What's in a name?

I’m not fond of my name.  My mother loves it, but for me it has been a source of confusion, frustration and embarrassment over the years.  A masculine name for a female in the ‘50s led me to boys’ PE and an invitation to join the Army before women in the military were cool. 

The spelling has been a nightmare.  There is no “i” in it anywhere.  People insist there should be.  My mother insists not.  (My middle name is no better, but that’s another story.)  It has been misspelled by nearly everybody, including my father once and the jeweler who engraved my wedding ring.  I wore that ring for 10 years before it was replaced. 

I use the name as little as possible, only when I must be identified.  I much prefer the monikers that associate me with my favorite people…my grandchildren.

My grandmothers were “Grandmother” and “Gammy.”  Gammy lived near so I suspect her nickname came before I could say grandmother properly.  And I do recall that Grandmother was insistent on being Grandmother.  My own mother tried that.  My daughter had other ideas.  So she is “Maury,” the only explanation being “because I love her.”  Good enough.

I started out as Grandma, but Ashley had two grandmas so I am Grandma J.

Then the dog, the huge lab/Rottweiler christened me “Grammy.”  Yes, dogs do talk or at least people talk for them.  I’ve been Grammy ever since.  To everyone.  I love that one.

Then Kayla painted a sign that says “Gramsy.”  Don’t know how that happened, but it also is pretty cool.

She also calls me Grandmother sometimes when she wants to be emphatic or really get my attention. 

Then here comes four-year-old Daniel, an entity all of his own.  He is autistic and until recently has been non-verbal.  He is coming along very well, but he refuses to say grandma.  We have prompted and encouraged, but haven’t gotten much that sounds like grandma.  He did say “banana” one time, but I’m not taking that.  He calls me “Hubba.”  Maybe it’s an amalgamation of banana and grandma, but it’s mine alone.  And I really love that one.

Now, if they’d only put it on my driver’s license!

The Typewriter

I’m an art journaler.  The word “art” is used loosely.  The word “journal” not far behind.  I found art journaling last summer when I stumbled across a video, and I was hooked.  The art part can be quite basic with craft paint, rubber stamps and stencils.  The journal part can also be as simple as quotes, pithy statements or verses.  I love it. 

My supplies started out quite simple.  Stuff I had on hand.  Kayla’s art paints, Sharpies, rubber stamps left from my teaching days.  Then it expanded and grew like topsy.  Now I have a craft corner (soon to take over the room), a die cut machine, drawers of rubber stamps, bottles of paint, stencils, paper.  And now a typewriter.

I blame Jerry Minyard.  A West Brook colleague and Facebook friend, Jerry recently changed the cover photo for his timeline.  A wonderful quote by C.S. Lewis.  The quote was great, but the presentation blew me away.  It was typed, in broken lines, on a sepia background with faint clouds.  I loved it and decided, on the spot, that I had to have a typewriter so I could recreate it.  True, I could probably have done it some other way, but my art journal guru, Julie Fei-Fen Balzer (whose blog comes email every Friday and I read avidly) mentioned her five “must haves” for art journaling and topping the list was a typewriter.

I went on a hunt.  It was harder than I expected. There were no typewriters on Southeasttexas.com.  Nothing in the Yellow Pages.  None lying abandoned at WB.  EBay beckoned.  I did find a couple in my price range.  The shipping was horrendous.  Those things are heavy.  But finally, I found a candidate.  The pretty, and pretty dirty, little blue Smith Corona Coronet – vintage undetermined – arrived yesterday.   It desperately needs a ribbon.  Amazon complied.  It reposes on my kitchen counter for cleaning and inspection.

Kayla arrived for the weekend and was immediately fascinated by the typewriter.  She had to try it out.  She used up all the paper and was downcast.  I told her to go get a piece out of the computer printer and she lit up like Christmas.  “You mean I can use the same paper!”  She typed and typed and typed some more.  “I did pretty good without a backspace,” she said.  “But it has a backspace key,” I said.  “Yes, but it doesn’t correct,” she replied.  She’s used to the delete key fixing all our booboos. 

She typed on.  The pitiful ribbon continued to give up faint letters.  She called her friend to let her hear the typing.  Friend now wants one too.  “I’ll let you hear the ‘ding,’” she bubbled to her friend. 

Kayla has a cell phone, an iPod, a Nook, a Nintendo DS.  But she is enthralled with an “old school” throwback to an earlier age.

Urban Dictionary defines “old school”:  “The term old school is of English origin and dates back to at least the 19th Century and is used to denote something that is considered to be out of date with current trends/ideas and thinking.” 

I don’t care for the phrase.  That’s my school we’re talking about.  I prefer to think of “old school” as things my daddy used to say.  He would approve some activity I was planning by commenting, “At least it will keep you from stealing hubcaps!”

I dropped this pearl on Kayla one morning on the way to school.  In all seriousness, she asked me, “Grammy, what’s a hubcap?”  We started looking for a car with hubcaps and did not find a single one by the time we reached the school.

There is a generation gap, but an aging blue typewriter has bridged it.

Hi, Linda

I’m retired.  That means I don’t go to work.  It doesn't mean I sit around eating bon bons and reading movie magazines (do they even have them anymore?)  It just means I don’t get up at 5 a.m., get decently dressed and go somewhere they pay me for something.  I am often awake at 5 a.m., but rarely decently dressed until absolutely necessary.  And, as other retired people will testify, there is always plenty to do and people who need things done.

In a previous diatribe I suggested that people who feel the need to mind each others’ business do something else, like go to the grocery store.  I go to Kroger every Wednesday.  Count on it. We have family dinner on Wednesday night, and I surely couldn’t go any sooner.  I’d eat the food.   (I usually go as well on Thursday, Friday, Saturday…you get the picture).  Linda is my checker of choice.  She is a delightful lady who rarely gets disgruntled.  They have a variety of nice people at Kroger who I greet every Wednesday, but Linda and I have formed a friendship.  She asks about my family and particularly my grandson, Daniel.  She convinced me to buy the reusable bags.  She waits patiently while I fumble for my Kroger card.  She gets a guy to lift the dog food.  We’re buds, of a sort.

Linda wasn’t there this week.  Another nice lady checked me out and I buggied my bags on out.  I’m sure Linda will be back.  She disappeared on me last year for a while and had me worried.  Turns out she was on vacation.  I’m sure she needed it.  I’ve been a checker before, not in a grocery store.  It can be an extremely stressful job.  But Linda always has a smile, even when it is hard. 

Wherever you were, Linda, I hope it was for good and not some trauma.  I missed you, my friend.

People who live in glass houses. . .

That is ALL of us.  Who among us really wants our lives put on a billboard on the interstate?  Not me, for sure.  I only hope not to be taken unaware because the world will talk forever about my dirty house, my unfolded laundry and my multitudinous animals.  And that's just the innocent stuff.

Who wants to admit to the times I've hurt people, let them down, not come through?  The times I've done stuff that I don't even want God to know, but He does?

So then, why are we constantly thriving on the missteps of others, like it is going to make us look better?  It's not.  The worst criminal or the most depraved acts of meanness and cruelty do not shine my crown.  It's tarnished all on its own.  And until I work to shine it up, it'll stay that way.

There have been many accusations thrown around through this political campaign and not limited to the national offices.  It seems that that mud-slinging has been a springboard for personal nosiness and judgments of our "friends" and neighbors.  Friends is in quotation marks because a friend would not do these kinds of things to others.

It was a sad day last week when Big Tex burned.  It was like the symbol of Texas was gone.  And what is the United States without Texas!  

It is an even sadder day when people can't find any more worthwhile activities than to mess in the business of other people and then spread their judgments like rose petals at a wedding.  There is so much more to life, be it crochet, grandchildren, baseball or craftsy activities.  Go to church.  Go to the grocery store.  Volunteer at something.  Get a life, for Pete's sake, and live it, not someone else's.   

Spitting in the wind

I’m a Libra.  The Scales.  I live for balance.  I like things to be right.  But that’s not always the case.  I don’t like it when things are unfair, even though I know life isn't fair.  I really, really don’t like it when my family is hurt.

I recently heard Christina Perri’s Jar of Hearts. 

And who do you think you are
Running 'round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
And tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
Don't come back for me
Don't come back at all
Who do you think you are?
Who do you think you are?
Who do you think you are?

I know someone like this.  Someone whose self-absorption and arrogance destroy everything in her path, every relationship, every hope of a relationship.  Who do you think you are? Puppeting those around you, telling others what to do? You have no right.  Who do you think you are?  But there is no way to show her what she does.  It’s like spitting in the wind. 

I know someone else like this.  (Apparently, this is a more common situation than it should be.)   This time it is one of the hearts in someone’s jar, one of the victims.  Her pain is due to other factors.  And there is little hope of her seeing him in his true light either.  Again, spitting in the wind.

Hearing the song (a beautiful one) and seeing the video brings it all up and frustrates me.  I want justice, I want retribution, I want them to SEE who they are, what they do, and what is happening to them.  I argue in my head and I argue out loud.  But I know there is no avenue to pursue, no way to bring this injustice to light.   I know it's not up to me.  I know it’s spitting in the wind.

So I’ll give it to God.  At least I’ll try.  He will bring justice where there should be justice and retribution where there should be retribution.  And that’s not spitting in the wind.

Jar of Hearts

Tube for one

I’m a big weenie. 

In 1998, I had an abdominal mass.  I told my doctor, no MRI.  I’ll just die of whatever it is before you close the lid on the box.  He didn’t press.  (He didn’t want one either.)  Now they have improved them but I still don’t want one.

But my knee disagrees.  Two weeks ago it decided not to work anymore.  I have suffered with arthritis in my knees for years and years.  At times it is better and then it is worse.  A “big pill” (600 mg. ibuprofen) usually keeps it in line.  But two weeks ago, for no reason that I know of, it just stopped working.  And it was my “good” knee.  Nothing I have done… rest, big pills, pain pills, ice, heat, IcyHot rub, knee brace…has changed it.  I was ready for the MRI if that’s what it takes.  Don’t care.  Close the box. 

Today I saw an orthopedist at Beaumont Bone and Joint.  A very nice man.  Very sympathetic and quite knowledgeable.   I’m getting an MRI on Thursday.  X-ray only shows bones, not whatever else is going on.  And something is.  OK, I’m old and fat.  But no older and fatter than I was two weeks ago.  So what happened?

Beaumont Bone and Joint is another story.  It is a very humbling place.  Everyone I saw was worse off than me, or so it appeared.  I felt very “suck it up, Nancy” but it hurts.  And these people treated me like I was just as hurty as everyone else.  And they handled matters with professional courtesy, compassion and speed. 

Turns out my head can stick out of the tube.  I can do this.  Yes, I can.  But still being a big weenie, I covet all the prayers and good vibes that you can spare.  As my friend, Margaret says, “when it’s you, it’s the only thing that matters.”

Buying the farm...

"I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills..."    So begins Isak Dinesen’s memoir of her life in British East Africa.  That phrase has become a way of remembering things and events that I hold dear. 

In 1972 I had a white Mustang with red interior and a stick shift four-on-the-floor.  I loved it.  In 1972 I also had a baby girl.  Two doors + car seat + baby = Great Frustration.  That lasted about two years.  Now in 2012 I have a red Mustang.  I also have a baby, my grandson Daniel, 3 years old.  The Great Frustration returned amplified by my increased age and decreased agility.  It lasted almost two years.  The Mustang, that is.  The frustration took considerably less time to come to the point of no return.  Enter the Nissan Rogue

I have had several “farms in Africa.”  I still have a heart-tug when I think about the green Nissan Titan truck I traded for the Mustang.  It was a blonde moment.  I am not blonde, but I had several months of a fling with it.   I loved that truck.  It carried me the 1,000+ miles by myself to Florida and back when the aforementioned baby girl was sick with Dengue fever.  It was empowering.  It was big. I couldn’t back it up worth a darn, but I was queen of the road in it.

I’ve had an assortment of modes of transportation that have been “farms”…my Honda scooter, station wagon, minivan, SUVs.  Each has had its place and done its job.  Each has its kaleidoscope of memories.

So now I return to my roots.  My red ginger hair which is mine regardless of whatever is really underneath.  (I don’t even want to know.)  And my new crossover SUV.  It’s who I am.

So, it’s not me in the red Mustang any more. I’m just buying another farm.