Dear Papaw II

Dear Papaw,

Last year, we discussed basketball, and I know you probably really enjoyed it. I have been learning a lot of terms in the past five months and I’m really enjoying it, but wish I could have you back around so you can see me cuss and scream with joy at my TV late at night just like you. I’m actually still shocked that mom doesn’t put anything on Facebook about that actually! I know she laughs at me though because every once in a while, I can hear her behind the door!

I’m still surprised you never watched a pro basketball game though. I find those are a little bit more interesting! One of the first games I ever watched of the Houston Rockets was when they went up against the Detroit Pistons and what was so cool about it, was the fact they kept going back and forth making three point shots! I was so impressed, but unfortunately, after they went into halftime I never saw finished the game nor did I find out who won it. Now I either watch it and after halftime start recording it or I just tape the entire thing because I get really tired watching the later games!

I recently watched the Dallas Mavericks go up against the Lakers and found out that one of your favorite players from IU was a member on the other team. For some odd reason, I didn’t notice him until the end of the third quarter because the commentators were suddenly talking about him and I immediately recognized the name “Yogi”. He wasn’t the only Hoosier I’ve actually got to see play. Back in November or early December, I finally got to see Cody Zeller play! He really is a tall dude but also looks like he’s thirty years old too!

Let’s get out of talking about basketball, but don’t worry, we’ll go back to it in a minute!

As you may know, little Emily is pregnant and Kristi is expecting #2! There’s babies all over the place! Is anybody else going to announce their pregnant in the next coming months that you know about up there?

It’s still a bit of a shock knowing that she’s not only married now but growing a baby in her baby when I literally have vivid memories of her being in mom’s belly. I still remember the day we all went to see her on the ultrasound. I vaguely remember being amazed that this stick like thingy could see through the uterus and map out an image of a fetus, and as a four year old that was like the coolest thing ever! I have yet to see Nolan move on it, but there’s a reason for that. Apparently, there’s just enough room for the doctor, mommy, and daddy in the room. So I’m left seeing the ultrasound pictures on Facebook, because mom keeps forgetting to actually show me the pictures!

When we found out that Emily and Brandon were expecting a boy, I will be honest and say that I was shocked. I really wanted a girl, but mostly because we all know how to take care of girls, plus Brandon has two sisters so even knows things about girls (somewhat) so knowing that he’d get a boy probably made him very happy, but I think figuring out that Emily also wanted a boy was interesting! I mean, since it’s been announced I’ve had many dreams of her getting peed on in the middle of the day, which means if I decide to take up the challenge of changing a diaper, it will be me getting wet instead.

I think it’ fair to say that almost everybody has purchased something for them, but mom has a full bag of baby clothes, while both dad and I have one outfit picked out for him. We at least have control over ourselves, but I have a feeling you were trying to influence me these last two months with the onesie I got for him. Amazon had cute little onesies that had collars like you used to wear and mom didn’t like them! One thing though is that I do think the one I got will work better as its more casual.

Brandon and I are going to be awful with this kid, as he loves DC and I’m on team Marvel, thankfully he has been buying him both sides but you know if I get the chance of changing his clothes, I’m going to put him in anything Avengers. The last time we went to Walmart, I saw these Avengers sneakers and I almost got them because I felt like I wouldn’t see them the next time. We both like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so we’re good there, it’s just colleges now is our issue. Brandon has a lot of North Carolina stuff on his wish list but I’m the good one. I’m trying to keep up with the tradition of the Butler shirts. This definitely won’t be his only shirt, as Emily saw little Butler booties and now I want to get those to complete the whole package!

Well, I think I’m done with this now. Hope you are still watching over us and enjoying your time in heaven with some of your friends too.

Love and miss you.

The “How-To” To Writing A Letter To Yourself

I originally wanted to do my Free Write Friday post right now, but I don’t have any ideas for the prompt at the moment. I’ll have to do that later on today! I wanted to do this yesterday after I had completed both of my letters to myself. I’ve got to say, I remember watching the episode of The Golden Girls where Dorothy writes a letter to her late father. She said she did it because she never really got to say goodbye to him and that it was really helping with getting things out in the open even though he’d never read it. I’m always dreading reading anything I’ve written in the last ten years, because I was so immature with my words and you can sense how my attitude was back then the more you go on reading them. I’m glad I waited to do the letters now instead of doing them earlier, although we did have to write letters to ourselves when I was a freshman in high school. It was our first day of school and nobody had homework in our resource class and so our teacher had us make these letters to ourselves and at the end of the year we’d get them back. Well, we never got them back and I’m thankful for that!

There’s two reasons of why I wanted to create a past and future list. I wanted one to be like an advice or a guide to my younger self. The future list was mainly an over-bearing question and answer list. I also have two reasons why I picked these two ages, I mainly wanted an age that was the start of everything going downhill. At age 14, I was basically at a standstill between being a middle schooler and going into high school. I was also going through things in my personal life that would kind of “get me ready” in a sense for the next several years of my life. For my future age, I wanted to pick an age where I think I’d feel at peace with, in a way, that’s also a bit of a standstill too. Everybody nowadays says, 40’s is the new 20’s, and I didn’t want to focus on a mid-life crisis or on that phrase, so I choose an age where it would be in the middle of an adult and elderly. Who knows, the world might get more complexed down the line and we may never die. Here are my guidelines into making a past and future letter to yourself:

The past letter:

• Pick an age that has three or more specific things that either at the time made you see the light or had gone downhill.
• When choosing that age, make sure you can remember everything well. While you know about a certain subject that happened at a certain age, as overtime you start to lose of what really did happen before it happened, as it was happening, and after it happened.
• Unless you have a very good memory, don’t select an age from 10 and under.
• Be as honest as you can, share and show us or yourself what you really can remember and how you really felt on that day/night.
• You can share as much as you want, but if you share it on a blog, I think you should censor yourself a little bit. Don’t go into full details in case there are people out there, who don’t like you very much and want to use it against you.
• When you go to give yourself advice for your younger self, I don’t know why I did it or the fact I’m telling you this, but try not to reveal much of what’s to come later on in your life. I might have Back To The Future stuck in my head or something and that’s why I’m saying it.

The future letter:

• I wouldn’t pick an age that’s five or ten years down the line, that’s too soon!
• Unleash any questions you might have bottled up inside.
• In case and god forbid this ever happens, share some memories of small things that you like that might put yourself at ease or make yourself happy that you were able to make it so enjoyable.
• Share what your fears are now but be a little bit humorous too!
• Be as vulnerable as you can as you write about asking about family questions, it might hurt coming out with it now and then too, but you might feel a connection between your two selves when you go to read it,
• Ask yourself one last question from now about how content you are and see if what you’re older says in whatever age you decide to give it to.

#FWF – Dear Myself

It’s been a while since I’ve done a prompt for Free Write Friday, so when I saw this one. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do with it. It’s going to be a little different from from what you’re thinking, but if some of you know pretty well. Doing it like this, shouldn’t be that BIG of a surprise to you. I hope you try to enjoy it in someway.

Dear Myself,

You might not remember how you lost your memory or remember the people around you, but the more people who come around you, you start to feel the love you had before your memory was taken away from you. Your family and friends will give you the love and support you will need for the time being. However, there’s one thing that I should probably tell you as not many people know or even want to bring up to you. You have your fair share of hidden demons. For years, the thoughts inside your mind have grown so big that sometimes you wished you could go to sleep sometimes and never wake up. You are entitled on having your bad days and as people will get aggravated with you, it will be worse for you. As you won’t know what will make you feel better. I hate to say it, nothing used to make you feel better. You would get into something but it wouldn’t be enough for you to be happy.

You have become very guarded. Everybody that comes into contact with you at this time has probably at one time has left you for a long period of time. Nobody is truly your friend unless your parents can tell you otherwise. Majority of your friends from high school haven’t really talked to you or hung out with you in about a year or so. The ones on your social media accounts actually do care, even though dad may not agree with that at times. You started blogging in high school and liked it so much that you kept up with it after all these years. Speaking of high school, you never had a boyfriend. You had two boyfriends in middle school and I’m pretty sure mom will tell you about them like its nothing. You did like quite a few guys in high school though. Just one little thing though, none of them liked you back as much as you liked them. It wasn’t you fault, it was their loss. You were obsessed with baby names. You had your second son’s name picked out since you were a freshman. You love to make a list of names to your friends who are pregnant. You like to read, and hopefully you’ll keep want to read the same books I fell in love with too!

You are a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to your drawings. The only colored drawing is made of pastels and it took you two weeks and you actually hate it the most. Your ink wash drawing the “shadow area” on the chin and cheek and on the left side make it look like it has tumors growing on it. You are most proud of the drawing with the barbed wire on it, plus the “Legacy” drawing. Which is the one with the purple eyes. It was supposed to be the last drawing you were supposed to do. You basically retired from drawing for two years. On March 11th 2011, you completed your first drawing and while you were working on it, you got very discouraged about not making it as good as you knew you could. Your “Nikki Sixx” drawing is your favorite out of all of them though. You looks exactly like the original picture. Which is what you were trying to do. You never usually draw women because the one time you did, it looked like a two-year old did it. You only draw musicians, because they are always there when you need them. You are obsessed with anything from the genre symphonic metal. They are the reason why you have so much metal music in your iPod. It is also the reason why you always worked on your range, you never thought you were good at singing in choir, but this has changed your point of view.

You pray to God every night before it turns midnight. If you miss it, then you think that day never counted. Sometimes you wait until that night to pray and hope God forgives you for not praying for the night before. You don’t go to church, because of certain reasons. You think other people from around the world and their religions are interesting. You like different cultures and are obsessed with the History Channel. Another thing you’re obsessed with is the cooking shows. Especially in the mornings, you actually don’t get hungry when you watch them. I don’t know how to really explain that either so don’t go to mom for that answer. You have two shot glasses up on in your room. One’s purple and the other is pink. You got them when you went to the aquarium in Ohio for Girl Scouts. You were actually really sick when you went and it rained like crazy and had to drive your wheelchair up to the place. You were just thanking God that all that water didn’t kill your battery. You have titanium rods in your back and you’re missing a rib, but I’m pretty sure you already knew that. Because there’s a reason why you hate when anybody rubs the top of your back. Ice cream gives you mini back spasms. You can drink one Code Red Mountain Dew every six months.

I think that’s all of the little stuff that really means anything to you, me, whatever. My life has now become your life, whether you choose to take over and change everything that made me, me, you are allowed to create yourself. Everybody will just have to get over it. As long as you accept yourself and accept the things you cannot change, you’ll be okay. You’ll make your own demons, enemies, loves. and interests. Hopefully you’ll have some part of me always in you. Hell, you’re living inside my body. You get that. Oh, by the way, only you are allowed to make fun of yourself and you have a pretty wicked sense of humor. Plus, ramps will become your best friend.

Sincerely,
Meg(z)han

Five Sentence Fiction: Letters

What it’s all about: Five Sentence Fiction is about packing a powerful punch in a tiny fist. Each week I will post a one word inspiration, then anyone wishing to participate will write a five sentence story based on the prompt word. The word does not have to appear in your five sentences, just use it for direction. PS: I found my inspiration while looking on Wikipedia about Rose Wilder Lane (daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder) about she gave birth to a son, but the facts about the birth and how he died haven’t been cleared. So while I continued to read on, I found I could use that in some way as well to this week’s word prompt. So I hope you enjoy!

This week: LETTERS

The sadness still set in my mind, as the tears still poured out of my eyes.

As days continued to come, the love of my husband and I once created grew apart.

He no longer looked me in the eyes, nor touched me when we slept.

It was only a month ago and I am still grieving a loss of a life that I cherished for only a matter of time.

I sit in this dark room writing this last love letter as I have no more to give to this very life that has taken so much from me.