Posts Tagged "Friends"

Welcome Campaigners!

Posted by Coleen Patrick on Sep 2, 2011 in Writing | 11 comments

Okay so Jessica started a blogging game to help campaigners get to know each other. If you’re playing, post 10 facts about yourself and then put a link to your blog in the comments below.  Happy campaigning!

1. I am the oldest of four siblings and there were times I let that power go to my head.

2. This year I found out I can’t eat gluten, so cupcakes and pizza have turned into sparkly, shiny things I sometimes can’t look away from.

3. Yesterday I went to the grocery store, Target and the library before I realized I was wearing my jacket inside out.

4. Fall is my favorite season (can’t wait to break out the fleece).

5. I think TV is awesome.  Gilmore Girls is a fave, I could live in Stars Hollow.

6. When I pull up to the drive thru at my library I inhale deeply when they slide back the window because I love the smell of books.

7. I think mushrooms are way too chewy to bother eating.

8. I like board games, especially Scrabble and trivia, but have been told I am like Monica from Friends when I play.

9.  When I was a kid I thought it would be cool to marry Godzilla.

10. I’ve lived in the same house for the last 16 years, but before that I moved 16 times.

Looking forward to getting to know you!

THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE THE PRAIRIE

Posted by Coleen Patrick on Jul 25, 2011 in Books, Inspiration, Writing | 0 comments

I loved Little House on the Prairie when I was a kid, so reading Wendy McClure’s book, The Wilder Life:  My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie was like catching up with dear friends.  In fact I was reminded how much LHOP played a role in my own life as I remembered along with Wendy about bonnets,  Plum Creek, the sod house, and above all the spunky, carefree, adventurous spirit that was Laura.

“MOST GIRLS JUST WANT TO BE LAURA”

I did too.  I admired Laura’s pluck, her spunk, her spirit.  Once when someone commented that I looked like the Mary from the television show, I actually felt insulted.  Okay so my hair was blonde and I was the oldest of four siblings, but i did not want to be the bossy, know-it-all (although that characteristic probably fit too).  I just wanted to be carefree and adventurous, like Laura.

But I felt a kinship with both girls for many reasons.  After all, I knew what it was like to share a bed with your sister, and to move a lot (my dad was in the Coast Guard).  Plus, I think we were the last family to buy a color TV (1984!!).    We were practically a frontier family.

Don’t let my parents fool you--they may have dressed the part, but they did not appreciate my attempt to clear out our backyard shed to make my very own prairie house (not even after I dressed my youngest sister in prairie garb to complete the effect).

This effort probably required at least a little bossiness.

Although twelve years later, my mom would bring this hat as a gift for my first child:

Even today my daughter is blissfully unaware of that bonnet or for that matter LHOP unless it’s been mentioned in the Final Destination movies.

Now I wonder if maybe that gift was less my LHOP sensibility and more of my mother’s, as evidenced in the following pictures of me and my baby sister:

Letting our “sunbonnet freak flags fly” as Wendy puts it in her book.

“SWEET AND SIMPLE HAD BECOME OUR OWN DREAM FRONTIER”

I think the best thing I learned from LHOP was that the simplest things make us happy, like those jars of penny candy in the Olson’s store, or a retweet or a yummy grilled cheese sandwich (even if nowadays it has to be gluten and dairy free).  Even seeing a pile of freshly picked cucumbers from our tiny garden gives me some sort of odd, geeky, perhaps prairie thrill.  But it’s the stressful times that really bring out “my bad, prairie self”, because that’s when I find myself longing to burrow deep into some mythical cabin in the woods.  My sister E and I call this my Grizzly Woman status (she even gifted me a grizzly bear keychain).

The good thing is you don’t have to go all the way to Walnut Grove to experience LHOP nostalgia.  All you need is a little connection, like reading Wendy’s book or re-reading the LHOP series.  Because of course we always carry the power to go home within ourselves, right?  Like Glinda the Good Witch said (to another girl from a Midwestern prairie), “You’ve always had the power to go back . . .”

It’s as simple as clicking your (bare foot) heels.