But Lot, hubby, HONEY, just one quick look?

So, in Genesis 19:26, a married couple, Lot and Mrs. Lot are fleeing from a burning town! It's being destroyed! There's nothing left! The town basically sucked with lots of "bad" people and L & L got one of the few "exit slips" (Come on! it's the summer but I got to keep up with the Teacher Lingo!) Think of it as THE Golden Ticket of its time, only they weren't leaving on a see-through elevator, but their feet! Well, back in verse 17, the divine Ms. L got the mandate, "DON'T LOOK BACK!" Well, she did? Oops! It was a fatal mistake and she immediately (and literally) became the salt of the earth! ...So, hello, LEFT FIELD...looks like Cindy brought you in as a special guest for this blog! Well, Not really! The divine Ms. L gets a bad rap in the Bible, in the New Testament where there's LOTS (ha ha) of "Remember what happened to HER!!!!!" So she was guilty of bad behavior, specifically, one non-negotiable bad behavior with a really stiff penalty!!! She was looking over her shoulder at her former (we can assume COMFORTABLE) life that was disintegrating, that was becoming dust in the wind, that was literally a mere shadow of her former town, that was....well, was! Can you blame her? What was ahead of her? Well, the Mr. and I guess that should have been enough. It probably was, but then again, it's not like they had a LOT (in my best Jim Carey voice...somebody, stop me!) of time to pack, and maybe she was thinking about the camel hump soup that she had just placed over the far (that's southern for FIRE)??? IDK! I've been LOTtie since January, living in Trojan land by day as a mild-mannered (well, or no-mannered) reading coach while spending my Thursday afternoons in the lab at the Wolfpack. I know that I have been looking back! Well, this week, my new principal called for some help with some workshops. That's a forward! Then, I spent two days at training in new reading programs, etc. and it was housed at Wolfson! (I swear that Barbra Steisand was singing "Memories" over the intercom!) Today, I went to a luncheon for a super-cool secretary that gets to go work at a brand new school!!! YAY for her! She was lamenting about how sad she was to leave, that it was bittersweet, and I just nodded. The Wolfpack just got a brand new principal and by all accounts, he is THE BOMB!!! But I don't think you can return...I mean the poets and songwriters promise us that "You can always go home again," but Work is not Home! Then, I surrendered my Wolfson key!!!! So, it's full steam ahead! Today I also met with another reading coach from the school that is right behind my house and together we planned some programs for our schools. (She's at a "turnaround" as well, and it's a good thing to forge new alliances across school borders!) That's a great step forward! Then one of my Wolfson friends (who graduated from Trojanland back-in-the-day) called to tell me she's transferring and she'll be working with me again!!! That's another step forward, cuz it's always easier when you have a hand, you know? I even had my Wolfpack shirts dry cleaned and I gave them to my favorite Dean and even to the guy who replaced me....(but don't tell, because I still kept one!!!) When the Smithsonian begins constructing the Cindy Museum, they'll just have to include Duval County School artifacts. Because my Time Machine is in the shop, I'm still not quite sure what memorabilia they'll have to choose from...but I know it will be a LOT!

Forgot about Lions, and Tigers, and Bears...LOOK DOWN!

Hello Friends... I am writing you from Tampa, Florida. I have been here since Sunday at an Academy sponsored by the Florida Department of Education (no that's NOT an oxymoron) and the Council for Educational Change. In theory, I think they accomplish many great things...But I digress...One of our "talk-ats" and a seriously slammin' great one talked about FILTERS, you know, that unique set of life experiences that makes YOU YOU, ME ME, and (shocker alert) the rationale behind us seeing things differently.. Before I left on Sunday, I was feeling a little guilty with two pairs of big, brown eyes staring at me and my suitcase while I was packing on Saturday, with their tails wagging. (gotya!!! Tim and Char would have been HELPING me pack....it's my dogs, (wo)man's best friends that were sad)....So, that night, I took them to the Dog Park, which is really the rest stop between Jacksonville and St. Augustine on I95 (which according to fatality records, the I95 strip in Florida is the most dangerous super highway in the USA!) We took about a 45 minute walk in the "Dog-Restricted" area and I decided to view the world from a dog's perspective, or, a DIFFERENT FILTER. There's very comical things to see at a Rest stop. There was a Florida D.O.T. dude, completely in uniform and gun holstered at his side, who was cleaning out his "company vehicle." There was a trucker whose cargo was an Army Red Cross Ambulance Helicopter that I swear looked just like the one on the opening scenes in MASH. There was shrooms and ant beds to explore and well, you know what else they were sniffin' on the ground! They barked at the guy in the little Honda with two really big mattresses weighing down the top of his car and they tried to get invited to a random family picnic, albeit, unsuccessfully. What they didn't notice was this sign about the potentially dangerous Agkistrodon piscivorous conanti (cottonmouth) because of the large FENCED IN (thankfully) retention pond in the middle of the dog park...Just today, at one of the talk-ats, I was thinking about that sign, more specifically the conantis that I have to deal with in education. All of you know that I was recruited away from a school that I loved and served faithfully for six years to be a Reading Coach in late January. But nobody told me about the conantis!!!!! You see, they very often take their human form and appear to us with slippery tongues and slanted eyes and TWO LEGS! and they didn't tell me that I would have to spend FOUR DAYS with one incredibly toxic conanti at this conference, who has tried to clip my wings at every turn in my new school. At least they sprung for separate rooms.....although I still have been sleeping with one eye open...(which probably explains why both eyes have been closed during a few of HER talk-ats....) Ladies, I'm down, down, down right now and I am the illustration of NO JOY IN MUDVILLE, anticipating my new year in the fall with the snake-in-the-grass who exclusively has the ear and eye of the principal.......but at least I'll be in a certain South Florida bed tomorrow night (should I use the snake metaphor, here????) where Mr. Man can make all things better, or at least for 4 or 5 days! I LOVE YOU GUYS!

Sandra Bullock Wisdom

Do you remember on Oscar Night, when Sandra Bullock gave a shout out to the "moms that take care of the babies and children no matter where they come from?" I'm guessing the audience thought she was paying homage to her movie, "The Blind Side," (which I still haven't seen) but she was offering a clue to her little Louie that she had adopted a few months back. I would also extend her MOMS to the males and females that choose to love on surrogate children. So why am I in this reflective mood? Well, it's partly because I have been doing my bi-decade spring cleaning and finding all sorts of pix and dust bunnies! This picture was taken in July, 1995, at my cousin's wedding and it's an incredible event! I'm sandwiched in the middle of my parents, Gus and Anna. I had just FOUND GUS a year before and our relationship was always a little rocky, probably because he was on a mission to kill his liver from his days as a Navy boy in Jacksonville! Still, there was a hole in me that would never have been filled had I never met him...To Anna's left is Charles, the man who raised me since I was four. If I was honest I would say that our relationship was a little rocky as well, especially after "their" child came along two years later. Still, because of Charles, I had stability and grew up in the same house until I left home, I had my first car (a '66 Rambler!) and I had a Catholic high school education, and my first job at Southern Bell (he retired with 40+ years) and a few loans-on-demand, and if I was honest, he might have even played a minute part in my daughter's name. Still, it's really tough when you are 8 years old and you have to stop signing your name CINDY LEE HARDWICK and relearn CINDY LEE INGRAM! I suppose Charles really didn't have to step up to the plate, I mean he was 37 when he married my mom, and that was his one and only marriage! During my first year of teaching, I was called to my Principal's office, with the news that Charles was gone. My priest came and picked me up and we went to the hospital. Of course, everyone else had already left but because I was with an "official collar person," they let me view the body. So I told him that I really did appreciate his support throughout the years, even if he was a hard man to love. I think he must have had a wonderful experience at his death because his mouth was slightly opened and slightly smiling like he was really beholding something amazing! I was asked to give the eulogy, which I did, and I used the LOVE VERSES in 1 Corinthians 13, you know.."Love is patient, Love is kind...." Charles showed his love by doing things, usually involving repairs of everything electronic! In fact, after the funeral, all his (and my) Southern Bell buddies reminded me, "Abe put in my surround sound," or "Abe fixed my washing machine," you get the idea. (He got the moniker ABE after Honest Abe!) It was less than five years later when I had to stand at another grave, and this time I heard a 21-gun salute and received his flag. The best thing about Gus (He got his moniker from Gustavos, a man he really admired, and his first employer in Jacksonville) was that he had several relationships after mom which produced two brothers, John and Justin. John and I are facebook friends which is awesome and Justin met our father at the funeral. (Long story for another day..We got to reconnect a year later when his family vacationed in Orlando!) One cool thing is I went to Korea with the University of Florida four summers ago. My father had been a POW, and over twenty years later, John was stationed there, then another twenty years later, I showed up. So it was cool to walk in the footsteps of the Hardwick men! I blogged about my trip every day, and John was my biggest fan! So, I guess you can say I'm the perfect example of NATURE and NURTURE. So, this is a strange blog, but this is where my heart is today!!!

Why I Love Mr. Man (to the tune of..."He Never Wrote a Song for Linda" by Barry Manilow)

So, I just returned from a great 4th of July weekend at Paradise! If you are looking at a map, head AAAALLLLLLL the way down 95 and you'll find Key Biscayne. It's just a breathtaking place. Whenever I return from the six hour road trip, there's always some time for reflecting. I can only talk to everybody on the phone for so long, sing at the top of my lungs for so long, check out rest stops, bite my nails, you get the idea. And that's only the first hour! HA! Well, this trip I was thinking how Mr. Man is a rough and tough "man's man" kindofaguy who has a sensitivity in all the right places! (He would kill me if he knew I was telling you this, but he actually has a poster of JOHN WAYNE in his bedroom!!! That's probably the best metaphor to describe his philosophy of life!) Something you probably don't know about me is that I was in a long term, very long distance relationship for many years with a Cuban named Carlos. We first met over 12 years ago and were each other's rock through divorces, children, church biz (he was an Episcopal priest) and for all those years his name was my password and vice versa. You get the idea. He lived most of his life in Cuba and it was a lot easier for me to travel there! (My own two people accompanied me as teenagers to visit his church and family in Guantanamo and to meet his daughter, my godchild, and they loved him too.) Not to be graphic, but we finally got to consumate our love in August, 2007. In April, 2008, he was gone, due to complications from a quadruple bypass. When he met me at the Havana airport, the first thing he did was forcibly move my head to his chest, saying "Listen to my heart." (As if I hadn't been doing that all along!) We had a great relationship with music and every once in a while (especially in SOUTH FLORIDA) I'll hear THAT song. Well, it happened at the IBIS Lounge in Key Biscayne on Friday, July 2nd. That's me and Mr. Man's favorite hang out and they frequent tunes of the Spanglish variety. I heard the song and Mr. Man said, "You're in Cuba right now aren't you." What could I say? I was busted. I was teary-eyed. So he stood up, I stood up, and we danced...and with my eyes closed we both knew who my partner was, at least for the two to three minute soundtrack... I never shared how I met Mr. Man. In April, 2008, I took a dark-thirty Greyhound from Jacksonville to Miami to catch a flight to Havana to see Carlos who had been admitted to Intensive Care. At midnight, every passenger had to deboard for 30 minutes in Orlando. I reached for an orange juice, and this crazy brown man reached for the same bottle. He was waiting to catch the bus to Miami. He said I had nice calves! Then he asked me why would I be waiting at the Miami airport for four hours all alone when I could hit the beach at Key Biscayne and make a new friend. It made sense to me! So we hung out all morning and he rode a taxi with me to the airport and I waved goodbye. When I arrived in Havana, I WAS TURNED AWAY, the first time that has happened with ten visits over twelve years...When I returned home, I didn't even leave my house for three days, and this was after another long-ass Greyhound ride back home...Carlos died that week. I never got to say goodbye. Then Mr. Man started calling and we began an amazing relationship. So, that's one of the many reasons why I love him...I think you can consider yourself a very blessed woman if you have known two larger-than-life John Wayne types!!! Don't you?