I got lucky. Really lucky.

My dad grew up on a farm. His parents supported seven kids on a single coal miner’s salary. My mother’s family wasn’t quite as poor, but they too ate a lot of beans and cornbread. When my mom was my age, she divorced her abusive first husband; shortly after that, she was in a major car accident and was seriously injured and needed several surgeries and lots of time in the hospital. She was out of work for about ten months total, with no money coming in and the bills piling up. After she got back to work, she paid off every penny of her bills, living by herself in a trailer and eating a lot of pancakes (they were cheap). Once my parents were married, they went through several strikes at the mines, when Dad would be out of work for months at a time. They had to save when they could.

Right now, Jesse and I are trying to live on as little as possible. We have some aggressive savings goals, and neither of us make much money. (That’s what you get when one of you works for a nonprofit and the other teaches. Well, we can’t say we didn’t bring this on ourselves.) So, I’ve been trying to take a page out of my parents’ playbook. We’ve been eating beans. We’re trying to use less electricity. We carpool. I’ve been drying our clothes on a rack instead of the dryer whenever possible. (I had to draw the line at the towels.) I’m not nearly as thrifty as my parents, not as resourceful as my grandparents. But I’m trying.

If you have any tips on saving money, I’d love to hear them. I love reading Erica’s blogs on saving money, because she is so much better at it than I am. My friend Sharon is also the Queen of Saving; that woman can stretch a dollar like nobody’s business. Another friend, Kirsten, is a budgeting pro. Kelly and Hilary continually impress me with their couponing skills. Basically, Harris Teeter just pay them to shop there. I’m pretty sure that’s how that goes. Couponing is a skill I just don’t possess, unfortunately.

I’ve got a ways to go, but I’ll just keep plugging along. I’ll just keep making those pots of beans.

The other day, a friend and I were walking downtown and we were gushing about how exciting it was that she was finally vested in her 401(k). She suggested that our excitement was an indicator that we were old. I had to agree. The fact that retirement savings is an exciting prospect has to mean that we are at last becoming our parents. Now we’re the penny pinchers and the long-term thinkers. We’re the ones fussing over the electric bills. And I guess that’s not such a bad thing.

Without further ado:

This is how I know my parents love me. I put embarrassing photos of them on the Internet, and they still talk to me.

(In case you were wondering, no, Dad doesn’t always look like this. My mom won’t let him wear hats, because his ears stick out like that. So, whenever he can get his hands on a hat, he will put it on and make a face to make her fake-mad, and then we all crack up. And, yes, he does this in public too.)

Here’s a picture of them both looking good. See? Not all the pictures I post online are embarrassing.

What’s that, Mom? You say bikini pictures aren’t any better? Well, I say Dad is one lucky fellow, and here’s photographic evidence.

My dad has a good time. He goofs around, loves to tease my mother especially. I can’t tell what they’re doing in this picture, but it looks like they may be…biting one another? Guys! Get a room!

Another thing you should know about my dad is he’s a worker. My childhood memories almost always have Dad in the background, fixing something, building something, mowing something, growing something, tearing something apart, or otherwise doing something with his hands. His hands are wide and calloused. He fixed our cars, our washing machines, our dishwashers. He built fences and replaced our kitchen counters and cabinets. He knew all the neighbors, and he helped them too. In Florida, he grew orange trees and lemon trees and lime trees and grapefruit trees, and our yard was always green.

One day, a neighbor woman was walking her little dog when a large dog ran out after her, and my dad immediately grabbed a garbage can lid and ran into the street to help.

That’s the kind of guy my dad is.

He used to be a coal miner in West Virginia. He loved that job. Here’s the only picture I have of him underground:

When I was four, we moved to Florida, and Dad worked at Cape Canaveral on rockets. He liked that job well enough, but not as much as mining coal.

Here he is working on something cold:

Dad isn’t a big fan of cold. He doesn’t miss this:

He’d much rather be here:

Now he splits his time between West Virginia and Florida, and he still fixes things and tears apart kitchens and mows the grass. He hikes and takes pictures of white water rafters. He trains the dog to “stay” and goes out on his boat and buys my mom pink flamingos as a joke (I don’t remember how that got started). He still jokes with hats too, and Mom stills pretend to be surprised.

I love you, Dad.

But, I got to use my sweet vintage Saladmaster grater-thing. (I don’t know what it’s called.) This was my mom’s, and I imagine it was purchased sometime in the 1970s. It will shred and grate anything, and it looks like sci fi. I love it.

Sharon gave me some fabulous veggies from her garden, including some rather massive zucchini.

Check it out. Now it looks like sci fi + horror film.

In fact, the Saladmaster can be quite dangerous. I know from firsthand experience. The last time I was involved in the making of zucchini bread was when I was a kid. I was helping my mom, and we were using this very same kitchen device. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but through some carelessness on my part, my mother’s finger was cut rather badly. I felt horrible. (Perhaps this is why I’ve not attempted zucchini bread on my own, like ever?) Now that I’m an adult, I respect the power of the Saladmaster and try to pay close attention to what I’m doing.

Throughout this process, Oliver was extremely interested. He watched the Saladmaster, and the green shreds coming out of it, completely entranced.

When I decided to try to take a picture of my finished zucchini shreds, Oliver made his move. Chaos ensued. Ah, Oliver. You make life…interesting.

I did this during the day, too, particularly on long car trips. When I got my first Walkman, the stories suddenly had soundtracks.

I’m still in the planning stages of this book, and I realized today that writing (fiction, at least) is for me an extension of what I was doing as a child. I am functioning on one level as a normal person: I drive, I go to the bank, I buy groceries. But often I’m also imagining a story, inventing characters, listening as they speak to one another.

For the most part, this doesn’t impact “real life” that much. I’m still careful in the car. I watch where I’m going. But yesterday at the bank I made at least three mistakes while trying to complete a simple transaction. I hadn’t even been in “story mode,” but I’d been thinking about it in the car, and apparently I hadn’t fully returned to earth.

The teller laughed; I laughed. I told her my head must be in the clouds, or already in weekend mode. She asked if there was anything particular I was looking forward to about the weekend, and I paused for a moment, considered telling the truth, and then lied and said something about the beach, keeping my secret to myself.

As I left the bank, I smiled. And continued the story…

Toward the end of our time together, A. (who is three now) picked up his toy guitar, sat on a blue chair, and started singing to me. It was so gosh-darn cute.

The song sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I figured he was making something up. I clapped and encouraged him to keep singing.

He did. And the song was definitely something I knew. What was it? The lyrics were in three-year-old language, a little hard to place. It wasn’t a song we regularly sang together. I caught words here and there…train…bend…was it “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain”? No. He kept singing, and I listened more carefully.

He started at the beginning once again. Then–I swear to goodness–I heard: “I hear the train a coming, it’s rolling round the bend [something something] sunshine, since I don’t know when.”

Yes.

Yes.

He was singing “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash.

And that just made my day.

While at heart I’m still that girl who wants everything pre-measured and beautiful, in reality, I’m a messy cook. Ingredients wait on every surface, vegetable peels lay discarded on the corner of the cutting board, dirty utensils collect in the sink, pots and pans pile up with surprising rapidity. Neatness takes a backseat, and I become solely focused on the task at hand: making the meal as good as I can make it.

A couple weekends ago, I was cooking a Bon Appétit recipe and thought—what a great opportunity for a food-themed blog, with pictures! The recipe picture itself was pretty, so I figured I had a shot at making something halfway attractive. I love cooking blogs the way my younger self loved Martha’s show, and the little homeschooler in me thought—why, I can do that too!

I started with the recipe and an RC Cola. Cooking makes me thirsty.

Actually, this is what the scene really looked like, but I decided to move the soy sauce and Wal-Mart honey bear so the picture would look better.

Here is the kitchen before—at least one ingredient on every counter surface.

But then I decided it would look nicer to gather all ingredients together for a little counter party. (Also, check out the new dishwasher!)

I later realized the oyster sauce wasn’t even an ingredient in this recipe, so it sadly left the party and went back to the pantry. Sad.

Then, the cooking began in earnest.

I chopped asparagus, grated ginger, cooked soba noodles, and even skinned salmon. I was rather proud of myself for skinning the salmon, so I took a picture. I was beginning to get the sense that this endeavor would probably not produce a typical, everything-perfectly-in-its-place cooking blog.

This bowl of cooling soba noodles is the last neat picture of the bunch. Neatness, once again, took a backseat, and the messy cook came out.

After a semester of frozen pizzas and Ramen noodles and eating out, I was extremely pleased with myself over this meal—spinach, asparagus, salmon, ginger, avocado, soba, what healthful ingredient does it not use?

The aftermath was pretty impressive. Dishes everywhere. No neat stack of measuring bowls. No Rachael Ray-approved trash bowl. No collection of pretty pictures showing my neat, pretty kitchen and my neat, pretty cooking.

But, I don’t mind. I’m a messy cook, and I’m fine with that. I cook with abandon, and I have fun, and when I’m cooking I’m not thinking of a million other things. I’m not thinking about deadlines or assignments or tests or grading. I’m thinking about food. About the task at hand.

And then, after all is said and done, I get to enjoy the end result. And—perfect and pretty or not—I’m happy with that.

Growing up in Titusville, Florida, you get used to the launches, you become accustomed to the strange fact that one of our nation’s greatest technical achievements is on full display mere miles from your house, that every now and then a 300,000-pound rocket is shot from the earth into space, or that every now and then a group of people get strapped into a black and white vehicle and leave earth, and you can watch it all happen from the street in front of your house.

This is how you watch a launch, when you’re nine and living in a one-story house that was built in the 1960s. Your mom has the TV on, to watch the countdown, and when the announcer calls out, “Liftoff!” you run out the front door and into the street—not worrying, because no one drives down this street except people who live here, and they’re used to kids being in the road. You’re barefoot, and you feel the asphalt on your feet, every bump and bit of gravel, and you turn back toward your house and look at the sky.

Then, it happens: You see the rocket or the shuttle as it thunders up, you watch the enormous column of smoke pouring from it, you see the fire just at the top of the smoke, and you can’t help but feel excited, even though you don’t realize just how lucky you are to be watching it. You don’t think about the miracle of technology, about the improbability of it all, what it means, you just watch it and know somehow that you’re watching something thrilling.

Your dad works at the Cape, on the Delta II rocket. At work, he touches satellites and works in rooms with motors that hold seven thousand pounds of rocket fuel. The rooms are designed for explosions, to protect the people in the rest of the building if something goes wrong—the people who might have a shot at getting out alive.

But you don’t know anything about that.

When you’re almost fourteen, your dad has been complaining about the company cutting corners, cutting safety, cutting expenses. There’s a launch coming up, and your dad says he’s afraid this one will end up in the river.

The launch happens, the rocket lifting off, the announcer calling “Liftoff!” but then something happens. The rocket explodes. It’s almost beautiful, like fireworks. You watch a video later, you watch it on the news, you see it over and over again. The announcer says, “We have had an anomaly.” You feel sick when you see it.

Eventually, you leave Titusville for Orlando and college. You can’t see the launches anymore, but from time to time you go home and watch them. You’re busy, though, and you’re moving on, and Titusville seems small and sad, with its old cinder block houses and scrubby palm trees. You’re in a city now, and you’re not thinking about missing the launches. And then, you graduate. And then, a year later, you move to North Carolina. You are doing big things; you are going to grad school. You have left the state you grew up in.

Your father retires. You don’t know when the rockets launch now. The longer you’re away, the more this bothers you. Your in-laws tell you about shuttle launches, and you wish you could see them. You know the shuttles will themselves be retired soon. You visit the National Air and Space museum just outside of DC and when you see the shuttle there, dramatically lit and gorgeous, you feel like crying.

You see one more shuttle launch, on a sunny May morning, the day before your sister-in-law gets married. One of the last shuttle launches.

You stand in front of the Indian River and watch the launch, you watch the fire and smoke, without thinking you pray it won’t explode, you feel the rumble of it in your stomach, the loud sound of all that fire and power, and you know very acutely now how lucky you are to see this, how miraculous it is, and why you’re thrilled, and why you’re sad. You know.

Shuttle launch May 14, 2010