Star Wars

Every generation has a movie series that defines it. For me, it was the original Star Wars. For my son it is the Harry Potter series. This weekend I will be standing in line early, with my son to see Harry Potter 7.1. It is kind of a passing the torch in a way. I remember standing in line for the first Star Wars movie with my parents many years ago.
It was the summer of 1977 and very hot. Back then there were no mega theaters, no getting your tickets on-line. One had to wait and hope there were tickets available when you got up to the front. My parents rarely went to movies and I had never seen them wait in line for any movie. They would just wait until later and come back some other day. But even at my really young age, I knew there was something different about Star Wars. We got there early and the line was all the way around the block. We had to park a ways a way and walk back to the theater. We were not able to get in to the “early showing”. My dad said he would wait in line while my mother took my sister and me away for a little while. This coming back later just added to my excitement. I was going to see the “late movie”! I had never been allowed to stay up that late! This was going to be awesome! By the time that we got back to the theater, my dad had literally waited throughout the entire first movie showing just so we could see the second one. We got in line, I couldn’t wait. My first late movie going to see something my parents were willing to wait hours in line for. I don’t know if I had any indication then, that I was being a part of history, of helping define a generation, but looking back, the whole thing seemed magical.

We finally got in to the theater. A large one theater auditorium. Only one place to buy popcorn and only one restroom. Such a change from today. The first thing that I noticed was the fact that it was a stifling hot oven. The air conditioner had blown, in July, in a crowded theater. I was sweating just walking in. We went in to the auditorium and the place was completely full. We were able to find three seats together, but my sister had to go find friends and sit elsewhere. So there we sat, sweating profusely, packed in like sardines, and with as much anticipation as a small child could muster for such an event. Then Star Wars started! The huge ship that flew over, the sounds of the overture with non-DHX sound! It was so amazing! I remember the words starting to scroll over the screen and my mother leaning over and reading them to me. It was nothing I had ever seen before.

By the time it was over I was a Star Wars junkie. And still am today. I have seen all the movies a hundred times and now look at what was once the cutting edge of high tech and marvel in its simplicity. Through the last 33 years, Star Wars has weaved its way in to our very existence. My children have been Star Wars characters for Halloween, I have told my husband more than once “May the Force Be with You”, and I have been in more than one light saber fight. Although the “new” movies that came after were good, there was nothing like the experience of the first Star Wars series.

So now we are on to my son’s age. Although he is older now, than I was then, we have seen all of the Harry Potter movies and will flock with the throngs of others to see number 7.1 this weekend. I will take my son to dinner and then we will get in line to get the best seats for the “late showing”. He has asked me more than once if I had already bought our tickets on-line. Now it is not a question of if we will go see at our chosen time, but where we will sit. We will walk in to our huge mega-plex with its miles and miles of hallways and concession stands. We are planning to get there at least an hour early, probably earlier, just to get our favorite seats. Front row of the upper area, no seats in front of us, and a railing to put our feet on. We will wait in line like I did 33 years ago, thankful first of all that it is November and the air conditioner will not be going out. We will sit, we will talk, we will become comrades with the hundreds of others that like us had to get there early. Excitement built early and will continue to build until it is over.

We have noticed, just like before, how a movie series can weave its way in to our lives. My daughter was Hermione for Halloween; my son has told me he is not an owl when I ask him to go take a message. Almost daily someone in our family gets hit with “Stupefy” or various other spells. I wonder if when my children grow up they will watch the Harry Potter series with their children. Will they remember the times of standing in line, of feeling like they are a part of something bigger? And more importantly, will they also be showing them Star Wars, so that all the phrases that come out of the then grandma’s mouth don’t sound so crazy?


So tonight we will put aside our regular Friday night life and join the other fanatics, just to say that we saw it on opening weekend. But also, so many years from now, maybe we will all remember that the little things in life can make any memory extraordinary.

It Happens In A Flash

So this week was a “happens in a flash” week. One of those that reminds you of what is really important in life, how one moment has the potential to change everything, and that every one of those moments is precious, and that I get really angry when someone stupid messes with those moments. This moment was brought to us by a crazy lady on the highway that almost took the lives of three precious teenagers.

For me, it started last Saturday. Watching Sooner football like we always do with my best friend Sherri and her family. Her daughter, Christine, just casually mentioned that she and some girlfriends were going to see a friend perform on Tuesday evening in a different town. The girls wanted to show their love and support and come watch her. I told her that was great and I hoped she had a good time and then promptly forgot about it.
My oblivion quickly came “crashing” to a halt at 4:30 on Tuesday. Sherri calls. There has been a wreck on the highway. A lady who apparently was going “at a high rate of speed” crashed in to the back of the girls’ car. They hit a semi in front of them, spun around hitting the semi again. The girls were stuck in the car and the rescue responders were having to pry the doors off to get them out. Boom. I felt like I had been hit by a semi. My first question, of course, was if the girls were okay. Yes, they seem to be, but Christine had hit her head pretty hard.

Through the course of the evening, we found out that the lady looked like she was high on something. She was screaming at the girls and the police. Christine and the other girls were checked out and thankfully, except for some pretty nasty cuts and bruises, all girls would be just fine. Through the course of the last few days a great soreness has revealed itself in Christine’s neck and back. But I am thankful that she is here with us to have the soreness.


It has also revealed soreness in me as well. I became quite angry with the crazy driver and to a certain extent I still am. This woman’s moment of some selfishness almost took away something precious from us. If it had been just a regular accident I don’t think I would be so angry. But to not have any regard for anyone else is not just unfair, it is unconscionable.

I do want to thank this woman for something, however. It did set me out of my own little world to remember what is important in life. Every now and again I think we all need to be reminded of that. Life gets set in its day to day doldrums and we forget that every moment that we are here is precious. When I left Christine, I don’t even remember if I even gave her a hug. But I will remember now. How many days do we separate ourselves from our family and friends physically and emotionally and not really tell them that they mean the world to us? It also made me remember the terrible shootings at places like Columbine. Did those parents say they loved their kids before dropping them off at school for what would be the last time? How many opportunities are lost just to say you care about someone?

But it isn’t all about the bad stuff. There are the great moments that one has to revel in as well. The fact that these girls were going to do something special for a friend. The hug that my daughter gives me every night. The sitting out on frozen bleachers to watch my son play football. These are the true moments of life. These are the ones that make it worth living. The great, once in a lifetime moments are awesome. But it’s the day to day ones that make a life. A life that I hope will always be filled with those ordinary moments that when looked at carefully can be extraordinary.

The Dog-Gone Time



The time change always messes with me. I feel kind of off kilter for a few days, feeling like I am always late (or early) for something. I love going in to Daylight Savings Time. The increased hours of daylight after getting home, the knowledge that the length of time the sun is up is getting longer, all of this makes me feel like I am emerging from a cave. The last few winters here in the southern-middle-midwest region have been colder and harsher than usual. So the beginning of Daylight Savings Time signaled the beginning of a new awakening. To be able to get out, stretch your legs, come out of hibernation.

Going back in to Standard Time is kind of the opposite, I guess. The days are getting shorter, there’s a chill in the air, and the sun is slanting in a different direction. It is a time to start gathering in. To buckle down for the winter. I do love, however, that I am supposed to cheat and get another hour of sleep when we “fall back”. I went to bed on Saturday and moved my clock back. So, in my world, I got to live the 10:00 hour all over again. I lived it by going to sleep, ready to wake up at the new 7:30, which would have felt like old 8:30, right there was the great bonus! Sleeping in with two kids and two dogs until 8:30 is a great luxury! At least for one day I can cheat the system and sleep in! Awesome.

Alas, this was not meant to be. My little dog, Charlie, knew that it was 7:30, even though by definition it was really 6:30. But apparently Charlie forgot to set his watch because he jumped on the bed at the new 6:30, came up to be face to face with me and whined that it was time to get up and go outside. I tried to convince him that he forgot to reset his watch, but he was not listening. All he knew at that point was that it was indeed 7:30 and he really, desperately needed to go outside. This was evident by the fact that as soon as I opened the door his little legs raced to his favorite tree and he was there for quite a while before he was ready to come back in.

Boomer on the other hand, had other ideas. Boomer is somewhere between the puppy/teenager phase. I get Boomer up to go outside as well, thinking that we could all go back to sleep for another hour after they both get done with their “doggy business” as we call it. The chill in the air just excited him, though. He ran around the backyard barking his head off. I’m sure he was thinking that this was great! It was new morning! There is a crispness in the air! It’s a great day to be a dog! Okay, that was just a loose interpretation, I don’t really speak dog that well.

Charlie, being the older but I don’t know how much wiser, dog came back in, finally realized that the time had changed (or maybe he was just too lazy to stay up) went back to his blanket and fell back asleep. Boomer decided the whole world needed to be up to see this glorious day! He immediately jumps on the bed and flops all sixty pounds of him on to his now awake “dog dad” and then looks him in the eye as if to say, “It’s time for my morning petting.” The now awake dad tries to convince the very awake dog that he must have missed the memo that says it is a day to sleep in for an hour. The phrase in our house to get Boomer to go to bed is “time for sleep”. So dad now tries that to get the sixty pound dog off his chest. It went something like this:

Dad: Boomer time for sleep, go lay down.
Boomer: Looks outside where the sun is shining and looks back at him.
Dad: Boomer! Time for Sleep!
Boomer: Lifts his head, looks out the window, looks at his dad, looks out the window again and looks at dad. You can tell he is just saying, you’ve got to be kidding, the sun is up!

So after much pushing of the sixty pound dog, he finally goes to his spot and immediately goes back to sleep. I, on the other hand, am now fully awake at 6:30. Somehow I feel cheated. Oh well, at least it was a rather interesting start to just a regular Sunday.

Capturing the Moments

Living with a young teenager is like living with a large blue-eyed alien. Some days he’s still momma’s little boy and wants to sit on the couch and hang out. More often than not, he texts on his cell phone to his girlfriend, plays video games or just hangs out with friends that are definitely not mom and dad.
My son is one of the most awesome people I know. He gets great grades, his teachers all think that he is a wonderfully polite student and he has a true heart for God. But the more he grows up, the more I feel like I am losing my baby. Which I am fully aware needs to happen. We are raising him to be an independent young man. One that is caring and thoughtful, but will be a responsible citizen when he grows up and won’t be living in our basement when he’s forty.

So that is the great conundrum. Holding on to my precious child while watching him grow up to be a great adult. While we still have a few years to go, I realize how precious the moments are when we do actually connect without him rolling his eyes and wondering how he is ever related to us. Tonight was one of those nights.
We have one computer that is the official “downloading of songs” computer. Every now and again I go in to see what my son or husband has downloaded and send those songs to my iPod. Tonight I was the one downloading songs from iTunes and my son came up and asked what I was doing. Cue the “my parents are lame” look when I told him I was downloading some great music. I was insistent and said that he should just listen to what I was downloading. My current genre of the moment is hard rock Christian music (yes there is such a thing). So I played him some of my “head banging” music, a group called Skillet, and he decided it “wasn’t bad” and asked if I had ever heard of his favorites such as Green Day. For over an hour we sat there swapping songs, looking up music videos and laughing at the fact that his mother actually knew some of the lyrics. He didn’t even complain when I started dancing around the room. He almost joined me, but not quite.
After a while, I realized that we both needed to get to bed. I was hesitant to let the moment go. I can see them getting fewer and fewer and want to just hold on to each precious moment and keep them in some sort of mental scrapbook. I want my son to grow up. I want him to become whatever he wants to be. I also want him to stay my baby. So for now, I will relish in the fact that he just walked in to beg me to do his laundry, late at night, for what he has to wear to school tomorrow. Knowing that way too soon, he will have to “relate” to his own children. I hope he gets the opportunity with them to share music and laughter and will enjoy the sheer act of embarrassing them greatly. To know how great every moment of a child’s life is. To know that even the dull ordinary moments can be something extraordinary.

I love Election Day.
It is one of my favorite days of the year for two completely different reasons. First is because it is such an amazing gift we have in this country. The second, well let’s just say that it is probably the sentiment of most of the nation.

Every major election day I reflect back to how I was able to go to my polling place, gripe that it is so far away from my house (about a mile) and that I have to stand in line behind maybe two people. Okay, maybe that was a little on the sarcastic side. But isn’t that how we feel when we take for granted this wondrous thing we call voting? I think about how women had to fight for the right to vote. They were imprisoned and beaten and seen as forgoing their duties as a mother and wife, just to have the right to walk in to a polling place and make her voice heard. The same goes with minorities. My children do not understand when I tell them that at one time only white males could vote. I like the fact that they look at me like I’m from another planet when I tell them that. They have very little sense of a segregated world. But at the same time, I want them to fully understand how we came to be that we can all go to the polls together and to never ever take that for granted.

I also try to tell my children about what happens in other countries. I have never yet, had to worry about my polling place being blown apart while I was voting, nor of being shot at while trying to get to a polling place. I have never had to risk losing my life for the simple act of voting. I see people all the time in foreign elections that are so proud of the fact that they got to actually cast a vote that matters. They dipped their fingers willingly in the purple ink so that their voice can be heard. How much fear goes along with that? Did they walk back home just to be accosted on the streets asking who they voted for? Did they have to report to their bosses how they voted to keep their jobs?

Then there are the countries that don’t get that right at all. They live in a dictatorship filled with corruption and violence. I try to instill in my children how those people would (and probably will someday) give everything, just for the right to vote. I pray that I and those around me, never take for granted what a precious joy it should be to be able to walk freely in to a polling place and let our voices be heard.

The other reason I really like Election Day is that all the political ads are finally over. Whatever happened to integrity and hard work? They have been replaced by mudslinging and half truths. These are people basically having a really long interview process to decide on a job. I would like to see how that works in real life. If I know I am one of the top candidates for a job and I’ve known Bob for years and find out that he is one of the top candidates as well, how do I go in to the interview. Am I really going to go in to my interview and when Mr. Interviewer asks me what I thought my strengths and qualifications are, am I really going to say, well I know that I have good ideas and can do this job, but let me tell you about Bob. A couple of years ago, I saw him really get drunk at a Christmas party. I think you should not consider him for this job. That’s why I should get it, because Bob is a lousy drunk. Do you really think it would work that way in real life? Then why should it work that way for politics? So for months we have been subjected to more and more negative campaigning. I think my vote really comes down to who slung the least amount of mud. Who is the least dirtiest out there?
I also hate it when they start talking about fighting the other party. Doesn’t matter if it is Republican or Democrat, the other is the mortal enemy of politicians. I am really tired of people saying they are going to Washington (or the state capital) just to start fighting with people. Great, so go up there, be a big bully, rally your other big bully friends and go knock some heads around. I can really see that as a way to win friends and influence people. Why can’t we all just get along? I would love for someone to say that they have all fouled up the country. We’ve also all had some great ideas as well. Why can’t we just sit in a room, throw in all the ideas and together morph them in to something that will actually work? If I was in Congress and someone came up to me and said that my idea was no better than a large dung heap, and they had a much better idea that was rainbows and butterflies, do you really think at that point I would even be listening? What if instead, they came up and said, hey, your idea was interesting, I thought point A was good, but I wanted to run something by you for point B. Don’t you think that we might come to some sort of solution? Wouldn’t I be less likely to lift him up and throw him into the big pile of dung mentioned earlier? Okay, so maybe the good reason that I don’t run for office is I still believe in the world of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. I want to believe that there is someone out there who is actually looking out for my good, not just the good of his own pockets.

Okay, enough of my rantings. For all eligible people, please, go study the issues and the candidates and GO VOTE!! And please teach your children what a wonderfully special gift this is. Unfortunately we won’t be home to celebrate election night coverage (another favorite), but I know that whatever the outcome tonight’s election will be anything but boring.

BOOT CAMP or BUST!

You could call me the adventurous type. Others might call me crazy or reckless but I don’t think that is it. I prefer to think of myself as extremely unlucky at times. But whatever it is, I tend to spend a great deal of time at doctors and urgent care clinics for “self inflicted” wounds. Which is how I ended up in physical therapy this time. But before I can talk about the great people at my local torture chamber (a.k.a physical therapy) I have to talk about how I got here. I wish this was a story of greatness, some good story that will be retold many years in the future. Although I do have a story like that, alas this one is not it. That one is a story of great fortitude and courage and strength. This one unfortunately, is a story of stupidity. Aren’t most like that though?

The university I work for was offering free exercise boot camp over the lunch hour three days a week during the early spring. Free boot camp!! How wonderful!! I thought this would be a great opportunity to kick start a nonexistent exercise regimen. I even put that on the application, “I want to get back in shape, to be able to use this as a launching pad to great things”. Maybe I would run a marathon! Hike tall mountains! I was so pumped for this! I even talked several of my friends at work in to going with me. This would be a great opportunity to bond as colleagues, to learn new exercise techniques and best of all, it was FREE!

I wrote many e-mails to my friends who weren’t as lucky as I thought I was to be able to go to FREE boot camp. I will try to get those posted as well. The first day we had these great instructors who told us how much fun we were going to have, but first they needed to do assessments to put us with our own kind. I was thinking this was great, we will be able to see where we are starting and where we are going. I was humbled by my numbers, but pledged to trudge on, and make those numbers better!

The second day, we got divided into our platoons. I was uplifted by the fact I was put in to the second group. Most everyone was about my age and looked about like I did. The third group was a lot like us, just maybe a little more out of shape than those of us who were just generally out of shape. Then I looked over to group one. This was the “Ken and Barbie” set who thought boot camp would just be great way to just spend an afternoon while bopping about in tiny workout gear. They became our mortal enemy just by fact that running in place for five minutes didn’t even make them break a sweat.

I always tried to do the little things that I was sure was helping me live a better lifestyle, like taking the stairs. I work on the fourth floor of my building so I always felt good taking the stairs. At the beginning of boot camp I was still taking the stairs in the morning, but after slowly walking back to our building after our sessions, we tended to take the elevator. Telling ourselves that we deserve it since we did just get out of class. By the time we were finished with our six week session, the stairs were evil, another inanimate object that I was sure was just laughing at me as I agonizingly attempted to climb them. I would wonder if there was anybody on floor two that I needed to go visit. Maybe someone would just come rescue me if I just waited long enough. Then I just decided all together that someone had definitely put in more flights of stairs to my floor so to spite them I would just take the elevator constantly. Ha, I would show them!

But none of that has anything to do with why I am now in P/T. A couple of weeks before we were finished we were doing an exercise and I felt a sharp jolt shoot from my shoulder to my elbow. Me, being the stubborn one, thought I had just pulled a muscle. I continued on thinking I would just work through the pain. Cue Rocky music. But it just seemed to get worse. We finished boot camp and a few months later I still had trouble even using it for small tasks. Yes, I said it took me a couple of months to realize that maybe I had really hurt myself. My doctor sent me to a sports medicine doctor that looked like she should have been in the first group I talked about earlier, although she was very knowledgeable. What followed was a great round of steroid injections, MRI’s, x-rays, and various other procedures invented just to laugh at people who were in pain. After spending copious amounts of money, she sent me on to a shoulder specialist. Dr. K is a great guy. He studied all my stuff and put me through more torturous movements just to determine that surgery was needed. For those who like to be impressed with big words, I tore my supraspinatus tendon. I hope that comes up sometime on Jeopardy. I could really sound brilliant. So, during surgery they determine that I also needed some bones shaved and some other stuff cleaned up. It could have been worse, which I am very thankful. But has landed me in months of physical therapy just so I can play basketball with my kids, or throw a ball for my dogs.

So, now my FREE boot camp has cost me a huge amount of money. Would I do it again? Probably. What would I do differently? Probably nothing, I don’t seem to learn the first time. Except maybe to not try to be Rocky Balboa. But, it does make my ordinary life a little more interesting.