I get up everyday to the same smell of rejuvenated life . The attitude of the past slowly leaving as the new fills the day . I sometimes get stuck in the past as we all have small failures while we heal and look for future success . This particular morning the feelings a bit stronger , the fresh air engulfs my being like the sight of a newborn life . The flood of emotions that haunted my day are being sorted , revisited , processed so future feelings can be dealt with in a more resourceful manner without the fear of relapse . I have been so afraid of feeling , I have regressed my natural sense of livelihood . I have accepted less from my day-to-day existence , hiding from the joys of family and friends only to be living in lies from one to another . This new day , today’s new air has something for me , I feel it . I know I’m here for a reason , this feeling , this caress that life holds for me is overflowing today . I love the smell of morning air……..
I have to admit that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with my brain for as long as I can remember. Our relationship began to have trouble when I was in the third grade. Evidently, I was unable to keep up with the class when it came to math, and I was dispatched, to my utter dismay and humiliation, to a mobile classroom on the outskirts of the school for an hour each day. While the rest of my class stayed put, I would have to scoop up my flagrantlydifferent math text-book, exit the class with my cheeks burning, walk the long distance to the Special Ed building, all the while feeling stupid, and meet a sugary sweet teacher who would talk to me like I was not only mathematically challenged, but also having trouble understanding the English language. The whole experience was completely appalling to me, and I decided that I’d work extra hard on my own so I could get out of the Special EducationMath Class.
To me, my circumstances have always been something that I felt I could change, if I could just figure out a plan of action.
Evidently, I have always been a control freak.. :-)
My plan was to get better at math immediately. Back then, though, there were no home computers, much less the World Wide Web, so I was a tiny bit unsure about how to go about becoming a mathematical genius overnight. Luckily, my mother had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica‘s, and I began my quest right there. Everyday after school, I would begin my research into a quick, sure way to improve my brain’s performance. Often, I would get distracted from my mission, running across something entirely unhelpful, but way more interesting.
And in time, I found a little excerpt from an old research study that stated how the brain worked in general, and had come to the conclusion that people who write with their left hands tended to have better mathematical abilities. Ah Ha! I thought. All I needed to do, in my own estimation, was to teach myself to write with my left hand. This, I surmised, would “wake up” the right side of my brain, and I’d be a mathematical wiz…Good-bye, Special Ed Math. Hello, Popularity and Wealth. Actually, I didn’t really care about the popularity and wealth thing so much..just getting out of that humiliating class.
I had this gut feeling that I’d just stumbled on to a little known cure, and that soon, I’d leave my classmates in my mathematical dust…
So, I did exactly that. I practiced writing with my left hand for weeks, then months, and then years. To this day, I will occasionally write with it just to make sure I still can. I have so blended my left hand/right hand capabilities that I made myself somewhat ambidextrous. :-)
But did it help my math abilities? I did catch up in math during my fourth grade year, and then later, in high school, I was able to hold my own, and to get good grades. I scored higher than average in math on my SAT’s, though I always find English grammar, literature, and the like easier to learn and understand, and those scores were higher than my math scores. I ended up working most of my life in accounting.
I have no idea if my little quest tricked my brain or not. Maybe, because I believed that it would make me smarter in math, it did. All I know is that I’ve learned that the brain is exceedingly magnificent and complicated, and we can train it to do what we want. Too cool!
One teacher that I admired and respected once told me that I was unusually logical, always breaking everything down to its simplest forms, which was actually a mathematical skill, and he thought it was unlikely that I was ever behind in math, but instead just wasn’t being taught in a method that I could learn from. Back then, in the 1970′s, the multiplication tables were taught by memorization, and he theorized that this method would not have been something I could have kept up with. A bunch of numbers memorized for reasons I couldn’t explain would not have been easy for me to retain. Instead, had the teachers shown me what exactly was actually being done when you multiply 2 by 2, I would have kept up just fine.
I remember thinking that I liked that teacher’s theory about my brain, but a tiny part of me wants to believe that in elementary school, I figured out a way to trick my brain into being smarter in math. :-)
Vicar (Photo credit: Nick Kidd) A Man Who Isn’t Afraid to Dream!!!
So, I was strolling through the internet this evening, really rather bored, but trying to keep my hyper-vigilant brain from worrying to death over the fact that my husband has been on his motorcycle for 5 hours on a trip, and hasn’t called me even once to let me know he’s alive, and I came across this little nugget of delight:
And it got me thinking about dreams. I may be mistaken, but I think it is safe to say that everyone in the world has had at least one dream while growing up. Of course, depending on where you come from, the dreams would vary drastically. I imagine if you are starving in a hut in a third world country, getting enough food to live to puberty would be a common dream. However, in America, the dreams are probably a little bigger and less life-sustaining. For me, when I was little, I dreamed of being an architect. My favorite uncle, The Master Debater and All Around Most Awesome Uncle Ever, my Uncle John, gave me some of the tools an architect would use, and I spent endless hours designing fantastic mansions. Then, after a relatively small amount of time, I realized that I just kept designing the same mansion over and over again, and the luster wore off the dream. Well, that and the amount of math involved…So, I moved on to other dreams (tap dancer, stand-up comedian, Comparative Religion Professor), but the only other one that ever stuck was to be a writer.
In my family, there are several excellent, published writers, and even more just as excellent, unpublished writers. What is really cool about this dream, though, is that we all write different genres, and none of us write with the same kind of “voice”. For instance, my brother writes about his church ministry and how he and some other financially strapped guys were able to build a church from scratch. Yes, he and I have the same sense of humor, but our interests couldn’t be further apart and our approaches to life are spectacularly different. My mother wrote many, many romance novels. They are actually really clever, well written, and juicy… but have you ever read a graphic love scene written by your mom? :( I can barely read a romance novel, much less one written by my mom, and to write one…I am not that gifted. Romantic I am not! I have an aunt who writes young adult books, including some kind of strange book that lets you make decisions throughout the whole thing, which then changes the ending. Witty and interesting, but beyond my abilities…..And another aunt that wrote science fiction back in the 60′s and 70′s. I was told that one of her books was made into a story for some drama series back then, but I’ve forgotten all the details. Strange that our interests never once seemed to cross over with the number of writers in this family, but so far, that is the way it has all turned out.
I blew off my dream to write most of my adult life. I’d written a couple of fiction books as a teenager, but I cringe to even speak of them. They were horrible. I just figured that my writing career would go the way of my architect career…no where. I just didn’t have the imagination one would need to create a believable story.
So, I lived my life, married, had a family (not in that order), and worked my little accounting jobs and all but forgot my childhood dream.
Then, I set up my blog, and I started writing about stuff I was interested in, or things I felt I wanted to share about myself, and boom! The dream came back to life like Snow White being kissed by Prince Charming! And you know what? It occurs to me that I am now in a better position to be a writer because I’ve lived a whole life. I’ve endured this circus show called life, and now I actually have something to say. I have something I can write about from the heart, and with real honesty and conviction. The dying embers of the flame of hope have been fanned into a roaring bonfire, and for the first time since I was a little girl, I have a real dream to work towards!
And vicars who quit their jobs to become Elvis Presley impersonators serve as a MASSIVE inspiration to me…Thank you, Vicar! You are my hero.
You are the wind beneath my wings… :)
I just think we never get too old to dream, and we should go for it!!! What is your dream??
It occurs to me that making friends on the internet is kind of an odd exercise when it comes to me. I spend a lot of time watching people...how they speak, what they say, body language, tone inflection, etc. Last night, I spent a good amount of time talking with Sara, and we talked for hours about subjects I've almost never discussed with anyone in my entire life, except maybe with
I watched the first half of an episode of Freakonomics last night. In my altered state of mind, much of it was vague, just some sad facts with funny faces. However, one thing did stick out. They talked about people attempting to...well, I guess attempting to "genius-ize" their kids. Playing Mozart, or teaching them different languages, enrolling them in various classes.
An offering from my daughter Rebekkah, even if it does make me sound a little bad... :-(
[caption id="attachment_2447" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Adventurers and Known Associates"][/caption]
Yesterday evening, I swore offf watching the news. Forever. But, as my world often does, I was thrown a curve ball. My husband won't jump on the anti-news bandwagon with me. I guess the upside of this latest little battle is that I would have missed the breaking news that is happening right here in Tulsa. A rogue exterminator has been caught rifling through a woman's bra and panty drawer.
Chef is from a very, very large Hispanicfamily. His mother is the eldest child of 13 kids. How incredibly awesome is that?? Basically, her parents gave birth to their own football team, with alternates. I love that...Anyways, Chef's white father left his family pretty early on in Chef's life, and left his mom and her very large, close-knit family, to raise their four kids.
I just love WordPress‘s dashboard. It is fun to see the little map light up with color, or to see how many times someone looks up my gravatar. I love the breakdown of which of my many bizarre stories people have continually looked up…they are never the ones I think were my best! But best of all, is the search terms that people typed into Bing or Google that led them to my site. I have wonderful ones.
Without doubt, Disclaimer: I’m God’s Worst Child Ever is my popular article of all time. So, approximately 180 people have typed in “God’s worst child” and they’ve been directed to me. Out of curiosity, I’ve been asking random friends to type that in and see what comes up. Guess what! My article..no wonder it is doing well. My son typed the phrase in to Google Images, and my picture pulls up. I guess I’m seriously God’s Worst Child!!
Number two article is trailing behind the first one at 169 searches, and it is How My Own Brain Humiliated Me. The phrase internet explorers keep using to find this one, you ask?
Three boobs. :-)
I typed that one in, and thankfully, while it pulls up my article, I’m not number one, nor does my picture pull up under Google Images. I can live with being God’s Worst Child, but if everyone who has never seen me thinks I have Three Boobs, I’ll just die…
In my quest to catch up with the blogs that I follow, I have found some interesting things to ponder..as usual, And one thing that really leaped out at me today was about a woman who had adopted a child from another country, and was concerned about the fact that the child was adamantly refusing to embrace Christianity at the…
Daffy Duck, as he appears in The Looney Tunes Show. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) - Also a name I would have agreed to while I was sedated!
I know this is going to be a shocker, but I occasionally choke on the foot I stick in my mouth at times. I thought I’d share one of those bright, shining moments in my life.
When my son DJ was born, he was very, very premature, and due to a loss of a lot of blood, I was unconscious the entire delivery. Because it was a little country hospital, DJ had to be helicoptered to a larger hospital in Dallas, some two hours away. So, when I woke up, my son was not there. Very distressing for a new mother, to say the least.
To transfer hospitals, a child has to have a name on his birth certificate, and normally, the mother is the one that fills this form in. However, because I was clearly out of it, my then-husband, Dennis, had to fill out the form. And being Dennis, he decided to trash the name we’d agreed on — Michael Anthony — for a name that embodied his own family — William Harold. :-(
Now, in fairness to Dennis, he insists that I told him this was okay sometime that drugged night, and I am going to even say that they may have been possible. But I was heavily sedated, so I would have named the kid Daffy Duck or Mickey Mouse at that point. He should have stuck to the name that we agreed on.
It took me a month to heal from the birth of my son, and all along, as I’m talking to my family and friends, I’m calling my baby Michael. Dennis, obviously nervous, says nothing to me, until I’ve finally been released from the hospital and am headed to Dallas to meet my new baby. That is when I find out that my son has been named William Harold Bell. And that Den’s family is calling him Billy Bell. O.M.G. I was pissed. Billy Bell???
Sure enough, there was my absolutely beautiful little boy with a placard on his crib with the horrifying name Billy Bell. Immediately, I made the nurse take it down and put up a placard that said William Bell. I needed some time to fix this, but now wasn’t the time. In the end, I changed his nickname to DJ. It doesn’t stand for anything. I just didn’t want him to be called Billy. Being poor, we were stuck with the name.
Flash forward to a couple of years ago, I was telling this story to some new biker friends of Chef’s (my present husband). In the biker culture, almost everyone uses biker names, so you almost never really know what the people around you’s real names are, and such was the case with the guy I was talking to. His reaction was odd when I finished my story. Slowly, he pulled out his wallet and showed me his identification. William Harrold.
I’d just insulted this man’s name. I totally suck.
So, evidently Facebook changed some stuff up over two years ago, and I just wandered across several messages that have been sitting in there forever, patiently waiting for my attention. Sorry to all my friend who thought I was just ignoring them...I am not too tech-savvy, so changes don't leap out me very often.
This one message, though, just cracks me up to no end.
