IN MY HEAD, ZOMBIES

Meter maze

"Meter maze"

It's the first day of NaNoWriMo and I'm staring at a blank screen. I have a story. I do. I just don't know where that story is going or how it's going to end. This is when the voices start talking in my head. "What do you think you're doing? You are not a writer. You are a scientist. You have no idea what you are doing." The voices are mostly right. I am a scientist and I have no idea what I am doing. I mean, my biggest excuse for not going on from my Masters to get my PhD was that I didn't want to write papers and grant proposals. I have no business pretending and that's what this feels like sometimes. I'm pretending to be creative. I'm sure Chris is out there somewhere thinking "how cute, she thinks she can write." Which makes him sound condescending. We had our places. He was the creative. I was the cheerleader. That's just how it was. The voices in my head tell me that Chris would make fun of these creative efforts even though I know he would never. 

I look at the blank page again and say to myself "1,666.7 words." That's all I have to do a day. That's a lot I have to do a day. I type a few paragraphs, thinking "this isn't so hard." Like I said. I have a story, but when I select all and do a word count it only comes up with 643 words. Is that all? Gah. 1,666.7 words is more than I thought. I plug on. Typa, typa typa. I pause to pat the dogs head. I take a break to shove the cat away from walking across the keyboard. I get 1,325 words and I call it a night. It's late (for me). I'm tired. My right foot has fallen asleep and prickles as I place it flat on the floor. 1,325 words will have to be enough for today, but when I lay my head down on the pillow, the story keeps playing in my head. I should add that there. I should explain this here. I should tell this part next. Now the voices in my head are those of the characters in the story. I have to tell them to be quiet so I can go to sleep, but I'm woken up a few hours later by the sounds of war outside. 

I stumble out of bed and peek out into the living room. Michael is sitting on the couch, excitedly shoving popcorn into his mouth. He sees me and asks "What's up?" My reply comes in the confused look on my face. He says "Are you wondering about the gunfire and fireworks happening outside? Don't worry. That's the sound of World Championship in Kansas City." The Royals have won the World Series (the Cabbage used to call it the World Serious).  Michael was nine or ten the last time this happened. It's been thirty years. He is beyond pleased. I mumble a "Happy Birthday" before stumbling back to bed. Michael's birthday is in a few weeks. Back in bed. Head on the pillow. The voices return. This time it's a blend of the bad voices mixed with those from the story. I focus on the sounds coming from the neighborhood. I hear more popping sounds of fireworks or gunshots or both. I hear people yelling. At least I stop listening to the voices in my head and fall back asleep. 

I wake up the next morning and the only voice I hear is the one saying "1,666.7 words. That's all you have to do."

That's all I have to do. Today.

SACRED MORNINGS

Morning coffee view. @heirloomkc

"Morning coffee view. @heirloomkc"

Last Saturday, I woke up around 7:30 AM, which believe it or not is actually considered "sleeping in" where I'm concerned. I got up, showered and dressed and headed out to run some errands before Michael woke up. This is not a new routine. I can get a lot accomplished in the mornings, but also I get some mental health time. I've made Heirloom Bakery my first stop lately, on these solitary Saturday mornings. Heirloom is a fairly new bakery that's opened in the Brookside area and everything about it reminds me of Portland. They bake everything from scratch and use local and seasonal ingredients whenever possible. Behind the counter there's a large work table where the young people who work there are always busy kneading dough or icing poptarts. 

Every time I walk in, I am tempted to buy one of everything from the display case. My personal favorite is the homemade poptart. On this particular day, I resist. Though all bets would have been off if the guy in front of me hadn't bought the last two Royals cookies. I went for the bread by the slice, toasted and slathered with peanut butter and local honey. I filled my coffee mug and took a seat at the counter. The counter spot is the best place because you can watch them making everything. You can see their faces, the look of joy and contentment as they work. Watching them move around the counter from one task to the next is like watching a well choreographed music video. I couldn't help but smile as Huey started crooning about the power of love being a curious thing and I watched the owner turn it up with a wicked grin. The bakery hummed. This is one of the reasons why this place reminds me of Portland. 

I chose my time at the counter to write in my Fortune Cookie journal while I waited for my breakfast. It didn't take me long to fill the tiny space given to my fortune on that page. I licked honey and peanut butter off my fingers while I tried to squeeze in just a few more words in tiny illegible handwriting. The story continued to write itself in my head even as I ran out of room to write in the journal.   

Nothing good comes from jealousy but there is good to be found in jelly beans

Carrie pressed her face up to the window and gazed at all the beautiful candies. There were sours and chocolates and every kind of gummy animal you could imagine. She stood up on her tip toes to peek up over a display of Cadbury chocolate bars to get a better look. This was when she heard the sound of skipping and chatter. She turned her head to see Maddie and father open the door to the candy shop causing the little bell above the door to rattle. Of course, thought Carrie. Maddie probably got all the candy she ever wanted. Maddie was always wearing the cutest dresses and they always looked brand new and clean. Maddie ate a perfectly packed lunch out of a tin box every day, never a paper bag, and her dad had a job. Carrie watched as Maddie pointed to a jar of gummy bears and wondered what it would be like to go into the shop and buy whatever candy she wanted.

If there had been room, Carrie would have wished for jelly beans. If there had been room, Maddie would have bought jelly beans for Carrie. But there was not and I'm OK with that, because there was room in my day just for this. 

NANANANABOOBOO

Tap tap tap

"Tap tap tap"

I just realized that there is one week until the start of NaNoWriMo. Ok. Maybe I didn't just realize that. I've known all along. I just decided to realize right now only because I've been procrastinating on all things. So I might as well procrastinate on gearing myself up to write a novel in a month or something like that. Have I mentioned that I'm tired? I am tired. I don't even know why I'm tired. According to my Jawbone, I am a "stellar sleeper". It actually told me so in my weekly update. I am a little worried that my body's trying to tell me to eat a hamburger or a chunk of bloody meat. I am not going to do this, though I will confess to eating some bacon about a month ago. It was hidden in a breakfast sandwich (I ate it anyway). I know it's not a lack of iron that's making me lazy. I know that this is something that happens to me every Fall as the weather gets cooler. I am a bear. Rawr.

Here's a bit of surprising and or good news though. I finally get to wear the boots I bought months ago when Sorel was having a crazy sale. The insides of these boots are softer than babies. Also, this morning, I wiggled into a pair of skinny cords that I haven't worn since last winter and despite being a size smaller than what I normally wear, they are not tight on my waist at all. I am surprised by this because I haven't been on my bike in a week. In fact, I think my two wheeled days have come to an end for this year. Wah wah. It's really cold in the mornings! Since the weather has been wishy washy, we haven't turned on the heat. We turned it on once and then turned it off the next day and turned the air conditioning back on. So it's really cold in the mornings. There was a frantic moment last night when it was decided that I had to have my electric blanket plugged in but we couldn't find the cord. The cord that was still in the bed frame where I had left it when I took the blanket off the bed in the Spring. 

The alarm clock goes off in the mornings and it is still dark outside. Dark dark. The sun doesn't even look like it's ready to show it's face. Now the house is cold, but my bed it warm and toasty and I do not want to leave it. I end up spending the rest of the day dragging my body around while wishing I was still in that warm and toasty bed. This way of thinking takes up all the energy. When ever my brain starts to think about something else, like NaNoWriMo and some half-baked ideas I have going for that, I sort of just deflate. It seems like so much work! I've got a couple of fiction ideas that have a paragraph or two of a start, but I feel like there's to much research and thinking required. My other option is to return to the memoir that I already have 30,000 something words on, but I look at that one and say "BORING!" No one cares about that story. I don't even care about that story. That story is so weird and convoluted and has no ending. Which I guess is good considering it's a true story about my life. Which isn't over.

NaNoWriMo is not about getting all the facts straight or even getting all the i's dotted though. It's about getting the idea written all down into something usable. Then you can go back and straighten the facts and dot the i's. I have plenty of material for this exact exercise in writing. Does this mean I have just talked myself into another attempt at NaNoWriMo? At the very least I have now convinced myself that I should do it, but not completely decided on if I will do it. I have all week to think about it and guilt myself into it. That's usually how I get most think done. Guilt. I was a devout Catholic nun in a former life. The time change happens this weekend. Monday may roll around and my whole attitude about all things may be improved just because we set our clocks back an hour. Who knows?! Maybe seeing the sun come up when I am getting up will make me feel less lazy. 

I'm going to go take a nap. 

IF I WALKED 2,185 MILES

Stars in the east and I am awake

"Stars in the east and I am awake"

I took Monday off. I needed a day of re-entry after our weekend trip, to do laundry and buy groceries and lay on the couch. Michael always wins the sleeping game on these trips, meaning I lost. I needed a nap. I used my couch lounging time to watch Wild. I'd read the book. The movie wasn't a surprise, but I still ended up crying with the main character as she dealt with her memories of her life and dealing with the death of her mother. "The doctors gave us a year. It's been a month." Cheryl Strayed says this to a nurse outside her mother's room as her mother laid dying of cancer. I hear ya sister. They gave us six months; it was weeks. Doctors are about as good at predicting life and death as weathermen are at predicting the weather. 

As I rubbed my snotty nose on my sleeve, I thought "Traci and I should hike the Appalachian Trail. For Chris." If you knew anything about Chris, other than his Star Wars obsession, you knew that he always wanted to hike the AT. He talked about it constantly and was always picking up some sort of camp gear with the intention that he would need it for his hike. Why else would I have ended up with half a dozen titanium sporks? We watched documentaries about the trail. We read books about the trail. One night we even had dinner as if we were on the trail, cooking up dehydrated meal packs on a camp stove. I say "we" because Chris included me in his plans for the hike even though we both new that hiking two thousand something miles was not very appealing to me. It was never the idea of walking that distance that turned me off. It was the weeks of carrying everything I would need on my back, the weeks of being dirty and the idea of attempting to poop in the woods. I barely can manage that activity when camping at a campground with actual toilets. I included Traci in this idea because before I came into the picture, Chris and Traci where going to hike the AT together. 

I had that thought of walking the AT and then I imagined what that hike would actually look like. The average time it takes to walk the AT from Mt. Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain, Georgia is six months. If you left Mt. Katahdin as soon as the snow melted, hopefully April, you could be in Georgia by Fall, just in time to carve a pumpkin depicting your travels on the trail. I get two, maybe three, weeks of vacation a year. My boss is cool, but I'm not sure how cool he'd be about me taking a six month leave of absence. But whatever. Let's say I could take off six (or seven, let's be honest) months of my life and put everything I needed in a pack on my back to walk my way through eleven states. While we're at it, let's say I convince Traci to do the same thing. Though convincing her would be almost as challenging as the hike considering she'd be walking away from her kid for six (or seven) months. Quinn is on the cusp of that age where hanging out with your parents is so roll your eyes Bo-ring. We could wait until he's fully into that stage before heading out and tell her that her absence will make him really appreciate her more. The prospects of being around a moody teen may be enough for her to dig out her back pack. 

I'd like to think I'd start off just fine. Walking is my thang. I walk all the time. I just don't walk while carrying a bunch of stuff on my back, but how much harder could that be? I know. I am not delusional. There's a scene in the movie where Cheryl makes it to one of the camp sites and a guy there helps her thin down her pack to something more manageable, a metaphor for dumping the stuff in your life that serves no purpose. I know the one thing in my bag that would weigh me down and make the daily hike more exhausting would be the bag of Chris's ashes. Human ashes weigh more than you'd think and they do not serve me well. That would be the thing to dump. I can imagine the two of us doing a lot of cursing as we hiked along. Cursing our tired, blistered feet. Cursing the mosquitoes and the rain. Cursing the endless sound of our boots making one step after another. Cursing Chris for leaving us to do this ridiculous pilgrimage with out him. 

Occasionally Michael talks about doing the AT. He's talked about doing sections of it a time like my Uncle Russell has done over the years. Sometimes I am included. Sometimes not. Sometimes it's something he wants to do on his own and I encourage this. The idea of Traci and I doing the hike for Chris is just a fleeting hallucination. Dump the things that do not serve you a purpose. I don't need to walk two thousand miles to dump the things in my life that are not serving me well. Our accumulations are on a constant loop. We collect. We collect stuff that's good and bad and eventually we get weighed down by those collections. So we purge. Collect and purge. Collect and purge. As long as it has nothing to do with my basement, I'm pretty good at purging. I don't need to prove to Chris that I can do something I never really wanted to do in the first place. I think that sentence is the bottom line or the line drawn in the sand. Crossing the line in this case comes down to figuring out if I'm living my life or trying to live Chris's life. I don't want to cross that line and I know Chris wouldn't want me to cross that line. We all have ways of figuring these things out on our own. Some people need to walk two thousand miles to do that. Some don't.

I fell like maybe I've already walked my two thousand miles.

I'M WRITING A REVIEW

Just took my new Shark for a test run

"Just took my new Shark for a test run"

I had started a whole entry about how the wire came out of my favorite bra and how amazing it is that I didn't poke my eye out while doing yoga. Then I got a free vacuum in the mail and my sad underwear didn't really seem like something I wanted to talk about any more. It did prompt me to take stock of the current state of my underthings and I did replace the bra with the missing wire. Just in case you were wondering.

Years ago, back when I attended my very first BlogHer event, I went to a sponsored party where they gave everyone there a free vacuum. I was totally amazed and surprised that this actually happened and when it showed up on our doorstep, I did a happy dance and wrote an obligatory review. It was a good vacuum and I used the heck out that vacuum, but eventually that vacuum stopped doing the thing that it is supposed to do. It kept getting clogged and I always had to clean it out in the middle of vacuuming my tiny house. I started keeping a wire hanger I had straightened in the closet with the vacuum. I'd vacuum half the house, take the whole vacuum apart with a screwdriver and everything, snake that hanger up and around to remove whatever small ball of clog, put the vacuum back together and then finish the vacuuming the house. It sounds so simple when I write it out like that, but I can assure you that there was lots of swearing and sweating and maybe some crying involved. So finally it was decided that we needed a new vacuum.

I wanted a Dyson. I really wanted a Dyson. I really could not afford a Dyson. Then I saw their small battery powered handheld and I thought maybe we could get a Dyson. I tested it out. It tackled glitter on carpet like a boss and I had almost convinced Michael that this was the one we should get. It is made for small spaces. No cords. He wanted more reviews and after looking around online we found out that the battery only lasts six minutes when you're using the vacuum at full capacity. So we went with our second choice which was the Shark Rocket. It's small, no weird twisted tubes for things to get clogged up in and it does a good job. OK. It's not cordless, but who cares. This is all basically what I told the Shark rep at the Shark booth at BlogHer this year. They had the new and improved Shark Rocket (I'd link to it, but I couldn't find it on their website) and after vacuuming the showroom floor with it, I had a serious case of buyer's remorse. I told the Shark guy that I was really disappointed that this version wasn't around when I bought my vacuum. I threw my card in their giant fish bowl and walked away.

Michael made it home from work before I did on Friday. He sent me a picture of a big shipping box followed with "what is this?" I had no idea. I hadn't ordered anything and I wasn't expecting anything. I told Michael to open it. He then sent me another picture of a vacuum cleaner along with "I am amazed by the shit you get for free." Dude. So am I. Shark sent us the new Shark Rocket. I totally wasn't expecting that. On Sunday, while I was just starting to dust the house, I asked Michael to open the new vacuum and get it all put together for me. He plugged it in and started vacuuming right away. He was actually a little sad when I told him he had to stop because I only vacuum after I dust. He had to wait until I finished dusting. This vacuum is even better than the previous Shark Rocket that we had purchased. It's still a small vacuum, meant for small spaces. It's light, handles like a dream and pulls up dirt under dirt. There's one short tube that connects the rollers to the compartment that holds captured dirt, so even if it does get clogged, it's really easy to unclog. It comes with two rollers, one for carpet and one for hardwood floors and the rollers are really easy to swap out. 

Honestly, I love this vacuum and not just because it's free. I swear. I wouldn't even blog about it if I didn't like it. You guys? My floors are so clean! Thanks Shark for my clean floors.  

THIS WEEKEND WAS BETTER THAN THE LAST

Mirror image

"Mirror image"

I'm almost a little surprised to say this because Cabbage weekends are always a bit of a challenge for me, but we seriously had a pretty great weekend. We really didn't have plans made and Friday night it was decided that we needed to go to a pumpkin patch. After looking around online, Louisburg Cider Mill seemed like the best (cheapest) option. So the next morning I made us a picnic lunch (mom...you're never getting that insulated picnic basket back...what did you expect...it's covered with elephants) and we jumped into the car and headed south. There was a brief moment of bad bad deja vu as we pulled into a line of cars, but the line moved at a reasonable pace.

Michael had the Cabbage and I jump out to get in line for activity tickets while he found a parking spot. Tickets were purchased just as Michael walked up to us and off we went to jump around on the giant air pillow. We went through a short maze built from wood pallets. We slid down Sunflower Hill and we got lost in a corn maze. We jumped back in the car just as we were reaching hangry levels and drove a couple of miles over to Somerset Wineries. We purchased a bottle of wine, which they opened for us and gave us two plastic glasses. Then we walked over to the very edge of the winery, threw down a blanket and ate our picnic. And it was good. Really good. Our spot was between two large trees. It was quite and secluded. There were no lines or screaming. It was just crisp Fall air with bright sunshine keeping us warm. No one was complaining. No one was crying. Instead we were munching on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, apple slices and cheese curds and laughing about silly things like farts. 

That morning, as Michael was putting on his shoes and the Cabbage was watching cartoons, I told Michael about the email conversation I had been having with Karen. I told him what she said about replacements and I included the Cabbage in this conversation. I said "I am not a replacement for her mother." Then I went on to clarify that I was an authority figure, but not a mother figure. The Cabbage piped up and said "but you are my step mom." My reply to this was "fine. If that's the label you need to use, please add the word wicked before the step." I explained to her that it was fine to call me what ever but recognize that I am not a mom. I'm sorry, but I'm not. When the Cabbage is in the house, I am a child care provider. I make sure she has food and clean clothes. I try to plan some sort of activity or outing because if we were trapped in the house all day I would drown in her in the bathtub. I lack the "motherly" instincts required for nurturing.  She wants to leave the house without brushing her hair? By all means, let's not brush her hair. We did get busted recently for not making sure she brushes her teeth when she's at our house. We've been trying a little bit harder to make that happen now. But again, I shrug my shoulders at this because I, myself have been known to not brush my teeth on Sundays. What? It's the sabbath. 

Sure, the Cabbage tells people I'm her step mom, but really, no one knows what that means. Everyone has their own idea of what that means and there are mothers out there who will look at my situation and declare I have joined their club. I counter that declaration with no offense, but I have not joined your club. There's nothing wrong with your club. It's just not the club for me and I'm tired of trying to make it the club for me. Which is what I think I've been trying to do and why I feel like I'm constantly struggling with the Cabbage. I've been trying to force myself into mom jeans when I'm more comfortable in yoga pants. I've been stuck on a label that others want to give me. So this weekend, I stopped trying to "mother". Instead of trying to please and reason with a five year old, I just did my own thing. Eat the sandwich. Don't eat the sandwich. I don't really care. I pretty much did nothing with the idea of "would the Cabbage like this?" Instead the question was always "would I like this?" And you know what? I heard less complaining. 

My waist sits too low for those high waisted mom jeans any way. 

AND THEN I HUNG UPSIDE DOWN FOR AN HOUR

I'm going to do yoga in one of those silk hammocks today.

"I'm going to do yoga in one of those silk hammocks today."

We had high expectations for Saturday. Perhaps, those expectations where a little too high, but we left the house with the sun shinning down on us and visions of cheese curds dancing in our brains. We stopped at the Enchanted Frog Antiques. We paused at an old cemetery so I could take pictures of dead people (as I like to do). Then we stopped in a long line of cars all waiting to be parked in a pasture and we waited. And waited. And waited. An hour later the car was finally parked and I convinced myself that it wasn't really going to be all that bad. I continued to do this right up until we were wedged into Shatto's General store. This where Michael bent down to look into my panic stricken eyes and say "How about we just go to the grocery store near our house and buy a bunch of Shatto products there?" I nodded my consent and hiked it back out to the car and then we proceeded to drive an hour back to KCMO.

Our first stop was a Chinese buffet. You see, we had assumed we'd eat ice cream for lunch and then get something more substantial later. But that didn't happen and since we'd gone too long with out food, we headed for a place where we could eat all the food. Michael started talking about Thanksgiving while we were munching on our Mongolian BBQ'd noodles. He was asking all these questions about what we should do. Go to Oklahoma?  Go to OKC? Stay here? The thing was I thought we'd already decided on all of this. The first Thanksgiving we spent together, Michael said that he liked to do Thanksgiving dinner. So I thought we were doing Thanksgiving dinner. In fact, I had even told my family that this was a thing. Now he was telling me that he didn't want to do Thanksgiving dinner and I had a melt down at a Chinese buffet. 

The effort I have been making to try to make everyone around me happy had reached critical mass and I was so overwhelmed that I could no longer do anything but put my head in my hands and cry. My body and soul has contorted itself into so many shapes in an attempt to please that is has become stuck. I find myself hesitating over every purchase, every word, every action, trying to decide that if said purchase, word or action is going to illicit an "I don't like purple", "Why is it cold?", "you didn't stop and get me anything?" So much so that often I am frozen with indecision. I have become so full of self doubt that I cannot make decisions. So when Michael asked me what I wanted to do for Thanksgiving, all I could do was cry. I had no idea what the right answer was. 

Recently I had been talking to my old yoga teacher about my relationships and how I have yet to figure out what my role or part was in the Cabbage's life. That this was in fact something that I struggled with constantly. Karen said the most simple thing to me: "Be you." On Sunday, while I was hanging upside down in a silk hammock during an aerial yoga class, that simple piece of advice rolled around in my brain like a marble in a maze. Have my endeavors to please those around me allowed me to be my true authentic self? The answer to that is only if my true authentic self is a trained monkey.  There is a difference in doing something kind and doing something you think is kind with the intention that the recipient will be happy with that kindness. Because for some people, no matter what your intention, will always be dissatisfied. Food will never be warm enough. Drinks will never be cold enough. For this kind of person, just right, just doesn't exist.  And it is not my job to make them satisfied. There's no such thing as perfection. Perfect is a make believe tale used to hurt people and make us feel less.

My happiness is not contingent on the happiness of those around me. That doesn't mean I am selfish or unkind. It just means that I change my intentions for doing kind and unselfish things. and when the recipient of that kindness complains about this or that part of the kindness, I will simple say "You are welcome."

NOTIONS

Right now

"Right now"

The moment I saw her, I started to judge. I don't know why. There was something about her that reminded me of the kind of girl who makes fun of someone for not wearing a certain brand of shoes. She was petite, with slim lanky legs sticking out of short gym shorts. Her blond hair was tied back into a pony tail under her pink sorority hat. She carried a camera, a 35 mm maybe, and wielded it around like she was really trying to get some artistic shots. She was obviously a student taking pictures for art class. A tag dangled off the side of the camera indicating it to be a loner and property of the art department. The thing that bothered me the most about her was the way she scowled at everything, sizing it up. She had this way of making me feel like I was in her way even though we were on my turf walking around the work fountains. She was the trespasser.

So I judged her. I'm not proud of it, but she became that girl who jabbed with cruel words in high school. You know the kind. She's the one who looked like she had everything, best clothes, perfect hair and skin, popular. Other's flocked around her trying to be just like her and she took sport out of being cruel to those not like her.  The mean girl who preyed on nerd girls like me. I pretended that her sharp tongued comments didn't sting. I put on my false armor of confidence and looked back at her with eyes that said "you are pathetic". Later on I would see this type as less of a mean girl and more of a vapid shallow girl/woman. I say girl/woman because this type never seems to mature past pink velour track suits and Chihuahuas with matching nail polish. Desperate housewife. More concerned with appearances than reality. That was this girl. She was currently in the state between mean girl and desperate housewife. She had that look about her that said "I'm in college to meet a good husband." I knew girls like that. Hell, I inadvertently ended up being a girl like that. 

Now I'm the mean girl with my mean judgmental thoughts. I don't know where they even come from. I'm disgruntled these days, weighed down with complaints from others. I hear someone complaining about a cold sausage and cheese McMuffin and I just want to jab a pointed finger in to the flesh of their upper arm. Don't you realize that there are people living on a Navajo Reservation that do not have running water? There are people in the US without access to running water and your sausage cheese McMuffin is cold? Your life is the worst. These are my thoughts. It's no wonder I'm disgruntled and prickly with these kinds of thoughts flooding my body. Right view. Right intention. Right mindfulness. Right  speech. I am lacking in all of these paths. I remember a moment in yoga class last week as I was settling into pigeon pose, Eka Pada Rajakapotasana. Our teacher told us to soften those areas of tension and to even soften our thoughts.

Soften our thoughts.

I soften my thoughts for this girl. She's just a girl in an art class trying to find inspiration. She's working on an assignment and really, I am probably in her way, blocking a shot. This girl is not that mean girl or that vapid shallow girl I am imagining. She's just a girl. Then I start to soften my thoughts towards other things. Things get lighter. The days get less wrinkled. I realize that I am not judging this girl as much as I am judging myself. I should be the one with the camera. I should be that thin and fit. I should. I should.

I soften my thoughts towards myself. 

LET'S JUST TALK ABOUT THESE PANTS

Kimi is confident

"Kimi is confident"

I'm gonna be straight with you. I am tired. I feel like I have been partially living out of a suitcase for months and just barely keeping up with the usual chores like laundry and sweeping. I dusted last Wednesday. So I feel pretty good about that. Then there was that Friday before we went to the cabin where I got all of the laundry finished THAT EVENING! I spent five minutes shaking my butt around the house and singing something about winning the laundry Olympics. I am getting things done, but I'm rushing to get all of the things done before the next activity. Then we're onto the next activity before I've had a chance to stop and pee. And I really need to stop and pee. 

My friend Heather, who used to live here but moved away to California, read my blog entry about Mom's blue house dress and then sent me this AMAZING moo-moo. The tag says "Loll Ease". This should tell you everything you need to know about this dress. I keep meaning to spend some time lounging in my hammock while wearing this dress and taking some pictures so I can do a proper post for this dress. This dress requires a proper post, but there's been no time for lounging. Lounging is on the horizon though. Right after next Saturday where we take the Cabbage to two different birthday parties on one day. PEOPLE! STOP HAVING SO MANY SEPTEMBER BABIES!

I'd love tell you about all the activities but there's really not a whole lot to tell. They are the usual hectic family activities. They were fun, but now sound boring. Instead I want to talk about these pants I bought on Saturday. Technically they are not pants, because LEGGINGS ARE NOT PANTS! But they make my butt look good. So if I were the type to wear leggings as pants, these would be the pants. Mom and I went into the Victoria Secret because I had a coupon and I thought I'd get some new under things. Except when we walked in a sales clerk hit us with this great deal they were having on their athletic pants. I let her steer me over and I skeptically looked at the pants as she pulled a size medium out for me. "Those are way to small." I said. "Try them on!" She said. So I did. Once the pants were on, I was stunned. Nothing was bulging out over the waistband or straining against the fabric like I'd stuffed myself into a sausage casing. My butt looked amazing! I wanted to run around the store telling everyone to look at my butt. Instead, I settled for standing on one leg and leaning out from the changing rooms as far as I could while extending the other leg to keep my changing room door from closing and locking me out while yelling for my Mom. Who did not hear me. 

I put my clothes back on and went out to find Mom. I told her how amazing these pants where. She responded with "So, they just hold everything snug and in place." which kind of put a smudge on the image I had of myself in those pants, but Michael made it all better with his reaction when he saw the pants on me. I wore a pair of them yesterday to work and realized quickly that I need more tunic like shirts so I can wear these legging like pants every day. I rode my bike in them and did yoga and I never once had to pause to pull anything out of my butt crack or tug them up where they'd slipped down over my belly. They stayed put. Like wearing a hug. Who doesn't want to wear a hug? 

No one. Well...except maybe those people who can't stand hugs. 

COWBOY MEMORIES

Mariachi

"Mariachi"

I don't know what made me think of this memory, but it's been floating around in my head for a few days now. Maybe it's because I felt like August would never end, the month full of sad anniversary dates. I flew to Portland on August 1st, ten years after J died and one year after Dad passed.  I didn't really say much about it at the time, but when I mentioned that Portland was hard, that was an understatement. There were moments when I could not bring myself to leave the condo. I couldn't imagine seeing anything I hadn't seen already and I wouldn't run the risk of running into old memories. So I sat in my room and watched TV on my computer. Then I got home and I was happy and things were good with the exception of a little work anxiety, but the month just dragged on and on. I know I am not the only one to feel this way and it's quite possible that sound you heard this morning was a collective sigh of relief. 

Any way...the memory that's been floating around in my head. It came to me while I was in the cafeteria one morning. There was a man trying to maneuver around the cafeteria with a tray in one hand and a baby propped up with the other arm. I thought for a moment of offering to hold that baby while the man finished getting his things. Then I realized that we were strangers to each other and people usually do not let strangers hold their babies. That's when I remembered this story Dad liked to tell. We were on one of our typical Colorado trips. I was still a baby and really fussy. The cottonwood trees had me all stopped up and snotty. The family had gone to one of those chuck wagon dinner shows and I stood on Mom's lap crying, with her arm wrapped around me while she tried to eat her dinner with the other hand. One of the young cowboys performing in that night's show came by and took me from Mom. He carried me all around the dinner hall, picking up empty plates with his other hand and filling glasses of tea all with me tucked in his other arm. He handed me back over to Mom when she was done eating. 

Of course, I have no memory of this. I just thought of Dad's story when I saw this man and his baby. I thought about how no one would do that now, but in the late 70s no one cared. People were still trying to set their babies on bears in Yellowstone for photo ops. That might have even been the same trip where Dad pulled a sizable trout from the river while we were on a hike. He didn't have his fishing license on him so rolled the fish up in a (clean) diaper and stuck it under me in the backpack I was riding in. I never wore a helmet or a seat belt. I have the scares to prove that I never wore knee pans. I can't imagine ever walking up to a stranger now and offering to hold their baby for them. My friends who have kids, I know for sure would never agree to hand their baby over to complete stranger no matter how frazzled they were in that moment. Yet, there I was thinking about making that offer and remembering the time I was whisked away by a singing cowboy. 

BINGO AND BICYCLES

Michael calls this his dauber art. It was worth $500. #winners

"Michael calls this his dauber art. It was worth $500. #winners"

A couple of weeks ago, after dropping the Cabbage off at a birthday party, Michael and I ended up at Custard's Last Stand for some frozen custard. It's the kind of place that serves its burgers and fries in a guitar shaped basket. There was a Bingo Bugler sitting on our table which is a  newspaper devoted to Bingo. I made Michael keep it because the headlines made me laugh and there was an editorial on what to do with those summer tomatoes, but it also gave us an idea for a date night. I don't think I've ever played bingo at a traditional bingo hall with daubers. Mom and I used to play in one of the community center tents in whatever small town we were in when traveling through Colorado. We used those bingo cards where you dragged the little shade over the number and prizes where gift cards to local shops and restaurants. 

Friday night, we went to dinner at Elsa's Ethiopian and then headed over to the American Legion to play some bingo. With the senior citizens. Michael and I were just about the youngest people there. There might have been one or two other women who where our age there with their mothers, but for the most part Michael and I were the young whipper snappers in the room. The two ladies sitting across from us at the table where a sister team. Judy was the oldest, just turning 68 last week and her hair had just started growing back from her last chemo treatment. We never caught the other sister's name, which I'm really sad about. We chatted about all kinds of things and laughed and joked through the whole evening. 

Playing bingo is hard work. I just had one book of nine squares, meaning I basically had nine bingo cards per game. Many of the people there had multiple books. One woman had strategically taped three books side by side and I don't know how many under each book. She had to lift up the top sheet to play her other cards. I had a hard enough time keeping up with nine squares. Then there's the patterns. All the games we played (except one), you had to make some kind of pattern. Judy and her sister had two books of nine they were keeping track of. We got to the game where you had to make an arrow and it nearly broke us. My sheet was a mess. I couldn't make any sense of it. At one point Judy said "this sure is a lot of work for fifty dollars." Then she won that bingo. The game after that was just a traditional Bingo. That's the game I won. 

The final game was a card of six and it was a blackout game. Just as the game was starting, Michael picked up his dauber and said "Come on Bingo. Cindy needs a new bicycle." We all laughed because the chances of one us winning the last game that was worth $500 was pretty slim. Blackout games take forever and we all started to lose momentum. We were chatting about gardening when Michael looked down at his card and realized he only needed three numbers to win. Judy got so flustered, she said "Lord, I'm gonna have a heart attack!" That was when he was down to two numbers. Then we see all see the winning number pop up onto the TV screen, but Michael can't say anything until the caller actually says the number. Which seems like is taking FOREVER. Our whole table was about to explode when Michael yelled out "BINGO!" It was very exciting.  Michael collected his winnings and we high tailed it out of there because we could feel all the eyes staring daggers at us. Well, except for Judy's and her sister's. They congratulated us and we all said our goodbyes. 

We had such a good time. Both of us agreed that even if neither of us had won anything, we still would have had a good time. We laughed and joked so much. Winning was exhilarating and we talked about our bingo night all weekend long. And then on Saturday, Michael used his bingo winnings to buy me a new bicycle. He said that he had been trying to figure out a way to get me a new bicycle for Christmas or my birthday. So winning $500 (technically it was $499, because of taxes) worked out perfectly. Turns out, my old bike could not be adjusted to make it more comfortable because the frame was too small for me. I replaced it with a vintage style Reid seven speed. It's the same color as my scooter and I'm thinking of naming her Bessie. 

Michael bought me a bike! @familybicycles

"Michael bought me a bike! @familybicycles"

THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

I'm staring at my reflection in the mirror. After weeks of an adolescent breakout on my chin, my skin has finally started to clear up. I'm thinking that I'm having a pretty good skin day actually and then I see it. The white hair in my left eyebrow. It's not the first white hair to recently grace my eyebrows. The first one showed up on the right, a short brilliant white hair. When that one showed up, I had this internal struggle of whether or not to pluck that hair. Plucking  it seemed hypocritical since I am so adamant about not dying the gray from hair, but at the same time that one white hair just seemed so out of place. I left it of course, like a short shiny beacon. The thing that set this new white hair apart from the others was it's length. This eyebrow hair was longer than any of the hairs growing on top of my head. It was long enough to put into a hair clip. 

First of all, how does that even happen? How can I look at my face every damn day and not notice this giant hair growing out of it? Did it happen overnight? I mean, that's really a lot of length for a hair to grow overnight. What else is on my face that I'm not seeing? We had a college professor in undergrad who had three large hairs growing out of the top his nose. I remembered that professor as I now started to scrutinize the top of my nose. Just to be sure. My body is not really sure how to behave these days. The acne on my chin says "teenager!" while the pain in my wrist screams "geriatric!" and my body hair has decided to do what the fuck ever. 

A couple of weeks ago I was wearing my David Bowie t-shirt and going through the check-out line in our cafeteria. The woman ringing people up and who practically runs the show down there looked at my t-shirt and said "You are not old enough to know who David Bowie is." I assured her that I was quite old enough to know The Goblin King as well as Ziggy Stardust. At a party on Saturday, there was a young man who nearly dropped his full plate of food on the floor as he leaned forward with a shocked "what?!" when he was told that I was nearly forty. I am well aware that I do not look (nor act) my age. Apparently this young man did not notice the foot long white hair growing out of my brow either (or it wasn't there yet).

I found myself having to tell my story to a couple of people that evening. It was a party in Terry's backyard, but more than half the people were people I had never met before. It's still hard to explain how I got here without mentioning Chris, because I wouldn't be here with out Chris. It's hard to explain how I've compacted eighty years of living into almost forty years of life. This is the only time I ever feel older than thirty nine. That and when everyone keeps posting first day of school pictures of their babies' first day of school. Tiny babies in high school. What is this world coming to? Then on Sunday, we took a wrong turn into a retirement community and I thought "ooh! look at this lovely retirement community!" So really I am an eighty year old woman trapped in a body that looks younger than forty, rides a Vespa and still wears Star Wars T-shirts with R2D2 on them. 

In the end, I did not pluck that crazy long white hair either. I trimmed it with a pair of scissors.  

THINGS I SHOULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW

Hint of Fall

"Hint of Fall"

If this were going to be a list kind of entry, the first three items of things I should be doing right now would be 1. writing 2. writing and 3. writing. Writing may even be number four on the list. Then number five would probably be to drink more water because even though I tend to only drink water, I doubt I drink enough water. I'm sure there are other things I should be doing right now (like not slouching, I am totally slouching), but I'm not here to write a list. I'm here to write! Ha! Right.

Seriously. I have unfinished things. I have ideas that should be expanded on. I have letters that I've been meaning to sit down and write. There are words out there that I need to gather up and corral. Instead I am spending my spare moments looking around the internet at nothing in particular. When I am at home, I am on the couch playing Sudoku or coloring in my new coloring book. Completely random side note. I bought my coloring book at Powell's Bookstore in Portland. When I asked the young man checking my bag if he could tell me where the adult coloring books were, he gave me a sly look and asked "Do you mean a coloring book or an "adult" coloring book?" and raised his eyebrows at the adult part. They have pornographic coloring books for adults. I regret that I didn't even go to that section and look at them. Also, that young man was covered in glitter. I love Portland so much.

An hour here. Fifteen minutes there. Twenty minutes in between this and that. All of those minutes are minutes I am wasting. Then I feel really bad about myself. Then I remember how Benjamin Franklin made himself a time management schedule because he had a hard time keeping his time in order. Benjamin Franklin couldn't even keep himself from the distractions of colonial life to get as much done as he would have liked. Then I don't feel so bad about myself, but I am not even close to being a Benjamin Franklin. The good news is that's OK, because I don't really want to be a Benjamin Franklin. Do you see how good I am at wasting time? 

Sunday, Michael and I were making our second trip of the weekend out to IKEA (you don't even) and the radio got flipped to NPR just as the Moth Radio hour was starting. I was all "Ooooh! I love this show! We should listen to this! Michael I think you'd really enjoy it! I want to tell a story on the Moth!" My brain went "wait. what? You do not want to tell a story on the radio." Michael asked what sort of criteria was required and I couldn't even tell him. I said "You know. A story. A true story about something." I really had no idea what the criteria are for Moth stories, but my mouth was saying that I wanted to do one. I don't think everything through. Except once I said it out loud I knew that this was something I wanted to do because I have a story. I have a great story! 

I just need to write it down first. 

BICYCLE! BICYCLE!

This is how I got to work this morning. Blame it on Portland.

"This is how I got to work this morning. Blame it on Portland."

I don't like riding my bicycle. The handlebars are weird to me and my seat is adjusted so that I sit higher than the handlebars. It had to be set high to accommodate my long legs, but leaning down on the handlebars makes me feel awkward and uncomfortable. Then there's like a million (24) gears which takes a relaxing bike ride and turns it into a Mensa test of lever pushing.  I feel wobbly on my bike and slow. This doesn't really make sense to me at all because when I was a kid, I went EVERYWHERE on my bicycle. My best friend lived probably two miles away. She was also the nearest kid. My bike gave me independence and the ability to go see Steph when ever I wanted. The only rules were to stay off the main busy road and not to go as far as the highway.

Once I got a drivers license, I spent less and less time on a bicycle and by the time I got to college, I didn't even have a bike anymore. There's been a really long stretch of time between riding my bicycle everywhere and not really ever riding a bicycle. I became comfortable with using my two feet to walk to places instead of using two feet to pedal to places. Then I met Michael who is all about bike riding. I bought a used bike (his ex-wife's actually) so I could go on bike rides with him and I can count on one hand the number of times in two years that I've gone bike riding with Michael. I made a scrunched up face when Sean suggested I rent a bicycle while we were in Portland. Sean walked with me the first day to the conference and said "nope! I'm riding my bicycle the rest of my time here." After the afternoon sessions on that first day, I walked back across the Steal Bridge and right over to the bicycle rental place. They set me up with a seven speed cruiser and a helmet and off I went. 

Sean and I rode our bikes to different food trucks for lunch every day. We rode out to cool restaurants in the evening. On my last morning, I rode my bicycle all along the Willamette River. I did complain a lot about the hills. That first morning, we rode our bikes up to the Waffle Window for breakfast. The ride was a gradual incline over twenty blocks and at one point I looked at Sean and said "I am not going to make it." I made it and once I realized I didn't have to keep up with Sean, who rides all the time, I was just fine. There was one day where I found myself riding back to our condo and I thought  "I could totally do this ALL OF THE TIME!" Sure, I was still complaining about hills and my butt hurt from the seat, but I was getting places.  I realized that I could do the same thing at home. I live 3.2 miles from work and most of the way to work is downhill (going home will be a pain). There's really not much of an excuse for me to not ride a bicycle to work.

Monday night (it was raining Monday), I got my bike down from it's hook in the garage and Michael made sure there was air in the tires. Tuesday morning, instead of rolling the scooter out of the garage, I rolled out my bicycle and pedaled my way to work. I struggled. I felt like I was going so slow. I am a sloth on a bike. Of course this is in comparison to what? There were no other bicyclists on the road. I was comparing myself to the passing cars, who were going way faster than me because, well, they are cars. Then I thought, at this pace, I was for sure going to be late for work and I started to get really frustrated that my body could not make this bike go any faster. Then it dawned on me. It's not that I am out of shape, it's that I'm out of bicycle shape. I just haven't ridden enough to know how long it should take me to get anywhere. I may be going slow, but I'm going and as long as I keep pedaling, I will eventually reach my destination.  

My new mantra just might be "I am a sloth on a bike".

THEN AND NOW

I remember walking past this pretty yoga studio years ago. Now I'm going to a class there. #yogapearl

"I remember walking past this pretty yoga studio years ago. Now I'm going to a class there. #yogapearl"

All those years ago we travelled to Portland. How long ago was that? Six years? Probably longer. We used to tell people that we'd left our souls here. Chris, Amy, Brian and I wandered the streets of downtown for days. I remember passing this hip looking yoga studio and being sad that I didn't have time to take a class. Also feeling a little relieved. It was fancy and fancy intimidates me.  

I wandered by it again on this trip. Yoga Pearl. Same look. Cute little super clean food restaurant attached to the side. I thought "I'll go to a class this time." I signed up and paid online for the class so I wouldn't be able to back out and panic at the last minute. Determined. I left our condo and arrived way too early. That's the thing I do when I'm anxious.  I walked around the block just to kill some time and then roamed the tiny display of yoga props and clothes in the front of the studio. I felt out of place. I was a poser carrying a yoga mat. Some how I managed to gather some courage though. I plopped my yoga mat down near the front of the class, claiming my space with some yoga props. I would smile and find joy in this new place, this new class. And I did. My mat became my island and I sank into the poses with a smiling heart. 

I've worked to make this trip my own. It was hard not to travel the same paths we travelled together on that first trip. My first day there I ended up at all the favorite restaurants even though I told myself I would not do repeats. Peanut butter, banana and chocolate chip pancakes are hard to resist. Then I let myself be talked into renting a bicycle and I found myself in new neighborhoods with new restaurants. I rode the tram. We didn't do that the last time. Now I've ridden two trams in one summer. I'm hanging out in a karaoke bar tonight. I'm doing so many things outside my comfort level.

What I have learned from this trip is that my Portland of then is not the same as the Portland that is here today. There are more tourists and there are more homeless. The number of homeless here now is staggering and depressing. Housing is so much more expensive to accommodate the growing tech industry.  I realize that I am content and happy with the home I've made for myself in Kansas City. Though, Portland remains a beautiful place to visit. Traveling here is worth it just for the food. I've eaten so well here and this town does a lot to promote green spaces that I love so dear. I've nearly wrecked my bike three times while gawking at community gardens. I believe that Kansas City is within reach of all of those things as well. 

Spending time with Todd and his family has been oh so good. The boys have grown so much and so fast and it warms my heart to see Yuko so happy. Evenings chatting about all things with Todd has awakened a section of my brain that's been sleeping or zoned out. I will leave a piece of my heart here when I leave. I will be sad to say my goodbyes to Todd and his family. I will be sad to say goodbye to that dream Chris and I had of living here one day, but dreams fade and new ones take their place. Yes, I will leave a piece of my heart, but I'll take my soul back with me. 

IN NEED OF SUPERGLUE

This dog woke me up at 4 am, knocked over Pepaw's ashtray and broke it, terrorized the cat and is now standing on the outside table barking at the neighbors. She's very productive this morning.

"This dog woke me up at 4 am, knocked over Pepaw's ashtray and broke it, terrorized the cat and is now standing on the outside table barking at the..."

The other morning, Josephine woke me up at 4 AM banging and scratching around in her crate. I figured she just needed to go out, so I got up and let her out. By let her out, I mean I opened my bedroom door and then made sure all the dog doors where open. Then I went back to bed. I was almost back into dreamland when a loud crash jolted me out of bed. Josephine had knocked over Pepaw's ashtray while trying to lick the inside of a bowl Michael had used for peanuts.  I did the thing you are not supposed to do in dog training. I swatted Josephine's butt and then picked her up as if she were an unruly toddler and put her back in her crate. The damage was already done though. Pepaw's ashtray was now broken on the floor. 

When Pepaw died, we all descended on his house to clean it out. He hadn't really been living in the house for some time. He preferred the comforts of his camp trailer. He still used the kitchen to store his MoonPies and spare aluminum coffee percolators. There was evidence that he still lounged from time to time in his recliner to watch TV, but mostly he slept in the trailer and spent time on the porch. Yet the house was full of home like things, furniture, old photos. Things that accumulate in a family home. All of this stuff had to be dealt with and the bickering had already started over who gets what. I've never been the type to care about such things. Actually, I hate the whole process. It's gross. I took Pepaw's camp stove because it was in good working order and we needed a camp stove at the time. I also took one of Pepaw's ashtrays. 

Pepaw was the smoker in the family. A number of ashtrays were scattered around all over his house. Most of them full. I wanted the ugliest, goddiest ashtray we could find. I knew that this was something no one else would want and thus I would not hear anyone complain about how that was promised to them or blah blah yuck blah. I also wanted that ashtray because I knew that without a doubt every time I looked at it, I would be reminded of Pepaw and the way he smelled like Old Spice and stale cigarettes.  Which I know doesn't really sound appealing, but I can't think of one bad memory when I think of those smells. Katrina was the one that actually found my ashtray. Her task was to wash all things dish like that day. She lifted the large orange ashtray out of the sink and said "Cindy, what about this one?" 

It was perfect. It was this large rhomboid shaped boat of an ashtray, burnt orange with flecks of black and gold. It begged to be set on a mod coffee table in a wood paneled basement with green shag carpet. It was the kind of ashtray that you could just imagine some hipster upcycling  into a bird feeder by gluing hooks and attaching chains to each corner.  It was so ugly it was beautiful and it was mine. Since then, that ashtray has always had a spot in my home. It has also always been known as Pepaw's ashtray. It tends to be a catch-all for things like nail clippers and keys. Remote controls and junk mail. 

I was pretty upset when I saw it laying on the floor in pieces. Then I realized that only two pieces had broken off and they were clean breaks. I can totally fix this. And I will. Because it's Pepaw's astray.  

THOUGHTS AND FASHION

I am slowly getting back to normal after my trip to New York. At least things are unpacked and clean and the suitcase is put away. For now. I leave Saturday morning for a microscopy conference in Portland. So I really don't know why I put that suitcase away other than I think I want to take my slightly bigger suitcase (?). I'm tired. Nothing really makes sense right now. Our weekend was full of hot sweaty yard work and coop cleaning. We chased chickens and clipped wings again. Matilda is a biter. In case you were curious. Also, there are no eggs yet. When I get back from Oregon and we have a Cabbage free weekend, we're going to make some modifications to the coop like put in some actual nesting boxes and a door on the side. I think this will help with the whole egg thing. 

After cleaning the coop and moving it over to some fresh grass, Michael and I sat under the shade and drank a soda before playing a second round of chicken roundup. We took a break and just sat and watched the chickens happily pecking around the yard. The heat here has finally reached oppressive temperatures and this is punctuated with the roaring buzz of the cicadas. That sound always pulls my brain back to my childhood. That sound means that it is the hottest part of the summer and the grass is dry and crunchy under your bare feet. If a breeze exists it is the hot hair of a hairdryer blowing in your face. Of course it is different here. Oklahoma was dry and hot. Missouri is humid and hot. It's like sitting in a sauna. I don't mind really unless I have to move around. I mean when you sit in a sauna, you sit in the sauna. You don't get on a treadmill and run it out. I'm quite comfortable in this weather lounging in a hammock. 

My mother had a house dress she always wore during those hot summer days. It was like a big mumu, but less Island and more pioneer. The dress always seemed bigger than mom in more ways than one. I have memories of going in for a hug and being surrounded by the blue cotton fabric. It was like playing in the sheets when they're hanging on a line to dry. When I fell and broke my arm that day, I sort of crawled a little ways down the yard before just laying there. I remember that this was the dress my mom was wearing and I can still see it billowing around her as she ran out into the yard. No shoes. Pale face. Panicked voice and that big blue dress. Really that's most of all I remember of that day. I remember one time Mom wrapped a scarf around her head and tied a belt around the dress. She put large hoop earrings in her ears and every bracelet from her jewelry box on her wrists, transforming herself into a gypsy for Halloween. She even had a crystal ball. 

That dress was so bohemian and hippy which my mother was neither of those two things. When I tell people that we only ate food from our garden, usually those people reply with "so..you had hippy parents." No. I did not have hippy parents. None of us were named after celestial beings. My parents where Southern Baptist Conservative Democrats. Almost the exact opposite of hippy. Maybe that's why I loved that dress so much. Contradictory. It softened Mom's hard edges and proper young lady tendencies. I don't know why I've been thinking of that dress lately. I have a black and white maxi dress that I tend to wear on Sundays after I've finally decided to take a shower and brush my teeth. Every time I lift it up over my head and let it fall down my body, I am disappointed that it is not my Mom's old blue dress. Sometimes I look for this dress on the racks in thrift stores or even in the mature women section of department stores. The dresses are never the right shape and the fabric is usually too scratchy, but I keep my eyes peeled any way. 

My billowy blue house dress is out there somewhere. I just know it. 

THE TAKEAWAY

Detroit

"Detroit"

Every time I've gone to a BlogHer conference, I've come home fired up and ready to make major changes to the blog and write write write and take more pictures, better pictures and to speak out more against injustice in this world and raise more money for charities. I come back ready to change the world with my blog or I have at least gained some new techie knowledge to help me make my blog better for changing the world. This time? Not so much. Or I've just gotten way more mellow with age. This is not to say that I gained nothing from attending the conference or that I wouldn't recommend attending the conference. If you are new to blogging, this conference has invaluable tools and information for all things social media. Not to mention it is a great way to meet other women who have shared interests and build a following. I've gone from kind of wanting a following to not really caring if I have a following. It's not the reason I blog. I was talking to a woman at the conference and she asked me how long I've been blogging and I was shocked to realize that I have been blogging at Elephant Soap for almost fifteen years. I might have five more readers now then I did in those early years.

I attended a workshop on mobile photo editing thinking that I would learn about some new camera apps. I did not discover any new app that I didn't already have on my phone, but I was inspired to go back to a couple of those apps and give them another try. Snapseed and VSCOcam are two photo apps that I have on my phone that I never use. I think I tried using them once or twice, but then got lazy and didn't want to really spend time learning how to use them. I discovered an editing tool in Snapseed that I had been looking for but not finding in my other camera apps. I had shoved this app over into an unused section of photo apps on my phone. It's now been moved up. VSCOcam has inspired me to rethink my 365 day project. My Instagram feed is messy and random and I love it, but I'd like my 365 things that make me happy pictures to stand out. I want a cohesive artistic flow to them and I want them all in one place. VSCOcam is turning out to be that place. And because I'm working on having a cohesive artistic flow of images, it is making me more mindful of how and what I photograph for a happiness project. This is something I needed because my 365 Days of Happiness project had grown a little stale. There were too many days when I reached the end of the day and said "Oh crap! I haven't taken a 365 day picture yet!" and so I would scramble and just shoot something. I needed a reminder to be a more mindful photographer.

The other thing I sat in on at the conference was on storytelling behind the hashtags. I'm not good at hashtags. I often forget them or type them out wrong. I know they can be powerful tools for spreading the word. I thought I was sitting in on a discussion of how to use hashtags but instead ended up listening to stories that have developed from #YouOKSis, #KnowMe, and #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen. These were stories that I needed to hear. They made me realize that I need to be paying better attention to my surroundings and speaking up when I see something that doesn't seem quite right. I need to not be afraid to say something, which inspired my own hashtag #SaySomething. I've also been pondering a way to do cool science workshops in the inner city schools here. I want to show kids the career possibilities that are available in the science industry. ALL Kids. Not just the white ones. 

So, I didn't come home on fire with ideas, but I came home with some good ideas. I came home with tangible ideas. These are things that are not beyond the realm of possibility or me just thinking up super grand ways to make the world a better place. Maybe I've finally fully grasped that I cannot change the world by trying to actually change the world. Making a difference starts small and right in my own backyard or my own neighborhood. I'm going to focus more on the smaller side of change. These are the things I took from BlogHer '15.

WHAT'S YOUR ISLAND

Morning

"Morning"

Friday, Michael and I took the Cabbage to see the latest Pixar movie, Inside Out. I knew, even though I didn't know a whole lot about the plot of this movie, that it would probably make me cry because that's the thing Pixar does. The creators at Pixar are just a bunch sadistic jerks who get off by making "kids" movies knowing that the adult will have to take the child to see it and so they put in those subtle things that will make the adult hyperventilate from ugly crying. Up, by far is my favorite Pixar movie. Ever. The theme of getting out there and living your life at the same time recognizing the adventures you've already had resonates in every bone of my body. You know how you watch your favorite movies over and over again? Well, I've seen Up one time. I can't even think about that movie without tearing up let alone get through the first five minutes without ending up laid out on the floor drowning in a pool of my own tears. Pixar. Sadistic jerks. 

I didn't cry all the way through Inside Out like I did with Up, but there were a few hiccuping sob moments for sure (I never want to talk about Bing Bong). Without giving too much of the movie away, the basic idea is that each day you create memories. Joyful memories. Sad memories. Angry memories. Joyful and Sad memories. The day gets filled up with these little memory marbles and then those marbles go to power the various parts of your personality represented by different islands. Like goofy island or family island. After the movie, Michael and I were discussing various parts of the movie and he said "What do you think your different islands are?" What do I think my different islands are? At the time I said "you know, the usual islands." But what are the usual islands? Then I started thinking more about how my islands are organized than what kind of islands make up my personality. So I'm sure I have an island totally devoted to putting thing in neatly stacked boxes and organized files. 

I'm sure I have lots of islands making up this personality of mine and I'm sure that there's a few of those islands that look a little run-down. Like they need some sprucing up. A fresh coat of paint. Friendship island is doing well, but could benefit from some actual non-internet face time and more human contact. I can imagine that my family island looks a lot like Jenga and is very carefully balanced in way to not knock everything over. Family is just complicated, but we make it work. In retrospect, all my islands are conglomerates of things that probably deal with a little sprucing up. That island devoted to organization, Secretary Island, looks over at my creativity island and breaks out in OCD hives. If the islands talked to each other in words, Secretary Island would look at Creativity Island and say "you're a mess! get your effin' act together!" Creativity Island contains a scarf I started knitting for Michael two years ago, three half written petered out writing projects and a number of half baked ideas. All of it causes Secretary Island to slap a palm of it's hand against it's forehead, if islands had foreheads. Or hands. Science Island is alive and thriving. The proof is in how I'm over analyzing the whole island thing all together.

The island I struggle with the most is Creativity Island. It has always been struggle. For years I'm not even sure you could call it an island. Islet. Small pile of rocks. I was talking to my hairdresser the other day about this year's BlogHer's conference. She asked about my blog and then said "Oh, all you creative types." I rolled my eyes and shrugged while mumbling something about not being all that creative. She disagreed, saying that there had to be some creativity involved in just setting up the blog in the first place. OK. She had me there. And then there's my photography. I'm not a bona fide photographer, but I've taken some pictures with my DSLR and my iPhone that I am really proud of. Michael has asked specifically for prints of a few of these, which means something because I don't think he's really paying attention half the time. I've also written some things that I've posted here that I'm pretty proud of. Meaning I feel like it's good and who cares what anyone thinks. Creating something I feel good about can be just as fulfilling as outside approval. 

Really and truly, all of my islands require constant upkeep. Just like a house or a car. The day all of those islands are perfect and complete is the day that I'm done on this planet. Who knows. I may even still be adding islands. 

TAKE ME HOME

Stormy sidewalk

"Stormy sidewalk"

Back before they opened up the highway between Pine Bluff Arkansas and Greenville Mississippi, we'd travel across Interstate 40 over to Memphis and then follow highway 78 down through Tupelo to get to Louisville. We'd make this drive maybe once or twice a year to visit Pepaw, my Mom's siblings and their families, and Dad's Mom. There were visits with both of Dad's parents. It's just that those are early and hazy memories.  My Dad's father passed away when I was little. I vaguely remember seeing him in a hospital bed hooked up to all the machines. That was probably the summer Mom had to leave my sister and I with our Aunt Martha. That was the one time I remember flying out there. All the other times we drove, sometimes making a stop at Graceland and staring out the window at the endless fields of farmland. Sometimes we'd drive through during cotton season and you could see the bolls of cotton just cracking open to reveal the white fiber inside. Eventually the fields transition into tall pines and you'd pass logging trucks carrying recently harvested trees. 

We took this same drive down through Mississippi on our way to the beach. For miles and miles we passed signs with names of towns so familiar to me; they are etched into my skin. Tupelo. Egypt. Starkville. Louisville. I was flooded with memories of those trips back when I enjoyed visiting this place. I remember playing with baby bunnies on Aunt Martha's rabbit farm and how she made pancakes for me for dinner because I wouldn't eat the rabbit that had been cooked. I know my Uncle Jimmy said something about it, but I don't remember his words. Only Aunt Martha saying "I won't make that baby girl eat the rabbit." My first introduction to vegetarianism. I remember sitting on Pepaw's back porch that always seemed to be practically enclosed due to the tomato vines he had growing up the trellis around the porch. Every evening we'd make ice cream in one of those old aluminium and wood bucket ice cream makers. Each of us taking a turn at the crank. Pepaw loved ice cream. 

One summer we spent there was the hottest and muggiest of summers. My cousin Melissa pulled a pomegranate from my Memaw's pomegranate tree. I'd never seen or tasted pomegranate seeds before. We busted open the fruit on the concrete steps on the front of the house, the entry way no one every used. Everyone just assumed the back porch was the welcome mat into Pepaw's home. We ate those sweet and slightly tart seeds, staining our fingers and lips a bright fuchsia. I couldn't help but think I'd just been given the most exotic treat. That was the same summer Melissa found the used needle in the ditch as we walked down the street. She held it up for us all to see before dropping it back down in the ditch. That needle was a sign of the encroaching drug problem that was making it's way into the poor rural south. Even Melissa would eventually have her own battle with drug abuse. Finding that used needle was as shocking to me as the pomegranate seeds were exotic. 

I remember playing with toys Pepaw found in the seat cushions of furniture he had reupholstered. Pepaw's upholstery shop was my favorite part of every visit. The building that housed the shop was not much more than a glorified shed. There were always piles of furniture outside in various states of disrepair, waiting for their turn to get new fabric. The inside always seemed dark and dusty. Roles and roles of fabric stacked every spare inch. I loved to run my fingers over the fabrics, feeling the various textures. I can clearly see my Uncle Russel sitting at one of the machines working on something with a needle or two held between his lips. I never saw Pepaw working, but always remember going in there and finding Uncle Russel talking as he ripped apart a seat cushion or tugging a new couch cover onto a new square of foam. I always thought of it as Pepaw's shop, but now I realize that by the time I had come into the family, it had passed over to Uncle Russel's shop. 

The last time I was in Mississippi was for Pepaw's funeral, ten or twelve years ago. I don't know what it was about that trip, but I decided then that I would never go back or more like I didn't have a reason to go back. I want to say the decision to cut off that part was as abrupt as that. Instead it was more gradual. As I grew older it became easier to hear "nigger" and the disdain and judgment as they talked of people and cultures different from theirs'. I didn't know how to respond to people telling me how lucky I was to go to an all white school or how the black people where I lived "just knew their place." I knew without being told that this way of thinking was wrong and it made me shameful. Shameful for not saying anything about it and shameful for having family who could possible think this way. With every trip, I began to notice more and more the poverty of the area and the toll that poverty took on education. It was too easy to drop out and not finish high school. It was just this rolling ball of lack of education and ignorance leading to more hate and discrimination. 

I felt the tears grow hot in my eyes as we passed the exit for Louisville. By now I was a mix of emotions. Sad for the good memories that had tarnished over the years. Angry with those who I let tarnish those memories, people who never cared to come to us for a change. Not even when Dad passed. Disappointed in myself for never standing up and saying "your language and your attitudes are wrong." When we told the Cabbage we were in Mississippi, she asked "what's in Mississippi?" I replied "nothing much." This is what I felt/feel towards a place my parents have always referred to as "home". My name is carved on a stone in the cemetery where all of my ancestors are buried, yet I never felt like one of them.

But then I remember the rabbits, the pomegranate, the ice cream and I turned to Michael and said "it wasn't all bad. I loved my Pepaw and I loved my visits with him." There is a bit of peace in that truth.