It was a great day out with my BFF, Yvonne today. We did some house hunting for her potential move up here to the big city :). Then a trip to Hobby Lobby led to a decision that I would let Brad redecorate the family room to resemble a Route 66 memorabilia shop. He doesn’t know this yet. As Yvonne was in need of a new pair of prescription sunglasses, we looked for the perfect pair to no avail. However we did find a never-before-seen pair of mymustang.com sunglasses for me. On clearance for $15, I snatched those babies up and promised my sacred Ray-Bans that they had nothing to worry about.
Brad and I had a great time at the annual Easter car show. Yvonne and Gary met us there on their Harley. Traffic and parking were a bit tricky, but worth it. There were so many people there making picture taking a little difficult, but the weather was sunny and a wonderful 67 degrees. My goal was to be able to share the year of each of the cars that I took pictures of, but that didn’t happen. Seeing the ’79 Trans Am made me pretty happy. It had an 8 Track in it! You’ll see a pic of its 6.6 engine. Brad enjoyed a ’65 GTO most of all, while Gary has a soft spot for the Corvettes. I did come to the conclusion that I would rather go to a car race than a car show. It was awesome seeing the cars all lined up, but there was a different feeling when someone started their engine. On a positive note…it’s great that the car show is free and you could tell that everyone there really wanted to spend part of their Easter Sunday looking at those amazing cars. Finally, an interesting rule-if you entered a car in the show you had to bring your own fire extinguisher. Hmmm.
Front Porch Sittin’, Cold Beer Sippin’ (Or…Life is Good!)
What a great day in St. Louis. The high was 60 degrees. Most of the snow has melted, so no more annoying puddles to avoid. Out to lunch at McCormick and Schmicks , a fabulous seafood place with Brad. My car is clean (met a fellow Mustang lover at the car wash) and hit a milestone (the car not me and no pun intended) today. The odometer turned over (as much as it can being digital and all) 75 thousand miles. Unlike my son I take photos of these events going zero mph. I am at present doing my front porch thing…finally. Love this ritual with our dog, Koda. Can’t wait until Jonboy is home to share. In the meantime I am working on several posts. One about vanity plates called Legal Graffiti. Another about local automotive businesses (so far Christian Brothers Automotive http://cbac.com/store/arnold-mo is on board) and their contributions to the community. One is a humorous take on my first ever visit to a drive thru car wash. All I can say is…Oh, My! And finally one focusing on the financial cost (burden?) of owning my little tank of a Mustang for the last 9 1/2 years. After your Easter time with family don’t forget to check out the awesome car show http://www.hccmo.com/id14.html at Forest Park, if you can. Pics to follow! One final note, my hopes are dashed for owning the 2014 Cobra Jet, as I have just found out that I (Brad, smiley face here) will need $97, 000 to purchase. Oh, well.
I’ve taken a break these past few days from my blog…a break made necessary because my dear 3 month old great niece was taken from us suddenly on Thursday. These are the words I wrote, then read at the chapel service today.
When the inside of your nose feels the burn of a tear that is yet to come… you know you are in store for a thunderous attack of love… a love that is felt so deeply.
Our minds are filled with the photographs we will never take …we will recognize a part of her in someone else, and we will know that her amazing life is molding so many people on this earth…we can look into her grandparents’ eyes and see the stories left untold… we can look into her great grandparents’ eyes and see not only the untold stories, but the lessons of a family tree filled with unbreakable branches. This is us, all of us here. We will bend, but we will not break. We are a tree of strength. And this tree is made up of the Stepps, the Hughes, our family and friends. Yes, we bend, we bend to accept, we bend to hope and we bend to love. But what we do not bend to is the simple acceptance that things are over. We will never do that. We trust You and accept that this is at your hands, God. And we say…You can take away a mom, a dad, a friend, and even a tiny little baby girl. You can take away our ability to hold hands with each other because of miles we cannot often travel. Take away whatever you like, and we will find a way to reach up, reach out and grab hold of one another with a grip so tight that You will place us in your testimonial of love that others should model. Thank you God for thinking once again that all of us here can handle this unbelievable task that you have thrown at us. We totally get the compliment. We can do it…each and every one of us. We are joined and we can handle this.
We are made strong by the lesson she has taught us. We are asked to give up the promise of her smile, big wheel lift offs, camo clad hunting trips, driving Amanda crazy with dressing room drama, driving Lee crazy with… well… being boy crazy. We are asked to give up seeing her put her brothers in their place.
But we are gaining so much. Many of us here have never even gotten to meet her, but please don’t be sad by that. We are all learning the same lesson, and gaining so much.
Miela Rose will bloom on in every one of us. God created a lot of stuff…can you imagine-150 varieties of the rose. Thank goodness that He was willing to think that a new rose could grow in the garden of a world that so desperately needs the hope of beauty, the hope of family, and the hope of unconditional love. While Miela Rose Hughes is now among the famous, thriving among the prosperous, and being cradled by other loved ones in heaven, her roots are planted here and her purpose is to tell the entire world that the beauty of a life yet to be lived is a promise to all of us that we also have a life yet to be lived. The purpose of her death is the hope of new life in all of us. Miela Rose Hughes was placed here by God, a reason for us to ask ourselves, in my next minute did I live the last one to its fullest, am I blooming, am I a beautiful part of the Garden?
I will leave you with words to a very poignant song by Tim McGraw. It is about a man that was just diagnosed with cancer.
The man said
“I was in my early forties
With a lot of life before me
And a moment came that stopped me on a dime
I spent most of the next days
Looking at the x-rays
Talkin’ ’bout the options
And talkin’ ’bout sweet time”
Tim asked him:
“When it sank in
That this might really be the real end
How’s it hit you
When you get that kind of news?
Man, what’d you do?”
And the man said
“I went skydiving
I went Rocky Mountain climbing
I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Man Chu
And I loved deeper
And I spoke sweeter
And I gave forgiveness I’d been denying”
Then he added
“Someday I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dying”
He went on to say:
“I was finally the husband
That most of the time I wasn’t
And I became a friend a friend would like to have
And all of a sudden going fishin’
Wasn’t such an imposition
And I went three times that year I lost my dad
I finally read the Good Book, and I
Took a good, long, hard look
At what I’d do if I could do it all again.”
Again he said,
“Someday I hope you get the chance
To live like you were dying”
We might not ever go sky-diving or ride a bull, but we can certainly love deeper, speak sweeter, give forgiveness, and be the friend a friend would like to have. We can kiss goodnight, reach out, see the good in others, and say our prayers. We can be better people.
We can live this way because of the beautiful lesson we have learned from Miela Rose.
You know your life is changing…is different … when you’re on a Facebook chat at 1:30 am and it says Mikonos, Kikladhes at the bottom. I sure do love my son Jon Nuessle. BTW Get your amazing self home from Greece as soon as possible. You and I have a whole summer of back road cruisin’, music, front porch sittin’, BBQing, and pit fires with Michael and Brad Nuessle waiting for us. I love that you miss your car. You’ll be back in the driver’s seat soon with your amazing Alpine CDA 105 sound system , knowing exactly which song is perfect for each curve in the road…pulling up to every stop light, not minding the pause in your cruise. You have the true car driver’s spirit. Can’t wait until you bring back your stories from Greece. Can’t wait until your spirit drops itself behind the wheel of your Ford Zx2, turns the key, and heads off down the road…some of them you’ve been down before, and many you’ve yet to travel…asking myself …am I sending you off, or letting you go?
St. Louis can be a weather weary place during the Spring, especially if you are a car enthusiast like me, well most of my family for that matter. As we are just (maybe) getting over washing the salt off our cars, in a few short weeks our clean cars will be dodging April showers. We do, however, have something to look forward to… After saying grace, enjoying green bean casserole, along with the usual Easter fare, this year Brad and I will be soaking in some amazing sites. On Easter Sunday, Forest Park will host the 52nd annual Concours d’Elegance car show. On display will be approximately 600 cars from the 1900’s to the mid to late ’80s. Gear heads and regular folk (the people I don’t quite understand) will be able to enjoy the beauty of antique, classic, and collector style cars. There are two qualifying traits that a car in the show must have. One- it must be at least 25 years old, and two- it must be unmodified from the day it was driven off the production line. If you’re wondering.. I’m more qualified to be in the show than my car is. I meet both guidelines (if you don’t count the numerous attempts at the perfect frame through weight loss over the years), while my car only meets one. Husband Brad is hoping to see his old ’70 Dodge Dart Swinger in the line-up, as it has made an appearance once before. A guaranteed great day filled with the shine of the sun, quarter panels, blowers, and hood ornaments. Stay tuned for pictures of this annual car show.
Hey friends, If you have ever been to San Francisco I would love for you to share about awesome dining, interesting sites, great shopping, and any other things that a traveler would love about the city of San Francisco. I have a friend who will be visiting from another country and is looking for some tips on her visit. Thanks for any information that you can provide. Comment directly on my hoodscoop03.wordpress.com page if possible. If not, a Facebook post will work. Thanks! PS This message is intended for both my Facebook and WordPress friends and family.
So excited to be spending tomorrow in my best friend’s third grade classroom. I will be talking about writing, listening to them read to me, then reading a very meaningful story to them…Junkyard Wonders by Patricia P0llac0. I am so honored that Yvonne is asking me to talk to her class about writing. We all have a voice inside of us. It might be our voice, or it might be the voice of something or someone that we would love to be. Sometimes it is even the voice of something or someone we wish we weren’t. We may not all become famous writers, but anyone can push forward some words that come from inside. Somewhere there is a refrigerator just waiting for a kid’s voice. Somewhere there is a wall waiting for graffiti. It doesn’t matter if you dot every ‘I’ or use the proper end marks. What matters is that the voice of every single person is offered the opportunity to be heard. Teachers do that. I think the world of blogging does it, as well. Whether you are 8 or 80 years old, a lover of cars or lover of sidewalk chalk, whether you are from a family of 7, a broken family, or a family that is now down to its only living survivor, you have a voice inside of you. Voices don’t need to be neat and clean. Voices don’t need to be polished. Voices can tell a tale. Your voice can change a view, make a difference, and cause a perpetual ripple in our world. I love that about writing. To my blogging friends…keep sharing your voice. To all of the classrooms full of kids…look for your voice and share it on every refrigerator. Look for that empty wall. See a blank piece of paper as an opportunity. There is a story from the tiniest of things like the dirt under you fingernail to the scrape on your knee. Your voice can be found in the kite in the sky and the loss of a pet. Your voice is all around you, but mostly it is inside. We are all Junkyard Wonders in one way or another, and the whole world deserves to know our stories, to hear our voices. Can’t wait to be with Yvonne’s class tomorrow. Can’t wait to inspire their voices! And so grateful to be part of the blogging life.
You are invited to read my voice from 1981 in the attachment that follows.
A blogger is constantly taking on the role of his topic. The role isn’t like an actor’s role…it’s a role of who they really are, sometimes in spite of what they do for a living. It’s a role that comes from inside and with me it’s cars. Plain and simple I love cars… cars that speak about history, cars that reflect their owners, cars that shine, cars that shape the beat of your heart with the sound of their engine, and cars that move you as they pass by.
This blog has provided me with a great deal of positive self-worth. I see it is an open-ended project that has been self-taught and self-motivated. It is filled with late night attempts to spark the interest of friends and strangers. I’ve worried over posts, followed the blogging rules, and have put positive mental attitude at the forefront of what I’m doing.
My gratitude goes out to all of those who are following me, especially Mart at One Man and his Mustang http://onemanandhismustang.com. Mart’s nomination for The Versatile Blogger Award means the world to me. Even before this nomination Mart has provided me with encouragement, support, and tips. Hopefully I’ll be keeping at this for awhile!
Here are the rules:
If you are nominated, you’ve been awarded the Versatile Blogger award.
Thank the person who gave you this award. That’s common courtesy.
Include a link to their blog. That’s also common courtesy — if you can figure out how to do it.
Next, select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. ( I would add, pick blogs or bloggers that are excellent!)
… dilemmas today…waiting on an email from a company that wants to talk to me about internet marketing ideas….really wanting to wash my car in the morning, because it will be my first day of spring break vacation and I will be out shopping with my mom, but the weather forecasters indicate rain at … well they’re not quite sure. Just enough ambiguity to create a bit of craziness. On a positive note, life could not be any better…the house is clean, laundry done, lesson plans complete for my return, Jon is exploring Greece, and Michael is out with friends. I am loving life and waiting for the next chapter to begin.
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