I Hate Snow

My Grandma, in her dress and tennis shoes.

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I grew up in a pretty straight-laced family. My mother would put my hair in pin-curls and make me wear the whole puffy dress, tights, patent leather Mary Janes getup for every school picture. She would claim that it was the one day a year I looked “like a normal little girl.”

My friends and in laws have often asked me how someone like me came out of the family I did. One of my friends was a little unnerved at the idea that I even had parents, much less that they were very conservative and did things the “socially acceptable” way. I have an explanation though. Recently I got some old pictures of my grandmother in the mail. The first one in the stack? Grandma in a dress and tennis shoes. It was then that I remembered her telling me as a child “never wear shoes you can’t run away in,” and I never do.  Maybe quirkiness skips a generation.

I really try to be normal. It’s hard. Sometimes my abnormality is cute, and other times it makes me the social pariah.  In elementary school I was more interested in architecture than Barbies. I remember being at my friend’s birthday party and she received a beautiful doll house. All the girls gathered around exclaiming, “Oh, it’s got a baby bed!” and “Lookit! The oven opens!”…my contribution to the conversation? “The dormer windows are nice!” Dead silence. Everyone in the room stopped and looked at me. My friend rolled her eyes and said “Joey, stop saying nerdy things,” and everyone uncomfortably picked up their chatter again. I wasn’t invited to any parties for a while.

I tell you this because I have a confession to make and I hope you don’t shun me for it.  I hate snow. I don’t think it’s pretty or magical or fun or exciting. I hate it. While most of my friends are taking their kids out sledding, making snow ice cream, building snowmen, or having snowball fights, I’m huddled up in the house praying for it all to go away. Snow is cold, messy, boring and a big inconvenience if you ask me. If it never snowed again I would be happy.

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The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 5

buy cheap soma without prescription #5 of 52 : EILEEN STEINER, MAUREEN MUELLER, & JOSEPHINE MUELLER
The 2011 Imaginary Family Project Week 5 - Eileen Steiner, Maureen Mueller, & Josephine Mueller

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Photo taken by Imogene Steiner, age 9

When I was 6, my father was killed in an industrial accident.  My mother, Eileen Steiner, received a settlement from his employer plus a life insurance policy payout.  Although we had plenty of money to live on our own, she decided to move us in with her two older sisters, Josephine and Maureen Mueller.  She was too sad to stay in the house we’d shared with my father, and too scared to raise a child by herself.  Aunt Jo and Aunt Reeney were happy to have us, and we settled into the big old house they rented together.  The sisters had grown up on a farm, but their parents had died long ago and they sold the farm for a tidy profit, so although we weren’t rich, we were always comfortable.

The house we lived in was a lovely old Victorian place, but the landlord was terrible at keeping up with repairs, so there were a lot of issues.  But we all loved the house so we put up with it.  That changed the evening the landlord cornered Aunt Reeney in the alley behind the house and made a pass at her.  She refused his advances, so he gave her a black eye and a split lip.  Aunt Jo got a strange look in her eye and said she would take care of it.  Continue reading The 2011 Imaginary Family Project – Week 5

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Seven Things You Should Expect From a Couples or Family Therapist

cheap soma overnight delivery From Moonstruck

I.
Rose: Do you love him, Loretta?
Loretta Castorini: No.
Rose: Good. When you love them they drive you crazy because they know they can.

II.
Rose: Do you love him, Loretta?
Loretta Castorini: Aw, ma, I love him awful.
Rose: Oh, God, that’s too bad.

***

Early February serves as a reminder to consider those you love platonically, as well as those with whom you are in a romantic relationship.  National Marriage Week is celebrated during Valentine’s Day season, and we see lots of information on television and the internet about how people enjoy their special time together, all in the name of Love.  What also happens, however, is that Valentine’s Day sometimes brings to the front of our minds things that aren’t going so well.  This is because, for some, the thought or events surrounding the season inevitably point them back home…where the heart is….or, where the heart MIGHT be if it weren’t for the fact that they were arguing all the time.

For those of you who plan to go out and have a wonderful time during the upcoming “week of love,” we wish you the best.  But for those of you who might be considering the possibility of getting some positive change in an unhealthy relationship, I want to make sure you have this list.  I’ve practiced therapy for ten years now and have summarized a list of standards you should expect if you decide to get counseling for your relationship. The list is based upon discussions with my own clients, and also from cases I’ve supervised:

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On Being a Bear

by Joey Rodman

There was a time when my youngest would tell people that when she grew up, she was going to be a bear. She did not mean that she would dress up like a bear, or that she would be aggressive, or that she would marry someone and change her last name to “Bear”….she meant she would literally become a bear. If you pressed her a bit she would tell you that she was going to be a “Brown Bear” like in Eric Carle’s book. She was 2.

I often became annoyed with people who would tell her that she could not, in fact, “be a bear” when she grew up. I felt like either she already knew this on some level and they were underestimating her intelligence, or she really did believe people could become bears and they were squashing her childhood wonder. I often battled back and forth between these two poles in my anger toward the idiots who would say “people can’t be bears.”  This was amplified by the fact that just about any of them would turn around a few minutes later and tell that she could be “whatever she wanted to be” when she grew up.

The child wanted to be a bear. I was not going to tell her she couldn’t. I was interested in finding out how she planned to do this.

She is now 7 and if you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up she will tell you that it is “a stupid question.”  Everyone knows, or should, that “…she is queen of the world. While she’s not technically ‘in office’ at the time being, her existence is not predicated on popular opinion of her political power. She is queen of the world. When she is older, everyone will realize this. Right now, we’re all too stupid to ‘get it’ and for that she pities us.”

She is told over and over by any adult around her (save her father and me) that she can’t “grow up and be queen of the world” because it’s not possible. There is no queen of the world. She will of course explain to them that not only is there a queen of the world, but they’re looking at her right now.

I tell you this because I think it’s a symptom of our bigger problem. Not only do we think that things are the way they are because they are “supposed to be that way” but we fail to imagine that anything will really ever drastically change. This type of willful amnesia annoys me the most.

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2011 Ranch Hand Guide: #4. Ride The Horse in The Direction It’s Goin’

It’s true.  Two summers ago I literally did not follow this rule; the horse went left and I went right…and down.  I did a complete flip (well, almost) and landed on the rock hard ground as dust billowed up around me.  My insides gelled together while I checked for feeling in my legs.  This rule is not really about horses, but rather the fact that our world is constantly changing; we need to make sure we are changing with it.

Julie on horseback
Here I am in the saddle where I am supposed to be. These are Judy's horses in Chickasha. It's almost certain that if I go for a visit, we are going to find time for a ride. Riding used to be scary too. But if I am going to keep up Judy, I knew I had to overcome my fear and move on.

The Seed

Change is constant.  Do you remember when you first encountered a new piece of technology for the first time?  A few years younger than I, my graduate school project partner insisted that the way to eject a disk from a Macintosh computer was to drag the disk to the trash.  Really.  Does that make sense?  No.  I know it doesn’t.  I was so very far out of my comfort zone on that day.  I eventually realized that this thing called the Internet might be sticking around for a little while, and I probably better get it figured out.

Germination

Change is constant.  My example of the change in technology over the years is just one tiny little blip on the world radar.  It’s true that just a few years after I watched the virtual disk drop into the virtual trash can and then watched the actual disk pop out of the computer, I was teaching others to create web pages.  But then the world as I know it changed again.  I moved wwaaaayyyy out into the country.  I could barely get an Internet connection.  WiFi?  Not out here!

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Showcasing Red Dirt culture ~ authored and managed by contributors with connections to the great state of Oklahoma.