Category Archives: the girl from Pittsburgh

that’s what friends are for

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You gotta love social media. Yes, I know some days you can’t help but hate it…the drama, the “vague-booking”, the time suck. But some days you just have to love social media. The last couple of days I have loved it.

My friend, Tracey, was running her very first marathon back home in Pittsburgh. She trained well for it and, thanks to Facebook, I was able to follow her in her training all along the way. I was so excited for her…her very first marathon!!! I was also a little nervous for her too…a worrisome foot injury late in her training schedule and the typical race-eve freak out…I couldn’t help but be worried a little…it’s what I do. More than anything, I wanted to be there…to cheer for her at the start, along the route and at the finish…because I know how much fun it can be…but more importantly, because Tracey is my friend and I wanted to be there just as I have felt like I have been throughout her training that she has shared. I set my alarm to remind me while at work early, early Sunday morning, west coast time, to send out a shout out wishing her luck and I began to follow her posted split times as well as #PittsburghMarathon live tweet updates.

Okay, fine. It wasn’t like I was there but then again it was…kind of sort of.

It was then on my Instagram feed I saw my friend Kim had posted an amazing shot of one of the elite runners running past her. It was a great capture indeed…air under the guy’s feet as if he was running through the air rather than on the pavement…you know, like us mere mortals who try to run. I KNOW that it had to be exciting as I once got to see running greatness run past me…in the opposite direction…while running in the San Jose Rock and Roll Half Marathon. Excited I messaged Kim and told her how Tracey was running in the same event and just might be running by her soon…okay, later…still Tracey was headed her way! Kim messaged me back asking, “How can I spot her? I’m at mile 16. Would love to cheer her on.” Kim and I send back and forth messages with me trying to describe Tracey and then I send her a screen shot of Tracey with her running bib. An hour later I receive another message, “We just saw Tracey! I think we gave her a nice boost at mile 16!“, followed by, “Wish I could have lined up a few more folks to cheer for her.“

Oh yeah, Kim is good people. She even came to my aid during BlogHer 11 with a dose of Tylenol…yes, it was part of her calling card but it helped me out and how can one ever forget that…oh, and I enjoyed sitting with her and sharing during a session or two. Even better, thanks to social media, I get to enjoy Kim’s company a lot and get to remind myself of the wonderful things that I miss about back home in Pittsburgh and that which makes Pittsburgh Someplace Special. Some pretty good people live there…like Tracey…like Kim.

It was after the race that I saw a posting on her Facebook wall from Tracey:

I’m home, icing every part of my body, reflecting on the day. A marathon isn’t fun or easy but parts of it did rock…My teammates, friends, fellow athletes! Laura Scarborough Setting up a surprise cheering section from 3000 miles away! The band at mile 9.29 playing Take the Skin Heads Bowling! Getting hosed down by a hot fireman in E Liberty! Knowing my Dad was with me every step of the way! My coaches Phil Thompson & Drew McCabe crossing the finish line with me! Best running partner Kathie O’Donnell finishing the last mile together!

Reading that made me cry…cry happy tears because although we can’t be face to face every day and we can’t just hop in a car and drive on over to be there for one another, I have some pretty amazing friends out there and thanks to the interwebs and a whole lot of social media I know that we can and are there for each other to support and encourage each other…to cry together…to pray together…to laugh together…tell me how and where to bury a body, you know, if I had to…to just be there for each other. It’s a small circle still it is a circle that has expanded my world in a way that I could never imagine…even when I am feeling alone here in Manteca. I have some pretty awesome friends…friends like Tracey, like Ann, like Kim, like Kari, like Kale, like Jenn, like Bill…I am so lucky…even if you all aren’t physically just around the corner.

Love you Tracey! Love you Kim! I hope that someday I can hook you two up…perhaps while taking in a game at PNC Park.

And one more time, congratulations Tracey!!! I am thrilled and honored to have cheered you on this weekend. You. Are. Awesome.

just a small town girl

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This week’s Focus 52 prompt is all about “my town”.

Show us where you live! Is there something you absolutely love about the place you live? Capture it and show us. Maybe you have a favorite place, favorite store, favorite hangout … take a few minutes this week to grab some photos to share.

I was not born in a small town but I have spent a good portion of my childhood in a small town(s)…in my humble (and somewhat limited) opinion, there was nothing more small town than Imperial, Clinton and Oakdale, Pennsylvania, where I lived from 5th grade through high school until I packed up and ran away headed to my birthplace in California. As a kid I hated small town life…I think that is the expectation of your average tween and teen though. In your limited world view there is nothing to do and no where to go in a small town. Everyone knows everyone and everyone’s business and as a kid you are only known as so and so’s kid…that could be a good thing or a very bad thing. If you knew my Mommy Dearest and my step-dad you would appreciate how hard it could be sometimes. But to consider my brothers and sister’s accounts it could be even harder if your oldest sibling is some kind of straight arrow, over-achiever who leaves right after graduation (and pretty much never comes back) so that no one can witness all of her major screw-ups and failings that are a part of growing up and becoming a real, bona-fide grown-up.

THANK GOD no one was able to witness that kind of craziness!

But, yeah, I am pretty much a small town girl, living in a small town world…even if I spent a good portion of my adult life falling in love, getting married, getting educated to pursue my life’s ambition and raising a family in a pretty big city in the Bay Area of California. But life can be funny sometimes as here I am for over nine years living the small town life.

Take note, if you really want to mess with your kids pull up stakes from life in the ‘burbs of Silicon Valley and land in a town where there is a cow pasture right across the street from the high school. Holly can tell you how amazing that is.

Truth be told, Manteca isn’t really a small town. It’s actually a city with a population of over 67,000 people. But it remains a city with a small town attitude, a small town way of thinking and a small town way of living…which is a good thing, but sometimes can be a bad thing…but it is a mostly good thing and a pretty great place to settle down and raise a circus. We are surrounded by orchards, vineyards, dairies and farms…and murals depicting all that, and more…and yes, there is a cow pasture directly across the street from one of my kids’ schools.

under the weather

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I don’t know about you but it has been an interesting, atypical day weather-wise in my neck of the woods. April showers, funnel clouds, a small tornado, hail, thunder and lightning…a very interesting day here in the Central Valley indeed. We don’t usually get crazy-assed atmospheric conditions like these on a regular basis. But we do experience them enough to make us appreciate the fact that we don’t live in the Mid-West, the South or along the Eastern seaboard.

I can do without the funnel clouds and tornadoes (of any size); but give me a good thunder and lightning storm and…oh how it takes me back…I love thunderstorms. Of course my love is colored with the view of a child growing up in Pennsylvania. I don’t have the understanding of an adult who regularly weathers such volatile storms. I do remember my own Mommy Dearest being terrified of them. Perhaps that is why I don’t necessarily fear them. Mom hated thunderstorms. Her biggest fear was lightning…lightning somehow traveling through overhead telephone lines into our phone and electrocuting one of us unsuspecting while we were talking on the phone. She had a delightful friend who liked to call her during such storms knowing full well her fear. As for me, the rumbles though loud and sometimes close with the accompanied flashes across the sky were as exhilarating as a roller coaster ride. Such storms also often offered relief, albeit temporary, from the oppressive humidity that could be Western Pennsylvania summers.

It is the memory of my brothers and me playing in the rain during such storms as small children that made me smile while I waited in my car in the queue to pick up Jodie from school. The thunder was rumbling and rolling with lightning flashes following almost immediately. Pea-sized hail rained down on my car and brought a smile to my lips. I really do like storms like these. Of course I am safe and dry in my car so why not enjoy the sights and sounds all around me? It is then that I receive a text from Jodie telling me their dismissal time is being delayed due to lightning strikes in and around their campus. “No problem“, I text back. I smile again recalling Randy, Billy, some playmate whose name I can’t recall and myself running amuck during a storm just like this. It was so much fun, I smile as I remember…yes it was…until that moment where Randy and that other kid came so close to being struck by lightning…

WTH?!

I shake my head quickly back to reality.

What the fresh hell was wrong with us out there running around in an open cow pasture during a thunderstorm? No. Wait. What the hell was wrong with our parents letting us play outside like that? So while waiting for Jodie to be dismissed I quietly file this fond childhood memory with parents driving with me sitting in their lap or being tossed around with my siblings in the back of a pickup truck or being fed whole milk and honey while I was still a baby and on and on…

Still I smile remembering the sheer joy my brothers and I enjoyed dancing and prancing while getting soaked in those summer storms of our tender youth. Good times!

silver and black dancer

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As a hard core Steeler fan who bleeds black and gold, I must confess I am cringing just a little and yet I am bursting with pride for  Jodie’s continuing dancing adventure. If you were a member of the more than 61,000 strong Raider Nation who attended today’s Oakland Raiders versus the New York Jets match-up, you are probably THRILLED that the Raiders won today.

Yeah! Go Raiders!

Even better, y’all were treated to an awesome half-time show featuring the Oakland Raiderettes and over a hundred boys and girls from select dance studios in the Bay Area and the Central Valley including our very own Jodie and fellow members of her dance team.

Lucky, lucky you!

Oh and the Steelers won against the Indianapolis Colts too.

Yeah! Go Steelers!

Yeah! Go Jodie!! Go Dance Stars!!!!

it runs in the family?

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When I was a girl I would travel cross country from Pennsylvania to visit my mom’s family here in California kind of like an annual pilgrimage back to our homeland. Let me tell you that four kids and your mom on a Greyhound bus for three days is all kinds of awesome. There was always fun to be had visiting Grandma and Grandpa, Aunts and Uncles and my Great-Grandparents. Austa and Chester lived on a itty, bitty bit of land in Merced and being a farmer from Missouri, my great-grandpa farmed the you know what out of that land. He even cultivated a banana tree that produced palatable fruit that got him in the local Merced Sun-Star paper back in the day. He was proud of what he could do with that dusty old property. He was a hard working, Missouri born and bred man who prided himself on the fruits of his daily labor. The last year that I was to spend a summer with him I was twelve…a rather smart-alecky, bored twelve year old. As much as I loved Austa and Chester I was bored beyond belief staying at their place in dusty, old Merced…I was twelve!

my great-grandfather, my borther, Randy and me...if you must judge the epic cat-eye glasses and WTF is that haircut of mine, judge my Mommy Dearest. I blame the lack of meds that she should have been on.

Still I managed to entertain myself. I found some amazing, interesting, something-I-bet-my-grandmother-never-ever-saw French post cards in my great-grandfather’s bureau while helping Austa with the laundry because my mom said I was good to help her. I choked down okra fritters which I know is a Southern staple but oh gawd not something I ever really want to eat again…pretty please. I “taught” Chester how to play gin rummy. I know that I was the one to teach him because I won every single time. I was his favorite great grandchild because I was the first so of course he would let me win every time. I also amused myself with my quickly aging great grandfather’s new “job” now that he was too old to keep up his property the way that he wanted to as the gentleman farmer from Missouri. In the late summer, early fall here in the Central Valley the flies are beyond out of control. They are freakin-every-where! I know they are one of God’s precious living creatures but they are beyond annoying. My great-grandfather, Chester Caudle, was THE fly killer of the sleepy town of Merced back in the day. As age began to betray his body he gave up the back-breaking work of growing amazing fruits and vegetables beyond abundance and took to his new calling of eradicating his fair city of the common housefly from his favorite chair in front of the picture window of their living room. Without fail, immediately after a quick breakfast, he would take his position, feigning reading the daily paper, or playing gin rummy with me and would be actually slaying the nasty houseflies with precision that compares to a stealth Navy Seal…really. Those damn flies never saw what was coming. At the end of the day, Chester would line up the carcases and take a body count which he would compare to previous days…weeks…months. It was all about the yield for him, the aged gentleman farmer. Being the typical twelve year old girl I was grossed out yet drawn to knowing the daily stats.  To this day, every time I see a fly swatter, I think of Chester. God I loved that dear old man and the summers I spent with him!

Fast forward nearly four decades later, flies remain a huge, nasty, irritating problem here in the Central Valley…even more of a problem here under the new Big Top. Oh my gawd, they are everywhere! Perhaps it is the local farm that borders our home. Nevertheless, they are nasty, gross and disgusting and must die. I know. They are God’s creation and serve a purpose and blah, blah, blah…but not under the Big Top. It is because of these truths that I have become my great grandfather.

I imagine he is chuckling because yes, I am having probably more fun than I should be with this weapon. So is my darling husband…and one of my darling daughters.

Yes, Chester is smiling down upon us all right now because somehow, someway, someday…if not today, perhaps tomorrow or even decades from now the Caudles will slay the flies of the Central Valley.

:::cue the inspirational music as I raise my fly swatter to the skies:::

Over the top much?

You must not live here in the hot, dusty, fly-infested Central Valley!