Stepping Out of My Comfort Zone

I had my very first Jet Ski ride this past week. It was scary. It was fun.

Three friends and I took a girls vacation to Florida for a few days. While we were there someone (named Tara) came up with the idea to rent Jet Skis. (I’m unsure of the actual brand of personal watercraft we used, so for simplicity, we’ll just call it a jet ski- - kind of like facial tissues are called Kleenex. But I digress…)

Yum! Iowa corn-fed! Tastes just like chicken! 
(Courtesy of Google Images.)

I was less than thrilled. I don’t like deep water and I wasn’t too keen on being shark bait. But, I didn’t want to be a party-pooper, so I went along with the idea.

We rented two jet skis and rode double. Two of the girls were experienced drivers and riders.  Two of us had never been on a jet ski. So it was deemed that the experienced girls would drive us newbies around.

Tara rode with Becky. I rode with Karen. Becky is nice. Karen? Not so much.

I knew that riding with Karen would be an adventure. She’s kind of a crazy girl sometimes and even as I protested, she told me to step out of my comfort zone. 

It would be fun, she said.

 This is what I DO NOT want to happen to me!
(Courtesy of Google Images.)

As soon as we hit the end of the no wake zone she hit the gas! I thanked God right then and there that I was holding on tight. I told her that I would be super scared if I fell off and asked her not to do anything that would cause me to do so.  She honored my wish- just barely.  We went straight but we went FAST!  (No donuts! Thank Goodness!)

One time we both bounced on a big wave. Even though I was laughing, I was terrified when we separated from the seat. My zany chauffeur slowed down for a while to let me catch my breath, and from that point forward, if a big wave came our way she either slowed down, or warned me before we went through it.

Karen and me before I peed my pants. (We did wear life jackets.)

I had a blast!  I would do it again. I gave Karen a lot of grief over the next couple of days; contending that her driving abilities were less that optimal, but really, it was so much fun.

I have a pretty long list of fears. Some of them I’m trying to conquer. Some of them are better left alone. The Jet Ski Event was a step forward for me. I’m proud that I didn’t let my fear win out.

But don’t get crazy, here. I’ll never go haunted housing (again). Also, I will never para-sail.

So what fears do you want to conquer? I’ll send my friend Karen right over- she’ll take care of ya!

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine

Night Camping

The lighting of the tikis crew.

Last week I talked about camping with my book club girls. I think the real camping begins at dusk.  A dark night with a full moon gives the camping experience a little more teeth, don’t you think?

Someone's goofing off while on tiki duty.

We were walking back to the shed from the cemetery as dusk was settling in. Tiki torches had been placed around the perimeter of our camp and it was time to get them lit. The tiki torches give me a sense of security that no wild animals will wander into our camp. 

The fire, which had been burning for several hours, was now a bed of red-hot coals- perfect for our foil dinners. Our family calls the meal Hobo Stew. Some call it Hobo Dinner, still other names were bantered about but in the end it’s all the same great meal. A hamburger patty, sliced potatoes, carrots, onion, bacon and asparagus in butter, salt and pepper; all wrapped in foil and baked in the coals.

After we ate and cleaned up, we built up the fire and watched it crackle and burn. It’s that simple. Just relax and watch the fire and wait for the stars to come out.

Our moon.

Just before the moon rose above the trees we heard it. Coyotes howling in the woods. No matter how many times you’ve heard them, the cries of a pack of coyotes are unnerving.  After a few minutes they were silent and we didn’t hear them for the rest of the night.

I brought glow stick bracelets. We put them on our wrists and in our hair and took many group selfies, which pretty much did not turn out but made us laugh anyway.

We’d gotten text messages from our husbands about possible storms overnight. Because we’re such smart and resourceful women and we knew rain was a possibility, the tents were abandoned for the shed and blow up mattresses in the back of trucks with toppers.

We had a late-night snack of bananas and chocolate heated in foil over the fire, then squirted with whipped topping. Oh yum.  Then we decided to try whip topping (squirted straight into our mouth a la Tom Hanks’ character in Big style) with a Fireball chaser. That’ll cure what ails ya!

We may or may not have smoked cigars.

At 1:30 a.m. the rain started. We dashed for our respective sleeping bags and called it a night.

The scariest thing about the whole night was the very strong odor of skunk. A couple of weeks ago my husband and one of his camping buddies had a skunk come into camp. I was afraid of that happening again. I shined my huge flashlight over the perimeter to the woods several times but never caught sight of anything

.

The next day was still rainy. The grill wouldn’t work and the fire was water-logged. We had left over taco dip and Rice Krispy treats for breakfast, instead of the omelets we were planning. We packed up and were heading out when the minivan got stuck.

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All in all, the camp out was a huge success.The weather was warm with low humidity. It was a beautiful day and night up until it rained. We got drenched the next day, and we ended up having to get help from the men, but we had a blast at Girls Camp Out.

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself,

~Nadine

Girls Camp

In last week's post I talked about some of my book club’s antics and how I was about to host a girls’ only camp out. When planning the camp out, I told the ladies that my husband said he would be willing to camp a couple of acres away from us, if they thought they would feel more comfortable knowing a man was nearby. The answer was a resounding NO! (But thanks anyway.)

Girls just wanna have fun, right? So no men allowed! (One of the 20-something sons of the group also volunteered to be The Man on Sight. He was vetoed too.)

So we were on our own. And we had fun.

Seven of eight.
Maybe we should have brought a selfie stick!

The first thing we did was unpack a shit-load of food and drink. Each of us brought enough for all of us. That’s one thing about this book club; we will never die of hunger or thirst. Embarrassment? Yes. Laughing? Maybe.

After we had everything organized, we mixed a walk-about-drink. Each of us with our favorite. Gin Bucket, Cape Cod, Captain and diet, beer, and wine.  When everyone had a drink and a bottle of water we headed for the woods.

 

Walk and talk!

The funny and cool thing to me was that, even though there were eight of us (and two were girls I invited- new to the group) everyone walked in two’s and three’s and just chatted away.  Every now and then we would stop to look at something, then the groups would re-organize in a different way and the talking would go on. I loved that my two friends were brought into the fold so easily.

Far left in orange shorts. Bags Tourney.

After a nice long walk we went back to the shed (cabin would be too fancy of a word for the building) and had lunch. Pulled pork, pasta salad and Papa’s Pretzels--YUM!

Next on our agenda (there really was NO agenda) was a round of Tournament Bags. Two games and the winners of each of those games played for the championship. Trash talk and cat calls were the prize.

We sat in the shade and talked about the book we’d read the past month, Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets. One of the ladies in our group actually wore orange shorts because the heroine in the story left her blaze orange behind, and it was a near fatal mistake for her.

Shake, shake, shake!

We made camp ice cream. Yep. Cream-based recipe in a sandwich bag inside a gallon bag filled with ice and salt.  We each had a baggie mixture to shake, shake, shake to Pitbull’s and the Ying Yang Twins’ song, Shake. For 10 minutes and frost bit fingers we shaked- um- shook. The ice cream was as good as it was fun to make. Topped with fresh strawberries, uumm, uumm.

Near our camping land is a cemetery. It’s an old, old cemetery. I’ve visited there before so I knew many of the stones dated back to the early 1800’s.  One of the girls said she’d like to visit it. So off we went. Eight jabbering, laughing women suddenly, without preplanning, whispered the whole time we were in the cemetery. We could see by the old markers that in some cases, several members of one family were wiped out in a very short time. We wondered if it was because of illnesses that we so easily treat now with antibiotics. Some of the markers were so worn or covered with dried moss that they were illegible.

As we headed back to our campsite, one of the girls said to me, “You know what? Don’t laugh at me, but I think those people buried there were smiling because we visited them.”

I won’t laugh at you. I can agree with you.

 “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” – Ecclesiastes 12:7

In my next post I will talk about camping after dark…

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine

Book Club Antics

This month our book club read Breaking Wild by Diane Les Becquets. It’s the story of a female bow hunter who gets lost in a vast and snowy wilderness while tracking an elk that she hit (with an arrow, of course) while out hunting alone. 

We chose this book because we always like to "theme it up," and we wanted to have a camp out. Usually we choose the book and then the activities fall into place, but this time was just the opposite.We had to do some searching to find a novel about a woman in the wilderness just so that we could have a camp out.

When we meet to discuss the book each month, we have a potluck and a few libations- a celebration of reading, if you will. Typically we try to eat the same food as the characters (this is difficult when reading a book about WWII--- and we’ve read several). Like the time we ate Hershey Bars after reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand and only potato based dishes after reading The Martian by Andy Weir. 

Sometimes, and yes I know this is nerdy, but sometimes, we dress like the characters.  After reading Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close- you guessed it- we all wore white dresses to a martini bar. One year we read Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, a book about Frank Lloyd Wright’s female love interests, then took a field trip to Spring Green, Wisconsin to visit Wright’s personal home he called Taliesin.

So, off we go. We will hike around the woods, but we won’t get lost. We will climb up into a deer stand, just to get a look around. We’ll make a campfire to sit by. We’ll gab until dark and watch the stars until our eyes get heavy, then we’ll get into our respective tents in our little tent city and sleep to the sound of cricket music.

Until next time,
Be Good to Yourself,
~Nadine

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Image from dandingeroz.deviantart.com

I’m sure, like me, you’ve read numerous comments and watched enough news coverage to last a lifetime over the mass murders in Orlando, Florida this past weekend. I don’t want to add to that hype by giving an infected pus-bag shooter any more of my time. Any more of my emotions. Any more my anything.

Crazy only knows crazy and Evilonly knows evil. We’re never going to be able to fix this shit because we willnever have laws that Crazy or Evil will follow; plan to follow or even care to follow.

What does this mean for us, the average citizen who’s maybe trying to raise a family or lead a productive life?  Well, for me, it means I’m going to work even harder to realize my goals. And I’m not going to let pus-bags stop me from living my life by second guessing where they’ll strike next. If I were to do that, then the enemy pus-bag wins.

I want to be the good I wish to see in the world. Based off all the video coverage I’ve seen from Orlando of all the people who helped or lined up to give blood, I think there are more people who agree with me than those who don’t. So many times a call to action comes from disaster, despair, and tragedy. We can all make a difference, if we try.

 

Let’s start small. Our first task is to open our minds to possibility that people who seem “different” from us are not depraved or dangerous because they, in fact do, look or act in a way we consider different. The color of someone’s skin, hair, and eyes has nothing to do with what’s in their hearts. What a person wears or how they look is not a sign of evil. Ideals, hopes and dreams are not wrong, either. Love cannot be wrong.

Lying, cheating, and stealing are wrong. Laziness and apathy is wrong. Murder is wrong. Cowards who murder for their own gain, or in the name of some other entity is an abomination.

Step into someone else’s shoes for a moment before you pass judgment on them. Look at yourself through their eyes. What do they see when they look at you? Will they see hostility? Indifference?  Or will they see common decency offered to one human being from another human being? Think about that. That’s the first step.

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” – Romans 12:21

Until next time,

 Be Good to Yourself and Others,

~Nadine

Live In The Moment

Image from rivermusicexperience.org

The River Music Experience, or RME, hosts a summer concert series called Friday Live @ Five. We learned about this last summer and went every Friday night that we could. We’re doing it again this summer, too. It’s a free two hour live concert. The bands range in genre from rock to country to blues to indie. Last Friday night Tim and I and some friends and family met in downtown Davenport for the first concert of the summer. It was a beautiful warm-but-not-humid evening. People were dancing, listening to the band, singing along, having a libation, and chatting with each other. And you know what? I DID NOT SEE A CELL PHONE THE WHOLE TIME!  I realized this after the fact. Not one time did I see anyone texting or otherwise furiously punching with their thumbs on their phones. For two hours at least one hundred and fifty or so people were IN THE MOMENT.

Image from dallasnews.com

A couple of weeks ago we were in a Des Moines area restaurant. Two high school couples came in dress in prom finery.  The boys wore three piece suits and the girls had on sparkly dresses. As soon as they were seated, all four pulled out their cell phones and began tapping away. I wondered how any of them even got a date for the night. They must have arranged it through text messages, because they sure couldn’t talk to each other. I also wondered who they could possibly be texting. Who or what was more interesting than the people they were with? And why didn’t they go to the prom with those people?

One time, I was in my car and noticed two people walking side by side with their dogs. My line of vision started at the two dogs, worked its way up their leashes to the owners, who were both looking at their phones! I barked out a sarcastic laugh. (Pun intended.)

Image from newhive.com

Recently,I read an interview on line where a famous country artist discussed how audiences these days were a mass of arms holding up phones. He missed the days of seeing concert goers’ faces. Is it vanity that makes people record the events they go to? (Hey look what I did and you didn’t!) Are they going to forget the event if they don’t have a recording of it? Will they ever even look at the recording again, except to show others? How many weeks will go by before they delete the event from their phone?

We’ve all seen it. People not in the moment because of their phone. We’ve all probably done it at one time or another. Friends, allow me a moment to stand on my soap box and have a rant. Smart phones are great. I have one. I love having the ability to send messages through several different formats. I can’t imagine not having my camera with me at all times. I love that I can get to the internet from my phone, but we need to realize that it –the smart phone- is a tool. A tool. Developed to make a job or task easier. That’s what tools do.

They should not control our lives. They should not shield us from living. Living means talking to the people around you. Living means enjoying without having to record. Living means waiting. Living means the delay of gratification. Instant gratification is the enemy. Smart phones are instant gratification. Fight the urge.

Image from cnn.com

Thank you. I’m officially off my soap box now.

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself,

~Nadine

Happy Anniversary To Me!

I started this here blog one year ago. That’s 52 weeks with 52 posts. I’ve posted each and every Wednesday.  I’ve learned some important ‘bloggy’ things in this year.

On the technical side of things I’ve learned that I need to be careful to make sure my font style and font size is consistent from post to post. Because I’m not the most fluent of computer users, I always write my blog on a Word document and then cut and paste it to my blog.  When I post, I find that the size and font changes over the two formats. Also, I take a ridiculous amount of time getting clip art and pictures into my post. Maybe I’m taking “the long way” when there really is an easy way or short cut to adding images, I don’t know. Having mastered neither words nor pictures, I’m sure to continue to make mistakes but bear with me, people, I’m trying! One thing I did figure out was that there is a specific field for the title of the post. It does not go in the body of the work. I figured this out on week 44. (See?...) I spent a good hour moving all the posts titles to the right spot.

Dates and topics of each blog post for this year.

On the writing side of things I’ve learned a lot too. I love being able to talk about my thoughts and ideas in this format. I’m not a huge conversationalist anyway, so this is a fun way for me to share. I love the challenge of thinking up a topic to write about each week, expanding on the topic and then pondering a life lesson.  As a teacher, mother, thinker and introvert, it is my natural tendency to look at a situation and either brood about it or find a learning point. I strive to do the latter more than the former. And although I love to write, I am a procrastinator. It seems like an oxymoron. Why procrastinate on an activity you love, right? IDK. I guess sometimes I feel I’m being pulled in so many ways that my writing takes a back burner and when I do have free time for myself I either A: do other things besides write, or B: am too tired to think about writing anything. Whatever it is, I would be better off just setting a time each day to write and stick to it.  Again, work in progress.

As a blogger, I’ve learned that to be successful, I need to get my posts ready early so that I have time to fix any mistakes before I post. I’ve also learned that if I’m posting every Wednesday (and I am), it needs to be done early in the day, not at random times or at 11:56 P.M., as I’ve sometimes done.  I’ve noticed on my statistics page that often-times on Wednesdays several of my loyal readers check for a new post before it’s there. This is an area that I vow to fix starting now.

Blogging gurus say that to have a good blog one must find his/her niche. They say good blogs are about one topic only. I’ve narrowed the topics I've written about to three main areas:

1.    Reading (books, song lyrics, author visits)

2.    Writing (novel, poems, contests I’ve entered, workshops, search for agent)

3.    Daily life occurrences (trees, chairs, making curtains, sisters, dogs, grandkids)

Reading and writing can go together as one topic area, I know. But if I were to get rid of my daily life stuff, I’m not sure I would have enough fodder to keep up a weekly post. Also, if I just wrote about my daily life I would be remiss to not include reading and writing because that’s a big part of me being me.

Statistics are important to a blogger, after all, that’s why we blog. This year I have had 1,035 views. That’s about 86 views a month or 20 views a week.  The blog entitled March Madness received the most views at 31, which is a bummer because I am not a sporty girl and won’t really be writing anything sports related.

So, on that note, I am looking at different ways to become a more successful blogger. I’m not interested in making money; I’m just interested in getting better at this. Here are some of my ideas:

1.    Change my blog name. Nadine’s Notions sounds old fashioned. I didn’t think of that when I chose it, I just liked the alliteration.

2.    Move to another blogging host sight, one that is easier for readers to respond to. Blogger makes you give up your first born and recite the alphabet backwards before you can post a response!

3.    Focus on just one topic…reading and writing?....daily life???

4.    Learn how to hashtag (#icantmakeitwork)

5.    Use facebook, twitter or tumblr to gain more coverage.

Thank you to all my loyal readers. I’m open to ideas to make this blog a fun, worth-your-time read. Next week will begin my second year of being a blogger. I think that’s worth celebrating!

Until next time,

Be Good to Yourself.

~Nadine