Morning jog

A little walk/run around my old neighborhood this morning was like a walk down memory lane.

Just around the corner and a  couple blocks down...lies my alma mater.  North High School.  The place where some dreams came true... (made the dance team every year, got to hang out on the fringe of the "in" crowd all those years..a big deal back then..)  and some dreams were broken. (lost at love, learned to be cynical.)

Walked some more, ended up at my elementary school.  Walked in from the back.  This is the warming house, where we'd go in to warm up after ice skating on the frozen ice rink they'd create on the adjoining field every year.  We'd bring our ice skates and go skating at the noon recess and after school.

The bike racks.  It was nice living in a small town where the light traffic, safe neighborhoods and plenty of sidewalks allowed us to ride our bikes to school and home again.

And the houses on our block.  This particular one is still owned by the Anger family.  what a name, and what a family.  I was good friends with the second youngest, a girl just a year older than me.  She was the only girl, had about 8 older brothers, one younger.  Most were in some kind of trouble with the law, it seemed.  The saying "bad company corrupts good character" applies well here.  Soon after we became friends, she taught me how to smoke cigarettes, and once her older brother even introduced us to pot in the woods behind their house.  This same brother, she told me, once did "dirty stuff" with her...my first encounter with a victim of incest.  yuck.  I'm glad that friendship ended soon after I got caught smoking once by my parents.  We lost touch of each other, I think she became pregnant in junior high school.  Her dad still lives at this house, below:

just stuff you think about as you walk down these old streets.

more throw-backs...

OMG, guess what i found in the back of an old closet here at my parents' house...

....my old high school prom dress!!!!!

(i feel so silly..)

now all i need is that old dried-up corsage i might still have hidden in their attic. 

oh and a date. or not. he was several inches shorter than me so dancing was awkward. 

plus he locked the keys in the car after dinner so we had to walk all the way back to his house to get his parents' car, crossing busy highways & sneaking through backyards, me in my high heels. memories. that's all.

p.s. using webcam for these, not easy, but sd card on phone is full. 

blogger struggles.

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 .....)