This is my entry for this month’s Memories Captured link-up, hosted by Galit Breen of These Little Waves and Alison of Mama Wants This. Take a moment to head over and view the rest of the submissions. They are always breathtaking and delightful!
These two pictures hang above my desk. They say an awfully lot without my needing to interpret them for you, but let me talk awhile anyway. My husband is not just a father to our children. He’s their Daddy. Sam, who is a Mama’s boy, has lately started demanding his Daddy-hugs at bedtime again and saying, in a worried little voice, “I like Daddy best.” He doesn’t yet understand the ebb and flow of a parent-child relationship, and he worries that he’s hurting me. He always seems surprised by my delight. I tell him, “That’s wonderful. I love you, and sis, and Daddy best.”
Sam’s a carbon copy of Scott. Everyone who sees him recognizes the resemblance at the same age. It’s more than just the blue eyes. It’s the shape of his chin, the height of his cheekbones, and the way he smiles when he isn’t paying attention. It’s in the way he freezes up if asked for a photograph; I’m told Scott has years of wooden-posed pictures to attest to his awkward relationship with the camera in childhood.
Caroline looks more like me, but she’s got Scott’s teeth and ears. And she is Daddy’s girl. By fall, she’ll have glasses, and then she’ll look more like both of us, but she whispered to me the other day that she wants a big pair, “Like Dad’s,” and I smothered laughter and told her we’d see what we could find when the time comes.
Scott plays with them endless games of hide-and-seek (my least favorite game ever in the entire universe). He taught Caroline painstakingly how to play Go Fish and Uno. And then, unbeknownst to the rest of us, Sam learned both games from watching them play. (We didn’t realize Sam knew how to play Uno until he unleashed his skills on Miss Tara the other night.)
He reads endless bedtime stories, indulges requests for “More parm-e-an (parmesean) cheese” at dinner, and hovers over the pancake griddle lest Sam’s pancakes brown in the least. He does household chores (all of them), survives my worst outbursts, and works his ass off outside the home as well.
The childhood he and I are giving our children is different from both of our own, not always, but mostly in good ways. Scott is a Daddy, and he’s my husband. I love him more than I can say in a few words on my blog. Happy Father’s Day Scott. I love you. We love you.
Doot-doot-doot-doot-doot. My daughter’s first impression of volunteerism was sheep plop. I took her to the humane society for her orientation into the junior volunteer club. It was supposed to be an hour of paperwork followed by a short tour. However, about half of the regular club didn’t make it, so the new members were invited to watch the presentation that the regular club had come to attend.
And seriously, who wouldn’t want to meet sheep? We sat down in the floor of the volunteer office, listening all the while to the mewling of a couple of litters of kittens in need of foster homes. Immediately, a girl in a volunteer shirt took the hat off of the Kleenex box in her lap. A duckling popped its wee yellow head out of the box and struggled loose. The girl’s Mom said, “We found her wandering around by the pond just like the other three.” (I thought at once of Idiosyncratic Eye.)
“We’ll take her home with them,” said another mother (and yes, they decreed the duck a ‘her’, even though it was young and genderless to me).
“Oh good. With all our cats, we’re just not set up for baby birds.”
And that was before Apollo the miniature sheep tramped through the front door. Actually, he was dragged bleating through the door. Being largely unfamiliar with offices, he was naturally wary of the glass swinging thing. And as soon as he got inside, he unloaded a cascade of little brown dots onto the carpet. This was the highlight of the kids’ visit. (I didn’t photograph it. You can surely Google sheep shit.)
We Moms were far more amazed to see that his dick really did come within an inch of the ground. (Unfortunately, there was no real way to photograph that,either.) Apollo’s wife followed, and Genevieve proved to be even more nervous than her spouse. She refused to be pulled in and had, instead, to be pushed. However, she didn’t poop. Finally, their baby, Hemingway, trotted up after his Mom. He’s only a couple of months old, though quite large. He didn’t care much about the people as long as we didn’t interfere with his milk supply.
After the sheep left, our orientation group was able to do some actual training that we had expected to come back for another day. My daughter got to hold still a trembling puppy as it received its first bath. (Or possibly its second bath; it was the only puppy in the pre-op area, and I believe puppy washing is a favored youth volunteer activity.)
I’m hoping to get Caroline back in on Monday and establish a weekly summer schedule of some kind, so that she can rotate through the available tasks and figure out where her talents and desires really lie. The program is empowering. Since these kids are all 8 and up, and since they all volunteer with a parent until age 15, we are free to choose our own activities. I will defer to Caroline as much as possible, since I really want her to get a sense of both the importance of volunteering and her own control in her activities. If it all goes well, I’ll update you here in a few months with pictures of Caroline in her volunteer shirt doing adorable volunteer things!
In the meantime, here’s one last picture of a sheep butt. Hemingway was seriously nursing most of the time. And that little tail had this crazy happy wag.
This weekend, Trifecta challenged us to respond to this picture
I spent my childhood chasing other people’s cows. The farmers who rented our fields were supposed to keep up the fences, but they never did. And the cows never got out during the day. No, they escaped at midnight or two AM, so that we all had to scramble out of bed looking for feed when someone banged on the door. And I slept downstairs, so I always heard the knock.
I hated those cows. I wanted them to die. But, especially once we bought the house and land, a wreck would have been on our insurance. While Mom tried to raise the cow’s owner, I tramped up State Route 286 in my nightgown chanting, “Come on cow, stupid cow, gonna get us both killed cow.” And then she’d join me in the car, and we’d herd the bovine slowly down the road, me leading the animal by the halter with a feed bucket, her following with the flashers on.
We lived in a sharp curve. Drunks regularly got tangled in our trees. (One memorable fellow actually knocked one over. Broke his own neck, too, that night. Worst neck break the hospital had seen where the victim walked away six weeks later.) So I watched for headlights behind me as I paraded backwards down the street, the cow and my mother following.
When I was twelve, I used to sleep in only my underpants. So when I went to answer the man pounding on the door at oh-dark-thirty, I actually managed to humiliate a neighborhood father with my breasts, which were far too large to be called ‘buds’ at that point.
By the time I was twenty one, all the roles had swapped and swapped again. My sister drove and I walked. Only, where Mom followed slowly with the flashers, Amye zoomed past in her Mazda, slammed on the brakes and screamed a 360 before coming in behind the cow, her red eyes haunting behind the wheel as she pursued us to safety.
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This post came easy. It’s the first one all week that has. Of course, ‘easy’ for me is always relative. Anyway, when I saw the picture Trifecta posted for our photo response this weekend, my mind went home. The only difference here is that the little girl in this picture doesn’t seem to care, or even notice, that the cow is walking down the road. Perhaps she’s in a country where such is common. I always cared. I always hated.
Brenda Cowden stepped out of the club’s back door and took a long draw. She tried to stop her legs from shaking. When they wouldn’t, she finally sat in the alley beside two days of garbage and a leaky dumpster. The cigarette slipped from her fingers to smolder in a pile of refuse.
“Put that thing out.” Her roommate Annie left the club as well and crushed the smoke under her heel. “What went wrong in there?”
“I got fired.”
“Because you’ve got limits on lap dances?”
“No. Rob says I’m hiding tips.”
“Oh.” Annie screwed up her lips. “Well, let’s go down the street and put in at Shimmy-Shebang.”
“He didn’t fire you, Annie.”
“We’re a team.”
“Listen, when he puts down the word that I keep money, there’s no club gonna hire me.”
“He’s not…”
“He is.”
Annie leaned against the wall, then sank down beside Brenda. She said, “Ow.”
“Yeah,” Brenda said, “Ow.” But she patted Annie’s arm where the brick had scraped it.
Annie said, “I got another idea.”
And Brenda said, “Sheena Green.”
“Yeah. Sheena Greena.”
“It’d be a hell of a pay cut. Think she’d hire us?”
Annie pushed up to her feet. “Think you can handle teaching preppy college girls how to pole dance?”
“I guess I’ll learn. If she’ll hire us.”
“Come on. The busses are still running. I don’t want to walk home.” Annie held out her hand.
Brenda used Annie’s arm for leverage and dusted grit and other debris from her backside. She hooked a finger inside her waistband and produced four bills. “Anyway, here’s your part of the take.”
“That fat bald guy? He did not give you $200!”
“I might have kissed Rob before I left.”
“What?”
“Long, and sweet, with lots of hands. And he might have had some hidden cash of his own.”
“Damn,” said Annie, “Sheena Greena better watch her till with you on staff.” She took the money.
“Us,” said Brenda. “With us on staff.”
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And this is what happens in the back alley with Trifecta.
On the Draw is a 7 card poker game that encourages risk taking. Also, there’s quick on the draw and slow on the draw.
Carly Groban bounded into the kitchen on lanky legs. “Oh, look!” she cried, reaching for the mail.
“Don’t touch it! It’s evil!” Her mother Sharon snatched the collection of brochures and ads out of the way before Carly’s hand made contact with the flyer on top.
“I just want the camp catalogue.”
“You ordered that?” Sharon drank from her steaming mug then put it down and rested her temple against her fingertips.
“Dad said he’d pay for it, Mom. You don’t have to worry about…”
“This has nothing to do with the finances!”
Again, Carly reached for the mail; again, her mother moved it. “This is going to be another one of your ghost stories, isn’t it?”
Sharon looked up, her eyes bloodshot and her cheeks streaked with red. “No,” said Sharon. “This is the ghost story.”
“Mom, I don’t think your meds are working.”
“I don’t take medicine because I see ghosts.” Sharon banged the coffee cup on the table and took several deep breaths. Then she got up and swept the mail into a trash can that materialized at her side.
Carly said, “I’m calling Gran.”
“Sit down.”
“I just want to go to summer camp…”
“Sit down.”
Carly sat.
Sharon said, “I was fifteen when I went to summer camp for the first time. It was wonderful.”
“I never knew you went to summer camp.”
“Sure. Only in my day, if you were a teenager, you went as a junior counselor. Senior counselors stayed in a house in the middle of a quad, and junior counselors lived in the cabins with the kids. So I had my own cabin of ten year olds to mind that first year. The next year, they promoted me to the twelve year olds.” As Sharon spoke, thunder rumbled outside, although the sky was blue. There would be no storm. Not out there. Inside, chairs, end tables, and boxes began to move around the house, all squeezing in around the table. She said, “Hello girls. Don’t knock over the coffee.”
“Mom, you need to take your Risperdal.”
“I took my Risperdal, Carly. How could I make this up?” She pointed around the table, to the assembled furniture.
“I…I don’t know. I want to call, Gran.”
“Honey, your Gran knows all of this. I don’t want to put her through it again.”
Carly didn’t reply, and Sharon went on speaking. “We lived with the kids, and we tried to keep them out of trouble and get action on the side ourselves. I think the junior counselors were crazier than the kids.”
“Yeah? How come you never told me you went to summer camp?”
“Because everyone died that second year, except the kids in my cabin.”
“What?”
“It was in the news if you want proof, and I really think your Gran should have told you before she let you go ordering something like that catalogue.” Sharon tilted her coffee cup and, determining it empty, drifted over to the sink and set it down. When she moved, the entire procession of chairs came along.
“Well Gran never told me anything like that.”
“Of course she wouldn’t. She wants to protect you. But I think she should have, and I’ll do my best to tell you now.” Sharon turned to the rumbling furniture. “Sit girls,” she said. The chairs stopped moving, and Sharon turned back to the window.
She went on. “There was a woman killed in Atlanta, and one of the guys started a rumor that the murderer was hiding out in an old barn. The counselors scared each other with it, and of course scared the campers, too…”
“Oh my God. He was hiding there, wasn’t he?”
“Don’t get ahead of the story, Carly,” said Sharon. “As I said, we scared each other with it through a couple of sessions, until a bunch of the boys decided to raid the barn one night. The girls overheard and went to wait in the barn and scare them first.
“I was hot for Jim Waugh. But I saw him kissing Tina Belcher, and I had an idea they’d stay behind to make out. I wanted to jump out and get their picture. So I sent my girls to Jenny Simmons and went to hide behind the boys cabins. Only Tina and Jim never showed up, and I got bored waiting. So I went back to my cabin, and there were all my girls mad because Jenny left without them and none of the kids knew where the barn was.”
“Wait a minute…” Carly got up.
“Carly sit down and let me finish.”
“No, I remember now.” Carly found her legs jerked out from under her by an unseen force. “This is bullshit, Mom. GRAN!”
“Don’t bother your grandmother!”
Sharon’s bloodshot eyes grew to swallow her entire face as she flew at Carly, who intoned, “Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!” like a magic spell until her grandmother’s arms shook her awake.
Carly’s limbs were at first too heavy to move in bed. She was curled into a fetal shell, and she had cut off circulation to her right ankle by tangling it up and pinning it under the left one.
Her grandmother said, “You OK?”
“Yeah.” Carly breathed heavily, like she’d run a long way. “I was afraid you wouldn’t hear me.”
“No, I heard.” Carly’s grandmother sat down heavily on the chair beside the bed. “I heard. What was it this time?”
“Some damned summer camp story.” The logy feeling finally let go of her arms and chest, and Carly pushed up on one elbow. If she had ever wanted to go to camp, the desire had now officially passed. But she couldn’t remember ever wanting to go, even though, in that dream, she had ached to reach in the trash and pull the catalog back out. “She was all on about how everybody but the girls in her cabin died…”
“Well that one at least has a shard of truth in it.”
“Yeah?”
“Just a shard. Some girl killed herself at the same camp your mother went to.”
“And she blows it up into a massacre.”
“With herself as the heroine no doubt.”
“It was looking that way.”
Carly’s Gran got up from the bedside chair and went to the window. Then she whistled.
Carly said, “What?” Her legs were working again, so she swung them down to the floor, but she didn’t stand up yet.
“She bopped a hole in the glass this time.”
Now Carly whistled. “We’ll have to cleanse the house.”
“Well, that’s been coming. Your feet any good yet?”
Carly rose carefully. “I won’t be running, but I’m good to walk.”
“Come look at this.”
Carly limped over to the window. Her right leg tingled as blood flow returned to the foot. She squinted out and saw a slimy pamphlet outside on the sill. “I guess she brought me a present.”
“Don’t touch it,” her grandmother said, “It’s evil.”
Carly laughed, low and hollow. “I guess she knew you’d say that.” She looked out beyond the window into the night, “Mama! If you would have just taken your medicine it would all be fine. This isn’t my fault, and it’s not Gran’s. Go haunt Daddy awhile, will you? I’ve got a Geometry test in the morning.”
Carly’s grandmother patted her on the shoulder. “Do you think you can sleep any more tonight?”
“Probably. But I’m moving to the den, if it’s all the same to you.”
Gran nodded. “I was going to suggest that,” she said. “Come on. I’ll help you get your blankets moved.” They walked back across the room together, mutual victims of the same haunting, abandoning the affected room until they could cleanse Sharon from the house once more.
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For the Scriptic prompt exchange this week, Supermaren gave me this prompt: Don’t touch it; it’s evil!.
I gave Grace O’Malley this prompt: Three dozen nightmares later, he finally had his answer. (No need to quote – just take off on the theme.)
We give Chewie rawhide treats. He takes them outside and buries them. And then, every night, he digs one up to bring in so he can snuggle it. Yes really, he wants to snuggle his stinky, muddy bone like my kids snuggle stuffed animals. I try to convince him to leave it outdoors, but if I take it away, he picks it up. If I throw it, he goes after it, and if I hide it, he cries inconsolably. No, really, I actually can’t seem to hide it very well because, hello, everyplace I pick is outdoors. So really, he just goes and gets it again.
At that point, I usually go inside, turn off the lights, and wait for him to realize that he is choosing between spending the night outside (not that I’d ever do that to the neighborhood), and bringing in his bone. And then this happens.
He can’t even bark with that thing in his mouth, but he won’t put it down. Except that after half an hour (ten minutes) or so, he finally does, then comes in to bed, and then does the same thing again the next night.
Sorry this didn’t publish yesterday. I had a bit to learn about Windows Live Video Fixer or whatever the hell it’s called.
but you stopped reading after you saw $5 and determined there were 3 place settings at the table after 5, didn’t you? I sure did the first time the adjuster said it. And he said that once the body shop gets into my car, the number is almost sure to go up. Be still my heart.
Although the other driver was at fault, it’s unclear (still) whether the DRIVER’S COMPANY’S insurance (remember, he works for a body shop) covers this, or whether the CAR OWNER’S insurance covers it. It’s probably the DRIVER’S COMPANY’S. But while we wait to figure that out, I’m going through my insurance, because I want my damned car back before its value drops so low that an estimate that high means “we total the vehicle”.
This, my dear people, is why we have mandatory car insurance.
So, lately my response to stress has been to go see films. Or anyway, that’s how I’m justifying two weeks in a row at the movies. Thanks to the world’s most amazing sitter, last night was movie night WITH Scott, and we FINALLY saw The Avengers.
My review? Ah yes, now I remember why I was only half tolerant of Snow White and the Huntsman. Snow White wasn’t written by Joss Whedon. And although it had action and kept the romantic tension on the back burner, it was not an action adventure flick. It was more a swashbuckler. And I like to swash buckles. But I love to jump off of high buildings only to be rescued by my supersuit. Metaphorically. In short, Snow White catered to the interests of a primarily female audience, and those things usually rub me all kinds of wrong. I liked Snow White. A lot. But I loved The Avengers.
Let me get this out of the way first. Some moments in The Avengers are pure cheese. The whole Loki thing was weird. (He’s supposed to be a trickster, not a bad guy, at a mythological level, but he’s the Face of The Bad Guys in this one. I like Diana Wynne Jones’ take on him much more, if the truth is to be told.) But I forgave that in about point six seconds, because it’s a plausible comic book theme, and I know from being a Buffy fan that Whedon can sell me his cheese without losing my interest.
I couldn’t figure out character motivations at a couple of key points. Like, why does Hulk … oh come on, that was not even a spoiler. You don’t put a loaded gun on the mantel in chapter one and then leave it unfired for the whole movie. They put in Dr. Banner at around chapter 3. You know The Hulk < ahem, the ‘other guy’ > is going to go off like a loaded weapon at the worst possible moment. Now, my question. Why does he completely lose control onboard the ship but only then? I mean, he’s Hulk at other times in the film, so why does he have such focused anger then and not in the first place? Something to do with Loki’s proximity and his underlying resentment about being deceived? Maybe. But distracting.
The ‘big name’ acting was rigid at times. At the outset, I had trouble believing Mark Ruffalo’s performance as a nervous, fiddling Bruce Banner. I felt a couple of times like I was looking behind his eyes to see him thinking, “OK, a twitch here, arm jerk there, and cut the eyes to the right. Good, repeat.” And as much as I enjoyed Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, she sometimes seemed to be reciting lines and giving off pouty-faced badly-planted sex appeal. Other times, though, the exact same things were right on target.
And I enjoyed the film’s meat very much. Besides the obvious references to the ‘prequelish’ movies that have been coming out for the last few years, Whedon also sneaked in nods to some other films like Ridley Scott’s Alien, (pretty cool with Prometheus opening this weekend) . It had a good storyline, excellent character interactions, and great music, all of which are discussed elsewhere on the webosphere.
But I haven’t heard anybody talk about the two things that were first obvious to me. Come on readers. Tesseract?! Tell me I’m not the only one who went, “Oooo, Madeline L’Engle!” when that word first showed up in the previews! I spent the whole movie thinking “There is such a thing as a Tesseract,” in my best “Mrs. Whatsit” voice. And the Chtauri… their name even sounds like Lovecraft’s Cthulu. (So Whedon gets a double nod for making them both Cthulu AND Alien references.)
I also haven’t heard much discussion of my two favorite characters, Hawkeye and Hulk. Newsflash, Hawkeye gets ‘turned’ by Loki ten minutes into the film (I refuse to consider that a spoiler), but I love him anyway. I’m a Sagittarius, so I’ve got an affinity for archery. Plus, Dad taught me how to shoot a bow and arrow when I was five. I sucked then, and I presume that nearsightedness, astigmatism, and the addition of 30 years haven’t in any way increased my ability, but I still love archers. (Must see Hunger Games. MUST.) And Hawkeye is loads of fun. I won’t give away his ultimate fate (see, no spoilers), but there is one badass fight scene with Black Widow where he proves his hand to hand skills aren’t subpar either.
And since The Hulk is the embodiment of comic book bipolar, I can identify with his rage. I can also identify with Banner’s insurmountable anger. Yeah, I know, he’s supposed to be all Jeckyll and Hyde, but Whedon has done it so that it’s obvious that Hyde is always contained within Jeckyll. Banner can’t do anything without Hulk always being there in some way. And that portrayal is as much descriptive of bipolar as it is of anything in the comic book realm.
Anyway, go see the movie. It gets a solid four triangles up for plot, character, music, and Joss Whedon. (Yes, Joss Whedon gets his own triangle.) I haven’t even touched on Robert Downey Junior’s Iron Man, New York’s Finest (the fact that since nine-eleven, New York City is the model for or outright scene of every cataclysmic disaster completely rubs me wrong, and the whole underlying ‘real heroes’ theme got on my nerves, too) , Mjölnir (you’re welcome), or schwarma. It’s a glorious comic book romp that I am ready to go see again. Oh. And first time viewers? Stay until the end of the credits. The very end. You’re welcome.
I was 19 and lost. I didn’t see the stop sign until a truck struck my sedan. No injuries, but the car was totaled. I thought I was taking my friend to research.
I was 21 and new to Kentucky. I stopped at the light, but the car behind me didn’t. She thought the light was yellow. I thought I was taking Mom to the castle.
I was 35 and composed. I had the green light, but the other car didn’t see me. He thought he was moving a vehicle. I thought I was taking my kids to swim.
This is my entry for this week’s Trifextra. The first and third links are to the blog entries discussing the wrecks in detail, and the middle link has pictures of Lexington, KY’s authentic castle. Each description has 33 words for a total of 99. Since Trifecta gave us from 0 to 333 today, I thought I ought to impose some kind of Trifectan order by myself.