Rest In Peace, Dear Papa, Rev. Wilbur Hardin

When I was a young child, my Papa loomed large in my life.

His deep voice, tinged with an edge of raspy gravel, would boom from the pulpit, where he preached every Sunday at the little Methodist churches where he was the pastor.  When his sermon involved consequences for bad acts, the entire congregation would tremble under the weight of it, but he would always bring things back to making better choices, doing better works, redeeming yourself by being the person you ought to be in the end.

Papa was a believer in living your faith by doing good in the world, not just mouthing the words as a way to look good to others.  He tried to live that example for his congregations every single day, with everything he and my Mama did together to make their community a better place.

He also stood out as an example of discipline and hard work ethic as I watched him work at his job as a steel mill pattern maker, cutting and shaping beautiful tools and things from the basest of materials, hour after hour.  Then, he would come home, exhausted, say grace, eat some dinner, chat with the family a bit, and then steal away to his study to craft his sermons into the wee hours.

The summer that I was three, my mom went back to school to get her masters' degree and my dad was working a really irregular shift at the plant where he worked, so I was lucky enough to spend it with my Mama and Papa.   There was always time for a story for me -- Papa passed along his love of books to me, and it has been a gift that has followed me always.

Mama came up with reasons for us to have to bake cookies every day -- usually half the batch went out to some parishioner in the community that needed a hand -- and I got to help with the mixer and then got to lick the bowl.  It was heaven.   She and Papa would talk about who needed help the most, a brightened day or a meal, and then he would go off to work while we set about whatever needed to get going in the kitchen, and then when he got home we would go out for delivery.

This was all done quietly and without a need for fanfare or public recognition, but simply because it was the right thing to do to help someone else in need.  It was such a wonderful example to see as a child. 

Papa taught me all sorts of useful things, too:  like scratching their dog's belly just right (Lance was a beautiful scottie dog who loved a good belly scratch); how to time my jokes for when people weren't quite expecting them, especially if I needed to lighten the mood in the room; and how to soften your edge when you are having a tough day, so that you aren't taking it out on the people you love, and to channel that energy into helping someone else.  Papa did not have a lot of patience for fools or people who continually made bad decisions, and I remember him telling me that you needed to take care with how you lived your life every single day, that every decision about what you did made you who you were -- inside you, outside to others, and in the sight of the Lord -- and that taking care to make the right decision in the first place was always the best way to go.

My Papa was the living embodiment of the Golden Rule - "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - it was a piece of scripture that he quoted often enough to me as a child that when I read it now, I still hear it in his voice.

But he didn't just say it.

Radiation Begins Today

It begins.  Again.

Radiation treatments will start for me this morning and I have the temporary tattoo markers to show for it:  they use them as guides so the targeted beam hits the right spot every time.   Oh yeah, I'm a rebel, I have three tattoos.  (You have to squint to see them, but still...I want the street cred.  I think I've earned it at this point and then some.)

Looks like I will have a series of thirty-three treatments in total, five days a week, every single week for almost seven weeks until they are completed, with weekends off to heal a little.  Each treatment should last about twenty minutes.

Oh joy.

It could be a whole lot worse, so I am grateful to be here and not in hospice.  Let me just say that up front.  But this has been an exhausting slog and it is not done yet.  How do parents of small children ever explain all of this to them as they go through treatment?

The staff at the UHC Cancer Center have been fantastic all the way through this.  Am so glad that they had great facilities near our house, so that I didn't have to go far away for treatment -- that would have been incredibly rough on The Peanut and she's been through enough this summer with me as it is.

But life goes on, even if our summer has whizzed by in nothing flat and not been all that relaxing.  For us, school begins again next week.

Where did the summer go, seriously??!!??

We still have school supplies to pick up and a few assorted school clothing items to snag, so somewhere today I will be taking The Peanut to shop if at all possible so we can avoid the weekend insanity of the back to school frenzy.  Somehow, in the next week or so, I also have to get my classroom ready for the kids to return.

Or, at least, as ready as I can under the circumstances.

Rest In Peace, Dear Aunt Mary Ann

Yesterday, the world lost a dear, dear soul, with a heart so big there were times that I could not believe her body could contain it.  My Aunt Mary Ann Hardin Moberg passed away yesterday, and my world is the poorer for losing her.

She was eight years older than me, and growing up we were more like sisters and playmates than aunt and niece.  When I was born, she thought of me as her little dress-up doll, and loved to take me for a ride in her doll stroller whenever my parents brought me over to the house to see my grandparents.

We baked cookies together, with my Mama always letting us each have our own spoon so we wouldn't fight over who got a taste of the batter next.  We helped cut grapes in half for fruit salad for holiday meals, and tried very hard to share the last slice of mama's homemade chocolate cream pie.

We shared a mutual ability to make dogs and babies very happy, and we both loved Lancelot, the family scottie dog, more than anything else in the whole world the summer I stayed a lot with my grandparents while my mom was completing her master's degree.  I cannot ever recall her meeting a dog that didn't instantly love her on sight, mostly because she was a practiced spoiler, always ready with a scratch and a treat for a doggie who needed a little more attention.

She had the most infectious giggle, and she dearly loved to laugh.

Shining A Light Into The Dark Corners Of Domestic Violence

Folks who know me are aware that I worked as a lawyer for many years, including a stint as an assistant prosecutor in a local county office many years ago.  What I saw during my years of legal work still haunts me today, as I still find myself waking up nights worried about abused children or various other individual cases that were not entirely tied up in the neat little resolved package that I might have wanted in a perfect world.

I think that is true for everyone who has worked in the criminal justice field in one way or another:  most people I have known who were decent and dedicated prosecutors or police officers and such worry -- even years and years down the road -- about the cases that remained not fully resolved for the better.  But sometimes, it cannot be helped:  you do the best you can with what you are given, facts, evidence, circumstances and so on, and then you have to move forward once a verdict is reached or a case is closed.

What you are often left with, though, is that unsatisfactory, nagging fear that you have still left a child or an adult in a situation that is going to continue to be abusive in some way.  Even if it is less so than it might have been without intervention, that is still a very, very difficult outcome to accept even when the law dictates that this is the way that things must be.

In the above video, Patrick Stewart eloquently and incredibly movingly talks about his own childhood in a home permeated with domestic violence.

So often, families facing this sort of fear feel as though they must hide in the shadows, keeping the secrets of the beatings and the terror and all of this away from the light of public scrutiny.  There is still shame attached to being a victim of domestic violence and, worse, far too often a fear of escalation or death.

So often, this continued silence is because of overwhelming fear -- of judgment from those outside of the home itself, or a fear that the violence will escalate, even to murder, because that is exactly what is threatened and far too often carried out by the abuser.  It is a terrifying way to live your life, every day, day in and day out, so drenched in fear that you cannot breathe or even conceive of a way out.

Imagine growing up in that sort of home as a tiny child.  Now imagine becoming involved with an abuser as you get older -- it would seem to you, in so many ways and for far too many people to count, that this is just the way the world is for everyone or, worse, that you somehow deserve to be treated as "less than."  It is a painful, painful thing to watch, and requires an enormous amount of will and courage and even luck to break free from this wretched start to life for far too many children.

As Patrick Stewart says so well here, "Everyone suffers.  No one escapes the trauma of those experiences."

RIP, Jeannie Hardin

This morning, my mama, Jeannie Hardin, passed away after a long and wonderful life.  She will be missed by everyone who knew and loved her because she was a dear, dear soul.

Last summer, she and my papa had their 70th wedding anniversary.  So many friends and family got to celebrate with them, including folks that I had not seen in years and years.

They loved being able to take that walk down memory lane and to see everyone.  That was especially true for Mama, who was dressed in the most beautiful purple chiffon-trimmed suit for the occasion, and beaming from ear to ear.

Mama, along with my Granny Verta Bell Frazer, taught me to bake and to love to cook.  Bless them both for that gift, it has brought me much comfort and joy throughout my entire life, and I think of both of them every single time I begin to cook a meal.

For both my grandmothers, feeding your family well meant that love was always your first ingredient in anything you were making.

I can remember standing on my mama's step-stool in her kitchen, pouring ingredients into her Kitchen Aid stand mixer, helping her make pies and cookies.  She always had a tiny apron at the ready for me to wear, and never complained when I wanted to sample the batter.  From the time I was tiny, hanging out with my grandmothers in the kitchen and helping to cook was always one of my favorite things in the world -- the laughter and love I learned in their kitchens is something I carry with me to this day.

I try to add that same measure of love in as an ingredient in everything I make for my own family now.

Growing Up

As hard as it is to say, our little Peanut is growing up. 

We had such a great time on the beach together during our recent trip:  hunting for shells, laughing at the antics of the dogs chasing seagulls on the beach, giggling at the funny little sandpipers, and trying to spot dolphins as they appeared and disappeared in the waves closer to shore.  It was wonderful.

Reconnecting is always nice. 

Being able to do so away from the day-to-day rushing is so much better.  Not having a myriad of distractions and an endless "to do" list of things that need to be done right now lurking in the background makes having those longer conversations or quiet walks along the shore or in a nature preserve or any number of other wonderful things we were able to do while we were away so much more meaningful on so many levels.

It got me thinking about how we might better do that on a weekly basis at home as well.

A Less Hectic Christmas? That's My Wish.

What about a quiet, peaceful Christmas, filled with joy and time together, with lots of laughter and hugs, with contentment and warm cocoa and as much love as you could possibly give to each other, each and every day? 

Wouldn't that be the very best present you could ever hope for this year?

It certainly would for me.  A less hectic, more family-centered Christmas sounds like just the thing I want in my stocking this year.

Here are a few things I'm hoping to do to make that happen for us:

Just Another Weekend

I don't know why it is that our weekends seems to disappear insanely fast, but they do.  It is as though time speeds up on the weekends, and whizzes by us as quickly as possible to get everyone back to work and school.

It is tough to savor the relaxation when there is just so much to get done.

And harder still when the window of time in which to accomplish the weekend "to do" list appears to be shrinking exponentially.

I've decided that better time management is my friend.  The trick is to figure out exactly what that means and make it work to my advantage.

Anyone have suggestions for ways to manage day to day tasks with more efficiency?  Or establish routines that help in that tremendously?

Life's A Happy Song? Strategies for Sick and Rainy Days

Just needed a little Muppet pick me up this morning.  From The Muppets.

Woke up to a foggy day outside, and still no let up on the chicken pox for The Peanut.  Our house is a germy pit of despair for a wee girlie who just wants to go back to school. 

So we continue to muddle forward slowly, hoping that they will begin to dry up at some point in the near future. Being a parent with a sick and stir crazy child at home can be tedious and exhausting for everyone, especially mom.  (I am so there this morning, let me tell you.)

I've been sitting here wracking my brain for things to do with the sickly wee one that don't involve a lot of energy expenditure, and here's what I've come up with for us for the next few days:

-- Coloring:  We always have a stash of coloring books, crayons and colored pencils on hand because you never know when a sick day/snow day/torrential rain in the summer day will show up.  Diversionary tactics are my friend.

-- Reading:  The Peanut has already read 4 books in the last 4 days.  Okay, sure...two of them were Goosebumps books, but the other two were the first two books in the Sisters Grimm series which we are both absolutely loving right now.  (Highly recommend the Sisters Grimm for the kids or grandkids in your life!)

The Intersection of Creativity and Balancing Your Bottom Line

Over the last few weeks, we've been tweaking our family household budget.  In order to get a better handle on where our money is flowing, I've been trying to keep track of what I'm spending -- where, on what and why.


It has been an eye opener, to say the least.  We spend a lot of money on crap we don't really need.

This is not exactly the thing you want to find out about yourself -- that you have an impulse purchase issue when it comes to items that your child or your husband might want and you are all about making them happy and so you buy before you really even think about it -- but there it is in black and white on receipts, week in and week out. 

And so?  I'm trying to spend my money more wisely and consciously.

Making Our Home Our Castle

One of our goals this year is to get a better handle on our family budget.  As we hurtle toward retirement, being able to live comfortably when we are spending well below our income is a big goal.

Both of us have seen far too many people need to keep working well past when they would rather have retired because their expenses were too great to be able to stop and enjoy their lives.  We've also seen far too many people retire, and then have to find some other part-time employment or something else to cover rising medical or other expenses that weren't planned for earlier.

We're very blessed in that we have the means to live well, because we have both worked very hard to get us to this point and continue to do so.

But that doesn't mean we ought to just take it for granted that will always be the case, or that we shouldn't be more thoughtful about how we use our resources.  Using them more wisely is always a good goal. 

One way to enjoy what we already have more while spending less is to get our home where we want it to be -- comfortable, cozy, inviting, less cluttered -- so that spending time at home is preferable to going out, spending more money and buying crap you don't need.

I've been looking around our house lately with that sort of eye toward what is working for us and what is not.

Nutcracker Ballet Tonight

We are taking The Peanut to see the Moscow Ballet perform the Nutcracker this evening.

I cannot wait. Their version is visually stunning, and perfect for an 8 year old who is loving her dance classes this year.

Let The Preparations Begin

It's time to rearrange the sunroom so we can squeeze the ginormous Christmas tree in front of the windows.

Usually, we wait until after Thanksgiving for this.  But this year I have a wee bit of surgery to get past,  and I'm afraid it might put a bit of a crimp in my giddy-up.  I'm worried about having enough ooomph to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table, although I have plans and a willing husband who can't cook like a gourmet, but he can follow directions like a pro, so we'll be fine.

But I'm beginning the tree and decor preparations earlier to make sure we get the Christmas tree up and decorated for The Peanut.  Just in case.

If nothing else, it's a good excuse to drink some eggnog.

I find myself thinking "just in case" about way too many things lately.  I suppose that's a normal side effect of the melanoma diagnosis, but it is a little morbid on the day to day.

But it is also liberating.  What is it that I truly want to be doing, saying, feeling, right this minute and not really care a whit about what someone else thinks about it?  What do I really want to do in this one moment?

What if...?

What if "one of these days" could be just around the corner?  What would you be doing right now if that were the case?

Healthier Choices...With An Unexpected Side Of Melanoma

It has been a long morning here -- lots of errands, some blood work, and a host of tests that had to be done. 

I'm going in for some surgery next Friday.  It is amazing, and a little daunting, how much pre-op work has to be done to make sure everything is in order prior to anesthesia and all the surgical whatnot that follows.

Why the surgery?  I've been diagnosed with melanoma. 

More Lessons Learned From Amy

I've been missing Amy a lot lately.  I didn't realize how much until mid-grumpiness over the weekend when it hit me square:  last year, on the 16th of October, we got the devastating news that our sister-in-law had passed away unexpectedly at the age of 38.

Beyond the shock and the grief came the unbearable pain that we would never again get one of her hugs or hear that laugh of hers that warmed you from the inside out.  For a while, it was as though all the light had gone out of our world, and we were left to scuttle along with a flickering candle where our hope had been.

But there were children to tend to and arrangements to manage and, as they say, life goes onward whether we are ready for it to do so or not.

Somehow, somewhere, mercifully the smiles have returned, the days have gotten a little brighter and the memories of Amy no longer carry that knife-sharp pain of loss, but instead are filled with an ever-lessening wistful loss and a whole lot of love and warmth.

We are now a year past that day when we lost her -- that horrible, horrible day -- and I've learned a few more things since my last post on the lessons that Amy taught me in her all-too-brief life. 

Let's start from where we left off:

1) Never go to bed without your spouse knowing how much you love them. Losing Amy was really hard, but knowing that her husband had no doubt in his mind about how solid their love was? Made it ever so slightly easier.

2) Who cares what size you wear, when everyone is really looking at how amazing your heart and mind are.

Making A Splash

For a while now, The Peanut has been semi-obsessed with all things ocean.  But especially dolphins.

After seeing Dolphin Tale twice now, the love of dolphins has ratcheted up to a full bore obsession, and she is now discussing a desire to become a marine biologist on a daily basis.  We've spent time researching everything there is to know about dolphins on various science websites, in library books, and magazines.  We've watched countless documentaries on netflix the last couple of weeks.

It's fun to learn new things.  And it is even more fun, as a parent, to watch your child love to learn something like this.

Last night, as we were cuddled together watching a documentary after dinner, I was thinking that life is really, really sweet for us at the moment.   Just had to share my momma smile this morning.

Reaching For Parental And Personal Sanity

Ever have one of those mornings where you look around and have no idea where the days have gone, what direction you are actually working toward, or how everything managed to get so rear end over tea kettle?

That is my morning today.

Our house was spotless and lovely last week.  No longer.

I could use the biopsy and exhaustion afterward as an excuse, but I won't.  We utterly and completely suck at keeping up with housework, even knowing that it needs to be done.

On top of that, I'm feeling woefully behind in planning for the library, especially for lesson plans and such, despite having all my reproducibles copied for tomorrow's classes and my topic and everything well in hand. 

It makes no sense.  I am a detail-oriented, utterly and completely into planning person when it comes to vacations.  Why can't I put the same effort into caring for my own home?  Or, for that matter, into getting my rear end off the couch to exercise more often? 

It's a conundrum.  And I'm wondering if part of my problem is that I'm not scheduling in the drudgery like I do the fun -- maybe I need to be more like Martha Stewart and put "weed the front flower beds" on my calendar for Thursday and then make myself do it so that I can cross it off. 

I wonder if that would work?  Better yet, do you think Martha might show up to weed my flower beds for me?

New Kids Shows Funny For Grown-Ups, Too

Bless the people who make Phineas and Ferb.  And the new Looney Tunes Show as well.

Ever since we got lucky enough to have The Peanut, my world has been filled with cartoons of all sorts.  We've tried to edit out the truly awful or annoying ones (Barney, anyone?  *shudder*)  And while we've been moderately successful at keeping the truly odious ones off our television, it is not a foolproof system by any means.

Yesterday, we had to deal with a marathon of Dragonball Z Kai, for example.  Put any cartoon in anime style, and The Peanut loves it.  Even the poorly written, badly scripted, no real socially redeeming anything kinds, she is right there. 

So we try to encourage the better shows where we can.  Especially the well written, amusing even for geezers shows that we can all enjoy together.

And that is where Phineas and Ferb come in -- there have to be parents in the writing mix on that show, there is no other explanation for its snide, snarky take on life in the absurdly amusing lane. 

I now fully understand why my father encouraged my watching Bugs Bunny when I was a kid -- it was self-preservation along with some serious fun, all bundled into one Looney Tunes show.  Bless him.

Taking A Mental Vacay Every Day

I stumbled across this photo of Santorini the other day, and immediately pulled it onto my desktop to soak in the gorgeousness of the view.  The color of the sea below is breathtaking, isn't it?

Just beautiful.

There are so many places in the world that I have not yet been.  But I've decided that pining for what might someday be isn't the way that I want to go.  It's a waste of the time I have right now to be constantly wishing I could go somewhere else, have something different, see something constantly new.

Instead?  I'm going to enjoy what is right in front of me and, occasionally, bring something new right here to all of us.  Maybe have a Greek food night, or wear more silk scarves a la Grace Kelly, or learn about masterworks of art whether or not I ever see the originals.

Life is just too short to be living for "someday."  So I'm going to bring the "someday" to my "here and now" every single day.  That sounds a lot more fun to me.

Beautiful Day

It's absolutely gorgeous outside here today. 

We woke up early this morning, and the temperature was still nicely cool and temperate so that opening the windows and letting in some fresh air was really lovely to start off our day.  Helpful since I made some French onion soup in the crockpot yesterday, and my house reeked of onion still.  (Not the most refreshing of scents to hit your nostrils first thing in the morning, let me tell you, no matter how good the soup may have been.)

We're trying to get back on the school schedule wake-up time, and it has been painful and ghastly.   Which just validates my need to be evil and do this for a week or so prior to the start of school every year, I think, but it certainly doesn't make it any easier knowing that since neither The Peanut nor I are morning people.