Home at last

Home - Recorded by Phillip Phillips

Hold on, to me as we go
As we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along
Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear
Don't pay no mind to the demons
They fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you’re not alone
Cause I’m going to make this place your home

settle down, it'll all be clear
don't pay no mind to the demons 
they fill you with fear
the trouble it might drag you down
if you get lost you can always be found

just know you're not alone
cause i'm gonna make this place your home


My sister is back where she belongs. 

Lost time

There are a few things in our lives that change everything. A few weeks ago, I had one of those moments.  I got a call-- my mom received a letter. From her daughter.  Her first daughter.

I have been looking for my sister most of my adult life.  We're just 22 months apart and both of us were raised as onlies, with much older siblings.  Her sister is 12 years her senior - mine are 7 and 9 and did not grow up in my house.  Damn lonely childhoods for us both.

I watched a movie tonight called "People Like Us".  Rotten Tomatoes said it was corny and contrived. Obviously written by people who haven't been in this kind of situation and don't know anyone who has.  Otherwise they would understand the instinct to watch without being revealed, to understand without being exposed.  I remember the first real glimpse I got of my sister.  My stomach flipped over. 31 years of looking and there she was.  There she was.  And she looks so much like my mother, the person I probably love more than anyone else in the whole world. I wished I could have just watched her for a while.  Before all my emotions and my sense of responsibility to my mother's emotional state overwhelmed me.  This movie - it might not have been Shakespeare but it was written from the heart from someone who has been there. And I got it. It's a very big world of for some of us, there's not many places where we belong. Blood relationships can be a unique kind of safety.  The proverbial shelter in the storm.

31 years I had a huge hole in my life.  While other people talked about their fights, their jokes and their memories, I had an empty place where my sister should have been.  Now that place is healed over, but there's a scar there I keep fingering, an impulse I have to touch what used to hurt so much.  I don't know where this relationship will lead.  I am squarely in the middle of my anticipated life expectancy.  So if I have another 45 years, what will they be like and where will she fit?

There was always one big question in my life. Where was she?  Now that one is answered, but it's replaced with others.

waiting room

I am an expert at being unemployed. I worked for a year and then...then I was laid off. It was a great job with great people. I was ready to settle in. Settle in to the company, to Wichita, to a new phase of my life. Now I am in suspension again. Waiting to hear about a job up North - Cedar Falls IA or Waukesha, WI. And in the meantime I read, do puzzles, crochet, bake, take lots of naps. It sounds wonderful but these are the kinds of days one should have once a month - not every day.

There is a cherry crisp in the oven. And I am in the waiting room of my life and career - again. Waiting, waiting, waiting for something to happen.

update to no one

I have no followers and I don't give this out to anyone anymore because it doesn't seem all that profound or interesting. No hopes of a book deal here.

It's been nearly a year since I wrote anything and what a year it was. Never did I ever imagine I would be separated from my work family and in such an ugly way. Never did I think I would be out scrambling for a job again, going to interviews and being told "no thanks". It's humiliating as hell. I wish I had the good fortune of marrying someone who just wanted me to stay home and keep house. Have his babies. Work only if it amused me to do so. Alas, I have somehow become the primary breadwinner of the family and so I feel an enormous pressure to find another job as quickly as I can. I feel like I'm bailing out a boat with a sieve.

I think every day about how it all went wrong at PBI. I dream about it a lot. I try to draw strength from my AT experience and remember what I endured as I hiked those 40 miles up and down mountains that seem more than anything to be the literal form of my emotional and work life. I try to tell myself again that I can. I can. Just baby steps. That's all I need to do. One more tiny step: a half-step even. Because moving forward is what I came for.

I'm just ready for the cool breezes and the beautiful vistas, already.

Freshwater Mermaid Dreams

In dark water, just over my head
Under the cypress
and one breath away.

I see you but you do not see me.
Your image wavers
I float here, waiting.

If I disturbed your current would you feel?
the want and water
the ache and longing?

Fish dream - the river current slips by me
I love you no less
Though you slip by too.

Know what?

Dear Smurfette, this is for you.

You know whats awesome? It's Friday

You know whats cool? sustainable energy

You know whats annoying? talk radio

You know whats nice? kisses on the back of the neck

You know whats bad? how dusty and dirty my house is

You know whats dumb? waiting in line

You know what makes me angry? being treated like I'm stupid

You know whats awkward? when my mother tells me TMI stories

You know what feels good? clean sheets

You know whats the most Annoying battle ever fought? anything to do with a medical insurance company

You know whats gross? thinking too hard about where my food has been

You know what totally sucks? paying bills

You know what stinks but used to rock? owning my own home

You know what rocks? Amazon

You know whats frustrating? hurting all the time because I'm old and out of shape

You know whats entertaining? Wii Fit

You know whats funny? Tim and I ad-libbing filthy verses to the song "I got a brand new girlfriend"

Yes, Nintendo, may I have another?

Dear Wii Fit:
you kicked my ass.

Well, not my ass precisely, more my abs.

I did it. I worked through every open game in my Wii fit on the first night. I played for 2 hours and in that time was repeatedly pummeled with hula hoops, shoes and panda heads, became a giant rolling snowball and I told my Wii trainer she was an unholy bitch.

Cyber abuse, the next generation.

Back to the Y so a real breathing human can abuse my body and mock me for only doing three push-ups. Yay!

snow and wind farms and crochet and Minnesota drivers

So, being a complete needlecraft geek I decided it would be fun to go to Knit Out and Crochet 2009 at the Mall of America this weekend. I made Smurfette go with me, thank God for her. The drive up was grueling 9 1/2 hours (it was supposed to be about 7) because of the snow. I discovered a few very important things on the trip:

• When people refer to IOWA as "Idiots Out Walking Around" they are not kidding. 5" of snow on the streets and some guy is walking right down the middle of the road like it's Downtown Disney.
• The Chevy Malibu Maxx is superior in really crappy weather.
• Minnesotans don't understand about how not to block intersections. Every light takes two cycles to negotiate. Do they think they're in New York? Does half a car length change the rhythm of their entire Saturday?
  
• Subway in Minnesota doesn't have provolone cheese. Smurfette asked for provolone and they said they didn't have it. So when I made a face while asking for cheddar, the Subway guy said "you seem like you don't want cheddar". Duh, I want provolone.
• They don't believe in raisin toast either, cretins.
• Wind farms look really neat. They look planted.
• Little old ladies aren't always nice. Sometimes they are mean, line-cutting bitches.
• The Knit Out and Crochet 2009 was dumb but the hot tub at the hotel was not.
• Did I mention Minnesota drivers suck?
• Lisa Loeb's albums full of camp songs are funny even without alcohol.
• Smurfette is one of only a few people in the world that would sing "Fried Ham" underwater style with me and think it's f-ing hilarious.
• Mall of America is big but it's still just a mall.
  

last of the archived posts

Entry for August 27, 2007

It occurs to me that even though I have a regular blog, we don't have anyplace to document barbecue stuff. So here's a little catch up on BBQ2 and our results so far this year.

Lansing (KS) Brew, Blues & BBQ: 10th place ribs

Tonganoxie (KS) Days BBQ: 4th place ribs, 10th place pork

Peculiar (MO) BBQ Roundup: 5th place ribs

BBQ on the River & Fly-In, Excelsior Springs (MO): 1st in ribs

Paola (KS) Roots Festival - zip. 13th place chicken (above), which was quite an improvement over earlier entries. 8th and 13th place chicken were only separated by a few thousands of 1 point. Those things that look like shrimp is slices of boneless chicken thigh that we added for pretties.

Next competition:

Leavenworth (KS) on 9/7-8

Atchison (KS) on 9/14-15

I hope that it all comes together before the end of the season. But I'm already looking forward to next year!

September 4, 2007

it was a good weekend

Sometimes you must count yourself lucky to enjoy your family. The pretty girls in the middle are mine. The boys are what is to be expected when you have pretty girls.

We camped, we ate, we napped, we watched the fireworks, we visited the orchards. We ate ripe peaches for breakfast and it was just about perfect.

almost done archiving old posts...

Entry for August 29, 2007

We get a weekend off. Packing up the camper and the d-o-g-s and heading off to NE for a weekend of camping with Dangelina (that would be Dan & Angie). Then Penny can have more chances to back seat drive, as in the picture above. She always seems very concerned about Dad's driving.

In all honesty I will be surprised if they Dan and Angie still come. She's 7 months pregnant and wasn't all hyped up on the idea anyway. Plus that adds her two dogs to the mix so there's be 4 dogs and 4 adults sleeping in a 25 foot trailer. Yee Haw!

We actually hope to lure her with food. T bought her a bread machine off of Craigslist last night so we know she'll be eating in the future. When all else fails, there is always homemade bread. And maybe a side trip to Nebraska City to the orchards up there.

I still can't believe our little birdie is going to be a mama.

September 7, 2007

Yeah, but do they eat at Taco Bell?

My neighbor "Mel" once told T and I that he and his wife were selling their house because they "Didn't want to live in little Mexico". Unfortunately, his fat, wheyfaced fishwife, the REALTOR, couldn't sell the place and took it off the market.

Last night "Mel" commented that the family that lives between us was "getting worse all the time". "There's more than one family living there" (it's parents and adult children, maybe an occassional brother stops in). "They're working on cars for money". (GASP!) "We're going to need a giant privacy fence". "They're not going to paint their house". (For the record, we attempted once to paint our peely metal siding only once in the 13 years we've owned our house and when it didn't work, we gave up. Currently we're allowing it to peel down to bare metal. Their house is freshly painted.)

Mel and his wife plan to "report" them. They "going ot put a stop to it". Well, let's make a list of my neighborly sins: My green pool and half demolished tree house must rank higher than their cars in the driveway. What about our 25' camper in the driveway? The two big piles of broken tree limbs I plan to illegally burn this month? My crabgrass? The 3 bags of soil sitting on the crappy picnic table that have been there ALL SUMMER???

Well, as Ron White says you can't fix stupid. Or racist, apparently. Mel said he'd rather "live next to a house full of drug-dealing blacks" than the nice family I took tomatoes over to a couple of weeks ago. The same people that sent over gorditas, Mexican candy, roasted corn and any number of other things in our ongoing international food exchange. The same family whose little 2-year old girl came running over to me the other day, chubby arms extended, so I could swing her up in my arms and cuddle her for a minute, just when I was grieving super-hard for a baby of my own.

I hope Whitey puts his house back on the market soon. Maybe a nice Hispanic family will buy it. Cause right now the most offensive neighbors in my neighborhood stopped to talk the most vicious trash I've ever heard last night. I comprehend more Spanish at this point than I do the shit he was spewing. At least my Mexican neighbors can speak a language I understand.

September 10, 2007

Doin' Time at Leavenworth

Well, we headed to Ft. Leavenworth Friday night for the Riverside Resources fundraiser competition. Never in our short cooking career have we had so much go wrong in so little time. So much that I started keeping a list.

We got there at 10 minutes to 7 only to discover the cook's meeting had been moved to 7 instead of 8. It took over 10 minutes just to figure out where to put the Mallard. Then when we tried to level it, we couldn't because of the slope of the hill we were on. But we had electricity! Only, no adaptor for our plug. Then while we're trying to figure that out, the organizer comes over to do our meat inspection. The meat was still in the cooler, next to the front door of our HOUSE. Along with our sauce and chicken marinade. By now, we're starting to attract sympathetic stares and offers of spare meat. Tim's furious and we're both starving. At 7:30 we unhitch the Mallard and I head for home to pick up an adaptor, the meat cooler and chairs.

2 miles east of Leavenworth, on the way back, I attracted the most unwanted attention of a Platte County Sheriff -- 73 in a 55, $125 ticket and a lecture about deer in the dark.

After a fun frisking by the MPs I get back to deliver food, the adaptor, the meat -- but no chairs. My very put out darling had long since lost his sense of humor and we completed our long night by quietly going to work and ignoring each other as much as possible.

Next morning dawns and most everything ended up slightly overdone and falling apart again - great for a backyard but crap for competition. The gloom started settling over both of us at awards. Nothing for chicken, ribs or pork. A pitiful 9th for brisket. But surprise of surprises... with only one sad little call we finished 5th!!!! A 623, our highest cumulative score ever!

Also I saved out 2 pieces of the frozen chocolate pie (above) I turned in for the dessert category. It got high marks but still finished 14/20 -- it's hard to screw up a dessert so everyone's scores are pretty high. We savored our pie and our 5th place and packed it in for another week.

One more competition to go... Atchison is next weekend. We'll judge at Shawnee, but no more cooking. After next week we hang up our aprons until spring so we don't have any competitions overlapping the arrival of the new grandbaby.

September 17, 2007

Atchison Contest and the sad decline of my cranium

Because T and I are so competitive, it was neccessary for him to enter his own dessert this week -- his favorite cream cheese pie, the one that he used to "woo" me. I like this best with cherries and he prefers blueberries but we decided for competition to try peaches.

We headed to Atchison (with the meat, this time) and as usual, were the last ones in. We made it for the cook's meeting but got in to a land dispute with our neighbor (the organizers assigned us to the same spot) and ended up having to rehitch and move. The rest of the weekend went really well. Our schedule was relaxed, our boxes all looked nice and our neighbors were fun. At awards, Tim won FIRST PLACE in dessert, right off the bat! Then a call for 9th place chicken and I thought "Oh wow, we're on it". But no, the pork and brisket tanked and the ribs only finished 12th.

Now we have a long winter to rethink our strategies for next spring. We judge next Saturday and then go racing at the end of the month. Then a little fall camping and another year gone by.

The BBQ circuit is a killer but by the time we go to awards I get so pumped that I start planning for the next one. It's sick, really.

Sunday we went to Worlds of Fun with Karissa & Alex. No lines, cool weather, a little rain but not too much... should have been perfect. But turns out that in my advancing age, I have become motion sick on not only spinning things but also the rollercoasters. Nevertheless I gutted my way through the Patriot, the Mamba, and the Boomerang before finally resigning myself to bumper cars only. I am old and now, really, really lame to boot. At least there are no rides at the Renaissance Festival. And next weekend I get to judge someone else's BBQ for a change. Ha! Take that!

September 17, 2007

sexaaaaaay

Why oh why would my husband INSIST that I change clothes on Saturday morning (at contest) when I was so comfortable?

Could it be that I was dressed like a character from a Dr. Suess book?

He doesn't like my pants. I do. They are like t-shirts for your legs.

September 15, 2007

bitch session

I must be more specific when I go to get my hair cut. Turns out that there was a pretty big difference between "cut" and "trim". I was delighted for the first two hours, now I am just pissed. It will not do anything cute. I look vaguely like an extra fat news anchor.

On that note, am struggling to get back in the good graces of the Weight Watchers gods. 4 days on the road is making it extremely tough...

also, apparently fever blisters only come when I travel. At least this time it's only one. I popped $17 for the Abreva, let's pray I don't look like I have leprosy by tomorrow.

Time to go have mocktails with the customer, with my misspelled name badge.

"Michelle"

READ the NUMBERS!!

Not 4, not 5, but 16. I'm throwing them all on here, what the hell.

knotty girl (photo removed, sorry)

This is the picture I'm sending in for the Nat'l Association of Farm Broadcasters flyer. I'm supposed to take part in a speakers panel at their national convention in November. I feel seriously outclassed. I don't know why, I can bullshit a resume as well as anyone but every time I think about appearing as an authority for anything other than say, bbq or getting oil stains out of a blouse, I panic. My stomach goes all in knots.

Don't get me wrong. It's an honor. But I can't help feeling it should belong to someone else.

By the way, it took 20 attempts to get a picture that minimized my chins.

last of the old posts

Number 571

http://www.nationalbbqrankings.com/

As of October 9, we were ranked #571 on the national barbecue rankings. It doesn't sound that impressive until you know that there are 1300 teams on the list. If that's what one little 5th place finish can do, imagine next year when we come out swinging and pick up our first Grand Championship!

And for the record, a GC is the ONLY way I'll be competing in the American Royal. Not that it's not kinda fun but I'm not much of a partier and last Friday night was like one giant mosh pit of drunk yuppies in their fake Western finest. AND I saw what may only be described as the grossest thing I'VE ever witnessed (and that includes cancer surgery on a horse's eyeball) -- a woman sitting down in a lawn chair after launching her BBQ tidbits all over herself, her lap, her clothes, her hair, the ground. 4 years at Mizzou and I never saw so much vomit. Ugh.

I just want to cook where the teams are serious, not seriously screwed up.

And what a load of fun I am, huh?

OK, there were actually 5 and this is #4

Stupidly in Love

Look at her, her little peanutty excellence. She is the most perfect thing I ever saw. I am stupidly in love with this child, with her mom and dad and with my husband for giving me this chance to be a mana and now, a nana.

Under these circumstances no one would need drugs. Just having her tiny hand grab my finger like she's urgently trying to tell me something ("PUT ME BACK IN!" perhaps?) makes me dizzy.

The girl who rocks my world was born Sunday morning weighing in at a whopping 6.3 lbs, 18 1/2" long. Her mom was a soldier throughout a very difficult and drug free labor (she's pretty amazing her own self).

She's a tiny girl in a great big world with a posse of crazy parent and grandparents to love and adore her. Let the adventure begin!

Entry for January 25, 2008

yep. still alive.

Going to get my baby fix this weekend before a long and busy travel schedule this spring.

Ambivalent about church but still love God and counting on him to lend a Mighty Hand in a few situations:

• cousin with CRPS who just underwent amputation to try and get the pain to stop
• Certain Smurfette with ongoing health issues who needs your prayers
• My uncle, who was diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer this week
• Our kids, mommy and daddy of my peanut, daddy needs a GREAT JOB!

All prayers welcome. Sorry to be so brief and boring but Mrs. Fix-It has other things on her mind...

old post #2

All I ever wanted

I grew up thinking i"d be the momma some day. For a while I thought, "It will happen, just .... later." It never did. For reasons much too complicated to explain, there was no child.

I'll never be completely easy with my decision. I tell myself I'm still a mom (a stepmom), a nana (stepgrandmother). Being a stepmother means being reduced by society and your family to something less than, instead of. Your opinions count but they don't. Your family is yours but it's not.

Regardless of the absence of a blood relationship, those moments holding Nessa are the most peace I have ever felt. Holding her while she dozes in my arms, I love the weight of her, the way her hair feels, the smell of her. I never want to put her down. I want to cry with happiness every time I give her a bottle and listen to her grunt her way through it, her little hands clasping the side of her face in complete relief.

I'm tired of people asking about my decision. I'm tired of other mothers judging me by my unused uterus. If you say "you were never a mother, you don't know, " I become a little smaller, a little less relevant. Not just to the person that said it but to the larger world.

Childless women are often viewed as selfish. Yet not having kids was the least selfish thing I ever did.

http://childlessstepmoms.org/content/view/2/1/

copied over from a defunct blog

Don't know why I thought I would blog on that other site but thought I'd copy these over and blow that old one up. So the next 4 entries are historical but worth keeping.

Platte City BBQ Contest, May 10 (2008)

What a misery. We had a tough weekend, tough enough that we don't think we'll be going back to this contest. Finished 34/41, poor Tim had last place dessert (this same dessert with peaches won first place last fall at Atchison, go figure). WHO gives a 3 on dessert? Pathetic.

Also, this contest there was a family fight across the way that got the cops called, the place where the awards were handed out was half the size it needed to be to handle the contestants and the kicker... the judges, despite being informed they are NOT to smoke or drink anything but water while judging were outside smoking and drinking beer between categories. It's so disappointing to work your ass off all night long only to have people disrespecting your effort.

All that aside, we're swamped with leftovers - we're on our second night of ribs and burnt ends and tonight we're having enchiladas with the last of the smoked pork. And the mutts all got a taste as well. Looks like our next stop will be Peculiar on 6/20.