A nice way to begin the day. Sloppy greetings from my goddog.
Sometimes, you know you must be an ok sort of person if a dog thinks you rock.
My god cat was less sure about the necessity of my existence this morning.
It’s a gorgeous day in Southern New Mexico. I head back home tomorrow, happy from a great trip back to NM, and very happy to get back to The Good Man. I miss him so much it aches.
So, while drifting about the internets recently, I came across a blogger who dedicated an entire post to the fact that she *never* gives people gifts off their wedding/baby gift registry.
She said “never” and she meant it.
She said that she wanted to give people a gift that was “more thoughtful” (her words).
Uh. Ok, I may be weird, but not giving people something that they want and giving them instead something that YOU want…doesn’t seem very thoughtful to me.
It seems very…uh…well very selfish, actually.
I suppose my knickers may be laced a little too tight on this one, but having recently been through the whole experience of choosing items for a gift registry (a harder job that I’d expected it would be) I can recognize how much folks appreciate getting what they planned for and asked for.
Because, let’s be honest, all those super duper off-the-list “thoughtful” gifts people give? Well, they get returned at the earliest convenience. I’m certain of that.
Unless you get wedding gifts much like my best friend did. Hand made items. I swear to goodness they must have gotten like six different hand-hewn cheese cutters. They were all beautiful, hand crafted, beautiful wood, truly almost art objects.
But in the end, who needs that many cheese cutters? Unfortunately, the handmade cheese cutters don’t go back to Target so easily!
And we won’t even speak about the handpainted saw blade they also received. To be fair, it was really well done, again, truly an art object. But not really off the ol’ list.
The exception to this could be a side deal that you cut with the recipients. For example, my mom wanted to give us a really special wedding gift, and plates and cake pans weren’t lighting her up. So she checked in on this, and I appreciated her asking.
Together we figured out a really special, meaningful something that I cherish and always will.
Asking first, fine. Just dropping a hand bent roofing nail crafted surprise…well…may or may not be cool. At least not at a “big” event like a wedding or baby. Surprise birthday gift? Yes! White elephant holiday present? Sure!
There is a time and a place, you know?
Any bride and groom with good sense and class will be honestly grateful for any present you bring, but really, being thoughtful means giving up what YOU want, and considering what someone else wants instead.
Harder to do than it sounds, apparently.
(C’mon, any of ya’ll from the country have either given, received, or know someone who has received a soldered nail windmill. Am I right?)
She’s borrowing from the random idea generator again.
Herewith, my list of my ten favorite quotes, in no particular order.
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” – Oscar Wilde
I don’t actually read Oscar, or know much about him. This quote was told to me when I was in high school looking for a quote to go with my senior picture.
You know the drill, we all had to have a quote, our defining statement. I liked the sentiment, so I went with it. My alternate was something about describing the taste of an olive, it was a weird quote. So of course they used that one.
But the Oscar quote has stuck with me.
“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture” – generally attributed to Martin Mull, but source is unclear.
First heard this quote in the little known and way under appreciated movie “Playing by Heart“.
This was before Angelina Jolie was, well, what she is now. She was only sort of known back then and is adorable in this movie. Her character is wacky and everything I wish I could be (including six feet tall and drop dead gorgeous), and she talks about this quote (attributing it to a musician friend), then subs in that “talking about love” is definitely like dancing about architecture.
I don’t know, it’s a quirky line. I like it.
“This is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball. You got it?!?” – the Skip in Bull Durham.
How many times, as a manager, have I wanted to throw a sack of bats at the feet of my employees and holler at them about being lollygaggers?
The answer is: a lot
There are a lot of life lessons to be learned from the game of baseball. This is a fave quote I remember when I tend to overcomplicate things that should be simply elegant. Like the game of baseball.
“…and when we win this game, we’ll buy a keg of booze, and we’ll drink it to the Aggies ’til we wobble in our shoes…”
That is actually the actual words from the NMSU fight song. It always appealed to me greatly that at an institution of higher education, we were encouraged to, you know, drink.
Our forefathers from 1888 saw the future. They saw it clear. They knew exactly what my alma mater would be.
Makes me proud. : sniff, wipes a tear away :
“Hey, minion! Bring me a beer! And don’t lollygag!”
And by minion, of course, I mean The Good Man. (juuuuuust kidding!)
Speaking of those college days….how about:
“It’s only love when you’re loved in return.”
Ok, sure, it’s a quote from a Steve Wariner song.
But it was said with *meaning* by my best friend, back in college, when I discovered that the guy I’d been dating was cheating on me. It was my first taste of heartache. The guy was truly a cad.
Now that cad has been married to another friend of ours for the better part of twenty years. Proves that sometimes it’s not the boy, it’s just the wrong boy for you.
My bestest friend and I had occasion to recall this conversation recently, with a laugh. This was while recounting the story to my husband.
So all’s well that ends well, I believe.
And speaking of The Good Man…
“To my heart you have the key/It you who set me free/And time will surely show/That our love will grow and grow.” Lyrics from “Positively Meant to Be” by Jimmie Vaughan
The words on the page don’t really have the same impact as they do when heard on top of the low and slow blues guitar sound from Mr. Vaughan (brother of Stevie Ray, totally different style).
It’s a song I sing to my sweetie. I know, I know…too goopy for words. But it’s my song for, or rather about, him.
Ok, let’s ungoop this thing…
“No matter where you go in life after this, it will always be better than Tucson.” – From the movie “Hamlet 2”
Ok, apologies in advance to anyone from Tucson or anyone who actually *likes* Tucson.
I have had several occasions to spend time in Tucson. Not the least of which is that the Colorado Rockies have their Spring Training facility there. In the City of Tucson, I’ve been treated bad, eaten awful food, my friend had her car towed (from an unmarked area) and been lost in muther f-word “downtown” Tuscon with confusing highway markers.
And when, while watching Hamlet 2, they said that line, the beverage I was enjoying came rocketing out of my nose like Ol’ Faithful.
Well said, sir. Well said.
And just to prove I can be fair, I’ll also include:
“Even for Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.”
Also a nose geyser line, spoken seriously and rather snidely by Kirk Douglas in the movie Ace in the Hole.
An utterly forgettable movie with an unforgettable line.
Ya gotta be from ABQ to understand it. But you know, there is a lot about Albuquerque that is just soooooooo Albuquerque.
‘Nuff said.
“May the bird of paradise fly up your nose.”
If Little Jimmy Dickens wasn’t a poet, I don’t know who is. In fact, country music is ripe with quotable quotes. Country living and cowboys tend to have some colorful descriptors, but that’s a whole other post for another day.
Ok, ok, I’ll end on an inspirational note…or something…
Seems fitting, uplifting. Don’t let those bastards getcha down!
“Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?” – Frida Kahlo
Beautifully painful and erudite, all at once.
I’m sure I’m forgetting quotes I adore, but can’t quite access in the ol’ brain matter today.
It happens.
Maybe I need to go out and flap my yapper and make some quotable quotes of my own…..
Back in my college days, I lived for a couple years in a sorority house. There were twenty-eight girls, a house mom and a cook. All of that living with a bunch of strangers was quite a life lesson for a nineteen-year-old girl, I assure you.
Those twenty-eight girls came from a variety of different backgrounds, with different values and talents.
Much of what I know and much of who I am can be traced to those days.
Recently, I’ve had a real dearth of creativity. Like a desert in a drought. My creative mind is dusty. The Muse, she’s out to lunch. A two martini lunch.
I’m learning, with the help of my extraordinarily talented and creative cousin, not to worry so much when the creative well has run dry. Be confident, he tells me, and The Muse will find her way home.
I’ve also gotten suggestions that creating something, anything, can also kick loose that block, get the gravel out, and let the magic happen. (this the basic tenet of the good folks at NaNoWriMo)
And so, when I get all creatively clamped down like this, I often go back to something I learned back in those sorority days.
This great girl from Roswell and I made fast friends (we’d both had to endure the same crazy roommate in separate semesters. This sort of experience bonds people). She’d grown up showing pigs and living on a ranch and was a much more creative person than I was at the time.
Not to be all stereotypical, but those ranch woman can out cook, out craft and out wrassle any of their town raised counterparts.
Anyhoo, I don’t really remember the events that lead up to it, but this friend of mine, at my request, taught me how to do a counted cross-stitch kit. It was a simple pattern, but when I was done, I was so pleased. It was a nice distraction during those long days of studying.
Doing cross-stitch is not especially hard, but can be time consuming, and there are certain stitches for certain patterns.
My friend very patiently showed me how to sort the threads, how to tape the sides of the aida cloth to keep them from unraveling, how not to pull the stitches too tight, how to fix mistakes, how the back of the cloth should look as clean as the front. All of that.
And so, over the weekend, I had a coupon for Michaels, and yearning to create, I picked out a very simple kit. A “learn a craft” kit that I think is made for kids.
But that doesn’t matter.
Today, I very carefully applied tape to the aida cloth. I sorted the threads and counted to be sure they were there. I folded the cloth and marked the center lightly with a pencil, and I got out my highlighter to mark off my progress, all the way my friend taught me lo’ these almost twenty years ago.
Whenever I start a new cross-stitch, I always think of my friend. She is with me, guiding my progress the whole way. She is forever a part of me. That’s a happy feeling. That’s the family you make over the course of your life.
So here we go! Let the creation begin!
Oh, wait. Well. There is one change. One update that will take place this go ’round. A necessary adjustment, if you will.
Yeah. My lighted magnifying class. Sadly, I don’t have twenty-year-old eyes anymore. *cranky*
Oh. And getting to work on my cute frog cross-stitch isn’t the only bit of using my hands that I got up to today.
I also got busy on these:
Ooh, I feel The Muse on her way back already! Here Musey, Musey, Musey!! Want a cookie?
A couple weeks ago, my best friend came out for a visit. As chronicled in these pages, we had a really nice time.
While out and about at the Japanese Tea Garden, I took quite a few photos. Beautiful trees, swimming Koi, flowing water.
Near the fabulous barrel bridge we stopped, and The Good Man took a photo of my friend and I.
I won’t publish it here since I haven’t asked permission, but seeing the photo doesn’t actually matter to the discussion.
Here’s the point: Later, when I downloaded the photo and took a look at it on my computer screen, I looked at my own visage and was a bit surprised.
You know who I look like?
My father.
Um. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I mean…as a woman, I think it might not be preferable to, you know, as you age…start to look like your *male* parent.
Growing up, I always favored my mom’s side of the family. I have the distinctive pointy chin. I have the body shape. Yeah, ok, so I’d given over to my genetics and was ok looking like my mom.
The first time I noticed I was starting to favor my dad was when viewing the proofs from my wedding photos. There is one photo where I have an expression on my face that is *exactly* my dad. In fact, The Good Man often teases me, “Don’t give me the dad look!”
It’s a sort of squinty eyed skeptical look, and I’d copied it to perfection. I remember the moment, the photographer was doing something weird, kind of annoying me, and I gave her that vintage dad look and click went the shutter.
Ok, so I own that. I was making the face.
In this recent photo, I wasn’t making a face! I was simply standing with my beautiful friend in a beautiful setting smiling at my husband taking a photo.
Something around the eyes, I think. And my nose. But damnit, I look like my dad! Ok, sure, I’m sure the faint whiskers now growing around my chin aren’t helping my “I don’t want to look like a man” cause, but sheesh!
I even sent it to my sister who confirmed that yes, around the eyes, I’m starting to resemble dear old pops. She said, “have you ever noticed you do that one eyed squinty thing?’
Gah!
It’s not that my dad wasn’t an attractive person, it’s just…..that he was a MAN.
Gah!
Genetics are weird.
