Monthly Archives: September 2009

The dictionary is one of my most favorite books. Most of the time we only pick it up to find the meaning of a word, or confirm the spelling. I discovered some years ago that it is a deeply satisfying read!

Just today, I was thumbing through the dictionary… and this time I actually was trying to find the meaning of a word. It was a “C” word… c-h-a… c-h-e— c-h-i… “What’s this? Chicken: a common domestic fowl; its flesh used as food. Memories came rushing back to me.

Six Hundred South 13th Street, Rocky Ford, Colorado: My first home. We lived next door to Doc Keck and his beautiful bride whom I affectionately called “Kecks.” This couple was like grandparents to me. He was a retired veterinarian and raised chickens in a coop in his back yard. Tom and I used to go over to their place and Doc would let us collect eggs from the hen house.

Tom was a gifted egg-plucker. He could slowly sidle up to the nests, look those chickens in the eye, and just talk his way underneath those hens. His voice just

A woman goes into a restaurant to have lunch… she’s maybe five feet tall and it’s work to say she’s even a size two. This dainty little thing is seated at the counter where she proceeds to order three cheese burgers, two dinner salads with dressing on the side, a fruit plate, and she washes it down with two cokes and ice cream. (Heart attack tomorrow, I’m thinking.) A couple of weeks later she comes into the same restaurant where I am dining and again she orders big time: a steak dinner with fries, again two dinner salads, and a two-scoop ice cream sundae. As she was eating all of this I watched… I mean I tried to be discreet… couldn’t stop myself… One thing kept coming into my mind… “Oink!” And she was still this tiny little thing!

It was clear that she loved to eat! She enjoyed every bite of everything she put into her mouth. (And a clean plate? Oh my grandmothers would have been proud of her!) This young woman was one of those amazingly fortunate people who has a very fast metabolism.

I can understand a metabolism

He viewed the kill from the top of the knoll. It wouldn’t be that day or even maybe the next but the beast inside him told him, “Soon. Soon.”

She was the female of her species. Unaware of the stalking, she moved silently across the open grass, stopping now and again to feel the wind and sense her surroundings. She took this path every day in pleasure of life, unaware of the fate that lay ahead.

He continued to watch. When she moved, the beast that lived inside him longed for the kill. When she raised her head, he ached to cut her down. Killing was what he did. Not for nourishment, but for pleasure. It was unlawful, but the beast… Yes, the beast that would not be silent demanded feeding. When it roared the hunter knew in spite of any decent impulse, he would take up his weapon and kill.

No one knows how many days the hunter stalked his prey. No one knows if he even wanted to find a decent impulse instead of planning the deception of his hunt. But the time did come when the beast inside

I just discovered that this title was sitting here with no thoughts… as if no one came to write. And I did quite some weeks ago. Where those words went I have no idea. Computer crash? Yes probably. Did you open this up and find nothing earlier? Did you feel alone? Ironic, isn’t it.

I recall getting a letter one time with no letter in it. Just the envelop from someone for whom I cared very much. I wondered and wondered where that letter went and what it must have said. I wondered if I would maybe get it later, having been misplaced. I wondered if I should ask the person what happened to it. I never did.

Today, I am wondering about it again… because I found this titled page with nothing on it and I’m thinking, “Did you wonder where the writing went?”

Sometimes I have received letters that meant a great deal to me. I have saved them and years later gone back and read them. Odd that I would be writing about this tonight, a day or so ago I found a 19 page

A photograph freezes an image for all time, so that we might remember what was and is no more. It also allows us to view that same moment from a different vantage point.

A few days ago I went through six boxes of photographs, which covered several decades of my life. Yes, they were in boxes. I would love to tell you that I am my mother who put all of the photos immediately into albums and labeled them all! She had that nailed. But no, her daughter (at least this daughter) has them scattered all over the place. I started out doing that… I have five beautiful albums that cover my high school college years and maybe five years of marriage and family. After that… it’s total chaos. I’m blessed to have been able to get the rest into boxes.

As I went through these six boxes of photos and looked at my life, I found myself wondering what happened to all of that living. We went from one year to another and life just happened. “Oh there I am in college.” and “Look… me married, and then “me pregnant or

Do you swim? I do. I think I have been doing this all my life… Maybe even pre-life… backstroke in the womb! I come from a long line of swimmers. But we’ll start with my mother.

She spent a lot of her growing up years around lakes because my granddad raced D-hydroplane boats on the weekends. She had to know how to swim. And she could swim… Like a fish!

When Mom had the three of us kids, she taught us to swim along with half of the kids in La Junta. (Her good friend, Frances Keck taught the other half.) But I digress.

I take you to my brother and me in the midst of junior life saving in La Junta, Colorado where our mother is one of the two instructors. Everyone is doing great and powering through this course. Yours truly is maybe powering through this course. I can do the laps. I can save the victim in that water. I can do everything but one thing that is required to pass Red Cross Junior Life Saving. I cannot float dead man.

From the time I was born until I was six years of age, my brother [later add to that our sister] shared a room together. I recall my sister being in a crib about a foot from the bed that Tommy and I shared. He and I would lie very still until we could hear her sleeping (she snored as a baby… it was so cute) and then my brother would haul out a flash light from under the bed and a stack of comic books. And we’d read under the covers together. From then on I was hooked; and I always read the same ones that he did. No Archie and the Gang, but ones like Superman, Super Boy, Spider Man… any comic book that had a super hero in it, this is what we read.

These were our childhood heroes… and in some ways our role models. Tom was particularly fascinated with the guy that could stretch… Elastic Man… that’s probably not his name, but he had this funky costume that was red and white and he wore glasses! I think my brother was pretty crazed over this guy because he didn’t

To compete: To vie with one another and/or come together. Tonight the women paired off to dance in DWTS, which brings to mind the way many women compete.

I use to believe that men were the only aggressive ones in sporting events. But put women head to head and I’ve never seen anything like it. Wow, single-minded focus. Guys seem to finish and say, “Great game.” and go around giving high fives to each other. Women? It seems like it’s personal. (Now is this just me, or do you make the same observation?) I especially see this when women play soccer or tennis. I guess I can understand it. But for me, it just needs to be great work! I want to constantly best my own performance and that makes the best competition.

As the women prepared for the woman’s relay dancing, there was a lot of attention paid to who went first, last, etc. Having done a lot of competition myself as a performer, placement is a big deal… But the bigger deal is that you have done your homework and come out prepared to demonstrate something that

Here it is September 21st and I still (still) don’t have my TV back from the shop! It’s been months now. And, while I’m not the biggest television fan that ever walked the planet, I do love my “Dancing With the Stars!”

Most of the time, I’ve been the one saying, “Could you turn that down?” or “Can we turn that off?” And suggest a TV for the bedroom? Forget it.

When this show first came on the air, I was all over this thing! Hubby was… “eh!” That said, I know how to keep silent and hold my tongue till I need to haul out the “ammo.” So I said to Hubby, “Dancing With the Stars” is sort of my football game, my soccer moment, my tennis championship. And I don’t want to watch it alone…. It’s payback time. Remember me removing the kids from the house so you could watch your sporting events in silence? You wanted silence and now I want your company. Time to suck it up…. Pleeeeeease?”

And I did the “wife face,” which is pathetic to resort to that, but I was desperate to do

How many times have you heard it said, “It’s just an expression?” Everyone uses them or hears them at some point in time. While some of us use them more than others, we all know what they mean. I’d like to peruse some expressions tonight and see where they take us.

In my family, I would hear my grandmother say things like, “You can do anything you want until it interferes with the end of my nose.” That was her way of saying, “Feel free to enjoy yourself until you upset my life.” And to upset her life meant all bets were off. straighten up right then or she’d paddle you no matter how big or old you were.

My brother and I were told we were going to [the same] grandparents cherry orchard to pick cherries. I recall having to shimmy up those trees to pick the cherries. It was a lot of trees and a lot of work! We did this until sundown. When we got back to our grandparents’ house, my brother was told he could go outside and play. but I was caught by the scruff of the neck