I may have forgotten to mention in my first 40th birthday post that as I get these gifts I'm to tell the story behind them. If I get them in a group (like the rooster magnet I got while vacationing in Montana), I have to tell the story right there. But this latest gift was left on my porch in a gift bag last week. I found it shortly after my sister, Jenny, had been here for an overnight stay. Coincidence? I don't think so. But nobody's taking credit yet. If you have no idea what I'm talking about but want to know, click here.
Anyway, here's a picture of the gift and then the story of the horse. The note taped to the package said, "Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to Ned's we go!"
Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my aunt Ruthie and uncle Ed's house. Their kids were more my age than my own siblings. Scott, Mike and Danny were my most frequent playmates as a child. Scott is two and a half years older than I am, Mike is almost a year older, Danny is a couple of years younger, and Jason was born about a month before my tenth birthday. When Ruthie didn't have us doing chores (she was the master of the Chore List, especially on Saturday mornings), we were playing "Jacques Cousteau" or "school" or "church" (I was never the priest) or "house" (I was always the mom). Some of my favorite memories include being at their farm, which at the time was where their grandparents, Susie and Pete, and uncle Paul lived.
On the farm, they had a horse named Tonka and he didn't look anything like the horse pictured above. He was light-colored and was a pretty mild-mannered and tame horse, but he had his moments. I loved riding him because it was different and exciting to be on horseback. Once when I rode him, Mike saddled him up for me. He didn't get the saddle cinched tightly enough around Tonka's belly. We got as far as the driveway (which isn't that far from the barn) when the saddle slid sideways. And so did I. Once I fell off (I clung to the saddle horn for a long time before I finally gave up and landed on the ground), I looked back and all three of the boys were standing behind me doubled over in laughter. I was not happy. After they quit their guffawing, they finally cinched it up tight enough and I went on my ride.
Another time, the boys and I had just returned from a week of summer church camp and I was out at their house after a brief visit at home with my own family. I wanted to ride Tonka, as I did every time I went to the farm. Someone finally saddled him up for me and I got on to ride. As luck would have it, Tonka hadn't been ridden in several weeks. He was ready to run and no amount of coaxing with the reins convinced him to slow down. I was bounced around in the saddle and terrified of falling off when he finally slowed down and allowed me to have him stop. By that time I was over a mile away at the nearest neighbor's house. That would be where Ned and his parents lived. Ned was the scary neighbor who embodied all the stereotypes of a hillbilly. Once I got Tonka stopped, I got off and stood for a moment weighing my options. I decided to hold the reins and walk him back to the farm.
I'm sure I rode him again after that, but I don't remember. I probably haven't been on a horse since I last rode Tonka. I'll have to ask what eventually happened to him, I don't recall if he was sold or given away. It's rare that I visit the farm when I go back home. Every once in a while I get the urge to ride a horse again, but then my childhood memories come to the surface and I change my mind.
This past Saturday my niece Katie and her boyfriend Frank came for a visit. They drove in from Emporia where they're both freshmen this fall. They were in need of a "get away from Emporia" weekend and apparently didn't want to head to Ellinwood, so they showed up on my doorstep. They didn't even bring toothbrushes, the spontaneous knuckleheads! We headed over to Heather and Justin's for dinner. Heather's cheesy potatoes, bacon-laced green beans and pork loin were a big hit with the dorm crowd. And me, too. I brought dessert and Gage enjoyed the blue frosting teeth he got from eating the cake.
After we ate, we played a game of Cranium, girls against boys. The boys were defeated handily by the girls, but you'll have to see Heather's blog for photos of the defeat.
You remember in the movie "Miss Congeniality" that her talent is making music with glasses filled to different levels with water? Well, I've never seen anyone do that in person until Saturday night. When Justin started making music with Heather's wine glass, stuff almost came out my nose. He gave Katie, Frank and I a lesson and let us all have a turn making the glass sing. Katie and Frank were good at it right away, but it took me some time to get it right. Don't try it with a cheap wine glass, it has to actually be crystal in order for it to work. Everybody else probably already knew this. I did not. Something else I can add to my resume.
Thanks for the good food, good wine and good times.
Last Wednesday, my friend Kathleen and I worked a three-hour evening shift at the Kansas State Fair in the Newman University booth. Before we worked at the booth, we met her mom and a couple of her mom's fellow Red Hat friends at the beer garden inside the fairgrounds. Her mom had been at the fair all day with the Red Hats since it was their special day at the fair. One of the activities was a cow chip throwing contest which Kathleen's mom, Lovella, won by wide margin. Here she is with her winner's ribbon and the winning cow chip.
Lovella says she's bronzing the cow chip, and as she said this Kathleen's dad did a big eye roll. It was quite enjoyable to meet Kathleen's folks along with Lovella's friends Thelma and Louise. I kid. Louise was only her middle name, her first name was actually Georgia. But I preferred calling her Louise for some strange reason. We (all but Thelma) made our way over to the Cottonwood building, where some of us dined on delicious chicken and noodles. The cow chip came with us, but Lovella kept it in the plastic bag while we ate.
It's been a busy week and a half around here. Sorry for the lack of posts. There's really no excuse, just didn't feel much like posting. But this one's for you, Teresa.
The weekend after Labor Day, I had some family visitors. Caden and his mom and dad (Rachel and Andrew) came to stay at my house Saturday night. They brought their two dogs, Copper and Zeke. Zeke is a new addition to the family. He's a puppy who's at least part lab that someone found. He's been abused and has the evidence of that on his head. When Andrew brought him home, Rachel couldn't say no to him staying. Caden got to try out some of the toys I recently bought at a garage sale, including a green tractor that a little boy removed all the stickers from. But that's probably good, because Caden's dad and grandpa only have red tractors.
Caden had scrambled eggs, toast and peaches for breakfast. He's an incredibly good eater. And he does love him some milk.
After a night in a strange house, he was ready to load up the dogs and go home. Here's a picture of Zeke, the newest addition to the family. Could you say no to this face? I didn't think so.
I hope they come back again soon. It seems they were only here for a few minutes and then they were gone again. Don't tell Copper I didn't post any pictures of him this time. He doesn't want anybody to think he likes Zeke, but I saw them playing in my backyard when he thought no one was looking.
This photo says it all for me. Back in July I watched one of the best tennis matches I'll probably ever see. For a tennis fanatic like myself it was a thing of beauty. The Wimbledon men's final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal didn't finish until almost 9:30 p.m. local time. Centre Court at Wimbledon doesn't have any overhead lights, so Nadal accepted the trophy in darkness right after the match. Roger Federer was seeking an unprecedented sixth straight Wimbledon title this year. And Rafa scratched his way to a win in a five-set epic match over Federer on his third try in as many years. While I have no qualms about the tennis prowess of Roger, I love to see Rafa play. Not only is he a buff Spaniard who's pretty easy on the eyes, he's an awesome player. He plays his heart out on every point no matter who is across the net and when he does lose he doesn't give any excuses. I'm in awe of his play for a couple of reasons, but the main one is that he plays left-handed. He does everything else in his life right-handed, but for tennis he's a lefty. I can't imagine how hard it must have been to switch after playing with his right hand for years. But now, how can anybody question the brilliance of that move? Rafa won his quarterfinal match against American Mardy Fish early this morning in the US Open draw. I'm still cheering for Andy Roddick, the only American left in the draw now, but I can't help being awed by the game of Nadal.
It's tradition in my family to relentlessly torture each other prior to the milestone 40th birthday and follow it up with a surprise birthday party. When my oldest sister Teresa turned 40 about nine years ago, we took it to the limit. I'm not sure how it all came about, but we started anonymously sending her note cards each month on the sixth (her birthday is August 6) of each month counting down until she turned 40. We started this 18 months before her birthday. Overkill? Perhaps.
When Teresa's 40th birthday rolled around, it was on a Friday. For various reasons, we scheduled her surprise party for the following day. Boy was she surprised when she came home from getting a pedicure that Saturday and walked in the door with six gallons of milk to find 70 people standing in her house waiting to scream "happy birthday!" to her. At this point she still didn't know who was sending her the cards. They were never in our handwriting and they were always mailed from Ellinwood by my dad on the 5th of each month so she'd get it on the 6th. Teresa never mentioned the cards to us and we never mentioned them to her.
Her final note card contained a Polaroid picture of my mom, dad, sister Jenny and I. It really was the perfect execution of the torture. With it being the first one there was no precedent. Since then we've done similar but different things to the other sibs. Mark got little snippets about his life for a poster board before his surprise party. I can't remember at all what we did for John, other than have a party for him in my dad's welding shop in the dead of winter. For Jenny the memories are more vivid. We scanned 12 pictures of her at different stages of her life and we made posters out of them. Every month they showed up in weird places, like the convenience store where she goes to get her Diet Coke fix every day. During that year she was on the school board and I contacted the people at the school and arranged for one of these 8x11 posters to show up every pre-meeting packet but hers. She was definitely surprised at that meeting when they all had pictures of her.
Now that you have some background, you've probably figured out that my torture has begun. It started back in April. It was the night of the Final Four to be exact, the same week I turned 39. I
was at my friend Joyce's for a KU basketball watch party and Laurie presented me with a gift bag. Inside was a cloth diaper and some rubber pants, but no note. Apparently the story of my life was going to be told through gifts that have some meaning in my life.I was a little confused at first what the diaper and rubber pants really meant. I've been told since by my mom (even though I know exactly who's doing this, nobody's admitting to anything) that maybe it's because when I was a baby my sister Jenny was told to change my pants and she poked me with a diaper pin so hard that I ended up bleeding. Her punishment kept her from going to spend time in Salina with our cousins and she's never forgiven me for that. Because of course it was my fault.
My other gifts so far have included a ladies slip (yes, there's a story there but I'm not telling it right now), a letter from my invisible childhood playmates, a rooster refrigerator magnet and some super-cool
sunglasses. When I was a teenager I got a pair of sunglasses that had one of those cling-on plastic sticker things that said "Duro lenses" and I thought it was the thing to do to leave that sticker on. My sisters teased me about it relentlessly until I finally removed the sticker in disgust. I didn't do it soon enough, however, because a new nickname was born. Any of you call me Duro, I'll deck you. That name is reserved for my sisters only. My latest gift was the sunglasses pictured here with some bling that spells out "DURO". These are much classier than the sunglasses of my youth. And believe me when I tell you that the letters aren't cheap cling-on material. They're glued on to stay.
When I was in Bozeman, Montana, earlier this year my cousin Angie presented me with a gift that she said came to her anonymously for me. Gee, I wonder how. It was a rooster refrigerator magnet. Yes, another story. I'm quite famous for this story in my family. My nephew Christopher wrote a paper about this incident for a class once in high school. I think he got an "A" on it. When I was little my 
family had lots of animals including pigs, chickens and a rooster named Pinky. We lived out in the country (where my parents still live) and I would frequently visit the pigs in their pen and then bop out to visit the chickens. Pinky didn't like me at all. And he was a mean rooster. More than once on my visits out to the chicken coop, he'd peck me on the behind. Most of the time it just scared me, but I guess more than once it caused me great distress and tears. He never really bothered anybody else. Let me just end by saying that Pinky's hatred for me caused his own demise. My dad got sick of him always pecking at me and he took the matter into his own hands. Pinky ended up on the menu in the pig pen one night.
Four years ago when Jenny moved into her house in Oakley, she found this sign left behind by the previous occupant. It was only natural that she give it to me.
So now you're up-to-date on the birthday shenanigans. I'll keep you posted as the rest of my "gifts" come rolling in.
Well, I'm pretty far from my promised 15 blog posts this month. But I'm working on a doozy that I'll be posting sometime this weekend. It's going to be a long one and for that I apologize. In the meantime I'm keeping busy with a job interview this week (more about the job later after I know something) and more contact with my former employer. Just haven't heard from either one that I am being offered a job. I'm trying to be patient.
I watched a lot of the Democratic National Convention this week. Mostly because my mom was watching it and I was there for the first two nights. Some of the speeches were very moving. That's enough about politics.
This past Monday was the beginning of the U.S. Open and I've been watching tennis when I can. One of my favorites, Tommy Haas, was defeated yesterday. I didn't see the match since it wasn't televised in its entirety, but apparently there was a line call that Tommy didn't agree with and then he self-destructed because he couldn't get past that. No challenge system was in place on that court either. But how about that Andy Roddick? He played a wonderful four-set match last night against Gulbis and won. I will admit that the television was on during the match, but I slept through most of it even though I had the best of intentions to stay awake.
More on the Open and tennis later. Right now I've got to go fold some clothes and maybe have a nap. I love three-day weekends!
Growing up, I spent a lot of time at my aunt Ruthie and uncle Ed's house. Their kids were more my age than my own siblings. Scott, Mike and Danny were my most frequent playmates as a child. Scott is two and a half years older than I am, Mike is almost a year older, Danny is a couple of years younger, and Jason was born about a month before my tenth birthday. When Ruthie didn't have us doing chores (she was the master of the Chore List, especially on Saturday mornings), we were playing "Jacques Cousteau" or "school" or "church" (I was never the priest) or "house" (I was always the mom). Some of my favorite memories include being at their farm, which at the time was where their grandparents, Susie and Pete, and uncle Paul lived.
