why i read it: i was surveying the teen fiction section looking for a title that began with the letter w for erin's book challenge. this was after i'd gone through and properly merchandised one of walls of bays because the staff at that particular store have no idea how to nor interest in selling books, apparently... and the obsessive-compulsive gal who once worked as the merchandising supervisor in a bookstore can't stand to see a poorly-shelved section. seriously. it irks the bejesus out of me. anyway. after i'd gone through and fixed the books, i picked out half a dozen or so that started with w and settled on this one, and i am so glad i did.

what i liked: i wonder if there's a secret current that connects people who have lost something. not in the way that everyone loses something, but in the way that undoes your life, undoes your self, so that when you look at your face it isn't yours anymore (page 68).

she leans over our table and turns the sign in the window so that it says closed on the outside. but on our side, perfectly positioned between mabel's place and mine, it says open. if this were a short story it would mean something (page 71).

next door to me, a woman started howling and didn't stop... i heard something break. it's possible that some of the rooms were occupied by regular people, down on their luck, but my wing was full of the broken, and i was at home among them (page 182). 

i wish her everything good. a friendly cab driver and short lines through security. a flight with no turbulence and an empty seat next to her. a beautiful christmas. i wish her more happiness than can fit in a person. i wish her the kind of happiness that spills over (page 192).

what sucked: not a damned thing.

having said all that: this was one of those books i read in a couple of hours. the writing is gorgeous. the way lacour tells the story is pretty near masterful, at least to me. it's complex. it's tragic. but there's goodness and love, and it ends well. i thought it was beautiful. and i don't say that about many books.

life after life

why i wanted to read it: because for erin's book challenge, i had to read something that dealt with time travel, and i didn't want to reread the time traveler's wife (even though i love that book). i remembered this one got rave reviews and thought i'd give it a shot. i listened to the audio book on cd. was cramming because the challenge is almost over and i'm determined to finish the fucker.

what i liked: since i listened to the thing rather than reading it i didn't get to mark pages. i figured if something really struck me or if enough things piqued my interest, i'd buy the book for my library and find the things.

i liked the premise of the story... of all the ways a life could play out. how one small thing -- walking on a road at a certain time, for example -- can cause huge ripples of change.

i was most interested in the story at the last of the fifth disc and the beginning of the sixth. that part of the plot (and i don't want to mention specifics because it's the ONLY part of the plot that i can recommend, the only time the author succeeds in engaging me, the only time she establishes great conflict and makes me feel for the character) is REALLY good. the rest of it...

what sucked: overall, the book is boring as hell. like seriously boring. like i found myself screaming at my stereo good god, just die already. the main character never knows happiness for too long any ANY of the lives she's given. and the end... UGH. pissed me off. a friend suggested that she's not really the main character, that a sibling is, and that pissed me off even more.

having said that: bollocks! don't read it. just don't.

the shack

why i wanted to read it: i used to work as a merchandising supervisor at a bookstore. this thing was on the bestseller bays FOREVER. i remember people talking about it and thinking it sounded stupid. so i'd never wanted to read it, but then they made that movie of it with sam worthington (LOVE him) and octavia spencer (LOVE her) which tempted me to check it out. and then at a friend's birthday party a few weeks ago, a friend of the friend encouraged me to read it. since reading the death and life of zebulon finch before april thirtieth was becoming less and less likely and since i don't typically read religious books, i figured i could switch titles for my genre of book you never/rarely read category in erin's book challenge.

what i liked: ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOTHING. NOT A DAMNED THING.

what sucked: this is the worst-written, most absurd story i've ever read. in. my. life. how this thing became so successful is MIRACULOUS, terrifyingly so.

having said that: you wanna know god? join a bible study. dig into the scriptures. don't read stupid, STUPID stories like this one. i was googling to get the image for this post and saw that, i guess on google, some thirty-four hundred folks have given this book five stars. what. the. fuck. WHY? won't see the movie, by the way, no matter how much i might love sam worthington and octavia spencer.

ten things at which i suck

one. driving. i knew this was going to be the case, which is why i put off getting my driver's license until after i graduated from high school. i rode the bus all four years of high school, yall. i was not ashamed. do you know why? because it made sense to ride it. someone escorted me to and fro, someone with what i'm sure is a much better driving record than mine turned out to be. someone who didn't charge me for the service. someone employed, ultimately, by my father. and if his people thought that driver was good enough, then by golly, i did, too. i didn't have to spend money on gas. i didn't have to spend money (or more to the point, my parents' money) on wheels and all the costs that went with ensuring they rolled smoothly.

so i got my license and since then, i've wrecked six cars, most of them on multiple occasions...

the first car i drove was the chevrolet corsica my parents bought from a relative. that one is the only one to which i did not cause bodily injury. my younger brother totaled that one.

my parents replaced it with a dodge shadow. i know i'd wrecked it more than once, but the only time i can recall was a summer day during the first year of ownership. in the back of the neighborhood in which i reside, there's a dip, and one of the gals i knew from school showed me that if you travel fast enough, you can jump it. i did so a few times. the last time, on this particular summer day, there was a nail in one of my tires. it popped the tire upon impact, and i did a number of three-sixties before smashing the car into some trees.

i kept that one alive for about four years and put nearly two hundred thousand miles on it before the transmission bought it, followed by a mechanic's announcement that the car had a cracked head gasket.

we won't talk about the number of speeding tickets i got in that thing. it was raspberry red, and i have a lead foot.

the next car was a green ford mustang. it was the first car i picked out for myself. my parents bought it for me. i wrecked it a bunch. the instances that come to mind are the time an old man in a white pickup cut across a parking lot, hit the front left bumper and then fucked up the entire driver's side of the car and, since both airbags deployed, the entirety of the dash, too. the second accident i can recall happened within weeks, it seemed, of getting it out of the shop from that accident. the exchange of loop six ten and interstate ten, near memorial and the galleria in houston, sucks ASS. i rear-ended someone... because people like to change lanes at the last possible second, which makes people slam on their brakes because they're following too closely, and i made the mistake of not paying attention. i make that mistake a lot. third one... i was driving one of the back roads late at night after the rain... too quickly. hydroplaned a bunch, landed in a ditch. i had the windows rolled down and got mud all inside the car. fourth... and this one put him down for the count... i was driving home from houston; it'd been raining and since hydroplaning scares the shit out me, i avoided the freeways whenever possible, which means i drove through the woodlands and took magnolia parkway (which was, at the time, a quiet little two-lane road with walls of pine trees on either side of it) to the frontage road of interstate forty-five. i'd passed my parents' neighborhood (the one in which i'd wrecked the shadow... the one in which i now reside... but at the time i'd been living in an apartment not far from them). i crossed crighton road (my light was green). the driver of a white oldsmobile ran his red light, broadsided me and sent my car careening into a telephone pole. split the engine in half. i've a six-inch scar on my right arm from the airbag... from putting my hands up so as not to see the wreckage occur.

i got even more speeding tickets in that one.

next... a pontiac firebird. i was blinded by the setting sun as i left work and turned left into someone's sport utility vehicle. that car died. i don't even think i had it for a year. i don't think i wrecked it any other times. but apparently, once is enough.

i replaced that one with a ford explorer sport track. i only remember one accident. i was asleep. a drunk driver hit it and four other cars. he knocked the bumpers off the others. i'd had that truck for six months. he knocked the bed off the frame, damaged every inch of the thing from the driver's side passenger door all the way around to where the bed met the rear passenger's door. it was in the shop for three months.

and then there's the acura rsx. my favorite. i managed to keep that one alive for almost a decade. miraculously. i'd managed to not get into an accident for eighteen months before the first one. i was turning left from a right lane, which i could do. the woman in the left lane went straight. it took several months to get him fixed because she'd been drinking, my phone was dead and she wouldn't call the cops to report the accident, so i had to wait for her insurance company to assign fault, and that took a VERY long time. within a few months of getting it back, i failed to yield the right of way at a stop sign late at night and drove into someone's sedan. i'd hydroplaned in it a couple of times, once on the interstate and amazingly enough i didn't hit anyone. i did hit the guardrail, which sent me back out onto the highway. it bought it on a sunny day in october three years ago. the southbound freeway was closed, so everyone was having to use magnolia parkway (which is now a four-lane, congested piece of shit). the guy in front of me slammed on his brakes, i slammed on mine, and the bitch in the toyota minivan shoved me into his car.

then there's the nissan altima, which as of about three p.m. today, has been parked in the recently-constructed median on a major highway not far from my home. i forgot it was there and was turning left (do you see a pattern here?). drove right over the curb separating the concrete from the tall, swampy, newly-planted grass. i'm pretty sure that car's dead. i can tell you with certainty the rear bumper's no longer attached.

interestingly enough, i've not gotten a speeding ticket since october of two thousand four. that last one... i was traveling sixty-five miles per hour in a forty-five. i've since discovered cruise control.

also i've become much more careful about keeping safe following distances. yall should, too. now if i could just get the hang of turning left.

two. dating. speaking to attractive men, in general. those horror stories are generally not nearly as entertaining. i'll spare you their details. well except for one:

there was this guy who was studying for his mcat. he'd spend hours in the cafe at the bookstore where i worked. after he took it we didn't see him as much. he came in during the christmas season; he'd not been wearing his usual attire of a baseball cap and polo. i'd been talking with a customer as we rode the escalator to the second floor. he got on after us and said hi to me. i didn't recognize him at first, but then just before we reached the top, it clicked. i managed to say hi back. i'd forgotten the name of the book the customer wanted. she was an older woman. i grinned at her and apologized, saying how cute boys distract me. she laughed.

if you wanna read about the kind of guys with whom i have tangled, there's this.

three. taking care of my things. 

four. taking care of myself. 

five. karaoke. it sounds like a good idea in theory because i've a really good voice, but...

six. cooking. something that takes my mother twenty minutes to make takes me two hours.

seven. sounding like a texan. i don't have a twang. i'm not even sure i could fake a good one. i'd be interviewing people for work, and they'd ask me where i'm from. here, i'd say. born in texas city. can't get much more texan than that... unless it was lukenbach, maybe.

eight. dieting. yall'd say this goes with taking care of myself, probably. but... i'm sitting here munching on string cheese and sipping my third soda of the day (it's canada dry ginger ale, though... so at least it's not caffeinated).

nine. email correspondence. have you left a comment on a pickypost? i love you for it. i read it. i will respond to it... eventually. (of the things, this is the one that makes me feel most like a despicable person.)

ten. following through with things. like finishing the fucking novel i started two decades ago. (this is the one that should make me feel like a despicable person, but oddly enough doesn't. i'll get around to it... eventually.)

check out michael's list and kristen's.

thirteen reasons why

why i wanted to read it: a friend encouraged me to read it.

what i liked: "it's nothing. a school project."

my go-to answer for anything. staying out late? school project. need extra money? school project. and now, the tapes of a girl. a girl who, two weeks ago, swallowed a handful of pills.

school project (clay, page 8).

why not just pop the tape out of the stereo and throw the entire box of them in the trash?

i swallow hard. tears sting the corner of my eyes.

because it's hannah's voice. a voice i thought i'd never hear again. i can't throw that away (clay, page 16).

so tell me, jessica, which did you mean to do? punch me or scratch me? because it felt like a little bit of both. like you couldn't really decide... that tiny scar you've all seen above my eyebrow, that's the shape of jessica's fingernail... which i plucked out myself.

i noticed that scar a few weeks ago. at the party. a tiny flaw on a pretty face. and i told her how cute it was (hannah then clay, page 67).

the next day at school i asked so many people the exact same question, where were you last night? some said they were at home or at a friend's house. or at the movies. none of your business. but you, tyler, you had the most defensive -- and interesting -- response of all.

"what, me? nowhere."

and for some reason, telling me you were nowhere made your eyes twitch and your forehead break into a sweat... hey, at least you're original. but your presence, tyler, that never left. 

after your visits, i twisted my blinds shut every night. i locked out the stars and i never saw lightning again...

why didn't you leave me alone, tyler? my house. my bedroom. they were supposed to be safe for me (hannah, pages 88-89).

this time, for the first time, i saw the possibilities in giving up. i even found hope in it (hannah, page 126).

i'm listening to someone give up. someone i knew. someone i liked (clay, page 146).

after feeling more and more like an outcast, peer communications was my safe haven at school. whenever i walked into that room, i felt like throwing open my arms and shouting, "olly-olly-oxen-free!"

... for one period each day, you were not allowed to touch me or snicker behind my back no matter what the latest rumor (hannah, pages 153-154).

let me guess. you told your friends to watch while you put the moves on me... and then i hardly responded... when i broke out of my daze, and before i left, i listened in on you and your friends. they were teasing you for not getting that date you assured them was in the bag... you must have a slow boil... taking it more and more personally... and you chose to get back at me in the most childish of ways.

you stole my paper bag notes of encouragement... what tipped me off? it's simple really. everyone else was getting notes. everyone! and for the most insignificant of things... after my haircut, i waited a week.

then two weeks.

then three weeks.

nothing... it was time to find out what was going on. so i wrote myself a note... to avoid the major embarrassment of getting caught leaving myself a note, i also wrote a note for the bag next to mine... and the next day? nothing in my bag. the note was gone. 

maybe it didn't seem like a big deal to you... my world was collapsing. i needed those notes. i needed any hope those notes might have offered.

and you? you took that hope away. you decided i didn't deserve to have it (hannah, pages 162-165).

everything they said -- everything! -- came tinged with annoyance.

then one of the girls... said what everyone else was thinking. "it's like whoever wrote this note just wants attention. if they were serious, they would have told us who they were."

... in the past, mrs. bradley had notes dropped in her bag suggesting group discussion on abortion, family violence, cheating -- on boyfriends, girlfriends, on tests. no one insisted on knowing who wrote those topics. but for some reason, they refused to have a discussion on suicide without specifics (hannah, pages 171-172).

and that's why, right at this moment, i feel so much hate. toward myself. i deserve to be on this list. because if i hadn't been so afraid of everyone else, i might have told hannah that someone cared. and hannah might still be alive (clay, page 181).

i'm not even sure how much of the real clay jensen i got to know over the years. most of what i knew was second-hand information. and that's why i wanted to know him better. because everything i heard -- and i mean everything! -- was good.

it was one of those things where, once i noticed it, it couldn't stop noticing it...

my ears perked up whenever i heard his name. i guess i wanted to hear something -- anything -- juicy. not because i wanted to spread gossip. i just couldn't believe someone could be that good.. it became a personal game of mine. how long could i go on hearing nothing but good things about clay jensen? 

... clay, honey, your name does not belong on this list... but you need to be here if i'm going to tell my story. to tell it more completely (hannah, pages 198-200).

the air was warm for that type of night, too. my absolute favorite type of weather... pure magic... walking by the houses on my way to the party, it felt like life held so many possibilities. limitless possibilities. and for the first time in a long time, i felt hope (hannah, page 204).

when she first arrived, when she walked through the front door, she caught me off guard. and like a freak, i turned around, ran through the kitchen, and straight out the back.

it was too soon, i told myself. i went to the party telling myself that if hannah baker showed up, i was going to talk to her. it was time. i didn't care who was there, i was going to keep my eyes focused on her and we were going to talk. 

but then she walked in and i freaked out (clay, page 208).

i couldn't believe it. out of the blue, there you were (hannah, page 208).

no, not out of the blue. first i paced around the backyard, cursing myself for being such a scared little boy. then i let myself out through the gate, fully intent on walking home.

but on the sidewalk, i beat myself up some more. then i walked back to the front door. the drunk people greeted me again, and i went straight for you.

it was anything but out of the blue (clay, page 208).

"i don't know you why," you said, "but i think we need to talk."

... and i agreed, with probably the dumbest smile plastered on my face (hannah, page 208).

no. the most beautiful (clay, page 209).

what sucked: not a damned thing.

having said that: it's good. every adolescent in america, every parent of every adolescent needs to read this book.

random quarter

some of yall might know some of this already, but...

one. my name is jennifer kristin. jennifer: the cornish derivation of the welsh gwenhyfar (guinevere) (means white wave, by the way... which suits because the waters of my internal landscape are NEVER calm). kristin: after my uncle, frank christian. so guinevere, a queen with weak morals and weaker knees... and christ. which really kind of suits because i'm hugely contradictory. also, counting my last name, there are five i's in my name (even the e's sound like i's), which i've never liked...

two. because i'm an aries, the infant of the zodiac. the sign that's all about me... me... me. and my parents like to point out how everything's always about me at every available opportunity. you're the ones who put all the i's in my name, folks, and decided to have a baby in late, late march.

three. plus, i'm the middle child... and the only girl.

four. i've spent the majority of my forty-four years as a resident of the great state of texas. save for: six months in natchitoches, louisiana (second half of third grade); nine months in roswell, new mexico (fourth grade); eighteen months in nevada, missouri (freshman and sophomore years of college). it is a great state, but i am itching to get the hell out of dodge. my small town ain't so small anymore, which i hate. the world is too big. i wanna go go go...

five. but you have to have money to go go go... which means you have to have a job, and i'm having a really hard time finding one of those. i used to write for a newspaper. i don't want to do that anymore. i'm actually sick to death of the media, and my father's got it on. all. the. time. one lady said i could use her as a reference and then told the manager not to hire me. the manager told me this... so one of'm's not being honest. i'd really wanted that job, but now that i'm privy to this information, maybe it's good that i don't have it. it wasn't anything grand, just clerking in a store, but i liked how casual the place was, the friendly atmosphere, that it closed at six p.m. weekdays and all day sunday, so i could have my nights and half my weekend. it was the kind of job you could clock out and walk out of without responsibility following you...

six. so i could spend my nights writing... not the great american novel. i don't have such grand expectations for myself. i just want to write a good love story. it was written. i've completed the first half of the revision process, which means cutting out the crap. now i have to replace the words i erased with better ones... only i'm so stressed out about the fact that i can't find work that i can't find the words.

seven. i live with my parents. i'm trying not to be ashamed of saying that. it's so much more practical that i do. i'm not involved with anyone; i have no children; i have no job; they're in their seventies, and they travel every few months for a period of several weeks each time to colorado to see my mother's relatives, that uncle after whom i'm named and her other brother and the nephews and their wives and children...

eight. i'm in a critique group with three other writers. one of them calls me her rainbow rowell girl, which warms my heart and intimidates my brain. another told me yesterday she sees me as a more literary writer while she and the others are more commercial fiction... like she thinks i'm the best of us. most of the time, i feel like i'm the weakest one in the bunch, so it makes me really happy that they say these things.

nine. that i think that way surely has something to do with the bipolar disorder (a diagnosis i received from a shrink in my twenties) or the major depressive disorder (a diagnosis i received from a therapist last year) from which i suffer. i'm on meds now. for most of my adult life i had not been. i don't like needing them, but... if i skip a day, i can definitely tell that i've done so.

ten. hell, there are days that i take them, and i'm still not on my best behavior. i bitched at a postal clerk because she was being a cow... telling me she didn't have an attitude when clearly she did. i bitched at the customers in aldi because they were all are you in line? no. no i'm not. i'm not standing near the registers with my fucking basket full of bottled water (which i probably should've been drinking instead of snacking on snickers). i didn't say that, though. instead i snapped i am, but you go ahead. i did that FOUR fucking times.

eleven. i am NOT a nice person. really, i'm not. it bothers me that i'm not. so much so that i go out of my way to do nice things for others to make up for the fact that the thoughts in my head are hideous. and when i can't keep those thoughts from rushing out of my mouth... i always feel guilty afterward because i wasn't strong enough to stop them.

twelve. i cuss. a lot. it drives my parents nuts. one of my mother's friends told her she was friends with me on facebook. your daughter's funny, and she swears a lot.

thirteen. my mother says i've got the go to hell look patented. it probably doesn't help that my eyes are like slits (weak muscles due to a mild case of cerebral palsy and a trio of surgeries made'm that way) and, thanks to her mother and my father, have a tendency to appear to be black (they're dark brown with a bit of amber, but when i'm pissed, the amber disappears). it also doesn't help that i've got resting bitch face, and mine's better than most.

fourteen. this is because i've no patience. none. NONE. when i'm watching my younger brother's twins (they are now nine... holy fuck. that can't be right. EIGHT. they're eight. not that that's much better.), i don't do the waterworks. the moment tears roll's the moment time out starts. most of the time, it works; they rein it in pretty quick.

fifteen.  that mild case of cerebral palsy has resulted in six surgeries, thirty-some-odd scars, the mental imbalance and vision issues that can't be corrected. the last two contribute to sometimes severe social anxieties... which sometimes contributes to my not being as nice as i should. i'm like a cross between sheldon and bernadette on big bang theory... unless there's a hot man in the vicinity... then i'm one hundred percent raj. actually... i've been told i'm intimidating, so maybe i'm ninety-five percent raj and five percent sheldon. you know, like when he's looking at someone like that person's the most idiotic person in the world... that. it really, really sucks.

sixteen. i've an english degree. not so much because i wanted that degree but because i wanted to get the hell out of school (it took me five and a half years to graduate because i was indecisive as shit... and because i let others influence my choices too much as an adolescent and young adult) and english was the quickest way to get out. i really wish i had some focus, some interest in learning. i REALLY wish i'd taken a year off and worked six months as a server and six months as a retail whore. had i done that, you can bet your ass i would've done better in school.

seventeen. i graduated without ever having read dickens, dostoevsky, nabokov, either of the brontes or austen. amazing, ain't it? and then about fifteen years ago, i decided i'd take some undergrad english classes to see how i felt about going to graduate school so i could get my mfa and teach freshmen how to write, and one of my professors assigned dickens -- our mutual friend. i fell in love with it on the first day of class (victorian literature, which ended up being my favorite subject).

eighteen. least favorite subject was principles of accounting.

nineteen. favorite color is green.

twenty. favorite candy is smarties.

twenty-one. favorite food is chicken spaghetti.

twenty-two. coke. NEVER pepsi. that shit's N A S T Y.

twenty-three. i'd live in london if i could... in the summertime. in the winter, i'd be in fucking fiji or some place like it.

twenty-four. that said, my favorite place to be is here.

twenty-five. it's two minutes past ten p.m. texas time, and i'm yawning and wanting to hit the sack. LAME. where the hell did my youth go?

the gift that keeps on giving

so i spent saturday afternoon with a friend from high school -- lunch at a burger joint that's been around for decades then flying kites out on the lake. she was gracious and generous enough to give me a birthday present: the blue journal on the left, which i love.

and then today brought me a box all the way from australia, from another gal with whom i'd gone to high school, with all kinds of goodies inside. that little silver thing next to the card? that's a millenium falcon keyring and next to that is a han solo one that also functions as a flashlight. she sent me snacks, too. but best of all, she colored me a picture, one of the tasks from last month's scavenger hunt, and she sent it to ME! yay! i feel so special.

i got good friends, yall.

i don't have a job, and that's really starting to freak me out. but i just keep telling myself... i've got REALLY GOOD friends. i keep marveling over it, keep telling myself there is good in your life, an abundance of it right now. i keep feeling immensely blessed because of it. every day. because for SO MUCH of my life, i couldn't say that. i knew i had a good friend or two, that gal from 'stralia being one of them. but friends? plural? as in SEVERAL? hell, i've not been able to say it with any sense of conviction until this past year. so for those of you who have no trouble making friends, please, please don't take them for granted. let them know how much you love them and why, because THAT'S the gift. make sure they know it. make sure they know you'll love them through thick and thin, god's honest truth. because i know what thin can do to a friendship. the fun stuff's EASY. i've not had too many hang with me in those rough moments. it sure does make life more bearable when you do.

eight things to celebrate in april: a scavenger hunt

one. april second. children's book day. i'm quick to think of picture books, of sitting with toddlers and telling them stories. but for this one, i want yall to donate two young adult hardback books to a junior high school library. the newer the school, the better because they're most likely in need of the donations.

two. april sixth. national tartan day. ah, plaid. i love this stuff. put on a plaid shirt and wear it with pride.

three. april seventh. national beer day. if you're single, go to your favorite bar and buy a guy or gal whom you think might be awesome a beer. take the time to find out if you should've picked someone else. this one's gonna be REALLY, REALLY HARD for me because a) i'm fucking shy as shit, though you wouldn't know this if you met me; b) i've had one adult beverage since september eleventh and that was only because it was st. patrick's day, and i'm a wuss. i was doing SO GOOD with the no liquor thing, too. dammit. anyway... if you're hitched, take your better half to his or her favorite bar and buy yourselves a couple.

four. april thirteenth. national scrabble day. play a game. not ONLINE. no going to pogo and playing their idea of scrabble. no words with friends through facebook. an ACTUAL game with the board and tiles. with THREE others.

five. april seventeenth. national haiku day. it's poetry month, yall. write your own haiku (three lines: five syllables on the first and third, seven on the second). share one written by another that you favor.

six. april twentieth. national high five day. give high fives to twenty strangers.

seven. april twenty-sixth. hug an australian day. just for you, erin and kristen. too bad yall aren't in texas. i don't know any australians here. this is gonna be a hard one, too.

eight. april twenty-seventh. babe ruth day. go watch a baseball game. NOT on television. drive your butt to the nearest park and sit there for nine innings (or however long it is) and watch those boys bat the ball around. it doesn't have to be a pro game. if you've a child who plays or have a friend whose child plays, watching that game counts.

twelve things (sort of) celebrated in march

one. march second. national old stuff day. show me two of the oldest and most favored things in your house, and tell me why you love them. so the first of those is the antique icebox my great uncle, the monk, refurbished that his sister, my great aunt lukie, painted. the second is the clock he'd made for my folks. i know both of these things are AGES older than i am. my younger brother keeps forgetting that the chest is MINE. every few years i'm forced to remind him, and my mother has to back me up. it's got PINK FLOWERS on it, for crying out loud.

from what i understand, you're also supposed to try something new or go about accomplishing a thing you normally do in a different way, even if it's as simple as taking a different route to a destination instead of going the way you normally go. make sure you take a picture of the new thing... i need to see that, too.

i forgot about this part. oops. i was all kinds of lazy on this one yall... there is shit i didn't get done. and the majority of the tasks i attempted to knock out today...

two. also march second. national read across america day, also called dr. seuss day. there's a film, a nicholas sparks' story called the lucky one, and in it, zac efron's logan is talking with taylor schilling's beth and blythe danner's ellie about philosophy. beth asks logan, dares him, really, to give them his favorite quote by a philosopher. he does. she assumes it's something of voltaire's when in actuality, it's from dr. seuss:

sometimes the questions are complicated, but the answers are simple. 

so what's your favorite dr. seuss book? what bit of his philosophy do you most admire? i don't have a favorite. never really been a big fan, but i do love how well-loved his stories are and by so many. they are colorful and fun books, and i can appreciate that. i love giving them to friends who are expecting for that reason. i spent time today in the children's section at barnes and noble, skimming through a few...

ones i hadn't read or wanted to read again. and in yertle the turtle there's a tale called gertrude mcfuzz who isn't satisfied with what she has, who she is and so she finds away to get a LOT of the feathers she admires, but once she gets them, she is so weighed down by them that she can't fly. i like the way the story ends.

three. march sixth. national dress day. wear a dress. the whole day. you don't have to do heels if you don't want to, but you do have to do the dress. for some of you, this might not be a big thing. for me, i've probably put on a dress maybe five times in the past year. i hate the things. i hate having to iron them. i hate having to wear them because you can't just put on the dress. you have to put on the make up, too. BAH. if you're a guy reading this, and you do the thing and provide documented proof of having done so, i'll send you a present.

four. march seventh. national cereal day. share a bowl or two of your favorite cereal with a friend. okay. so i didn't share. it's cap'n crunch, and i'm a selfish wench.

five. knockout roses

six. roses for an old friend.

five. march twelfth. national plant a flower day. pick a spot in your yard and plant your favorite flower there. (also this marked the fourteenth anniversary of my older brother's death so have a beer for him today, will you? but just one. if you didn't then, please do so now. that'll make me happy.)

i found these bright pink knockout roses at the grocery store. this was many tasks that i did not attempt to tackle until the very last day, so they're not planted, but they are placed where i want them. i hope to get them firmly in the ground by monday morning. we'll see.


six. march thirteenth. national good samaritan day. do something nice for someone you detest. do something kind for someone who's known more badness in his or her life than good. be an army of one. so there are only two people i truly detest in this world; one is out of state and the other is god-knows-where-i-don't-care. there are a couple of friendships that haven't been what i've wanted them to be. so i bought flowers and got a gift card and took these things to only residence i know for one of those friends -- her parents' house. this particular one is a gal i met the summer my family moved to conroe, so i've known her for thirty-four years. her birthday is the day before mine. i'm not crazy about how i've made so much more of an effort to maintain a friendship or the excuses i've made on her behalf in an effort to alter my thinking so that i'm not riding paranoid waves of my shortcomings into guilty cesspools. but i've made some really good memories with her. i like to believe there can be more like those. i want good things for her. the last time i saw her, though, i was living in san antonio -- at least twelve years ago. so i took the flowers and gave them to her mother to give to her. they told me they were on their way to meet her and her daughter at a sandwich shop for dinner, a fundraiser for her daughter's high school band. they'd asked me if i wanted to go. at first i'd declined. and then i decided, what the hell, why not.

so right before i got there, on the corner of the interstate and the loop, was a man who was begging for money. there'd been one there earlier. i hadn't given him anything and felt guilty for not doing so. i kept hearing the scripture in my head... the least of my brethren. this guy was much younger, looked like he was in a better place than the one i'd seen earlier, though not by much. i debated, and then decided, what the hell, why not. i pulled out a twenty and handed it to him, said please don't go by beer with this. get yourself a good dinner. he told me he was a recovering addict, going on thirty-some-odd weeks. i really hope that's true. but it doesn't matter whether it is. it only matters that i feel good for doing what i did, and i do. if he squanders it, that's on him.

anyway, so i saw the friend, gave her the gift, chatted for a bit. she seemed really pleased to see me, which made me happy. she said i'd made her day, which made me happier still...

seven. also march thirteenth. national napping day. give yourself a bit of rest one afternoon. lay down, and let your mind wander... dream a little. sheets by pottery barn kids. painting by julia gilmore.

eight. march twenty-first. national single parent day. surely you know someone who's raising a child all by his or herself. that's a LOT or responsibility for one person. send them a note of encouragement. if that person lives near you, offer to watch his or her child (or children) for an hour or two. give that single parent a bit of respite.

so the night i originally posted this list, i messaged a few of my single-with-children friends through facebook. the conversation with one of them went like this:

me: hey lady. just checking in. wanted to make sure everything's going okay with you. everybody doing alright?

her: that's incredible you'd ask. as a matter of fact, i'm going through some stuff. how did you know?

me: i didn't. so what's up?

this is not a woman i know very well. but i'm glad i messaged her, to be getting to know her better. she volunteers at the houston livestock show and rodeo and got me into see zz top. so yeah... this is kind of backwards. it's the only picture i have to go with this one, yall. i drove into houston, spent a few hours with her. time away from children can be a beautiful thing... says the childless woman. i've watched my brother's twins enough to know this to be true. i'll send her a note.

i also went to another single-with-children's birthday party. and the gal from number six, she's single-with-a-child, as well. so i'm counting it as good enough.

nine. march twenty-fifth. national tolkien reading day. what's your favorite of tolkien's tales? what's the third word on the twenty-fifth line of the three hundred twenty-fifth page of that book? so i used the whole trilogy because the individual books weren't available. i've not read this, by the way... i hear it's not very well-written... i ain't got time for that. and when you've seen the movies as many times as i have... the word on that particular page is eyes. or maybe it was eye singular. shit. i knew i should've written it down.

ten. march twenty-ninth. my birthday. send me happy thoughts, preferably via the post because i like getting mail (address is in the sidebar). please and thank you. i know. i'm being selfish. it's my day. i get a freebie on this one.

okay. all the goodies. the game, splendor, i bought for myself because i was feeling guilty for having borrowed my friend's copy of it so often. the rest of the loot in this photo are from the gals in my book club, who made me chicken spaghetti and paula deen's bananas foster bread pudding and gave me all these goodies: a tote bag with shiny, gold hearts (because they knew i would so love to have that), banned books socks, a soy candle scented like a public library and a jane eyre charm with the text:

i am no bird; and no net ensnares me: i am a free human being with an independent will.

eleven. march thirtieth. national take a walk in the park day. show me your favorite spot in your favorite park.

SHITTY photos. i so sorry. i completely forgot about this one. so this is the park near the entrance to my subdivision. there's a pretty white gazebo and some gorgeous azalea bushes (when they're blooming... we've already missed the spring, so... they gone now, but...) and an itty bitty creek. there's some really pretty pictures of it here.

twelve. national crayon day. grab a box of crayolas. color a pretty picture, and then send it to a friend. didn't get this one done. but I WILL. i swear.

a letter to my forty-four-year-old self

a half hour or so before midnight, i was scrolling through my twitter feed and came across this bit of hideous nasty:

that's eddie lacy, formerly a running back for the green bay packers, which is my favorite football team (there was a period of loathing... the brett favre era, but the moment aaron rodgers began taking snaps i began to love them again). next to marshawn lynch (who played for my second-least favorite team, the seattle sea hogs, as my nephew calls them), lacy is the best running back in the nfl. so i was mad as hell when i learned he'd exchanged a packers jersey for a hogs one. son of a bitch. 

that's not really relevant to this post at all, by the way. i just needed to vent.

this post was inspired by lecy's letter to her forty-five-year-old self. she's one of the gals i met through the peaceful posse facebook group for bloggers. so far i'm enjoying being a part of that. anyway, when i read her post, i loved the idea of it. it's easy to write a letter to our younger selves, which allows us to look back on our lives and see where we've improved, that we've endured and maybe offers others who are younger a bit of insight. it's easy, sure. but it's also good to look at where we are now, how good we're doing now. and for the most, part, i'm doing okay. now. last year, no. i was not good. AT ALL. the year before that was as hideous and nasty as that photo of eddie lacy. one of the three worst years of my life, actually. i survived it. thank god. 

i'm in this bible study in which we're examining john's retelling of the apprehension and crucifixion of jesus, and one of the statements made by the woman leading the thing was something about how often we don't see the times jesus is protecting us. in my life, especially in my adolescence, i've felt as though he were absent. 

and that statement brings to mind a bit from an eposide of a football life, one featuring steve gleason and his efforts to climb machu picchu. gleason's got als, and climbing it meant spending significant time working with with doctors to ensure his lungs could handle the changes of and higher altitudes. climbing it meant having people carry him up. the night before, he said to his wife that he felt jesus was absent. and then at dinner, a woman, one who was terrified of heights and was celebrating with her husband after having climbed the mountain, she was wearing one of gleason's no white flags t-shirts. she saw gleason and spoke to him of how he'd encouraged her to make the climb. that's how jesus works.

there's an older couple who lived outside of the delivery territory of the newspaper for which i once worked, and so i would bring them the paper every week. i'd not seen them in a while. i'd stopped by the office of another friend, seeking job hunting advice, and during our visit, she'd asked me if i'd seen that couple in a while. i had not. so i stopped by their house that evening. the woman learned while i was there that her mother, who is blind and going deaf and having night terrors, isn't eligible for hospice care -- a crushing blow. had my friend not suggested i visit them, i would never known of this. looking back on my life there are so many times where it seems the hand of god has lead to me help others, to be there for them when they're most in need of it. i can see, now, how his hand has lead others to help me. i don't feel as though he is absent, but there is still a wide chasm between us. i'm working on a way to cross that.

i'm working on a way to see the good that's come from carrying my cross, because we all have one. i'm working on spotting the collateral beauty that's born of the damage. i'm working on a lot of things.

sure, there are things i'm lacking in my life -- gainful employment, the ability to love and be loved by a good man, my own place, the family of my own that i'd hoped to have by now, a published novel. okay. that's a lot of lack. and this isn't turning out to be anything like a letter, but then i never do anything normal. not really. and that's okay.

i've made some damned fine friends this past year. some REALLY good ones. one of them's making me chicken spaghetti, and another's making me paula deen's bananas foster bread pudding for our book club meeting tomorrow night, and we're discussing one of my favorite books -- the language of flowers by vanessa diffenbaugh. how fortunate for me that i got to make the suggestion for this month's selection and the group went with it. i finished rereading it sunday, and i loved it SO MUCH MORE the second time around. the past couple of weeks, i've been getting texts from the gals in our group telling me how much they loved it. that made me feel good. that food tomorrow night's gonna make me feel good. i'm gonna be ten pounds heavier afterward, but so be it. most of all, their company's gonna make me feel good.

so... from my current self to my future self so when i can look back on this a year from now or ten, i can know where i stood when i was here, and that it was a good enough place to be:

not every day's gonna be good. this week, like every other, is a testament to that. you've got an abundance of compassion and resilience, and yes, tenacity, to help get you through the uglier days, to help others get through theirs. you've got those damned fine friends to lean on and laugh with. revel in that. you cannot fuck your life up, no matter how much it might seem as though you've done or are doing so. you're not that powerful. god's got this. remember that. and your plan for your life? yeah, let go of that. try to see his plan.

your room is clean. kind of. the bed's not made. your desk and closet are a disaster, and you've got stacks of papers spread out in your brother's room, but at the moment, you're attempting to make sense of the chaos, which is something you rarely do, so yay for that. you've kept your car clean for a whole week! YAY. you're about twenty pounds lighter than you were two months ago. FUCK YES. all these things are good. all you are is. ALL OF YOU. even those traits you're not so crazy about... they could never be as ugly as that sea hogs jersey.

the end of an abbey

the monastery's closing in september. there are maybe four monks left living there. when the visiting abbot returns to his monastery in the fall, the surviving members of the abbey of our lady of the holy trinity in huntsville, utah must leave the land that's been their home for decades. my great-uncle celebrated his ninetieth birthday last month. he wanted to die at that abbey. he wanted to be buried there.

i have spent every summer of my life, save for two, visiting him and other members of my family i rarely get to see. that place is a haven. it is heaven.

we are not going there this summer. the last trip was the last one. i am beside myself.

it's like another part of my childhood is dying... a slow, slow death. i had my first communion there. sometimes i entertained the thought of getting married there, just so my munkle could be with me. my mother's father died before i started kindergarten, so that man in that chambray hat, he's been like a grandfather for me. his faith in me, his love for me... they are miraculous things. i grew up thinking we'd always spend summer in utah, like we'd always spend christmas in colorado. the latter of those delusions died a decade ago. i've watched the life of this particular dream diminish over another decade, just like i've seen the joy diminish in my uncle's eyes.

i want to get in a car and drive until i've reached that holy land. i want to stay there until they kick me out. i want my room in that shabby guest house, that one at the front on the second story with its giant window and its rickety twin bed. that blessed quiet. that brilliant sunset. i want to sit under the shade of that giant box elder tree and look out onto the fields... the fields that fed the cattle my uncle once tended. i want to feel the breeze and bask in the glorious light of the day.

i want the peace. there's no better sound of silence than in that valley.

but instead i have the single tear sliding down my cheek and settling on the tip of my nose. i have helpless rage. the whir of electricity and air conditioning. the sound of my family's voices downstairs, chatting and laughing with each other like it's just another day.

you get what you give

i started writing this post and had six or seven paragraphs down before i realized i was burying the lede. 

sometimes interviewing people for the articles i was assigned to write while working at the newspaper, sometimes those people intimidated me. the more beautiful they were, the less comfortable i felt in their presence.

one of those people was an artist, a painter from mexico who provided the art for the office building her husband owned. i'm in jeans and my docs and probably a polo, and i'm sure my hair was tied back in a pony tail. i doubt i had put make up on. the usual m.o. for me. this woman, who was at least a head shorter than me, had long, flowing brown hair, gorgeous skin and eyes and smile. she knew how to dress. she knew how to be a woman, in every sense of the word. i was intimidated by her, but i managed to get through the interview alright.

so imagine my surprise, after my having sent her a note a few weeks ago letting her know how much i'd enjoyed meeting her (because i did... i always love talking art with people), how much i admired her talents and skills. imagine how pleased i was to get a note from her. a note that included the following:

i feel so blessed that we met. let me tell you, the day of the interview, my nerves were killing me. hahahah! but you made me feel so comfortable that suddenly i started to talk to you as if i knew you for years. you are such a sweet, kind, smart and wonderful human being.

i'm a little weepy reading that. and i've read it at least a half a dozen times today. 

i am a free woman!

so on october sixth, i wrote this post. and for the six months since, i've been dreading that follow up appointment. it was a week ago monday. it was one of the worst well woman exams i've ever had, actually. had the student nurse practitioner not been there, it would've been fine. the woman who'd examined me previously was there again this time, supervising. and yeah, i was anxious. i'm always anxious in clinics, especially in situations like this, but then... what woman isn't? but i was more anxious than normal because... this was the third exam i'd had in eighteen months, and the last two hadn't been so awesome.

i was anxious. i wasn't crazy about having a student practitioner doing the exam. it didn't help that it was a guy. i was managing it, though. until crunch time. and there, when gentleness matter most... he had all the finesse of king kong. and then he had the audacity to say something about how i'd scooted back. i'd scooted back, jackass because you were stabbing then gouging my insides. and of course, i cried. i hate crying in front of others. it rarely happens, but when it does, i'm mortified that i couldn't keep the waterworks from working until i was alone.

the woman took over... did her thing... effortlessly. painlessly. graciously.

and then on friday, she called to say everything's negative.

i was lounging in bed, debating whether i should get up, get moving. it was pretty cozy... and then my mobile, and then those words. that one in particular...

N E G A T I V E

ever since, my brain's subconsciously been replaying that line of bianca piper's (portrayed by mae whitman in the duff). OVER and OVER and OVER again. if you've noticed, i hardly ever put gifs on picky. because really, the repetition of the thing annoys me, but... yall. I. AM. A. FREE. WOMAN.

i've been thinking of that line of scripture used in francine rivers' redeeming love...

you are all fair, my love; there is no flaw in you. song of solomon 4:7 (p. 305).

i haven't felt all fair. i haven't felt flawless. prior to last friday, neither of those words would i use to describe me. but since that phone call, i have been hearing that bit of scripture in my head on a constant basis.

and yall... this experience i have... this drama that's played out for me over the course of two years... it's nothing compared to what others face. N O T H I N G.

i spent a good bit of my day thanking god, praying to him. because i am free to FINALLY close this horrific chapter in my life. i'm done with it. i'm ready to write the next one.

there are way too many in this world that won't have that luxury. there are way too many women in this world who die because of the callousness and carelessness of their partners. i've spent two years reliving all those moments when i ignored the flags, when i ignored my gut, being angry with myself for giving up and giving in, for having gotten myself in this mess. i was out of it in two years. some will never be out of it. countless are dead now because of it.

today i came across this article on facebook. the whole time i read it, i was picturing the events. could see the chaos and the panic and the violence. could hear it. and the men, these attackers, the douchebag i'd been dating... his mental state where women are concerned, it's not so very different from those who'd victimized the author in that article.

i got off easy, all things considered. i've been praying again throughout the day. for that woman, for those in similar situations, and yeah, for myself. 

so pray with me, will you? that more women get to love that word negative. that they can have mae whitman's voice floating around in their subconsciousnesses: i am a free woman. or maybe belinda carlisle singing i feel free...

twelve things to celebrate in march: a scavenger hunt

one. march second. national old stuff day. show me two of the oldest and most favored things in your house, and tell me why you love them. from what i understand, you're also supposed to try something new or go about accomplishing a thing you normally do in a different way, even if it's as simple as taking a different route to a destination instead of going the way you normally go. make sure you take a picture of the new thing... i need to see that, too.

two. also march second. national read across america day, also called dr. seuss day. there's a film, a nicholas sparks' story called the lucky one, and in it, zac efron's logan is talking with taylor schilling's beth and blythe danner's ellie about philosophy. beth asks logan, dares him, really, to give them his favorite quote by a philosopher. he does. she assumes it's something of voltaire's when in actuality, it's from dr. seuss. so what's your favorite dr. seuss book? what bit of his philosophy do you most admire?

(it's also texas independence day. freedom from mexico... and the beginning of nine years of being a nation.)

three. march sixth. national dress day. wear a dress. the whole day. you don't have to do heels if you don't want to, but you do have to do the dress. for some of you, this might not be a big thing. for me, i've probably put on a dress maybe five times in the past year. i hate the things. i hate having to iron them. i hate having to wear them because you can't just put on the dress. you have to put on the make up, too. BAH.

if you're a guy reading this, and you do the thing and provide documented proof of having done so, i'll send you a present.

four. march seventh. national cereal day. share a bowl or two of your favorite cereal with a friend.

five. march twelfth. national plant a flower day. pick a spot in your yard and plant your favorite flower there. (also this is the anniversary of my older brother's death so have a beer for him today, will you? but just one.)

six. march thirteenth. national good samaritan day. do something nice for someone you detest. do something kind for someone who's known more badness in his or her life than good. be an army of one.

seven. also march thirteenth. national napping day. give yourself a bit of rest one afternoon. lay down, and let your mind wander... dream a little.

eight. march twenty-first. national single parent day. surely you know someone who's raising a child all by his or herself. that's a LOT or responsibility for one person. send them a note of encouragement. if that person lives near you, offer to watch his or her child (or children) for an hour or two. give that single parent a bit of respite.

nine. march twenty-fifth. national tolkien reading day. what's your favorite of tolkien's tales? what's the third word on the twenty-fifth line of the three hundred twenty-fifth page of that book?

ten. march twenty-ninth. my birthday. send me happy thoughts, preferably via the post because i like getting mail (address is in the sidebar). please and thank you. i know. i'm being selfish. it's my day. i get a freebie on this one.

eleven. march thirtieth. national take a walk in the park day. show me your favorite spot in your favorite park.

twelve. national crayon day. grab a box of crayolas. color a pretty picture, and then send it to a friend.