Grandma offsides. Five yard penalty.

I LOVE the fall. I love the cool weather, the changing colors of the leaves, the Halloween decorations, the big fat harvest moons. It's always been my favorite season of the year and I confess that fall is especially fun in the South. Having grown up a Southern California city girl, I just can't resist driving by all the local farms with their corn mazes, pumpkin patches, and pick-your-own apple orchards. It's everything fall should be.


But there's another side to autumn in the South that I'm afraid I just don't get. Football. Now, for those of you west of the Mississippi or north of the Mason-Dixon line, you might be thinking, "What's to get about football? It's just football, right?" No, no, my young friends. Football in the South isn't just football. It isn't a sport. It isn't a multi-bazillion dollar industry. It's a RELIGION.

As Bryan pointed out in an old blog post of his, there is no football "season." True, from September through February corporate absenteeism and domestic violence reports spike on fall Mondays, and everything from the family car to the family dog is decked out in team colors. Heaven help the poor bride who schedules her wedding during this most sacred of times. Heaven help the poor baby who unwittingly makes his or her entrance during this most sacred of times. Heaven help the poor slob who dies during this most sacred of times. Folks attending weddings, funerals and birthings can often be seen surreptitously checking the score via text message and/or discreetly placed ear buds and I'm quite sure that an audible "GO DAWGS" has occasionally broken the reverent silence expected at such events. But as Bob Bell, a former NFL defensive lineman once said, "In the South there are three seasons: football season, recruiting season, and spring practice."


Now, as I've said, I don't get it. While I can appreciate a spectacular touchdown pass, a tight end's tight end, and some of the goofy end zone dances I've seen, the rest of it just leaves me cold. I wouldn't know a line of scrimmage if it bit me in the armpit and frankly, my dear, I really don't give a damn. Until one of my grandbabies gets involved.


While Bryan and Jacey and Cole were out West this past week, I had the wonderful privilege of caring for Hailey, Nathan, and Connor, including making sure that Nathan attended his football team's practice on Tuesday night. 5:30-7:00 at the local elementary school. I found it cute to watch him put on those funky pants with the laces in front. Hailey helped him get his shoulder pads and jersey on along with the helmet that looked impossibly big. There he stood, looking for all the world like a miniature Joe Namath. Too. Too. Cute! Off he went to join his team mates, all similarly dressed. They were just adorable!! Until the coaches got on the field.


Mind you, these boys are six years old--seven tops. Four years ago they were all still using sippy cups for crying out loud! All their lives they've been taught to be polite and play nice. Until now. I stood there, dumbstruck, and watched while three or four coaches circulated among these little guys SCREAMING at them. One little guy had somehow fumbled a tackle or a grab or whatever the hell he was supposed to do and the coach followed him around the field screaming "YOU CAN'T TACKLE SOMEBODY WHEN YER DOIN' THIS!!!" (wiggling his fingers in front of him) 'YOU LOOK LIKE YER GONNA TICKLE 'IM!!" "PUT THOSE SHOULDER PADS IN THERE--GIT HIM! GIT HIM!!! GIT HIM!!!!!!!!" This guy actually grabbed the boy's face mask and shoved him to the side, all the while bawling in the boy's face "GIT OVER THERE--IN LINE, BOY!!"


Well. He was lucky that he wasn't speaking to MY grandson. If he had been, I'm afraid I would have had no choice but to hobble onto the field and separate the man from his testicles. Luckily, the only time he screamed at Nathan was to tell him, "GOOD JOB, BOY!" while pounding him on top of his helmet. Even that made my skin crawl.


Well, Nathan was, of course, completely brilliant--what follows are several additional shots all taken by Hailey (EXCELLENT photographer that she is!) Nathan's the one in the white pants/black jersey. In the last shot, you can only see Nathan's fingers, though. They're wrapped around the waist of the boy in yellow--a spectacular end zone tackle if I do say so myself! I guess I don't really have to get football. It's enough for me to know that Nathan clearly has talent and clearly loves the game. The coaches, however, are a different story. Be nice to my baby, boys. Otherwise, I know exactly where to put MY shoulder pads.

When worlds collide...

I've blogged about my job before, but on the off chance that any of my three faithful readers didn't catch that particular post, I work in the archives of the Atlanta History Center. Generally speaking, I love my job--although lately I've been re-evaluating my career path. My particular position, Reference Manager, experiences an extremely high rate of burnout (I'm the third person to take this postion in as many years). The lion's share of the job requires working with the patrons who use our archives, but my boss is anxious to expand our outreach programs and, frankly, I'm barely keeping my head above water just keeping up with the patrons who come to us. The fact that the pay rate for my position sucks doesn't help. But I can't deny that helping people conduct research can be really rewarding. Our patrons generally fall into three major groups--those conducting family history research, those conducting research into their historic home or neighborhood, and faculty and students conducting academic research.

I was helping a couple research their historic home a week or so ago and I suggested they check out the subject files in our very large, very elderly card catalog. They were sure their home had been owned by a local business owner and I thought we might have a business file on this particular merchant. So I'm flipping through the cards, looking for this retailer, and suddenly a card pops out at me bearing the following legend: "Amoroso, Arnold D.--Personality Subject File." Completely forgetting about the two guys I was helping, I stammered out loud "....th th that's m m my great UNCLE!!!!! OMIGOSH, THAT'S MY GREAT UNCLE!!" It was all I could do to drag my attention back to the guys I was helping. It turned out we didn't have any files on the business they were looking for, so I managed to cough up another suggestion or two for them to work with on their own. As soon as I possibly could, I beat feet downstairs to the stacks and pulled the box that contained the file on Ami. There I sat, on the hard concrete floor, hands shaking, while I opened the folder. It was an amazing moment for me.

So let me back up just a tad and explain. My grandfather, Colonel Logan Osburn Shutt, was one of ten children. One of his sisters, Ellen, married a man by the name of Arnold Dante Amoroso in 1934. Colonel was close to all his siblings and I can remember as a child that our visits to Maryland almost always included time spent with the families of his brothers and sisters. I only vaguely remember Ellen and Ami (as Arnold was called), but he was legendary. I had always been told that he was a Bataan Death March survivor and the reverence with which he was discussed was palpable. He died in 1978, just 7 years after my grandmother, so I don't remember him well and I was, of course, too young and stupid to have asked enough questions of my grandfather while he was alive. That's the problem with family history--by the time you're old enough to care, all your sources of information are dead! I had done a little research on Ami and found that he may not have been on the Death March, but that he was, indeed, captured at Corregidor and spent a good deal of time in a couple of Japanese POW camps.

So I was completely stunned to find this file on him at work. I had no idea that he had any Atlanta connections so it was a total surprise to find a March 5, 1967 newspaper article all about him. I went from the newspaper article to our other reference sources and found his death record and obituary also in our collection. The newspaper article, though, was the real gold mine.

Colonel Amoroso had been chief of anti-aircraft defenses in Manila harbor when Japan began its conquest of the "Greater East Asia Co-Propserity Sphere" in early 1941. When General Wainwright surrended the island of Corregidor in May, the Japanese let the survivors have the run of the island--for awhile. When the Japanese began cracking down during their occupation, they sent Ami to Old Bilibid Prison, and later to Camp Cabanatuan. From there, he was sent to Davao, to Mindanao, back to Bilibid, back to Cabanatuan again and then once more to Bilibid before being taken to Japan. It appears that he was on the ship Oryoku Maru that was sunk by American bombers, killing 300 American prisoners. The survivors who made it ashore were rounded up and put on two other Japanese ships to complete their journey to Japan. The ship Ami was on was hit again by American bombers--this time Ami was one of only 88 men to survive.

Ami describes his treatment as sometimes good and sometimes bad, depending on the weather, food, water, and guards. When the camps were liberated in September of 1945, Ami was transported back to the States in a hospital ship, weighing just 88 pounds. He had been overseas for six years and, on his first trolley ride in San Francisco, on the way to the hospital he visited daily during his recuperation, he handed the driver what he thought was a dime. Turns out it was actually a penny. He didn't know the difference.

After the war, Ami served in Hawaii and Panama, and became an ROTC instructor at Georgia Tech in 1950. After his retirement from Tech and the Army, he worked in Atlanta in real estate. He died on March 13, 1978, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

My job can truly suck at times. I guess everybody's can. But how often can you stumble on a piece of unexpected treasure like this while you're working? Even if this is the only time my family history and working worlds collide, it'll be worth it.

Here are two photos of Ami taken in 1971...the first is Ami and Ellen, the second, Colonel and Ami....

My spool is beginning to unravel...again.

Okay, so I know I've posted about losing my grip before, but this is my blog and I'll whine if I wanna, right? I also apologize in advance for making my first post in two months a total bitchfest but I know my gentle readers (all three of them) will understand when they realize that I left this yesterday morning:



to come home yesterday afternoon to this:



Yes, it sucks, doesn't it?


I really did have an amazing time in Southern California--the trip was worth every penny and every "paid time off" day that it took. I flew in Thursday morning, had lunch in Laguna Beach, wandered around the Mission San Juan Capistrano for a few hours, and had dinner in Pacific Beach with Annike and Patrick. Friday, Saturday and Sunday were family reunion days and they couldn't have been more pleasant. Randy's sister Heidi did an amazing job of organizing everything and it was such a treat to spend time eating, visiting, hanging out at the beach and at home, reminiscing over old photographs and catching up with each others' lives. We need to do it more often.


Sunday evening, Annike, Patrick, Megan, and I headed down to Palm Springs and I spent the next couple of days leisurely driving down memory lane and hanging out in graveyards--another passion of mine that I've blogged about here.


I couldn't have asked for a better trip. Any thoughts of Georgia--and my white elephant house that I can't sell, my day job that pays too little and stresses too much, my night job (teaching freshman history) that sucks up every spare moment of my "free" time--were steadfastly squashed. It worked pretty well. Until I left my American Express card on the hood of the rental car and drove off without it. That should have been my warning. I called immediately and AmEx made arrangements to get me a temporary card so it wasn't a big deal, really, but it made it harder to shove the unpleasant things ahead of me into the back of my mind.


To be honest, none of the things that are pissing me off are big deals. The flight home, for instance. I didn't even flinch when the no-nonsense, middle aged, heavy-set African American stewardess responded to my request to take away my leftover Diet Coke with an immediate "I ain't got no place ta put dat!" I didn't groan when we circled Birmingham for over an hour while the thunderstorms in Atlanta cleared--I wouldn't voluntarily spend an hour in Birmingham on purpose EVEN AT 40,000 feet. Getting home almost two hours late and transferring luggage into the car in a driving rainstorm didn't bother me.


The property tax bill I got today that's more than last year's bill even though the county agreed the house is worth almost 40,000 LESS didn't faze me. When I tried to have a little retail therapy this afternoon and realized I was missing yet another credit card, I took it in stride. It torpedoed the rest of my afternoon since I had to drive all over creation to get it back, but I did get it.


My kids and grandkids are healthy, I am reasonably healthy and fully employed so what am I bitching about, right? Beats the snot out of me! I think I'm just tired of worrying about things over which I have no control, but that significantly impact my life. I'm tired of slogging my guts out at a job that doesn't bring in enough money to make ends meet and having to spend what precious little time off I do have working a second job. I busted my ass to get my master's degree and cannot understand why people in my field are forced to take the proverbial vow of poverty in order to work. I love my job--at least I think I still do--but I'm getting older with every passing minute and wish I could slow down just a little.
SO. I wish I could slow down, but I can't. I wish I could curl up with the In-N-Out burger and animal style fries pictured above, but I can't. I really wish my job paid me adequately given my education and abilities, but it doesn't. I wish Clayton County wasn't so screwed up, but it is. I wish I wasn't so weighed down with worries of every kind that I leave my credit cards lying all over two states, but I am. My mom used to say "if wishes were horses then beggars would ride." I think I like Burgess Meredith's quote even better--"you can wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which gets filled first!"


Well, enough of this blah blah blah--I think it's time for chocolate chip cookies and National Lampoon's Vacation, don't you?

A woman of integrity

I ran into an old friend last week who asked me if I'd been able to sell my house yet. It's kind of a sore subject these days--I live in a beautiful home on an acre lot in a lovely neighborhood but despite two separate attempts to sell (totaling over two years on the market), I've had no takers. I'm not in distress (yet) but the house is just too big for me and much too far away from work and family to be practical. Nothing would make me happier than to sell it.

No, I told him, I haven't sold the place yet and in this economy, it's not likely that I will--maybe ever. His response caught me by surprise. "You might just have to walk away from it," he said.

Not in this lifetime. Someday they may come to drag me out of it and sell it on the courthouse steps for back taxes, but walk away from it? NEVER.

This got me thinking. I'm rocking along okay right now but it wasn't too many years ago that our financial world was in total shambles and we were in real danger of losing our home and everything in and around it. A deadly combination of unemployment, underemployment, and spectacularly stupid financial decisions left us, as my Dad was fond of saying, without a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of. My toes still curl when I remember the mailbox stuffed with letters marked FINAL NOTICE and the constant barrage of collection agency phone calls. It was bad.

Of the many thousands we owed, though, I can only remember one $200 bill that we never did pay. J.C. Penney, bless their nonexistent hearts, got impatient and wrote us off while I was in the process of scraping up the last few dollars. When I tried to pay them, I found that our account no longer existed. Everybody else got paid in full. It took a looooong time and we were, unfortunately, helped along by an unpleasant windfall or two (read: somebody died and left us a little money), but things did get better. They got a lot better when Randy finally found the job of his dreams and we were both fully employed again.

One thing that helped me through the whole miserable ordeal was a story passed down through the family about my grandmother, Ruth Hardy. Growing up, I spent many weekends, holidays, and summers at the exclusive hotel she owned in Palm Springs. By the time I was born, she was well established, a Palm Springs City Councilwoman, and a shrewd businesswoman. But she didn't get there overnight. The truth was, my grandfather drank away all the profits from the hotel they owned together and by the time she divorced him in 1939, he had left the business--and her--with staggering debts. Her creditors offered her a settlement--she could walk away from her debts for pennies on the dollar.

She refused. Give me time, she told them, and I'll pay you back every cent. The "rest of the story" in her own words (as quoted in Palm Springs Life Magazine, October 1963):

"There were so many of them that finally my creditors got together and served me as a group and put a keeper from the sheriff's office at a desk (in the hotel lobby) to take in any money for bills. The keeper was a nice young man, embarrassed at the job he was doing. I soon made him a good friend. On the second day, he wore civilian clothes and for the next two weeks, while collecting money, he served as room clerk. And I never had a better one."

She did pay back every creditor in full--despite being told in 1933 that she was "doomed to failure" because Palm Springs was "way over-built" and didn't need another hotel!

I'm really lucky to have this published magazine account of that old family story. The article details many of the struggles she went through to become successful and it's a great read. But what strikes me most about the article is what she DIDN'T say. There is not one single word in it about my grandfather and his drinking. It would have been so easy (and truthful) for her to say that it was entirely my grandfather's fault for getting her in such a mess in the first place. But she didn't.

I hope I learned something from the financial mess we were in years ago. But even if I didn't, I will never forget the example Ruth set for me. I'll never walk away from a financial obligation. It may take me years to get it paid and things might get lots worse before they get better. But they will get better.

Ingleside Inn, Palm Springs, California (circa 1960)

I see dead people

Okay, I'm hooked. Thanks a lot, Maureen Keillor, for introducing me to yet another history geek obsession: Find-a-grave.com.

For those of you unfamiliar with family history research (what I like to call "Crack Cocaine for the Over-50 Set"), this is a website containing literally millions of names that volunteers have posted from cemeteries across the world. You can search for famous people or just the ordinary folks that grace your family tree and if you're lucky, find out where they're buried. This can be a gold mine if you've exhausted more traditional records repositories and still don't know enough about that elusive ancestor. Knowing where they're planted can open all kinds of doors to death certificates and obituaries and other ways to find the information needed to knit the generations together.

Such was the case with my uncle, Sidney Francis Atkins, Jr. Since I'm not posting this from home, a photograph of Sidney will have to wait, but Sidney was my father's half-brother. My grandfather, Arthur Jackson Hardy Sr. married a woman by the name of Nettie Blanche Kirby Atkins. What happened to Mr. Atkins is a mystery (hopefully, not for long), but when she married my grandfather, Nettie already had a little boy by the name of Sidney. When my Dad came along, Sidney was probably five or six years old and I've got some smashing pictures of the two of them together. The only other tidbit of info that I've ever had about Sidney is that while my Dad was stationed overseas during World War II, he was planning to meet up with Sidney (who was also in the service), but Sidney died before the meeting could take place. It didn't take much to locate a smidgen of veteran's info on Sidney--the National Archives has records showing that he enlisted in the Army from Jim Wells County, Texas, and that he achieved the rank of 1st Lt. before dying in 1945 of a "non-battle related" cause. Up until just two weeks ago that's all I knew.

Then I stumbled on his name on Find-a-grave.com. It turns out that he's buried in Lockhart Cemetery, about 50 miles south of Austin, Texas. An e-mail to the volunteer, Judy Rogers, who posted his name resulted in an almost immediate response. Yes, she lives near Lockhart and yes, she'd love to go photograph the headstone so that I can see what other information might be engraved there. It turns out she has relatives buried just over the Alabama state line in Cleburne County, so I volunteered to take photographs of those graves in gratitude for her willingness to shed some light on Sidney. Bright and early this morning I was headed west, armed with my camera, her e-mail, and a short list of photo requests from other people who have relatives in the same cemetery.

Too. Much. FUN! I only encountered two problems and the first turned out to be a non-problem, but it did make me pause to think once or twice.

First, the cemetery was 50 miles from NOWHERE, near a town that can't even be described as a "wide place in the road." A "wide place in the road" would be too big. We're talking a rusty mobile home with underwear hanging on the clothesline about every three miles or so, and that's IT. I did my best to stop imagining the faint strains of a banjo when I got out of my car to ask directions at the only retail establishment I'd seen for about 30 miles. The crumbling shack was covered in Skoal and Budweiser advertisements but the hand-lettered sign proclaimed "Yes, we're OPEN," so I ventured inside. The man behind the counter had most of his teeth and although he looked at me like I was nuts when I asked where Blake Cemetery was, he was perfectly cordial. If there was a shotgun behind the counter, at least he didn't wave it at me.

I got back in the car, headed down the road according to his directions, and promptly slowed down to avoid hitting the biggest bloodhound I've ever seen, ambling across the dusty road to the shade of a giant oak tree. Dunno if the dog belonged to the guy on the tractor at the side of the road, but I slowly cruised through the clouds of dust he was generating and forged on.

When I found the cemetery, just off Cleburne County Road #10, I ran into my second problem. I was totally unprepared for off-roading in Alabama. My car, affectionately known as The Golden Calf, had no trouble negotiating the deeply rutted, muddy hill that led to the center of the graveyard, but when I got out, I realized I was in trouble. I was wearing capris, a t-shirt, sandals, and a baseball cap. The capris had no pockets, so, ever mindful of the isolated spot I was in, I tried stuffing my cell phone in one side of my waistband and my car keys in the other. One hand held the papers and pen I needed to transcribe names and the other held my camera.

Making a mental note to bring some kind of backpack next time, I found the first grave I was looking for rather quickly and, hardly able to contain my excitement, I knelt down to frame the best shot. Now, mind you, most of the cemetery was overgrown with all manner of noxious weeds and underbrush and, unfortunately, I missed the fact that there were fire ants EVERYWHERE. It's a damn shame no one was there to film this creaky old lady, dancing all over the graves, slapping the offending bugs with my paperwork while the cell phone and car keys fell out of each pant leg. After a quick trip back to the car, I started over again with cell phone and car keys inside the camera case hung around my neck. Better.

By the time I finished with all the photo requests, I was bug-eaten, sweaty, sunburned, and dirty. What a way to spend a day off, right? But I ended up with a number of bonus shots--including the one at the top of this page. There were several other babies resting peacefully in that graveyard--this was one of the few who lived long enough to be given a name. At least now, their information will be included for Blake Cemetery on Find-a-grave.com. Hopefully someone out there will claim them and knit them securely into their own family tree. I couldn't possibly think of a better way to spend my day off.




UPDATE: Sidney Francis Atkins and Arthur Jackson Hardy, Jr.
My Uncle and my Dad....

My big brother Mike

Facebook is a pretty wonderful thing. It can be a galactic time-waster and it has, unfortunately, distracted me from working on this blog (and from cleaning my bathroom...and the garage...and paying bills...and, well, you get the idea...) But it's been through Facebook that I've become reacquainted with friends I thought I'd lost many, many years ago. I've also become reacquainted, or perhaps I should say better acquainted, with family members who live in far flung locations that I don't often get to visit.

Such is the case with my nieces, Jennie, Kristen, and Brooke. I don't often comment on their Facebook "doings," but it's been such fun to read their profiles, look at their pictures, and stay up to date with their statuses every day. I tend to think of them all as sort of frozen in time at, say, about six years old, so it's fun to keep up with their grown-up lives via Facebook.

They have something in common with my own girls, too--they lost their father way, way, WAY too soon. So tonight I just wanted to put a few memories out there--stories that they've probably heard a million times, but then again, maybe not...

Mike was nine years older than me so you'd think I wouldn't know much about his early years. You'd be right, except for the fact that I'm the designated family historian and as such, I have all my mother's papers and memorabilia. It's amazing the things that mothers keep. In her papers I found a letter from my grandfather, Colonel, dated April 11, 1947. He congratulated Mother on her "darling little boy," and refers to a check he enclosed with the letter that was to be used to attend to the back yard. As Colonel put it, "I don't want any grandson of mine, especially the oldest, to have to play in the dirt like I did, through choice, when I was quite small."

I also found a tattered Better Homes and Gardens Baby Book that contains information both funny and tender. Mike was born at 1:36pm on April 9th, 1947 in Los Angeles. He was 8 pounds, 13 1/2 ounces and 22 inches long. Under "condition at birth," Mother wrote "in perfect condition." Subsequent pages are filled with all the trivial little things mother's keep track of about their babies' first years--what they eat and when they sleep and how old they are when they giggle for the first time. One entry caught my eye under "Mental Development." Where there is space to record "Further comments," Mother wrote..."sworn into Regular Army and baby blew bubbles - August 11, 1947." Apparently at the ripe old age of 18 months, Mike was already commenting on military history!

From the second grade on, the "Interests" portion of the book contains references to Mike's love of all things having to do with airplanes, ships, and space. He excelled in science, loved to build model airplanes, and enjoyed Cub Scouts and, later on, Explorer Scouts. By the ninth grade, he was reading books on Gettysburg and the Civil War--these are subjects, along with the history of World War II, that he would study intently for the rest of his life. He was an excellent swimmer and an asset to the Canoga Park High School swim team. I can remember watching him do the butterfly--have never understood how anybody can do that stroke and he was SO good at it!

Some of my earliest memories of Mike date from his teenaged years. I remember the day he got his first muscle car--a metallic blue Chevelle Super Sport. It wasn't long before he wrapped it around a telephone pole while trying to impress a carload of girls, but boy he loved that car while he had it! I also remember when he broke his collarbone, bodysurfing at, I think, Zuma Beach. To this day, the smell of A&D Ointment takes me back to Baltar Street and I can see him standing in the den, swathed in bandages. I remember the really vicious migraine headaches he used to get and how he'd try to manage the pain by lying in bed with blankets over his windows to shut out the light. I always tried to tiptoe past his room at those times because I knew the pain made him sensitive to sound as well.

He had a temper. It may have been his skateboard that I tripped over when I was about 10 years old. I fell flat on my back, knocking the wind out of me for the first time. After laying there for a few minutes, gasping like a fish out of water, I got up and heaved the offending object into the street. I think it was Mike that chased me into the house and nearly put his fist through the bathroom door that I locked behind me. In reality, I probably deserved to be pounded. I can remember answering the phone once when his girlfriend, I think her name was Carol, called. I held the receiver out so she could hear and hollered loudly for Mike, saying that "Debbie" was on the line. When he picked up the extension, I listened just long enough to hear her say "WHO is DEBBIE!" I know, I know, but that's what punk little sisters do, after all.

He went off to college at Loyola University in Los Angeles and was a pre-med student for almost all four years until he took a computer class as an elective during his senior year and fell in love with the technology. Four years at a Catholic university and I can still remember the Thanksgiving prayers he used to offer: "Good food, good meat, good God let's eat!" Irreverent, yes, but a tad more polished than his alternate version: "Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub, thank you, God, for all this grub. YAAY GOD!"

As the years passed and he traveled the world, becoming a successful and sought-after troubleshooter for an assortment of banking institutions, he really did seem to become larger than life for me. But at some point during those years, he also seemed to realize the importance of family. Starting about the time I got married, he began a tradition of calling me on my birthday every single year. London, the Philippines, San Francisco, New York--it didn't matter where he was--or where I was--I could always expect that call. It's one of the things that hurt the most after we lost him on December 18, 1995. It's also the reason I really hate my birthdays even today. Not because I'm getting older, but because I miss those calls more and more with every passing year.

When Mike was only 18 months old, he had his first x-ray. It was a chest x-ray, taken to investigate a heart abnormality that would eventually take his life. Truth be told, there was never a damn thing wrong with his heart. The organ in his chest that pumped blood had serious problems from the very beginning. But his heart was quite perfect--and solid gold.

Boys will be boys

I've had a most excellent day today with my two grandsons, Nathan and Connor! It actually started last night with popcorn, Harry Potter, and a sleepover and continued into today with breakfast at Chick-fil-A, playtime at Monkey Joe's, toy shopping at Target, and the 3-D version of the movie "Monsters v. Aliens." We capped it off with some time at the park in Fayetteville followed by snacks and Bug Juice at the gas station store.

I think they had a really good time, but they couldn't possibly have enjoyed it more than I did. I had forgotten how much I miss dirty sweat socks, grubby hands, and giggling over phrases like "I could eat an ELEPHANT," and "Who farted?" At some point during the time we spent in the car, the conversation turned to GameBoys and what kind of games their Daddy played when he was a little boy. That got me thinking...

We traveled a LOT when my boys, Bryan and Benjamin, were little. With Dad in the Navy, it was not only inevitable, but expected. One of my favorite trips was a visit to England in the fall of 1986. We were living in southern Spain at the time, and at $10 a ticket, we couldn't resist hopping a MAC (Military Air Command) flight from Madrid to Mildenhall (by way of Aviano, Italy and Ramstein, Germany). It was a long flight in a cargo plane that I've mostly forgotten except for one memory. The Air Force crew flying the plane were some of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet. Mindful of these three little kids they had on board, they were kind enough to invite Annike and Bryan up to the cockpit to watch as we made our nighttime flight over the English Channel (I don't remember if BJ made it up there or not--he may have been asleep at the time). Anyway, Bryan happened to take his brand new GameBoy up to the cockpit with him and the flight crew were fascinated with it. I wasn't in on the conversation, but somehow they talked Bryan into letting them borrow it and I think they put the plane on autopilot for the next hour or so while they had a go at Doctor Mario or whatever game Bryan had with him at the time!

We landed safely at Mildenhall and spent the next couple of weeks driving the length and breadth of England, Scotland, and Wales. It was a terrific trip (and the impetus for finally potty-training BJ!). After almost three weeks of stuffing five people and a massive sack of "nappies" in a car the size of a Mini-Cooper, Randy had had enough. The minute we got back home to Spain, BJ was out of diapers. But that's another story!

Suffice it to say, I can't begin to express how much I miss those days that I thought would make me nuts at the time! Here are a few pictures taken during that trip.

Thank GOODNESS boys will be boys!

Beware of falling fruit

The girls and I were hiking in beautiful Waimea Valley during our January trip to Hawaii when I spotted this sign. Naturally, my first thought was "oooh, this would make SUCH an excellent blog post title!" I've been waiting ever since for fate to hand me a day to match. It was today.

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I work in the archives of the Atlanta History Center, smack dab in the middle of the most posh neighborhood in Atlanta. We are free and open to the public but thanks to our location, we are generally (and mercifully) free from the, shall we say, interesting patrons that find their way into many public libraries. Our patrons almost exclusively fall into one of four categories: a) elderly folks researching their family histories, b) students of all ages conducting historic research, c) absent minded professors intent on getting their next book published, and d) spouses and domestic partners of those in categories a through c that get dragged along for the ride.

I guess I need to add a new category, coined by one of my co-workers, for the woman who visited us today: Wackadoodles. We wondered if she really belonged with us when she floated to the reference desk, signed in using a made-up patron number and the name "Fatima," and proceeded directly to the computers. My co-worker walked over and asked her if he could help. She said, yes, would he bring her a cup of coffee? When he explained that we allow no food or drink, she sort of sniffed as if she'd suddenly found herself seated in a sub-par restaurant, and turned her attention back to the computer. For the next several hours, we watched as she intently surfed the internet, filled out online applications and printed dozens of real estate listings while alternately mumbling to herself, wadding up paper balls and tossing them across the table, and making odd gestures at the computer screen with her hands.

Now, I should probably point out that mumbling to oneself and making odd gestures at the computer screen is behavior that we frequently see from a lot of our patrons--in fact, it's behavior we occasionally indulge in ourselves. I think it's part and parcel with being a history geek. This woman was not a history geek. At one point, when I walked past her, I noticed that she was most definitely not conducting historic research on the net. The hot pink logo on the screen (in the shape of a bunny's head) gave it away. People may read Playboy for the articles, but I doubt they have much to do with history.

It wasn't until she started walking laps around the Reading Room and pulling books from the shelves to stack them in odd piles on the tables that we finally decided it was time for Fatima to leave. After security escorted her off the property, we found that when she wasn't with us, she had been alternately scattering papers around the atrium of our building and trying to clean the bathrooms. She left what looked like a hypodermic needle in the ladies room--further investigation determined that it did not contain a needle and that she had apparently been using it to whiten her teeth (when she wasn't cleaning the bathrooms and surfing porn sites on our computers, that is).

So. I guess it's to be expected that while working with the public you're occasionally going to stumble upon a nut or two. I could write a book about some of the wacky people we deal with on the phone and via e-mail. But this is the first up-close-and-personal experience I've had and I have to admit it was a tad unsettling. I felt sorry for her. Maybe she just has a cell phone with AT&T...

I'm on MyFace now! No wait...Spacebook? FaceSpace? Oh yeah--FACEBOOK...sigh...I'm too old for this...

It's been an odd month already. I spent a wonderful three days in Tampa with my most adorable Hannah last weekend (and her Mommy and Daddy) and Benjamin got me all hooked up with MyFace...er, Facebook, which I think might be kinda cool. I promise to post some terrific pictures of my trip and my baby Hannah in a much happier post tomorrow. And I promise to get excited about Facebook. But not now.

Right now, I'm feeling pretty much like my poor dashboard hula girl (photo above). She was a perky addition to my daily drive, wobbling at just the right moments and reminding me of our Hawaiian adventures even while I was stuck in traffic. But I guess the Florida sun was too much for her--we left the car parked in one of Tampa's mall parking lots for just a couple hours. When we returned, the glue that held her together had completely melted. One gentle turn out of our parking space and she sagged to starboard--another turn and she slipped sadly to the floor, trailing her grass skirt and wobbly spring behind her. Poor thing, I know just how she feels...

You see, I've had to do battle with the dreaded AT&T Customer No-service Department no less than TWO times in the past month. TWO TIMES. This is enough to drive anybody to drink and since I don't drink, it's been enough to drive me stark raving nuts. The thesis couldn't do it but AT&T certainly did.

It all started...well, let me back up. My pathological hatred of AT&T dates back many years and covers more altercations than I can cover in a single blog post. This most current round began innocently enough. About five inches of nonstop rain last month resulted in the need for my septic tank to be pumped. (Don't get me started on septic tanks or this huge house I own that has become the quintessential white elephant/albatross around my neck). Anyway, the tank needed pumping. To do this, the septic tank guys had to bring a small backhoe into my yard. The procedure went smoothly enough until they came across my phone line which some AT&T moron had laid right across the top of the tank. This isn't the first time normal maintenance of my home has resulted in a cut phone line. They laid the phone line about 3 inches under the soil right along the back of the house when it was built. Just after I moved in, a friend tried to rototill the ground around the foundation in the back yard so I could plant some flowers and the rototiller cut the line. THAT experience left me without phone service for days and the AT&T morons who came to fix it, completely tore up the brand new sod in my front yard. But I digress.

SO--after the great septic tank debacle, I had no phone, no internet, and was, of course $400 poorer for the whole septic tank repair thing. TWELVE calls to AT&T later, using my Verizon cell phone, I finally managed to get a real person on the line. For the first eleven calls I was only able to reach a recording--some sickeningly cheery woman's voice that continuously chirped, "I'll just ask you a few questions so that we can determine what is wrong with your phone" and then the line would go dead. The first few calls I managed to get past that question without losing it. Along about call number 5, I found myself screaming into the receiver, "I KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH MY F*&^ING PHONE, THE F*&^ING PHONE LINE IS CUT!!!" Anyway, after twelve calls, I managed to reach what I assume was a real person. This one had all the personality of a tree stump, but miracle of miracles, I was only without phone service for about 24 hours. By the time I got home from work the next day, the phone line was fixed.

But they weren't finished with me yet. Did I mention I have a Verizon cell phone now? That's the only reason I was able to call AT&T from my house--I previously had AT&T cell phone service and was only able to get a signal at my house if I stood in my bathtub and stuck my face through the window blinds. But that's a whole 'nother story. Suffice it to say that I changed cell phone providers last December to Verizon and have been blissfully happy ever since.

Until I tried to pay my final AT&T cell phone bill. I have always paid it online so I went online the day we came home with our Verizon phones and tried to pay the final bill. I was locked out of my online account. The message said that online services were only available to current customers. So I called AT&T to find out what I owed. They told me it was over $200. This is more than twice my normal bill, so I asked for an itemized bill to be sent to me. They said sure. Two weeks later, I get a single sheet bill with nothing but the total amount due, plus a few dollars because now it's late. I call again. Please send me a full itemized bill. Sure, no problem. Two weeks later, another single sheet. I call again. Can't you just allow me access to the online version, I ask? No, can't do that, but we will send you a full itemized bill. This time, I'm smart enough to at least write down the name of the idiot I spoke to. Almost a month passes. I get home from Tampa to a message on my answering machine. AT&T has sent me to a collection agency. After a most unpleasant conversation with the collection agent that concluded with him hanging up on me, (I confess, I was NOT nice on the phone) I call the collection agency a second time. This time I'm given to a supervisor who tells me quite frankly that AT&T will probably never send me a full bill but it would be best if I dealt with AT&T directly because there's nothing much they can do for me.

TWO AT&T customer disservice supervisors later, I still have no online access to my account, no full itemized bill, and no assurances that they will ever send one. By now, you've probably been reading long enough for Jimmy Buffet's "The Asshole Song" to begin playing. I apologize for that, since this is a G-rated blog, but I felt the song was just too perfect to pass up. It's my Ode to AT&T.

So yeah, I suppose I should be all excited about MyFace or SpaceFace or whatever the heck Benjamin signed me up for, but to be honest, I'm still too ticked off. Those of you who read this blog AND participate in Facebook, feel free to post your comments about your Customer Disservice experiences on my wall. In the meantime, I guess I should just be grateful that my toilets flush. Too bad I can't flush AT&T down my toilet...but ya know, that would SO be worth another $400 septic tank repair...

Southern comfort...

It doesn't snow very often in my neck of the woods--about 25 miles south of Atlanta--but when it does, it's an event. The joke is that whenever the local weather guessers predict even a sprinkling of the white stuff, every grocery store across the metropolitan area is immediately innundated with people who, for some odd reason, clean out the shelves of every carton of milk, every loaf of bread, and every case of beer. Bread. Milk. Beer. This is the mantra, apparently, of Atlantans and the required provisions for dealing with an inch or two of snow. I don't know what they do in Alaska when it snows, but I think it's safe to say that folks there don't careen wildly through the streets to the nearest Piggly Wiggly and then elbow each other out of the way to fill their grocery carts with bread, milk, and beer.

Anyway, what we Atlantans generally hope for is enough snow to cancel school and close businesses but not enough to have to shovel since none of us are ever prepared for the snowfall that we do, occasionally, get. Case in point: snow started falling this morning on my way to church. Big, fat, squishy flakes that immediately melted on my windshield. By the time I left services (early, by the way), it had switched over to serious snow and was about an inch and a half deep on every surface of my car. Do I have a snow scraper? No. Do I have waterproof outer garments or shoes? No. What I did have was a single stray CD case that Benjamin had given me with a collection of classical/church music. Out came the CD. I used the case to scrape the fluffy stuff from my windshield but by the time I got a small section cleared, the CD case disintegrated and my hands were nearly blue. (No gloves, either.) I realized too late that I should have done the passenger window as well but it was too cold to get out again. SO, like a complete and total moron, I opened the window and then tried to push the remaining sheet of snow out before it quavered slightly and then collapsed in a heap on my lap. Smooth...real smooth.

That's what we southerners do in the snow--we improvise. Bryan improvised with an aluminum coke can one wintry morning a few years ago. A couple hundred dollars (and MANY months later), Jacey ended up with a new windshield--it turns out coke cans are NOT intended for snow removal but they DO leave a lovely web of deep scratches on the glass.

SO. I'll curl up with my ancestors, some good old movies, and a few cups of cocoa this afternoon and enjoy it. It's STILL coming down and they're forecasting up to four inches by the time the storm heads on up the east coast. It really won't do me any good since I'm off tomorrow anyway. But it's fun while it lasts.

The only down side of the whole thing is what it does to the early spring vegetation here. My poor, poor daffodils!!

Time warp...

If you'll forgive me just one more brief Hawaii-related post--

We had a fairly short list of "must do's" for the trip--Pearl Harbor and the Polynesian Cultural Center were the top two on the list--but you know I just couldn't go to Hawaii without taking care of one family history related task.

In a previous blog, I wrote a little about my darling grandmother, Dardy, and shared a wonderful picture of her dancing the hula (complete with grass skirt and lei) on a deserted Hawaiian beach sometime around 1930. I neglected to mention that I also have a shot of my mother at about age 3 in much the same outfit, although clad just a tad more scantily (no top). We just could NOT resist trying to replicate those photos for the next two generations! (Oh, and thankfully, neither Dardy nor Mother wore coconut bras although those were readily available in all the shops!)

SO, without further ado, here are FOUR generations of Shutt women doing our best to hula amid the palm trees of Oahu...Mary Robbins Shutt, Margaret Osburn Shutt, Linda Susan Hardy VerHoef and Megan Trijntje VerHoef. (A special thanks to Annike for the clever photoshopping to convert our 2009 shots into sepia tones! Oh, and I should tell you the one of me is not for the faint of heart--you might wanna skip down to Megan in a hurry...;-)

By the way, we did not bring the grass skirt home and I'm SO sorry I didn't...Tuesday is Mardi Gras at the archives and I would have LOVED to wear it in the parade (and you thought librarians were boring--wait'll you see the pictures of THAT...)

Hallowed ground...

I have spent a good many years studying World War II history. Not exactly sure why it holds such a fascination for me--perhaps it has something to do with the way it makes me feel close to my Dad, who I lost in 1990.

At any rate, I've been extremely lucky to have actually visited a few places that have had special significance for me as I studied the war in the European Theatre. My 2006 trip to High Wycombe, England, included an unforgettable, behind the scenes, quite personal tour of the former 8th Army Air Forces Headquarters where my Dad spent the war. More recently, here at home, I've driven down the same streets that German prisoners of war walked through during the summer of 1945 on their way from their camp to the packing shed where they canned peaches in a tiny town just a few miles from my house--that experience ultimately led to my master's degree since my study of the camp was the topic of my thesis.

Many years ago I watched a television program about the USS Arizona. It included video of the drops of oil that are still rising to the surface from the wreckage, just a few feet below the water. Some say the drops are tears--that the ship still weeps for the loss of her crew. I was awestruck. Some years later, while visiting the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., Randy and I stood transfixed as we listened to videotaped interviews with the men who survived that day--first responders who talked about pulling men from the flaming water, sometimes leaving the victim's skin behind. One corpsman remembered that there were so many burn victims that day, the hospital dispensaries ran out of alcohol for sterilizing equipment and wounds. Some intrepid sailor solved the shortage by separating the local Officer's Clubs from their entire stock of booze; they used the stuff in place of medicinal alcohol.

Anyway, Pearl Harbor sort of became my quest. It's been at the top of my bucket list for decades now and I just wanted to see it more and more the older I got. It was everything I had heard about and more. One particular surprise was the fact that the introductory film that visitors are shown while they wait for the Navy launch to take them across to Ford's Island includes actual footage of the first Japanese torpedo hitting the ship at just before 8am, December 7, 1941. I never knew such footage existed. Most of us are familiar with the now famous photograph of the ship's tower, listing horribly to starboard as it burns out of control.

But seeing the ship as it looked moments earlier, before the attack, when 1,177 men were still looking forward to their Sunday activities, and then seeing that torpedo hit--

Here's a few photos we were able to take during our brief stay on that hallowed ground...

Three's the charm...

SO. I guess I had a lot of reasons for wanting to go to Hawaii (after all, who wouldn't want to go) and I'll be sharing a few of those reasons in future posts. But the fact that our trip was spectacularly successful is really something of a miracle. You see, it's the third time I have tried to make the trip. To say that the previous two tries were unsuccessful is sort of like saying that the Titanic was buoyancy-challenged.

My first attempt occurred somewhere around January of 1980. Mother and Daddy rented a large home in Maui for the purpose of having a family reunion. At the time, Randy and I were starving college students so they graciously paid our way to the islands and even provided us with a little bit of pocket money. We were not able to take Annike, however, and as a new mom who had never been separated from her little darling for more than a few hours, I was totally panicked at the prospect of flying a few thousand miles (each way) over water and spending a whole week away from my baby. Had any of us known what was in store, we could have saved ourselves the trouble and spent the week at home, sitting under a warm shower, shoving money down the drain.

We arrived in Honolulu on a Saturday afternoon, took a white-knuckle special over to Maui, and settled in for a week on the beach. Sunday was cloudy, but warm--and coming from the snow and near freezing temperatures of Utah, we didn't complain. Monday it hit us. According to newspaper accounts, it was the "worst disaster to hit Maui since World War II." Some tropical cyclone spun out of the eastern Pacific and slammed into the islands with a vengeance. Apart from spending day after day stuck in the house, the only two clear memories I have of the trip are trying to find an open store to buy groceries and watching a car parked near the shoreline get washed out to sea, and later watching the floodwaters rise up to our calves INSIDE the rental car while we made a mad dash to the airport for yet another white-knuckle special back to Honolulu. It was like something out of a cartoon--we opened the doors of the car at the airport and a little Niagara Falls spilled out of each opening. I don't remember how much Daddy paid the rental car company for the damage, but it was significant. Here's a picture of our first day:

And here's a picture of what the rest of the vacation looked like:

Total. Freaking. Disaster.

Many years later, Mother and I got to talking about trying to go again. Her sister, Mary Pleasants, had been born in Hawaii and Mother had lived there briefly before Pearl Harbor and the two of them had been back many times and just loved it. Mary was able to book us rooms at the Hale Koa (the luxury hotel reserved for military members and retirees) right on Waikiki beach so we decided to make it an estrogen fest and go together along with my girls, Annike and Megan. We were scheduled to leave from Charlotte on December 24, 2003, but the girls and I were going to drive up to Charlotte the night before and spend the night with Mother and Mary in order to catch our flight the next morning. While we were packing, we got a call from my cousin, Lynn, that mother had been admitted to the hospital with severe abdominal pain and that we'd best come now. A frantic three and a half hour drive later, I arrived at the emergency room to be told that she had slipped away just about twenty minutes earlier. I've always wondered why I was able to travel from Athens, Greece, to Los Angeles in time to see my father before he passed away, but was unable to drive 260 miles from Atlanta to Charlotte in time to see my mother.

SO. Not only did we never make that trip, the simple thought of going always tended to bring back the painful memory of losing mother. God, she was SO much fun! Always ready to travel, always ready to get up and go. Here's a favorite picture of her, on one of her many trips with Grand Circle Travel (this one might have been the trip to China--not sure):

We completely dropped the idea of going until just a couple of months ago when my "bucket list" started calling again (more about that later). I gingerly began thinking about it, quietly began talking about it, made the reservations while holding my breath and keeping all fingers, toes and eyes crossed, but only Annike was brave enough to go public. Benjamin thought it was supposed to be a surprise for Megan because she never said a word about it until he finally asked her the day before she was to leave. She told him she couldn't bear to hardly think about it much less talk about it lest the Hawaiian Vacation Gods were listening and decided to slam dunk us yet again.

BUT. Three is aparently the charm. Every single day there, I thought of Mother and Daddy and Mike and Randy and how they all should have been there to enjoy it this time.

But we did our damndest to enjoy it for them. Aloha!

Mahalo...

Mahalo is the Hawaiian word for thank you. And I am incredibly thankful today to be sitting in my ocean front room, watching the palm trees sway in the breeze and the waves roll onto the shore while the sun rises on yet another glorious picture-postcard perfect day.

How and why I got here is the topic of a future post, but part of the "why" lies in the fact that yesterday should have been my thirty-second wedding anniversary and today makes exactly seven years and three hours since I lost my sweetheart, lover, and best friend. Both days are emotional minefields and I never, ever, try to go to work or do anything else that requires me to behave sensibly or maintain any sense of normalcy.

SO. Yesterday I parked my fat fanny on a North Shore, Oahu beach with Jimmy Buffett's latest book in one hand and a virgin pina colada in the other. Today I will return to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie and finish up what I didn't have time for last night--perhaps take a hula lesson or get a Fijian tattoo. Anything's possible.

And tomorrow I'll be able to face the world again which, now that I think of it, shouldn't be too hard when it looks like the picture at the top of this page...

Road Trip 102: Packing Do's and Don'ts...

Well, thanks entirely to the heroics of Travel Agent Man, I am actually planning to take a holiday very soon. That's all I'm going to say since I'm just superstitious enough to think that if I talk about it out loud, it might not happen. Remember the major appliances and thumbdrives...

Anyway, in the process of planning this trip I've naturally started thinking about packing for it. As a mother of 4 and grandmother of 5, I have become an expert at packing. Making sure I have the requisite clothing, toiletries, drugs, reading material, and credit cards has almost become second nature. I feel like my dear friend Barbara Toberg who, when our children were small and our husbands in the Navy, used to say "Give me a diaper and a MasterCard and I can go anywhere." And we did.

Now I'm not to the point yet where I need the diaper, but the point here is that I'm pretty good at making sure I pack lightly, but thoroughly. Making sure the luggage actually makes it to my destination with me is another matter.

One memorable family road trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, began on a morning when I woke up with a migraine. Hardly able to put a coherent thought together, I loaded up on my drug of choice (in those days, massive quantities of aspirin), tossed a few things in a suitcase, whispered to Randy that my suitcase was ready to be loaded in the car, and then headed out to the front seat with a cold washcloth over my eyes, hoping I wouldn't end up driving the porcelain bus before the drive up the mountains even started. Three hours later, migraine gone, we happily arrived in Gatlinburg where I realized that NObody had bothered to put my suitcase in the car. We spent our first evening in Gatlinburg in the local WalMart, buying cheap underwear and a new toothbrush for me. The rest of the trip didn't get much better.

The picture above sort of illustrates another part of packing at which I've become expert. When you travel in small cars with large children, as we did for most of our married life, it becomes necessary to approach packing the car as you would a giant jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces go together. Now, lest you think I was the pro at loading up the car, let me set the record straight. Randy was the pro. He really was. I became the pro at keeping my mouth shut for two reasons:

1. I really was no good at all at shoving 497 pieces of luggage, diaper bags, sporting equipment, stuffed animals, and other assorted paraphenalia into a 3 foot square trunk. Randy, on the other hand, approached the task with the same skill required to build the pyramids at Giza. He really was a pro.

2. Many of our family trips were to visit my mother and aunt in Charlotte, North Carolina (where the picture above was taken). My mother and my aunt were experts in their own right. They loved to send us home with their cast-offs du jour. It became something of a game..."Susie, I've got this umptiefratz that would be just the thing for your bedroom/kitchen/craft project/living room/child. It might be a tad old, but all you have to do is paint it/wash it/remodel it/wait 5 years til they grow into it/buy something else to go with it/ and it would be perfect!" After about 30 minutes of polite refusals, followed by equally polite but ever more insistent encouragement, Randy would finally smile through clenched teeth and say, "Sure, we'd love it!" Then he'd have to find a place for it in the car, at least until we cleared the city limits when he'd pull into the nearest gas station and toss it in the dumpster.

SO--it was just NOT strategically advisable for me to try to coach him on packing the car. Since it was my fault that we were loaded to the gills, and I was crap at trying to load it anyway, I just learned to stay in the house and keep my mouth shut and try not to look worried at the Grapes- of-Wrath-style bungee cord job on the roof of the car. Truth be told, he WAS very good at it. Give the man a set of bungee cords and he could load the contents of a small house on the top of our car. He ALWAYS did an excellent job and we ALWAYS got everything home in perfect condition.

Except for one spectacular failure.

Bryan had just graduated from high school in the summer of 1999 and had decided he wanted to move out west. Always happy to have any excuse to head back home, we decided to combine moving Bryan to Arizona with a family vacation. Annike wasn't at home that summer, so it was just Bryan, Benjamin, Megan, me and Randy. And our luggage. And everything Bryan owned. TV, VCR, stereo system roughly the size of a pony, assorted car parts, books, CDs, clothes, you name it--Bryan wanted to take it. And, of course, the TV, VCR, and stereo system roughly the size of a pony just COULDN'T go on the roof, so it all went in the back deck of our older model Ford Taurus station wagon, and all our luggage went on the roof. Bungee cords everywhere. It was a brilliant packing job. The only drawback was that somebody figured Megan would have more fun in the back deck behind the stereo equipment so she ended up squashed against the back window like one of those Garfield suction cup toys.

Anyway, all packed and ready to go, we lumbered out of the driveway in the sweltering June heat, rolled up the windows, turned on the air conditioning and felt a blast of....HOT air. Nothing but hot air. No a/c. In June. In Georgia. For a 2,000 mile trip to Phoenix. Did I mention this was in June?

Well, there was nothing for it but to get started and hope that the a/c fairy would visit us at some point and start sprinkling some cold air our way. After negotiating the 10 miles of side streets to the freeway, we were just merging into six lanes of traffic on Interstate 75, hot air blasting, Megan's pink face barely visible in the rear view mirror behind the stereo equipment, both large teenaged boys plugged into their portable CD players, when we hear Megan say, "Uh oh."

That's all. Just a quiet little "Uh oh." Before I'm even aware of what's happened, Randy cuts loose with a stream of highly colorful language, and we're merging back to the right, on the emergency shoulder of the freeway, and I'm looking back to see Randy's suitcase bouncing along the middle lane of traffic, spewing toilet articles and underwear across five lanes of traffic. Most of the 18 wheels on a few tractor-trailers are running over Randy's shaving kit and the rest of our suitcases are dangling precariously from the roof of the car.

Well, there are things in his suitcase that just should not be scattered across five lanes of Interstate 75 so without even thinking, I sprint from my seat, take my flip flops off for better traction, and I'm poised at the side of the road like some kind of aging track star. They say there's a special God for idiots and He was looking after us that day because just at that moment, the traffic cleared and there wasn't a car in sight for miles. Bryan and I scampered across the freeway, snatching up undies, shirts, pants, anything that hadn't been completed trashed, and we were back in the car before the next round of cars was visible, away on the horizon.

We spent the first night of that vacation in the hotel laundromat, washing the tire marks out of Randy's clothes while he went to WalMart for another toothbrush. The next day, Megan was happily esconced in the back seat between the boys, and the luggage was in the back deck.

20+ years of perfect packing ruined by one measly failure. I think the bungee cords are still resting quietly someplace on I-75.

I got FIVE grandbabies and a diploma for Christmas. What did you get?

Okay, so I'm stealing shamelessly from Bryan and Jacey's blog, but their title is just too good to resist! Without further ado, here's a slideshow of just a few of the best moments....

Are they not the cutest things you have EVER seen! Oh, and I'm apologizing in advance for this week's music choices. I realize they're a tad irreverent, but after all--Christmas is over, and you really haven't lived until you've heard Porky Pig and Bob Rivers butcher Blue Christmas and Winter Wonderland! Enjoy!