Flashback Friday: Red White and Blue
You know I’m not really one for participating in lots of blog carnivals, but I just couldn’t help myself this time. Anne Glamore at My Tiny Kingdom has started a new carnival for Flashback Friday! I’ve seen lots of Flashback Friday posts here and there over the last couple of years, but there hasn’t been an full out carnival for it. I’m so glad she did this because it gives me a great excuse to scan some of my old photos!
The theme this week is “Feeling Red, White and Blue.”
Apparently I wore a lot of red as a kid because it wasn’t hard to find the perfect picture for this one. What makes is more perfect is my mom. Hi Ma! I hope you don’t mind me posting this. 
I think you are absolutely beautiful.
This was taken in March, 1977, just a month before I turned five. That chair is still in the same spot and it’s where she’s rocked and snuggled all of her many grandchildren over the years too.
Love you Mom!
xoxo
Annette (the one you still call your “baby”)
ps. Next week is “This Makes me Giggle” – I can’t wait!!!
get him tom!
A couple of months ago I was fighting a very bad cold and the pressure in my sinuses overcame my will to properly parent my kid. In my Nyquil induced haze I agreed to sully my TiVo with the likes of Tom & Jerry. No, I’m not a fan of the show, and I never was as a kid either. Heresy to some, but there it is.
Frankly, I think the creators were cat-haters, and whenever I watch it I always want to root for Tom. It’s my forever unfulfilled wish that he’d get to eat Jerry and get it over with. Clearly, it’s not the violence in the show that bothers me. And anyway I was a Bugs Bunny kind of girl. (Hence George’s name.)
In order to quell the screeching noise of a disease ridden flea carrying rodent outwitting the dumbest cat in cartoondom, I’ve resorted to earphones and streaming video/itunes while I play Facebook Scrabble work. This way the boy and I can be in the same room and I don’t have bleeding eardrums. One of these days Hulu is going to be good enough that I might not even need my TiVo. Now that’s heresy!
hello out there
Is anyone there? Hellllooooooo. Tap tap. Is this thing on?
Are you a lurker? Lurkers are blog readers who don’t comment, so we never know who’s out there.* I was a lurker for a long time. I was reading blogs for a good two years before I started my own, and I always lurked.
I thought that the blog writer didn’t really want to hear what I had to say. That my comment wasn’t that important. Oh, how wrong I was!
What I didn’t understand, because I wasn’t writing myself, is that bloggers live and die by their comments section. I never imagined that bloggers might desperately check their email a thousand times a day, just to see if a comment notification has miraculously appeared. (Uh, well, that might only be me, not all bloggers…ahem.)
Now I write comments on blogs far and wide. I figure if it makes my day, it will probably make their day too! Although I’ve commented on some enough to qualify as a stalker, I swear I’m not, I just can’t shut up!
Anyway, all this is to say, somehow I missed that this was National Delurking Week, and today is the last day! So delurk won’t you, and make my day? (Unlike yesterday, which was a very very sad day, because no one, no one, commented on what I thought was a pretty dang good post! ~sniff~ Can someone hand me a tissue? Updated to add: Okay well there are comments now, but only because I guilted my twitter peeps into it! Just like I’m guilting you! Ha!)
* I really love my lurkers, because I can see that someone (!) is reading, but I sure would love for you to say hi!
you make me blush
Y’all gave me some of the nicest compliments evah! I got some of the sweetest comments and emails I’ve ever had here yesterday. I don’t know why that embarrasses me, but it does.
Here’s the thing, a couple of you called me a writer. I’ll take that as a huge compliment because I definitely don’t view myself as a Writer with a capital W. I know I can put a few coherent thoughts together, I know the rules of the English language, (whether I follow them or not!) and sometimes I get a creative thought. However. I’ve never aspired to write for a living. Somehow, to me, a writer is someone who makes money with their work, or at least has the will and potential to do so. Am I wrong about that?
Just by virtue of blogging, does that make me a writer? I don’t think so. There are many real writers who use blogging for practice, to hone their skills, and really it’s a perfect platform for it. Feedback is essential to a writer, and what better way to get instant feedback than a comments section? But that doesn’t mean every blogger is a great writer.
Most of the really good writers I know can’t not write. It’s part of them, part of their soul, and from what I can tell, they feel something akin to withdrawal symptoms when they don’t do it. I, on the other hand, could go for weeks or months without writing anything, and it wouldn’t bother me a bit.
Writing a little fiction is something I’ve dabbled at in the past, but have never been serious about. I discovered something about myself as I’ve done it more often this year; I’m really a better editor than a writer. Just like with photos. And I’m okay with that. I know one of my talents is having an eye for a great image, though not usually through my own lens. On paper, my talent is seeing how the words can be rearranged to make them sing. But when I try to edit my own writing, a haze shadows the page, and I can’t see it for what it really is. I’m okay with that too.
Anyway, this makes me wonder, how do you define a writer? Is it anyone who writes anything, or must you have a true passion for it? Does a writer need to be making money from it, or just be good at it? Do you have to have pure talent, or just perserverance to make it great? Or all of the above?
noshing and pimping!
I’m a little embarrassed to admit this…
I have a post debuting on Blog Nosh today! No, I don’t mean I edited a post on Blog Nosh – I actually put one of my own on there! I don’t know why I have such a hard time pimping my own blog but there it is – the mortification that I won’t be able to shake all day.
I did it because I’ve edited so many posts there* and I thought it was time the Blog Nosh readers got to know a little bit about me! So go see which post I chose from my archives that I think is my true self! Heh. It’s okay to laugh. Really. I do every time I re-read it.
If you’re clicking around anyway – go click on over to the 2008 Weblog Awards and vote for Blog Nosh for Best New Blog! Pretty please with sugar on top? You can vote once every 24 hours so vote early, and vote often! Blog Nosh’s Editor in Chief Velveteen Mind is a finalist for Best Diarist too!
* send me your best archived posts and I might feature you too! and then you can have one of these:
These buttons, baby, are all the rage.
deja snow
Deja vu anyone? Yes, there is yet another snow storm on the way. And it looks like a “code orange” on the French Toast Meter.* Bwaaahhaahhaaaa!!**
The local TV station says 5-10 inches and NOAA says 5-9 total. Wait. What the?? Weather.com says 1-2 inches? Oh great, and Weatherbug split the difference with 2-4 of snow plus 2-4 of sleet. Hmmm. So who’s right??? I knew I should have been a meteorologist so I could figure it out for myself!
Either way, I don’t think we’ll be having school tomorrow. Again.
*Link courtesy of DH. 
**Milk, bread and eggs = French Toast! I never heard this joke until a couple of days ago, but I pretty much laughed until I peed cried. Really it was worse in Virginia. A prediction of 2 inches of snow there and people would mob the stores in fear of being stuck at home for ~gasp~ a whole day. Here it takes a prediction of at least 6 before people will bother!
case of the mondays
Well, it’s definitely a Monday. Sheesh.
We were supposed to get back to our normal routine today. The boy was heading back to school after a week and a half of vacation on top of a week off from the ice storm. He only had one normal day in between there!
Unfortunately, we had a coating of ice on everything this morning and school was delayed two hours. A delay means, of course, that morning kindergarten is canceled! Arghhh!
That doesn’t mean I get a day off, it just means I have to find ways to keep him busy so I can get my own work done. A little while ago I handed him his camera and told him to go take some pictures – I’m hoping to get at least a half hour out of that, maybe even an hour if I’m lucky!
Yes, we did give him a camera for Christmas – our old digital camera we bought way back when DH was still a daily newspaper photographer. It’s a first generation digital and it doesn’t have some of the features that I have on mine, (anti-shake, etc.), but it’s good enough for him to play around with while he’s learning, and it has a neck strap so he’s less likely to drop it. The resale value on it was just a few bucks so we’re not losing anything if it does break though, better than if he were to break mine!
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On a completely different subject, I’ve been challenging myself to declutter different bits of the house every week, and this weekend I tackled the pantry. Oh. my. head. I have very little cupboard space in my kitchen so I don’t keep any food in the cabinets but I do have a closet that I use as a pantry. It’s always a disaster. I can’t reach the top shelves without standing on a chair, and all the shelves are deep so it’s easy for things to hide. It’s a disorganized mess and I can never find things I know are in there.
I pulled out so much junk! Mostly half eaten boxes of crackers, stale cereal, and expired canned goods. There was nothing disgusting, but there was one jar of lemon curd that expired in 2002! I must have moved it with us from Virginia! What the heck do you do with lemon curd and why did I buy it? No wonder it’s been in there forever!
After I took out everything old and expired I organized everything that was left into categories. I kept the cereal on the top shelf where DH can reach it – he and the boy have breakfast together most mornings but I don’t eat much cereal. I put pastas, rice and beans together, then condiments and sauces in another corner, baking supplies in another, canned fruits and veggies on the sturdiest shelf, and on the lowest shelf is the snack stuff that the boy is allowed to get himself when he needs something to munch on – granola bars, rices cakes, etc.
Now I can actually see what I have, and what I need to buy! No more guessing! No more running out of things and not realizing it! No more buying too many of the same thing! (I certainly don’t need to buy any teriyaki marinade or salsa for awhile, that’s for sure!) And now I can plan my meals in order to use up some of the cans that are getting closer to their sell by dates, so I don’t have any more waste.
It feels so good to get that done, I can’t even express it.
photohunt: hope
Meet Mu. That’s short for Mujahadin. He’s my dog in-law. But I like to call him kitty. He weighs about the same as George but we’ve never gotten them together because I’m pretty sure George would put the smackdown on him.
Mu has a tendancy to beg a little. I blame Candy cause I’ve never seen my FIL feed him from the table! Candy is my FIL’s “spousal equivalent”, heh. When I asked her if she was a girlfriend or a significant other that’s what she called herself – I love it!
In any case, I spent all evening last night searching for “hope” but I couldn’t find it. Then DH caught this at the breakfast table this morning:
Looks hopeful doesn’t he? You know why? He has good reason to be hopeful. He knows Candy is a sucker for his cute face.
Mu wins!
one last Christmas reflection
I had the perfect New Year’s Day yesterday. We spent the morning taking down all the trapping of Christmas, boxing up our memories in plastic bins, neatly put away for next year.
We then went to Target for yet one last bin, one big enough for the first fake tree we’ve had in years, and one almost as expensive as the tree. Yikes. Then we got our coffee and smoothie respectively, went home for lunch, and took a 2 and a half hour nap. No really, the boy and I had a glorious long winter’s rest while DH was at work.
We did in fact let the boy stay up until midnight to ring in the New Year, the first and perhaps the last time we’ll do that. Not that he was bad, but frankly if he had been in bed at normal time, I’m pretty sure I would have been too. Apparently I’m an old lady. Confirmed by the fact I crocheted again throughout 3 hour ride on the way to the FIL’s today. At one point I said ‘oy vey’ at something DH said and that was it for him. Now I’m not allowed to say little old lady things at the same time I’m working with yarn of any sort. Oy vey. But I digress.
So the decorations are gone, when it felt like we had just put them up. It feels good to have the furniture back in place, and have clean empty spaces again. Another whole year before the Christmas hype begins again. I can’t decide if that’s a good or a bad thing, honestly. A little of both perhaps. It would be nice if we could keep our holiday spirit year round, without all the rest of it.
As I folded up plastic branches and pulled apart the metal trunk of our tree yesterday, I remembered the only other time we’ve had a fake tree since we’ve been married – the year I was pregnant. It was all I could do to get up and go to work everyday. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could barely walk. I was nauseous all the time and threw up daily though I was far into my second trimester.
Just the idea of Christmas overwhelmed me, buying gifts was impossible, and setting up a tree blew my mind. We were in Virginia, far from our families, just the two of us, expectant, scared, and hopeful all at once. I cried out of helplessness, ordered to lay on the couch on my downtime, not able to create any Christmas spirit, but needing it all the same.
One day, mid-way into December, I arrived home, looked around and cried again. This time tears of joy. My dear husband had dug into our Christmas things, things I thought would stay put away for another year. He’d found our old 2 foot fake tree, leftover from our college days, and set it up with lights and my favorite ornaments. He’d put out as many of my decorations as he could find and waited for me to come home and find it. He’d made my Christmas spirit for me. And he didn’t need a 7 foot tall fir to do it.
That was a good year, so have all the years since, and I hope the next is better than ever.
Happy 2009 my friends. xoxo
Filed Under family, life, the husband Tagged christmas, family, holidays, new year