Memories Archives | Midwestern At Heart

Writing

Here’s an interesting topic that has been on my brain today… Writing.

Seriously, who thinks about writing? Well, obviously I do. But why? Writing has kind of a negative connotation. I think some of that stems to school when you are required to write papers. Papers on things you don’t want to write about. Required to write X number of words on a topic you may or may not know anything about or care about. But writing is a unique quality.

It is a way to convey a message. When you read a piece of writing, it can make or break what you are trying to say. Heck, think about texts. They are a form of writing. It’s a form of communication. You type something one way and someone takes it another and BAM! you have a fight on your hands. That’s the interesting thing about writing. Some people spend years honing in on that talent and ability. The ability to speak and write. If you read a lot of job descriptions, they want you to be able to communicate effectively and efficiently and that includes having the ability to write.

In a job, you’ll write memos, emails, meeting minutes, notes, etc. In those, you have to be able to convey a message to multiple groups of people. And two words about that are Quickly and Effectively. (more…)

College Life

I’m not sure why the last couple days I’ve been stuck in the past. That’s how it feels anyway. Maybe because College seemed so easy… or maybe it was the phone call from Camille that brought back the memories. My {step}daughter is a Freshman in high school. She’s at the part of her life when grades totally matter. When she’s starting to think about her future. Starting to make plans about going to college (or not, but right now yes).

A lot can change in four years. Right now she has college narrowed down to two choices. One is in state, one is way out of state. But either choice she has plans to live at home (the out of state is with family). If there’s one thing I keep trying to stress to her, promise me she’ll live in the dorms at least 1 year. Bam! Seriously though, you learn a lot from living in the dorms, and that is one way you make those lifetime friends. (more…)

The Damn Water Tower

The other night I was watching a movie with my husband and my mother-in-law. I think it was My Secret Valentine or it could have been Very, Very, Valentine. Either way, it was a Hallmark movie. If you haven’t figured out… Hallmark movies are my absolute favorite. Christmas and non-Christmas alike. There’s always a plot twist right before they have a happy ending and they are always so predictable. Either way though, I like them. They give me that warm tingly feeling.

But while I was sitting there watching the movie, my phone rang. I answered the phone and it was my friend Camille. In college, I always teased and called her Camel Jockey. Sometimes to her face, sometimes not. I was caught off guard a little bit because I haven’t spoken on the phone with her for about 10 years. The last time we spoke on the phone, she had just gotten engaged. I found out via Facebook and was giving her crap to the point she called me.

We chatted for a good almost half hour. We reminisced about good times and bad. A few years ago I was sitting in my Midevil British Literature class when we went to break. During the break, I jumped on Facebook for a minute and saw a very scary message. She said something to the effect of don’t wait until the last minute to tell your best friend how you feel or something like that. I can’t remember the exact words because it’s been almost 3 years now if I remember right. (more…)

Gussied Up

Sometimes my husband calls me the queen of random and lately that’s really how I’ve felt. I happened to be watching one of my absolute, all-time favorite movies… My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. Gosh, I love that movie! I prefer it over the 1st and typically, in my opinion anyway, you can’t always say that about sequels. Usually the first is best and second isn’t worth it. But this one… I actually much prefer the second and want them to make a third!

In this movie, if you haven’t seen it, Tula and Ian’s daughter goes to her senior prom. (No, that isn’t what the whole movie is about, just the part pertinent to today’s post.) Because of that scene, I got to thinking about Prom and real life. A relative of mine’s daughter had her debutante ball this last weekend. We don’t have anything like that around here, I figured it was just a tv thing… but it is apparently a real thing. The girls dress up in beautiful gowns. Prom is the same way and then there are homecomings, etc.

All this getting gussied up young in life and then people grow up and what is there? Maybe a wedding dress here and there, but what else? I grew up in the country. I grew up rural. Even Middle America. Maybe it’s different if you live in NYC or someplace. Maybe people do get dressed up for Christmas Eve and Christmas day… I don’t know. I just know my friends and I don’t. (more…)

Two Truths

As I lay awake last night staring at the ceiling, trying to get past the sound of my husband snoring, I couldn’t help but think about life… again…

There are two truths I can tell you about myself. These two truths I have heard my whole life.

Truth 1: You have a beautiful smile.
Truth 2: You need to smile more, you look like you’re mad all the time.

I have to say, the latter of those truths I am kind of tired of hearing. Let me explain. There’s a quote that says something to the effect of always smile and make them wonder what you’re up to. You know the one I’m talking about, right?

I have a question to that though… How many people do you actually see walking around all the time smiling? Seriously. If they are, people think they’re weirdos, but in all reality, I hardly see anyone walking around smiling ALL. THE. TIME. Maybe when they’re happy about something that just happened or if they are talking to someone, but otherwise, people don’t generally walk around with a constant smile on their face. (more…)

Three days before Christmas Abug and I decided we needed to work on Santa cookies. Santa was coming and with his long flight across country and the world, he needed some good sustenance, so we went with making Red Velvet Peppermint Kiss Cookies. We figured he’d get Chocolate chip everywhere else so we’d give him something a little different. That’s the way we roll in this house.

And might I mention, my kid is a country kid, but she’s worse than her mommy about having dirty hands. Making the Red Velvet part of the cookies, the food coloring along with some of the oil transferred to her hands (and mine) and she hated that! WOW!

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Ft. Worth 2017

The real start of the Christmas season for me tends to be our trip to Ft. Worth. There have been a few years I haven’t been able to go, but I try to make it down there every year. Sadly, for me this year was a little lackluster. It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but it just didn’t scream Christmas season to me.

Hubby had to go to San Francisco for work the whole week leading up to Ft. Worth. He flew into DFW on Thursday night. We left home Thursday night and drove as far as Denton, Texas. Then from there, Friday morning we drove to the hotel that hubby was at and picked him up.

It seems like every year they change up the schedule for the NCHA Futurity. This year the NonPro and Amateur finals happened Friday night, the Open Semi-finals happened on Saturday, and the finals for the Open happened Sunday evening. Truthfully, that’s how it used to be, then they started changing it. We’re back to basics now.

Ft. Worth Stockyards

No trip to Ft. Worth is complete without a trip to the Stockyards. I have to say, this is probably my favorite place on earth… or at least one of. Hubby though wasn’t in the Holiday spirit so I felt like I was “dragging” him and he pretty well refused to go into the stores with me. One of my favorite things to do is window shop at the stores and I couldn’t hardly budge him into a store with me. I was getting frustrated.

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Thanksgiving 2017

Thanksgiving feast Desserts at my Father in Law's house - Thanksgiving 2017

Thanksgiving 2017 is on the books. It was a bit of a sad Thanksgiving this year as it was the first Thanksgiving without Grandma W. That first Thanksgiving is always awkward. Awkward and sad. This proved to be no different. And it was strange because my Father-in-laws house is always booming with people. Not this year though. There was still a fair amount of us, but still, it was different. (more…)

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