by Sarah | Nov 2, 2013 | All About Me, Story of Me
I honestly don’t know what got me started on it.
I wasn’t one of those little girls that grew up dreaming of being Miss America.
I wanted to be Wonder Woman.
Or Princess Leia (minus the kissing my brother part).
Or on Broadway would suit me fine.
All I know is that I ended up signing up for the Junior Miss Pageant (the ONE year they tried to ‘dignify’ it by calling it ‘Young Woman of the Year’). And in the same year I signed up for the Miss Indianapolis Teen pageant.
Two pageants, one year.
I didn’t win either of them.
I won secondary awards. Fitness, presence and composure, finalist talent, non-finalist talent. I made it to the finals of one, 4th place over all.
I have to say…
I had a crap-ton of fun doing them. I knew I’d never do another one, I didn’t care to. I’m so glad I had that experience.
From the pressure of performing at the top of my game and being quick on my feet to the answers. To the endless rehearsals for the silly little dances they had us do.
The camaraderie of the pageant brought me friends during my senior year I didn’t have the rest of school.
The general stand-offishness of everyone in the other pageant that led to me just glad it was over.
I learned a lot, and I gained a lot, and I look back on it with immense fondness.
And yes, I kept my plaques.
by Sarah | Nov 1, 2013 | All About Erik, All About Home, All About Me, All of Us, NaBloPoMo
I have two tales of raccoons…one with a happy ending, the other…well…I figured for the first day of NaBloPoMo I’d be nice and not ruin the month too early.
This first story happened not too long ago, right here at this house with that big fat sucker in the picture over there. <<—
That is my driveway that Mama Coon was perched on, right over the gulley and the pipe that runs under my driveway where she lived with her babies.
Where she would come out regularly and pull any tiny scrap of food out of one of our trash cans that we lost the lid to. Even if it meant strewing crap across three yards to do it.
To make matters better, her and her little brats started to chew and rip at our shingles as the weather turned colder. They wanted IN.
They would destroy our roof to do it.
So we, naïvely perhaps, called animal control.
After all, they were being destructive to property now, not just purely a nuisance.
The best advice he could give us was this…(it’s been a while, the words might not be exact):
“You have a big trash can? Good. Set a trap and catch the raccoon. Fill a good tall trash can with water and drop the trap in. They drown real fast, don’t worry. Once she’s dead, wrap her up in a big trash bag and throw her away. Get all three of them, or they’ll never leave.”
Erik and I stared at each other slack-jawed for a while. We thought about Denver, quite young at the time, and what he would think if he caught wind of what happened. Plus, really? That’s flat out cold murder. It’s not hunting (which I’m fine with) or euthanization of a sick pet (which hurts but is sometimes necessary). It’s flat out murder.
Not cool, dude.
In the end we opted for trap & release. We’re fortunate enough to live on the border between suburbia and rural. We borrowed three traps, got all three of those buggers caught and took them miles away and released them.
In some cases, the less humane option is vitally necessary (as the other coon story will show)…but not every single time.
~shudder~ Could you kill a coon for no reason when the trap and release option was just as easy?
by Sarah | Oct 31, 2013 | All About Me, Blogging Life, NaBloPoMo
Considering my brain-dead-ness since Denver went into the hospital, I got a part time job, and life in general just blew up with activity…
I knew it was time for drastic measures.
Since BlogHer took over NaBlo it’s a monthly challenge, but I like the old challenge days when it was just November.
Still, I’m doing it. I always find it sparks me back to life and at the very least I have prompts when my own ideas are just not coming thanks to work, or kids, or husband, or home, or writing, or any other source of disruption in my life.
So tomorrow it begins.
I’m diving in again.
It’s been a long year, but NaBloPoMo, here I come again.
by Sarah | Oct 28, 2013 | All About Denver, All About Erik, All About Family, All About Kennedy, All About Me, All About Molly, All of Us
I’m a long time self-admitted geek of the Star Trek variety. I fell in love with Star Trek: TNG when I found it during its 4th season, and have never looked back.
Erik is both a sci-fi Aliens, Predator, Star Trek sort of Geek…and a horror Geek…and a few other Geeks I don’t understand.
Denver found Star Trek with the re-invention of Star Trek. He’s moved on to go back in time (thank you, Netflix) and watch EVERY episode of EVERY incarnation, swiped Erik’s movies to watch EVERY movie. The documentaries and anniversary specials, too. Since then he’s moved onto Battlestar Galactica, tried Dr. Who, and so on…
In the past eight or so months there’s a new sort of Geekling coming up in this house.
The girls are obsessed with all things Avengers.
Not just Avengers, though.
Comics.
They are making comics left and right – the one in this post was one of their first. One page, simple, with the battle of their beloved Avengers.
The obsession has grown so that their coloring books are painted on the front and back covers with comics. They swipe my printer paper and draw panels to fill in their stories. From super hero tales to stories about their cats…they are comic booking it up.
I, admittedly, am slightly clueless about comics. My Geek flag didn’t fly that far, even when I began my X-men addiction. I only have a few of those comics.
So we’ll venture into another realm of geekery.
Now…excuse me while I try to find some art classes for them…and seek out the perfect first comic for them both.
And considering their propensity to tear up anything they own, it will have to be one that it doesn’t matter if it ends up damaged.
by Sarah | Oct 24, 2013 | All About Denver, Cystic Fibrosis, Special Needs
Three years ago we didn’t know.
Three years ago Denver had “asthma”. An occasional inhaler on the Cross Country field was needed.
A yearly, to bi-yearly round of antibiotics to treat pneumonia (which was my clue).
Then we got the diagnosis.
Last year was the first hospital stay.
1 full week.
The life-changing event still didn’t change much at home.
An occasional inhaler. A prescription for vitamin K. A small device for his percussion that he could carry with him it was so compact.
Fast forward another year.
Another hospital stay.
And Denver gets his first new car.
No, wait. It just costs as much.
The dreaded “vest”.
Or as Kennedy always calls it “The shakey-shake”.
We expected him to progress.
But not so fast.
Half the time I feel so blindsided.
I hate that he is so painfully aware of every change in his body.
I hate knowing that is sister will also progress one day, definitely before I’m ready, hopefully not before she’s ready.
Denver is smart, very intelligent, he researches and reads and wants to be a doctor after all of this. He gets it, and he lives it, and he tries to move beyond, although I think he had some trouble this year. His hospital stay came right at the start of Cross Country season and threw him off for the rest of the year.
Kennedy is showing signs of great intelligence.
Who knows, maybe one day one of them will be the doctor that finally cures this disease.
But for now they’re still my babies.
And they are tied to machines for at least thirty minutes out of every day.
And it hurts.
I don’t like that this is their ‘normal’.
I don’t like that Denver now has to add the “shakey-shake” into his schedule.
I never will.
by Sarah | Oct 13, 2013 | Photography, Scavenger Hunt Sunday, Songography
I’m diving into Songography this week to mix it up with my Scavenger Hunt Sunday. To help with this week’s entries I had lots to do, I spared you 95% of my Haunted House pictures…but included one since I was desperate for a pink picture. Everything else was from our Harvest Festival and mine & hubbies anniversary.
All taken w/ Canon Rebel XS or LG Lucid 2.
1. M is For…
Molly, of course. Couldn’t do this prompt without my beautiful girl.
It’s also for Moon…loved the moon sitting amongst the sunset-lit clouds.
2.What you Saw Today
Pumpkins. Lots of pumpkins at the festival.
And a small plane flying low over the festival.
3. Corner
Another mantis paid us a visit this week, this time he hung out on the corner of my front stoop, posing for shots.
I shot this one “from the hip” and loved the cockeyed angle and the way it caught the corner of the bin of gourds.
4. Pink
I loved the pink silks I found on some of the corn in the maize-maze…most of it had turned black, but some were gorgeously pink.
And then there was this guy’s creepy pink mouth at The Children’s Museum’s Haunted Hollywood exhibit.
5. Hands
Kennedy loved that she could hold the little pumpkins in her hands.
After 11 years of marriage we still like to hold hands at dinner.
Songography:
Look Out Any Window by Bruce Hornsby:
Lyrics that moved me were: There’s a man workin’ in a field
See’s the rain and it’s burning
He’s saying this can’t be real
Oh as he sees the color of the fields turnin
This time of year there are any number of farmers working out in the fields around here. I didn’t have my camera with me when I happened to stumble upon it, but I thought these shots I got at the fall festival captured the essence of it:
You can find more pictures over at my flickr account.
I honestly don’t know what got me started on it.
