because even in the pre digital era, I was that annoying photo op mom with a camera super glued to her fingers. You know the type. Of course, those were the pose- freeze - hold it days… the let me take another shot just in case your eyes were closed days… the days when you weren’t sure how a photo would turn out until you had it developed. I wonder if this new generation of digital moms knows just how blessed they are. They get to capture their children in candid, real life moments and not worry about wasting a shot to do it. I envy them.

Way back when, I never wasted a shot by taking a picture of an object or a landscape. Instead, I posed the girls in front of said object or landscape. No matter how grand the canyon, it was really nothing more than the setting of that chapter in the Princess Chronicles anyway.

Here's the Great Smokey Mountains.... behind my girls...

And that's the Mighty Mississippi River... behind my girls...

Some random water wheel in Florida.... behind my girls.... during the prairie bonnet phase...

Look! An entire century.... behind my girls...

And back then, I kept the one hour photo mart in business. When I hit that 24th exposure, regardless of whether it had taken me a month to reach that point, I simply could not contain myself for more than an hour before seeing my masterpieces developed.

So I would drive (because back then, photo developing actually involved legwork…) to the photo mart, leave my film, and then fritter away an hour somewhere in town waiting to pay entirely too much money for the big reveal. Apparently, frugality and photography were diametrically opposed on Debbie Drive...back then.

What a difference technology makes! Now, I snap a few (hundred) pictures, plug the shiny red Kodak into my laptop, and voila, instant gratification and mass production. It doesn’t get any better than that.

That’s why when Cinderella went to the ball last year, I was able to shoot and upload 52 photos of the event and turn 20 of them into a slideshow, complete with witty captions… which I then sent through cyber space to various locations around the globe. All before the clock struck midnight.

It was grand.

Nowadays, I store my pictures in this little computer… in folders, of course. I’m not sure how much memory I have in this little laptop, but I’m pretty sure that at some point it will develop dementia from the overload. Until that time, I will continue to point, click, and hoard.

Because I’m still a hovering, card carrying member of the parental paparazzi.

Obsessive Innieism

I’ve been cleaning this morning. I’m talking deep spring cleaning in serious super purge mode.

And the sad fact is I haven’t left this spot.

As I’ve mentioned, I'm an innie. I like my schtuff secured neatly away behind a door, curtain, or screen. If that’s the case for my large items, it is doubly the case for my paperwork and other such small items. I am a serious fan of the file system. In my mind, I have addressed the mess if it is neatly organized in a folder. And then in a file.

And I like my files color coded. I have a huge pile of old folders in various colors on stand- by, waiting to be called up into active duty.

Brown files are used for the house… green for all things financial…gray for all things auto… red is insurance. (Come to think of it, since we currently use Blue Cross, those files ought to be reassigned to blue…) The girls are filed in purple unless it relates to college. Then, it would be orange. Can anyone relate?

I have a massive four drawer filing cabinet on The List, but I have no decent place to keep it in the house proper. Instead, I have mini files in various places around this house. My favorite file spot is behind a door in the den closet. Not only do I have a two drawer filing cabinet full of files in there, but I also keep a standing file on top of it for those items that I want at my fingertips.

I know that if I have to take the extra millisecond to actually open a filing cabinet drawer, I will probably just leave said item in the horizontal waiting room. And that would be a mess magnet.

 A VERTICAL waiting room, on the other hand, is perfectly acceptable to me. That would be the reason that I created this…

It’s my little magnetic “to be filed” nook. Seriously, I’m pretty sure this inniesim is a psychological disorder. Perhaps The Practical One will do her masters thesis on it.

And that leads me to my Wednesday morning purge session.

This morning, as I was trying to locate a recent email, I discovered that my obsessive innieism has now entered the computer age. In my inbox alone, I had PAGES of emails. To deal with my emails, I have set up a variety of e- folders for the messages that I feel the need to save hoard. I have a Sunday school e-folder, a DAR e-folder, a school e-folder… Most oddball of all is the e-folder I set up for emails that I just can’t seem to delete. This would include emails that are funny, informative, or sentimental. Appropriately, I have named that folder The Attic.

So this morning, I sat with my coffee for a few HOURS and tried to do a little purge of my e- hoarding. I purged email folders. Then, I headed over to Favorites Paradise, where I have also utilized the e- folder system. That would be the reason that I had to scroll past 29 folders before I could reach the link to the aforementioned email to begin with.

See?

I have e-folders for Bible study, for blogs, for message boards, for recipes, for decorating, for crafts… I have one folder simply named “orange”. Good grief. Within each folder is a neatly stashed bundle of links.

 In Bible study alone, I counted 55.

Now, for a compulsive meanderer  like me, any purge presents the dangerous risk of wandering. If I’m not careful, clicking a saved link will lead me on a cyber adventure road through google land. Therefore, I had to preset my purge to a specific block of time. Tomorrow morning, I’ll set aside just 15 minutes to do some more. At this rate, I might complete the job by the new year.

If I knew how to delete in bulk, I would do it. In fact, if anyone knows how, please share the e- instructions. HOWEVER, if there is a way to color code e- folders,

please… please…just don’t tell me.

When Vera Rides Shotgun

Life is what you make of it. And what I have made of mine is often a hectic frenzy. I say this because my hectic mornings are a direct result of the choice that I made to live 30 country miles from our school, job, and church.

So on a usual hectic morning, we load the car with the breakfast basket, the travel mug, the purse, and the 50 pound book bag, kiss the daughter, and she’s on her way. But there are some mornings which rise beyond the hectic level to manic morning status. Those would be the days when, for one reason or another, the daughter decides to spend the night with the Duchess. This necessitates the addition of Vera Bradley into the hectic routine.

Vera, of course, is the designer of those fabric girly bags in a variety of patterns. Manic mornings include the Vera Toggle Tote, the Vera Cosmetic Bag, the Vera eyeglass Case, and the Vera flat iron holder all combined in a neat little Vera pile which must make it down the stairs and into the front seat of the car along with hanging clothes for the next day…



… in addition to the breakfast basket, the travel mug, the purse, and the 50 pound book bag. Inevitably, these mornings occur on the days when Super Dad is not there to oversee the project.

Such was the scenario the other morning as Miss Whimsy  left for school with plans to go Winter Jam and spend that night with the Duchess. So before sunrise, we lugged the travel mug, the basket, the book bag, the purse, the Vera pile, and the hanging clothes for the next day toward the door.

And I asked, “Do you have your jacket?”

“I have this…” She gestured to her hoodie. Was that what I asked? No, it wasn’t.

So I said again, “But do you have a jacket?”

“No… I have this”. She gestured again.

Now, I was getting a little testy.

“But you might need a jacket.”

“No I won’t.”

“Yes, you might. I’ll get it.” And I balanced the breakfast basket in the crook of the arm and opened the closet door…

“It’s not there. It’s up on my bed. And I don’t need it.”

“Yes, you might.” And I marched up the stairs to the beat of the mommy cadence. You know the one. “You are spending the night with Grandma… You do not know what the weather will be like…. You may keep it in the car… but you need to be prepared….wok wok wok wok wokkkkkkkk.”

And I distinctly heard a muffled titch. Oh, yes, I did. And it was followed with the, “Why?...”

Don’t tell me about multi tasking. I’ve got that thing down to a science. Only a veteran mom can juggle Vera Bradley in one hand, a breakfast basket in the other, dangle hanging clothes from her thumb hookie and a jacket from her armpit, yet STILL manage to reach into her bag of Mommyisms and retrieve that worn out “Because I said so” from the bottom.

And that was the final word. Motherhood is not for wimps.

And she and Vera headed for school. I have no idea whether the jacket ever made it out of the back seat of the car. It probably stayed there, if for no other reason than pure stubbornness. I, however, got Mommy Points for sending it.