In which Stephen King and mammography share a post

I had my annual mammogram yesterday. And of course it was awkward making small talk with the radiologist as she pressed and compressed and manhandled me all over that General Electric glass plated machine. I was praying that thing wouldn't go all Stephen King on me and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze till I popped like a tick. 

Is there a special course that radiologists take to learn how to conversate (as Camden puts it) while feeling up the patients? My radiologist, Amy, was very good at it, the conversating. I don't think I blushed nary once.

Also, I had no idea GE was in on the mammogram gravy train. They made my machine. This is an exact replica of the machine I got intimate with yesterday. My machine's auto-stop squeeze feature was working fine.

All this to say, get your girls checked out, ladies. And pray Stephen King doesn't read this blog.

The hills are alive...

Home has a sound.

A sweet, syrupy twang that settles in my soul.

It oozes over my skin like butter on a hot biscuit.

Envelops me like kudzu on, well, southwest Virginia.

Home has a sound.

When we were at home last week, I couldn't get enough of listening to people talk. The waitress at Roma's, the clerk at Ingal's, the voice at the Sonic drive-in - oh my goodness, I could have listened to him repeat my order all dingdang day! Even my own mom has a down-home lilt in her voice.

This sound is so different from the clipped break-neck speech up here in Connecticut. It's soothing. Slow. A drawl that, honest to goodness, takes me back to Hee-Haw in the best possible way. (Did you know this? My dad's mom's name was Minnie. My dad's dad's middle name was Pearl. They wanted me to be named, um, Minnie Pearl!)

Home has a sound, indeed.

Home Coming

We ended our week-long trip to Virginia with our favorite couple on the whole wide earth. 

Jack & Lois

  Lois & Jack

     Dodo & Mo

Dodo would be Jack. Mo is Lois. Because Lois mowed the yard a lot when we lived next door at 618 Walnut Ave. She mowed it so much that one of Camden's first words was "Mo." And later, when we went to eat supper with Jack & Lois/Lois & Jack, he shrieked his greeting to her, "MO!!!!!!" And he turned to Jack and coughed up, "Dodo!" We have no idea where that came from. Truth be told, Dodo has always been the more reserved of us all. 

Last night we met up on Dodo and Mo's front porch, the space of many a meet-up back when we were neighbors and supper bums and best friends. Oh, that porch has seen some fits of laughter. We used to drag the baby monitor over there after Camden had drifted off, and we'd hang out till we were all sleepy with bellies full of Chinese delivery and burpy giggles. 

That baby monitor would just drone on, the comforting static soothing us into a nightly ritual.

Oh, the stories that front porch can tell.

Take Wanda Peters, for example. Now, Ima not going to tell you the whole Wanda Peters story. But you just have to know the belly guffaws it would incite. I never knew dear Wanda, but Lois did. And that story will go down as one of my favorites.

Then there was the time that Lois, who had never thrown away a piece of paper that she might possibly find a use for one day, swore she still had her 1980s-era pool and spa license. Oh, yeah, we taunted her. "Prove it!" Well, I swannee, she did. She marched right up to her guest room or attic or some such place in the house and produced that dingdang license before we could call TIME. We just thought she was a hoarder.

Our whole friendship started out when we bought the crazy falling-down house next door to J&L. On our first night there, we realized the gas hadn't been turned on, so we had no hot water. Lois, who had already christened the move-in day a "Ben Gay Rum" event, offered up her bathroom in less than a second. Two hot showers later, some Ben Gay for sore muscles and a splash of rum for sore bones, we had friends for a life time. That very week, Jack saved us from certain death when he warned us about a certain casserole we should not eat. I cannot divulge more details. Just know we are alive and well to this day thanks to Jack's "patch up". Thank you, Jack.

Oh, I could go on and on and on. Dodo and Mo are more precious than gold. Of all the examples of faith and marriage and loyalty, Dodo and Mo are at the top of the heap. And even after all these years away, they're still keeping the porch lit, watching for friends in the dark, teaching us how to love and keep on loving till well past bedtime.

Home

Connecticut - topping 100 degrees

Roanoke, Virginia - topping 100 degrees

Norton, Virginia - a soothing 86 degrees

It's good to be home.
Always, good to be home.

Skinny Buddha

Friday nights used to mean small group Bible study.

Then for a brief respite, it meant Chinese delivery and TV reruns.

Last night it was a karate tournament. 

The boys and I were thankful spectators. Curt was a competitor who took 3rd in sparring. 

Today he has legs the size of tree trunks to prove it. 

The sparring is really play-fighting. You aren't allowed to make contact with your kicks and punches, but when you block a hit, you likely will feel it. There was a lot of feeling going on last night. 

But the main idea of this posting is that our school beat another school to bring home the "Buddha".  I put it in quotations not to be mindless, but to show that I recognize that this piece of sculpture is not an honest-to-goodness Buddha. It's more like a Confucius. But, as I was told by an instructor at the tournament, who will not be identified on this blog, "Battle for the Confucius just doesn't sound as good." She's so right. Battle for the Buddha clicks. Fight for Confucius is not clicky in the slightest.

Now that Windsor has the Buddha that is not a Buddha, I figure we'll be all smiley as we spar one another in class. We'll go nuts about our victory until, oh, say, Christmastime. Then we'll forget about the skinny Buddha until it's time to consider entering next summer's tournament. At that time we'll go all hog-wild about defending the Buddha, and in one year I'll be posting some other ludicrous blog entry about my husband's tree-trunk legs and the bruises and our overall pride that our school owns this fine piece of art for 365 days.

Long live wimpy Buddhas.

I Write The Songs

It takes quite a lot to make me cry. In fact, I can go for weeks without shedding a tear, but this week has been a doozy.

I cried Friday night after SCREAMING a mad holler when I was one frustration beyond my breaking point.  I cried. I felt better after that. Sometimes you just have to let it out.

I cried Sunday morning in church when the holy spirit was moving all about the space that is our church - a New England high school auditorium - during the band's praise and worship time. Oh, how I raised my hands and lifted my out-of-tune voice. Those were happy tears.

I cried that night when I started putting together the DVD of our 2nd grade year together. I selected  music I thought would speak to our year, set it to the 400+ photos I had taken, and sat back to watch. I told Curt that I wasn't sure I'd be able to say goodbye to this class. And I cried.

Yesterday, my teacher friend across the hall asked us to pray for her daughter whose baby was due that very day. Her daughter had lost that baby just after Christmas. We all prayed for comfort and peace. Teacher friend came to me after school with glistening eyes; her daughter just learned she was pregnant. I cried. 

Today Tiana brought me a Diet Coke and a pack of Twix. I cried. Jessica brought me the sweetest card and a gift. I cried. Miles tried to give me his published book, Jack's Anger. I cried and made a deal with him that if he came to read it to my class next fall, that'd be just perfect. I could not take his book; his mom needed to save that. She'll cry.

A half-week of tears. And tomorrow is the last day of school. I have a feeling that I'm not all cried out yet. Perhaps I should load some Barry Manilow on my iTunes and have myself a good old bawl. Or I could watch my newly burned DVD and weep just the same. 

I'm not so sure I know how to say goodbye to this bunch.

Mocking Birds

I asked my kids last week to write down things they hear me say all the dingdang time.

Not a one of them said "dingdang".

But here's what I apparently do say to them:

Oh my stars and bars!

Oh merciful heavenly days.

Even my dog sits when I ask her to sit. (RIP, EmmaLemmaLimaBean)

Heavens to Betsy.

Ooooooooooh, cla-aaaaaass!!!

Class, class!

Classity class class!!!!! (It's a Whole Brain Teaching thing.)

You are my favorite.

I love you!

And I do love every single one of them,

seeing as how they're all my favorites.

Camden has been bugging me for DAYS to list his LOT of Nerf guns on Craigslist.com.

I have promised him for DAYS that I'd do it. 

And then I didn't. 

Yes, I know fully well what a sucky mom I am. 

Well, said child sneaked up on me tonight and caught me reading random Facebook postings and homey blogs. I had absolutely no excuse for NOT posting his artillery. This was his moment.

And it was mine, too.

I'm so thankful I picked "Post it!" instead of "I'll do it later." Because we all know that LATER means WHEN I'M GOOD AND WELL READY WHICH MAY NEVER HAPPEN.

It took less than 2 minutes for me to type up and post the selection of colorful guns you see above. The boy is hoping to score enough money to buy himself an X-Box 3605eleventy7 gaming system. Or something like that. I really hope he gets that much for this big box of plastic guns. He's certainly shelled more than that out on Nerf in the past few years.

I have to admit, though, that a part of me is sad to see this era come to a close. Those guns sparked some serious battles in our home. Battles that elicited laughter and screams that had us doubled over in giggles when the white flag flew. There's a very big part of me that doesn't want to let these guns go.

Revenge of the Nerds

See that girl in the red tee and her Curves capri pants to the left near the net? That's me eyeing the ball in yesterday's Faculty vs Eighth Grade volleyball game. What on God's green earth possessed me to sign up for this? Surely not my nifty tan. Oh yeah, I freely choose to make an oaf of myself whenever the opportunity presents itself. Chance to be an oaf? OK, I'll take it, Alex, for $200!

My volleyball oafness goes back to the early '80s. Volleyball was my nemesis in gym class. I would stand at the serving line and hold that ball forever. For. Ever. For many, many evers. I rolled it around in my hands. Rolled it a bit more. But I wouldn't serve it. Could not serve it. (Could be that my hair was in the way.)

I knew that the second that ball left my hands, there was no tellin' where it was gonna fly. Certainly not over the net. Oh, I could bounce that ball all around the gym, but I could not make it go to the other team. As a result of my deftness with the volleyball, I was the most fought over kid in gym class.  

"Ah man, we had her last time. It's YOUR turn!" 

"Uh-uh, WE had her. You have to take her this time." 

Way to make a girl choose the band. (Go band!)

How could I possibly climb out of the misery of my youth and answer the call of my now-school's faculty team? Well, to be honest, I took the bull by the horns, I grabbed the golden ring, I answered an email. I paused for a fraction of a second before I hit SEND and there you go. I put myself on the faculty volleyball team. I did this without full disclosure. Nobody knew my past. Nobody had seen my large hair and Sally Jesse Raphael glasses. Nobody had called the Class of '86 to check my Permanent Record. I figured I was golden. How long could this game take?

It took an hour.

We played three games.

We lost every single one.

But that's not the highlight. 

I could explode the moment with you and make you relive every excruciating moment of me fondling that crazy orange volleyball before finally getting up the nerve to let it fly. But I really don't want to dwell on unpleasantness. I just want to tell you that one time. ONE TIME. One time, I let it fly - over the net ----- OOOOOOOOVVVVVEEEEEERRRRR TTTTTTHHHHHEEEEE NNNNNNNEEEEEETTTTTTTTTT -------- where the eighth graders bounced it around a bit but could not return it.

YES! I scored my first point! MY FIRST POINT! EVER! IN MY WHOLE ENTIRE DINGDANG LIFE! 

And that is my slice of life. 

I may never outlive it.

Fridaysomething

June 1 by the numbers:

7.5 school days till summer vacation

#86 Steeler Hines Ward will join NBC sports, so I can continue to smile at that pretty face

Volume 35 is fine for TV shows, but too loud for commercials

38 things left to do to list the house

 6 sneaky little things I've taken down in my classroom even though we're not supposed to start till June 11

27 years of giggling at David Letterman

1 Google hit that declared that Kobe Bryant does, indeed, play for the Lakers.

4 minutes till my coach turns into a pumpkin.