May 2012

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First Mother’s Day: check.  I handled it by running away for the day.

First Memorial Day: check. I handled it with routine.

We made our yearly pilgrimage to the cemetery today.  I’ve always wondered if Memorial Day is recognized the same in the big city as it is in the small town.  My guess is, yes.  A city, after all, is made up of blocks.  A zip code may be in Metropolis but life is lived in the neighborhood. 

In a small town, people start gathering at the cemetery in the morning.  Since I have fallen in with morning people, we were the first to arrive.  Mini-reunions are held as fellow grievers arrive armed with cleaning supplies, flowers, and memories.  When the weather permits, we can linger and chat.  Today was not one of those days.  The wind made it bitter cold.  It was all we could do to shine the stones and tether the flowers. 

In addition to the normal gravesites, we now have an extra one to visit.  Mom’s favorite thing was having her family surround her.  She still has that power to bring us together as we gathered around her tombstone.  Dad worked hard to make her stone shine.  His name is already on it.  I asked him if it made him nervous to shine his own name.  He just laughed.  Much to dad’s disgust, mom’s death year has not been added on the stone, yet.  I say, if there’s no end date maybe that means she’s still here.  That’s okay with me. 

We visited the other cemetery to place flowers on the graves of mom’s grandmas.  Even though one died before I was born and the other died when I was too young to remember.  Mom loved her grandmas and she always placed flowers on their graves.  They were important women in her life and helped shaped who she was.  So, we took flowers and placed them on their graves, too.  Perhaps someday we won’t.  For now though, we will. 

This afternoon we had a family BBQ.  Well, a Wyoming BBQ.  We cooked the burgers inside where it was warm.  The burgers were good.  The conversation was enjoyable.  We laughed and had a good time.  For me though, I kept thinking of our Memorial Day a year ago.  Mom just found out the CLL cells had come back and started treatments again.  She was sick but she came home for the weekend for Bubba’s graduation.  I had no idea she’d leave us in six months.  Last Memorial Day was the start of a very hard and trying summer.  But I’d do it again if I could spend a little more time with mom.

So, I survived my first Mother’s Day and Memorial Day without my mother.  Whose bright idea was it to put those two commemoration days in the same month? Not cool. Do the days get any easier?  Or has May become a bitter month?

As I tell Lyn, take a deep breath and remember, you got this.  I got this.  I know I do. Another deep breath.

Flying Mixed Metaphors

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I never realized how much imagery makes up our language.  It seeps in most of my conversations.  What’s funny is when the image is off – just by a hair.  Or, rather, a word. My old boss was notorious at doing this.  If I had only known I would someday be writing a blog about this I would have written some of her ‘ism’s down. 

I’m not exempt.  In fact, lately, I’ve noticed I am starting to pull the wrong image out of the hat.  Just the other day, I was writing my blog and wanted to use a metaphor for quickly.  Instead, I wrote “At the drop of a pin.” Wrong drop.  “At the drop of a hat” = quickly.  “At the drop of a pin” = quietly.  Thank goodness for editing.

It happens during conversations.  So, here’s a warning: if we are ever speaking at a party, you better duck.  The mixed metaphors will be flying!

How to Swear Around the Kiddies

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We have a lot of crazy sayings in our fine American dialect.  Phrases we say without thinking of the origin.   Words are modified that have already been diluted with variations.  If we ever stop and think about what we’re saying, we might be surprised.  For example, who is Pete?  Poor Pete.  If he ever wanted to remain anonymous, he’s doing a lousy job.  We shout in frustration, for the love of Pete!  And we yell, for Pete’s sake!  Who exactly is Pete and how did he score two phrases in our vernacular?

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Just Don’t Think About it that Much

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I went to see the Avengers.  So, maybe I’ve seen it twice already in the first two weeks it’s been playing.  Don’t be a judger.  Anyway, I’ve seen it twice and to sum up – I like it.  My favorite line actually belongs to Thor.  (spoiler alert) After warning the others to be respectful about Loki because he is his brother he finds out what a bad boy Loki has been.  “He is adopted,” Thor responds.   I know, I know, I’ve seen the articles detailing how insensitive that joke was to the adoption community.  I’ll let them wage that battle.  And in my political incorrectness I’m going to laugh because it is funny.

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First You Pick it Up, Then You Put it in the Bag (bump, bump)

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Every year for the past several years, our ward volunteers to participate in our city wide clean up.  It’s not a complicated job – every person is assigned garbage bags, a brightly colored t-shirt (so drivers can see you and wonder if you are on work detail, I suppose), and gloves.  Then we walk along, spot trash, pick it up, and put it in the bag.  Even I can handle this.  So, the last few years I try to help out.  However, Saturday I wanted to go visit my new grand-niece and avoid Mother’s Day on Sunday.  I decided to volunteer  but leave early.  I grabbed two bags and figured I’d work until I either filled up both bags or an hour and a half – whichever came first.  Unfortunately, I filled two bags in an hour.  And I only covered about a block.  The word I think you’re looking for is “ew.”   At least, that’s the word I used.  Many, many times. 

Our section to clean is across the street from a grade school and just down the road from a small convenience store.  So the litter has the normal offenders.  Cigarette butts that if each one were picked up they’d fill a bag with just them.  Broken bottles.  Plastic water bottles.  Candy wrappers.  And a whole lot of shopping bags.  They like to congregate in an open field down from the school.  The sagebrush captures them and do not like to let them go. 

There are always a few finds that make me wonder.  I wonder what the stories behind them are.  I found a half of a skateboard.  Just half.  What happened to the other half?  Did it have more sentimental value that the owner was willing to carry it home?  Was this the bad half?

I also found a bumper of a Nissan.  Sagebrush is notorious for hiding things.  This is what I picture:  someone pulled up to the curb and used the parked Nissan in front of him to come to a complete stop.  When the driver stumbled out of the car, a bottle fell out, too.  It broke.  I know because I picked up the pieces.  The driver, let’s call him Ed for convenience (I picked the name at random, no offense to any Eds reading this), has a lot of infractions with the law.  The police are well acquainted with him.  And the last thing Ed wants is another run-in with the boys-and-girls-in-blue.  So, he decided he needed to hide the evidence.  He had a nice chat with the sagebrush.  The  sagebrush family agreed to hide the evidence.  I suspect not for free though.  Someday, he’s going to owe them a huge favor.  Sagebrush just seems kind of evil like that.  He threw the bumper into the sagebrush and figured he was safe.  Except, of course, for the fact the victim car no longer has a bumper.  A detail the owner probably noticed.  And Ed’s car was right behind it with little pieces of Nissan littered in the grill.  Almost a perfect, drunken plan though.

Another find, and this one is kind of gross but I was wearing gloves and I figure you’re old enough to hear it, I found a pregnancy test.  Talk about stories.  Too many to list and the stories are a little too seedy for my little blog.  I’ll let you paint your own scenarios.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell if it was a positive or negative because both were marked.  Hmm, that gives the stories an interesting twist.

Every time I participate in the clean-up I’m amazed at just how gross people can be.  Our little town gets a bad rap for not being “pretty.”  But ditching trash in the sagebrush isn’t going to help.  As a species, humans are a filthy and disgusting lot.  “Don’t be a pig,” we say.  The pigs answer, “Uh, leave us out of this.   We’re not that gross.”  And they are right.   I have two trash bags full of ickiness to prove it. 

Here’s a little theme music for this blog.