Day Fifty Eight: Warcraft love

"If at first you don't succeed, create an alt."

Three out of the four people who live in my house play World of Warcraft.

This leads to intense conversations about the characters, the lands, and the quests. My son can tell you anything you want to know about ANYONE in the game. He knows the history of the Horde and the Alliance and who is what and when and why. Even though I have played longer, he plays better. The game stirs his imagination in wonderful ways, as well. Once his computer time is up, he often heads out to the backyard to fight off imaginary Night Elves or he drowns himself in a character novel based on the game. Out of the blue, he’ll say to me “Mom I am thinking about creating a Orc Shaman and here’s why…”

It’s awesome.

Unlike most devoted players of the game, I don’t have a ton of alts. Once I got my Blood Elf Hunter to – oh I’d say – level 52, I couldn’t imagine going through it all again with some one else. Frankly, I don’t know how people do it. I have a relationship with my little hunter. Her name is Arabethialyn (level 80 & 1/2 on the Auzermyst server); Arabeth for short. She dual specs in Beast Mastery and Marksmanship and has an super cool white dinosaur pet named Ghost. After four years, I still freak out in dungeons and I don’t go on raids anymore. Mostly I do quests at my leisure and collect pets, mounts and tablards.

I take breaks from WoW but I always come back. I belong (as does my son and sister) to a very family friendly guild called Outcast. They are very laid back and let me come and go as I please. One of the best things about them is they are a helpful guild. No matter what your level is, there is usually someone playing with good advice on how and where to go to complete quests. They are the best.

And this is fun for me. It truly is. I don’t hide behind my character, I don’t hide from this world in a fantasy world where Arabeth is the star. I don’t have a Horde tattoo and I couldn’t begin to tell you the best way to lay out your talent tree. But I have a good time.

I know there are people out there who aren’t gamers and feel like we are just wasting our time and money but it’s really an amazing community to be part of. If you don’t play games, life is less interesting. Even if it’s just cards with a friend.

Today’s heart is made from the World of Warcraft card game Worldbreaker.

Day Fifty Seven: Movie love

"Every great film should seem new every time you see it." ~ Roger Ebert

My family loves movies.

Seriously. We love them.

We have a sign hanging in our family room that says ” MOVIE NIGHT :: cell phones off please.”

We are not exactly film buffs. We couldn’t tell you what type of lens was used to shoot the Russian roulette scene in The Deer Hunter, for example BUT we can quote National Lampoons Christmas Vacation almost verbatim.

We have a movie night as often as we can. It totally shifts into high gear during the holiday season when we watch a theme film every weekend. Curled up on couches and chairs, we eat popcorn and share our time and make our memories.

Since we have a Netflix account, more often than not, my husband and I will watch a film before bed on a super cool portable DVD player my eldest sister gave me for Christmas two years ago. We watch anything and everything  and we lay there together. We laugh, we complain, we enjoy the time together. We enjoy the movies.

The first rated R movie I ever saw was a western called “The Long Riders.” It still remains one of my favorites and I have seen it countless times but my favorite western is the remake of “3:10 to Yuma.” The best comedy I have ever seen is “Waiting for Guffman.” Best drama? I have no idea. I love dramas and documentaries.

My son helped me make today’s heart. We grabbed a few of our thousand DVD’s , some red vines, and pretzel sticks. I love him to pieces.

Oh yeah. Go watch the Oscars!

 

Day Fifty Six: Glitter glue love

“All that is gold does not glitter; not all those that wander are lost.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Stuff isn’t always what it seems. I guess that is why they say beauty is only skin deep.

I think fools gold is as pretty as real gold and who is going to know the difference?

My eldest sister is a big believer in fake diamonds. No one knows they are fake and if they get stolen, it costs very little to replace them. There is a sound logic there. You don’t have any blood on your hands from the horrible diamond trade in Africa, either.

Also nothing stays beautiful. Roses wilt, people get old, things wear through. You may see that jacket the way you did when you first bought it but to us, it looks raggedy and worn out. You know what, though? Keep that damn jacket if it makes you happy. It isn’t just the look of the thing – it’s how it makes you feel. It makes you remember that rainy day or that drive across the desert, that first kiss or the winter day your child was born – KEEP IT. Keep it forever.

I have met some beautiful people in my life and have found them to be no better or worse than the average looking people I have known. I see my friends and family as amazing, wonderful and beautiful people. You may see them differently (though I assure you, if you knew them, you’d see them the same way.) My point, though, is that it’s all perception.

Like the diamonds. Like the jacket.

We assign worth to what means the most to us. Fake or not. Old or new. It’s nice to know that my fake gold necklace only needs to make me happy and we can cover ourselves in cubic zirconium. It doesn’t matter. The magic comes when you give it memories.

I like glitter so I did today’s heart on a newspaper with glitter glue. I assign worth to it because it makes me smile.

 

Day Fifty Five: Handy wipe love

“Indecision is like a stepchild: if he does not wash his hands, he is called dirty, if he does, he is wasting water.” ~ African Proverb

So sorry about the quality of today’s picture. The heart is made of handy wipes and it is very windy outside today so I took the photo inside.

That said this got me thinking about learning how to wash your hands of things. We like to say we have let go and moved on but let’s face it – most of us are holding a grudge about one thing or another.  I wonder why humans do that. Why do we select a moment in time and stew about it? It seems like the ultimate waste of time…

I heard a Buddhist quote on TV yesterday that really struck a chord with me. The person said:

“Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

Firstly my mouth sort of fell open and secondly I got really embarrassed. I did a mental inventory and realized I have grudges against all sorts of people. There are places I wont go, individuals I wont talk to, shows I wont watch and music I wont listen to. How shocking to admit to myself!

It’s not really about forgive and forget – is it? I don’t think there is anything wrong with remembering; it’s the forgiving that’s the key. It shouldn’t be so difficult to forgive but it is – Oh my goodness it IS!

Maybe total enlightenment doesn’t come from believing in any God or religion – maybe it comes from being completely able to forgive.

Let bygones be bygones.

Able to wash your hands of the whole affair and really REALLY feel okay and whole inside.

We can’t control other people. What they say and what they do is totally up to them. If they are evil nasty creatures, that is their own row  to hoe. Why do we insist on getting all caught up in their ugly sauce? It could be we are just hardwired that way. If I knew for sure, I could make a million dollars and save the world.

I have to wonder if all mammals are like this. Do dolphins stop talking to each other because one ate the others krill? I have four dogs and none of them have made the others mad enough to hold a grudge. They just get on with it and get over it.

Maybe I can forgive a few of these grudges if I try hard enough.  I just have to stop drinking that poison.

 

Day Fifty Four: Drops of glass in a vase love

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” ~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We have two tall thick vases filled with these tiny drops of colored glass. I am not sure what they are called. Glass stones, maybe? I have seen them with words printed on them – words like hope and faith and peace. The ones I have used today aren’t that big. These are the size of nickles.

They sit on the top shelves of the bookcases that flank the wall unit that houses our TV and they are pretty hefty vases. If you were to drop it on your head, you’d get a nasty bump. I don’t think it would kill you but it might knock you out if it fell from high enough or was swung or thrown hard enough.

I have visualized using them as weapons if I ever need to. Is that weird? I can’t be the only person that does this.

We don’t have a gun. We have dogs, instead. But if something were to occur while the dogs were outside or if some insane killer had already dispatched them, I think I should have some sort of plan in place. I am not much of a hider – I was terrible at hide-in-seek when I was little – and besides, if my family was in danger, I would have to figure out how to fight.

Chucking a heavy vase filled with glass rocks at the bad guys head might just buy us/me enough time to get away.

I can spend hours before I fall asleep planning the perfect escape. I am prepared for just about anything. It’s a odd game I play in my brain. “What would you do if…” I fill in the blanks as realistically as possible except we all get away in the end and that – heartbreakingly – rarely happens in real life.

I am not paranoid. I don’t believe anything bad will ever happen to me OR my family but -hey I watch The First 48 – I know terrible things happen when you least expect it and that is when you need to know where the baseball bat is. And I do. It’s in the closet with the golf club. Oh yeah – don’t even try to get in here; we’ll knock your block off.

I am wondering how this blog went from talking about those pretty little glass stones to me threatening to knock a burglar’s head in. Good grief. What does the word burgle even mean? Does it actually mean to steal or is it a word that originally meant something else and we have adapted it into our vernacular? Let’s see…

Oh ewww. The Urban Dictionary says it means something disgusting and I will never ever type that here. If you are curious, go look it up. Because…eww.

Here is the webster definition : burgle – commit a burglary; enter and rob a dwelling.

And that is your vocabulary lesson for today.

Day Fifty Three: Fresh apple love

"Why not upset the apple cart? If you don't the apples will rot anyway." ~ Frank A. Clark

The world outside my window is very fresh today.

It get’s cold where we live and occasionally it gets below freezing but most of the year we come in over 70 degrees. You either love it or hate it. It is the curse that comes with living with the desert. Since I have lived here all of my life, I am used to it but I don’t love it.

There are many moments in the year when it’s perfect but that isn’t totally seasonally related. That has more to do with us as a family. In Spring, we get our backyard ready for Summer. Leaves get raked away and new solar ground lights get put out. Because we are lucky enough to have a pool, we start counting the days once February comes around. Our Winters are never long so neither is the wait.

Before we had a pool, we were totally an indoor family in the Summer. The 125 degree heat beat us back at the doors and we would hide under the air conditioning. Preferably in front of a fan. But now things are different. We BBQ and swim and eat outside. We talk and watch the sun go down, we shiver and wait for the stars to come out. Really,  having a pool put in gave us a whole new season. We kinda caught on and saw what we were missing.

But back to today.

It’s 59 degrees here and the sun is shining. I stood on my patio drinking ice water with some lemon and I thought about what I would do for today’s project. I wanted to do something colorful and light, something to remind us, here in the desert, that this is the time to open the doors and let the fresh air in.

Without too much explanation behind this next statement, most everyone I know and care for had a horrible 2010. People got lost and people cried and people suffered. It was a bad year all around. As I was standing on the patio, I was hoping that this year will be better and with the sun shining, I really believed it would be. Because life is what you make it, right? You can stand up and say no, not this time. This time I am holding on to the situation with all my strength and guide it toward the good.

You can give yourself a whole new emotional Season.

Day Fifty Two: Google eyed love

" Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes." ~ Thomas W. Higginson

I have been wanting to do this one for a long time. Since I first started this project 52 days ago, I wanted to glue some googly eyes!

There is something endlessly fascinating about googly eyes. They make everything come to life. Think about the possibilities! Stick a pair on your remote and suddenly it’s looking for you! Glue some to your water glass and it gets empty while you get full…

They make me laugh when they rattle and wiggle about in every direction. Imagine what you could see if your eyes could do that?! No one would sneak up on you ever again. They also add the very enjoyable freak factor when you put them on your fingers, or toes or the middle of your forehead.

If you are having house guests, place them randomly on items in your bathroom – or better yet, your refrigerator! They might think twice about drinking that last beer or cracking that final egg. The guilt of the eyes might prove to be too much for them.

Every State should have postcards depicting cartoon a man or woman (or both) with huge googly eyes, proclaiming “You’re in (enter State’s name)! Don’t look so surprised!” I would make it my life’s mission to collect ALL OF THEM!!!

Taxidermists should be legally bound to offer googly eyes among their choices. Imagine a beloved pet, stuffed to stay with you for all the rest of your days, with HUGE GOOGLY EYES! If that isn’t a conversation starter, I don’t know what is.

“Wow Tom, I don’t remember Coconut having such wiggly eyes…”

“Oh yeah. Me and Louise went for the deluxe GOOGLY eye. We thought it would make her seem more lively.”

“I see that. When you shake her, her eyes follow you wherever you go…”

That would be SO COOL!

Day Fifty One: Sidewalk chalk love

"The true object of all human life is to play." ~ G. K. Chesterton

When I was a kid, my mom made me play outside.

She’d kick my sister and I out of the house and tell us to be back before the street lights came on. That was our curfew. The street lights. In the summer – here in the desert – they came on somewhere between 7:50pm and 8:15pm. You didn’t want to take your chances wandering in late.

We lived in a new suburb when I was very young, around 7 or 8. It was built in a desert area near an old fashioned rodeo. Yep. Horse country. The local stop ‘n’ shop had a hitching post our front and we often found little desert critters in our garage or driveway. Scorpions, lizards and tarantulas were common place. Occasionally we’d see a desert tortoise.

My middle sister and I loved it. She is only two years older than me and we ran wild with our friends, heading up into the nearby mountains to see the ‘witches cave’ or stealing frogs  from a neighbors back yard pond. I remember having to walk to school past a deserted, graffiti covered shack and being told The Manson Family had lived there. They hadn’t. I remember riding my friends horses and seeing one of their mothers chop the head of a chicken she was planning to cook for their dinner. It ran all over their back yard and I couldn’t stop staring at it, even when it finally collapsed in a heap.

We had no choice as kids. Even if it was 115 degrees outside, we had to go out. Mom’s didn’t worry so much about dehydration and UV levels in those days. We had no sun screen and if we got thirsty, we drank out of the hose. Lunch was usually some sort of sandwich in a rush and we had to make sure we shut the door so we didn’t let flies in or the cool air out.

If a friend had a pool, we could swim if we wanted. I have memories of just swimming, never learning, and almost drowning when I misjudged one pools depth. My sister hauled me out of the deep end but we stayed and played. My mom never knew I had nearly drown that day; it just didn’t seem like that big of a deal at the time. By the time the street lights were coming on, I had forgotten all about it. Near death experiences only seemed scary when they were happening. I electrocuted myself so badly in my house (by falling against a lamp plug while it was still in the wall) that I seared off the edges of my skin. The emergency room Dr. told my mom that there wasn’t really anything left to stitch together. You can still see the two long thin scars on my shoulder.

There were few fences then, people weren’t so secretive and protective of their property. We wandered through each others back yards with friends named Rollie, Kathy, Penny and Buttons. I remember Button’s well because she tore out a hunk of my sister’s hair in a a lively game of  “Tell me to stop when it hurts.” Penny’s dad had a collection of “Crime & Punishment” books that scared me so bad one night my eldest sister had to come walk me home from a sleep over. Rollie and Kathy were brother and sister. Sometimes we got along, sometimes we didn’t. They lived a few houses down from us and I remember them being the first kids to talk to us when we moved in.

We had a lot of fun then, dumping dirt from our shoes after a long day outside. Two silly, tough, sun burnt little girls.

Today’s heart is a little dedication to those days. Just some sidewalk chalk on my patio.

Day Fifty: Small creature love

"It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffling slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal."

Today was a sad day at our house.

My son’s’ gerbil – Stormy – passed away after being part of our family for two years.

He and I bought her at Petsmart and he was so excited. I remember trying to talk him into getting a hamster but once he and Stormy locked eyes, he was a goner. He named her Stormy because it was raining that day. It was raining this morning when she died.

I put her in a pretty golden organza bag and we buried her in our rose garden.

Stormy had a few adventures living with us. Once I left her cage open and she escaped into my son’s room. She could have left and gone out into the wide open of the rest of the house, but she didn’t. She stayed in the area she was familiar with and played in the closet among the old CDs. We found her, scooped her up and got her back in her cage. It was stressful for a few moments there – because of our dogs – but I think Stormy had a great time out and about.

Stormy had also romanced my husband. He’d never had a pet like her when he was a kid and he was just charmed by her. She would hang out with him while my son was cleaning her cage. She had a big purple rolling ball and would roll around our bedroom, visiting each of the dogs from the safety of the ball. Cole, our big lab was her favorite. We suspect it was because she couldn’t believe how big he was. For her it was like visiting a mountain.

At night when we were saying goodnight, my husband would feed her a few sunflower seeds as a treat. She loved that.

I made today’s heart of leftover gerbil food. It seemed like a fitting tribute to our very small animal.

Day Forty Nine: Saturday outing love

"And that's the wonderful thing about family travel: it provides you with experiences that will remain locked forever in the scar tissue of your mind." ~ Dave Barry

We went on a family outing today – out to the Natural History Museum – to see a traveling Egyptian Exhibit and to look at some skulls and dinosaurs.

My son loves museums. In fact, last night when we where discussing our plans, he announced out of no where “I love HISTORY!” It was great. He gets his love of learning through his father I think. My husband is simply the smartest person I have ever met. He can converse intelligently on just about any subject and as he gets older, he just gets smarter. It’s kind of scary.

Anyway, my son is like his dad. He had to read every plaque in the museum and watch every educational film. He pushed every button and went in every room. Really we were done long before he was – it was nearly impossible to pull him away. I think he would absorb it through his skin if he could. As it was we saw a re-created rain forest, some stuffed buffalo, and a tiger shark. All in all – it was a good time.

In the gift shop on the way out, he chose a Dinosaur Bones Excavation Kit as a souvenir. He and his Auntie are hammering away at it right now, trying to piece together a miniature Stegosaurus. He also got a pretty cool tee shirt.

On the way home, we stopped at a family diner  for a late lunch. That is where I assembled my project from sugar packets and plastic creamer cups while waiting for my Belgian waffle. My son swears he had the best hamburger he’s ever had.

I sat there thinking how lucky I am that we travel well together. We have gone long distances, even with my paranoia of freeway travel, and it’s usually smooth sailing. The arguments are few and far between, usually they lose out to rousing games of “I Spy.’ We like each others company.

It’s pretty sweet.