Rabbit, Rabbit

Well, hello there October! Where the heck did you come from?!

Does anyone else welcome in the new month by saying "Rabbit, rabbit?"  I adopted the tradition/superstition years ago when I watched the Nick Days blurb on Nickelodeon about how it supposedly brings good luck all month if you say "rabbit, rabbit" first thing on the first day of the month. (You know you were raised in the 90s when . . . )  According to Wikipedia (oh font of all knowledge) this superstition originated in Great Britian, probably in the late 1800s, and has since spread to all English speaking countries. I made sure the first words out of my mouth this morning were "rabbit, rabbit" so now I'm set with good luck all month. ;)

Speaking of Nickelodeon (is it even on the air anymore?!), why is it that I can remember all the words from the "Good Burger" skit on All That ("Welcome to Good Burger. Would you like a Good Burger? Can I take your order, please?"), but I can't remember the capital of Kazakhstan, which I did a report on some time in middle school . . . roughly the same time period as when I was watching (apparently) way too much Nickelodeon. And I can still hear the Nickelodeon jingle: Nick-a-looow-de-on!  Hmmm, suddenly I understand why I didn't get into Yale . . .

Source

MOVING ON . . .

All I really wanted to say was, "Happy October!"  I've reached the end of my marathon work schedule, which means that today is the first of two whole days off . . . in a row. I'm pretty giddy about the prospect of this newly found free time. Of course there are plenty of projects vying for my time already, but for the time being, I'm attempting to catch up on the blogsphere. The dirty house can wait another hour or two before I give it my full attention.   

Andy and I writing off September as the lost month. Because September was such a blur, I find myself still thinking that it's the end of August. Then I head out back and wonder what the heck happened to the garden.

Apparently the garden all hopped into the freezer (I'm sure I had some hand in this, probably in a semi-conscious state after work), because our chest freezer is stuffed to the gills with green beans, tomatoes, cabbage, apples and blueberries. With the freezer being so full, Andy's been pestering me about where exactly we'd put a deer if he gets one this year. He raises a valid point. I think we have months to eat our way through the now very full freezer before we have to contend with storing 40 pounds of venison sausage, but then realize that November and deer season are next month. Yikes!

But enough. For today, I'm going to take a break from first world problems like wondering what we're going to do with all of this food and instead, spend my day soaking up the autumn colors, which I'm pretty sure peaked over the weekend. It's a cool, grey day - perfect for tea, reading, knitting, housekeeping projects and trying out new recipes for dinner. I hope you all find some time for renewal today as well. 

The view from one of Andy and my main grouse hunting hikes earlier this week

Side note: want to sponsor Of Woods and Words this October? There's still space for some more advertisers and I'm totally open to swaps. Lemme know.

Happy October! May you have good luck all month long!
 

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On Participation Awards

We all know that many critics of the Millenial generation think we're a little lazy and spoiled. According to the critics, we received way too many participation awards as children and our parents and teachers focused too much on our self-esteem for us to really be hard-working and contributing members of society now that we're all grow'd up. (Note: apparently the fact that Baby Boomers hijacked the 9-5 work system doesn't factor into Millenials' floundering . . . ?)

I have a fair share of participation awards tucked away somewhere in my childhood bedroom: certificates from speech competitions and plays, gaudy pedestal trophies from soccer seasons, pins, badges and pucks from my hockey playing days.  While I was active child, I was by no means an athlete. While I had a good imagination, I was by no means an actress. The only merit I used to "earn" this myriad of awards was a willingness to "stick it out for the long haul" - to play the entire sports season or make every rehearsal and performance. I didn't particularly excel at any of my extracurricular childhood pursuits, but, by gum, I did them anyway.

Despite five years on swim team, I don't think I have a single swimming "trophy" in my collection

I've been thinking a bit about participation awards lately. Mostly, I suppose, because it's been such a manic month in which - I kid you not - I have had a grand total of three days off. On Tuesday night, as I submerged six pints of homemade barbeque sauce (the last item on my "to can" list for the summer) into the hot water bath canner, I said to Andy, "You know, I'm kind of proud of myself. I've done everything this month that I'd said I do."

It's true - over the last month +, I've worked two jobs, kept up with the garden and Etsy, made rather feeble attempts to keep my online content fresh, and didn't shirk out of single one of my freelance writing obligations. If it sounds like bragging, it's really not meant to be. I say it more with a sense of wonderment than pride: I did do it all.

Obviously, going at a breakneck pace isn't desirable for the long haul. The schedule I've kept over the last month is really bloody stupid and I don't deserve congratulations from myself or others for maintaining it. It's a schedule good on the bank account, hard on everything else.

And this week I've felt myself wearing out. I've needed a lot more sleep than I would in normal circumstances. I'm emotional and irritable.But it's all ending soon. I keep whispering the number one under my breath. One more set of "days off" spent working at a second job. One more month of full time work.

You know, I don't think the participation awards I received as a child made me lazy and I don't think they were totally without merit.

Because sometimes just sticking it out is laudable. We don't have to be doing mindblowing things all the time. We don't have to be the best of the best. In fact, the best that most of us can offer the world is simply doing what we said we'd do.

We're adults now. There's no one handing out needless awards that will just gather dust and eventually be tossed in the trash or make awkward appearances at a garage sale. But if there was I'd stand up and accept my participation award for this month gone by with pride.

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Send Me To Summer Camp

As a homeschool jungle freak, I spent most of my childhood wanting to conform. I pined for the typical American childhood/tween years that Nickelodeon and kids literature presented, the one filled with home rooms, babysitting, crushes, shopping malls and summer camp.  

Now, why a girl who basically grew up in the woods felt summer camp was a necessary element of her childhood, I'm not quite sure. But I blame the Babysitter Club books. Jessi and Mallory were always having formative experiences at summer camp. Salute Your Shorts might have influenced this conviction as well.

When I was thirteen my dream was realized. I packed up my bags and headed off with my friend Kati for a week at her church's camp. It was a very Lutheran camp located on the west end of the national forest we live in, which meant we drove for about four hours and ended up in a place that looked just like where we'd all come from. 

Any previous references I'd seen about the typical summer camp experience lead me to believe scavenger hunts, jumping off floating rafts into the swimming area, arts and craft hour, and singing around the campfire were to be expected. Although we did a fair amount of singing around the campfire, the songs were all the religious songs, I'd learned during my Vacation Bible School days and our major project of the week was rewriting the Lord's Prayer in our own colloquial. Ah man. I totally thought I'd be learning map orientation skills. Imagine my disappointment when not one of the counselors walked around with their nose smeared with a thick layer of sunscreen.

To make matters worst, somehow on the bus ride over to the camp, every girl on the bus seemed to have gotten their periods. A week with cranky, hormonal thirteen year old girls? Awesome!!  

On our camp-out night, a thunderstorm prevented us from paddling over to the island campsite. Instead we were forced to backpack to a campsite where we prepared to pitch our tent on the side of the hill only to find we'd forgotten the tent stakes. (We used twigs to hold the tent in place that night as we slept at a downwards slant, blood rushing to our toes all night long.) When the camp counselors, who had the time seemed super old but were probably recent high school grads, couldn't get the fire started in the drizzle, our cabin's special needs girl started eating cold hot dogs straight out of the package.

It wasn't all a disaster. My memories of that week are pretty blurry, probably in part because of the sunburn  shown in my one and only photo from that week, but I have fond memories of making wax sculptures in the sand of the volleyball court, weaving yarn around two twigs to make "God's Eyes" and writing letter after letter home chronicling my adventures. My cabin swept the clean cabin award that week (anal and competitive even in those days) and one afternoon at the swimming hole, I felt my legs whip around behind me in a perfect breaststroke kick, a stroke I'd struggled with since joining the swim team early that year.

I never went back to camp. I got a big enough dose of conformity to last me a long time . . . well, at least until I started to feel like I ought to go to prom . . .

 

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Guest Post: Book Club Weekend Holly-Style!

Note from Ada:  It's one late Book Club Friday, but I'd like to blame the delay on Blogger, who started eating all posts and comments on Wednesday and didn't stop until yesterday morning. (Epic fail!) I wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to read Carissa's Small Town Traditions post before post Holly's Book Club Friday (weekend?) post. Holly writes over at Wuthered Window and shared some of her favorite childhood reads. Seems we've been talking about childhood favorites on Book Club Fridays a lot lately. Enjoy! P.S. Of Woods and Words regularly scheduled programming resumes on Monday. See you then!





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As part of my gap year I haven't been doing much structured written work or reading until a couple of months ago and therefore have not performed to a deadline in a long old time. BIG MISTAKE! (cue quote from Mystery Men)

After a lovely day helping my grandparents sort a new carpet out and watching The King's Speech with them, I drove home and was about to go to bed when I thought, I'm just gonna check my emails (it's something I do to pass and waste time – as I nearly always have signed up for spam). I saw to my horror (at 10:30pm) an email received yesterday from Ada saying very nicely, any time on Thursday would do for getting my guest post. Well I sure hope she meant that.

Books of my childhood (oh lord, what's coming next you say, a drivelling account of the fact you loved to read) is a topic focused on by Jayne Fordham in her post "Memories... books I read as a child.” And whilst a little bit of insight into her choices it opened up great memories for me. These sorts of posts are only ever interesting if you happen to like the same books and can revel in the stories with the writer, or it leads you on a trail entirely of your own reveling.

Such was the case in Jayne's post when she mentioned James and the Giant Peach and writing your name in the front of books. Having seen the film at around the same time (and later discovering David Thewlis was in it all along) as reading the book, it meant I didn't conjure up the world for myself but used the scenes from the film. This is half, if not more, of the fun in reading on your own and as a child, that you are the creator and the characters become your friends as you are drawn in. (I still always cry when my literary friends die – Akkarin!)

And now I have a terrible secret to reveal... I own a first edition paper back of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (you know, the edition before the illustrator realised Dumbledore was an old man), and like every small child, it was mine and I will make sure no one takes it, therefore I will write my name in large letters in the front and colour in the Hogwart's crest (wrongly). Rendering it now worthless to everyone else but myself. Hurray for childhood greediness and love of HP!

They were the first books that began me reading like a maniac every night till stupid o'clock in the morning (meaning I now need glasses, idiot), and the first ones where I had the characters, scenes and world firmly in my head and all as my own creation. It's a good job the films are so great else that would have been ruined.

(Yada Yada stop talking) Finally a quick fire round of other childhood and teen favourites that I will forever love and give to my kids/any child who will listen to my good sense and taste:

• Artemis Fowl (I was seriously going to audition if the film had been made, for the part of Holly of course. Weirdly my boyfriend would have done the same thing for Artemis, meaning we might have met completely differently.)
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• The Magician's Guild.
• Jedi Apprentice (cue laughter).
• Wizard Apprentice.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events.
• Mister Monday series.
• George's Marvellous Medicine.

And hand on heart not, never, never will be Twilight.

Holly

What were your favorite childhood reads? 

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Life without a Television

I grew up in a household lacking a television, but least you fear my brother and I were raised as some northern hybrid of the "homeschool jungle freak," let me assure you that we did not spend our afternoons studying up for the National Spelling Bee. In the summer months, our maternal grandparents were our next door neighbors and more afternoons than not, we'd head over for our diet pop and a couple hours in front of the tube, watching Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon (and later on, MTV and VH1), slowly turning our brains into a soft jelly.

During the winter, my grandparents headed south, forcing us two kids to depend on the library for some old fashioned entertainment. In college, I enjoyed the hundreds of complimentary cable channels that came with on-campus living and quickly discovered that people really meant it when they said "there's nothing on." Now that I'm on my own, I once again live in a household without a television and it's hard to miss the blaring, commercial ridden box when there's Netflix.

Through it all, there's always been a time every year when everyone in my family actively seeks out a television.

Yep, Minnesota High School Boys Hockey tournament time! The four-day tournament always takes place in St. Paul over the second weekend of March. It almost always handily coincides with my birthday (including my birth day) and I have gone so far as to have friends tape the championship games on the two occasions when I've been out of the country during the tournament. Needless to say, the tournament offers the best hockey in the world. The color commentary of intrepid tournament announcer Lou Nanne is basically the soundtrack to this annual weekend at my house.

Over the years, we've come up with pretty creative ways to get around the fact that none of us own a television to watch the tournament. One time, my father (who always walks or bikes to work) came home from work with a borrowed t.v. so small, it fit inside his backpack. If I remember correctly, the only thing the teeny t.v. ever displayed was a whole lot of static. Another time, we borrowed a larger television, but the set only got reception in our (unfinished) basement. That year we huddled around the t.v. on the concrete floor between the wood pile and roaring furnace. More often that not, we ended up crashing at the (sometimes unheated) home of some out of town accommodating friend or relative to get our annual fill of hockey.

The ridiculous television adventures seem destined to continue. Just last weekend, I headed over to the neighbors' for some Oscar viewing. We figured we could stream the awards show, but the only thing streaming was a backstage commentary, complete with the thank you cam and press conferences, but no actual shots of the actually ceremony. Figuring out who actually won required careful deductive skills. But that's just life in the woods, alienated from the world of popular culture.   

As for the hockey tournament this year, Mom says she's figured out a way to stream it. We'll just see how that goes, eh?

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