December Photo A Day, Day 16 - Makes You Feel Merry

Day 16 - Makes You Feel Merry

Our stockings...guess which one is mine? LOL

I still don't have much to say, because of migraine. I'm just swallowing pills like candy trying to push the pain away. I hope my liver forgives me. At least I don't drink!

I'm honestly at the point where I'm going to go back to peanut butter. If I have a headache anyway, why can't I have the good things in life while I'm suffering?

I just want a Reese's Cup.

Okay, I'm done whining! LOL Just thought I would vent for a minute...if I can't vent here, who can I vent to?!

On an up note, here's Ten Things That Make Me Feel Merry:

1. My kittycat

2. UK basketball (especially when they're MAKING THEIR FREE THROWS)

3. snow

4. music

5. Chelsea (when she's not being a grump)

6. Dwayne

7. books

8. kindness

9. generosity

10. LOVE

30 Songs in 30 Days, Day 6 - A song that reminds you of somewhere

Mom took this awesome picture at a game we went to in 2006

Sorry, yall.

It's officially basketball season. Tonight was Big Blue Madness. I only have one song I can possibly choose. 

It's the song we sing at the end of every Kentucky basketball game and before every Kentucky Derby.

It reminds me of my home. 

It's 'My Old Kentucky Home', written by Stephen Foster.

Ties, baby

We go to Cumberland Falls every year.  My daughter feels the pull as much as I do, and insists on it.  She'll be 21 in July. !!!.  She was 2 or 3 in this picture, and my grandma had talked us to the edge to get a great shot.

We're Kentuckians, through and through.  Even though I was an Army brat and lived in a lot of different places, it was a relief to come back home.  I'll never want to live anywhere else.  Why would I?  This is the best place in the world.

I blame my grandmother.  She raised all of us to be like this.  I'm not kidding when I say that when I was little, she'd sing me to sleep with a lullaby that began, "Kentucky, you are the dearest land outside of heaven to me...".

I'm a city girl, but I can trace my dirt poor tobacco-farming eastern Kentucky ancestors back to the 1700's.  That's because they're all buried in our family cemetery in Blackwater, KY, where we go every year on Decoration Day.  My grandmother is buried there, and my great-great-great-great-grandmother is buried there. There's still room left for me, too.

We were taught how to handicap the Kentucky Derby by the time we were 5, the basics of country music at 6, and had field tripped the state's major landmarks before age 10.  The UK Wildcats basketball worship training began in the womb.

It's a good thing the brainwashing began early and intense, because it might not have otherwise survived the big 3-year move to Germany.  We didn't get basketball over there, I had to rely on country music cassette mix tapes sent to me via APO mail, the only mountains were the Alps, and the only landmarks were various castles and the Schwarzwald.

I got shipped back home right before I turned 13.  A little culture shock.  But my family!  My trees, my basketball, my Derby, my bluegrass, my mountains, my falls, my Kentucky...

Edit: My mom reminded me exactly how the song goes:

Kentucky, you are the dearest land outside of heaven to me,
Kentucky, I miss your laurel and your redbud trees…
When I die, I want to rest upon your graceful mountains so high..
For that is where God will look for me.

I'm ready for the madness...

Music: The Cure - Just Like Heaven

I'm going down to Lexington tomorrow to stand in line for my midnight madness tickets... only it's not midnight madness anymore, it's BIG BLUE MADNESS, and for the last few years I've had my tickets given to me by friends and I haven't actually earned them like a REAL fan by standing in line all night like you're supposed to... It's time for me to Earn My Tickets.

Of course if I was a real, raging lunatic fan, I would have gone down there Tuesday with a tent like my friend's husband did... But since I don't have any vacation days because I used them all up by the middle of February, that wasn't really an option.

I should really be going to bed now, since I'll be up all night tomorrow... but I'm just so excited...

It has to be said, I can't help it, even though there's no game, and not even a practice, it's still basketball time, so...

Go Cats!

Easter...

I had a rough time getting out of the house on Easter morning...any other Sunday, I get to church on time (well, my usual five minutes late for Sunday School, no problem), but this Sunday...well...
I know what the problem was.  I usually just wear my work clothes to church...dressy casual dark slack-type clothes, and my black Skechers, of course!  I've gotten used to being the only woman at my church who doesn't wear dresses, I hardly even notice it any more. 
But my grandmother bought me this lovely purple skirt and jacket-type thing for my birthday, that's been hanging in my closet ever since, that she begged for me to wear at least for Easter, before it's relegated back to my closet with all my other lovely skirts and dresses that my grandmother has bought me...
So that was the problem.  I know it took me twenty minutes to figure out how the stupid skirt went.  It had TWO slits in the front, when I finally figured it out...whoever heard of that?!
When I finally emerged from my bedroom, all dressed and grumpy and purple, D laughed and laughed when I told him about my skirt confusion.  I think his exact words were, "You girly-girl, you...".  It's a good thing he also told me how nice I looked!
But after the rough start, Easter settled down into a good day.  What's a little skirt grumpiness compared to the magnitude of what this day means to Christians like me?
It was also my grandma's birthday.  After church, the whole family went to my grandma's house for dinner.  Then C and I, and my cousin, made Easter eggs.  After that, things are a little hazy because I fell asleep on D's knee in the family room, but I vaguely remember the kids having their Easter egg hunt inside (it rained outside all Easter long).  Then my grandma opened presents, we had birthday cake, and we watched the Kentucky game,
insert big sad :( here, nothing worse than fighting through two overtimes and still losing...but I'm still so proud of my team...I love my Cats!...
I was sitting around the table with my mom, and my grandma, and my aunt, and my cousin, and my daughter...everyone else was in the family room or the living room or elsewhere...and my grandma boasted about how she still had her eastern Kentucky accent...and my mom and my aunt said, no, not like you used to, and then they all started talking over each other in this old language...the language they all had forty years ago when they still lived in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.
I just remember feeling so lucky, sharing amused glances with my daughter and my cousin, that we all shared a moment like that, together, in 2005.  Every holiday seems like a precious gift, to make just one more memory with your family.

It's 3 a.m. ...

I'm sure that tomorrow I'll regret this whole staying up thing...but tonight my team made it to the Elite Eight (yay!) along with Louisville (yay!) and I was on a 'my team won' high...and my daughter spent the night at my grandma's and something about her not being here makes me not want to go to sleep...it's just different without her in the house!
I'm trying desperately to fight the urge to buy an IPOD before I go on my trip to New York.  While we were watching the game tonight, I virtuously offered D the chance to buy me one of the newer, cheaper IPOD Shuffles (because one of their handy commercials came on...), but he just laughed at me...he feels that I have a problem.
Which is entirely possible.  I'm a single mom, I work 40 hours a week, I go to school (or I did before I dropped this semester), I go here, I go there, yet every night after my daughter is in bed I still find time to feed my book/music/book/TV/book/movie/book habit, not to MENTION computer time...
My name is Michelle, and I guess I'm an entertainment junkie.
(whew) There, I've said it!
Okay, the confession took a lot out of me and I'm finally getting tired, I'm going to bed now...good night!

Is there anything besides this?...

March Madness (noun) -
1.  The annual college basketball tournament to determine the NCAA champion.
2. A state of mind associated with the NCAA Championship Tournament.
Symptoms are: desire to watch basketball games until 1 a.m.; compulsion to read every word of the sports section; and temptation to participate in office pools.
Help! I have all the symptoms...was there anything besides college basketball going on this weekend? 
Well, not really, not where I live...the city, and, I'm sure, the state, came to a dead stop Saturday evening when my team played (GO BIG BLUE!). 
No one knows what it's like to be caught up in the madness, until you visit Kentucky during basketball season and become infected...it's not a game, it's a religion!
I did manage to tear myself away from the TV a few times this weekend, though...we went to the Macaroni Grill Friday night...my mom called and asked if we wanted to meet her there, and having just been reminded by Angel of how nice it is (what a coincidence!), we had a very nice time...AND I got to draw pretty pictures on the table, that's always a plus!
I took my daughter to the Y Saturday morning, treadmill, strength training (me), rock climbing wall (her! not me!)...then we went to see 'Because of Winn Dixie' at the movies Saturday and was VERY pleasantly surprised at how good it was!  We loved it!  I had avoided going to see it because, you know, it's a 'dog' movie...but no sad ending for this movie, it was all good...
So can we talk about basketball some more? I know I'm a girl and this isn't a sports journal and I never talk about the fact that I watch every single Kentucky game, and that I record every single Kentucky game, every year, in case it might become a classic (e.g. the UK v. LSU 'Mardi Gras Miracle' that I DO have on tape because, yes, I recorded it!)...and I know that I'm actually a Louisville grad and they are also still alive in the tournament (yay) but it's not a conflict at all, I'm glad Louisville wins but I DIE if Kentucky loses...and how about that West Virginia-Wake Forest game? Wasn't that good? Two overtimes...take that, Wake Forest, I don't want to hear anymore whining about how come you were not a number one seed...Texas Tech still in it, I wonder if the players are afraid of Bobby...one last observation about Kentucky, three of the head coaches in the Sweet Sixteen this year are or have been Kentucky's head coach (Tubby, Slick Rick, and Eddie Sutton...pretty rare, if that's even ever happened before...and, okay, one last GO BIG BLUE!
Anyway, I just finished reading a Great Book, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk...I know that there's a movie out based on it but I've never seen it, but the book was first and it is awesome!  I finished reading it today and immediately started rereading it, which is always a good sign...
I think that's all for now, because I have to go and put some clothes in the dryer and more in the washer...I'm so hungry because I didn't get to have supper tonight, I got home from work and my daughter begged me to take her to the skating party so I had to turn around and go back out...there's poor hungry parents all over town tonight, probably, like me, who were stuck at the skating party with only the prospect of stale chips and candy bars for dinner, whatever was sold at the skating rink...but she had lots of fun, and me sitting at the skating rink for two hours...well, that's how I had two full free hours to finish my book!

Cold, oh so cold...

I haven't turned my heat on yet...and it's so, so cold in my house.  I have an old-fashioned floor furnace, and I have to vacuum it out before turning the heat on.  I meant to do it today, but of course I procrastinated all day long and didn't get it done.  Well, really, it's called "laziness".
I got caught by surprise last night by how cold it was and ended up sleeping with extra clothes on, and double blankets...I got so cold I put my bathrobe on as well, and nice warm socks.  This morning, when I got up, I turned on the stove, left the oven door open, and had to sat in front of it for a half hour before I felt warm.
I promise I will clean the furnace out tomorrow.  It has to be cleaned out before it's turned on...I made the mistake once before of getting too cold and turning it on in the middle of the night when I hadn't first cleaned it, and was promptly followed an hour later by the piercing sound of the smoke alarm.  It's very scary being woken up by that!  But at least I know it works...
Midnight Madness was ALL THAT and more...(Friday night - the first official college basketball practice for the University of Kentucky)...thousands of crazy UK fans milling around downtown Lexington in the middle of the night...huge roar from the crowd as they opened the doors to Memorial Coliseum.  All kinds of fun events inside led up to the 12:01 a.m. appearance of this year's team.  By far the most applause came when Ashley Judd (UK basketball's most famous fan) was introduced and walked into the stadium...she got a standing ovation...I think people were more excited to see her than they were to see Tubby Smith!  Well, okay, that's understandable, because you know, she's ASHLEY JUDD, but still...hello, basketball?...never mind. 
I had to take my daughter to acute care today, she is not feeling well at all...the doctor said they have seen quite a few patients there in the past few days with the same thing and it should clear up in a few days.  She went through stages allday, where she would feel really good and get out puzzles or start cutting paper...and then she would feel bad again and lay down for a while.  I wish she would have just rested all day, but it wasn't going to happen!
Tomorrow is parent-teacher conferences and her follow-up appointment (not for being sick, the other doctor).  I'm a little apprehensive, about both...
I hope this week goes well!