All Posts Tagged With: "home"

It’s time we had a president who understands what it’s like to stand alongside people who have lost their jobs, and walked the picket line with them. Who understands what it’s like to listen to a grown man choke up because he hasn’t just lost his job, he’s lost his pension, he’s lost his healthcare, and he’s trying to figure out how he’s gonna go home that day and explain to his wife and his kids that they’re in trouble and he might not be able to take care of them the way he wants.

There’s something wrong about that. There’s something un-American about that.

— Barack Obama

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Can you really be in touch with the average American if you don’t even know how many homes you own? I can easily count how many I own — ONE!

Via MSNBC:

This Feb. 2005 picture shows the Lake City, Ga. home which was the subject of the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” television show. More than 1,800 people helped demolish the Harper family’s decrepit home and replace it with this sparkling four-bedroom mini-mansion that towered over ranch and split-level homes in their Clayton County neighborhood. But three years later, the home has become the latest victim of the foreclosure crisis after the family used it as collateral for a $450,000 loan. The two-level home is set to go to auction on Aug. 5.

Materials and labor to build the home were donated, the story reports, and $250,000 was raised for the family, including scholarships for the three children as well as for a home maintenance fund. As you might expected, upon hearing the news, volunteers who helped build the home were “less than thrilled about the family’s financial decisions.”

“It’s aggravating. It just makes you mad. You do that much work, and they just squander it,” Lake City Mayor Willie Oswalt, who helped vault a massive beam into place in the Harper’s living room, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

One of my favorite TV shows growing up was Emergency! — a show that any little boy would love with fire trucks, lights and sirens, firefighters, lights and sirens, ambulances, lights and sirens, exciting action, lights and sirens…

Last night, it hit a little too close to home, though. We had our own EMERGENCY!

Fortunately, everything turned out okay in the end, except for a few minor, but painful injuries. But it gave everyone a big scare.

I was relaxing in my recliner. Ashley was doing something else (I’m not sure what). Sarah was working on a class assignment that involved making churros, “a fried-dough pastry-based snack,” for her class. Karla was helping her.

Karla and Sarah were deep-frying the pastries. All of a sudden one of the pieces of dough exploded and then another. Boiling oil splattered everywhere — on the ceiling, on the surrounding walls, on the kitchen floor. A flash of flame lit up the stove area. Both Karla and Sarah cried out — partly because they were startled, partly because they had been sprayed with hot oil and partly because the situation was plain terrifying. They instinctively backed away, but Karla fell backwards because of the frying oil that had coated the floor. Continued

The first part of this blog’s name/title is about “who.” The second part is about “what” the “who” is doing. And the final part is about “where” the “who” is doing the “what” and the “where” is…

“…in Oklahoma”

That’s where I live. It’s a state that I’ve fallen in love with. It’s a place that I am (generally) proud to call home (except for those times when the most ignorant side of our state gets national exposure).

I’m a transplant to Oklahoma. My family moved to Altus in 1986 right at the start of my senior year in high school. We didn’t know what to expect at the time. When we heard we were moving to Oklahoma, we were deflated. “What’s in Oklahoma? Where is Oklahoma?” We had very low expectations about the state we were being assigned to. An Air Force officer at the base my dad was being stationed told us before we moved to appreciate and remember the trees where we were living at the time because there weren’t any in Oklahoma. Well, it was an exaggeration obviously, but he wasn’t too far off in Altus (located in the far southwestern part of the state).

Two things we noticed right off when we traveled through Oklahoma (literally from the northeastern corner, driving down I-44 through Miami (Mi-a-muh, as I’ve been repeatedly reminded by native Oklahomans), Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Lawton and then straight west to Altus.

1. Red dirt — and I mean RED dirt. That was the first time we had ever seen red dirt. Dirt is supposed to be brown or black, right? That’s all we’d ever seen… before coming to the red earth state.
2. Big sky. The sky seems so much bigger in Oklahoma than just about anywhere else* we lived previously, especially the farther west you go in the state. On a clear day in Altus, the sky was/is an awesome shade of blue that stretches from horizon to horizon and it seems so incredibly big. I can’t emphasize that enough. I know that other western states have similar views, but this was the first time I had noticed it and it was amazing. (*The exception would be when we lived in far western Kansas, but it still didn’t seem as big, but maybe I just wasn’t noticing and appreciating it at the time.)
   

I’ve lived here for more than two decades since and I have truly grown to love this state. There is an unquantifiable je ne sais quoi that makes it difficult to describe to outsiders what makes this state so endearing to those who call this place home.

There’s a natural beauty to the state (that some people don’t or choose not to see); Oklahoma promotes itself as having the most diverse ecological landscapes within its borders than any other state. Certainly, if you travel from northeastern Oklahoma to southwestern Oklahoma, you’ll notice a distinct difference; and if you travel between southeastern Oklahoma to northwestern Oklahoma, you’ll find an even more stark contrast.

More than any other state that I’ve lived in, this state has a spirit — the “Oklahoma Spirit” that locals like to brag about — that binds it together, that rallies its citizenry together in times of tragedy and need, and that rises above the distinct (and sometimes quite partisan) differences among its people.

I’ve lived in several other states: Florida, Texas (far southern part along the coast), Virginia, South Carolina, Kansas, Illinois and Indiana. They each have qualities I like about them, especially Florida. But none of them is like Oklahoma. And this is where I want to live. And this is the place I am proud to call home.

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So, now you know “what’s in a name” when it comes to this blog. It boils down to this: This blog is about who I am, about what I’m doing and about where I’m doing it. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.