Day #26: Z is for Zany

Tags

A-Z Challenge, Masons, NaBloPoMo May, parades, Shriner's, tin lizzies

Dictionary.com defines “zany” as “amusingly unconventional; idiosyncratic”. I love that word idiosyncratic. It is purely fun to say. Idiosyncratic. Idiosyncratic. Idiosyncratic.

Okay, I’m back on track, I think. Whenever I think of the word “zany”, it is followed quickly by “antics”. And what more delightfully zany antics are there than those shown by the gentlemen of the Shriners, driving their tiny Tin Lizzies and representing their local Masonic Temple in a parade? These guys work hard…raising money for the nearest Shriner’s Hospital and finding small patients in need of care…and they play hard, too.

And as they surge down the parade route in a lightly choreographed motor vehicular burst of zaniness, they bring joy to the hearts of all who watch.

Well, that’s all, folks…the A-Z Challenge is ended, without missing a beat. May will bring a double challenge, as I attempt the NaBloPoMo challenge to post daily on both Trigger’s Horse and Photo Fun With Fawn. The theme for May is “nourish”; that one should be interesting. Happy reading!

Day #25: Y is for Youthful

Tags

A-Z Challenge, family, hope, innocence, Mom, wedding, youthful

Merriam-Webster.com defines “youthful” as “having or showing the freshness or energy of someone who is young; having or showing the innocence, hope, lack of knowledge, etc., of someone who is young”.

The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the term “youthful” is that it is hardly ever used when talking about a man. Our society doesn’t worry about our men looking or acting “youthful”. But if you pay attention to especially the cosmetic advertising, youthfulness is a VERY IMPORTANT QUALITY for women. I must admit that our society’s fixation on youthfulness wouldn’t bother me at all if it were a concern across the board. But singling out women makes the whole concept stink.

That being said, I still can appreciate a spirit of youthfulness, and that youthful spirit is much more an inner attitude rather than an outward lack of wrinkles. This picture taken at my daughter’s wedding perfectly captures my mother’s youthful attitude. And my sister and I were loving every minute of this dance, too.

Dancing with Mom at Georgia’s wedding

Day #24: X is for Xerox

Tags

Fresno Community Hospital, photocopiers, troubleshooting, xerographic process, Xerox Corporation

Dictionary.com defines “Xerox” as “1. Trademark. A brand name for a copying machine for reproducing printed, written, or pictorial matter by xerography; 2. a copy made by a xerographic printer”.

I must admit that I’m stretching the category here, as my intent was to use only adjectives for this A-Z Challenge, and it looks like the pros are using Xerox copy as a proper noun rather than an adjective/noun combo. Oh, well — my blog, my story, my stretch!

Back in the olden days of office equipment, 35 years or so ago, I was hired by Fresno Community Hospital as a typist clerk in their Speech & Hearing Department. It was a great job, made possible because I had recently been fired by a hypocrite masquerading as a devout Christian because my private life didn’t fit into his small-minded box, so I was available when this great job appeared.

In addition to typing audiology and speech pathology reports and occasionally answering the phone, I was the designated Xerox Key Operator. In other words, I was the employee specially trained by the Xerox Corporation to troubleshoot problems and make minor adjustments on our huge and very expensive Xerox machine. (Ooohh….aaahhh…) This rather dubious honor found my regular workload interrupted any time an employee in our department jammed the machine, ran it out of toner, or just couldn’t make it copy properly. And it was a temperamental beast, for sure, almost as if it knew that when it went out of commission our work progress ground to a halt until someone from Xerox came and brought it back to life.

I cannot tell you how much time I spent with my head down inside that clamshell, searching for the teeny tiny piece of paper that had torn off a copy and was jamming the works. Suffice it to say that in each succeeding position since, I have ended up being the photocopier specialist, although not always specifically trained by the company that supplied it. A useful skill, definitely, although not one that ever made it to a resume.

And that is my Xerox story.

Building Community

Since today is “Free Sunday” from the A-Z Challenge, I wanted to share my most recent post from PhotoFunWithFawn. – Fawn

Photo Fun With Fawn

Yesterday afternoon I had a lovely time at the Little Lambs Preschool fundraiser crop in Exeter.  Karen Munger and her group of volunteers at Trinity Lutheran were exquisite hosts, planning a day of scrumptious food, great treats, lovely door prizes, and best of all — thirteen hours of scrapbooking.

It was a perfect example of building community.  Nearly 50 women with interests in some form of scrapbooking/photo preservation/papercrafting; vendors representing Close To My Heart, Ahni & Zoe/Creative Memories, and Stamping Up — all joined together to raise money for a cause dear to us all — preschoolers.  People shared ideas and skills as they told their family stories.

For me personally it was a day to reconnect with an old Creative Memories sister and meet several of her friends, meet a local CM consultant I have heard about ever since I joined the company and talk to her about the…

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Day #23: W is for Welcoming

Tags

curiosity, friendship, kindness, welcoming

Dictionary.com defines “welcoming” as “greeting the arrival of (a person or object) with pleasure or kindly courtesy”.

Twice when reading this I saw “curiosity” instead of “courtesy”. I actually think that “curiosity” is the more accurate response in most cases. What this calls to mind is two children meeting each other…kindly, but really curious about the other one’s life, home, or situation. Lily, especially, rarely meets a stranger she doesn’t like, and she collects new “friends” the way a smoker collects matchbooks.

To take that initial greeting up to the next level requires a bit of effort on our part. Our pleasure at greeting someone needs to be combined with a healthy curiosity about them, in order to figure out what our relationship to them will be.

Were you welcoming towards someone today? Tell me about it in the comments section.

Day #22: V is for Vanishing

Tags

A-Z Challenge, birthday parties, cursive, frog, lizard, toad, urban sprawl, voting

Dictionary.com defines “vanishing” as “disappear[ing] from sight, especially quickly; go[ing] away, especially furtively or mysteriously”.

I’m writing early tonight just in case the crazy rainstorm we are enjoying takes out the electricity. I don’t want to miss a single day of the A-Z Challenge posts.

I thought I was done with lists, but this word just seems to lend itself to that format. So here goes.

1) Service stations with garages attached where you can actually have a mechanic listen to that weird noise your car is making, or make sure your tires are all properly aired up.

2) Critters in my yard. I can’t remember when I last saw a lizard, frog, or toad in the yard. We garden organically, but most of the neighbors don’t, and I think they have managed to kill all the critters.

3) Kids’ birthday parties where the mom just invites the children and their moms over to spend a couple of hours and play. Now everything has a theme and is a pretty big deal.

4) Wide open spaces. There is so much urban sprawl here…the towns are all running into each other.

5) Uncomplicated car engines.

6) Comfortable shoes that are narrow at the heel that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

7) Correspondents. Not people who email or FaceBook message each other, but who send actual hand-written letters through the US Postal Service. How will our grandchildren treasure old family letters if no one writes any?

8) Beautiful handwriting. Or handwriting at all. Some schools don’t even teach cursive writing…they say it has been made obsolete by the computer.

9) Teaching children how to think rather than what to think. And this will get worse as standardized testing continues to drive the education system in this country.

10) Educated and engaged voters. Such a small percentage of eligible voters take advantage of their opportunity to have a voice in our political future. Of course, it is hard to get really excited about an election when the candidates appear interchangeably bought and paid for.

That’s all for me tonight. Sweet dreams.

Day #21: U is for Unusual

Tags

A-Z Challenge, books, elephants, family, giraffes, tree frogs

Merriam-Webster Online defines “unusual” as “Not normal or usual; different or strange in a way that attracts attention”.

I am thinking tonight about unusual things, and a list is forming in my mind. Here are a few of my favorite unusual things:

1) Elephants and giraffes. Long trunks and big ears, long necks and small ears; exotically unusual.
2) Tree frogs. Tiny critters with voices way too big for their bodies.
3) Antique books. In this day of mass production, hand-bound, leather-clad books are miraculously unusual.
4) Lily and Olivia. Incredibly smart and lovely, each in her own unusual way.
5) Chance, our furry family member. He is amazingly loyal, placid, and comfortable in his own fur.
6) Our family. Outstandingly drama-free, loving, caring…generation after generation of care and consideration that shouldn’t be unusual, but seems to be today.

I was shooting for 10 things, but my brain has stopped. So six is enough. Goodnight.

Day #20: Tubular!

Tags

A-Z Challenge, slang, surfers, Valley Girls

I had to really dig for a definition that fit my mental image of the word, but finally found Surf Slang on About.com, which explained “Tubular is an adjective used by surfers from the 1980’s to describe something especially great… It was universally recognized as uncool by real surfers but used extensively in movies of the era. The literal definition can be used to describe a wave that is hollow or barreling, but as of the 90’s, calling something “tubular” pretty much fell out of favor altogether.”

My high school memories of the “real” surfers I knew did not include “tubular” in their vocabularies, but it was certainly overplayed as slang by Valley Girls and their ilk. Tubular was nearly always followed by an exclamation point, which is why I played it that way in my word list.

The A-Z Challenge is tubular, man!

Day #19: S is for Sincere

Tags

A-Z Challenge, children, faking sincerity, family, sincere

Dictionary.com defines “sincere” as “1) free of deceit, hypocrisy, or falseness; 2) genuine, real”

My husband-who-lives-across-town used to say that if he could teach his sixth graders how to “fake sincerity” they would be ahead of the game for life. What he meant by that was that if he could teach them to appear interested and focused on the task or person at hand, they would ultimately complete the task and find the intriguing elements in it as part of the process. He was ahead of the “fake it ’til you make it” trend, but equally successful.

Young children are the most sincere humans around. They are straightforward and totally without guile, and you always know where you stand with them. Olivia, the almost four-year-old in our house, has no difficulty communicating her ideas, feelings, and opinions with anyone who will listen. She is sincere in her approach, and can be counted on to “tell it like it is”, whatever “it” is. Rapidly approaching eight, big sister Lily is becoming harder to read as she learns how to dissemble and prevaricate. She has been out in the wide world long enough that sincerity is becoming more and more difficult.

As for me, I’m finding myself at the opposite end of the sincerity curve. With age has come the honest understanding that I can be my own sincere self without being concerned about what others think about me. I have no men, bosses, or co-workers to try to impress, and have the freedom to simply be myself — whatever shape I take at the time. And that in itself is a blessing.

Day #18: R is for Robust

Tags

chickweed, crabgrass, dandelions, gardening, spurge, Thalassa Crusoe, water restrictions, weeds

Dictionary.com defines “robust” as “strong and healthy; hardy; vigorous”.

Looking around the garden this spring the most robust things I see are the weeds! Crabgrass, dandelion, foxglove, chickweed, spurge — you name it, it is thriving! And since our city enacted stringent watering regulations last week, allowing for lawn watering (for even-numbered addresses) only on Sunday for a maximum of thirty minutes, I rather doubt that the freshly seeded grass will be able to compete with the weeds. I stealthily water the flower bed every third day with the hose, jealously guarding the amount of water it uses in exchange for the beauty of pansies, lobelia, iris, and lavender.

Even more robust are the weeds in the front yard of our next door neighbor’s house. A true testament to the hardiness of weeds — especially crabgrass — the house next door has apparently been abandoned, as no one has been there for at least three weeks. So no matter how hard we try to make our yard beautiful, it is overshadowed by weeds three feet tall that are thriving on neglect. And the back yard is worse; fortunately I only see it as I am hanging laundry out to dry next to our shared fence.

Slightly lower on the “robustness” scale is the gardener…no, in truth I am plenty strong and healthy, but mostly lazy! I love the gardening part, and envy legendary master gardener Thalassa Crusoe’s team of laborers who kept her gardens ready to be planted. The weather for the next several days is supposed to drop into the mid-70’s (from the high 80’s we have been experiencing), so I should be able to make some progress digging vegetable garden beds. My veggies will be late this year — no matter how short the growing time needed, they can’t get started until I plant their seeds!

How is your garden? Are your veggies and flowers robust, or just the weeds?