That’s what we say. It’s easier, less jolting than “miscarriage.”

Married two months. Just starting a new job. Pregnant was not where I expected to be. And…there I was. For the first few days I tried to push the thought out of my mind. As if that would change things.

Then the worry set in.

We’re not ready. It’s only been two months. What will people think? We can’t afford this. I just started this job. How can this be real? What are we going to do?

I’m not ready.

Then reality set in. I would have to go to the doctor and get what I already knew to be true confirmed. Plans would have to be changed. I wouldn’t be able to work at my new job for the entire year. We would have to come up with an entirely new idea of what our life was going to be, because it wasn’t just him and me anymore. (And while I was able to work all that out in my mind, I should point out that I was still really deep in denial about what was happening.)

And then my fearful reservation split wide open. (more…)

In light of this weekend’s patriotic celebrations, I thought it would be a good time to share a more sobering experience I had recently.

While we were back east a few weeks ago, we visited Arlington National Cemetery. It was my first time to visit and there are few experiences like it.

We saw the Tomb of the Unknowns and were able to watch a few different groups lay wreaths there for the fallen.

The memorial for the victims of the Challenger explosion was something I wanted to view. Some of my earliest memories are of this tragedy being on TV and my family talking about it. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I wasn’t yet 2-years-old when that happened.

Both Kevin’s Pop-Pop and my Uncle Mike served on the USS Forrestal. Pop-Pop was aboard during the tragic fire that killed so many men. I got a picture of Forrestal’s grave before we were removed from the grass. Silly us, we didn’t know that you weren’t allowed on the grass unless you were there for a family member. It certainly wasn’t listed in any of the information we picked up at the visitor’s center.

Luckily, one of the graves that Kevin wanted to see was accessible from the path. This is the grave of Audie Murphy, an actor from the post-WWII era and the most decorated US soldier from WWII.

We had come to Arlington for a reason though. I have an uncle buried there and he was in the same section as Audie Murphy. We had found his section and grave number before going to the cemetery and Kevin and his parents waited while I trudged down the rows looking for his number.

It was hotter than blazes that day and I don’t handle the heat that well. I was glad that the first row I tried was close to his number.

268, 269, 270…

I skipped the big monument and went to the next single because it seemed logical to me at the moment.

287…What?

I couldn’t figure out what I’d missed. The only thing between the two single headstones was that big monument. I walked around the other side.

And there he was.

You see, my uncle, William Henry “Bill” Arnold, was on a plane about to head home. It crashed before they made it out of Vietnam. Wasn’t shot down. Just crashed.

He and 15 other men are right there. Together in death as they had been the last moments of their lives.

He was 29. Never married. No children. My mom was just 5-years-old when it happened, but she remembers being told.

And as far as we know, I am the only person in our family to ever visit his grave. (Not by choice, certainly, but distance makes it difficult.) I can’t help but be a little sad about that.

Imagine. If we’d never declared independence from the British we’d (likely) never have had the south, big hair, tacky sequined vests, and the great American creation — Glamour Shots.

Have a great, safe weekend!

Here’s where I’ll admit to you that the Blues Festival going on in town wasn’t exactly our cup of tea. There were lots and lots of bikers. Really, the town was over run. There was a lot of stuff you couldn’t get to or see because of the large crowds this festival drew. I would love to go back and check out what I missed.

The one photo I took of any bikers.

Later that evening went a little ways past our cabins to The Rowdy Beaver.

Kevin had a steak. I had what I always have, given the chance…

…a pound of cold shrimp. Yum.

I wonder how much I would have to eat to get The Gout. That’s what we call it around here. I had an uncle one time who came down with The Gout. Not “gout,” The Gout.

Then we drove down some winding mountain roads to go see a natural bridge that it turned out you had to pay for and we weren’t into paying to see it. I mean, you couldn’t see what was on the other side so you didn’t know exactly what you’re paying for. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’ve been to the state fair and have seen the sign for the “Man Eating Chicken.”

I did take a picture of a rock though.

And then I had Kevin stop alongside the road so I could get a shot of this house. Because it looks like the same house in my favorite children’s book — The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston. The illustrations by Barbara Cooney are fantastic.

By the end of that day I was ready to get back to our cabin, relax, and enjoy a long bath, a cup of tea…and a Slim Jim.

We spent our first anniversary in Eureka Springs, Arkansas at The Grand Treehouse Resort. I had heard good things about it from a number of people, but the credit goes to Aura for the idea. When she posted some photos from the place on her blog a while back I knew that we had to visit. We were not disappointed.

When Kevin called to make our reservation there was one cabin left — Sanctuary Treehouse. They were expecting a lot of people in town over those few days for the Blues Weekend (which we would learn more about later) and so we went ahead and took their last cabin. It was perfect.

And Kevin liked the door.

One of my favorite things about the cabin was the symmetry. I’m so OCD that repeated patterns can really get to me, but give me a room that is about as perfectly symmetrical as it can be and somewhat minimalist…and I’m in heaven. Really, from the moment we stepped through the door I knew why they named it Sanctuary.

Of course I couldn’t pass up the symmetry. Perfect photo op. Also, FACT: I meant to have pictures taken at our wedding with Kevin and I together with our Macs — him with his white one and me with my black.

Loved the bed. The sheets were comfy and again, the decor of the room was so relaxing. Couldn’t have asked for anything more perfect on our anniversary.

My one complaint was the big window up there. I loved it during the day, but between 5 and 6am on a weekend that you want to get some extra sleep? I needed some blackout curtains. BAD. For the record, thanks to the early sunrise I saw my husband awake the earliest I’ve ever seen him on a weekend.

Loved the tub, shower, and sink. I took every opportunity to get into the tub that I could. It was enormous.

Oh, and I almost forgot…

Just as I almost forgot to take a picture before we devoured it. The owners have The Most Fabulous Cheesecake waiting for you in the refrigerator, along with some delicious orange juice. Even Kevin, who doesn’t enjoy regular cheesecake, liked the chocolate (he gets whatever cheesecake is loaded down with peanut butter, chocolate, and cookie dough whenever we go to The Cheesecake Factory).

The balcony was the perfect place to have my 6am cup of coffee. Just enough breeze, not yet hot, and the flowers…you see them? They are exactly the same color as the stained glass windows in the entry. They carried their theme very well.

Next up, I’ll share some of our experience in town. It was…interesting. And we weren’t expecting what we walked into. Which was almost equivalent to the Sturgis Rally.

As a kid, I didn’t get in a lot of trouble. Go ahead, ask my brothers. They’ll tell you I was spoiled and received preferential treatment because I was the oldest and the only girl.

I’ll tell you I didn’t do stupid stuff.

Okay, there was that one time when I was 5 and decided to launch rocks over the house with my little shovel. It was a feat of engineering for someone my age. Mom didn’t see it that way when one of the rocks came crashing through the front window. Oops.

But seriously. I was well-behaved. My brothers were…boys. Kyle and I are 18 months apart and Ryan is 2 and 1/2 years younger than him so we’re stair-stepped pretty nicely. From the start, right after Ryan was born, I was placed in the middle and it was for a reason. Then it was because they were both in car seats and I was the only one who could wear a seatbelt. After they both grew out of their car seats it was because they would go after each other like a pair of rabid wolverines. 

Kyle and Ryan bickered and picked at each other like there was nothing more fun in the world. Back and forth, all the way to church and from; on the way to school and on the way home; roadtrips — forget roadtrips. Those were the worst. “Stop touching me!” “You’re too close to me!” “He’s got more leg room!” “I want to sit on this side!” “No, I called it first!”

Gripe gripe gripe gripe gripe. My parents wonder why I was so bossy. I felt like a referee in the middle of that mess! And everyone knows that the person in the middle is the one suffering. Four words — feet on the hump.

The fact that I was in the middle never did what Mom and Dad intended (reduce the number of fights between them). Instead, I was just caught in the middle. After a while I think I started finding humor in it. I could get away with a lot of tiny things because my brothers were always going at it and my parents were too busy scolding them. I am what my dad calls “a pot-stirrer.” I might not have been in the fight, but I was definitely fueling the fire.

One evening, we were on our way back from The City and I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but what I do know is that my dad had had enough. The boys were fighting, we were almost home, and it had been a long day. And Kyle had one of his favorite G.I. Joes with him. Flint.

Flint had this awesome pack he wore (pictured above) that you could fill with water and he would shoot eco terrorists. With water. (Sidenote: The Gulf Coast could really use you right now, Flint.) He also had “color-change battle damage.” You know, the same old thing that happens to you when you get covered in toxic waste, acid, deadly oil spills, etc. So that was pretty cool. We all liked Flint. Personally, I liked to put his helmet on my finger and play like he was a little puppet.

Kyle, however, liked to put the helmet in his mouth. Now, he was still pretty young and those little pieces are choking hazards no matter what the age. For Dad it was probably a combination of that and the fact that everyone had been touching that helmet. Germs are not something you mess with in this family. And like I already said, Dad had enough. Enough. When that word came out of my dad’s mouth, you knew it was serious. And he had told Kyle twice already to get that helmet out of his mouth.

I think the threat had already been made. When Dad looked in the rearview mirror and saw the helmet on the tip of Kyle’s tongue for the third time, he said, “Give it here.”

Hand it over he did because there was no more messing around at this point. Down rolled the window and out flew the helmet. There may have been tears, I don’t remember, but things were never the same. What is an Eco Warrior without his helmet? He faces a world with traumatic brain injuries and deadly poisons seeping into his gray matter around every corner. And so he retired. I’m sure he still saw some terrorist fighting action, but not as much. Eco Warrior Flint was the first G.I. Joe I remember the boys having that had gear of any kind that you could control. Not long after, he was relegated to a life unfitting for any G.I. Joe at Sudsy Waters Seaside Retirement Village and Bath Tub with Moosel the Wuzzle.

In the spring of 2005 my parents bought a house for my brother and I to live in here in Norman. I had just finished my sophomore year at OU and Kyle would be starting as a freshman in the fall. That May, we painted, moved in some furniture, and I shut the door as my parents left and I cried. I was 20-years-old and I was living alone for the first time. In a house, in a town that I didn’t feel I knew, even after 2 years.

I had recently gone through a pretty traumatic…well, let’s call it a “relationship tussle.” I was bereft and didn’t really know what to think or say or do. My best friend was in France for the summer and I knew no one that had stayed in Norman. The point is, I was really, really alone.

The first week of June I started a summer class. Tuesday through Friday I spent in a lab below Sarkey’s Energy Center on the far northeastern point of OU’s campus. It was unbearably hot and humid, parking was hard to come by, and by the time I got out of class at 2 or 3pm I was ready to be at my house in the middle of the floor with the air conditioner on full blast. There is nothing like an Oklahoma summer.

After I was done with class on that first day I took myself to the grocery store. My first trip to buy food to put in that mustard yellow refrigerator. I loaded up. This was my house after all. No one lived there but me and I got to make all the decisions for the moment. It meant cream cheese, tofu, and vegetables that my family never consumed.

I bought an artichoke.

I had seen advertisements for LOST and knew plenty of people who watched it. To me it looked like some kind of Gilligan’s Island-X-Files-Survivor-dinosaur show. Yes, going in to LOST I thought that there was a DINOSAUR (you’ve got to remember that people had NO idea what was going on in the first season). When I lived in the dorms the previous year (2004-2005) I had considered watching, but knowing what Heather thought of most of my TV-viewing choices, I’d decided not to get into anything that could garner further ridicule. LOST isn’t exactly the most normal TV show.

I had a plan that first night after class. They were showing the entire first season again over the summer. I boiled my artichoke, sat down in the middle of my living room floor, and watched Pilot, Part 1 (& maybe 2; don’t remember if it aired that night). And every Wednesday night after that for the rest of the summer, I boiled my artichoke, melted my butter, and watched LOST.

It was one of the first things that was “mine” when I moved into this house. It was new and special and my very own. I know I’m rambling, but let me say this one last thing about it. (And pardon the sentimentality.) There’s a line in St. Elmo’s Fire (my favorite of all the Brat Pack films) where Wendy (Mare Winningham) talks about her first night in her new apartment. She’s on her own for the very first time, having broken out from under some familial expectations about where she should live and work, what she should drive, who she should be dating, etc. In the middle of the night she gets up to make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. In her house. In her kitchen. “It was the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” she says.

LOST was the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich I ever had.

It’s prom season and I thought I would share with you all one of the reasons being from the town I am from has meant so much to me and how its history feels so personal.

At this point, we’ve established that I’m from Pernell, Oklahoma and that I graduated from Elmore City – Pernell High School in a neighboring town, Elmore City. And you know about the celebration that went on back in April. Well, there’s a reason why this all hits home for me.

My parents don’t believe in dancing. Or didn’t. I’m not really sure. I don’t press the issue anymore since I’m an adult, but the point is that growing up I was taught that dancing was a sin. No explanation, no verses to back it up, no classifying what kind of dancing was evil…nothing. All I knew was that once junior high rolled around I got to feel like even more of an outsider than I already did. Never in all my years at school did I get to attend a homecoming dance or a spring fling.

I got used to it. Got used to throwing out excuses that wouldn’t make the kids accuse me of going to a “snake church” (I heard that one a few times). For the record, my church had nothing to do with it. All of the kids that I went to church with in Duncan were going to dances. I tried to bring that up as a point to argue. It wasn’t pretty.

Junior year. In our small town it meant planning prom, putting it all together, and getting to attend for the first time (unless you’d been invited by an upper classman during your freshman or sophomore years). I tried to push it out of my mind. I was on student council, was a class officer, and was a part of the committee that was making it all happen. There was really no escaping it. It is, literally, the biggest thing of your junior year of high school.

And as far as I knew, I wasn’t going.

No one’s going to miss me though, I thought to myself more than once. In my mind, I was frumpy, a nerd, I had frizzy hair, and had never been on a date (or even asked out) in my entire life. (cue Janis Ian’s “Seventeen”) It wasn’t as if someone was going to ask me to go.

But someone asked me and I said yes, still not knowing if my dad would let me.

Then another one asked. And then another. And then two more. (At this point, I must ask: Isn’t there some kind of guy code about this? I would have never dreamed of asking a guy to prom if my friend had already asked him.)

I begged and I cried and I wrote terrible poetry and hoped that maybe…maybe I would be allowed to attend. There’s no leftover memory of how it happened. But my parents said that I could go under one condition. Anything, as long as I can go.

I’m sure you’ve guessed it. They allowed me to go as long as I wouldn’t dance. The classmate I ended up going with (I went with the first one that asked, as I figured that was the fair thing to do. If I had it to do over again, I’d pick the person I was better friends with) was fine with that. I made sure and asked beforehand. Seriously, there are few boys age 16-17 who really want to dance. I sat the whole thing out…but I was there. My hair was done, I was in a pretty dress.

It’s been 8 years since that night. We visited my hometown a few weeks ago to celebrate the 30th anniversary of prom, but the rain really washed away a lot of the excitement surrounding the day. Still, it brought back a lot of memories of my first prom and the thrill of being given a chance to do something I had fully expected to be left out of. It made me think of how much things have changed. How my parents never fussed over me taking 18 hours of upper division dance courses at OU (enough to get you a minor in anything else, but they don’t offer it there). And how, if I hadn’t taken those ballroom dancing classes, I wouldn’t have been there for this final dance, where this guy came to watch me and took this picture of me and my best friend.

And then I married him.

What are your memories of your first prom? If you didn’t go, why not? Share you memories of this special occasion because I’m dying to know!

Where I come from. That’s been a pretty common theme around this place. As I’ve grown over the years, those of you who have been reading have seen me go from wide-eyed small town girl planted in the middle of the state’s largest university with all kinds of dreams floating through my head, to a domesticated married lady in my mid-twenties, looking forward to the future. And so, while you’ve heard most of that, today’s McLinky at Real Housewives of Oklahoma (you read that right) is “Where I Come From.” I figure there’s more left to say.

It took me leaving my hometown to realize just exactly where I belong. I can remember sitting in the middle of a cultural studies course at the University of Oklahoma and hearing someone trashing the “small” town they were from. First of all, they hailed from a town with 20k+ residents. Sugarpie, you can get back to me when you live within a 15-mile radius of where your family has been settled for the past 100 years, with a population of no more than 15, between the signs, counting the barn cats.

No, really.

Hearing that and so many other things, having new experiences, and knowing that Taco Bell was open at 2AM if I really needed them — all those things opened my eyes. I love my home.

My home is Pernell, Oklahoma. It’s not Elmore City, where I was sent to school when we consolidated in 1992. No, my home is that strip of highway in the middle of the country. Twenty miles west of Pauls Valley, thirty-five east of Duncan, eight north of Ratliff City, and an hour (give or take) south of Norman.

If it was just the town that I was tied to, it wouldn’t be home to me. What makes it my home are the people and the memories tied to the place. I am tethered there. Somewhere atop that hill Nannie and Pappy’s house sits on, my heart is buried deep in the hard clay.

It took growing a little bit older to find out all these things about myself. If anything, I was the child with the wildest dreams about getting away, making something of myself, and never coming back to that smalltown. Now, I’d do anything to get back there and stay.

Because what I come from is a deep sense of family.
A respect for the land.
A love of springtime and gardens.
A need for the quiet and peace you can only find in the country.
A desire for the Word.
A godly heritage.

Men who believed in raising and standing by their family.
Who supported their families in plenty and in want.
Who toiled and dug and reached down into the earth until it produced.
Who were funny as all get out.
Who had strong exteriors, but the most tender of hearts.
Who believed in serving the Lord.

Women that would walk miles to get what their family needed.
Who made food stretch and feed as many mouths as would crowd around the table.
Who spoke truth.
Who raised a passel of children and shared with them all the love of Jesus.
Who worked a garden of red clay and made it produce the sweetest fruits.
Who loved with every breath they had in them.

Where I come from is a clay hill surrounded by good bottom land. What I come from is a line of men and women who lived fully, gave everything, and loved without measure.

I could not ask for more.

A while back, Cindy over at Maternal Maddness asked if I would explain how I started my garden. And I’d be glad to oblige her.

Up until a few years ago, I thought I was in the minority, but with the changing economy and people searching for money saving ways to feed their family, there has been a definite boom in growing your own produce and buying food locally at farmer’s markets and roadside stands. Almost every Saturday morning in the summer I head over to my local farm market and pick up a few fresh veggies. It’s become tradition for me and I like to see what my neighbors from around the state are growing.

How I started my own garden is pretty simple, but why I am so inclined to do so is a bit of a tale.

Growing up in the tiny town of Pernell in southern Oklahoma, I had a very close-knit extended family. To me, my second- and third-cousins are just as close or closer as some people’s firsts. I lived next door to my great-grandparents for the first 16 years of my life, before my parents bought that house and we moved in. My great-grandfather, or “Pappy” as we all called him, owned a grocery store across the highway from our two houses and the post office. Some of my earliest memories are from that place, but I’ll save those for when they are relevant.

In the late evening, during the months of June and July, you’d often find my immediate family in Nannie and Pappy’s backyard, sitting in some aluminum rocking chairs. Those chairs always scared me because I thought they rocked too far back, but that’s neither here nor there. In the far back corner of the yard Paw Paw (my grandpa and Granny’s husband — Granny is Nannie and Pappy’s youngest daughter) would till out a place for Nannie to plant her vegetables. Okra, peas, beans, radishes, squash, and tomatoes. Oh, the tomatoes. Maybe a turnip or two. Paw Paw and my dad would get out there and set up the cages around the tomatoes and run some big black plastic pipe down into the ground by each plant. That was how they watered them. I have no idea if that’s a commonly used method (the only person I ever saw do that was Nannie), but I remember rows full of that black pipe.

It was a family event. We (me and my brother Kyle — Ryan was too young) would run all over the yard while the planning and planting was going on. Up over the big mound of earth in the yard that was the cellar, sliding down the cellar door, and trying to climb the well. We weren’t big enough yet to reach over the top, all I could do was peek over the edge, and my dad and uncle would soon cover the top of the well (yes, a well that they used to draw water from sits beside the house) to prevent any accidents. I remember Paw Paw letting me help him make the rows. With a pair of stakes and a long piece of twine connecting the two, he would stand on one end of the garden and I would stand on the other and he would tell me which direction to move. Then Nannie would come along with her stakes that had the vegetable names on them and put them in the rows accordingly.

And we would sit out there underneath the mulberry tree, the sun setting behind their duck pond. It is a big pond in its own right, but in those days it seemed like a lake to me. You could see the sky right in that pond and on those clear summer nights it was so big and bright, without a cloud. Down where there are no lights competing with the stars.

I don’t remember how many summers I had like this. No more than two or three. But the thick warmth in the air, the buzzing of the bugs, the itchiness on my legs from the Bermuda grass, and the feeling of togetherness with my family–what I thought was paradise at the time, what I now know is the closest thing we have on this earth to the real thing–is something I have carried with me all of my days. It was such a feeling that I remember lying in my bed at night and thinking about what heaven would be like. The only thing I could imagine was close would be playing outside in the evening at either Nannie and Pappy’s or Granny and Paw Paw’s and never being called in because it was getting dark.