Happy Birthday Mom!

I'm sure most of you expected to see a Christmas blog today. I do tend to discuss the holidays and what they mean to me.

But, today is also my mother's birthday. As we have learned over the years, when you share a birthday with Jesus you very often play the second fiddle.

Not today.

That is not to say that this blog won't have some of my favorite Christmas memories. They are there, wrapped up with Mom's birthday.

Mom has mentioned, on numerous occasions, that she had only one birthday party growing up - when she was 5. We couldn't do too much to change this while we were growing up, but we have made the effort since we became adults.

While I'm certain the original idea came from Mom, Daddy always impressed upon us to wrap one present in birthday paper. We never did that whole "here's your Christmas birthday present" thing. We have always made an effort to have a birthday present.

Over time, Andrea and I have tried to even mix it up a little more. Make the birthday part of the equation even more memorable.

For instance, in 2002 Andrea and I took Mom to New York City.

She'd never been.

It was a total surprise.

And there is nothing in the world as magical as New York City at Christmastime.

We worked for months on an itinerary - the Rockettes, "Regis and Kelly", Tavern on the Green, "The Producers", and High Tea at the Plaza Hotel. We also shopped and did the touristy stuff. We presented the itinerary to her like she'd won a prize on a game show.






I'm pretty sure she had a great time.

Always looking to outdo ourselves, for her 60th birthday a few years later we gave her something else she'd never had before.

A SURPRISE birthday party.

Now, people, this took some serious doing. Mom seems to know everything that is going on and we never were very good at telling fibs to her. It was complicated somewhat by the fact that Andrea and I both live out of town so we did all this planning long distance.

But we pulled it off. We were able to gather a lot of her friends and had a very nice lunch. And she was honestly, truly surprised. I'm still not sure how we did it.

There aren't any big surprises or elaborate gifts this year. This year it will just be our family, at home.

But that's good, too.

We will remember the family members no longer with us. Laugh about how Papaw finished his Christmas lunch at the hospital on the day Mom was born. Joke about the sack and Army boot Daddy gave her one year when she wanted a trash compactor. Reminisce about having Christmas Eve dinner after church at Sambo's Restaurant every year for a long time and the year that Papaw forgot his wallet.

Christmas is a magical time. It is a time for family and friends. Time for loving and sharing. And a time for remembering that our Lord and Savior was born to ultimately save us all from ourselves and give us the greatest gifts of all.

But in our family another very important person was born on December 25th. She was there for all the asthma attacks and sicknesses, all the basketball and soccer games, the weddings, births of her grandchildren, and more than a few funerals.

She's our mom.

And we love her.

Happy Birthday Mom! Hope your day is wonderful!

To Tweet, Or Not To Tweet

Fox News presented a story this morning about a woman whose 4 year old son drowned in a pool and she was tweeting about it on Twitter half an hour later. Some were taking the position that it was just appalling that a mom would do it.

First of all, I cannot even begin to imagine the pain the mom had to have been going through.

Secondly, no one should judge how someone else grieves. Grief is completely personal and no two people approach it the same way.

Having said that, I have to say I, too, was shocked at first but only for a second. In today's electronically connected world it might have seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. We send text and mass emails, share information through blogs and Facebook. Why not Twitter?

It might have actually made the process marginally easier to deal with. That mother could tell the tragic news once and all her friends and family got it. She didn't have to retell it, and relive it, dozens of times. Say it once and then get on to the next thing she needed to deal with. Most likely funeral arrangements.

I know when Mom's husband was sick their friend did the Dicky Chronicles and it was a way to get the news out - both the good and the bad - to a large group of friends, who could then share it with other friends. There is no random repeating of the facts (which can get messed up in the translation) and no inadvertently forgetting to call someone while you were deep in your grief and shock. I think it probably helped by Mom in a lot of ways.

So, while I am often reprimanded for being "too plugged in" and not spending time with my family, I do see there are advantages to having these large online groups. I have been able to reconnect with childhood friends and family members that have become scattered over the years. It helps that I know they are only a mouse click away.

Before anyone criticizes the way someone else handles a tragedy I think they should step back and stop for a minute. People younger than me spend an awful lot of time on their electronics and they think nothing of sharing news that way. The mother of a 4 year old is most likely quite a bit younger than I and probably falls into that category. They have their cell phones on and ready 24/7 so it was most likely just instinct that she picked it up and tweeted.

I guess, like everything else in life, things are a matter of perspective. I'd say all things in moderation, including living electronically, but who am I to decide how someone else should live their life? As long as they are truly living it.

I also think, at least in this case, the breaths wasted on being critical would have been better spent praying for a young mother and family that just lost a child and will never be the same.

Well, At Least the Puppies Ate Good...

OK, I would have totally won the "How Martha Were You" prize yesterday morning had I called the Martha Stewart morning show.

Totally.

I decorated the Christmas tree and the house, made crepes (with Nutella and marscapone cheese), cooked a giant pot of chili with cornbread and Riley's gumbo, made sauce for the tortellini, did a little shopping, and I baked.

Christmas cookies and cakes.

Boy, did I bake!

On Saturday I pulled out the cookie press for some spritz cookies. (I learned from Martha Stewart that spritz is the German word for squirt, which is how you make the cookies.) Trays and trays of cookies. So I set out a sample, kind of for decoration.



Having finished my last task of the day, I decided to take Riley for his walk.

This is what I returned to.



I asked Billy if he ate all the cookies and got a response of "what cookies?". I looked in Scooter's usual "laying place" in the kitchen and found the napkin.

(Not to fear, Billy did get plenty of cookies. The tray was only a sampling.)

So, Sunday rolls around and it is time for the big project.

Cakes.






I had seen this cake on another blog and wanted to try it. One for work and one for us.

This cake requires 3 boxes of cake mix. I only have two cake pans so this was an all-afternoon process.

Mix, tint, bake the batter.

Repeat.

Twice.

While the cake is baking I'm decorating and have the Christmas music going and all is well in my world.

I get the last two layers out and they are cooling.

Decorating is not far off now!

I walked upstairs to tell Billy something. Gone two minutes, max.

Yep.

You guessed it.

Patches ate the last two layers.

Not completely, but I think he only stopped because they were still burning hot out of the oven.

I walked back upstairs, tears in my eyes. All I could say was "Patches ate my cakes. Patches ate my cakes."

Billy's response - "All of them?" (I think he would have been secretly impressed had one dog eaten 6 cakes layers in that amount of time but wouldn't have said so.)

I pulled myself together and went to further survey the damage. Patches had munched about a third from each layer so I thought I'd just cut that part off and see what I could do.

This monstrosity was the result.




You can't really tell, I couldn't bring myself to photograph any more of it, but the layers split and it wouldn't stand up and it was just a huge disaster of a cake.

Fortunately, Billy is big believer in the adage that the food is all going to the same place and it doesn't matter what it looks like. He has been eating on this mound for a couple of days.

(He has a good soul, don't you think?)

Anyway, I took the good cake to work yesterday and it was oohhed and aaahhhed over and generally well received.

And my lesson - either get higher counters or smaller dogs....

Stop Seeking, Start Seeing

One of the best lessons I learned recently was that sometimes we can get so caught up in looking for something specific that we may miss something else equally as wonderful.

Billy and I love to travel.

We just don't always do it well together.

He has some crazy notion that I know where everything is and how to get to it even if I've never been there before.

Maybe it's a man thing.

Of course, this is not a new problem for us. We had our very first fight as a married couple while on our honeymoon in the Bahamas - because I couldn't find the zoo. We walked and walked and walked up a dusty road looking for the zoo.

The Bahamas in August is just a little toasty, too.

We finally stopped and turned around and headed back, obviously no longer interested in the zoo. We saw the sign for it on the way back, partially obscured by vines and stuff. But, the fight wasn't completely that I couldn't find the zoo. It was that Billy found a street vendor and bought one bottle of orange juice and drank it in front of me without offering me as much as a sip.

Like I said, it was a little toasty outside that day....

Anyway, I've gotten use to our obstacle in traveling.

So, 20 years later, our anniversary trip, in Rome, and some things never change.

I actually have a fairly decent sense of direction. I know how to look at the Sun and get my bearings and all of that. Prior to this trip my biggest challenge had been New York City. You can't see the Sun for all the tall buildings so I had to develop another plan.

But I have NEVER been so turned around in all my life as I was in Italy. No matter what we did, we could not figure out how to get where we were headed. We even did the smart stuff like turning around and retracing our steps to get back to the beginning and start over and we would manage to goof up even that.

So, on that first Sunday afternoon we'd managed to turn a 10 minute walk to the sightseeing bus into an hour, or two, or so, and still couldn't get to the meeting point. Tired and more than a little frustrated I finally just suggested that we stop.

Right where we were.

I looked around and saw a large staircase. So, we went to the top to, much like the bear, see what we could see.

What we found was an incredible museum. We spent a couple of hours inside, just looking at sculptures and portraits and incredible art.

We'd stopping seeking and just starting seeing. We'd quit trying to just find one specific place and took in our surroundings. I couldn't help but wonder what all we missed that morning while we were focused on the map and where we were on it.

How many things did we not have time to see because we'd spent so much time just tying to find one thing?

(I know there were lots of things there that we didn't see - the Spanish steps, the Pantheon, the mozzarella bar,,, But, those are all just reasons to go back someday.)

How much in our lives do we miss because we are only seeking and not seeing? How many opportunities pass us by simply because they aren't what we were looking for?

I'd venture to say there is much. I think I am probably missing a lot in my world because I don't really stop to see all that is around me.

I might have just come up with my New Year's Resolution - stop seeking, stop seeing.

Oh, and one thing has changed, When we got to the museum we went into the snack bar - and SHARED a Diet Coke.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles....

And taxis and water buses.

Matter of fact, we used every mode of transportation in Italy except motor scooters.

First of all, let me issue a sincere apology to all the New York City cab drivers I have ever maligned. They got nothin' on the Italians. Male, female, car, motorbike, no matter. They all drive 100 miles an hour and the Rules of the Road do not apply to the two-wheeled vehicles. We had motor scooters flying out from around corners, going the wrong direction, and driving up the middle to get to the head of the line.

Bizarre!

And scary.

I got the bejeebers scared out of me more than once. As a non-Italian driver I also got some dirty looks and less than kind gestures. But, at least no one let know I was number 1 in their books.....

Also, with all due respect to my friends and family in Texas, if you think things are bigger in Texas, you've not been to Rome.

Jiminy Christmas!

Massive is the only word I have for some of what I saw and that word is woefully inadequate.

History literally rose up out of the ground everywhere you turned. I think the history part of the trip is the one thing that moved me so much. The preservation of it all. Living in Natchez, the oldest continually settled area on the Mississippi, I know something about historic preservation, but nothing like these people.

The Catacombs in Rome run for 11 miles. 150,000 tombs and 2,000 still have bodies in them. But you can go down and see them and the tour starts in an underground church that still looks like it could have services. We toured the Duomo in Florence. It is enormous! I think the Statue of Liberty can stand upright on the inside. But we saw a staircase and went down. Underneath was an earlier Basilica. It was like they razed it at ground level and then just built on top. The original Mosaic floor was still there. There were stone steps leading up to, now nowhere. The crypts of the early clergy was still down there as were the altar where they worshipped.

Touring Pompeii. Knowing that the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius was 1,930 years ago yet from certain angles you had no idea it was 2009. The vineyards were replanted and Mt. Vesuvius loomed in the background, same as that day so long ago. Gardens have been replanted with period-specific plants and the excavation continues. We saw both restoration work and new digging.

And the streets. Still stones or bricks. I was very profoundly moved by some of this in Rome. Looking at the Coliseum; knowing the early Christians were fed to the lions there. And having it be real. It wasn't just a story in a book. I was seeing where it happened. I was walking the exact same streets that they walked. Walking where Jesus walked (potentially, anyway). One of the guides was telling the stories of the deaths of Peter and Paul - punishment for being Christian. Since Paul was a Roman citizen he was given the honor of being beheaded. Beheading at this time was considered an honorable death since the death was immediate. Peter was not a Roman so he was crucified. Non-citizens had to suffer.

I just got chills being there and seeing all that I read and heard about for so many years. Sure, the food was fantastic. The weather mostly glorious (did I mention that two or three nights we actually slept with the windows open - in November). And the people incredibly kind, although Billy wasn't impressed with their manners sometimes. Of course, he also thought if he spoke English just a little louder that they might miraculously understand him. I learned, quickly, that while I could certainly ask my questions in Italian I couldn't always understand the answers. But everyone I spoke to was patient and we gestured a lot to get the messages across.

I think I could write for days about the trip, but I won't bore everyone. Suffice it to say that we think we could live in Florence. I think being an English-speaking tour guide there could just about be the ultimate dream job.

We enjoyed our trip, our time together. We learned what we won't do if we get the opportunity to go back someday (DON'T rent a car - take the trains. There are numerous blog postings just in the disaster of having an automobile).

But I'll leave you with a few pictures. They are all on my Facebook page if you want to see the rest.

Brad Pitt for President

Now, before you all get your knickers in a bunch, keep reading.

I've said before that when Billy and I first met we were on opposite ends of many, many spectrum.

One was politics.

I was raised fairly conservatively (OK family members, clean up where you spit out your coffee on that understatement) and Billy was raised a Democrat.

We at least called ourselves Registered Independents so we could decide in which primaries to vote and gave ourselves the "freedom" to vote the person not the party.

Billy was raised a Democrat.

This caused many a interesting election nights, especially during the Clinton Years.

Being from Arkansas, they were ALL Clinton Years.

I will make no secret of the fact that I despise Bill Clinton. Not a fan of Hillary, either, but I cannot stand Bill Clinton. One thing that Billy has always tried to get me to see is a division of the President, the Man and the Office. I don't have to like the person in the Office but there should be some level of respect for the Office itself.

I think he makes a very good point but I could never see past all of Bill Clinton's embarrassments to see anything positive that came out of his Presidency. I'm sure there were accomplishments and so on but not in my view.

Because of my conservative nature I have not been a big supporter of our current President, either. I strongly disagree with a lot of his ideas. But I've been trying to at least listen and give them time. Not to take a hard line before they've had a chance to develop and either succeed or fail.

Now, over the years, Billy has moved his outlook a little more to the center and looks more at the Person than the Party when he votes. But he has always maintained that whether or not our candidate wins the election we should support the Office and try to give some benefit to the decisions being made.

He also did not support Mr. Obama for the election but he has really tried to be positive and open about what is going on. Until the other day. I don't know what we were watching but he just blurted out that he was so disappointed in everything that was going on right now. He couldn't see that the nation was making progress and he thought Mr. Obama was disingenuous to say he was not disappointed that Guantanamo Bay would not be closed by the original January 2010 deadline.

Something else was said on the television and Billy just said "if all they wanted was a celebrity, why didn't they just elect Brad Pitt".

I felt sort of like a mom watching a child lose their innocence.