i love the idea of scavenger hunt posts. though i've tried this before with no success, i'm trying again. not so much because i want yall to play along, but because i need to play. but it'd make me so happy if yall would play, too.

mental floss posted an article about fifteen offbeat holidays to celebrate in november. so i'm tying the hunting to those holidays. if you wanna play along, you've got 'til november thirtieth to find or do these fifteen things, take a correlating photo (a selfie with the thing), and make me a picture post of all the lovely. i'm not setting up a linky for this. if you participate and you want me to see the pics, leave me a comment here with the link. the fifteen things are thus:

one. november second: plan your epitaph day. here's a happy one for yall. buy a small batch of posies, visit a cemetery and leave the flowers at the grave of someone whose headstone struck some sort of chord with you. sometimes people leave quotes on them. my older brother's buried in colorado. his headstone is a bench upon which are the words laughter was his art. if you're feeling especially generous, maybe send up a prayer of thanksgiving for that individual's family and friends.

two. november third. sadie hawkins day. get a guy's phone number. do with it what you will.

three. november fourth. king tut day. yall know that bangles song walk like an egyptian? if you feel like strutting your stuff in public to the tune of that insane eighties hit, be my guest. or if you're in new york and can get to the met, supposedly they've got egyptian art on display. maybe a museum near you does? i got no idea. look into that. i'm cool with you browsing the stacks of your local library or bookstore. find a book about king tut or the egyptians... factual or fiction, turn to page one hundred fourteen, what's the fourth word on the eleventh line?

four. november fifth. guy fawkes day. ever wanted to give a senator, congressman or some other elected official a piece of your mind? i put a letter in the mail to the president the other day. i didn't care that he'll most likely never see it; it felt good writing it, addressing it and dropping it in one of the united states postal services boxes, complete with my jimi hendrix stamp in the top right corner. find out who's running things in your neck of the woods. try bitching to him instead of your twitter and facebook accounts.

five. november sixth. national saxophone day. find a sax player. get the man a drink. or girl, though... i can't say i've ever seen a woman play the sax. if you find one, lemme know.

six. november seventh. international tongue twister day. go to your local bar when it's hopping. get a stranger to get through the woodchuck chucking wood or so and so selling seashells by the seashore. without tripping over the words. buy that person a drink when the deed's accomplished.

seven. november thirteenth. world kindness day. do something good for someone. this can be anyone: family, friend, stranger... whatever. once you've done it, find out three things about that person. choose from the following: their best day; their worst (if they feel like sharing); their favorite book; favorite film; favorite band; favorite song; favorite food; best vacation; where'd they'd most like to go for their next vacation; the job they have now; the job they'd love to have; whether they like dogs or cats; coke or pepsi.

eight. november fifteenth. clean out your refrigerator day. show me the nastiest thing in there. WHY IS IT STILL IN THERE?

nine. november eighteenth. use less stuff day. i've got books on the brain lately, so... round up some of your books that are in good condition and donate them to your local library (or to a friends of the library group). AND/OR clean out your closet and donate the things to a women's shelter.

ten. november nineteenth. world toilet day. well this one's fascinating. my younger brother would have a field day with this one. there is such a thing as a bathroom guest book. find it. buy it. give it to that special idiot in your life.

eleven. november nineteenth. international men's day. how interesting that this occurs on the same day as world toilet day. get a gift card valued at no more than twenty-five dollars to some store or restaurant dudes love. dick's sporting goods, perhaps (though i hear their shit's way overpriced...so academy may be a better bet). give it to a random guy. just because.

twelve. november twenty-second. national start your own country day. i'm pretty sure half of america would jump at the chance. let's keep this one civil, though, yeah? where's your favorite spot? where do you go when the day is just too ugly and you need to see something good? show me what your country would look like. in a perfect world, my country would be on a beach in fiji or a flat in london... i'm looking for something a little more realistic here. there's gotta be a place you go when you need to get centered. show me that.

thirteen. november twenty-third. national day of listening. i know the purpose of this day. we tune each other out so often, and with such success. nothing proves that more than an election. we only hear what we want to hear. nine good things might be said, but there's that one word or phrase... music soothes the savage beast, and things are much too savage right now. check out who's playing at your local pubs or concert halls. pick a band you've never heard of before. go see them play. listen.

fourteen. november twenty-eight. red planet day. have fun with this one. i'm giving yall a freebie. interpret this one however you'd like, so long as it can be tied to mars somehow. pottery barn kids sells a planet mobile, for example. find that. get a picture with it. grab a copy of the martian, turn to page eleven and share the eighth word on the twentieth line. watch the film the martian child and share your favorite line. men are from mars, right? introduce yourself to a stranger and pick his brain; ask him anything you want. go to town. show me how crafty and clever you can be.

fifteen. november twenty-ninth. national square dance day. i'm sure there's a square dancing group near you. find out when they meet. catch'm in their act. find out what they love most about being involved in that activity.

a few of my favorite things

i am a republican, though i'd say i'm a pretty moderate one. my friend tyler is a democrat. a devout one. in fact, she is more devoted to the democratic party than any other person i know. sometimes the things that come out of her mouth make me cringe and shut my browser because i can't stomach the sentiment. her steadfast support of hillary clinton is, to me, both admirable and abominable.

but she's my friend. warts and all, god love her. i hope she would say the same about me. 

today she put up a post called the little happies.

i'd started a similar post this morning... this one. but i stopped because i'd spent so much time on twitter reading all the rantings about how horrible trump is going to be for this country, which made me cringe and shut my browser a few times. i was showing my mom some of the snippets of vitriol and i'd mentioned to her that if i went to tyler's twitter, i'd see all kinds of things that would hurt my eyeballs. when i finally looked, the second thing there is a link for that post and a picture of a crayola caddy and a girl coloring in the background. this is why i love tyler. that right there. because despite her love of the democratic party (not to mention sooners and razorbacks) she will say or do something that will remind me that once upon a time, if our paths were to have crossed as children and we'd been playmates, we would've been coloring at the same table. only my book would've been something disney or care bears.

anyway... i read her post. at the bottom of it, she'd welcomed hearing of others' little happies. so here are some of mine:

one. my friends ann, kelly, lara and jenn. the first three are my writing friends and members of the critique group i'm in. if i don't go to group or join them for a morning writing session, they're quick to question why i'm not there, quick to say they miss me. i've never really known that kind of friendship. i've never had friends like them. i love that i do now. and jenn... the woman's a miracle, really. that our paths have crossed is a wonderful blessing to me. that she thinks so highly of me is one, as well. just yesterday, she was saying how i needed to stop being afraid of success. that i need to quit depriving the world of me.

two. i was about to haul my butt to austin to see a movie. i hate austin. it's full of liberal longhorns and coated in burnt orange. YUCK. but i so wanted to see joel edgerton in loving because i'm confident he has delivered an oscar-worthy performance in it that i would've made the trek. then i learned that river oaks theater in houston will be showing that film on friday. it's not gonna be an easy movie to see. i know that. but i've watched the trailer for it a dozen times now, at least, because there are parts of it that fill my heart with such wonder. like when he and ruth negga, playing richard and mildred loving, are sitting there and he says i can take care of you. she lays her hand on his back and says i know that. my eyes well up every time i watch that, but they're happy tears. and in the last scene in the trailer, when he says tell the judge i love my wife, those tears fall. because it's beautiful. everyone should know that kind of love. how they know it shouldn't matter. 

three. coca-cola fizzing in an ice cold glass.

four. i'm kind of getting burned out on writing again. that's not a good thing. right now, as valuable as those friendships with fellow writers are, ultimately what keeps me going is the love i have for my work. the pieces i'm playing with right now haven't gotten nearly as much of my attention as others have. they are the murky middle, and if i can't make them good, then the scenes of isabel and reese that i favor, like the one below, won't matter.

this one makes me happy. lots of the ones i've written do. that's a hard thing for me to remember sometimes, so i'm kind of glad i'm putting it down here.

five. pappadeaux's. i spend more time there than anywhere else. i probably spend more time there than the employees do. but i'm there, really, because they're there. they've been a huge help to me on many occasion.

six. lord of the rings. tyler says she's a bigger tolkien fan. i've never read the books, so that may be. but i'm pretty sure i could go toe to toe with her on the films. that'd be a fun thing to fight about.

an army of one

in the religion (renamed the politically-correct belief) section of the houston chronicle's sunday, november thirteenth issue, there's an article entitled the silent (mis)treatment: show hospitality to everyone you encounter by ben byrum. in it he talks about the experiment he conducted as a college freshman. new in town, new to the church and having difficulty making friends, he decided one sunday that if after services had gotten underway no one had greeted him he would walk out. he waited for five minutes and nothing. thirty seconds before the service, he began gathering his things.

i was planning to go back to my room and stay there for the rest of the day; after all, nobody seemed to pay attention to me. with fifteen seconds left, my math professor turned around in her chair, which was a couple of rows in front of me, and almost as if she had turned around just for me, she flashed a me a smile and said, "i'm glad you're here, ben."

he stayed. he couldn't tell you what the service was about, what songs were sung, but he remembers feeling noticed and how painful not being noticed was.

further in the article, byrum shares a tale from the seventies about a man in his thirties who wrote a letter, walked from his san francisco apartment to the golden gate bridge and jumped. byrum said the man had left the letter in his dresser.

it was discovered by investigators when they searched his apartment. it was a suicide letter that read, "i'm going to walk to the bridge. if one person smiles at me on the way, i won't jump." 

i wept when my mother told me about this article, these stories of invisibility. the writer had gone to that church on several occasions. he'd chosen it because it was the most popular among the student body. that man... i can't even begin to imagine how his despair must've grown with each step toward that bridge.

christ, how difficult is it to smile at someone? just smile? that simple act of kindness could've been the light for that man.

today, i spent my afternoon at pappadeaux's. i went to barnes and noble's for a couple of books. i got gas for the journey home. when i pulled into the station, i noticed a girl huddled on the corner of the curb. i asked her if she needed a ride. she asked me if i was going to tomball. i wasn't. that's twenty minutes southwest of where i was, and home is ten minutes north, but i told her i could take her wherever she needed to go. in my mind i'm praying please god, don't be some psycho bent on wreaking havoc. i mucked out my car, gave her a bag of chips, which was the only food i had on me. she'd not eaten all day. she had no money. her phone was dead. her friends had left her there. she was a twenty-seven-year-old psychology student and a mother of two. she reminded me a little bit of my brother's wife: petite, blonde with pigtails dyed blue, dressed in a sweatshirt, jeans and chucks. her birthday's in three days. her friends had left her there. i told her she needed to get some new friends.

she'd been waiting at that gas station since ten a.m. when i'd met it her, it was half-past eight.

now sure, a whole lot of bad shit could've happened. i can imagine all kinds of scary, yall. i knew the risks. i just kept thinking if someone had left me there, and i had no way of getting home, i would've been praying hard for someone to show me some kindness. i asked her if anyone had offered to give her a ride, thinking that maybe they'd asked and refused because it was out of their way. she said no. i thought of the story in the paper, of the man, and asked if anyone had even smiled at her. she said no.

i'm a christian woman, but i don't go around bragging about it. that's not how i define myself. those commandments? i'm pretty sure i've broken at least half of'm, some of'm i break with phenomenal consistency. i say god a helluva lot more than i should, which means i break that third commandment several times a day. my faith's a crazy mix of catholicism, astrology and greek mythology, which means i'm breaking the second one with pretty much every breath. and i love my mama and daddy, but i do not live the way they want me to, so... there's three of'm that i've all but obliterated. but that passage in matthew... twenty-five: forty: inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me... i'm not always good about it, but i try to keep that one in mind.

so there's that. but more... i've gone through too much of my life feeling as invisible as that author and the man who'd made that godawful trek to that bridge. nobody should ever have to feel like they don't matter.

can you imagine how many had gawked at that girl today? how they'd thought so little of her?

ain't no way in hell i would've left her sitting there. ain't no way.

i'm not some social justice warrior. i don't think i get up on my soap box too often. not nearly as much as some of my friends do, anyway.

but good god, yall... we can do better. we can do so much better. it just takes one person... one smile. one kind word. one gesture. it just takes one.

forty-three... one for every year of me

i was digging through audrey louise's blog for a particular post and came across one from august (way to miss that one, eh? i miss a lot of things, but that's because i'm REALLY bad about looking) entitled forty-three rando-s. it's just a list of questions, and yall know how i love that shit, so...

do you like bleu cheese? i'm gonna say no, but i can't do so with sheer confidence, because it's cheese, which is my second favorite food group, and i'm sure i've eaten that stuff and not minded doing so...
have you ever smoked? YES. sometimes as much as three packs a day. but i've not done so since june twenty-fourth of 'seven, so... yay.
do you own a gun? no. never will.
what is your favorite flavor? red and white peonies.
do you get nervous before doctor visits? yes. i've spent one too many days in doctors' offices. in clinics. i hate being in them.
what do you think of hot dogs? blech... until i eat one, and then i'm like this is pretty good, actually, so long as i don't think about how it's made.
favorite movie? i have to pick one? fuck. i'm gonna go with dedication. i love how unconventional it is. i love the dialogue. i like pretty much every performance by the cast, even mandy moore's.
what do you prefer to drink in the morning? something cold, carbonated and caffeinated. typically coca-cola or dr. pepper.
do you do push ups? no.
what’s your favorite piece of jewelry? i bought a london blue topaz ring a couple of years ago. i wear it to remind me of things i've lost and how careful i need to be. but also, i'm very fond of the color.
favorite hobby? watching films.
do you have attention deficit disorder? nope.
what’s the one thing you dislike about yourself? that i'm capable of having sheer disregard for others' well-being and interests.
what is your middle name? kristin.
name three thoughts at this moment: i need to shower and get dressed and apply for some jobs today; i need to get this fucking story finished; i need to thoroughly clean my room.
name three drinks you drink regularly: coca-cola, dr. pepper, unsweetened iced tea.
current worry? that i'm never going to find work i love.
current annoyance right now? it's cold in this house.
favorite place to be? london.
how do you ring in the new year? watching films.
where would you like to go? london.
do you own slippers? no.
what color shirt are you wearing right now? maroon.
do you like sleeping on satin sheets? never done so. i prefer flannel.
can you whistle? no
what are your favorite colors? green, maroon, navy.
would you be a pirate? no.
what songs do you sing in the shower? whatever's in my head in that moment.
favorite girl’s name? were i to have had a daughter, she would've been called griffin antonia.
favorite boy’s name? he would've been called either jonathan lucas or matthew nathaniel.
what’s in your pocket right now? nothing.
last thing that made you laugh? no idea.
best toy as a child? i was fondest of coloring books and crayolas. also fisher price's little people.
worst injury you ever had? fractured collar bone.
where would you love to live? london.
how many televisions do you have? one.
who is your loudest friend? probably traci.
does someone trust you? i don't know.
what book are you reading at the moment? nothing's captured my attention so well as to inspire me to finish it.
what’s your favorite candy? smarties.
what’s your favorite sports team? the green bay packers, though it's killing me to watch their games this year.
favorite month of the year? november.

the five most difficult things about writing (from an incredibly amateurish perspective)

one. the words will not come. i'm a member of a critique group that meets regularly on wednesdays, and over the past two months, i have taken a total of four pages of the novel that has been in inconsistent progress since january of nineteen ninety-fucking-seven. i know. I KNOW. i suck. we'll get to that in a minute. last week, i took three pages. the week before i took one. and when i say pages, i mean typed, double-spaced pages of twelve-point times new roman text. i write by hand, so those pages, in the case of those from last week, were six in number and single-spaced...

one of the servers just interrupted this train of thought with: that doesn't look like your book. she's standing right next to my barstool, her face inches from mine, her eyes wide and dark, her lips set in a smirk of utmost displeasure. she is batting her lashes at me and glaring.

the scene that has plagued me is one that i am rewriting because the words that were there were shit, and i hated them so i killed them because i knew i could do better. i know i can. i need my reader to feel for my character, and in reading what was written, i felt like my reader would've hurled the book across the room, kicked it a few times and then thrown it in the trash. i can't have that. i love my characters too much to allow that to happen.

so the words won't come, even though i know exactly how this scene will play. i know that when it's done well, my reader will want to be hugging both of these characters, these children of mine.

that's the other reason why the words won't come. these ARE my children. and the scene i'm writing involves them getting handsy with each other, so it feels pretty perverse to be writing it. i don't like watching porn. i'd rather be getting it on than watching two people do so. i sure as shit don't want to be writing that stuff. but if i don't... my reader's gonna hurl the book and kick it and...

it's not like the scene will necessitate that much of the handsy... my girl's gonna freak the fuck out and then have to explain to her boy why she did so. and her reasons for doing so are justifiable and good. but... she wouldn't give them unless she absolutely must, and the only reason she'd do so is because they were getting handsy and she had to put on the brakes all the sudden. the shit that happens before and after is written. it's just those handful of sentences that will connect the dots... i need them, and i can't write them.

two. the words will come, but not in opportune moments. like when i'm in the shower. or when i'm driving. yes, it'll make me sound like a crazy person, but basically, i will hear my characters' voices in my head. and i can't record the conversation because. i'm. in. the. damned. shower. or on interstate forty-five, which is packed like sardines, only instead of gross fishy things, it's monster trucks and expensive sports utility vehicles and luxury sedans, all traveling faster than the state-mandated speed limit of sixty-five miles per hour. there's no such thing as following distance here, yall, which is probably why the stretch of this particular bit of interstate is one of the deadliest in texas. there's no way in hell i can chicken scratch that shit on a whataburger bag or snag my cell phone to leave a voice memo so i can jot them down later. the words will have to wait. and if i'm lucky, they'll stick with me until i can write them down. but that hardly ever happens.

three. the words come, but they belong in some other scene or some other character. like the words that came to me yesterday while i was in the shower and, later, running to popeyes to get my dad his lunch.

four. i allow myself to be distracted by the television or the servers or the pretty day or the good book or movie or football game or... because writing IS work. anyone tells you it's easy, that person is a lying sack of shit. pardon the cliche... but it's true. try putting seventy thousand coherent words together in a manner that's going to make someone LOVE them. i dare you.

it's SO much easier to spin your wheels on a back road in the country on a pretty day while listening to stevie ray vaughan and guzzling dr. pepper than it is to spin them while sitting for hours staring at a blank piece of paper and sipping iced tea.

in that rare instance you write something that's brilliant... it's. BRILLIANT. and then you stick it between two chapters that you thought were decent. the brilliance of that one chapter makes it so ALL the other chapters look like crap. so much so that you question your ability to write, and you end up thinking you're shit, and, mentally of course, YOU hurl the manuscript across the room, kick it a few thousand times, and then bury it in your closet. and days, weeks, months... maybe even YEARS go by before you find the courage to dig it out again.

five. you have to work. like a REAL job that actually pays your bills because the chances of your writing ever doing this are slim to none... while you're getting your english degree, your professors are saying this over and over again... you're probably not going to make any money doing this... it's like they DON'T want you to choose this path... because honestly what sane person would WANT to write seventy-thousand words, get rejected seventy-million times and get paid seventy dollars for the work? sure that's an exaggeration. but it's a good one.

so the only time i end up being devoted to this manuscript of mine is when i'm NOT working.

the two biggest reasons it's taken me TWO DECADES to get this bitch in the ground, so to speak (i've seen kevin smith in catch and release far too many times), is because when i'm working a full-time job, especially one that requires me to stare at a computer screen eight hours a day or where i'm surrounded by books (because those people CAN write and convince someone that the writing is good enough that it does indeed merit publication... that's not intimidating AT ALL)... the last thing i want to do when i get off work then is stare at a computer screen and work on a book that's going to be rejected seventy million times. i've never handled rejection well. i can't bear to think that these eight characters i've created will endure so much rejection, too.

tunes for tuesday

a few weeks ago, when erin called my attention to alyssa's back to blogging challenge, i was like, nah. i don't wanna play. this right here is probably the only post i'm going to contribute, and i'm doing it because i realized one of the prompts, upon further consideration, did kind of strike a chord: three (or however many you choose) songs that define your life and why.

while in high school, my younger brother was asked to write a paper about music and how it could soothe the savage beast. he wrote about how it helped me, and though i didn't particularly like being compared to a savage beast, there are far too many times the phrase has suited.

my father was a musician in high school and college. rockin' rick played the saxophone. he also played football. on friday nights he'd play four quarters, and then he'd march on that field during halftime in his pads and uniform. he was offered a full-ride scholarship to southern methodist university to study music, but he wanted to be with my mother, and she wanted to go to lamar university... they have hundreds and hundreds of albums. there was always music in my house as a child. i'd come home from school, and my mother'd be singing along to barbra streisand, jane olivor, johnny mathis, harry belafonte...

i can remember sitting at the kitchen table listening to olivor's songs while doing homework (probably because i'd not done an assignment and she was making me finish it to turn in for partial credit so i wouldn't fail a class). i remember sitting before a phonograph in their bedroom listening to belafonte sing the rose. she'd wanted me to hear his version. i was, and still am, partial to bette midler's, which is where we'll begin...

the rose. had to be bette midler's because i can sing. well. and i wanted to sing it as well as she. (because in the early days of my youth, before i learned of just how broken my body was... before my peers shattered my self-perception, i had confidence... i knew i was good, and i could.) i sang that one a LOT. on walks around my neighborhood, on the bus ride to school... during class, i was writing the lyrics. every day. i clung to those words, to the hope in them. they were a relentless prayer for me... when the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long, and you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong, just remember...

the wind beneath my wings. midler again. sue me. i love that woman's voice. it is, well... divine. i was always in the shadows. my parents', my brothers', my peers'. i never felt the sun on my face. i always walk a step behind, even now. i've heard my smile's amazing; it hides an astounding amount of pain. but my father... he's told me often of how i'm his hero. me. this man who's accomplished SO much in his life, has made such a name for himself, has established and nourished so many positive relationships with SO many people. he thinks the world of me. so i'd sing this one, too. i'd pray i could be this strong, that i could know i deserve his praise. this one, like the last, made me hope.

before you were born. toad the wet sprocket. off the fear album. this album i listened to often in the first year or two of its release. it's one of those few that i think are pretty damned solid, beginning to end. this song, though... its lyrics speak to me for several reasons. forty years ago or so, if a child was born with issues like those i had, doctors recommended that child be placed in an institution, which is exactly what was recommended to my parents. before you were born someone kicked in the door... there's no place for you here... stay back where you belong. my parents took me home. they found other doctors who did what they could to fix me... every time some issue surfaced, they'd find another... and another... so physically, i lived with reminders that i am flawed, like i'd been made of scraps. i'd go to school to face my peers... you are not wanted here... stay back where you belong... my self-image was obliterated by the time i'd entered high school. the only emotions i knew by this point were rage and despair. by the time i entered college, i was a poorly-constructed shell of a woman. the rage had fueled me in adolescence, but the fire was dying by then. at least, i thought it was. this song stirred the embers just enough to help get me through five more years of academia. goddamn the wounds that show how deep a word can cut. i'm always having to ask others how they see me now. have done so for the last two decades because in the first two decades so many sought to break me. so my reflection... there are just pieces of that shell now. fragments. i always feel guilty having to ask, pathetic. i know how it seems. how can it happen that every time you ask us this question, the answer seems like a lie. you know what we're saying, and you know what it means, and it's always sincere, god knows, but it never gets through to where you need. while some of the lyrics light a fire in me, still, the first and last verses can sometimes keep it contained.

whatever i fear. toad the wet sprocket again. there's almost nothing left, and you eat my kind for breakfast... i sicken myself so much... whatever i fear the most is whatever i see before me...

rhyme and reason. dave matthews band. i know these voices must be my soul... i've had enough, i've had enough of being alone... i got no place to go. i kept hearing people say depressed people choose depression, and for the longest time i'd thought i'd brought all this on myself, that it was caused by how i'd chosen to react to the traumatic experiences of my youth. a sort of mental self-harm over which i had complete control. so for me, the reference to needles in the song is metaphorical. and there's that part of me that just wants it over and done.

with or without you. u2. because this is how i feel about love... i can't have it, but i want it. i wait for it, even though i know i can't handle it when it's in my clumsy grasp. my hands clench things too tightly. there's too much hate in me... from all that fire and rage. i'm too open. too eager to share. too free with my stories. i give myself away too easily... and then, when it matters to be open and vulnerable... the walls i build are insurmountable. mama says i've got the go to hell look patented. see the stone set in your eyes... see the thorn twist in your side... 

i also like acrobat: you can swallow, or you can spit. you can throw it up, or choke on it... don't let the bastards grind you down... i know you'd hit out, if you only knew who to hit. and who's gonna ride your wild horses. 

closer to fine; secure yourself; kid fears; prince of darkness; blood and fire. indigo girls. darkness has a hunger that's insatiable, and lightness has a call that's hard to hear. i wrapped my fear around me like a blanket (closer to fine). i wrote a whole post about prince of darkness.

silent all these years; crucify; precious things; winter; hey jupiter; the doughnut song; baker baker. tori amos. every finger in the room is point at me. i wanna spit in their faces, then i get afraid of what that could bring. i got a bowling ball in my stomach, got a desert in my mouth. figures that my courage would choose to sell out now... i've been raising up my hands, drive another nail in. just what god needs. one more victim (crucify). basically the whole album little earthquakes needs to be in your collection if it's not already. that last song, though, baker baker. that one's my favorite. behind my eyes, i'm hiding... my heart's been hard to find. here... there must be something here.

place in this world; i'll lead you home; let me show you the way. michael w. smith. my crutches when i feel most defeated, when all seems lost.

the fall film challenge bonus round: my list

big stone gap

bleed for this

the book thief

bridge of spies

the choice

concussion

eighty-four charing cross road

election

evening

flags of our fathers

gleason

hacksaw ridge

jack reacher: never go back

ladies in lavender

loving

the other boleyn girl

the perfect storm

the queen

the remains of the day

remember the titans

spotlight

a street cat named bob

thirteen hours: the secret soldiers of benghazi

the thirty-three

the three musketeers

the fall film challenge: the bonus round

guess what. for the bonus? pick twenty-five films that have been based on books or actual events. when you post your list to the facebook page, you HAVE to provide links (like goodreads or wikipedia) to verify choices are legitimate ones. I WILL CHECK. I WILL TELL YOU NO IF THEY'RE NOT. same rules apply: can't use films you've already seen; has to have a page on imdb, theatrical release... no changes... yadda yadda. AND because i'm nice, this year you don't have to have finished the regular round before watching bonus selections. so that's it. have fun.

the tally, for those of you who are interested in knowing challengers' progress, is thus:

christine: twenty-five. finished original list september twenty-second. 

alyson: twenty-five. finished original list september twenty-second (second). 

andrea: twenty-five. finished original list october second. 

christina: twenty-five. finished original list october seventh. 

kathryn: nineteen 

dani: thirteen 

brianne: nine 

sabrina: nine 

lauren t.: eight 

michael: eight 

stephanie: seven 

cassie: four 

cherie: four 

erin: three 

lauren h.: one 

there's no shame in having only seen a few, by the way. ultimately, the purpose of this challenge is to get you to see things you wouldn't normally see, and if it gets someone to watch one movie, then yay. i'm glad. because i know there are some of you out there who love books, like erin, a helluva lot more than they love film--or maybe i should say it's easier for them to get through a book than a movie. you can listen to a book during a commute or while you're cooking dinner. watching a movie while you're cooking is a little more complicated. like the other day when i was trying to watch desolation of smaug and bake muffins. it took me two hours to make the muffins, yall. why? because there are hot men in that movie. i enjoyed looking at their faces a whole lot more than i enjoyed spooning batter into muffin tins. anyway... collectively, we challengers have seen about two hundred movies since september thirtieth. i say about because some of them are duplicates, and i'm too lazy to figure out an exact count. that's a lot of movies, yall, in a very short amount of time. i am impressed by these girls. this is pretty awesome.

i have seen sixteen flicks. i'm having a really hard time finding the trojan women. i understand i could buy it, but, although it appears to have a pretty fantastic cast, i'm not interested in purchasing a film i've never seen. so... if by some freak of nature one of you lovely readers happens to own that particular flick or know of someone who does and would be willing to hook a gal up, i'd appreciate the favor. you will be rewarded for your generosity.

random quarter

one. so the first thing i do when making these posts is type out the one through twenty-five bit because if i do it that way, then i don't have to do control b as much. then i go back and type the things. today, i got so caught up in typing the numbers that i was on twenty-seven when i realized i could stop.

two. this the fifty-first rq post. actually, i'm sure there've been more than that, but i went through and killed about seven hundred posts last year, and some of those were probably rq's from way back when. picky's been around for more than a decade, yall. i can't keep everything. i can guarantee you i wrote more than two posts in two thousand eight, and there's nothing from five, six or seven. so yeah. there were probably more like sixty or seventy of these. whatever. the first rq post was composed on april twenty-fourth, six years ago. the one with the most page views is this one (one thousand, two hundred sixteen); the one with the fewest is that one (thirty). in the former, all of that is still true, save for number four because i can't fix phineas. he bought it two years ago this month. i'm still sad about that.

three. i am about to make the third call today to the cable company because i can't watch my recorded shows and do netflix and all that jazz... i am unthrilled. mostly because they ask for the best phone number at which to call you should they get disconnected, but they don't call you back when the call's broken, so you have to repeat the same complaints AGAIN. the third one, though was successful, thank god. something's busted in a box. imagine that. and they may be out today to fix it. maybe.

four. i have watched sixteen of the twenty-five films i'd chosen for this year's film challenge. i can't say for sure, but i think that's the greatest number of films i've seen by midpoint. i'm kind of proud of myself. i've never finished my own damned challenge. mayhaps i'll do it this year!

five. and then there's erin's book challenge. i've read FIVE books, which IS the most i've ever read of my selections for one of her challenges. the thing's over in two weeks. i might get one more in. maybe two. but ain't no way i'm finishing that one. sorry, lady. there's always the next one...

six. the aggies have won six games. they are undefeated. they are ranked sixth. it is a beautiful thing. that said... the first half of their season's a cakewalk compared to the back half. bama's next. as in next weekend. at bama. we've beaten them there before. maybe we could do it again. that sure would be nice. then we could be eight and oh because the next team is like new mexico state or something... aggies vs. aggies. there can be only one, dammit. and ours have a ninety-nine point five percent chance of victory. the bama game, though... the chance of success there is MUCH smaller. something like twenty-nine point three percent.

seven. so something really weird happened with picky this year. i can't figure out it happened. of the posts that survived the great culling, the one that's had the fewest views is called hate hates hating. i'm kind of glad i'm doing this rq post today, that i'm checking out the page views and whatnot because it made me revisit that particular post. and in light of the one i'd written the other day... i'm really glad i looked at this one again because it reminded me that that's how i need to pray. after giving thanks and asking for help for my friends... the simple request in that post is good enough. not that i've not made the request since. not that i'd forgotten writing that post or coming to that realization... but i forget a prayer doesn't have to be fancy. it doesn't have to be specific. it can be as simple as the italicized words i'd written then.

anyway... the weird thing... i culled a few more posts a month ago, so there are a little less than five hundred picky posts now. if you break'm down into hundreds...

the last batch (june to june, two thousand eight to ten):

eight posts have fewer than ten views;

sixty-one have between ten and ninety-nine; 

eighteen have greater than one hundred

the numbers for the next three hundred posts are fairly similar. the first batch, though...

the most recent one (may of fifteen to now):

twenty three posts have fewer than one hundred views; 

sixty have between one hundred and a thousand; 

sixteen have more than a thousand

SIXTEEN. in the other four hundred, there've been only two that have amassed that many: n is for neapolitan (one thousand one hundred twenty-three) and that rq post mentioned earlier. i can't figure out what i did to incur the spike cause i'm pretty sure i'm not writing about anything differently.

of course now the numbers are settling back to normal. maybe it was just this fluke thing. it's just that i never figured any post of mine would get that much attention. and i get it. there are bloggers out there who have posts that get hundreds and hundreds of views on a regular basis. so i probably sound silly talking about this...

eight. am watching the way, way back for probably the thirtieth time. i am not a sam rockwell fan, but there is no one who could do the character owen better justice than that dude. my older brother was kind of like owen. maybe that's why i like this movie so much. i say kind of because my brother was pretty damned particular about how he dressed, but for the most part... i can see my brother doing a lot of things owen does in this film. i miss my bubba.

nine. i can't stand steve carell. nothing makes me loathe him more than his character trent. the guys i meet, they're like trent. i'd really rather find one like owen. and i know, considering i'd just said he reminds me of my brother, that sounds weird, but... the guys in my family are pretty awesome. sue me for wanting someone like them.

ten. i had all these shows and films saved to the dvr. like an episode of a football life that focuses on steve gleason's interest and effort in climbing machu picchu. it was a damned good episode. it's gone now because the cable guy had to replace all our damned boxes. so... no more shows. i had to go through and reset all the shit. bah.

eleven. my mom makes baby cupcakes out of yellow cake and cinnamon and sugar. it only took me three tries but i've managed to nail that shit. there's like a science. you have to tweak the recipe a bit, beat it differently than what it says on the box, bake'm for just the right time (NOT the eighteen minutes it says to do on the box), mix just the right amount of cinnamon with sugar and soak'm in just the right amount of butter then the cinnamon stuff. the first batch? not so good. the last batch? badass.

twelve. i've told yall before it takes me hours to write these posts. that's because sometimes i'm like... what. the. fuck. i'm only on number twelve??

thirteen. i hate job hunting. i hate how small i feel. that i try for the jobs that interest me and end up working in retail. i really don't want to work retail EVER AGAIN but it's looking like that's about to happen.

fourteen. and then i hate hating on retail because it's honest work, hard work. and who am i to belittle that? it's just that i don't want my work to be just a job. and that's how i see retail. it's just a job. and a i'm just a girl. working a just job makes me feel more like a just girl. and i really don't wanna feel like that.

fifteen. i have kept my room clean for a whole three days! i swear to god this is a record.

sixteen. my bank account's had less than twenty bucks in it for two weeks. i'm pretty sure that's a record, too.

seventeen.  i've been having trouble sleeping. it took a clonazepam, two unisoms and watching the actors' commentary of the first half of the director's cut of fellowship of the ring to get me to sleep last night. i dozed pretty much all night. i know this because at some point, i had to start the thing over.

eighteen. baseball doesn't interest me so much. until i'm sitting at republic grille (filling out a job application) and watching the cleveland indians beat the boston red sox. yeah. YEAH. the INDIANS. that team that was featured in major league beating that team that was featured in fever pitch. that got my attention. because how in the hell did that happen? and then one of the servers is saying some shit about how the series could come down to the indians and the chicago cubs. THE CHICAGO CUBS. i feel like shit's horribly off its axis.

nineteen. six more things... i'm over flo the progressive gal commercials. those need to end. so do the ones for sites like match and eharmony. and credit cards. and the goddamned lincoln ads with matthew mcconaughey.

twenty. i want to take a road trip across the low-lying lands of louisiana. i lived in that state when i was nine. for like six months. it sucked. i can only blame the interest in going back there on the fact that i watched deepwater horizon the other day, and i liked how the land is spotted along the coast in places. kind of like it is in north carolina. i've not really taken a road trip in about a year... since north carolina. maybe i'm in need of another. after i get a job, of course... and when i manage to get some time off. funny how i have the time now, but not the funds. and when i have the funds, i don't have the time.

twenty-one. that movie, by the way... of those mentioned in this post, that's one yall definitely need to see. ain't no excuse for you not to.

twenty-three. that first movie mentioned has finished. now i'm watching the reboot of macgyver. well, the fourth episode. because i lost the first three before i could watch them (because i wasn't that excited about this particular program, so i was saving them for when there was absolutely nothing else to watch), and while the cable guy could fix the cable, video on demand shit's busted. but apparently that's busted for a bunch of people. i grew up with richard whatshisface playing mac. it feels weird to me to see this other dude playing the part. it feels weird to see henry winkler listed as an executive producer, too. that's the fonz, yall. i grew up watching him slicking his hair and snapping his fingers. this shit makes me feel REALLY OLD. anyway, this show? not so impressive. i can't see it lasting a season.

twenty-four. i watched deadpool (one of the many things i had saved that is now GONE, dammit, because the more i think about that movie, the more i like it) the other day. there's some damned fine dialogue in that flick.

twenty-five. i wanna be scrawny again. i also wanna eat like three bowls of honeycomb. guess which one's more likely to happen?

i don't know what to pray for anymore

i've never been good at praying. ever. i know how it should be done: you're supposed to express gratitude for the good, which i do; you're supposed to ask for help with things that hurt and are in need of healing, so i pray for my friends. i'm good with all that... until i get to what's hurting me, to how i've hurt myself, to how i'd like it to be healed. i don't know what to pray for anymore.

every well woman exam i've had has come back normal, save for the last. i've lesions, abnormal cells that may need special attention. i go back in march for another exam, and if they're still there... well, then...

i'm trying not to think anything of it. for the past month, i've managed to roll with this well enough. apparently they're rather common. they're caused by human papillomavirus, which i got from that douchebag i dated last year. i got it because i'd lowered my standards, because i relented. because i'd thought a lot of things i didn't like to think.

it's probably nothing, this... i'll probably go back, and they'll do their thing, whatever it is, and i'll be fine. this is probably just me freaking out because that's what i do best.

i am a strong woman. i know this. i might not always act as though i've got a backbone. i might use bitchy and bluster as a defense mechanism a little too often. i'm horribly passive aggressive. but i can take a ton of shit. you can poke and prod at me until you can't find a vein anymore, like doctors did when i was a baby...

whatever this is, i'll deal with it. that's been my thought process for the past month, since i got those abnormal results. hell, for the past eighteen months since all this shit really began. whatever this is, i'll deal with it, like i've done a thousand times before.

curious, though, isn't it, that i would feel compelled to go see that movie to joey with love. i went because she was gifted with a beautiful voice and seems to have had a beautiful heart and soul, and i wanted to know that beauty a little better.

halfway through the film, though, i thought... this could be you a year from now. this struggle she endured, this battle she fought and lost... leaving behind a man who loved her and a daughter who needed her. this could be your struggle... only you don't have as many reasons to fight as she did. all because you relented, because you gave up. you who makes a point to hold her ground, even if holding it means to curl up in a ball, to dig a trench, to bury yourself. well... you're running out of trenches... you can only build so many before the ground gives way.

six impossible things

so yeah. these are just a few of the dozens of books i've purchased or, as is the case with the help and dearly beloved, been given in the past decade or so that i've been meaning to read. that pink one third from the right? landline? i've read that one at least a dozen times. i'm obsessed with that one. like OBSESSED. if there were only one book i could read for the rest of my life, that one's on a VERY short list of titles from which i would choose. the one two doors down from that one? the brown leather one? that should probably be the ONLY one on that list. that's the bible, yall. and shock of all shocks, i've read some of it. like i've read a few pages in most of the books on this shelf. (there's two more rows of books behind that one... just so you know. i've read a few pages in a few of them, too.)

two doors down from that bible is a young adult novel i picked up a few years ago... another selection for erin's book challenge that, also shocking, i have yet to finish. it's called six impossible things. 

i see it every morning when i wake and every night before i sleep. i see it and remember that quote of the queen's in alice and wonderland. most of the time i look at those words and see shortcomings because all too often, i can't even find the courage or the strength or the passion to strive to believe in one thing. shortcomings because i can think of six impossible things with such ease. IMPOSSIBLE THINGS like looking in the mirror and not feeling about my face today like i did when i was thirteen. sure, the face staring back at me is different. but the girl's the same. the girl knows that the reason the face is different is because surgeons had to make it so. HAD to or her teachers would continue to treat her as though she belonged in a special education environment rather than a mainstream classroom. had to or she probably would've died not long after. i can tell you all about impossible things.

i was gonna make a list of the worst of those things, the ones that i needed to believe i could overcome. and then it occurred to me, that's just enabling the ugliness.

so let me tell you instead of some other, more uplifting impossible things i've known.

one. the love my parents have for me. i don't make it easy, yall. i've not made it easy for them since birth, practically. they've had to fight harder for me than i've ever fought for myself. they'd do it with their dying breaths. i've said before how easy it would be for my mother to tell you of the flaws of her children... but she sees such goodness in us, in each of us, no matter how uncouthly and idiotically we may behave... my brother drank himself to death. my other brother was unfaithful to his wife. and i've relied so heavily on their financial assistance for so long that they can't provide for their grandchildren's college education like i'm sure they'd hoped to do. we are gifted in so many ways, and not all of them are good. but when i'm despaired and drowning because of it, when there is no light in me and i ask her why she loves me, she holds on and says it's because i bring her joy and there is such goodness in me... that they could love me despite how ugly i can be to them, how frequently i take advantage of them... that their love for me can be so boundless seems so impossible to me, and yet, there it is. and i know it to be true.

two. the worst years of my academic studies were from fifth to seventh grade, and right smack dab in the middle of them was this wonderful teacher named pauline elliott. during this time of my life i was convinced death was the best way my story could possibly end. i've never prayed so hard in my life as i did then, and my prayers, they were not good. they lacked any gratitude or praise, any hope or faith, any kind of light. my pysche was similarly constructed. and one day, this woman pulled me aside after class and said i had a talent for writing. that one compliment... to this day it makes me cry recalling it because of the kindness she showed me, because of the good she saw in me when so many saw such ruin, such waste. i'm sure i've blogged about this before, but that compliment could not have come at a more crucial time in my life. it was just the right thing to say, at just the right time... and it seemed so impossible to me that any teacher could care for me because they had not done so in years... and yet... there. she did. she's gone now. she died this year. i don't think i ever told her how valuable her words were to me. they were like hope in pandora's box. i walked into that school every day and heard every hideous thing you could imagine... and there in all that ugliness, was that one shining sentiment.

three. the worst year of my adult life was from spring to spring 'two to 'three, and right smack dab in the middle of that was this wonderful professor named janevelyn tillery. i was in the throes of some pretty impressive depression when i met this woman. i'd enrolled in one of her linguistics courses at the university of texas at san antonio. i'd had my heart broken just a few months before. i'd quit my job and spent the majority of my summer holed up in my apartment, rarely bothering to change out of my pajamas and the only time i'd left the house was to buy cigarettes and food. somehow, by august, i'd decided i need to do something with myself, so i enrolled in english classes and hid out in academia. toward the end of the semester, tillery had asked her students to fill out index cards detailing the classes we were taking in the spring. i loved how invested she was in her students, in their education and aspirations. i didn't fill out a card because i wasn't going to be taking classes next semester. she noticed that i'd not submitted one, and when class had concluded she confronted me about it. when i'd said i wasn't enrolling for spring classes, she looked shocked and sad. she said, but you're so bright! you should be in school! i almost cried right there. not because i couldn't be in school, but because here, yet again, impossibly, someone saw good in me when i could not see it in myself. someone outside my family loved me when i felt so horribly unlovable.

four. i can laugh. a few months ago when we were at the monastery, my brother's friend adam remarked at how it pleased him when i'd laugh one of those full belly laughs. i think it surprises people when i do. i am so serious, so guarded, so besieged on so many fronts by so many things that laughter is as foreign to me as the french tube system. there are times when i think there's no way i could manage laughter while feeling like i do, and then... there it is. someone, something will strike just the right chord...

five. getting up out of bed every morning. often before i go to bed, i think, there's another day like today just around the corner. and even though i've gotten through thousands of those days... getting up out of bed each morning, planting my feet and putting one before the other again and again... that i have the energy, the capability to get through it astounds me.

six. i can sing and write and speak my mind. because i'm convinced i should've lost my voice decades ago, and yet, here it is...

by the way... at some point, i'll get all those books read.

siren songs

show of hands: how many of yall have seen an affair to remember? (if you haven't, don't. it sucks.) how many have seen sleepless in seattle? (if you haven't, and you're single, that film will make you depressed as shit. don't watch it alone, don't drink adult beverages while you watch cause that could just make you more depressed, and do have some ice cream on hand. do watch it. it's good).

i ask because i'm working on a particular chapter of my manuscript that involves my gals and their viewing of the former of the two films. two of them love it. one of them doesn't. the viewing comes at a fairly crucial point in the story. i've got the thing broken down into thirds, and this particular chapter falls right around the conclusion of the second third. the gal who doesn't like it is about to crumple under the weight of all the bullshit in her head, unbeknownst to the other two.

after they've left, she burns some sad songs to a cd and goes for a drive (my girl's old school, okay?) because she's upset and needs to cry. her friends, unknowingly, have put an idea in her head, more bullshit onto the heap, and a good jag would be helpful. only she can't cry. she should be able to because yall, the tunes on that cd, they're pretty sad shit:

the chain (live from webster hall). ingrid michaelson. be ok.

do what you have to do. sarah mclachlan. surfacing.

vienna. the fray. how to save a life.

gravity. sara bareilles. little voice.

every rose has its thorn. poison. open up and say ahh.

ashes and wine. a fine frenzy. one cell in the sea.

doughnut song. tori amos. boys for pele.

happiness. abra moore. strangest places.

almost lover. a fine frenzy. one cell in the sea.

sullivan street. counting crows. august and everything after.

nothingman. pearl jam. vitalogy.

tear in your hand. tori amos. little earthquakes.

with or without you. u2. the joshua tree.

sometime around midnight. the airborne toxic event's self-titled album.

roads. portishead. dummy.

bend and not break. dashboard confessional. a mark, a mission, a brand, a scar.

reason why. rachael yamagata. happenstance.

i wanna talk to yall today about the second one by tori amos, tear in your hand. first of all, that song's on one of the best albums ever recorded, and if you don't own it, i must insist that you stop reading this and go do whatever it is you do when you buy music and get it now. thanks. (you should get baker baker from under the pink, too. and that album by a fine frenzy. and that song by ingrid michaelson.)

the album was released in nineteen ninety-two. i was nineteen. i read, just today actually, an article in rolling stone in which amos offers a track-by-track guide to the songs released then. in that she said tear in your hand was nostalgic, about separating from family and high-school friends. but for me, i've always seen it as a really good song about a break-up: you don't know the power that you have with that tear in your hand. 

for twenty-four years i've thought, erroneously, that the tear might've been the man's, and that he was both sad and convinced that ending things had to be done, and that the girl was rendered powerless by the sight. even after i'd endured heartbreak, i still thought this. 

the other day i was listening to this song because whenever a scene involves music i make myself listen to it to help me get the thing right, to immerse myself in whatever my character might be feeling.

i was driving. i think i was coming back from a writing session at pappadeaux's when a memory surfaced. it involves that electrical engineer i'd mentioned in this post (he's in this one, too, by the way).

i wouldn't've thought of it, except that i've dreamed of him twice in the past month. people aren't often in my dreams. he's never been in them, not even when we were dating. not even after i'd ruined things. never. in fourteen years. that's how long it's been. that's how much the bastard impressed me. but then again, i'm a supremely impressionable gal. anyway. i'm confident that had i not had those dreams, this memory would never have been stirred so well.

when i was a kid, i cried in school in front of my classmates. it was pathetic. eventually i learned how to rein it in until i could hide somewhere to get it out. i hid a lot. since grade school i think the only time i've been unable to keep the tears at bay in front of other men, excluding those in my family, was with him. in that second post, the one referenced in the parentheses, i mentioned that i couldn't let him see me cry. i'm talking about ugly cry, yall. full on misery.

but... we were laying (lying? i can never fucking remember) on his sofa, and he was telling me how much he liked me and enjoyed spending time with me, but... i knew what he was saying. i heard it. i understood it. i was in one hundred percent complete agreement with him on it. he wasn't ready for serious, and he felt we were headed in that direction. i wasn't ready for it either. i was perfectly content with how things were because i could go home at the end of the night. (dammit. he's in this one, too.) i was listening, but all the hideous things were swirling around inside my head. one tear fell onto his shirt. one. so i sat up, wiped my face. told him i needed a kleenex. he went to get one, only he didn't have any, so he brought back a bit of bathroom tissue. i wiped my eyes. he was crouching before me, so his eyes, that gorgeous green, were level with mine. he gave me this hint of a smile, took the tissue and said he was going to frame it and call it jenn's tears. i got the hell out of there.

that song of tori's was ten years old at the time. it took me another fourteen to really understand it. i'm a writer. i'm supposed to pick up on this shit pretty quick. and yall, i pray i never know that power again.

if you don't stand for something...

during the olympics last month, gabby douglas didn't put her hand on her heart while the national anthem played...

colin kaepernick sits on a bench or takes a knee while it's played, and the same damned shit happens. do i personally like that this was so? no. not so much. because to me that song is beautiful. do i personally like it that john legend tweets things like this:

 

John LegendVerified account‏@johnlegend

For those defending the current anthem, do you really truly love that song? I don't and I'm very good at singing it. Like, one of the best

no. not so much. because i truly love that song. i've stood at kyle field with my hand on my heart and the line, o, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, there's a surge of emotion in me... nothing big, just a little ebb and flow of pride at how that might have looked to those men on the night of that perilous fight. how beautiful the flag was to them in that moment. and that happens every time. EVERY time. how beautiful that flag is to me, always, when the wind catches it. hell, i was at some event at one of the parks in the woodlands a couple of months ago that involved skydivers and some flags, one of which was the stars and stripes, and when the last one landed, when that glorious red, white and blue hit the ground, i instinctively took a step forward, put a hand to my heart and said aloud: get it off the ground. he was quick to gather it up because it was precious to him, too.

that anthem is precious to me. if i'm at an event and it's playing, i will not sit and my hand will be on my heart.

but damned if this ain't the land of the free and home of the brave. gabby douglas didn't put her hand on her heart. so what? SO WHAT? she's free to put her hand where she pleases. colin kaepernick chose to sit. HE HAS EVERY RIGHT TO DO SO. he knew the shit was gonna hit the fan, but HE DID IT ANYWAY. that's courage, yall. that's the kind of bravery francis scott key had in mind when he wrote those words. no, it's not some galant act. he didn't enlist in our armed forces and fight alongside those in iraq and afghanistan. he didn't pull a child from a burning building or save a woman from the violence caused by some pitiful excuse for a man.

but there are people who have called his actions pitiful. there are folks setting fire to his jersey. i've heard endless bitching from almost every direction about how stupid it looks that a man who makes so many millions a year playing a game, whose black parents gave him up, who was raised in a white family has the audacity to say black men are oppressed in this country. heads up, people, plenty of them ARE OPPRESSED. still. it's a damned disgrace. and if you don't think it's in your neck of the woods, go drive around the lesser affluent neighborhoods of your community... i guarantee you there are wards not so very far from you that are comprised of houses barely standing because the boards are so ancient, the materials so corroded by weather and time. there are people living in those homes, or trying to. some of them are scraping an existence with three jobs and the skin of their teeth. you can tell because their yards are tidy and those boards, as beaten as they are... the windows are clean and there are potted plants on the porch. others... you know the people inside are as dilapidated as the building in which they reside. they are bitter and full of blame; that's their right.

there was an instance last summer in which a man was offended that i'd asked him not to stand so close to me. i needed distance because of my own limitations. he'd thought i'd wanted distance because he was black and i was white. my mother had to point this out to me. i reread that post, and not once did i mention color. because my parents made damned sure their children didn't judge people by the color of their skin. i didn't see a black man that day. i saw a man standing too close to me. for me, that's all it was. but because of how i was raised, i forget to consider that others haven't been raised that way. so for him... white privilege raising its head again. i was oblivious to it. to this day, i'm ashamed of my behavior. still. it had NOTHING to do with who he was, but my panic made it appear otherwise.

sure, maybe there's a better way kaepernick could've said his piece. i understand and can respect what he's doing and why. he's standing for something. not literally. it's a fucking metaphor, folks. but this cause of his, it's good and deserving of the attention.

and as much as i don't like that john legend said he doesn't like the song... posting that on twitter's maybe a little courageous.

christine teigenVerified account‏@chrissyteigen

@johnlegend settle down, you're okay at it

god love chrissy for her sense of humor. the world needs more of that.