As I have a full day today, instead of writing a blog I would refer my readers to my post titled "Drama King" of October 18th and the fourth comment posted on it. Disclaimer: Entirely his doing.
Have a great day!
Friday, October 28, 2005
Thursday, October 27, 2005
FRICK AND FRACK
Last night we had our friends, Diane and Rick, over for dinner. Diane and Rick Frick. I know...the name cracks us up, too. Don't know what his parents were thinking. But you know what's even more remarkable? Rick and Diane named their only child, a son, Rick! Go figure. Anyway, I digress...
Together they are another Ricky and Lucy Ricardo. She is wacky and he is her straight-man. Diane says whatever comes to her mind. To say she is uninhibited is an understatement. Whether she ever embarrasses her husband is hard to say. I think because they've been together so long (around 35 years) he's just used to her. When I first met her I didn't know quite what to make of her. Now I find her delightful. She never stops talking, and with full-color animation. The stories she tells of their travels and adventures are so bizarre as to be unbelievable, but Rick verifies that she is not exaggerating in the least. I choked three times laughing during dinner -- talk about dinner and a show! My stomach hurt from laughing and swallowing too much air.
A year ago Rick suffered a terrible accident and fell off the roof of his own home (no worker's comp for that). He shattered his hip, fractured his pelvis, injured his back and arm. It has been a long, difficult, and life-changing year for them. Two surgeries: one to put him back together with screws and plates, and the other to remove said hardware and try (unsuccessfully) to remove a surgical drillbit which broke off imbedded in bone during the first surgery(!). Never one to sit around, Rick always was working on something...on the job, at home, or for friends. Now he can't work. Between that realization and the constant pain he endures, I think he came near a breaking point. But, that's where his little spitfire wife, Diane, comes in. She cajoles, prods, encourages, berates, defends, scolds, torments, champions, and loves her husband. She has been at his side, in spite of her own fears and fatigue, caring for him, up at all hours when he can't sleep for the pain, wiping his butt (as she unabashedly tells us), feeding him, listening to him, intervening for him...this little 4'10" wildcat has put more than one high-powered, highly degreed surgeon into tail-tuck and back-up mode.
I tell Diane she ought to write a book and she waves me off. I tell her I'll write the book because it would be a best-seller and the money will help take care of their insurmountable medical bills. She just laughs. Problem is, I don't think the written word can do Diane justice; it would be difficult to capture her in a book. Maybe the Big Screen...but Lucy's gone; who could ever play the part of Diane Frick?
Together they are another Ricky and Lucy Ricardo. She is wacky and he is her straight-man. Diane says whatever comes to her mind. To say she is uninhibited is an understatement. Whether she ever embarrasses her husband is hard to say. I think because they've been together so long (around 35 years) he's just used to her. When I first met her I didn't know quite what to make of her. Now I find her delightful. She never stops talking, and with full-color animation. The stories she tells of their travels and adventures are so bizarre as to be unbelievable, but Rick verifies that she is not exaggerating in the least. I choked three times laughing during dinner -- talk about dinner and a show! My stomach hurt from laughing and swallowing too much air.
A year ago Rick suffered a terrible accident and fell off the roof of his own home (no worker's comp for that). He shattered his hip, fractured his pelvis, injured his back and arm. It has been a long, difficult, and life-changing year for them. Two surgeries: one to put him back together with screws and plates, and the other to remove said hardware and try (unsuccessfully) to remove a surgical drillbit which broke off imbedded in bone during the first surgery(!). Never one to sit around, Rick always was working on something...on the job, at home, or for friends. Now he can't work. Between that realization and the constant pain he endures, I think he came near a breaking point. But, that's where his little spitfire wife, Diane, comes in. She cajoles, prods, encourages, berates, defends, scolds, torments, champions, and loves her husband. She has been at his side, in spite of her own fears and fatigue, caring for him, up at all hours when he can't sleep for the pain, wiping his butt (as she unabashedly tells us), feeding him, listening to him, intervening for him...this little 4'10" wildcat has put more than one high-powered, highly degreed surgeon into tail-tuck and back-up mode.
I tell Diane she ought to write a book and she waves me off. I tell her I'll write the book because it would be a best-seller and the money will help take care of their insurmountable medical bills. She just laughs. Problem is, I don't think the written word can do Diane justice; it would be difficult to capture her in a book. Maybe the Big Screen...but Lucy's gone; who could ever play the part of Diane Frick?
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
CALL OF THE WILD
There they go...can hardly see them, though, being that they're fully camoed out. I squint, narrowing my vision, trying make out who these mysterious early morning figures are; silhouetted against the faint lightening in the east. I have a very distraught labrador at my feet...funny...usually she's afraid of strange things in the dark, but now seems very eager to go outside. The figures part ways, one carrying a bow and the other a cased shotgun. The archer disappears into the woods behind our home while the gunman commandeers Ramsey's Chevy and canoe. Boy, he's not going to be happy when he finally rolls out of the sack at 9:45 and finds his wheels gone.
This covert operation is making me skittish. I go to rouse my sleeping children and gather them in a safer, interior room of the house (do we have an interior room?). I open the girls' bedroom door to find in Taylie's bed a very fat cat blinking sleepily in the warm spot left after her sister's departure. Inspection of the boys' room reveals an empty top bunk...
The time is 6:43 AM. These two kids usually have to be pried out of bed with a crowbar or a glass of cold water. Maybe I should start using a duck call and a deer grunt...or a whiff of "Doe in Estrus" waved under their noses...
This covert operation is making me skittish. I go to rouse my sleeping children and gather them in a safer, interior room of the house (do we have an interior room?). I open the girls' bedroom door to find in Taylie's bed a very fat cat blinking sleepily in the warm spot left after her sister's departure. Inspection of the boys' room reveals an empty top bunk...
The time is 6:43 AM. These two kids usually have to be pried out of bed with a crowbar or a glass of cold water. Maybe I should start using a duck call and a deer grunt...or a whiff of "Doe in Estrus" waved under their noses...
Thursday, October 20, 2005
ITCHY AND SCRATCHY GO TO CRYSTAL FALLS
Sunday I bought two bushels of baking apples (Cortlands and Wolf Rivers) from the guy with the apple truck in town. Yesterday my mom came over and we spent the day peeling, slicing, and freezing apples for pies and making applesauce. Kind of a tradition. The kitchen was a mess, but the house sure smelled good. I love tucking those packages of apple slices in my freezer; it's that "hunkering down" thing I've written of before. And there's nothing like fresh homemade apple pie, warm from the oven!
Ramsey is sitting in his tree stand in the woods behind our house this evening and Mark is guiding up on Lake Gogebic. Hopefully, they both will have good luck. I am glad Ramsey is deer hunting tonight because he's been obsessed with duck hunting lately and I'm wanting venison.
It's been a busy week with no end in sight. Tomorrow the kids have art class and piano lessons, Mark guides again tomorrow and Saturday, Taylie worked at the Tackle Box with Ramsey today and does again on Saturday. I am on worship team at church this Sunday and will have practice sometime Saturday. I'm still chipping away at fall cleaning, the leaves are almost all down and then the raking begins.
As for the goofy title -- I thought it might create some interest in this somewhat boring post.
Ramsey is sitting in his tree stand in the woods behind our house this evening and Mark is guiding up on Lake Gogebic. Hopefully, they both will have good luck. I am glad Ramsey is deer hunting tonight because he's been obsessed with duck hunting lately and I'm wanting venison.
It's been a busy week with no end in sight. Tomorrow the kids have art class and piano lessons, Mark guides again tomorrow and Saturday, Taylie worked at the Tackle Box with Ramsey today and does again on Saturday. I am on worship team at church this Sunday and will have practice sometime Saturday. I'm still chipping away at fall cleaning, the leaves are almost all down and then the raking begins.
As for the goofy title -- I thought it might create some interest in this somewhat boring post.
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
DRAMA KING
The first and third Tuesday each month during the school year, our local library hosts a homeschool group activity. This semester we are studying drama and putting on a production of the Wizard of Oz. The library has brought in a retired drama professor to teach and direct. A very good opportunity for these homeschoolers.
Not if you ask my son, Wylie. It's rather ironic that he detests having to go to this class; as he is easily the most dramatic of my four children and definitely a born comedian. He was the unplanned "oops" born 13 months after his sister. It wasn't funny at the time, but God must have known I would need comic relief.
Wylie has tried everything to get out of having to attend drama:
"I'll take piano lessons if I don't have to take drama."
I told him he was taking both.
"I'm painfully shy."
Yeah, right.
Today his dramatic flair really surfaced. He faked diarrhea for six hours, clutching his belly and staggering for the bathroom.
"I can't go today, Mom."
I gave him a Pepto Bismol tablet and told him to get in the car.
At drama practice he didn't suffer a single cramp nor made a single trip to the washroom. He hammed it up as the Scarecrow, much to the delight of his co-actors. He just can't help himself.
Not if you ask my son, Wylie. It's rather ironic that he detests having to go to this class; as he is easily the most dramatic of my four children and definitely a born comedian. He was the unplanned "oops" born 13 months after his sister. It wasn't funny at the time, but God must have known I would need comic relief.
Wylie has tried everything to get out of having to attend drama:
"I'll take piano lessons if I don't have to take drama."
I told him he was taking both.
"I'm painfully shy."
Yeah, right.
Today his dramatic flair really surfaced. He faked diarrhea for six hours, clutching his belly and staggering for the bathroom.
"I can't go today, Mom."
I gave him a Pepto Bismol tablet and told him to get in the car.
At drama practice he didn't suffer a single cramp nor made a single trip to the washroom. He hammed it up as the Scarecrow, much to the delight of his co-actors. He just can't help himself.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
99 AND HOLDING
As long as I'm on the subject of birthdays and getting older...
My grandmother, affectionately known as "Nana", turned 99 on the first of this month...99...ninety-nine...no matter how you write it, that's OLD. But I will say this, Nana has aged gracefully. At least, up until the last couple years anyway. She has lost some of the grace but none of her style. For example, last year when I was helping her celebrate her birthday, she announced, "I can't believe I'm 87 years old! Why, I'm pushing 90!" I, ungracefully of course, had to set her straight, "I hate to burst your bubble, Nana, but you aren't 87, you're 98. You're pushing 100." "No I'm not!" she retorted. "I'm afraid you are," I said, "Do the math." (A former elementary teacher can never resist that challenge.) "What year is this?" Nana asked. "2004," says I, "and you were born in 1906". She did the cyphering on paper and I knew when she had the answer because all she said was, "Shit." Not real graceful but very much her style.
On her birthday this year, as I sat on the edge of her bed in the nursing home where she's resided since breaking her hip last winter, she announced, after coughing, that she hated to cough. Upon my asking why she said, "Because I pee all over when I cough." Too bad she hadn't made that announcement before I got settled on the bed with her. She thought it was funny. Not very graceful but, nevertheless, her style.
She also declared she was not ready to die but didn't want to see another birthday because she did not want to end up having Willard Scott wish her a happy 100th. You watch...she'll outlive Willard just to spite him. Not real graceful, but definitely her style.
My grandmother, affectionately known as "Nana", turned 99 on the first of this month...99...ninety-nine...no matter how you write it, that's OLD. But I will say this, Nana has aged gracefully. At least, up until the last couple years anyway. She has lost some of the grace but none of her style. For example, last year when I was helping her celebrate her birthday, she announced, "I can't believe I'm 87 years old! Why, I'm pushing 90!" I, ungracefully of course, had to set her straight, "I hate to burst your bubble, Nana, but you aren't 87, you're 98. You're pushing 100." "No I'm not!" she retorted. "I'm afraid you are," I said, "Do the math." (A former elementary teacher can never resist that challenge.) "What year is this?" Nana asked. "2004," says I, "and you were born in 1906". She did the cyphering on paper and I knew when she had the answer because all she said was, "Shit." Not real graceful but very much her style.
On her birthday this year, as I sat on the edge of her bed in the nursing home where she's resided since breaking her hip last winter, she announced, after coughing, that she hated to cough. Upon my asking why she said, "Because I pee all over when I cough." Too bad she hadn't made that announcement before I got settled on the bed with her. She thought it was funny. Not very graceful but, nevertheless, her style.
She also declared she was not ready to die but didn't want to see another birthday because she did not want to end up having Willard Scott wish her a happy 100th. You watch...she'll outlive Willard just to spite him. Not real graceful, but definitely her style.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
est. 1960
Me and Gander Mountain. Both established in 1960. Two of my husband's favorites.
Having recently celebrated my birthday, I find myself pondering how I ever got to be 45 years old. I'm not depressed or devastated by this; just astounded. I can quite clearly remember my seventh birthday (but I can't remember what I came downstairs for). How can I be old enough to clearly remember anything 38 years ago? How did I end up in this body with parts that hurt for no apparent reason? Since when do I snore? Why am I suddenly interested in magazines with articles touting titles like, "Flatter Abs in Eight Days!"?
Before the rest of you who are older than me start rubbing my nose in the fact that I am "just a youngster", let me wallow in being 45 for a while. I'll deal with 50 when I get there.
Having recently celebrated my birthday, I find myself pondering how I ever got to be 45 years old. I'm not depressed or devastated by this; just astounded. I can quite clearly remember my seventh birthday (but I can't remember what I came downstairs for). How can I be old enough to clearly remember anything 38 years ago? How did I end up in this body with parts that hurt for no apparent reason? Since when do I snore? Why am I suddenly interested in magazines with articles touting titles like, "Flatter Abs in Eight Days!"?
Before the rest of you who are older than me start rubbing my nose in the fact that I am "just a youngster", let me wallow in being 45 for a while. I'll deal with 50 when I get there.
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