Geological Changes

Earthquake time, and Fio is so excited! Change is in the air--well, really, in the earth. It seems to Fiorella that the quakes are happening where one never expected them, Oklahoma being the latest. And it wasn't just a flutter either.

Fiorella, of course, has a theory. She thinks the tectonic plates are on the move, that the world is reforming itself yet again, maybe moving back to form another Pangaea, the great uni-continent that divided itself to form the landscape we have today.

Yeah, she knows that these things happen over billions of years, but she also figures there's got to be a time, a moment, when the die is cast, when the water from the Atlantic Ocean bursts out of the mountains and starts filling the Mediterranean basin, when the land bridge across the Bering Straits becomes too deep to travel, when Spirit Lake is changed forever.

And she has to wonder if Pilot Knob will start spewing lava again.

Genealogical Nest

Fiorella has been interested in genealogy since she was a child, maybe because her father's work opportunities yanked the family out of its ancestral nest when she was just seven. Yeah, 1500 miles across the country, and--dare Fio introduce the concept?--cell phones and email weren't even twinkles in Steve Jobs' eye back then. No more weekend visits with cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts, great uncles. Fio, her parents and brother, were four against the world in exotic, remote Waco, Texas.

So Fio started questioning her parents about their families and writing down the answers. Mother was forthcoming, but Dad was more reticent--his family didn't talk about the past.

Fiorella never got around to writing a family history, but now she doesn't have to. Cousin Tom's wife, Norma, a crackerjack researcher, has stripped bare the bones of Dad's family and is about to lay it all out on Lulu for the rest of us.

Now if Fio can just entice someone on Mother's side of the family to do the same.

Thank You for My Emmy

Call Fio crazy (which is nothing new), but she's thinking of trying her hand at a sit-com script. After all, she wrote a couple of skits when she was in high school, participated in Baylor Children's Theater when she was eight, nine, and ten, acted in a couple of civic theater productions as an adult, and has loads of material in this blog to draw from, so what else does she need?

Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother, watch out! Fio is feeling creative again.

Leaving, Cleaving, and Conceiving

Fio has accepted the fact that parents love their children more than their children love them. It's nature's way of protecting the perpetuation of the species. Thus parents will sacrifice and even die for the sake of their children, but children are hell-bent to pull away from their parents and live their own lives from the moment they're born. It's called maturity--they are preparing to assume the parent role themselves, in which the pattern will be repeated.

We all love our parents, but we love our offspring even more, which is as it should be. Parents are the past. Children are the future.

Best Wishes to All

Fiorella, as you know, is extremely competitive. She likes to be top of the heap in whatever she is doing. And she keeps an eagle eye on those who are upward bound or maybe even besting her. But she wishes them well. It's the right thing to do.

Besides, it hurts less that way.

While You Work

Fiorella has taken up whistling again.

She learned once, with great effort, when she was about six but hasn't puckered up for years until Younger Son, a talented and prolific whistler, boomeranged home. To her shock, she discovered her lips had forgotten how to whistle. It took her a couple of days of work just to get out one weak little tweet.

So, in her own determined Fiorella way, she's been working on her whistle steadily and can now tell you that she's got a five-note range. Nothing to write home about, but it's a start.

Halloween Tidbits

Fiorella pledges never to eat again. Last night she stuffed herself full of leftover Halloween candy and this morning she still feels sickish.
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Have you noticed how perfectly shaped the supermarket pumpkins have become in recent years? It's as if HEB molds them in the back room. Fio, who prefers a little individuality for her artful carving, searched until she found one that had more of a dumpling shape--like she does.
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Gone are the pirates, cowboys, and fairy princesses of yesteryear. Last night everyone was a zombie. At least the costumes were easy to put together.