grab a plate & buckle up your chin strap, buckaroo

Now that I am the one that is stuffed {not the turkey}, and now that I am the one done in {once again, not that unfortunate turkey}, Thanksgiving is winding down.

Slowly, slowly like those last few bites of cranberry sauce {which as a rule, I never eat} that you really didn't need, the holiday wraps up.

And that {ah ha!} is where They catch you. You think {"That's a very good habit to get into, Piglet."} that the Thanksgiving rush {similar an all-out blitz} is over. You take a deep breathe and stretch out for a snooze on the couch.

Yeah, right.

That snooze won't be happening until after January 1st.

There is no winding down after Thanksgiving. It just isn't possible {like spiking the ball with 1 second left}.

The ride is just beginning.
It is the kick-off, the naming of the starters, the of unwrapping the turkey, the buying of pumpkin filling.

Thanksgiving is the first quarter in a game in which both teams are better in the second-half.

It is an all-out sprint from here on out {like the race to the last piece of pecan pie, or the final ten yards to the end zone on a ninety yard kick-off return}.

Hang onto that football {or your paper plate}, and hope to see you at the halftime show.

a stolen post from my photoblog

This past week and a half has been rather full with babysitting and volunteering commitments and writing sessions and shaking off a determined cold.

I haven't pulled out my camera in over a week.

But even though I don't have a picture to post today, I still wanted to give y'all a howdy-doody.

Have a super Thanksgiving, friends o' mine.

I could begin a cliche list of things I am thankful for, but that would be sappy and boring (for y'all). Instead I will be concise and brief and yet all encompassing.

I am thankful for the knowledge that my God is not one made of human hands. And I am thankful for all the implications of that accompany that fact.

I am thankful for all these things and more.

a post for myself

Yes, I know it was just a house and that the people are really what made the memories. But the two just belong together. That is just how it is.

The people and all the memories fit inside the house. They are framed by it. That is where they belong.


I remember the summer - over a decade ago - when everybody was in town {back in the day were everybody was able to "come in town" over the same span of days} and I spent the night at the house with the cousins. I had the black iron daybed on the enclosed back porch.

One night as I was going to bed, cousin Jeff (my senior by seven, or eight years), hereby known as The Family Jokester, came by and talked to me. He explained that he and the other older guy cousins were going into the fields across the street to look for wildlife in the dark. He said, "If we see a bunch of green glowing eyes together that are too short to be deer eyes, then that means that they are coyotes. And if that happens then I am going to run home and dive under your bed. I hope no coyotes get in before I can shut the door."

The door was right next to my bed.

I didn't sleep a wink that night.


Then there was the summer of the Marshmallow Wars.

My Dallas Cousins showed up with a trunk full of PVC pipes and a Quantity of Mini-Marshmallows fit for a Baking Aisle.

We constructed these Blow Dart-style guns, which when one blew through one end, it would eject a Mini-Marshmallow at a rather high speed and accuracy.

Fun? Oh. My. Word. Yes. That was all we did that week.

Keifer staked himself out at an attic window and sniped a number of us before we were able to locate him.

By the end of the week, the yard and Flowerbeds were peppered {or salted, mayhap?} with little white pillows.


Haha, yes, those Flowerbeds. They were my Memaw's Pride and Joy. If the football was misdirected and sailed into the Bushes, one retrieved it with fear of Memaw coming out when you were still Beating around the Bushes for the ball. And if you walked through them, ah, yes, well, I wouldn't recommend that.


Then there were the boat wars in the Creek in the backyard.
We sunk the canoe a couple of times, at least.


And then those summers when we would swim in the Creek [this is another thing that I wouldn't recommend]. There were chunks of styro foam that we would use as rafts.

And one time - we were out lazily styro foam-rafting one afternoon, and (a much) younger Lexi was sharing a raft with my cousin Amy. Lexi kept insisting that she saw an alligator approaching. Amy kept telling her to stop worrying, or she was going to go take her back to the shore.

Then Amy saw What Lexi Saw, and we all made a dash for the Dock.

The alligator swam by a few minutes later. We {imaginably} didn't swim for the rest of that summer.


Then there were times of playing Barbie dolls in the RV. For a long time the girl cousin to guy cousin ratio was 4:9 {now it has become a bit better at 6:12; okay, maybe "a bit" isn't the right phrase to use}, so those times of playing Barbie dolls was a nice hiatus from the football games and whiffle ball games.


But those whiffle ball games were fun. We still play (or played) those in the front yard, even when we got older and got jobs and (some of us) got married. My cousin Jon, when he came in town to recruit for his college soccer team, would still demand a whiffle ball game.


And then once The Family Jokester tied Lexi and I up in the expansive attic. We were laughing and squealing so much that it took us twice as long to slip out of the knots.


And then there were the Cousin Movies. No, don't even try to comprehend; just listen (or read, I guess). Thank you.

Almost every year the guy cousins - who had zero faith in the acting ability of their female counterparts - would film a movie. They were hilarious and brilliant - and sometimes rather weak. But we loved them. The personalities of the cousins were never more strongly displayed {especially in the Blooper Reel part}.


Superseatsaver; Tommy Tricker; Team Cardboard; Amy starting a fire by rocking over a electrical cord; Keifer did it; Fort Cousins; Jeff's infatuation with The Story Lady; the plastic boot stockings; the late night sardine games; Memaw's singing Christmas lights; Operation Zero; mud fights; croquet games (I'm sending you into the Flowerbed - Ha!)...


But now all these people will be meeting at a different house, in a different city, in a different state.

Those that are here - or were able to come down - walked around and reminisced. The secret hiding places for Hide-and-Go-Seek were revealed. The Do-You-Remembers exchanged.


It will be different, and it will be missed. But the people will be the same. And knowing my family, life will continue to be Memorable.

Very Memorable.

{almost} a five-year old's anagram

"Look, do you like how I'm painting the lanterns?"

"Hmmm... those aren't lanterns."

"Yeah, they are."

"Hmmm... no, what are those? Think about it. You are close, sort of."

"I don't know..."

"Well, what sounds like lanterns?"

"Like a lamp post, or something?"

"Haha, no, no. An... ant..."

"I still don't know."

"Antlers."

"OH, yes! Yes! Antlers!"

give me a bloodhound; i have a train to find

Griffin told me something which he said I should blog about.

But I don't remember what it was that he told me.

I do remember that he told me that this blog improves his quality of life.

Maybe that is why I don't remember what else he said.

{Griffin's Credibility Monitor while saying the Quality of Life statement - Wooooooooooooh}

Yeah, you know what I mean, pumpkin.

(I just had to go tell my two younger brothers to be Model Citizens, think that will keep them contained for another fifteen minutes? Yeah, I don't either.)

Excuse me while I go grab me some Mini Wheats to eats. (Had to make that rhyme, of sorts.)

Meet back here in 15 minutes. Actually, make that 5.




{ On second thought, we should have made that 2.5 minutes. }


You know, the thing with Mini Wheats is that you have to eat them fast.
But I have noticed that is a trend with cereal, in general.

It isn't really a food that is conducive to eat while blogging - or jogging, for that matter.

But, nooooow that I have finished mine, it is rather a moot issue.

(Unlike those Model Citizens in the room next door... I just had to pay them another visit. What do little boys find so fascinating about increasing both noise and action as bedtime draws nearer?)

Ah, but, yes.

{I just lost my train of thought, which actually reminds me of this entire blog... it is rather one long lost train of thought, I am afeared.}

I told myself something which I said I should blog about.

But I don't remember what I told myself.

{Morgan's Credibility Monitor - Wooooooooooooh}

Let's start at the very beginning/A very good place to start

I was pulling up this blog 'o mine and for some reason pulled up the wikipedia page on A Little Princess instead.

My life comes with pre-installed detours, I have noticed.

I have also noticed that musicals are inherently hokey.
{Yeah, hadn't thought of that, had you? Uh huh.}

But I still love them.

Though, I must admit my faith in them was shaken a bit when I pulled up a list of the songs from The Sound of Music only to - finally, ten years after I have owned the sound track, and a split infinitive later - realize that Rolf and Leisl sing Sixteen Going on Seventeen and then later in the movie Maria and Leisl sing basically the same song.

Hello?! There is nothing hokey-er than having a novice-turned-nanny also be a super stalker.


Okay, actually that sounded horribly plausible.

Orion

I must confess that I love driving in the country in the early morning or on the cusp of dusk. No, I love it.

The lighting, the color, the shadows nearly make me ache inside. It is beautiful in that sort of way.

We passed a field in the middle of being transformed into hay bales. There is something intrinsically happy about round, plump hay bales in an open field. It is as if the field has been peopled by sleepy, smiling creatures of some sort. A field full of hay bales never looks lonely.

Darkness began to creep in as we began our pre-dinner shopping. But with the artificial lights of the parking lots and the blinding lights in the department stores, darkness arrives more sinisterly in the city. It isn't very welcomed, or at least it isn't worked with. They just try to hide it there.

The shoppers were plentiful, in a harsh sort of way, and boisterous, in a brash sort of way. I remembered why I never shop on the weekends. Ever. {Except last night obviously.}

Then at the tick of 6:30 we were at the restaurant.

There is a curious thing about restaurants {besides the fact that I never learn how to spell the word due to some mental deficiency or other}. There are a million little islands with their own intrigues and hilarious (or very not hilarious) discussions in the same building, but they never interact. They are the most socially unsociable places ever.

We laughed and chatted and laughed again.

After a bit we did the nicest thing there is to do after an evening meal: we went and got coffee.

The Starbucks' barista that waited on us has forever reminded me of a sailor of old. He has the long hair and longer sideburns. And one day I will tell him that. I just have to figure how to without it coming across wrong.

The Starbucks was hectic. Way too young kids were spitting wads of paper through straws, and being utterly rude.

We went outside.

As we sat and talked, the people around us ebbed and flowed. Motorcycles and vintage cars rolled by, revving their engines. Hummer limos rocked by with windows rolled down. People walked by with a murmur or a yell.

I looked up at the sky. It had been dark for nearly three hours and yet only two stars were visible. How uncomforting is a blank sky at night. How dismally empty it is; how foreign. How wrong.

Eventually we split ways. Lexi and I laughed all the way back to the car. We realized that throughout the evening we had been thinking the same things, and had the same song stuck in our heads. And that was funny, though not at all unusual.

We followed the roads toward the country, passing three different sets of flashing police lights along the way (a wreck, on a call, and a pulled-over car). There is something strangely stark and jarring about flashing lights in the dark.

As the city receded, the fields of hay bales started to roll past. I glanced out my window as we rounded a curve, and caught sight of the constellation of Orion. As a child, it was the first constellation I was ever able to pick out, and now we chased it all the way home.

this path o' mine

"With all my ideas and follies I could one day found a corporate company for the propagation of beautiful but unreliable imaginings."

- Robert Walser

an orchard

The others had a head start on us.

There had been a slight difference of opinions on what type of shoes are suitable for a walk. It had been a stalemate for a bit. Then after the others had gone tripping down the asphalt road without the two of us, she had realized the error of her way (a desire to wear ill-fitting rubber boots - rubber boots! - on the walk).

We hunted down a much more suitable pair of footwear, added a stroller containing a five-month old little brother to the party, and then began our walk down the road.

The others had already begun the trek back from the end of the cul-de-sac. My sister and her two charges were ambling along the edge of the road were the asphalt devolved into gravel and tentacles of encroaching grass.

The weather was drop dead gorgeous. No, Drop Dead Gorgeous. Like, "Can-You-Give-Me-A-Hammock-And-Make-Today-A-National-Holiday" weather. Like, YES.

My little companion - the one who was not dozing delightfully in the stroller - began to collect an orchard. I think she meant bouquet. And I explained that to her.

She uprooted enough flowers and grasses to start a rather successful roadside floral stand.

"But, I can't find any pink pirate pom-pom flowers," she said, very dolefully. She is the Most Doleful Child when she desires.

"Ooh, well, what do they look like?" I asked, as serious as possible.

"Pink puffy flowers with... with..." she replied, excitedly expounding on the word "puffy" with her hand gestures.

"Oh! Those... hmm... I'm not sure if it is the right time of year for those," I said, giving her the "oh shucks" facial expression.

"Yeah, I guess so," said the Most Doleful Child.

We passed the Worn Out Three headed home for lunch. But we pressed on.

We came upon a small butterfly in the grass.

"That is a skipper butterfly. Isn't it beautiful?" I shared.

"Yes." she gasped, in awed tones. She can be the Most Awed Child when there is reason to be so.

"Look," I whispered.

She looked up the roadside ditch. In the green and purple and brown grasses scads of yellow butterflies flitted. It took a few seconds of staring to realize exactly how many there were.

"Wow," said the Most Awed Child.

By now we had almost reached the end of the road. After uprooting a bajillion stalks of purple-y, brown-ish grass, we turned around.

"Look, ballet!" exclaimed the babysitee, pointing excitedly at a certain super energetic butterfly.

"Yes, ballet," I reassured her. And we smiled that Smile that is shared only between two people, when together they stop and step back from the world and view it for what it really is. And attempt to comprehend the majesty of He who really created it.

Then we stopped. There in the ditch - all alone and nearly bedraggled - was a pink pirate pom-pom flower.

She turned toward me with her mouth agape and her eyes popping. And then she dashed down the ditch and plucked it.

We were nearly to her house by now. She added broken twigs and rocks {yes, rocks, as in: "mineral matter of variable composition, consolidated or unconsolidated, assembled in masses or considerable quantities in nature, as by the action of heat or water."*} to her bouquet.

We clomped up on the porch and into the house.

"Mom! Mom! Come see the orchard I made!" she clamored as she rushed up the stairs.


So, yeah, on second thought, maybe I didn't explain it to her very well.



*thanks dictionary.com

only in the republic of texas

(as overheard by an Anonymous Election Worker, an A.E.W.)

Husband: "Weeeeell, we changed our address yesterday with the county, so I dunno if our informaaation will be riiiiight"
A.E.W.: "But you only moved within the precinct, correct?"
Wife: "Oh, yeah, we're still livin' here."
A.E.W.: "Okay, then everything should be fine."
Wife: "Yeah, we took yesterday off and went down to the County Office and gave 'em our new information. I thought, you know, its time to update the informaaaation on both our Concealed Carry Licenses anyway, so we miiiight as weeell do everthang."
A.E.W.: *nods head very slowly*
Wife: "Now, which votin' booth do I go to?"
A.E.W.: "Whichever one, ma'am, you would like to, ma'am. And sir."

oh, yes, and Emily Dickinson in the Triple i Category

I have been reading C.S. Lewis again.

And I have once again been brought face-to-face with a very crucial problem. I cringe at the sight {sound, I mean, the sound} of it; for it I have no answer.

Which author do I find the most impactful (which is not a word, but should Be) on my own writing style?

Oh dear. See? Yes, I know. Exactly. Wait! You are cringing, too? Really? You too? I thought I was the only one!

[“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one!” - C.S. Lewis]

But, for a serious moment - this is a true problem. (Sorta of. I mean in the Grand Scheme of things, no. But in the Little Sideshow of Interesting Info, yes.)

There are C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton and A.A. Milne and P.G. Wodehouse and e.e. cummings leading the pack of Initialed First and Middle Names Authors.

And then there are Austen and Alcott of Female "A" Name Fame.

And Oscar Wilde and Thorton Wilder from the "Wilde" section of the Yellow Pages.

And Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie of "A" and then "C" Names with an Occasional "D" with Additional Englishness and Mystery Connections.

And the Bronte bunch of Familial Ties.

And Charles Dickens and Oliver Goldsmith from the Category of Olivers and Oliver-Inventors.

And Thomas Hardy and Nathaniel Hawthorne from the Last Name "H" Writers Who Write about Social Outcasts.

And Frances Hodges Burnett and J.R.R. Tolkien have staked themselves out in the Three Names or More Department.

And in the Last Name Could Be A First Name Slot we have Henry James and Mary Shelley.

And the most depressing thought is that I have hardly begun to list my favorites.

There are also my Favorites Who Wrote Under a Pen Name (everybody wave to Mark Twain and George Eliot) and The Solid Writers with "Ws" (Willa Cather and E.B. White deserve their day in the sun, too).

See? It is a pointless endeavour, an unanswerable question.

The list could rather go on infinitely. Yes, infinitely, C.S. Lewis.

("Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." - C.S. Lewis)

already?

Hello, November.

The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree, but you haven't even given it time to fall yet.

thoughts from an election worker staked out in a gas station feed store

Next time I will take a pillow to sit on on top of my folding chair. I will be the Raja of Paja, directing the world* from my cushion.

We were garrisoned between the plumbing section and miscellaneous items (steering wheel covers, citronella lamps, fence wire, pet massage gloves, [truly] etc., etc., etc.). The OFFICIAL ELECTION GEAR was stashed in the aromatic Feed Room right behind our temporary county consulate. The laptop case rested on top of a bag of horse feed. Another bag leaned against medicated goat salt blocks. Make sure you get the medicated part in there. Yeah, medicated. Yeah. That's right.

We were rather secreted behind the plumbing pipes and elbow joints.
("What are y'all, mushrooms? Being back here in the dark?")

6:30a.m. comes awfully early.

Soon the Local Good Old Boys arrived for their Daily Coffee Convention. Apparently, there is a astronomical shortage of coffee makers in the homes nearby.

("Who is that in the red cap?" "Who? Oh, I can't tell. Eddie is in the way.")

The stories rolled in tempo with the clock.
("And the chicken was stuck in the snake's throat. I wrestled with him; tin was flying off the barn!")

I started the 342-page book I brought.

Eddie wandered back to our little citadel. He lives on the other side of the river now, but still holds membership in the Daily Coffee Congregation.

He has a pecan orchard.
("Thar's goin' to be an Aggie givin' a pecan seminar this Sat'rday." "That will be nice." "Weeeell, if I le'rn anything. He's an Aggie, you know.")

He studied the ballot.

By the time Eddie finished voting, one of the Congregation had returned with some homemade tamales to show off. Tamales with coffee was the menu for the Convention that morning.

Eventually, the Coffee Convention ground to a halt. The Members revved their engines and went home to pick pecans.

("They were full of it this morning, my, my.")

The voters trickled in. Some familiar (Hi, Joshua), some vaguely reminiscent of last election. They were just familiar enough that it made my brain itch trying to retrieve their names from some cavern in my mind.

I call it: The Mental Equivalent of Needing to Sneeze.

I stretched and went back into the Feed Room.
It smelled so grainy and grassy and Texas-y.


("Able, how much are those boots up there?" "Those? They ar' $19.99." *whistle* "Yeah, quite a deal," laughing)

By early afternoon, my parents (Voters #39 & #40) arrived bearing gifts (Coffee and Gingersnaps - shall I now enumerate the other Necessities of Life? ) from afar*.

The Rest of the Afternoon was nearly sleep inducing. Couples drifted in to vote.
(Always the husband, "I beat you!" Always the wife, "Oh, I didn't know we were racing")

The Tech had to offer us assistance a couple of times. Dear County Government, aircards which run on cell phone networks don't do well in The Boonies. {For Real}

At 5:00p.m. I finished the book.

7:00p.m. comes awfully late on days when 6:30a.m. comes awfully early.

The Final Push arrived to vote at 6:55p.m. The only things certain in life are death and taxes and the Final Push.

Then we cleaned up.

The posted signs were taken down.
The electronics {The Hand Scanner #1, The Laptop, The Printer, The Hand Scanner #2, The JBC} were shuttered.
The various envelopes were closed after being filled with the proper paperwork.
The forms, signed. The voting booths, sealed.

I stumbled over The Extra Long Plumbing Pipes more than once.

The boxes and bags were collected out of the feed room. My jacket was retrieved from its resting place on a tower of 50lb bags.

And the day was done.

Another Election was taken care of from the plumbing section of the Gas Station Feed Store.

{Would you like a washer hose with that ballot, Sir?}


*Exact definition of this word is not certain in this case.

do you have your voter id card?

I was going to post here tomorrow.

Yes, saith I, tomorrow - that is The Day. Inspired, I will be by then. I will write a future classic.

Tomorrow.

But then I looked at my calendar.

Tomorrow - the day of the birth of my future authorship - is a day that I may not claim for my own.

For it is... Election Day. And I am... an Election worker.

Tomorrow I will spend 15 hours not spilling out creativity on my keyboard.
I will spend a morning, a pre-noon, a noon, an afternoon, a pre-evening, an evening, and a pre-night not smiling to myself as my fingers slowly tap-dance on my keyboard.

So, once more my dream is deferred. If only the government knew what they were squashing by hosting Election Day tomorrow.