Where It’s Gone

I miss my writing too.

But in the way that I miss and love my parents. Feeling grounded by the fact that they are there. Yet not needing to live in a bedroom in their house.

But I do miss my writing. Where has it gone?

It’s been sprinkled into 1-inch holes in the ground, along with rosemary and red poppies and dill and parsley.

It’s been tugging on the rope braid and tossing the frisbee of my ever-energetic pit-mix, Scout.

It’s been plating saffron crème brulee after firing pizzas on the grill with the most indispensable women in my life, intertwining ourselves in the knots of one another’s lives.

It’s been typing, typing, typing up notes, contacts, important numbers and stories into a personal reference for my Rotary years in India.

It’s been cradled by the seat backs of sold out Broadway houses marveling at the care in which actors shade and modulate the excesses of life.

It’s been scribbling in dates of weddings, births, and graduations into a calendar of family & friendly events long ignored.

It’s been writing out checks for banal things like health insurance, student loans and long term visas that I can no longer risk not having or ignoring.

It’s been scrolling excitedly through news on the politics and peoples’ movements of a society I will soon join, and am finally free to rally.

It’s been panicked and screaming for help in the turbulent, rushing waters of the windy green river.

It’s been folding laundry, making the bed and other tasks which are fondly mundane.

It’s probably spent far too much time debating departure dates and frequent flyer miles.

It’s been printing out photos and holding them up to the light, to look for memories that passed too fast, being all too back-to-back.

It’s been attached to wide arms wrapped around old and new friends from whom I will not see for some time.

It’s been folded around steaming chai tea cups, sipped silently with unearthly appreciation.

It’s been sipping cheap imported wine on patios at sunset, full of favorite people and knee slapping laughter.

It’s been carousing on a thursday night under the guise of research and paper-writing.

It’s picked up the remote once a day to watch John Stewart reduce it all to what it is.

It’s unpacked boxes of things I scratch my head and can’t remember owning. (dated silverware from vegas?)

I guess those are the places my writing has been.

And perhaps if my writing hadn’t been anywhere else, it would take no joy in the simplicity of what it’s doing.

But it’s been many places. And thus it knows.

It’s happy right where it is.

Home.

Stuck.

I know. Totally absent. Apologies my friends and family.

Sometimes life just hits FF on you and the button sticks. For the first day in weeks, today I hit Pause.

Let me collapse on the couch for a few. I promise my fingers will soon warm up.

Weekly Humanist Reader

Yolanda and Melissa at the Kitchen Table remember the life and socio-political impact of Malcolm X on his would-be 84^th birthday. An unconventional leader who emerged from the least likely of places, the memory of Malcolm X re-awakens the possibility of ‘workable interracial coalitions’ and how sadly mistaken we are to believe that our finest visionaries can only arrive via an Ivy-League education and without a ripple on the glassy waters of their lives.

Six Degrees of (Rotary) Separation? A new reading of the release of U.S. journalist, Roxana Saberi, former Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar to England.

Not only are the femicides in the Mexican state of Chihuahua underreported and overshadowed by the War on Drugs, but also takes attention off the horrific examples and sheer numbers of women disappearing in the Baja Peninsula.

In Liberia, the spoils of war linger long after soldiers return home. This is my rifle, this is my gun. One is for killing, the other is for fun.

The practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM): should indigenous rites of passage ever trump human rights?

The latest issue of Mother Jones highlights an incredibly stirring photo essay, by Jonathan Torgovnik, entitled Intended Consequences, about Rwandan children born of rape in the Congo.

Calling all watchers of films! Particularly in the tri-state area!  The 20^th annual International Human Rights Film Festival will be in New York from June 11-25^th.

On Tuesday morning at 12pm (CST), the California Supreme Court will issue their decision regarding Proposition 8.

And finally…Because local wisdom should be preserved and to remind us that there are other ways of being (and because I cannot get enough of TED): Wade Davis’ talk on endangered cultures.

Check-in #6: “comeback” edition

Foggy brain. Not wanting to move out of Austin. Delaying things. Clutching unnecessary, expensive-to-ship belongings when I should be finding loving homes for them all. This all just makes me so sad. It’s so definitive.

Plus I’m taking hours and hours to write blog posts and then not getting them posted until days (or in this case, weeks) later.

The good. The hard. They seem to alternate so quickly that it’s almost impossible to keep track. Cycles.

So I decided to open yet another international bank account which is hard. Because it is never done swiftly or without having to hold the line for ten-minute chunks of time…But then the guy who set me up was the kindest, most affable person in the entire world so that was good.

Or like being crazy busy before going on vacation to the East Coast with the Ladies of 1304 which will be wacky fun good, but then coming back from it could be draining and nightmarishly hard.

Nevermind. Let’s do this thing.

the good stuff.

On My Honor

Despite the atrocities of inclusivity within the Boy Scouts of America organization (including religious intolerance, homophobia and the enforcement of strict gender roles), I was determined to attend my brother’s Eagle Scout Ceremony on May 3rd. Why, when it stands diametrically opposed to my own personal politics? Because during celebrations like this, when family and community rally around others, there is a palpable tightening of the bands that hold networks of people together. And there is much to love about who he is becoming. And it just happens that among his many involvements, BSA was a partial catalyst to his evolution. Hearing his stories and helping him write his thank-you speeches revealed to me just how in sync we are as siblings. He has grown into a storyteller. An adventure-seeker. A sensitive and responsive leader. His memories were goofy and spontaneous and moving. I cried. And, I attended in show of support for my mother worked entirely too hard to motivate him to complete. Hats off to you, Mom.

Wet ‘n Wild Fun

It was the way I like to do fun. A blustery winds-day, nestled among my right kind of people, giving one another equal parts medicine and sopping wet smacks to the back of the head with water balls.

Although I did mention a time or two on this three-hour voyage  how impossible it was to hear my own thoughts amid the rushing waters and gleeful scatter of voices around me, I forged on with an attempt at meditating-on-water and would you know it, it’s highly unsafe. And also impossible. Not that I didn’t fall madly in love with the conversations, and with my fellow tubers, because I did. But if floating the river for three hours means getting most unfortunately pinned next to the enormously misinformed, misogynistic and misguided red-headed drunk that keeps incessantly blooping into my space and conversations, next time, I’ll float by moonlight or I’ll drive to the end of the river and wait the three hours for my party, thank you. He was pretty much a wreck. Made only worse by his littering of beer cans. Oh, and his interchangeable definitions of ‘feminist’ and ‘lesbian’. Tft. Tft. Grr.

Blasting melodies with heads belting out the car door window is the best. When your right kind of people are finally in your path, only good things can come and you remember the long road you took to finally meet them.

Greune, TX! Where things are remote, green, gorgeous and not so freaking loud (when the annual Americana festival is not spilling into the streets). There are so many things to love about this city. The final head count was nineteen for our tubing brigade and really, no one could have imagined a stealthier group.

Taking a long, lazy, weekend somewhere beautiful is the most choice thing in the entire world and I must do it again as soon as possible.

The God of Small Things

..is the most recent novel the ‘book club’ has chosen to read—my suggestion. While the book is supple with allegory and metaphor, a delicious page-turner, I’m not far enough to submit a formal review or summary. Instead, I’m taking a moment to recognize the absolutely amazing powerhouse this group of women has grown to become. We are a club of phoenixes.  The sandstone ruins of Petra others have yet to discover. There are legions of history and lore shared between us. A weekly invitation to engage in total bewilderment and fury. This is my first actor-architect-environmentalist-teacher-activist group I’ve ever allowed myself to be part of. I adore them. They contribute significantly to my anticipated separation anxiety.

Be Who You Are

Should my memory fail me (as it will, as it should), my core must remember this night. Discussions at length of (among many pursuits) sexuality, performance art, the airing of grievances, and feats of strength. And the importance of a balance of power.

Do not attempt to discern. This is merely an ink spot with an arrow pointing to it, saying: Don’t forget me. I’ll save your life one day.

the weird stuff.

In an effort to maintain sanity and try this brevity thing…I’ll just say that during my attempt to streamline my email labeling system, I had the great misfortune to stumble upon old emails from previous relationships. Dating back to high school. And even my first year of college. Wowza! Why? Blech! While I certainly don’t plan on any of them knowing about this writing thing, if such a situation were to arise in which they did follow or catch wind of my ambiguous reference to them… let the record show that I now realize what I was experiencing was deep confusion compounded by a wily attitude and maligned maturity-all of which are being/have been worked through (mostly!). I couldn’t help but laugh at all the muddiness and intense emotion you shared with me about our affiliation. I look forward to hiding away in the corners of grocery stores should I see you at the end of the aisle before you spot me.

the hard stuff.

Augusto Boal died on May 2, 2009, due to complications of leukemia. He was a man that I immensely admired, studied intimately and my heart breaks to hear that he is no longer walking among us. But I’m feeling a renewed responsibility to continue to reform ideas of education into mutual meaning-making and awareness. I’m not sure what else there is to say. Even in death, he continues to move me.

That’s a wrap for me. So many fantastic events are unfolding…I am in the folds of comfort and peace. What happened during your week? Please feel free to join in.

Review: ‘The Method Gun’

Should I begin this review with a question? Answer: Rubik’s Cube. Or any puzzle of sufficient complexity. Life itself will do, as an example. How do I become myself? Everything we’ve done is nothing. I have no idea how to act as myself-when to cry, who to kiss, eye contact. If I could make myself understood to you. Forget it–let’s do something else.

Given that so much of our inner lives and the outer vastness of life in general–can feel like a Rubik’s Cube that’s always just a few too many moves away from being solved. Given that the creative arts, at their best, provide not only a welcome distraction from the grave toward which we all plummet but may also evoke the feeling that, oh, here’s one of those moves that helps solve the Cube, that makes just a bit more sense of my life, of the larger world and it’s confounding patterns of chaos. Given that, is it any wonder that some artists eventually deconstruct their art, those smaller cubes designed to reiterate relevant sections of that largest puzzle, in an attempt to discern the most effective parts.

But sometimes, the move you thought would be a potentially Cube-solving turning point turns out to only make things worse. Thus, rehearsals. Thus first, second and third–drafts. Whatever it takes to find your way in the forest of the night.

Featuring a cast of five from the Rude Mechs’ ensemble, The Method Gun explores the nine years spent by (the fictional) Stella Burden’s 1970s theatre company as they prepared their production of A Streetcar Named Desire for its debut, in the wake of Burden’s unannounced departure for South America.

Framed in such a way that each cast member portrays at least three characters—the actor himself (or herself), a member of Burden’s company, and that person’s character from Streetcar—the play veers off into any number of directions and time periods. Freed from the constraints of a linear narrative, The Method Gun explores two key issues: why some people who don’t have a passion for creation choose to define themselves as artists; and how a charismatic mentor can fool a willing student into chasing approval long after they should have moved on.

It’s the exploration of these themes that makes The Method Gun such a potent piece of work. Burden’s ideas, as they’re depicted by the company she left behind, are absurd and hilarious, a dead-on parody of 70s-era radical theatre (an example of the deft satire at work: the company’s production of Streetcar is done without the characters of Stanley, Blanche, Stella, or Mitch).

They’re also arbitrary in a way that a young artist could easily mistake for wisdom. Characters explain that the audition process for the company consisted of Burden simply asking the question, “Truth or beauty?” and often making a decision before the answer was even given. She leaves notes explaining her theories locked in a box, with the instructions to set the note ablaze before reading, and then trying to read as many words as possible before it’s consumed by flames. What’s more, the play opens with something called “crying practice,” in which the five actors carry out one of Burden’s rehearsal rituals by standing in front of the audience, wordlessly attempting to bring themselves to tears.

The re-creation of the Streetcar re-creation is fascinating, if you’ve ever been involved with or enchanted by theatre, especially artists, more so if you’ve also watched yourself being yourself on the less defined stages of life and been unsure of your performance there.

There is certainly a danger in Method Gun. That there are too many layers, too much thespian navel-gazing going on, too intense cerebral machination needed to appreciate this whole….

Never mind the Rubik’s Cube. Think, instead, about your favorite caper film. The Italian Job. Ocean’s Eleven. There’s a goal to be reached, much fine loot to be gained, if only you can suss the system and time the diversions and jimmy the locks and make it through those crisscrossed laser beams–that lattice of amplified light, the breaking of which will trip the alarm, and that’s it, hero, so close to heaven, and now you’re hella fucked.

They’re looking directly at theatre through theatre, at what it has to offer the people who perform it and the people who watch those performers. The difficulty is in reaching the goal, in making the looking as entertaining as what they’re looking at, making what they’re looking at as entertaining as ittheatre can be, making it all come together in front of an audience that wants to be entertained but would also appreciate the feeling that, oh, here’s one of those moves that help solve the Cube. (Okay, the cube is back.)

I’ll give you a hint: They suss the system and time the diversions and jimmy the locks. The actors do it every night they perform the Method Gun and that, during the final minutes of the show, they do the whole thing over again–this time between swinging pendulums of light, the laser-caged caper finale gone Newtonian old school.

But the power of The Method Gun isn’t restricted to an “inside baseball” satire of thirty-year-old acting tropes. The concept of directionless journeymen artists, forever trying to live up to a creative ideal they’re not sure ever really existed, is one that extends well beyond the theatre, and watching these people struggle with that live and in person is what makes the play such a powerful piece of work. The Method Gun could have just as easily been about folk musicians chasing the ghost of a Dylan stand-in, or filmmakers trying to re-create the approach of a Kubrick analogue, but it’s a theatrical piece, and the Rude Mechs set it in the world it inhabits. In the end, The Method Gun succeeds, first at exploring the universal themes that artists of every stripe struggle with, and also in reaffirming the medium’s place in the larger artistic world.

The show is a fake; the acting’s pretense; the danger is real; it’s impressive as hell. But even without the lights framing symmetry in perfectly timed arcs and the Rudes stepping or bending or fighting or dancing expertly between them, the best danger of theatre was already there: the danger that something real will emerge from this stage of fakery and pretense, and it may have teeth.

Book Review:The Art of Verbal Self-Defense

How-To: Deal with Bubble-Bursting Joy-Suckers

Regardless of whether it is done in the name of honesty or providing a dose of much-needed reality to the unsuspecting party, dishing out criticism–and being the target–is equally difficult. Yeah. Yuck. Criticism overload can be completely crippling sometimes. Absolutely devastating.

And I can’t seem to locate a window to let the something said blow out as gracefully as it blew in.

Best described as a discreetly veiled indirect criticism of my choice to do ‘the big thing’, the offending remarks were (I suspect) meant merely as precaution. And it was only until this last week that I began to notice unusual patterns–outright refusal to discuss ‘the big thing’ with friends, sluggish body language, a persistently wonky sleep schedule which kept me cranky–old habits that  know they on their way out. For good. Which is awesome, except that I have not dealt with their extended absence just yet and occasionally invite them in and they, well, throw a party and leave a terrible mess for me to clean up.

Point is: Everyone criticizes. And everyone is criticized. Thankfully, Suzette Elgin, genius and communications demi-god has written the  Gentle Art of Verbal Self Defense series. A road map through the minefields of verbal attack patterns, semantics and mouth malpractice, she illustrates with fully dramatized scenarios that help the reader to recognize how to communicate quickly, competently, straightforwardly and, as my recent scenario would suggest, more sensitively, with others.

Great tactics for verbally outwitting pretty much anyone, but — more importantly — it’s a way to practice consciously taking care of yourself so that confrontations are rare and there is no loss of face on either side of the interaction.

Just writing about her makes me feel better already.

I Survived the 5910 District Conference.

I have a conflict here. On the one hand, I have a vested interest in not boring the hell out of you. Which means I probably shouldn’t keep talking about the district conference.

On the other hand, you know I always tell you what’s on my mind … and what’s on tap at the moment is about a hundred ideas, thoughts, wonderings and insights. All of which (sorry!) have to do with the crazy three days I spent back in my home town.

So here’s what I’m going to do. Quick verbal snapshots of some of the stuff that’s percolating in my brain right now, and we’ll see how it goes from there.

The three days I spent away were the most fun ever. Say, whaaaat? Well, sorta.

I need to make a confession. I just spent four days at a conference in my home town and didn’t actual go home.

Well I was there. But only for sleep.

At first it was just because I was having too much fun at the conference. And then it was because I was meeting people and making useful connections.

And by the end, it was kind of “well, I’ve come this far”. Like, actually going home would be over the top.

So I’m thinking … these completely fascinating conversations with like-minded thinkers, helper-mice and fellow goofball service-seekers were so valuable and so inspiring that I can’t wait to do it again.

Just maybe not at a a district conference.

Highlights and Lowlights

• PDG Ulises Vidana Saldana’s (commissioned to speak by RI President, from Mexico City) ill-prepared, misogynist keynote address on the usefulness of women Rotarians–since females are becoming more involved anyway– between cracking jokes about gender roles and how, although silent, women have control over men
• Rotaract Club of Angelina College and their quickly-approaching service project with South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation
• Meeting Kaustavi from Calcutta at the Zone Club; Learning about Kolkata’s lags, disorganization, administrative snafoos and overall, lack of safety
• Meeting and spending time with all my right kind of people–Josmery, Allison, Marlee, Raul and Adele–exchange students and foreign ambassadors
• Mouzon Biggs (Methodist mega-church pastor of Boston Avenue in Tulsa,OK and Rotarian) keynote on service being in our hands yadda yadda, invoking Galileo’s crime, the ruins of Petra and the women of  Grey Gardens who turn in on themselves as anecdotes along the way
• funding and distributing the Iron Lung, a mechanical respiratory chamber for those suffering from Polio

No brilliant conclusions or anything. I’m just sitting with all of this, and watching it sift through my sleep-deprived brain. Getting excited about where I might take these ideas, without having to take them anywhere just yet.

I can definitely say that I’m happy to get home.

Check-In #5: ‘everybody says don’t’ edition

What an odd little week. From its bright beginnings, I never could have imagined it closing in such rollercoaster fashion. Defeated and lonely. Full of fear and uncertainty.  Ready and Resilient. Not sure what to think of it yet. But I’m beginning to feel things so deeply. And its affecting my sleep.

So I’m listening to Beyonce’s ‘Single Ladies’ .  Absurd, I know.

On with the week. With bits of last week thrown in for good measure.

the good stuff.

Keep Theatre (un)Planned

After weeks of crazyjampacked Wednesdays, I was finally able to catch the Texcentric show at Patsy’s Cowgirl Café starring fellow SU alum, Ted Meredith and the ever-radiant and lovely Ellana Kelter, a fellow book club slacker member. In the fashion of Garrison Keiller and Prairie Home Companion, Texcentric is a send-up of old time radio shows including ‘on-air’ skits, commercials and live music.

This week I was also fortunate to see Echoes, Back Story and Buried Child.

End of an Era

Here’s a nod to all students finishing up degrees and completing senior capstones at Southwestern University. You’re all so ready. Do good work and keep in touch.

Until There’s a Cure

This Saturday, the 24^th of April, the annual Hill Country Ride for AIDS will commence at 8:30am from Krause Springs. While I am surely sending my thoughts to all the riders this year, my heart and excess stamina is claimed for Team Britica, made up of Brit Cox and Jessica Hager, two women who have delighted my soul and unknowingly helped in the re-imagining of a new story for my life. One in which I have become so intensely interested in the world and being present in it.

I think of all those who have benfitted and gone on to live longer, more fulfilled lives due to direct financial support from Aids Services of Austin, Project Transitions and other beneficiaries of this incredibly positive and life-affirming experience.

While I am unable to ride on April 24th, I hold in my thoughts B. Smith, P’Pahn, P’ Noi, P’Gahmun, P’Khem,  R. Ochoa, J. Vignal, all those in the TNP+ Network (Thailand) and those seeking shelter and service from the Village Day Center for Care (New York).

Go Team Britica! Boycott Abbott.

Rally in the Valley or Rotary District 5910 Conference

Realizations.

Of course any “venturing out from the place you think of as home” is fraught with all sorts of things. Regardless of what “home” means to you.

Yes, I have problems with the word journey – Juana make something of it? That was “wanna”.

You take yourself somewhere new and you watch yourself interact with ideas, people and your own perceptions. And I got slammed with a huge epiphany this morning. And tripped over some serious mental blocks-doubt, fear and insufficiency-on my way to the first plenary session.

Realizations, Part II.

I’m not sure if I’m ready to talk about it, yet. But I’ll plant some seeds.

For the last few weeks now, I’ve been dealing with the uncertainty of moving to India. Calcutta, India. I’ve been sitting with my insecurities and the lingering thought bubbles that accompany them,  knowing that there is a significant emotional component to this venture as well as the physical uprooting of my person.

But this morning I realized EXACTLY what’s going on here. What the root of it is. And what the next steps are.

I’m feeling optimistic. That’s all I can say.

Totally worth it.

This uncomfortable flash of insight – this astonishing (to me, at least) realization – is so useful to me and so powerful, that the whole trip to District 5910 Conference was worth it.

Even if I hadn’t gotten to meet all the incredibly inspiring Rotarians.

Even if I haven’t gotten to go to a bunch of panels and hear Mouzan Biggs speak.

Even if I hadn’t been touted as a model candidate and strongly encouraged to apply for the opportunity to become a Peace Fellow.

All in all, a pretty great trip.

That’s it for me…

But please join in and let me know of all the good/hard stuff occurring in your lives. And always, have a glorious week!

Something to Believe In

Haven’t been feeling like I’ve wanted to write about this anytime soon. A couple weeks ago I found out about Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, an 11-year-old boy, who, provoked by bullies at school about his perceived sexual orientation, made the painful choice to hang himself on April 9, 2009. In an ironic twist, Carl would have turned 12-years-old on April 17, 2009, the same day thousands of students will participate in the annual National Day of Silence, a silent protest for GLBT persons and their Allies to bring attention to anti-gay and homophobic harassment in schools.

So mostly I still don’t understand. Not only are kids killing other elementary and pre-teen children (as evidenced in the case of Larry King), but also, we’ve somehow managed something worse: the ability to make them want to kill themselves. And what I’m feeling like is bumming and staring at the wall.

But at the same time needing to write something, because writing has been my comfort at so many points in my life.

Can’t say anything amazing at the moment unfortunately, but something wants to be said.

Something like … Well,  I don’t know exactly. Except that I do.

Because within my own family, for nearly a year or more, I’ve become fantastically tangled up in my own cousin’s private battle to remain on the edge. And alive.  At the same time.

Sixteen and gay, in a matter of weeks he has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by overdosing on pain killers, huffing paint and driving maniacally in the wee small hours of the morning under the influence of his latest enterprise, mushrooms, grown from the comfort of his closet.

And really, I know that I should be counting my lucky constellations that he is still alive. He is still alive. Yet, this no-longer-only-in-news news has created some serious insomnia for me and keeps post at the front of my consciousness. Always. So clearly there’s something going on here…probably something important.

So please, hang out with me for a bit while I process out loud.

And this stuff, this ever-present nagging pressure to unpack this persistence, causes me to freeze up, so much that I become tongue-tied and ridiculously inarticulate. Because the stakes are so high. I mean, of course I should speak up, but what if it doesn’t stick?

Here’s what I’ve got.

I keep coming back to the whole “someone believing in you when it seems like no one else does and you don’t know how to believe in yourself” thing.

I know, I know. You’re heading to vomit, right? Because it’s sickening. And who hasn’t already heard all of that hullabaloo? So I don’t like it. I don’t like it because it’s not wow! zap! pow! and because it’s cheesy and annoying. And makes me nauseous. It reminds me of made-for-television movies and excessively romantic sunsets and crescendo-ing violins. Neither of which have a place in the present situation.

And yet, to hear from someone that just having you around is good for the world can make the difference between killing yourself and as Kate Bornstein writes in her book, Hello Cruel World:101 Alternatives to Teen Suicide,  killing off those parts of yourself that are ineffectual, harmful, create personal dissatisfaction and do you no good.

Or.  Maybe. What I’m trying to say is that while it may be hard for you to believe as you are so deep into your self-destruction, paralyzed by self-doubt and loathing and a whole host of other impossible fears, I care for you. I care about you. And I take an intense  personal interest in both the process and the experience of you becoming well. While I understand your desire to remain on the edge, I wish for you also, to remain alive.

Forget the ‘doom,doom, doom’, ‘you’re wasting your life’ and the variations on all of that. You are bright and talented and going to do great and exciting things in the world and it is completely okay if you take as long as you need in getting there.

But in the meantime, I stand as a reminder of what you already know. Because I am completely prepared to believe in the great things that you’re going to do, without at all needing you to have done them yet — or ever — in order for me to continue to love you.

I just believe. Because it’s true.

Check-In #4: “sunshine on my shoulder” edition

What a week. It got mostly taken up by Easter preparations and related stuff.

Well, at least the house is clean.

And Mark made what might be perhaps the best tofu lasagna I’ve ever tasted. And since we know no one makes better lasagna than grandma lucy does, this was a hard thing to admit.

But it was that good.

It’s the little things. Again.

the good stuff.

Deep Eddy

Thomas and Josephine, my sweet darling conniving adventure seekers, helped me load up Four Wheels and we spent a couple of hours at Deep Eddy early Friday afternoon. Everything is better when they are around. And I am consistently affirmed that yah, I could do this kid thing. Eventually.  And it looks as though they’ll be visiting India during holiday this December. Huge sigh of relief.

As the temperature hovered at 54 degrees, much of my time was spent pool-side catching up on Coraline. And creating obstructions to halt the ants in their pursuit for my creamy thighs.

Also, we talked about Star Wars legos and Israeli dodgeball (Ga-ga).  Something that deserves a spot in the ‘good stuff’.

Our inboxes must have been slammed, because clearly, the whole thirteen of us who turned out at Deep Eddy failed to receive the memo that the real knees up was swimming at McKinney Falls State Park with the mammoth-sized nip-at-your-proboscis turtles.

Yogurt Planet

Things have been kind of crazy, as you know, and I was craving some serious decadence. And! Nothing lessens the affects of hypothermia from frigid waters like frozen yogurt. So we made an adventure trip to Yogurt Planet. Brilliant concept. Self-serve yogurt dispensers and gazillions of toppings (captain crunch crumbles*lemon sauce*fruity pebbles*) that, when ready to be enjoyed, is weighed at a station in which you pay by the ounce. Crazy! Good! And potentially Expensive! (if you let small children self-manage topping dispensation like the woman in front of me).

My Personal Stucknesses: They Are (Slowly) Getting Unmangled

Guess what? Yesterday I made the choice to open my personal practice and introspection to public view.

You know, the only thing that makes this process move faster, is writing. I discover those things that I am not afraid to say loudly. So anyone can hear. I really thought writing would become more painful than practical. But love is working my writing out again for me.

This is fantastic. I am fantastic.

Friends and Personal Achievements

To two of the most beautiful gentleman friends in my life–Mike and Leo–I am immensely proud of both of you.

Mike, you have certainly found a way to turn the night into day and could not be more honored to celebrate this successful venture with you. Thank you for holding on. Your personal narrative takes a dramatic turn at Trinity Repertory and I believe in the work you will do. I am not surprised. You are so accomplished and your enthusiasm hatches one ploy after another. Some things are meant to be.  This is just one more.

And lest I forget to mention, Leo, golly geez, cheese-head. You rocked candidacy today. You’re the brainiest and most delicious organic chemist I know! The entire village was cheering you on today and it 100% worked!

Easter

I’ve mentioned Mark’s tofu lasagna, right? Scrum-dilly-umptuous.

Among the myriad of activities–egg dying, cock-fighting and catch-phrase–this Easter was delightful. The weather was oh so fine and the friends (which included Ellana!), so divinely gem-my.

Happy Easter everyone. I sincerely hope you made or devoured something good to eat.

the bad stuff.

This will not be brief.  An entry to follow.

That’s It For Me…

And yes yes yes of course you can join in if you feel like it. Have a glorious week!