Tbt

throw-back thursday

ahh yes, i could do tbt every day for many days while staying here, in my old childhood bedroom, the house i grew up in, with all its memories on its walls, and its ghosts within the walls.

From old trophies, knick-knacks, art projects,

...some old favorite stuffed animals...

...to the faded photos on the walls. 

Like this one, my family minus one. (with 5 kids it was hard to get us all in one shot, especially as the older ones moved out)

and somebody's dorky senior picture, don't laugh...(can you say "feathered bangs"?)

so embarrassing...

(and i still remember the day that photo was taken, my sister & i had just returned from a camping trip, just the 2 of us, which ended with us getting in a big bisquik dough fight when our project of pancakes over the campfire failed, and it took me a loooong time to try to wash my hair before that picture was taken, i think i still had dough in my hair...)

and a variety of other stuff...

..like this little gem that my sister will kill me for sharing if she ever finds out, (sorry Heidi!)

and there's our wild & crazy pound puppy, Marty...

..and the dance team I was so proud to be a member of throughout high school.  We supported our various athletic teams by performing at football & basketball games, wrestling (like above), swim meets and hockey games.

And that just covers the stuff in this one small room. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the memories, good and bad, whenever I come home and spend time just thinking about it.

Maybe I should go back to the feathered-bangs look....

...then again, NAAAAHHHH.

goodnight.

TMI

I love my parents but....do we really need these on the dinner table? #oldpeopleprobs #awkwardconversationstarters

Trip to wisconsin

On a plane, waiting to take off,  connecting flight in Charlotte. more later...

CLT airport.  huge busy crazy. counted 3 starbucks, got my fix at the first one.  love this craziness, the confusion, the chaos, the people-watching.  

 

  

 pass by currency exchange booths, slowing down to gaze at the list of international rates...costa rica, dominican republic...ahh, how i wish wish wish i could exchange my u.s. cash for some foreign money, then hop on a plane to someplace exotic. 



 traveling alone is so fun, the possibilities are endless. i know my real life has responsibilities & people to care for, but it’s just fun to imagine...what if...what if i decided to trade in my ticket & go anyplace in the world i wanted? where would i go? what people would i meet?  what if i ended up in a place where i didn’t know the language, it smelled funny & i forgot my sunscreen?   one can only imagine.

time to decide what complimentary beverage i want from the us airways flight crew. oh the possibilities.  cranberry apple juice or fuze tea?  back to reality.

no exotic rain forests or turquoise waters to look down upon from this window, just neat & tidy plots of land between ribbons of highway, lots of lakes, peeking out from swirling masses of clouds..moving northward to the landlocked midwest.  where’s that drink cart?

sitting in minneapolis airport.  this place has a slower vibe, older & more run-down, thinner crowds than the CLT airport, but the lay-out is more confusing.  Multiple floors and terminals and wings all connected by a tram, this back-and-forth rail system that takes you from one place that makes no sense to another illogically-placed location that looks exactly like the place you just left.  In other words, i’ve just spent the past 50 minutes getting lost and more lost and back to just lost again.  bought a ridiculously-priced turkey & cheddar sandwich & am now waiting again, this time for the shuttle van that will take me the 90-mile drive across the state line and to Eau Claire, WI.  And obviously i am so bored that i have to narrate my entire life here.  

Good ol’ Midwestern folk sit in plastic chairs scattered around me, absently staring at their phones or into outer space.  In 40 minutes i’ll get on a van with these people and ride away from the big city and through the vast countrysides and picturesque farm settings of America’s Dairyland.  Even after all these years, those familiar roads still bring back memories of a very different journey than I’m now on. A simple, slow road of growing up and experiencing life at a slower pace, from the viewpoint of a fairly naive child & teenager. Things were simpler back then, but i’m not going to get into how things were back in the olden days.  

What’s more startling to me now, is how a seemingly lack of drama in my life back then was really just a cover-up for the striving, tumultuous emotions I hid inside, not wanting my very non-emotional family to tease me for being such a drama queen, as if that were even a “thing” back then.  Now i see things differently, and i could easily pick apart my family’s dysfunctions as they become so black-and-white to me when I see them again, but what for? This is a time to just enjoy who they are, for I may not have many more days, hours, minutes, left in this lifetime to spend with those who raised me.  

p.s. just for the record...

here's my wcw: (woman crush wednesday)

i know it's a bit weird but..

it's my mom:

grew up on a farm,

taught high school p.e. & biology,

raised 5 gnarly kids,

takes good care of her ill husband,

loves her 2 grandkids & multiple grand-cats, dogs, chickens, pigs, & goats.

It's good to see her again.

mcm

Man Crush Monday

Confession time: I actually have 2 man crushes:

Malcolm, my ferocious, athletic little Tiger

& Morgan, my plump-ish, alpha-cat, first-to-the-chow-pot Lion.

Sometimes they rrrrRRRRRROOOOOOAAAARRRRR

..but here they just like to purrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Saturday selfies

Born to run...(bruce Springsteen ) Running to stand still...(u2) Run to you...(bryan adams) Running on empty...(jackson browne) Ha, actually my pandora dance cardio station was spinning out lots of Pit Bull, Rihanna & September's cry for you (you'll never see me again .....)

Stranger than fiction

Today's To-Do List:

___wake up. (duh)

___fuel up with 36 oz. italian roast coffee, raisin bran w/sliced bananas & tons of milk (check!)

____ drop off kids at school (check!)

___stop at library on way to gym, quickly pick out books for kids (check!)

___drive my lazy self to gym,  plant jiggly self in front row of Body Pump class, weights gathered and assembled on bar, prepare for Miss Triathalon-running,  over 70-lbs. of weight on her bar for squats, thunder thigh instructor to whip me into less-jiggly shape. (check!)

___crawl out of class so weak and even jigglier that i cannot even open my car door (check!)

___go to other library and spend just a few minutes picking out a few books for myself, for next week's solo trip to Wisconsin to care for elderly parents for a week (chhhhhh-uh, did you say, a Few Minutes? like 15 max?)

ahh, therein lies the problem.  Not only does this creative type easily lose track of time (it was an hour and a half later the next time I checked) but I have a serious problem finding good fiction that I will actually enjoy reading.  I wish I just fit into a niche of a certain type of book, like mystery, fantasy, suspense, romance, (gag) or historical fiction..(zzzzz) but i don't. I have to be able to relate to the heroine in some way, and that's the hard part.  My life is stranger than fiction.  There's nothing, no character any bestselling author can come up with that comes even close to the strange quirky, eccentric, weirdness of my life.  My drama.  oh sure there's plenty of books on similar dramas like mine, but they're often cast in a dark light, with too much cursing and behaviors even more despicable than mine.  

So I meander to the "inspirational fiction" section, thinking surely I'll find something a bit more positive, with cleaner language and a more hopeful, inspirational ending.  But just a short gaze at these stacks of pretty colors and sweet titles brings to mind one word of classification:  "inspirational romance".  Triple Gag!!!!!  And these characters, come on, these neat-and-tidy, prim-and-proper Christian girly-girls who dream of nothing but china patterns all their lives, excuse me while I ralph into the nearest book drop..

After ninety minutes of frustratingly searching these stacks, my stomach now growling from only being fed a puny energy bar and gatorade after the gym, I finally pick out 4 books:

1. the song reader - about a girl with a secret gift of reading people's lives by the songs in their heads. As the cover reads, "Can the lyrics to a song reveal the secrets of the heart?"  I think I can relate to this. 2. the ten year nap- ahhh, really? if only that were a thing, i'm down... 3. living on the couch, a psychological thriller exploring the mind of a psychotherapist, (i think i have some relatable experiences here..) and 4. shout down the moon- about a girl who sings in a band and ironically, learns to use her "voice" in other ways, having the courage to trust in her talent and in her even bigger heart. 

Chances are I won't even get around to reading these books I painstakingly picked out today.  My easily-bored or distracted mind will find other things to obsess over on my trip. But at least I had fun trying.  Perhaps a book review will be on the agenda in a couple weeks or so.  Just for practice. just everyday writing. 

Lizard w/o a tail! !!

Poor little guy ...