Facebook

I’m not a Facebook fan, but last July my daughter invited me to view her birthday pictures. I signed up and since then have visited the site a couple dozen times. Due to my ignorance, inexperience, lack of techie skills I mistakenly requested everyone in my address book to be my friend. Oops.


Now I know what my accountant, former boss, co-workers, students, and my niece, a college freshman, think, do and say. It isn’t pretty! It’s too much information. OMG! I don’t want to know.

I have since “hid” all but my daughters and a few chosen friends. I have received friend requests from people I have briefly encountered or haven’t heard from or seen in years. I ignore people who lived on my street or worked down the hall from me and never talked to me then. Why do they want to be my friend now? Am I a snob? I know the point of Facebook is to find friends, but if you really have not been in contact with them, are they really your friends? Do you want to know that their kid squirted spinach out of their nose or what your niece and her boyfriend did last weekend?

Surprise! My very first playmate from kindergarten, the year was 1960, contacted me this week on Facebook I would have recognized those big blue eyes and infectious smile anywhere. She always looked like a birthday party waiting to happen. I appreciated knowing that she thought of me often and wondered about my journey through life.

We had been friends and in the same class together from kindergarten through eighth grade in a small private school. We had sleepovers, traded clothes, whispered about boys, told secrets and shared a love of sand between our toes.

We drifted apart in high school. She had a boyfriend and I was a nerd. I never saw her again after graduation. She married her high school sweetheart and had four children and is a grandmother now.
And she still looks like a birthday party.

It’s good to see you again, Debbi.                    

Thanks Facebook.

Love at Every Sight

Do you believe in love at first sight? I do. It happened to me 33 years ago. I fell in love with the P.E. teacher on the first day of my grown-up career, teaching third grade students, at an elementary school in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
I interviewed, accepted a job, moved from the bitter cold upstate New York area and started work within a five-day period. I was temporarily camping out with an estranged cousin and his family because I knew not a soul in Virginia Beach. His two daughters thought this was a fantastic living arrangement and immediately informed me about the “hot” teacher at their school. What did a ten and an eleven year old know about hot guys? Soon, with active imaginations they were conniving about us dating, kissing, (Eeeew!!!) and falling in love.

Out of forty-two elementary schools in the system I was hired to teach at the school my cousins attended. On my first day of work I had butterflies in my stomach, as my heart raced with excitement to have landed a job a month after graduating from college. I had no doubts, regrets, nor second thoughts about my decision to work and live so far from the safety of my familiar world. Life couldn’t get any better. Or could it? Overflowing with happiness I noticed someone very interesting sauntering down the hallway.

Judging by the running suit and the whistle around his neck I knew that my preadolescent cousins recognized excellence. It took me two nano-seconds to fall in love. Why so long? I’m nearsighted!

He, on the other the hand, took two weeks before he noticed me jumping rope with my students on the playground and acquired the courage to ask me on a date. Of course, I readily accepted, clumsily spilling my drink with shaking hands. He was even more gorgeous up close. I had my cousin call the school to inquire his first name so I didn’t have to call him “Mr. PE Teacher” that evening.

We dated. We kissed. We fell in love.
We married. We raised two children. We grew old together.
And my heart still does somersaults when I see him and I fall in love all over again.
Don’t you love happy endings?

Quite A Lot of Mountians

If you don’t think that a lake and 1/100 of 100-Acre Woods are quite a lot, I also have mountains to queen over. We bought a little, and I mean tiny, petite, itty bitty, teeny, minute, not quite minuscule, condo just outside of Blowing Rock, NC in 2007. Friends invited us to their little bigger condo for a visit and we fell in love with the area. Have you visited Blowing Rock? It’s a quaint little town, down the holler from Boone where Appalachian State University lives. Go Apps! They, whoever made this up, say our condo has a million dollar view. What do you think?

We run away to the mountains to escape the humidity in the summer months. In the fall we attend the ASU football games even if it is raining and subzero degrees. Snow blanketing the trees and mountain tops in the winter is a breathtaking sight. But sometimes, like last December 25th, we were iced in with no electricity and had to delay Christmas with our family in Charlotte. It’s cold in them there hills!

We are blessed to have the best in North Carolina: our lake and woods on the east coast and the mountains in the western part of the state. And in case you don’t know we also have two daughters Ashley and Tessa, a son Andrew (raised by his biological parents, but I still claim him because they did a great job) and a 5-month-old grandson Alekzander in North Carolina. What else could a queen want?

Queen of Quite A Lot

Here I am! Queen of Quite A Lot
Once upon a time I was a princess. It started at the time of my birth.

49 years later my boyfriend/husband/best friend/Saint Anthony, aka St. Tony, gourmet chef, master carpenter, and teaching partner retired after 31 years. Three years before I could retire. BOO HOO! Because he was raised Catholic like me, his middle name is also Guilt. I would set the alarm as usual; beat the clock for interrupting my sleep, dress for success, and whine for a small portion of the day. Only from 8:30-4:00. ”Why do I have to go to work if you don’t?" At 4:15 I would stumble back through the door of our home to a chilled glass of wine awaiting my arrival. We’d chat on the porch as savory scents wafted through the screen door to tease my taste buds.

Thus Queen of Quite A Lot was morphed. Gradually over three more school years the crown became embedded in my skull. I retired in 2007 and we moved from Virginia to North Carolina. I wore the crown proudly.


Well here is a small portion of my quite alot.

This is my back yard, and my side yards. Wait I know this: It’s a peninsula! Peaceful, yes, except during bullfrog mating season. We also have Canadian Geese that fly in every morning and gracefully glide on the golden pond. Tony or I call out, “The geese are home.” It’s not unusual to spot a herd of deer swimming across the lake, or watch our hopeful pound puppies tear though the woods in hopes of catching that rascally rabbit, rabid raccoon or perhaps some beavers who have gnawed down our trees for their lodge.

We have a little paradise here including my Hundred Acre Woods, which is only 1/100 of 100 acres. Come explore with me and play. It will be fun!