Time Passes

When I think back to my childhood, I felt like it took forever.  I felt like I was a child for so long I couldn't stand it.  I longed for the day when I could run my own life.  Now that I have it, I enjoy and would never want to go back to my childhood.  Not that my childhood was bad, by any means.  I have many fond memories of my family and friends.  I just hated the rules.  When I was younger:  Having to be in bed by 8.  Having to be home by a dark.  Not allowed to have a Nintendo.  Not being able to go from one friend's house to another without asking my parents first.  Not being allowed to wear makeup.  When I reached high school:  Not being allowed to go on dates.  Having to be home by 10, and later midnight.  All are typical childhood limitations.  

I see so much of myself in Aiden.  Stubbornly independent.  I know he cannot stand the limitations and rules we have about watching TV, playing LeapPad, getting dressed and going to bed.  I just hope he can see the fun in things and not focus on all the limitations.  Childhood takes a long time when you're in the midst of it.  

The older I get, the faster time seems to travel.  College was fun, but it was over before I realized what I was living.  Travis and I spent a couple more pre-parental years running amok, but that was soon over as well.  Next came the marriage, house and kids.  Aiden is already 3 years old and our second child is Army crawling all over the house with her mouthful of 5 teeth.  

TIME FLIES.  It really does.  This video puts it into artistic perspective:

 

THE EAGLEMAN STAG from Mikey Please on Vimeo.

LOVE

A CGI Disney short that was made to look like the old school hand drawn movies I grew up with:

The Nutshell is 5 Years Old

Five years ago today times were very different for me.  If Blogger ever shuts down, I will be very sad to have lost all these archives of my life.  Enough so that I might just look into a way to transfer everything.

Childhood Games

I used to jump over cracks in the road while I sat in the front seat of the car.

 

Here Comes Halloween

Aiden is LOVING Halloween this year.  He is going to be Captain America for trick or treating and he has his Spiderman bag from last year.  I remember when I was little this was probably my favorite holiday.  The older I got, the more it moved towards Christmas.  Ariel is still obsessed with Halloween.  It's pretty much HER holiday.  She goes all out with the decorations every year.  When I went to her house Tuesday, I decided I need to beef up my decor a little.  Mostly for Aiden.  Last night I made a new wreath while Aiden started working on a Halloween painting.  I think the wreath turned out pretty good.  I'm not sure how well it will hold up over time though (lots of glitter and feathers).

After we were done with our crafts, we set up some decorations around the house.  Aiden is so into it that I let him put a spiderweb up and some other spooky items in his room.  I didn't do much when compared to Ariel, but I took a few photos that I sent to the family:

Every time we go to Target (which is at least once a week), Aiden wants to walk through the Halloween section.  I couldn't believe it when he wanted to push the buttons for the spooky animatronics. 

When I was little, I grew up in an old Victorian home.  Our house was the place to go for Halloween.  My dad put up a giant spiderweb and spider on the side of the house.  Our front porch was decked out in spiderwebs and the candy bowl sat between a papier-mache clown and my dad.   My dad took some of my brother's old baby clothes and stuffed them so it looked real.  Then he stuck his head and hands through styrofoam so his face and hands completed the stuffed clothes.  I hope that makes sense.  It was creepy.  I don't think I'll ever go that far for Halloween.  I absolutely despise scaring people (let alone small children) because I know how much I hate to be scared.

I went to Google maps to get a photo of our old house.  The yard looks totally different and the house has been painted a peachy-pink color, but you get the gist of what we had going for us on Halloween.

I need to buy Nightmare Before Christmas.  That's a good Halloween movie that I could watch with Aiden.

Homemade Pies

One night while my dad was here we baked homemade pizzas.  Ariel and I used to do that all the time as a kid, so it brought back some fantastic memories.  Aiden and my dad shared a pizza.  I think it worked out good because Aiden wanted every topping my dad wanted, so they had lots of goodies on top. 

I think Aiden enjoyed himself.

I used dough that came in a pouch for the first time - I just had to add water.  It wasn't too bad!

He watched his pizza bake in the oven and then scarfed down his slices like we hadn't fed him days.  Gpa was impressed. 

Succinct

Again, I have little time, but I have lots to talk about.  So just a quickie.  Aiden has been getting up before 6 for the past couple of days and it reminds me so much of myself.  When I was little if I woke up even a tiny bit, I would get up immediately.  I didn't want to miss anything.  I don't know if that's what Aiden is thinking, but I can't help but think of myself when I was little.  I did sleep in when I was a teenager.  Though if family was in town or if it was a holiday, I was up at the break of dawn. 

Travis gets so annoyed with him.  I do get a little frustrated he's up before my alarm some days, but at the same time, I know this won't last forever.  He won't always want to get up and lay in mom and dad's bed for a few minutes before the day gets moving.  And the fact that we're so much alike gives me a bit of a soft spot as well. 

I sure hope Mila is a daddy's girl so he can get a taste of this.

In the 90's

One year at Christmas time, we went out hunting for our tree.  Found the perfect one, tied it to the top of our van and made our way home.  When we got home, my dad trimmed the tree outside, then brought it in the living room to put in the tree stand. 

By this point, it was dark.  A few moments later, a bat was flying frantically around the house.  We all ducked, the cats went nuts trying to chase the flying creature and my parents did some quick thinking.  If I remember correctly, they attempted to coax the bat out the door using a broom at first.  When that didn't work, they moved on to a blanket.  They opened it up and held it vertically to push the bat toward the door.  Worked like a charm. 

I have to give my mom props for doing that because I really don't think I would have handled it well.  I have a severe fear of bugs or any flying creature getting stuck in my hair.  Just thinking about it gives me the chills.  After my parents divorced, my mom moved into another home.  There was a red bud tree at her front door that used to get swarmed by Japanese beetles (they look like black shiny June bugs) every summer.  There were so many that they used to land on the front screen door.  For a little while, our garage door keypad stopped working so the only option was to enter the front door. 

Traumatized me for life.

Looks like someone else had a creature problem this year:

Snake found in a Christmas tree

I Remember

10 years ago on September 11th, I had just started my second year at the community college near my home in Illinois.  I was getting ready for work when my mom called and told me to turn on the TV.  A plane had run into one of the World Trade Center towers.  I turned on the TV and watched the footage of the burning building.  I couldn't believe that had happened.  How could that happen?  That's a little low for a plane to be flying around a city.  Maybe something was wrong with the pilot?

I called my dad to see if he had seen the news.  He hadn't.  As I stood there pondering over what could have gone wrong with my dad, the second plane ran into the second tower.  Wah??  Did someone manage to get video of the plane running into the tower and they were just playing it over?  No that can't be it.  I can see the first tower on fire behind the second.  The SECOND tower got hit??  I'm so confused.  What the hell?

My first class that day was calculus and the teacher was this really angry woman that I didn't feel like testing.  I thought about not going into school. I didn't know what was going on.  But then I thought about that teacher and her irrational anger at the world.  I made the choice to go in.  I left the TV on while I got ready and it was so horrible.  People were jumping out of the building.  I could only imagine the fear these people were facing.  

While I was driving into school, I heard that the Pentagon had either been hit by a plane or a bomb.  Not sure which.  Still confused.

When I got to class, only half the students had shown up.  The teacher asked the remaining students if they would be up for a lesson.  We all said no, so she let us go early.  I went to the lobby area of the school where they had set up a bunch of TV's all set to different news channels so I could watch the events unfold. 

I could not believe my eyes when the first tower fell.  All I could think about were all the people in that building.  My second thought was about all the people on the street that they showed staring up at the burning buildings.  The dust in the air was tremendous.  The the second tower fell.  Insantiy.

Then I heard about the fourth crash into the field in Pennsylvania.  By this point, I wasn't sure what was true and was rumor.  I walked around in complete disbelief for the majority of that day.  I wasn't close with anyone living in New York, but I was still numb about the whole situation.  How could something like this happen in the United States?  Don't we have excellent safeguards against stuff like this?  Come to think of it, how could the US prevent other stuff like this from happening?  We can't be everywhere at every time of the day to 100% guard US soil.

Suddenly I was afraid for my family in and around Chicago.  What if there was another big attack?  Oh the stress that surrounded that whole situation and I didn't even know anyone who was there.  It just struck me as so intense that an attack had occured on US soil.  Is this what people in 3rd world countries feel like every day?  At any moment, their village could be attacked and they wouldn't have any police to run to.  Hell, it might be their very own government that's doing the pilaging.

Life is scary.  We've got to make the best of it.

I thought this 9/11 timeline at Wikipedia was really interesting if anyone wants to look it over.

What a difference 9 years makes

I came across these photos within a couple days ago and couldn't help but notice the similarities. The first is taken at a party in high school, circa 2000. The second was taken Thanksgiving 2009. That means we had graduated from college, gotten married, owned a house, bought a dog and our son was four months old.

Big Fish

Have you ever seen the movie Big Fish? Basically, it's this movie about a man who grew up listening to the grand stories of his father, only to grow up and believe himself foolish for ever believing him. Sometimes this is how I feel about my dad. I'm sure some of what he told me as a kid were exaggerations in an attempt to keep me from doing something I shouldn't be. And then there are stories like this one, that he stands by to this day...

Soon after graduating from college, my dad lived with five other roommates in a house. Every year the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus visit Champaign, Illinois. He said the circus performers always parked there "train" car between the railroad tracks and the power plant down the street from his house. One year, he got curious and decided to get a closer look at where these guys live. It was dark out, so he didn't notice the railroad tracks and quickly lost control of his Triumph Bonneville. He wasn't badly injured, but he was partially wedged under the fallen bike. Suddenly, he was lifted upright, along with is bike and then set right on his bike like a doll. He was confused and disoriented. As he looked around, he realized that the Strong Man from the circus show had righted him and his bike.

My dad thanked him and then the Strong Man invited him into their train car. Since that's what my dad was their to see, he said 'sure' and went in to meet the rest of the crew: the juggler, the clown, the acrobatic woman, etc. They hit it off and my dad quickly invited them over for dinner. They stayed up late into the night talking, but when he woke up the next morning they were all gone and there was a 4-foot, paper-mâché clown standing in the living room.

There was a note on the table thanking him for his hospitality and explaining the clown. They had previously been on tour in France and had taken this from the last venue they had been to. They said not to take off the necklace because there was a myth that if that pressed butterfly left the statue, it would come to life in the middle of the night.

I grew up with that clown sitting in the back corner of our TV room. Because it was there as long as I could remember, I never questioned it. Not until I was older, when my sister and I would get a little crazy in the house and knock it down, did the story of the necklace get told to us. Then when we told our friends about it, they would freak out and not go anywhere near it. Occasionally, we would knock the clown over and his head would get knocked off (my parents had to glue that thing back on hundreds of times) and the necklace followed behind. We would frantically try to get him back upright with his charm ON.

My dad later told me that one night after he had obtained the clown, his cat knocked over the clown in the middle of the night. The noise woke him up in his attic bedroom, but he didn't get out of bed to fix the clown. At that time, he had a terrarium with several lizards that he cared for. He said that night after the clown fell over, he dreamt about sword-fighting with these upright lizards that were larger than he. When he woke in the morning, all the lizards in the tank were dead.

After telling his roommates the story, they all admitted they'd had bad dreams as well. One dreamt he was dead, lying in his coffin during his wake. He watched as each of his friends and family members walked by his casket. Another dreamt about falling off a cliff to his death, and so on.

From then on, they made sure that charm remained around the neck of the clown.

What do you say? Fact or fiction?

My thing for Travis's

As I look back at my life with boys, I am amazed by the number of Travis's sprinkled throughout. My very first crush, ever, was a boy named Travis. It was Kindergarten. I decided he was the bee's knees the moment I saw him in class that first day.

My parents hadn't had time to get my school supplies together that first week, so I had to share with my fellow classmates. The day that stands out in my mind, was the day we did watercolors. I had to share and the teacher chose Travis to share with me. I was soooo nervous, but excited! We started on our pictures, but had to stop one minute later when Travis got mad at me for mixing the colors together. I was heartbroken and embarassed. As far as I can remember, Travis was never my boyfriend, just a crush.

I now believe that procrastination with the school supplies and the years of similar stories in the years to come are the reason I am meticulous in my need to buy things way too far in advance. In the same vein, I am usually entirely too early at functions. I would rather be 30 minutes early to an event than 5 minutes late. It's just not right.

There was another minor Travis-crush in middle school. Fast forward to Freshman year of high school, and a new Travis came into my world. I attended a consolidated high school. The grade school I came from was the largest school to feed into our high school, but it was really interesting to see new faces at school. We had all been together pretty much from Kindergarten through 8th grade. High school was a small change for us. One of the other grade schools contained a Travis. He was so cool, laid back. I really liked him. We were friendly, but it was never more than that. I kind of got the vibe that he wasn't interested in my, so I never pushed things with him.

THEN! The King of all Travis's came into my life my senior year. It seems almost serendipitous that I should end my dating years with someone who has the same name as my first crush. I think it was meant to be.

Courtesy of Travis' Grandma

Travis is the little guy third from the right.

I got this photo via email from Travis' mom's mom last month and thought I'd share it. It was accompanied by this note:

Here is a picture of Travis around age 3 at Christmas with the children's choir. This is when he reached over and took the microphone off the stand and held it up to his mouth like he was going to say something. You could hear him breathing softly into the microphone, but he remained quiet... then someone got the choir director's attention (the red head sitting in front) and she tried to retrieve it. As he gave it to her very willingly, he dropped it and it clunked very loudly down behind the communion table to the floor, where she had to work to get it. This picture was taken after all that.

I am constantly amazed how great most people's memories are. There is no way I would remember something like this is such great detail. Which is why I take so many photos! Between Travis as my memory rolodex, this blog and photos, I am able to retrieve stories with "ease".

Just Call Me Hood Rat

When I think of my childhood and life as a teenager, I would say I was a good kid. I did a few things I probably shouldn't have in high school, including attending a few underage parties, but nothing too extreme. I never got in trouble - save for two run-ins with the police.

The first was on Valentine's Day. I think it was my first Valentine's Day with Travis, which puts us in 2000. I was 17. We had just dropped off my dad's girlfriend at the airport in Champaign and were headed home for the night. I missed my turn, so I took the next right. It was only after I was already committed to the turn that Travis pointed out that I was pulling into a bad neighborhood. I kind of freaked, and tried to speed through until I could take another right to get back on the main road.

After doing what I like to call a California stop, I got pulled over by a cop. He was very stern, asked for my driver's license and insurance. I was driving my dad's car, so I searched through the glove box for the insurance. The only card I pulled out was expired, but it was all I could find, so I gave it to him with my ID. A couple minutes later two more cop cars pulled up. The first policeman came up to my window, while another went up to Travis' window and had us both get out of the car.

He asked us to empty our pockets, slowly. We did it. Then he asked for permission to search my car. "Sure," I said. I have nothing to hide. He made sure to ask if I had any drugs or weapons in the vehicle. "No, sir." Travis and I just stood on the side of the road where the police had set us and watched them go through my dad's vehicle.

Thankfully, they did not tear into the seats or break anything. I did chuckle when they opened up my Sea World pen with a killer whale on the tip. I'm assuming they were looking for drugs.

After they had completed the search, the original cop came up to talk to me again. He admitted that we looked out of place for this neighborhood, so they assumed we were buying drugs. I explained what had happened and he actually apologized for the inconvenience. He said, under other circumstance, he would have let me go for rolling through a stop sign in a known bad neighborhood. BUT. My insurance card is expired and that's a no-no. Since their reason for pulling me over was for running a stop sign, they had to give me two tickets: one for the stop sign and one for expired insurance.

The good news was they let me drive home. I was shaken, but glad that the cops were nice to us in the end. I had to go to court some time later with the current insurance card to prove the vehicle was insured. Unfortunately, even though the vehicle was insured, I had to pay for a year's worth of this special, expensive insurance for people who were driving without proof of insurance. Annoying, but I could deal. It's my responsibility as a driver to make sure a vehicle is legal before I get on the road.

That following fall, I had graduated from high school and was attending the local community college. I was driving home from class and was planning to stop by and surprise Travis. It was 3:55 pm and I was driving through a school zone. Since the school zone speed changes at 4:00 pm, I decided it was close enough and went the normal posted speed.

Unlucky for me, there was a cop waiting at the very end of the school zone. He clocked me "speeding" and pulled me over immediately. I was parked on the side of a fairly busy road, which was horribly embarassing for me. He did the normal routine and got my driver's license and special insurance card. He came back a couple minutes later and asked me to get out of the car.

Oh no.

I was getting shaky, since I was unsure what warranted this behavior. He made me turn off the car and take my keys and purse with me. After he got me to the back of my car, he asked me if I knew my driver's license was suspended.

Blink, blink.

"WHAT?! No! Why is it suspended?!"

"I'm sorry, but my computer doesn't tell me the 'why', only that it is suspended."

"What? Ok. So, what do I do? What happens now?"

"Well, you can't drive on a suspended vehicle, so I will have to drive you home. Then you can contact your lawyer or the courthouse to find out how to solve this."

By this point, I was SOBBING. I couldn't stop. The police officer told me to stop crying, that I wasn't in THAT much trouble. He said that he would have let me go on a warning for speeding through a school zone right at 4, but he couldn't let the driver's license part go. Are you kidding me?! I have to get a ride home in the BACK of a cop car! That is humiliating and SCARY.

Needless to say, I didn't get to stop by Travis' house. After a little digging, I found out that my special insurance had been cancelled, which was against the rules for my previous encounter with the police. I had to have that insurance for a year and cancelling it beforehand is frowned upon. Question was, why was it cancelled? I had to pay for an entire year in advance. I didn't get any money back, so I had no notification that it had been cancelled.

After speaking with the insurance company, it turned out that they had accidentally cancelled it. HA. My court date was set for something ridiculous, like two months later. In the meantime, my MOM had to drive me to COLLEGE everyday. Then she picked me up and brought me to work. Lucky for us, we worked at the same place, so it was easy to get a ride home from her at the end of the day.

It took one visit, on my court date to prove that it was the insurance company that had cancelled my insurance, not me. I had paid in full and could prove it. They reinstated my license and I have not had a problem since.

The result of these run-ins with the police is that I have a constant fear of all police when I am driving. I am convinced that they will pull me over for something that is just this side of illegal and then find something else monstrous wrong with me or my car. As far as I know, I am doing everything legally. But that's just the thing. If I am doing something illegal, I don't know about it.

All that, topped with the fact that Travis got pulled over here in Texas for driving without a seatbelt when he was, in fact, WEARING HIS SEATBELT, has me a little terrified. Everytime I see a cop on the road, my pulse speeds up and I sweat just a little.

I need therapy.

Mom and Cara

This photo cracks me up. My mom was going through old photos and came across this one of her (left) and her cousin (right) when they were somewhere around 9 or 10 years old. Whenever they had family visits, everyone had to dress up. My mom said that their parents used to like to make them pose like adults. It is pretty funny. Although nowadays you'd probably get a visit from Child Protective Services.

I haven't seen it in years, but I remember seeing a video of my mom and her three siblings when they were kids. My mom was the youngest, at somewhere around 5 years old I think. She was a waitress, walking around smoking a cigarette and serving her brothers and sister drinks like they were in a club. Ohhhhh funny...

Freight Train

The house I grew up in had train tracks that ran through the backyard. As a parent, the thought of that stresses me out to no end. Apparently my parents were numbed to the idea since they moved in before I was born. I'm sure it helped that they taught us to respect the trains.

When Ariel and I were little, we used to run into the backyard when a train stormed through and scream at the top of our lungs. The rumble of the train would drown out our screams and it was exhilarating. No one ever told us to be quiet when we screamed as a train passed. We could be as loud as we wanted without any consequences. If we were feeling extra zealous, we would run to the edge of the hill that the tracks stood on and make a motion with our hand like you do to make a semi driver honk his horn. Most of the time, the train honked back. Excellent memory.

I like to think Aiden's getting a little taste of that every time I vacuum.

Vacuum Fun from Nicolette Ward on Vimeo.

Internal Balance

I don't know if it is normal or not, but I have an almost constant battle with myself about the level of activity in my life. I'm not talking about exercise, because I'll be the first person to tell you that I suck at that. Period. I am referring to the stuff we do to fill up our schedule.

After a particularly recluse weekend, I feel like I am turning into a hobbit and quickly make plans to do something at least every other day for the following week and weekend. But then as soon as that busy spurt is over, I feel like I need some R&R so I take a break and stay at home for the week or weekend.

I can't really say that it is a lazy weekend, since it means I have a lot of catching up to do around the house (laundry, dishes, vacuuming, yard work, etc). This is something I pretty much constantly struggle with. I want to do stuff with my friends, but even then we have the limiting factor of finances.

Is this something that anyone else battles with? I don't know if it is rational or not. Sometimes I wonder if it stems from my childhood. When I was little, our days were fairly lax, spending the evenings at home or with a friend. Maybe a couple times a month, my parents would set it up so we could spend a day with another family (more often in the summer). At least that's what it feels like when I think back on it.

But then when I got into high school and my parents divorced, they went through a period of what I like to call "parental revolt". They both spent time finding things to do away from home, such as dating, playing tennis, hanging out with friends and what not. After a year or so of that, things slowed down to almost NO activity. Anything I did during that time was because I made the plans to do so.

Is it because I never properly learned how to live a normal daily life? I feel like I should be past that by now. I am an adult, who can make her own decisions. Problem is, I'm not sure what I should do. I like being social, but after running myself into the ground I need a break. Then I feel guilty about spending several days in a row at home and start the cycle all over again.

Another side of me wonders if it is my OCD personality (I do not have diagnosed OCD, but I do feel that I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies) that pushes towards a fulfilled life. Problem is I have trouble realizing that I'm going overboard until it's too late. What to do, what to do?!?!

That's a lotta gum

How cool is this? A prom dress and matching vest for the dude made out of GUM WRAPPERS.

When Ariel and I were young, we used to go to this local pizza restaurant, called Monical's Pizza (I have to go there every time I visit home now), with our parents. My dad would pull out a bunch of gum wrappers and show us how to make a chain when each one was folded a certain way and linked with the next. Just another one of the good memories from my childhood that I would like to pass on to our child(ren).

Kilbury-Routh-Hargus House

Growing up we lived in an old Victorian house that was built in 1895. I came across this photo today and it shows our old house at the end of the road before it was moved. The house was moved twice. The first tmie was in 1959 when it was moved just a few yards because they built Interstate 74 and wanted the on ramp to be where this house was sitting. The second time was when my parents bought it and moved it to their land, where it sits today!

I'm not sure what year this photo was taken, but it has to be before 1959 since it is in it's original location and the roads are MADE OF DIRT.

Also found this photo. I worked in this building in high school at the St. Joseph Apothecary, where I was a Pharmacy Techinician. When this photo was taken, it was still the depot for the Interurban - a little trolley car/train that you could ride to and from the "big city" of Urbana for just five cents! When I was a little kid, I used to go up to the pharmacy that I later worked at and bought Tootsie Rolls and individual Jolly Ranchers for five cents each. Irony, anyone?