40 Minutes with Your Mother

I know there will tons of blog postings all over the place this week about moms and tributes to moms. But, when in Rome, right?

In my lifetime I've been blessed to know my mother, both of my grandmothers, and two of great-grandmothers. And while I've known all these women, I haven't always gotten right the history of lives that surrounded them. LK calls it "family history according to me" because I'm always having to come back and correct some thing that I once that was fact that only later do I discover isn't true at all. So when I heard about the StoryCorps project on the Cobert Report I found it very interesting.

StoryCorps is the most ambitious oral history project ever undertaken. Since 2003, this remarkable project has collected the life stories of more than fifty thousand Americans in all fifty states and preserved these interviews for future generations at the Library of Congress. Millions of radio listeners look forward to hearing these stories each Friday morning on NPR. In recording booths traveling across the country, StoryCorps is capturing for posterity the stories that define us and bind us together.

Basically how David Isay, StoryCorps founder, described it on the show is that you take a woman- in this case your mother, grandmother, someone who fills that rolls for you, into this room (the one he was talking about was set up in Grand Central Station but he said they have them all over now) and you have 40 minutes to ask her questions listen to her as she answers the questions and talks about her life. At the end of your time together they give you a CD of the conversation and then keep a copy of the CD in the Library of Congress (so it's probably not the time to take someone in the box and ask them the deep-dark-family-secret-kind-of-questions.)

So this has started me thinking, it's too late to think about questions to ask my great grandmothers, they are no longer with me (though I'm sure my Great Grannie would have had some amazing stories to tell her life as a single mom raising 4 children - or at least that's how I think the story goes). But for my mom and grandmothers- what questions about their lives would I ask if given 40 minutes in a room alone with them?

What about you, if you were given 40 minutes to ask your mother, grandmother, great grandmother, any question about their life and sit and listen to them as they answered- what questions would you ask?

Random Thought Thursday: Open up and say AAAAAAAAAAAA

You know, there are those weeks were all things go according to or better than planned. And then there are the weeks that look at your optimistic operetta and roll on the floor laughing. This week was all about the latter.

On Tuesday morning of this week I began to feel a bit achy while getting ready but chalked it up to the cottonwood trees blooming and my blessed sinus season coming into full swing. After all, I am not one who gets sick because I have the power of positive thinking on my side.

But by noon, as I cried the whole way to pick LK up for lunch, I knew positive thinking wasn't going to work this time. But it would still take 36 hours and several round of 103 temperature spikes (which fully explain the wacked out dreams I was having) before I truly broke down an admitted I am sick. (Have I mentioned my stubborn nature before? Yup, this is a perfect case in point).

Now 60 hours into this "fun" and 24 hours into the blessed relief called antibiotics and I have found hope to believe I just might come out alive on the other side of this thing.

I have to take a moment in my random musings to give a huge thank you to LK how has valiantly held down the fort this week.

So what does being laid up mean? Well it certainly means zero planning for the Mother of a Brunch has gone on here. Thankfully we moved it from it's normal Saturday morning time slot to Sunday afternoon. So I think Saturday will be all about the planning- and this year? This year I'm so not above calling whatever deli I can find and having them cater this shindig. Afterall it's Mother's Day, right?!

When ISH calls

9 times out of 10 I'm concerned for the events to follow when ISH exclaims "Mommy! Watch"

10 times out of 10 I'm concerned for the events to follow when he says "No Mommy! Don't look"

Then and Now

This week for Iheartfaces they are pulling from the theme of the website Young Me Now Me. So, since I don't have pictures of me as a child laying around (no Mom, that is not an invitation to bring them) we thought this one was pretty funny. The original one we took when we lived in Memphis and our oldest was 1 month old. Fast forward 6 years and two moves and here we are now.

Check out other entries here.

Looking Forward to May Days

So you might notice the new do we're sporting around these parts. Yup, the blog had a spa day (speaking of Mother's day presents) and came out looking rather fab (if I do say so myself and since it's my blog, I will).

The new look was a bit impromptu, but then I'm someone that often rearranges furniture (yes Mandy, I agree my bed looks better in it's new location) so why not a little bloggy-rearranging too.

And in case you're wondering, the inspiration for the header picture is to show you all how it is my hair can stay so big (and you all thought it was just the pomade). It's a fun Where's Waldo sort of picture if you have the time to hunt.

But the look isn't the only thing that's changing this month. This month I will set aside the 365 with Rachel Ray and will be moving on to another cookbook- which one, ah you'll have to come back and see.

All and all, I'm looking forward to May. In my mind, May is the beginning of summer, I mean I know it's not really summer yet and I know that we have a full 26 days until I'm feeling sand between my toes, but when May is here- it's like I can see summer peeking it's head around the corner, "walking sneaky" towards me as ISH would say.

May is also the sixth Mother of a Brunch that I've hosted for both sides of my family on Mother's Day weekend. It's a great time of celebration.

And speaking of things that have been going on for a while, this month I get to celebrate nine years of marriage to the wonderful LK.

May will also be a time of celebrating as I get to be there to watch Dr_EAM walk the stage and cross from the world of med-student into the world of resident. He's been working on not laughing when someone calls him doctor. Let's hope he gets that one down before his first day in the new program.

I feel like I missed out on the April showers part of year, but the tree-house effect of my backyard is in full swing, the birds are back, I saw my backyard toad the other day, and good times ahead. (Someone stop me before I break into some Nellie Forbush meets Laurey Williams song and dance routine!)

Here's to hoping you're seeing May as optimistically as I am,

They were all Yellow

Mandy's theme for her photo challenge is yellow.  I've already shared my views on yellow, so I'm sure you can understand why it's hard for me to choose a picture- I just don't take many pictures of yellow.

But I do have this one.  We were on the balcony of the San Marco Basilica in Venice.  It was a rainy a day and I looked over the edge to see a sea of umbrellas.

Be sure to check out more of the yellow entries here

SoCoS: Score

It's SoCoS time children. I found this fabulous site that generates random nouns. I think I'll be using this for more SoCoS topics because it's hard to come up with truly random nouns just between LK and myself. So this week's randomly generated word is Score.

Ready and go:

I've never been much of a team sports player- well much of a sports player at all to tell you the truth. I get my competitive drive met in other areas, like school. I would always compete with Aaron Loney for grades in high school. I guess I should thank him for my graduating with honors.

Hit a road block. Hit a road block. I hate it when guys say "Score!" like some surfer. They sound so stupid.

Stupid has become a nap time word in my house now that the word police live with me. But I've told the boys that they can ask me the meaning of any word even if they think it's bad and we will talk about it- trying to foster open communication. This worked well with easy to define words, until Geo heard a girl in his grade say the F word. I don't know what the situation was, but he knew it was an off limits word even before asking me. But, following my open invitation, he asked anyway because he was curious.< "It means," I said, "that I don't like you and I really want to hurt your feelings."

Thank you Arthur.

Now it's your turn. If you'd like to participate in a little SoCoS action here are your guidelines: Write for 3:37 without stopping. If you can't think of what to write, write "hit a road block" over and over again until something comes to mind. When you're done- post a link to your SoCoS writing as a comment to this post.

Looking forward to see what you all have to say