Things I Am Thankful for Today

• That my son woke up in a wonderful mood.
• That when "Afro Circus" from Madagascar 3 came on Pandora this morning, we danced.
• That when The Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" came on Pandora this morning (I know, we're eclectic), N. looked up from his pancakes and said, "Mama, it's your song!" because I sing it every time I hold his hand. :)
• That on my lunch break today, the sun was shining, the air was warm and the day was lovely.

What to Write?

I'd like to say that a horrible case of writer's block has kept me from posting. But I'd be lying. In fact, I'm suffering from the opposite problem: writer's abundance. I have so many things I want to say, to write about, to try to work through, that just beginning to get them all down is too daunting. So I'm taking a deep breath and starting with just one ...

Letting Go and Letting God

I have heard this saying for my whole life (probably). But it's only in the past year or so that I've realized that this isn't a one-time act of faith. At least, it's not for me. No, I have this worry habit ... I give things that are worrying me to God, and then I take them right back, mull over them, test the sore spots, roll them around until they've acquired the weight and heft of mountains and feel entirely too heavy to do much of anything with besides shoulder them and carry on. 

It's exhausting! And as I get accustomed to my new life, I've realized that I just don't have the time or energy to waste on so much worry. So I'm trying to give it to God. I'm well aware that He is infinitely more capable of addressing my worries than I am, and yet I find myself giving him the same worries over and over and over again. 

I'd like to say that I have a pretty ending to this post, that I've found the trick to always giving over to God the things that only He can heal, but I haven't. But I am coming to terms with the realization that, for me, letting go and letting God is a day-to-day (and sometimes, a minute-by-minute!) way of life. 

P.S. Have you noticed that I like hand pictures? Yeah, me too! :)

Things I Love About Kansas

Yes, I do have a few. Fall being one of them! I miss fall in my neck of the South, where the trees suddenly seem to pop with the sedate but glorious colors of fall. But fall in the South is usually over entirely too quickly, like a quick gasp of "ahhh" before the flames of summer are extinguished by the nagging damp of winter that makes even young bones ache.

But fall in Kansas (at least, so far) is a season long enough to be enjoyed. This weekend, for example, was beautiful. Crisp, cool air in the mornings that warmed to purely pleasant afternoon temperatures. And, since it's Kansas, there's always a breeze! My 4-year-old and I spent most of our time outside this weekend. The weather was too pretty to spend the whole day running errands and doing chores (which is what usually consumes our weekends), so I let a few things slide so we could enjoy this lovely Kansas fall weather. I know it will eventually give way to a Kansas winter (snow, ug), but today is too pretty to worry about what tomorrow may hold.

Writer's Block

As you may have noticed, my posts around here have been few and far between this year. I've decided to try to remedy that lack this month. I'm not pledging to post every day (I'm being realistic), but I am going to try to get something up a few times a week.

Today, that something is a whole lotta nothing. Which is odd, considering how drama heavy my life has been of late. Apparently, I still need to work on that whole self-editing thing.

On Being Not Southern But Missing the South

I am not a native-born Southerner. My parents were born and raised in Illinois, I was born in Maryland, but I spent all of the life I can remember growing up in the hinterlands of South Carolina. We lived pretty much every definition of a red neck joke that there is: grew up on a dirt road? Check. Truck rusting away in the backyard? Check. Chickens pecking around the yard? Check ... at least for a while, until they became stew. Learned how to use a bolt action rifle? OH check, that one was required learning at my junior high (seriously ... our final took us to a shooting range to shoot skeet). Yes,  yes, I grew up in the red part of the South.

But despite the fact that I can drawl with the best of them when the mood strikes me, I don't consider myself a Southerner, and I never really have. I can't trace my family tree to the Great War of Northern Aggression (to be honest, I don't think my entire family tree was in America yet). I never bothered to learn whether supper or dinner was actually lunch, because isn't that what lunch is for? And football, while I do enjoy watching the occasional game, well, I never felt the need to live, breath and die by the score board at either my local high school or Clemson or USC (that would be the University of South Carolina ... not the other one).

And yet I find myself a thousand miles away from the South and wishing I had deeper Southern roots. I don't know if it's the lack of kudzu draped power lines or the dearth of readily available sweet tea, but I feel adrift here in the great mid-West. When it comes up in conversation that I'm from South Carolina, I'm automatically classified as Southern. I feel as if I'm faking people out, as if I should wear a sign that reads, "Not a REAL Southerner," "Doesn't Really LIKE Grits" or "Never Cooked With Fatback."

What do you think? Should I have my own disclaimer?

On Remembering Who I Am

In two months, I will observe an anniversary I never imagined I would have: the one year anniversary of my divorce.

Despite the fact that my failed marriage is a chapter of my life I'm thankful to have behind me, this anniversary isn't one I'm ready to celebrate. I didn't get married planning to get divorced, and getting divorced wasn't something I wanted to do. It took me seven long years to realize I didn't have a marriage. That the relationship that I was fighting so hard for didn't exist. That the man I promised to love, honor and cherish had never been and never would be.

I continue to be surprised at how hard it is to say good-bye to the dreams I had for my life, to the illusions that kept me bound to someone with whom I could never have a real marriage. There are definitely days when I just want to pull the blankets over my head and let the world whirl along its merry little way while I sit this one out, thank you.

But I'm not. That's not the person I am, or the person I remember myself to be. The dreamer who didn't just dream, but also did. The crafter who finished her projects more often than not. The dancer who didn't care if my arms were flying all over the place because I was having fun, and who cared if I looked silly? The singer. The doodler. The writer for fun, not just money. The many things that I lost through the years because hopes and dreams and fun bleed away against relentless disappointment, frustration, resentment, and the realization that you, the person you are, can never, never, never be enough to make this person happy or satisfied or content.

So I'm starting over. Reconnecting with the person I used to be. Choosing to focus on the blessings that I gained from my marriage. Learning to live with the scars I got there, too, and not shrinking away from their tenderness. Showing up. Pressing that publish button, even when it feels entirely too intimate to put these words out there. Healing my heart. Believing in the blessings of today and the promises of tomorrow. Here's to tomorrow.

The Universe Likes to Watch Me Squirm

So, July is normally a good month for me. We get a pretty major holiday to celebrate, and we get my birthday (and no, those two events are not the same thing!). This year, however, things didn't work out quite so well.

To set the tone for my month, I got some really horrible, awful, gonna-take-a-while-to-adjust news. So I have been alternately crying and trying not to cry for about three weeks now. Fortunately, I have some pretty awesome family and friends who are helping me through the horrible-awful. I'm picking up, readjusting and coming to terms with a different version of what I thought my life would be.

But then came the insult to injury events:

• Never leave permanent markers out where your 4 year old can reach them. The second time I wore my brand-new birthday present (fabulous dress from Ann Taylor from an even more fabulous sister), said permanent marker and dress had an unfortunate run in. Despair! Tears! And I'm talking about mom here ...
• I threw my keys in my apartment complex compactor. All of them. My car key, my house key, my mail box key, every single one of my reward cards ... I realized that hooking them over my finger (because I didn't have any pockets) while throwing away my trash wasn't a great idea about the time those keys slipped off said finger and went sailing into a smelly, dark maw of trash. 

Fortunately, the universe doesn't actually hate me (it apparently just likes to watch me squirm). I was able to get the permanent marker out of my dress (soaked it in milk. Who knew?). And because I live in an apartment, I was able to get one of the maintenance guys to go dumpster diving for my keys (and he was soooo nice about it, too, which was awesome because I felt pretty terrible that he was going to have to go in there for my keys).

Lessons learned: Nothing is really permanent, even permanent marker, being lost, or crappy marriages (and, hopefully, divorces). And that's a good thing!

The Dark Side of Reliving Your Childhood

I've heard and read a lot of people say they'd like to go back to the carefree days of being a kid. I get it. I've said it, too. The long summer vacations that were too long midway through but never long enough in hindsight. The innocence of no bills to pay, no dinner to cook, no being tagged in random Facebook posts that make you say "huh, I guess that INSERT FASHION FAUX PAS wasn't such a good idea after all."

But fortunately, I have an almost-4-year-old son. So I get to relive a lot of my childhood while playing with him. The good — the endless enjoyment an empty box can bring, the never-ending wonders of the great outdoors — and the really, really ugly.

Ugly and I had a run-in a few weeks ago. The boy and I had gone to a local park for a play date. We both had fun: him running around and not really playing with his playmate, me getting some much needed adult conversation with a fellow mommy. We parted ways and merrily went about our days.
Until around midnight that night, when I woke up with a horror I had almost successfully buried beneath the years. The itching, the burning ... ARG! CHIGGERS!

For those of you who have never had the (ahem) pleasure of enduring a chigger bite, they're miserable. If chiggers existed in Italy, Dante would have devoted an entire layer of hell to those puppies. You can't scratch them, because if you do, you will actually scratch off all your skin (I'm not kidding ... I may have suppressed the childhood memories, but I still have the scars). And you can't not scratch them, because they itch like crazy and the littlest thing — seriously, I'm talking about wearing clothes — sets them off.

So two or three chigger bites is miserable. But when you're talking about, oh 50 or so, ohhhh my, you're talking about a whole new level of torture. You can't sleep, which makes functioning really tough. You can't comfortably wear clothes, which makes going to work really awkward (here's hoping no one was snapping FASHION FAUX PAS pictures for Facebook!). You also can't accept the sweet, endearing hugs from a loving, snuggly almost-4-year-old boy without cringing.

I tried everything: nail polish (no effect), Benadryl (worked, but made me pass out, which isn't terribly effective for working or keeping up with said sweet almost 4 year old), anti-itch creams (ha ha ha ha ... whose brilliant idea was it to require that you RUB anti-itch creams on?), anti-itch sprays (relief that lasted, oh, about 15 seconds) ... and then I broke out in hives. Oh yeah. It was a fun week.
The only good thing I can say about chigger bites is they go away pretty quickly (although never quickly enough). After enduring that week, I've since recovered. I only looked as though I had been burned multiple times with a cigarette for a few days before those marks, too, began to fade and heal.
But I have learned my lessons:

• Lesson 1: Childhood is overrated.
• Lesson 2: Invest in serious bug spray.
• Lesson 3: Figure out a way to eliminate the entire species of chiggers. Those puppies deserve to die.

Write Like You Talk ...

Write Like You Talk

I think the first time I heard that piece of writing advice was in my college fiction-writing class. I loved that class, and I learned a lot, including that piece of writing advice.

That advice has stuck with me through the years, especially as I've stared down a blank page and struggled with where to begin. But as I've grown in my career and moved to more editing and less writing, I've begun to realize that “write like you talk” is, at best, incomplete advice.

Publish Like You Intend

Talking is a very sensory experience. Your tone, your inflection, your facial expression and your gestures combine to effectively convey your message. Think of the phrase, "Yeah, right." Just by varying your tone, you can make that phrase mean, "You're right" or "Exactly!" or even "You're lying."

Our written words don't have the benefit of sensory context, which is why we need to be so much more careful with the words on our pages. Your reader doesn't "get what you mean" unless you clearly take them to your exact point.

By all means, write like you talk. Doing so is a great way to get your thoughts on a page and get your creative juices flowing. But when it comes time to hit the publish button or send your files to a printer, dust off the grammar hat from your grade school days to make sure your copy says what you mean.

A Reflection on the Preschooler's Cheeks

My son has the cutest cheeks ever. I realized this as we were getting out of the car to check the mail today. The sweetest curve, the smoothest skin, the nibbliest texture. No day is so bad that it can't be fixed by watching those cheeks bunch up into a great big smile. Even if his cheeks are damp and sweaty for a hard day of playing, or even a bit gritty and dirty from said day, they are still kissable and soothing. Even when he pulls that perfect roundness flat with an I-Don't-Want-To frown, they are perfect and sweet (although slightly less endearing). <3

Getting Organized ... the Saga

Have you ever had that conversation about the ways you don't want to die? You know, after watching something like Titanic. Drowning? Not so much. Freezing to death? Might be better than drowning, but still, I'll pass. Pretty much anything short of passing peacefully in my sleep is not high on my list.

Death by paperwork is, again, pretty far down on the list of ways I'd like to die. So that's one of the many reasons why I'm trying to reign in my home's paper tide before it becomes a tsunami. The boy probably wouldn't mind so much: while his current obsession is cars, before cars, it was paper. Anything made out of paper. And he's convinced that yours truly can make anything out of paper. He seriously tested my origami abilities. I'm enjoying this cars respite, but I know paper is in our future. He's dependable, my boy.

So building my life raft (not out of paper!) is my first goal for the new year. I've moved an old microwave cart into my foyer to help corral all the paper as it comes in. And while I fully intend to deal with the paper as soon as it crosses my threshold, I'm also designating Monday and Thursday evenings as Paperwork Party (ie, shred, toss and file nights). I live a wild life, let me tell you. Meh, it's better than drowning! My last step is making a convenient, easily accessible home for those pieces I need to keep. Any suggestions?