Summer Re-Run

Thought for the day:  The healthiest response to life is joy. [Deepak Chopra]

According to the calendar, yesterday was the first day of autumn, but evidently, nobody bothered to let Mother Nature know, because around here, it still feels and looks like the middle of summer. Sooooo, why not go with a (ta-DA!) summer re-run? Not that I'm (ahem) lazy or anything, but it's been more than five years since this post ran first time around as Rhymes With Dreams, and most of you haven't seen it. So you could say I'm re-running it out of sheer laziness the goodness of my heart. Yeah, let's go with that. With a bit of editing, here ya go. I hope you enjoy it.

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Thought for the day: Why do people pay money to go to the top of tall buildings, and then pay again to look down at the ground through binoculars? 

One of the few good things I can say about growing up in a neighborhood of row homes is that there were always enough kids around to initiate just about any kind of game you can imagine: games like curb ball, dodge ball, red rover, Mother may I, spud, seven up, and of course, tag. A little convenience store down the alley from our house served as our meeting place, and the big metal pipe at its front corner served as home base for our tag games. Tag games always started by everyone yelling "Not it!" Whoever was slowest, WAS it, and would have to cover his eyes and start counting at that pipe while everyone else ran.

It's been 55+ years since I played that version of tag, but thanks to a very sweet fellow blogger, now I can play a different (more age-appropriate) version. She tagged me IT, so now I get to answer some questions, before tagging some other bloggers. Sounds like fun, doesn't it?

Here we go:

1.  If you could go back in time and relive one moment, what would it be?

It'd be that moment I spotted my husband at the airport when he finally came home from Vietnam. It was sheer magic.

2. If you could go back in time and change one thing, what would it be?

The airplane spent an interminable hour and a half sitting on the tarmac in Atlanta, and should have already landed in Baltimore by the time it finally got off the ground. My sister-in-law and her husband picked me up at the airport and we drove straight to the hospital, but my mother died twenty minutes before we got there. So, if I could change one thing, I'd make that plane leave on time.

3. What movie or TV character do you most resemble in personality?

I have no idea. Maybe a cross between June Cleaver and Lurch?

4. If you could push one person off a cliff, who would it be?

Geez, I'm boring. Can't think of anyone I hate, and even if I did, I'm not a push-somebody-off-the-cliff kind of person. I'm more of a guns or poison kind of gal.

5. Name one habit you want to change about yourself.

I need to exercise. Unfortunately, owning exercise equipment and a pair of spiffy running shoes doesn't do the trick. You actually have to use the darned things. Doesn't hardly seem fair, does it?

6. Describe yourself in one word.

Vulnerable.

7. Describe the person who named you in this meme in one word.

Family-oriented.

8. Why do you blog?

It started out (reluctantly, I might add) as a means to establish a "platform" to benefit my writing future. Now, I do it because I truly enjoy it, and because I've come to care about the people I've "met".

Okay, I'm going to deviate from the original post here, and instead of naming anyone in particular, I'll let all of you guys and gals who are interested snag the blog tag from the top of this page and answer the questions on your blog, and either pass it on to three other bloggers, or throw it up for grabs, like I'm doing. Kinda like a chain letter, but better. No body parts will turn black and fall off if you don't do it. (I don't think so, anyway. Personally, I wasn't willing to take the chance.)

Did you notice that word meme in question number seven? Familiar with it? In answering these questions on her blog, the gal who tagged me said, "What the heck is a meme? I never heard that one before." Since the only meme I'd ever heard of before was the French word, which rhymes with hem and means same, I decided to do some investigating.

It turns out that meme, which rhymes with dream, can best be described  as a basic building block of minds and culture, similar to the way a gene is considered a biological building block. Just as genes transmit biological information, memes transmit ideas and belief information, like catch phrases, melodies, the latest fads, and fashion trends. By extension, an Internet meme would be a concept that spreads via the Internet, like viral videos, tweets, and ... games of blogger tag.

So now we know.

On an earlier post, I told the funny-but-true story of my grandfather using most of my grandmother's clothes as diapers during their long voyage to America. Turns out, my brother acquired a copy of their ship's manifest through Ancestry.com and informed me that their ship didn't sail into Ellis Island, after all. The S.S. Columbia left Glasgow on April 28, 1923, and actually arrived in Boston Harbor eight days later. Eight days. When Mom-Mom described the voyage, she made it sound like so much longer than that, but eight days of seasickness must have felt more like eighty.

Now that I know they entered via Boston, I've been thinking about another story my grandmother told me. She said they lived in New York City for a while before moving on to Baltimore, which is why I thought they'd come into the country through Ellis Island, but maybe I misunderstood. Maybe they actually lived in Boston. Still, wherever they lived, the story was hysterical.

My grandmother could wax poetic about Scottish heather.

She said the temperatures were hot, hotter than what they'd ever experienced in Scotland. And the bugs? They were absolutely horrific, and also something quite new to them, she said. According to her, they didn't  have such annoying bugs in Scotland. So, picture this: they're in a cramped hotel room in the sweltering heat one evening, and the flies and mosquitoes are flitting and buzzing around the room, and about a hair's breadth away from driving my grandfather completely insane. So, Pop starts chasing them around the room with a fly swatter in hand. Bouncing on the bed, swinging the flyswatter like a baseball bat, and cussing as only an irate Scotsman can cuss. And oh yeah, because of the heat, he also happened to be naked. When my grandmother looked out the window, a small crowd was gathered below, pointing up, and having a jolly good time. Seems they found my grandfather's shenanigans quite entertaining.

Now whether or not that story's entirely true, I can't say, but she certainly told it to me often enough. One part of the tale doesn't mesh, though. That part about Scotland not having any annoying bugs? I did a google search to see if that's true. Not even close. There's a wee bug called the Highland midge that is so annoying, it's been known to make grown men cry. Those miserable critters not only bite, but they swarm. Not talking little swarms, either. I'm talking swarms of hundreds, and even thousands, that attack all at once. They've been called the scourge of Scotland.

Still, why ruin a good story with facts, right? My grandmother chose to remember Scotland as a perfect place, with fields of heather and nary a bug in sight. Works for me. I love good dreams. (rhymes with memes)

 rainbow above the highlands

                                  Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

Pole Dance, Anyone?

Thought for the day:  You can learn a lot about a person by the way he handles an unexpected detour.

Now that we're back home from our road trip and settled in again, I reckon it's time to come up with a regular post, huh? I must confess, to make sure I got them done, I wrote the Veterans Day post and LST 325  posts weeks ago, so this is the first gotta come up with somethin' post in quite some time.

As luck has it, a couple of you already provided me with what I need to get my blogging engine started again.

The lovely Marcy of Maine Words kindly shared the Versatile Blogger award with me shortly before my hubby and I took off for Florida.

As a recipient of this award, I'm supposed to reveal seven random tidbits of information about myself, and then pass the award to seven other bloggers I admire. Not sure if I can dig up seven things of interest about myself ... OR limit myself to only seven bloggers I admire ... but I'll give it a shot. Thanks, Marcy.

Also, the lovely Julie of What Else is Possible? shared another thingie with me that's going around the blogosphere.

 It isn't exactly an award; it's more of a nudge to get bloggers to reveal themselves. Wait a sec. Maybe that wasn't the best way to explain it. Not reveal as in rip off clothing, wiggle one's derriere, and slither around a pole, but reveal as in tell a little something about oneself. Actually, ten somethings. So, I'm gonna take the liberty of combining this with the Versatile Blogger award, and tell you a total of ten deep dark secrets, and call it a day. (And sorry ... they're neither deep nor dark.)

• Since the thought for the day is about unexpected detours, I'll start with that. Being a directionally challenged person, and the daughter of parents who were even more talented than I at getting lost, we always stuck our tongues firmly in cheeks and referred to the experience as taking the scenic route. And, to tell the truth, as long as said detours don't make me late for a commitment, I actually like 'em. They've led to some pretty interesting sights, and to some pretty interesting people. Besides, who's to say? Our true destinies may lie in the detours. 
• I don't give a diddle about diamonds and gold. I prefer wood and leather.
• I always work the New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle in ink. (Erasable, of course.)
• When I was eleven years old, I inherited two glass powder boxes that had been sitting on my maternal grandmother's dressing table for a bazillion years ... a clear one with an elephant lid, and an amber one with a deer on the lid. Years later, my son accidentally broke one. Fast forward another twenty years or so, and Eureka! Doggone if I didn't spot the broken deer's duplicate at an antique store. (And immediately started crying.) Thankfully, the shop owner didn't take advantage of the tearful situation, and charged a fair price, because there was no way I was leaving that store without it. After that, my hubby, mother, mother-in-law, and a couple aunts turned me into a powder box collector. Now, thanks to their loving generosity, I have quite a few of them, and some are quite beautiful and unique. But (shhhh) I'll tell you a secret: I would've been perfectly happy with the two. They're the ones sitting on the top shelf in the picture below.

• I love playing most board games, with the exception of Monopoly. Loathe that game! As luck(?) would have it, whenever our family plays that vile game, I'm always the first one eliminated. (Oh, darn! Breaks my heart!) Then I sit back with a cup of tea, and read the newspaper, which is exactly what I wanted to do in the first place.
•  What can I say? I like to win. So I tend to be a tad too competitive, especially when playing trivia, word games, or cards. In particular, I used to be a cut-throat Pinochle player. My husband, on the other hand, never even played Pinochle until after we got married, and never gave a good diddle about it, or any other game. Still doesn't. Which is a good thing, because his nonchalant attitude tempered my card-counting bloodthirsty ways. (It's just a game, Susan; it's just a game.)
• Most of the things I consider treasures have little or no monetary value. Like this tiny teacup in the picture below. I found it in my father's house after he died, and it's the last piece from the set of dishes I owned when I was four or five years old.

• My parents had a pool table in their basement, so I started playing while I was still in elementary school. Being rather competitive even then, I got to be pretty darned good. Could even do a trick shot or two. On my first evening at college, a couple hometown boys, who were big bad jocks in high school, invited my roommate and me to go to the student union with them. Seems they wanted to teach us non-jock nerdy girls how to shoot pool. (heh, heh) Alas, let's just say the evening did not go well for them and their poor widdle egos. (In retrospect, we might've let 'em win a game or two if they hadn't been so bloody condescending.)
• When I was young, I loved the Clifton Webb movie Cheaper By the Dozen.  So much so, I wanted to have at least a dozen children of my own someday. Didn't work out that way, but whattaya know? Life blessed me with a dozen grandchildren, and that's even better!
• I still have several dolls. In the middle of the picture below  is ALF, the one and only doll I ever bought for myself. (I LOVED that show  ... and his big feet.) On the left is the angel Ruth doll my wonderful sister-in-law made for me after my mother died, and on the right is another doll named Ruthie. My mother made her, and we laughed like idiots when she gave her to me. (Ugliest doll I ever saw, and I love her to pieces.)

There, is that ten already? That wasn't so bad. Now the harder part. Handing the challenge off to seven other bloggers. Not that I don't admire seven of you guys and gals. Au contraire, mes amies. I admire ALL of you. The difficult part is finding seven of you willing to (ahem) reveal yourselves. (I mean, after all, not everyone wants to wiggle and slither around that pole, or is willing to bare one's soul.)

Ah, what the heck? I'll name seven of you, and if you want to run with it, YAY! If you're too chicken to do a pole dance you'd rather pass, that's okay. Maybe you'll give it a go next time. After a few adult beverages.

• Laura at Austanspace
• L.G. Smith at Bards and Prophets
• Carrie Boo at Carrie on Carrying On
• Julie at Empty Nest Insider
• Murr at Murrmurrs
• Anne at Piedmont Writer
• Mr. Charleston at Termites of Sin

The voyeur in me would really enjoy seeing those folks do a little soul-baring, because I'd like to know more about them, but even if they don't, check out their blogs, okay? 

In the meantime, I already showed you mine. Time to reciprocate. How about revealing a tidbit about yourself in the comments? Doesn't have to be ten ... or even seven ogles. Just one little itty bitty peek ...

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

[Oh yeah, almost forgot. The cute Road Trip picture at the top of the page comes to us courtesy of the cool folks at icanhascheezburger.com]