Tagged: thewaywewere

18
Jan
2015

TREASURE HUNTS

I probably wrote about these back when we were doing them, but I was cleaning our bedroom today (spring-cleaning! in the winter!) and found this little stack of tiny notebook pages. Upon further investigation, I realized they were the treasure hunt lists that I used to make to entice Martin to go walking with me. We’d walk around Flyinge with this tiny notebook and he’d check things off as he found them. I don’t remember how old he was but it has to have been when he was pretty young. 9 maybe? Give or take. Usually I would make up...

10
Jan
2015

THE INFAMOUS CANOE TRIP

True story, Freshman year, Michigan State University, 1982-1983, originally written summer 1983 Jim planned it. That, right there, was an inauspicious beginning. But at first everything seemed fine. We were told the Pine River was one of the best rivers for canoeing, but we were neglected to be told that meant people who knew what they were doing. So, we all trooped out cheerfully with no real idea of what we were getting into. The first foreshadowing of what was going to happen came right at the very beginning of the trip. Julie and I rode with Link and Burge—not...

14
Nov
2014

PRODUCTS OF THE PAST

Don’t you ever worry about the fact that all the stores with stuff are closing and all that will be left, soon, are clothing boutiques, hair salons, liquor stores, groceries, and restaurants? Bookstores are more and more threatened by Kindles and other e-readers. Stores that sell movies are going under as Netflix and Apple TV take over. Stores that sell music have pretty much already gone the way of the dinosaur. There are still some toy stores out there, but more and more, it seems that we do the majority of our shopping and ordering online. We stream our music...

29
Sep
2014

GOOD TIMES, OLD TIMES, FLYING(E) TIMES

Dang it, there went time again, flying. Every time I write the word flying now, I have to delete the e I automatically add to the end. Flyinge. (where I live, you know) We spent most of yesterday evening watching three old videotapes that Anders’ mom gave us when we were dropping her off yesterday after her appointment at the physical therapist (hers was after mine, my arm is MUCH better, thank goodness). She’s slowly cleaning out some of Einar’s closet junk and getting rid of stuff. One was a video Anders had made shortly after he moved downtown to...

09
Jan
2014

A LONG TIME AGO

When I was a kid, we often went on road trips. I suspect this was because, as a military family, we never lived in the same state as our grandparents or other relatives and had to travel to see them, which we did a lot. We drove to Michigan to visit my mom’s parents and see all our cousins and aunts and uncles and we drove to Chicago to see my dad’s mother. There were three of us kids in the back seat of the station wagon… the big boat of a brown station wagon with wood side panels. Often...

14
Nov
2013

COLLECTABLES

Things we have in the house that we can’t or don’t use A whole container of 3-inch floppy disks (can’t) An entire shelf full of LP record albums (can’t) 2 shelves worth of videotapes (don’t) A wall holder holding over 50 cassette tapes (need a transfomer but could) 20-ish 45 rpm records (can’t) A wall shelf holding 500+ music CDs (don’t, thanks to Spotify) 3 strings of colored fat-bulb Christmas tree lights (need a transformer) A Sony Walkman and a Sony Discman (don’t) 2 digital cameras (don’t, thanks to iPhones) Wii console (don’t) A small sampling of titles from the...

12
Sep
2012

BRAIN DRAIN

There is something about the autumn light that just gets me buzzing. Driving home, the sky was such a clear blue and the lowering sun was beginning to tint the bottom of the clouds pink and coral. Everything looked extra-3D somehow; more real, brighter, ALIVE. The leaves haven’t begun to change yet, as we haven’t had any real frosts to speak of but the foliage looks thinner somehow.The trees are dark, dark green and the edges of the roadsides are tawny gold. Years ago, I was a mad fiend for Trivial Pursuit. Of course, back then EVERYONE was. It was...

05
Mar
2012

THE OLDER WE GET, THE BETTER WE USED TO BE*

Some days I can’t settle at all and others that’s all I seem to be doing. I look at the backs of my hands and think how much smoother they used to be. The crosshatching has always been there; I remember it clearly yet it seems so much more prominent now. The knuckles knobblier, the grooves …groovier. I still bear, here and there, the tiny white scars of cat scratches from long-ago, they’ve faded a great deal. The veins, on the other hand, are not fading, quite the opposite. My hands are still smooth, but not when they are bent...

18
Oct
2011

HOW TO DATE YOURSELF

Watched a DVD with the kids last night that contained the first 3 episodes from the TV series Bewitched, which I used to LOVE. They were…ASTOUNDED by the special effects. I thought Elizabeth Montgomery was great, and I must have heard back in 1995 that she had died of cancer, but I didn’t remember it so I was a little sad when I googled her last night and found out she’d passed away at 62. Do you remember when Dick York was just quietly replaced with Dick Sargent and nobody seemed to notice? I was too young to pay attention,...

20
Oct
2009

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: CLUBS & FORTS & RECEPTACLES

I have work to do and yet I am not doing it. Not yet. Soon. I thought I needed to write something here instead. Something not very profound, something just tossed out there to the wind and the weather and the mental receptacles of anyone who might be reading. It’s not work for work, though; club stuff. Club stuff. It feels corny to say I belong to a club. A women’s club. Even though it’s not all women anymore. And even though I never go to lunches (anymore) or teas or knitting circles or whatever. Still. I wish we had...

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