Month: August 2020

MJ Monday-Motivation: Lightning Bugs

Once again, my schedule–writing and day job–prevented me from getting to my patio/garden/back yard in a timely manner. It doesn’t help that the person who had all these grandiose plans for the space disappeared on me last year.

The first year of my garden was the best. It looked amazing. I had fresh herbs. I had colorful coleus, and planters of other beautiful things.

Since then, the space has become more of a jungle. I still love sitting out there, especially at night.

I love watching the lightning bugs. (Yes, I am born and raised in upstate NY, and we always called them lightning bugs. I never heard of a fire fly until I started school.) This year they start flashing early and continue to flash often.

No wonder summer is my favorite season.

Thursday Thought: Typewriters

The other day I recaptured a memory from when I was very, very young.

My aunts and uncles and cousins always got together with extended family, so I knew my cousins’ aunts from the other side of their family.  This memory comes before I went to school, so I couldn’t have been much older than three or four, but it is very vivid.

My cousins’ aunt, a teenager at the time, had a toy typewriter. It was red. It typed purple, like the dittos I would later receive in school for classwork. I was obsessed with the typewriter. I remember wanting desperately to play with it. Longing to use it.

Even then, I knew I was a writer.

My Boy is 30

Yes, my first-born, a/k/a Y-Chromo, is thirty years old today.

I never knew unqualified love until I met him.

He was 5 weeks premature. He couldn’t wait to get out and meet the world. When he was in day care, other parents would tell me he would be a politician or a cruise ship activity director.  Within a week of being in daycare, he knew the name of every child in the center. That hasn’t changed.

He decided what he wanted to be when he grew up when he was in middle school, and except for one brief diversion, he became exactly what he said he would be.  His 7th grade math teacher told me Y-Chromo had a mathematical mind. I laughed. I stopped laughing the day he received his BS in Mathematics summa cum laude.  The next year, he received his MS in secondary education: he was all set to become a math teacher. His dream. He got his first teaching job right out of college.

One of my most memorable moments with him was when he was an infant. I was rocking him in the middle of the night after feeding him, and I felt him grow. Babies grow at some point. We see it when their clothes become too small. But that night, I literally felt him grow in my arms as I rocked him. A miracle.

Happy birthday, baby!

 

MJ Monday-Music: SIRIUS

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I recently purchased a new vehicle. A really new vehicle, that come with three months free Sirius radio. How cool is that?

Except I rarely listen to music in the car. My commute is short (less than 2 miles one way). And between the dreadful radio my husband has to listen to in the morning–he works in radio sales and has to monitor competing stations–and the radio and other noise at Day Job, I relish those few moments of silence I have alone in my vehicle.

The *idea* of Sirius radio is cool. And I’ve played around with a couple of stations. But I’ve spent more time moving the continuous stream of related emails into a folder than I have listening.  That’s right. The emails DO. NOT. STOP,

That ought to say something.