Olympic Curling

Lack of sleep combined with some unusual information in the Yahoo Sports headlines got my mind wandering in unfamiliar pastures. From time to time, I would attempt to nap between phone calls and check the headlines since we are getting real time results BEFORE the nightly broadcasts of the Olympic events.

While I am not a complete lunatic when it comes to understanding sports terminology, some are just odd and Olympic curling is one of them. My apologies to all those people who have curling patches, pitches, rinks or whatever the heck it is they call them in their basements.

In my congested, medicated and slightly dopey state, I read a bit of an online headline that said boldly: "Olympic Curling: The Sport Played With Brooms". I immediately flashed mentally to my sister Kari's hair salon.

Graceful imagery of long flowing hair being hot rolled, pinned and tucked and other women's hair being carefully curled into perfection with a gleaming golden curling iron passed through my view. I saw them sweeping up trimmings and clippings of hair with wide push brooms as they leaped through the air twirling around the handles as perfectly wound as the sections of hair had encircled the hot rollers and curling irons.

Pleasant music accompanied the spectacle and I could see in my minds' eye a stylist standing atop each of the three sections of the medal platform as national flags were raised on high. "The Bronze Medal for Curling... Hair ....goes to Finland!" Polite applause fills the area around the medal stand.

"The Silver Medal goes to Lithuania!" Again the polite applause lets the cosmetologist know her efforts have been recognized.

"And the GOLD MEDAL FOR CURLING HAIR goes to AMERICA AND KARI'S PLACE FOR HAIR!" Thunderous applause and a jet flyover through a fireworks burst fill the arena which suddenly has an open air feel. The combined high school bands from every school in our county strike up the National Anthem and the Junior ROTC from AHS raises the American flag just a few notches higher.

As the bouquet of flowers is placed into her arms and a gleaming golden medal is hung on its Olympic Ribbon around her neck, tears of joy are accompanying her 'Queen wave'. Kari sings along boldly, if tearfully, and the crowd is so moved they all sing the National Anthem even if it isn't their own nation's song.

Then the phone rang and it was some crappy bill collector who had called the wrong number.
The Olympic fantasy was over. But it made me wonder, why ISN'T there an Olympic Curling event for real?

I can do my hair for basic stuff, but when it really matters, I go to the 'PRO'. I know my limitations. And Kari knows my hair. Between what I think I know how to do and what she can create from split-ended mess I normally stuff under a baseball cap, something truly Olympian occurs.

I walk in like everyone's buddy and leave looking like the belle of the ball. A veritable sow's ear turned into, for a brief moment at least, a silk purse. If that doesn't deserve an Olympic moment, not much else does.

Oh yeah, and the real Olympic curling? It's some stupid thingy about throwing some kind of polished rocks on the ice while someone else is keeping it moving with a broom or some crap like that. And who looks good after they heave rocks for distance in the cold? No one!

Keep the name. Change the event.

I can see the buildup now... This year, this time, this style! Olympic Curling... keep those rollers hot, folks... This is an Olympic year!

You and the horse that brung you

Some days I wonder what is wrong with people that a good swift kick wouldn't cure.
Our society has chosen to devolve into parasites seeking to drain blood money, energy and strength from other people for saying the wrong thing, looking too happy and not giving enough worshipful adoration to an individual. And in our rush to our unrighteous judgement, just appearing to be guilty is enough evidence to ruin lives through the media and through tale-bearing in a local setting.

Verbal miscues and downright rudeness happen. From time to time, we brush up against the harsh reality that everyone doesn't love us as much as we love ourselves. Words sting. But the epidemic of seeking another place and another time and another circumstance where the gilded age of understanding will distill upon us and make us universally accepted is the goal. We don't want to be left out when the parade passes by. It is almost as if people believe that it is possible for there to be a utopia where they will be a singular point of light that everyone else gravitates toward and is worshipful to us in awestruck wonder.

Then there are the excuses of why we don't do better in our lives that we foist upon everyone else in the world as the reason for why our lives are miserable without ever thinking about any root cause for our unhappiness.

If only we lived in another town things would be different.

If I only attended a different school, I'd be popular.

If only our family went to a more friendly church, we'd be happy.

If only people understood my special circumstances.

If only, if only, if only...

Are you kidding me? Don't you see the problem here? It isn't everyone else and their mistakes and human nature that causes you grief... pure and simple it's YOU bringing it upon yourself! You choose to focus on the bad and miss seeing anything that is good!

As individuals, we ALL want to be loved and accepted as being of worth and as having something special that makes us desirable to others through friendships and relationships that transcend time. But this attitude of 'you have hurt my feelings and I'm never going to forgive you' is just so second grade.

Attitudes bring people close or repel them. When we wear our heart on our sleeve and dare the world not to bruise it, we ask for our own cup of trials with a second helping on the side. No one will protect our heart better than we will and God designed a sturdy place for it inside our chest so that it could better weather life than it would have on a sleeve. Metaphorically speaking, we wear our heart on our sleeve, but realistically speaking, we wear out our emotions publicly and dare others knock the chip from our shoulder and to offend us so that we can call everyone unfair and withdraw. It's the "Well, screw you and the horse that brung you" mentality. We are seeking to blame someone else for our own self-imposed trials and for the reality of mortal life.

Seeking to be offended by a word or a deed has become a popular refrain due in large measure to the self-pampering culture that puts "I" before "WE" and "SELF" before "OTHERS". Materialism and comparisons crowd out reality with vague dreams of riches and popular standing.

There are those who believe that someone else is secretly ratting them out to the powers that be just to keep them miserable. Well, okay. That's a pretty sweet trick. There are spies all around us and you are telling us all that outside forces have the absolute power to make your disposition sweet or sour dependent upon what pressures are brought to bear against you.

It floats up from the playground to the very seat of human power. "It's his fault!" Really. And you didn't have any role at all in your own misery. Just blame others for your problems and somehow that lets you skip away on your horse free and clear?

Personal responsibility is a concept that we readily seek to apply to others but which becomes a pretty fuzzy idea not quite in focus when applied to our own life. It's inconvenient to realize that whatever attitudes we have follow us into whatever neighborhood we live in and that attitude determines what kind of happiness we enjoy.

Laying the ghost to rest here and now, we need to see clearly that blaming someone else doesn't FIX the problem and chances are, blaming others won't really make us happy. Eventually we will run out of 'other people' to blame for our personal feelings of persecution and misfortune.

We can't have everything we want. It's just not going to occur. And comparisons with other people only serve to hurt us in the long run. We weren't meant to have the same mortal experience. Different things create growth in different people.

If we take the time to review the self-limiting excuses list and change a few items, it might just change us for the better.

If only I would choose to get involved in my town I would be different and effect real change in my community.

If only I would choose to lay aside the desire for worldly popularity, I'd have the opportunity to develop real friends that I could depend upon and who could depend upon me.

If only our family made an effort to greet people and help make our church a more friendly church, we'd all feel more welcome and we'd all be more happy.

If only I overlooked my own circumstances and chose to see the special circumstances of others, I could truly serve them.

If only, if only, if only...

What happens after we ride into town depends more upon personal choice than upon circumstance. While your horse may have brung you here, the influence you have while you sojourn in this segment of mortality has more to do with what is in your emotional saddlebags that upon location or self-importance.

No one gets everything they ever wanted and sometimes when we DO get what we thought we wanted, it's not 'all that and a bag of chips'. Then we are stuck with sorting through the dream and the reality to craft something we can live with, grow from and move on.

Money doesn't solve everything. Being the most recognized person in your church doesn't guarantee that you will be happy. That is an internal decision. And the constant obsession with nitpicking through what someone else meant when they misspoke only serves to separate us instead of creating an opportunity to extend grace and grow together.

David O. McKay once said: "The true end of life is not mere existence, not pleasure, not fame, not wealth. The true purpose of life is the perfection of humanity through individual effort, under the guidance of God's inspiration.

"Real life is response to the best within us. To be alive only to appetite, pleasure, pride, money-making, and not to goodness and kindness, purity and love, poetry, music, flowers, stars, God and eternal hopes, is to deprive one's self of the real joy of living."

Go out and claim your joy of living. It's out there and it has nothing to do with present circumstances and everything to do with where our heart is.

And, God bless you and God bless the horse that brung you.

Jazz and the exercycle

Programming up a list of comfortable favorites of my jazz selection, I get the music humming along and start to pedal away the fat and calories that insulate my frame.
Since I've been so cold lately that I could have used my hands to chill steaks, I wonder about my sanity. Having a zero thyroid function isn't for the weak and sissy.

Only those brave souls who are willing to bear around the winter chill with them even in July know of what I am speaking.

Some days, the very idea of getting up and moving is so unappealing, but I am navigated to a sitting position on the side of the bed by sheer willpower, and I'm quite certain the will is someone else's. Were it my little voice talking and taking over the reins, I'd be under the electric blanket with the heat setting turned up barbecue and the portable phone on the floor by my houseshoes.

Compelling the weak and flabby body to sit atop the gel padded bike seat for my attempts to coerce fitness from a body that would rather ponder upon the blessing of central heat is a sometimes Herculean task. Pedaling more out of guilt than pleasure some days, I do what I can in the nasty rainy cold of winter.

Snowy days look so pretty when I can stay inside and warm. But if I have to get out in them, I feel very put upon.

Days that are so cold and achy make me wonder if I could have gutted out the trek across frozen hills and plains that bore my ancestors from place to place in the cycle of hunting, gathering, planting and sowing. And God bless those folks who made their home in the moors and fens scratching out a spartan existance from the most meager of circumstance.

I realize that if all of your neighbors live the same way and there isn't 24 hour news coverage to tell you that you are in a bad way or impoverished, then you don't dwell on it. It kind of makes me wonder just how much better our world could be without the saturation of 'news' and 'newsmakers' who intrude upon our reality and make us think we need oh so much more than we have.

So I pedal and wax philosophical, or at least as philosophical as I am likely to get while the washer and dryer buzz plaintifly to me to come and pay them some attention lest they take revenge on my clothing.

The jazz music is alternating forms of pulsating rhythm from around the world as interpreted by people through their own cultural eyes and experience. As I pedal, sometimes I imagine roadways and byways with there hills and dips. Sometimes, I'm riding a smooth boardwalk or pathway through a seacoast town. Other times, I'm just mindlessly riding to check the box and say "I did it" for the day.

One thing that is sure, winter isn't my friend when it comes to exercise. I sympathize with bears too much and feel that hibernation might be good for us all. Imagine how well rested we'd all feel with a long winter's nap tucked under our belts!

As I pedaled along I reflected upon a report I heard about the blizzard that shut down Washington D.C. They said the closures of government services was costing yeah so many millions per day.

I thought and said it was probably cheap at twice the price because when D.C. is open for business they are wasting billions of dollars weekly as if printing more money is the solution to everything.

Time to heed the dryer's frantic call. It's warning me I'll have wrinkled towels if I don't drag myself from the bike and come RIGHT NOW and rescue the towels.

I promise I'm getting there. But I have to confess I'm not all that fussed up about whether or not my towels are wrinkly. Should that happen to be a trigger for you, you are more than welcome to come and steam press creases into my towels. I won't stop you.

But I might write about how looney you are for pressing a towel...

Brad up close and personal

My throat feels like it's been rubbed with sandpaper. It can't have anything to do with shouting, screaming, singing and dancing all night, could it? Nah. Must be a virus going around... yeah... a virus named Brad Paisley which was accompanied by an evening with friends, fun and Brad right up in our collective grills. What more could a girl want?

Thanks to the kindness of Beth and Pete, I was able to sit right in front of the stage and see Brad Paisley close enough to look at the individual whiskers in his mustache and beard and see the detail painted on his jeans. Not that I was looking, of course.

Before we made it to the Civic Center, we made a pit stop for dinner at O'Charley's. I'd never been there before and the food was great. We met up with Beth and Pete's kid Brandon and a friend of his, Sam.

Typical college kids, they were there for the food and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

After the orders were taken, the conversations about what was going on in college life began and reminders of the past were dredged up along with a refresher course of being a kid in a greater world.

While I am happy that Brandon is having this experience at this time in his life, I can honestly say I wouldn't want to go back to it myself for all the tea in China. There are some things that just can't be experienced but one time and college is one of them. It isn't the same as an adult to go back to school. Focus changes, campus life doesn't exist and for most grown-ups, there is a sense of urgency about getting from point A to point B that the college set lacks in full measure.

Most of them are learning life lessons about relationships and the excitement and pain they cause and for some, those life lessons also include just how much booze and buzz can you deal with before your grades are impaired as badly as your judgement.

At one point in the conversation, Sam was telling us about the rural small town that he came from here in Alabama. As he talked about it being so small that everyone knew everyone and was possibly kin to them, he related the sad tale of troubles his mother was having with her pet chickens. Some of them are no longer with us, cue 'Taps', and somehow, the roosters managed to escape the sad destruction that seems to have befallen the hens. They made their escape to the woods behind their house.

Sam said they hear random crowing from the woods from time to time and they think the roosters have become feral. Just the idea of feral roosters set the gathering laughing. I couldn't help but think of their lonely and perhaps slightly confused "cock-a-doodle-doo's" echoing in the trees with no response from the ghost chickens that are long since dinner for a coyote or fox near their former home.

My mind began to wander... Do feral roosters run in packs? Or are they herds? They are flocks when they are tame, but one wonders if all of that changes when they take on life in the wilds of Alabama. There is just something about living rough that changes a rooster... hardens him somehow.

Have they been altered by circumstance so bitter that they are no longer concerned with crowing exclusively at sunup and sundown? Do these rogue roosters now crow at odd times to confuse their predators and perhaps escape an early grave?

Is there feral nature something that was always in them from the beginning as some sort of recessive trait only brought to the fore when genetics takes an ugly turn?

I now have so many questions about these feral roosters that should be asked and answered. Can they be considered a federally protected species? Are they endangered? And lacking normal hen house female companionship, do these roosters have a feral chicken ranch somewhere that meets that special need?

We know they have escaped from their captive breeding program, but can they sustain life in the wild by beak and claw? Or is their feral species doomed to a Darwinian extinction because they are not chosen to survive? I think Sam and Brandon should take this on as a project and seek for government help and taxpayer dollars to solve this crisis! Unfortunately, that wasn't ever mentioned as a viable option and the conversation for the others at the table had long since moved on to other topics, I shifted the gears of my imagination and finished my salad. Pity.

When the meal was over and the plates were cleared by our hostess who overheard the conversation and announced that she was a proud liberal arts/theater graduate (which, to the uninitiated, means that she can say "do you want Fries with that" using an accent or costuming), it was finally time to continue on to the real reason for the evening... BRAD!!!!!! WOO HOO!! Not that I am excited or anything...

There was a big ol' whacking Brad Paisley Concert Tour tractor trailer rig stationed near the spot we parked that let us know we were in the right place. Beth and Pete knew where we were going all along and thankfully I wasn't driving or we might have bypassed Birmingham and ended up in Atlanta circling Peachtree Plaza all night and swearing. I can find my way around my hometown most of the time, but city navigation is another thing entirely and I was just glad that the responsibility of making it to the concert on time wasn't mine.

Beth had entrusted me with the sacred printout to indicate that tickets had been purchased for us to pick up at the will call window. She asked me several times if I had it. I assured her that not only had she given it to me, but I had stowed it in my purse for safekeeping. I asked her if she wanted it, but she said no because I was "responsible". Hmmm. Now that is one for the record books because generally there is an "ir" prefix before that particular word.

A relative newcomer to the country concert tours, a handsome fellow named Justin Moore (who has some seriously blue eyes), opened up the event with a great program and I actually knew a couple of his songs. Sometimes, I'm familiar with the music someone does, but not always just who it is that sings it. His set was great! He even signed one of his guitars and handed it down to a handicapped boy in a wheelchair by the stage. Now that was both cool and classy all rolled up into a boot cut jeans package.

Miranda Lambert came out next and she put on a high energy warm up for the main show and what parts of it were understandable were great. But, bless her heart, she seriously needs to fire her sound man. There were times Miranda totally disappeared into the NOISE of the band.

She finally sang a couple of songs that I could recognize above the feedback. Singing along made a reappearance at that point. Her part of the set was good, but dang it all, we need to get on to BRAD!!! Brad! Brad!! BRAAAAAAAAAAADDDD!!!! Seriously, I'm not impatient. Not at all...

When the house lights finally dimmed after the set change and it was time for the show to begin, all kinds of screams filled the room to replace the buzz that had been rumbling around the civic center. Of course, the "other buzz" filling the civic center that was created by ALCOHOL (not the song, the stuff in the cups all over the room) didn't go anywhere and was added to as the evening progressed.

Working over the strings on his various guitars, Brad churned out music and sweat in equal measure. Man, that guy can really make that axe of his sing! He gave a tutorial on serious guitar licks that would put a lot of non-country guitarists to shame. Some can play... some think they can play... and then there is Brad! Woo hoo, that man can coax out the music from his collection of fine instruments. And he ain't bad lookin' either.

I think he covered the complete catalog of my favorites. I didn't want it to end. But like all good things, it had to. Which sort of sucks. But that is what makes these experiences SO good is that they are uncommon and of short duration. Otherwise, the civic center might have been filled up with a lot of dead people who have been overcome by the fun and excitement. Someone might have complained... probably Brad.

No one of his caliber wants to sing to dead people. Frankly speaking, I don't think anyone does. They aren't any fun and most of them can't carry a tune when they are asked to sing along. And despite what you may have seen in the "Thriller" video of bygone days, corpses CAN'T dance. Most of them didn't have any sense of rhythm when they were alive and being dead won't improve it... particularly if they are white and filled with true embalming fluid instead of JD, Lynhchburg's finest.

I have to say that looking up from our unique vantage point at all of the performers was a truly rare experience. There was an interesting intimacy in being that close to someone whom you usually only hear through a pair of speakers or some headphones. Sitting on a bar stool just feet from where you are changes everything. You just THINK you know their voice until you are that close and can hear the nuances of their heart and soul singing their own music in such a personal way. It was so far above incredible, I'm not sure there IS a superlative that covers it. Watching Brad work so hard to make me and a room full of strangers happy was just awesome.

I realized something else at this concert. It was slightly disconcerting, pun NOT intended! There are two kinds of people at concerts: those who pay for seats and use them all night long and then there are the people like us who get a ticket to enjoy the concert experience up close and personal and that involves dancing, screaming, and singing along to the song whether you are in tune or not. And that isn't an experience that I'm willing to cram into a seat. Plus, if you sit down all night, you are getting a view of the person's butt directly in front of you who IS standing up to sing and dance the night away. Other than Brad's, I didn't see a lot of attractive butts at the concert. But to be fair, we did see quite a few people with incredibly 'sweet spirits'.

By the time we got about halfway through Brad's set, I realize I wasn't going to be able to talk afterwards. Fortunately, that didn't deter me from continuing to scream and holler and sing along. I can always recuperate later...I think. And if not, I can die a happy woman. Either way, it's a win-win situation. Looking right up into his face as he stood right in front of me, I kept singing, screaming and letting him know how much fun I was having while he was singing TO ME and that I appreciate all he has brought into my life musically. I am thoroughly and completely convinced that he heard ME, his biggest fan, over the din... we made eye contact several times, I'm sure of it... and whatever you say won't make it any different. So there.

The most amazing part of the whole evening was knowing that I have friends who care enough about my life and interests to make it all possible. Plus, they, like me, have more than one or two screws loose, so going anywhere and doing anything with Beth and Pete is guaranteed to be a good time. It's so much fun to look down the row and see that murderers row is all happily singing along and taking in that closeness that was unexpected but so appreciated.

Yeah Brad! And Yeah to Beth and Pete for sharing this night with a lunatic.