Slip Slidin' Away

Slide shows are in the love/hate category for me. I hate to think about sitting through one of them, but I always love that I did...especially when the slide show includes pictures of me! And I love it even more so when the photos evoke memories, a funny title for the picture, or a good guess at what was going on when the picture was taken.

When I was at Hilton Head with family last month, Dad brought with him a slide show of sorts. He had taken a bunch of old slides, converted them to photos, and put them on a jump drive. I was a bit hesitant when he suggested he just copy the pictures to my laptop, but I’ve looked at these images several times since then and am glad to have a piece of family history in my possession.

Seems like I’ve been watching my Dad’s slide shows since I was in the womb…well, now I have proof that’s true. If my calculations are correct, the above photos were taken by my mother when she was pregnant with me – and that’s Dad there next to the slide projector. Also in the photo: my paternal grandparents and my uncle – my uncle was probably almost 4 years old in these pictures and, get this, he’s four years older than I am. So despite my poor math skills, I was able to put two and two together and get nine months.

The slide show in Hilton Head was really quite nice. My Dad even made me popcorn so it could be just like the old days. I loved seeing all of these memory-provoking photos, and of course being the first born, most were of me. What does this mean? It means there are now mucho opportunities for me to add some of my favorite self-effacing humor to my blog – by posting embarrassing photos of myself.

Stay tuned for the Blue Mailbox slide show. Check the blog when you feel like it and I’ll try to post on a more regular basis. As always – thanks for reading.

Note: see if you can find all of these items in the two photos above:

• record player
• bean bag ash tray
• pack of cigarettes
• movie screen
• pearls
• cat-eye glasses
• funky lamp
• t.v. tray
• the ubiquitous fruit crate (ubiquitous in my family that is!)
• refrigerator (pink and stainless combined?)

Say my name, say my name

Do a google search for my name and this is what you get…

Related Searches:

• Stephen King

• Carrie Bradshaw

• Carrie Underwood

• Carrie Ryan

For years, people I meet have been telling me that I look like someone they know.  Despite this, or perhaps because of it, people just don't seem to remember meeting me or can't remember my name.  So for years, I've been trying to figure out a way to help people at least remember my name.  I tried "rhymes with Hari Kari" but most people either didn't understand the reference or couldn't get past the "suicide by sword" image long enough to associate it with "Carrie".  I've also tried the Stephen King novel/movie Carrie.  That closing scene...at the prom...with the bucket of blood drenching Sissy Spacek - how could you forget that?

Okay, maybe not everyone has heard of Hari Kari or seen the movie Carrie (and if they haven’t – what’s wrong with them?!). But they certainly know that Carrie Bradshaw has some really cool clothes, lots of sex, incredible friends, and a New York City rent-controlled apartment. They also surely know that Carrie Underwood won American Idol and continues to rack up Country Music Awards with lyrics like this:

Before He Cheats

"And he don't know...

That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little souped up 4 wheel drive,

carved my name into his leather seats,

I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights,

slashed a hole in all 4 tires...

Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats."

So I’m all about considering switching my references from suicide and death to sex (Carrie Bradshaw) and bitter country songs (Carrie Underwood), but who the heck is Carrie Ryan? Is she the love child of Nolan and Meg? Is she some one-hit wonder? Does she even sing or act? Well, let me google her and find out...

Turns out she’s a writer…of books I’ve never heard of or read. But since she comes up 4th in a google search of my name, either she’s really good at tagging herself on the “internets” or she really is someone famous that I need to get to know. Here’s the bio taken from her website:

"Born and raised in Greenville, South Carolina, Carrie Ryan is a graduate of Williams College and Duke University School of Law. A former litigator, she now writes full time. She lives with her writer/lawyer fiancé, two fat cats and one large puppy in Charlotte, North Carolina. They are not at all prepared for the zombie apocalypse."

I’m ambivalent about Duke, I could never be a lawyer, and I've never owned a dog.  But I do love fat cats and am strangely intrigued by the thought of a zombie apocalypse. Perhaps I’ll hit the DeKalb Public Library for a free Carrie Ryan book loan.

In the meantime, if you meet me anytime soon, don't be upset if I can't remember you or your name.

Things that go bump in Broad Daylight

I'm not sure if Mercury's in retrograde, if there's been a continuous full moon, or if I'm just going through a clumsy phase. There are others in my life that are having bouts of bad luck so I guess it could be the moon and the stars; with my luck though, it's probably a full on clumsy stage in my life. Let's hope it doesn’t last too long.

It started with bruises on my legs and arms that I couldn't account for. I wasn't exactly sure when or how I got them. My lunch buddies suggested I might be drinking too much but I assured them I wasn't drinking any more than normal (thankfully they didn't ask me to define "normal"). When I started paying attention, I realized that I was accidentally bumping into coffee tables, chairs, corners, other people and rose bushes. It went from those minor bodily thumps to glass collisions. I'd do the dishes, break a wine glass; do the dishes, break a drinking glass; do the dishes, break a vase. We're now down to two non-matching wine glasses (besides the ones we bought from Cost Plus World Market for cheap and the ones from Doc. B.'s mom – though I'm pretty sure I'm responsible for having broken some of those in the recent past as well).

With this spell of flailing fragility, it wasn't a surprise when I scraped the side of my beloved little silver (dump) truck. Yup, I was turning into a parking space and cut it too close - too close to a huge cement pylon that is. I'm mad, annoyed at my clumsiness, and disappointed when I break things...but scraping my truck was different. This is a 7 year old truck, formerly in perfect condition, with only 25,000 miles on it, that we were recently considering selling so that we could put the cash toward a new car. It didn't have one single flaw in it other than what it came with, or should I say what it didn't come with. Sure, I had to roll down the windows by hand, there weren't any car mats (and I'd been too lazy to purchase any) and I only had AM/FM music selections. But it was paid for and it many times over earned its name: The Wheelbarrow.

The reason the truck has so few miles on it – it stays in the driveway while I take MARTA to work every day. It just sits there patiently waiting for me to load it with mulch, loan it to a friend, drive to my once a month haircut and color, or speed up I-75 to my bi-annual dentist appointments ("speed" is of course relative when you are in a Ford Ranger). So it was an unusual day in its life when it was parked out on the street last week. We were having some rocks delivered and the only place to put them was at the end of our narrow driveway – so the truck had to be out of the way. When I came home from work that night, our neighbor came running over to inform us that the truck had been hit. A repairman at their house that day had backed out of their driveway right into the side of the truck. If only I had parked the truck the other way, the new dent would have been smack dab on top of the section I scraped. But alas, no such luck. This truck, that was in mint condition just a few weeks earlier, now had a dent on one side and a scrape on the other.

The repairman's company was very helpful. They agreed to pay for the dent repair and for a rental car while it was in the shop. So Doc. B. took it for estimates and discovered that we'll actually be getting my scrape repaired less expensively because a bunch of the labor can be rolled into the dented side (they have to remove the back end of the truck, match paint colors, etc. - all things they would have had to do to repair either side).

So, when it's all said and done, I don't know if this is good luck or bad luck? I guess its good luck in that I'm sitting here in Hilton Head while Doc. B. is handling the repairs. Thanks Doc. B. but I wish you were here!