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4月28日 Interesting...I was reading several of my fave blogs the other day when it occurred to me how much I care about these strangers. I can't wait to read what they've written about their lives, thoughts, feelings, or problems. The more I read the more I want to know. The authors seem so interesting. All I really know about anyone is what they write. A few have included photos but initial perceptions of most were based solely on their writing. As a result, I experienced the personalities with no preconceived notions about physical looks, political beliefs, religious ideals, or station in life. These people could be paupers or millionaires. They could be priests or prostitutes. And I took comfort in the fact that anyone reading my space knew little about me. Eventually, if you read someone enough, you pick up on their sense of humor, sensitivity, anger, and general outlook on life. One of the most interesting spaces I read (until she went private) belonged to a stripper in NYC. She talked about her job in almost exactly the same tone as I do mine, yet how incredibly different our lives are!! I miss her and hope she is doing well. I would love to be able to sit and visit with many of the bloggers over a latte or a cold beer. If I had met them "in real life" I probably would have made a judgement of them based on the visible instead of what they hold inside. Either that or I wouldn't have approached them because of the fear of being judged by them and found lacking. I try very hard not to be shallow and judgemental but there are boundaries created in the brain that are hard to cross. We moved around a lot when I was a kid and I learned to hang back when I began a new school until I determined who would be acceptable as friends. Although I was taught to be "nice" to everybody my parents wouldn't have allowed me to hang out with the "wrong crowd." Part of that stemmed from the fact that we lived in tiny towns where teachers could lose their jobs if somebody found a beer can in their trash or something crazy like that. So would I ever approach a biker chick, a little heifer in spiky high-heels, or some ol' guy with a ponytail with cat hair on his sweater? Probably not. More because of my own inferiority complex than a judgement on them. Who on earth would think a dumpy, gray-haired woman with a strong Texas drawl (with dog hair on my sweater) would have anything interesting to say? So I blog. I can approach interesting people and reach out to them with less fear of rejection or ridicule. Now, before you start thinking I sit at home in the dark with just my dog and my computer, relax. I have lots of friends and family with whom I do lots of fun things. However, they're all residents of my comfort zone. I have noticed that I am now more likely to speak to someone who didn't fit my prior criteria for approachable people. So, thank you people who read my space and whose spaces I read. Thank you for sharing your lives with the limits you place on yourselves by what you write. Thank you for leaving comments for me on my space. You give me validity. You give me confidence. You give me joy. And, as us cool people say, ya'll are the shiznit... 4月25日 Mother.Yesterday I was at my desk when one of our students walked past my door with her mother. Then the mother walked back by my door. Then again. Finally, the student came in and said, "MizAngie, was your mother a school teacher?" "Yes." Then her mom came in and asked if my mother taught art at CHISD. "Yes." Turns out my mom was her art teacher in junior high. The weird thing, though, is that she was stunned by how much I resemble my mother. Of course, my mom would have been the age I am now when she taught this woman. Kim began telling her daughter that she became a teacher because of my mother. She then went on to tell her about my mother's long, gray braid. I told her the story of my mother's braid and then we shared a teary moment. You see, my mother died of cancer ten years ago. That long gray braid was, for some reason, very comforting to me. My grandmother and two of mother's sisters all had long hair that ended up in long braids, and I wear my hair long. I related that long braid to Mother, thereby being reminded of all things nurturing and motherly about her. Anyway, it wasn't long after the doctors began chemotherapy that it became evident that Mother would be losing her hair. We also knew the treatments were a long-shot at any kind of cure. With that knowledge, I worked up nerve to ask Mother if I could have her braid cut off to save. She agreed and a friend came and gave her a haircut in the hospital. Before she cut the braid off I combed Mother's long hair one more time and put it in a neat braid. I had to leave the room as she got her haircut. To me this was a sure sign that I would soon lose my mother. A few weeks later Mother was gone. She died before completely losing her hair but it was very, very thin. With braid in hand I went with my brother and sister and sister-in-law to the funeral home for our first viewing of the body. I took the braid and placed it behind Mother's head so that it draped over her shoulder as it had for as long as I could remember. And then I said goodbye... 4月22日 Spring.It's officially spring. I'm running a little late on warm weather preparations but I finally got things going yesterday. I decided I would go to our baseball game as the weather was so gorgeous and warm, and wanted to wear something more seasonally appropriate so I wouldn't melt in a pile of dark winter clothing. (Hmm. There's an unintended similarity to the Wicked Witch of the West in there!) I dragged out the short pants, white shirt, and flip-flops, then headed to the shower. Now, I do shave my legs occasionally throught the winter but not as diligently as I do in warm weather. I know this speaks volumes about the fact that I share my bed with a labrador retriever instead of a "tiger" but, hey, whatever. Anyway, I now have everything on my person either washed, shaved, plucked, curled, trimmed, or polished and I'm ready for warm weather. I couldn't help but wonder when I began caring more about the hair on my top lip than "elsewhere." GYA!! Old age!!!! Ha. The sunshine felt wonderful on my lily-white winter skin. I turned a little pink but it was gone by this morning. I worried that the outfielders would ask me to cover my legs as they were casting quite a blinding glare that could have interfered with them catching a fly ball. OH! Speaking of bright sun and ballplayers...I took a bag of sunflower seeds for the guys on the team. I leaned over the dugout wall to hand them to a guy - and when he looked up at me I thought I had crossed paths with a DEMON. I jerked my hand back and couldn't stop myself from asking, "What's up with your EYES?" They were a browny-red like a bad photograph. He laughed and said he had the new no-glare contact lenses. Good grief. I had heard of them but had never seen any in person. Verrrry freaky, y'all guys. We won. We were able to use the "10-run rule" in both games of the double-header. That means we were winning by 10 runs or more in the 5th inning. This is one of my most favorite rules in all of athletics! It saves us from having to sit through 2 or 4 more innings of really bad baseball. Every sport needs to adopt a similar rule. I don't know how you could do it for soccer, though, as those games are usually decided by very few points. Soccer was so boring until I found out that many of those guys don't wear underwear. Not that I see anything - it's just intriguing to know, I guess. I really don't want to explore why that's intriguing to me. I fear it may signal some latent and perverse thing in my psyche. At the least it confirms that I'm a horny old broad. Haha!!
Wow. A horse fly has made its way into my sewing room (where I am) and it sounds like a weedeater. Bzzzzzzzzzz.... That sucker is huge, too! I'm not psychic but I do see a rolled up magazine in that fly's future.
I went to a funeral last week at the Catholic church. My second Catholic funeral ever. Those guys are so organized and orderly. Not nearly as exciting as a black funeral. Anyway, about halfway through the service I remembered that my cell phone was in my purse and on. Egads. There weren't many people at the funeral so I couldn't even nonchalantly turn it off as it would play the "I'm being turned off" song. I just prayed nobody would call me. They didn't. Whew!! I would have been mortified. I have a peeve against people who have no cellphone manners and then I almost had my own bad phone manners incident. I have a friend who answers her phone to tell me she can't talk. So I ask why she answered the phone. She says to tell me she can't talk. Oy!!
Gotta run. My dryer buzzed so I need to move the next load over. I didn't do one chore yesterday so I'm stuck doing ALL of them today. Ugh! I had to put Timber out before I killed him a bit ago. I was sweeping. I swept up a plastic bottle which he had been chewing on and using as a toy a few days ago. Wellllll, he thought I wanted to play so he jumped into the pile of swept-up crud, grabbed the bottle, and jumped around waiting for me to take chase. Damn dog. I was so perturbed but he was so funny that I had to laugh, which set him off on a gallop from the living room to the utility room and back again. So now I need to go sweep again. And finish the laundry. And, and......
4月19日 Ranting from a cynic...Journalism ain't what it used to be. Instead of just reporting the news broadcasters and journalists now analyze it to death. Have you ever watched a Little Dribblers basketball game? Instead of setting up plays and passing the ball, etc, you basically have ten little kids running around chasing and trying to get one ball. That's what network news reminds me of nowadays. Last week it was Imus 24-7, this week it's the Virginia Tech tragedy. I don't mean to diminish the incident at VT, but once I've seen an interview with Dr. Keith Ablow or others, I don't need to see it over and over and over... Granted, I wouldn't know they're showing it over and over if I weren't glued to the frickin' television. I thought one of Matt Lauer's interviews this morning was comical (in an ironic way) when he's showing pictures of the killer and asking the "expert" if it was bad for the media to show pictures of the killer. ??? I could almost picture NBC execs yesterday when they got the package of crap from the VT shooter, dancing around, "Looky, looky, looky what WE got. ALL the networks got anthrax but we got anthrax from terrorists AND sick, demented stuff from a killer. Let's get it on the air!" It's probably already on YouTube. What a great thing YouTube is...you can watch a talking dog say "I Wuv OOOO," the hanging of Saddam, and scenes from a mass murder.
Something else that's buggin' me that the media is doing is trying to find blame somewhere for what a disturbed young man has done. Anyone who works at a school can tell you that there are all kinds of privacy laws protecting students, not to mention civil laws that protect all of us. So why second-guess college security and administrators? They're probably doing that enough themselves. I go to work at a college every weekday and not once have I thought to myself that one of these kids might come in and shoot me. Even now I'm not thinking that is a probability. And believe me we do have some strange ducks attending school here, and teaching here, and working here...
I was reading a forum on either msn or cnn where readers could post their feelings about the VT tragedy. One of the posts struck me as rather ironic. It was from someone in the UK and I'll paraphrase it as, "I hope you Americans see how horrid it is to have guns and I want to express my HATRED to you Americans who still believe in having guns." Yes, I think hatred will go a long way in changing that whole "right to bear arms" philosophy...
And from the serious to the sublime...
My boss told me to stop asking the Spanish kids to say "fax." I have a tennis player from Spain who sends faxes to his folks. I try my best to get him to say "fax machine" and "fax" as many times as possible, just for my own junior high amusement. Have you ever heard anyone with a Spanish accent say the word "fax"? It sounds like "fux." (teeheeheeheeheehee) Jorge thinks it's funny, too. He humors me...
It's a beautiful day in East Texas today. I hope it's beautiful where you are, and that you are in a place where you can recognize and appreciate the beauty...
4月17日 Wow.Today I am aware that I live a charmed life. I haven't had to live through a tragedy like the one at Virginia Tech University, or 9-1-1. I guess the worst thing I've ever had happen in my life was my nephew getting hit in the head with a tree limb and nearly dying. The deaths I've been close to were in the natural order. Grandparents, parents, etc. I can't imagine anything as horrific as what happened in Virginia. I can watch hours and hours of it on television and I still can't grasp the reality of what those people are dealing with right now.
Last weekend I watched "United 93." I was skeptical of the movie when it came out but watched it anyway. My usually short attention span took a holiday and before I knew it the movie was over and I was sitting there with tears running down my cheeks. It was so realistic.
Well, I have to cut this short. We're in another severe thunderstorm watch tonight and I want to turn the computer off before the electricity goes off or something.
My prayers are with the people at Virginia Tech University, and with you.... 4月14日 Stuff 'n such...We had us some cuh-razy weather in Texas last night. Tornados, golf-ball sized hail, and now a cold front. Brrrr!!! I think my blood was already thinned out in preparation for summer temps so I've had a chill all day. Timber has been curled up on his bed all day. I had to practically toss him out the back door a bit ago because he was walking around with his back legs crossed to keep from peeing on himself. He peed while walking in a circle and then immediately banged on the door again. Crazy dog. It's 40-45 degrees outside, but it's damp and overcast so it feels colder. Last week we enjoyed 75-80 degree weather so you see why our thermostats are confused. Thank goodness the terrible storms moved off north and east of here because I went to sleep as soon as I heard the rain. If a tornado had blown in Timber and I would be hangin' out of a tree somewhere because I didn't hear a thing after the initial noise of the wind blowin' in.
I can tell I'm aging, besides the obvious signs like weaker vision and shifting body parts (sonofabitchin' gravity!!). I monitor weather and bowel movements much, much closer now than I ever have. Why IS that? I can remember my parents connnnnnnstantly talking about their poop and thinking it was so gross. When you're younger, you just go when ya feel the need and it doesn't cross your mind otherwise. Now I have a mental "poop-journal" monitoring the whens, how oftens, and other particulars of my bathroom habits. I don't even know WHY, I just made the realization that it's something I unconsciously started paying attention to. I used to think my Daddy was avoiding real conversation because he always asked about the weather when I called him. Now I realize he asked because he realllly wanted to know about the weather. I'll be talking to my niece on the phone and, before I know it's even coming, I say, "Wellllp, how's the weather out there?"
I read an article on msn written by a language specialist (sorry, lady, I can't remember your name) who said she grew up in the South and she hasn't heard the term "nappy-headed" in years. Well, she must not have grown up in Texas or Louisiana because we still use it. My son calls his children "little nappy-headed boys." Or I'll tell my son it's time for a haircut by telling him he needs to cut his nappy hair. My son and his birth family use the term fairly frequently, in the same way my mother used to tell me to brush my ratty hair. (def. Ratty: hair so tangled it looked like rats had been suckin' on it or livin' in it) This brings me to the affirmation that it all depends on how you use words that determines their offensiveness. In my part of the world it's not just a "black thing" although it mostly is because more black people have the curly, coarse hair that is considered "nappy." My Daddy and brother had thick, coarse, dark hair when they were young so we called their heads nappy. (Much to my brother's chagrin as he spent hours in the bathroom each morning with a hot-comb trying to coax the thick curls into a "Beatle haircut.")
Several months ago I told you about Nelly, a chocolate lab who had been dragged behind a truck and left for dead in a ditch. To update, Nelly has now left the vet's office and is living with the lady who rescued her from the ditch. The dog is running around with her new family of humans and other labs and looks happier than a hog on ice. She has scars on her skin but not on her spirit, thank God. It took about 5 months for her bones and severe cuts to heal. The boys who say they "accidentally" dragged her are gonna get away with it with no punishment or even cruelty charges being filed against them. Little bastards. One of the teens had charges filed on him a few months later for a drive-by shooting. Not a smart kid. He did a drive-by at a house off of a dirt road that wasn't well-traveled. Didn't take long to figure out which vehicle did the drive-by when about 3 cars a day travel the road. Duh.
I've really been trying to cultivate a taste for different wines. Unfortunately, the only ones I like are the sweet ones. I've studied food pairings and I try the different wines with the recommended foods and.....blech. The description of the wine says "you'll taste apple with some vanilla in the oak with maybe an essence of cinnamon" or something like that. I pucker up and take a sip and - pah! - vinegar!! Every time!! I'm beginning to think that growing up on KoolAid, sweet tea, and beer has ruined my taste buds for fine wine. Beer. Ummmm. Now THERE is a fine beverage...
Okay, folks, I'm shivering like a dog shittin' a peach seed so I'm gonna get Timber and crawl under a quilt for a little nap. Hope y'all are havin' a good weekend... 4月11日 Mistakes...Wow, Don Imus made a big ol' ugly mistake, didn't he? He'll probably end up losing his job over making a stupid statement about the Rutgers women's basketball team. What I don't understand, though, is why everyone got up-in-arms about his "racist" statement. In my opinion it was a sexist statement, not a racist one. The term "ho" has transcended all races and age groups now. Whether it's said in jest or one is seriously being referred to as a ho (whore) I've heard all kinds of people use the term. That doesn't make it right, I'm just pointing out that I don't feel it's necessarily referring to black women only. Anyway, the remark was stupid and uncalled for when referring to a specific group of women and he should suffer some consequences. But lose his job? I don't know... Have we gotten to a point where there's no forgiveness, only punishment and revenge? I saw Whoopi Goldberg on Anderson Cooper (CNN) last night and she talked about how a precedent had been set when Jimmy the Greek and others lost their jobs due to racist remarks and based on that Imus should lose his job. As my Mother used to say, "Two wrongs don't make a right." Whoopi Goldberg also talked about how his downfall was that he addressed his slurs toward a specific group. He might have gotten away with a generalization, maybe, about women basketball players being tough ho's, but can't get away with naming the Rutgers team specifically. If specificity can get ya fired, then why do The Donald [Trump] and Rosie [O'Donnell] still have their jobs? They've done quite a bit of shit-slingin' at each other and at others and they're still on tv. (Unfortunately!!) I sound like I am probably an "Imus in the Morning" fan but I've never listened to or watched it. I don't know anyone who does. B-o-r-i-n-g. I know one damn thing, I've also stopped watching the network morning shows this week. MAN! They get on somethin' and won't let go. They're more tenacious than a bulldog. By the second day of endless interviews with people giving their opinion about Don Imus, it started feeling like they were beatin' a dead horse. Let It Go, People! Sheesh.
I bet President Bush sends Imus a thank-you note. Here's why...
Here's a schedule of my local news for the past two nights:
10 minutes of Imus crap.
30 seconds about the military increasing soldiers' tours of duty to 15 months.
7 minutes about Anna Nicole Smith's baby girl Dannielyn Hope Marshall Stern.
25 seconds about Nancy Pelosi's visit to the Middle East.
20 seconds to give us the death count of Americans in Iraq.
8 minutes of Weather!
3 minutes of Sports which included an interview with a coach about the Imus crap.
A story about a smoking chimp. (I'm NOT kidding.)(I think they refer to this type of story as "the happy ending.")
Lucky for me, I haven't gotten fired for saying stupid stuff or I would be perpetually unemployed. I don't usually say mean stuff. Usually. Oh, and, if I've said anything in this blog that hurt your feelings or pissed you off.......get over yourself.
4月9日 The iPod...I've given up on my beautiful little green iPod I got for St. Patrick's Day. It came into my house and proceeded to kick my ass. My nephew kinda got it to work but it wouldn't work the way it was supposed to. I took it, with my computer tower, to Dallas for my nephew to work on. I had a friend from our IT department at school look at it. The same nephew came to my house and tried again. The consensus of all who know more about computers than I was that I should exchange it for another and see if that made a difference. So I did. And it didn't. In fact, by installing a new one it negated all the things my nephew had done to get the first one to work. My Windows xp refuses to communicate with the Apple device. So I'm done. Despite reading about all the problems others have encountered trying to use the iPod, I still feel like such a failure. Like I told my peeps, though, I don't want to learn computer programming for a tiny f*cking iPod, and that's about what would happen if I figured out how to get the thing to work. So...does anyone have an old 8-track I can buy? That seems to be about my speed. I feel like this is an age thing, but then I feel like everything lately is an age thing. Being hormonal isn't helping my attitude. All I wanted to do all day was rip somebody's head off and shit down their neck. That sounds like it would be so, I don't know, satisfying. Anyway, I remember at age 17ish being able to calculate exactly how many words to allow to play of the 3rd song on track 2 before I would hit "next track" in order to get all of my favorite song on the last track to play without having to listen to the entire 8-track cassette. (You had to be there to understand what the hell I just said. Know, though, that it took perfect timing and dead-on accuracy.) A coupla years after that I could go by instinct and feel on exactly how long to fast forward or rewind a cassette tape to get to the song I wanted to hear. Even with a cd I can click "next" pretty dang fast to get to my favorite song. But that little 1" iPod Shuffle stopped me dead in my tracks (excuse the pun). Fine. Whatever. I must stop beating myself up about this. I need to remember that I'm a good person. I was happy before the iPod, I can be happy again. DAMMIT, I realllly wanted that iPod. I envisioned myself with the little green iPod clicked onto the front of my shirt with the earphone wire inside my shirt like the cool people, Timber on his leash, the two of us bee-bopping down the street. If we saw someone we knew I'd give 'em a head-bob so they'd know that yes, I was speaking, but speaking in tune to whatever fantastic music I was listening to on my iPod. Not an mp3 player from Wal-Mart. No, no, no. My iPod Shuffle. I had playlists that included Korn, Tu-Pac, Paulo Nutini, Frank Sinatra, Tim McGraw, Bob Marley, and the South Austin Jug Band. I would never be bored with such a variety of sounds and styles. But it's all over. Now if Timber and I go for a walk I'll be the one just staring ahead and I'll wave at people with a goofy old lady wave. I guess I could keep the earphones and fake the iPod. Naaaa. That wouldn't be cool. And if I forgot and actually heard something someone said to me I'd give myself away. Then I'd be that WEIRD lady that walks around with earphones in her ears for no reason. Little kids would run toward their houses when I appeared. Okay, okay. I'm taking the iPod back to Target tomorrow. All they'll give me is a "store credit." Great. There's nothing else I can buy with my "store credit" that's even 1/2 as cool as the iPod. Hey, I can use my iPod "store credit" for a, um, a bunch of personal hygiene products and some dog food. NOT.
And to top it all off, the Astros are having their worst start since 1990. 4月8日 The Cast-Iron Skillet...My parents had an assortment of cast-iron skillets, griddles, Dutch-ovens, and cornbread makers. Some of them were given to them by family members, most were inherited when my grandparents died. I can remember Daddy cooking over a campfire, telling us that was how the cowboys used to cook on cattledrives. Every fall sometime around the first frost when the mornings were real cool but not cold, Daddy would cook a breakfast outside. He would fry potatoes and sausage in one of the big Dutch ovens and cook biscuits on the lid. Mmmm. (Heart attack in a skillet!) I remember cold, rainy days with chili or stew bubbling on the stove in one of the big cast-iron skillets. The smell was comforting as we snuggled next to the heater and watched the nasty weather outside. Mother would have two of the skillets full of hot oil when she made her fried chicken. She used the cast-iron skillets almost daily. She did use the griddles every morning when she fixed our breakfast. She used those old griddles to cook the perfect egg or make perfect giant pancakes. She lectured us about not leaving them soaking in the sink as it would make them rust and ruin the seasonin'. I didn't know what that meant at the time but know now that it's the way the skillets are tempered that make them cook stuff real good without a lot of stickin' or burnin'. It was a real pain in the ass to carry those heavy skillets of used oil outside and dump 'em (And dump 'em far enough away from the house not t'get flies!), then wash and dry them. Ugh. They're pretty dang heavy! Well, I brought the skillets home with me when my parents died. Nobody else wanted one. My sister and sister-in-law prefer the lighter, non-stick skillets. One niece is not much of a cook (she's always too busy!) and the other hadn't become domestic at the time. I use the skillets almost everytime I cook. They're perfect for everything. I can use them on top of the stove or in the oven. I feel a connection to my Mother when I use the skillets. I can see her in her red & white checked apron with flour across her belly from standing next to the cabinet while she dredged her chicken or rolled out a pie crust. She always stood with her left hand on her hip and did all the stirring or turning with her right hand. The whole time she was cooking she was coordinating all of us who were within earshot. She wasn't one of those mothers who did all the work and who didn't like people bothering her in the kitchen. Oh, no. We were all expected to pitch in. The benefit to that is that my sister and I learned how to cook pretty dern good. I've been shellin' peas since I was about four years old. Back then I didn't know it was work. I thought it was great fun to sit on the porch with all the other women and shell peas for supper. Well, until my fingers started getting sore. Anyway, back to the cast-iron skillets... It's kinda cool having such a connection to the past. To know that my parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and maybe further back have eaten food prepared in the same skillets I use today is interesting. I have now passed a cast-iron Dutch oven to my youngest niece (CeeCee's mom). The last time I was at her house she made some pasta sauce in the skillet. As she stood at the stove with her left hand on her hip stirring the sauce, I could hear my Mother's laugh...and it was so comforting... 4月5日 Dad-gum Astros!See what I mean? Monday I was full of hope and excitement for the season. By Wednesday night I was ready to kill Brad Lidge and give up baseball forever. CRAP! Lidge is supposed to be our "closer" but he's more likely the "loser." Ugh. Monday night I was so excited when the game started, through the 7th inning, and then BOOM - the tie, then the go-ahead, then the loss. I felt like I dropped my popsicle in the sand. Then the same thing Tuesday night. I may start watching hockey. Or bowling. Why not just turn off the tv and do something else? Good God, people - let's keep this REAL. Hahahahaha...
I get to stay home and sleep in tomorrow for Good Friday. I'm soooo happy about that. I'll probably wake up at 7:00 a.m. and not be able to go back to sleep. My internal alarm clock is used to waking up early. By Monday morning I'll have it readjusted to sleeping later and then I won't be able to get up to come to work on time. It's crazy. I'm crazy.
Y'all have a great day...
4月1日 The Weekend...and Opening DayI got home this afternoon around 3:30 after spending a coupla nights in Dallas with "The Babies." I had a GREAT time just hanging out with my niece, nephew, their spouses, and (drum roll, pls) ADDIE and CEE-CEE. The babies are so different. Addie is the world's "happy-go-luckiest" babies ever born while Cee-Cee is high maintenance. Cee-Cee has developed so much since her little 2-lb butt was born. She's up to 10 lbs 10 oz and seems to have an old soul. I've read that children who go through a lot due to being preemie or being ill have a maturity unlike regular babies. Anyway, Cee-Cee looks me right in the eyes and I feel like she's speaking to my soul. We just stare at each other sometimes when "The Others" aren't looking. I know it's weird but I feel like our souls are talking to each other through our eyes. I love her so much. Addie? Oh, yeah...My Addie. I've always liked to sing. I don't do it very well but I still do it for my own enjoyment. Today when I laid down with Addie to get her to sleep, she sang herself to sleep!! She stuck her thumb and a finger in her mouth and just kinda chanted in baby-babble until she faded off to sleep. So does Addie speak to my soul? Oh yeah, but she does it through my heart. And these are just the girls! You should see me when My Boys (great-nephews) are around. THE funniest, most handsome little guys in the world!! I didn't think there could be any kids more special than my nieces and nephews but I'll be damned if the next generation of nieces and nephews aren't just as special!
I spent two whole nights and three days in Dallas. This homebody just doesn't DO that very often. My good dogsitter was available this weekend. Johnathan does a great job watching Timber and the house and I trust him not to have wild parties over here while I'm away. Of course, he knows I would kill him. Anyway, he even lets Timber sleep with him. Timber was so glad to see me today. It's hard to tell if he missed me because he acts just as glad to see me when I just drive around the block.
Today was opening day for the 2007 baseball season. My Houston Astros will play tomorrow. I really like football. I'm in Texas - I'd be a freak if I didn't like football. Basketball is my favorite sport to watch. But baseball...I don't know. There's something different about baseball. Maybe it's because I can remember my Daddy and brother staring at the radio as they listened to games back in the 60s. Maybe it's because my brother lived and breathed baseball when we were kids (and still does) and I've always thought my brother is the shiznit, the bomb-diggidy, and the cat's meow all rolled into one. Maybe it's because baseball symbolizes renewed life when it starts in the spring and brings joy all through the hot summer. Maybe it's because the players look good in baseball pants and all look like they have big hoo-hoos because they have to wear a cup for protection. I don't know. At my house there were lots of important days...Christmas, Easter, our birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Election Day, and Opening Day of Baseball. Baseball is woven through my life. It's uniquely American. A hot dog tastes different at a ballpark. Nothing is as green as the infield of a baseball diamond. The National Anthem sounds better in a baseball park than it does almost anywhere else in the world. (Except for when Roseanne Barr butchered it.) "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" is a baby's lullaby in our family. Nowadays, every sport, every business or organization has a baseball cap with their logo on it. I remember when only baseball players had baseball caps. Whether little league or major league, you were known to be a baseball player if you had a cap. It meant something to have that cap. Guys that wore a baseball cap were known immediately to be jocks. It was great. So today baseball began for another season. I'm full of hope today, as is every baseball fan in America (except maybe the Rangers fans - HA!!) that their team will still be in the running for the pennant in August and September. We're all dreaming that our team will be in the World Series in October. Today our team didn't have one loss, tomorrow we might, so today is the best day of the season unless we go on to win the World Series.
GO ASTROS!!!!! |
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