Mardi Gras Memories

It's Mardi Gras day in New Orleans!

The first picture is of me, my Dad and brother when I was one years old. It was Mardi Gras day and I was a rabbit. My big brother was Zorro.

The second one is my cousin Missy, my brother and me on Mardi Gras day. Missy is the clown, my brother is Spider Man and I am the jockey.


Today is Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. My hometown of New Orleans, which was devastated last September by hurricane Katrina has decided to go ahead with the celebration. I have mixed feelings about this decision. However, no-one consulted me on this, so I guess I don't really have a say in it (jk). What I do have are some fond memories of yearly family dress up times.

When I told a friend recently that I used to march as a majorette in Mardi Gras parades she asked me if I bared my chest. (Well those aren't exactly the words she used but I don't want to put the exact words on my blog.) I was a little shocked by the question, (I was 10, 11 and 12 at the time) but I realized that this is the perception that most people have of the celebration. And they may by right; I haven't been to Mardi Gras since the seventies. I imagine there were wild, drunken parties back then and I'm sure it's gotten worse.

I do know that my family and our neighbors enjoyed a family fun time of dressing up in costumes, yelling "throw me something Mister" to the floats and seeing how much "loot" we could collect. The "loot" consisted of plastic necklaces, trinkets and baubles; but the biggest prizes were the doubloons. Doubloons are gold silver and mulit-colored souvenir coins that commemorated the parade. I remember that even back then you would never reach down to pick up a doubloon that landed on the ground because someone might stomp on your hand. You had to be the first one to step on it and then carefully pick it up.

Later on when I began marching in the parades, I remember the challenge of marching for five or ten or twelve miles, carefully trying to avoid stepping in horse manure. I remember the thrill of doing our baton twirling routines with its kicks and swirls to the crowds in the bandstands. I have fond memories of Mardi Gras.

Today, I pray for a city at a crossroads. The events of the previous year challenge me to repentence and prayer for my hometown. I pray that the city recovers, not back to the way it was, but to righteousness. I can only imagine what it's been like to lose a home and all its memories.

I read an interesting article this morning on MSN about Mardi Gras traditions. Here it is if you're interested in reading more:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11525571

third grade picture

Olympic Observations

I know I haven't posted to my blog in a while. I've been going through an adjustment period to my daughter's new five day a week gymnastics schedule at a new gym that's about an hour and a half drive away. She loves it. I think that the new schedule and new coaching are worthwhile, but something in me has been reacting with anxiety to the more intense schedule. I thoroughly enjoyed today's day off where I didn't have to leave the house once.

I remember that today is Saturday; and it's world and local news day. The Winter Olympics get my vote for the story of the week. I've managed to watch some of the night coverage and read up on the major events in the newspaper.

I love the theme for this Olympics: Passion. It's an emotion that sums up something that is lacking in our culture.

The only night I managed to stay up until the end of the programming was the night of the Ice Skating finals. I wanted to see Sasha Cohen skate and find out who won the gold. (Actually Aimee came in and blurted out that Sasha won the silver, so there went the suspense.) I was rooting for Sasha, and not happy to see her fall twice. In spite of the two falls, I thought that the rest of her skating routine was the most beautiful skating I have ever seen.

I also caught the women's snowboarding cross finals, the one where Lindsey Jacobellis of the U.S. had a commanding lead and decided to celebrate and show off a little before she reached the finish line. It wasn't a good idea. In fact it was such a bad idea that it cost her the gold medal. She had to settle for the silver.

I was also impressed by the story about the Turkish skater whose parents gave up their comfortable life in Turkey and moved to Canada so their daughter could get the training she needed to excel. There are only two skating rinks in all of Turkey. She was competing as Turkey's first Olympic Ice Skater. It makes my driving Aimee to gymnastics across town pale in comparison.

So here are some lessons learned from this year's Winter Olympics:

1. Stir up the passion, don't allow apathy or numbness to steal the zeal or fire from my heart. The Bible says: Stir up the gift God within, paraphrase: live passionately, go for the gold in life, don't settle for less.

2. It's not over till it's over. That goes both ways, whether it looks like a win or a loss, don't quit competing until the finish line is crossed.

3. It takes sacrifice to be a champion.

4. We really need to get TiVo.

American Girls

Meet the newest member of our family, Aimee's new look-a-like American Doll. Aimee named her Bethany Chan Masterson. She's got light brown hair, blue eyes, and freckles, just like Aimee. She bought her with her Christmas money and she came in this week. If you're not familiar with American Girl dolls, there's a whole world out there (and it's not cheap). Check them out at http://www.americangirl.com.

A Mother's Legacy: Flower Girl Poetry

Not Possible
You can't put the love
and laughter and tears
of a lifetime in a book
that costs 34 cents. But you
can try...

ECT





My mother died in 1979. I never really knew her as an adult, becuase I left home when I was seventeen. But she was an amazing poet. She was always scribbling bits and pieces of her poetic thoughts in pencil in a spiral notebook. After she died I thought the notebooks were lost because I never could find them at my Dad's house. I remember asking my Dad about them and he said he got rid of all my Mom's stuff. I thought they were lost forever.

I was so blessed to find three of them when I was packing up my Dad'd stuff in New Orleans to move him to stay with my family before he died. This was around 2000. I was so happy to see the notebooks again. It was a found treasure. . However, it was a bittersweet happiness. I couldn't pick them up without crying. There's so much of her in her poetry and I miss her so much. I had so much guilt for so many years for not being there when she died. God has been working His healing work in my heart in this area. I have a beautiful picture of her when she was twelve years old next to my bed. I can now look at the picture with pleasure instead of pain. God is so good.

They've been packed away for years. I've wanted to transcribe them and make them available for others to read. Well, I think I've found a great medium to initially publish my mother's poems. I created a blog, called Flower Girl Poetry. I'm still working out the technical difficulties with it so it's not quite ready to announce. The blog I created with my allmyways ID can only have information "about me" on it. Of course, I want to put info "about her". So I created another id and a blog called http://flowergirlpoems.blogspot.com. Like I said, it's not really ready the way I want it to be but I posted the first poem called Legacy on it.

As soon as I get a flat-bed scanner I will post some pictures of her to the blog. I also want to scan the handwritten text of the poems with the transcribed text. I tried taking digital pictures but they're not clear enough. So stay tuned for some great Flower Girl Poetry.

about me

I'm tired of looking at the About Me text at the top of my blog. I've been trying for about an hour to edit the template code so you have to click on "view my complete profile" to see the text displayed about me. I can remove the entire profile including the "view my complete profile" link; but I don't want to do that. I only want to remove the text.

If I sound frustrated, I am. I could change the entire template to one that is already set up that way, but I like the "scribe" look. I don't want to change that. I should be able to modify the html. I've been programming computers since the 70s. I started with FortranIV when I was an engineering major. Back then, you had to punch up your programs on punch cards, hand them in at the computer room window, and wait for you results to print out. I remember spending many late nights in the computer center. Ah, what fond memories! Kind of like trying to edit the HTML template in my blog.

The Mr. Wonderful Doll, does that count as news?

I know, today is Saturday, my self-proclaimed, "Karie's blog world and local news day" or something like that. I know something else; I seriously doubt that anyone but me would notice that I said it was going to be news day and I'm not writing about news. I could be wrong, but I don't think there are throngs of people out there, breathlessly waiting for my take on news stories this week. Let me know if I'm wrong, okay?

But for my own sense of saying something and sticking to it, I wish I had something on local or world news to write on. But I got nothing. The Daily News to which I subscribe has got to be the shortest newspaper in the country. But not one of the papers that are dutifully thrown on my front lawn every morning has made it out of the plastic wrap this week. Yesterday I picked about five of them, sopping wet from the sprinklers, in the garbage can. I need to cancel my subscription.

I know, you can get news online and I did see a few headlines on MSN; but I didn't click on any links to read more. I really want to be informed but I just didn't have the energy this week. I'm adjusting to a new, even more intense gymnastics schedule for my daughter, which involves four more hours a week actually at the gym and about five more hours of driving a week. I'm exhausted. My daughter, on the other hand, is bursting with energy. She amazes me.

On a completely different subject, I wanted to write more about Mr. Wonderful. No, not my husband but the doll. The Mr. Wonderful post on Chuck's birthday was kind of an inside joke. He came home from work the other day and told me about a Mr. Wonderful doll that one of his co-workers had brought to work. It's a guy doll named Mr. Wonderful. Pull the string and you hear phrases like:

Here honey, you take the remote, I'll watch anything as long as I can be with you.

I'd love to go shopping at the mall with you today; spending time with you is more important to me than watching the game today.

I just want to cuddle.

You just go sit down and relax, I've got dinner covered tonight.

Mr. Wonderful

Happy Birthday to Mr. Wonderful! Who is this Mr. Wonderful? He's the man I married, the love of my life, my soul-mate forever.

I know that when you get to be our age, birthdays aren't quite as much fun as they were when we were children; but here's a birthday poem for you. Today, on your birthday, may you be "The Birthday Child".

The Birthday Child
by Rose Fyleman

Everything's been different
All the day long,
Lovely things have happened,
Nothing has gone wrong.

Nobody has scolded me,
Everyone has smiled.
Isn't it delicious
To be a birthday child?

In the Doghouse

These three are in the doghouse. They are, from left to right, Princess, Woobie and Coco. Coco is the mom, and the other two are her pups. Don't let their cuteness fool you. They are trouble. They are master escape artists. For several days now, they've managed to escape from the backyard and go exploring the neighborhood. This despite Chuck's constant efforts to block their escape.

The entire backyard is chickenwired. Boards are up over the remaining escape holes. And yet, still they manage to escape. At first it was just Coco and Princess leaving the premses. Each time they escaped Chuck would "fix it". And still they would escape. Woobie was the "good one". She would stay behind and run to the sliding door to announce her mother and sister's escape. You know it says in the Bible that "evil company corrupts good manners." On Sunday, Woobie joined the ranks of the escapees and went with them.

We returned from church on Sunday to find all three of them missing. There was a note taped to our garage saying that the dogs were being kept at a neighbor's down the hill. They had been discovered in her backyard visiting with her dog. When we got home, Chuck once again "fixed" the place of escape. And the dogs were banished to the laundry room.

Yesterday, I asked the kids to take them out in the backyard (since they were going crazy inside) and watch them closely so they wouldn't escape. Meanwhile I went to take a shower. The kids got involved in some kind of sword-fighting game devised by Eric and the next thing they knew the dogs were gone. It took an hour and a half of traipsing down the hills, knocking on doors down the hill and general searching to recover them. It turns out they weren't down the hill at all.

This time they walked "up the hill" to a nearby busy street and were rescued by a kind lady from the midst of dodging traffic. That's what she told us, anyway. I'm really glad I didn't see it. She flagged down my son who was combing the streets and asked if he was looking for three little dogs. She kindly kept them in her back yard, and got them back in after they escaped from it.

This has got to stop. These three will remain "in the doghouse" until further notice. I'm looking into those electric collars.