What do I want with 90 Meat Sticks!?!

My son is in Kindergarten.

I recently learned that they have a wrestling league for the youth in our area.

There aren't a lot of sports and activities for 5 year old children so we thought it might be a good idea to get my son active and doing something that might be fun for him too.

So, we went to the wrestling sign up meeting at one of the school's libraries.  

What a culture shock!

We walked in (My husband, my son, and myself) and were greeted and handed paperwork.

There were several parents there; one of them was wearing a WWF Wrestling T-Shirt.  

We sat down to fill out the paperwork and a high school girl comes over and hands us 3 boxes of meat sticks (similar to Slim Jims) for a fundraiser.  I am a strict vegetarian, therefore an instant sense of panic overcame me and I said, "um, I don't think I can sell those, I am a strict vegetarian", to which the girl replied in a dismissive tone, "oh, just take them to work".  I looked at my husband, then I looked at the meat sticks, then I looked at my son sitting there looking a little clueless about the whole situation and I said, "Are you sure you want to do this?".  He said passively, "Yeah, sure".  The next table over, there was a two year old girl crying and a father saying in a overly macho voice, "what are you crying for, do you see anyone else here crying?".  As I was reading my son the rules on the sign up sheet about the 4 day a week training schedule and what is expected, I could tell he wasn't paying attention.  I looked at the meat sticks again, and then looked back at my husband, who was looking annoyed. We heard the meat stick girl giving someone their meat stick fundraiser as she was saying, "they are non-returnable".  My husband and I looked at each other again and he said, "do we want to be stuck with these meat sticks, especially changes his mind in a couple weeks and doesn't want to do this anymore?". "No", I replied immediately, "I am not paying $90 for Meat Sticks!".  I turned to my son and said, "you know what, why don't we do this when you are older and understand it better".  He looked a little upset, but not devastated, after all, earlier he didn't want to come to the meeting because he wanted to play instead, how easy is it going to be to get him to all the practices?  "I think you can make a more informed decision in a year or two", I said, "besides, I am not sure how well you will fit in here".  

I had my husband return the meat sticks and tell them we changed our minds.

I was thinking "you know your a redneck when..."  you have Meat Sticks as your sport fundraiser.   

The Mix Tape

My car and my husband's car are both in the shop.  Because of this, we have been driving my mother-in-laws car.  Its a 1992 car (but only has 120,000 miles on it) and comes fully equipped with am/fm and cassette player. I like having my own choice of music to play in my car, so, finally, this morning I decided to grab a cassette tape I had seen in a jewelry box.  I grabbed the tape on my way out the car, and held my breath as I stuck it into the tape slot.  I had no idea if the cassette player or this old tape even worked.  I immediately pushed rewind to wind the tape to the beginning, as it looked left somewhere in the middle.  After it finally rewound, the tape made a funny chipmunky-scratchy sound, so my finger shot out to the eject button.  Phew, the tape popped out!  It looked okay, so I thought I would give it one more try. TADA!, Jim Morrison's voice sang "Come on Baby Light My Fire".. WOOHOO!

I was off down the road and down memory lane.  I remember this mix tape, a construct of two Twenty-Something girls that hadn't quite found the love they were looking for.  My best friend and I listened to this tape A LOT.  We would listen to it quite often while we worked out with our "Body by Jake" Ab machine, "Body By Jake" Thigh Machine, stepper, hula hoop, twist board rotation.  We called it the "sexy tape", primarily, because of the Paula Cole song "Feelin' Love".  If I recall, it was constructed to play from beginning to end like a story that starts with longing and desire and ends with, well, conquest, I guess.

Since I haven't had a LOT of driving to do today I am only through side one of the tape.  It's in the real lovey mushy section right now.  Though we used songs from different time periods, there are a lot of mid-late 90's songs in there, so the tape is dated.  I can also tell we really wanted to put one Phish song on it because there is a very misplaced "Water in the Sky".

My husband and I were discussing the lost art of the mix-tape.  Though it is easier to make a CD/MP3 mix on the computer, anymore, there was this proud feeling of accomplishment that came with the time and effort of a mix tape.  You had to listen to all the songs while you made it, pause the tape and wait for the perfect time to un-pause it.  I remember the CD/Cassette recorder that we made the tape on, I remember our deliberations on the ensemble, and the boy, girl, boy, girl song fashion.  So far, it is still a very enjoyable tape!

Sailing in the seas of contrast (or maybe floating gently on my back on a noodle)

I'm sailing in this vast ocean of contrasts (Its frickin awesome, by the way),
their waves pushing me closer toward the shores of my ever-changing, ever evolving destiny (of my creation)

AND I DON'T EVEN GET SEA SICK ANYMORE!

I used to swim (quite badly), practically drowning in the huge waves.
But that was another yester-year

Tomorrow, I think I'll buy a noodle and float gently on my back  ;)

Make it BRIGHT! (shine, baby, shine)

The other day, I was thinking back on my younger days with the temptation to sensationalize that time of my life.

It dawned on me, I am Living it, I've been living it (although I hadn't always realized it).. Not some American dream, not some elusive dream, but MY dreams, and they are coming true in the strangest ways.  And now that I realize what is happening, now that I really know what to do, the possibilities are ENDLESS!

Here I am, now, standing on my own summit of creation, realizing what it REALLY means,seeing these manifestations beginning to appear,  knowing how far I've come, and I am SO excited about the adventure that still lies ahead.


I want to shout it to the roof-tops!

"YOU ARE LIVING IT!"

"Make it the BEST!"

"Make it BRIGHT!"