A Prairie Home Quilts

While I was sitting at my desk, I looked up at my inspiration board with family pictures and was inspired to do another four letter word block for Tonya.  I decided it would be good to do another block for more practice, and because I wanted to do a word that no one else had done.  [Something about the need to be original? Unique? Who knows.] After I finished the block, all I can say is that I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to do wonky letters and I’m sure it’s all the fault of my elementary school teachers.

Yes, it’ll definitely take several years of therapy for my brain to do wonky. You see, in elementary school every year I received the dreaded “N” for penmanship.  “N” as in needs improvement, not satisfactory, not up to par, not normal, nasty and a whole slew of other negative “N” words.  Once in sixth grade, my teacher held up my paper in front of the whole class as a messy example of what a paper should not look like.  I was mortified… wanted to die… felt like I was standing in front of the whole class in my underwear.  [Mr. Gross if you're out there, you should be paying for my therapy!]

So where am I going with this you ask?  Well, because I was traumatized and humiliated for my penmanship [hey, it's not like I wasn't trying to do my best!] I decided to show up those negative Nellies and Neds. In Junior High [Middle School for those of you under 50], I worked really hard at improving my handwriting. I filled notebooks with my handwriting practice. I spent many hours writing 10, 20 & 30 page letters every week to my BFF. I even spent several years graffiti-ing everything in sight with block letters. Block letters with stripes, polka dots, and drop shadows.  Lots of L-O-V-E in the shape of a heart.  [The school custodians must have loved washing my artwork off the desks everyday.]

Yup, I practiced so hard that now my penmanship is too neat and as a result, I’m having a hard time doing wonky. That’s got to be the reason. It’s certainly not because I have an organized, neat freak personality. [No offense to any organized neat freaks who might be reading this.  Really.  I have two children who are organized neat freaks and I love them anyway.]  So Tonya, here is my second, four letter, unwonky word block for you.

A nice, neat [big, fat?] KISS.

As you can see, I still like going all the way to the edge with my letters.  I’m not sure what that says about me, but I’m sure it says something.