I Could Make Those People Dance

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a dancer. I am not necessarily of the two-left feet persuasion, as I do possess a bit of rhythm, but I don't know dance moves nor do I have much stamina.

So my dancing tends to be done alone, in the kitchen, or as I wander around picking up and attempting to clean the house.

Even in school, when they tried to teach us line dancing in the late 1970s and disco in the early 1980s, I was not the most coordinated of students.

Ah well. We can't be successful at everything.

What I could do, and occasionally still manage to do, was make words dance. Writing a good sentence is like watching professionals dance - and the dance depends upon the words.

Writing about a sad affair of the heart? There's your waltz for you.

Need to send some zing into your sentence, and add a little syntax? You might cha-cha a bit of Latin rhythm for that one.

Sentences can rhumba, samba, flatfoot, square dance, and perform ballet. They can go barefoot on a wooden floor or they can tap a dance on the stones of the town square.

So what, exactly, makes a sentence do the twist while another sentence rests limply, noodle-like, on the tarnished cookie sheet of your brain?

As with most things, a good sentence is good mainly in the eye of the beholder, but even so, some things hold true.

As a journalist, I dealt in facts. But no sentence is a good sentence if it only contains facts. My best first sentences for articles were the ones that bypassed the facts and went someplace else. How many times did I write a lazy beginning that was factual? Hundreds. "The Board of Supervisors met today and discussed the budget. " BORING!

What would be better? How about: "The ticking of the clock was the only audible sound as the Board of Supervisors today stared for long minutes at the unbalanced budget numbers that the county treasurer had placed before them."

Better, yes? Also long and something that, for the sack of brevity, could conceivably be axed in a news story. But in an article, or a longer piece, you bet that's a better beginning.

But what makes the second sentence better? It still has the facts - the supervisors met today and discussed the budget.

However, it also contains a bit of emotion. They "stared for long minutes" - indicating that the members did not like what they were seeing. It offers an image of the members, staring down at paper. It's logical in the scenario it projects. And it contains a promise of more to come. What happens next, after the members finish staring at these unbalanced numbers?

So a good sentence could be said to contain facts, emotion, and image. It is also logical, and perhaps it holds a promise.

Want a shorter example?

Engagement ring: for sale, never worn.

Oh my. What has happened here? It's just a sale notice, right? But what intrigue! Why was the ring not worn? Did the girl turn the boy down? Was he on his way to propose when he fell off a trolley?

Those six words create an emotional connection. Sentences need not be as wordy as my first example to say something important. They need merely say it in a logical and seductive way. The reader's imagination then takes over, and supplies the emotion, the image, and the promise.

How then, might I go about making better sentences? I want to make people dance with my writing. What must I do?

First, find the facts. Example: My feet fit in these shoes. That's elementary stuff - subject/verb agreement. In journalism, this is known as the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where, why. You need to place that information into the sentence in specific order. This little sentence has the who: (me), the what (shoes), but not necessarily the where, why, and when.

Try this sentence: On Friday, my feet fit in these shoes when I visited the orthotics doctor, but by Tuesday my ankle had swollen so much that I had to walk around in socks.

Lots going on there, eh? But you know all the 5Ws. Who: (me) What: (my shoes and feet), When: (on Friday through Tuesday), Where: (at the orthotics doctor), Why: (because I am having ankle problems.)

Sentences dance when they offer up images. Everyone has an imagination, and the writer must feed that. A good sentence allows someone to imagine the scene but does not over-explain. It also does not offer so little information that the imagination has nothing to grab.

The best way to make a sentence boogie is to use action verbs and concrete nouns. Then add in one or two of the five senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, sound). That can give you the phrasing necessary to make the sentence stand up on its toes.

Example: The howling dog chased its tail after the skunk sprayed it.

Phewie. There's an image for you. A stinking dog running around in circles.

You could get more precise in your language. The howling dachshund raced blindly in circles after the skunk sprayed it.

The thing about writing a sentence is it is almost never finished. I can piddle with a sentence for hours, trying to find the appropriate verb, the better noun, the more concrete adjective.

It becomes a marathon dance, then, one of those 1950s sock-hops where couples competed with numbers on their backs.

Sentences should evoke emotions. First, you, the writer, must know what emotion you wish to evoke. Fear? Is there a problem that must be solved? Is the person happy, prideful, sad?

If a person is sad, a good sentence does not say, "Joe was sad." A better sentence says, "Joe kicked at the rocks at his feet, his shoulders slumped, and his head down, as he trudged along the dirt road that lead to the school."

In other words, a good sentence doesn't tell the emotion. It shows it.

Lastly, a good sentence offers a promise. It may simply be the promise of more things to come, but still, it keeps the reader engaged. In the example above, the sentence promises to explain, at some point, why Joe is unhappy.

And finally, a great sentence takes much practice. None of the sentences I wrote above are truly great sentences. But I rewrote every one of them at some point. Maybe I only changed a word or two, but it didn't come flying out of me whole.

Even though I've been writing and publishing for 30 years, I still practice.

If you want to read 10 truly great sentences, check out this list from The American Scholar.

If you want to know why these 10 truly great sentences make one take a spin to Waltzing Matilda, check out Poynter's analysis here.

Dance on.

Thursday Thirteen

Here are 13 messes that I need to clean up sometime this year:

The closet from hell.

1. The closet in my office, which is stacked full of unused notebooks, 3.5 floppy computer disks, video games, and other assorted ancient technology.

2. The "beauty box" of crap on my beside table, which holds things like hand cream, lip balm, Ben Gay, and other things one might need for a good night's rest.

Bathroom stuff box

3. The "bathroom stuff" box that sits on the bathroom counter because it's stuff we use every day, or did - some of it we stopped using but it is still in the box. You know what I mean - the stuff like Preparation H or face cream or something.

4. My briefcases. I have numerous briefcases and book bags, most of which have something in them. I need to go through all of them, keep what I want, and hand the rest over to someone else who can make use of them.

5. The drawer in my office desk, which holds ink pens that probably date back to 1993, assorted staples, 3x5 cards, paper clips, Sharpies, pencils, sticky note pads, scratch pads, and other smaller items one might want within reach.

My pile of unread books. Still in their bags!

6. My bookcases in my office, which hold more books that are unread than read these days, because I went through the "books I've read" part and sent a bunch to the library, only to fill the slots with more books that I have yet to read. I really had hoped Kindles (of which I now have 3) would cure this problem but alas, books grow by leaps and bounds seemingly all by themselves.

7. The warranty drawer. We have a filing cabinet drawer stuffed full of warranty papers for practically everything we've ever bought. Many of the items are no longer surviving, have blown a fuse or busted a gut or whatever, and so sent to that merry trash bin in the sky. The papers still survive, though. I strongly suspect that for the most part, they can all be sent to the recycling bin, but one must look to be sure.

The warranty drawer. Note the 1991 truck, which we have
not owned for 20 years, and the other files which begin
with "19.."  - yes, they are at least 17 years old.

8. My journals. Alas, I have boxes of journals and I need to throw them away. However, I want to look through them first. Most, I suspect, are the "woe is me" kind that one tends to have when things are not going well, but there may be a gem or two in there someplace. I think too it might be interesting to make a timeline of where I was and what I was doing in given years, using the journals, before I burn them. And they will be burned.

9. The attic. I haven't been in the attic in years but I know that we still have tax records from the year we married up there. Since that was 33 years ago, well, understandably there is a paper problem somewhere.

Under the bathroom sink.

10. The bathroom vanity (or under the bathroom sink). I clear this out periodically but since we apparently never put anything back from whence it came, stuff piles up and then I end up with three shampoos and no conditioner. Once that becomes an issue, it is time to go through that thing again and see what the problem is.

11. My makeup drawer. I still have, truthfully, eye liner color that my mother gave me when I was teenager. I still use it because I can't find anything else like it! But I also have mostly empty containers of face powder, blush, and eye shadow. Time for a lot of that to find its way into the trash can.

12. The tax box. I really, really dislike keeping up with our accounting, particularly since we run several businesses, but it must be done, and should be done more regularly than I do it. So if I have one "resolution" for this new year, it is to keep on top of this. That is, if I can get 2016 out of the way. Egads, what a nightmare.

13. And last, but not least, my clothes dresser could use a going-through. I have three drawers that I never open, and whatever is in there needs to simply be tossed so I can regain the space. Let's face it, if I haven't worn panty hose in five years, I am not going to wear panty hose again ever.

My dresser. Note the three drawers I marked as "not opened."

So there you go. Not resolutions, but stuff that needs to be cleared away at some point. Feng shui and all of that.

Wish me luck!


____________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 481st time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

The Crack of Dawn

Happy Birthday to My Niece

My niece turns 15 this month! She is a beauty queen, cheerleader, star pupil, and all-around American girl. Here are a few photos of her. (Some I swiped from her FB page. Others I took.)

 

If I Had One Chance

This is a revision of an article I wrote in 2014 about my father. The Fincastle Herald published it in May of that year. For the sake of privacy, I am leaving out his name, his companies names, and other names.

If I could, I would fix my relationship with him. We are on speaking terms but we are not close, and I do not believe at this juncture we ever will be. I do not know what I have done, but my impression is he is consistently and constantly angry with me for things I am supposed to understand and know I did, but I do not know nor do I understand. This is not something I can fix and I have mostly stopped worrying over it, though the holidays tend to bring it to the fore. You would think I could figure this out, but I cannot and I no longer attempt to. Some things just aren't meant to be.

Anyway, here is the revised article.

***

My father, now 75, is a local businessman who truly embodies a rags to riches story, the stuff from which American legends are made. He was born to be an entrepreneur. At the age of 72, when many men were retiring to play golf, my father bought the local country club in order to work on his fourth concurrent business.

He has a reputation of turning everything he touches into gold, according to an employee at one of his companies. "He turns it around and it turns into money," a purchasing agent for his main corporation said.

My father recently described his life as a movement from ridge to ridge. He was born in Canvas, West Virginia in a cabin that sat on a ridge top. His father at that time was a coal miner. My father now lives in a stately home on a hill outside of Roanoke, Virginia, a long way from a cabin near a coal mine.

My father's storied life as entrepreneur began on the streets of Summersville, WV. When he was seven years old, an uncle bought him a shoeshine kit and he shined shoes in the street.

Not long thereafter, his family moved to Roanoke from West Virginia. His father, a World War II veteran, required treatment at the VA Hospital for wounds he received in the war. After his father healed, the family lived in New Castle in the Scratch Ankle area for two years before settling in Salem, where my father attended Andrew Lewis High School.

During his teen years, my father started his second enterprise, a wholesale fish bait business. He paid other youngsters to dig up worms and moss, put the night crawlers in containers, and sell them to local stores and gas stations. "I did that for two years," he told me. "I had about 25 customers."

Then he started a lawn mower business with a friend. "We cut about $40 a week worth of yards," he said. "You only got $2 a yard back in those days."

At the age of 17, he joined the military, serving for 37 months. He served in Korea for 13 months and eventually ended up in Fort Monroe, Virginia, with the United States Continental Army Command. His last job there was decoding security messages for the government. He received an honorable discharge at the age of 20. "I still wasn't old enough to vote when I got out," he recalled.

After he left the military, he became a police officer in Salem and was one of the youngest men hired to serve on the force at that time. He married my mother, who at the time lived in Salem, Virginia, in 1962. I was born in 1963 and my brother was born in 1966.

However, public service officials then, as now, made little money. "Being a police officer wasn't enough financial security," my father said. "I had $110 a week in expenses and brought home $105." Searching for something better, he decided to turn his considerable charisma and charm to sales.

He became a salesman and branch manager for a company out of Pennsylvania. He commuted from Salem to Richmond. In 1969, he decided he wanted to live in a more rural community. About that time, the company asked him to relocate. When his manager offered him either $4,000 in moving expense money or six-weeks in severance pay, he took the severance.

His Main Corporation

He determined then that he would make his own future, and he would do it in many different ways. First, he set himself up as an independent sales representative. One of his largest clients was located in Southeast Roanoke. In 1973, an opportunity to create a rubber product franchise came his way. He created his first corporation.

In 1976, the company began expanding, an ongoing project. The company has two branches,  two satellite locations, including one in Texas, and 48 employees. The company services over 9,000 customers.

"We ship overseas into India, Vietnam, and China," my father said. The company is ITAR certified, which means it is able to supply products to US defense contractors. My father, now retired, has turned most of the day-to-day operations over to my brother.

My father's company has a reputation for treating its employees like family. "He's got his moments," an employee said of my father, "but he's there for his employees personally as well as on the business level." The company does not have a large employee turnover, she noted. "He instills that family feeling here."

Early on, that wasn't necessarily the case. Another employee, who has been with the company for 30 years, said that becoming more like family was a transition my father made over the years. "He was so hard-core when I came here," she said. "He put business before family, but now it's different. He's mellowed."

Even though he is retired, my father continues to have a near-daily presence at the business. "He makes a point of coming in and speaking, sitting down and asking me how things are going," an employee said. "He told me once, 'I will always be your friend but there is a line I will always draw, and he draws it.'"

My father's selling acumen is legendary. "Once he starts a project he sees it to the end. He followed through until it was delivered. He is always thinking, and he's got a knack for doing it," an employee said.

My brother calls my father, "one of the greatest salesmen that I have ever run into. I firmly believe he could sell a cape to Superman," he said.

Farming

In 1970, my father bought a farm that backed up against his father-in-law's old home place. He fixed up an older home that had no plumbing when he bought the house.

He raised a number of different birds from time to time, including chickens, ducks, and quail. Beef cattle became his number one farm product, however. 

"I actually leased almost 1,400 acres around here at one time," he said. He raised hay to support more than 100 head of cattle, which he sold at the stockyard. "I sold the last 30 head of cattle in 1995," he recalled. These days he has one animal remaining, an old cow he is allowing to live out its life in his pasture fields. His property is now a beacon for various creatures, with some areas overgrown and others seeded for wildlife enhancement.

He has purchased nearby properties as they came up for sale, expanding his real estate holdings. Today he owns hundreds of acres around the original tract.

In 1976, my father built a spacious home up on the highest ridge of his farm. Not long after his house was finished, our family suffered a series of tragedies that still makes my father shudder when he recalls it: a tractor ran over my brother, who survived the incident. A few days later, while my brother was still in the hospital, my grandfather, my mother's father, passed away. My father told me that was one of the low points of his life.

In 1989, lightning struck his house and nearly burned it to the ground. My father rebuilt. He added on to the house at that time and in recent years, he has renovated the garage and added an addition.

Making Music

My father came from a musical family; his grandfather, father, and brothers all played instruments and sang, and so did he. He formed a band in 1970. He played guitar and sang at venues all over the state, ranging from Virginia Beach to Marion and locations in between.  He has many stories about his time as a lead singer.

"Once we were playing on two hay wagons in New Castle opening up the New Castle Fair and the drummer fell off the wagon backwards," my father recalled. "He drummed barefoot and I looked back and all I saw was two feet up in the air, but he was still beating on the snare drum. He never lost time."

In 1972, my father opened a retail music store in the mall across from Lord Botetourt High School. He ran the store for about four years. The band rented practice space in one of the lower levels of the mall for several years, too.

He stopped playing with his band in 1982. He said it was too difficult to focus on the weekend music and keep up with a growing business. However, he has returned to those musical roots. Now he also plays guitar and sings in a local band that entertains at nursing homes and public fundraisers.

Yet Another Business

In 1999, my father went to Iowa and spent a week at the World Wide College of Auctioneering, which is recognized worldwide as the number one school for auctioneering. Not long after, my father began his second business, an auto auction company.

In 2005, he and a partner bought out a local stockyard and formed a new corporation. The company now has 70 stockholders and my father is on its Board of Directors. "I oversee the operation of the stockyard, and the general manager answers to me," he said.

The Country Club

The local country club and golf course ran into financial troubles during the economic downturn, and in 2010, a group of investors purchased the stock and took over running the company. My father in 2013 bought out one of those original investors and purchased additional shares to become the second-largest shareholder in the country club.

Hobbies

My father was an avid golf player in his younger days and spent hours on the golf course. His main corporation has for the last decade held an annual customer appreciation tournament at the country club he now owns, usually hosting about 130 golfers. My father played golf regularly for 25 years and was on the Senior PGA Tour Pro Am on three different occasions.

He is also an avid sportsman and enjoys hunting and fishing. He has been to Africa twice to hunt big game and annually makes treks to other areas of the United States to hunt, including Alaska. He has also hunted in Canada and in Russia.

Additionally, he has soloed as an airplane pilot. He rides motorcycles, too, and recently turned his Honda Goldwing into a trike bike, one of his few acknowledgements of age creeping up on him.

My mother passed away in 2000, around the time my father began his auto auction company. In 2007, my father remarried.

Looking back on his storied life, my father said he considers himself an entrepreneur. "I also consider myself lucky," he said. "And I'm not a procrastinator, either."

He said he is now back on the ridge, but in a different capacity. He recalls his childhood on that ridge in West Virginia as a happy one. "That is when you're the happiest. You don't have all these tears. You just have happiness at that age."

And now? He looked around the restaurant of his new business venture, and then at me as I interviewed him for this article. "Right now I'm very happy," he said.

 

Sunday Stealing: Bud's Last Stand

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

 

Sunday Stealing: Bud's Last Stand of 2016

Ok, Bud the Sunday Stealing King is playing a New Year's Day Trick, because these aren't the questions that were there yesterday morning. But I shall answer them now (Sunday morning, of all times!). The others are below.

1. What did you do in 2016 that you’d never done before?

A. I took up knitting and coloring. They are hobbies that are supposed to help my mind calm. My mind wanders and thinks constantly, sort of like a breeze that never stops, not even to knock over a tree.

2. Best thing that happened to you was . . . watching my husband ride a race car around the track at Pocono Motor Speedway in PA. I loved watching him fulfill an item on his bucket list and be so happy.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

A. Yes. I lost my friend and mentor, Monty, who was killed when she was hit by a truck in the sleepy town of Floyd. I first met her around 1985 or so, when she was teaching an adult ed course in writing at Roanoke College. We hit it off and remained in touch via mail (pre-internet) and occasional visits. We later discovered we were distant cousins. She died in mid-December.

5. What countries did you visit?

A. Just the one I live in.

6. What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016?

A. Better health, more get-up-and-go since mine has got-up-and-went, and more friends.

7. What dates from 2016 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

A. November 9, because of the election. December 14, because of my friend's death.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

A. Continuing physical therapy, I guess. It is very painful and it takes a lot of mental stamina to put yourself through that twice a week. I am on hiatus from PT for a few months, now. Insurance makes you stop every so often.

9. What was your biggest failure?

A. Not writing anything other than my blog and in my personal journal.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

A. I developed a new hernia just before Christmas that scared me because it is a palatable mass above my naval and my doctor ordered an ultrasound to check it out. She seldom orders tests so it scared me, and it may ultimately need to be surgically repaired, but only as a last result. I have no desire to go under the knife again.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A. My Lord of the Rings coloring book. Actually someone gave it to me, but that's semantics.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

A. I don't know. Everyone acted pretty much like they always do.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

A. I am afraid the actions of our president-elect continue to appall and depress me. But that is all I will say about that.

14. Where did most of your money go?

A. To doctor's visits and regular bills.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

A. My brother returned to me a cherished Christmas ornament over the holidays.

16. What song will always remind you of 2016?

A. Hallelujah, because after Leonard Cohen died and I heard Kate McKinnon sing it on Saturday Night Live after Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election, I began to learn the song on the guitar. It is easy to play but I have trouble remembering the words. I also play it too fast.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: (a) happier or sadder? (b) thinner or fatter? (c) richer or poorer?

A. (a) about the same (b) about the same and (c) about the same.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

A. Writing and reading.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

A. Playing video games.

20. How did you spend New Year's Eve?

A. I spent it like I do most nights - I watched a little TV and went to bed.

21. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

A. "I did my best, it wasn't much. I couldn't feel so I learned to touch. I told the truth. I didn't come to fool you." - Hallelujah.

22. What was your favorite new TV program?

A. I don't have a favorite new one. I kept watching the same old ones - Supergirl (2nd season), Game of Thrones, Masters of Sex, Big Bang Theory.

23. What was the rudest thing someone did to you in 2016?

A. Nothing stands out in my mind.

24. What was the best book you read?

A. The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

A. I pulled out my electric guitar, even though I can barely lift it, and plugged 'er in.

26. What did you want and get?

A. I wanted some "shelves that slide" for my lower kitchen cabinet pots-and-pans place and received those.

27. What did you want and not get?

A. I wanted more improvement in my health but it is a chronic issue and improvement is incredibly slow.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

A. I don't really have one.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

A. I don't recall doing anything special, and my age is nobody's business but mine and the government's.

30. What one thing made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

A. My friends and family always help make the year better.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016?

A. Jeans and t-shirts.

32. What kept you sane?

A. Coloring.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

A. I enjoy reading Lynda Carter's Facebook posts. She's feisty.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

A. Oh must we? Really? I'll go local. Locally, the county supervisors moved historic structures out of the way to make room for an industrial shell building, which was a great loss to the historic community, and the state/feds started working on Exit 150 on Interstate 81, which is the biggest boondoggle one has ever seen.

35. Who did you miss?

A. I miss the things that never were and never will be.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

A. I can't think of anyone.

And here are the questions that were up there yesterday (December 31) but which have now disappeared:

1. Your main fandom of the year: Supergirl. She's on Season 2 but I like the show a lot.

2. Your favorite film this year: Star Wars: The Force Awakens. (It is the only one I saw at the theater.)

3. Your favorite book read this year: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

4. Your favorite album or song this year: Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen.

5. Your favorite meme sites of the year: Sunday Stealing, Saturday 9, and Thursday 13, of course.

6. Your fandom that you haven't tried yet, but want to: I don't know of any.

7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year: I started coloring along with everyone else. Is that a fandom?

8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year: I don't know of any.

9. Your TV boyfriend of the year:  I don't know. I like Leonard on The Big Bang Theory. But not well enough to have pictures of him on my PC or anything.

10. Your TV girlfriend of the year: Supergirl, I guess.

11. Your most missed old fandom: Xena: Warrior Princess (and that's really old!)

12. Your biggest anticipations of the new year: Completing the paperwork for the 2016 taxes and determining whether or not I go back into physical therapy in the spring. Really exciting stuff, eh?

13. Your favorite post (of yours) of the year: Breaking Up is Hard to Do. It also has the second highest viewing of any of my posts this year, exempting posts that have to do with local political issues.

14.Your favorite new blog (to you) of the year: whoever was new on Sunday Stealing or Saturday 9.

15.Your favorite new website of the year: I started following Tommy Emanuel on YouTube. Listen to this guy play Classical Gas on the guitar.

16. Your favorite news story of the year: Hillary Clinton won the nomination to run as the presidential nominee for the Democrat Party.

17. Your favorite actor of the year: Miam Bialik (Amy on The Big Bang Theory).

18. Your favorite drama TV show of the year: Game of Thrones

19. Your favorite comedy TV Show this year: The Big Bang Theory

20. Your favorite cartoon of the year: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
__________

I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: Tammy

Saturday 9: Tammy (1957)

In Memory of Debbie Reynolds (and Carrie Fisher: May the Force Be With Them Both)

(Debbie Reynolds once lived in Roanoke, VA my closest city. She was married to a big real estate developer here, Richard Hamlett, and was in the area from 1984 to 1996. I never met her but she was "about the town" on occasion.)

Unfamiliar with this week's song? Hear it here.

1. In this song,Tammy sings of being able to hear "the breeze from the bayou." What sounds can you hear as you answer these questions?

A. Just the washing machine, the clocks ticking in my office, and my fingers on the computer keyboard.

2. This week's song was the theme of a popular movie about a girl who grew up on a houseboat in Mississippi. Looking back on 2016, did you spend much time on or around water?

A. No. We have a pond on the farm but it is on the other side of the property; I can't even see it.

3. In addition to being an Oscar-nominated actress, this week's artist, Debbie Reynolds, was a big movie fan. She amassed an amazing cache of movie memorabilia. Do you collect anything?

A. I collect books, Christmas mice, and clocks.

4. Though she never won a competitive Oscar for acting, Debbie Reynolds was awarded the Academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award earlier this year for 60 years of charity work. While she supported many causes throughout her life, one she was closest to was The Girl Scouts. She was not only a Scout herself, she was a leader when daughter Carrie was young and a fundraiser throughout her life. Were you ever in Boy or Girl Scouts?

A. No. My mother worked a full-time job and I had no way to make it home from meetings.

 

Thanks for playing Sat 9 in 2016

6. The New Year's Eve fireworks celebrations in both Disney World in Florida and Sydney, Australia coordinate pyrotechnics and music. Are you expecting either fireworks or live music on your New Year's Eve celebration?

A. I only expect the sound of snoring on New Year's Eve.

7. According to the National Insurance Bureau, more cars are stolen on New Year's Eve than any other single day. Are you confident your vehicle(s) will be  safe and sound this Saturday night?

A. It should be, yes.

8. Do you have any New Year's Resolutions for 2017?

A. Only to try to live more healthily and to do my physical therapy exercises. I try to come up with power words or phrases for each year, but am not sure what it will be for 2017 yet. Last year it was HEALTHY. Maybe it needs to be HEALTHY again this year.

9. Looking back on 2016, what surprised you?

A. A lot of celebrities died. I think I saw something like 130 artists, musicians, writers, actors/actresses etc. passed away this year, including Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, George Michael, Merle Haggard, Alan Rickman, Prince, Glen Frye, David Bowie, Morley Safer, Gwen Ifill, Nancy Reagan, Harper Lee, Florence Henderson, etc.

Personally, I was surprised by some family changes, none of which directly concern me now but likely will over the remainder of my life.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Saturday 9 posts and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however.  

Thursday Thirteen

It's time to look back on 2016, which has been, to say the least, a rather bizarre and ugly year, and see what, if anything, I accomplished.

Since I have not been well, the little things will have to count for a lot.


My husband racing around the track.

1. I wrote 52 Thursday 13s, and hosted the TT website for the year, except for one week when I was on vacation.

2. I went to Pocono, Pennsylvania, and watched my husband race around a race track in a fast race car.

3. I saw my chiropractor 27 times.

4. I went to physical therapy 62 times.

5. I have 100 pages, typed, in my journal for 2016. That's just over 49,400 words.

6. Counting this entry, I wrote 325 blog entries.

7. I edited a novel.

8. I read 19 books, which for me is a record low. I may have read a few more than that, having forgotten to put them on my reading list, but it appears my reading level dropped considerably. No wonder the books are piling up.

9. I resigned myself to having to hire someone to come in to clean at least once a month, because I cannot push the vacuum.

10. I cast a vote for a woman for president of the United States.

11. I shot some nice photos.

12. I started learning to knit.



It's a scarf.

Whatcha think, you knitters out there?

13. I took up coloring and found that I enjoyed that.

Gandalf arrives in the Shire.

Sounds a bit boring, eh? Maybe next year will be more lively.


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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while and this is my 480th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.

Over the Rainbow . . . in Late December

Christmas 2016

I took no pictures of Christmas this year, aside from a photo of my tree and of Santa Mouse.

Santa Mouse, a long-lost remnant of my childhood, finally returned.

Our tree, 2016

On December 18, we held a little "holiday open house" which was mostly family, though a friend of my husband's also showed up. We had invited other folks but everyone had other plans. It is hard to do get-togethers this time of year.

The "holiday open house" was nice, with my husband's friend and his wife, my father and stepmother, my brother, my sister-in-law, their two children, my mother-in-law, and my nephew's girlfriend all joining in for food and conversation.

After everyone else had left, my brother gave me Santa Mouse, which I had given up on ever seeing again. I received two other Christmas mice this year, too - one from my dear friend B. and another from my aunt.

On Monday, December 19, the timbre of our holiday changed. My physical therapist felt a lump in my stomach that she'd not felt before, and it hurt. She's been rubbing on my belly for 16 weeks because of chronic abdominal pain, so of course she would recognize any change immediately.

I happened to have a doctor's visit already scheduled for December 20, so I asked my physician to check it. 

My GP is not one to send you off for tests, so when she told me she wanted an ultrasound, I panicked. My mother died of pancreatic cancer, so of course my brain went there first. Too high for the pancreas, my doctor reassured me. But she never said what she thought it might be.

The internet indicated it was either a hernia, fluid build-up in my abdomen, a bulge in the stomach aorta, a cyst, or a tumor. Doctoring by internet is probably not a good idea, really.

Worry led us by the nose for the remainder of the week. My friend T. came by on Thursday and she could feel the mass in my stomach when she hugged me goodbye. That was scary, that it was so noticeable.

I was a nervous wreck when I had the ultrasound on Friday morning. Worse, since it was the holiday, I expected it to be December 27 before I knew the results.

That's a long time to wait.

I told only a few people there might be a problem. No need to worry folks, after all. Christmas Eve came and I was home alone, with the firefighting husband out saving the city from the ashes of itself. 

A friend called, and another dropped by unexpectedly. I hadn't seen B. in ages and she's had a rough time. I was so pleased to see her, and I was pleased with myself for keeping my mouth shut about my testing and worries. She has enough to worry over.

My brother came back, too. He had one of my husband's Christmas presents in his truck, and he dropped it off. We also exchanged gifts, a tradition. Brother and sister always opened the present from one another on Christmas Eve, a ritual created to shut us up, I think. But it's a tradition we have preserved.

Santa woke me around 4:30, stumbling around in the living room (not really, I'd had a bad dream), and after I checked on things and went back to bed, I woke about 6:30 a.m. My husband arrived home a little after 8, and then it was time for our Christmas.

We had a very pleasant hour opening gifts, each of us taking our time to examine what we opened and to express our love and joy with each other. No matter what the rest of the world brings to us, my husband and I manage to find our way back to one another in love and in friendship.

Late in the day we went to my mother-in-law's, where we had a fulfilling and delightful dinner of turkey, green beans, squash casserole, cheese ball, meat balls, candied sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and gravy. Everything was good and we could hardly manage dessert, which for me was carrot cake and for my husband coconut cake with boiled custard.

Then again we opened gifts, with my sister-in-law complaining as she does every year about how we weren't supposed to buy anything (yet they always buy us something and we buy them something). I finally told her I was 53 years old and nobody was going to tell me what to do. Sometimes I can be mean.

At any rate, I received some nice reading material, dish towels, and gift cards, which are always welcome.  Hopefully everyone was happy with the treats we gave out as well.

Then we came back home, and as soon as I finished my shower, my husband was ready for bed. Apparently he'd had a rougher night at the fire station than he had let on.

Today my aunt visited me. We laughed when we both opened our gifts to one another and discovered we'd given each other coloring books. That doesn't happen often, and fortunately they were not the same books! We had a nice visit, and she left.

Alone again in the house, I read the paper and finally came back to my desktop. I discovered a message from my doctor.

The fact that it was email and not a phone call was in itself good news. I don't think my doctor would tell me anything bad in an email.

So I held my breath as I opened the test results. The mass in my stomach is likely a lipoma (non-cancerous fatty tumor) or a hernia, and it had been present on my CT scan in 2014. There was a little change in that it was a tiny bit larger, but otherwise nothing life-threatening.

My GP suggested I see a surgeon to see if surgery is warranted, but I think I've had enough of surgery for a while - I've had my belly cut open 7 times. If she will let me watch the thing and see how things go, that is my preferred way.

With that sword of Damocles no longer hanging over my head, I can relax now for the new year.

A Christmas miracle? Probably not, but certainly a load off my shoulders.