Aaaaaaaaaah! Summer is finally here! Time to relax, kick-back, take a
load off. I'm planning on sleeping in every morning for at least a
week.
What do you do to relax? Are you a hot tub/candles/wine kind of
person? Or do you relax by exercising? Do you like to leave town? Spa
it? Or maybe just curl up in bed with a good book and ignore the
children.
Or maybe you never relax. Sad.
Write your spin on "Relax". Post it. Let me know. I'll link it.
Check in on Friday for my spin on Relax, and to find out next week's Spin topic.
I am feeling SOOOOO lazy! It is definitely the countdown to Camp Mama around here. Only one week and two days until summertime, summertime, summertime. But I think I can come up with a handful of randomness...
Just in case you're looking for a refreshing summer salad recipe...
Oh my...
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I love these photographs. An Austin photographer has commemorated her daughter's 5th birthday by dressing the kid up not as a Disney princess, but as real-life inspirational women...
Amelia Earhart
Susan B. Anthony
Go check out the other photos! It's such a cool idea!
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Gotta admire this girl's gumption.
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An old friend of mine, Lara, needs your help. Lara is an artist, an activist, a small business owner and a lovely human being. I first met Lara through a theater we were both involved in, and when I adapted "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret" as a stage play, she was my Margaret. Lara is also going blind. She is a young woman with severe cataracts, which can be helped with surgery, but her health insurance doesn't cover vision. Please watch the video HERE. Her friends have put together an Indiegogo site. which is raising the $14,000 needed for surgery to both of her eyes. So far, they have raised an amazing $8000. PLEASE donate to her cause. Even $5 makes a difference! Thank you SO much!
Mama was working in the garden, planting some new rose bushes. She was not wearing gardening gloves, because she liked the way the moist dirt felt on her hands. She would come to regret this.
It was mid-March, and the weather in Texas was starting to warm up, so she had decided to garden at dusk, when it was pleasantly cool outside.
She was wearing a large and not particularly attractive muumuu, which her sister-in-law, Verna, had sent her from Hawaii. It was the only thing that still fit her, as she had outgrown all of her maternity clothes.
Oh, did I fail to mention that she was pregnant? She was. Quite pregnant, in fact. But she still had a couple of weeks until her due date, so she was pretty surprised when labor pains started in fast and furious. She sunk down to her knees.
"Roy!!!" she cried.
Nothing.
"ROY!!!" she yelled out, louder.
Nothing.
She managed to get up and stagger into the house. Daddy was sitting in his big chair in the living room, watching "Rawhide" on television. Daddy loved a good Western.
"Roy! It's TIME!!" Mama cried. Mama was often melodramatic.
"Now?" Daddy asked calmly. Daddy was never melodramatic.
"Yes! Now! The baby is coming now!"
"Well, why don't you go lie down and let me watch the rest of "Rawhide". It will take a while for that baby to get here. We'll drive in to the hospital after the show," declared Daddy, ever the pragmatist.
"But this baby is coming NOW!"
A rather large fight ensued.
Mama, of course, won, as pregnant women in labor tend to do, and Daddy turned off "Rawhide" and drove her to the hospital.
When they got there, they whisked her into the Maternity Ward, and told Daddy to go home. They would call him when it was closer to the time for delivery.
Once Mama got into the Maternity Ward, they stuck her in a bed in the corner and refused to call her doctor. It was far too early, they said, it will still be many hours until that baby was ready to come out.
"But this baby is coming NOW!"
"Oh my goodness, you older mothers..." scoffed the nurse. Mama never forget this line.
Because she was, in fact, an older mother - almost 40. Which was rare in those days. And the nurse in charge seemed to think that Mama was a silly, over-reacting older mother, who clearly didn't know anything about birthing babies.
Mama became convinced that they just weren't taking her seriously enough because she was wearing this terrible muumuu and she had dirt stuck under her fingernails. She was afraid that they thought she was some kind of low-class woman, who didn't know any better than to go into labor with dirty nails.
"I was gardening! I'm not usually dirty!" Mama tried to tell the nurses, "I should have worn gloves! This baby is coming NOW!"
Finally, after a few hours, she convinced a nurse to come and examine her, and sure enough the nurse took one look and said "This baby is coming NOW!"
They called her doctor, and Daddy, who both rushed down to the hospital. Within an hour, the doctor found Daddy out in the waiting room, and told him he was the father of a healthy baby girl. Me. It was just after midnight on March 18, 1961.
Notice that by now she has washed her hands and put on a little lipstick. And a bow.
Daddy never got to see the end of that episode of "Rawhide". And Daddy, having the wry sense of humor that he did, complained about it for the rest of his life. Every year on my birthday, he'd mutter sadly, "Never did see the end of that "Rawhide". Every time the show was on, he'd watch, but after a few minutes he'd shake his head sadly, "Nope. That's not the episode."
But Daddy didn't have Google. Or IMDb. Or YouTube. Though he would have loved them - all that information at his fingertips. And I, being very much my father's daughter, did a bit of research.
I Googled "Rawhide March 17, 1961" and sure enough..."Rawhide" Season 3, Episode 19, Incident Near Gloomy River popped right up on IMDb! The legend has been confirmed! And John Cassavetes was the guest star, so I guess it was a good episode!
My next stop was YouTube, and guess what? A scene from Incident Near Gloomy River. Gotta love the young Clint.
And so, this is for you Da.
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This post was inspired by...
Prompt #3 - Tell us about the story of your birth.
Yes, I know I assigned "Bucket List" to you all as your Spin Cycle topic of the week, and now I'm saying I hate them. I don't hate other people's bucket lists, I just hate the idea of making one for myself.
I feel like it would just be setting myself up for failure. There are SOOOOOO many things I want to do in my life, and SOOOOOOO many places I want to go. And realistically, I won't get to most of them. I know it. So putting them down on a list is just too depressing.
But every now and then, there's something that you've always dreamed of doing, and never imagined that it could really happen for you, and then it just falls into your lap. Something you can officially check off your mental bucket list...
Y'all may or may not remember that I sing in my church choir. We're a small but mighty group, who sing at the 11:00 mass at Blessed Sacrament Church in Hollywood. We sing good music. I should make that with a capital g - Good music. Like Handel. And Beethoven. And classic hymns. And...Mozart. Hmmm, Wolfie.
A couple of years ago, we were blessed to get a new choral director, Dr. Joe. Doctor as in PhD. He's wonderfully talented and great fun too. Well, Joe has been invited to conduct Mozart's Requiem. In New York. At...brace yourselves...Carnegie Hall.
And so, in three weeks, on May 22, I'll be flying to New York. We have rehearsals on Thursday and Friday, and then at 8:00 pm, Saturday, May 25 I will actually be performing in Carnegie Hall. I am so excited I could spit.
We will be part of a large chorus, composed of 5 choirs, and Joe will be conducting us along with a professional symphony and professional NYC soloists. A tiny voice in the large group. But I don't care, it's something that every performer anywhere always dreams of.
Now granted, I'm not performing based on my own personal talent or merit, but simply because I'm lucky enough to be in Joe's choir. But I don't care.
I don't know if any of you know Mozart's Requiem. It's one of the most beautiful and thrilling pieces of choral music ever written. I get goosebumps during every rehearsal. It's Big Good music - that's two capital letters. You may remember it as the last piece of music that Mozart wrote at the end of Amadeus, when he's dying and going sort of crazy and Salieri helps him notate the music.
Remember that part?
It is good stuff, y'all. Here's a video of the Dies Irae movement...
Outrageous, right?! I honestly don't know if I can describe the thrill that comes from singing something this beautiful in a choir. Especially a choir of people you love. And the idea of this choir that I love together in a huge choir + symphony + soloists in the most famous venue in the world is just mind-blowing. Here's the Kyrie...
We've been practicing hard, because we really want to sound good for Joe.
But more importantly, what am I going to wear?! Does anybody have a long black skirt I can borrow? Where does one even purchase a long black skirt?
If any of you are in the NYC area, and want to see a performance of Mozart's Requiem at Carnegie Hall, let me know. I have a connection for discounted tickets.
So I guess the answer to the age old question "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" isn't "Practice, practice, practice." but " Know Joe."
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Check out the other "Bucket List" spinners. Have you crossed off anything on their lists?
Growing up in Texas, I tried very hard to hate Country Music. I was part of the Rock and Roll generation. I thought Country was old-fashioned and hickish.
But my sweet Daddy loved Country-Western music. It's what we listened to on the radio in his car. And I have always hidden a deep and abiding love of the Country greats. Hank Williams. Patsy Cline. Loretta Lynn. Glen Campbell. Eddy Arnold. Johnny Cash. Merle Haggard. Tammy Wynette. Willie and Waylon and Dolly. Bobbie Gentry. And "The Possum", George Jones.
Jones lived a hard life, filled with heartbreak and drinking and torment, but nobody could channel heartbreak into music like he did.
RIP George Jones. 9/12/1931 - 4/26/2013.
In honor of George and of my Daddy, please listen...
The topic of this week's Spin Cycle is Apple/Tree.
As in "...doesn't fall far from...".
Which tree did you fall directly beneath? Do you find words coming
out of your mouth and then gasp "Holy Christ, I've become my mother!"?
Do you look down and see your father's ugly, bony feet sticking out the
bottom of your pants?
Or maybe you are the tree. Do you see things in your children that are JUST LIKE YOU?
Is all of this a good thing? Or a curse? Do you revel in the sameness? Or gasp in horror?
Write your spin on "Apple/Tree". Post it. Tell me. I'll link it.
Come back next Friday for my take on "Apple/Tree" and to get the next week's spin topic.
