Joy and Peace

I've been listening to Joni Mitchell's "River" a lot lately. Part of it is that I like the song. Part of it is because I think it's funny that my mom always said that Joni Mitchell was "the girl who sang the blues" in Don McLean's "American Pie." Pretty much everyone else in the world thinks it's Janis Joplin. Why the disparity? I never asked my mom, but I think it's because she hates Janis Joplin and REALLY hated that people said she looked like her (although, when she was in high school, my mom really DID look A LOT like Janis Joplin).

The thing that has struck me about "River" through all these listenings is that it mentions "songs of joy and peace." I hadn't ever really noticed that that's what most Christmas carols are about, but it's true. Joy and peace. These are two things I've spent most of the year trying to chase down. At times, I've been very successful. At other times, not so much. But, the fact that I've tried to chase them down is the most important thing. Right?

Let's back up to a week ago Sunday. I was visiting my friend Shawna and when I left, I forgot my purse with my wallet and cell phone in it. I didn't realize this until I arrived home (about 45 minutes away). I had about a quarter tank of gas at that time, so I knew I'd need to put some in. I scraped together $10 for gas using the lucky dollar that had been in my car for the last seven years (my mom won it on a scratch off ticket and told me to keep it in the car for luck), $7 coins I had left from my birthday trip to NYC, and $2 in quarters. I arrived at Shawna's house and she commented on the fact that I was smiling. "What else am I going to do?" I said.

Three days after I spent the lucky dollar? I totaled my Shiny Blue Car. (I loved that car.) It had snowed that morning and coming down the giant hill by my apartment on the 1-mile drive to work, I lost control, slid down the entire hill, crossed a usually heavy-traffic street, into two parked trucks. Car totaled. Me? Totally fine. No air bags to contend with, no soreness, no scratches, no nothing (except a little emotional trauma -- it was seriously scary). I know it probably has nothing to do with the lucky dollar, but it still freaked me out when I made the connection many hours later.

My co-worker Amy gets scratch tickets for Christmas, but gambling is against her religion. She left me a scratch ticket with a $1 win in her mailbox so I'd have a lucky dollar to put in my new car. My grandboss James did a bunch of research and even went to the dealership with me to test drive my car.

And so, six days after totaling my car, I purchased a new (to me) car. It's a 2008 with less than 25,000 miles on it, and it has all-wheel drive. The Black Pearl (that's her name -- in honor of her color) and I took to the road yesterday to come home for the holiday. So far, so good.

During the drive, I thought about Mom and how she's been sitting on my fridge since regionals in September. I need another misadventure soon. And I thought about Joni Mitchell as I listened to "River" when it came up on one of my mixes.

Joy and peace.

In about an hour, I'm meeting my high school journalism teacher -- who is, without question, one of my top 5 favorite people on the planet -- to go for a walk. Her father died very recently, of lung cancer. It's hard to believe it's been 14 months since I was in the same position with Mom.

The last 14 months have been all over the map -- some of the best and most beautiful experiences of my life, some of the bravest things I've ever dared to try, and some of the saddest, most painful days I've ever lived. But even those days have taught me so much about joy and peace -- that they are things you have to actively seek, that they are always there, that even if you have to live in the sadness sometimes, there is ALWAYS a day when it will feel less sad (and it, like the sadness, will come when you least expect it).

This Christmas when I wish people joy and peace, it means so much more than it ever did to me. And I mean it with all my heart.

And so, I wish you joy and peace. And if you need it, a river to skate away on....

Small Acts of Kindness

Remember my friend Nora's video? She won the contest, and her video is THE video for Guster's song, "Bad, Bad World." (You can read more about the awesome stuff related to the video on Nora's web site.)

A friend of mine gave me a gift certificate to an AWESOME sock company for Christmas. I placed my order earlier this week, and my socks arrived yesterday. Today, I found a really big package of socks from the same company on my doorstep. This seemed odd. When I opened the package, I discovered a packing slip with the contact info for someone in Washington (the state)! It was about $100 worth of socks.

I sent an e-mail to the woman, telling her I'd received her socks and would be shipping them right out to her. She e-mailed back and said she'd send me a check to cover the costs of shipping.

I wrote back, "Don't worry about the shipping costs -- consider me an elf helping get your presents where they need to go!"

So she wrote back, "I will certainly pay your act of kindness forward. I have things to mail at the Post Office on Monday and I will pay for the person behind me in line. Thanks for reminding me that this world is full of really wonderful people. All the best!"

See. It isn't such a bad, bad world.

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day

I've worked in HIV services since I was 20. (I'm not all weird about my age; it's been 11 years.) I didn't really expect to be out of a job by now, but it would've been nice.

Have we come a long way in treating people with HIV, so that they can live longer, fuller lives? In many cases, yes.

Have we come a long way in prevention, to make sure others at risk stay healthy? In many cases, yes.

But it's hard weighing those facts against the amazing people I've known who would have done more amazing things if their lives hadn't been cut short. (And, yes, the same can be said for people who have lost their lives due to cancer or tragic accidents or any number of other reasons. Death sucks. And, it happens to all of us sooner or later. I just happen to have been touched more by this disease than others, because I've worked in this field for so long.)

It's also hard weighing the advances in treatment and prevention against the places where people still don't have the access they need and deserve -- and I'm not just talking about developing nations, but right here in the U.S., too. Some of the national statistics are startling and sobering and just plain sad.

The point of World AIDS Day is to make sure that people don't forget -- about this disease, about the people who are living with it, about the stigma that still exists -- and make sure people are aware -- of the risks, of the availability of tests, of treatment options.

Even if you've never personally been touched by HIV, tomorrow is a day to remember and be aware.

Bad grammar makes me

One of my favorite t-shirts reads, "Bad grammar makes me [sic]."

It makes me sad how many people don't get it, but it doesn't surprise me. Most people don't give a shit about grammar. And, that's okay. There are lots of things that other people hold sacred (football, beer, bacon, old people) that just don't interest me.

The thing I find interesting, though, is how many people seem to worry that I judge their spelling and grammar. Really? I mean, first of all, do I seem that mean? Do you really think I'm going to publicly shame you or think less of you if you write/say/spell something incorrectly? Really?

I am passionate about writing and communicating in general, which means I'm a complete and utter grammar geek. I love words. I also paid attention in my English classes. I have a ton of grammar and usage books, and I consult them often. Does it pain me when I see someone using really, really bad English? Yes. I hate emoticons because they are a misappropriation of punctuation. Really.

I try to refrain from correcting people unless one of the following applies: 1. he or she asked for me to proofread, 2. he or she is a good friend that can handle me pointing out an error without becoming offended, 3. I am absolutely sure there is a mistake and it's related to something really important (like the draft of your wedding program that hasn't gone to print yet).

Sometimes I can't help myself -- for example, when my sister sends me texts or posts on my FB wall and DOES NOT USE ANY PUNCTUATION AT ALL. (Yes, the caps there are intentional.) Look, I'm not asking that she use CORRECT punctuation, just SOME punctuation so that I know where one thought ends and another begins. It makes a difference. Plus, it could literally kill me. When I read, I breathe like I would if I was reading something aloud. (This may be a very weird quirk only I have; I've never asked if anyone else does it. I admit it's strange.) If you do not put commas or periods in the text you type (and if you type a lot of text), I will basically hold my breath until I get to the end. This could lead to dizziness or even death. Do you really want to be responsible for that? (And, yes, I realize that I would be up for a Darwin award if I died because I didn't breathe while reading a really long text from my sister. So it goes.)

I am not a great speller. I'm an okay speller. I use spell check. I use dictionary.com. I also have a pocket dictionary (and a pocket thesaurus and a pocket style book) that I carry in the tote bag I bring to work every day. Will I mock you a little if you accidentally spell something completely inappropriate or just plain funny? Yes. I also expect you to do the same when I do it. (Because I do and I will and I'm okay with that.)

I'm pretty good with the basic rules of grammar. There are a lot of things I still look up. And there are rules that I knowingly and intentionally break. (Um, hello fragments.) I rationalize by saying, "Well, I know the rules I'm breaking, and I'm choosing to break them for stylistic reasons." Is that any better than someone breaking the rules because they don't know them? I don't know.

I often say that my e-mails read like I speak and my spoken grammar is atrocious. By my standards. Many other people disagree.

Whatever.

I find it fascinating how intimidated people are by grammar. Language is hard. We all make mistakes. The only time I think less of someone who has exhibited poor spelling and/or grammar is when he or she should know better. For example, a person hired to do communications work who has three typos in her out of office automatic e-mail, because she didn't take the time to re-read it or click the spell check button. That's just lazy and sloppy. And annoying. (See, that fragment has way more weight BECAUSE it's a fragment. Am I right?)

It annoys me when people talk about me being smart, and I've been trying to figure out why. It's not like it's a bad thing to be smart. (I always say I like people who are smart and funny.) I finally stumbled on the answer: it's not something that makes me proud. It's just something that happened out of the box, like having blonde hair and blue eyes. (While I like both of those traits, I'm not particularly proud of them either.)

I'm proud that I have a talent for writing. I'm proud of myself when I do something I didn't think I could, when I face my fears, when I do something kind for someone else. I'm proud that I work every day at being a good person. I'm proud of how honest I am, even when -- especially when -- it's not the easy or fun thing to do. I'm proud when other people think I'm funny or brave.

I'm not proud of being smart. I'm not proud of knowing more grammatical rules than the average person.

I just love words and written language and communication and the connection to other people those things make possible. I like rules, which is why I like grammar (even if the rules are exceptionally wacky a lot of the time).

I should probably stop telling on myself

But I can't help it. (It's the lack of self-discipline again, I think.)

There was an episode of Buffy where she says, "I feel an attack of dumb blonde coming on." This always irked me because she wasn't a REAL blonde. I am.

And, unfortunately, I have these attacks sometimes.

Take today.

It's time to do my quarterly data analysis at work, so I opened up my ginormous spreadsheet and, for some crazy reason, I had apparently password-protected the main worksheet. I don't remember doing this, but I'm the only one who could have. (And, there's absolutely no reason to do it, which just makes me crazy.) Since I didn't remember doing it, I also didn't remember the password. I tried every password I have ever used. None worked. So, I had to copy what I could into a new worksheet, delete the password-protected one, and now I have to update all 8 gazillion references to that worksheet throughout the rest of the workbook. It took me 20 minutes to do it on one worksheet; there are five more in the workbook. Awesome. That was Dumb Blonde Attack #1.

I was telling my cube-neighbor about it this morning, and then we got to talking about the fact that it's Election Day. I was annoyed that even though I changed my address with DMV (on a form that specifically mentioned voter registration, too), my request for an absentee ballot was denied. I'd have to vote in person for the first time in many, many years. We were lamenting about the candidates and how crappy this whole election season has been and our fears about the race for governor (since it will affect us as state employees as well as residents of the state). I said, "There should be a test you have to pass before you can vote."

My cube-neighbor said, "Isn't that how they kept African-Americans from voting back in the '50s?"

"Not literacy tests," I said. "I don't care if you can read. I care if you know the issues and are informed."

And so, I wrote on our little in/out board that I was "performing my civic duty" and went off to get myself registered and to vote.

After standing in line, filling out another form, producing my rental agreement and license, I was cleared to vote. I went up to the little old lady and collected my cards. She said, "Make sure you turn the white one over, because it has two sides." Well, duh. Of course I'd check! Did she think I was an idiot?

And then I stood in front of the little voting cubicles and I was stumped.

Let me back up for a second to defend what I did next: Like I said before, I haven't voted in person in many years. And, in Portland, the set up is different. The voting areas are more more like partitioned cubes. It's very clear how you get in and out of them.

So, I stood there, looking at people's legs beneath the curtains, and I couldn't figure out how you got BEHIND the curtain (because it looked like one continuous curtain -- really, it did). So, I go to the little old lady and I say, "This is probably a dumb question, but how do you get behind the curtain?"

She looked at me like I was too stupid to live. And lifted up the curtain.

Oooohhhhhh.

That would be Dumb Blonde Attack #2. Which is a lot for one day.

I told this story at work twice today (at lunch, and then at our staff meeting). Both times, I laughed so hard I made myself cry.

I toyed with the idea of doing a dramatic reenactment -- maybe even with my gnomes or quarter machine monkeys -- but I don't think I'll have the time to get that quite right, especially if I plan to meet my NaNoWriMo goals. Sigh.

It's good to laugh at yourself, and I'm glad that I can. I certainly have plenty of opportunity....

I lack discipline

I always have.

I was lucky to be smart enough to be able to make it through school with very little effort. I could sight-read (which is the dumbest term EVER -- of COURSE you read by sight!) well enough that I barely ever practiced when I played the flute. I have always, always, always been a procrastinator. Without deadlines and someone to hold me accountable, I would never accomplish anything.

I'm a big skeptic of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) -- during which people attempt to write more than 1600 words per day to end the month with a novel-length manuscript. Maybe it's because I don't think you can force creativity. Maybe it's because I don't know how anyone can write that much per day. Maybe it's because I just can't imagine sustaining that kind of momentum and having the kind of discipline it takes to sit your butt in the chair and do it. Every day.

I met my friend Ben a couple weeks ago to review the work we'd most recently sent each other. He encouraged the daily writing thing. I told him I've never (NEVER!) written on a daily basis. I write when I feel possessed to write or when I have a deadline. Yeah, that's pretty much it. But, I did write almost every day last week (and without a specific deadline or being particularly possessed by an idea or phrase or word). It felt good. And, then I stopped for three days. (That was dumb. Very, very dumb. ...And typical. See title above.)

But. I know that I CAN do it. When my mom had to start radiation two years ago, things weren't looking so good. I decided I wanted to give her a complete copy of my novel for Christmas, so she could read my book before she died. In six weeks, I completed the draft I was working on (which was less far along than the draft I am currently working on).

So, this NaNoWriMo, I'm going to try to work on my novel every day. Screw the word counts -- my goal is to just do SOME writing every single day.

Now we circle back around to the title of this blog again: I. Lack. Discipline.

My shrink says I need to reach out and tell people what I need, when I need it. I don't like doing this because it makes me feel needy and annoying. But, Amanda Palmer says that nothing is impossible if you ask for help.

So, I am asking for help.

I need cheerleaders and task masters. I need people who will encourage me throughout the month, and others who will prod me (in a not-so-gentle way) to make sure that I really am working on the book every day this month.

In exchange, I'm happy to slip your name into the story somehow and I'll include you in the acknowledgments if I ever get it published. (Or, I'll bake you cookies. The choice is yours.)

Now, to accomplish today's writing....

Surreality

I'm sticking with the one-word blog titles for now because, well, I can.

I just pulled myself from my warm, cozy bed, stumbled through the dark apartment to the office and woke up my computer (and the screen was blindingly bright in all that darkness, let me tell you) just so I could write about insomnia. Not mine, my narrator's.

Yeah, that's just weird no matter how you slice it.

I realized earlier in the day that my narrator's best friend hates her (the narrator's) sister. Or at least she really dislikes her. This came as a surprise to me. I figured it out based on two snarky lines of dialogue in two separate scenes that I'd written well apart from each other. (It's especially interesting because this character is not particularly snarky in general.)

I also spent a good chunk of time this evening looking for a scene I'm sure I've written. I can't find it anywhere -- it's not in the notebook of longhand notes, not in the stacks of printed bits of scenes I have strewn all over the floor and the desk, not in any of the documents in the folder labeled "pieces" on my computer, not in the old version of the book, not in the older version of the book. No where. But, I'm sure I wrote it. I can picture the text on the screen. ...Or did I? (I usually don't just toss a scene entirely. If I don't like it or it no longer works or whatever, I usually hold onto it in a folder or SOMETHING unless it's so badly written it embarrasses me. This does not seem to be the case with this scene I maybe didn't write after all.)

So, it's almost 1 a.m. and I have to get up around 7:15 to go to work. I am a girl who needs her sleep. (Like, I should get 10 hours every night. I don't, but I should.) And yet, here I am writing about writing, when writing about my character's insomnia gave me insomnia.

My life is really strange sometimes.

Instructions

Over the course of the last few years, dozens of people have told me that life doesn't come with instructions, and the early death of a parent certainly doesn't. That observation is both trite and unhelpful. I really didn't think I was the only person who missed the giant user manual that comes free from the hospital when you're born.

To survive all of this, I had to find a way to make something positive for myself. I had to find something to learn. Otherwise, the weight of being motherless would have crushed me. It would have made me forget how to breathe and how to think and how to love. I would have lost myself.

What did I have to learn?

• To not give up on the things you want before you even try to get them.
• To not let fear stand in the way of happiness.
• To not leave so many things unsaid.
• To take the time to tell people what they mean to me, to make sure they know.
• To focus on the importance of remembering, of love, of embracing adventure as a means of chasing down joy.

What did I do?

• I took my mom’s ashes on adventures that I thought she would have liked, so I could still feel close to her and I could share things with her. Most of the friends who have participated in these adventures never even met my mother. That has taught me that a lot of the time, people will do things you would never imagine they would do, if only you ask. It has taught me about the kindness and generosity of my friends. It has drawn us closer.
• I tried to face my fears in very visceral ways – trapezing and riding waterfalls.
• I’ve made an effort to show people that I care about them, to let them know what I think of them, to let them know when I’m thinking of them.
  
• I’ve tried to inspire others by sharing the things that inspire me.
• I made up my own instructions, my own rules, and then I branded myself with the most important ones in the most obvious places I could find.

The tattoo on my right wrist came first, so I’ll start with that one. I got it the day after Christmas, and I put it on my right wrist because that’s where I wear my watch and I knew I’d be looking at it all the time.

The letters DFTBA stand for “Don’t Forget to be Awesome.” It’s my favorite saying, taken from the Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria. The blue rose has so many meanings. “Blue Rose” was my mom’s CB handle when I was a kid. It’s there to remind me that you have to take risks and go after the things you want, that happiness takes work, and that you should never settle (no matter how afraid you might be).

The left wrist got tattooed on the first anniversary of Mom’s death. She had a picture of a seagull from the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach tattooed on her collarbone; I chose an image on the opposite page. The word “Love” is there to remind me of this quote:

But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and their practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfect invisible principle of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers went brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull could look upon him. "Jonathan," he said, and these were the last words that he spoke, "keep working on love."

(Which is, of course, where the title of this blog originates.)

Make sure the people you love know it. Let them know that you think of them. Let them know what you think of them. Don't wait. Don't expect happiness to just fall into your lap -- work at it, go after the things you want, take risks. Keep working on love and never, ever forget to be awesome.

Music

I write. Even before I could write, I told stories. (One of the best things anyone ever said to me was when my older sister pointed out how I used to tell stories before I learned to write -- and how she and her friends used to ask me to make them up for them.)

But, I think in pictures. Most of my writing comes from describing the images in my brain.

And, I need music. I can't think (much less write or do anything creative) if I don't have music playing in the background.

I love making soundtracks -- for road trips, for particular periods in my life, for the stories I'm writing, for friends. A friend of mine once told me that a friend of hers told her that every time you hear a new song for the first time, you evolve. I don't know if there's any actual science behind that, but I love the idea. I love sharing new music with people and hearing new songs for the first time.

And maybe all of this is partly why I was so psyched when my friend Nora asked me to participate in her project to make a video for Guster's "Bad, Bad World." (I normally avoid having my picture taken at all costs. Nine years later, my sister still rants about how I'm not in "any" of her wedding pictures...which is an overstatement. I'm in some. Just not a lot.)

So, please go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfBmHiMoNd8
If you have a YouTube account, sign in and "like" the video by clicking on the thumbs up. (If you don't have a YouTube account, stop being a slacker and create one. It takes less than two minutes.) You should help Nora win, because she is awesome, because her idea was awesome, and because it's one small thing you can do to decrease world suck.

Shortly after I helped film this video with Nora, my grandboss (that's my boss's boss, get it?) sent me the link to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REo7VnlenOA with the lyrics to the song. He said some of the images and lyrics made him think of me -- and it almost made me totally lose it right there in my cubicle when I read his words, the lyrics, and listened to the song.

I've been trying to do some writing for most of today and I haven't accomplished much. Usually when I get stuck, I make a collage. Collages help me think -- don't ask why; I don't know.

Tonight, instead of making my typical collage, I played with some lyrics from some songs I've been listening to a lot. I don't know what I'd do without music; I don't want to know.

Here's my texty alternative to a collage:

It's empty in the valley of your heart. I am still not getting what I want. I'm coming apart at the seams. The sun, it rises slowly as you walk away from all the fears and all the faults you've left behind. There's no turning back for us tonight. 'Cause I need freedom now, and I need to know how to live my life as it's meant to be. Are you looking for an answer? It gets so lonely. I'm here. Hold on to me. I'm right here waiting. It's too late to save me. You're too late. Doc, there's a hole where something was. Things aren't the same anymore. Some nights it gets so bad, I almost pick up the phone. I could really use a friend tonight. I cannot live, I can't breathe, unless you do this with me. Please stay until I'm gone. Well, I'm a wreck, I really can't explain it. I can't explain a thing. I'm so lost. I'm barely here. I wish I could explain myself but words escape me. I wish you could remind me who I was, because every day I'm a little further off. I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type. Wish that I was as invisible as you make me feel. I would gladly stay an afterthought, just bring back some nice reminders. 'Cause I have other things to fill my time. You take what is yours and I'll take mine. Now let me at the truth, which will refresh my broken mind. I'm a loose bolt of a complete machine. But I will hold on hope. May you dream you are dreaming in a warm, soft bed. May the voices inside you that fill you with dread make the sounds of thousands of angels instead. And I'll find strength in pain. I swear I didn't mean for it to feel like this, like every single inch of me is bruised. I wanna have the same last dream again. The one where I wake up and I'm alive. I'd promise you anything for another shot at life. I'll know my name as it's called again. Boycott love. It only takes a heart to be heard. You will be fine.


The songs quoted are:

"(Coffee's for Closers)" - Fall Out Boy
"7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)" - Fall Out Boy
"The Pros and Cons of Breathing" - Fall Out Boy
"Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes" - Fall Out Boy
"GINASFS" - Fall Out Boy
"Astronaut" - Amanda Palmer
“Nobody’s Crying” – Patty Griffin
"Bruised" - Jack's Mannequin
"Soundtrack for Our Movie" - Mae
"Almost Everything" - Wakey!Wakey!
"Check Yes, Juliet" - We the Kings
"Save a Place" - 1969
"The Adventure" - Angels & Airwaves
"Not Now" - blink-182
"Stockholm Syndrome" - blink-182
"The Cave" - Mumford & Sons

Butterflies

The words below I am completely stealing from a blog written by Jamie Tworkowski for his organization To Write Love on Her Arms:

i am impressed by people who are honest and kind. i am inspired by moments of vulnerability, moments of confession and compassion, moments where someone makes it clear that they are a person in need of other people and someone else makes it clear that the first person is not alone.

....Be loved. Be known. Love people and know people. Be so brave as to raise a hand for help when you need it. Make friends and make sure they know they matter. Be loyal to them and fight for them. Remind them what’s true and invite them to do the same when you forget. If you do some losing or you walk with someone else in their defeat, live with dignity and grace. It is a middle finger to the darkness.



I was talking to my shrink yesterday about my oddness, which some people even call crazy. (It's nice to have a licensed clinical psychologist who has been assessing you for a year and a half confirm that you, most definitely, are not crazy.) She said my whimsy is very life-affirming. She said this several times. (In fact, she agreed that I'm a lot like Luna Lovegood.)

I never really appreciated butterflies until I visited two butterfly gardens in the span of a couple of weeks last February and March. In the second garden, two separate butterflies landed on me (one right on my DFTBA tattoo). So, now I equate butterflies with peace and love and a connection to those who are gone (mostly because of a legend a volunteer in the second butterfly garden told me). And that is why I've been making origami butterflies lately -- why I cover them with inspiring words (many stolen from Jamie's blogs) or hide important messages inside them. I'm using the butterflies as my messengers, just like the Blackfoot Indians saw real butterflies as messengers to and from the spirit world.

Reading Jamie's blog this morning made me think of butterflies....

Magic

...what he felt in its place, the truth, was inadequate. How could he say he'd become a magician because he felt abandoned once in a lonely house? How he'd returned to soothe abandoned women? How he'd fought off loneliness so many times by picking up a deck of cards that now it was simply rote? That if he weren't a magician, he'd be nothing much at all? "It's a way," he murmured, "of turning back the darkness."

"Excuse me?" Her face contorted. "Excuse me very much?"

"What I mean is, the world is an awful place, isn't it? Magic makes it less awful for a moment or two." He felt like he'd torn away a bandage, and confirmed that an old wound was indeed still there. "If I can shake the world off a man's shoulders, I feel better."

All over Bernie Simon's features, lights were dimming and doors politely closing.

"I mean," he rallied, "there's joy and wonderment to be had. I love to perform. It fights back the loneliness. It's all I really know how to do anymore."

- Glen David Gold, Carter Beats the Devil

Keep Working on Love

Yes, it's redundant to title a blog post the same thing as the blog itself, but so it goes.

So, Wednesday was a very bad day. I had been feeling pretty miserable all day, and then I just totally melted down at the end of practice. And on the drive home. It was just a mess. But, Thursday was better. And Friday was actually okay. I thought of my mom a lot (obviously), but in good ways. I kept myself pretty distracted, and I finally got the tattoo I've been wanting for months -- the seagull pictured on the right hand side of this page and the word "Love."

"Keep working on love" -- those words haunt me. It seems like no one in this whole world is exempt from that idea. We could all do more to show others love, to love ourselves, to be loving and kind and gracious.

I did some writing today (finally!) and it started with reviewing comments my friend Em made on a couple of chapters. One of her comments was about how my narrator has two sides, "the totally cynical, sarcastic I-can-take-this side, and then this other, completely vulnerable I'm-trying-to-stay-small-so-you'll-love-me side." It kind of killed me to read that comment, because she's right on. (And I'm not just talking about the assessment of my narrator.)

I like to think of myself as really straightforward and direct and easy to read -- I think I am all of those things most of the time. (If I'm not directly expressing what I'm thinking, I will more than likely tell you if you ask. There are precious few things that I hold back completely to myself.) And yet, at the same time, I've found that there are A LOT of people who just don't get me. And not just because I'm weird (which I fully admit I am) but because they don't understand me or the things I've tried to express.

I had this epiphany last week about why I hate it so much when people call me strong. It's because I didn't choose it. I never asked to be. I have just clung from moment to moment to moment to survive. Many, many people see that person -- the one who has crawled through the last couple of years and can still smile and crack a funny joke every once in a while. Fewer see the "trying to stay small" side, even though I think that side is so much more obvious, exposed. Maybe even more real. More me.

I've got to keep this ointment on my new tattoo for a few days, and it's getting all over everything. Just now, I had to change my shirt because I had this greasy stain in a rather suggestive place. This happens a lot. Not because I grope myself a lot, but because I frequently wrap my arms around my middle and then lean forward. I do it without even thinking about it. And, I realize, it's sort of like hugging myself. (Staying small.)

I had this mission to exploit every opportunity for fun and happiness on Saturday, and I think I accomplished most of that. I slept most of Sunday away. Today, the sadness is starting to creep in again -- I've exhausted all the plans, all the distractions. It's time to remember, again, that I am motherless. This is how I will be for the rest of my life.

I keep myself insanely busy these days (in fact, right now I'm running behind on meeting a friend for dinner before practice) -- part of that is certainly about distracting myself. But part of it is about working on love -- about appreciating every moment I have with the people who make me feel happy, who make me laugh, who make me feel loved.

You know it's bad when...

• you contemplate making yourself reminders so you don't put your underwear on inside out. Again.
• you stop threatening to run away and go live in a cave and instead start seriously considering employment in Zambia.
• skating doesn't help. Not even a little.
• neither do the superhero socks.
• you don't care that you smell horrific and you're wearing gnome jammie pants -- you go to the grocery store at 9 p.m. to get yourself some ice cream and Magic Shell because you need it.
• even though you need the ice cream and Magic Shell, you don't want it, so you put them away without even a little taste. And you really don't care.
• while listening to Taking Back Sunday, instead of screaming along, you find yourself crying.
• you wish you could just stop being you for a few days and then you realize you aren't the you that you used to be and you're wondering who you are now and how you got here and where you go next.

Today was definitely a bad day. Tomorrow is Nemesis Day. And then Friday -- the one-year anniversary (which is semi-redundant, isn't it?) of my mom's death -- will probably be completely and utterly miserable beyond the telling. But, then it has to get better, right? Because by then I will have made it through the year without it killing me. (And I hope this means there will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year....)

And, if not, there's always getting furiously happy out of spite.

Joy Trumps Nemesis

Today is the 51st Thursday since my mom died. Throughout the last 51 weeks, I have repeatedly grumbled about how I fucking hate Thursdays (as opposed to Arthur Dent, who just could never get the hang of them) and have dubbed Thursday my nemesis. Nemesis Day is what I've called it.

But, today, something magical happened.

Joy won out.

See, my incredibly awesome friend Nora sent an email to a select group of people on Facebook. And it was pretty cool just to be included in this group. But then I read about the project she wanted to undertake and, I'm not gonna lie, I got a little giddy. (Okay, okay, I got a lot giddy.)

Because Nora wants to bring people joy, which reminded me of my mission to chase down joy and as I re-read that list of 200+ things that bring me joy, Nemesis Day started to suck less. A lot less.

And then I listened to this song (because it's part of Nora's joy project) and it kind of screwed Nemesis Day's chances of making me miserable today.

My friend Holly posted this anonymous quote as her FB status earlier today: "Never give up on something that you can't go a day without thinking about." To me, that ties right back into joy, too. (I mean, you really SHOULD give up on something you can't go a day without thinking about if it doesn't bring you joy, because who needs that kind of misery?)

It doesn't take much to make a difference in someone's life. Just a small act of kindness, an affirmation of love, an attempt to share joy.

So, huge thanks to Nora for making that difference in my life today (especially this particular Nemesis Day).

"Hope less and do more / Say less and feel more"

- Dog's Eye View, "Last Letter Home"

Talk about a weird day.

I had a meeting this morning with some IT people I've known for about a year and a half via email and phone, but never met in person before. On the one hand, it was sort of like peaking behind the curtain at the great and powerful Oz. My observation was this: In real life, people are just weird.

I discovered this strange sore on my belly about a week and a half ago and it totally freaked me out because I didn't know where it came from and I thought it might be MRSA or GAS or some other flesh-eating type of thing. I wore a skirt to work today, which meant I had to clip my ID badge to my wasteband (when I wear pants, I clip it to my pocket). As I often notice when I wear skirts, the edge of the clip of my ID badge was poking me in an uncomfortable way. ...And then it finally dawned on me -- THAT is where the sore came from! (I then clipped my badge to a lanyard to resolve the problem.)

I left work early, because I had to drive an hour to my vet's to pick up prescription cat food and Thyroid meds. All day I've been saying I need to get a vet closer to where I live now, but it's hard. I like my vet. The main partner in the practice was very good to my Emmett when he almost died from a blocked urethra four years ago. And one of the other vets is awfully nice to look at. (Of course, I'd completely forgotten about her until I was on my way out and saw her name on the door. This just goes to show how distracted I am.)

I am insanely distracted. Distractable. On another planet. I'm not sleeping well, not eating fabulously, and my memory is shot. It's just like right after Mom died. I guess that's because this time last year I was getting the worst sleep of my life, watching my mother seize, changing her diapers, filling out paperwork for Medicaid to have her put in a nursing home (the card came the day after she died). I miss my mom. So much so that I wrote her another letter over the weekend while I was staying in her house.

Part of it goes like this:

I find myself still really spacey about things -- not recognizing people who recognize me, not remembering details I should/used to remember -- because there's still so much to process. The last two years are kind of a blur -- the last year with you was so hard, and then this past year without you has been mostly a nightmare.

The odd thing, of course, is that I know I am a better person now than I was a year ago. The last 24 hours of your life changed me in deep, dark, permanent ways. I know more about who I am, what I'm willing to do, the costs of the choices we make, but I also know that life is fleeting and that you have to be willing to take some risks if you ever expect to get what you want. In fact, I've come around to the conclusion that you don't deserve happiness if you aren't willing to work for it -- you can't just sit by and expect life to drop the things you want in your lap. Maybe that works for some people, but not people like us.

Can you tell I've been looking at my tattoo a lot lately?

I've been trying to let it do its job, to remind me that every, every second is important and that it's worth the pain of humiliation or rejection or loss (or even a little physical pain) to go after the things that are important to you.

It's still hard.

Everything is so hard.

Tonight I did something I think was incredibly brave. It didn't turn out the way I'd hoped, but it could have gone a lot worse. But, what matters most, is that I took a chance. (Especially because it scared me so much I was afraid I was going to hyperventilate.)

Shortly after Garden State (my favorite movie) came out, Zach Braff said this:

What Garden State's really about is how short life is. And how we get caught up in so many entanglements and insecurities and worries and obsessions and trivial arguments while life races right by us shaking its head at how seriously we take ourselves. Keep in mind that the sun's gonna burn out in about a million years and truly nothing will have mattered.

He's right. I'm still working on not taking things so seriously and not getting caught up in my insecurities and all the worries. I'm better at it than I used to be, and that's something. It's progress.

My life feels so out of control lately -- too much going on at work (so, of course, I volunteered for this TA project in Zambia that may end up with me going to Africa in the spring) and at home and I never have enough time to write (so much for that plan to have the book done by the end of the year....) and my cats are really cranky about barely ever seeing me. And, even though I often feel like I can't breathe from the spinning of the earth, I think I'm starting to let it just spin without worrying so much about trying to control how and where it spins. Because the truth is, I don't really have that kind of power anyway. It's going to go where it goes. I may as well just enjoy getting there.

My little shiny blue car passed 100,000 miles tonight. So many of those miles were earned during the darkest, saddest, hardest times in my life. But, many of those miles were passed while I was having grand epiphanies, too -- figuring out who I am and what I want.

My shrink was so incredibly right on the money when she called me action-oriented. "Hope less and do more. Say less and feel more." Those are some of the best words of advice I've ever heard.

And, one of the best wishes I've ever heard:
"May the voices inside you that fill you with dread make the sounds of thousands of angels instead." (from Patty Griffin's song "Nobody's Crying.")

That is what I wish for me and for you. DFTBA.

None of us can stand alone all of the time.

People I have loved profoundly have tried to kill themselves or seriously considered it. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I don't know about all the suicide attempts or suicidal thoughts of my loved ones. I know a lot of people don't talk about it.
Here's the thing, though: No one -- no matter how strong, no matter how vivacious -- can stand alone all of the time. It's just not possible to make it through this life completely on your own. There is no shame in asking for help when you need it. (If you were falling off a cliff, barely holding on by your fingers, and someone happened by the ledge -- wouldn't you call out for a hand?) There is no weakness in accepting help when it is offered. (If you saw someone hurting, wouldn't you want to help, if you could?)

The simple truth is this: You deserve to feel okay about yourself and your life. Yes, you. And you. And you. And you. All of us.

Some of us struggle with depression more often than others. Some of us experience it in more challenging ways. Some of us are possessed by an overwhelming desire to physically inflict our inner pain on our bodies. If you don't want to talk to the people in your life who love you, talk to people who have trained and studied to offer strategies for dealing with these situations.

Would you think less of a person with diabetes who needs to take insulin to process the sugars in her body? Why is there such stigma associated with people who need medications to process their emotions in a healthy way?

If you saw someone with a swollen, bruised ankle that couldn't support her weight, wouldn't you recommend getting an X-ray? Why is there such resistance to seeking a therapist to help heal the wounds in our hearts and heads?

It's not just okay to ask for help when you need it. It's your job. No one can do it for you. You owe it to yourself and the people who love you. If you think they will be better off without you, you're wrong. There is no pain like grief. It's the worst thing you could purposely inflict on someone you care about.

Tomorrow is World Suicide Prevention Day. Suicide is the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S., but there are places to go for help:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK

HopeLine: 1-800-784-2433

Genius

"True genius is never recognized in its own time."
"Except by the one who has it."
- Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay


Most of my friends will tell you I'm smart. (My mom always said I was book-smart but had no common sense. The truth, I think, lies somewhere in between.) I was an honor student; school came pretty easy to me; I learn some things (especially if it has to do with memorizing stuff) quickly. In some ways, I'm pretty smart. In other ways, I'm dumber than a box of hair. (And, I don't know why, but I love that phrase.)

But, the thing that irks me is that most people do not recognize my genius. I have these brilliant ideas from time to time and when I express them, people look at me like they're trying to decide what size rubber room would be adequate to contain me.

For example: Sunblock. I think that someone needs to come up with a type of no-tears sunblock (that is key) that goes on very brightly colored (and should be available in a variety of colors) so you can see if you've missed a spot. The pigment in the sunblock will temporarily dye your skin, fading as the sunblock's protection fades -- when you're back to your normal color, you need to get out of the sun or reapply. I still think it's genius. My friends, not so much.

I've just finished reading Suzanne Collins's Mockingjay for the second time, after re-reading its two predecessors. In these books, there is at least one character who dyes her skin green. I bet Suzanne Collins would like my sunblock idea.

But I digress.

The main character in Collins's books is a girl named Katniss Everdeen. In all three books, this girl is openly mocked for not noticing the effect she has on people (specifically two boys, but others, too). She has no idea that these two boys are deeply in love with her -- has missed it completely. Even when they tell her, she's pretty clueless.

In the books, people find this both endearing and annoying. Some would say she's insanely dense. Me, I can relate.

It's not that I have people pining away for me. It's just that I am hopeless when it comes to flirting. I never realize it's happening until someone else points it out to me. I recently told a story to three different friends and at the end of it, they all concluded that the guy in the story was flirting with me. When my first friend came to this conclusion, I thought she was seeing something that wasn't there. When my two other friends came to the same conclusion, I realized I have a problem. This is not the first time someone has flirted with me and I've missed it.

So, here's my genius idea: All flirting should be preceded by the announcement, "Let the flirting commence." Then there's no possible confusion.

Right?

Why do I feel like I'm going to get about as much support for this idea as I did for my ideal sunblock? Too bad Katniss doesn't really exist; I bet she'd be on my side....

Dreams

I wrote myself an email this morning to transcribe the dream I had right after I woke up:

I went to bed thinking about misadventures, plotting places and pictures. So I guess it stands to reason that I would dream of my mom. I had also been thinking about derby regionals, and earlier in the day had been making plans to meet a friend from derby, so I guess it stands to reason that in my dream, I'd be trying to get to a meeting with my derby wife. At first, I was early. So, I wandered around this giant, sprawling mall. Then, in the dream, I had to pee, so I wandered through this place that had a glass floor. I was terrified to step on the glass floor (and see the stories and stories below), so I walked the edges, where there was marble and I could pretend I didn't feel like I was going to fall. Once to the place where I could pee, my mom was there (but she was younger - high school maybe?) and she was doing some kind of performance art. And, suddenly, I became the artist that she was visiting and I decided to sculpt her, but as a kitten. (In my dream, my mom as an adult was narrating and she said this really happened and that she was letting me recreate the sculpture. She also said I'd never get over the fear of open glass floors and that that was okay.) I made the sculpture and although it was still very soft, I handed it to her to look at. She reshaped it a bit, so the kitten's head was all tucked into its body, the ways cats do. And then I realized I was 15 minutes late to meet Rehab. But, on my way to meet her, I realized that some bad guy had vandalized the place where I'd left my laptop (I guess the one I have from work?) and other things. All that was left was the fabric jewelry box my mom made me when I was a kid, on display, like a message. I was about to say, "What does it mean?" (yes, like the double rainbow guy) when I think I woke up.

I miss my mom every day. Lately, I've been remembering how bad things were last September, and it makes me remember things I don't want to remember, and miss her even more. Dreams like that seem nice enough, but they rattle me. I can't explain it any better than that -- just that I feel very jarred when my mom shows up in my sleep. Especially because it happens so infrequently.

I spent most of today with two very good friends, and there's something bizarre about the way the three of us connect, we just always have an incredible time together. Maybe it's partly to do with the fact that each time we get together, it involves a misadventure with my mom's ashes. Maybe it's partly to do with the fact that each misadventure is about not accepting the status quo and not doing what other people think/say/expect you to do, but instead following your heart and doing what makes sense to you. Just you.

It's been such an effort to remember all the lessons I've learned from my mom's death, but I try to practice them every day: tell people I think of them; tell people what I think of them; choose happiness and wonder; chase down joy; never settle; do what makes sense to you; don't forget to be awesome; love love love -- keep working on love.

"You're ready, sweetheart. Let go. Let go!"

- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I know that's the line Harry's mother says in the movie just before he has to break the connection to Voldemort's wand. I'm too lazy to go see if it's the same as the book. In any case, I've been thinking of this a lot lately.

I have a hard time letting go of some things. I forgive incredibly easily, but if you get me to the point of holding a grudge, you may as well walk away because it's a rare and indescribable feat to get me to let go of a grudge.

But that's not the kind of letting go I'm talking about.

I obsess about things -- mistakes I've made, wrong things I've said, opportunities I've missed, people I've inadvertently hurt, regrets, regrets, regrets. I have insomnia anyway, but this definitely contributes. I'm a chronic worrier.

Since my mom died, I've gotten a lot better about this -- it takes a lot more to get me worked up in the moment and after the fact. But, I still worry about things that it's pointless to worry about. Case and point: When I was flying back from a work trip on Thursday, the airline lost my checked bag. At the airport, after I got home, that night in bed, I kept worrying a. about whether or not I'd ever see my suitcase again, b. how stupid I was to put my camera and my necklace made from one of my mom's earrings in the checked bag, c. what else I'd packed that I couldn't remember. I was freaking out. AND, none of it mattered. I kept trying to remind myself of that: Whether I freaked out or not was not going to have any impact on the airline finding and returning my bag (which they did end up doing the next morning). (There are times, I think -- although I can't come up with a specific example -- where worrying and freaking out MIGHT have an impact on the outcome and then I guess it's okay. Or more okay. Who knows.)

So, I'm trying to stop myself from doing that kind of worrying and freaking out and crucifying myself. I'm trying to learn to let go (and be a little nicer to myself). It's not the easiest thing in the world, especially when you've been one way your whole life and suddenly try to go the exact opposite way. But, I am a girl who likes extremes, right?

I've been working on my novel more lately. This is due at least in part to two friends who are reading and critiquing for me. I should be writing a chunk of my second chapter RIGHT NOW so I can finish it and send it. But I'm not. I'm stuck in this place where I freak out about not being good enough, of never finishing, of always disappointing myself and the people who believe in me. When I get on a roll (like I was yesterday morning in the Laundromat), I freak out the other way: What happens if I finish the book, publish it, make a tremendous impact on the literary world -- and I'm not happy? It's all I've ever wanted, and what if it doesn't make me happy?

It's actually a central question in my novel.

And I think the answer is this: It's more than the accomplishment of dreams that makes a person happy. It's also about satisfying personal relationships, challenging yourself to reach for another dream after that one, exploiting every opportunity for joy.

"It's a world of hope and a world of fears"

I apologize now for getting the "It's a Small World" song stuck in your head. It's been stuck in mine for days. Welcome to Hell.

A much more serious post has been germinating in my consciousness for days, and it's going to come on out and play sometime soonish. I can feel it. I once saw an interview with Patty Griffin where she said that sometimes she's just in a horrible mood she can't explain and then - BAM! - a song just pours out of her, and she realizes that that's why she's been so distracted and cranky - her subconscious was otherwise occupied. This makes sense to me.

I was in DC for several days for work. While there, I re-read the first two books in the Hunger Games series. Last night, the third book was waiting in my mail when I got home. I stayed up until 4 a.m. to finish it. And, as dedicated as I was to reading these books (because they ARE good books), I've been in a horrible mood for days because of them. Or because of other things. Who knows.

But that's not what this is about. This is about the smallness of the world.

My friend Steve (an actual friend named Steve, not the little-known band) sent me a message via Facebook the other day. His brother had done some artwork on the helmet of a derby girl whose legal name is insanely similar to mine -- same last name, very close first name. The league she plays for? Ithaca. On the team that came to Maine to play in the bout where I was a jammer ref last Saturday. Small world?

Oh, yes.

But, it's even smaller. This chick's derby name is strikingly similar to a ref from another league (I think it was Dutchland) that we played once last year. This ref came up to me before said bout and said, "It's nice to finally meet the person who stole my name!" She had wanted to be Graceless Kelly, but I registered it first.

What are the odds?

Ambivalence

Rather than describing myself as bisexual (which is a completely accurate term), I usually prefer to say, "I could go either way." I'm not sure why exactly, just that I like one descriptor better than the other.

Dictionary.com defines ambivalence as "uncertainty or fluctuation, esp. when caused by inability to make a choice or by a simultaneous desire to say or do two opposite or conflicting things."

Yep; that's me. I constantly want things at opposite ends of the spectrum. Mostly, I blame this on being a Pisces. (I blame a lot of things on being a Pisces. But, I also couldn't imagine myself any other way.)

I've been feeling pulled in opposite directions a lot lately -- work has been pretty nuts and I've had a lot going on outside of work. I feel pretty okay most days, but I've also had these moments of intense sadness thinking of my mom and having dreams where she randomly appears (which is odd, because I've barely dreamed of her before now).

In short, I'm overwhelmed. Like, a lot. And, it's been causing me to put my mission to Keep Working on Love on the backburner quite a bit lately, and I don't like that.

While my mom was really, really sick many of my friends told me I needed to cut myself some slack -- I needed to stop trying to be such a damn perfectionist and just take things as they came. Yes, I was forgetful and distracted. Yes, I was not the kind of friend I usually try to be. But, that was okay. (Or, at least that's what they tried to convince me. Sometimes I believed them.)

And, maybe it is okay to drop the ball everyone once in a while. But, it's time to pick the ball back up, because words matter. I keep trying to remind myself that when all else fails, it's important to share a bit of your heart with the people who matter to you.

Sometimes, though, I find it's hard to even know how I feel (much less share that with someone else) because I just feel like the world is spinning a little too fast. It feels like that now. And maybe that's just because everything has been so busy and I haven't been getting nearly enough sleep and and and and and....

Sometimes, I feel like I'm just repeating myself all the time. But, one thing I've learned from conducting and attending so many trainings is that people need to hear the same things over and over and over (times sixteen or so) until those things sink in.

Good luck with your head

That's what Natalie Portman's character says to Zach Braff's character at the end of their first meeting in Garden State, my favorite movie ever.

I've been thinking about my head a lot the last few days, since our head ref mentioned on Wednesday night that I'll be an outside pack ref at Saturday's bout in Boston. I wasn't thinking about this as a problem (outside is my favorite ref position) until he reminded me about all the pillars at Shriner's auditorium. And then I remembered seeing a skater hit one of those pillars face-first a couple years ago -- she smashed her glasses and broke her nose and needed stitches.

Today, I went to one of the most magical places I've ever been.

Let me back up.

My friend Mia was one of the people who got one of my pink letters ages ago, and she's one of two friends who decided to assign ME missions. The second one I received from her was to go to Step Falls Preserve and just enjoy nature. And ride the falls. At least one.

Luckily, she happened to be in town this week (she lives very, very far away), so I took a vacation day and we agreed to meet there at noon. The problem? There are pretty much NO signs identifying this place. So, I went way the hell past it and into Grafton Notch State Park. I'd like to go exploring there sometime, actually. What I saw from the road was pretty nice. A toddler moose crossed the road in front of me. I just stopped to watch him meander and was about to take a picture when an SUV came FLYING down the road in the opposite direction. The moose was obviously freaked out by the speeding vehicle and ran (as much as moose do) off the road. The picture I took wasn't very good. Sigh.

Eventually, Mia and her girlfriend flagged me down and I ended up at the preserve a mere 45 minutes late. We trekked up hill a ways, then across a bunch of rocks, and set up a little picnic area in a shady spot on a bunch of rocks.

After we ate, I took some pictures and Mia climbed around like a monkey before demonstrating for me how one rides the falls. (Basically, you find a gentle slope with some slime on it, give yourself a shove, and let the water do the rest. A natural water slide.)

I'm glad I thought ahead and wore a sports bra rather than my regular bathing suit top, because there's no way in hell I would've kept any kind of modesty if I'd worn a real bathing suit. Almost every time I ended up in the water, one or both of my contacts would end up getting displaced or folded. Being half-blind and wandering around wet, slippery rocks is not particularly fun.

I think I had full vision, though, when I was climbing up a slope, slipped because my feet were wet, and did a belly flop right in front of a large group of frat boys. I immediately started laughing, and I think that freaked them out. They were all concerned. Mia just said, "She does that a lot." Truly, I do. And, in this case, I was glad for all that extra padding in my chest.

The water wasn't too cold, and it was a gorgeous day. We rode lots of little falls and jumped into a pool that was not nearly as deep as it looked -- that's how I scuffed up both my knees really badly.

I got a pretty amazing contusion on my left shin climbing out of a pool at the bottom of one of the falls. I'm not sure how I got its match on the opposite arm -- that may have happened when I slipped and fall backwards, landing completely flat on my back and whacking my head on a rock. (Luckily, no concussion. Surprisingly, I didn't even really get much of a headache.)

I'd brought some paratrooper toys, so Mia and her girlfriend climbed up the falls and let them go while I took pictures below and then went and collected them in the falls. Not a bad way to end a nice little adventure in a beautiful, peaceful place.

Now that I know how to find it, I can't wait to go back again....

Really?!

My boss and I frequently sit in our cubes and say, "REALLY?!" Yes, like that. All bold and caps and italicized. Sometimes, it's underlined, too. You can just tell by the way we say it. The eye rolling helps, too.

But, seriously, this is my reaction to my life right now. In less than one week, I was pulled over (although did not get the ticket), came within inches of being run over in a cross walk, came within inches of being broad-sided in a parking lot, had brake lights illuminated on my dashboard that shouldn't've been there (and then paid $89 to find out that nothing was wrong, have the sensor cleaned and reset, and then have the lights come on again before I even got home), and I got stuck in an elevator. No, really.

So, I wasn't stuck in the elevator that long -- maybe five minutes? Still, it was incredibly spooky. (Thankfully, I was not thinking about that scene in Inception where Arthur uses the elevator to drop everyone. That would have made the big lurching thing the elevator did even more scary.)

My cats are driving me cuckoo banana crackers -- suddenly Mazzy isn't yowling in the night and waking me up (which is nice), but she's doing it during waking hours instead (which sucks). Emmett who, in his almost 6 years of life, has never spent a full night sleeping on my bed has been doing so for just over a week (ever since Mazzy stopped the yowling). This morning at 5 a.m., he decided he wanted some recognition for that, I suppose, because he smacked me in the face with his paw. Then he repeated that little gesture every half an hour, gradually extending his claws each time. What do my cats have against me sleeping anyway?

And, not only that, but Mazzy has picked up Emmett's habit of trying to stick her head in my water glasses. EVERY time I set a glass down now, I have to defend it from her.

REALLY?!

DesMoines

Never been there. Never been to Iowa. (It is in Iowa, right? I always get Idaho and Iowa confused, being that I've never been to either of them, they're both short words that start with I, and they're both way the hell out west somewhere. Have I mentioned my geography is terrible? My geography is HORRIBLE.)

DesMoines is important in the Graceless lexicon because it was code between my old boss and me. He and I worked together for nine years. Sometimes, he said, he'd feel like we were having a normal conversation and then all of a sudden he found himself in DesMoines and he didn't know how he got there. (Usually, I would back up and trace my thoughts for him -- "Well, we were talking about X which made me think of Y and then you said Z which brought me to G in my head and that's why I said H just now." Most times, things would make more sense then. Sometimes, not so much. My brain is a strange and scary place, even for me.)

So, anytime I lost him, he'd say, "We're in DesMoines."

Here's the thing: I am all about context.

This same former boss used to get a little annoyed with me, because any time he would mention a year, I would say, "I was X years-old." He thought this was me rubbing in the fact that he was basically old enough to be my father. It wasn't. Really, not even a little. It's just how my brain works.

For example, my mom died just over nine months ago. What do I keep thinking? If I had gotten myself pregnant right around the time she died, I'd be having a baby right around now. Does this mean my biological clock is ticking out of control? No. It's just that that's the most obvious thing to link to that amount of time.

Here's how I translate other blocks of time:
8 hours = a work day
6.5-7.5 hours = about how long it takes to drive home to NY
3 hours = a derby practice
2 hours = a movie
1 hour = an episode of most tv shows, or the time it takes to get to Portland
1/2 an hour to 45 minutes = time to travel to various places (depending on the amount of time)
7 minutes = the time it takes to microwave a Stouffer's macaroni and cheese dinner

Two years is how long I spent in grad school, or how long I played roller derby -- depends on the situation which one I think about. Two and a half years is the amount of time my mom was really sick. Four years is the span of college (or high school, but since college was more recent, it usually wins).

As my old boss figured out, I do it with years, too. Anything from 1943-1953, I think about how old my dad would've been. Anything from 1953-1975, I think about how old my mom was. Anything from 1975-1979, I think how old my sister was, or how many years it was before I was born. Anything after 1979, I calculate my own age at the time or what grade I was in. If it's around 1982, I might think about how old my little sister was. With some years, I think about significant things that happened then (graduations, deaths, major world events, etc.).

I'm kind of random, I admit that, but not as much as you might think. Inside the creepy, dark recesses of my brain, there are all these fine little webs that tie things together.

And maybe that's what happened to my grandpa in those last years before he died: The webs got untied. He couldn't link things together anymore, and that's why he forgot. For that last little bit, he pretty much lived in DesMoines.

Nemesisisisis

Remember that crappy season of Buffy (two words for you: "Doublemeat Palace")? To be fair, two of my three favorite episodes (the musical and the one where they all get amnesia) were in that season. And Willow turning out to be The Big Bad -- that was GENIUS. But, the season as a whole, kinda sucky. You know it's true. The one thing that always makes me chuckle, though, is the way the group of dweebs could never seem to pronounce "nemeses."

Thursday = my nemesis.

I've been saying this for a while. In fact, I was looking at some old blogs a couple weeks ago and I realized that Thursdays were sucking for me even before my mom died. Stupid effing Thursday.

I'm sitting here right now feeling like I could burst into tears any second...and kind of hoping I just would. It would be a relief to just have done with it. Y'know?

I've had a fairly ridiculous week. Monday morning, I was about to pull into the parking lot at work, and there was a cop car blocking the way. I went around the block, came back, and got about as far as the parking lot when I noticed the blue lights in my rearview. "Pausing isn't stopping," the cop said. At least I got off with a warning.

Last night, I missed being run over by an old lady (and you wonder why I hate old people?!) by inches - literally. If I had not moved out of the way, she would have grazed me. It's not like I wasn't standing there holding a very bright umbrella over my head. It wasn't like I wasn't in the crosswalk long before she approached me. A couple of guys in a car on the street perpendicular shouted, "Whoa!" through their open windows. THAT is how close.

And even as I sit here sighing heavily with my eyes aching from all the weight, I still see the obvious silver linings here: no ticket for running the stop sign by my office, not ACTUALLY getting run over by the oblivious old lady.

When, oh when, did I become an optimist?

I don't like it....

Lovely

Here's how I know I'm a total emotional basket case right now: I can't even collage.

Not being able to write is one thing (a sad thing, but not an unusual thing), not being able to read is a little more rare (but it has happened before), but not being able to make a collage is new for me. I usually just sit down with quotes I've been collecting (I'm always collecting them) and pictures I like (I usually collect those, too) and I just randomly put them together. Sometimes, it even comes out looking pretty.

The last several days, I haven't been focused enough to even write a coherent e-mail. I haven't been focused enough to read much (which kind of kills me -- I love to read, always have). And tonight I discovered I just couldn't collage.

I know why I'm so distracted (Saturday was my mom's birthday). I know that these feelings of discombobulation will eventually pass. But, it doesn't make being in a funk any easier.

Here's what has:

I'd planned another event modeled on the Beckoning of Lovely for Saturday and although the turnout was quite small, it was pretty lovely and it distracted me for a couple of hours. It was very hot, and I made an offhand comment about going to the movies (airconditioning!) and so my friend Kate suggested we go to see Inception.

The movie blew my mind for all the reasons it's been blowing other people's minds.

But, it was more than that.

Instead of being a real grownup and doing my laundry on Sunday, I went to see it again. Things made more sense the second time. Both times, I was struck by the character Arthur. It's not just that I liked the character (although he was my favorite in the movie). It's not just that the character was well-written (although he was). It's the way the actor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) delivers one very simple line about midway through the movie.

When Ellen Page's character asks him about the lead character's dead wife, he says, "She was lovely."

(It's not the coincidence of the word choice that gets me, although I do find that interesting, too....)

Something about the way he looks when he says it, the way he says it, just reaches right into my chest and stops my heart for a second.

Before Kate and I saw the movie Saturday night, we wandered around the bookstore. In true Graceless fashion, I had planned to not spend any money and ended up charging $73 worth of books before I left. One of the books was Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan.

I finished reading the book tonight (when I say I can't read, I don't mean it literally -- I mean that I can't sit and read for hours and hours and hours on end like I normally could). About midway through the book, Levithan writes about a community's reaction to the death of a football player: "I vowed then and there that I would never hesitate to speak up to the people I loved. They deserved to know they gave meaning to my life. They deserved to know I thought the world of them."

And then it hit me.

I went to the pile of materials I'd amassed for my next collage and I selected a handful of quotes (most from Libba Bray or the To Write Love on Her Arms blogs) and several origami butterflies I'd made. (I am not particularly skilled with origami butterflies specifically or origami in general.) I wrote the selected quotes on the butterflies. I made copies of the passage from Boy Meets Boy. I put these things together in an envelope and tomorrow I will be mailing them to five friends. (There would be more, but I ran out of butterflies. Mayhaps more will go out soon....)

The five butterflies are headed to a somewhat haphazardly selected group of people, but they are all people who mean a lot to me and people I wanted to make sure knew that I love them, that I think they're lovely.

It's not a magic cure-all by any means. But, I can feel the funk starting to shrink away just a bit. The lesson in this? When all else fails, share a bit of your heart with the people who matter to you. It might just make a difference.

Do you make a lot of jewelry?

That's what this guy asked me as I stood in the aisle at Michael's trying to pick out a chain for one of my mom's unmatched earrings. He then proceeded to talk to me for several minutes, all the while I was standing there thinking, "Wow, he's hitting on me. I can't believe he's hitting on me. In a craft store. And, he's not obviously creepy. Awkward, but not creepy. Or obviously deranged. Or old. Definitely not old. And he doesn't seem to be homeless. Wow. How weird is that? Oh, hey, he's STILL talking to me."

It must've been the dress. I purposely wore my blue ruffled undies today because my sundress is a bit on the short side. I know I should probably give it to Goodwill, but I love this dress.

Anyway, the fact that this awkward guy came on to me is remarkable because stuff like that never happens -- unless the guy IS creepy or deranged or old or homeless. Or a combination of any of those things. Really.

And now I'm going to recycle a blog I wrote in December in a super secret location:

I finally went to the Laundromat and this creepy (and I mean CREEPY) guy was sitting a few feet away (did I mention he was reading Stephen King?).

I’m settling down with my book, and out of nowhere, he asks me my name. Had I been thinking, I would have given him a fake name.

MINOR TANGENT:

There was this time in high school that I was at the mall with Stacey and several others (although I don’t remember who else) and these boys on the second level called down to me to stay where I was, they were coming down.

(I called it a game of “Let’s laugh at the ugly girl.” Now, I don’t think I’m exactly ugly. I have very pretty eyes with long eyelashes, which is supposed to be a good thing, or so I’m told. I’m not hideous, but I’m not a knockout, either. I turn heads in a “wow, that girl is odd” kind of way, rather than a “I want to nail her” kind of way. And that’s fine. As Ani DiFranco says, “Too pretty is also your doom, ‘cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.”)

My other friends scattered, but I grabbed Stacey’s arm and made her stay with me. When the boys arrived and asked our names, we both gave aliases. I don’t remember hers. Mine was, I believe, Monique. I don’t really remember anything else about the incident, except that it made me feel like I was being laughed at, and I didn’t like it.

So, this guy asks my name and because I can’t think that fast on my feet anymore, I tell him my real name. And repeat it, because he can’t hear me.

I go back to reading.

He then tells me he thinks my bookmark is really cool. Okay. The bookmark I was using? My business card. I have tons of bookmarks at home (people think these are good gifts for some strange reason) but I almost never use one. I usually dogear. But this was a borrowed book. Sometimes I use a sticky note or a paperclip, but I didn’t have any of those around. So, I used my business card. And he thought it was cool. Really? Really?

This reminds me of high school, too, when Kim and Anthony used to have this game where they’d try to come up with the worst pickup line ever. (My favorite is still one of Anthony’s: God must be crying…because he lost an angel. Most of it had to do with how Anthony delivered it.)

When I tell him my bookmark is just my business card, he asks where I work. I tell him I work for the state. He asks where. I say, “the health department.” But he doesn’t hear me. I repeat myself several times, finally kind of yelling, “Maine CDC, the Center for Disease Control.” That finally seemed to shut him up.

It’s not nearly as bad as when I got semi-stalked by the insanely creepy guy at Bubba’s two Lucky Lass Throwdowns ago, but it was pretty icky. If there is a creepy/deranged/homeless/old man within 10 feet who is the least bit emotionally unstable, he will hit on me. (No one else hits on me, BTW. Unless you count when Thighs Queen used to call me “Beautiful Graceless” — which actually did make me feel sorta beautiful — but I’m absolutely certain she wasn’t actually hitting on me, that’s just her way.)

DO I GIVE OFF A VIBE? Really, I want to know. What is it about me that draws in these creepy/pervy/CRAZY men? (this reminds me of the scene in Garden State when Mark asks why it’s never a hot chick who wants to talk your ear off about some stupid pyramid scam….)

Because, if some stranger wants to flirt with me, I really won’t mind in the slightest if it’s a hot chick with red hair (although I suppose that last part is optional) or a very funny, geeky boy. Why doesn’t THAT ever happen?

And the world spins madly on

It's Nemesis Day, and I know that not only because I can read a calendar, but because the excellent mood I was in completely vanished late last night for no obvious reason.

Today at work, I kept reading updates about this horrific triple homicide a couple hours north of here. Turns out, one of the victims was my derby wife's cousin. I would comment on what a strangely small world it is, except my mind was blown many years ago when we found out my ex-fiance ate lunch with the serial killer who murdered my brother-in-law's cousin. It is a small, and often brutal, world.

Before my derby wife discovered this news, we had dinner with two other derby friends. I'm not sure how it came up, but there was talk of bigamy. Cruella said to me, "You'd be an excellent sister wife, Graceless. You could make the schedule!" That may go down in history as one of the oddest compliments I've ever received.

And, keeping with the odd theme, a friend just posted this as his Facebook status: "Did I really just sing 'Let's Get it On' in public? Yes. Yes, I did."

A bizarre, brutal, and incredibly small world indeed.

Sending lots of love to dear friends who lost loved ones this week....

"Very occasionally, if you really pay attention, life doesn't suck"

- Joss Whedon

I've been having a lot of epiphanies again, which always makes my head hurt. Don't let anyone fool you: Epiphanies suck. Or, having them does. Once you've worked it all out, it's not so bad. Usually you're better off. But having the epiphany, that is no fun at all.

I was re-reading something I wrote back at the end of December about holding my breath: "Holding it all in like I have been helps me keep Mom close. And I’m afraid to let it out/let go, because I’m scared to really feel the loss. It’s starting to come — the numbness is wearing thin at the edges — and I don’t know that I can do this. And even if I can, I don’t want to. I don’t want to let her go…."

The other day, a friend of mine sent me an email where she said that I sounded really happy. And, I guess I have been sort of happy for about a week now. I'm mostly moved into my new apartment and I've started writing a bit about Mom's death (or, at least, my grieving process). It's like I'm starting to exhale a little. Albeit very slowly.

One of the reasons I'm glad I moved is that I know my mom was disappointed that she never saw my last apartment. It bothered her a lot. And that bothered me. I know she'll never see this one either, but at least it's not like she KNEW about this one. I can't explain it any better than that. Plus, this isn't the place where I lived when we found out the cancer had spread or that things were going downhill so fast, or where I had to come back and live after she'd died. This is a new place. A place where I can start over. I like that.

I sent an email to a mentor of mine last week. I told him that I've been focused on telling people what I think of them since Mom got sick. I likened it to someone in a 12-step program making amends. In a way, that's what it feels like.

When my sister convinced me to join Facebook shortly after I moved into the old apartment, I did so reluctantly. At the time, I decided I wasn't going to send many friend-requests. If people wanted to be my friend, they'd find me. That was my rationale. (That, and I always assume that people just sort of tolerate my presence and I didn't want anyone to accept my request out of some sense of obligation.)

That was dumb.

Today, I sent a bunch of requests to a bunch of people from derby -- some of whom I've known for years -- because I realized a couple of things. 1. I wanted to tag them in pictures I had; 2. If they didn't want to be my friend, they could ignore me; 3. It's important to let people know you think about them. (I really do have to learn things about 16 times before it sinks in. Geez.)

The day I got home after Mom died, I made her favorite cookies for my co-workers -- to thank them for their kindness, for their understanding, for their support, for covering for me for the three weeks I'd been out. I was only able to do it because I was in a completely shutdown state. Total zombie.

At Christmastime, I'd intended to bake like I always do. Got all the stuff. And I couldn't do it. I just couldn't face baking, as ridiculous as that sounds. My mom taught me to bake when I was in second grade. It was always my way of relieving stress and showing people my appreciation (traits I inherited from my mother). Baking always, always, always makes me think of my mom. And, it's been too hard to even think much about doing it.

Until tonight. I just baked her chocolate chip cookies. I was very distracted, and I had to consult the recipe (I've been baking them from memory for half my life). But I made them. And I didn't completely freak out, either.

I posted on Facebook that I was going to bake and was worried about how it would be. My friend Jed, who used to work with me, posted that he remembered my cookies. Makes me want to send him some, two states away.

Because, memory is an incredible thing. I have gone through much of my life feeling pretty invisible. It always amazes me when someone a. notices me or something I've done and b. remembers it. It's like they're saying, "Hey, you're important." It's an incredible gift. (Maybe this is why I focus so much on details -- and on remembering them. It's my way of saying, "Hey, you're important. You matter to me." Kind of like giving someone a plate of cookies I've baked. Or monkeys from a quarter machine. Or random missions to seek out joy/bring joy to others.)

I was talking to my friend Shawna about sending her cookies, and she said, "You don't have to do that." I told her that of course I didn't HAVE to, but that I'm my own girl and I'll do what I want.

I said it without thinking.

But the phrase "my own girl" is incredibly important.

Years ago, when I broke my engagement, I wrote this poem (the only good poem I've EVER written) about said broken engagement. It starts out, "There once was a girl, a plain girl, / who lived in a kingdom / rich with berries, corn, and cows." It ends, "...she rode away / on her broken dream / and was her own girl once more."

Only, when I wrote it, I wrote, "and was a plain girl once more." One of my thesis advisors didn't like the repetition and didn't like the message of the girl being plain. She wanted the girl to be strong. So, she advised that I rework it. I changed it to the line above, but I never totally felt it.

Until now.

I AM my own girl, and I'm not sure when it happened or how it happened, but it's true. I am my own girl who stumbles blindly through so many things. Many people wouldn't understand the choices I've made, or agree with them. But they all add up to me being who I am. Sometimes, I take the long way around. Ultimately, I end up where I need to be. And it's not easy, but what in this life is? (It's like saying, "Hey, you're important. You matter to me." They're easy words to say -- even to mean -- and yet how often does any of us take the time to remember to say them?)

I guess I am kind of happy this week. It doesn't mean I won't be miserable next week. Or next month. Or even five minutes from now. But I'm learning to take things as they come to me and to remember to appreciate the beautiful people and experiences in my life as often as possible.

The noticing is important, but the remembering is key.

Words matter

Six or seven years ago, I sent these emails to a bunch of people with the five words I'd use to describe them. Some of those people emailed me back, and I kept the lists. I was thinking about those lists recently, and wondering if they'd changed. And, it occurred to me that it was time to send five words to people who are important to me again.

So, last week while I was waiting for scrimmage to start, I sat in the expo and I made a list of the five words that came to mind when I thought of about a dozen of my friends. Several of them wrote back, "What a way to start the day" (because I'd sent my emails very late last Thursday night). A few wrote me lists in return.

The original words given to me 6ish years ago:

intelligent
kind
quirky
responsible
beautiful

child-wise
imaginative
sweet
independent
quirky

genuine
kind
bubbly
smart
super-organized

intelligent
wry
talented
pure-hearted
independent


The new words:

intelligent
creative
unique
thoughtful
extraordinary
(and, because Jackie couldn't stop herself, she added precious, beautiful, stargirl, imaginative, daring, courageous, wonderful, special)

creative
responsible
just
ethical
loving

warm
accessible
shiny (bright)
creative
tender

witty
wise
open-minded
nonjudgmental
eloquent

considerate
inspiring
smart
kind
individual

perceptive
honest
supportive
altruistic
sprightly

These are incredible words. If I could, I'd sew them into a patchwork dress and I'd wear it all the time. It's important to let people know that you think of them; it's important to let people know what you think of them. It is important to make sure that people know that they matter.

I discovered the organization To Write Love on Her Arms almost two years ago, I think. Today, I was browsing through the blog on the web site, and I came across this quote:

"I just have to believe that we are all more loved than we'll ever know. And we're all in this together."

And, it really is true, isn't it? And, that kind of makes me sad. Why don't we let people know we love them more? Why don't we take every, every opportunity to tell the people in our world that we're glad they're in it and that they make it better? Why don't we open our hearts more?

I'm just as guilty as everyone else. I try to remember to be awesome. I try to show kindness, to tell people that I'm thinking of them, to choose wonder, to inspire love and happiness. I try. Sometimes, I'm really good at remembering. Other times, I totally suck at it. Sometimes, I feel incredibly sad and so, so very alone. Sometimes, I don't want to crawl out of my bed and deal with the world. Sometimes, I hate people. I hate all the noise and the brightness and the chaos. Sometimes, I get distracted by deadlines and work and feeling disgruntled and unappreciated. Sometimes, it just takes all the strength I have to make it through the damn day.

But, I want there to be more days filled with love.

Today, I also came across this Mental Floss blog. Why aren't we all a little kinder? Just look at the impact it has. It doesn't have to be a big, huge thing. The blog reminded me of a time when I was visiting my ex-fiance in New York City. We were on an escalator or stairs in or near Grand Central Station. A woman was ahead of us, struggling with a baby carriage. I was annoyed at being stuck behind her. My ex, who was not always the most observant guy on the planet, reached right out and helped her. The look on this woman's face -- you'd have thought an angel just crossed her path. She thanked him up and down for his help (and, really, he didn't do all that much), and I just stood there with my mouth open realizing that THAT is exactly the reaction I SHOULD have had -- I should have been moved to help her rather than be annoyed that she was blocking my way. Especially because she needed the help. Because she appreciated it.

Because kindness matters, dammit.

We are all loved more than we'll ever know. It's like that scene in V for Vendetta, when Evie is reading the letter from Valerie, who wrote: "Even though I've never met you, I love you." Human beings are capable of such profound acts of love and compassion. Unfortunately, it often needs something to trigger it into action. (Maybe that's because none of us could sustain it all the time -- it would burn us out like the sun if we tried.) I guess I just wish there were more triggers.

And, maybe that's part of Working on Love -- finding the triggers.

And, maybe that's what the five-word experiment was all about. And the pink letters. And the misadventures. And so many of the other things I've been doing the last year-ish.