Sunday Stealing: The August 20 Question Meme

I haven't done Sunday Stealing for ages, mostly because I'm in a funk.  I'm working on getting out of said funk.  Hence, I'll commence with Sunday Stealing now :-)


1. What's for breakfast?
I haven't been able to eat breakfast since I was pregnant with Addie and threw up every morning for eight and a half months.  You would think that after almost seventeen years, I'd be over it, but ...


2. Do you read a newspaper daily? 
I read my news online, from a variety of sources.  I try to get a well-balanced view of things ;-)


3. What do you do when you can't sleep?
Bitch and moan about it on Facebook (in case you can't tell, this happens a lot ;-))


4. Say a word that sums up your mood. 
Resigned.


5. Do you remember your dreams?
Yes, almost always.  It probably goes along with the insomnia thing ... I have seriously messed up sleep habits.


6. Name something from your dream last night.
I had a really bad dream last night, actually, about my sister getting badly hurt.  It was horrible :-(


7. Name a food that describes you. 
Because I am evidently sweet and versatile, apple pie ;-)


8. Today you are wearing:
Very stylish black pants from Wal-Mart (that are covered in golden retriever fur) and a red shirt.  I am a style maven on Sundays ;-)


9. What's in your pockets?
Nothing at all.


10. Did you sing in the shower today?I haven't taken a shower yet today.  We've been getting some wind and flickering lights as a result of the lovely Irene, so I figured I'd wait and take one later this afternoon.


11. What's the last song you heard? 
"Freak the Freak Out" by Victoria Justice.  I was watching Victorious with Belle.  Please don't judge :-)


12. Looking forward to the holidays? Trying to ...

13. Where do you want to be this instant?The beach ... I went to the beach house a little bit ago to get the electric mixer (forgot it there last night when we were in a mad rush of taking down screens and moving in the porch furniture), and having mashed potatoes with chicken for dinner tonight was worth braving the elements ;-)

Here's the view from the beach house porch:

14. What's for lunch? My sister was visiting last week, so our pantry became a bit more organic than it usually is.  She bought this kettle corn dusted with cocoa powder ... I ate a bowl of that for lunch.  Mmmmmmmmmmmm :-)


15. What's something you would like to do soon? 
I am so not going there!


16. Reading anything now? What is it? 
I am always reading something :-)  As always, I have three or four books going at once, but the one most recently read is The House on Tradd Street by Karen White.  I've found myself addicted to her books ... they're somewhere between Jodi Picoult and Danielle Steele, which would normally make them far too "chick-litty" for me, but, hey, it's summer ;-)


17. What's for dinner? 
Chicken with mashed potatoes and some sort of green vegetable that comes out of a bag in the freezer.  That's assuming the power doesn't go out, of course, at which point we'd be up the proverbial creek since much of our food is still at the beach house ...


18. A favorite part of the day is: 
Reading Belle a story and putting her to bed :-) (not because I like to "get rid of her", but because it's a nice peaceful  time)


19. Are you happy? 
Shut up.


20. Guess how many people will do Sunday Stealing this weekend?
48

Friday Fragments: What's Been Shaking This Week :-)

It's a great relief to me that it's a Friday ... and that I can use Friday Fragments (thanks, Mrs. 4444) to do the catch-up thing since I've once again been neglecting my blog.  

Ahem ...
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My brother Adam, his girlfriend Colleen, and my precious nephew Pete came down to the beach on Sunday for a visit.  Lots of fun :-)

Particularly entertaining was the Subway incident.

We decided to get subs from Subway for lunch, and Addie pulled up the menu online so we could call in our order.  They had pulled pork on the menu, but when I ordered a pulled pork sub, the Subway lady (who didn't really speak English very well), told me that they didn't have pulled pork subs.

So Adam and I get to Subway (we took Addie's car, heeheehee), and he starts cracking up like nobody's business when we were greeted by this sign.

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My mother has spent endless summer hours reading on the porch of the beach house for many years.  I have spent endless summer hours reading on the porch of the beach house for many years.  And now?

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Enjoying lazy days at the beach (now that the dogs are back at the house)...and a random cat that hangs out there.  Yes, I'm serious :-)

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Belle put on a hula hoop show.  She made tickets and everything ... my future superstar is pretty darn funny :-)

And I think this video truly captures the unique essence of Belle's personality ...

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Belle had a very bad day on Monday.  She had a rough visit with her father (he fell asleep--I'm reserving judgment by not putting "passed out"--for over half an hour of a two hour visit at a movie theater and snored so loudly that everyone around us was staring and saying, "Shhh!" ... poor Belle was mortified), there was no mayonnaise for her desired tuna fish sandwich at lunchtime, and her fish died.

I told her we all have days like that sometimes...
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Another week, another root canal (actually, it's the same root canal ... they just do it in three parts, so I had the second part done this week).

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I went to make a phone call from the beach house, and it hit me like a ton of bricks how much the world has moved on.  I had my Droid (which can do everything but breathe for me) in one hand, but it wouldn't work because cell reception's dreadful at the beach, so I got the pleasure of using this baby when I had to call my mother ...

**
I went to another conference on Wednesday and Thursday, this one on PBIS (in a nutshell, focusing on rewarding positive student behaviors with the hope that it will motivate more kids to behave ... it sounds stupid on the surface, but it really and truly works really well).

It's been the summer of enjoyable and useful conferences :-)
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I finally got the competencies written for my classes.  I've spent a lot of time with the state standards for English this week getting curriculum mapped out, and I'm exhausted but enthused.  One more week and then it's back to school! 

Motorcycle Musings

There are a lot of motorcycles in my neck of the woods at this time of year.

First, there is Motorcycle Weekend (also known as "Bike Week") in Laconia. I attended this festivity once when I was going to college up north and was much prettier, thinner, and of course younger. One of my friends that I was with swears that there's a topless picture of me in a collage-style calendar made from that year. (There's a whole shirt-lifting thing that is sort of like Mardi Gras beads but not really ...)

Anyway, I also live in a beach town, and riding along the coast seems to be a favorite route for bikers. I don't blame them--I love to both walk and drive the same road. It's so pretty ...

It seems like there have been a lot of motorcycle accidents this year. It's funny, according to the news there were actually fewer Bike Week incidents, but maybe I'm just paying better attention, I don't know.

I've been on a motorcycle, of course. Once was with my old friend, Andy, who had a knack for exploiting what I refer to as my self-destructive streak. Yeah, I almost fell off ... no helmet ... dumb.

The other was with the father of an ex-boyfriend, a wonderful man (the father, not the ex-boyfriend) who wanted to show me why he enjoyed riding his bike so much. He insisted that I wear a helmet, and it was a really neat experience. It's definitely a unique way to view the countryside, and I must say that I enjoyed it.

As a bumper sticker I recently saw on a motorcycle states, "I completely understand why my dog rides with his head out the window."

Which brings me to the crux of my concern, I suppose.

There is probably a 3:1 ratio, based on my own informal observations through two hours spent in a car each day of the workweek, of motorcyclists who don't wear helmets to those who do.

I feel two ways about this.

First, I suppose that if you're going to be riding a motorcycle, there's an inherent risk involved. Wearing a helmet is not going to protect you from getting a broken neck or back, from losing a leg or landing hard on a sharp piece of machinery and being impaled (we writers have vivid imaginations ;-)). Furthermore, it kind of defeats the purpose of riding a motorcycle, of feeling the breeze in your hair and being just a little bit closer to nature than cars allow, if you're going to stick a helmet on.

However, head injuries are the most common cause of motorcycle fatalities, and helmets are an obvious safety measure that can lower that number. Also, on a purely practical level, I suspect you'd eat a lot of bugs if you weren't wearing a helmet ...

I don't wear a helmet when I ski or ride a bicycle (although my kids do). I don't even wear my seat belt half the time, a habit I'm trying to get better about.

However, I have long had kind of a hang-up about helmetless motorcyclists, and it hit me while riding with my mother to drop off my nephew this afternoon (we had him for the day because my brother and his family were having a yard sale) why this bothers me so much.

It's funny how I never realized this, that an event that shook my subconscious so strongly wasn't something that I connected until today with my disinterest in getting on a motorcycle ever again.

The brain is an amazing thing ...

I took a couple of summer courses at UNH shortly after transferring there from Plymouth State, English electives that ended up being two of my favorite college classes ever (one was "Studies in American Poetry" and the other was "Anger in Literature"). The night before the last class, one of my professors was killed in a motorcycle accident. He was not wearing a helmet, and it was evidently pretty hard for him to be identified, if you get what I'm saying.

So, yeah, every time I see someone on a motorcycle without a helmet, I cringe a bit. I guess it's just not something I will ever understand.

Happiness Is: An Annotated Photo Journal

When I was cleaning the pictures out of my Droid, it struck me how powerful photographs are. A visual image can take you back to a moment, and you can in a way almost relive it. Amazing!

Anyway, since I'm not always good about posting visuals here, I thought I'd share some pics along with a written ramble or two. Hope you enjoy : )



Belle is cooking here. Addie got her a cooking set for Christmas--measuring cups, cookbook, and of course the infamous hat. Needless to say, she loves it.



Addie hates to get her picture taken. Like, deplores it. I always feel kind of bad, because I have hundreds of Belle pics (she's something of a ham ...) and very few of Addie. This was taken on Thanksgiving--the girls, my mom, and I went to see "Harry Potter 7 Part I" then out to dinner. Addie let me take a picture of her, for which I was very thankful.



One of my students writes uplifting messages on my whiteboard every day. It sounds very small, but it makes me incredibly happy : )



Did I mention that Belle's a ham? Yeah, that's what I thought ...




My dogs are the coolest. That's all.



The girls in front of the Christmas tree. I love pictures of the two of them together because it's so obvious how much they love each other. They are nine years apart in age, but I have met very few sisters as legitimately close as Addie and Belle are.



And speaking of sisters, this is mine. She is a college professor (she got the brains in the family) and lives way too far away. We are only two years apart in age, so we had the kind of love/hate relationship growing up that is really an incredibly close friendship when you put it in perspective.



One of my favorite roles in life is auntie, and I absolutely adore my two nephews more than words can say. Oddly enough, they are only two months apart. This is my brother's baby, my brother, my brother-in-law, and his and my sister's baby. <3




My mother is cutting Belle's birthday cake here. It was so important to her that Belle have a wonderful birthday, so she pulled out all the stops. Love my momma!



Belle reading the note that Santa brought her. Guess what it said? That Santa decided not to bring her the Harry Potter Lego set she wanted because he knew how much Mommy wanted to give it to her for her birthday in January. The stores were all sold out of the thing ... I think it was kind of a stroke of genius ;)



I am blessed to have an amazing classroom paraprofessional (also known as teacher's aide, educational assistant, or all around lifesaver). On this day, Belle had a teacher's workshop at school and I didn't know about it until the night before (should probably look at those school calendars ...), so I had to bring her to school with me. My para, Ginger (she's a dancer and an absolute joy to be around), read a book with Belle at one point.




I know there are a lot of jokes about Mom's apple pie these days, but can I just say that my mother makes the best apple pie ever?




And, finally, the beach. It is where I go when I am happy, when I am sad, when I have something on my mind, and when I want to get some sort of zen balance.

It's also where I realize, as I do at this moment, how very lucky I am!

Drama at the Beach

When my grandfather took up golf as a very serious (and time consuming) hobby, he bought a summer house on the beach so that my grandmother would be busy indulging in one of her great passions (the beach in all its manifestations) so he could pursue his own. It worked out well for them--they had an incredibly loving marriage, by every account I've ever heard.

I cannot remember a summer that wasn't beach-infused. There are epic sagas of the time my father had to float my mother out of the beach house on a raft when the tide came in too quickly during a storm, tales of my first steps on the shores of the Atlantic, my sister's passion for microbiology taking early root in the tidepools of Hampton Beach. My cousins have similar memories, and I cannot express the gratitude I have for my grandfather's generosity in giving us the great gift of a house at the beach. His eight grandchildren are ocean freaks, and the mantle has been passed as Belle and my nephew Pete spent this past weekend in hard-core beach mode.



Anyway, one of the oddest perks is that our location is such that we have a view of the main road that runs from "the strip" of Hampton Beach (where it gets a little dicey and was definitely a good time when I was a late teenager but kind of makes me sick now) to the coast of Maine but also of the small side road where our house is located.

We have a screened-in porch that runs all around the front of the house. Sitting out there reading a book or with a nightcap is a little piece of heaven. And yeah, okay, one of the highlights is people watching, not gonna lie.

Belle and I went mini-golfing with Andy and his daughter one night last week. When we got back to the beach (rather late ... Andy runs on "manana time"), Addie was in freaking hysterics on the porch. I put Belle to bed then went out to see what she was giggling about.

This probably sounds sick, but it was so funny. There was a couple over on the beach having a rip roaring fight. That in and of itself isn't funny, of course, but the fact that they were obviously intoxicated and screaming things that were pretty private just made it seem like a soap opera.

"You won't even put your arm around me! I make you sick, don't I, Tony? We're alone on this romantic beach and you won't even touch me! You don't want to fuc* me! What did I ever do to you?"

And so on in that vein. The funniest part was that we actually observed the nefarious Tony staggering drunkenly up the beach path and down the street, swigging from a bottle under the streetlights. We never got a look at "Mrs. Tony", although we tried.

This probably sounds sick to you, to sit there and listen to the conversations people are having as they walk by (some CRAZY shiz ... you cannot imagine), hoping that the stupid kid who rides a skateboard without a helmet tied up to his buddy's motorcycle doesn't crash and burn (my mom has this Hippocratic responsibility to help an injured person, I guess, but she doesn't suffer fools like this lightly and wouldn't be thrilled to have to help someone hurt doing something so foolhardy), judging people based on our dogs' reaction to them (my black lab is a very good judge of character, strange as it sounds, so we always pay really close attention to who Sonja barks at), and just in general making fun of people walking by. It's kind of an art form, really.

Tonight, for example, there was a couple walking over to the beach and the guy was carrying his dog like a baby. I mean, I know there are some dogs that are kind of meant to be carried, a la Paris Hilton's Tinkerbell, but this dog was big enough that it just looked kind of ridiculous. I took a picture, but we were in the middle of dinner so by the time I grabbed my BlackBerry, they were pretty far up the beach path (it's also shot through a screen, so the quality's pretty shoddy).



I share this with you not because I want you to know how petty and twisted I am (and I'm really not ... it's just a temporary summer thing) but because I had a crazy epiphany while watching the man carrying his dog. I started wondering why he was holding the dog instead of just laughing at how stupid it looked. Was the dog sick? Very old and about to have its last jaunt on the beach before that final trip to the vet? Was it a true beach dog and as such not fond of walking on asphalt? Did the guy have some need to be carrying something due to a recent loss? Had the dog been left to him by his recently deceased mother and he was holding onto the dog so tightly because he missed his mother so much?

Yup, it struck me like a bolt of lightning that sitting at that porch for thirty-three years taking in the people walking by, questioning their motives and the tiny slice of their life I was experiencing ... well, it made me a writer.

So thank you, Papa. Thank you for this day of Belle boogie boarding with her uncle



and thank you for my writing.

They are both gifts I will cherish forever.

Gotta Love a Six-Year-Old

Belle started summer camp this week, and she absolutely loves it. It's been kind of hard as it's really hitting me how grown up my little baby is getting. Part of getting grown up is really getting a mind of her own. Belle has always known what she wants and how to get it (we make a lot of pink-hair-and-a-nose-ring-at-twelve comments about her), but the scope is getting much bigger.

They took a trip to a lake a few towns over today. She wore her bathing suit underneath her camp t-shirt and shorts, and then she went to pack her beach towel. She was dismayed that I had packed a sweatshirt as well as underwear and an extra shirt (I guess the kids wear their camp t-shirts into the water). She was furious ... she admonished me, "Mommy, I am not a baby."

Of course, when I picked her up, she was wearing the extra clothes I'd packed ;-)