Author: abby mumford

travel

role models

abby mumford

traveling gives you a fresh perspective on yourself, your likes, your dislikes, your neighborhood, your family, your friends, your habits, your life. basically, it will flip your notions upside down. the farther you travel away from home, the knowledge you learn will increase exponentially.*

i was in denver this past weekend. i had the good fortune to be able to swing a last minute visit, which meant i had two and a half days with my mom and maga (my grandmother). amidst the flights and food and christmas cards and conversations and quiet moments, i learned about these people i call my family.

for instance, there is MAGA. she is 89 years and 8 months old. what a trooper she is. she is dealing with the aches, pain, and confusion of getting older, but she manages to put a smile on her face and get out there in the world despite the fact that every morning she wakes up without jobo (my grandfather), she does so with a broken heart. her advanced age means she can’t continue the globe trotting ways of her youth, and so, she brings the globe to her. egypt and india are the only two places she and jobo never visited, so when the king tut exhibit set up shop in the denver art museum, she got tickets for herself and mom and me and we all walked like egyptians.

thanks, maga, for showing me how to retain my sassiness for 89+ years. and for showing me how to bring the world to my doorstep.

for instance, my DAD is a sly guy. he’s not upfront with his emotions, so you have to listen for his declarations of love. i’m glad i now know how to do that. this time, it took the form of him looking up my (ridiculously small windowed) connection in philly. he let me know which gate i’d be arriving at (B14) and which gate i had to get to (C18) in 15 minutes. (i originally had 40 whole minutes, but de-icing a plane + waiting while the pilots shoo a fly out of the cockpit cuts into that.) he gave me specific directions on how to get from one gate to the next (because i am amazingly adept at getting lost). he even emailed and texted me this information because he wasn’t sure which i’d get to first. (side note, i LOVE my smartphone.)

too bad i didn’t turn on my phone until after i landed in boston.

thanks, dad, for giving me a reason to practice letting someone take care of me. i’d kind of forgotten.

for instance, there is my MOM. i had the opportunity to witness my mother as a mother but not while mothering me, which (still with me?) means i was able to objectively watch and appreciate her parenting skills. observing her taking care of her mother was something phenomenal. i felt like i had put on a pair of super-scientific-x-ray-night-vision-high-tech-not-yet-created-but-probably-will-be-soon* goggles and instead of seeing bones or guts or body heat, i could see her patience, her intelligence, her frustration, her sense of humor, her nerves of steel, her love.

growing up, it’s hard to see your mother for all of her sacrifices because, well, you can’t see past yourself. (those teen years are tough on everyone involved.) and even now, it’s still a bit hard to see her objectively because she’s either doing something for me or for one of my siblings and i’m too close to view the situation with any clarity. but denver enlightened me. my mom’s relationship with her mother is (not so) surprisingly a lot like hers and mine. they laugh, bicker, listen, talk, direct, clash, roll their eyes, are grateful for one another. another key fact: they still possess the ability to embarrass each other.

for instance, maga came down wearing a silk scarf tied around her head to keep her ear warm. i thought she looked adorable, however mom couldn’t stop laughing at how maga looked like a babushka. later that night, we were all at the neighbors (maga was sans scarf) when my mom announces to the group, “do you have any grandsons? abby’s available.” yup. thanks, mom.

but you know what? if having them as my role models means i’m going to grow up to be like them, i am ready to grow up.

any day now…..

in the meantime, thank you, mom, for being there for these first (almost, but not quite yet) 30 years. i wouldn’t be who i am today without your guidance, your expectations, your love.

*so says me, the scientific expert.

book club

BOOK HUNGRY: all creatures great and small

abby mumford

who says you have to be crowded into the living room/kitchen/dining room to hold a book club? we are ladies of the 21st century. we don’t need no stinkin’ couches. so pull up a blog and join in the conversation.

the members of the BOOK HUNGRY are (alphabetically): patty blount, kelly breakey, karla nellenbach, vanessa noble, alyson peterson, cynthia reese, elizabeth ryann, and myself. here’s the deal. we pick a book to read. we discuss via email. we post a review on our individual blogs on the same day (3rd thursday of the month). we link to each other. done. i know, genius. click on each one of their names (above) and it’ll take you to their review. browse. enjoy.

this month’s BOOK HUNGRY selection is:

ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL by James Herriot

i am not an animal person.

*waits until crowd stops gasping*

(and by crowd, i mean the one person who’s reading this.)

i also don’t read a lot of non-fiction.

*crickets chirping*

hey, those crickets have a place in this month’s selection, which, despite the aforementioned facts, i enjoyed. and here’s why. well, wait, let me first quote james herriot himself:

“If only vetting just consisted of treating sick animals. But it didn’t. There were so many other things.” (page 173)

and THAT’S why i like this book. it’s not just about the animals and the veterinary practice herriot joined right after he graduated from vet school, it covers his crazy boss and the farmers and the town and his crazy boss’s brother and the automobiles and his clumsy search for love. (yes, i could relate to that part.)

sure, the animals have a starring role (and i found it rather fascinating to read about them from a scientific standpoint), but it’s mainly about james  herriot, an english bloke who’s fresh out of vet school and is in desperate need of a job. (hmm, sounds familiar in this economic time). what follows is herriot’s firsthand account of how he found his way into the bizarre, hilarious, never ceasing life of a country vet. it’s a coming of age story, if you will.

(can you still call it a coming of age when the main character has graduated from college and beyond?)

back to the story, herriot’s boss (siegfried farnon) said this: “There’s a very fine dividing line between looking a real smart vet on the one hand and an immortal fool on the other. This sort of thing happens to us all.” (page 196) which is why this book is so relatable. we’ve all been in situations that required us to tread softly in hopes of coming out looking like a genius instead of appearing as though we barely passed the first grade. herriot faces these situations weekly.*

i fear if i go on, i might ruin some of the most hilarious parts, so just know that the life of a veterinarian is never dull and throughout the hectic and chaotic nature of his job, herriot manages to maintain a sense of humor as well as a degree of humbleness.

if you like animals and non-fiction (or even if you don’t), prepare to be charmed by this book.

*intentional vagueness required so as not to spoil anything.

p.s. see you next month, folks, where our December pick will be THE HOST by Stephenie Meyer.

//

feelings

the art of listening

abby mumford

people have been surprising me lately.

(not that it’s surprising that i am surprised because let’s be serious, i’m constantly startled by people popping up in my office door, by my roommate rounding the corner, by typing in wicked.com instead of wickedthemusical.com. (seriously, don’t do it.) and i am the worst at googling things, so if i can ever actually find the information i started out searching for, it’s a minor miracle.)

ok, my point.

sometimes i’m so busy listening to others that i forget others are doing the same. it catches me off guard when someone reveals they were listening to me or reading my blog or paying attention to my tweets.

it’s easy to tell who’s listening when you’re in a conversation and a person pulls up facts previously discussed or someone leaves a comment on a blog post or someone replies to an email or someone @ replies you on a tweet, but it’s hard to quantify who’s paying attention when you don’t have time for an in-depth conversation or they don’t leave comments or they aren’t on twitter or they forget to reply to an email or life just gets in the way, as it is wont to do.

so you have to LISTEN for the random snippets.

like when my mom sent me an incredibly generous letter.

like when my grandfather said he heard i was researching netbooks. and wanted to know why. (i figured it’s time to redefine my writing. i don’t want it to be just a hobby. it’s a job and i need to treat it as such. and thusly, i need portable technology. yeah, yeah, netbooks are going out of style. hey, i’m still conducting researching here. any suggestions?) (also, is anyone out there available to give me a scrivener 101 class? it’s supposed to be intuitive, but me and technology? we don’t click. i need an outsider to hold my hand and walk me through the process before i’ll let technology take me out on an unchaperoned date.)

like when my godmother mentioned she’s read my blog and is that ok because that’s not stalking me is it? (for the record, nope, not stalking. READ ON, cindy.)

like when my dad asked about my new sport, squash. i hadn’t talked about it except on my blog. perhaps he read it there or perhaps my mom or sisters read it and mentioned it to him, but whatever it was, he remembered and asked me about it.

like when kelly breakey wrote this post for me. or, to be specific, about me. i was merely tweeting about my obsession with the darren criss/glee version of katy perry’s TEENAGE DREAM, which you should watch by the way. here you go:

she watched the video and caught the fever. and dedicated a post to it. it may seem silly to others, but it feels nice to be thanked. sometimes it only takes a quick comment or a short video or a hug or a phone call to crack open a bad day and let the sunshine spill in. she says i did that for her, but she returned the favor tenfold by writing that post.

basically i just wanted to say THANKS EVERYONE for listening to me. it is the nicest thing you could do (well, maybe you could bake me some cookies and mail them to me. that’d be swell. chocolate chip, please.), but more importantly, thanks for giving me a reason to love listening to you.

(you in the general sense. and, of course, YOU, yes, you right there, in particular.)

general

note to self

abby mumford

i was at the weepies concert on sunday. while listening to them (and the opener, greg tannen) the lyrics sparked some area of my brain stem (or something scientific like that).

“GHU.”

“there’s something about october.”

“why don’t you break me like a stone?”

those make complete sense to me, which is good because often my grocery list makes me go HUH? i guess the creative mind works a bit differently than the logical, analytical, errand running mind.

do you write cryptic notes to yourself? can you always decipher them? or does it put a strain on your membrane?

feelings

from one middle child to another

abby mumford

my dear nephew,

you turned 6 yesterday! i’m 5 times older than that (well almost. let’s not get ahead of ourselves), but don’t let that fact  scare you. i’m swear, i’m still pretty cool. i may not be able to work the blonde hair and blue eyes quite like you do, but then again, you probably don’t realize you’re rocking it. and come to think of it, you probably think girls are icky and don’t want them near you. but what you don’t realize is that the time will come, and when it does, you’ll see that blondes really do have more fun. (don’t tell your mom or dad i told you that.)

you probably don’t yet realize that all those hours you spend with your legos building and creating and destroying and building again are laying the foundation for a future engineer. typical mumford style. (unless you’re me.)

you probably don’t understand that by spending your lunch money (every day) on a bagel and cream cheese you are creating a lunch time tradition. a tradition that is delicious and fuels your body for an afternoon at school. an afternoon of learning important things like letters and numbers and calculus. it also shows that you are a creature of habit (me too, especially when it comes to food) and there is nothing wrong with being predictable. (trust me, ask any one of my friends what i’ll order when i’m out at brunch and they’ll tell you, without pause, french toast.) you know what you like and you’re not afraid to order it. but don’t forget that there are some really fantastic foods out there, like green beans and tomatoes and milk and apples and corn and sweet potatoes.

you also probably don’t realize your flexibility is an amazing trait your mom passed down to you. it’s important to keep limber because there’s nothing quite like crawling on the floor after your cars, climbing a tree, or riding your bike, but if you can’t touch your toes, those things aren’t nearly as much fun. (you’ll have to take my word for it.) and hopefully that physical flexibility will become a personality trait as well because as the middle child, you have to be able to go with the flow. your other siblings  may (sometimes) garner more attention, but it just means you get to be independent and do things on your own like the big guy you are.

but you know what? you shouldn’t know any of those things yet. you’re only 6. you should be focusing on the fun and the laughs and the good times and the cupcakes.  you’re only 6 once, go ahead and be silly! all the time!

happy birthday, aaron bear!