Boston

My friend lives and blogs in Boston.
She is an excellent writer.
Go read her stuff.

the middle of the night

Sometimes these things

these things weigh heavily on my mind.

Pushed up from my heart where usually they lay in dormant slumber.

These hard things. Sad things. Difficult things that are here or else are coming.

They are there. Things that must be done. Or staved off.

Things that are bigger than me. Overwhelming and tricky things.

A list of things a mile long that must be done, figured, taken care of.

These things that get the best of me more often than I care to admit.

Mostly I sleep well. Sleep is healing and keeps the gears running,

but sometimes this list just ticks on through. Not letting me rest in it’s demanding urgency.

The clock is ticking, the list is ticking, time just keeps on ticking by

and still I just keep swimming upstream it feels like. Awash in a sea of mixed metaphors

and similarly confused similes like a salmon throwing itself up the rapids, desperate only to hatch these ideas into fruition.

I’m tired and need to go back to bed, but I needed to get some of this junk out of my weary head.

It will keep until the morning.

My tender heart will not break tonight even though it is stretched tight. My brain paces around itself looking for the lightswitch.

Turn out the lights, it’s bedtime.

Just Keep Paddling!

 

sometimes I sit next to the ocean and listen to the waves crashing,

just one after the other endlessly and eternally.

without regard for my problems or issues.

enormous and everlasting.

bigger than me.

 

bigger than nearly everything.

more powerful than me and anything that is thrown at it.

rocks and problems and anything are are tumbled and polished until they are but a grain of sand.

a tiny grain of sand among billions.

as am I.

and then I know that I am small and insignificant in the grand order of things.

and that is as it should be.

and my pain or sorrow is tossed into the ocean to be tumbled and ground down to but a grain of sand and wounds rinsed and cleansed with water and salt.

whatever the source of your comfort,

know that you are on the right path,

everything is as it should be for now,

and you will get where you need to be if you can keep paddling.

 

A Ticking Timebomb

Self Portrait “Saturday”: Real Beauty

I love the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.

At least I do in theory.

Because the idea that there is more than one type of body that can be beautiful is something of a revelation in today’s society. Bigger, smaller, shorter, taller, older, younger. Kudos to Dove for broadening the spectrum of beauty in the public’s eye.

And yet.

We know that at the end of the day they are still trying to get you to buy things that they make. Just because they had the brains and moxy to try to expand their target audience to include many of us who are generally excluded, doesn’t take away from their bottom line.

I have read that even within their Real Beauty they don’t allow some versions of beauty such as tattoos.

I have followed them on Facebook for quite a while. I felt that the good they were doing was a step in the right direction and we could work on broadening the beauty definition ever wider as a next step.

But they lost me.

Their latest product (apparently) is some kind of magical deodorant that is designed to help you have beautiful underarms so that you can be confidant and beautiful.

I have never felt particularly unconfidant in my underarms. At least not until you brought it up, Dove.

And they keep at it.

“This winter, don’t let your underarms control what you wear.” (I’m paraphrasing, I think.)

Seriously? Now you think that I let my underarms dictate my fashion?

Any fashion choices I make during the holiday season are fairly strictly dictated by the weather.

My underarms really have no say in it.

Every time I’d see another picture or post about how beautiful my armpits needed to be I’d get all irritated and and ranty about it until I had to hide them from my news feed. It was armpittiful.

So here is a picture of me.

Showing off my Real Beauty.

Because armpits are where real beauty starts. Hadn’t you heard?

Stuff About the Place

Seems really pretentious for a meat product, Mr. Spam.

I think this is a local product. Spicy rubs, indeed.

Went down to conferences this week. Got to see the artwork that they have hanging up in the halls. This was working on alliteration.

Got Jokes?

C: Do you know how Flo Rida got his name?
B: No, how?
C: He used to be a dental rapper!
B: ?
C: Flouride.

~*~

C: What would Garfield’s name be if he was a paper?
B: A paper? I don’t know.
C: Garfold.

Portrait of an Awesome 9 Year Old

Scene 1:

I pick the kid up from the after school program one day. He points out some thing on the wall.

“That girl likes  me.”

“Do you like her?”

He runs ahead and gets a drink of water. He looks  up and grins.

“I’m being hard to get!”

“Well, that’s a good thing to be.”

“Hogan (his friend-same age) says to never make eye contact.”

“Hmm…”

 

Scene 2:

He is starting to really get into music and often will listen to Pandora Radio on my phone. Using headphones generally. We were meeting Daddy somewhere that I was just going to hang out in the car for a few minutes.

“Okay, leave my phone here with me.”

“I know.”

Unplugs headphones, but leaves them around his neck.

“I’m going to wear these like this because they make me look awesome!”

 

Scene 3:

…the following morning we’re getting ready for school. He grabs the headphones on the way out the door.

“I need these.”

“What for?”

“To wear.” (The “Duh” here is implied.)

(Also, he lasted half the day before someone told him they weren’t allowed to have those at school. She may not have known that they weren’t attached to anything, though. HIS teacher was fine with it.)

 

Scene 4:

Telling me some story about school goings on…

“Josh is the weirdest kid in my class. I’m second weirdest. Well, I’m tied for second place with Hogan.” Looks up and raises his arm valiantly. “I want to be weirdest!”

Scene 5:

Regarding the girl in scene 1…

“You know the girl who likes me?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Andrew likes her. And he asked me “How do you make Maggie like you?” and I told him, “I act frickin’ awesome!””

“Well, that is how to get people to like you, by acting awesome.”

“But she doesn’t like me anymore.”

“No?”

“Yeah, today we went in the tower and I told her that I didn’t like her and she said she didn’t anymore either. So I’m letting Andrew have her.”

*Daddy was here for this one.*

“You are, huh? That’s nice of you,” he said dryly.

“Just stepping aside?” I asked.

[Whew! Dangerous love triangle averted!]

 

Scene 6:

Waiting at the bus stop this morning…

“Hogan and I made a pledge. and Cayden too, but he didn’t really because he didn’t raise his right hand but I get to raise my left hand because that’s my good hand. That we wouldn’t like girls until 5th grade.”

Curtain closes on Act I

Six Word Friday: Saving

I think love is tiny acts of

saving each other again and again.

I shore you up today. Tomorrow

it’s your turn for the same.

Together we can save our selves.

Our time, our money, our sanity

One small moment at a time.

Love is boring.

I’ve been married for a while now. The thing about love is that it starts out pretty flashy and dramatic. That’s great because maybe people wouldn’t get together without these “fireworks.” We’ve seen an entire movie genre spring out of the hormonal secretions of those newly in love. Of course, only rarely do movies show the rest of the story.

What happens in the castle after Cinderella marries the Dashing prince?

Because after the honeymoon phase, people settle in to living an actual life. Which just entails…stuff. Not bad stuff, just stuff. The little daily minutiae that all added together equal a life. Even if you lead a very exciting life, there is still cooking, cleaning, working, bill paying, child raising.

You know at the beginning of the fairy tale if the hero is willing to die to save the heroine.  And that’s great.

But it doesn’t really help when you are waiting in line for 3 hours at the DMV. Because I think that’s where love is.

Real, lasting love is sitting on those stupid, uncomfortable seats with you. It’s helping you dot your i’s and cross your t’s in triplicate in order to stave off another 3 hours. It’s taking turns herding the kids outside to get the wiggles out. Often, love is boring. Because life can be boring and you’ve got to love through that.

Love knows what it’s like to pace.

It will spend the wee hours of the morning walking the length of the house soothing a colicky baby. It’s in waiting rooms in hospitals everywhere.

When everything is going well and there are no hospital waiting rooms or colicky babies? Love holds your hand on the way into the grocery store. Or takes the trash out. Or makes your coffee for you.

Or sits through your favorite Dancing Show on a Monday night.