Dr. Knickerbocker and the Tiki Tribe

Tags

children's literature, education, neon tiki tribe, poem, poetry

My newest Neon Tiki Tribe book, The Rise of Kunatos, is due out in a couple of weeks. The story is a fun one that I co-wrote with Joe Lorenzano where we introduce our biggest bad guy, Kunatos. The theme for this book is “never give up.” I think that’s a great lesson for all ages. While I was writing the story, a friend of mine told me that she has decided to go back for her doctorate degree. It’s going to be a long journey since she is a working adult and has to get through a master’s degree before moving onto the doctorate program. She also chose a major that is very difficult to get into, and she will have to do some work beforehand to even start. I was so inspired by her tenacity and how much she embodied the spirit of The Rise of Kunatos that I wrote this poem.

Dr. Knickerbocker

Here comes Dr. Knickerbocker
Walking down the street
Smiling wide and saying hi
To everyone she meets

Dr. Knickerbocker smiles a smile
That starts from deep inside
It comes from joy, it comes from peace
It comes from miles of pride

She used to be just Knickerbocker
No “Doctor” to her name
And then she made a giant choice
That left her never the same

When people said, “No, you can’t.
You might as well just quit.”
She said, “No way! You can’t stop me.
Not for a moment. Not one bit!”

She pushed on through, she kept it up
She used her best talent
Which comes from pride deep inside
And says never, ever quit!

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National Arbor Day 2013

Tags

arbor day, national arbor day, nature, outdoors, poem, poetry

Happy National Arbor Day! I say “National” because each of the states actually have their own Arbor Day, and then there is one big shendig on the last Friday of every April for the U.S. as a whole. Did you know that? I did not until a couple of weeks ago! To celebrate, I would like to share with you a poem I wrote last year. Some of you may recognize it from when I wrote it last January and posted it on Facebook. This year, I played around with Photoshop for the first time and added it to a picture I took in the park last week. I hope you enjoy it!

Busybodies and Baby Talk

Tags

Pregnancy, Pregnancy choices, Pregnancy gossip

My friend is pregnant. I’m happy for her, but there’s a little part of me that is a little bit sad too. Oh, not sad for her; that is nothing but happy. The sad is for me. Weird thing is that I don’t even want to have more kids at this point. My eldest is 15 and my youngest is 4. That is some kind of crazy spread, isn’t it? By the time my youngest graduates high school, I will have been raising babies for 29 years. As great as it is, a stopping point is good! But, three years ago I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and, with the issues I have, I was told that it was a really good idea, imperative even, not to have any more children. My husband and I had yet to totally decide on whether or not to have any more at that point, and that decided it for us. I thought I would feel relieved since I was more on the “not” side of whether or not to have another kid. The fact that it bothered me so much came as a surprise. Being told I can’t is a huge departure from deciding I don’t want to, and I still don’t like it at all.

It’s so complicated, isn’t it, this whole business of who’s pregnant, who isn’t, who wishes they weren’t, and who prays every night that they are? It’s supposed to be a very personal thing between a woman and our other half, but it’s not. Not really. If a woman isn’t married and she is expecting, well, I don’t even have to tell you how much fuel that is for the gossip fire. Marriage doesn’t exempt anyone from baby gossip, however. As soon as a girl gets married, everyone starts asking when she’s going to get pregnant. And as soon as she spits out that first kid, they start asking when the second one will make an appearance. If the first kid gets to two and no talk of a second is in the air, people start sharing opinions on the dangers of only children. On the other hand, once that third comes along, here come the “don’t-you-know-what-causes” thats. It is never ending!

People are often just trying to be friendly, helpful even, but there is a whole world going on behind the answers. My children are eleven years apart for a very good reason. I always wanted a second, but for a long time, that didn’t seem possible. I’m pretty much Fertile Myrtle and have no issues with getting knocked up; that wasn’t the issue. You see, my ex was not a good husband. He was not a good father. I don’t think he is even a good person. It wasn’t long after I had my oldest son that I knew the marriage wouldn’t last forever. It was only a matter of time that fully depended on when enough was enough for me. Right or wrong, I felt I owed it to my child to exhaust every effort at keeping my marriage together, so “enough” took a while to get to. I wanted another child, just not with my ex.

Every question of when I was going to have another, every comment about lonely onlies, really hurt. I don’t blame any one for that hurt. I chose to keep everything to myself. I chose to keep everyone out of my world. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame myself either. It was an “it is what it is” situation where blame is a ridiculous thing to even try to assign.

But, how common is this? Not my situation exactly, how common is the baby game complicated? I would say every time. Every time a woman joyfully announces she’s pregnant, one of her friends is putting on a happy face while secretly dying a little inside and feeling just how empty her womb is. Every time newlyweds get asked about when they are planning on having a baby, one couple happily talks about their plans to travel first, while another tries to defend their choice not to have any children, simultanelously hoping they don’t sound defensive and wishing they didn’t feel the need to explain it at all. Every time a woman cries about not being able to get pregnant, another cries because she is. Even if you are the happily married, blissfully preganant, glowingly gorgeous woman, you know people who aren’t and you’re worried your joy will bring pain. Having children, not having children, individual choices, individual problems – it’s all complicated and it’s always hard.

So, I have a few suggestions to make it easier on us all…

1. It’s ok. If you want to have kids, don’t want to have kids, have no idea what you want, want to adopt a baby, want to put your baby up for adoption, are sad you are pregnant, are ecstatic you are pregnant, wish you could get pregnant, wish someone would permanently remove your uteris, wish you had a uteris, want one child, want to have more children than the Duggers, use fertility treatments, oppose fertility treatments, want to work in child care, want to stay away from children completely and forever. It’s ok. Now, if you have children and don’t take care of them, that is not ok. But, that is a different blog. This one is about sorting out what we want and how we feel about baby making and, let me tell you, the whole range of emotions is pretty common and absolutely normal. It’s your choice and nobody else’s; which brings me to my next point.

2. It is ok to talk to other people about their choices. It is not ok to to be presumptuous and rude, even if you are not trying to be. You need to be conscious of the impact of your words. Here’s a good example:

Bad question: So, when are you going to have kids? Dude! Judgemental much? You just told that person that not only does she have to have children, she is not normal if she doesn’t. I’m sure that you were just trying to be friendly and make a connection, right? Well, let’s try again!

Good question: Are you planning to have kids? Look at that! You have given them the option to say yes, no, or I don’t know and feel ok about it. Awesome.

Another point: if what you are about to say can appropriately be prefaced with, “You know what they say,” don’t say it. “They” never have anything nice to say and “they” should be left out of any conversation. When it comes to discussing personal and emotional topics, cliches always suck.

3. It is ok not to answer rude questions. Your choices are yours and you don’t owe anyone an explanation. But this one comes with a caveat: be as gracious as humanly possible because most people are just trying to be friendly and make a connection. Not everyone deserves the benefit of the doubt, but you deserve the benefit of giving it. Anger and bitterness are two nasty little critters that build up inside causing pain and ugliness. Don’t let them in. Ann Landers had a great way of graciously turning the tables on a rude questioner by politely asking, “Why do you want to know?”

4. It is ok to tell your barren friend that you are pregnant and it is ok for you to be happy about it. Did you call her “barren” or something as equally mean and offensive? Did you brag about your amazing fertility and how easily you can conceive? Of course not. Just be sensitive and try not to talk about it more that she can handle. And don’t be offended if she doesn’t seem as happy for you as you want her to be. She loves you and she is happy for you. She’s just got a little, or maybe even a lot of, sadness for herself that she needs to work through.

5. It is ok to feel sad when your friend announces that she is preggers. Really. Now, angry at her is approaching a ride on the crazy train and that is not so good. Your friend did not get pregnant to spite you. But sad? Perfectly normal. Remember that scientific law Newton discovered? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. She is thrilled and if you are sad, you are just following the law. After you smile and congratulate her, go home and have your cry out so that you will be ready to pick out a cute shower gift and show her the love.

6. It is ok if you are pregnant and not married. We can disagree all we want about the advisability and challenges of having a baby out of wedlock, and we can disagree all we want about the morality of sex outside of marriage, and that is fine. Agree to disagree. I personally think people should wait and that marriage is the best place to have kids. However, if you are already pregnant, that conversation is completely moot. You may or may not have chosen to get pregnant, but you have chosen to have your baby and I have nothing except love, admiration and support for that. Anyone who doesn’t, can suck wind. Period.

I haven’t covered everything here, I can’t. There are so many variables and so many personal situations that I can’t possibly address them all. I don’t even have any over-reaching conclusion to tie this all up beautifully with a deep, and affectual ribbon. So, I think I will just leave you with this: if baby talk and the whole baby making business makes you sad, happy, emotional, or feel nothing for it at all, you’re normal and you’re not alone. There is someone else who feels the exact same way.

In Pursuit of a Green Thumb

Tags

gardening, nature, outdoors

Happy Earth Day, everyone! I woke up and checked out my own little piece of earthy goodness that I put together this weekend. I now have a vegetable garden and I have an Instagram to prove it. Go me!

This is my second attempt at gardening actual food instead of just the tropical landscaping plants I had in Florida, which took more pruning than help in growing. Thanks to the warm weather and long rainy season, they did that with absolutely no assistance from me, and thank goodness for that. Because of my unexplainable success with native flowers and bushes that had been planted and matured before I was placed in charge of them, I fancied myself an apt and able gardener. Feel free to giggle at that. In that same sandy yard, I attempted to grow tomatoes and peppers. Now, the jalapeños grew remarkably well. I had several harvests and even made my own red pepper jelly from them. Turns out, it’s pretty hard to mess up jalapeños in Florida. They love sandy soil and hot temps, don’t require fertilizer, and the bugs don’t really like them too much. Plant and go! That works for me.

Tomatoes, it turns out, are entirely different. They like soil with a certain pH – 5.5 – 6.8. They want fertile soil rich in organic matter (read: not Florida sand). Tomatoes do well with a ground cover, attract bugs, and even have their very own special wormy caterpillary looking thing called a tomato hornworm. It is icky! My tomato “crop” ended up being nothing more than pathetic looking bug fodder. You’re welcome, every bug in three counties, for that special feast!

So, my jumping in head first was a mixed bag with the garden. I swam, nah that’s giving me too much credit, I was fished out of the pool with my easy-to-grow peppers and smacked my head pretty hard on the bottom of the pool with the tomatoes. That’s ok, I learned a lot from my failure and when I did look up tomato info on sites like this one, what they were talking about made a lot more sense to me.

Time to jump in again! This time we are in Tentucky (Fort Campbell is in both Kentucky and Tennessee, therefore, I have thusly named it “Tentucky”). I bought a raised flower bed from Sam’s Club, soil from Lowe’s, and I’ve read up on my chosen plants: black zucchini, summer strawberries, my faithful peppers, and one hopeful Roma tomato plant. I’ll let you know how is goes.

Pepperminty Clean!

Tags

All natural cleaners, Borax, Homemade cleaners

A couple of years ago, I decided to limit the number of chemicals in my house. It was about the time my Dad got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and my youngest son was starting to walk around the house and get into things. Everything. So, I got rid of all the the cleaners under my sink that bore warning labels such as: TOXIC! and CORROSIVE! I started using Method and Seventh Generation products. They’re great and I still use some of them, but they are also expensive and quite frankly, I’d rather buy shoes. My great grandma always said that the only thing you truly needed to be clean was a bucket of hot water, but I don’t want to work that hard either. So, somewhere in between sounded like a good place to be! That place turned out to be making some of my own cleaners.

I like this one. It’s a great bathroom cleaner that leaves the throne room smelling like a peppermint stick, which is a lot better than how my boys leave it smelling. It doesn’t melt dirt away with no scrubbing like all of those chemical cleaners claim they do in commercials. I really don’t want something that does that. Seriously, what is in that stuff?! I use a sponge that has a spongy side and a scrubby side, then wipe with a dry towel for a streak free finish. My favorite way to attack the job is to go in the order of increasing nastiness – sink, tub, then toilet. (And around the toilet. I’m thinking of floating Cherrios targets in the pot or perhaps painting a bullseye in the bottom with the words “Aim Here!”) If the boys have left the porcelain pot in a particularly interesting state, an extra shake of Borax in the toilet does the trick. Same with the tub.

My First Video Conference Call

My favorite jammies include an oversized shirt, usually one of those XL ones they give out at football or baseball games, and a pair of patterned pajama pants. I have such choice options as white with neon snowflakes, blue with white moose, and pink with red, dancing Santas. With my powerful home organization skills and my system of picking whichever pants and shirt my hand seizes in the dark, I never match. Isn’t my husband one lucky man? Aww yeah!

Not only are these dashing ensembles my regular night wear, they also end up being my Tiki Tribe phone meeting wear. These meetings take place in the evening when everybody is off work and our various children are put to bed. Thus far, that has worked well for me. However, the Tribe is about to introduce something new into my world – the video conference call. Yikes! I’m not one to wear my pajama pants to Walmart, and I am certainly not wearing them for a business Skype-a-long. So, now I have to worry about what I will wear, the doneness of my hair and makeup, and the condition of whatever room will be seen behind me. This is going to be very different.

But, I’m excited about this! We are meeting with a team of educational experts; people like the professor who teaches other teachers how to teach, a PhD of education, and a twenty-five year veteran of special education. Teachers have been responding very well to our books and have been asking for teaching guides and lesson plans so that they can use them in their schools. These experts not only agree that our books are worthy of being in the schools, but that the books are worthy of their time and expertise. That’s huge! Especially for me.

You see, the Neon Tiki Tribe team is a group of very well educated individuals. Our illustrators have degrees in graphic design and their skills are very evident in their brilliant illustrations. My writing partner, Joe, has a degree in creative writing; his story lines are amazing and his command of the action sequence shows. Me? I’m almost finished with a master’s in English education. I have achieved a 3.91 GPA and am pretty confident in the skills I’ve learned, but that means nothing until those skills are put into practice. This is like the ultimate peer review; teachers want to use my work in their classrooms and educational experts think this is a good idea. Wow! Just wow!

The 4th Hour

I’m sitting here watching the coverage in Boston; the bombs exploded just a short time ago. I keep thinking back to last February when my husband and his best friend Jason ran the Austin Marathon. Jason’s wife Kelly and I made our way down to the finish line just before the 4th hour of the race. We had made signs with our children to surprise their Daddy’s and show our pride in our husbands. While we waited in the cold, I decided to run into Starbucks for something hot. I stood in line and chatted with a woman who was waiting for her girlfriend to come across the line. She had overcome many odds to be able to run the race. On the street near us was a family group waiting on their grandfather to finish. As we watched proudly for our husbands, my heart swelled with joy for all of these wonderful people. Avid marathoners, an amazing eleven-year-old boy, a determined soldier with a prosthetic leg, an elderly woman in much better shape than I have ever been, and many others triumphantly crossed the line. These were the people in the 4th hour. These were the people who had trained hard, had no hope of winning the race, but every hope of winning their goal. These were the families and friends waiting to share in that shining moment. These were the people there today in Boston. These are the people that now fill my thoughts and prayer.

Au Natruale Lighting

I love my bathroom window. We had one in San Antonio too, but it was clouded over and the only thing to see through its useless glass was my neighbor’s bathroom window. This one, however, faces the street, is beautifully clear, and lets a lot of natural light in. I love putting on my makeup in natural light. I love the sunlight beaming in and waking me up while I blow dry my hair. I love looking at the little birdies in my tree while I brush my teeth. I don’t love forgetting to close the blind before I get into the shower. Eeek! Excuse me while I go find my dignity…

Jumping in, head first

My cousin, Julie, has a story she loves to tell about me. At about four years old, I decided I could swim. This was something I just knew with every inch of my being. So, one fine day while the family gathered around my grandmother’s pool, I ran with all the vigor and assuredness my little four-year-old body could muster and jumped right in! And promptly sank straight to the bottom. If you think this story ends with me learning to be shy, measured and careful, we have obviously never met. I actually tried it again at home not too many days later, and with no one looking. That was the day I learned to swim. I also learned that someone might pull me out or I might just pull myself out, but if I really wanted to do something, I better just jump right in.

And that is how I have lived my life ever since. Sometimes I sink, sometimes I crack my skull on the bottom, and sometimes I swim. Doesn’t matter. I love jumping, head first and without looking. Want to find out what happens when I do? Then come along with me and follow this blog!