undisciplined thinker

where i lose all my friends

At Scarlett's birthday party last year we had all the guests hold a large picture frame up and I took a picture.  I was reminded today I never posted them to the blog.  I only posted this one (no offense, but it is the cutest):

This post is to rectify my oversight.  I hope you all are still my friends tomorrow.  I'm not worried about my family, they're stuck with me.  

Thanks for reminding me, Kimberly.

rick rinrin - your sister is an ass

Brother,

You turned forty over a month ago and all I did was call you.  I didn't send you a card or even a meaningless gift.  No over the hill paraphernalia. In full confession, which you are already aware of, I didn't even call until the evening, mere hours away from the day passing completely.  I harbor guilt about this and not because a good sister should recognize a milestone birthday of her only sibling more fully, but because I have all these things I want to say and your birthday would have been a good time to say them. 

I know that you probably, and correctly, assume the days just got away from me.  The hubbub and bustle of the daily skewed my vision of the calendar until *poof* it was May 21st and you were forty.  But I didn't tell you that.  I didn't even tell you then that I was an ass and I should have, because I felt it.  I'm sorry, dear brother.

As a belated gift I'd like to reintroduce you to Ricky.  He was you over half your life ago and seen by a six year old.  He was very cool and daring and a complete enigma to me.

Childhood me remembers you most clearly when we lived at The Spa.  I slept in a tub full of animals, the back hall with the bathroom at the end freaked the shit out of me for some reason and you built me a swing set.  Once, I had made mom mad about something.  I think I broke something and I was feeling the sad guilt a child feels only when they know they have disappointed their mother and you took little crying me outside.  Between the two units that were storage.  You sat me on a wood plank, my kid memory thinks it was a wood door covering steps to a basement, but I'm not sure The Spa had basements so I could be wrong.  You told me she wasn't really mad at me.  That it would be fine.  A grasshopper jumped on my knee and before I could utterly freak out (which I was a pro at) you swept it of my knee and kept comforting me.  That was Ricky.  Protecting me before I knew I needed it.

Have I ever told you that I use to sneak into your room when we lived there?  You probably knew, I mean I was six and you seventeen, but I thought then I was pretty crafty.  I'd go in when you'd be out lighting fields on fire with your friends or some crazy crap.  I'd lay on your bed, I remember it being so dark in there and I always remember it being summer time.  I'd snuggle down on your bed that was piled with clothes and look at the trappings and detritus of a seventeen your old boy.

You had two tiny, tiny little bears made out of pressed cinnamon with little bow ties.  You wouldn't let me touch them when you were home.  I touched the crap out of them when I snuck in.  I may have even licked one, but you'll never know for sure.  You were such a cool mystery with your dark brooding messy room and your little cinnamon bears.  I wanted my room to look just like yours when I was seventeen. 

I feel so grateful for how our relationship has grown.  I liked your mystery as a child, I love our kinship as adults.  I don't know many siblings who have an age gap like ours that maintain the kind of relationship we do.  Thank you for being my big brother, for giving me a sister, for making me an auntie and for keeping the grasshoppers away.  I love you.

this post brought to you by autofocus

"Say, um, Happy?"

"Ya, Sleepy."

"Is it just me, or is it getting more and more ridiculous how they portray dwarfs these days?"

tiny time machine

I have a grandmother on my father's side that I don't see often anymore, but that when I was a child I saw pretty frequently.  I see her every couple of years when my dad comes home for a visit and we send Christmas cards every year.  Every time we get a note or package from her it touches me deeply.  She lives in a world where this kind of correspondence means a great deal.  She will probably never see this post.

She sent Scarlett a package for her first birthday.  It held clothes and toys: vintage, new and crocheted (which I assume her mother, my great grandmother, Scarlett's great great grandmother, made).  But there was also these.  Two little biddies, that when I saw them became the focal point for everything I feel about these two woman and my childhood memories of them.  They could have been mine or one of my cousins.  It doesn't matter.  We all had a bounty of them, they were all different and all the same and so much them. 

delancey houghton

I spent first through six grade in the town of Soap Lake, Washington.  From five to eleven years of age. 

Soap Lake is a small town like any other.  All the shops line one road, Main Street, of course.  They place a larger then life pine tree smack dab in it's only intersection every Christmas.  I have a memory, that may not be accurate, that someone told me the population is 2,000 people.  It's probably bigger, but that's the size I see it.  Smaller then the population of my high school and her sister school combined. 

Soap Lake was a huge tourist attraction in the 30s and 40s because of it's "healing waters."  There are minerals in the lake that use to cover it's surface with sudsy foam.  As a kid, the tiny red specks in the water were called "shrimp" and if you didn't wash off after getting out you got a rash everywhere your suit touched.  I stop swimming in it at a young age by choice.

Soap Lake isn't a rich community. There are orchards and farm land.  In my mind its always run down, unless I think of it from my mother's childhood perspective.  The pretty lake town with tourists and a soda shop.  Where young girls could run around and parents didn't have to worry.  It may have been run down when I lived there, but in reality I think it's in an up swing.  There are some prominent folks in the community who want to see the town shine again.  They have a small, funky art museum, a new community theater and public art sculptures on the beach.

My family grew up in this town.  My mom, both my dads, my brother.  Everyone moved away, but everyone grew up there and in my Mom's case she moved back, with me.  My grandparents still live there and that is why, as an adult I go back.

I have good memories of Soap Lake.  It's the only place I remember my Grandma Sallie.  I'm pretty sure I got all my sass from her and my secret desire to have my car horn go "buruuuuga."  I loved the summer reading program at the library every year and the librarian, Mrs. Friend.  She would tell stories and draw a map of where the character went that always turned into an animal at the end.  Blew my mind every time.  And the peacocks next to the library that I would try to get to splay their feather (always from a distance, I was no silly even then.)  I remember the creepy "witches house" that scared the be-jesus out of me.  The summer parades.  Driving to the lakes.  Going to football games.

But the memories that stand out the most are not great.  I can't say they are vivid, because I've blocked a lot out, but the emotions they carry are very vivid.  I was severely bullied at elementary school starting around fourth grade.  Emotionally and physically.  My mom did everything she could think of.  She talked to teachers and the principal and even the police.  It didn't matter.  After I finished my sixth grade year we moved to Spokane.  As and adult I've wondered if that decision may have saved my life or at the very least my sanity. 

The situation at Delancey Houghton was a character shaping one for me.  I had a hard time adjusting to the students at my new affluent, Spokane school.  They wanted to be nice to me (except for a few, but they always exist, and they were raised to use words to hurt, not fists) but I wouldn't let them.  Soap Lake left me guarded.  Then I met Bret at the beginning of my eighth grade year and I learned to let the guard down and I was able to make friends and get into the petty high school drama that everyone experiences.

For a while I tried not to look back on Soap Lake, but that wasn't really a reality.  First, it was a big thing in my life that I deal with in my personality every day.  Second, I still have family there and so I go back.    While I enjoy the company on these trips, going back to the town always fills me with dread.  I feel dirty and like I have something to prove.  But every time I am compelled to go into to town, even though my family lives on the outskirts and there is no necessity for it.  And I'm always drawn to the school. 

This is what it looked like when it was first built in the early 1940.  This isn't the school of my memories, there were big tree flanking the front door and paved roads when I attended.  But I couldn't find any current pictures on the googles.

Around five years ago they built a new elementary school right next to the new high school across town and this one lay abandoned.  I only saw it in the beginning stages of neglect.  Fields dying, weeds taking over the hopscotch squares, play equipment torn down.  I hadn't visited Soap Lake in four years until this past fourth of July weekend.

My sister, who made it into town before me, texted me that the school was being demolished.

I didn't know how to feel.  This beacon that lorded over me being torn down.  I felt like I wanted to see it and that I didn't.  I felt sick.  I wanted to run to it, but I didn't go that night.  Or the next day.  But the day after.  My brother and my niece and nephew walked through the wreckage.  I took pictures on my phone and was overwhelmed by nostalgia.  I could see both how it stood now, demolished and broken, and perfectly intact like in my youth.

There had been a fire in the gym.  The stage where I had band concerts and saw a traveling acting troupe preform The Princess and the Pea was blacked and hollow looking.  There was no roof and half the first floor now lay in the basement.

I walked around to the front by myself.  I didn't cut through the grass, but walked all the way around.   Approaching the school the way I did every morning.  The bell, whose housing I use to crawl up inside of, to my left and the doors, that seem massive in my youth, in front of me.  I cried a little as I got the top of the ramp and I was trying to work out why.  I couldn't quite understand my emotions, there were to many.  Then I realized the core feeling.  I even told the empty door frame out loud.  "I beat you."

I drove by again that afternoon and later that night.  That's when I took this picture.

I was compelled to drive by at least 5 more times, but I didn't.  I felt like I should let it go, but that I don't want to, but that I can.  I didn't realized I carried so much around regarding this run down building.  Now having had a week to process I like how I left it.  I like the dual set of memories I carry.  It feels full circle.  A circle that wouldn't have been complete if the building still stood intact, yet abandoned. 

before she was Mrs. Albee

Who:  The Bride and her Maids
What:  A photo scavenger hunt
When: Two days before the wedding
Where: The Edgefield, Portland; May 13, 2010
Why:  Pre-wedding Silliness

Photo-Challenge 1: A Picture with Jerry Garcia or at least at his tribute bar

Photo-Challenge 2: Someplace Elisha Shouldn't Be an abandoned firetruck that came with the ambulance definitely counts

Photo-Challenge 3: Another Future Bride or Groom both is even better

Photo-Challenge 4: Make & Perform A Secret Handshake With A Stranger "...and let it fly"

Photo-Challenge 5: Play Patty Cake With A Stranger

Photo-Challenge 6: Something Elisha Doesn't Want To Remember old men who may or may not be hitting on her, we couldn't tell, definitely a situation not to remember

Photo-Challenge 7: Taking A Shot lemon drops made with fresh squeezed lemons

Photo-Challenge 8: With A Bartender

Photo-Challenge 9: Make Your Own Stage & Preform A Song "I'm a giant pimp cup, short and stout"

Photo-Challenge 10: Sit At Someone Else's Table another bachelorette

Photo-Challenge 11: Perform A Trick For A Stranger she liked to sing that night

Photo-Challenge 12: A Man Who Looks Like A Messiah she decided that 80s tribute duo we're definitely God like and since they couldn't be focused on, they must have been

Photo-Challenge 13: An Animal close enough

to Haiti with love

I saw this on a friend's blog and thought I should pass it on.  There are some pretty cool things to bid on.  Check it out.

To Haiti with Love is an online auction of art, photography, papercrafts, clothing, and creative goods. All proceeds will go direct to the St. Joseph's Family of homes for children in Haiti.

one year, one month

I am learning that time is quantifiable yet hard to measure accurately.

Yesterday was my one year anniversary of the blog.  In that year I only made 57 posts.  I have less then 5000 page views.  It's interesting to me that this last year was the year I chose to start documenting.  It was a big year for us and not all of it present in my posts.  Bret changed jobs, we bought a new car, we got pregnant and had a baby, I became president of the Ad Fed, I entered my late twenties and Bret is about to start his last year before thirty.

I have shown you exactly where that year went and what we did...yet there are times that seem like just yesterday and the actually yesterday speed by to fast to remember.

What is going on?  Has time always moved like this?  Am I just realizing how sporadic and flighty it is?  Is it a product of growing older, of becoming a mama?  People, my baby is four weeks old today, one month!  But I just had her last week...

ones I kind of liked

Playing around with my newly outfitted camera that my SIL gave me a while back after she upgraded her's.  These aren't perfect, or in focus really, but I like them still. 

the man outside my daughter's room

Went to close the blinds the other morning and there he was.  I ran and got my camera.

Can you see him?  I can.

He hasn't been back.  I wonder if the neighbors know he lurks by their basement?