ON THE ROAD AGAIN!

 Jayne's packing up all her books hitting the road Williamsburg, here she comes! 

WHAT I DID ON SUMMER VACATION--in 1972

This graphic popped up on my Facebook feed the other day, and I realized that times have not changed. It's a right of passage every September for students to write an essay on what they did on summer vacation. So here's mine. Granted, the vacation was in 1972, but through the prism of time I have come to appreciate what my parents did--and did not--teach us.  

The “educational” tag is SO over rated.  Especially when it comes to summer vacations.  My parents (a self-employed business man and an elementary school teacher) made it their mission to make sure we learned something over the summer break.  So while my friends were water skiing on Lake Michigan or riding donkeys down to bottom of the Grand Canyon or hanging out with Mickey & Minnie, my family was marching through the Smithsonian in DC or traipsing along the Freedom Trail in Boston or sitting (snoozing) through historical lectures in the City of Brotherly Love. 

   Did I have VA-CAY Envy?  You bet I did!

DEAR INCREDIBLE STORY IDEA...I will find you and I will write you!

      

One of the top questions I get asked by readers is, “Where do you get your inspiration for stories?”  The easier question to answer is, “Where DON’T I find inspiration?”  Everything I see, I wonder what the story behind it is, like these shoes in the image. It’s all about asking a few questions and then making up the answers.  

     Say you’re walking down the street of your small Midwestern town and notice that the large clock atop the town hall has stopped working. You ask yourself when and why did it stop?  A writer might (and one did) wonder if it had been struck by lightning. Hence the time it had been struck was preserved for future generations to cogitate about. That begs the question, if someone were to travel back in time and needed to harness a huge amount of energy, they would know what time the clock was struck and arrange to be there when the lightning struck. Hence with a few questions and a little imagination, you could have written Back to the Future. And you would have made a little bit of money doing so, too.

VERY SUPERSTITIOUS...

Have you checked the calendar today? Yup. It’s Friday the 13^th. Does that scare you?

According to my sources (the Internet), thirteen is an unlucky number. Historically it has something to do with the number of people seated at the dinner table. Why? Let’s see…how many were at The Last Supper? Thirteen. And we all know how that turned out. How many, according to the Norse myth, were at the table before Loki arrived uninvited and then some really bad things happened, like, people died? Twelve, plus Loki equals thirteen. The code of Hammurabi skips right over a 13th Law. There must be something to this...

Twelve is considered a “perfect” number (twelve months in a year, twelve gods of Olympus, twelve hours in half of a day.) It then follows that the number thirteen must be equally UN-perfect, right? Or so the superstitious minded say. Peoples’ fear of the number thirteen, labeled triskaidekaphobia (that’s a mouthful, isn’t it?) is evident through the centuries. Even today you might hop on an elevator in a high-rise and notice there is no 13th floor.   

CELEBRATE GOOD BOOKS, COME ON!

 

Those who know me know I don’t pay particular attention to these National Observance days. There’s too many to track, over 2,100 according to the National Observance Day website << https://nationaldaytoday.com >>. I’ll do the math for you…that averages almost 200 per month! Works out to be about six per day! More than enough to drive a woman to drink…more!

Of course, my lack of attention means I’ve been known to miss the big ones, like National Son’s Day, or National Mutt Day. But since we celebrate those every day at Casa Ormerod, no need to feel guilty about not giving a social media shoutout every time these important dates roll around.

There’s another National Observance Day on the horizon that I also celebrate every single day, but thought it’s time for the rest of the world to show it a little more love. So today I’m dedicating my blog to raising awareness of this little known but very important day.

THE DOGS DAYS OF SUMMER...What the Heck Does that Mean?

         “I’m melting….” That’s my internal thought every time I step out into the unbearably hot and horribly humid sticky-icky summer days.  But at least I can sweat, or “glow” as they say here in the south, to cool off. 

Dogs don’t sweat. Their only cooling mechanism is to pant, drawing air across those long fat tongues. Only it’s hot humid air flowing across their tongues so it doesn’t seem as if it would be all that effective. Which explains why they often resort to Plan B: digging holes in the dirt deep under the front porch where it is maybe three degrees cooler. It doesn’t seem as if they have a Plan C.

Melting dogs under porches is why these summer days are known as “The Dog Days of Summer.”

THE OH-SO-SUBTLE SOUTHERNIZATION OF A YANKEE…

Those sneaky southerners! They draw you into their gracious mannerly ways and hypnotize you with that charming long-voweled speech. Before you even realize it, you've been Southernized. I’m a born and raised Buckeye, a Yankee through and through. But most of my thirty years as a Navy spouse have been spent in the south. Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee, to be specific. When I ran across a porch plaque defining The South, I realized I just might be one of them now. 

 

The South

\t͟hə ‘sau’th\, noun

A Place Where…

 

Tea is sweet and accents are sweeter. I’ve been known to slip a “fixin’ to” in as often as possible—and it must be said with a twang in order to truly be southern.