Blah-Blah

The 2008 Summer Olympics are finally underway. There are several events I like to watch - track and field and gymnastics are my favorites, but the rest don’t really interest me.

There are some sports (if you can call them that) that I cannot believe they have made into Olympic events. To me, they are a joke, I mean Badminton – come on! There are a few others I feel this way about, but I’ll leave it at that.

On the other side, I’ve found that I can’t stop watching the “real” sports. I have watched some of the basketball and gymnastic preliminaries, but I have really been drawn to the swimming – which I have never really enjoyed watching.

I even found myself jumping out of my seat and cheering last night as the USA men’s 4x100 relay swim team came from behind to beat France for the Gold, setting a new world record. It was amazing… especially after the French said the only reason they were there was to “smash the Americans” in this race.

Is anyone else out there watching? What are some of your favorite events?

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My sister-in-law, Georgetta, called me Friday afternoon because she had a cut on her head that she thought would need stitches. Of course my first question was, “What happened?”

Well… here goes…

My brother, Blake, went out to his shop, and the door was jammed. He opened the big doors and tried to get the regular door open from the inside, but couldn’t. He asked George to help him, so she tried to pry the door open. When she stopped, Blake walked to the back of the shop – to get a running start – so he could jump into the door and bust it open.

In the mean time, George decided to do more prying and asked Blake to wait a minute. He was already at the back of the shop, though, and didn’t hear her. She was down in front of the door prying away as Blake ran and jumped into it.

Needless to say, Blake flew through the door knocking it into George.

She actually did need stitches, but wouldn’t go to the hospital. She also has some bumps and bruises, but she is okay.

It is one of those things that isn’t really funny, but I couldn’t help laughing as she told me the story … Luckily, she laughed with me.

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My aunt, Pat Melton, passed away this morning after a short battle with cancer. Although it is always hard to lose someone you love, I'm thankful that she is now at peace and won't be suffering anymore.

As a kid, I loved to visit her house. She was always smiling and made you feel at home. She made the best baked beans I have ever eaten, and they always had the best toys or gadgets to play with (and still do - just ask Briar or Brad). I actually used my first computer at her house many, many years ago.

Aunt Pat was a huge NASCAR fan; she even won the Mark Martin truck that was given away a few years ago after the NASCAR season.

She loved life and her family and lived every day to the fullest. She was one of a kind and will definitely be missed.

Others in the office were talking about nicknames today. It got me to thinking…

A nickname is a name of an entity or thing that is not its proper name. It may either substitute or be added to the proper name. It may be a familiar or truncated form of the proper name, such as Angie – for Angela.

I’m also called Ang a lot. I guess that would be a nickname for a nickname. I don’t know. In school I was called “Big Ang.” Looking at me now you would think it is because I am big… I wasn’t then, though. They called me that because I was very small.

My husband called me AJ until we got married and I was no longer an AJ, and my Granny Tate always called me Hannie.

My little brother, Blake, is better known as Possum, and my older brother, Rodney, is either Hot Rod or Cougar.

Briar and Brad are #1 and #2, my niece, Kylie, is Booger, and Jarah is Tiger or JJ. My nephew Drake is Big D, and Grace, my other niece, is Gracie. I think nicknames are supposed to be shorter than the original name, so I’m not sure what happened there.

Anyway, you get the picture.

I’ve shared some of mine … feel free to share yours, too!

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At times while getting ready for work in the mornings, I will turn to my eight-year-old niece, Jarah, to ask how something looks - my hair, makeup, clothes, etc. She never fails to tell me how “great” everything looks.

I know that I don’t always – or ever, for that matter – look great, but I have trusted her not to let me leave the house looking like a fool. My hair is the last thing I fix, or don’t fix in my case. I’m a wash, comb and go girl. The other day, I took a towel off my head and quickly towel dried my hair. It was standing up everywhere.

I looked at Jarah and asked about my hair, I told her I was trying a new style. She quickly told me it looked “great.” Thinking I’d call her bluff, we headed out the door. Halfway to school, I couldn’t take it any more, I asked Jarah if she was really going to let me go to work with my hair uncombed.

She again assured me how good it looked. I keep a brush in my car, and was able to tame my wild tresses before entering The TD building.

This morning, I thought my hair looked about normal, and was ready to leave the house only to have Jarah tell me how horrible it looked. I didn’t even ask her opinion this time.

I didn’t have time to do anything to fix it, so I walked around all day with my horrible hair.

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Aside from occasionally forgetting that my family has moved and driving to our old house, we have settled in quite nicely. All the boxes have disappeared and everything has its place.

As a child, we lived in the “country,” and I hated it. As an adult, I love it.

We had a housewarming party a couple of weeks ago. Lots of our family and friends came and shared refreshments and visited with us. We had a great time.

We also had a opossum that visited our house for about three weeks. He would eat dog food and then go about his business. I have pictures of the animal on my cell phone and watched for it every night. My husband, however, has put an end to these visits. We have lots of other critters to take its place, though.

Briar and Brad seem to really like the new house. They have friends who live nearby, and they have been spending a lot of time at our house. We also have a bigger yard, so they have been spending more time outside.

Everything is still new to us, but it seems as if we made a good move.

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Saturday my family had a reunion at Lake Frierson State Park. We had several who were unable to attend and were missed, but overall we had a good turnout.

I was very surprised, yet glad, to see long-time family friends Delbert and Mary Gall. Having her homemade pickles and deer sausage was a big treat.

I enjoyed catching up with everyone. While talking with a cousin, I had a feeling of nostalgia, watching our children running and playing together. It doesn’t seem like very long ago when we were the ones running and playing while our parents sat and visited.

In the past several years, we haven’t had a big family get together, and I didn’t realize how much I missed everyone.

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My family has now spent three nights in our new home. Briar and Bradley have their rooms completely unpacked and all their pictures and posters hung on their walls. Their rooms look really nice.

The rest of the house is still a work in progress. I know getting settled in takes some time, but I’m ready to have it all finished.

The refrigerator is too tall for its space. We are going to have to cut about an inch and a half off the cabinet above it to make it fit. The man we had hired to do our flooring put ceramic tile down in our bathroom. He came back Friday to do the grouting, but realized he had used the wrong stuff to stick the tile to the floor. He had to pull it all back up. He put a carpet in it so that the bathroom is functional. In a couple of weeks, he is going to redo it for us.

Hank, our dog, loves our new location. He has lots of room to roam or find a sunny spot to lie in the yard. I’m used to him following me around the house, but every time I looked for him this weekend, he was laying in the yard.

All in all, though, everything has gone pretty well.

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So we closed on our house last week. It is officially ours. Well, almost … Mr. and Mrs. Harris, previous owners, are in the process of moving out.

In the meantime, we have packed, picked out new carpeting, talked about paint colors for the living room and Briar’s bedroom, purchased new furniture, checked on different cable companies (our current one doesn’t provide service in the area in which our new home is located) and we’ve packed some more.

The only problem we’ve had so far happened while packing up things in the kitchen. It is decorated with mammies and Aunt Jemima memorabilia that I’ve collected for the past 14 years. I was cleaning the items to pack for the new house and soaked them in a cleaning solution that cleaned a little to well. It removed all the grime, but the paint came off, too. Luckily I was only doing a few pieces at a time, so most of my collection is still intact.

Moving is not an easy task, but we are really looking forward to making this house our home.

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Can you call it writer’s block when you don’t really consider yourself a writer? Hmmm…. Something to think about.

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, and I didn’t realize how many people actually read the “blah” that I post until I missed several weeks.

Since my last post, a lot has happened…

Briar and Brad had the flu, and I haven’t felt well.

We are possibly buying a house, so we’ve been doing some serious cleaning at our current residence for the past couple of weeks. I have boxes stacked up all over the house labeled to go to different places. It is definitely a crazy time.

A few friends came over and watched the Super Bowl with us. I really wanted the Giants to win, but never thought they could actually pull it off. I was pleasantly surprised.

We have seen our share of sorrow, having already attended four funerals in 2008.

I don’t know what the rest of the year holds for us, but I’m sure there will be plenty of stories to share with all of you!

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