July 27, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 5 Comments

Step Kids

Nah, they’re not step kids really, they’re my very own kids, fur and all.

I just love the solemness of the little display here.

Yes, it’s morning.

Yes, Mom is up and moving around.

Breakfast, however, has not been made.

There’s a little bit of judgement going on here, certainly some alarm; definitely a great deal of consternation.

I’m rushing to clean the kitchen first, before I have to leave for class, but helpless under the weight of their regard, I fold.

The crisp crack of the Fancy Feast lid sears apart the air…

releasing suddenly manically eager kittens tumbling frantically down the stairs

to their dish.

::sigh::

Cat drama.

July 10, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 6 Comments

Three Things Thursday: July 9, 2015

My contribution to to the lovely Nerd in the Brain’s weekly show-n-tell of happiness all come from our wonderful first day at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games in North Carolina.

It’s both one thing and many things, so I’ll try to narrow it down to three themes – I may cheat and show you more than one picture for each category, if you don’t mind.

Music – lots of gorgeous fiddle and mandolin, spiced with flutes, drums and fabulous harmonies:

Sheepdog Trials (my weakness, I could watch them all day):

The Torchlight Ceremony recognizing all 120 Scottish Clans and Societies in attendance:

And I will bonus you some gratuitous “Men in Kilts.”

Thank you as always, Nerd in the Brain, for letting me share my happies!

July 1, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 0 comments

It could be worse…

Instead of grumbling about being overworked, I should just appreciate the fact that my job doesn’t require I wash the windows.

May 12, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 8 Comments

It’s a Cold, Cold War

We are fostering a young dog this weekend at the loft, while they get the paperwork straightened out about her adoption.

She’s one of the sweetest little pups I’ve ever met. She is quiet, gentle and great in the crate. Only about a year old.

And…she thinks cats are very exciting!

The cats are pissed.

To their credit, it is their house. They never asked for a dog.

They are reallllly angry.

It’s a simmering rage, a festering emotion that will make itself known by icy, squishy hairballs in my shoes and wee in my over night bag. It will be brutal in its speed and thoroughness.

Puppy, to her credit, just wants to play.

However, the kitties want nothing to do with “no stinkin’ dog.”

Awwwwww.

April 4, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 15 Comments

A Hellacious Belle’s Guide to the New South: Daddy’s Girl

Yes, I am a Daddy’s girl. Since I am also a Southern girl, there is no shame in this at all.

Regardless that I am a forty-something adult woman, it is not only perfectly normal, but socially acceptable for me to still call him Daddy. Not Dad, not Jim.

(In the South, btw, Daddy is actually pronounced \ˈdeh-dē\ or “deddy”)

There is a special relationship between Southern girls and their fathers.

Southern mamas teach their daughters to be strong women; but their fathers teach them that they are invincible princesses with arcane superpowers who should be treated with monumental respect.

Daddies teach their girls that they are brilliant and beautiful, worthy of love and loving and can do anything they put their minds to: start a business, be an astronaut, be president of the United States, be happy and fulfilled.

My Daddy didn’t raise me to believe that my goals in life were defined by my gender. He taught me to be smart and quick and strong and give my best. And if I worked hard and believed in myself and what I was doing, I could have or be anything I wanted.

He taught me integrity by daily example.

He taught me to win without vanquishing others.

He taught me a love of learning.

He taught me that if I ever borrowed anything, I should give it back better than I got it. Don’t just fill up the gas tank, wash and wax the car.

He taught me to be a good friend and told me that was the most important thing I could be in life.

My Daddy is my hero. Now and always.

One of the (few) benefits of being older is that my father is now my friend. My husband and I not only vacation with my parents, but we have dinner parties with them. We go to the beach together. We enjoy their company. We hang out.

We are good friends.

I am eternally grateful for the strengths he gave me. He not only taught me to believe in myself, but gave me a port in the storm and a shoulder to cry on for those times I didn’t. He has always been there for me.

Me and my awesome Daddy.

I am proud to be a Daddy’s girl. My Daddy’s girl.

We pick our battles and fight with the heart of a pit bull while still maintaining grace and elegance. Our mystique is that of a soft-spoken, mild-mannered southern belle who could direct an army, loves her mama and will always be daddy’s little girl.”

– Cameran Eubanks

April 1, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 21 Comments

A Hellacious Belle’s Guide to the New South: Accent the Positive

Ah’m fixin’ to write this blog, y’all, for the a to z challenge. It’s just takin’ me a bit.

source

I was born in the South and learned to speak there, my earliest words lulled by languorous rhythms of low country loquacity, dusted with the twang of the North Georgia mountains, and balanced by the “get-to-the-business” patois of Birmingham and Atlanta.

I do have to confess to some inner valley girl swirled somehow into the middle; a hitchhiker, I suppose, from UGA college days long past. It’s like, who I am.

Some of us chose to hide our Southerness. Or mask it in our daily conversations, thinking the lack of a drawl makes us sound smarter, more educated. Traveled. Worldly.

But if we are from the South (and that South can run all the way from Delaware to parts of Texas and Arkansas) trust me: we have an accent. And the deeper you get into Dixie, the deeper it lies within the dweller; the broader it becomes, the more it brands who we are.

As children, we’re all yes’ems and no’ums, fixins and done gonnas, but once we’re off to college and maybe living outside the South in some nest o’ Yankees or Midwesterners, (or heaven help us, as a lonely expat in outrageous and truly foreign parts, like New York City or Los Angeles), many of us will barricade behind the safe sterility of carefully enunciated “Americanisms,” only spontaneously dropping our “g”s in the excitement of a promotion, “y’all”in’ all up while reminiscing about our childhood, returning to our every day lives from down home holidays with gifts of fudge, divinity and peanut brittle, along with some venison sausage that we let slip, “came from a deer our Deddy shot lass Fall.”

“My voice falls into Southern drawl when I am tired, drunk, or in trouble. Too often, my accent is attacked by all three of these realities.”
― Jennifer Harrison, Write like no one is reading

Much like Jennifer, my accent seeps out of me when I’m tired (and admittedly, the other two occasions as well) plus the rare opportunity that I’m actually speaking on the phone with a Southerner, especially an older woman. It’s like a secret password: “Hey, I’m one of y’all. I know the code.”

Source

You almost always hear my accent when I’m being charming, or flirty. Believe it or not, Time Magazine recently reported that a survey by dating site Cupid.com, voted the “sing-song honey sweetness” of the Southern accent as the country’s sexiest, and by a pretty significant margin.

Regardless, it’s part of me and defines me as a native of the Southern states of our nation. There’s history and tradition in my speech, an above-the-norm politeness and courtesy marks my words. The voices of my ancestors layer over the language of business and tech I speak daily at work; Southern “sugar” spins into words of endearment; the honeys, preciouses, sweeties, and darlins I use to address my beloveds and total strangers alike.

Oh, and I will use it to be annoying. Don’t get me wrong. The first time I sense someone is prejudging me as an Atlantan, or a Southerner in general; watching them don that patient look they might assume with the deliberately obtuse, the mentally challenged or the truly uneducated.

Game on.

And then I lay it thick. Sweet as honey, slow as molasses mixed with peanut buttuh. Just givin’ them folks what they’re expectin.’

Why, it’d be just plain rude to disappoint!

“I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death.”
― Maureen Johnson, The Name of the Star

March 23, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 19 Comments

Hell’s Belles

Despite a level of of fear and trepidation I typically reserve for dentist appointments, I just signed up for the Blogging from A-Z April (2015) Challenge. This is a writing quest to blog each day in the month of April (except for Sunday, which you get “off” for good behavior.) For these 26 days, you’re asked to write “thematically” from A through Z, taking on a new “letter” daily as your source of inspiration. (Ack! ‘Zounds!)

Obviously, I don’t got a “lick of sense,” as my Granny would have said, because I’ve taken this a little further and joined the bloggers picking an underlying theme for the A-Z theme of their daily challenge. I’m going to do my best to write about the South: the place I call my home, the food I love and the culture I respect, the roots of my humor and every once in a while, a source of embarrassment (Honey Boo Boo, Real Housewives of Atlanta or Duck Dynasty, anyone? ::shudders::) How being raised to be a “lady,” and the perfect little “princess” translates into a world where the door’s no longer held open for me; it’s sometimes slammed into my butt.

The juxtaposition of very old and revered (and occasionally woefully dusty and outdated) and the spangly new: sometimes bright and fresh, sometimes bling-y and gaudy, studded with trailers and high-rises, dusted with Dawgs and debutantes, and swirled and twirled into the inner urb’s and outer ‘burbs that make up the New South.

I’d love your suggestions for discussion or your stereotypes to be debunked and we’ll sop ’em all up with a biscuit, while discussing Southern Life, or at least life as a modern “belle,” from A through Z and to Handbaskets from Hell.

March 15, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 2 Comments

To Sir Terry, with Love;

March may have breezed in like a lamb, but it is roaring out with the ferocity of a lion. A lion that has stalked and devoured more than its fair share of the good things of this world. March is a calendar page I’d just as soon see flipped over.

Six years ago, it snatched up my best friend, Nyk.

This year it beamed away the fabulous Mr. Spock: gifted actor, director, photographer and writer, Leonard Nimoy.

On Thursday, March 12th, it snuffed the blazing candle that was one of my favorite authors, the amazing and astounding Terry Pratchett, although no one and no thing could fully extinguish his spark.

Image source: the Guardian

“To be a star, you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and don’t worry about the darkness, for that is when the stars shine brightest.” – Terry Pratchett

To you, Sir Terry, I raise a toast to your worlds and your words.

The disease that took you can’t take away the gifts you’ve given to me and so many others.

Thank you for Binky and Greebo, Susan and the Death of Rats. For Samuel Vines, Tiffany Aching and the Wee Free Men. For Mort, Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax.

Most especially for Granny Weatherwax.

For the innate and powerful wisdom of Headology.

Thank you for your beautifully realized, but hysterically polarized Discworld; a more bizarre, yet somehow still warmer and gentler version of the warped reflection of the society that we view, skewered in the mirrored screens of our TVs and laptops and cellphones.

Thank you for sharing your light. Your grace. Your magic.

“There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.

The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass!” – Terry Pratchett

Thank you, Sir Terry, for filling my glass.

March 3, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 9 Comments

I Carry Your Heart with Me

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go)

– E.E. Cummings

March 3, 2009: my friend Nykoyen Ekpoudom passed away from a venous thromboembolism, a blood clot in major vein in her leg that broke loose and traveled to her lungs. It was unheralded and lightning fast – she lost consciousness and fell walking out of her office building in Manhattan. She never woke up.

I never got to say goodbye.

I can’t believe it’s been six years.

I think about her a lot.

It stuns me that she never got to meet one of the other most important people in my life; my husband, David. She would have approved and having her approval was a big deal.

She would have a lot to say about my current career ambiguity (probably unsolicited.) She would want to know about the plan I should be working on.

Were she here, she would read every single blog that I write. She would give thoughtful feedback.

She would covet my new black boots.

She was the kind of friend you just talked to. About anything. Goofy or funny or crazy or scary or serious. Good or bad. And yeah, if you were being an idiot, you could count on Nyk to gently bring that to your attention, but in a “get your *#%^ together – you’re better than that” kind of way. Friends serve so many roles in your life – each one is unique and has a different place in your heart.

Nyk was unabashedly my Partner-in-Crime. We were “sisters from another mister” – almost always up to something. Flirting with some hot boy, crashing a happenin’ party and commanding the room; shopping for completely unnecessary footwear, tossing down a Cosmopolitan or ~~two~~ three.

Off on some crazy adventure in Texas or California or New York.

Sometimes, there was karaoke. She was an brilliant business woman, strategically on-point for a stellar international career. Her goal was to always honor her family and her heritage. She wanted to bring change to her corner of the world.

She would have.

She liked to grab all her girls, weave through the crowds in whatever bar and dance like a dervish in front of the band. She had a thing for drummers.

She had a razor sharp brain, an appreciation for happiness and a deeply kind and generous nature. She saw the best in people – their true potential. She possessed a rich and rare sense of humor.

When she traveled, she always packed too many shoes.

She dazzled like a diamond in a sun beam, illuminating every room she walked into.

She would order the craziest combinations of food. Baked plantains, pickles, french fries and sweet and sour meatballs. Chili-covered “death” dogs, topped with peppers and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, drowned with diet coke.

She always had my back.

She was my friend.

My life moves on, skirting a Nkoyen-shaped hole in the world.

I miss her. I carry her in my heart.

March 1, 2015 by kimicalreaction - 18 Comments

Family Jewels

I’ve had a rather rough week emotionally, so when a friend emailed me on Tuesday and asked if I would set up a jewelry booth at a pop-up art shop she was hosting this weekend, I got a little excited.

Bless her heart, this sweet woman engages in the kind belief that I’m organized and make jewelry on a regular basis, with enough inventory on hand to do a booth with a week’s notice – her thought that my only outlay would be the time on Sunday to set up and sell my work.

Actually, I had no inventory at all when she contacted me (I gave pretty much everything I had made away as holiday gifts), but I felt a sudden need for an artistic challenge, something to get my head out of my #$$ and end my current pity party.

I said, “Sure! Absolutely!” and jumped right on Etsy and started ordering some supplies. I figured I’d get everything by Thursday and have about 3 days to put together 20-25 pieces (earrings, necklaces and bracelets) for the art shop.

I started designing jewelry about eight years ago, right after I sold my club and was looking for the next direction for my life to take. Any type of large-scale uncertainty makes me quite a bit twitchy. Crafting jewelry requires (at least for me) a tunneled focus, a channeled muse and small and somewhat soothing repetitive gestures, with the added bonus of the visual and tactile delight of gemstones and crystals.

It’s ultimately an amazing form of therapy for me and I really enjoy the act of creating. I would do it more, but I always have the excuse of working too much, spending too little time as is with husband and friends, trying to consistently write a blog…

Therefore my big ol’ box of jewelry making junk typically makes an appearance only around birthdays and holidays.

Well, maybe something for a special dress or new outfit, but I’ve learned that anything I make for myself tends to get conscripted by my Mom. How do you say no to your Mom?

Of course, my supplies didn’t come in on Thursday. They came in Saturday afternoon. As in yesterday, Saturday afternoon, the day before the Sunday pop-up shop.

David and I sat up ’til after midnight last night watching the new season of House of Cards on Netflix, while I hunched over small piles of rocks and twisted wires scrabbling them together until I had what I thought was enough of a display for a small show.

But of course, I woke up around 7 a.m. and felt guilty that I didn’t have enough stuff to give my friend variety for her event, so I made coffee, curled up in front of the fireplace and made a few more pieces.

When I realized it was time for me to get ready to leave for the show, it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked my phone all morning.

Sure enough, there was a text message from my friend.

The pop-up shop was cancelled for today, sorry for the late notice.

Oh well, vie la c’est. I feel much happier and more relaxed. My “creative” has been let out.

David and I had fun running around this morning outside in the freezing mist to take pictures of the jewelry I made (natural light tends to show color best) and I know they will reschedule the art shop in a few weeks.

In the meantime, I have new jewelry to wear.

I got to watch 3 episodes of the new House of Cards.

Should I provoke the thought, I have enough product to maybe open that Etsy shop I’ve been meaning to do for a few years now. I would love to do something where I could make a little moolah and donate part of the profits to Atlanta Lab Rescue, a group I volunteer for.

And, I had a blog topic for today.

With photos.

And bling.

A veritable treasure chest of “win” and a “jewel in my crown.”

(Aarrghh. Sorry.)