i am my own shock absorbers

My thighs have been aching for days. That’s right, aching. I walk like an old man, or a pregnant lady, or like I am mentally unstable. One of those might be true. You pick.

It’s all because I was a little too excited about the Jet Ski and the jumping of the waves and I underestimated the amount of muscles in your thighs it takes when you have to squat and absorb the bounce of sailing 6 to 12 inches above the small waves of Lake Gaston. It took me a while to get use to the steering. I treated it like a car. That was the wrong thing to do. I’m lucky the docks and other boats moved out of my way until I got my footing. And when I finally got the hang of it, WATCH OUT! I sped through that lake like a rocket, with thunder between my legs, my face and hair pushed back by the rushing air. And then when I managed to peel myself off of the rocket-made-for-water device, my legs turned to Jell-O and since then I have been walking as if drunk. And I’m sunburned to boot. And it’s not sexy cause it’s in the shape of the lifejacket I was wearing. Yeah, I’m cool like that. I ride like that. I absorb shock like that. And I know, you’re jealous, but remember that walking up and down stairs is totally and completely overrated!

take me to London

Take me to London. I want to see the Thames. I want to stroll through Kensington Park Gardens. Take me to the Tate Modern. Let’s walk across the footbridge and admire the suspension holding us above the barges. We’ll look at the old power station with its straight lines and smoke stack and then we’ll head inside. Maybe it will be drizzling and the surreal art will be a reprieve from the British weather. Take me to London to see a West End show, maybe an Andrew Lloyd Webber recreation or maybe Les Mis for the 12th time. Take me to London and let’s go shopping. Let’s admire the prettiest things in Harrods and buy some tea at Fortnum and Mason. Let’s hold hands through the open-air markets. I want to go to London to hear the accents that feel so familiar, so natural, so much like what I should have heard all my life. Take me to London because I feel at home there and yet I am a foreigner. But take me to London and let’s pretend we live there. Let’s have high tea at Claridge’s and pretend we’re posh. Let’s call Bayswater our tube stop and we’ll live close by in a row house. We’ll grocery shop at the Marks and Spencer on the corner of Queensway Rd. We’ll make chicken curry. Take me to London and let’s eat at Geales for fish and chips. Let’s take cab rides once a week to test the drivers’ Knowledge. Take me to London and teach me British slang. Show me were the boot is and what it means to be cross. Take me to London. I want to feel the weight of pounds in my hand and buy Cadbury bars at tube stations. Take me to London. Take me to London. Take me to London. I miss it in the depths of me. Just take me to London and let me be.

it’s like the new version of forwards and i hate those things…

It’s this newfangled thing called “meme” and it’s only for the cool kids with blogs. Thanks Kristin. Somehow I will repay you!

How many books do you own?
I’ve never counted, but I’d bet about 200. If you add children’s books and acadmic books then that jumps to about 350.

What was the last book you bought?
Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chasity by Lauren F. Winner. I love all of her books and this is her latest. I just want to know what she has to say on the subject.

What was the last book you read?
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. It took me like a year after this was popular to finally read it. It was great and even a bit healing for me. I recommend it highly.

Name five books that mean a lot to you, and that you´ve read more than three times.
Save for poetry I don’t believe in re-reading books. There is something about reading a book for the first time that I don’t think you can recapture on the 2nd or 3rd go ‘round. I’ve only done it with two books. Maybe I need to change my tune about the re-reading thing, anyway, here are some important books.

Jacob Have I loved by Katherine Patterson. I read this in middle school and couldn’t put it down. It stayed with me and when I studied young-adult literature in my Education classes I chose to re-read this book. It resonated as much for me in college as it did in middle school. Katherine Patterson is an amazing author and I would recommend all her books no matter your age.

While I Was Gone by Sue Miller. Loved it.

Girl Meets God by Lauren F. Winner. Made me think lots and lots. I would give this to anyone who is questioning or searching for faith. It’s not a Jesus save me book, but it’s a great way to jump start questioning your beliefs and why you believe them.

Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Album. I know, so cliché, but this book came to me at a time I needed it and it taught me a great deal. I love it when that happens.

Native Son by Richard Wright. In a last ditch effort to switch my major in college to English I signed up for any English class that was open. One of them was African-American literature. I thought I would hate it. I thought it would be a study more of history than of literature. It was and it wasn’t, but this book opened a door for me. I will never close it again. I hated reading in college even though I chose English as my major, but this book was one of a handful of required books that I full on finished and I loved it. Read it!


Challenge five people to fill this out in their blog:
Sadly I only have one real friend who has a blog and she’s the one that tagged me. And, the only virtual friend I think that I could tag playfully would be Andre. So, go to it Andre, if you so desire.

radio edit

I was driving to work yesterday when I heard a new song of a band announced on the radio. I realized that this was the band (and the record and therefore a song) that my brother recorded with. I turned up the bass to maximum so that I could hear my brother’s rhythms. It’s the most I’ve heard from him in two weeks because he got mad at me for not sharing a movie with him. I thought we were grown up. I guess I was wrong. Didn’t we leave the fighting over sharing when were four? Well, I guess his children are rubbing off on him. And just because he has a platinum record on his wall and songs on the radio doesn’t mean he isn’t a baby sometimes. I’m just sayin’. And I was going to see him play tonight, but I've got a better offer. So there. Nah.

happy birthday b.b.

B. is my cousin of many years. Well, actually all my years. And hers. She’s awesome. She’s the sister I never had. She calls me every week and tells me about her animals and her garden and now her new house. Things are always changing in her life. In the last year she’s lost her job, gotten married, adopted 2 cats, started her own business and now moving to a new home.

She says, “I love you” at the end of every phone conversation or visit. It took me a long time to say it back. I know that hurt her, but she understood my need for time. It’s so much easier for me to write it, to separate myself from voicing the words. I have so much to learn from her. She doesn’t compartmentalize love, she just loves. She says, “I love you” to all her friends. “Because I love them,” she says. I love her too. I love her kindness and her simpleness and how deeply she feels for other people and animals.

She so rarely complains or brings up her own worries, that if she does, she’ll call the next day to apologize. She’d so much rather hear about your problems and help you through them that I sometimes think she missed her calling as a therapist.

She’s a brilliant photographer. That’s why she started her own business, because the people deserve her talent. She can turn a simple photo of her cat into a work of art. I’ve begged her for a year to start a photo blog, but she claims laziness. I’ve even gone so far as to threaten to set it up for her. I haven’t yet. So, leave comments and let her know you want to see her work, it’s amazing.

She’s a chilled out, Grateful Dead lovin’ blond. We couldn’t be more different or more related. I adore her.

Happy Birthday B!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sometimes they just come

This was originally going to be a full on post about a true story. And then, it just morphed into a poem. I haven't written a poem in years. And this is how it used to happen, they would just come.




Question

A child once asked his mother
“Who was that man that
used to take out the garbage?”
I wonder how she answered him.
His young brain couldn’t
have comprehended
the details of adult relationships.

I wonder if that was the last time
he saw his father,
leaving from the back door,
probably through the kitchen,
a white cinched bag in his left hand,
his silhouette slipping through
the crack of the open door.

schedules

I don’t like to admit it, but I’m a scheduler. I sat talking to a parent today for 2 hours about her child’s disabilities today. I gave her suggestions after suggestions about keeping a schedule and preparing him for transitions. We talked straight through my lunch. From then on my day was spent. I couldn’t get my grounding. I kept thinking that in 5-10 minutes we’d be shuffling the kids off to lunch and I’d sit in the teacher’s lounge and gossip about the day or our prospective weekends. And then it was the end of the day and I realized that I needed that schedule. I needed to sit in that teacher’s lounge and chat in order to process my day and move on. I need my schedule, or at least lunch. I’m not so different from the kids I teach. We all need structure and sometimes schedules to make our days easier. And that’s why I love these kids, I see myself in them.

untitled

A poetry professor in college asked us once if poetry depended on the angle of the reader or the writer. He wanted us to think about whether the reader’s past had anything to do with how they interpreted a poem. I was adamant that the history a reader brings with them fully influences their understandings. Others disagreed, but I still stand by my thought. Take the previous post. While, not a poem, the comments I got were wholly influenced by the readers lives. Andre , who writes about his depression, stopped and contemplated. I’m sure he understood my metaphor for the river being a step away from drowning you. Or maybe not, that is what I love about writing. It can be taken so many ways. Then there was Elise , who is Kristin’s sister. She lives in Norway and I don’t know her, but I bet she’s wild and crazy because she thought I was hung over, probably from the fact of going to bed happy and then the headache that took a while to register. Sadly, Andre’s perception is more correct. It was a statement about how quickly reality can overwhelm us when we sit and think about all we are missing.

night and day

I go to bed with happiness in my heart and my world and house full up of love. And then I awake too early for the world to hit me and my head begins to ache and then I look around at all the unconditional love I don’t have and the guilt I feel for mistakes and the injustice for people who are wrong and I want to cry. The difference between night and day can simply be the difference between the dry riverbank and the river.

old stuff

I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes reading through old emails from college. I was searching for a particular one in which a boy that I pined after wrote to me while I was away for the weekend. The subject was something obscure and obtuse and the body of the email simply stated that he missed me and then he quoted Pink Floyd, “we are two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl.” For some reason I didn’t save that email. It is the only email I can fully recall from college. It stuck out. I remember coming back to school on Sunday night of that weekend and checking my email in some crowded computer lab and smiling because J. had thought of us as a “we.” He had sent an email with a “we” in it. It was my first. He was my first. And yet he wasn’t. I wanted to post just that email and let it stand alone as a testament to love of long ago, to a past I used to live, to naiveté and wonderment. Instead I’ve been rereading email after email where I talk about how much I missed people and how much stress I was under. And there are the few where I play counselor sending poems and messages of hope. Life is hard sometimes and yet I remember college as frilly and silly. Look around people, your reality is not really happening the way you see it. It all depends on how you will remember it. History gets garbled and tossed around in our brains and I hope at least that your history comes out as a happy one.

purging

I’m a keeper. I like to hold on to things for their possibilities. I never want to give up on something. It’s the Special Education spirit in me, that everything and every person is worth something, worth holding onto.

So, it’s hard for me to purge, to rid myself of excess. This week I’ve had a crash course. I came home on Tuesday to my entire kitchen displaced to my dining room. Painters had been in to finalize some work that was done 2 weeks ago. They moved everything and when I say everything I mean even the dirty dishes that were in the sink. I was first shocked at first and thought I had been evicted or robbed. I had no idea the painters were coming on Tuesday, but when I looked around and saw the smooth walls and smelled the fresh coat of paint I relaxed and then I became embarrassed. Strangers had to move my dirty dishes. I immediately felt guilty. I saw the painters outside the next morning on my way to work and they asked how the job looked. I skipped the question and went straight to apologies. The painter said he didn’t mind and wanted to make sure it looked good. I again stated my apology and into my car quickly. I then came home that night and cleaned the kitchen. It wasn’t on my to do list for the day, but I was forced.

I was forced tonight too when M. and L. descended upon my apartment to organize and rid my place of things unnecessary. It was difficult to watch and listen to at times, good friends mumbling over the lack of organization. L. said, “You’ve got a lot of nice shit. You need to have places for everything.” I’ve got company coming tomorrow night and M. and L. jumped onto the “clean sweep for Anna” show. I thought all morning about how I could convince them not to come and then at lunch today they told me they were in their cleaning clothes. “I can’t believe I have enlisted my friends to clean my house,” I said. “You didn’t really enlist us,” said L. and she was right. They decided to get this done. It’s all fair in love and domesticity as I’ve spent hours helping decorate M. her home and helped L. paint a room and cooked her and her husband many a dinner. I just have no knack for cleaning and purging and therefore good friends come to your rescue when you don’t even ask. And you know you have good friends when they are willing to go through your shit and order hamburgers in which they have to eat on their laps in the living room because there is shit on the dining room table. I know at least, I won’t be purging these friends. Thanks to L. and M., my house now shines.

a new love

It’s been a long time coming, this newfound love. I have to say I wasn’t really searching. That’s precisely when they say it happens, you know, when you’re not looking. The need and pain were there somewhere in the background beating out an urge that I barely recognized until it was fulfilled.

It took me a while to settle into it, the fit always a little snug at first and the instinct to push away is always greater in me than the instinct to pull closer. I like change. I like new. I just don’t like new all over me, suffocating my space and time. So, I waded in slowly until now this love has overwhelmed me and it’s like air.

It’s The Postal Service and I’m obsessed.

I’ve given the album to K. and J. and forced them to listen to all last weekend. It consumed my drive up and down from D.C. and it has trumped NPR on my car radio to and from work. That is HUGE. Nothing trumps NPR. That’s how I knew this was love. I’m in love with a new band and I’m all giddy. I haven’t felt this way since, well, U2 when I was 16. It’s that deep people. It’s love to the core.

I told K. that there was one song that describes my life and I just couldn’t in any way write it better than The Postal Service did. I told her that it’s about a boy who is waiting in a London underground station when her realizes he’s been looking for love that was like a movie and he says that he wants to believe in love and he wants “life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd.” I just can’t do any better that. It’s my life and he wrote it.

I then I tried to play the song for Kristin, telling her that this song was my life and that she had to hear it. I searched through the songs on my car stereo not knowing its number and not recognizing the beginning beats. I landed on track 7 convinced and that it was the right song and we sat there, in my car, parked and ready to get out, but waiting for the song that is my life to play. We waited for 40 seconds. “It’s taking so long to begin,” I said. “Well, it’s your life,” said Kristin. And then when the words came, it was the wrong song. We got out of the car. I couldn’t handle the reality of that moment.

Here are the words to the song that is my life. And you can listen to it here.

Clark gable

I was waiting for a cross-town train in the London underground
When it struck me that I’ve been waiting since birth to find
A love that would look and sound like a movie so I changed
My plans and rented a camera and a van and then I called you
"I need you to pretend that we are in love again" and you agreed to

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd
I greased the lens and framed the shot using a friend as my stand-in
The script it called for rain but it was clear that day so we faked it
The marker snapped and I yelled, "quiet on the set"
And then called "action!"
And I kissed you in a style that Clark Gable would have admired
(I thought it classic)

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd
I know you're wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear
That your perfect verse is just a lie you tell yourself to help you get by?

-The Postal Service

happy belated birthday to kristin

This is late partly because I suck and partly because we (Kristin’s friends) are just tonight celebrating her birthday in town. This is the invite that was sent:

To celebrate Kristin's birthday and Norway's independence day...we are
going to KUBA KUBA!

That's right...
Kristin is good friends with M. K....
whose Sunday School teacher is V...
who is first cousins with Johnny Depp...
who was in What's Eating Gilbert Grape with Leonardo DiCaprio...
who was in Marvin's Room with Diane Keaton...
who was in Godfather III with Andy Garcia...
who is Cuban...
which is why we are going to Kuba Kuba!!

Kristin is Norwegian down to the tall, thin, blond hair. She even grew up there. That’s crazy to me and when she came back to this country at the ripe old pubescent age of 12, she donned the feathered haircut of a Dynasty character. She thought that was her gateway to the cool factor in America. I think she might have been wrong.

Kristin is way cool though. She knows EVERYONE. She knows more people at my alma mater, post graduating, than I do. That shows her cool factor right there. And it might show my lame factor, but this is not about me.

Kristin really is linked to me through people who know people who went to college with her. It’s a bit strange how our worlds are connected, but that we didn’t meet until she was accidentally given a 2nd grade teaching placement in one of my schools. It’s like kismet.

Since our recognition of stars aligning and finding our friendship, she has broadened my world by book readings, movies, dinners out, and poker parties. She introduced me to more people in Richmond in the past few months than I’ve met in the last 2 years. She’s cool like that.

She’s also got an activist’s heart and impresses the importance of her causes with gentle ease. She’ll get you involved or at least conscious of her causes without dragging you into it. That’s cool to me.

She’s ready and willing to get hitched should the correct boy come along and baby, I’m right there with you. We’re both waiting and searching, but I have a feeling that she will find a great love. One who is smart and kind and compliments her and brings her joy. She certainly deserves it.

See, I told she was cool and she deserves a Happy Birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Kristin!!!!!!!!!!!

pictures

We take them so we can relive, recapture moments we know that someday we may forget. We are fighting our own minds and we are banking on the negative, so sure our minds will lapse and forget our own lives that we will need a visual to call it fourth.

Sometimes pictures hurt. Nostalgia can be a dangerous beast, reminding you of the things you meant to do, the hurt you had yet to feel, the pain you didn’t know was hiding under the surface of your then smile. Like a rubberband pulled taught and snapped, your mind goes back and fourth from then and now, from happiness or pain, from love or longing, from what happened and what was it I meant to accomplish in this life.

I choose to leave the albums on a shelf in plain view of my everyday ramblings through my home. I rarely take them down and when I do it is usually late at night when anyone else in the pictures is fast asleep, next to lovers or husbands or wives or babies. I am not, I am roaming the rooms of this empty home looking for an answer to what it was I meant to accomplish in this life.

It is a senseless question and one I often ignore, pretend it doesn’t exist. I thought I had a path once. I thought I could have predicted and determined where it was I meant to go, what it was I meant to do. I stopped that thinking, realizing instead that going with the flow of life would lead to less worry, less stress, less “what ifs.” And the pictures of my past recall the things I have not done. And I wonder if the girl in those pictures would recognize the girl holding them in her hands today. Would she be her friend? Would console and comfort her? Would she laugh and joke with her? Would she applaud and welcome her? Or would she kick her ass?

sailing on saturday

I woke up with a headache which meant one of two things, either 1) too much wine the night before or 2) anxiety was setting in. I tried the coax the anxiety away and thought I was successful, but the headache would reappear on the front left side of my head above my eye every few minutes. K. prompted me to take Advil. I did what she said. The placebo effect kicked in and dulled the pain. We readied for a day of sailing, watching the windows for any sign of the storms that were due that day. We packed a backpack with books and music and jackets and put our sunglasses on.

The drive to the Chesapeake Bay marina took 45 minutes. My headache was kicking back in. We stopped at a grocery shore for lunch and snacks. I got seltzer hoping to settle the now unsettled stomach that was turning over and over. I’d been sailing before. I was once a lifeguard. I had no idea what the anxiety was about other than the unknown.

We walked down the pier-passing sailboat after sailboat, some small, some huge. The sailboat we boarded had two sleeping cabins, a bathroom, and a living room. Shelves folded down and seats could be rearranged for more sleeping. Everything was precise with calculations in this small space and yet everything seemed comfortable and perfectly sized.

Inside the cabin, the queasiness intensified. The slight moments of the boat and the inability to see the surroundings sent my mind into repetitive thoughts: “You will not throw up. You will not throw up. You will not throw up.” K. and I split a sandwich. I ate quickly hoping that the food and seltzer would ease the feelings of losing control and fainting.

On deck, the sun was shining and the visuals stopped the queasiness, but the headache remained. We motored out of the dock, the sails still wrapped around their poles. The Bay was filled with sailboats. There must have been hundreds of white-bloomed sails that day. It was gorgeous and cluttered. We sailed beyond the markers, through the cluttered portion and into the wide-open waters of the Bay passing buoys for crab pots to where the bridge gleaned in the distance and barges and tankers crossed paths.

We gabbed and talked, the girls giggling out of earshot of the boys to which they would boom, “What are you laughing at?” “Don’t worry,” I replied, “we’re laughing at you, not with you.” The wind was wild and strong and billowed the sails to 7 knots. We sailed for a good hour then turned around. On the way back we had a clear straight line to home, to the marina. I spied a gargantuan ship to our left. It was huge in the distance and seemed to be fading away. I sat on a perch that I deemed a place I could live and watched the big ships. I turned to J. who was steering and said, “That’s a big one there,” and pointed to the boat on the left. He agreed that it was big and that we wouldn’t want to mess with that one. I then asked, “Is it heading toward us?” J. stood up at the wheel and sprung into the action. The boat was heading our way and we were on a collision course. We had to tack and turn around and do it quickly. I wasn’t nervous until the owner of the boat, J.’s father, warned him to keep the wind in the sails and not be dead in the water. He wanted us to get as far away from the monster as possible. My headache and stomach paused themselves. The fear and survival mode kicked in. We turned and cleared the path quickly; mouths open as the vessel crossed the path in which our boat had been heading. The size was almost unfathomable. It seemed like 2 cruise ships stacked on top of each other, but there were no windows, just huge walled sides. We would have been a fly smashed against the windshield if we hadn’t turned around. The boat would never have noticed us.

Back on the dock my headache began to dissipate. The unknown was now known and a crab dinner was on the agenda. I love sailing. And if you were driving on the Chesapeake Bay bridge on Saturday afternoon and looked down into the water at the sailboats below and were filled with a bit of envy. Well, then, you were looking at me.

Gifts

We are given something everyday, pieces of life’s details that we often ignore. And there are moments we hold on to, tuck back into the recess of our minds in a file we call “remember this.” Our senses heighten and we pay attention to the shift of light around us, the smell, the lilt of voices. We take everything in in that moment and we press “save” in our minds. “This is important,” we think. And then we go on.

Last night I arrived ready to recount my awful parking job. I had one-liners and little details piled up, the turning and the pulling in and out of the parallel space, the looking back, the gauging, the getting out and checking and getting back in and retrying, the crookedness, and then the “fuck it.” When the door opened, I was greeted with a “shhhhh,” a forefinger to lips and a whisper about a baby. J. was on the phone to his best friend who was recounting the birth of his son.

I knew that this was a gift and my smile enveloped my face. A baby is born and man is talking about it.

I’ve been present just moments after a baby comes into the world. I’ve held and cooed over the newborns, watched them get weighed and prodded and wrapped up tight. I’ve watched their eyes moving, taking in this strange new world and their mouths opening to this strange new air. It’s amazing, but in the hubbub and excitement over the child, I don’t pay attention to the father and his reactions. I focus on the baby, the new life in the room. I’ve never been privileged to the father’s recount until last night.

The joy and exhaustion on the speakerphone was evident even to someone who doesn’t know B. well. His voice was elevated. He was elated. He talked about the whole process with brevity, his mind seeming to not fully grasp the fact that he was a father, that he is now responsible for this other him. The details came after questions and we heard about the hours spent at the hospital, how H. was doing during and after the birth, and how little W’s eyes were a big beautiful blue/ grey, and then the best sentences came when B. said “It’s just amazing. This person was inside her belly and now he’s here.” W. was perfect he said, with ten fingers and ten toes. I had to repress my Special Ed. mind and the probability game in my head. This was joy, this was wonderment, perfect was perfect at this moment. And I accepted the gift that was given me. B. never new I was in the room listening in with K and J beside me. He words were meant for their ears, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if the whole world knew he now has a perfect baby boy.

the best thing

about being single is the ability to carpe diem. I walked into my house after work today and thought "My cocoon. I do not have to leave this nest all weekend if I don't want to." I was ready for a weekend of downtime, of me time, then I got a phone call. Now, I'm on my way to DC for good times with good friends. There may be sailing and museums and movies. I know there will be laughing and conversations. I love impromptu. Now, pray for good weather and strong wind. I want to go sailing, damn it.

abuse of power

beth,
i know you read this everyday and i haven't talked to you in forever. so, i sent you an email tonight and it bounced back. please send me an email with all your updated info. including phone number, email, and address. send it to the gapgirl(at)gmail(dot)com. thanks babe.

sorry to everyone else. business people. business.

any takers

Apparently I've been wrong about my pining for London and NYC. I've never been to Rome. Want to go with me?

You Belong in Rome You're a big city girl with a small town heart Which is why you're attracted to the romance of Rome Strolling down picture perfect streets, cappuccino in hand And gorgeous Italian men - could life get any better? What City Do You Belong in? Take This Quiz :-)

because i can

So, partly because of Andre, I've been playing with the things that Mac makes so easy for us Macophiles. I'm not really all that tech. savvy, but I'm trying. Today, I added two songs that you can download. Both of them would be great if a man would sing them to me. So, listen up and hear the soundtrack that I like to pretend COULD be my life. Baby, you can drive my iDisk.


**update- Turns out I can't let you drive my iDisk. Sorry folks, but I'm a friend of the copyright law.

by popular demand (and by popular i mean that two people requested it)

A poem read to you.

tiny fruits

I've loved marzipan since I was introduced to it in small doses at an early age. I adored the shapes, the tiny fruits, the little animals. The creativity fascinated me. So much so that when I would get a box on trips to Europe, I would have trouble eating what I considered to be precious etible art.

This is what my Mother sent back from her trip to Provence. There seems to be, in minature form, a pear, an orange, a lime, a raspberry, a cluster of green grapes, and two apples, stems and all. I'm grateful because I haven't tasted the concentrated almond treats in years. But really, given the choice, I would rather have gone to France.

bachelorette 101

Take one bride-to-be, add bridesmaids, close friends, alcohol, other adult accoutrements, Never Have I Ever Jenga, and a late night out at the bars. You will get a party night where things are discussed and revealed about friends and people you just met that you never thought you’d ever learn. And you’ll realize that behind close doors, we’re all the same, sort of.

I would like to tell all men (especially the exceptionally drunk ones) that approaching a bachelorette party is a good idea and answering our embarrassing questions is much appreciated. However, please do not outstay your welcome and stop hitting on the married or soon to be married girls. While their attention may stroke your ego, that’s all that will be stroked with these ladies. And to the 38 year-old mortgage broker who tried to convince me that he was going to Iraq in order to arrange a pity hook-up, I’d like to call “Bullsh*t” on you and thanks for playing. Boys, truth is so much more appreciated than any line or seemingly interesting lie. Now, let’s all sober up and come back to reality.

And this is why I don’t miss the drunken bar scene.

Congrats to J., the bride-to-be. It was much fun.

hello world

The next best thing to a phone call.


**Update. There is now a permanent link for you to hear.

sometimes is not enough

What I’ve realized and what every girl needs to realize is that what happened in the past is in the past. What I mean by this is along the same lines as HJNTIY . While the book annoys me and I believe only truly applies to 85% of all men, it has much truth.

There are times that I reminisce through old letters, old emails. My heart flutters and my stomach does flips thinking that someone, a he, was thinking about me. I cling to these memories at times, these “once upon a time” moments of affection or flirting.

But, “once upon a time” is not now and really has no bearing on the present because if the boy who sent those words could not or would not send those same words at this exact moment then the past is the past and should be left there.

But, sometimes, we need those glimmers of past lives to flicker back up and give us hope. Because if someone could feel that way once, then someone could feel that way again. And this life would not be a collage of “once of time-s."

apple of my eye

As Google shows with a drawing of a chalkboard with an apple resting appropriately on the ledge, it is teacher appreciation week. Appreciate me!

And thanks.