Legacy

You know where I'm going with this post, don't you?

There has been so much high-profile death in the past two weeks - Ed McMahon, MJ, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays, Karl Malden, even our beloved Mrs. Slocombe, Mollie Sudgen, from Are You Being Served? - lots of famous people have died, y'all.

And, as I was thinking about Sudgen's death while I was at choir practice Wednesday night (don't judge me for not paying attention - all we did was listen to the Christmas musical he's picked) I started thinking about legacies.

My legacy, and that of my family as a whole.

What will people say about me, and about my family, when I'm gone? Will people think about the good things - like some have tried to do with MJ, remember how awesomely talented he was, and not the allegations of the 1990's and the abject creepiness of his adult years? Will they remember Jason and me as people who did what needed to be done, who could always be counted on?

The only people who really know what life is like in the Turner house are Jason, Anna Marie, and me. What is she going to remember about her parents, about our marriage and our life, when she's an adult and we're no longer here? Have we done a sufficient job of teaching her what is important to us as a family, and what we feel that the Bible teaches us is important in God's sight?

While it would be nice for my obit to include the words "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist" that's probably not going to happen. And seriously, my career is not the most important thing in my life. It never has been, and I hope it never will be. The most important legacies that I'm crafting right now are in my marriage and how I'm raising my daughter. Those are the things we leave behind, even more than the words I write or the songs I sing, or the things I've collected over the years.

I want Anna Marie to be proud of her parents, to think of us as honorable, Godly people. I want to be the kind of person who can be depended on, not one who "talks a good game" but doesn't deliver.

I want to leave a positive, Godly legacy behind when I'm gone. What about you?

Melissa Turner here, for being sad when a celeb dies

It's been a weird week for famous people, y'all. And while I've always been a sucker for a dead pop culture icon (RIP MJ! Don't stop till you get enough, man!) one death is hitting me kinda, unexpectedly, hard.

That's right. Mr. Kaboom hisownself, Billy Mays.

While I've never been a fan of his (or his obnoxiously loud voice) I've been watching his reality show, Pitchmen, and it's given me a new respect for his craft.

The show has given me a glimpse at a more human side of the Oxy Clean guy, but I guess that was part of the point. Not only did he perform in the commercials, he and his buddy Antony Sullivan (or, Sully as he's known on the show) actually worked with the inventors on how to best market their products.

His was a unique brand of showmanship, and I'm just sad that I didn't find these gems until today:





I just about split my side on that second one. Laying low in a motel room FTW!



REST IN PEACE, BILLY MAYS. OUR WORLD IS BETTER PLACE BECAUSE YOU YELLED AT US.

Where has the summer gone?

It seems like school just let out a few days ago, and yet here we are nearing the end of June.

Crazy!

We published our Profiles issue today, which happens every June. And, the Five Star Races are Friday night! Time for those already! Anna Marie's age group has a 1/4 mile run, and I (foolishly) promised to take her to the park tonight to practice on the 1/4 mile track there.

In the middle of a heat advisory. Yay me!

Next week is the Fourth of July, and the next day Anna Marie leaves for camp in Oklahoma. When she gets back, she's leaving the next day for South Carolina, and then it's just a couple more weeks until school starts again.

Have mercy!

I guess just like Christmas comes earlier each year, so does the first day of school!

I'm just kind of dreading that the second half of this summer is going to pass by even more quickly than the first!

Oh no she din't!

Oh yes she did.

Told you I was tweaking things these days!

I just realized, I haven't cooked in four days.

Not since lunch on Sunday have I had to cook.

Brilliant!

Here's the rundown of my week, so far:

Sunday night, we went to our small group meeting. We had hamburgers, graciously donated by Peasnap Catering, and I didn't have to cook them! WIN!

Then, on Monday, my dad was at my house using the internet when I got home, and he and Jason were in the middle of something, and I realized that I had just a few minutes to get Anna Marie to Vacation Bible School at our friend's church. Since they feed them at VBS, and Jason and I hadn't eaten, he had me pick up some Kentucky Grilled Chicken.

(Side note: that stuff is really good, so don't go telling me that it isn't as healthy as it pretends to be, because we're eating it at least once a week now. LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!)

Tuesday, I worked late, and my mom took AM to VBS. Jason ate popcorn for dinner in my absence - since I didn't know what time I'd be home, I told him to go ahead and eat - and I heated up some fat free refried beans in the mircowave.

(Microwave does not equal cooking, people.)

Today - oh, what can I say about today? What can I say about a day that really started at 10:30 last night, when my friend at the Sheriff's Office sent me a Facebook message to check my work email, because there had been an incident with a deputy, and I had a press release waiting. Except I CAN'T check my work email from home, because it includes some odd username/password combo that I don't have memorized for the webmail login. So I spent the next 30 minutes combing the websites of my competitors up north, and pieced together what had happened.

What had happened was: a guy freaked out, assaulted someone, stole a car, and left. Then, he killed a guy in a car on the side of the road. Then, he robbed a convenience store at gunpoint. After that, he kidnapped a relative, ran from a deputy, and tried to kill that deputy in two different ways before being shot himself.

He's facing at least half a dozen charges when he gets out of the hospital.

So anyway, after waiting two hours on a press conference to start today, and having my car run hot on the way back, and working through lunch, and then having a really, really long staff meeting, and then working overtime to finish a special section that had to go down today - well, let's just say I didn't argue any when Jason had brought home some grilled chicken salads.

And will I have to cook tomorrow night? Nope. It's our weekly trip to Backyard Burger. And I may not cook Friday either, because Anna Marie is spending the night with a cousin so we may take advantage of another date night.

So folks, the moral of this story is - sometimes, when the world is crumbling around you, at least you won't have to spend what little time you have left slaving away in the kitchen.

A change is gonna come

I was going to call this post "ch-ch-ch-changes" and put up a picture of David Bowie, but then I remembered - I've already done that.

So, instead, I used the title of a Sam Cooke song. Clever, no?

No?

Well.

As you can see, I've made a couple of changes. I was inspired by some changes that are happening at work today, and which I'm still trying to process.

The first you'll notice is the layout; yes, I'm talented at the "copy and paste" method of blog updating.

The second thing you'll notice is the "Swidget."

(It's that great big square thing over there on the sidebar. Please, if you know some html hack I can use to get that thing to shrink, for the love of Pete, let me know! I'm a mere mortal and not privy to that sort of know-how.)

I've signed up with Swagbucks and, while I haven't redeemed any yet, I'm really, really close to being able to do so! And they've got lots of cool stuff, just for searching! And if you click that Swidget and sign up from here, I get more!

Swagbucks is a search engine, powered by Google, which randomly chooses to give you rewards points for using it. You can then trade those points in for oodles of different things - mp3s, gift cards, and lots more.

Though I haven't gotten any prizes, I promise it's legit. I know people who have! Seriously! And I'm having even more fun with these things called "swagcodes" that they have "hunts" for. The other night, during the NBA finals, they hid FIVE codes on their site. FIVE! It was only good during half time (the codes all have time limits) and I actually had fun figuring out the clues to find the codes.

(I am SUCH a dork.)

If you sign up with Swagbucks on Twitter or Facebook, you get all sorts of neat information - like when there's a swag code! They also have a program called Twitter Tuesday Phrase that Pays, and if they pick your tweet, you win 50 Swagbucks!

Sweet!

I've also gotten around to finally changing the "What I'm Reading" button over there. I love Lillian Jackson Braun's books - they make me want to live the life of the main character, in a quaint little town, with plenty of money from an inheritance, and a couple of Siamese cats.

Living in a converted barn, and writing a column for the local paper - no crime stories, no angry public officials. That would be the life!

I've made a couple more changes to Anna Marie's room too, but - I kinda ordered a little custom canvas wall thing for her room. It'll only be about $10, and it's by a local artist! I've just got a little more tweaking to do before I'm ready to reveal her room.

Tweaking. I guess that's what I should have called today's activity. TWEAKING.

A tweak here. A tweak there.

Add it up, and a change is gonna come.

It's 2 p.m. on a Sunday, and I'm still in my nightclothes.

No, no one is sick.

No, Hell didn't freeze over.

Yes, we did have a massive storm on Friday night, which knocked the power out to lots of places - including my church. We drove past yesterday, and a huge tree had fallen over onto the lines about a block up, snapping the power pole in half.

Like a huge toothpick.

So, while we could've gone all old-school and had church outside (a logistical nightmare, with 1,500 average attendees) I suppose, it was canceled. And, for a high-tech church like mine, that means a series of text messages and Facebook posts about 8 p.m. last night.

(It's a good thing we didn't try to have church outside, because it was storming AGAIN this morning.)

What did we do while said storm was wreaking havoc on the Mid-South?

We were driving. Or, more specifically, I was driving. To downtown Memphis, where there was a tornado watch.

And it was all for Jason - so we could see Jaws at The Orpheum, on the big screen, as part of their Summer Movie Series.

No, we didn't take Little AM - my mom came and spent the night so we could have a date!

I hadn't seen the movie all the way through, and there was one scene - underwater, Richard Dreyfuss in a wet suit, next to an abandoned boat, I won't say more for fear of spoiling it for the 3 folks who still haven't seen it - that I just about ended up in Jason's lap.

Hyperventilating. He, of course, thought it was hilarious. I, of course, did not.

So, here we are, actually spending a Sunday at home, and Anna Marie and I have yet to get dressed. I spent about an hour on her room this morning (how do I always end up with at least one bag full of trash, no matter how often I go in there?) and she and Jason have been carrying on for the past two hours or so.

(Oh, the sounds of "teamwork." I can hear them even as I type. Better him than me.)

We will be having our small group meeting tonight, which is good, because Peasnap Catering is providing the hamburgers for our cookout. Jason and I make about four dozen "Snappy Burgers" (my name for his proprietary blend of secret herbs and spices, available on Tuesdays at the kiosk in the auction bay) and they're now in my freezer.

Mmm, mmm, good.

I'm trying really, really hard to get Anna Marie's room into shape, because it's really, really stressful for me to go in there when it isn't - and she's about to leave for two weeks, to Oklahoma and South Carolina, and I'm not going to spend my precious break time cleaning in there!

Maybe, just maybe, we'll get some "after" photos in a bit - because I sure as heck didn't take any before.

I don't want to be reminded of that mess!