Unwind Your Life

unwind December 29th, 2009

November 6, 2009

I think I figured out why I hate lemonade! Seriously, I just don’t like lemonade. I’ve always kind of wondered why I don’t like lemonade. I mean, I like lemon drops…not Lemon Heads…but good old-fashioned lemon drops…you know, the hard candy with the sugar on the outside? Mmmm! I don’t think you see them too often now days…probably considered a choking hazzard. Still, other than those frozen lemonade things you can get in the summer at the grocery store and the water parks…I just don’t go for lemonade.

For most of my life I’ve just figured it’s because I really don’t like sour things. I’d totally rather have something sweet. Although, now that I think about it, I did go with a friend to Mesa, Arizona once and she picked some lemons from her brother’s lemon tree and made some fresh-squeezed lemonade…and after she added five or six cups of sugar…I really liked it! But overall…I’ve always kind of had a thing against lemonade.

However, you know how some of your biggest, “Ah ha!” or “Wow!” moments offer epiphanies in the middle of the night? I mean, that’s when I think of most of the story lines for my books…at like three a.m. Anyway, yesterday I woke up in the middle of the night and thought, “Ah ha! I wonder if that’s why I hate lemonade?”

Thus, I believe the reason I’ve always struggled with lemonade…is by memory association! Let me explain:

When I was about seven years old, my mom and dad took me and my little sister (she was maybe eight months old at the time) on a picnic up in the mountains (the Sandia Crest) with some friends of theirs, Jerry and Carol Farr. Oh, it was a lovely day! The air was warm and fresh…fragrant with the scent of cedar. The picnic box was full of delicious picnic type foods (including my mom’s divine potato salad), and a giant jar of lemonade sparkled in the sunshine as we set it down on a nearby fallen tree trunk! Ahhh! What a memory! There was nothing like a trip to the Sandia back then…nothing like eating Mom’s potato salad in the open, free wilderness of the mountains!

Well, things went along at just a lovely, lilting, picnic-in-the-mountains pace as we enjoyed the fresh scents of the trees and the soil…as we ate our potato salad and drank our lemonade. And then…it happened. My little sister (we’ll call her “Luanna,” because that’s really her name) “messed” in her diaper. And I do mean she “messed!” In fact, “messed” in her diaper isn’t even an appropriate description! Rather, the “mess” oozed and leaked out at every nook and cranny, through every bend and venue it could find…running in rivulet’s down her legs and onto anything and everything in its path ! Yeck! (I have a stark vision of my dad holding my sister out away from him as the “mess” oozed and dripped out of her diaper! It’s a very vivid memory! I mean, after all, we were in the mountains…thus, the background scenery for this vision was quite out of the norm…and thus embedded itself permanently into my subconscious.)

Mom soon discovered that they hadn’t remembered to bring any water…none…not a drop. The only liquid we had with us was the lemonade…the lovely, sweet, lemonade. (I have a vision of it still…glistening like liquid sunlight, as it lingered in the large glass jar still sitting on the fallen tree.) Mom was beside herself! No water? How could they have forgotten water? (If you know my mom at all, you know she never goes anywhere without water!) Furthermore, this was long before “”aby wipes.” Needless to say, the picnic was over.

Before I quite knew what was happening, my dad, and his friend Jerry, were washing Luanna off with the only available liquid at hand that could be used to wash a baby’s stinky little bum with…lemonade!

Oh, but the story doesn’t end there! Oh, no! My “dislike of lemonade by memory association” wasn’t set in stone yet! No! That happened when I was elected to hold my baby sister on the hour-long drive home! Not only did my poor baby sister smell like baby poo a la lemonade…she was sooooo sticky! I mean, sticky like flypaper sticky! Sticky and stinky…that’s what she was…and I got to hold her all the way home…at the tender age of seven…the impressionable age of only seven years…the age when your experiences with lemonade are obviously very life-molding. What happens to a child when a bad lemonade experience occurs at that age…well, let’s just say, it sets a precedent, shall we?

And there you have it…my deep-seated, psychological reasons for not liking lemonade…on some subconscious level…I associate lemonade with baby poo! What a realization, huh? Oddly enough, my sister told me just this evening (as we were discussing the traumatizing messy diaper/lemonade remembrance), that she absolutely loves lemonade. And, seriously…one has to wonder if her love for lemonade stems from the same incident that spawned my dislike for it. Hmm.

Well, another one of life’s great mysteries solved!

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unwind September 29th, 2009

Okay…so…last night I had this dream that Bruce Willis came for a visit (fortunately my bathrooms had just been cleaned).  It was great to see Bruce, but, unfortunately, our family was so busy running here and there that we just had to drag Bruce along and never really got to spend any quality visiting time with him!  He went with us to the produce stand, and grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, to my son’s driver’s ed. class…he hung around while I cleaned the house a little and as tons of people dropped in to borrow sugar and eggs.  All too soon, he had to leave and I realized that we didn’t even get any photos with him!

Thus, I woke up thinking, “Okay…life is way too busy if Bruce Willis comes over and I don’t even have time to get my picture taken with him!  Slow down!”

Slowing down is about to be forced upon me by way of the fact that Kevin and I have to go to the DMV this morning to get the car registration thingy done.  Undoubtedly that will take most of the day.  So, I guess I’ll be slowing down all right…but I still won’t get my picture with Bruce Willis if he drops by!  Good grief!  I have GOT to get my priorities in line!

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unwind July 22nd, 2009

Okay…I’m sure all you green-thumbers out there know exactly what these flowers are (do tell!)…though I do not!  I will tell you that…when we moved back to New Mexico in January…the leaves of this lovely plant looked exactly like a weed!  Thus, Kevin pulled it nearly out of the ground!  Since then, it has flourish and bloomed and is gorgeous!

However, my favoritest thing about it is happening right now!  When the leaves of the flowers wither and fall…what’s left is the perfect, perfect, perfectest “Who” thingy!  You know…in the book Horton Hears a Who…when he puts the dust speck on the clover thingy?  Doesn’t this sooooooooooo look like the clover thingy…sort of?  Trent and I just got a kick out of these photos for that reason!

Which reminds me…I’ve almost got The Lady of Shalott memorized!  I just have trouble on the transition the third to last stanza…but a couple of more days should do it!  Therefore, I’m on to my next memorization project…How the Grinch Stole Christmas!  Who’s with me?  Get it?  The Grinch?  “Who’s” with me?   “Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot…”

Meanwhile…Can’t you just hear those little Whos calling to us from these flower heads?

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unwind July 14th, 2009

I was whipping up a batch of cookies the other day and noticed something…my miscellaneous measuring cups!  I figure, in the nearly 25 years since I’ve been married…I must’ve owned at least three different sets of measuring cups.  The reason I assume I must have owned three sets being…I have one metal “1 cup” measuring cup, one blue plastic  (that sort of country blue that was popular for kitchen stuff in the late ’80s) ‘1 cup” measuring cup, one metal “1/2 cup” measuring cup, one blue plastic “1/3 cup” measuring cup, one cream-colored plastic “2/3 cup” measuring cup, and one cream-colored plastic “3/4 cup” measuring cup. (There ain’t a 1/4 cup measuring cup in the group!)  Thus, I began to think, “What the heck happened to all the rest of the metal, blue plastic and cream-colored plastic measuring cups that, at one time, went with the ones I do have?  Are they like that old adage about the dryer eating socks…or is it something else?

I began to ponder over the state of my curious measuring cup collection…and her is what I have, at last, surmised:

1.  Children!  Can I even begin to tell you of the love of a hose and dirt combined that my children owned?  And how could one possibly appropriately play in the mud and water without measuring cups!  Also, I’m thinking of how my daughter used to play with her little miniature “My Little Ponies,”…always pretending some witch was trying to cook them up in a stew!  She definitely needed measuring cups for those imaginative little recipes!  Further, measuring cups are perfect for studying such little things as ladybugs and tomato worms!  So there you have it…possibility #1!

2.  Moving!  How many items are misplaced during a move?  My measuring cup collection has been from Albuquerque, NM…to Rexburg, ID…back to Albuquerque…to Utah…back to Albuquerque…to New Orleans, LA…back to Albuquerque…Ferndale, WA…to Monument, CO…and back to Albuquerque!  I mean, oh my heck!  How could I possibly expect to keep three complete sets of measuring cups during all that?

3.  Stove Top!  Possibly…I’m thinking it would seem very like me to set a measuring cup down on a hot burner and melt it.  I seem to have a vague recollection of have to pick blue plastic off a burner at some point.

In truth…there isn’t a definitive answer I guess…no perfect explanation of my measuring cup situation!  So…I guess I’ll just quit fixating on it…try to think of something else…such as…why do I have remnants of three different sets of measuring spoons?

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unwind May 20th, 2009

You know how I love these little “Just for Fun” contests!  So…here’s another one!  The winner receives a copy of “Scarlet Moon,” a YA retelling of a fairy tale that I just think is darling!  Just be the first to post the correct answers to the three questions below in the comment box and you’ll win!  If you aren’t the first to post correctly and win…post anyway and I’ll plop your name in my hat for future prizes!  Here goes!

1.  How well do you know me?  Who played Mr. Rochester in my favorite movie version of Jane Eyre?

2.  How did the author of “Gone with the Wind” meet her early death and where?

3.  (I know this one is a wild guess…but it’s just for fun!)  Who would I most likely cast as Lochlan Rockrimmon if The Highwayman of Tanglewood was going to be made into a movie!?

a.  David Boreanaz      b.  Gerard Butler     c.  Hugh Jackman    d.  Christian Bale

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unwind May 15th, 2009

Sorry to have been so quiet this past little while!  I was out of town!  But…I’m back now…so I’ll see you soon!

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unwind May 5th, 2009

I was going through some old files today…and…remember how we were talking about writing “snippets” yesterday?  Well, I found this…and even though I don’t know if this really counts…I thought I’d share it with you!  Warning…it’s silly!  Just right for unwinding today!

Cleaning the Bathroom
Otherwise Known As: The Flaming Heads of Housework

Bathroom cleaning is not my activity of choice. Still, it has to be done. And so, a couple of years ago, there I was…cleaning the upstairs bathroom, the one adjoining my bedroom…just a cleaning away. Soft Scrubbing until my little heart was content. (Actually, I was grumbling and complaining the entire time.) Anyway, there was a little, footed, heart-shaped, ceramic candle holder, complete with a lovely, scented, two-wicked candle within, sitting on a white doily, on a forest green towel (doubling as a tank cover), on my toilet tank. Well, as candles do, this little candle had accumulated a bit of dust and as I was carefully dusting it, I broke off one of the tender wicks. Now, as any scented candle-lover knows, once you’ve broken a wick, it’s murder trying to get the candle to stay lit afterward. But I loved this little candle! Therefore, I lit the wicks and set it back on the toilet tank (so that I could re-light it as needed) while I finished up the joyous, ‘cleaning of the bathroom’.
There I was, whistling while I worked, scrubbing the counters, the toilet bowl, etc. And then it was time for the floor. As I was bent over the toilet seat, scrubbing the small piece of floor between the wall and the toilet bottom, an odd, “sizzle, crackle, sizzle,” noise, followed shortly by the undeniably familiar scent (rather stench) of burning hair.  It was the same scent I’d smelled a few years earlier when I had risen early one winter’s morn, having forgotten to turn the thermostat up prior to retiring the night before, to a chilly house. Well, we all know, no matter what the instructions on your gas stove read…i.e. ‘Do not use stove as an alternate heating source,’ your first inclination when you’ve let the house get too cold, is to turn on the gas stove burners and stand before it, warming your hands over the open flames while the waiting for the furnace to fire up. So, there I stood, rubbing my hands together over the stove flames, when suddenly the all too familiar stench of burning hair reached by nostrils.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I wonder where that all too familiar stench of burning hair is coming from.”

Suddenly, I noticed the strange, “sizzle, crackle, sizzle,” noise coming from the vicinity of my arms. Sure enough, the tiny hairs on my arms were pretty much gone, except for a few valiant ones, which had curled tightly into tiny, seared knots of what was once a hair.)

Thus, as I continued to clean the bathroom floor, I could hear the sizzling, smell the foul stench of burning hair . Finally, I stood up and glanced down at the candle still burning on the toilet tank. It seemed fine and I couldn’t fathom where the smell and noise were coming from. Everything seemed in order. Until the sizzling got louder. I turned to look in the mirror. As I caught site of my reflection in the mirror (looking a bit like Michael Jackson during the infamous Pepsi-commercial-hair-caught-on-fire incident of the 1980’s) I thought simply, “Ahhhhh! My hair’s on fire!” Oh, it wasn’t a flaming inferno, by any means. Just a wee breath of a fire. Still, “Stop, drop and roll,” was driven completely from my mind and all I could do was hop around the very clean bathroom, smacking myself on the head, an occasional yelp emanating from my voice box, until the sizzling stopped and the stench of burning hair dissipated.
You know…it’s funny how people (specifically hair stylists) expect there to be some dramatic explanation to the charred condition of your hair when you go in the next day to have the burnt area trimmed. Well, sure I’d only been in for a hair cut three days before….but obviously I had been cleaning my bathrooms since then. Hello?

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unwind March 25th, 2009

As a child, my favorite book was “Andrew Henry’s Meadow.”  My mom would lay down on my bed with me and read it to me before I went to sleep.  The soothing sound of her voice…the expression with which she read the book…helped to settle my anxieties and send me drifting off to sleep wrapped in feelings of security and hope.

Children’s books can have a similar effect on us as adults!  Reading to our children is something we should do not only for them, but also for ourselves.  And here’s the spin on it…take a moment to read a child’s book to yourself now and then!  It does wonders!

I began collectin children’s books about 20 years ago…when my daughter was little and I realized how much I had missed them.  Well-written text and beautiful illustrations can soothe me as much as a little cup of hot chocolate.  Furthermore, they don’t take long to read.  Just sit down for five or ten minutes and read something light!  I have a few favorite’s to suggest:

“Rosebud and Red Flannel” by Ethel Pochocki (Wonderfully romantic!)

“Sailor Moo-Cow at Sea” by Lisa Wheeler (Cute little romance!)

“Andrew Henry’s Meadow” by Doris Burns (So sweet and soothing…good message, too!)

“The Worrywarts” by Pamela Duncan Edwards (An alliterative work of fun!)

“Night in the Country” and “When the Relatives Came” by Cynthia Rylant (Soothing and sweet!)

“Doll’s Christmas” by Tasha Tudor (Old-fashioned and lovely!)

“A Cowboy Christmas” by Audrey Wood (Cute and romantic!)

Whether your 15 or 115…Children’s books are an often forgotten means of escape.  Just run on over to the local library and choose a few.  Read one each evening before bed.  They work as good as hot chocolate to relax your mind and body…well…almost as good!

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