Hot.
Like a lot of the nation, we have been experiencing hot.
Yesterday, our high was 107 at 5:25 p.m. I made our son mow the lawn. (He had been putting it off for days.) He kind of hated me for a while.
Our other two decided to go into business.
Within 30 seconds of setting up shop, they had their first customer.
Every time I looked out some one was stopping.
My daughter, the shrewd business woman that she is, was struck by everyone’s generosity.
Seems everyone gave them more than the stated price per cup.
One fellow even paid for the next four customers.
Which prompted the next four folks to pay for the next four folks if they couldn’t pay for theirs.
Then there was the young fellow who after he learned his drink was free — looked puzzle for a second then handed her a dollar bill and said, “This is your tip then.”
She loved that.
They hooked up a bunch of extension cords and brought out a fan.
One of the joys of owning an old home; you accumulate tons of extension cords.
Then there was the joy of counting the money.
“I love Madison.”
That was my daughter’s remark after a few hours selling lemonade.
“See, how good it makes you feel when someone is generous. Remember that when you are in a position to be generous one day.”
I think she was too busy counting their money at that point to hear me.
But like the heat, I don’t think the kindness of others couldn’t have gone unnoticed.
Do you remember selling lemonade?
I went running tonight about 6:30.
The temperature was 100.
I decided to go ahead and get out there no matter how warm.
When I got home, it had plummeted one degree.
* * *
Yesterday, I was working out with my trainer, Beverly Morris. As I was stretching out at the end, our local Biggest Loser, Johnnie Franklin, was working out.
After a profile about Franklin in the local paper, he joked that he can’t walk down the street without someone stopping him.
Already down 95 pounds, he plans on losing another 150 pounds. He talked about how tough it is but that he can do it sticking to eating right — and exercising day by day. Even if it is something small.
Beverly, who has worked with Franklin, agreed.
“People don’t realize the most important part in weight loss is not the condition of the body but the condition of the mind.”
That stuck with me.
So what if it’s 100 degrees. I’m in pretty good shape, if I take it slow, I should be fine.
Whether it’s meeting my friend in my driveway tomorrow morning at 6:25 for a ride to the pool or lacing up those running shoes, getting started is often the biggest hurdle.
Mind over wanting to sleep in.
Mind over thinking it’s too hot.
Mind over those chocolate chip cookies cooling on the counter.
What do you think? What was you latest mind over body experience?
For five years, I tried to be funny each week.
Some weeks, it just wasn’t possible. I didn’t feel particularly funny.
That is a problem for a humorist. For the most part, you have to write somewhat funny even when you’re depressed as hell.
* * *
This week for MamaKat’s Writer’s Workshop I’m choosing prompt 1.) Share what you were blogging about last year at this time…what has changed?
It hit me that a year ago week of July 4th, instead of sending in my weekly column as usual, I emailed the publisher my last column. I couldn’t tell him in person because I was afraid my voice would crack; my nose and eyes would run. And I’d look like an IDIOT.
For five years, I had spent Sunday afternoons drafting a column.
In the car coming back from vacations, on the porch on beautiful spring afternoons, in my room on rainy afternoons when the rest of the world was taking a nap.
I knew it was time to spend my creative energy and talent on other things but like a tired toddler — I didn’t and don’t transition very well.
My husband, if reading, is nodding his head vigorously.
So what’s the deal a year later?
Well, I still send in a column every now and then. If the muse is there, I can write for my Morgan County Citizen readers.
I am able to concentrate more fully on freelance writing assignments.
I spend more time having fun blogging and meeting the vast social blogging universe.
I can get serious about a first draft of this story that is forming in my head.
I’m sad that I don’t have that weekly connection with my beloved readers.
No. I’m mostly sad that I can’t do it all. Be funny, creative, writing everything I’d like and still make family my number one priority.
This is good for me and I am happy.
I’d just be happier if I could do it all.
I think.
Where were you a year ago?
What do you do with a tropical storm blowing outside?
Well, the Miles Family does art work.
As in coloring.
My father-in-law.
And me.
I worked really hard on the shading above Ken’s upper lip. It took me over three hours.
* * *
Well, we made it home yesterday and I went out to my garden.
I noticed one watermelon was doing pretty good.
While others weren’t where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve puzzled this.
How do you untangle the vine and put it back on the ground?
I’ve never figured out how.
It is like a storm ruining your beach trip.
You just can’t fix somethings.
This watermelon’s story is most probably not going to end up very pretty.
But it is what it is.
Sometimes the weather and watermelon have a mind of their own.
Don’t cha think?
I arrived at St. George Island, Florida yesterday afternoon.
A little more than 24 hours later we were told we had to leave.
Poo.
Debby Does the Gulf and decided to head straight for our vacation spot.
Then we saw this go by our house.
We had been without power all day.
At 4:40 p.m., my mother-in-law came in and said that we had 20 minutes to evacuate.
It’s amazing how fast you can pack when motivated.
Everyone needed gas.
Riding along Apalachicola Bay.
Trying to think positive that we would find a gas station that had power and gasoline before I hit “E.”
Well, we made it to Tallahassee.
Debby didn’t get the best of our clan.
Though I am a little peeved that both trips to the beach this summer have been complete washouts.
What about you? Did Debby douse your week of fun?
A few summers into the world of vegetable gardening, I have learned a few things.
One is how little I know.
Another is that I can learn how different plants grow.
And the whole spectacle is miraculous — in spite of my efforts.
* * *
Pole beans.
Vines that wind in and around and produce a million beans.
Or so I thought. For that’s what they did the first year of my garden. Pole beans everywhere. So sick of beans I didn’t even freeze them. For why? There would always be abundance.
Then last summer.
Not a bean.
We had put up the chicken wire fence. There was a huge hedge of vines just like the year before but not one blossom appeared.
I have read since that pole beans like cooler summers and bush beans hot ones. So who’s to say? Certainly not me.
I’m just so happy they appeared this year.
Out picking my first bag full in two summers, it just struck me how amazing God is.
We plant a seed.
The bees and other pollinators come along and do their thing.
And we end up with this.
I was telling my friend Annie about my bean-proving-there-is-a-God revelation.
She scrunched up her nose and looked a little puzzled like she does when she thinks I’m saying one of my silly white girl things.
Annie and I are tight. We met a few years ago when she knocked on my door and asked about my garden. She thinks of me as another daughter and I think of her as a spiritual adviser. But don’t tell her that, she’d just get mad at me thinking that was silly talk again.
So when Annie wasn’t as moved when I presented her with a sack full of beans — and explained my finding-God-in-the-vines epiphany — I found that a puzzle. Not that she wasn’t thankful to God, she thanks God for everything.
I could just tell that she wasn’t filled with the wonder of it that I was.
Then I realized she grew up with all her brother and sisters tending acres of garden — that’s what fed them year after year.
To her seeing a bean vine produce in the summer was a natural as looking to the west and watching the sun go down every night.
That made me feel better.
I still felt like a had a little church in my bean field yesterday.
How is your garden growing?
“I just love your hair,” the tall, countrified fellow called out.
Not to me mind you.
To the women about my age with long, thick, rolling curls of shiny white hair tumbling down her back.
“My wife,” he continued ….while I strode out the door of the supermarket.
I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation but I enjoyed playing it out in my head just the same.
Compliments are good things. Even if it’s not to you specifically — as I saw the moment develop between those two, I felt like had given the compliment and received it at same time.
* * *
Yesterday ended up being a day spent beautifying me from the neck up.
I had a facial peel scheduled in the afternoon and forgot about a hair appointment that morning — till I found myself in front of the mirror.
Beth put in highlights to accentuate cover up my gray and gave me a cut (a little shorter per my request).
I received compliment Number 1 “love your hair” leaving salon.
Then I showed up for my facial.
Somehow I left without any pictures of Julie, spa owner and peel giver, that day. But she’s all over this blog in different places. Just look for the curvaceous blonde with the lovely smile who looks ten years younger than she is…though she is young.
Younger than me.
So are three quarters of the creatures inhabiting the earth and the seas.
Compliment Number 2 on hair was given by Tabby a hairstylist extraordinaire herself. So that compliment counts double. She was cutting Jack’s hair, Julie’s son. Diana probably gave a compliment too. But she always does whether my hair is just done or not. She’s that good kind of person.
Yes, here I am in all my glory. Face peel and hair cut.
No idea what the spot under my right eye is. Probably phantom sun damage that will show up later.
Got compliments Number 3 and 4 at Wal*Mart later in day.
Woo.
Compliments — fun to give and fun to receive.
We’ve just got to remember to open our mouths.
With all the kind things said about my hair raining down after a cut and blowout, makes you wonder what it looks like every other day?
No. not really.
What was the last compliment you received? Or gave?
Comfort.
Ease.
Basically hanging out and not being bothered, threatened or having to do or say anything.
Wow. Am I that much of a raging an intro-vert?
Maybe I am.
This week for MamaKat’s Writing Workshop I’m selecting prompt number 1.) Write about a time you were forced to step out of your comfort zone.
The first thing that sprang to mind was giving blood. Yes, I’ll write about giving blood.
No. I won’t.
Not because I don’t feel uncomfortable giving blood, it’s more that something picks at me to dig deeper.
There’s got to be a hundred and twenty-one things that make me feel more uncomfortable than giving blood.
* * *
Writing critique groups.
That’s what came.
You know when you first start writing. You’re petrified to call yourself a writer.
Me a writer? How arrogant.
Writers are scholars who made straight A’s in Grammar and have read and wrote 1000 page essays dissecting the complete works of Dostoyevsky.
I have a friend. A very accomplished professional in the literary business who told me — most matter-of-fact — that one day I would be comfortable letting people read what I wrote. And critiquing it.
Whoa.
NEVER.
But of course she was right. I’ve been embarrassed to tears (always afterwards in the safety of my Suburban) by critiques and felt sky high after others.
In fact, I am without a group right now and I so want one.
Why? What changed?
I learned the only way an okay writer can become better —
or a good writer have moments of greatness —
is to write everyday. Study. Then let others read your work and give honest (yet gentle) critique.
I hunger for the negative.
Because only with challenge can we grow.
And I,
Jamie Miles,
the writer,
want to grow.
What about you? What or Whom pushed you out to teeter on the edge of a limb?
My oldest graduated high school in May.
Waves of emotion caught me in a rip tide when I least expected it.
Like bursting into tears while cramming Pop Tarts in the toaster on school mornings.
My middle child, a daughter, finished with elementary school for the middle school next fall.
That didn’t faze me. But what did pull me up short like the choker collar on our lab was that she was too old to attend Vacation Bible School.
What?
I only have one baby hatch-ling left that can be sent off between 9 and 12? Only one the proper age to make crafts. Only one to lick sticky sweet red Popsicles and sing Kumbaya.
That stopped me up short in a proverbial mid-life cliche.
So this year I made sure I made the most of it with my remaining, of age, bible school boy.
We walked to the church every morning.
Darn it.
Even though we were late. We walked. I walked him home every noon time — even though we had places to go.
We checked to make sure he brought his offering.
I enjoyed listening to the birds. To his talking…whatever that was about.
One of those rare seasons I realized just how fleeting time is.
And it was good.
What about you? Has any child’s milestone caught you by surprise?
The black of night hung close.
Clouds saturated with moisture pressed into the sand as drenched cotton balls lying limp on a bathroom counter.
She dragged three hundred pounds out of the water and up unto the dune.
No light.
That’s why she came now.
No one. No thing to notice her. Or to hinder task that needed to be done.
She stretched her arms, dipped them into the soft sand and pulled. Reached and pulled her body away from the water.
She didn’t know why she came; she only knew how to come.
Push, press, flip. Move the shifting earth. Push, press deeper, slinging the sand behind her. She didn’t know why.
She only knew how.
Laboring away as determined as an old woman creating a space in her garden for an heirloom hydrangea.
Then came pressure, intense pressure.
One by one soft, leathery eggs dropped out of her down into the womb she had carved into the sand.
She didn’t know why.
She only knew press and relief. Press and relief.
Sixty minutes.
Her task complete.
Back flippers flung sand, covering the cradle.
She reached and pulled, dragging the weight of her body — so much heavier than in the water —
back to water.
Relief.
* * *
While at the beach a few weekends ago, one morning we woke up to this right outside our window.
One trail in. One trail leading out.
The turtle guardians had already dutifully marked her nest.
Seeing her tracks through the sand. Her ingress and egress.
All done when I was fast asleep 50 yards away.
I was touched with a tinge of sadness. How could I have missed it?
Have you ever missed something spectacular right in front of you…while you lay sleeping?
* * *
This Saturday, June 23, is World Sea Turtle Day on the birthday of Archie Carr.
Professor Carr was a a zoology professor at the University of Florida who brought attention to the world’s declining sea turtle populations and is considered the father of sea turtle conservation and science. Read more here…
