moving notice

Thanks for stopping by, but I've moved to thislifeinwriting.com.

You can make the move with me if you'd like!

let me be the first to tell you

Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness I am really excited about something, if you can't tell.

And how's that for a change of pace around these parts, huh?

Don't you worry though, I will be back to singing the blues in no time, but first I have to interrupt and tell you something that makes me so happy.

See, my brother and my friend Joe worked on a little pet project called thislifeinwriting.com. Yes, dot. com. As in, I am totally running with the big dogs now. Anyway, we started off with a wordpress layout called nona that made me kind of happy but not thrilled but then Jase told me to get sketching and writing the title with my own handwriting and then he scanned everything and then we changed things to blue and red and rearranged the sketches on top and went ooh! and ahh! respectively until bam! I was thrilled.

And I am still thrilled. I mean, there are a few more tweaks to do yet, but don't let that stop you from checking it out.

So go, go, go!

Go to thislifeinwriting.com and if you want to tell me that you like the balloon and that you enjoy the red flowers and boy oh boy isn't ollie a cutie then comment there, my friends. But if you don't have anything nice to say about it or anything else for that matter, then please refrain from commenting because have you read my blog lately? Life sucks enough without mean comments, you know what I mean?

But why are you still here...GO!

I've never fought a war, but...

I think I might have post traumatic stress syndrome.

I mean, there are parts of me that have been around forever. Things that I am used to, that I even like now. Like the beauty mark in the middle of my forehead that causes random strangers to accuse me of playing with hindu tattoos. Or at least one random stranger, anyway. In a coffee shop. True story. But I am used to the fact that my eyes are brown, but green too when the sun shines in them just so. Or even that I hear myself referred to as skinny more often than anything else; that I can continue to use my own preference of slender as much as I can, slipping it into casual conversation in a clumsy attempt at subliminal messaging, but that won’t make my friend David stop saying that I am the skinniest person he’s ever met. And it won’t change the fact that I get no compassion when I complain about this to others either. Rather, they tell me that they’d love to be called skinny just once. And again, I am skinny. Not slender, but skinny, subliminal messaging and all.

But now I have a syndrome and I hate it.

Now when my phone rings or I get a text telling me to please call, I have a visceral reaction. My heart starts beating faster and faster, racing to I don’t know where, but it’s getting there way too soon. My breathing becomes shallow and I taste panic. It is not savory, it is not sweet; it is fear and it is pervasive. It starts in my mouth and eventually makes it down to my stomach so that there is no longer any room for food. And I become full and nauseous at once as all I know to do is wait for myself to waste away because nobody can live on fear for too long. Which is a little bit nice in the moment since it means that there is an end.

And an end to a very bad thing is actually a very good thing.

This morning, for instance, my brother called me before 9 am. And to a performer, that is early. Nobody calls me then, not even my mom. But he called and I was scared and if I am going to be honest, too scared to answer. So I didn’t. Whatever it was, I wanted to be blissfully ignorant for just a little bit longer. But then he texted and told me to call him. Shoot. No more sweet naivety. Instead, the panic. Instead, the heart beating hard enough to sustain a few hundred, rather than just one skinny (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?) female.

And there it was, not even 9 in the morning and I was being reminded of my new syndrome. Nice. Perhaps, along with the simple task of answering a phone call from my brother, the sounds of my spoon against my cereal bowl will be just too much for me today also.

*oh, and on a completely different note, I was inspired by my brother who just added snow to his blog. So not to be outdone, I went out and got some for myself. Because of it being December and all. And because of my competitive nature and all. Hope the snowflakes don't annoy you guys too much...Unfortunately, mine look more like dandruff while my brother's look more like the beautiful romanticized snowflakes we all see on the victorian christmas cards we never do quite get around to mailing, but oh well. Merry Christmas anyway.

in which I talk about piles and hope you understand

Close being the key word here.

Cause really, I am not doing fine. Friends, kind people who care, keep asking me if I am okay and the truth of the matter is that I am not okay.

But will I be?

Yes.

And something that makes me feel a little better along the way is solving problems.

Huh? you might wonder.

See, I get this feeling that there is this reserve of Stuff I Need to Make. And it's this pile that is sitting somewhere already, outside of the realm of time and small details like that; it's whole and it's beautiful and somehow my journey gives me the tools to take it from that pile into a tangible pile.

A song that I can play.

I picture that I can see.

Text that I can read.

A conversation that I can articulate.

And all the materials are in existence already. All the words are here, it's just a matter of finding the right combination of syntax. All the notes have been around and accessible since the birds first started singing about how morning makes them feel way back when, it's just a matter of arranging them into just the right story that reflects me.

So I get to work.

I arrange and I rearrange and I chisel away until there is something that I think I have successfully grabbed from the Stuff I Need to Make pile and placed it securely into the Stuff I Have Made pile.

And maybe when the former pile is gone and the latter pile is edited and recorded, it will be time to go home. Or maybe home will just be a bigger pile of Stuff I Need to Make and I will realize that the journey is never realized with an ending or a drop off or a period; that the straight line I thought I was walking was circular all the while and the way God has put eternity into our hearts means that there isn't a The End, but there is a great big Happily Ever After and after and after and after and we'll keep making our stories last in the things we tell each other and the tears we cry and the songs we sing when we'd forgotten we could cause all the while we are looking for somebody to tell us that it meant something, that it still means something, and that it's a good something.

Because it is.

presently blonde and sketching

So I did it.

Or rather, Kasey the fabulous hair stylist did it.

Transformed my hair from brunette to reddish-orange to blonde.

And all the while I was sitting next to a kind lady who was also getting her hair done. She looked a little familiar maybe, but I didn't give it a second thought and was happy to listen to the lilt in her British accent as she marveled over the way my hair had gone from as dark as hers to well, this.

I even told her that her accent was so very pretty, still not knowing that I was sitting next to someone I'd heard before.

On the T.V.

A while ago.

Finally she tipped her stylist, who quickly said thank you, Tracy and then I knew. Tracy Allman, of the Tracy Allman show. The funny lady who launched the Simpsons. Oh, right.

Lately I have been spending a lot of time making things.

Songs, mostly.

But I also started drawing a little last night.

I was staring at this photo and started sketching and came up with this.
Me and Ollie in pencil and ink.

apparently santa's elves make wheel chairs too

It's always strange when somebody steps out of character for a moment. As a kid, when I overheard my mom say she was really P.O.'d about something, it was like I'd heard an angel take God's name in vain, it was so shocking.

Because see, I knew what the 'P' in 'P.O.'d' stood for.

And just today, Santa Claus said something kind of strange.

Yeah, that's right, Santa Claus. Red furry suit. Long white beard. Jolly expression. Only it's odd when all of the sudden he drops that famously jolly expression in order to ask your sister, who is recently wheel-chair bound due to knee surgery from which she is recuperating, if her condition is permanent.

And yes, all of the Christmas music came to a screeching halt because that's a weird question anyway. Even if you aren't Santa. I mean, what if it was a permanent condition? What if she was our own version of Tiny Tim, doomed to forever hobble around on a leg that barely works? Or rather, be pushed by people like me who erroneously presume that when a bump is in the horizon, the best course of action is to push the wheelchair harder, making her almost fall out and brace her body against doing just that with nothing other than her bad leg?! And is it a good idea to bring it up in the middle of the mall? So what then? My sister bursts out in tears because she was once again reminded of her poor and unfortunate state by freaking Santa Claus, of all people?!

Luckily, though, her condition is not permanent.

And she let Santa know.

And then he continued in a most un-jolly voice, red hat pulled low over his brow, Well, you really should have a lighter chair than that for travel.

Ummmmm, okay.

Thanks?

I mean, I knew Santa was a lot of things. Able to be in all places at once on Christmas Eve. Able to shimmy down chimneys and other such impossible looking entrances. Able to manage a whole team of mythical creatures, one with a particularly bulbous and shiny red nose. But a wheel chair aficionado?

Honestly, I kind of like him better when he sticks to asking me what I want for Christmas.

goodness

Soft little hand in mine. With grey hoods streaming behind us and shadows marching alongside us, we're gonna be okay.

Yep, we're gonna be just fine.