Tag Archives: thoughts

The Day My Cell Phone Aged Me

15 Feb

This past weekend I lost my cell phone.  Since it was my birthday, I chalked it up to age and hoped my next mishap wasn’t losing my teeth.

Don’t worry about the cell phone.  My son found it for me.  I think children are hard-wired to locate items of modern technology.  It’s a skill similar to radar devices that detect heat-seeking missiles.

But, on Saturday, my phone was lost.

I wasn’t worried.  You see, I haven’t spent money on a phone in years.  Oh, I pay for the service, just not the telephone.  It’s my dirty little secret.  I collect, some say hoard, old cell phones and chargers.  I take all the reject phones from friends and family and put them to good use.  I like to think of myself as a recycler rather than a techno-moocher.

Saturday was my big birthday shopping excursion and I found myself in a mall that makes a football stadium seem small.  I took FringeKid and told my husband and son I’d give them a call later and we could meet up for a bite to eat in the food court.  I discovered my missing phone when hunger pangs struck.

Since I was near H&M, I figured I’d browse and then ask a clerk to use the phone.  The young men behind the counter broke out into laughter when I inquired about a phone.  Apparently a person without a cell phone is a like a person without ears, only more hysterical.

So I set out in search of an older, wiser, hopefully more helpful sales clerk.  Lord & Taylor was nearby.  Generally when I go into a store like Lord & Taylor, I am ignored.  Maybe they recognize the Target clothes on me.   I guess I look like I cannot afford their merchandise, and it’s mostly true.  My daughter usually gives us away when she picks up a price-tag and yells $298 dollars!  It’s all awe and wonder for her.  She’s only familiar with $19.99.

So I found a lovely clerk at the makeup counter, mustered my courage and asked.

“Excuse me.  I have a crazy request for you.  I seem to have misplaced my cell phone, and I am wondering if I can borrow the store phone for a quick call?”

“That’s not too crazy.”  She said.  “Believe me, I’ve had people ask for worse things.”

“Really?  Worse than asking for a store phone, because the guy with the eight inch gauged earlobes in H&M thought that was a request from some time in space, like way back in the 90′s or something.”

Stuck in an aging gloom that wrinkle cream couldn’t help, I considered all the outdated things I cling to.  I mean, I still have a VCR in my house.  I felt technologically stunted, deficient in the new ways of an ever-changing world.  I felt like my cell-phone came with an antenna.

I was aging right in front of my ten year-old baby girl, and feeling older than my usual twenty-nine until a women in Macy’s stopped me and asked for my help.

“Excuse me dear.  Do you know how to work a cell phone?”  She asked.

“Well the nineteen year-old in H&M doesn’t think so, but let me give it a try.”

She explained how she was trying to take a picture of some leopard-print stilettos for her daughter, but couldn’t get her cell-phone to cooperate.  I grabbed the phone, scrolled through the options, flipped it over in my hand and said, “I’m so sorry, but your phone doesn’t have a camera.”

In that moment, all the pieces of my old-fashioned world fell into place.  I knew there was hope for me and my outdated technology, because my lost cell-phone has a camera.  I wanted to hug that woman with the antique cell phone.  She gave me the greatest gift of all – my youth.

My Idea of a Super Bowl

5 Feb

Superbowl

The question on everyone’s mind -

GIANTS

or

patriots

I think you know where the FringeFamily stands in this bowl.

Hope Lives Here

2 Feb

This weekend we went into the city to see my uncle.  While he is being treated for throat cancer, he is staying in The Hope Lodge, a residential facility run by The American Cancer Association.  It’s a place for cancer patients and their families to live during treatment.  It is close to the major hospitals in NYC and brings commuting to a minimum.  Some patients are from out-of-state and some live nearby.

It’s a place where hope lives.

Unfortunately my photograph does not do this collage justice.  Each little square has writing in it – encouraging words, parts of Bible verses, little messages – all things to give hope.  Many of these little tiles, if not all, were made by children.

I got to thinking how nice it would be if we had one hanging in our house.  Isn’t that what we all want to know?

Hope Lives Here

Hope that despite the dark patches, the future is bright.

Hope that there is healing on the other side of pain.

Hope that joy comes in the morning.

Hope that tears only last for a time.

Hope that there is victory to be had.

Hope that you will be able to love again.

Hope that broken hearts will be made whole.

Hope that the sun will come out tomorrow.

Hope that you will get through your present trial.

Hope that what you do today will make a difference tomorrow.

Hope that your labor is not in vain.

Hope that your little light will shine for eternity.

Hope that people can change.

Hope that the economy will recover.

Hope that God does what He says He will do.

Hope that your faith is not blind.

Hope that life truly does go on.

Hope – Hope -Hope

For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope. – Romans 15:4

Let hope live in your house.

American Print Media Obsessed

26 Jan

I have no right to be a critic.  I am under skilled and over (or is that overly?) opinionated; however, my love for print media sometimes leaves me longing.

America obsesses with cutting fat and self-help.  Don’t worry ladies, I’m not even hinting at cutting out chocolate and potato chips.  I’m talking about fat in writing.

I’ve sat through all the college classes that taught me to cut unnecessary words (obviously I pay no mind to those rules) and eliminate ‘fat’ from our articles.  Heaven forbid our story is a size 14 instead of a size 4.

Most editors would die of fright if they were assigned my blog or yours.  They like neat little concise gifts of journalism in 500 words or less.

We’re losing something.  As we cut fat, slivers of meat follow.  Suddenly our writing is skin and bones, absolutely boring to look at and tiring to read.

Magazines are filled with countless self-help articles.

How My Woodstove Ruined My Nails in 300 Words

Help Johnny Overcome His Fear of The Toilet in 5 Flushes

10 Ways to Say I Love You, but I Hate Your Dog

Be Bikini Ready in Time for Your Grave

Don’t even tell me you only read Christian literature, because it’s just as bad.

Knowing God’s Will in Ninety Days

7 Ways to Raise Kids Who Will Attend Church

12 Envelopes to Financial Freedom

How To Masquerade as a Proverbs 31 Woman in 31 Days

We’re obsessed with these heartless, but neatly wrapped articles that help us do everything from birth a baby in a bathtub to walk the streets of gold in stilettos.

Is anyone else tired of reading this gibberish?

Maybe it’s just me.  I kind of long for the days when slighty wordy short stories, written by aspiring writers, appeared in monthly magazines.  I’d like for people to stop fixing me and start entertaining me with words, or challenging my depth of knowledge without planning my next 10, 30, or 90 days.

I honestly do not think most magazines are worth the $4.95 we are asked to pay for them.

Don’t even get me started on newspapers!

I’m always amazed when I read an article, glom all kinds of superficial facts and have no idea what is really going on or why the article was written in the first place.

Most of our print news media is self-help or tabloid, and I include CNN in that tabloid lot.  Take a gander at the headlines.

Come to think of it, I should have written this article in the format of -

8 Ways The Media Failed Me and My Fat

Alas, my rant is over in less than 500 words.  My editor will be pleased.

Thoughts and comments welcome, as long as they are in 3 Easy Steps or Less. ;-)

A New Year, A New Clean, A New Kinda Crazy

6 Jan

My aunt is coming next week and I’m super-excited.  It’s actually been a couple of years since I’ve seen her and this is the first time she’ll be to my house since my daughter was three.  That’s a long time ago baby.

It’s not that she hates my house…well, maybe she does, but that’s not the point.  Since she has a nice big house with lots of extra rooms and a pantry filled with snacks, we usually go to her house.  Plus, she lives in the sunny, warm place called Georgia.  Also known as the strip mall capital of the world.

But this time, she’s coming to my house.  One word for you people – CLEANING.

Aparently I don’t do it enough.  I tend to read blogs and write posts in my spare time, when in fact, I should be cleaning.  I just discovered I have a dust bunny farm in my bedroom.  It’s like I’m raising them for sale at the farmer’s market.

I’ve had three days of sweeping, mopping, swiping, chucking, scrubbing, spraying, and organizing.  I’m ready to embrace my lazy side once again.  Life shouldn’t be lived with a dust rag hanging off your belt.  I smell like lavender all purpose cleaner and although it’s a pretty purple color, it’s not exactly par-fume.

Did I mention I’ve been dieting these past five days?  I have.  I would say I could eat a horse, but I only have plastic horses in the house and they don’t have enough calories to fulfill my cravings.

You know what I realized yesterday?

Every single time I walk into a gas station or convience store, thousands of seductive calories claw at my arms and legs.  They captivate my eyes and make me drool on my gloves a little.  It’s true.  When did gas stations  go from filling your car to filling your internal desires to eat everything under the sun as long as it’s drizzled with a little chocolate?

That’s what I want to know.

In between my hundred calorie cream of wheat and my glass of flavorless water, I organized my son’s Legos.  It’s a projected he’s wanted to do for a long time, but we put if off.  Mainly because organizers costs twenty-bucks a pop and he needed a few; however, he got some Christmas money.  Although I think it may push the nerdy line a little, he spent his Christmas money on organizers.  Four to be exact.

If I didn’t help him, it would take him the next six months to seperate bricks.  I don’t have six months.  I need a clean house by Monday!

I used a day and half (believe me it took that long) of my life sorting Legos.  Not how I imagined my new year would begin, but I can now seperate a Lego from a cheap imposter on feel alone.  It’s like the skills bankers have for detecting bogus money, only in my house it’s Legos.  If you bring counterfit building bricks to my house, you could face up to five years in jail.

And if my kid ever dumps all those little bins onto the floor, someone may have to restrain me.  A day and half of my life people!

Then I made playdo with FringeKid.  Yes, I think it’s infinitely easier to go and buy a little container of cool smelling colored dough, but after a day on the floor with red, green, blue, yellow, gray, and black bricks, I wasn’t changing out of my pajamas.

Despite recent fashion trends, I don’t go shopping in my pajamas.

Just thought I just share.

I made a dinosaur embryo with my playdo.  Don’t judge my creativity people.  I lost half my brain to 1/2 inch toy bricks.

Wish me luck on my home overhaul.  If you don’t hear from me by Monday, send Mr. Clean.

Thanks.

P.S. Please excuse the wretched photography.  I would like to blame one of the kids, but it was me.

2012: Six Things on my New To-DO List

3 Jan

So, it’s 2012.  I’m having a touch of difficulty wrapping my mind around our new year.  Wasn’t it was just 2000?  I mean, could it have been that long ago?

I’m sure a few people still have canned corn and ammunition tucked away in their basement.  On the eve of the last end of the world, I was too pregnant to care about computers crashing and people looting for food.  All that fighting for survival seemed easier than finishing my last seven weeks of pregnancy.

It just seems like twelve years ago was yesterday…makes me feel like I’ll be turning ninety in February instead of my usual twenty-nine.

Truth be told, and I’m a blogger who emotionally dumps words on a page, I was feeling pretty bummed about 2011.  I just didn’t feel like I accomplished enough in a year.  After all, these years are fleeting, and I’m almost ninety!

I may have wallowed in unaccomplished despair and self-pity for a hour minute or two on New Year’s Eve, but I got an attitude adjustment when I read Edie’s blog the other night.  She said, “God has given me everything I could possibly need in His son.  I am forgiven and blessed with the every good gift from the Father.  The rest  is icing on the cake.”

Did you hear that?

Everything I didn’t do last year or didn’t ‘get’ to do is only icing on the cake anyway.  I have everything I could possibly need already.  And here’s the bonus – I love cake and icing!  It’s great when I get to enjoy the bonus stuff, but I’ve got nothing to worry about when I don’t.

For the record, I have sworn off both icing and cake, and cookies, chips, soda, anything good and tasty, etc.  I will shed a few pounds this new year.  Hopefully twenty-five, but I’m realistic.  I’ll be happy with ten.

Did you make an resolutions?

The word “resolution” sounds all important and bona-fide, doesn’t it?

I’m not really making any resolutions this year, because let’s face it, in my house resolution means lie.  I never keep long-term resolutions.  I am refocusing myself on some goals though.

1.  I need to finish a book.  I have 30,000 words written on one book and 20,000 on another.  One of those books needs to make it to 50-60,000 words in 2012.  It’s a must do, even if just for myself.  So I know I can.

2.  I need to get more exercise, meaning I need to play Wii dance with my daughter more often.  You’d be surprised how much the beach boys and Katy Perry’s Hot and Cold make you move.  I just have to remember to close the curtains before we get started.  Once, I shocked the mailman a little, and not in a good way.

3.  I want to learn Zentangle.  Cathy wrote about it and now I can’t get it out of my head.  I think it would be so much for FringeKid and I to do on girl’s night.  I mean, doodling with purpose?  I’m there.  You should’ve seen my college notes and don’t even get me started on church bulletins.  I could totally rock this art form, because I’ve had mega amounts of experience.

4.  I want to do more new things this year, have more experiences.  I know it’s kind of vague, but I’m still working out my thoughts.  I just want to have lots of good memories to think about when I’m old and fully gray.  Before I lose my mind, that is.

5.  I want to spend more time having fun with my kids.  I mean, they will be teenagers soon and from what I’ve heard, that’s worse than them catching the bubonic plague.  Sometimes it’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day that I forget to have fun.

6.  I want to be thankful.  For all things.  Everyday.  I want thankfulness to become my default.

That’s it.  That’s enough for January.  Maybe I’ll revamp my list in July.

What about you?  What do you want out of 2012?

The Cirle of Life or You’re A Soccer Mom

30 Nov

One day you’re a young woman with hope and dreams, plans for the future, and the next thing you know, you’re a soccer-mom.  Your only dreaming happens when you fall asleep for ten quick minutes waiting for drama auditions to finally end.  It’s the kind of dreaming that leaves drool stains on your shoulder and lines in your cheeks.  The strangest thing is you have no idea how this happened to you.

Oh, you remember the highlights – little people in scrubs screaming at you to PUSH; the Dora cake you baked in a bowl, frosted with nine cans of whipped chocolate, and subsequently offended every Spanish-speaking country in the world; the first day of school when your little princess cried so hard she threw-up on the vice-principal’s shiny new shoes – it’s just all those days in-between that confuse you.  It truly does not seem possible that you have three kids, a dog, four goldfish (Sorry, three.  I forgot the one floating at the top of the bowl this morning.), and a SUV (the fashionable equivalent of a mini-van).

You’re a mother of school-aged children and you’re not sure if you like it.  Oh, you love your kids.  There’s no question about that, but weren’t you created for more than selling fifty-cent cheetah print slap bracelets at the Santa sale?

No child was harmed during the shooting of this picture.

I’m sure you thought so.  Once.  Now you can’t think past the Mt. Everest size mountain of laundry growing out of your second floor hall closet.  You’re supposed to re-create the Mayflower from a shoe box and glue gun by Friday and your son’s eighth-grade teacher just called to tell you he failed his algebra test.  You know that the Pilgrims would never have required you to build a boat from cardboard, and although it’s unlikely any Indians will scalp you, your son’s Math teacher looks like she can swing a mean axe.  It doesn’t matter that no-one but Einstein and eighth-grade math teachers use algebra, you’re forced to Google the answers to tonight’s homework.

You have feelings of pity toward your own mother for the gray hairs you caused when you were sixteen.  You remember the maccaroni beach scene that hung over her wall-mounted telephone for so long only six lone macaronies remained by the water’s edge.  They looked tired and a tiny bit sad.  You marvel at the wonder of the slightly sagging, mildly wrinkling woman who is your mother.  She still sends birthday cards and babysits your kids when they are too sick to sit through another junior-league softball game.  She lived through being a soccer mom and she’s better for it.  At least she exhibits a lot more patience with your kids than she did with you.  She has that knowing look in her eyes – the one that says, “You’ll not only live through this, but one day you will realize you loved it.”

via Pinterest

While you’re sitting at your computer becoming best friends with internet math geeks, that mis-matched girl of yours clasps your cheek in her chubby little fingers and plants a spitty kiss on your face.  “I love you mom.”

You begin to understand that you are living your dream – the one you had when you played house in the backyard day after summer day.  It’s the circle of life, or maybe it’s just that darn Lion King song stuck in your head again.   Tonight you love the life of a soccer mom.

Then your cell phone rings from the front pocket of your jacket.  It’s the Math teacher and she’s swinging her ax.  It’s not only the circle of life, it’s the circumference of the circle + a-b squared.  It’s life as a soccer mom and you love it.  At least you love your kids.  ;-)

I’m Torn Between Hate & Love

29 Jul

Not to stray from today’s post before I’ve even begun writing it, but last Sunday my daughter dressed her sock monkey and took her to church.

It’s kinda, sorta funny and yet a little bizzare all at the same time.

************

At this moment in my life, I’m hating Fiction Friday and it was my idea.

That’s pathetic, but I cannot help it.  I’ve written about 200 words since the last Fiction Friday, but that’s it.  I should be posting a portion of Chapter 4 today, only I’m not so into it.  I have it written – chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7 – all done.  I’m working on chapter 8 now.  I use the term ‘working’ very loosely.

I just don’t know if I want to share anymore of this book.  It’s such a tragic story, I feel like I’m being depressing on my own blog.  I don’t want to be a downer, you know?

In writing this book, I’m drawing from all my experience in dealing with women and their issues.  It’s the worst of everything tumbled from my fingertips into a few characters.  I do hope my main character Lacy will show that she can overcome all the sins committed against her and live a happy life, free from the bind of evil, but yet I hesitate.

Maybe this book should be more meaningful, have a greater purpose and all that noble stuff.  Maybe it’s just a lame first attempt at fiction.  I’m not sure.

So it sits.

Maybe I’m just over thinking things.  I’m a professional at that.

Meanwhile I am in all out overflowing love for a plant.  Her name is Roxanne.

Yes, I named my plant.  Do you find that unusual?

I spent a whopping $20 on this jewel of a plant last summer.  When I brought her home, she was thick with branches and dotted with pink and purple blooms.  Her beauty drew me from the lumber section of Home Depot, all the way outdoors to the Garden center.  I went googly-eyed in love.

So I brought her home where she promptly dropped all of the blossoms on my living room floor.  Shocked by her nerve, I put her outside on the porch; however, her delicate leaves and dainty branches broke and splintered to the ground.

I wept bitter tears.

Not really, but I did regret wasting twenty bucks.

Roxanne lived naked and sickly in my living room this past winter.  Many questioned my choice of dead plant decor, but I told FringeKid to say nice things to her and I hoped.

This spring, little green buds formed on her stick branches, so I set her outside in the sun.

Today I am proud to show off her buds and blooms.  I couldn’t be more pleased with my Roxanne.  She’s slowly returning to her former grandeur, giving myself and the world hope that we can once again bloom beautiful.

We sit on the cusp of this weekend and we have a choice – give up on beauty or sit in the sunshine till we bloom.  I am going to sit in the sun (with sunscreen of course).

Yes, I know that last paragraph made absolutely no sense because we are not plants, but it sounded good in my head.  That shows you the state of my brain.

Happy Friday friends!

If you were more productive than I, please join Fiction Friday and leave your link.  Please, thank you, and you’re welcome.

Now be truthful, have you ever named a plant?  And do your children dress up stuffed animals for church?  Or is my kid the only odd duck?

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