Flying

I’ve enjoyed flying for as long as I can remember. I was that kid with my nose pressed to the window watching the ground slip away beneath the wings of the plane. It was magic. A lot of times, knowing how something works, the intricacies of it, the scientific reason why something is possible, takes away the sense of wonder. But knowing, though roughly and in the vaguest of terms, how an airplane works hasn’t changed that awe. Maybe that’s why I enjoy flying so much.

I’m reminded of the poem about ‘slipping the surly bonds of earth’ and ‘touching the face of God’ that I memorized in middle school (and have mostly forgotten in the ten years since…oh my gosh, it’s been ten years since middle school). Maybe God didn’t give us wings to start with so that we could be in awe when He did.

Anyway, the cabin crew is picking up the trash, and the fasten seatbelt sign just popped back on, so I guess we’re almost to Panama. It’s been a good flight. They aren’t stingy with food on this airline. We got little sandwiches and Oreos with our pretzels.

P.S. In case you're wondering, I wrote this on the plane, then published it later. I was not on the internet on the plane, although that would have been cool.

Favorite Childhood Memories

I was blessed with an amazing childhood. This is one of the ways.

I wouldn't call my parents particularly musical, but somehow all three of us kids ended up playing at least one musical instrument by our teenage years. I think our love of music, and need to create it, is because of the kitchen sink. All of us, at some point, had to help Dad wash the dishes, and on most of these occasions we were singing. With dish rag in hand and water dripping from our elbows we would sing or listen to music on the old blue boom box as the sun set through the kitchen window. On Sunday nights, we would listen to Thistle and Shamrock, the Celtic music program on NPR, keeping time on the back of the plates. On other nights, we'd listen to Peter, Paul and Mary, singing along with the worn tape. At some point I noticed that Mary was singing something different, so I followed her voice and learned how to sing harmony.

Sometimes when the TV isn't on and Dad is washing dishes, he sings or whistles the same songs.

The Great Purge of 2008

Apologies for not posting for two thirds of the month of December. Despite not having anything to do after school officially, I still found myself there until 6 or 7 at least two nights a week. Hopefully I will learn to say 'No' very very soon, lest I become permanent fixture in the PAC and set up a cot in the prop room.

Anyway, a much needed Christmas vacation is finally upon us, and I am spending this, the first official day thereof, cleaning my room. It has been in dire need of a normal cleaning for several weeks, considering the amount of dirty clothes, random papers, and shoes scattered across the floor and my desk. However, I've also decided that this is the perfect time for a purge of things that I saved due to 'sentimental value' that no longer have any sentimental value. It's surprising how the mind/heart/teenage-girl-inside-all-of-us forgets the things that seemed so important at the time. So far I've thrown out some pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio a friend gave me out of her Bop Magazine in 7th grade (I shudder to thing that I ever wanted such a thing), an entire years worth of 'The Torch' (my alma mater's student newspaper), my acceptance letter to UCF (why did I keep that?), and financial aid information from FSU (I doubt that had any sentimental value to begin with). Along the way I've been sidetracked and succumbed to the desire to crack open my senior year book, look fondly upon my glory days, and cringe at the fact that I hadn't fixed my hair before they took my senior picture.

On another note, my New Years resolution last year was to post 75 times. It doesn't look like I'm going to make it without a concerted effort at daily self expression for the next ten days. Any suggestions on what to write about?

Google 2001

If your favorite search engine hasn't reminded you yet, Google turns 10 years old this month. In celebration, they have put their oldest available archives, from 2001, up for the public to search and reminisce. Try typing in September 11. Apparently, their archive is from before that fateful day; nothing of consequence pops up. It was a different world back then. This article in the Washington Post does an excellent job of walking you down memory lane, pointing out things long forgotten, and some things which are all too familiar.

I Googled this very blog and was disappointed not to find it. Then I realized I didn't start writing it until October of 2002.

So, I searched the archives of my own memory and dug up a few personal highlights of 2001. Here's what I came up with:

- Last year on JV soccer, Jobie teaches me how to run
- Paul graduates high school
- Summer trip to West Virginia. Cold showers for a week. Good times.
- Bud dies
- Meet Amy, one of my best friends, after history class
- September 11th
- Do tech for "The Foreigner" until soccer starts, my first play at UHS
- I make Varsity soccer & split my head open on a teammate's chin in the second week of practice. The scar still hurts sometimes when its cold or rainy.
- "Scenes from a Tuesday in September"
- IB kicks it up a notch
- Pre-Calculus kicks my butt (Mrs. Parrish, round one)
- Klongerbo's class, find out that I LOVE English, I learn how to write a good essay
- TOK with Mr. Boyte, wonder if dragons can fit in tea boxes
- Driver's License...woot (still accident free and only 1 ticket!)

What do you remember from 2001?

The Boot Game

Every year, Colonial and University battle for a boot painted red and black on one side and blue and gold on the other. This game has come to be known as the Boot Game, and it is undoubtedly the one game out of every season that each team wants to win the most (except for maybe University vs. Timber Creek, but that's a newer rivalry). Six years ago, I stood on the east side of the stadium. This year, I stood on the west side looking towards the bleachers I had run up and down countless times in my high school career.

It was strange walking around to the far side of the field, greeting people in red and black. Even more strange were the cheers of, "Let's go, Colonial, let's go!" issuing from my mouth. I felt weird cheering against my Alma Mater, but at the same time, I couldn't possibly cheer against my students. After all, I don't really know anyone at UHS anymore.

I contemplated wearing my University Varsity jacket over a Colonial faculty shirt, but decided that the ribbing I would get from everyone wasn't worth it. Besides, it's September and therefore WAY too hot to wear a leather and woolen jacket.

Anyway, I walked over to the home side to watch the band. As I stood there, it struck me that I was looking, to borrow lyrics from Ragtime, "toward the future, from the past."

September Memories

Right around the time the fireflies quit blinking for the summer and the leaves began to change into their autumn attire, the apples in the small orchard on the hill were ready for picking. Early in September, the pastor's family would come out to the farm and help us pick apples. I'd spend the morning running around the base of the apple trees picking up the fallen fruit, then climbing around the baskets in the back of Dad's little black pickup truck.

Around lunch, when the truck was full and heavy, we'd drive back to the house wedged in between bushels of apples. We'd spend all afternoon cooking apples into lovely things: apple sauce, apple butter, apple pie. Us kids would take turns turning the crank and mashing the cooked apples into the machine. By the end of the day, everyone was tired and sweaty from being in a hot kitchen all afternoon, but we had fresh apple sauce and apple pie as a consolation.

Daylight Savings

Today daylight savings became a mosquito buzzing through my daily routine. Ages ago I looked forward to the beginning of daylight savings with childish excitement. Daylight savings meant the fireflies were coming back soon. It meant my brothers and I could play outside longer, even after dinner, and it would soon be warm enough to wear shorts and make mud pies under the swing in the spring rain and float paper boats in the puddles under the hemlock. We would come in after a long day of playing Davey Crockett in the yard, our faces sweaty and sticky, black necklaces of dirt and sweat around our necks, our sleeves zebra striped from being dragged across our faces.

Daylight savings meant summer. Kick-the-can at night, baseball out by the chicken house (we were moved to the back after putting a hole through the parlor window), long afternoons reading, soccer, skipping rocks in the pond, riding our bikes out to the road to get the mail, no school. Summer was great. I loved summer when I was little. Somehow there was always something to do. That was summer in Virginia.

Now daylight savings means I have to turn a light on in the morning to find my way to the bathroom, and I drive home as the sun sets in my rear view mirror.

Sam's Barber Shop

When I was little, my Dad got his hair cut at Sam's Barber Shop in Pulaski. It was this little shop that had the revolving striped poll outside the front door. It smelled like stale smoke and some kind of lubricant. Sam shared the space with his father's clock repair shop. I suspect that's where the lubricant smell came from. It was always full of sound: ticking clocks, the drone of an old radio in the background, small talk between Sam and whoever was in the barber's chair, and thirty different clocks chiming in the hour, half, and quarter hour.

I never really liked going with Dad; little girls don't get their hair cut by barbers. I would sit there and look at the pretty, ill-fated deer in the hunting magazines and watch the demo screen on the Contra arcade game over and over. I always had a book--the Hardy Boys, or Encyclopedia Brown, or Nancy Drew--but I couldn't concentrate for all of the ticking clocks, especially if I was trying to figure out why Encyclopedia knew Bugs Meany was lying (if you're wondering, yes, I Wikipedia-ed it). Sometimes I would play checkers with Keith, but I'm not very good at strategy-type board games, and I got tired of losing pretty quickly. When that happened, I would sit and look at the clocks. All kinds of clocks. Coo-coo clocks, grandfather clocks, old pocket watches, clocks with spinning weights. I wanted to know how they worked, and why some of them had long chains and others didn't, and how a pocket watch could do the same task as the big heavy mantle clocks.

I never really got to find out. We moved before I was old enough to understand any of that, and I doubt I would have bothered finding out.