Saturday, June 9, 2007

Spicy Blogging: Sunday Scribblings

This week's Sunday Scribbling prompt is spicy. InlandEmpireGirl's spicy piece is here. Silver Valley Girl might take a recess this week while in Washington, D.C.

A dozen years ago, or so, a girlfriend of mine had a son about twenty years old. One night he had watched the movie "The Usual Suspects". He called it spicy. He meant it was awesome.
So, I am pondering. What over the last year, has been spicy in my life? Here it is:


It's my regular old family. We all live modest lives. Silver Valley Girl, back left, manages a vet's office in Kellogg. InlandEmpireGirl, back right, teaches middle school in a small district in Inchelium, WA. I'm a community college English instructor. Mom, for many years, taught elementary school and then ran the Talented and Gifted program in Kellogg. She's retired.

What makes us spicy isn't flamboyance. It's not fame. It's not magnetism.

We get along and enjoy each other. That's pretty much it. It's spicy for me to be able to leave my home here in Eugene, OR and travel back to Kellogg and know that when I get together with my sisters and my mom, it'll be comfortable, good humored, and fun.

I wouldn't even say we are unique. Plenty of families get along.

Nonetheless, it's spicy.

I think my already good relationship with my sisters became spicier, more awesome, when we all started blogging.

I started blogging in October, 2006. I did it to give myself a writing discipline. My sisters read my blog and started learning more about me and so, first, Silver Valley Girl thought it would be fun to give each other writing assignments. We started writing pieces that met each others' assignments.

This evolved into my sisters beginning their own blogs. Voila! We all began to learn more about each other. I learned much more about InlandEmpireGirl's passion for gardening and cooking, in a much deeper way. I began to learn more about Silver Valley Girl's devotion to family and to her backyard tree.

I felt closer to my sisters. My respect, which was already in place, deepened.

We all posted photos on our blogs, and spicy became spicier. I began to see the world through my sisters' written word and how they see things through the lens of a camera.

Mom doesn't blog, but we have times when we read her things out loud whether about Christmas memories, tribute to her on Mother's Day, a tribute to her mother, and other things, and she has come to know us better.

The family who blogs together stays together? Maybe it's not that far-fetched.

I do know that since we all started taking this on, family life has been a lot more spicy.

It's awesome.

For more spicy Sunday Scribblings, go here. To read InlandEmpireGirl's blog go here. Here is Silver Valley Girl's.

4 comments:

Mommy Dearest said...

You guys rock. It's always great to see relatives that truly get along, not just pretend. Your family is a good role model for us dysfunctional types :)

Christy Woolum said...

I like being called spicy! Great post.

gautami tripathy said...

I did not know that your three are related! I too think that is very spicy!

Maybe I should persuade my 3 brothers to blog too!

Thanks!

Rob Kistner said...

Family rules Ray!

I never grew up knowing the love of a family, but I have created and co-populated my own family as an adult.

It's awesome -- and very spicy! ;)