Whoo! Hoo! Super Duper Sweet Blogging Award

You can imagine my surprise!  How great is this?  Recognition from peers is a beautiful thing that inspires, encourages, and affirms we are heading in the right direction!  Now it’s my turn to shine a light on others.  Please take time to explore the blogs below; if you do, I guarantee you’ll walk away knowing a little bit more about the world, others and yourself.

Rules to this award are:

1. Thank the Super Sweet Blogger who nominated you

Mind On the Loose is an amazing woman who inspires us with stories reflecting the history and traditions of her family, her hopes and passions, and a litany of on-going and revolving projects. Her curiosity about the ever-changing science of electronics is quite impressive to a technologically-challenged admirer such as myself. Mind On the Loose provides a welcoming community setting for anyone looking for a place to share.  I hope you visit her soon.

This is the first time I have been nominated for a blogging award, and it’s name fits so well, not because I’m sweet, but because Sweet is my maiden name!   So, many,many thanks to Sabrina, whose mind is on the loose, for including me in this award.  I’m so happy we’re friends, but we most likely would never have even met if it were not for WordPress!

2. Answer five super sweet questions: The 5 sweet Questions are: 

• Cookies or Cake?     Cookies! (mostly)
• Chocolate or Vanilla?     Chocolate!
• Favorite Sweet Treat?     Italian Cream Cake! (Neither chocolate nor cookie, whoops!)
• When do you crave Sweet Things the most?     3:00 (PM and AM!)
• Sweet Nick Name?     ittyMac, a combo of maternal and paternal grannie’s nick names: IttyBitty and MissMac.

3. Include the Super Sweet Blogging award image in  your blog post  (See above)

4. Nominate a baker’s dozen (12) other bloggers

Here, we go!  I’m following Sabrina’s example of giving you an idea of what sort of content you’ll find in the blogs I’ve nominated to share this amazing sweet prize!

The Empathy Queen – is a sincere, sometimes heart wretching journey through life and all that means. Pure, straight up honesty and amazing candor expressed humorously, punctuated, when least expected, by a precise and smooth sense of irony.

Humoring the Goddess – Back from a blogging hiatus, this funny, relevant blogger takes a swing at aging in a fast forward world continually changing.  This blog is a wild, fun ride you won’t regret taking!

Meganhasocd, The War in my Brain – A tug-a-war some days, a sail boat ride across a placid lake on others, The War in my Brain delivers a hard message softly, and with humor that always leaves me thinking; which, I believe, is exactly Megan’s intention.

Foreignly – Enlivening Dreams – is written by a student sharing his “ideas about various subjects ranging from humanities to science, but mainly on personal development…”  I think this is a very interesting blog, and being able to communicate with a young person on the other side of the planet is just too cool.

South of Where – is a blog I have only recently explored.  I found it while reading a response comment on an unrelated blog.  It was stumbling into treasure, for me.  At first, I thought I could see my own life in her words, but later I realized it is the author’s perspective that makes hers special to me.

Kmosullivan – is an advocate for women and setting socio-economic, cultural and community bars higher.  I’m drawn to the author’s use of humor and current events, and always enjoy the personal stories Kelly shares.

Writings of a Mrs – is the journey we follow as a woman works through the process of achieving her dream to make writing a profession.  Family photographs, poetry and personal musings bring us along for the ride!

Forgiving Dreams – thoughts on life and living the dream – covers a myriad of subject matter ranging from current events to spiritual musings.  This blog is where living  a Sustainable Green Lifestyle intersects, nicely, I might add, with the fast paced challenges and changes of Corporate World.

World’s Worst Moms – Well, if the blog name was actually intended to represent the truth, I’d have to be the first one to say, “I want one of those!”  Humorous, serious, relevant.

Cranky Caregiver – Grandma says – cracks me up!  If I could take life on like Grandma does, I’d have a lot more pep in my step!  Funny, fun and accurate.

–Jenny Kissed Me – JeGlatter  This blog takes me into the space in my head that poets share with both the splendor and the abysses that are part of celebrating and surviving a deeply introspective life.  Her words are so fluid, it feels like I’m swimming.  She is great, not good.

Second Half Woman – follows the journey of a single woman exploring the second half of her life and sharing with gorgeous photography, poetry and personal musings along the way.

5. Notify your nominees on their blog

There; all done!  Thanks again, Mind on the Loose!

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Rebels and Wallflowers

From the beach, the sea is immense, but it gets bigger when you’re in a boat and land disappears from sight.  Suddenly you find yourself chasing an elusive horizon that seems to tumble from the sky into the water like a blue blizzard, or an avalanche. It’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The girl swam to her grandfather’s boat, released it from its mooring, lay flat on her back in the bottom of the hull like a stow-a-way; she watched white Cumulus overhead shape-shift, the rhythm of lapping water lulling her brain into a nearly unconscious state.  When the sound of waves breaking on shore vanished, she sat up. That was when she realized she’d drifted much further from the safety of her grandfather’s house atop the bluff overlooking the bay than she had intended, and her stomach tightened, then lurched, the bitter sting of lunch rising in the back of her throat. 

She was in deep water now, the gradual slope of sand bars behind her, only the midnight blues of the channel as far as she could see.  The sharks she imagined circled in anticipation with night only a few hours away. 

This was the row boat, not the larger one with the Evinrude motor.  But there were the oars, so all wasn’t lost. The girl pulled them from starboard, placed them in  rusty oar locks, sat with her back to the bow as she dipped them into the water, moving the oars in unison like two giant wings on a huge bird, an albatross maybe.  The dot in the distance was home, but she knew she would have to work harder than she had ever worked before to get there.  That thought filled her with an unfamiliar sensation, and her breathing deepened and evened out.  The girl held her head high and began to whistle.

Rowing against the current was hard work, but the girl was strong; her endurance was untested, she had yet to discover her limits.  The idea that barriers should contain her thoughts, should influence her vision of herself; that century old standards and gender based expectations should restrict her ability to achieve any goal she set for herself had not yet formed in her brain.  She knew only what she’d learned for herself, and watching her grandfather. 

In the beginning there was only the land, but Grandfather said that was all they needed, so for weeks, the two lived in a cramped borrowed trailer while they built their home.  Often she marveled at the concept of creating something useful and sturdy from nothing at all, using only primitive tools and a strong back and of course, Grandfather’s knowledge and resolve.

These memories wafted in and out of her mind as she rowed, making her stronger, filling her with the sense that she is liberating herself from a nameless, faceless capture. 

She imagines Grandfather waiting for her on the bluff, sitting in the forest green Adirondack chair he’d built, the chair he sits in when he watches the waters below for schools of mullet.  She knows her grandfather realized she was gone almost as soon as she had left; perhaps he had even watched her leave, chuckling at her great escape, amused by her determination to intentionally break a rule, and proud to have witnessed another passage in her life. 

Had she known he was watching, she might have understood he recognized the necessity of this small rebellion, how sacred and intimate such choices become.  She already knew he would not be angry at her; Grandfather would understand, even if until this very moment, she, herself, had not fully grasped the requisite need to establish independence, to spread one’s wings and jump off the highest cliff, testing your fortitude, knowing instinctively you can fly. 

The girl’s mind moved to another thought as she rowed, turning her head from time to time to look at the cliffs that were growing larger and larger, emboldening her to do whatever it takes to find her way home.  In her mind’s eye, the girl was at a dance in the school gym where the bleachers were lined with a short string of unfortunate girls who had yet to discover how beautiful they are.  And she suddenly understood that taking a boat without permission, drifting mindlessly into open sea was inspired by the same kind of longing a wall flower has to dance, to feel the spotlight emphasize her presence in the shallows of a dance-floor-world of popular girls, to dream that jocks might stop dead in their tracks as if seeing her for the first time, amnesia claiming their memories of ignoring her in corridors and the lunch room, or even worse, laughing at her on the track in Phys-Ed where she is forced to wear one of those hideous white short jumpsuits with elastic around her thighs.

The sound of waves breaking on shore roars in the girl’s ears.  She turns to see her grandfather standing on the bluff watching over her; he is smiling.   The girl angles the small boat parallel the mooring post and tosses the anchor in; then jumps into the water, swimming with the rope in her teeth.  She ties the knot around the post the way Grandfather taught her; then swims to shore.

On the beach again, the sea rushes in, foam pools around her ankles and a sand dollar nudges her foot.  She bends down and picks it up with her hands.  The girl looks to the bluff again, this time Grandfather is not there.  She knows they will talk about this at dinner tonight.  Without thinking, the girl tosses the sand dollar as far as she can, back into the sea.

“Go home”, she says.

Climbing the stairs that wind up the bluff, the girl hears herself say,

“I’m not a good soldier anymore; I’m not sure what I am or what I’ll ever be, but whatever happens, I’ll take the risk, and I will be the one who decides.”