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Monthly Archives: November 2017
I‘m a hopeless optimist. Ask anyone who knows me well. I stay to the bitter end, hoping against hope things will get better: my jobs, relationships, food. You name it. Don’t fault me for wearing orange. I have no more say in the matter than I do over my skin or eye color. It’s game day Saturday? Bet your best watch Amy’s wearing orange. It’s almost indeliberate and automatic. If we’re not in attendance, we’re watching from wherever we are (including the Walking Horse Celebration and a bar in Florida) and looking for the checkerboard with every play. Sure, I’ve lost hope several times this season. It’s depressing. I’ve said for a long time-it’s hard work to be a true fan. Anybody can root for a winning team. But to support a program when they’re down and out takes a special kind of loyalty. Some may call it stupidity. But Rocky Top does something to me. And orange is never wrong. Additionally, you can always cheer on whoever is playing Alabama or Florida. Lots of ways to keep occupied as a Vol fan. If nothing else, I can be proud of our band. Pride of the Southland never makes a false step. They’re the majority of the pageantry: the Power T that the team runs through, the…
November Writing Challenge, Day 4 Tweeting I have never tweeted in my life, save for singing that old tune “all the little birdies on Jay Bird Street, love to hear the robin goin’ tweet-tweet-tweet”. I once Facebooked that I was too long winded to tweet, which was ironic, since that was one of the few posts that could have been tweeted. I think our President has no business tweeting, but maybe that’s over since the disgruntled employee evidently deactivated his account. A wise move for all, I say. My cousin collects Tweety Birds. I can’t whistle. Maybe there’s a parallelism there. Didn’t they call Conway Twitty Tweety? I don’t know. I was young. I don’t know a thing about Tweeting. I’m really out on this subject, if you couldn’t tell. I kinda dread sharing it, but I’m committed now. And it will keep me accountable to improve. (See? I almost wrote “do better”) Sorry to disappoint you with this one. Not much to draw on…
November Writing Challenge, Day 3. Clarity. I gained the clarity of sight in fifth grade. I didn’t realize I was squinting, but one of my teachers did. Nobody in my family had connected my debilitating headaches to poor vision. But what a relief it was to be able to read road signs easily and distinguish cows from…well, blobs. The migranes disappeared, never to be repeated in my lifetime thus far. And believe it or not, I prefer myself with glasses even though so many people feel the need to tell me I’m so much prettier without them. These are the same people who like it when I have straightened hair. #sonotworthit Shopping for glasses every year is both a blessing and a curse, as so much of my life is. It’s a blessing to be able to afford high quality lenses and the ability to have them so quickly and *almost* effortlessly, compared to many countries that have no availability to them at all. And the selection! It takes me forever to narrow it down to just a few pairs. I always make the saleslady pick, as I am a hopeless Gemini. But contacts are out of the question. I nearly have to be hog tied to get eye drops in (I’ve found rolling them off the side of my nose is almost endurable) and I can barely get an eyelash out without crying or melting down from an anxiety…
November Writing Challenge Day 2 Wind. Once upon a time, in a land full of dirt roads and gently rolling hills, there was a cabbage plant. And under its largest leaf quivered a small winged grasshopper. The grasshopper wasn’t sure what had happened for him to be separated from his 392 siblings, but here he was. He was scared, but he wasn’t cold. He was lost, but he wasn’t blissful. He was green, but he wasn’t jealous. His yellow eyes darted anxiously as he chewed his bottom lip. He flicked an antenna and waited. Pretty soon he heard the chirrups of friends and neighbors 40,000 strong and he ventured out from under the cabbage leaf. He stretched out a leg and eyed the sky for swooping sparrows. The golden wheat rustled and he warily watched the high grass for other uncertainties. He climbed a stalk and munched thoughtfully on a tender sprout he’d found on the way up. It was green like him. The stalk shifted slightly. He gently swayed in the wind. He spread his wings to shake the dust out. And he remembered being lifted, the sensation of being weightless, and this was it, it was wind. It was wind beneath his wings. And he was flying away, to the next cabbage patch, on the next wind. I never gave much thought to wind until I went out west. It’s not like…
Instead of doing 30 days of Thankfulness I’m switching it up this year. I think it will be good for me. All twelve months are listed on Pinterest. I need to get back in the habit of writing. Time is so hard to come by, though, between working, keeping house, cooking dinner, my own maintenance (which seems to grow by the day), reading my self imposed goal of sixty books this year, and catching up on social media. But anyway. So. Day One. Heartbeat. Well. The obvious is when your heart starts beating, you’re here, and when it stops, you’re not. But I’m not normal and the first thing that comes to mind is Brian talking about wood fences that don’t lay with the land and have “heartbeats” (bumps). But for the sake of a good story, we’ll track back to the customary usage. I see more hearts stopping than I do starting. My heart stopped the first time I laid eyes on Johnny. I know it did. I’ve seen heart stoppingly gorgeous creatures; horses at play in fields and working cattle, their muscles rippling and manes flying away from their necks as they turn on a dime (my heart has stopped when I became separated from said equine in a grand fall). I’ve witnessed panthers pacing and stalking prey, their gorgeous shining coats showing…
