Random catch up post

Whew—the last two weeks have just flown by. I have been buried at work, getting presentations ready for India (I leave Saturday), and also working on a spreadsheet so I can forecast the work pipeline. And our India agenda has shifted several times. Never mind the details, as Inigo Montoya would say, “Let me explain . . . No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

The other manager who is supposed to be there with me for the first week had a hiccup with her visa application—India requires a visa for entry into the country—so there’s a slight, OK more than slight but not huge, chance that her visa won’t get here in time for her to leave on Saturday also. So she and I have been developing two agendas: one that includes both of us and one that’s a solo agenda. While I can present everything alone, it would be much better for both me and our new associates if we were both there. So stay tuned on that.

In other news, my granddaughter has written a play and enlisted the help of her brothers and mom to put it on. When I read that blog post, I had to smile because I did that all the time when I was a little girl. I’m sure I drove everyone nuts around me putting on all these plays—some were musicals, some were dramatic and all were at least to me, very complex and of course important. I loved theater and for a long time, I was convinced I’d be an actress when I grew up.

My step sister used to put on beauty pageants. She wanted to be Miss America in the worst way and so she held these pageants in the back yard. I can remember her swanning around with a book on her head (for better posture), and then arranging us in dress up clothes for the evening gown competition. She was around eight and I was five the year I sang a really long, involved song (“Just wait until I comb my hair”) for the talent competition. Turns out one of our next door neighbors has passed that story down to her own children which just cracks me up.

It’s been hot here, really hot. Oddly enough, it’s been a bit hotter here than it is in Bangalore (where I’ll be). Although the air quality is better here—which is a little alarming for me and my lungs. I won’t be running in India, that’s for sure.

And I think I’ve pulled together clothes that will suit in India and still be things I can wear here. Did you know that flowy pants are a thing again this year? Normally I’d pass on a trend like that but with my need for less form fitting clothes, I got a pair from Loft. And I picked up what’s called a boyfriend shirt from Old Navy, plus a couple of other flowy-esque tops elsewhere, and I think I’m good. I don’t need to blend it, I just need to not offend.

I’m planning on not checking a bag. In addition to just preferring to travel that way, I have a tight connection on the return trip—I have to change airlines and terminals in Frankfort which means I would have to get my bag from baggage claim before clearing security again. I’d rather not add that kind of time to my trip.

Getting my ears pierced—a family story

Last week, my granddaughter got her ears pierced. My daughter-in-law posted a video of the procedure—I guess any more places like Claire’s do both ears at the same time, only they were a little short-staffed so A had hers done one at a time. The look on her face just killed me. You could tell she was thrilled but at the same time, having that done hurts.

My 13th birthday cake

I was 13 when I got my ears pierced and I remember it well. I don’t recall asking to have it done, but that’s probably because I’ve always been so deathly scared of needles. Remember, I had lots of painful penicillin shots when I was a little girl so anything associated with needles meant pain to me, so it’s no wonder I dreaded any form of needle intrusion. My mom took me to the mall and I do remember she was acting a little weird, but I just figured she was spazzing about something unrelated to me. Not so—she knew she was taking me to get my ears pierced and I’m sure she feared I’d have a meltdown or something if she told me where we were going.

The nice thing about not knowing I was going to have my ears pierced is I didn’t really have a lot of time to get all worked up. I mean, I was definitely nervous but not outrageously so. I sat there quietly as the lady marked my earlobes and boom! My ears were pierced.

But there was a problem . . . you see, my ears are shaped differently, especially my earlobes. The lady had centered each hole in the middle of the lobe, but the earrings weren’t level on the sides of my head. After we got home, Mom realized that one earring was distinctly lower than the other. So she proposed that we take out one of the earrings, let the hole regrow for a week and then have Dad re-pierce that ear in the correct spot.

I did not want to do that, I can tell you. But I also didn’t want to have earrings that were never level and would always look wrong for the rest of my life. So I agreed, we took out the earring, and then I waited and got super nervous as the end of the week approached.

I believe I did well when Dad re-pierced my ear, but that may be a nice revision of history on my part. Regardless, today my earrings hang where they should even with my mismatched earlobes.

Setting the record straight

The scene: my kitchen in Columbus, OH
The players: me, Jordan (about 5) and Ben (about 3)

I opened the fridge to get some butter, and realized the butter wasn’t quite wrapped. When I unwrapped it all the way, I saw the very distinctive bite marks from my younger son. He had gotten into the fridge, unwrapped a fresh stick of butter and taken a big bite out of it. For years, I just figured he was a butter slicker like me. 

Flash forward nearly 30 years later.

I was at Ben's house this past weekend and somehow that story came up – I think because at least one of his children has his exact same overbite (which came directly from me, sometimes genetics stink eh?). I was teasing him a bit, as family often does, about his apparent love of butter when he said well no, he did it because his brother Jordan told him to.

Wait, what?

Since we live in the digital age, I texted Jordan and asked him, fully expecting him to say no, no, no, Ben did that on his own. Instead Jordan confirmed the story, that indeed he had told his little brother to go bite the butter.

All these years, I’ve thought that Ben just did it on his own and I’ve told others, more than a few others to be honest, about that story. It’s pretty funny to learn otherwise. Now I wonder what else Jordan told him to do . . .

Needles and me—a family story

My daughter-in-law posted a story about her daughter having to have blood drawn, and mentioned that it was a scary situation for A. Well, I can completely relate to that so here’s a little story about me and needles.

I have always feared needles. Maybe it’s because I had more than a couple of penicillin shots as a kid (those suckers hurt) or maybe it’s just the needles—regardless, any trip to the doctor that involved needles also involved tears.

When I was nine or ten, my parents started the process to adopt a child. In addition to home studies and background checks and I don’t even know what else, we also all had to have physicals. And those physicals meant we needed to have blood drawn. Since my dad was an M.D., he did the physicals and blood draws.

Everything went fine until it was my turn to have blood drawn. This time, in addition to crying (at least I’m pretty sure I cried), I also ran. I ran all over that tiny house: down the stairs, up the stairs, into the kitchen, I mean I just flat out bolted. He couldn’t catch me and was absolutely furious. At the time, it seemed as though I ran forever, but it was probably more like a couple of minutes because truly, the house was pretty small.

Mom saw that things weren’t going well and managed to both get Dad to stop chasing and me to lie down on my bed. I do remember crying then, probably from the adrenaline dump, and my mom rubbed my hand. I calmed down enough that Dad could get the blood and yes, I felt it but I didn’t act out any more.

Over the years, I’ve gotten much better at handling my fear of needles but it’s never gone away. Some of the reactions are involuntary (I have puked when getting an IV installed because those suckers hurt), but I no longer cry from fear. I still hate them though, and I guess I always will.

Why I don't ride bikes

I was a typical little girl, I loved my roller skates and my bicycle. I loved the amazing bike I got when I was 10 – it had those giant U shaped handlebars and a banana seat. Oh I was styling with that.

My first bike -- I was six and
lived in Nashville

Because my parents were divorced, I generally had two bikes at any one time. My mom and dad had a bike for me wherever they lived at the time (they gave me the banana seat bike) and my father and stepmother had a bike for me in Bryn Mawr. Usually the Bryn Mawr bike was a hand me down since I had three older stepsisters and an older stepbrother there.

The year I was in 6th grade, I lived full time in Bryn Mawr and I had a new bike with skinny tires. I don’t know if they actually were English tires but that’s what I was told they were. All I knew was that they were a lot thinner than any tires I’d ever had before and that’s important to this story.

One warm spring day, my next older stepsister had gotten a call from a boy in Kentucky where her father lived and where she had a lot of friends. She really wanted one of her Bryn Mawr friends about this wondrous event and so I set off on my bike. Keep in mind, this was before call waiting or second phone lines and cell phones were still only seen in science fiction, so the only way this friend would get the news right away was if I dashed off and told her.

Disaster struck when I was close to the friend’s house. I was so excited and not paying much attention when the skinny front tire of my bike slipped into the gap between the sidewalk and the lawn. I remember this part so clearly – the curb was on my left, and so was the edge trimming I’d slipped into. I started to fall over toward the left and I thought “This is going to hurt.”

Next thing I know, I was on the ground but not where I fell. In fact I was nowhere near where I fell, I was about three blocks away from that spot. My bike was on top of me and some man was yelling at me, asking me if I’m OK. (Looking back as an adult, I bet he wasn’t actually yelling at me but he was most insistent. He probably saw me pass out and got pretty freaked out by it.)

I told him I was OK. He asked my name but I couldn’t remember and I kept thinking you don’t tell a stranger what your name is. Then he asked where I lived, and that took a bit to dredge up out of my foggy head. He asked if I could get home and I guess I said yes because he let me go and I started the long walk home. Even if I’d wanted to ride my bike, I couldn’t have because the seat was twisted.

I got home and what was really weird was no one noticed I’d been gone, and no one noticed that I had a pretty scraped up left side of my face. I had the most tremendous headache for about a week. I don’t remember who fixed the bike seat, heck maybe I did that. And that boy never did call again.

I continued to ride bikes for years; that was my transportation option until I learned to drive. But I never liked it after that. I lost that joy of just riding and riding that you see kids have. I tried wearing a helmet later on, as an adult and that only made things worse for me. So these days, I'd rather run or walk or drive my car.

My grandmother and college

So here’s another family story. This picture is of my grandmother (Mana) and isn’t dated although she looks quite young. She wrote on the back of it that she thought her dress was pretty and she hoped whomever the recipient was would also think so. I suspect Mana made the dress herself – she was quite a good sewist.

I don’t know all the details of this story, so here's what I do know. Mana’s parents didn’t have a lot of money but they did send her to college for either a semester or a year, I don’t remember. Then they told her it was her sister’s turn to go and so Mana never got to finish college. She ended up marrying my grandfather and having four children: my mother, my uncle and twin girls, my aunts.

You need a bit of information about me for the rest of the story to make sense. I’d joined the Army right out of high school and didn’t start college until I was 29. I dropped out a couple of years later as my entire personal life imploded and wasn’t able to go back until my late thirties.

By the time I was able to go back to school very part time, my grandmother was dying from colon cancer. I flew out to see her in early February that year for a final visit. She was still entirely herself, her brain and personality hadn’t been impacted by the disease and the only time there was any impairment was when she had to take her pain meds.

I sat with her that Saturday, and she had me tell her what I was doing with myself. She’d drift off from time to time and at one point woke up enough to say “I’ll be with you momentarily.” That simultaneously made me smile and feel really sad.

Anyway, the point of the story is this. After I’d told her my plans to finish school even if it took me five years, she patted my hand and as fiercely as she ever said anything, she told me “You finish college. Get that degree.”

I flew home the next day and she died the following weekend. And I did finish college, I did get that degree. I had a chance to walk around KU the day I graduated (because you’d better believe I walked down the hill) and I told Mana that I did it, I’d finished and it was partly because of what she'd said.

The dollhouse

This is not really a family story, although very nearly so.

My grandfather on my mother’s side worked with wood a lot. I have a jewelry box he made for me, plus a Christmas carving of the Madonna on a donkey while pregnant, and also a wrought iron two dimensional sculpture of the Madonna and the Christ child mounted on wood. All are lovely and incredibly well done.

He passed that love of working with wood on to his son, my uncle. My uncle made amazing furniture, truly artisan work and I wish I’d had the foresight to have him make some for us. He understood wood and could make the beauty of the grain just appear out of nothing and the lines of the furniture always worked with whatever wood he’d chosen to use.

He also started making a doll house years ago when my cousin was a little girl. My aunt made some soft goods for it, and my grandfather even made a table or two. But she ended up not really being into dolls or their houses and so he never finished it. Long story not so long, my mother knew I was obsessed with miniatures and that he had this unfinished doll house and so he gave it to me.

I think you can access the photo album with the pictures of how I finished the doll house here. Each picture in that album has a description of what you're seeing. Finishing it was a lot of fun but once we knew we were moving to Boston, we were stumped on what to do with such a big piece of furniture. My daughter-in-law’s parents live close to the Kansas City area, though, and they agreed to take the doll house and store it in their basement (which isn’t nasty and damp, but lovely and finished).

Well we are back in the KC area and apparently J’s folks were afraid – yes, that’s right, afraid – we would want the doll house back! All the grandkids play with it every time they visit – all seven of them. And anytime people with children come over, those kids play with the doll house too!

Here’s a picture from last week of our grandchildren playing away with the house. My son and his father-in-law shortened the legs of the stand my uncle made. That way the kids can play with everything more easily.

Honestly, even if we did have room for the doll house now, I would never ask them to return it unless it was a burden to them. I have to admit, too, that it's a lot easier not to watch little hands playing with the furniture my grandfather made. I'd get all wrapped up around the axles worrying that they might break things rather than focusing on what matters; the kids are having a lot of fun with something my family made.

Caves – another family story

This picture was probably taken when I was four and my brother was three. Despite the poor quality of the picture, can you see that my brother’s shirt matches the detailing on my dress? His pocket trim is the same as the trim across my bodice, and if I recall correctly, my mother had a grown up version of this dress too. I think she or my grandmother made it – I’ve always thought my mother made it but Mana could have very easily done it. To be honest, I never noticed until I scanned this picture that my brother's shirt matched my dress.

Anyway, I think this picture was taken before we went touring inside a cave. The name escapes me all these years later, although I think it started with a C so perhaps it was Cumberland Caves. My mother might remember.

Mostly what I remember about the trip is being so proud that my dress was like my mother’s and also how very cold I got inside the cave, and how nervous I was under all that rock. Other than that, I don’t remember who else was with us or what else we did that day. I just remember being proud of my dress that looked like my mother's dress.

American Gothic -- a family story

Years ago, we'd moved into a new house in a new neighborhood. It was so new that there were no trees to speak of because the area had been cow pastures previously. So we added probably six or seven trees. The one in this picture was a gift from my parents and we planted it at the back of the lot near a stream/storm drainage system.

I love this picture for a couple of reasons. First the boys are so young (five and seven). I don't have many pictures of their childhoods (their father kept the photos, although the ones I do have are thanks to my sons and their wives finding and scanning lots of my ex's pictures). I also like how it mimics the American Gothic picture by Grant Wood. Finally, I like it that you can see how tired they are. They were rarely tired, but in this picture they are. They'd wanted to help dig the hole for the weeping willow and that was hard work for an adult, let alone a child.

I went by that house years later and all the trees had grown well. Sadly, our old house was about the only one with trees. I guess no one else bothered to plant any.

But wait -- a family story

From my childhood:

My sister Cindy always dreamed of competing in Miss America. I have early, early memories of her walking in the living room – swanning, really – with a book on her head. The goal was not just to keep the book on her head but entirely level. Plus she’d stroke the front of her throat with her hands in upward motions because that was supposed to keep your throat looking pretty or something like that. And she loved to hold beauty pageants in the back yard.

I was a very dramatic little girl and summer I was four, I apparently participated in her beauty pageant game with a great deal of flare and gusto one night in particular. My talent competition was singing, and so I composed and performed a masterpiece. Here's part of the lyrics:

I love you to the house
I love you to the store
But stay away, til I comb my hair

I wandered all over the back yard that night, singing and posing and singing and posing for probably 10 minutes.

And apparently my fame spread to our neighbors. I'd posted the picture you see here on Facebook and tagged my sister and my brother Doug. The neighbor commented on the picture and said that her children had heard that story all their lives. I can only imagine what they must think of the crazy little girl who lived next to their mother and sang about combing her hair.

Breaking up is hard to do

My grandmother Mana used to sew a lot. So to help her out, my grandfather made my grandmother a button box. After she died, it was passed along to me. But the button box ended up fully submerged in our Great Flood of 2009. We dried it out but honestly it's been messed up, dusty in a way I can't seem to clean, and slightly smelly ever since. It's time for me to toss the box.

Most of the buttons were either rusted or a little bit moldy, or in the case of the leather buttons, just messed up. I sorted the buttons and kept the really cool ones that weren't ruined. 

I hate losing something like this. I always felt like it connected me to my grandparents and helped me see where I get some parts of me. 

But I really, really want to

Kent and I end up incorporating silly phrases in our day to day language. I guess it’s sort of like having a private language, although we’re not trying to be exclusionary. But we’ve done it with things Alison’s said (I hold you now! or Oh my goodness!). This week, we've been using a phrase from our nephew, Schuler.

I mentioned before that he’s got very precise diction—he says yes, not yeah, and uses complete sentences to ask for something he wants. What he usually wants is to play with someone’s cell phone, specifically the games. So he’ll say “May I play with the phone, please?” If the answer is no, then the corners of his mouth head south in a hurry, the tears well up and he’ll say in the most plaintive voice ever “But I really, really want to!” If the answer continues to be no, he’ll keep saying that over and over and add in more tears and crying. Because it’s not my child, I thought it was pretty cute. 

The other night I wanted pizza again—so I used Schuler’s tactic with Kent because he’s the one who makes that particular pizza. And it worked! It worked quite well. We spent the rest of the weekend using that phrase and laughing ourselves silly.

Amy, if you’re reading this, I think it’s cute. I’m sure it drives you nuts and next time I see you, I’ll try not to say it around you. 

Whatcha watching?

I keep all my little videos of our cats and stuff around the apartment on YouTube (all 95 of them), and of course all my pictures are on Google Picassa. For some reason—and I’m not entirely sure why—younger children like my niece and nephew absolutely love seeing both the videos and all the pictures.

Now the videos are nothing special and they’re all quite short. Most are between about 30 seconds and a minute. Almost all involve the cats doing their normal cat things. The pictures are similarly nothing spectacular: a picture of our patio, a tomato plant, the ruined floors (x3), the cats, the cats, the cats, etc. But kids love them.

The rubber ducky video I posted last month? Schuler has watched that one probably a dozen times. I’m not exaggerating. He asks for that one specifically and prefers I replay it when it’s over. He also loves one where Wally jumps in a box and then jumps back out. The kid is obsessed with those videos. Rayna likes the videos but loves the pictures more, especially the ones that include her cousin Alison.

This isn’t peculiar to my nephew and niece. Alison is the same way. So I don’t know what I’ve done with my silly little videos and very ordinary pictures, but they hold great entertainment value for these kids.  

Don't crack your coconut

When Kent was a little boy, his grandfather would tell him that when he started roughhousing around. Now we say it to each other whenever one of us bonks our heads. And yesterday I used it with my nephew.

Schuler is three years old, and pretty articulate for his age (for example: he says yes very carefully and doesn’t say yeah). Last night he made a catalog for me of all his various owies and not two minutes later, he bonked his head on a piece of furniture. So I said “Careful! You don’t want to crack your coconut!” He latched on to that phrase like crazy. He told me probably seven times that he didn’t have a coconut, and he hadn’t cracked it anyway. Then he decided he bumped his coconut. I’m doing a really poor job conveying his earnestness and how very serious he was in telling me all about his head.

Well about an hour later, he and his sister Rayna completely bonked heads together. I mean it was probably a stars-inducing head bonk. They both had tears in their eyes and then he told me with quivering lips that maybe he’d cracked his coconut. My sister and I giggled over how he said that most of the night. We'll see if he's still concerned about his coconut today.