Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes… October 28, 2010

Turn and face the strange…

Whew. A lot has happened since my last post. I mean, heck, it’s been almost three years! Without going into great detail, I’ll just say that life has happened; Barry and I got engaged ; I made new friends, kept some of the old, continue to volunteer, go on wine tours and write. I am participating in an apprentice program for spiritual studies. I am no longer a full-time realtor. My license is inactive as I have gone back to school. After I parked my license, I got a job at the Dept. of Health & Welfare in the early childhood division. It made me realize that life is not getting any shorter, there are thousands of children in need of support and that I love the subject of Psychology. Since I had so many Communications credits to transfer from my previous attempt at college (eighteen years ago), I felt it was in my best interest to pursue a double major.  So, here I am, a non-traditional, full-time student pursuing her Psychology and Communications Degree. I love this new role, even though I may be a bit grouchy during midterms.

So, life is settling down to a more manageable pace. Each of our kids (who live with us) are having landmark years; Mimi started kindergarten, Griffin is in middle school, Hannah and James are freshmen in highschool and Tara is a senior! Phew! Also, Chelsea and Rome are expecting baby number two(!) and I will be a grandma (again!) in April. And, not to leave out any of the kids…Zoe has decided to take some time off before pursuing college in the spring. Her current interests are red velvet cupcakes and chai lattes while working as a cashier at Riverfront Park.  

Griffin’s football team took third in the league this year.  He is now on to wrestling, and guess what? He came home with ring worm! Yuk! There are about 200 boys on the wrestling team–I don’t know how they plan to eradicate ring worm between all of them! But, euw. He won’t stop touching it and my OCD tendencies make my skin itch.

I attended Hannah’s first high school orchestra performance the other night. (She plays the violin, in case you did not know.) I have to say I was impressed! Much different from when she was in middle school. They played Air on Strings, but my favorite was Scheherazade. It was so beautiful–not at all stray cat howlish sounding, like I had become used to. They sounded great!

In all, the kids are doing well.

So, the house is coming along. It is an ongoing project–there are minor finishing details to tend to, like trim work and such. The yard needs landscaping and the front porch is the last thing to be done. We have plans to do the porch and yard this spring. Yay! I”m looking for bright and colorful xeriscape kind of plants, and I’ve got sketches going for my herb garden. I might share some here later… I had a dream the other night that we added on a sunken living room to the back of the house. I think that’s a fabulous idea!

Anyhow, my midterm essay for Film Communications is calling my name. I’m writing an analysis of Hitchcock’s “Rebecca.” And, I hear a big cup of vanilla latte calling my name. TTFN! ~d

Trying something new. December 5, 2009

What do you think about this new rating widget?

Grandma Lucille Makes Her Way Back Home June 17, 2008

Being 2000 miles away from loved ones has its ups and downs. I was not around Grandma when she became ill, and so my memories of her are when she was healthy and vibrant.  I know her health declined in these past few years, and even though I did see her after her leg was amputated, I still remember her as the spunky Grandma of my childhood. I will always remember her this way, and I think that is an “up.”

I have been thinking about her a lot over these past few days. Some of the best memories of my life are memories with my Grandmother and I feel so blessed to have and to hold these memories so dear in my heart. I’ll be gliding along in my day, going about my chores and I’ll suddenly remember another good time with Grandma. I’ll giggle out of sheer joy at the stories she’s told me about her life and I feel grateful to have had her in my life.

So it’s a bit surreal that I will never see her again. This is the “down.” It’s hard to process the fact that she has passed away when, in my mind, she is still healthy and full of spitfire. I know she passed away on Thursday. It is just now sinking in that she is, in fact, gone.

Last night, just as I was about to fall heavily into a blissful slumber, I heard my Grandmother’s laughter. The sound was so real, it was as if she was in the room with me. It woke me from my (almost) sleep, and more memories of her flooded my mind. It was about midnight and I got up from bed and sat in the kitchen, looking out the window at the moon and stars, just thinking about her. And I cried.

One of my favorite memories of Grandma is when she shared details about her life as a little girl. About six years ago, my Grandma Champine and her sister Barbara visited us in Idaho during the holidays. Over breakfast one morning, the stories of her life started to pour out of her like the syrup we used on our pancakes.They were warm and sweet and flowed slowly and some stories were sticky and…oh, I only wish I had a tape recorder!

She laughed as she shared the story about the time her father decided to pack up the family and move them to Hollywood, CA. Her mother (whom I learned was very gullible) reluctantly obliged. Three days later, they found themselves broken down in Pennsylvania. What’s more, as fate would have it, the gentleman who stopped to help them with their car just happened to be her father’s cousin.

Because I grew up so far away from my Grandmother, I never had the chance to sit and listen to these stories before. As we sat at the breakfast table, I begged her to continue and I learned so much about her in that little two hour chunk of time; more than I ever could imagine I’d ever know about my Grandmother.

She talked about her father’s wanderlust, how he kept the family constantly moving, strapping a matress to the car and just up and leaving. And if they had no place to sleep at night, Grandpa would pull off to the side of the road where they’d sleep under the stars, the entire family sharing the matress .

She talked about living in a little shack in PA, just down the hillside from the railroad tracks.

She mentioned how she met my Grandfather and how he’d pull the car over to the side of the road and kiss her passionately when they were first married.

She talked about her Grandmother Hooper, and how she got the name ”Hooper.” (From hooping bushels and barrels, of course…) I learned about her family namesakes…the Fowlers, the Hoopers, the Reeses, the Hadds.

After my visit with her, I rushed to write down all I could remember about our conversation and as I wrote, my mind filled in the blanks. It’s funny; before this day I never thought of my Grandma as having a past. Prior to our breakfast, she was just Grandma who had always been here and would always be here. Grandma who had wet, juicy kisses for me whenever I came over to her house, who made jello fluff and always had Hostess treats for us grandkids~even if we were grown who had kids of our own. After that day I viewed her in a different light. Now she was a woman with a history and feelings and stories to share and a lot of spitfire still in her. This multidimensional woman caught my imagination and I wanted to know more, more, more!

Last Wednesday, My Aunt told me she was ready to go, that Grandma said she wanted to go “home and see Ma & Dad and her sister.”  She left us on Thursday.

As I was trailing off to sleep last night, I imagined her journey to heaven. She was seven again. Her dad had packed up the family and they were camping along the roadside under the brightly shining stars and moon. It was her family’s penultimate road trip together.

And I could hear Grandma laugh out loud.

 

 

 

The Reason I’ve Moved February 27, 2008

Cuz my best pen ran out of ink

green and still growing… February 25, 2008

green and still growing…