Tales From the Burning Prairie

A brand new year is starting soon, here’s to hoping it’s better than the old one. I could lament the stupid, rotten, unfortunate things that have happened in 2007, but what’s the point. The turning of the new year, each and every year, gives us a chance for a clean slate, a fresh start every 12 months. We should all take advantage of it and leave behind the worries and failings of the last year. That can be hard sometimes. So many of us here will be dealing with the after-affects of 2007 well into 2008, but I think I can view it as just tying up some loose ends.

I have two resolutions to share right now: I resolve to have my new blog up by New Year’s day and I’d like to figure out how to make this writing thingy bring in a few bucks. If you’d like to read the rest of my resolutions, you’ll have to wait until the new blog launches. Anybody else have any resolutions, hopes, or dreams for the New Year?

Hi Family and Friends,

I’m doing things a little differently this year. This year has brought some changes: Monkey is now in Pre-K, half-days, five days a week. He is really enjoying it, although he has picked up the annoying phrase “Butt-head”, could’ve lived without that one. Pumpkin turned 2, boy did she ever turn 2. Her new favorite phrase is “I don’t want to!” It’s like living with a tiny, incontinent teenager. Hubby is still at the same place and I am still going to school. This was a tough semester and I’m glad it’s over.

December has been interesting to say the least. The ice storm got us, just like everybody else. Luckily, we had lights and heat through most of it, but we did lose our trees. My last final (or would that be my final final) was canceled due to the storm, not that I’m complaining mind you. And we found out yesterday, the storm dealt us a harsher blow than we thought. Some massive branches fell off our Silver Maple and damaged our water line leading to the house, we will be fixing that during the days leading up to and following Christmas.

And my washing machine sprung a leak.

Hey, but other than that we’re doing great! We are warm and healthy and still have internet access. When life and other real things happen to you, it shifts your focus to those things that are truly important. We are not stressing out about Christmas, and plan to celebrate quietly at home.

And from all of us here at The House of the Burning Prairie- Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Joyeux Noël, Mele Kalikimaka, Buon Natale, Feliz Navidad y prospero Año Nuevo, Good Yule, Seasons Greetings, and Happy Holidays one and all!

As I get older, I find myself less willing to let my friends go without a fight. Maybe I’ve mellowed as I stare 40 in the face. As a girl and very young woman, I had no trouble walking away from relationships. A careless word, an unkind deed, a slight (real or imagined), any offense of my “delicate” sensibilities and I would drop a friend like he or she were made of fire.
Just think back to when we were kids. It didn’t matter if it was across town or across the country, if you moved (or your best friend moved), you could count on that friendship being over. All vows to the contrary, the calls or letters would slowly taper off, the visits would get harder and harder to arrange, and the friendship would die of neglect. And even though they had been children sometime back in the dark ages, your parents just could not understand why you were so upset. “You’ll make all new friends!” Never quite comprehending that even if the mean kids at the new school decided to gather you into the fold, no one could ever fill that friend-shaped hole in your heart.
For me, that scenario played out when my parents moved us when I was nine. Where once I had been a happy, well-liked child, all of a sudden I was the new kid. Ouch. Memory and perception are funny things, but it sure seems like every time I opened my heart to new people it invariably got ripped out of my chest and handed to me. By high school, I had built up some pretty good defenses and could let friends walk away, or walk away myself, and not be too affected by it. Then, my freshman year of college, I made a friend, one that I refuse to let go. We have pissed each other off, done and said mean things to each other, yet we always work things out. Even a whole state away, I know I can call her and ask anything of her and I hope she knows the same of me. She taught me how to be a wife by teaching me how to be a friend.
This past Fall, something terrible happened, I received a notice of my High School Twenty Year Reunion. Yikes. That put me in mind of all the friends I had simply abandoned since then. I realized that we all let too many loved ones go too often and for too many reasons. I was never popular, so I set about finding my friends from back in the day, so I would have someone to sit with in a sea of virtual strangers. Selfish, maybe, but I have reconnected with several old friends. And I’ve filtered those pesky memories and perceptions through an older, hopefully wiser, me.
Friends, like oil, aren’t the unlimited resource I believed way back when, they won’t just drop into my lap anymore. I was inexcusably mean to a couple of very nice boys, and unaccountably nice to several rotten boys (you know who you are). Hopefully, when everything shakes out, on the whole, I was nicer than meaner. The town where I grew up, that I thought I hated, turned out to be a pretty nice place to grow up. And that Twentieth Reunion? It was nowhere near as painful as I had feared. Even though only one girl friend was there with me, two of my favorite boys showed up (thanks Brad and James).
I have spent some time since contacting old friends and renewing those relationships. So in answer to your question Jeremy, the how is unimportant, the why is all. And that why is this: all of you, my old friends, had a hand in shaping the person I am today and I wanted to say “Thank you.” If I was nicer than meaner to you, that is to my good fortune. And if I was meaner than nicer, let me say mea culpa, I plead youth and ignorance. My long-suffering husband and beautiful children have made me a wiser, less self-involved person and I’m a much better friend now.
Come visit me on the burning prairie and let me tell you a story.