snapshots
Saturday, Jan. 04, 2003 || Pardon me boys, is that the Chatanooga Choo-Choo?

Nicole feels The current mood of nacwolin at www.imood.com

Kaytlin will miss her first basketball game tonight. Poor thing came home from her sleepover having tossed her cookies and then proceeded to do so once more before hitting the sack and sleeping the day away.

She looks a bit green around the gills, that�s for certain.

I managed to drag myself out of bed around 9 AM. I so didn�t want to, but once up and about and enjoying my vanilla-nut flavored coffee and warm glazed sour cr�me Krispy Kreme, I was glad I did. I have also managed to rack up some more treadmill time, reconstruct the announcement slides for PowerPoint tomorrow, devour a second sour cr�me donut, edit the bulletin, wash two loads of clothes, and run the dishwasher.

Oh, the exciting life of this Midwestern pastor�s wife.

Rob and I did make it out to dinner last night without a child in tow. Gotta love giftcards; I tried a yummy chicken entr�e at Texas Roadhouse, bringing more than half of it home to enjoy for lunch today, along with the remaining lima beans from our New Year�s dinner. Call me crazy, but I love baby lima beans. I have eaten an entire box of them (cooked, of course) in the past 4 days. All by myself.

They remind me of childhood holiday dinners. Perhaps that is the attraction.

My mom called this morning to tell me that my great-aunt Mary passed away last night. I haven�t seen Aunt Mary in, probably about seven years. When Marlen and I were little, she babysat us. I can remember (though it seems quite dreamlike now) arriving at Aunt Mary�s one day and hearing her tell Marlen to let her know if she had to go to the bathroom. I guess Marlen was in the process of potty-training. My next recollection of that day is of a - - ahem - - pile of�well, you fill in the blanks�on Aunt Mary�s livingroom floor.

Guess Mar didn�t quite follow that admonition.

It seems my young life was a parade of aunts for babysitters. There was, of course, Aunt Mary. There was Aunt Genny, who always threatened to bust our a**es with a spatula (egg flipper). I suppose she was all bark and no bite, as I don�t ever recall her going through with that promise. There was Aunt Catherine, who I harassed shamelessly as I went through my angst-ridden early teens.

One thing about Aunt Cass: she could laugh. Her entire face would crinkle up, her shoulders shaking like so much jello. Janie never ceased to bring about enraptured giggles from Aunt Catherine.

She made homemade noodles for her soups and called lunch, dinner and dinner, supper. We teased her unmercifully for saying, �I reckon� and calling the couch a divan. She sent us to the grocery store down the road for that one ingredient that would complete dinner, cigarettes (they still let kids buy them then), and a box of Little Debbies. She didn�t mind if we threw in a candy bar for our effort.

She shared a room with me and we often stayed up talking late into the night, about what I don�t remember. But there was just something about that time that made me turn off my �miss-priss-the-world-owes-me� attitude.

She started coughing and downing bottles and bottles of cough syrup one winter.

She fought the cancer for perhaps a year, maybe two, before peacefully passing on in her sleep one summer night.

I think it was hardest on Janie. Though Aunt Cass stopped caring for us once the cancer was diagnosed, in the time she had chased us about the house (literally, once, with a fly-swatter at that), Janie had fallen in love with this native Baltimorean/Kansas transplant (hence the unique words and phrases). She was about 8 when Aunt Cass moved in with us, newly divorced and moved back to Maryland, caring for us during the week when our mom went back to work, traveling home to her mother�s each weekend for a reprieve from three irrepressible girls. I, a know-it-all 14-year-old, didn�t think I needed, and certainly didn�t want, a fill-in mom. I recall Marlen as sort of ambivalent�go-with-the-flow. But Janie fell in love with Aunt Cass as only an 8-year-old little girl could with an aunt who giggled when she performed and thought her beautiful even with her frizzy, perm-gone-haywire hair.

And though I wouldn�t have admitted it then, the simple fact that she would giggle into the night with a trying-to-be-tough 14-year-old was pretty special.

Do they play The Chattanooga Choo-Choo up there, Aunt Cass?

~ ~ ~

Marn has inspired me to log my own "miles to no-where" this year. So, miles to-date: 6.23.





~ ~ ~

test - Saturday, Oct. 01, 2016
Just a reminder - Friday, Aug. 10, 2007
Rockin' Girl Blogger - Wednesday, Jul. 18, 2007
A good end - Friday, Jun. 01, 2007
Moving on? Yes and no. - Monday, May. 07, 2007

All entries (c) Nacwolin 2001-2006. These are my words. Use your own, m'kay?

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