Refractions and Reflections

  ---1--- This past weekend I took my brother with me to South Padre Island for my friend's wedding. It was the first time either of us had ever seen the ocean (I saw the San Francisco Bay once from a pier, but that doesn't count!!). The beach at the bottom of the island was magnificent. We got there before sunrise Saturday morning, so our first view of the ocean was in the dark, then the sun rose and the pastel pinks and blues reflected off the water and it was just so indescribably beautiful. Here are some pictures. :)     ---2--- So the trip down was horrible. I picked my brother up in Tulsa, and I missed a couple turns and had to backtrack, so the first couple hours of our trip took place in stinking Tulsa! It wouldn't have been so bad, but the trip to South Padre is so long already...and all the highways around Tulsa are toll roads...and the traffic through at least half of Texas was slow-moving...and there was a lot of rain and even ...

Since I got to work tonight I have been glued to CNN's coverage of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado. Sometimes it is easy to watch things like this and remain numb to the emotional component - after all, I don't personally know the people affected. But on another level, I do know these people - they are my fellow Americans. In fact, we live in the same region of the U.S. In fact...I experienced the Joplin, Missouri tornado two years ago, so I can very much empathize with the feelings of shock and devastation, fear and grief.... Two years ago, my house survived the storm (though it was damaged, and my car was totalled). I left a little while after the tornado to get some McDonald's across town (where the power wasn't out) for the family I lived with. Then I didn't leave the house again for several days. The destruction was simply too much to take in. (The power was out, too, so we didn't even have the luxury of news, and having a clue what was going on around us...

I may be touch-and-go for the rest of the month, but back to the Blog Every Day in May challenge! Today I am supposed to share a childhood memory and be as descriptive as possible. (Actually, this is yesterday 's prompt, but I already did today's prompt on Day 5 by accident.) The memory I am going to share came to my mind after I got home from work this morning. I came in and greeted my pets. Being oblivious as I am, I walked into the next room, and when my puppy didn't follow me as usual I went back to see why not. I hadn't even noticed (possibly because I didn't turn the light on when I came in), but he had picked a tag off the bottom of a rug - a large, sticky tag - and his right paw was stuck to his head and one of his eyes was covered. He had gotten himself into quite a mess! It was simultaneously humorous and sad - quite a funny sight, but at the same time painful for him because I had to hold him and painstakingly pull the sticker out of his long hair! ...

---1--- I haven't blogged since Sunday night. I'm sorry I have been MIA from the "Blog Every Day in May" challenge. I will probably pick it back up here soon - just needed a break. Thank you to all who have left wonderful comments; you guys are great. I will return the love soon! ---2--- After my post Saturday about the ridiculous number of times I've fallen in my life , I rewatched an old favorite movie Sunday night: My Best Friend's Wedding . Want to know why it was my favorite? Well, besides the fact that it is absolutely charming, Julia Roberts falls 5 - go ahead, count them - 5 times in that movie. Seriously, that was one of the selling points for me. ---3---   Also Sunday night, while I was watching said movies, I had two giant pieces of cake. Two. Giant . Okay, and a third small piece. And it was good. See, I am leaving for South Padre Island this coming Tuesday for -ha!- [one of] my best friend's wedding. So for the last couple ...

Today was Mother's Day. I am late getting this post up, but it fits, because the prompt is to tell about who/where/what I miss, and today I very much missed family. Most of the time, I love where I am (Missouri). I moved here from Ohio almost 11 years ago, and it has been long enough that most of the time homesickness is a thing of the past. Even on holidays - occasionally I get to be home for one, and many others I have spent with dear friends who are like family. A few have passed just like any other day, not really special, not really lonely...just another day in this interesting life. But then there are some holidays, like today, when I realize the years are ticking past and I think about how I will feel about all the holidays I "missed" when various family members are no longer around to spend them with. Today I missed being near family. Sometimes it is so easy to take for granted having those people you can just "pop in on" unannounced and walk in the...

I posted Quick Takes yesterday, so I'm counting that as my post for May 10...and I don't like the May 11th prompt, so I'm throwing it out and using the prompt for May 10th on May 11th. :) (Yeah, I like making up my own rules.) The prompt for May 10 is to "spill" about my most embarrassing moment(s). I can't really think of a particular embarrassing moment...well, I can think of a humiliating moment, but it is really more sad than funny...so I will instead share a sort of vague "collection" of embarrassing moments. I used to fall a lot . I was pretty much known for it. I'm pretty sure I used to fall every single day when I was a kid (okay, and maybe after that, too), and often more than once a day. Not exaggerating. If all my falls had been caught on tape, I am sure I would have no trouble filling up an entire episode (or two) of America's Funniest Home Videos with them. I seriously could be standing in the middle of a room not moving a...

 ---1---   First things first: in case you didn't already see this all over Facebook, last week at this time it was SNOWING. In MISSOURI. In MAY!! For like two days straight, and big flakes! Not much stayed on the ground, but it looked pretty heavy-duty.     ---2---     Also this time last week, I had some visitors in town from Atlanta. My friend was graduating, so she and her husband stayed at my apartment for the gradution. Friday night we went out to dinner before I had to go to work, and we chose a Brazillian restaurant called ReRico . If you are ever in the Springfield, MO area, I highly recommend this place (though it will cost around $30 per person). If you have never been to a Brazillian steakhouse, let me tell you how it works. Well, at ReRico they start by bringing you 4 or 5 different appetizers, including spinach dip, a California sushi roll, some kind of cheese-filled biscuits, and soup (there might have been more, but that's...

This was yesterday morning. Since I work third shift, this means I was about to go to sleep...but Albie was just being his usual playful puppy self. Here I was struggling to get him to stop trying to gnaw on my fingers long enough for me to take our picture. His hair is in the state it always takes after he manages to work out his topknot ;).  

In a recent post , I mentioned that I watched a documentary on the White family of West Virginia. [This is not a recommendation that you watch it...it is simply a reflection.] The Whites are an appalachian "hillbilly" family...they seem to proudly epitomize the grand title of "poor white trash". Their generations are full of young deaths and lifelong incarcerations and broken families, due to drug use, violence, and ignorance (I do not say that condescendingly...I just don't know a better word for it). The members of the family speak vulgarity with every breath. Watching the film, the audience gets a sense of the "family pride" - I think most families have some sense of pride, or "belonging" maybe, that unites them and holds their sense of dignity in place, regardless whether others would ascribe to them the same level of honor. But the undercurrent of this documentary was one of pain and shame...and resignation. Some members of my own fam...

We've been prompted to write about the things we're most afraid of today. The most obvious answer for me is spiders! Those heinous things give me the creeps. By the way, did you hear Governor Christie is in trouble with PETA, as journalist Esther Lee reported , "after delivering a palm-faced smack-down on an itsy-bitsy spider before a group of fourth graders"? I have a feeling PETA and I would not get along well on this issue.... But, difficult as it is to believe, there are things that have caused me way more fear than spiders have. For a long time it was the dark. I am no longer afraid of the dark...unless of course there is the risk of a spider lurking in said dark, plotting my demise.... I also used to be afraid of walking in grass after dark...again, because of spiders. Oh, and don't even get me started on camping. So you see, it is no small thing to say I have feared something more than I have feared spiders. But I have. I guess you could call it mea...

At the suggestion of a friend, this morning I watched the documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia on Netflix. [WARNING: Do not watch this film unless you are prepared for some really strong language and really rough content.] It is not a suped-up so-called "reality" show for bringing in the bucks, with a lot of staging...like Amish Mafia and the like. It's REALLY real. Unbelievably real. Like, unless you know people like this, you will think it IS staged. But it's not (I can say that because I do know people like that). And so it left me in deep thought about the human condition. Immediately afterward I came across this blog post by Donald Miller discussing human depravity. Please read it - it is brilliant!! It goes so perfectly well with what I was pondering after watching the documentary on the Whites. I like to take into consideration varying views on the eternal destination of humanity - whether some will go to heaven, some will go to...

"If you couldn't answer with your job, how would you answer the question, 'What do you do?'" I spend most of my time in my head. I read, write, lurk on social media sites and blogs, research, pray, watch tv, listen to music, consider my plans for the future, imagine, over-analyze my interactions with others.... I think . It's what I do probably more than anything else. My Myers-Briggs personality type is INTP (Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving). ( Here is a link to a short online test - disclaimer: this is not the full test, but it will probably give you a decent idea of what your personality is like.) And here are a few motivational(?) posters to give you an idea what being an INTP means: I think many people misunderstand the definition of an INTP. Just because I think doesn't mean I am an emotionless robot. Just because I think doesn't mean I am a supergenius destined to rule the world (I am a supergenius destined to ...