life – Roxie Rides Again

Live to write. Write to live.

March 7, 2023 Roxie

I started writing a blog for a few reasons. 1) I love to type. 2) I love words. 3) I love telling stories. I love reading and writing in general. I think I was the only person in my 7th grade English class who loved diagramming sentences. I remember the excitement I felt walking into the classroom and seeing blank diagrams on the chalkboard just waiting to be filled in. Oh boy! Today was the day! But back to writing. Linking words together into sentences that describes something that someone can see in THEIR mind just blows MY mind. Pink baby elephants rolling in a field of white flowers. You couldn’t help it. You just mentally pictured it.

I have a lot of respect for people who keep journals. Take Laura Ingalls Wilder, for instance. She turned the journals she wrote into an entire collection of beloved children’s books. Of course, I read all of them and nerded completely out to the point I wore an effing sunbonnet around like a complete nut. Remind me to tell you the story of the sunbonnet and Holly Hobby t-shirt sometime. But I digress.

LIW was the OG of storytelling and it’s thanks to those journals. LIW not only inspired me to dress like I had just hopped out of a time machine, but she inspired me to write. I wanted a diary. But longhand is super-hard for an undiagnosed ADHD-er whose brain goes nine times faster than their hand can keep up with a pen. So my diary was filled with sentences missing words, words missing letters, and scratched out misspellings all over each page. My diary was a wreck. Plus I felt like a weirdo writing things in a diary that only I was supposed to read. “Dear Diary, Today I …..” Wait. Wasn’t I the “I”? Should I be writing to myself? “Dear Roxie, Today you …..” Wait. Am I writing to my future self? Or to myself now? Or should I just be jotting down things of importance? I asked for a diary almost every year for Christmas and every year I got frustrated at the messy pages and lack of commitment and would throw it in the trash a few months in. Boy, do I regret that now. What I wouldn’t give to have a look back into a day in the life of my little self.

So what does all this have to do with anything? I mentioned briefly in my last post that I had shut down my first few blogs because I was afraid of being found out or suffering repercussions from others who didn’t agree with what I wrote. And although I didn’t shut down THIS blog, I stopped posting in it. And shortly after that, I began shutting down all of my social media accounts. At first it was really liberating. I wasn’t as tied to my phone and was living more in the moment. But then I began to miss writing. I pulled out my laptop and started pouring my thoughts out into Word documents. Not the same – even though I enjoyed typing more than writing. I still felt like I was writing a Dear Diary column with a readership of one. What I missed, dear reader, was YOU. I love sharing my words and thoughts. I love when I connect with someone and make them smile or laugh. Or know that maybe I’ve made someone’s day a bit brighter or helped someone feel like they aren’t going through something alone.

The other thing I’ve figured out is that this blog is my therapy. If something is bothering me or I need to work through issues, I need to get it out of my head by writing it here. And what’s been churning around in my storm of a brain for the last few weeks is how much I’ve missed social media. I can’t believe I just admitted that. I dropped off social media because (I know now) that I was hiding. Hiding from people who hurt me, judged me and hated me. But I have met a great group of people who I want to share my life with more than I want to hide from my old life. So I bit the bullet and opened up Facebook and Instagram again. And realized how much I had missed out on while I was gone. Friends got engaged and married. Babies were born. Spectacular meals had been eaten! And I had missed out on all of it! Talk about regret. My fear of being confronted or being made fun of by a few had caused me to miss out on so much.

I’m getting REALLY tired of learning from my mistakes. So one thing I’m going to rectify before it becomes another mistake is to stop referring to the parts of my life as my old-life and my new-life. It’s just my life. There are a lot of chapters, and they are all mine, even if some of them were hard to get through. It freaks me out a little bit to see some faces on social media that I didn’t think I’d see again and I’m trying to work through my feelings instead of running. But I want to finish my story on my terms. And with people who mean more to me than they know. Yes, in your book of life you get to be the main character, but there wouldn’t be a story if there weren’t other characters involved. Those are the real heroes of my story… the ones who support me, forgive me and most of all love me.

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A little normalcy in this weirdly abnormal world.

March 21, 2020 Roxie

I can hear the music in my head just looking at the picture up top. Dunh-DUUUUN-dun-dunnnnnnn … dun-DUUUUUN-dun-dunnnn. Happy sigh.

One of the many things I love about Harley is how much he loves Gone with the Wind. He passed that on to Bam-bam and we love throwing around lines from the movie. Having a hard time figuring something out? “I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout birthin’ babies!” Ate too much at dinner? “As God as my witness, I’ll never go hungry again!” You get the picture.

Harley’s birthday was yesterday. I had planned to take the day off work to play with him, but with all this COVID-19 stuff happening, we couldn’t get to The Shack, our favorite breakfast place. They have such yummy food AND super-fun grown-up breakfast drinks. My favorite is the one that has real Coco Puffs in it and you can suck them up through a giant straw. So you can see why he was disappointed that we couldn’t go. It was too cold to bundle up for a ride on the bike and besides, we didn’t know if we could stop anywhere if we got thirsty. Instead I made a semi-decent breakfast at home and then we had Bam-bam and PowerPuff over for diner. Take-out of course.

Being cooped up in the house under haze of disappointment when you thought you’d be shoving food in your face all day and zooming around on the bike in search of beer makes for a lame day of celebration.

What does this have to do with Gone with the Wind, you ask? It started with the after-dinner conversation about how many cowboy and baseball movies Kevin Costner has made (we counted four each), which led to a discussion about what his best movie is to date (which Harley and Bam-bam insist is Waterworld) As I am writing this Harley is saying that post-apocalyptic movies are his bread and butter, though. One thing we could all agree on was that it may have been THE longest movie he ever made. Then that made us wonder what was the longest movie ever made by anyone? Powerpuff thought it could be The Last Samuri, which they had just recently watched. I said forget them both because there is only one movie that could be both the longest AND the best movie ever.

I looked across the table and asked Bam-bam what he thought it was. He cocked his head to the side and said in a tiny voice, “Roadhouse?” OMG NO! GONE WITH THE WIND! It was unanimous. We went crazy talking about how Scarlett was scary and beautiful and bitchy and strong. Powerpuff said she had never seen it. Silence. We all just stared at her. And just like that …. Bam-bam is digging around in the basement for the DVD, I am throwing dishes in the sink and we are all finding blankets and pillows to snuggle up in to watch the show.

It didn’t disappoint. It never does. I can’t get over the wardrobe and dramatic shots. I. Am. Obsessed. I could do a whole series on the dresses, the poses, Scarlett’s famous RBF …. seriously. Bam-bam said watching it as an adult he sees what a feminist Scarlett was, even though she ironically started out just wanting to married to Ashley. Who, by the way, I think is a total simpering wimp. Rhett Butler is where it’s at if you ask me. But yes, Scarlett O’Hara is a total badass and a force to be reckoned with.

We only made it through the first half to intermission but plan to pick it up next week and finish the last half so we have something fun to look forward to. Although it was supposed to be something entertaining we could do while we can’t leave the house, it’s hard not to see the similarities to our current situation. We’ve just been floating along living our best lives and then BAM! We are jerked out of our comfortable realities and forced to figure out how to live life in a way we never have before. The unknown can be scary I don’t know what the future brings. But I think we will be okay. Because there is a little bit of Scarlett in all of us.

Images in this post may be subject to copyright.

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Ride in Peace

May 12, 2018May 12, 2018 Roxie

Last weekend when Harley and I went out for a ride, we were hoping to see some of our riding friends we haven’t seen since last fall. As you all know, winter seemed to last forever and it was followed by a cold and wet spring, so we haven’t ridden much since last fall and were anxious to get out and see familiar faces and share some new stories.

One of my favorite things about riding is the people we meet along the way and the connections we have made with others we normally would have never known. Bikers and riders come from all walks of life but we all have one thing in common … the motorcycle. If you’ve got one it’s because you love it. And you love riding it. And you love talking about it with others who have one too.

It’s such a great feeling to come in from a hot, sweaty ride into a cool, dark bar and belly up to get an ice cold drink. And then the conversations begin. Sometimes it’s just us and the bartender and other times it’s a mixed bag of bikers, weekend riders and locals. We have met some super cool people because of the bike and I am proud to call them my friends.

We met Tophat a few years ago. He roared into a local bike night with loud pipes and a crazy getup. As he blasted by where Harley and I were sitting, we both did a double-take. Me: Was that guy wearing a top hat? Harley: Was that a skeleton tied to the back?

That would be a yes on both counts. Not only was he wearing a leather top hat, but the skeleton sitting on the back of his bike had on a long black wig and was wearing stilettos. To complete the look, on the back of his vest was a huge patch of a skeleton wearing a top hat. GOALS.

We decided then and there that we could never … ever … be as cool as this guy.

Not long after that night, we mentioned to someone that we had seen a dude riding a Harley and wearing a top hat and they said that we had seen Tophat. Everyone knew Tophat. And everyone who knew him liked him. He was funny as $hit. How do I know, you ask? Because we met him.

He was standing next to me in line one night and I thought, “O. Magawd. I’m standing next to Tophat!” So I looked kind of sideways at him and said (in a very Napoleon Dynamite way), “I like your hat.” And he turned to me with a huge grin and said, “Thanks!” I motioned for Harley to come over and we started a conversation that has lasted off and on for a few years.

You always knew when Tophat was pulling up because of his unmistakable silhouette. Not to mention the skeleton. And you always knew when Tophat was around, because his larger than life personality had everyone around him laughing and joking around. He basically caused a ruckus.

So when we were out for our maiden voyage of the year Sunday Funday ride last weekend we were really hoping to see Tophat. We don’t always see everyone every time we are out riding, but we looked for him at each stop nonetheless. Next week, we told ourselves… we will see him next week.

Next week will never come. We found out a few days ago that our friend passed away on Tuesday morning. Tophat’s real name was Justin. He had a life, friends and family who knew him so much better that we ever could. I don’t mean to diminish their loss by writing about my own sadness. I hope that they know how much we enjoyed his company and always looked forward to seeing him when we were out and about.

I’ve got to provide a disclaimer here for the picture. I did not take it and I do not know the person who did, but I found it on Facebook and it basically summed up Tophat as I knew him and I wanted to share it.

Next weekend we will all gather to honor Tophat’s life. Harley and I will forever remember how happy he made us that first night we met him because the coolest biker we’d ever seen welcomed us and made us feel like we were part of the local biking community. Tophat, you will be missed more than you know. Ride in peace, brother.

family

Right Now

April 15, 2018May 12, 2018 Roxie

The problem with not writing very often is that so much has happened since the last time I wrote I don’t know where to start. So I guess the best place to start is just right freaking now. Now. This very moment I am sitting in my cozy living room with Harley, watching the movie Logan and smelling the mouth-watering roast that has been cooking all day.

Out the window I see signs of spring on a wintery day. It’s April 15th and it’s 30 degrees outside but it feels like 17. Our weeping willow tree is barely showing sweet little leaves that have probably just frozen their nuts off. Yes, I know weeping willows don’t have nuts. But if they did, they would be freezing them off … literally and figuratively.

Rocket is running around like a psycho chasing a HUGE fly that somehow managed to escape the freezing weather and get inside. It’s so big I think I can see it’s fur. Three days ago it was 80 degrees and we had the air conditioning on and we had to switch it right from the A/C over to the heat. Rocket can be a spaz, but when it comes to fly-hunting, he is right up there with Mr. Miyagi. You remember him … the patient, chop-stick-wielding, fly-hunting karate teacher in The Karate Kid? I think Rocket must be Mr. Miyagi’s spirit animal. Anyhoo …We have basically experienced all four seasons in the last day and a half.

Speaking of the seasons, I think it was summer the last time I posted. There have been some major changes since then … Trixie married Prince Charming, Bam-Bam proposed to Powerpuff and Clark was promoted to Sargent in the Marines. Our little family is getting bigger and going places!

But right now. I took a break from writing for Sunday dinner. Right now, the dishes are done and Harley and I are settled in front of the fireplace waiting for the season finale of The Walking Dead to start. Powerpuff and Bam-Bam are working on their coloring book masterpieces. PSA – I bought a grown-up coloring book and a pack of colored pencils last weekend and it’s quickly become part of our Sunday family dinner tradition.

But right now. Right now the evening is drawing to a close … the cloudy sky is morphing from a cold, silvery-gray into a dark, starless night. The shadows slowly swallow up the backyard and turn it into a pool of inky darkness. It’s cold outside. The wind flecks sleet against the windows. But inside we are close and warm. The fireplace glows against the faces I love. Right now I am happy. Right now.

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Family Foundations

August 27, 2017August 27, 2017 Roxie

The older we get, the more things we lose … car keys, sunglasses, height, memory, to name a few. The other things we tend to lose are much more precious … pets, friends, parents, family. The older I get the more I cherish the latter. We all do. Earlier this summer my family lost one of my cousins and our hearts are broken. We may not have seen a lot of each other in the recent past, but there is another hole in our family and we will never be the same.

It saddens me for opportunities lost and memories that will not me made that would have included her. While talking with my other cousins, one of them mentioned that we need to start making plans to get together again instead of waiting for another family funeral. One of them said that if we don’t start doing something, our family is going to fall apart. The torch doesn’t pass from one generation to another if you are passive. It only passes if you make the effort.

Today my cousins are coming to my house. It’s just a small group, but we feel like it is a start. We have common childhood memories and we all have different stories about the same people and I can’t wait to reconnect. In this day and age of technology and social media it’s easy to become lazy about making time for the important people in your life. REAL time. But if we don’t make the effort, then the measure of what is lost will be gone forever.

I hope that one day we will be able to rebuild again what our parents made for us. The foundation of a family. We all already have the immediate family foundations, but I I’m talking about the larger picture … generations of the same family who know each other, love each other and who are there for each other. Forever.

Sunday Funday Rides

Sunday Funday Rides – Vol. 1

July 29, 2017July 29, 2017 Roxie

Green. Blue. Gold. Those are the summer colors of Kansas. Green trees … rolling hills ….. farmland. Until I rode through the landscape on a motorcycle I never realized how many colors of green there were here. If you were to draw a picture of what we ride through you would need every green crayon from the 64-color box.

The blue sky is an endless dome over our heads and the depth is only enhanced by the white contrast of the puffy clouds. Even in 100-degree heat, the Kansas sky and puffy clouds look like something out of The Truman Show movie.

Gold. Glorious, beautiful gold is rolled up into round bales to rival Rapunzel’s locks and dot the landscape to break up the green as we ride by. It smells like sweet summertime and looks pretty as a picture.

Yes, even on crazy hot days Harley and I like to ride on the weekends. The wind massages my skin in soft, summer breaths and plays with my hair like Trixie used to do when she was little. Being on a bike is both mesmerizing and breathtaking.

FullSizeRender 4 — Pretty as a picture. Oh wait .. it is!

Harley turned the bike north when we left last weekend to start our Sunday Funday ride. We don’t usually plan out our route, but mostly ride wherever the road takes us. There are a lot of organized rides out there, which we appreciate and sometimes support, but most of the time we like our stops to ourselves, with the exception of a few locals or other random bikers who frequent our favorite spots.

Last Sunday one of our stops was at Helen’s Hilltop in Tonganoxie, Kansas. By the time we got there the sun was directly overhead and I was pretty much sweating like a pig. I made a beeline to the restroom and then found, to my dismay, that getting my tight, sweaty jeans back on was reminiscent of Ross trying to put his leather pants back on in an episode of Friends. Suffice it to say, I didn’t have any powder to help mop up all my sweaty sweat, and thank god for that. But the exertion of squirming and squeezing and jumping up and down trying to get my tight jeans back on made me break out in an all-body sweat all over again. My hair frizzed, my mascara ran and I looked worse than when I had gotten off the bike.

I finally came out of the bathroom to find Harley halfway through his beer. He stared at me for a beat and said, “Everything alright in there?” I gave a slight nod and he looked at me in that way he has sometimes that makes me feel like maybe I am crazier than I am afraid I am. Then the bartender slid me over a Summer Shandy (yep, at a biker bar) and I clapped my hands with glee. And then remembered that I was supposed to act with a bit of decorum and took a long, cold, glorious swig. If there is anything better than an ice-cold beer on a cold day, I can’t think of it right now.

One of the great things about finding places off the beaten path is that you meet some great people and see some strange $hit. We came out of the dark bar and were squinting into the sunlight and saw something I’d never seen before. I had to blink twice to make sure my eyes were adjusting correctly. It wasn’t really a motorcycle. It was a cross between a dune-buggy and a trike and looked like a traveling sofa. They guy who built it was having a beer on the porch and was happy to let me snap some pics.

I love seeing new places and meeting new people and riding with Harley gives plenty of opportunity for both. Being on a bike lets you smell the sweet, fresh air of the country, feel the warmth of the sun and the soft caress of the wind while you take in the rich, vivid colors around you. Riding is a feast for all of your senses and I can’t wait to get my next fix.

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Summer Celebrations

July 9, 2017 Roxie

The 4th of July might just be my favorite holiday. Most of this comes from a lazy perspective: there is little to no decorating involved, no gifts need to be researched, bought and wrapped, you CAN clean your house, but because most of the festivities take place outside you don’t HAVE to clean your house. Plus there’s the fact that it’s not cold outside AND you get to play with fire.

This was our first 4th of July in our new house and we rang it in with a bang! Okay so it was rainy most of the day, but that didn’t stop us from gorging ourselves on a fabulous 4th food feast, swimming, playing yard games and shooting off fireworks. Friends and family alike came for the day and stayed well into the evening. A good time was had by all. Well, until Baby O got his leg stuck in the door, Bam-Bam almost blew off a finger and Clark came close to setting himself on fire with a sparkler. So maybe I should add the disclaimer that a good time was had by all for the most part.

Yes, they are all okay. Although Bam-Bam had been bleeding from the leg earlier in the evening from something that was either accidentally shot at him or he unintentionally dropped on himself. Let me say this about Bam-Bam: he is self-disciplined when it comes to working out, eating right and generally taking care of himself. But also … he can be like a bull in a china shop … aka: a hot freaking mess. If something is going to happen, and it doesn’t happen to me, it’s going to happen to him. So am I sorry that his leg was bleeding? Yes. Am I surprised? No.

Watching our family and friends gather and celebrate just warmed the cockles of my heart. Yes, my cockles! It also brought back my earliest memories from July 4th’s of the past. When I was growing up, we didn’t always live near family and would fly back to the Midwest in the summers. I remember being given a punk (why are they called that anyway?) and a box of snakes. The sunshine was bright, the sky was blue, the clouds were puffy and the air was so humid it almost felt like it was pushing me into the ground. But there I was outside on the sidewalk, watching little black blocks smoke and hiss their way into long ropey-like snakes that would turn into dust with the touch of a finger. It was magical! Between the snakes, playing non-stop with my fun-loving cousins and my grandma’s fried chicken … I was a goner for the holiday.

This year Clark and Bam-Bam got the fireworks for our celebration. I told them about my lifelong love of the magical snakes, but they couldn’t find them. What they DID find, however, was much, much better. It was called the Pooping Puppy. Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking. It was a cardboard dog with its tail in the air and a fuse sticking out of it’s pooping-area. I got the honor of lighting said fuse. And guess what? It “pooped” out the snakes of my childhood! I’m pretty sure I jumped up and down and clapped my hands with glee. The wondrous wonders of firecrackers!

They also picked out a special firework just for me … The Frog Princess. It was a ball of hot-pink foil with a frog-like face. I lit that sucker on fire and the eyes and mouth GLOWED OFF AND ON like magic while fountains of spark showers rained out the top of her round, froggy head. It was the best thing ever! I didn’t think to take pictures during the festivities so that you could have seen the Pooping Puppy and Frog Princess for yourselves.

So the next day, Harley and the baby grownups cleaned up the warzone-like backyard while I dragged my festivity-weary self to work. When I got home they had put all the firework trash in the firepit so we could just burn up the rest of the cardboard pieces in one fell swoop. Pretty ingenious, if you ask me. We waited until after dinner for the day-after burning and I came outside to water plants while Clark poured lighter fluid all over the trash/firepit. Harley and Clark sat close to the firepit on the patio while Powerpuff lounged nearby on the outside loveseat. It was a lovely evening. And then suddenly something decided it wasn’t finished showing off and decided to start the show all over again. I heard a loud whistling sound and looked over to see the firepit ablaze with fire and sparks. Unfortunately for Clark, it was pointed directly at him … and it was the Neon Patriot, our grand finale fountain. Oh, irony.

Clark jumps up to get out of the line of direct fire and I see Powerpuff standing inside looking on from behind the storm door. How she got in there so fast without actually moving, I don’t know. But who am I to question the power of the puff? I’m just standing there frozen, with my mouth open, holding the still-spraying hose. Do I think to point it at the fire and help? Nope! Just stood there. Harley was the only one who seemed unaffected. He just sat there gazing into the firework display at his feet and smoking a cigarette like it was an everyday occurrence. Thank goodness it didn’t last long and nobody was hurt. Of course, after it was all over, Bam-Bam sticks his out the door and says, “I told you that was going to happen.”

The Frog Princess looks out accusingly as the only survivor of the day-after burning

Someone at work told me last week to have a memorable 4th. I wasn’t sure at the time if that was a good thing or a bad thing. But they were right … if nothing else, it was memorable.

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Back in the Saddle

July 3, 2017July 3, 2017 Roxie

There are boxes in our house again. But this time the boxes are moving and we aren’t. Our baby grown-ups are moving out and starting their own lives. We call them our baby grown-ups, although we are talking about twenty-somethings. Our younger kids are already gone and the oldest is the last to go.

One year ago we packed up everything we owned and moved into a new (to us) house and have spent the last year making it a home. Now that we’ve made it a home for the four of us, it is a little bittersweet to finally have the house to just the two of us.

You may remember me … I’ve been around before … a couple of times actually. I envy those of you who have started out and kept going. I recently read that one of my previous blogger-buddies has just posted his 900th blog (Go Ben!). But since the dust has settled from moving out of my life, leaving my 22-year marriage, sending my baby to college, falling in love with Harley, selling my house, moving in with Harley and Bam-Bam, buying a house with Harley and everything else that has happened …. I finally find myself with the itch to tip-tap away at my keyboard and re-join the virtual world. That being said, I’m back to share my life with you again.

Between the two of us, we have three twenty-somethings: Bam-Bam, Trixie and Clark. In that order. Our youngest, Clark, is a hot-shot marine and is currently stationed in Japan. He is home on leave for a couple of weeks and we are soaking up every minute with him. Trixie lives with her fiancée in the Pacific Northwest and is chasing her dreams in the fashion world. Bam-Bam and his girlfriend, Powerpuff, are the ones packing up and moving into their first apartment next week. Sidenote: we sometimes refer to Bam-Bam and Powerpuff as The Vegans. Not because they are vegans, but because they workout all the time, meal-prep and eat healthy. No, it doesn’t make complete sense, but it makes enough.

With Clark adding to the hustle and bustle of young adult energy in our house, it’s hard to image what it will feel like when he returns to Japan and the vegans move out. But just as we have with everything else so far, I’m sure we will figure it out. It seems like I’m always trying to find the new normal. Hence, the blog name. Not only am I metaphorically riding again in the blogging world, but in so many other facets of my life. Things are constantly changing. Life goes on. And it is good.