Category: All good things

Flying visit

Ohhh so much going on these days, which I’m totally not complaining about. I remember the days of moaning about how boring things were, so I will not be moaning about being too busy to blog 🙂

Just wanted to give the props to the kidlet who has scored a scholarship worth 56k over four years to Tulane University. We are both thrilled by that. Unfortunately, I don’t think Tulane will end up working out, mostly because the programs they concentrate one (medicine and law are the main ones I believe) are not areas she’s interested in. She wants to be a teacher. We’ll explore their education track but I’m not sure Tulane will be the right fit.

And I can’t believe I am actually able to say such a thing 🙂 I’m so proud of my kid.  I know I must sounds like a tedious mom always bragging on her child, but oi, it’s my blog 🙂 And she deserves mucho props.

So, encouraged as we are by Tulane’s very generous scholarship offer, she’s going to go ahead and apply for some other schools around the country, preferably ones that off good education programs, and just see what sorts of things they might offer. I think UNK down the road from here is still her top choice, but maybe the scholarship offer we just got will help us sort of negotiate some more financial assistance for her there. 56K would totally cover all her costs at UNK whereas it would not at Tulane and the less she is saddled with student loans, the better.

So that’s one happy aspect of the life of Steph right now. I’m still working in this rough economy. *phew* And yes, still happily in love with the boyfriend. Unfortunately for my Twitter list, we’re sort of in that mushy, googley-eyed phase and I’m sure I’ve sickened at least half of my tweeps 🙂 Sorry guys but hey, you get to watch a beautiful love story unfold before your very eyes and how often do you get to do that 🙂 But yes, he makes me so happy and I’m just going to enjoy myself and not worry about whether I’m bugging people 🙂

Right, enough of an update for now. Will make more of an effort to keep this updated a little better in the future but if you know anything about me, I blog in spurts with the odd dry spell now and again.

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The Finest Student

I’m taking a moment here to have a Proud Mom post for my daughter. Shannon is currently in the middle of doing the college app/scholarship app thing, and I want to share one of the glowing letters of recommendation her English teacher did for her. Am I bragging about my kid? Hell yes 🙂 it’s my blog, I’ll brag if I want to 😉 She deserves it ‘cos she’s pretty cool.

If words were wings, this letter would deliver itself. Such is the airy power of what i will share with you about the finest student i have encountered in 27 years in education. For there is a story being written here on the Plains, a hopeful prophecy of golden days ahead, the genesis of a singular life and manifold accomplishments that will matter – the life and future accomplishments of Shannon ______.

Truly, were you to know her, you would understand the force of nature she is as a writer, the compassionate observer of the needs of those around her, the gifted scholar who has done Promethean works at such a young age, and the precocious future educator destined to inspire those students fortunate enough to have her teach them in the decades to come.

To say that Shannon is exceptional and well-rounded is like blurting out that the Earth is a nice place to live – the understatement compels any would-be advocate to find a better, stronger way to create a picture of her true capabilities. And they are dazzling! How many students write a novel their senior year in high school while balancing the demands of coursework, involvement in over a half-dozen activities and clubs, and a nearly full-time job? How many consistently finish assigned work in rigorous academic classes and ask for ancillary enrichment reading to satisfy a thirst for deeper insight? These have been my experiences with this startling young woman.

I could rattle off a menu of her many accomplishments, medals won, competitions mastered and superior academic performances. I could list aperitifs such as her 32 score on the ACT and her leadership in the fine arts program and the clubs within our school community. However, my space is limited, and her resume is doubtless attached; thus, I choose penultimately to tell you that your committee has an opportunity to advance the education of the next Sexton, Bishop, or Browning. So strongly do I believe in the gifts God has given Shannon that I urge you to give her your strongest consideration. She already has my highest recommendation. Thank you.

You can tell it was written by an English teacher eh? Hehehe. I read this and was just filled with so much pride I thought I would burst. I mean, of course I already think highly of my amazing kid, but finding out that her teachers do as well is a really good feeling. She has two other, just as beautiful, letters from other teachers that make my heart sing.

It’s been a long road for Shannon and me. There were times when her grades weren’t so hot and it took some understanding to discover that when Shannon finds the work too easy, she finds ways to not do it. A lesson both of us needed to learn because I couldn’t grasp why my intelligent child would not be doing well in a class. One teacher (and this still pisses me off) in third grade wanted Shannon to be examined because she thought she might be ADHD because she was “daydreaming” a lot. I put my foot down on that and we came to discover Shannon was simply bored in this woman’s class.

Anyway, I’m extremely proud of my extraordinary daughter. I believe she will be one of those teachers that students always remember the rest of their lives.

I love you kiddo.

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Téléfrançais – L’ANANAS!!!!!

Oh. My. GAWD. YouTube has EVERYTHING.

We watched a kids show that taught basic French to students, and with some help from The Google, I found Téléfrançais, the zany adventures of a talking pineapple in French class for years when I was in high school. When I tried to describe it to my daughter, all I got was funny looks.

But HERE!! PROOF of the PINEAPPLE! L’ANANAS!

AHhhhhhhh nostalgia 🙂 Now I have to rip the vid so she can take it to school and show her French teacher, who also gave funny looks.

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Aunt Judy

For the past couple of days I’ve been working on this site for the paper. It’s the sort of “home” for the year-long (and a bit) series of cancer stories written by people in our community. It’s been a beautiful series, and photographer Scott Kingsley and columnist George Ayoub put a lot of work into it.

And then they gave me their “babies” to make them look nice online. Not a problem. Except in the process of building the site, I discovered I was going to have to actually read the stories. It’s probably horrible of me to admit I never read the stories when they appeared in print, and horrible to admit I hoped I could just cut and paste the stories up without having to delve into them. There’s a reason for that though. I knew that I’d have a difficult time getting through them.

Two things I’m afraid of: death and cancer. And because I’m one of ‘those’ women who cries at sad things, I just end up avoiding stuff like these stories. I admire and whoop for joy at anyone who beats cancer. I’ve walked in Relay for Life. I donate to breast cancer awareness organizations. But I get weepy. Which is exactly what happened when I found I had to format the stories online which required me to actually read them. So for the past two days I’ve added about 27 stories – all of them great – most of which made me cry.

And this is a very long way of saying that cancer scares me because I watched my brave and beloved Aunt battle it for over 15 years. Man she was awesome. The coolest Aunt a kid could have and I’m not just saying that. In the pic below, that’s Judy on the left with my mom when they traveled to England together.

Judy was the one who took me on my dream trip to NYC when I was 16. We roadtripped together from Grand Island to Niagara Falls to New York City, and then along the coast and into Boston and New England in general. It was awesome.

At Niagara, I convinced her to do the helicopter trip over the falls in a chopper. She was terrified, but she did it, though the pilot probably still has her fingernail marks around his knee, hehe. She took me to my first aquarium in Boston. She rode the subway in NYC. The best story from the trip though has to be the cab ride she and I took.

I don’t recall where we were headed, but the driver was of Eastern descent. Indian perhaps? Anyway, it’s the middle of summer, very hot, we’d been walking all over the place, and he kept asking my Aunt, “You have rash?” over and over again, and she kept getting more and more offended. It turns out he was saying, ‘You have RUSH’. meaning he was asking if we were in a hurry because he needed to stop for gas. I about fell over laughing so hard.

But Judy was full of awesome. She was there when I graduated from high school. And it was around this time that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She battled and did the chemo thing, but it never quite went away. A few years after I graduated, my family left California and moved back here to Nebraska to help her out.

When I left my husband, which is not a story I really want to go into publicly except to say it was a horrible weekend, but Judy and my Grampa drove over 7 hours from Grand Island to Castle Rock, CO to come and rescue us. She didn’t hesitate to jump in the car and come help us. And she was there for me and my daughter while I went through divorce.

When the cancer started getting aggressive, she made monthly trips to a big cancer center in Oklahoma for treatment, but it was spreading into her bones. She lost her hair, and went through all that wretched stuff cancer and the treatments required for it do to you. But she never lost her spirit.

She made Christmases extra awesome, especially for the kids. She’d hire a Santa to come and pass out gifts on Christmas eve, host all the family dinners and cook like crazy. We have a family cookbook full of recipes from well, family, but friends as well, and Judy’s stuff was always a hit.

She spoiled my daughter rotten 🙂 Shannon spent a lot of time with Aunt Judy as she grew up and I’m so glad they were close.

She was the one who broke the news to me about my dad the night he died. And she was there for us all the morning my mother died. One echoing statement I clearly remember from that blurry day was her whispering, “It should have been me.” She was feeling guilty that she was suffering from cancer and yet my healthy mom died before her. I remember that so vividly, and it kills me to remember that.

The following year after mom died, Judy’s cancer seemed to speed up and consume her. She passed away on October 9th, 2002, just shy of her 58th birthday.

I don’t want to talk about what she was like at the end. I don’t want to remember her that way. I prefer to remember her as she was in that photo up there – laughing, happy, and having a great time because that’s what she was always like. She rocked, bigtime 🙂

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Roadtrippin’

Today was one of those days when you just say, “Ahhhhh, what a lovely day.” at the end of it 🙂

It seems like every time we make plans to head into Lincoln to visit the Voelkers, something happens to keep that from happening. One time was spent in a snowy ditch after we drove right off the interstate exit curve during white-out conditions. Just before Christmas, the kid was sick and the weather was crap. But today we finally made it in and spent a delightful day hanging out with Jo and Tom, Günter, Beca and Hannah. And the kitties 🙂 Even got a call from dad during it, so that was lovely 🙂

We brunched, we chatted – well, Shannon and I mostly sat giggling away at listening to Günter and Beca riff off each other, and Hannah telling Zoo bar stories. Jo put together a huge spread for brunch as usual and it was full of awesome. I showed off my mad juggling skillz with some Clementine oranges to hehehe. Yes, I can juggle. A little. I’m a constant surprise.

And we all walked to a couple of Asian markets… one possibly just a front for something else judging by the scant products, compelte disarray and general… oddness of the place. They did have this stuff in freezers called ‘Jews Mellow’ which prompted a few inappropriate jokes – my favourite of which was Shannon blurting out, “Jews Mellow is people!” I lost my shit laughing at that. I have looked it up though, because the name is so weird to this very white chick, and have learned it’s a leafy green vegetable popular in the Middle East, and is thought to be a sexual stimulant that makes women stray into the arms of strange men.

The other markets we popped into were loads of fun and I ended up with some Rose tea – never had it so hope it’s nice. Actually I hope it’s loaded with caffeine, but at the least it should smell nice 🙂 Also saw some frozen squid heads, and I’ve had Barnes & Barnes stuck in my head ever since.

Then after some more lovely hang time, in which Tom helped me pry the cap off my anti-freeze thingie in the car so I could fill it up, we left for a stop at our favourite import place, Eyes of the World. There is always a lot of fantastic, beautiful, funky and just plain weird stuff in there and we try to go whenever we’re there.

I bought yet another funky box thing that folds out into a clock and a shiny new silver Claddagh ring. I’ve been looking for a silver one for years actually. I was given a gold one with an emerald heart one by an old boyfriend, ohhhh about 12 years ago and it just became one of those things I wore. Not because of who gave it to me, but because I love Claddagh rings, and that one came from Ireland. Must be my Irishness I guess. I’m not really a fan of gold jewelry though. Much prefer silver so while I wore the gold one, I’ve always been on the lookout for a nice silver one. And silver ones that won’t break or turn your finger green are hard to find.

All this just to say I felt it was time to replace that one, and I’m digging being able to wear it the proper way when one’s heart has been captured 🙂

After that, it was an uneventful drive home, apart from letting Shannon take over the drive at York. Just before she got her license, she drove once on Interstate between North Platte and Ogallalla. And that’s it. She’s only ever driven here in town. As she will be going off to college *sob* in the Fall, and the one she wants to go to is 40 minutes away by Interstate, I figure she better learn it. It’s a bit different from town driving. She did well 🙂 We will practice some more this spring.

And so now we are home, with our swag from Jo and Günt and Beca (thank you again guys!) and EotW. And it was a perfectly lovely day. Thanks Voelkers 🙂 Love you all!

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Rambling about

Today I decided I wanted to go shoot some pix outside of town. The weather’s fairly nice, if brisk 🙂 and I’ve the day off from work and it would feel good to get out of the house for a while.

Instead of just driving out into the country though, I thought we’d go back to Witch’s Bridge. The problem with just driving around here is a lot of land is private farmland and probably wouldn’t appreciate a couple of chicks wandering around their land. So I went with a place I knew 🙂

We first went to Witch’s Bridge a couple of years ago with some friends from the paper as we attempted to produce our second annual trip to someplace creepy at Halloween and “investigate” hauntings 🙂 The first one we did was spend an evening at the downtown movie theatre after closing. I wanted these to be like Most Haunted, but kind of failed 🙂

Anyway, the kidlet and I, after getting a bit lost and asking Scott for help, we found it, and well, here are some pix from our ramble today.


Clicky 🙂

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Byebye 2008

This was a good year. I actually can’t think of anything too bad, personally, that happened this year, so that’s a good thing. No, this year was peppered with very nice things. I think the only trauma that stands out to me was when the paper laid off my lovely friend and coworker, out of the blue and actually quite shockingly. In the morning, everything was fine, tra-la-la, and by the end of the day she was in tears, cleaning out her desk, tra-la-fucking-la.

But she landed on her feet, as I was sure she would and is doing well, liking her new job and mostly happily in love with her new boy 🙂 So that turned out okay.

We got to travel a bit thanks to my awesome cousin and his lovely wife who helped us be there for my baby sister as she got married at the coolest wedding I’ve ever been to – not that I’ve been to a lot of weddings, mind you 🙂 And apologies to dad and his new wifey whose wedding was also very lovely. But Kelly’s rocked it bigtime 🙂 hehehe.

That’s my gorgeous sister in the pic there, just before the ceremony but after a little Kaluha 🙂 Pictures from our entire trip are here. And I mean all of it 🙂 From above the clouds to below the sea. From San Jose to Big Sur.

It was a brilliant trip back to the homeland, where I gained a brother,  I saw old friends, watched Kelly marry the man of her dreams, and who shares her love of ghost-themed TV shows, took the kidlet to some old haunts, played with otters, chuckled at the door to nowhere, reflected a little at the beach where my parents’ ashes were scattered, and stressed over rain on wedding days 🙂

This year we also got to hang with Dad on a couple of visits which we always love. One visit he brought the lovely wife with him and it was wonderful to see her too. I would really like to find the time to go back to Montana in the new year. Such gorgeous country.

Close on the heels of one beautiful, perfect wedding, we got to attend another, way cool, loads of fun wedding when my cousin married his longtime girlfriend in a sort of pagan, Wiccan handfasting ceremony followed by much beer and loads of German food. We stayed in a gorgeous freaking mansion, and ended the weekend with an awesome Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert.

This year saw my daughter really grow into an even more beautiful, intelligent, awe-inspiring young woman. She rocked her ACT score and after years of wondering how I was going to get her through college, she turns around and does so well in school that she may get a full ride at a nearby Uni. She wants to be a teacher. Isn’t that fantastic? I’ve never met a more talented, funny, charming teen in my whole life, and luckily, she belongs to me 🙂

Looking back at the year at the paper, despite the layoffs, and some drawbacks, we are doing really well and remain on the “cutting edge” according to one reader as far as online goes. I’ve learned so much this year alone about how to grow the paper. I really still love what I do and can’t believe I get paid to do this stuff. It’s awesome.

And there there is one more thing that makes 2008 memorable. This is the slightly mushy bit, so feel free to skip ahead 🙂 That one more thing is my honey. That’s the back of his head up there in my uhh, header, hehe, at the top of the page. I don’t know how it happened, I don’t question my luck, I just enjoy it. But I love him. I really do, and here’s hoping 2009 is even more wonderful for us.

For you, dear readers, I wish you life, health and love in the new year.

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