I'm Dreaming of a White St. Patrick's Day...

Said no one ever.

And yet, that's exactly what we've got.

Poor Mother Nature.  She's really been getting beat up on Facebook these past couple days.  I've seen posts ranging from "Go Home, Mother Nature, You're Drunk," to "DIE WINTER DIE," to various other comments critiquing the Bi-Polar episodes the weather has been suffering from lately.

And I get it, I do.  They've already added thirty minutes on to every school day (which is sort of hilarious, because on the day of the scheduled implementation of extra time, school was ironically closed due to-- you guessed it-- inclement weather).  At this rate, summer vacation will begin for teachers at about the time we're ready to come back in August.

But, still.  How often, on St. Patrick's Day, do you get a chance to make one of these:

She looks bigger than she actually is.  (My mother decided she was a she.  I didn't really think about it, just assumed it was a guy.  I supposed that's sort of sexist of me, but hey, so is the term "Snowman."  And since she is wearing my hat--with sparkly glitter threads woven throughout, nonetheless-- I guess she is a girl.  Or a snowman who is very comfortable with his sexuality). 

Still, even though she's small, I'm pretty proud of her.  Granted, it has snowed approximately four million times so far this year, so much so that Kaliah asked me today if Delaware looks completely white from outer space.  But none of the previous snowstorms brought the good-for-packing snow.  I was beginning to think the problem was me, that I just wasn't talented enough to make the snow stick together.  I thought maybe I'd reached a new low in life, because, really... how hard should it be to make snow form a few snowballs?

But then this most recent snow arrived, and I could tell the difference as soon as Kaliah and I started rolling it.  It wasn't me, after all.  This snow, this was the sticky kind.  So behold:  The St. Patty's Day Snow Woman.

We'll call her Pat.

Mother Nature does get a bad rep when she goes on these wild mood swings.  (Funny how we assume snowmen are dudes but nature is a lady).  I guess she's entitled, though.  If I were responsible for the whole entire world's weather, it would be even more sporadic and crazy and unpredictable than it's been, even throughout this wacky winter.  And I wouldn't apologize for it, either.

After all, it's a big world out there.  There's a lot to keep up with.

And as for making up her mind and sticking to it?

Who are we to judge?  I can't tell you the number of decisions I'm juggling with right now, but I bet you've got just as many.  From the mundane, like deciding what to fix for dinner or what kind of damage control my hair is in need of, to the life changing--like is my career going where I want it to?

It's a miracle my child and I make it out the door fully clothed each morning, with all the stuff I'm thinking about.

I've been told I wear my heart on my sleeve, that I care too deeply and feel too much.

I know, of course, that this is true.  But my feelings are what make me who I am.  I don't always take criticism or rejection well (fun times on the publishing endeavors, let me tell you!), and I tend to overreact in all kinds of situations--to get too excited or take something too much to heart.  To dwell on something I've done wrong or to overanalyze the tiniest details.  But this same sensitivity makes me a better mother, a better listener, a better friend.  I'd like to hope a better writer.

And my child, my colleagues, and my friends know that the volcanic emotional eruption comes with the territory.  They know when to get out of the way and give me my space, or when I just need a hug.

So give nature a break.  Sure, she can't make up her mind lately.  She's been a bit moody--furious storms, smiling suns, gentle breezes, and God forbid--more snow--she's going through something, maybe, but who among us isn't?

You can't get the rainbows without the rain.

And you CAN make a snow woman on St. Patrick's Day!!

So while I'm not Irish, I do consider myself lucky.  More than lucky, actually--blessed.  I pray that all of you are blessed as well, and that if, much like Mother Nature, you're struggling to make up your mind about something--that you accept each day for what it's worth--another incredible day in your journey.  No matter how far you are from your destination, you are somewhere today.  And that's worth celebrating.

Just ask Pat.  I doubt she thought she'd be here in March, but here she is.

And that, my friends, is something more than even the luck of the Irish.

Dog Days of What Felt Like The Never-Ending-Winter

This is my dog, Sue Yung.

She is guilty of many offenses.  The most recent one being that, last night, whilst I was asleep, with the bedroom door wide open and mere steps away from where Rashieme was still awake playing video games in the living room, Sue Yung sternly approached my bed and "Arfed," in the discreet but serious way that meant I had better get up in the middle of the night before she peed in my bedroom.

She is going on to be nine years old in the near future.  She was my first child, in a way, because in the brilliance of the third trimester of my pregnancy, I decided it was the perfect time to add a furry friend to our family.  That didn't work out so well.  Sue Yung ended up staying with my mother for several years, but now, Rashieme and I have been awarded sole custody.

Mainly because she has a bad habit of lazily standing or laying exactly where she shouldn't, which isn't exactly convenient in Mom and Mommom's househould, primarily because Mommom now uses a walker which Sue Yung has been known to attack from time to time.  The snarling and snapping usually occurs when the walker intrudes on her personal standing or snoozing space, which, again, is always in a convenient location, such as in the middle of a narrow hallway, or blocking the only bathroom door, or perhaps directly in front of the stove or refrigerator at meal time.

Sue Yung is a Lhasa Apso Shitzu mix.

Rashieme claims she is "A Dog."

Sue Yung was named by Rashieme after the female character who gets kidnapped in the Rush Hour movies.  I don't know why, but sometimes I do wish Sue Yung would get kidnapped.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

So we are a very diverse family.  Rashieme is African-American, I am white, our daughter is bi-racial, and, apparently, our dog is Chinese.

We also own a smaller dog, Diva, who is, in a word, Terrified.

She is the sweetest, most timid, eager-to-please creature I have ever met.  She is spoiled rotten and well-trained.

But she walks around with a perpetual look of Terror on her face.

Also, as pictured below, she was involved in a torrid romance with Kasey, and it seemed not to matter to either of them that both are girls and Kasey is, in fact, a cat.

 

 

So this post was all about my pets.  Those of you who know me know that I am really not a pet person these days.  I love them, don't get me wrong, but in mothering and housekeeping and working and all the other -ings of my days, they just don't take a top priority in my life.

Luckily, Kaliah is the most compassionate, animal-loving, constantly pet-tending child there could ever be.  She still wants to be a veterinarian or an animal rescuer when she grows up (though I'm hoping, eventually, she'll move more towards, you know, doctor.  Or lawyer.).

Of course, her manners of tending and attention sometimes result in the animals flocking to Rashieme and I to be rescued from her loving care... but her intentions are good, I assure you.

So here's to the household pets that love us, adore us, amuse us, and befriend us.  Who on the frigid days of winter cuddle up to warm us.  Who on the dog days of summer lie inspiringly motionless, sprawled out across the living room floor.

They are sparkles of light in my life, though I'm not a particularly passionate pet owner.  I enjoy those quiet moments of contentment sitting with or coddling my furry friends, infrequent as they may be.  I recognize the difference they make in my household, and am happy that I can provide them with a home in which they are adored by my daughter.

And slightly more than tolerated by me.

Just kidding.

Sort of.

The Backwards Watersliding Full Flip Head Dive

So it's March, and it might snow again tomorrow through Monday.

I think I speak for most of us when I say, aww, horse poop!

So, how about a taste of summer?  Today's True Tale of Everyday Crazy takes place on a warm summer day, in a kingdom not too far, far away, as we all remember glimpses of sunshine and humidity, and the heavy salt air of the ocean under the blazing heat of a cloudless sky.

The perfect setting for the Backwards Watersliding Full Flip Head Dive.

The Backwards Watersliding Full Flip Head Dive

            There is a small water park in Fenwick Island, Delaware, that my mother and I frequent with my daughter in the summertime.  It is a fun way to spend the day—lounging by the kiddie slides that will entertain a young child for hours, floating down the lazy river, and, assuming you are a little more adventurous, flying down the two curvy water slides that are the main attractions of the park.

            It used to be that you could select either a foam white mat or a round, yellow air-filled tube to slide on.  In recent years, the policy has been changed.  Now, adults may only slide on the mat, not the tube, and a giant red and white sign proclaims this at the area where you choose your riding device.  I feel that, most likely, I am single handedly responsible for this change.

            It was several years ago, on a perfect, cloudless, sunshiny day, and the three of us had enjoyed a long day of soaking up the rays, drifting down the lazy river, and, for Kaliah and I, riding the slides.  We’d been riding double, because she was only about three or four at the time.  It had been great fun, but, for some reason, I had it in my head that going down solo would be much more exhilarating.

            I was right.  Possibly, a little too right.

            Mom and Kaliah stood near the bottom of the slide, where the riders came bursting out of the chutes and flung into a shallow pool.  I bravely selected a yellow tube to slide down on, climbing the many wooden stairs leading to the top of the slide as quickly as I was able, the air-filled tube lightly tapping against my legs as I made my way to the very top.  Though it was nice out, it was later in the day, and much of the crowd had already left.  I didn’t have to wait very long before the life guard at the top blew the whistle.  I planted my butt firmly in the middle of the doughnut hole and launched myself down the slide.

            What I noticed immediately was that sliding solo was not only much quicker than riding double, there was far less control involved.  Almost instantly, as the tube slipped and slid around corners, the raft began spinning in wild circles.  Though there was no time to really think about it, I automatically began craning my neck to see behind me as I was careening down the slide backwards, and more importantly, I began trying to shift my body weight around in order to maneuver myself back into a forward facing position.

            It was to no avail.

            Though the entire experience couldn’t have lasted more than six seconds, it was a very panicked six seconds, as I twisted my shoulders, dangled my legs, clutched the tube’s handles, and shimmied and shook in every way possible to try to avoid hitting the water backwards (my mother, who, on principle, refused to ride anything more exciting than a merry-go-round, had apparently passed on her irrational fear of riding a waterslide down to me, citing the reason that “she might hit her head on the bottom”).

            Perhaps it wasn’t so irrational after all.

            On about the seventh second, I had managed to reposition myself into a near sideways position, just before the ride ended and the tube hit the water.  I gave one more desperate twist of my weight, trying madly to avoid going in backwards.  I remembered catching sight of my mother, holding my daughter, and watching their eyebrows raise and eyes widen like cartoon characters.  And that was the last image I had before tightly squeezing my eyes shut, as, in spite of my best efforts, the slide spit me out backwards at break-neck speed.

            I’m sure it was quite a spectacle, mainly because my mother confirmed that, yes, indeed, it was.

            As I’d been trying to flip myself frontwards, my legs were sprawled out widely, spread eagle style, and the moment the tube hit the pool, I was catapulted over into a backwards, air-born somersault, flipping over completely (legs still spread wide open as in a cheerleader’s toe touch position, FYI), holding onto the tube handles for dear life, feeling them ripped away as my head made contact with the water and the tube shot out of my hands and sailed through the air.  The pool waves rushed over me as I rocketed head-first to the very bottom, banging the side of my noggin on the concrete floor of the pool, gurgling and gasping and even giggling underwater at the sheer stupidity of the situation as I was bounced back upwards, mass of wet, clumped hair clinging to my face as I sputtered to the surface, welcomed by Kaliah’s “Wow!” and the guffawing laughter of, out of all people, the lifeguard.

            “Mommy did a flip!” Kaliah cried in wonderment.

            “She sure did,” my mother managed to agree, as she was also suffering from a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

            “I hit my head on the bottom,” I choked out, laughing and stupefied.

            “Do it again!” Kaliah urged.

            But alas, that was quite enough sliding for me for that day.  Also, there is absolutely a zero percent chance that I would ever be able to duplicate that accidental feat.

            If someone had been recording that on their phone or camera, maybe I could have won America’s Funniest Home Videos, or, at the very least, went viral on YouTube.

            Or maybe I should just be thankful that my bikini top remained in its correct position, and I suffered no known brain damage, all while managing to give the lifeguard, whom I figured would have seen it all, a story to tell at happy hour that evening.

            You only live once, after all, and if you, my friend, have never attempted a Backwards Watersliding Full Flip Head Dive…

            Well, then, sir or madam, you might not be fully living.

 

Mom and I at the scene of the accident.

Wishing on a Wintry Wednesday...

My routine's all out of whack.  We haven't had a normal week of school in all of 2014.  There's a good chance that we won't leave the house for days.  And, yeah, once again... I'll probably be in school until almost July.

Winter blues?  Sort of.  But then, I look out the window and see this:

 

How can you not find it beautiful?

 

 

(I guess talk to me at the end of February.  If we get any more snowstorms, I might lose that reverent feeling.  But for now, I find it soothing.  Romantic.  Enchanting).

It also reminds me of The Winter Writing Retreat, an event hosted by The Eastern Shore Writing Project.  Sadly, ESWP is currently on hiatus.  And despite the winter timing, the retreats I attended never looked quite like this.  But sifting through my old blog the other day, I found a piece that I'd written upon return from the retreat and wanted to share.  The thoughts I recorded in this post eventually played an important role in my deciding to travel to Peru in the summer of 2011 as a missionary, so this piece has a truly special meaning to me.

It is dedicated to all of my friends and colleagues who miss ESWP.

I hope you enjoy.

Originally posted Monday, January 17, 2011.


                                                                            A Love Affair

This weekend, I experienced one of those once in a lifetime, luxuriously refreshing string of events that you might equate with an unlikely romantic fantasy or an unspoken, secret dream: in a beautiful oceanfront hotel, where I watched the sunrise over the sea, talked all hours into the night and early morning, enjoyed laughter from the depths of the soul, invigorating intellectual conversation, and plastic cups filled with cheap wine, I fell in love...

It wasn't a weekend getaway with a long lost lover (though that might have been nice, too). This weekend, during the Eastern Shore Writing Project's Winter Writing Retreat, I fell in love again with writing, with living, and with people. It was a love affair of different sorts.

I engaged in a whirlwind romance of the mind as my colleagues and I examined the power of words, allowing ourselves to express heartfelt sentiments about writing, teaching, and communicating. I wrote, I reflected, I read my words aloud. I laughed. I felt deeply my own pain and joy, and that of those around me, as we captured the little miracles of life and typed them into existence on our laptops, jotted them into permanence in patterend journals and tattered spiral notebooks. We came together in a way that is truly rare. I realized, once again, that writing is a bridge across cultures, years, gender, experience. I smiled and cried as I was touched by the words of those around me, and I was humbled as I watched my words fall meaningfully onto the ears of others.

I was swept off my feet spiritually, as well. In a place when I was more inspired than I have ever been by the common bonds uniting us, so many vastly different people, I reflected on what God has done for me, the incredible gift of salvation that I believe is found in Jesus Christ. I ran across the boardwalk at sunrise, watching the incredible display of glowing pink rays lighting up a still soft, star speckled sky, the cold ocean consistently lapping the shore below. I thought of how big my God was, yet how accessible He is, to all who seek him. I prayed for my new friends, and thanked God for the amazing blessings He has given me.

Of course, it's all very noble to claim that I had planned this spirtual rejuvenation in conjunction with my adamant need to exercise. Truth is, I had to force myself to run. Self, I began, you've gained at least five pounds if not more over the holidays. You embarassed yourself terribly at your last 5K. If you don't run at least once this weekend, I'm going to kick your own butt later.

So I exercised my resolve and woke up at 5:30 in the morning, as to not interfere with the precious writing time or the socialization to which I had quickly become addicted, having come together with some of the most interesting and fantastic people I had ever known. As I'm too cheap to pay for a gym membership, and too much of a pansy to be hardcore with my running in the icy month of January, I decided a run in the hotel's treadmill would be a special treat.

Down I went to the gym on the second floor, and yes, it's quite possible that I forgot my sweats and had to run in my pajama pants (don't worry. They're gray, and except for the penguins and surfboards across my derriere, I don't think anyone would have noticed anything suspicious about my attire). Luckily, I was the only lunatic in the gym at what I would have thought was an ungodly morning hour.

*Sidenote--I just had to google "butt synonym" to figure out how to spell derriere. True confessions of the randomness of my life.

So anyway, I attacked the treadmill, and it attacked me back. I've only resorted to indoor running a handful of times in my life, and when I checked my mileage after twenty-five minutes, a timeframe when during my normal efforts outside I would have been at close to three miles, I had managed to run just over two. Sweaty, hot, and disgusted by the stuffiness of my gym and my poor performance, I jumped off the treadmill and wandered out to the balcony to breathe in some fresh air.

To my delight, it wasn't a frigid, furious winter morning, as I assumed it would have been. The cold that greeted me was exactly what I needed to refocus my mind. I jogged down the stairs, having found the inspiration to finish what I'd started. I ran the final mile down the deserted Ocean City boardwalk, awed by the spectacular display of nature in the sunrise, convinced that God had chosen this moment to talk to me.

It was a beautiful experience.

The people I spent the weekend with: dear older friends and instant newer ones, too, were truly some of the most fascinating I've ever met. Many of us are teachers. Some of us are students. All of us are writers. Stacie, the single mom of four I invited from my church, one of my favorite friends I made last year, discovered that she is, in fact, a writer. My friend Greg, a college student and full-time construction worker, held his own and kept us in hysterics as he carried his weight as one third of our entire male population (the only time you'll be in the minority as a white male, we joked). His creative documentary on seagulls is both hilarious and a bit scary. Once he posts it online, I'll provide a link. Laura, who has easily done enough living in her short time on this planet to have lived fifteen people's lifetimes, told of her adventures in twenty-one countries, and her Deep Conversations with Random Strangers, a brilliant book idea that stems from her energy and fearlessness in meeting and connecting with new people. I heard sentences from her mouth that I would never anticipate hearing again, things like "So I was in Chicago, and it was after I'd won third place in the Amateur Ventriliquest Competition..." We practiced the art of Deep Conversations with Random Strangers, marching into The Atlantic Hotel in Berlin, demanding to know if this was in fact the hotel Richard Gere stayed in during the filming of Runaway Bride. The gracious owner, who was sidetracked by her duty to check in actual paying guests, handed us the key to Room #20, and up the stairs we went. Cynthia touched the bed Mr. Gere slept in; we all admired the toilet he peed in.

We finished the weekend out with Jody Kelly Wright, a local author and partner of a West Ocean City restaurant. She spoke beautifully, encouraging us all, inviting us to celebrate whatever successes it is that we have achieved, and to constantly challenge ourselves to take it to the next level, whatever that may be. Jody is living my dream. She has had one book published by a small press, and is now an agented author pursuing traditional publication for another of her novels. I think given her energy, dedication, and obvious talent, she is a definite name to watch. As I sat in that room with other aspiring authors, I thought back to that grueling run on the treadmill, and how the moment I stepped outside, I was free to really run. It suddenly became easier, because instead of running in place, I was actually going somewhere. I think so many of us run, run, run through our lives going nowhere, just as I was struggling and huffing away on that treadmill. Only in breaking loose and running in the fresh air, which we are so often afraid to do, because of the cold, because of the inconvenience, because of the unknown, because of the challenge, only when we venture outside, do we find we are finally able to run somewhere. I don't even know that where you go is the important thing... I just know it matters that you are moving in a direction of your choice, as opposed to staying still despite your best efforts.

As I thought about God and all his majesty, the gifts he gives us that we take for granted or get distracted from (the most sacred of which is the gift of His own son), I vowed to not run in place any longer. I vowed to pursue my dreams and those God has for me, and to not settle for running in place, to exhaust myself in a struggle to make it through without actually going anywhere. I want to live life to the fullest. As I returned to Salisbury for church in the evening, my pastor's words summed up my realizations of the weekend:

"It is never too late to be the person you were always meant to become."

Why wait another day? We are given so very few, and they are truly precious. I'm getting off the treadmill now.

Will you?

Why settle for an affair when you could be married?

Here's to living each day to the fullest.