The Nerd Blog

It is time for a confession.  I have to admit it.  Here, publicly, for everyone to see.  I am (gasp) a nerd.  It’s true.  I know.  If you could not tell from the story of how I met my husband (see my blog dated February 18, 2013).  But I am.  I am the kind of nerd that celebrates March 14, May 4, and September 20.  I am the kind of nerd that pastes photos of Admiral Ackbar onto mousetraps.  I am the kind of nerd that has a sticker on my keyboard’s space bar that says, “The Final Frontier.”   I am the kind of nerd that knows who the “Egyptian God of Frustration” is, as well as who “Vera” is.  I am the kind of nerd that knows words/phrases in Elvish, Chinese, and Klingon, as well as what “as you wish,” is code for. 

I have been meaning for some time now to do a blog about being a geek/nerd.  Whatever you call it.  There are people who make distinction between the two terms, but I, for one, use them interchangeably.  For the purposes of this writing, and to make things simpler, I will say "nerd" to describe myself, because I'm not unusually knowledgeable about science or computers (which is the meaning some people ascribe to the word "geek.")  But I AM unusually knowledgeable about Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings.  

This one is for my peeps out there- you know who you are.  The ones who eat pie on National Pi Day, March 14.  The ones who watch all three (or six, if you happen to be of that persuasion) Star Wars movies on May 4, National Star Wars Day, and go around telling people, “May the Fourth be with you!”  The ones who watch every single episode of Firefly, then watch Serenity, and then curse Fox and cry for more, on September 20.  The ones who get the jokes about Admiral Ackbar and The Final Frontier.  The ones who even know who Admiral Ackbar is.  The ones who know that Zack once referred to Garibaldi’s Daffy Duck poster as “The Egyptian God of Frustration.”  The ones who know who “Vera” is on the show Firefly.  The ones who have themselves picked up Elvish from The Lord of the Rings, Chinese from Firefly/Serenity, and Klingon from Star Trek.  And you guys also know that “as you wish” really means “I love you.”

Anyway, I am a nerd.  Which I am totally fine with that.  I LIKE being a nerd, and I'm proud of it.  At the risk of sounding narcissistic and completely full of myself, I venture to say that I LIKE myself.  I like how I am, and I like liking the things that I like.  I don't mean that I don't think I have room to improve, God knows I do, but what I mean is, I have a reasonable healthy self-esteem.  And as part of that, I am a nerd, and I like being one.

I wasn’t always a nerd.  As a child, I did always love reading.  I always loved superheroes and fairy tales and fantasy-type stories.  But I had no idea that those things were considered nerdy.  I hated, and I mean HATED, Star Wars when it first came out.  Yes, I am old enough to remember that.  I turned 8 that year.  And several of my friends were into it, but I did not go see it, and I just did not see the attraction.  I saw the original Kenner toys advertised on TV, but I wasn’t interested.  Imagine if I had purchased some of those, how much they would be worth now! 

It wasn’t until I was around 13, when I actually watched any part of a Star Wars movie.  I was on my eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C., and while we were in the hotel room, The Empire Strikes Back was on TV.  I complained the whole time, and begged my roommates to turn the channel.  I didn’t see what was so great about a guy in the snow getting attacked by a yeti and defeating it with a light saber.  And all the rest.  It just didn’t do anything for me.  It’s funny to remember that now, because now ESB is my favorite of the movies, and I can quote whole sections.  But at the time, I just didn’t get it.

Then when I was 14, I went out with some girlfriends to the movies and they chose The Return of the Jedi.  I endured it; it didn’t make any sense to me.  The speeder bike chase made me dizzy (still does, I must say).  Nothing about it appealed to me, except I did think Harrison Ford was good-looking.  Well.  He was.

It was also during my fourteenth year that I started dating.  I must say that in my high school, there were various cliques, and for a time I was an outcast, until the “brains” accepted me into their clan.  I didn’t really deserve to be in that group; I wasn’t smart enough.  My grades weren’t good enough.  I knew nothing about computers.  But they accepted me.  To this day I’m unsure why, but thankful.  Before long, I started dating one of the guys in the group, whom I will call John, because, well, that was his name.  John took me to see a movie called Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  It sounded like it would be horrible!  I couldn’t see why anyone would want to see a movie with that title!  However, as we sat through the opening credits, the name Harrison Ford flashed on the screen.  I turned to John, “You didn’t tell me Harrison Ford was in this.  If I had known that, I wouldn’t have complained.”  Well, I watched it and loved it.  Years later, I went on to watch the rest of the Indiana Jones series (even, much later,  “Indiana Geriatric and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”), and came to love Temple of Doom the least of them.  But at the time, Temple of Doom was all I knew, and I loved it.  Before high school was over, I was dressing up as Indiana Jones for Spirit Week.

It wasn’t until after I was married, however, that I saw all the Star Wars movies for the first time.  Sam (my ex-husband) and I went through a phase where we watched several movies that came in series.  We watched the Back to the Futures (which I loved but had no idea they were sci-fi), the Supermans (also loved but didn’t know they were considered to be sci-fi), and some others that actually weren’t sci-fi, but I don’t really remember all of what we watched.  What I do remember is that somewhere during that time I sat down (no doubt under some kind of duress) and watched all three of the Star Wars movies IN ORDER.  And at that time, I was like, “I GET it now.”  I saw why everybody was so crazy about these movies.  I even saw what people saw in sci-fi in general.  Once I saw all three movies in order, I understood the plot.  I felt, for the first time, the charm of the story, of the characters, and even the charm and mesmerizing quality of the overwhelming odds that the characters faced … and conquered.  I finally saw that the Star Wars movies were like a fairy tale, but set in outer space.  I immediately became a fan, not only of Star Wars, but of sci fi in general.  It was not long after, that I began to write my own sci-fi novel.  I started writing it in the early 90’s, and I still haven’t finished it (although I have worked on it quite a bit off and on).  I have done a few other things, like give birth to, raise, and home school a child, hold down several jobs over the years, participate in my church, do volunteer work, take classes, etc.  Not an excuse for not finishing my book, but a reason.  I set my priorities and lived by them. 

Anyway, I became a sci-fi fan.  And I didn’t realize it, but I had always been a fantasy fan.  As a child I had seen a cartoon on TV that was telling the Christian story using a lion as the Christ character.  Even as a kid, I looked at that, and said, “That’s Jesus!”  But I did not get to see the whole show for some reason and so never found out what it was called.  I was visiting my father (I was a child of divorce, what can you do?) one summer when I was around 12, and my step-siblings were busy one day, so I decided to read.  I found about five books on horses in my step-sister’s bookshelf, and the first one I read was by a man I’d never heard of, and was called A Horse and His Boy.  I devoured it eagerly, and when it was over, I returned to my step-sister’s shelf for more of the same.  I painstakingly read every one of the others, but they were all just stories about a girl who wanted a horse, and then there was some trouble, and then she got one.  Boring.  Especially on the heels of A Horse and His Boy.  I then asked my step-sister if she had anything else like that one, but she just made noises like she didn’t “get” that book, and she much preferred the other ones on her shelf.  Years later, I would hear a youth pastor would tell a story about a boy who was turned into a dragon, taken from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, by someone called C.S. Lewis, and I would run out to try to find a book by that author, but I would only come up with a volume of excerpts from his theological works.  More years would pass, and a college boyfriend would insist that I read The Chronicles of Narnia, and I would start The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but be fairly bored with it, and put it down just pages before it finally got good.  Even more years would pass, and then Sam, my ex-husband would tell me that I really needed to give The Chronicles of Narnia another chance.  And so at last, I did give Narnia a chance, and I read for the first time past the boring part, and found that I couldn’t put it down.  In reading The Chronicles, I found that I recognized the story of the boy turning into a dragon, and the horse story, and lo and behold, I had finally rediscovered that delightful lion story I had seen on TV as a child!  Apparently, I had been a fantasy-loving nerd all along and hadn’t even realized it! 

 

Nerds Vs. Non- Nerds

This is the thing about nerds that I think most non-nerds must not get.  Non-nerds see only reality.  They are concerned with things like inflation, jury duty, gas prices, new drapes, oil changes, sports stats, botox injections, and keeping up with the Joneses.  (No one seems to realize that the Joneses, in turn, are trying just as hard to keep up with THEM, but that, as they say, is another blog).  Non-nerds see only reality.  Nerds, however, are different. Nerds see reality as it is, but they also see what COULD be.  Nerds appreciate people who use their imagination enough to see beyond reality to what could be. 

Non-nerds see only what they can physically SEE.  Nerds are constantly fantasizing, imagining, thinking, brainstorming, and problem-solving.  Nerds think that non-nerds must be constantly bored.  Nerds are always fascinated- with stories, books, movies, drawings, costumes, and even with reality.  Everything around them excites and engages them.  Everything MOVES them.  If a nerd sees something he likes, he likes it so enthusiastically that he will read it, watch it, collect it, and dress up like it. 

Nerds use their imagination, and they seek out others who do, too.  Non-nerds tend to identify themselves with their job.  They think of themselves as plumbers, stockbrokers, dentists, or waitresses.  But a nerd identifies themselves with their fictional heroes- they think of themselves as Spiderman or Gimli or Black Widow or Yoda.  Nerds may appear on the outside to be mild-mannered Clark Kents, wearing glasses or even overweight, going around with their noses stuck in a Kindle or an iPad or a computer.   But in their reality, they are good-looking, wearing armor, riding on a fearless battle steed to fight a raging dragon to rescue a princess, earn wealth, and save the kingdom.  I don't understand why everybody wouldn’t prefer to be a nerd.

In the television show House, M.D., there was a character named Dr. Kutner who was a nerd.  He had met a person who had formerly been into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and then had joined a religious group, and then completely and drastically changed her way of life.  He was trying to explain to another character how he understood that something like that could happen.  And this is how his part of the conversation went:

“You can become a D’har Master.  Does that require further explanation?   … In college, I was really into science fiction.  Not like the guys with the $600 prosthetic ears who could swear in Romulan.  That was embarrassing to the rest of us who just thought it was good, smart literature.  I went to ONE convention.  By senior year, I was D’har Master of the Klingon Empire.   … You can’t have your eyes opened to something and not act on it.”

Non-nerds might look at us and think we are out of touch with world events because the last time they saw us, we were dressed up as a Mal Reynolds or Kaylee Frye.  But nerds look at world events, and say, "Whoa!  It's scary!  If we don't DO something about it, we could end up with a government like the Alliance!"  What most non-nerds don't realize is that sci-fi and fantasy novels/movies/shows address the same issues we face every day; they just address them in a way that's larger than life.  And they make us THINK.  We might be outwardly dressed as a Jedi, but on the inside, we have the most serious minds.  (There was a joke there for the nerds, but it will sail right on over the heads of most non-nerds.)  I once saw a guy with a tee shirt that said he was a superhero disguised as a nerd.  And that is really how it is.  We look like we are totally in left field, out there with our light sabers and our hobbit feet.  But the fact is, we are attracted to sci fi and fantasy because it not only takes a hard look at the world’s problems, but also, it tries to do something about them.  Nerds want to be Mal Reynolds because he is a thorn in the tyrannical Alliance’s side.  They want to be Batman because he fights crime.  They want to be Eowyn and kill the evil Witch King of Angmar.  They want to be Superman and save the world.  And because these are their goals in their imagination, and because this is the kind of thing that their minds are dwelling on, they’ll be more active citizens.  They’ll vote, and they’ll get involved, and they’ll protest, and some of them might even run for office.  And maybe non-nerds won’t realize that their motivation came from the last Orson Scott Card book they read.  But it did.

Nerds might be sitting around speaking to each other in Elvish while a life-size Boba Fett stands in the back of the room, and non-nerds might be sitting around on their leather couches worrying about their second mortgage while drinking their non-fat latte. Non-nerds might see nerds and think we're weird.  But nerds look at non-nerds and think they're BORED.

Thinking About Talking ...

I sometimes sit and watch people talking, whether in person or on TV, and I wonder  about it.  I mean, here are these people, who are basically big blobs of meat and guts and muscles and bones and organs.  And they can move around and make decisions and you know, just generally DO stuff.  And then they open their mouths and these sounds come out, and then other people understand what they mean by those sounds.  I mean, it fascinates me that, for example, that I can make certain sounds to you and you make sounds back to me and we each know what the other was thinking and wanting to convey.  It amazes me that my boss can come to my desk and make certain sounds, and that gets me to take certain actions.  I can go to a store, and make certain sounds to an employee, and even though I have never talked with this person before, she will direct me to a certain object in the store.  On TV, a cowboy can get on a stagecoach, and start making sounds in the direction of the beautiful widow he finds there, and she can, in turn, make sounds in his direction, and even though they have never met each other, they understand each other.  And those of us in the audience understand them both.  I mean, the invention of language and word to communicate is a fascinating thing.

I mean, I think about that movie Caveman, and how they went around talking about "ool" and all that, and that however much that movie was fiction, surely at some point, communication was similar to that.  And yet, over the few short centuries that we have been here on this earth, we have learned how to communicate things like, "indubitably," "loquacity," "ostentation," and "Will the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant?"  It just astounds me that we have learned to communicate with our fellow man so well, and are so attuned to each other, that when we do meet up with someone whom we can't understand, we don't know how to handle it.  If you meet someone who doesn't speak the same language, you smile and nod, but if you really need to convey something, you get frustrated and resort to drawing pictures or an impromptu charade game.  Which it's discouraging when you go through something like that, but even that makes me think, "How marvelous it is that it works so well when it DOES work!"  (Which is also what I think about traffic laws whenever I see a car wreck.  I'm always amazed, given the way we all drive around in lanes right next to each other, that MORE accidents don't happen.  But THAT is another blog ...)

I sit around thinking about stuff like this way too often.  :)

Hospitals, Hats, and Happy Birthdays

Hello, everyone! Sorry I have not posted in a while! I have been busy with … well … I will paste some recent facebook statuses so you can see. April has been a wild ride:


April 1- Eric had outpatient knee surgery this afternoon, and he came through it GREAT! Apologies to those of you who received a phone call from him afterwards where he was moaning and groaning about how much pain he was in, and it was only an April Fool joke. He is actually pain-free (so far- they say it may get bad tomorrow), and he woke up from the anesthesia fine (anesthesia is always a particular danger to someone with his condition), so I am really thankful to have him back, whole and healthy, and in his right mind- well, as much in his right mind as he ever was! haha! Also as far as we can tell, the doctors did NOT leave a rubber chicken or anything in his leg for April Fool's Day, so that is good news. To those of you who knew about his surgery and prayed, thanks so much! To everyone, please join me in thanking God for bringing Eric through it safely!

April 14- Hello, everyone, Please pray for my mother, who will turn 76 this year. She went to the hospital today, to the ER, with shortness of breath. They told her it was her heart, and they decided to keep her a couple of days to run some tests.

This has got me kind of rattled, because Mom doesn't get sick or go to the doctor. She hasn't been to the doctor since age 49, when she was climbing a tree at 11 pm, playing hide and seek with a bunch of kids, and broke her ankle coming down out of the tree. She is always so healthy and active, barely ever takes an aspirin. So, I know that it had to have been serious or she wouldn't have come to the ER. She said she had been having the shortness of breath for about two weeks, off and on, but that she realized it must be something serious when this morning she had to sit down and rest in the middle of getting ready for church. So please pray for her.

She is in good spirits and has been joking around with the doctors and nurses, and asking all the men whether they are single, because, she tells them, she is looking for a man!

Thanks for praying!



April 15- She has had a bad morning this morning, shortness of breath has been more noticeable. But I went by to see her on my lunch break, and she seemed like she had improved some.

April 15- later in the day- Thank you so much for the prayers. She is currently in ICU, but whatever they are doing to her, it is working! She is doing much better! She has had a host of visitors, and has been holding forth and entertaining them. With the nurses trying to keep her quiet so her monitors won't go off! She aims to misbehave! But I'm just so tickled that she feels like misbehaving! God is truly answering our prayers!

April 15- even later- She is grateful for all the prayers, and she says they are working! God has done a miracle in her! We are very thankful! She is not out of the woods yet, though, so please continue praying. She is expecting the cardiologist in a few moments when he comes out of surgery, to come and tell her whether she needs a heart catheterization to find out what is wrong and possibly to fix it with stents. I will keep everyone posted!  Thanks again for your prayers!

April 16- Update on my mom:

She is doing much better today. This afternoon, she had a heart catheterization to find out what was wrong. They found a 50 % blockage in one, and a 80% blockage in another. They put a stent in the 80% one, and they said it went in really easily. They said she came through the procedure fine, that she was awake the whole time, and joking around with the doctors the whole time. She had on a cow hat that she wore not only before the procedure, but all during the procedure. They tell me she will get to go home tomorrow or the next day with medications, so she is really happy about that!

Great story: She woke up about 6:00 am, complaining that she had lost her hearing aid. It had fallen out of her ear in her sleep. So I started looking around the bed for it, figuring it had gotten mixed up in some of her cords and cables that are connected to her. So I looked all under her covers, in the pillowcase, and under her legs, and under the bed, and in the mechanics of the bed, and we even called in the nurse, who helped us look. We didn’t find it, and I told Mom, "We’ve looked everywhere we can look, unless you have it stuck up your butt crack." Not ten minutes later, the nurse came back in to give her a shot in the hiney, and guess what she found? My aunt came to visit Mom, and she had left her hearing aids at home in the refrigerator (We learned later they meant ON the refrigerator). Mom said, "Well, I guess that’s better than leaving it in your butt crack!" But then Mom told my aunt, "At least I had mine ON me!"

Another great story: If you know my mom, you know that while she has been in the hospital, she has been asking every man that comes in the room if he is single, because, she tells them, she is looking for a man! So when the cardiology nurse (a woman) came in to explain to her about the procedure they were going to do in the Cath Lab. Mom immediately asked her, "Are there any single men down there?" The woman thought for a minute and said, "No, they’re all married. But there IS some nice eye candy down there." Mom said, "Well, even if they’re married, I can LOOK!" Then the woman told her, "The only ones single are myself and another woman." Mom said, "No, I don’t roll THAT way!"

But seriously, though, thanks so much to everyone who prayed. I was so afraid I was going to lose my mother yesterday, but God has truly done a miracle! She went from not knowing if she was going to be able to take her next breath, to wearing her cow hat into an operating room while flirting with all the doctors, in just over 24 hours! I am so thankful for what God has done!

April 16 – a little later - Here is one of the promised photos of Mom wearing her cow hat in the hospital. She is sleeping here, but don't let that innocent look fool you! She is a HOOT!

 

 

April 18- My mom is doing great. She is well enough to be moved to a regular room, but the rooms on the floor she is supposed to be on, are all taken up, so she is staying in ICU, but not for medical reasons. She has been taken off the catheter, and taken off the cannula, and is now only on various pills. But they are keeping her another night to do a sleep apnea thing, and then the cardiologist may keep her another day or two to try to make sure her meds are regulated. So she is well out of the woods, but it is still going to take time to get everything back to 100%. Thanking God for His continued favor!



April 19- Thanks, everyone, for your prayers! I always read her all the facebook posts, and I know they encourage her a lot! She needs to milk it instead of chomping at the bit to get out of there, she needs to lie back and let somebody take care of HER for a change. She did meet a male nurse she really likes (who is about 30 and married), and he takes her for a walk around the ICU occasionally. Last night I told him to have her back by eleven. But he is moving to LA in a few days. The course of true love never did run smooth. Lol

April 19- My mom is still in the hospital, and now Eric is in the hospital in another town. He was at his mom's house having severe stomach pains. He came to the ER, and the doctor said he thinks it's collitis, inflammation of the bowels, so they are keeping him to run more tests. Please pray for him.

My mom is still in the hospital, and they say she is going to get out tomorrow. (They have said that before, so I am not holding my breath). When she does go home, they are going to make her use oxygen when she is upright, and use one of those sleep apnea machines at night. For my mom, who has always been healthy, this will be a huge transition. Please pray for her as she tries to make this adjustment.

I covet your prayers as well, because April has been kind of rough. Eric's knee surgery, then the death of my grandmother, then almost losing my mother, and now Eric is in the hospital also. In a different hospital.

I love you all! Thank you so much for your prayers! We are so grateful to know we have your support!

April 20- Thanks, everyone! amazingly enough, I am keeping a good attitude (odd for me, I know, especially when I am under stress) but I would give ten dollars for just one extra hour of sleep. But no, like a good friend of mine said, "When it rains, it pours, but God has His own umbrella over us all, and He is taking care of us."  We are doing well, in spite of all the crap. God has a plan in all of this. So we must be in the safest place we can be, i.e., in the center of His will. Thank you all so much for your prayers! Your support and love and prayers mean so much!

April 20- later- Thank the Lord! My mom is (finally) out of the hospital. She could use your prayers as she transitions from being a healthy person who rarely even takes an aspirin and never goes to the doctor, to being a person who is on oxygen and has to take prescription medications. Before this, she hadn’t been to a doctor since she broke her ankle at age 49, and now she is 75. So having prescriptions and being on oxygen is something totally foreign to her. So please pray for her as she makes these adjustments.

Eric is still in the hospital. They ran another test on him today, but they haven’t told us the results of it yet. They have him on a clear liquid diet, in preparation for a test he may or may not take tomorrow, but we haven’t heard from the doc to be sure. Last I heard, they had not even decided. He is still in quite a bit of pain when the painkiller wears off, and he often feels nauseous. I covet your prayers for him. I pray that they find out what is wrong with him and fix it once and for all.

Please pray for me, for strength and wisdom and grace. Thanks so much for your prayers.

 

April 23- Finally! Eric is out of the hospital! Mom has been out of the hospital and staying at my house, but I haven't been able to see her because I've been staying at the hospital with Eric. And my daughter is here helping out! All my favorite people under one roof and on the mend! I'm so happy! Thank You, God!

So, yeah, April has been quite a roller coaster. It is now May 11, and I won’t tell you about May’s stresses. At least not yet. But with everything that has happened, I am exhausted, and trying to get caught up. However, I will say this. During the month of April, losing my grandmother, and almost losing my mom, and worrying that I might also lose Eric … I have learned to appreciate my loved ones while they are here.

Today, I am celebrating my birthday (it was May 10, but we are celebrating today). I am going to spend time with Eric, Mom, and my daughter, the best gifts (other than salvation) that I have ever been given.

I’m so thankful that they are all here to celebrate my birthday with me, and to celebrate Mother’s Day tomorrow. This birthday and Mother’s Day could have gone much differently, and I am so thankful that it isn’t that way. God has been good to me.

Tell all your loved ones how much you appreciate them today. Don’t wait. You never know what could happen. Take advantage of the fact that they are still with you, and say to them, now, all the things you would have wished you had said, if something were to happen to them. Carpe diem!

Mother-in-law Pointed a 38 at Me Sunday

So … how was your Saint Patrick’s Day?  I spent a small part of mine with my mother-in-law pointing a loaded gun at my head at close range.  Okay, so she swore up and down it wasn’t loaded, and she wasn’t really aiming at me, not even in fun.  She was just holding it up, and I happened to be in front of it.  And she spent the next half hour listening to Eric lecture her on gun safety and how that you never point a gun at somebody even if it isn’t loaded.  Then come to find out it WAS loaded.  Kind of scary, if you think about it.  But all’s well that ends well.  I’m still here.  Didn’t die.  :D  Any one you walk away from, right?  All in all, a good day, don’t you think?

My Afternoon at the Police Department

My best friend called me today around 3 pm, but I couldn’t answer the phone because I was in booking at the local police department getting fingerprinted. :O lol No, I wasn’t being arrested.

Actually I got a new temp job, which I am very excited about! Working for a company that does retirement planning. And I guess because we have access to sensitve files, they have all their employees get fingerprinted.

 In any case, it was a really neat experience, getting fingerprinted. Had to go into the detention area, past the holding cells, etc.

 Anyway, it's all done and I am enjoying my new job. I am not sure how long it is supposed to last; they say 2-3 weeks. I hope they like me, and that it turns out to be something permanent. I really like it there! But if it is only going to last for 2-3 weeks, I will be thankful for what I have! I'm very grateful and excited! Thank God for a job, even a temporary one!

A Tomato Worth 63 Cents?

Sooner or later, someone is going to ask, so as a preemptive strike, here is the answer.  My icon is a tomato with a 63-cent price tag because of a family story about my mother and grandmother that took place when I was growing up.  My grandmother, known as Mammaw to all us kids, was born in 1910, and brought up on a different work ethic than most people in my generation.  She believed you worked, period.  That was it.  No ifs, ands, buts, maybes, or excuses.  She was quite old, and still planting a garden every year, still tilling it with a roto-tiller, still chopping wood for the fire, and washing clothes in an old-timey washing machine.  My mother, her middle child, would try to get Mammaw to take it easy, to not work so hard.  Mom was afraid she would have some kind of collapse.  Every year, Mom would ask Mammaw to NOT plant a garden THIS year.  But Mammaw kept working.  Kept planting gardens. 

One day, Mom stopped by the store on her way home from work, just to pick up a single tomato.  She was outraged at what was then a high price for one tomato- sixty-three cents.  She came to Mammaw's house fussing about inflation, and told Mammaw, "I'll never fuss at you again for having a garden!" 

The story became a family joke, and made its way frequently into the cartoons I used to draw about all the inside jokes that only my family would ever understand.  Often my mother could be seen in those cartoons, holding (among other representations of other family jokes that were on her) a tomato with a 63-cent price tag.

Mammaw is long gone now, and my Mom recently celebrated her own 75th birthday.  We had a huge celebration for her, and we had 4 cakes made.  We had the cakes made with those photos that you can have the bakers put on top of the cakes.  I used the 63-cent tomato photo you see as my icon, and three other photos representing family inside jokes, as the photos for the cake decorations. 

And that is where that photo came from.  An old family joke.  I'll probably be sharing more of my old family jokes with my blog friends in the future, so ... stay tuned.  The others will be funnier.  :D

There's One in Every Crowd

The other day, in leadership class, the instructor told us to write something at the upper left hand corner of the page, and I wrote it in the upper right.  I may have been not paying attention, or it may have been because I never have learned to tell my left hand from my right very well (I must've been absent the day they covered that in kindergarten).  Seriously, I have to check my hands to see which one has a wedding ring on it.  But anyway, for whatever reason, I wrote it in the wrong place.  I found out what I had done when the instructor told us to write something else in the exact same place I'd just written something.  I knew then that I had goofed, and I raised my hand and stopped the instructor, told her what I'd done, and asked her to repeat the instructions.  This was the third or fourth time I had caused the poor woman trouble, but she handled it with aplomb, of course, telling me to just draw arrows.  But then she said something that kind of made me feel good.  She said to the rest of the class, "There's one in every crowd!" 

Now, I have heard that expression lots of times, but not usually about me.  It actually made me feel kind of good to be the cut-up, the trouble-maker, the fun one.  When she said that about me, it made me wonder, "Does this mean I am coming out of my shell, or does it mean that I should go back in?"

I don't know.  What do you think?  :)