Be Back Soon

Me, Myself and I need to regroup. So, I'm taking a wee bit of time off from my blogs. I'll be back next week. Don't do anything I wouldn't do ok?

Have a great week.

The Weekend

It’s been busy in my world since last Friday so my Monday post will be short. I traveled with my daughter to St. Louis this weekend to a Vintage Fair. We had some tense moments, but mostly a fun filled weekend. Mother’s Day I spent with my mom. I always enjoy time with my mom.

My daughter sells vintage items on Etsy and took some of her stock to a Vintage Fair. I loved spending time with my daughter. We met awesome people. We stayed in a plush hotel. What’s not to like? Well, the tense moments of a trip that almost always related to – driving are what I don't appreciate.

Tense moments:

-Eight lanes and driving an oversized SUV in the middle of four lanes is well an education in itself.

-Don’t forget I live in a rural area.

-First detour on the way to the hotel was tricky, but doable.

-Don’t forget I call a rural town -- home.

-Lots of downtown St. Louis traveling.

-Did I mention I live rural?

-We did everything right by visiting the site of the fair (two miles away) the day before. Easy Peasy. Then there was a race, a race of pink t-shirted tutued little girls, which blocked our easy 2 mile trek to the fair.

-What? I’m a small town girl with no navigational skill to my name.

-A helpful city worker told us three different ways to get there, each one being a faster or easier way. Bless his heart.

-Didn’t he know I drive in rural areas?

We did what he said and drove farther downtown, past a Walgreens, took a highway to another highway and missed our exit and took another exit. We looped and drove, looped some more and exited and somehow, by the grace of God, we ended up at the Vintage Fair.

Like in your face -- right there. How is that possible? The Vintage Fair was loads of fun.

How was your weekend?

Sunday Reflection: Mothers

The only thing easy about being a mom is the love given to you from your children and even that hurts sometimes.  The love for our children drives us on to (hopefully) do what is in the best interest of our children. It’s a lot of emotional and physical work, but motherhood is amazing. As our children get older, they’re more than likely not in our every day care, but they are never far from our hearts.

I have the most wonderful mom. She is kind and giving. She supports her children’s ideas and dreams – our biggest cheerleader. She suffers when we do. But, most importantly, she offers unconditional love.

Jesus had a mother. Mary knew from the beginning that her son had heavenly connections. Maybe secretly, she thought he would always be safe and never have to suffer. But, down deep inside I bet she knew he had a sacrifice to make. With this knowledge, she was a devoted mother to Jesus, the son of God.  And, her son knew what a gem he had in his mother.

“Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.” John 19: 25-27 (NIV)

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, Joyce. Happy Mother’s Day to the moms who are reading this.

 

 

 

Scripture source: Holy Bible, Biblegateway.com

Writing The Arrangement and The Begonia Bribe

There is big news over at Confession's of a Watery Tart.  The Begonia Bribe by Hart Johnson a.k.a. Alyse Carlson was released yesterday. She is touring at Jessica Bell's Blog today and Alex Cavanaugh tomorrow. Be sure to go pick up a copy of Begonia Bribe here.




Now, on to writing The Arrangement

In the weeks to come, I will talk about my posts for The A-Z Challenge that I titled The Waiting Summer.   Trying to come up with 26 memories for one summer was, well, challenging, but the A-Z was about challenge, after all.

I chose the summer of my seventeenth year because I held down my first real job and it was a time of transition. Sometimes I felt like I was waiting forever on people and life to happen and other times my waiting was in the blink of an eye.

Someone had asked me how I remembered the details or even the memories themselves, when they couldn’t. I think I have a terrible memory, but only for short term stuff and names. And, it may help that I am a detail person. However, I think everyone can summon memories if you try.  

I stimulated my memory “squirrels” by

•   Looking at lots of photos.
•   Thinking about my friends.
•   Asking my mom things.
•   Asking my sister things.
•   And just old fashioned brainstorming.

 

I actually drew a circle on a piece of paper wrote the summer of 1973 and drew lines out from that labeling them with the people I knew or met and events as I remembered happened. I thought about the makeup and clothes I wore and my troublesome hair. 

The Arrangement was the easiest to write. I wanted to work a real job for the summer. I wanted to work in a town twenty miles away waiting tables. Both my parents worked so I knew my dad believed in working, but would he let me drive so far every time I needed to go to work?   I don’t’ remember how long I pondered telling him my plan, but I remember the evening I did it. I remember how I felt. I also knew what our family dinners looked like at the time.

Things that stand out for me regarding that story:

• We ate meals together. I took that tradition with me to my family.

Things I didn’t tell you:

• How it seemed like it took forever for my dad to get home from work that day.
• At that time in my life, I felt restless and head strong.
• I felt like I knew best and all adults knew nothing.  
• I realized after I wrote The Arrangement  that the coupon selling job was during my senior year not the summer before as I thought. No biggy.
• It was at times emotional for me. We’ll talk about that later.

 

From the Comments:

• I enjoyed that I reminded you of days past – your first job, maybe your family. That’s what chronicling your life is about.
• My one summer babysitting job consisted of the lady dropping off her daughter, who was my sister’s best friend, me sleeping in, my sister playing with the little girl all day while I collected two bucks for my work, plus all the Merle Norman makeup I wanted.  It was a win win situation. Right? And no I didn’t share my earnings with my sister.

(I apologize for the funky formatting. I couldn't get it to straighten up and fly right.)

 

Can you remember details about a particular summer of your youth? Are you sharing stories with your children of your childhood? Are you listening when your parents tell about theirs? What was your first job?

A Little A-Z Reflection and The Frugal Shrink

The A-Z Challenge is over and everything is back to normal. Right? Thanks to all the hosts and hosts of hosts that helped out, as well as, participating in the A-Z.

Once again, I wrote like a mad-woman for my posts, only this time, for The Ruralhood. I wrote 26 memories of one summer, The Waiting Summer. I mostly enjoyed it, well… now that it’s over.

Last year, my theme was Grim Tales from the Ruralhood where I used a Brothers' Grimm title and created my own short story for each day of the alphabet. I wanted to do something similar this year. However, my theme was tamer and more personal writing. BTW, my Grim Tales book is being looked over and should be back to me by the end of May. Then I’ll get with someone to help me prepare it to upload as an eBook. We’ll see if I can get it done by the end of summer.

This year for the A-Z, I fantasized about hitting all of the links, but once again my day job got in the way. J I loved meeting the new bloggers that came to my blog and those who returned to see what I’d written. Very flattering. I also appreciated my regular blogging friends who supported me.

If there is a negative, it’s that I visited over 700 blogs to get 55 new followers. But, thankfully, I would rather have readers comment than follow anyway, but, I like followers too. I ran into a couple of advertisement blogs (spam?), those who (I guess) decided not to participate after all and those who started, but didn’t finish. I say kudos to you all for starting it. I tried to comment on those. blogs to be supportive. 

I considered stopping the whole thing myself on week three. I even prayed once for God to please end the A-Z or April soon -- before, I lost my mind. What a waste of a prayer – huh? All in all, the A-Z went well at TheRuralhood.

However, I now have a fear of people named April.

One last thing about my posts at The Ruralhood. I’ve put a tab on the blog where I’m listing all twenty-six stories so it will be easy to access them. There won't be much editing at this point. And they're not all there, yet. Just saying.

The Frugal Shrink

Along time ago, my daughter started a blog and posted on how she lived frugally during her intern year and a couple of years past that. She was quite the coupon-er and sales hound. She was featured on a news station in Springfield, MO once for that very thing. And she used to speak to groups on how to get the best deals.

Even though she doesn’t have to be frugal any longer, she loves a good deal and is back to blogging here and there about it. The reason I’m talking about her blog is that this week (I think) she’s posting her interview with the daughters of Amy Dacyczyn’s. Who is that, you ask? In the1990s, Amy Dacyczyn’s produced a newsletter called The Tightwad Gazette.  She lived frugally and wrote about it. Then she put her ideas in book form -- later on. Anyhoo, my daughter thought it would be fun to see how her children turned out. The daughters agreed to be interviewed by my daughter. To give you some background, The Frugal Shrink has written an intro here.  After that, you can click on Newer Post or here for the next post, if you’re interested.

So are you still among the living after the A-Z? What did YOU get out of it? Do you remember the Tightwad Gazette? Do you like good deals?