Friends – then and now

Remember those people who helped to make you who you are today? I’m not talking about family members, teachers, pastors/priests, former bosses, etc (though they certainly helped shape you, too). I’m talking about the friends who watched you go through every agonizing stage of adolescence – braces, bad glasses, worse hairdos, and (if you’re from the 80s, like me) hideous fashion statements like flipped up collars and safety-pinned pants. And they remained your friends anyhow.

People who did wacky stuff like this with you:

(That’s tinfoil on our heads to wrap up the henna stuff we put in our hair… the dog was curious so he got sucked into the picture, too. Tinfoil and all.)

And, even though applying henna to your friend’s hair may have turned it green for an interminable several minutes, she remained friends with you.

These are the people who saw you through horrifying prom dresses, boyfriends (and break-ups), listened to you crying on the phone from college when you were homesick (even though they were at another college and equally as homesick) and with whom you took your first drinks of alcohol (and maybe a few after that).

Then college was over and you had to get jobs. You moved this way and they moved that way. Then you were in their weddings and they were in yours. You moved further apart. But you still got together several times a year.

Then they had babies and you had babies. Or maybe they got jobs that took them even further away. You got together once a year.

Then the babies started getting older and your life became completely, solely all about their lives, their activities. You and your friends? Christmas cards became the primary form of communication.

Remember those people? Go look them up – Right Now. Set a date. Get together. You will wonder why you didn’t do it earlier. Their kids and your kids will become fast friends (maybe even frog hunting friends – see below) in a matter of hours. Watching these new friendships grow will make you feel as great as renewing your old friendships.

This is all to say that I had a fantastic camping gathering last weekend of a group of friends – some of whom I’ve known almost my entire life. But none of whom I had seen for several years. There were about thirty of us altogether – adults and kids. We are going to make it an annual gathering. It is absolutely amazing to me that, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve seen each other or how far apart all our lives have drifted, when we get together it’s like we’ve never been apart. It’s like the best kind of family in the world – one you choose. We grew up together. I hope we’ll all grow old together.

A love story…

This is a love story, prompted by this picture that I came across as I was

These darn kids are laughing (LAUGHING!) at my baby! They’re also doing an outstanding job of hiding a lot of rust.

searching for pictures for my Father’s Day Tribute.

Do you remember your first car? I do. I luuurrrvved that car. It was enormous, rusty, falling apart… I paid $150 for it. What a piece of junk.

But it was mine! No more schlepping rides from friends or trying to figure out bus schedules.

It was a yellow 1976 Ford LTD I bought during college. The friend from whom I bought it had given her the name “Big Yellow.” She was a V8 and I recall that when getting her up to speed on the highway, it felt like I was floating. Floating! Seriously. It was the most amazing experience.

Also amazing was the skill I learned of putting her into neutral when slowing down to go around corners, so I could keep gassing it and she wouldn’t splutter and die. That, my friends, is a skill they’ll never teach you driver’s ed.

The friend who sold it to me gave me a list of instructions (sort of like when someone leaves their precious baby with a sitter). The list included stuff like: brake light is permanently on, nothing wrong; engine light comes on after a while because of missing cylinder; only seven cylinders; ceiling is fun to deal with – almost like a sun roof!; and (my favorite) rust is a free option, but a mandatory one.

When I first got her, one side of the back bumper was attached to the vehicle with a length of rope. I took it over to my brother’s house (because he had every tool known to mankind) where we got out what he called the BFH (the Big F-ing Hammer) and wacked at the bumper until it came the rest of the way off. Then we drilled it directly onto the i-beams (or something like that… the terminology escapes me). I’m pretty sure that wasn’t strictly legal, but it looked much more legal than rope. When I drove out of his driveway after all that banging and drilling, there was a rust outline of where Big Yellow had been parked.

She definitely left an impression.

Big Yellow had such personality that she started to creep into other areas of my life. I wrote a college paper about taking her in for an oil change. The paper was titled “Trials and Tribulations of an Automobile Illiterate.” My mom wrote a poem about me and Big Yellow to go along with the shovel she gave me that year for Christmas to stow in Big Yellow’s trunk (a must-have during any Minnesota winter).

Eventually, I moved on and sold Big Yellow to another friend. Sadly, she had to call the junk yard to come and get Big Yellow just a few months later when the driver’s side door fell off and there was no hope of re-attaching it (at least, not for more money than the car was actually worth).

And so passed the end of an era.

Tell me about your first car! Or a car that you loved the best. Or better yet, a car that you loved despite the fact that it was a piece of junk!

In which I let my children play with molten wax

A little while back I had grand plans for changing my header here on the blog. Those plans did not come to fruition. (I did, however, update the photo from a clip art picture to one that I actually took myself and I like how it turned out. The stone wall is kind of whimsical!)

The plan was to create a batik to go along with my manuscript. My main character, Tess, is a dirt bike rider. I envisioned a cool-looking batiked image of a female dirt bike rider with her pony tail flying in the wind… It was really awesome – in my head.

My oldest daughter working on her “totally rad” batik of a Fender guitar. And even though this is molten wax, no children were harmed in the making of this batik.

Then I got down to business and remembered how hard it is to batik. My daughters got in on the action, too, and had fun with it. I used to do lots of batiking before I had kids and having molten wax around the house became a bad idea. Now they are pretty much old enough to be careful with it.

If you are unfamiliar with batik, a simple explanation is that you create a design on cloth using wax and dye. Where ever you put the wax essentially blocks out the dye. So, it’s kind of like painting in reverse. You have to think backwards. For example, you start out putting on your first application of wax, followed by dipping it in, say, yellow dye. Where ever you put the wax – it stays white. When it’s dried, you put your next application of wax on and then dip it in dye again. Let’s say this time you use red dye. That means that where you put the second application of dye, it will stay yellow but now the rest of the fabric is orange. And so on.

When you’re all done, you remove the wax either by ironing it off onto newspaper or by boiling it off.

If you do a search for batik images, you will find some absolutely amazing works of art.

My fatal error was in forgetting how difficult it becomes to make the colors come out right after you add a few layers of colors together. I finished my batik and even messed around with it to create a banner. But it turned out too dark.

So it’s back to the drawing board! Or the wax and dye board in this case, I guess. My goal next time around: use better dye (not the cheapo stuff I used this time) and plan out the layers better ahead of time! All art is about process and experimentation, right?

Anybody out there ever done batiking? I’m self-taught so if there is anyone with some expertise who can give me some tips, I’d gladly take them!

Game of Thrones (or: Why I dropped off the face of the Earth)

Dear Internets: Game of Thrones has consumed my life. It started with the book. Then I bought the DVD of HBO’s Season One, of which I had to watch every. Single. Episode. In short succession. Then the special features. Then I had to Google everything on Sean Bean, Jason Momoa and Peter Dinklage. And the cutie-patootie who plays Jon Snow (even though his mouth is always hanging open which is slightly annoying). Then I had to buy book two – A Clash of Kings. I will rejoin the world when I have finished book two. Most likely. Or I might just move on to book three. I make no promises.

P.S. Dear me: this is your conscience speaking. Remember that post when you said your “word of the year” was going to be “focus?” How’s that workin’ out for ya? *sigh*