Saturday, January 29, 2011
Hayes44ever
Mary Poppins isn't the only thing that I love.
Last week, a friend forwarded me an incredible article about another of my great loves. Chuck Hayes is my all-time favorite Kentucky Wildcat. I first noticed him his freshman year. My family and I had followed the Cats to Athens, and this newbie initially caught my attention for the "44" on his jersey. Since childhood, I had HATED Kentucky 44s. I'm sorry, Dan Issel. Forgive me, Cotton Nash. You fellas were fantastic, but to my generation, the most immediate associations with "44" were Gimel "Scissorhands" Martinez and, God save us all, Rob Lock. I was 10 years old when Lock first put on his jersey. That was 23 years ago, and I still seethe with disdain when I think about him and his disgusting propensity to foul - early and often.
Then came Chuck Hayes. Like Lock, he hails from sunny CA. Thankfully, though, the similarities end there. In that first outing in Athens, Chuck was everywhere you'd want him to be - pulling down rebounds, chasing after loose balls, scoring the odd Whitaker Bank Shot. He did it all, and I took notice.
"Daddy," I said. "No more will I hate 44! That kid's gonna redeem his number!"
And did he ever.
In four years at UK, Chuck became everybody's favorite. He also became the player who had the highest win percentage in college basketball. Now a Houston Rocket (alongside fellow Cat Patrick Patterson), Chuck is doing big things in the NBA. By "big things," I mean backing up Yao Ming and holding Blake Griffin (John Wall's stiffest competition for Rookie of the Year) to 5 for 16 from the field. Sean Pendergast wrote a great post about this feat:
"Stingy defense," he wrote, "tireless effort, relentless rebounding...what kind of NBA player are you, Chuck? Please, on behalf of those of us who are still too shallow to fully appreciate the things that you do, stop trying so damn hard, Chuck Hayes."
In both the Richard Justice posting and in Pendergast's more recent rant "against" my Sweet Baby Hayes, the Houston press is waking up to what us Kentuckians have known about Chuck for a long time:
"All he does is win."
Friday, January 28, 2011
"Take some sound advice, and don't forget it ...
On 12/31/10, a friend and I sat at a restaurant in Nashville, discussing the year gone by and anticipating the one ahead. Amidst eating, laughing, and uncovering the reasons why our waiter, a native Jayhawk, was actually a Buckeye fan (huh?!), I mentioned to him the one change I'd most like to make in 2011:
"I'd like to blog more."
Well, we can all see how well that's going for me. There are 3000 excuses that I could make for my 26-day hiatus. Unfortunately, however, none of them involve international travel or an invitation to tour as the title role in Thoroughly Modern Millie. I haven't been feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, or developing strategies for achieving elusive peace in the Middle East. Nope. In the immortal words of David Wooderson, I have just been "l-i-v-i-n'."
Well, I've been l-i-v-i-n' and w-r-i-t-i-n' and t-a-k-i-n' my 11 year-old nephew to watch the Wildcats in Columbia. With Cam & Aunta in the stands, the Big Blue brought home their first SEC road win of the season. This is probably not a coincidence. In fact, I'm in the middle of negotiating with my sister to get her to allow me to take him to each remaining away contest; otherwise, this may not be the year we win Number Eight. Right now, she's all, like, "He's gotta go to school," and I'm all, like, "Yeah, well, the last time I checked, there's isn't any 'fifth grade is more important' in TEAM."Parents just don't understand.
The other supremely exciting thing to happen this month is this: I ordered my cap & gown. You know what that means. That means that I'm graduating in May. The dissertation is nearly done. The tuition is completely paid, and the only thing between me and a degree is one more Wildcat sweep of the SEC Tournament. Oh, and the "small" matter of a dissertation defense.
Another friend called me while I was on the phone ordering. As soon as the order was placed, I called him back and immediately exploded into unexpected tears. "I think I'm just shocked and so relieved that this day is finally here," I tried to explain myself. "I just can't believe it."I really can't. A PhD in Musical Theatre History was my very own "impossible dream." It took three years of rejected applications (speaking OF Buckeyes ...), two years of 2,000 miles a week, and a lifetime of lots-of-prayers to get it done, yet here I sit, standing on the precipice of glorious completion.
"To God be the glory! Great things He has done!"
During the very emotional phone call, I remembered a moment from when Cam and I were driving home from Columbia last weekend. There are only about 60 songs on my iPod that his mother will allow him to listen to. Knowing that, I was, of course, careful about what I played (though I did slip in a little Black Eyed Peas - SORRY, SISSY!). The way there, it was all Television's Greatest Hits - theme songs to shows like Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle, and, Cam's favorite, F-Troop. On the way back, when not celebrating the fact that we'd eaten corn dogs, nachos, and Twizzlers for dinner, we listened to some of the Mary Poppins cast recording.
You may not know this about me, but I love the movie Mary Poppins. I'm less in love with the stage version, but it still contains one of my all-time favorite musical theatre numbers: "Anything can Happen." It's one of those songs that I have never once listened to without crying. Not one time. Saturday nite was no exception. I think I first lost it while singing "Take some sound advice, and don't forget it: Anything can happen, if you let it." I know I was completely inconsolable, though, by the time we got to "Go and chase your dreams! You won't regret it! Anything can happen, if you let it.""Aunta," Cam asked. "Why are you crying?"
"Because, Buddy. That's true. If there is something you love, and you really want to do, you should do it, no matter how hard it might seem. If you have a dream, you should go after it; there is no greater feeling that being totally in love with your life."
I'm not sure my attempt at wisdom fully resonated with my favorite adolescent. To be honest, I'm not really sure it fully resonated with me, either - until that phone call a few days later. The tears came, bringing with them a realization: by the grace of God and through His strength - and with the irreplaceable support of an incredible family, I am one of the lucky ones. I have been blessed far beyond what I deserved and given the chance to "Go and chase my dreams."
And you know what? Mary was right. "I don't regret it."
I am living proof that "... anything (including an eighth National Championship, Wildcat fans!) can happen, if you let it."
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Oh, Baby, Baby, it's a WILD world!
KSR: In Memoriam 2010 from Drew Franklin on Vimeo.
Also on any Wildcat's "Best of 2010" list would be the fact that UK defeated our arch-rival "Loserville" (thanks, Dad, for THAT clever little play on words) Cardinals no fewer than three times this year - once in football and twice in basketball, including during their first meeting in UL's tastily-named "Yum Center." That, of course, makes me want to get in his face and shout, "SUCK IT, RICK PITINO."I'd do it, too, if I weren't afraid he'd take me seriously.
Ew.
In the spirit of Kentucky's Big Blue domination of its "little brother," though, I give you Ryan Parker's interpretation of last Friday's win. In fact, now that this entry is done, I can FINALLY get back to re-watching my DVR'ed broadcast of the game.
Make your 2011 as BIG as the BLUE!
"... it's not very long."
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Saturday, December 25, 2010
The 12 Memories of Christmas: Picture Perfect
There is something about this picture that I just love. In fact, it makes me want to cry - good tears, the happy kind. As soon as it was taken, I saw it on the back of my camera and said, "Man. Mayme would've loved this." That alone is enough to make me cry for wishing she were here to show it to. It's the kind of picture that she would've blown up poster-size and plastered all over her house. It's the kind of picture that Lori and I would've pasted on a coffee mug (or, one year, a dinner plate) and given her for a Christmas gift.
It's the kind of picture that makes me remember the Christmases when there were just the five of us - Mayme and Papaw's grandkids. Before there were spouses or babies or schedules that kept us from seeing each other a thousand times a year, there were the five of us, footloose and fancy free.
Getting this picture was, without a doubt, the highlight of my holiday (had she known I was so easy to please, Mom could've significantly decreased her gift-buying budget!). I've spent every single Christmas of my life with these folks - I remember when Brad came in to tell us he and Leslie Potter had just gotten engaged, when BJ got that guitar keyboard that played a midi-version of "Last Christmas" as its demo song, when Lori and I were given Fisher-Price cassette radios with microphones, which we used to play Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker while standing in the middle of an unusually icy Riverside Drive. But even though we're always together, we still haven't gotten a shot like this for over a decade. That's about the time that the family's focus shifted from our generation to the one after ours. Brad and Lori have two boys a piece. Sissy has four children, so naturally - and rightly - all eyes are always on them.
This is as it should be. Heaven knows, all eyes - and then some - were on us as children. In seeing this picture, though, I realized something. While most of our attentions are on the next generation, we need to not neglect our own. We need to take time to squeeze and hug and sit around and chat about each other - and not just each other's children, as precious and wonderful and adored as they are. This year, we did that, and it made my Christmas picture perfect.In other news, Christmas is a lot busier than I remember it being! In fact, two days in to "The 12 Memories of Christmas,"
I realized that I'd blogged myself into a corner and that committing to write daily entries at a time of year when I'm trying to visit with friends and family members I haven't seen for the last 365 days while also trying to submit a second draft of my dissertation was, to say the least, short-sighted. In the end, you know what I chose. The irony isn't lost on me, though. As I mentioned before, I spent much of my Christmases past trying to invent ways to make time move more quickly. In Christmas present, however, I want to freeze time, to stop it, to make it go as slowly as Black Friday traffic on Nicholasville Road. One nite is not enough. I've gotten greedy, longing for more time to spend with my wonderful family and to take pictures that make me think, "Man. Mayme would've loved this."
(You can see way more than 12 memories of THIS Christmas in the slideshow below!)
Click here to view these pictures larger
Monday, December 20, 2010
The 12 Memories of Christmas: Reservations required.
I got the sweetest email from my cousin BJ this morning. "I'm sleeping, until 3 p.m. Wednesday," it said.
I immediately responded:
"Thank you for your email. In anticipation of my family's Christmas celebrations, I have entered a medically-induced coma from which I will not emerge until mid-day Wednesday. I will respond to all emails at that time.
Thank you again for your message.
Kristin Stultz"
His response:"This is an automated reply.
I am currently away from my email, but I am NOT shaking boxes, reserving my spot on the floor with tape or digging into the baked spaghetti early.
If you need assistance, please contact Mary Stultz."
I think it's pretty obvious that our exchange was in reference to the 5th Memory of Christmas - this memory is also known as "how the grandchildren of Mary & Fred Stultz survived the Great Wait leading up to every single Christmas Eve."
In a previous post, I alluded to how tough it was to suffer through the daytime of each December 24th. Under Mayme's tree was an avalanche of gifts. They overflowed, like the banks of the Ohio during the Greenup flood of 1937. Sure. Some of these were for our dads - Mayme and Papaw's sons. Others were for the extended family - uncles, aunts, and cousins we only saw that one nite of the year, but the five of us had lived long enough to learn that most of them were for us. As you can imagine, this made Christmas Eve interminable. If the 21st is the shortest day of the year, the 24th is most definitely the longest.
We developed a strategy. We had to. We'd do anything to make the time pass, to make the hours fall from the clock like snow from the sky. The older we got, the wiser we became. By the time Mayme died, in fact, Lori and I were just sleeping until it was time for supper. That's what I was alluding to in my email. In the earlier years, though, we had to be a little more creative. BJ alluded to most of our methods in his email, and I include them here as suggestions in case there are any children out there whose holiday celebrations are nearly ruined by older family members who don't share their sense of urgency:
1) Shake boxes. This actually occurred the second we got in to town - having arrived at 1400 Riverside Drive, Sissy and I would head straight for the tree. "I'm sorry, Mayme," our obvious subtext. "I will just have to hug you later. If you'll excuse me, my sister and I have got some business to attend to." Typically, Brad, Lori, and BJ would be waiting for us in the living room. Our work would get immediately underway. Brad would crawl under the tree and pull out whatever gifts were tagged to one of us. Hearing our names called, we would mentally cross check the shapes and sounds of the wrapped packages with those things on our wishlists. This clandestine method often enabled us to determine a box's contents without so much as peeling back a single piece of tape. Well, at least not the WHOLE piece of tape. It's tape, in fact, that leads me to tier two in our three pronged strategy...
2) Reserving my spot on the floor with tape. Mayme's house was really full on Christmas Eve. It, too - as the presents under her tree - overflowed like the banks of the Ohio. Naturally, then, the five of us knew we had to be proactive. If we wanted a space close to all the action - and trust me. We DID - we'd have to stake our claim early in the day. We accomplished this by adhering massive amounts of masking tape - Mayme must've bought stock in the masking tape company, because she always had several rolls' worth - to the braided rug carpet that covered her hardwoods. On this masking tape, we'd each write our name - "Kristin," "BJ," "Lori," you get the picture. That way, no adults would go getting any bright ideas that they could sit on the carpet right by the tree. "Um, no, Jim Bob. You can't sit there. You'll have to step away from this spot. As you can see, it's RESERVED. Maybe try to talk Papaw out of his big blue recliner, huh?" You'd have thought the adults would've gotten used to this custom - five Stultzes sitting in a semi-circle that echoed the hemline of the tree skirt, but we took no chances. We marked our spots each year - sometimes several days before the big day. 
3) Digging into the baked spaghetti early. Everybody knows that Mayme served baked spaghetti on Christmas Eve. In fact, that's still what we eat on Christmas Eve. To do otherwise would be a sacrilege! The tension between parents and children came not so much in the eating of the spaghetti but in the timing of the eating of the spaghetti. The five of us knew that we had to eat our dinner before we could open presents. What we didn't know was why we couldn't just eat spaghetti for breakfast and get on with the Big Show. Though we probably could've talked Mayme into it, our parents wouldn't hear of it. So we'd start begging for dinner about 3 in the afternoon. When the time finally came, my cousins and I could complete our dinners - spaghetti, crackers, and some kind of dessert - in 37.92 seconds. Our older relations didn't share our zeal, however. They'd take their sweet time, visiting with other family members and eating two, three, NINE helpings, while us kids would ask a quick intervals, "Are you ready now?" "How about now? Are you done yet?" Each time, they'd squelch our desire like a bronze cup snuffs out a Christmas candle.
And then, at looonngg last, would come the culmination of the day. The waiting, the wishing, the shaking, and the spaghetti all led to the single moment when the voices that once said, "No" would ring out in a glorious chorus: "Kids, are you ready to open presents?"
Were we ready? Did they even have to ask?! We'd been ready since three days earlier. We were just relieved they'd finally caught up, and when they finally did, they knew just where to find us - thanks to the spots we'd so cleverly reserved earlier in the day.
"Christmas card's a'comin'! Christmas card's a'comin' ...!"
Much as I might want to, I always end up making the ultimate decision that that money can be better spent on things like heat and food, but it always makes me feel guilty, too, never responding to an assortment of greetings from friends, their babies and family vacations featured on the front of a tri-fold card. I used to love participating in this exchange. Weeks in advance, I'd select several boxes of cards and fill them out while watching White Christmas the nite after Thanksgiving.
Then came more expenses and less income and the fact that, since I don't have any babies, what in the world am I gonna feature on the front of the tri-fold card? This year, though, none of that matters. This year, I have a Christmas card. I didn't actually send any in the old fashioned, stamp-and-envelope sense of the word, but thanks to Shutterfly.com, my Mac's GRAB application, and some underwriters here in the blogosphere, I give you my Christmas card. It's one Kentucky fan's way of saying, "I'll have a BLUE Christmas without you."
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