Category Archives: Family

Sonic Shakedown

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I think today must be "show the world how many people in your family are more talented than you" on the blog day.  Actually that would be damning my relatives with faint praise since I set an exceptionally low bar in terms of talent.  Whatever.  My last post I shared one of my daughter's poems, and with this post I'm going to share my cousin Jeff's new local band, Sonic Shakedown.  I've posted one of their videos below and you can check out their Myspace page here.  BTW, Jeff's the bass player.

The Words I Love You

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The following is a poem written by my daughter Erin (15) and published here with her permission. 

The Words I Love You
by Erin Lowder
The words I Love You,
Are meant to make,
Someone fall head over heels,
The Words I Love You,
Are meant to make,
Someone's heart skip a beat,
But sometimes,
The words I Love You,
Are said out of pure habit,
And sometimes,
The words I Love You,
Are said to make conversation,
It needs to be understood,
That the words I Love You,
Can be mumbled through a child's mouth,
To their mother,
And that the words I Love You,
Can be said to a teen's significant other,
Or to an adult's love of their life,
But when the words are said,
The meaning behind them
Should mean one thing,
And one thing only,
They should mean:
"You are the best thing,
that has ever happened to me"

Go West!

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West Forsyth High School's girls varsity soccer team, currently ranked 14th in North Carolina, was profiled in the Winston-Salem Journal today.  My daughter plays for the JV team and some of her friends are the freshmen varsity starters that are mentioned in the article.  She already realizes that she's going to have to work very hard to crack the varsity lineup next year, but knowing her she won't shrink from the challenge and if she makes it the reward will be that much greater.

So How’d You Spend Your Easter?

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I'm willing to bet your Easter Sunday was a tad more relaxing than mine.  To begin with my Easter-eve didn't end until well after 4 a.m. because, well, just because.  And it wasn't a good "because." Then we overslept and didn't make it to Easter service, which is saying something since the service didn't start until 11.  After that I decided to take care of all the bushes that had been torn out of our front yard and made into two big piles when our new septic field was installed last week.  I lost count, but I think it was something like ten mature bushes and one small tree that were all piled together, and since bushes are bushy they weren't easy to get apart, and trimmed down and moved to our rather large brush pile in the woods behind the house.  Even with the kids' help it took the better part of five hours and let me tell you those root balls weren't light. The fact that my chainsaw broke down midway through and I had to start sawing by hand didn't help matters, and of course the fact that I'm not exactly in fighting trim hurt my cause too.

Why am I sharing this with you?  Well, because my 42-year-old body is very unhappy with me today.  About every other sentence I type prompts spasms and cramps in my forearms.  My lower back feels like a really ticked off elephant ran over it at least 10 times.  My arms look like a deranged cat used them as scratching poles.  My shoulders are so sore I can't really lift my arms above my head.  But the worst part truly is the realization that I'm getting freakin' old.  Ten years ago, heck even five years ago, I'd have shrugged this off like it was nothing but today I can't even shrug.  I was going to ask the question "If I feel like this at 42 then what am I going to feel like at 52?", but I already know the answer.  At 52 I'll be just fine because I'm damn well going to pay somebody to do the job for me.  That, my friends, is what they call hard earned wisdom.

15 Years

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So ER ends tonight after 15 seasons.  Personally I don't think I've watched it in at least 10 years, but when it first started airing Celeste and I would watch it every week.  I have fond memories of watching the show in its early years because our kids were toddlers at the time and we had no social life.  We were living in the first place we'd ever purchased and we didn't have two nickels to rub together, so our entertainment was limited to whatever we could find on the tube.  Even though we knew the show offered a portrayal of emergency medicine that was as accurate as CSI Miami's portrayal of police crime scene work we still found it a nice change of pace from everything else that was on the tube at the time.  BTW Law & Order was another staple of our viewing week and that show's still going strong and it's one we still watch fairly regularly.

It's hard to believe that those same toddlers who were crawling around when ER premiered are now in high school and working on getting their drivers licenses.  It's also hard to believe that I don't think I yet owned my first cell phone when the show premiered and I'm sure I never imagined that my kids would communicate with each other (and me) primarily by typing short text messages on their cell phones when the show finally came to an end.  Man I feel old.

Mia, Mia, Mia

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This morning I received the following email from my lovely wife Celeste.  It was sent after she'd already dealt with an outrageous billing issue with our former insurance company and had left our dog Mia to her own devices for two hours this morning.  Luckily Mia was confined to the family room, sun room and kitchen or who knows what she might have done. Here's the text of the email:

Subject: Mia. Mia. Mia.
 
On top of the Blue Cross thing now there's the Mia thing. Or should I say THINGS?
 
1. Pee on the kitchen floor.
2. Notebook paper chewed up like a shredder on the family room floor.
3. An entire bag of tortilla strips in a pile in the sunroom (a rather neat and tidy pile by the way).
4. My knitting. Oh yes this is wonderful. The once neatly wound ball of yarn is now a bird's nest.
5. Did I mention that my knitting needles are now toothpicks and splinters?
6. Who knew a baseball was made of so many little white strings?
7. She obviously doesn't like the taste of the English muffins because they made it from the butcher block in the kitchen to the back door of the sunroom unscathed.
8. Erin's celestial orb (the pretty silver thing with colorful beads that can be made into various shapes) is not in working order any more.
9. And the crowning glory? A big pile of poop.

Celeste


I dare not laugh lest I be forced to live the rest of my life sans one limb or another.

Taking One On the Chin

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My daughter's soccer team (West Forsyth JV) was 30 seconds from a 0-0 tie with arch rival Reagan High School last night when the Reagan girls scored on a really nice break away goal, so the West girls had a tough loss to swallow last night. Besides the built in rivalry of the schools' location this one is even more special because most of these girls play with or against each other regularly on their club teams.  For instance one of my daughter's club teammates played for Reagan and a bunch of girls from the sister teams from our club and who practice and scrimmage together all the time also played for Reagan.  That made it a great atmosphere because while we were definitely rooting for our own kids we were also giving "atta girls" to the Reagan girls.

The next big rivalry game will be Davie High School.  There are quite a few of my daughter's club teammates playing for Davie and since I was the assistant coach on the club team I'm going to definitely have some mixed emotions going on.  Of course I'm pulling for West, but the perfect game to me would be a close win for West with all the girls from the club team playing great.  I'll keep my fingers crossed.

The Package

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Yesterday we arrived home to find a full mailbox.  A couple of Celeste's clients regularly send her packages full of bills that need to be paid so I assumed that the big envelope that was taking up most of the box was for her, but when I looked at the front it was addressed to me and the return address was my Mom's.  I could feel the outline of a book so my assumption was that Mom had sent me a book she'd come across and thought that I'd enjoy.  Oh, how wrong I was.

When I opened the envelope I found a soft bound book with a cover that featured blown up pictures of leaves in fall colors and the words "The Living Years" on the front.  When I opened the cover I found on the title page "The Living Years" and the author Rachael Garrity, aka my Mom.  I quickly thumbed through some pages and realized that this was the book on her family that Mom had been trying to write for years.  A couple of years ago at Christmas she'd given my brother and me binders with the first piece of the book, but we hadn't seen anything since.  Needless to say I was stunned to find 150 pages in soft bound glory in the package I opened.

Mom wrote a specific version for me and another for my brother and since the voice is first person and addressed directly to me it is incredibly intimate.  She begins with her grandparents and carries it through to 1972 which is when I was six.  She wanted to get it done by this week because this Tuesday would have been her Daddy's 100th birthday and the book is also meant to commemorate that event.

I've yet to get too far into it, but already I'm fascinated by my family's long ties to this area.  Family names include Motsinger, Mock (think Mocksville) and Sink.  Still, the most interesting aspect to me are the childhood stories about people I have only known as adults. It's a truly amazing heirloom combining Mom's memories, letters written between family members, poems written by my uncle and family pictures.  I think I'll be mining it for years to come and my simple call to thank her isn't nearly suitable as a gesture of appreciation.  I'm blown away.

17

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March 7 is a fun day for me every year. Why? Because it’s Celeste’s and my anniversary and for 17 years it follow has followed the day that I almost have a heart attack at 11:00 P.M. You know, that’s when I have my “Oh crap” moment as I realize that once again I almost forgot the occassion and that I’ll be scrambling the next day to find an appropriate gift.
In the past we’ve celebrated our big day by having dinner at Zevely House as a couple or by taking the kids and celebrating as a family at River Birch Lodge to name just two. This year it will just be the two of us at Ryan’s. We’ve lived here for four and a half years and we haven’t eaten there yet so we’re looking forward to it.
Of course the weather is gorgeous today because I ordered it up as part of the celebration. You can all thank me later.

Williamsburg Weekend

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WilliamsburgTrip_InTheCondo_081207
Celeste and I spent the weekend in Williamsburg, VA with our very good friends the Figuracions.  It was their 14th wedding anniversary and they asked us to spend it with them, which we were honored to do.  We had lots of fun and it really came at a good time since we really seemed to need the break from our routine.  On the left, the four of us in the condo we stayed in over the weekend. Bobby and I were roommates in college and the fact that he would remain my friend after that says all you need to know about the man.

We spent a lot of time this weekend talking about our kids, or should I say commiserating with each other about living with kids, and it occurred to me at some point that we are very lucky to have friends who have literally been there through everything: wedding, kids, moves, job changes, etc.  Hard to believe they've already been married 14 years or that it's been over 20 years since Bobby and I roomed together at George Mason U.

WilliamsburgTrip_PotteryFactoryHardwareWineCheeseSign_081206
We spent the majority of the weekend puttering around the Pottery Factory, browsing the aisles of the Christmas Mouse and picking through the selections at the General Store.  To the left is a pic from the Pottery Factory; only there would you find a 'Hardware, Wine & Cheese' store.

Much thanks to our friends the Campbells for letting the kids stay with them for the weekend and shuttling them back and forth to take care of the pets.  That's some serious duty that we really appreciate.  Then they topped it off by feeding us dinner last night when we came over to pick up the kids.  We had a couple of hours to sit around and catch up and honestly that's about as good as it gets. A great weekend all the way around.