NaBloPoMo – Page 10 – Beverly Army Williams

Pimping All Over the Blog 11/28*

The fancy pens

the women and the yarn
you know who we are
cuz we're pimpin all over the blog.
The fancy pens
the women and the yarn
you know who we are
cuz we're pimpin all over the blog.

I love a fountain pen. Or two. Or ten. I spent some time on Saturday cleaning and inking my collection, which I put into this lovely pen box I've had on my book shelf for ages.

Now each of my pens is nestled safe inside.

When I want to take one on the road with me, I used to just drop it in my bag. For work, it would go into the jumble of my pencil case. Then I got a pretty little package in the mail.

Want a closer look?

Now I can bring along a fountain pen or two, along with some cartridges, and I know my pen is protected and easy to find. Take a look at Naoko's shop. The quality of these little cases is excellent. Want to see how happy my pink Lamy (turquoise Lamy cartridge inside, for those want to know) is in one?

More pimping tomorrow. The mailman was very good to me this week!

*with apologies to Ludacris

Snow Day 10/28

On the snow days of my childhood, my mom would take advantage of her children being home and have us clean our rooms. Snow days were a mixed blessing. How exciting to be home mid-week! How crappy to have to clean. Sledding! Dusting. Snowmen! Weeding out stuff.

Eventually a snow day meant I could go into work for a whole day instead of just after school, which of course meant a bigger paycheck.

As a teacher, snow days still give me a thrill. I woke at my usual early workday hour, reached for my iPhone, and hopped onto my college's site. There it was, the little red banner saying the college was closed. Ahhh, back to sleep I went until it was time to take Neal to his bus.

I like having a job that ties me to my childhood in its rhythms. The snow day work ethic my mom instilled in me emerged. I did lots of food prep in the morning and lots of grading in the afternoon. I stole a little time for weaving, though, and I got outside to run around with the dogs.

If only there had been some real snow. We only got about 2" here. So much for the anticipated 12"!

Whether you had to go in to work on this snowy day (or, hey, maybe you don't live in a snowy area!) or not, what do you like about your job?

Also, happy birthday to my sister Maureen! Yup, she is 1 year and 364 days older than I am. Imagine that!

Birthday Skiing 9/28

After sleeping in until 7, I had my usual breakfast, but it was just a little more special than usual because I opened birthday cards from my family as I sipped coffee and munched cereal. Then Neal and I geared up in our cross-country ski clothes and headed to Ski Sundown for a beginner's downhill ski lesson. I was so klutzy that our instructor gave me to another instructor, and I had a two-hour private lesson. I still have a long way to go before I'll call myself a proper skier, but man, oh, man, did I have fun. I can't wait to go back for more!

What activity have you taken up later in life? What inspired you?

p.s. the flowered fabric is my "usual" apron that I mentioned a few posts ago…

Ties to History or I Really am a Braggy Aunt 8/28

Dan (featured in the micro video) was too young to vote in the 2008 election, but he was pretty passionate about the candidate he wanted to see in the White House. He created this mural after the election, and N. and I went to see it on display at his local library.

On my way to work today, I heard a piece about the space shuttle Endeavour's launch. I remember the first launch so clearly. One of my brothers went to Florida just to see an early launch; I sure was envious.

I'm reading two novels for work right now: Willa Cather's My Antonia and Roddy Doyle's A Star Called Henry. Both are novels I enjoy a great deal, Cather's for the accuracy of her portrayal of Nebraska at a particular time, and Doyle's for his rambunctious take on the Irish Revolution.

I read anything about Tudor England, about Elizabeth I that I can find. I am rabid for overblown costume dramas about those times.

I don't claim to be a history buff, but there is no escaping it. Text book history may give the facts (granted, through the lens of the writing historian), but our art…our individual human experiences…our storytelling…those provide us with the intellectual and creative history to which I feel so closely tied.

What about you? What period of history do you like? What connects you to history?

The Pack 7/28

Coco was forlorn when her daddy took her big sisters to visit grandma. She might growl ferociously at the big girls when they hop on my her bed in the morning, and she might steal Nyla bones from them. She is the littlest member of the pack, though, and her ties to the rest of us are mighty strong.

Thanks for the comments about the micro video of Dan's speed painting. I'll mess around with iMovie and see if I can do anything with the roughly eight minutes of video…without being able to see the actual painting, I didn't think the video was interesting enough to post, but I'll see about editing it a bit to give you, dear readers, a bit more of the performance.

The Superbowl is over, which is just fine by me. I'm glad the Saints won; New Orleans, and I mean the city, needs a win, don't you agree. I'm no fan of the game (unless I'm watching it on a fall night in the stands at a local high school). The Superbowl, in my world, means the end of a long season of noisy nonsense. You might like it and be clucking your tongue at me, and that's okay.

What I do like, though, is hanging out with a fire going and reading. Tonight I'm catching up on the two novels my different sections of Composition 102 are studying. I've read both several times, but I like to have everything fresh in my mind, so I do the reading as assigned. Note to self: do not assign two different novels at the same time. It cuts into personal reading time way too much.

Which leads me, contestants, to a question for you: what book are you looking forward to reading? I love hearing about the books on others' nightstands…it helps me to build up my "to read" list.

Hope you had a great weekend!

Tongue Tied 6/28

This is the tail end of a roughly eight-minute speed painting performance by my very talented (if I do say so myself) nephew. Neal and I had a blast at his high school's talent show, and he was one of the biggest hits there. This kid leaves me tongue tied.

Okay, contestants, tell me what awesome thing is a kid in your life doing that amazes you?

Mutts Part 3, in which I Mean a Dog 5/28

Last fall, when the grass was green, my pixie cut was just starting to grow out, and a girl could sit outside without the danger of a red nose, Spring came over to shoot pictures for me. She had me pose on the grass, my trusty typewriter next to me. As she readjusted her camera, the mutts meandered over.

I love this picture of the two older dogs; it reflects their personalities so well. Tilly (the dog in the background–blue heeler/German shepherd mix) is a lady. You can't see it, but her paws were crossed. She's funny, sweet, gentle; a real people pleaser.

My Maddie, on the other hand, is a goof ball. She has strong beliefs about what is right and what is wrong (walks at 4:00 sharp=right…one of the other dogs playing with her special blue ball=wrong), and she likes to serve up JUSTICE as she sees fit.

I love all three dogs, clearly (otherwise, why would I ramble on about them so?), but Maddie and I have a special tie, one that comes from hours of walking, just the two of us, and from night after night of sharing a bed, just the two of us, before we moved in with Neal and Tilly. She has protected me and entertained me over and over.

Guess what? Today is her sixth birthday. If I remember the dog years to people years ratio correctly, she is now older than I am.

Does that mean I have to listen to her now?

Happy Birthday, Maddie Mulligan! Mwah!

Mutts Part 2, in which I am Awake 4/28

Sh*t. Even worse than knitting while drinking* is blogging while dozing. Thanks for coming back to read today. Seriously. I expected to go onto bloglines and see that my little list of subscribers had all run for the hills. Then I would have been so, so sad. And disappointed in myself.

Let me try again with my musings about being a mutt. Based on family trees done by various dedicated relatives, I know that my French relatives came to America (it wasn't the U.S. yet), then moved up to Canada, where…and this is seems like a story waiting for me to write…they were part of the Acadian movement south where they became Cajuns. Oh, wait. Maybe that story has already been written. Back north they came, and my maternal grandfather was the eventual result. Wait. I'm the result. Wait. We all are in my family.

Not all of my family came here so long ago. My maternal grandmother's father traveled here from a little town in Scotland. When I was a girl, one of his relatives (shame on me for not remembering the relationship; I'll have to ask my mom) used to visit now and again. My oldest sister was penpals with a cousin of some sort for a while. Years back, my aunt visited some of the family, and she was moved by how generous they were with their hospitality. My mom and I both hope to see the seat of our Scottish roots some day.

It's pretty neat to see a place from which your family came, isn't it? Even though I wasn't in the right parts of the country, I was thrilled to spend some time in France and England and Ireland, and especially Nova Scotia where those Acadians once resided. It's pretty neat, too, to consider the personality traits that are often attributed to a nationality emerge in my family. I grew up hearing my mom chide me not to be a "stubborn bull-headed German like your father" (ahem), and the "thriftiness" so often associated with the Scots rages in my mom…I confess to having a bit of it in me, too.

For a long time, I was envious of anyone who had parents who had come here from another country. So much family in a different, exciting location! How neat! Other languages! Better food! Different music! I may not have that, but I do have an abundance of cultures that I can explore as I look closely at my genetic identity.

Today's question for my intrepid contestants: if like me you are a mutt, do you identify more with one aspect of your heritage than others? Have you visited any of your places of origin? Not a mutt? What connects you the most to your cultural heritage?

*may result in knitting in the round backwards. Not a pretty sight!

The Mutt in Me 3/28

I took a glance at the clock and was surprised by the late hour. Neal and I had a rare date night tonight. He's been battling something more than a cold for weeks and finally is recovering, so we spent some quality time together (read that as my chatting his ears off and probably sending him into a relapse). It's funny, isn't it, that it's just the two of us in the house, yet that good time together can still be difficult to come by.

But I'm not here to write about date night. All day I thought about my theme for the month, and I settled on an aspect of life that fascinates me: my heritage.

Like so many Americans, I am pure mutt. What I find super interesting is how we mutts often identify with one specific nationality, and how that identification can shift over time. When I visit a country from which my ancestors came, I get pretty fired up about that culture. Among my future (way in the future at this point) travel plans are visits to more of the countries that spawned me. A few that didn't, too!

This post was way more specific when I was writing it in my head in the shower, but I offer the late hour as my excuse for the poor execution. Help me out, will you, by letting me know what ties you to your heritage the most?

Ties to the Kitchen 2/28

I made this apron for a swap last year, and since the light was terrible for taking a picture of the apron I actually use, I dug into my archives. The one pictured is made from a vintage pillowcase to which I added a nice long tie so it could be sassily knotted however the recipient wanted.

When I was a girl, I often helped my mom or my oldest sister bake. I could fix soup from a can, cereal, and scrambled eggs. I think that encompasses the level of culinary skill I had until I married and moved out of my parents' home at 21. Things didn't improve much, especially as my ex-husband is practically a genius in the kitchen. Still, I added a few more recipes to my repertoire. Always, though, I loved to bake: cakes, bread, cookies…all of it.

I lost ten pounds the first week F. and I were separated. Most of that was the shock of being asked for a divorce leading to a total loss of appetite. Part of that, though, was I didn't really know what to fix for myself, on my own. Over time, and through the kindness of girlfriends, I gathered some new recipes and learned to like being in the kitchen. There is a real pleasure in cooking for one's self, and one's self alone.

I cook for two now. It's a challenge sometimes as I'm an ovo-lacto vegetarian and Neal loves meat of all kind. He's gotten used to eating vegetarian most nights, and once or twice a week when he wants a steak or salmon or whatever, we fix our meals independently. I confess, the smell of a chicken that has been dressed with gobs of lemon, salt, and pepper makes me consider eating poultry, but I resist. I don't want it, really.

I declared 2009 the year of the kitchen for me. The big renovation project ate up a lot of the time I would have liked to have had for canning and cooking, so I've extended the year of the kitchen to 2010. I received two Julia Child cookbooks for Christmas, which should help me along on my journey to develop my culinary skills. One of the books is Baking with Julia, and I've been drooling over pictures and recipes a lot.

No matter how much I learn to love cooking, it is the baking that ties me to my childhood and my young adulthood. It is baking that makes me quiet, brings me peace.

How about you? What hausfrau activity links you to your past and gives you joy?

Thanks for playing the comment game. I'm thinking the glamorous prize might be woven. Does that appeal?

Category: NaBloPoMo