-
As You Wish
No more rhymes now, I mean it. Anybody want a peanut? I’m not a movie person per se. But I have an emotional attachment to a handful of films. One in particular. The Princess Bride. This attachment is based perhaps on my one hundred plus times viewing this film one summer in the the late 1980’s. I blame it on my framily. We watched it on VHS on a television that was placed on the floor. I think we watched it every day for one entire summer. (Not exactly watched so much as had it on for background noise.) We acted it out, dressed up as the characters, rolled down…
-
July Fourth – Another Beautiful One on Record
July Fourth on The Farm. It seemed to last a blink of an eye this year. There were still people I didn’t get to really chat with and I think there was dessert I didn’t get to spoon onto my plate. It’s always a bounty of good times. A bevy of conversations to have. A moving from here to there to this to that, tubing down the river and consuming copious amounts of food and then trying to settle all that food down quickly enough to tackle the annual kickball game and then suddenly it’s almost dark and we need to find our spots on the blanket for the best…
-
framily. the beauty of it all.
We are so blessed. Framily is a gift so beautifully overwhelming sometimes. Papa Dale and a trip to the pond to go fishing after a trip to the auto store for man errands. Big buddies and little buddies. Oh, there’s all the usual chaos that accompanies a dozen-ish young children at every meal. But it’s a happy kind of crazy. And it’s kind of my favorite type of crazy. The crazy that says, “We are all in this life together. The tantrums and the tears. The hugs and the high-fives. The spills and the shoves.” I really like this Jason Maraz song entitled…
-
a long-winded build up to some Fourth photos. that’s all.
Yesterday was what London calls a “home day”. It’s just like what it sounds like – a day where we spend every waking hour at home. These are her absolute favorite type of days. We stayed home primarily because we had no access to a car. Which was fine. To be fair, the kids stayed home all day. Kevin and I actually enjoyed a now-rare date night. The kids and I had plans to attend a library event in the afternoon but both cars were occupied so we skipped out on the library event. Which was fine also, except now our library books are overdue. Again. (I’ve made a basic…
-
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Ways.
What I Love About the Farm: Hanging out with Sally and Emma and Sarah. The wide open spaces. (No neighborhood in the distance. No cell towers. No highway over the ridge. Nothing but green trees and green grass.) These two boys developing a brand new buddy-ship. No Internet connection. (Yes, I love this. I type these little posts at night, lying in bed, through my phone. And even that service is sketchy and unreliable. And I like how that makes me feel marvelously distant from all other realities except the one wide-open reality in which I am currently experiencing.) The loud chaos of so many children playing at once. And…
-
Tradition.
The farm has little to no Internet. So it’s phone entries again for this girl. But I’d say the view makes up for the Internet-less. And then some. It’s that wonderful holiday. Sort of my favorite holiday. (Especially if we don’t count birthdays.) July Fourth. The week where the farm in Virginia is completely over run by hordes of romping, dashing, enthusiastic children. And we eat our meals all together and we always have dessert. We stick ourselves on top of old tire tubes and willingly place those tubes and our bodies in the muddy cold waters of the Pigg River. We gather all together and eat picnic foods all…
Keep Reading . . .
a thank you, thirty years later.
single and other conditions
Thanksgiving Tables …
-
Virginia Woolf Does It – Why Can’t I?
This weekend I made buckeyes. And it isn’t even Christmas. Our washer has been blinking E20 every time I try to wash a load of laundry. I woke up Sunday morning with a severe crick in my neck and my Hawkeye curled around my head. When I told him “good morning” he replied, “If I eat a vitamin and a bite of spaghetti at the same time, what would that taste like that?” We brought our heat bill down by $90 last month but this weekend’s colder weather will likely alter next month’s bill. Our thermostat rests at 58 degrees. In the morning I can see my breath in our…
-
off the grid
It seems that for the past four days or so I have been unofficially “off the grid”. Mostly unintentionally. I think I first jumped off the internet waves Thursday morning because I was just plain old too busy to get online. I was too busy . . . sweeping the filthy crumb-encrusted floors of our house, running to the grocery store to be sure we had adequate supplies of milk, cereal and ice cream, piling laundry in and out of the washing machine in hopes that our children looked slightly less like ragamuffins than usual, and making lists of what I needed to get accomplished before 3 p.m. (I never…
-
Another Birthday Story. Different Birthday(s).
Remember how I said our stop in Atlanta was a soft landing place before making the haul to our next stop? That was true. (Because I don’t lie here – right? Well, at least not intentionally.) We drove nine hours to Florida two days before Christmas because we wanted to be a part of a fabulous birthday surprise for two marvelous people. Maybe you remember seeing their faces here before. Oma. Papa Dale. The matriarch and patriarch of our framily. They both turned sixty. And we made it (just barely in time) to see their surprised faces as they entered the room. And by “just barely in time” I mean…
-
When Uncle ‘Stin Comes To Town
We heart Uncle ‘Stin. (He’s framily, you know.) He stopped by for a visit this week. Here’s what we learned while Uncle ‘Stin was around. I met ‘Stin (a.k.a. Austin) when he was younger than my little Wilder is now. Which makes me feel an odd combination of both sisterly and maternal affection for him. (Is that misterly affection then?) And of course I have been aware of ‘Stin’s age for, uh, all of his life. But this trip I realized – he’s not a kid. (And he probably has not been for a while, I know.) He is, in fact, (to borrow his own phrase) a Transformer. You know…
-
Just Now . . .
It may be February – but I am just now putting up my Christmas gift. (And by “I” I actually do not mean me. Because “I” am, uh, horrible at hanging items in a secure fashion. Just ask my husband. Or don’t. Please.) As I was saying . . . the Christmas gift is just now being displayed. Because that’s how we roll. I love this shelf. Love it. It was my Christmas present from Jon. (I was lucky enough for him to draw my name in the Christmas framily exchange.) I love it because Jon made it. (And I love homemade, handcrafted. You know.) And I love it because…
-
Brought To You By . . .
As I said in the last post, it’s no small task for both Kevin and I to leave the state of South Carolina sans children. But leave it we did, if only for an overnight journey to Atlanta for that U2 concert I was raving about recently. And our adventure was brought to us by some wonderful people we like to call Emma and Sally. Or Aunt E and Oma. Or “Aunt Eeeee-muh” if you are two. How do you get to claim the title of sainthood anyway? Do you have to be Catholic? Or dead? Well, if those are the two primary requirements then I guess Emma and Sally…
-
Framily
Framily. It’s not a misspelling. It’s a word I like to think Kevin and I coined. Framily. By this word we mean – the people who are not actually related to us by blood or marriage, but we wish they were anyway. The people who we choose to surround ourselves with, spend time with, celebrate and weep with. The people who we call when we need encouragement. The people who we trust our children with. The people who don’t offend us when they tell us the truth because we know the love behind the words. That’s framily. You probably have some of those people in your life…
