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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 17

Day 17: Are you named after anyone?

No, and I am named Patricia only through my dad’s intervention. Mom apparently wanted to name me Yesenia when Dad (thankfully) stepped in and said no (no offense to any Yesenias out there). He also had a hand in naming my sisters, which is why all three of our names have “a” as the second and last letters in our names. Synergy!

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 16

Day 16: Your least favorite chore.

Despite being the Keeper of the Litter Boxes, I’m going to have to say cleaning the bathroom is my least favorite chore. At least with the litter boxes I can keep everything pretty well contained. When it comes to the bathroom, though, there’s just so much more to clean and more chemicals to deal with. It’s essentially this germ-phobe’s nightmare. (Although I did get into the habit of wearing latex gloves while cleaning/dealing with chemicals when I was pregnant.) It works out that Rich almost always takes bathroom cleaning duties while I take kitchen duty when we go on a housecleaning bender. Now if only I could afford a maid, I’d never have to worry about who has to clean the bathroom. Or the litter boxes.

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 15

Day 15: Something that bugs you.

I can only pick one thing? That makes this so much harder.  Hmm.  I was going to say people’s faces staring at me from magazine covers (creeps. me. the. hell. out.), but I’m going to go with something that bugs me so much it makes my dander stand up: people who text (or worse, answer their cell phones) during movies. Anytime a fellow movie-goer’s cell lights up with a text, it may as well be a lighthouse, it’s so bright to me. And, oh, how my blood boils when those rude people don’t turn off their phones or at least keep them out of sight. Holding it up to your face in the theater? Really? And honestly — WHAT is so important that you have to keep texting during a movie? Or answer your phone? I know that most of the people sharing those darkened auditoriums with me are not bigwig CEOs or gifted, in-demand neurosurgeons or anyone else without whom the world can’t survive for a two-hour movie. I say all this as someone who has put the verbal smackdown on my own family and friends for these horrible cell-phone cinematic transgressions on more than one occasion. (I am that person who will report you to theater management.) Going to see a movie? Turn off your damn phone. It’s what I do. It’s a simple common courtesy. And if you are expecting a life-changing call or text (ha!), then don’t go see a movie. Especially not one with me.

*I thank God cellphones were a rarity when I worked at a movie theater. It was never an issue. I miss those days.

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 14

Day 14: One thing you want to do before you die.

To get off my ass, make the time, finish at least one of the books I’ve started, and get published. Because I have to say, seeing (and reading) some of what makes the best-seller lists these days is quite the eye-opener.

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 13

Day 13: How you relax.

Relax? Reee-lax? Am I pronouncing that correctly? That should tell you how often I relax and how good I am at it. When I do attempt to relax, it usually involves me stretched out on the couch like a slug catching up on recorded shows on the DVR.  I’m pretty sure in a former life I was a potato; in this one, I just happen to be a couch potato. And most of the time when I do stop working on whatever I’m doing around the house, it’s usually on the spouse’s orders. He’ll actually sneak around to catch me if I’m trying to work when I should be relaxing. It’s not always easy quieting this scattered, multitasking noggin of mine. But some days I do manage to do just that. I could get to much more done if I only had a clone.

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 12

Day 12: Something you do every day.

Believe it or not, I, Patricia Sanchez Lee, recovering Catholic, say prayers every night at bedtime. I know some people who believe I’m a godless heathen because I don’t regularly attend church (admittedly a rarity here in the Bible Belt), but I’m not. Just because I don’t attend weekly services doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God, Jesus, heaven, hell, and all that goes with it; I’m just more spiritual than I am religious. I firmly believe that God is everywhere, as I was taught in church, so I know He hears my nightly prayers. But I’m definitely open to the idea that someday I might find a church with which I feel compatible.

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 11

Day 11: A photo that makes you laugh.

I’ve done really well taking pictures of Coraline every day so far this year. Getting them uploaded to my Flickr account is another story. In taking all these pictures, I’m always amazed at the range of expressions she makes. From shy smiles to Scrunchie Face© (her trademark, on-demand expression) to coy looks to hamming it up, she covers all the bases. For some reason, though, this is the picture that makes me laugh every time I look at it. It’s not that unusual an expression for Coraline, it’s just so not Coraline.  I took this at bedtime one night while she sat in the chair in her room. It’s like she decided to channel an indecisive, aloof old man in a diner or something. Rich and I agree we have no idea why she made this face. We also agree that we love her face, no matter what the expression.

"What can I say?" (3/11/12)

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 10

Day 10: Your favorite room in your house.

One of the things that made this house so appealing to us was the big basement den/family room. We instantly knew that this would be the room in which we spent most of our time — it was perfect for us, with plenty of room for Coraline to play and in which to entertain guests. (To the left of that three-headed lamp, just around the corner, is our home gym. And adjacent to that is the kitchenette.)  After almost exactly two years of living here, this is indeed our most-used room in the house. And, dare I say, most popular — whenever our nephews come to visit, they immediately want to go downstairs. Rich, Coraline, and I spend every evening together in here, from the time we get home from work until Coraline’s bedtime. We watched Coraline learn to crawl and then walk and then run in this room. We held her first birthday party here. We’ve had gaming sessions and new year’s get-togethers here. It’s the room the entire extended family retreated to after Thanksgiving dinner. It’s where I held a chick-flick-a-thon back in February (and hopefully another one at the end of this month). And this Saturday, it will be the room in which we host my parents’ 40th(!) wedding anniversary party (thanks to my sisters for getting the ball rolling on that). I’ll be consulting with the siblings the next couple of days to figure out what decorating route we want to go. I’m thinking nothing too fancy since (1) it’s for a cookout and (2) the room looks like a Howard Johnson room frozen in time. Seriously — I cannot wait until we can afford to redo this whole room. And yet wait I must. Sigh.

You should see this room after Coraline and her cousins have trashed it.

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 9

Day 9: Your most treasured item.

I never really got to know my paternal grandparents. They lived in Puerto Rico, and neither they nor my parents had enough money to make frequent visits a possibility; travel from Houston to P.R. wasn’t cheap. One of the very few memories I have of them involved my parents and their friends getting the bright idea to pick bananas right out of the trees in (I believe) El Yunque National Forest on one of our visits to P.R. You know what I remember about that particular excursion? Sitting in the car after with my abuelo when cockroaches started pouring out of the trunk into the backseat with us. Turns out there were roaches living in those banana bunches. It’s a wonder I don’t flat-out faint at the sight of cockroaches to this day. Or bananas.

My better memory is of my abuela cooking for us (an abuela will never let you go hungry) and swinging in a hammock with my abuelo. That’s it. That’s all I can remember about them on my own. My last visit with both of them was when I was 3 or 4 years old. I saw my abuela again when my dad and I flew to Puerto Rico for Abuelo’s funeral when I was 11 1/2 years old. And on that visit, Abuela Maria gave me a religious medal that she and my abuelo had purchased for me years before. I wore that necklace every day from then on, only taking it off when I visited a beach, pool, or amusement park. I tucked it into my shirt if it didn’t match whatever other jewelry I was wearing (I prefer silver or white gold), slept with it on, and even wore it in the shower. Which is why, one day about 10 years ago, it was sheer luck that I happened to look at the floor of my shower just in time to spot the medal floating toward the drain. In a blind panic, I stepped on it at the last second, preventing it from disappearing down the drain. My mom took it to a jewelry store to repair the broken loop that led to the medal falling off. I stopped wearing it every day.

It now pretty much lives in my jewelry box, but every now and then I pull it out to look at it. It’s literally the only tangible gift I have from my abuela and abuelo, and I feel safer knowing where it is at all times than I do risking wearing it and maybe losing it.  But after tonight, I might just start wearing it while I sleep so I can feel like I have my grandparents with me again.

Front view

Back view

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31 Day Blog Prompt Challenge Day 8

Day 8: A birthday celebration.

I’ve had birthdays on the mind a lot lately: Coraline will turn two(!) in September, so I’ve been wracking my brain thinking about what to do, what would be age-appropriate, what theme she’d like (I’ll take a wild guess and say Elmo). She won’t remember her party, but I will.

There are two birthday celebrations of mine that I distinctly remember. One was a party at Chuck E. Cheese. While I can’t remember too many specifics, I do remember my sister Samantha seated across the table from me when Chuck E. himself came up behind her to say hi to our table. She turned around, looked up, and let out a scream that only a toddler could make, one that the astronauts in orbit probably heard clear as a bell in outer space. Her reaction pretty much made that party for me.

The other childhood birthday party that I distinctly recall is one we held at our house, I believe the last one I celebrated in Houston before we moved to Knoxville. I remember having a lot of friends over, and we watched cheesy movies, including at least one starring Elvira*. But what I remember more than anything, still clear as a bell, is the awesome cheeseburger birthday cake my mom got me from our favorite local bakery. (Oh, to be able to travel back in time to eat more of the donuts that bakery made.) I think it’s because that is still such a great birthday memory for me — that cake, the likes of which I’d never seen before — that I hope to make one just as memorable for Coraline someday. I’ll be sure to wait until she’s old enough to remember it.

I remember that cake being as beautiful as this one. (Get the recipe here.)

*I didn’t know until I wrote this post that Cassandra Peterson, aka Elvira, and I share the same birthday. Synergy!

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