Home Is Where The Heart Is

I usually do all of my shopping on Fridays. It IS payday, after all. So, true to fashion, yesterday, Little Britches and I hit the stores. He really hates to shop, but he is such a trooper about it. Anyway - while I was at the grocery store having my order rung up - the lady behind me was loading her items on the conveyor. The cashier noticed that the woman behind her only had 2 or 3 things in hand. She was almost finished with me so, she asked the customer behind me if she minded if she rang up the woman behind her with only a couple of items while she finished loading her things on to the conveyor. Are you following - or have a totally confused you? I'm going to finish my story either way. :0)

When asked if it was OK to ring up the other lady first, the woman behind me said, "NO! (sarcastically). Of course she can go first!" Kind of like, "Du-uh! Who would be so rude to not let her go first."

So, we all had a chuckle and the cashier said, "Can you imagine if people actually said no to requests like that? I'd like to be there to see their face."

To which, the woman with only a few items replied, "It can happen. I just moved here from Maryland and it happened there all the time."

Then I asked her, "Do you find people are friendlier in Indiana?"

"Oh, yeah."

By then I had my stuff ready to go and said the customary, "Y'all have a good day!", and I left the store.

I thought it was an interesting conversation about the nature of the people in this great state. There are always stinkers everywhere. There are also nice people everywhere. But, generally speaking, people in Indiana are warm, helpful, kind, courteous and just plain ol' pleasant. It almost reminds me of living in an old movie - in a time that has slipped on by for much of the country. A time when people were grounded with character, integrity, morals and a good work ethic. Maybe it's because there is so much farming that goes on here, keeping people connected to the earth or some yada, yada like that. I don't really know what it is. I just know I love it!

I remember when we first moved back here from spending 9 years in Florida. We were amazed at how friendly people were. All those years in the Sunshine State had wiped it from our memories. Even the cashier at the drive-through at McDonald's was chipper. In FL, it could be a completely frustrating experience to just try to get some fast food - because 9 times out of 10, the person taking our order was too lazy or put out with working to even enunciate when they spoke to us. We were never sure if they got our order right or not. (Usually, not.) Then you had to deal with the deep sighs and eye rolling. That's always a pleasant experience. Not! Coming home to Indiana was like a breath of fresh air after being trapped in a sewer. No offense, if you live in Florida. Maybe the whole state isn't that way. Or, maybe you just don't know anything different. :0) Or maybe you're one of those eye rolling, deep sighing, non-enunciating cashiers. Oh, dear! I hope not. Or maybe you like it when people are rude to you. Whatever...different strokes for different folks, I guess! It just wasn't my cup of tea. Anyway...

I said all that to say this: If home is where your heart is, then my heart is right here in the heartland. This is a great place to live. But, I'd still take the mountains, too! :0)

So, We Meet At Last - Part 3 of 3

Richie's mom, Aunt June, used to have me come and clean for her sometimes. One Saturday I had been over there cleaning, or napping, or chit chatting it up with Aunt June, as was sometimes our custom. Yeah, I'd bust my butt over there. Mom and Amanda came over to pick me up. We were sitting there, shooting the breeze with Aunt June, Uncle Richard and Richie when the door bell rang.

It was Richie's friend, Brent. Brent had lived just down the street for their whole lives. He was a pretty common fixture at their house. But, Brent had a friend with him today. A friend I had never met before. None of us had. That didn't change the fact that I knew who he was the second he walked through the door. We all did. I swear, it was like a younger version of my Uncle Terry had just entered the room. So, this was my brother.

He still didn't know who we were, though. He found out real quick like. He didn't know our faces, but he knew our names. All it took was Uncle Richard making this very innocent statement: "Hey, Sharon, tell Ross..." That's my parent's names. Suddenly, Jim turned 30 shades of purple and told Brent that he needed to go. Now. He heard the names and connected the fact that he was sitting in a room with family he had spent his whole life not knowing. It was a little more of a surprise than he could publicly handle. I would guess so.

Over the course of the next few weeks, Dad invited him to come over to our house and meet Mom, Amanda and myself. It was amazing to finally get to meet him. It was like Richie had said, he was one of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. What was really amazing to me was all of the things we had in common. There were so many things that I would have assumed would be a common thread due to the fact that you were raised together. But, I found that the family gene pool determines a lot more than I had previously thought.

He quickly became a common fixture at our house. Him and I truly bonded in the months following our meeting.

We were together all the time for a short season. But, life is full of twists and turns. He had made a trip back out to Texas for his best friend's wedding. While he was there, he met some pretty, little red head who caught his eye and captured his heart. When he got back to Michigan, he immediately began making plans to move back to Texas. He had full intention of marrying this feisty little debutante. And, so he did. Round about the same time, I was making plans to move to Ohio and spread my fledgling wings. I've lived in 2 other states since those days, but haven't called Michigan home since I was 19.

Our family, minus Mom, who was obviously taking the picture. :0)

Given our geographical locations and other circumstances that life throws at you, we haven't seen each other since those bonding days shortly after we met some 16 years ago. He now has 3 children of his own and we've never met each other's families. He occasionally visits the family back in Michigan. I was usually in Florida when this happened and couldn't get up there. They fly out to Texas and see him. I'm glad that he's still close with the rest of them. Him and Amanda became very tight through the years. I'm looking forward to the day when we'll be able to connect again and our own families will be able to meet. Until then, there's always e-mail...

"Tex" - Part 2 of 3

I found out the serious news my parents felt it was time for me and my sister to know. We have a brother. He is six years older than me. Shortly after he was born, his mom moved them to Texas. He was raised there. And, although me and Amanda were clueless that he walked the planet until that fateful February night, he knew full good and well that me and Amanda existed.


So, why did our parents wait so long to tell us about him? Do you remember the girl that I saw at the mall and invited to the Sweetheart Banquet? Do you remember my mom about spewing Pepsi out her nose? That girl's new beau was my brother, Jim.


Jim had older brothers and sisters who had moved back to Michigan. He had recently moved back himself and was staying with one of them - on my mom's mail route. My parents knew that he was recently back. But, they really knew nothing about him. They didn't want to risk our first encounter being a complete surprise to me at the Sweetheart Banquet.


I don't think that Jim and that girl dated more than a couple of times. And I'm not sure if I ever even saw much of her again after that mall encounter. But, her brief appearance into our lives set the wheels in motion for us to become a family at last. My parents found out somehow that he was working at Cones-N-Cues, the local pool hall, where we sometimes hung out. So, my dad gathered up his courage, and his life-long best friend, and headed up there to introduce himself to my brother.


We told the family about it all. Of course, my aunts and uncles knew about me having a brother, but, it was a shocker to my cousins. Especially Richie. See, Richie hung out at the pool hall quite a bit and was friends with lots of the guys that worked there. When he found out that Jim worked there, he said he probably knew him and wanted to know who he was. I remember Richie literally falling off of the couch onto the floor when he found out. My brother, Jim, was Richie's friend, "Tex". Then it all started coming together for Richie. He started thinking about how "Tex's" mannerisms and expressions were so much like my dad's. He said that "Tex" was one of the nicest guys he had ever met and that there couldn't be a mean bone in his body. "Tex" had been to Richie's house. He was actually the ONLY friend of Richie's that I had never met and had never been to our house. Go figure.


So, Dad had met with Jim a couple of times and started to get to know one another. We started finding out more about our brother. My mom said that he even looked just like my Uncle Terry. I found that to be true soon enough...

You Mean, We're NOT Going To Die? - Part 1 of 3

As far as I knew growing up, it was just me and my little sister in our tidy family of four. We have a very close-knit family. And by close knit, I mean, like my mom's whole family would pile up and drive several state's away to accompany us to my dad's family reunion. Most of our family vacations included at least one set of Mom's siblings and their families. As far as the grandchildren went, there were six of us. Richie was first. I followed four years behind him. And the rest were sandwiched in between me and my sister, who was six years younger than me. Me and my cousins were probably raised more like siblings than extended family.


This is a picture of us six grand kids and Richie's fiance, Lisa, around the time of this story. I'm in the top of the tree with a burgundy sweatshirt and big hair. My sister, Amanda, is standing on the ground in a white sweatshirt. And Richie is kneeling with Lisa on his lap. Jimmie is in the tree by me. Boo Boo, or Boo, as we call him and Jamie are in the middle.

Richie and I were super tight growing up, although he was horribly mean to me. My granny used to say, "Pammy would follow Richie to the ends of the earth, and he'd be there waiting to push her off." But, that's a story that will need to wait for another blog post. Regardless of this fact, we shared the same circle of friends, for the most part. I knew most all of his friends, except one.

Hang on. I'm setting the stage, here.

Every year around Valentine's Day our church would put on a Sweetheart Banquet. It was a big deal where you got to get all dolled up with a fancy schmancy dress, or suit/tux if you were a guy, and see just how big you could get your hair. This was the early 90's after all, and big hair was everything. Really. So, anyway... one night me, my mom and my sister were at the mall having dinner at the food court and I ran into a girl that had been coming to church, but that I hadn't seen in a while. In the course of our conversation I mentioned to her that we were going to be having a Sweetheart Banquet and that she should come.

She said, "Oh, yeah. That sounds like fun. And I have a new boyfriend, so, I could bring him."

"Yeah, great. What's his name?"

"Jim. Jim _______."

At this point, unbeknownst to me, my mom about choked and spewed her Pepsi out her nose. Evidently, she said something that had unnerved my mom.

Fast forward a week or so. It's Friday night. February. Snowy. My senior year of high school. I'm getting ready to go out with a couple of my girlfriends from school, Beaner and Yellie. I'm just about ready to leave and my mom gives me this real serious statement, "Why don't you come sit down? I have something I need to tell you." That's always a red flag when you're ready to walk out the door for a fun filled evening with your gal pals. Then she starts in with this whole weighty scenario...

"Years ago, back before your dad and I were together, he had a relationship with a woman." I must inject here, this is where my head started spinning. My palms started sweating. And a whirlwind of thoughts started bombarding my cranium to the point I didn't know whether to puke, pass out, laugh or cry like a baby with a diaper full of dukey. This was 1992. AIDS was fairly new on the scene and being thrown into the forefront of not only the media, but the public school system, as well. So the first thing that went through my head was this: "Oh my God! She had AIDS. Now my dad has AIDS. He gave it to my mom. She probably transmitted it to me and Amanda. Oh, my God! We all have AIDS and are going to die!"

While I'm listening to the foreboding forecast rattling my skull cap, I try earnestly to hear what my mom is saying at the same time. That was quite a chore, considering I felt as if I had a twister raging through my innards. I did manage to hear her say something along the lines that she had gotten pregnant and I had a brother.

Thank God! Whew! It's just a brother! We don't all have AIDS and are going to die! I'll get to live to marry and raise a family! Hallelujah, praise the Lord! I have a brother! Talk about feeling like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders! I was feeling some major relief. Heck, I was feeling down-right giddy! So, I went outside and found my dad, who was shoveling snow like a mad man, trying to calm his nerves and let him know I was cool with having a brother and all.

Then all the questions came. I wanted to know details. I was curious why they decided to tell me and my sister now, after all this time.

To be continued...

I Did Something A Little Unconventional Yesterday...

I gave my 9 year old a Mohawk. I know, I know. You're probably gasping in all of your appallment (I think I just made that word up) right now. You're thinking slanderous thoughts of my mothering abilities and tactics. And you're wondering why they let women like me reproduce, aren't you?

Well, let me just say that I never thought I would be a mother who would give her 18 year old a Mohawk, must less her 9 year old. In the past, I had a lot of preconceived ideas about what I thought I was going to want, or how I thought I would be. And when the day came upon me, I realized that it was just that - a preconceived idea. I guess I've realized with myself that sometimes you just don't know how you'll handle something until it's handed to you.

Here's the Mohawk story and my reasoning behind why I gave it to my boy.

First of all, you must know that I have given my guys their haircuts for a REALLY long time. They would go somewhere and pay to get it cut and then I would have to even it out when they got home, because, inevitably the stylist had missed a few spots. Now, I'm not saying all stylists are this way. But, short of paying $30 for a haircut x 2 guys every two weeks (which just AIN'T happening in this house) that's what we ended up with. So, we started going to the local beauty academy for haircuts. I watched what they did, what they used... went and bought the tools necessary, and voila, became our new at home stylist. I'm not a pro by any means, but they get just as good of a cut from me as anything we paid for. So, on to my story...

Life has been a little busy around and both of my guys were way past due for a haircut and looking pretty shaggy. Tuesday night, Little Britches mentioned getting a Mohawk if his dad was too tired to get his hair cut that night and wanted to wait until yesterday. He was kind of playing around as a sort of threat. He's mentioned a Mohawk before - several times. But, he's also had a sense of fear involved with it. His dad and I could tell that it's something he would really like to do, but, was just plain nervous about it. So, we got into the whole thing about if he wanted to get his hair cut that way, why he was nervous about, who cares what other people think, blah, blah, blah... I realized that he was scared about what other people would think, about what it would look like, if he would hate it...All of those type of issues.

So, here's my reasoning behind giving my boy a Mohawk. It's really about the principle and not the haircut. Personally, I've never been a huge fan of the look, myself. But... I don't want to train him to make decisions based on fear or what other people think. I don't want him to grow up being afraid to take risks. Life is full of risks, after all. And if we avoid taking them, then essentially, we avoid living life to it's fullest. I actually encouraged him to get it cut that way if it was what HE wanted. I told him that it's just a haircut. It's not permanent. The worst that can happen is that he hates it. In two weeks it would be grown out, as fast as his hair grows. No harm done.

My husband and I determined a long, long time ago that we want to raise our son to be able to make good decisions on his own. Of course, we have to guide him. We ask him questions to help him think through the consequences. We help him determine what God has to say about the subject. Ultimately, he's nine and we make the final decision on major matters. But, there are a lot of issues that aren't major matters that we allow him to spread his wings on. We don't want him to be a follower or succumb to peer pressure. We want him to know that everyone is different, and that's a good thing. God likes diversity. You can look at all the shades of green he created or the infinite types of flowers he made and see that. The only thing that really matters is knowing what God said about an issue and how you feel about something. I don't think God really cares whether or not he wears a Mohawk.

So, after thinking about all this and being reassured that if he didn't like his hair, he wouldn't be ruined for the rest of his life, Little Britches made a decision. He was going to take a calculated risk and get a Mohawk. Something amazing happened once he made the decision - he started to get excited about it. Then, once I cut it yesterday morning, something even more amazing happened. He was proud of himself. He was proud that he did something he was nervous about doing. He was proud that he stepped outside of the box and made a decision based on what he thought he would like, rather than what other people would think about it. I was proud of him, too. It was a wonderful boost to his self-confidence.

I don't know how long he'll keep it for. He's nine and has worn the same hair cut his entire life until now. He may keep it for a while. He may go back to his old cut. Heck, he may even want to try some other style next. But I can tell you one thing - he got much more than a Mohawk yesterday. He got a life lesson that he will carry with him for the rest of his life and a good dose of self-esteem. As a mom, those two things were definitely worth the Mohawk.

How NOT To Fish

My family likes to fish. OK. I like to do things with my husband and HE likes to fish. Kapeesh? I really do have fun with him whatever we are doing - so it really doesn't matter. Anyway...back during the first year of our marriage, we decided to go catfishin' at a pay pit one night. The whole concept of the pay pit is that they stock it with fish, so you're supposed to be able to catch fish when you go. Right? That sounds great, in theory. But, this night...well, the fish just weren't biting. I got bored. I mean, when you go fishing and you actually get some action - it's pretty fun. But, when you just keep sitting there doing nothing but staring at a stationary bobber - it can be quite a yawner. I know there are many men who would disagree with me. These are probably the same men who think that shopping even if you don't find anything is a total waste of time. So, whatever...

Back to my story. I got bored. Then I got creative. I realized that bullfrogs will bite anything that you put in front of them. So, I quit fishin' and started bullfroggin'. MW thought that seemed like fun, so he joined in. Then he had a brilliant idea! He suggested that we bring the bullfrogs home and have frog legs for dinner. I've never had frog legs before - but, hey, MW likes them. And he assured me that they taste like chicken! :0) That was good enough for me.

We caught enough bullfrogs for dinner and took them home. We were so excited! We were gonna have frog legs for dinner! We didn't think through the whole process beforehand, though. Once we got them to the kitchen sink and got ready to prepare them, we couldn't figure out how to actually get their legs off. Do we cut them off while they're still alive? What would we do with the rest of their maimed selves after we cut their legs off? Please, we're not that cruel. Do we kill them first and then cut their legs off? That would be more humane, right? (If you belong to PETA - PLEASE, quit reading now.) How do we even kill them? Knock them in the head? What do we knock them in the head with? What if we knock them in the head and they don't die? What if they just pass out and then we cut their legs off they wake up from the amputation and start hopping around the kitchen all one legged and bloody like? No, we couldn't have that either. We were sort of in a pickle. We had all of these frogs and didn't know what to do with them.

The only thing that we could think to do was get some water boiling, put the frogs in the boiling water, cook them and then cut the back legs off of the dead frogs. Easy peasy. It was a plan. But, it wasn't a great plan. It wasn't even a good plan. Oh, we put those big bullfrogs in boiling water and cooked them alright. But, when we took the lid off of the pot we weren't expecting what we saw. Somehow, the frogs had expanded during cooking and they didn't look right. They were all grey and their eyes had melted. Ew, gross! Suddenly, MW and I had totally lost our appetite for frog legs. I'm pretty sure that I've never eaten them to this day.

So, what have we learned today? Sometimes you should just stick to shopping.

Have a great day!
Pam

A Birthday Surprise!

Little Britches and his cousins.

Target practice.

Dad passed one of his BB guns on to Little Britches for his birthday.

Yesterday was Little Britches' birthday. He turned 9. Wow! Time really flies, ya know? I had planned on having a post all ready to go ON his birthday. But...spontaneity happened. That's always a fun thing. MW thought it might be fun to go spend the weekend at my parent's house in Michigan and throw Little Britches a party with all of his cousins up there. We kept it a surprise.

My mom organized the party - and all of his cousins were able to make it, even on short notice. I arranged for my dear MIL to get Little Britches on Friday while I packed, shopped and took the dog to the kennel. When we went to pick Little Britches up after MW got off of work, we told him that we were going to Michigan for his birthday. Actually, MW told him. LB said, "Nuh uh! Are we, Mom?" I nodded yes. He began jumping and screaming and shaking his fists in the air. I think he was just a little bit excited. He wanted to know when we were leaving and we told him, "Now! The bags are packed and loaded up in the Explorer. We're leaving right from here!" And then the jumping, screaming and fist shaking commenced, again.

All of his cousins came on Saturday afternoon for the party. After all the eating, cake and presents - all of my cousins and our kids headed to Bounce-A-Mania, leaving our parents behind to unwind with coffee, conversation and QUIET. Bounce-A-Mania is awesome! I had never been anywhere like that before. If you're not familiar with it - it is all of these blow up Moon Walks, slides and obstacle courses. The adults had as much fun as the kids did!

I think that this was Little Britches' most memorable birthday, so far. I was really glad that we were able to go up there this past weekend. It meant a lot to spend a special time with family that we don't get to see as often as we'd like.


I'll post more later.
Pam