It’s been so long…

It has been so long since I have written on this site, it almost feels foolish to start again. I had a moment tonight in which I was thinking about the last few years, and I thought I would look at my blog to see where I was “back then”.

It seems hard to believe that it was four years ago I was posting semi-regularly on here. It feels like half a life-time. Since I have been away I have started a full-time job that most days I love. I’ve dealt with family issues, including the death of my grandpa in late 2013. I miss him everyday.

I have also begun the process of graduate school for my MLIS. It has made life busier for sure, but it is a step that is necessary in order to make more money in this profession.

I feel like I have changed a great deal in the last couple of years. I went from a harried college student who loved to thrift and take photos to someone who takes a harder look at the world around her and is more focused on streamlining the amount of “stuff” in her life. There is only so much “stuff” a person needs, physically, emotionally and mentally.

I have found it harder to completely unwind. Increasingly it is more difficult to let the day go. I find I need a release. The last few days I have done some major journaling to let all the random thoughts escape in a place where only I can see them.  I also believe it might be time to revisit this blog. I won’t make any promises about regular posts, but new posts, and more frequent posts for sure. It is just time.

I believe this blog has taken a melancholy tone, and I don’t mean for it too. I am just feeling contemplative. It’s 1:30 am and I have the sound of Ben Webster in the background. Summer is starting to arrive in all of its full glory, so who knows, maybe I will take the show on the road to the front porch for a blog in the near future.

Until then…

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Book Bloggin’: Charms for the Easy Life

Tags

book bloggin', books, Charms for the easy life, Kaye Gibbons

When I read the summary of this book, I was intrigued. After reading the book, I am not so sure it is one that I would recommend. First, I felt I battled to get through this book. I was waiting for something to happen. I felt like rather than this book being a cohesive story, it was fragmented happenings. I liken it to be like a dangling charm bracelet and the reader goes from one charm to the next rather than in one flowing circle. 

The character of Charlie Kate was interesting, but by the time I was 3/4 of the way through I was a bit tired of her always being right and a bit bored of her granddaughter’s hero worship. I mean, she was a fantastic, not-of-the-norm woman. Great. Awesome. But did that mean the other females had to be chicken livers? 

The daughter Sophia, I felt the author tried too hard to make her the opposite of Charlie Kate. At the same time however, I feel that her POV was rather swept under the rug. She was, to me, deemed as immature and therefore not as worth the trouble of getting to know.
The author routinely mentions her and Charlie Kate getting into spats, but didn’t go into the dialogue or get into her head to make her more dimensional. 

I felt like the granddaughter’s character Margaret was more developed, but frankly, she was dull. She had no pizazz. It seems as though Charlie Kate got all the vim and vigor and by the time Margaret came around she was the equivalent of a den mother before she got out of high school. Also,the romance that developed between her and the soldier was rather unbelievable. Are we really supposed to swallow whole that just because she sat and stared at the man that was cause for him to find her so fascinating he was ready to schedule a date with her, let alone 3? Farfetched is a good word to describe that situation. 

All in all, I am not sorry I read the book, but I dont think it would make it into the top ten list of books I would tell others to read.

Book Bloggin’: American Ghost

I discovered this book on goodreads.com. Once I read it I could not think of a more perfect title to this book than American Ghost. The title is captivating, but once you dive in you find yourself surrounded by many ghosts, and I don’t mean the kind that yell “BOO” in the dark of night. Not only does one of the main characters, Jolie Hoyt, self identify with the label of “American Ghost”, each character has a “ghost” in their family. The ghost being a family member who was forever altered by the racial violence that existed in the American South in the 1930s.

I also feel that there are two other American ghosts in this book, a ghost who is not a person, but whose legacy can still be seen today: the violent ghost of the extreme racial prejudice that was so common for that era. The second ghost would be that of the American poor female. It is a ghost that routinely haunts Jolie Hoyt – not just because her deceased mother was one, but because it is the image that she sees in every poor woman in her small town of Hendrix.

This book is not for everyone and I HIGHLY recommend reading about it before you delve in, because like a gator in a Florida swamp, once this book has you, it won’t let go…

Just Waving Hello…

Tags

acceptance, attitude, Christmas, employment, family, graduated, graduation, grandparents, life, negative, outlook, positive, posting, school, writing

I can hardly believe it has been over a year since I have posted a blog here. I had a few drafts in the works, but nothing concrete.  To say that I have been busy this last year would be an understatement. School and work kept me completely immersed in “to dos”. 

The upshot of it all, I graduated!! Two weeks after I graduated I found employment which, though only part-time, kept me busy and on the road. I also began spending more time with my grandparents – a topic for another post. In July, I began to work two jobs and so I was working 6 days a week. I ceased that busy schedule in October and though I am not on the road as many days a week, there seems to always be one reason or another to be on the road or not at home. 

Christmas is just around the corner and I can hardly believe it is nearly here. Tonight I had a coffee with two dear people and we reminisced about where we were a year ago. To be honest, it feels like five years ago. This time last year I had just completed a busy semester – one that included 60+ pages of writing, not to mention my capstone paper for my degree. I was already starting on the spring semester by reading a well-researched, but extremely difficult book on World War II and dreading the day that would come when I would have to discuss it. The thought of all of that even now, is enough to turn my stomach. 

So where am I now, you may ask. I am finally coming to a place of peace. It is surprising how long it has taken to arrive. I finally feel I can take one day at a time and despite being occupied with work and family related things, there is time for lunch with friends and the occasional coffee. 

I also feel as though I have done a tremendous amount of growing in the last few months. I feel like the goals I am wanting for my life are coming into focus. I also feel that because I have a clearer picture of what I want, I also have a clearer picture of what I don’t want. I know that in life we can’t always choose what have or what we do not have, but at the end of the day, many times we do have a choice. Sometimes that choice is only choosing how we look at the world, be it with acceptance of life as it is and the hope for better or with repugnance of everyone and everything in it. 

This is my kin y’all

I love my family, they have good hearts. Sometimes though, they have a little too much time on their hands. Case in point, the holidays. Every year there is at least one gag gift that goes around and usually my mother is involved – either as the giver or the recipient.

One year my aunt and my uncle gave my mom a sewing basket. As a small joke my Uncle Rich put in the basket the worst looking undershirt I have ever seen. This thing had more holes than swiss cheese. Upon giving it to her, he said that now that she had this new sewing basket, maybe she could fix his shirt.

Fix it, she did. Not only did she fix it, but she had me write a little poem to commemorate the occasion. Tonight as I was clearing out my files, I came across this ditty, and I thought I would post it here. May it gave you the laugh it gave me.

A Tale of Tatters

Oh woe is me, oh woe is me,

I came in a package three shirts apiece.

But alas when it came time for me to be clean,

I was done in by too much bleach and steam.

Now I look worn and tattered,

With seams ripped and holes scattered.

Martha and Rich gave me to Jan in her new sewing kit,

In hopes my tears she could fix.

But not even a seamstress as wonderful as she

Could fix a worn old rag such as me.

Then one night, Christmas Eve to be exact

That old lady found a use for me, now I’m all that!

Rich, in need of comfort after the long day of laughter and mirth,

Can now find some rest in his old stuffed shirt.

Jan cleverly put me inside two pieces of satin and lace,

And now I help make a comfy pillowcase.

I want to thank everyone who has helped me on my wonderful journey from the store shelves,

To the washing machine,

To Jan’s smart little scheme.

My life has been filled with adventure and dirt,

And I want you to know I will always be…

The Grateful Undershirt.

Back on the porch

Tags

contemplation, Contemplative thoughts, front porch bloggin, life, love, night, porch, relationships, summer

Hello all!

Well it is offically summer in the city and I am back on the front porch, blogging. It feels as though eons have passed since I last blogged from this locale.  It is absolutely gorgeous out here tonight. It is cool and the mosquitos are keeping the humidity company in another town.

So why the porch? Because it is late. Really late, 2:30am late. I didnt want to keep any lights on in the house, so here I am. Plus, I needed some outside time, sitting in a calm and serene place with no distraction. Sometimes, even late at night when everyone is asleep, the house still has too many distractions to write.

I feel like there are about 1,000 thoughts in my head at the moment. One of them is a question I pondered two years ago in this blog. I was in my basement tonight cleaning out an old desk. Apparently in my last clearing out I neglected to get all of the memorabilia from my last relationship out as there was a card still lingering.

Did I read it? Yes. Was that wise? Probably not. I began to ask my self the same question I did two years ago, where did the love go? I am two years removed from that question, and light-years removed from the relationship, and still I can only speculate.

I think the answer is the love didn’t go anywhere. It just changed. It morphed into resentment and eventually anger and loathing. I believe this to be true because as I felt the love get smaller the others grew. Love is energy, it doesn’t die, it just transfers.

Why does it transfer? Because it has to, it’s energy and therefore always changing. Only by taking the time out to cultivate the love in relationships can it be sustained. Stop pulling the weeds of misunderstanding and resentment, and they take over the love, eroding it back into the ground. The fragments are still there, they have just taken on a new form.

To the question, can you get the love back? I don’t believe you can. It would be like resurrecting the dead, and if you have seen Practical Magic, you know that is not a good idea! But on a more serious note, why would you want it back? No matter how great the love was, for whatever reason, it turned sour. Bringing it back won’t cure the sour. It is best to look forward, move forward and let the relationship continue to evolve than to wish it were someplace else.

Just for the record, I am not wistful at the thought of my ex, Heck to the no. I don’t want to even think about that!! YUCK! I just felt like revisiting that question and seeing if my answers were still the same.

All in all I have a pretty good life. It has thrown me for a few loops this past year: a major car accident, a nasty sprain, and that was just from mid March to mid April.  It has left me with a desire to reorganize my priorities a bit.

Normally, I do try to be a “what is” kind of girl versus a “what if” kind of girl. Tonight though, the cool night air has my mind wandering over to the ifs in life.

A Question of Faith

Tags

faith, God, Spiritua

There has been a post looming in my mind for some time. I am not sure what It will be titled, or how it will come together. The only thing I have that is solid is a topic – faith and spirituality.

As any reader of this blog knows I have a lot of faith and I am very much a spiritual person. In this last year all of it was put to the test. Looking back I can’t say I walked away unscathed. My spirituality took a hit. Each night I would go to sleep  in my bed I would pray and cry (if I fell asleep in the recliner I didn’t pray – I slept there a lot).  I must say I began to grow weary of praying, knowing that it would lead to tears because I didn’t know how the events of my life would turn out.

So what changed you ask? The way I feel when I pray. I used to feel like I had this direct line to God. It was a fiercely strong connection. Now, that feels absent. I feel like my prayers are like dandelion fluff and they are going out into the prayer universe.

I feel like this past year I should have a stronger connection to Him. A connection that I could have had, but relied too much on my own capabilities to get through hard times rather than handing it over to God. I just couldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go of the certainty of the anxiety that I felt and let it go into the uncertainty of God.

“The uncertainty of God”, is a powerful phrase. Since when did I start believing that God was uncertain? I don’t, I am sure I don’t. If I don’t, then why did I just say it?

I know that God is out there and I know I can pray. I think the events of this last year have just left me feeling unprotected and vulnerable. I remember after the car accident not being able to take the good things and really appreciate them because I was too focused on the stinking pile of mess that was the rest of my life.

This past weekend I ran into a man who I have known all my life. We used to go to the same church and he was talking to my Mom about retirement and asking her when she was going to retire. My Mom showed hesitancy. (Rightly so, she is very active in her work and she enjoys it and the people. There is no reason for her to quit just yet.) Our friend took one look at her face and said that if it was money that she was worried about, she shouldn’t be.  He proceeded to tell us how that was a concern for him and he had prayed about it. He said that God said to him, “Who do you have faith in, Me or money”?

That is a very powerful question. Who do I have more faith in, God who has seen me through, or myself, who is not all-knowing and all-seeing? Is it even a matter of faith, or is it a matter of trust? I have faith that God is there, but maybe it is just my trust in Him that is failing. The trust that He is really going to avert me from disaster and I won’t have disaster after disaster land on my head again.

The trust of disaster aversion is important. Is it the most important thing? Maybe not, maybe what is more important is the soft place to land after disaster has struck.

That will be something to ponder on tonight after I have prayed….and cried.

No More Miss Nice Gal

Tags

brother, cell phone, crazy, drama, ex-girlfriend, finish last, gals, Mississippi, nice, nice gals, nice girls finish last, phone company, Verizon, vulgar

Nice gals always finish last. Is this true? I don’t know. Some would say that it is not, other would say it is. I say today it feels true.

My brother, mother and I all went in on the same phone plan to save money. I called my carrier and got my brother a free phone – because he wanted one just like mine. I did that for him because I wanted him to have a nice phone and he really liked mine. Then I check the bill. He or someone has racked up nearly 100 dollars in charges such as downloading ringtones – I can’t see my brother downloading Justin Bieber. His ex girlfriend however, I can.

She currently has the phone. The phone bill is about to go over its minutes. I have tried to get it back, but to no avail. She wont meet me because I am a stranger, even though I wanted to meet in a public place. (She cant meet a stranger but its ok for me to pay her phone bill.) Then we offer to pay for her a cab to go to my brother to drop the phone off but she wont do that because she doesn’t trust cabs. Bottom line it this woman is nuts, a user, and a liar. She also has an extremely vulgar mouth. I can’t remember the last time the f-bomb was used at me, or I was called that word.

I am just hoping to get the phone back from her. If I shut the phone off, then I really have no way to contact her to get it back. She has also threatened to throw it in the Mississippi. Funny she can make it to the river to drop it in but not to the home to drop it off. The genius has said all of this in a text message, so if I ever take her to court I have proof she has destroyed the phone. She claims to not have a car to get to the home so I have given her until 6pm tomorrow to get the phone back to me or I call the police, report it stolen, and call the phone company to shut the service off. Then I will start court proceedings against her for the cost of the phone and the charges to the phone. I have checked it out and I think I can prove it was her who downloaded the ringtones by looking at the calls that took place around the times that the ringtones were downloaded. I can prove a couple, but I have to investigate further. I want to be prepared if I have to go to court.

This nice gal will not be finishing last.

On American Literature…

I am currently taking an American Lit course in school. My God. I had no clue that Americans were so morbid in their writing. Good grief, what the heck? Maybe it has been the selections of the professor, but I am wholly underwhelmed.

We started out with Whitman and Dickinson and worked into Huck Finn. Then it was short stories about race, death, soldiers and PTSD. Then over break it was As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. That book is just horrific.

I have discovered I am an emotional reader. When asked if I liked a story or not,  my first response is not yes or no, or anything about overall themes. I tell people how it made me feel.

To Faulkner: You make me feel disturbed. Your absence of emotion and overabundance of apathy and callousness is disgusting.  I read you and I need a mental vacation and a hot bath.

So WordPress world, is American Lit overall just morbid? Say it isn’t so. If it is, I am adopting British Literature – at least then I can have my Austen.

Blog, what blog?

I can’t hardly believe that it is has been nearly two months since my last post. Where has the time gone? Oh, yeah, that’s right, school. How could I forget school?

To say life has been busy the last few months would be an uderstatement. I feel like everyday there is always three or four things that I should have done that I did not manage to get to do. Blogging is one of them.

You know its funny, no matter what is going on, no matter how crazy things are, blogging is one of the things that I usually want to do.  I am going to have to find a way to make it a priority.

So other than school what’s been going on you ask? Not a whole lot. I have just been trying hard to find the balance between work and school and sleep and having a coffee with friends.

Right now we are on spring break. Well, that is what the school calls it anyway. My lit teacher is calling it the week she doesn’t have to teach. I have so much work to do for that class, its not even funny. Not to mention the 12 page paper that I have to research and the two page paper I have to write.

The one project that I am really jazzed about it the 12 page research paper. It is for my Civil War course. I am focusing on the message that the government sent to the women about sacrifice and how that idea of the irreplaceable value of women was indeed replacable at the end of the war when suddenly the contributions of the women were forgotten and they were seen as greedy money-suckers when they came to collect their husband’s pension.

In fact this Friday I will be heading up to the state capitol to do some more research on the subject. It’s about an hour and a half away, so that will make for a nice drive. Mom said that she would go with me. I am glad, because another pair of researching eyes will definitely come in handy.

I know that the material is out there, it will just require some digging. I wont have long to dig, but I will do my best. Then it will be back home to finish As I Lay Dying.

Widows and As I Lay Dying, nothing like a happy and cheerful spring break!