You, Too, Can Have More Cabinet Space...

Okay, so I'm a practical person. I simply don't do fancy; I do not own a pair of heels -- or a pair of pantyhose; I never wear any more make-up than mascara and Carmex; and I never do an outfit more hoity-toity than Sunday best.

I've always been like this, so, fifteen years ago, when I recieved an inordinate number of crystal vases and bowls as wedding gifts, I was suprised. (I do apologize deeply if you were one of the givers of such a gift. Please, keep reading; maybe you'll like how this ends. Maybe.) It's true that I adore shiny things; at times, I am like a puppy just mesmerized by light reflecting from the bling, but, after an admiring "ooh" and a suprising "aah," I was at a loss for what to do with all this Czech -- or was it Yugoslavian? -- crystal.

For over a decade, these fine pieces lived in the cabinet beneath our kitchen bar. Every so often, I would take them out and hand wash them, but a single crystal would only get used occassionally for fruit salad at Christmas. I tried working some of the Mikasa pitchers and vases into shelves and end tables. Such attempts at interior design never worked; the Gorham always looked out of place with the handprinted-by-a-preschooler rocks and empty whiskey jugs. (Think the kind they used to blow across on Hee Haw!)

About a year ago, I finally discovered what to do with all these fine, but seemingly useless pieces: I just started being practical. I started using them. My first attempt was keeping my chap stick and pony-tail holders in a truffle bowl on the bathroom counter. It worked great, so I moved on to drinking straws in the pineapple-design vase:

Then, I moved on to snacks in the larger bowls, plastic flatware in the pitchers, and soda can tabs in the small bowls. In truth, I just started using what I had, realizing finally that the special occassion I was saving them for might never come.

I wonder now if all the Fostoria crystal my grandmother loved so much really got used and seen as much as she had hoped it would...

These days, I see my shiny, blingy crystal pieces everyday, and maybe they aren't filled with fancy flowers or decadent dishes. But, they are filled with bits and pieces of this life -- of my life, the life I have that is chocked full of practicality and utilitarianism. It's a life that works... and makes me smile because, now, it shines a bit more.

Family Ever After

I'm thinking about marriage today: Why people get married. Why people stay married. Why they don't. Why they choose what they do. And what we can learn from their stories...

My mom's parents. They were married for 52 years. Their wedding was in September, which, for wheat farmers in Kansas, was threshing time. My grandmother never hesitated to tell the story of their getting married and then her feeding a huge herd of threshers.

I love how, in this shot, they are standing close to one another -- like they want to touch one another but knowing, also, that it somehow isn't appropriate. Love. That.

My dad's parents. They were married for 69 years and 2 months. Their first date was in 1939; they went to see Gone with the Wind at a movie theater in Dallas.

Everyone who ever met them knew -- I mean, really knew in his bones -- that they adored one another. Always. Unconditionally. Entirely crazy about each other. Oh, that's not to say that she didn't want to pinch his head off at times or that he didn't really spend time in his garden for more than the beautiful tomatos. But it is to say that they somehow figured out how to grow the patience to accept and love one another. Always. No matter what.

My mom and dad, married 48 years next month. Here, they are standing in the Fellowship Hall of the First United Methodist Church in the small West Texas town where my grandparents (first picture) owned the Dairy Mart. My dad is clearly on his best behavior here; I can totally imagine the whole cake-eating ordeal going an entirely different direction. Totally.

Amazing how this milli-second nearly 50 years ago has been frozen in my family's history. How Mom and Dad likely don't remember this moment in their lives, but they know this photo intimately.

Funny, too, how Mom was trying to channel Jackie O, white suit and pill-box hat. Not so funny that JFK would be assassinated five months later.

My in-laws, married 47 years next month. I am so amazed by my father-in-law's hands here. They remind me so much of another set of hands...

Rest assured that this picture was taken somewhere in Ballinger, Texas, not in the tropical locale the palms suggest.

My father-in-law's parents in Talbert's Hollow ("Hall-er" to the locals), Tennessee. They divorced in the 1960s, but, somehow, it always appeared to me that they remained family in a way.

Oh, and, Mama Lois turned 94 last year, and she is still cute as a button!



Metro Man and I on August 10, 1996. I thought we were fairly young until I took this picture out; then I realized how old the picture is (It's totally untouched here!) and -- by extension -- how old that must make us.

But I am learning that old can be good. Old can be better. I can see the coming decades from here, and I am excited -- inspired even -- to learn the lessons of patience and grace that others have learned and emodied so well.  

And Piles to Go Before We Sleep...

As any mother, there are things that I have had to learn to accept. One of those things is the pile approach to living. In certain things, you expect piles... piles of laundry, piles of bills, or piles of dirty dishes, but, with two active, busy boys, our piles move beyond the expected. We have piles everywhere -- many of which don't make sense to me on any level. Piles of candy wrappers, piles of Legos, piles of graded homework, piles of rocks and pieces of playground mulch (especially stumped by that one...What amusement can one find in a piece of mulch? Really?), and, for one anonymous boy at my house, piles of socks and undies under his chest of drawers.

Like this pile of Star Wars figurines, martial arts throwing stars made of notebook paper, and home-made baseball cards. The Happy Meal box is empty of food but still filled with a crazy assortment of little boy minutia. I will let you in on a little secret: These boxes still work like some sort of canola-oil Febreeze long after the last sea-salted finger has been licked.

Here is another pile from one boy's room... Legos, a miniature White House put together from cardboard, and a host of tiny instructions and plastic bags that originally accompanied various small toys from a host of fast food restaurants. 

Fast food doesn't really play as pivotal a role in our lives as it seems to here. No, really.
 

As I wander through my own house, though, I realize the piles are not limited to my little boys. My big boy has his own assortment of piles. Monthly publications related to kayaking, motorcycles, or golf are eternally welcome to pile up in his little corner of paradise.

Piles of junk cannot be attractive in full, 32-bit technicolor.

Then, in my pile search, I will find an achingly sweet Mother's Day card in which I am depicted as a super hero defeating the worst of super villians.

Or I will find something like this... A shot that touches my heart with its simplicity and even more with the depth to which I know that sentiment is felt by its owner.

And, so, I adjust. I buy more Rubbermaid totes, I sneak the mulch pieces into the garbage when no one is looking, and I learn to see beyond the piles to what is beneath them... to the hearts of three amazing boys.

My Metro Jethro

Every good blogger it seems has a secret, pet name for her husband, so I feel obligated to cleverly represent mine. I heard a shtick on satellite radio last week about "Metro Jethro," and it struck me how much I am married to that man.

He owns pink dress shirts, but he dipped Copenhagen for over a decade. He has a definite opinion on wall color and upholstery fabrics, but he adores threadbare t-shirts and -- recently -- flip-flops. If it has pipes, electricity, or gas involved, he can likely fix it, but he is always the guy you want when you've lost something; he is entirely gifted at looking for things -- patient and resolute. He knows tools better than the marketing director at Craftsman, but, with rapt attention, he will watch The Bachelor with me.

If you are one of Metro's golf buddies, let me add that, always after watching such a show, he resignedly shakes his head at why he did it. He is simultaneously unsure and totally certain of his motivation -- an emotion that any married being experiences at some point, it seems.

I took this shot in October, 2004. It is Metro's hand with my two boys' hands. Sweet. Beautiful. And, now, so long ago, it seems. Heartbreaking. Encouraging.

On a side note, that deck that appears beneath their hands in this picture has since been burned. Literally. In a bon fire at the back of our 1 1/2 acres of drought-stricken paradise. It seems we liked the deck, but termites liked it better. Then, the deck wood soon became a mere connecting flight to our house. Someday, I'll explain how we discovered -- and kept at bay -- those rascally, little creatures. Noah should have, perhaps, made that one ommission on the ark. Just saying.

I took this shot one spring when I was planning something really cool for Mother's Day. This is Metro and his brother, Just Jethro... Jethro minus the metro. I think, from the descriptions, you can tell who is who in the photo. I never did make that cool gift for their mom, but, knowing these guys as I do, I have always thought the picture filled with a certain poignancy -- a certain clarity of their spirits. I am thinking about how they are following similar but iconically different paths and how the goats are symbolic of... Wait. I lost focus. Remind me to stay on topic here: It's just a cool picture.

Metro Jethro is a man's man and a gal's pal -- and a pretty nifty life partner.

Well, um, okay...

Recently, I have become entirely consumed by the Pioneer Woman. Read her blog, her novel, even her cook book. If you know me, you realize what a stretch that last one is. Love her. Love. Her. She's funny, smart, endearing, and a bit kooky. I totally adore those qualities in a person, especially that last one. Especially. So, after what I am sure had to be a divine calling, as well as a false start or two, I'm off and blogging. (I won't even mention the likes of Karen N. or Kitt S., whose blogging shoes are, I am sure, cutie patootie, and could never be filled by my peasant stock 8Cs. Metaphorically, of course. I am not at all implying that Karen or Kitt have chubby feet the likes of mine, but I digress. I'll probably do it again. Try to keep up.)

My sweet family... It is somehow entirely appropriate that the younger boy is always looking a different direction than the rest of us. Entirely symbolically appropriate.

This blogging endeavor appeals to me the same way a diary in junior high did. You know what I mean? You don't know? Okay, then, it's like having entire and total control over something. Besides my 7.5 minutes each day in the shower, I don't have that luxury very often.

My house sometime last winter, sitting as it does on 1 1/2 acres of drought-stricken, weed-infested paradise...

I did consider my new blog name carefully. Even used and eventually discarded a rhyming dictionary. Then totally fell in love anew with the whole "kitsch" idea. After spending so many years in academia -- You have to stretch your neck muscles and say that word like the Howells on Gilligan's Island might have said it. You just have to. -- I am entirely enamored with all things kitschy... romance novels, paper crafts, George Strait songs, art from Walmart, and, yes, now, blogs. Okay, I was always enamored with George Strait, but that's another post entirely.

Today, I have no aspirations to higher culture; I fully embrace that I was raised in the armpit of Texas -- a place some likely consider Hee Haw Hell -- and I am entirely at peace with that. I have worked through those issues, and the ego of higher education is fading from my daily consciousness. I'm grateful for that. I'm not even bothered by writing in sentence fragments these days. Not much anyway.

Remind me next time to tell you more about myself. Maybe I will, or maybe I'll just let the rest of my weirdness be a surprise...