Let me call you sweetheart....

   I have a horrible memory for names.  I remember faces but the names escape me.  No, it's not because I am getting older...More experienced.  I have always had this problem. 
   Why do you think I call everyone darling.  After all I'm not a Gabor sister.

Eva Gabor

                                   Oops, I just dated myself didn't I.


   This can get real embarrassing, like when you are trying to introduce someone.  I have done it so often that now it is expected of me.  I just brush it off with something like, okay I would like to introduce you  but you know I am horrible with names so just introduce yourselves.   Hey it worked for Dory in
Finding Nemo.
   When I taught dance, I had a little trick I did.  I would set the student's chart on a table by the floor and then dance them over to it to read the name.  I just pretended to see what step I needed to teach them next.  I knew that chart forward and backwards, literally.  I thought I was pretty slick until one Valentine's Day .....
   All my students got together and gave me a card.  It had Donald and Daisy Duck on it, and said ...Let me call you sweetheart.....Because I can't remember your name.
   I laughed and said... BUSTED.    They knew about it all the time.   Hey, I always said I got the smart people.
   Sometimes it helps to have accomplices.  If one of us couldn't remember a name, another one would go up to the person and introduce ourselves.  When we had the name we would walk by the other and tell them the name in passing.  Then they could go up to the person and pretend they knew the name the whole time.  That one worked like a charm.
   So if you forget names like I do, don't get upset about it.  Use one of the above tricks or make up a new one.  You could even try telling the truth ... I remember your face but I'm sorry your name escapes me. 
   Well, I hope I helped you out a little, Darling.

I'm not a stalker, I just got too big for my shell...

   I have been contacted through facebook by some of my fellow graduates from  high school.  I graduated with a lot of people.  Some of the ones I graduated with recommended other graduates, and so on and so on.
   Now I have a number of people on my friends list that I barely remember and who have no idea who I am.  Only one of them actually asked who are you.  You see I'm not the same person I was back then.  Back then I hid inside my own little shell.
   In high school I was not one of the cool kids.  I was too shy.  I am the one who sat at the back of the class and hid out.  I would turn bright red when I talked in front of more than 2 people... I'm not kidding I did.  I was in a drill team called the Shufflers.  We sat in the stands and preformed routines by flipping cards to form words and pictures.  But even then I was the quite one.  I didn't have a car and I walked to and from school.  So I didn't go hang out with the other students.  But I did have great legs...
    So what changed.  I learned not to take everything so seriously.  I didn't like talking in front of people so I took a speech class.  I had to talk then. 
   Then life took over and helped trained me.  I learned to joke around and not show my embarrassment.  When you blush easily you become an easy target.  So I had plenty of practice handling this one.  Like the time I turned 18 while working at an amusement park in my hometown.  The security guards that knew me got on the loud speaker and announced to all the employees “Hey Guys.  She's legal.”  You either laugh or die.....I'm still here.
   Then I took ballroom dance lessons because I was going with a polka band to Octoberfest in Germany.  I couldn't dance...period.  I got hooked on dancing.
   When I couldn't afford to pay for lessons any more I started teaching.  I spent a lot of time in the arms of strangers.  They were at my mercy and I was the boss.  That helped.  I took over the dance classes and taught 3 or 4 couples in the back room.  That quickly became 15-25 couples in the large ballroom.  I complained about the size because I was still a little bit shy with so many people.  I was told they picked you we didn't do it.  Wow... what a boost to my ego.   It taught me to be loud too. I had to be heard over the music and the feet on the floor.
   The embarrassment part, when your a dancer at competitions you've got sometimes 2 to 3 minutes to change costumes you don't have time for embarrassment.  I have stripped out of one outfit and into another in bathrooms, in hallways and once in the corner of the ballroom with two of my students holding up a sheet.  I have changed in a car while on the way to a dance competition, no I wasn't driving.  But the truck next to us did do a sudden lane change as I recall.  Hey I ya gota do what ya gota do.  There was no way I was going to be the one everyone had to wait on.   I never missed a mark.
   I have danced in front of tens of thousands of people at the Astrodome and on live TV for the Texas Sesquicentennial.  I think I got the blushing in front of people part handled.  The hardest part of that was learning how to pronounce Sesquicentennial.  
   I was an RMT (registered massage therapist), who specialized in pain management.  I have worked on athletes, CEO s, musicians, men, women and children.  Out of survival I have learned to handle awkward situations, and extract myself from them.  Yeah, Al G. you better not mess with me.
   The dancers, musicians and very dear friends that know me wouldn't have recognized me in High School.  So you see, even if you remember me from High School... you still don't know who I am.  I am a person in a constant state of change, as we all are.

My old High School...ahh, Memories....or nightmares.

I would like to thank Micheal for be brave enough to ask who I was and in turn giving me the idea for this blog.

Time travel on aisle 4...

   It's that time of year again.  The time when I walk through the store and suddenly out of one of the isles I get hit with those smells.  The smells that immediately transport me back in time.  Back to the time when  the only house cleaning I had to do was my bedroom.  The only laundry I did was pick up my dirty clothes and put the clean ones away.  Dinner was cooked by someone else and bills where a mysterious unknown monster waiting in the distant future.
   What a wonderful smell.  I find myself following that scent around the corner and down the aisle.  Suddenly there it is right in front of me.  The bright yellow and green box full of hope that all things are possible.  The box of Crayola Crayons...

Image via Wikipedia

    When I was younger nothing brought as much joy and pleasure as that box with its brand new never used crayons.  Inside that box where mountains to climb, rivers to swim, forest to explore, and space to conquerer.  There where all kinds of exotic animals and fantasies to be seen.

    They say a picture is worth a thousand words... Well, inside that little box there where unlimited words  and stories.  Where would you like to be... under the sea ... at the north pole... on a beach...a galaxy far far away ...  Grab a piece of paper anything would do and go.
   Nothing was imposable or too far away.  That little box is magic.  If you don't believe me buy one and hand it to a small child with a pad of paper.  Stand back and watch the wonder shine in their eyes and the magic flow from their hands to the paper.  Who knew that zebras were really purple and yellow, and ate red grass under a pink sky.




    Oh wow they now come in a box of 120 different colors... I really need that... For the granddaughter... so what if she is only one month old.  It's never to early to appreciate art.
 
   Wait.  What's that smell.  Can it be.  Yes it is... Play-doh.  I may never leave this aisle. 

 

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• Photos: The making of Crayola's crayons (news.cnet.com)

I must be crazy...

   I am an overachiever.  I try to do everything.  So when I started blogging I started looking at other blog sites and decided how I wanted mine to look.
  Things always change so I kept looking and I found the cooking sites.  Hey that sounds good.  I have all my mother's handwritten recipes that I have been typing up.  So I started a recipe blog Grandmom's Recipes.  Now my family can go online and find a recipe from Momma's collection.  Since I only have to write the introduction for the recipe I should be able to do that and my original blog.
   So back online I go.  I start checking the blogs other people are looking at.  Wow look at all the writers that are on here.  This stories are great.  There are romance, science fiction, horror and mysteries.  There are Drabbles that tell the story in exactly 100 words.  There are flash fiction that tell a story in less than 1000 words.  And there are serial stories that have a new chapter everyday or every week.
   Then Rayna from Coffee Rings Everywhere did a horrible thing.  She dared her followers to write a drabble based on a photo of hers.
   I never could pass up a good dare, so I sat down at the keyboard and wrote.  This is fun.  I forgot how much I enjoyed writing stories for school.  Great, but the fiction just didn't quite seem fit into the format I had decided on for my blog.  What was I going to do with these.  I knew I had way to much fun writing them to stop ... so where to put them.  Then I noticed that little link on the blogger dashboard that says Create a Blog.  Oh well, why not.  So Books at Large was born.
   Now I have 3 different blogs.  What have I done.  Have I gone insane... That rhetorical please don't answer I don't think I could take it.
   Well as you can imagine I don't think I can just dash off something every single day for 3 blogs, though I did today.  So the story blog may not get posted to as often.  But I always wanted to write.  So of course I am overdoing it as usual.

                                       What the heck was I thinking?

Help there's a Teenager in the house...

   I have never had children, let me rephrase that I have never given birth to children.  I have been around children most of my life.  I was the oldest of 4.  My sister being the baby was 8 ½ years younger than me.  My mother use to say my sister had two mothers.  If she told her no, my sister would come ask me.  The same thing happened with my sister's kids but I knew better by then.  I always asked them what did your mother say and they knew they where caught.  There Mother did it all before them ... and she did it better.
   I have always gotten along great kids and communicated well with them.  I think it has something to do with the fact I never quite grew up.  Grown ups are too serious and I am anything but.
   I even got along great with Jack's daughter and son. His son would listen to me, asked my opinion and believed me.  It was great ...

   Then he moved in with us. Over night I was living with a teenager in the house.  I was not prepared at all.  I thought by not having kids I could bypass the Mother's Curse.  Nope...didn't happen.
   Suddenly I knew nothing.  I was out of touch with what the real world was like.  I just didn't understand.   I went from no kids to a teenager... and I didn't get to grow into the roll. 
   I guess I could have looked on the bright side and realized that was a teenager's way of excepting me as a part of his life.  But I was a little too busy trying not to kill him, or go insane...  The next time I saw my mother I gave her a big hug and said I'm sorry.  I asked her ... How did you survive you had four?  She just laughed and smiled.

   I still don't know how I survived ... but I did.  Now that he is in his mid 20s and has a daughter, his father and I get smarter everyday.  He calls for our opinion again.  Listens to what we say.  We apparently now understand, and know exactly what is going.  It is nice but...

   I can't wait until his daughter becomes a teenager.  Then it will be my turn to just laugh and smile.
 
   Oh and thanks Mom for not saying I told you so.