The Pancake Plan

Free time, free writing, and the life of the unwillingly unemployed

2011-12-07T08:57:00.001-08:00

Let's get this out of the way: I still don't have a job. I have tried, and I'm still trying. But, this nasty ol' job market has successfully kept me down and out of the paying, working world.

That said: I have officially completed all of my assignments from the fall semester classes! I'm ecstatic for the free space in my thoughts, not to mention my time, a precious interval I must not waste before the spring semester begins in January. So, today is a "do whatever I want" day, which really just means I email my advisor about details for my internship next semester, I clean the kitchen, and I sit on the couch and stare at the dreary rain that's held on for a third day straight. But, at least I can enjoy my Christmas decorations, and plug in the lights because it's so dark in my house.

Whether you like it or not, the lack of a job to get up for in the morning, and to serve as a grounding structure for your day, can test the self-discipline of even the most driven person. I, for instance, wrote in a post not too long ago about trying to give myself a list or schedule, but being unwilling because I feel tied down on a schedule. But, now that my semester is over I have whole, yawning days I must fill. Now, I say all of this to preface: I actually have a plan.

Lately, I've been trying to reinstate writing in my life. It's been two years now since I left the MFA creative writing program I was in for a couple semesters. I left that program because I felt I wasn't mature enough as a human or as a writer to produce the massive amount of life work an MFA requires of a writer. Shortly after I left, I began a stint as a temp Technical Writer for a large company, during which I started this blog. Although I had just left the creative program, I saw myself bloom as a writer, and I was conceptualizing and writing every day. During this time, however, I was also accepted into the Masters in Library and Information Science program at USC, and when I began to prepare for that program I put my writing life on hold. Now, I realize, that was a mistake. Thankfully, not much time has passed and I believe I won't have too long to be back where I was when I started this blog. Writing was breathing for me, and when I wasn't writing, I was reading new fiction and peeling my eyes to see and synthesize everything I could.

I am planning, and in the process, of working writing back into my life. The plan I spoke of is simple, but has not been easy at first. I am remembering, as I begin again, that trying to write after a too-long hiatus is akin to your first run after a season of little or no running. Here's what I have planned so I can get myself fit again:

Write, write, write...write...write...and write some more. Most things count. I have started keeping a freewriting journal in a Word doc. There are many websites that offer writing prompts and exercises, and they are just as good as anything else. Yesterday I was using some free (no cost) writing prompts at a site called The Journal.
Remember that everything is practice, and don't try to expect everything you write to be perfect. Just write. In time, you will see your writing get better, but it can't do anything if you don't write.
Read a lot, and widely. Don't just read the kind of thing you want to write, but read in other genres, and read nonfiction, too.

You will hear those pieces of advice from anyone who knows what the writing life is all about. I'm simply retweeting it.

Blogging is included in writing, and I'm sure you've noticed the increasing number of my posts lately. But, it's only a component of the writing life, a type up stretch for that run I was talking about.

So, I apologize in advance for clogging up your RSS feed in the next few weeks. (I flatter myself that someone actually has my blog on RSS feed).

Now to put a hurting on that dirty kitchen...

Buffing a shine into the old Holiday - some real-life pre-Christmas thoughts

2011-12-04T13:40:00.001-08:00

What a grey day. The trees, the only things I can see out my bedroom window, are now fully leafless, jutty and brittle under a lint-colored sky. I have just finished wrapping what presents I've been able to come up with yet, and my husband's asleep on the couch after wrapping one of them. One of them.

We are curious creatures this season, expected to be ready to drive out to anywhere my mother wants, to look at Christmas lights - a little town in the mountains has the cutest, the best decorations and luminaries - because it's the holidays. When during the rest of the year would any friend or family member hold you to these standards of gathering and being joyful about it?

One could call me a Scrooge. Bah, humbug.

No, it's not true. I bought the claymation Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer this afternoon, and played it as I taped and cut (quite irregularly and badly). The movie used to be longer, I thought, their journey to the Island of Misfit Toys more rigorous. At moments, the music smudged and skipped, due to the deterioration of the old original from which it was copied. And I had thought, when I was a kid, that happened because we had recorded our tape on the VCR from a TV special, sponsored by 7UP.

Last week my mother gave me a shoebox taped shut, full of ornaments she had given me each Christmas as I grew older. We expected our ornaments on that wonderful morning of Gameboys and colorful sweaters, my sister and I, but the tradition was of my mother's making, not wanted enough to appreciate among our other gifts. So, when my mom tried to hand me the shoebox, I even told her to, "keep them, they belong on the tree at your house. More at home here."

After Daniel and I got our Frasier Fir home last night, I sawed off the bottom stems and nestled it into the tree stand in the living room. Somehow, I managed to get the odorous, sticky sap on my hands, my jacket and, miraculously, in my hair. We then began to attach the ornaments we bought for our first Christmas tree together in 2009, and I opened the shoebox full of childhood ornaments from my mother.

With many things, the older I get, the more they lose their shine. My parents, I will admit, change character in my perception over time, and become more human and less omnipotent than they once seemed. I feel, at moments, that I have learned everything about them that I can, having lived most of my life with them. But, as I emptied the box I realized, for the first time, the care and love my mom had stored up for me in it among the ornaments. I found myself telling Daniel a little story from out of my kidhood as I pulled out each one, a physical twinkle of a memory I'd forgot I had.

And I have made a new memory, putting them on the tree in Daniel's and my home for the first time.

I'm amazed the gifts made it under our tree. If the cat wasn't bedding down on the wrapping paper, the dogs were chewing on the ribbons and playing dangerously close to the boxes. I even had to yell at the greyhound because she had her stinky mouth all over one of my new slippers. Seriously, I don't have children but, really, I do have children.

I'll continue to push Christmas to myself. I've neglected it a couple of years, and the time just shoots right by, depressing and unmarked. I can even try to ignore those irritating commercials that replace the words to Christmas songs with advertising slogans. Even if, somewhere in the back of my mind I think, "Why am I putting a tree inside my house that probably has spiders in it?" I know it's because I believe in the tradition, too.

I was raised on the culture of Christmas, and in an effort to not be a sad, nihilistic human creature, I say, "Let's buy some shit no one needs, give it to each other, eat some candy cane cookies and sausage balls and sing along to the Carpenters!"

The past, the cold can make you stronger

2011-11-18T08:07:00.001-08:00

I just found out, Margaret Atwood, the author, is good at more than one genre. I read a book of hers called The Handmaid's Tale back when I was in the Creative Writing program. I say "back when," and really it was only two years ago when I left it but it seems like a longer time, enough time, at least, to change the course of my life. That novel by Atwood is a dystopian, post-apocalyptic account of a human society in which women can't easily have babies anymore. Rich and influential women take handmaids, instead - like the story of Sara and Abraham in the Bible. When I read it I was amazed, and I just couldn't stop reading because I wanted to know what would become of the handmaid who showed me her story, because she was unnamed and could've been anyone, even me.

But I've also just heard Garrison Keillor read a poem by Margaret Atwood, "In the Secular Night". Atwood as poet lets in on what happens in those unaccounted-for hours, what my mom calls "the wee hours of the night," when a person is less structured. The poet mutters to herself as she walks upstairs, eating a bowl of baby lima beans and cream with her fingers. She mutters and contemplates things that, like miraculous epiphanies, only come together when one has been awake long enough into the night. And of course, like every writer, she waxes nostalgic for a spell inside the poem.

I was just telling my husband the other night, in one of those rambling monologues I subject him to because I see no one but the dogs most days, that nostalgia and the past are inescapable for me. I can't hear, read, smell or watch anything without being kicked back to the first time, the formative moments of that spice or movie where I applied it like lipstick to the experiences I was having. But this is good for a writer. The ability to see the past as a catalogue of events meaningful when strung throughout each other in myriad ways is, indeed, what charges writers to write. The recurring themes, images and symbols in a single life and even throughout history beg for significance, so we write them into story.

* * *

It's getting cold below the southern mountains, finally, even though November is well on it's way. Just two days ago, though, I was bearing my legs in cutoffs again, albeit with boots up to mid-calf. The little black spiders, frequently sighted on the ceilings in summer, even thought it was okay to parade about in the open again on floors and walls. I hadn't seen a spider in the house for at least two weeks, and I was quite content with it that way.

For me, no spiders is about the only good thing that comes out of cold weather. It's hard to do anything but sit balled up under a blanket, or bundled in too many clothes for real comfort, when it's cold. So, I try to see the cold weather as a challenge, something that will make me stronger and more resilient. I make myself go for runs in the cold, because it makes the body stronger. Also, I try not to let that holiday languor set in and ruin any useful line of thinking.

Tonight is going to be another cold one, but it's Friday, and that makes everything just a little bit better. Daniel and I are headed to one of our usual haunts, the Hare & Hound Pub and Restaurant in Landrum, SC.

But first, I'm going for a run with some friends. Don't worry, I'm layering on some Underarmor for this one. I might even wear pants instead of shorts.

Plans and Pancakes

2011-11-09T13:21:00.000-08:00

No longer the open meadows of thought, free and green for sitting and smelling, holding a watermark concept up to another for a starker, more meaningful picture. Not, at least at a time like the end of a fall semester, where any stray thought must belong to research paper or project formulation and not traipsing in the Free Meadow of Creative Thought. Textbook phrases, quantitative data, and professors' monotones and exaggerations crowd in, demanding their priority as "school things" and "the future of my career."

I'm not really a list person. I mean, I work better with lists, and more efficiently. Yet evening after evening, I fail to make any real sort of schedule for the next day. There is something cage-like about scheduling, and no matter how smoothly things go because I managed a plan beforehand, I never make it habit. So my mind can be found floundering and inconstant as to what I should be doing with my time. The silent, monstrous zeppelin floating over my tooth-brushing, my teatime and my walks to the mailbox, is that I should be doing something for school.

But I do have to have other things, things that get me to the teatime from the tooth-brushing, and to the schoolwork as well.

About a month ago, I bought a 49-cent copy of the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier from a Salvation Army, on a whim because I have sort of always wanted to read it. My English teacher in high school assigned it to some of her classes, but for whatever reason she didn't assign it to the one I was in. When I opened to and read the first page a couple of weeks ago, I had already been reading another book on my Nook, but the plot was slowing up. Reading, waiting for something to happen in that Nook book, was like searching for arrowheads in the backyard.

Reading Rebacca has been just the distraction I've needed. It's a haunting mystery that was written in the late 1930's, and the protagonist is a young woman, awkward, thin and pale, who falls in love with and marries a widower almost twice her age, and goes to live on his estate. But no matter what she does, the girl cannot escape the ghostly memory of Rebecca, her husband's late wife who was killed in a boating accident. Or was she murdered?

Okay, obviously this is a purely self-indulgent read. But who doesn't need those? I'll finish the other book, of course, which is Swamplandia! by Karen Russell. I have a nasty habit of starting and rarely finishing - whether it is in reading or writing. So, I'm trying to shake this.

Swamplandia!, as it happens, is actually a really good book, just slow near the last quarter.

As a last note, I want to mention that I made pancakes yesterday morning, just for me and no one else (especially not the dogs). After smattering them with butter and maple syrup, I sat in the quiet at the end of the kitchen table, and indulged my breakfast fantasy (which is, it so happens, a rather dominant one). I thought of this blog, a namesake of the morning pancake, and let my various, schedule-less selves settle and resolve into a complete girl-woman-creature. I found a moment, and heard my voice, singular and peaceful, in my head.

My voice, no one else's.

Goodbye Hallowe'en: a past perfect and past present holiday

2011-11-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

It is tragic - I must take down my Halloween decorations. Well, I guess not must, but should probably. I do love All Hallows Eve, but if I had all the trappings of it hanging around all year it just wouldn't be as special and fun.

My morbid yard, alas, must return to normal

Halloween was off limits when I was a kid. Because my mother had dabbled in what she called witchcraft when she was a teenager, when she began going to church with her grandmother - the only religious person in my mother's family - she gave up the usual things it is said you must give up when you become a Christian, including Halloween. So, naturally, as her children, we were allowed to dress up (mainly as Bible or history characters) and go to the church fall festivals, but never trick-or-treating.

It never bothered me really, until I was a teenager and became interested in all things fantasy - especially elves and fairies - and wanted to dress up and go out with my friends. I was also interested in Celtic and pagan traditions and holidays, which included All Hallows Eve. I had read about Halloween, and even in those tracts from church casting halloween as demonic I found it darkly intriguing and mysterious, something forbidden in earlier years and therefore all the more enticing.

More creepy decorations

Now that I have my own life and my own house, I will celebrate Halloween every year. I enjoy the shifts and layers that it has acquired throughout history. Some historians believe it could have originated in Roman festivals and and feasts of the harvest and the dead, but it is more widely associated with the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-an). Deriving from an irish word samuin, meaning end of summer, Samhain was a harvest festival falling an the first day of autumn, and was the most important of the four quarter celebration days in the Irish and Scottish medieval calendar. People also believed that it was a time when the everyday world and the realm of the magical and spiritual were closest. Christians and the Catholic Church also influenced Halloween with their All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, a time for honoring and praying for the souls of the dead. Many would wear masks and other costuming so as to disguise themselves, following lit candles held by others on their way to their place of worship for the next day.

Pumpkins on my table

I think you can disregard what anything has been in the past and accept it for what it is to you now, including Halloween. But, I prefer to keep the doors of history open and, perhaps, the door to the magical realms open as well. Halloween has the qualities of an ancient old town like Dublin, Ireland. Walking down Dublin's streets, you can see a each layer of its long life throughout civilization, from the cobblestones and Dublin Castle of the medieval times, to the many colorful doors of the Georgian era, and hundred-year-old buildings housing cellphone stores. There are aged pubs that still bear the original name from the times of the Irish kings, but show Gaelic foorball games on their flat screens behind the bar.

Worlds and ages meet and commune on one night, Hallowe'en.

So, to celebrate it this year, I had my first Halloween party. This is mainly why I spent so much time on decorating. It was largely a success, except for the part where my high school girl-crush walked in (whom I invited but hadn't seen since, well, high school, during which I was much too shy to talk to her) and I am sure that at that moment I was probably the most awkward person she had ever talked to. (Hi Anne, glad I got the awkwardness over with). I managed to get a few pictures of the costumes. Oh, and I'm a new Instagram user due to my sister persuading me to sign up, so the pictures are all at least 45% hipper than their original form (not an official percentage, I just made it up).

A Paul Bunyan and Blue Ox, a Margaret Tennenbaum (my sister), a Christmas sweater couple, and a best friends heart.

I was a Victorian ghost, and my husband Daniel was a John "Hannibal" Smith from the A-Team.

Hell yeah. 'Til next time.

Out of Dormancy

2011-10-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

A fire-color, blazing on the ground and throughout limbs, would suggest warmth but the air is chilled instead. A plastic skull, a Halloween decoration, in the front garden is caverned under drooping mums. My backyard is covered with leaf carnage, blanketing what little grass we have and bringing it to brown in this season of death-like sleep.

Contrary to nature, I have been feeling renewed lately, coming out of a dull, anxious state. Last night I was reading the Lofty Ambitions blog's post, "Neil Gaiman on Being a Writer." If you don't know, I am a HUGE Neil Gaiman fan, so that was initially what piqued my interest to read it. But, I discovered that Lofty Ambitions is a great writing blog, and reading that post I felt overcome by the last paragraph in which the blog writer paraphrases Gaiman on becoming a writer:

"...if he didn’t try to become a writer, he’d think on his deathbed, I could have been a writer. And he wouldn’t know whether that was true or whether he was fooling himself. So he decided to give it a serious go, to find out whether he could become a writer, to remove doubt. He doesn’t seem to have any other question about what he might have been and is comforted to know that, on his deathbed, he will say, I was a writer."

I was gripped by the image of being on my deathbed and not having at least seriously tried to be a writer. How many times will I do this? I hide from writing, my first love, and am discovered by that often latent passion stumbling upon another writer's blog, or listening to Writer's Almanac on the radio, or simply reading some ill-written words on the page of a magazine. A feeling of being discovered not doing what I'm supposed to runs through my body, left behind and lazy.

So, here I am once again, creaking open the door , which is in need of a little WD40, to connecting unlikely thoughts and details, to making up fun lies of history and the present and future, to leaving my body behind and residing in characters - to writing. I'll have to get back the flow and rhythm of it, and to reteach my mind to think of everyday things as a writer thinks of them. It won't be hard and it won't take long, but I'm out of practice.

Some hopeful news: I will be able to graduate with my Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) in August of 2012. I have less than a year in this program, and I'm very happy to have it over with. With luck and connections, I hope to find a job as a librarian next fall. Interestingly, I'm already thinking about going back into an MFA in Creative Writing program again. Not sure if Converse College's program is the one for me, though I started the program there. I still want to teach writing one day.

A friend suggested I do National Novel Writing Month, more fondly known as NaNoWriMo. The problem with that is I have no idea for a short story at this moment, let alone a novel. But, it's been my experience sometimes that beginning to write will alone engender idea and story. Well, I have until tomorrow to decide if I am going to be writing a novel in November or not. If I do, it will be complete shit. But then I'll have the shit out of the way really fast.

So perhaps, by the time all the red and orange from the trees has turned to crunchy ground cover, I'll have gotten it out of the way. After all, I'm not a stranger to this process, just a truant.

Taking steps towards being okay

2011-10-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.
- The Creation of Ea,
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin

I pick it off the top of a stack I bought at a giant book sale back at summer's end. The first words I read, before chapter one of A Wizard of Earthsea, are like the red letters.

Talk-therapy with my sister yesterday over pizza brought me out of my head for the day. But by tonight I needed more and Daniel listened to over an hour of descriptions of my screwed-up mind lately. Clearer now, with a promise to Angela to start blogging again this very day, and every day, I am here doing what I have thought about doing and should have been doing for months now.

I began this blog out of conviction that happiness is self-created. In the time since I last posted in February, pathetically about an anniversary post that never happened, I have felt unworthy to post on a blog about overcoming depression. This is because I have been in it. I've been experiencing pretty extreme episodes of anxiety for a few weeks now, and it feels like carrying a giant crushing stone wheel that keeps rolling over me as I try to throw it off. But I have begun the process of trying to outsmart it.

Feeling surrounded and trapped lately by random possibilities like disease and sudden death, the opening verse of Earthsea shushed my mind for the "word," and recalled the contingencies, the appositives that allow life to be the precious thing it is. If it weren't for the bad, the good would not be.

So, in answer to what threatens my happiness and my stability in the dark moments: thank you. Because the evil little gremliny creatures stalk my sanity, I learn I can conquer them.

And mostly, thanks to God for, indeed being God, speaking through who and what God will.

This is the start of something better for me - this moment.

Middle Earth meets the Middle of Nowhere, and notes on thrift stores

2011-02-03T11:40:00.000-08:00

A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.

When Gandalf said this he was referring to, well, wizards in particular. But I'm going to apply that to bloggers, too. Well, this blogger at least. So here I am not early or late in my post, but precicely when I need to be.

I do think that Gandalf and the whole of the Fellowship are with me in some way every day. When I'm sitting at my desk at work or I'm bored in my tiny apartment, I sometimes wish that I could live in Middle Earth. Rivendell in particular. Oh, and...after Frodo took the Ring to Mordor and Sauron was destroyed. I don't think I could have fit very well as a character in any of what came before. I kill every plant I touch, so I couldn't be a very good hobbit. I'd never survive the climb over the snowy slopes of the Caradhras in the Misty Mountains because I hate the cold, and I'd be no good at navigation as a member of the Fellowship because I can never get anywhere without the maps on my iPhone.

But I'm pretty sure I'd be a good Elf. I'd have to learn the Quenya or Sindarin but I've kind of always wanted to do that anyway. Wow, I just locked in my status as a big huge nerd, I think. Whatever.

So, my local library in Greenville County recently had a smallish exhibit of artifacts and interesting pieces from the Inklings, the literary group in Oxford England that met between 1930 and 1949 (according to Wikipedia), whose most famous members may be said to be C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. I do like Lewis, but it was the Tolkien and LOTR materials that I was most interested in, and nearly shrieked into the quiet of the library when I first saw them.

I had to stop my hands from opening the glass case and holding those first American editions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and rolling up the posters and sticking them in my bag. I'm pretty sure the library would not be okay with that, if I've learned anything in my studies at library school thus far...and I assure you, I have.

The exhibit wasn't that extensive, but it had some very cool things to boast. It had first editions of Lewis's works as well as Tolkien's, and artifacts from Lewis's home at The Kilns, and some autographed copies of books by the Inklings, and more.

I wasn't sure if I was going to make it to the library to see the Inklings exhibit before it ended on January 23rd, but I just woke up one Saturday morning and knew that was the day, and I was going to make time for it. I took Daniel because he likes Tolkien and Lewis, too. It was a very nice day, one of those days that puts you in a good mood for a few days afterward.

In other news of my life, Daniel and I are in the long process of buying our first house. Offer was accepted and the groundwork of the loan has been done, and now we are in the waiting period for the loan to go through the underwriting office, which, as I understand, can take anywhere from no time at all to forever. It basically sits on someone's desk at the loan office until somebody finally takes mercy on us and pushes it through. Such is life. But, I'm already imagining how life will be in our new house. It has a huge fenced backyard, so Aggie our silly greyhound can take herself out to pee and poop. But, knowing her, she'll probably just stand outside at the door until one of us walks out there with her. She's like a little child.

I'm going to thrift stores and combing craigslist for cool cheap furniture and such. I recently bought a green velvet couch for forty bucks off craigslist. It's in my parents' basement right now until we get the house. I really enjoy craigslist. I even have a craigslist app on my iPhone. Daniel has his game apps like Angry Birds...and I have craigslist.

I went to a thrift store in Greenville yesterday called SOS. My friend had bought this really awesome chair from the 1960's there, so I thought I'd see what else they had. I got there about 20 minutes before closing and didn't see anything that I absolutely had to have. But it's so interesting to go around and look at the stuff that people have had in their houses for years, decades even. One interesting piece was this drafting table. It was huge and old and very used. A piece of paper posted above it said it came from some architect who lived in Greenville who was well-known. Named McMillan or McM-something, I can't recall.

I have no need for a giant old drafting table, but for a moment I felt like I was looking at a museum artifact. I started to just stare at it and imagine what kind of innovations and buildings were conceived and drawn on that table. Thrift stores are kind of like museums in a way...

...that sounds like a completely different blog post.

As a final note, guess what?!! The very first anniversary of my blog The Pancake Plan is coming up soon! I'll be posting on that day for sure, and I'll try to make it something good. ;) It's February 16, mark your calendars!

Vagabonds

2010-12-29T11:00:00.000-08:00

Usually I can't explain my absence without feeling like I'm making excuses. This time it's different.

It happened about three weeks ago. Daniel and I had fallen into a light sleep while watching tv at about 11PM on a Thursday. I hate sleeping with the television on, because I just end up waking every hour or so and never feel like I'm really resting. So, I awoke enough to ask him to please turn it off, and he got up to turn the heat off too. It was then, as I was turning over to fall asleep again, that I heard yelling in our apartment building. At first, I thought it was some domestic fight until I heard, amid stamping and raised voices, the ultimatum word, fire.

We bolted out of the bed, and a fierce red glow bathed the hill outside our bedroom window. We didn't know how much the flames had engulfed yet, and scrambled to throw on clothes and grab cat and dog, fragmented logic mingling with panic in our minds. When we opened the front door, we were somewhat relieved to find our hallway yet untouched by the flames we heard growling through the top two floors. People were rushing in and out of their open apartments, yelling to each other. We put the pets in Daniel's Outback, and I ran in to grab my bag and the car keys, leaving our door wide open. I came back out and realized Daniel was barefoot. I wanted to go get his shoes but a big crash from within the building forbode any further entrance.

We sat silent in the car, driving away as the giant flames surged towards the sky through the roof of our apartment building. The cat meowed, his cracking voice anxious as he hopped around inside the car.

"All our stuff," I said, my hands shaking.

"It's nothing. We have each other," Daniel said, reassuring me and grabbing my hand.

"I'm glad we got the pets," I said, letting the fact settle my mind a bit. Our little family was safe.

"Me too. You did a good job, girl. You were brave."

Tears clouded my eyes, and the firetruck sirens screamed as they neared the apartment complex.

We didn't want to stay and watch it burn. Instead, we told a police officer at the scene who we were so they could know we got out safely, and headed to my parents' house.

We stayed with my parents for a few days until we moved to our friend Jason's house, to the vacant room where Daniel lived before we got married. So many people helped us out during this hard time, including may parents and Jason. My work family at the bank pitched in and gave us a monetary gift, which we didn't think we would use when we received it, but have since used every penny to help rebuild the trappings of everyday life we too often take for granted. We re-bought toiletries of every kind, as well as grocery items and miscellaneous things.

Thankfully, our stuff wasn't scorched. Istead, it incurred smoke damage and water damage from the hoses that put out the fire. Everything smelled like smoke, even my shampoo bottles and makup.

We had renter's insurance to replace anything that was damaged beyond repair, and they gave us a different apartment to live in for a while, though we hope to find a house in the next couple of months. Now we are unpacking boxes and trying to sort our lives again.

So it's been a rough holiday season, but we are still here, and I'm thankful for so much. Hopefully soon I'll be able to post a happy tale of how we found our first house.

We are trying to cultivate flowers in the ashes.

The Neighbors

2010-11-05T07:01:00.000-07:00

Good morning world!

It's getting chilly here in Greenville, and the rain has been a transitionary of sorts from the warmth hanging on to the edges of summer to, finally, a smell and nip on the air of fall.

Waking up in the morning gets tougher, too, and I wonder sometimes if humans have some natural instinct towards hibernation in the cold months. But, fortunate for my schoolwork and my mood, I woke up at 7:45AM when my alarm clock sounded and rolled out of my cave of blankets into the cold, still-dark of the apartment. I realized only after I had walked around for 30 minutes shivering in my robe that we haven't even changed the thermostat over from cool air to heat. I took care of this problem and flicked on the heat switch.

Apartment living puts one in weird propinquity with strangers, neighbors, the Indian family that lives through the wall of our bathroom. Often I hear the woman singing or humming a tune while she showers as I sit on the toilet. The bathroom door closed should give me the assurance of privacy, but listening to someone you don't know singing in the shower right behind you while you're relieving yourself is a strange sensation. This morning, I washed my face and brushed my teeth to the sound of a rough, sleep-deepened male voice, the Indian man speaking to his wife in their language about what, I tried to imagine.
"I need you to iron my shirts, they were too wrinkly last time." Or, "The guys at the office are going out for drinks after work, I'll be home a little late tonight." I imagine all the possible topics being devoid of any real emotion, because the tone in his voice is all business, no tenderness.

There are many Indian families who live in our apartment complex. They all work at the big corporate headquarters of a giant company across the busy road. The men go to work and the women can be seen walking up and down the parking lots and streets at the apartments, pushing baby strollers or carrying grocery bags. They still wear the shocking bright pink, orange and turquoise silk saris trimmed in gold from their home country. They let their beautiful, exotic children hang, run and slide at the playground until late afternoon, when they head home to prepare for the men to return from work. Most evenings, this is about the time when, if I am walking down the hallway from our small apartment, curry and saffron hang heavily in the air.

Then, when the men come home and have eaten their dutifully prepared dinner, they will all congregate in carefully pressed pastel shirts on the sand volleyball court beside the playground. A few boys are allowed to accompany their fathers to this men's club.

The women aren't slighted in this. I've seen them gathered, all watching their small children play in an alcove of a parking lot, chatting and laughing grinning their stunning grins.

This morning, I did my routine along side the family that lives in the adjacent apartment. I may have been changing my underwear while the moustached young Indian father was sipping his coffee and thinking about tonight's gathering at the volleyball court.

Sometimes I smile say "hi there" to the woman if she opens her door during the day as I walk to my car. She is only about my age but already has two children, and I feel as if I could relate to her if I tried. She only looks up as an afterthought of being polite most of the time. I realize she doesn't feel the same about us as I do.

Things That Happen to a Girl

2010-08-03T10:35:00.000-07:00

I woke up late this morning. Late because it was 9:34AM and Daniel and I were supposed to go running at 8AM. Both of us lied there under the same thin blanket, me with no job and him putting off getting up to go in to the school and get ready for the kids coming back in a couple weeks. It's okay we woke up late, pretending we hadn't made ambitious exercise plans this morning, because we looked at each other for longer than we would have, reminding ourselves that we are lucky to love so deeply.

After he left, I pulled myself out of the bed and out in the living room to the couch at least, because I know staying in the bed will only make me sad for an empty, still-warm half of the bed. The new greyhound, Aggie, who used to be called Jeserell when she didn't belong to us, followed me close behind from room to room, her usual practice. I washed my face and put on clothes, and ate a bowl of Cheerios while I watched Curb Appeal on HGTV.

I knew I had things to do today. For one, I missed my call from the unemployment insurance office last week because we had to go to a funeral in Lexington, so I was supposed to go to the office in Greenville this morning and reschedule. Bad idea that I started out at just before lunchtime, because when I got to the place in the shit side of west Greenville it was spilling out its doors with other people who probably missed their phone appointments too. This scared me off. And the parking lot was crawling. I said to myself, I'll try again tomorrow, wake up early and beat the rush. Oh, I've tried calling. Phones are always busy.

I suppose the most important thing behind all of this, behind the motions I go through and the TV shows and the good intentions, is my sustained mood. Lately, it hasn't been sustained and it certainly hasn't been good all the time. All of what I've just told about I did while trying to hold up a fragile, self-forged feeling of okayness. I've been sad lately...no, apathetic. Nobody's fault, just a place I've fallen into and am now trying to pull myself out of. But this morning, when my eyes opened, I felt the apathy resting over me again, but I made a choice in the moment and said no to it. Of course, that isn't good enough to last all day, but it worked for the next few minutes at least, and so I knew it would be hard but I could keep making the choice to push away the bad feelings all day. I'm still trying.

Driving downtown, I heard a song by Patty Griffin, "Long Ride Home" from the Elizabethtown soundtrack, and sang with her so loud in the car. It made me feel good, so I went to Earshot and bought a whole Patty Griffin album, called Children Running Through. I'm listening to it right now, and it's different a little, different than I expected. I expected a more bluegrassy album but she has a lot of jazz and even rock influence in this one. I don't know what I think about the whole album yet but I love her voice. It helps me have nice feelings inside, which was the whole point why I bought the thing.

Yeah, I'm not really supposed to be spending money right now since my temp job as a Tech Writer is over and I'm trying to get a Library Assistant job with the Greenville Library, which is turning out to be a slow process. I'm in between a few things right now, not just jobs. I'm waiting to start going back to school again, my classes start in a couple of weeks. I'm in between video games, I guess you could say, because I've played the hell out of the Sims 3 for the last few weeks and now I'm burnt out. I guess my apathy is a feeling of waiting, being in between.

I'm getting myself through, though. I've fallen apart a couple times, cried for no reason apparent to people outside myself, like my husband. He helps me through those times as much as he can. But the difference between this time and the past is that I've been here before, and I've learned more each time how to cope.

Lesson #1: Lying in the bed alone in the morning is pretty much the worst thing to do during these times, and should be avoided at all costs.

Lesson #2: Watch some TV. It helps.

Lesson #3: Don't blame your reason for crying on something your husband did to hurt your feelings three years in the past. It will just end up making him cry too. (Yes, I did that)

There are plenty more lessons, but we'll save them.

Also, I am pretty sure I'm some sort of psychic, or whatever word for psychic you want to use to fit your worldview. It's not something I've just realized, but recently it's gotten a little freakish. I have the occasional, unexplained moments of deja vu, but I have also been able to conceptualize or guess the details of things before I even know them. For instance, and I know this is going to sound minor, but it freaked me out: I was driving to my apartment and there was a white styrofoam cup on the curb, and before I saw where it was from, something about seeing the cup made me think randomly about this restaurant called Joy of Tokyo and all of a sudden I wanted to go there. So, I got closer to the cup, and I could see red lettering and realized that it said Joy of Tokyo on the side. How many restaurants have white styrofoam cups and it just happened to be from the restaurant I was thinking about. This instance alone wouldn't mean much if it weren't accompanied by occurances of a similar nature. And it's not like I'm trying to do these things, they just happen.

Not to mention the insane dreams I've been having lately. For the past week, I have woken up early in the morning with my heart racing and the memory of dreams so real and so exhaustingly action-filled that I will just walk around in a daze for at least 20 minutes, with sounds and elaborate scenes from them reverberating throughout me. The real world doesn't even compare, neither does any fiction or film, to the adventure and the emotions I had in these dreams.

And all of this isn't the end of it. I would go into more detail, but a couple of the dreams I've had involve people close to me. I will say, however, that a few months ago, I dreamed that someone I knew (who I hadn't seen or spoken to in over a year) was going to die. Not month later, this person actually passed away.

I've only told my mother and my husband about these things. I've said to myself I wouldn't tell anyone, but it's getting weird lately, and I don't know what the purpose of it all is, or if it has a purpose at all. I'm not even sure I believe it is all linked, or that what is happening is something para-normal. I am sure that if anyone reading this blog can give me any insight or personal experience of their own that relates, I would be happy to not feel alone in dealing with it.

To close out, here is a photo of Aggie, our new greyhound, a 3-year-old girl who wags her tail all the time and still has stitches in from her recent spay:

Insert: Dream Adventure to Ireland

2010-07-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning to drive to my grandma's house in Marietta, SC, a very familiar and well-kept doublewide surrounded by flowerbeds and cats from several different litters up a mountain road. Aunt Jayne, my father's sister, and her husband Uncle Ted (who enjoys puns and traditional celtic music) were on the last day of their visit down from Raleigh, and wanted to see pictures of Ireland and hear about my trip. After I finished apologizing for not being able to show them the first half of Daniel's and my trip to the Emerald Isle because I have seemingly lost the memory card with all the pictures from Dublin, Galway and halfway across the southern coast, I pulled up the what photos on my computer I'd been responsible enough not to lose.

A week and a half ago, on Wednesday evening, Daniel and I finally made it back to the Charlotte airport where both of our mothers were waiting to pick us up so we could all ride home together. That evening when we arrived back to our apartment in Greenville, my mother gave us the news that our greyhound Nicksie had run off while she was staying with my parents while we were away. We stilled haven't found her or discovered where she is yet, and it's been really tough for both me and Daniel. She was our baby. I haven't been able to reflect on my dream adventure to Ireland without a tinge of grief nagging me about Nicksie. But this morning, while I sat at Grandma's kitchen table in front of my laptop with Jayne and Ted looking over my shoulder as I described each photograph's location and story, I was able to gather the amazing memories Daniel and I made together in the land I have dreamed of since childhood, and linger in the beauty and realness of the whole experience as I unravelled its pieces to my aunt and uncle. They went to Ireland some years ago, and could even relate to some of the impressions I got about Ireland's current culture and atmosphere.

I learned something this morning about myself, flipping through photographs nearly taken over by shaggy green landscapes and the gray stones of ruined, ancient structures. Well, actually I knew it but denied it, assuming it was a negative trait. It started with me saying what I've usually tried to say to people when they ask about the trip, something like "It was beautiful and amazing, everything you think it would be and more in the way of landscape and natural surroundings. But the culture is...well...very "westernized" and modern."

What does that even mean? Ireland is a western country, right? Basically, this is my way of saying indirectly that I expected everybody in Ireland to be into their own traditional music, know a huge list of fairytales and legends by rite Irish birth, and be entirely - somehow - quintessentially "Irish". Whatever that means.

What I learned about myself was just this: I have been imposing a personality on Ireland, for my own imagination's benefit, for my entire life. It was my Narnia, my Camelot or Atlantis for the majority of my tortured childhood as a mousey, stick-thin dark-haired girl who didn't really have many friends. I even learned songs in Irish Gaelic and sang them to myself during gym class in 6th grade. I was that weird, and not the kind of weird that hipsters claim pervaded their childhood, for which they can now be indirectly regarded as cool. Nope, I was just sort of a freak that didn't even fit in with the freaks.

You know, the kind of person who wants to go to Rome because - of course - every local has probably descended from the Greek gods in some way, because of Italian men being the most romantic ones you'll ever find, and because everybody sits in cafes drinking espresso all day, reading and thinking about the pasta and wine they'll have for dinner that night. I realized I have regarded Ireland in this way - as a fairytale land where everything is just how I imagined it would be, and that I'd fit in automatically because: I was meant to be in Ireland.

This, however winningly it got me through my imaginative yet uneventful childhood, is just not so. When Daniel and I arrived in Dublin airport and took a rather empty bus into the heavily industrial, pervasively international city, I knew I was in for a wake-up call from my dream. I was even homesick the first day and into that night, and cried over my tea in our no-lights, no-air conditioning hotel room on the second morning of our stay in Dublin. I think I knew it then, that it wasn't going to be exactly what I expected. Daniel and I discussed it, and we both decided to take things for what they are, to experience things as current Irish culture, and not what we expected Irish culture to be.

Maybe you're thinking, at this point, "Duh, Shannon! How can you not know this already?" The thing is, people who have known me all my life, like my family, expected (I believe) for my reaction upon visiting Ireland to be visually ecstatic, like my dreams have come true. Well, my dream has come true, only - it wasn't what I expected. It wasn't even better than what I expected: it was just different, but it was beautiful. For one, I never expected I would get to go there with my best friend and person I love most in the world - my husband. We did it together and, in my memory it is filed away under "Adventures with Daniel" instead of "Wishes Granted".

But, what I realized more fully this morning, was that I should not be embarrassed to admit this to anyone just because I have acted like Ireland equals heaven for my whole life. After all, if everything were exactly how we expected it to be, how could we ever discover and learn new things? This is the biggest thing I took away from my trip to Ireland.

Ireland, I discovered, is a big history casserole, where the layers are often physically visible. From the first days in Dublin, where an early Medieval castle (Dublin Castle) has been amended for many different uses over its lifespan, and is now mainly a tourist spot, to even the land itself, which tells a story in the nutrients of its soil where potatoes were (and still are) grown and the curves in the terrain shaped by millennia of human-land interaction, past ages are still alive in some way in Ireland. But, the thing is, they are valuable for what they lend to Irish history, but Irish culture as well, which is a very alive and progressive while it never forgets its roots.

I'll continue to write about my adventures in The Republic of Ireland in the future, especially so I can tell you about some of the individual experiences we had. In some way, they will inspire me for the rest of my life. But, of course (and this is the beauty of it), never in the way I expected.

A few pictures:

This is a typical western landscape. We took this picture as we drove the way from our ferry over the Shannon to the town of Dingle.

A quiet, picturesque beach on the Dingle Peninsula coast. We tried to drive off the tourist paths and find secluded, hidden places most other travelers would miss. This was one of them. Not to mention, to get to this particular part of the beach we had to climb over a wall-pile of barnacled, seaweed-covered limestone boulders. You can even see Daniel in there, walking unsuspectingly while I take his picture.

More later, I'm having trouble uploading photos right now!

Hope everyone is doing well. Don't worry, I'm back for good now so you'll be reading more of me from now on. Sorry for the huge gap (insert trip to Ireland). :)

Today

2010-06-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Today at work: Can’t focus, my mind is working overtime and needs some fire for all the fuel it has, but all I’ve got to do is some brainless document correcting. Sitting at a grey desk in the corner of a huge room, I glare at a computer screen under florescent lights. A tiny space heater grumbles at my feet. They keep it around 64 in this internal department of offices, beyond a warehouse and through halls, behind doors, like an inner sanctum of air conditioning. Outside it’s pushing 90 and humid as hell from all the rain we’ve had.

By the time 2PM stumbles up, I feel like I might be going a little crazy with that walls-closing-in sensation. I text scramblingly to my husband, a couple friends, with answers enough but not connecting in the way I need to this wire in my mind that seems to be shorted and sparking out its energy into cold air.

Facebook: a terrible pit of deception, artificial socialization. I don’t have a blinking curser over my head as I walk outside from my apartment, making sure everyone knows “Shannon T Greene is taking the trash to the compactor and taking the dog to pee.” If you ask me what music I like, I won’t be able to pull out a picture of the band. And precious few of us ever really look as good as we do in our profile pictures.

But, today is my last day of work for the whole month of June. Next week we make last preparations for our trip, then on Monday June 14th Daniel and I catch a plane to Dublin! I’m borrowing my mom’s camera, a very nice one, much nicer than my little Coolpix. Only the best for the Emerald Isle!

Rejecting Rejection

2010-06-02T12:03:00.000-07:00

Today, I haven’t done much in the way of productive thinking. Productive thought denoting, in my mind, the stuff of creative process – imagining scenes, telling myself bits of story. What I have been doing is my job, which I do not think of as my work. I’ve been writing and revising training documents for a giant pharmaceuticals company, for which they pay me enough money to significantly contribute to my and my husband’s financial cares and entertainment whims. Earphones in and music in my head, I have been getting along pretty well for a day at work. The trick is not to think about any one thing for very long, especially the fact that it is 1:03PM and you can’t leave your desk until 4:30PM.

I got a rejection email from Poetry Magazine the other day. I hadn’t realized that, until I’d received the email, I’d been partially hopeful the powers that be at Poetry Mag would accept my poem and publish it among the other, much more prolific, poets within its pages. This was a foolhardy scrap to leave wandering around in my mind unchecked, because I was definitely more disappointed when I read their (very polite) rejection than I had expected.

Rejection letters/emails can’t mean anything to a writer or any kind of artist. I think, for a couple of days, I let the rejection from Poetry Magazine get me down about my work, and that can destroy you as an artist. Think about it. If you want to be a published writer you must send your writing in to be judged by whatever editors or authorities are in charge, and you will most definitely be rejected – at some point, if not most points. You can’t care. You have to be the end-all on your own work and you have to believe it’s worth something. If you don’t believe that, you have to stop creating because if your work isn’t worth something to you, it is never going to mean anything to anyone else. (Well, it will mean something to your mom.)

I was browsing the Writer’s Almanac for today, and read about the author Barbara Pym, who would have celebrated her 97th birthday today if she hadn’t have died in 1980. She started out looking to publish her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, but it was rejected by a couple publishers. After some time, in 1950, she managed to get it published, and five more novels after that. In 1963, however, she sent her publisher a novel she had just written, which her publisher rejected, claiming that her style of writing was outdated. Then, 16 years later when it seamed the only one besides her who believed in her work was the poet Phillip Larkin:

“In the January 21, 1977 edition of the Times Literary Supplement, writers and scholars were asked to nominate the "most underrated writer of the century." Pym was the only living writer who got two nominations — one from Larkin and one from biographer and scholar Lord David Cecil. And suddenly, she was famous. In the next three years, she published two novels, she was the subject of a BBC program, and Quartet in Autumn (1977), which had been rejected the year before, was nominated for the Booker Prize. Her early novels came back into print, she was published in the United States, and her work was translated into many other languages. But she had cancer, and she died just three years later in 1980.” (Writer’s Almanac)

As I read this section, I smiled to myself and chuckled under my breath at the computer screen. Barbara Pym pretty much got famous after that Times Literary Supplement edition not because her work had changed or gotten better, but because some respected and no-doubt-respectable author-personages said her writing was good. Thankfully for her and for her readers, she never let rejection stop her from creating and believing in her work.

I for one have never read any of Barbara Pym’s books, but I may pick one up in the future. She’s on “the list” (which, by the way, is dauntingly long, especially given my slow reading pace).

This post will end, for no particular reason, with a silly picture of our greyhound, Nicksie, who has a precious little ribbon tied around her head. My little girl!

Pattern of the Positive

2010-05-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

I live a constant life of what I call self-medicating. With a built-up practice of about two years now, I’ve been able to train myself to recognize (most of the time) what kinds of situations and circumstances will trigger a narrowing path of negative thinking and cause me hours, sometimes days, of depression.

My self-medication consists of spaces, both literal and figural in nature. My and my husband’s apartment, for instance, is one of those spaces (though it does the job best when it’s clutter-free). But there are others, like the space in my car on the way home from work, and the quiet plunk of water echoing off walls during a bath. This blog is one of those spaces, as is writing in general; also, walks with my husband in the evening are spaces of a sort. And although the walk spaces are shared, they are shared with my best friend who is a part of me even when I am on my own, so it works. Then there are the more abstract spaces, ones formed mentally and almost spiritually out of habit and survival instinct. The ritual of preparing a cup of tea and the partaking of it is one of these, and a necessary space I keep every day. Then sleep and prayer are perhaps the Great Spaces and the most healing of all.

A couple years back, around the time I began paying marked attention to self-medicating and trying to control how I react to my own emotions, I decided I would go off the antidepressant I was taking. The drug was Lexapro, and I had been on it for about a year though I had taken it previously in 2005 for the first time. I had been warned of the side effects of dropping depression meds cold-turkey, but I had done it that first time with no trouble, and I thought I could probably do it again.

The first few days off the meds seemed fine. But then I started getting these sensations that felt like dulled electrical shocks or zaps in my entire body. I was constantly lethargic, nauseated at certain times of the day, and I even lapsed back into some moments and days of being non-motivated or depressed.

I recalled these things yesterday morning during my daily routine of getting ready for work and listening to Morning Edition on NPR. They did a spot called “Coming Off Antidepressants Can Be Tricky Business”, how it worked for some people and not for others. The spot reminded me of what a tough time I had going off the meds, and that it was definitely not a wise decision to quit abruptly instead of tapering off like doctors recommend, if you must go off.

Thankfully, I had enough will-power…or stubbornness…or enough support around me…or whatever it was that let me just go through with it. I just never wanted antidepressants to become an emotional crutch, but most of all, I wanted to be me without the interference of medicine, however hard that was going to be.

Last night, I talked about the radio spot with my husband, Daniel, and about how thankful I am that I haven’t had another relapse of depression. But then I added that I could never really see that happening now, with all I’ve learned about myself, except maybe in the wake of some awful tragedy. I thought, I don’t know if I trust myself to not go emotionally downward if someone I love died or a natural disaster struck and wiped away all I own and know.

Daniel listened, thought for a moment, and then said, “I don’t think you would go back (into depression) even then. Think of how much you’ve worked at getting to know your feelings, and what you’ve been able to get yourself through.”

And I realized, ultimately, he’s right. I can’t make room for the possibility of more depression. I have to have faith in myself to keep going and learning. And this, in itself, is upholding the pattern of positive thinking, which is the opposite of the pattern that so often is or causes depression.

Self-medication, for me, is largely about spaces. But the point of having those spaces is to fill them with what’s positive to me, things like Saturday morning pancakes, watching the clouds move across the sky, learning new things and reading.

* * *

Last night, Daniel and I drove to my parents’ house, laps laden with the almond shortcake I made and cut strawberries to go with it. It was my baby sister’s twenty-second birthday, just four days before her wedding on Thursday, and we had all decided to celebrate with a cookout. My mom made barbequed ribs that slid off the bone and melted in my mouth, and other southern staples like creamed corn and biscuits and baked beans. Two of my dad’s brothers, Uncle Steve the skinny gray-haired lefty, and Uncle Gary the balding garage owner in a sleeveless shirt, showed up with Uncle Steve’s dog Beebee.

My sister’s best friend and old roommate was up from North Augusta for the party and for the wedding. Vlad, who was born and raised in Romania but stayed with our family while he went to college when I was in my teens, came and brought his girlfriend and her little Chihuahua. And, of course, my mom and dad were there too.

I couldn’t think of anything to get Angela for her birthday. So when I was at the store getting ingredients for strawberry shortcake I just wandered around, thinking something would stand out. I meandered through the housewares section and thought about newlywed house-type gifts, like coffee grinders, throw pillows and waffle makers. They seemed too impersonal for a birthday gift for my sister. I weaved through the crafts section, through the racks of bicycles and baseball bats, and found myself in the toy aisles. It just felt right amid the boxes of games and action figures, like I was coming back home after years of being gone. Then I saw them – canisters of Play-Do with multi-colored lids toppling in stacks.

We used to have Play-Do as kids, but you never lose the desire to create shapes and layer colors with clay as you get older. I tossed ten different colors of the soft clay into my shopping cart, and grabbed something else on the way out through the toys – a Velcro ball game with two catching pads similar to a set that Angela and I played with growing up camping and at the beach.

Just because I wanted to further drive home the half-joke of juvenile gifts, I bought her a Pez dispenser in the shape of Pumba from The Lion King and a glittery gift bag with the Jonas brothers on it.

When I gave it to her, it all had the effect I’d planned: she laughed from the moment she saw the bag until she pulled the last can of Play-do out of the bottom. And I saw in her face that she remembered the childhood connections to each gift just like I did.

I tell this story because it has to do with happiness and nostalgia, which can be closely linked. I tell it because I mean to revel in the wonderful feeling I have when I see my sister smile or hear her laugh. And, I tell it because I want to show that happiness can be planned. I think that lots of people believe that happiness is a product, just what happens as a result of something like a nice compliment or a fun day with someone you love. But it’s just not, and we can know that because sometimes we wait on happiness after things that should bring it to us, and it doesn’t come.

Sometimes, you have to mean to be happy. If you aim at joy, you will hit it more likely than not because you are actively involved in expecting it. Someone once told me – and I think that someone was my sister – that if you smile even when you don’t feel like it, just the act will bring on the feeling that usually accompanies a smile. I’ve tried, and it’s worked every time.

* * *

A pattern, by nature of definition, is something that has been organized and created. If it were not controlled by some force, whatever the pattern is made from would just all fall at random. In the pattern of negative thinking we make decisions, whether we are entirely conscious of them or not, to go down instead of up. If we really desire to, we have the ability to take control of that pattern and transform it to be positive, by reacting in a non- self-deprecating, realistic way to each thing we deal with each day. It is possible to create our own world.

And when we have control over so little as human beings, why not decide to be in control of not just our actions, but our reactions?

A Good Life

2010-05-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

I'm back - to the Blogosphere and to the real world after an extended weekend in Charleston with Daniel!

If I had been in any sort of lull, had time to myself ever in the months before, May is putting a stop to it. With my husband's and my first anniversary, my sister's wedding and all the events that surround it, and the making-ready for our trip to Ireland in June, I have been a complete creature of preparation, planning, practice, bridal shower and - only a little - stressing. But not that much of the last one. They are happy things, these events - memory-makers and the stuff of nostalgia. But now and then I have to slow the clicking frames in my mind and see clearly, even smell and touch, the lovely things and moments in what rushes by. If I don't, this life will not have been worth even the lifting of the chest for breath.

Sometimes I have thought that what we are all really pursuing here on our planet is happiness. Lots of people would argue and say, no, success is what people want, or love, or freedom. But what are those things without happiness, without that secretive, beautiful thing called joy? Nothing. At least not to me. Sure, those things can create happiness and joy, but not for everyone.

Today at work, my boss stopped by my desk on the way to his office. "How was your weekend?" he asked. Of course, he was referring to my anniversary trip for which I had taken Friday off last week.

I beamed, I'm sure, and said, "It was so nice," and paused a moment. Then I added, "I just wish it didn't have to end."

My boss shifted on his feet a little and replied through a sarcastic grin, "All good things come to an end, Shannon."

I smiled back at his jest and nodded, an olive leaf. But when he walked away to his office I sat replaying his statement in my head and the tinge of seriousness in his voice when he said it. In times before, I have realized by the reactions and comments of others in the office - all people at least eight years my senior - that they think I'm a young grasshopper with many life lessons yet to learn. My boss counts as one of the top holders of this opinion, making sure most he gives me a good impression of how much your life is not yours anymore when you have children, and generally giving off "It must be nice for you...," and "Enjoy it while you can...," vibes.

Several moments after I had been rolling the pebble of his statement, "All good things must come to an end," around in my mind, I realized I heartily disagree with him. I even googled the phrase. I found a website called The Phrase Finder, which says that the phrase dates back all the way to the 14th century and the time of Chaucer, where it originated as the English proverb, "All things must come to an end." The "good" wasn't added until much later. But to me, without the "good", it is a completely different statement.

Sure, all things - moments, feelings, journeys, lines at the grocery store, conversations...lives - must end. It's a fact (that is unless you want to get theoretical and mathematical about it). But even if that thing is a good thing, take, for instance, an anniversary weekend in Charleston, it may end but that doesn't mean more good things shouldn't or can't follow. The attitude I sensed in my boss was one of, "Your life may be nice right now, but you just wait." Well, I'm waiting, but I'm waiting with a purpose, being that whatever my life holds for me and those I love, I refuse to feel that I am always waiting on things to get worse.

I'm a firm believer in the idea that a person's perspective will create his or her world. A person can lose everything she owns, be left completely alone having lost everyone she loves, or be in the center of a tornado and still note the beauty of life and value its every fiber. On the other side of the coin is the person who has everything he could want, be blessed with loved ones and still find things to make him miserable. I'm not saying sadness or anger or even depression are not parts of life that we all have. But we can pull ourselves up and focus on what's good and lovely in the world.

I say all this because of my boss, because my life is boring many days. I have lost loved ones, and I have lost respect where I desired to keep it. But I carry on. I look at the earth - the sky, the greens of the trees and the many deep colors and dimensions around me and know that the same life force holds and balances it all - including me. And because I am blessed with true love and a sound mind, I do not just carry on, I hunger for more.

So Tom (my boss): I don't care if I have eleven children just like my grandma did on my father's side - I will allow them to bring me all the joy I can receive from them. I will continue to love my husband above anyone else and desire him above all else.

And I will not let the Good end in me, as long as I breathe.

Street Cool and Steampunk

2010-04-21T18:26:00.000-07:00

I've been reading and writing a good bit lately. Writing a short story and rolling ideas around in my hands, seeing what they feel like. But, I do not want to neglect this more lucid, revelatory outlet of expression, my blog.

Two things:

1. I am at a coffeeshop after having a long run in the park with a new friend. Earlier, as I neared the entrance to the coffee establishment I crossed the path of two, we'll say, urban gentlemen. They had the dark baggy clothing that looks to me like a toddler playing dress-up in his big brother's closet. They had pristinely groomed patches of hair on their chins and shiny stones in their ears. And one of them was carrying an iPod dock complete with iPod, completely turned on and completely playing some illin' beats matching the rhythm of their swagger. What is this, the early 90's? It's socially strange to have music playing to your walk, like you're in some Chris Tucker movie and everything's cool because your ego's being bolstered by you thinking people are watching how awesome you look.

**Note: Overheard a table conversation. You only need to know what one of them was saying. "Oh so are you a nurse? Are you in nursing school? Oh, you're a doctor!" Nice work.

2. I have pleasantly, officially discovered the subgenre/subculture/style called "steampunk". If you've been into steampunk forever and think it's crazy I only just found out about this, hold on a minute. I've been reading books, watching movies and enjoying things that could be called steampunk for, well, my whole life. I only just discovered there was a specific name for it. And now that I can focally identify and define this sublimely intriguing world of art, fashion and literature, I just can't stop going, "Ooo, that's steampunk," in my mind to things that fall into this subcategory. Like I said, lots of books and entertainment I've enjoyed can be acurately called steampunk. The first one that came to mind was Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass and the His Dark Materials trilogy. Then, and I know it doesn't fully qualify, but I thought of the movie Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome with Mel Gibson. I love this post-apocalypse creation not only for the story itself, but for its interesting blending of past and future aesthetics.

And now I can buy that knee-length tight leather vest I've been eyeing for years at the local Renaissance festival and not feel like I'd look like a renny (new term for you? Look it up) when I wear it. It's definitely something Lyra would have worn on the way to find Lord Asriel in the North.

That's all for now....Now, go have an adventure sometime in the coming week! Even a small one, like taking a walk to a new neighborhood, or going to work a different way than the day before. Those things help life seem a little more interesting, and they are good for happiness too.

Sticking to the Plan

2010-04-14T06:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve recently been questioning the idea of writing intimate details about myself, sans alias, in a blog. It got me in a little fix at work, and I have been hesitant about continuing to write what I feel and go through in the days following. It wasn’t that big of an issue with my boss in reality, but just the fact that someone said, “No, stop,” at all was enough to take my hands off the keys completely for a bit. I believe in complete intellectual, and therefore, writing freedom, but those who take that freedom up should be prepared to answer for what they write (in my case, when I write as well). I didn’t see it coming, so I wasn’t prepared.

It won’t stop me though. See, here I am, and hopefully will be in days to come (with a much smaller gap between posts). So don’t lose faith in me, those of you who are readers of my blog: family, friends, and people I don’t know, though I’m pretty sure there are much more of the first two than the last one. I’m not shot down easily.

I even started losing my emotional footing while I couldn’t write (blogging is currently my most continuous writing outlet). Though I wrote a couple of fragments of things, put them aside and sent one to be judged for a contest, the satisfied aura of having written a few lines I actually like fades until I do it again the next day, or whenever it happens that I do it again. Having a definite place to set out some scenes and images for anyone to read has become a kind of nestling place where I can settle down in and roll out of being recharged emotionally. I can’t give that up and be a complete person.

If I have to have one outside of my husband and my home, if I can’t remember why I’m where I am, if I need one to tell my stories as a human, a child, a lover, a believer, a reader – this blog is my happy place. It’s become what I created it to be, and that is the most beautiful thing when you set out to create something.

Whoever is out there reading this right now, I have an idea. I’d thought about putting some fiction I write on my blog. Not whole ones, of course, just parts and pieces so I can use them in the future and they won’t be considered “published”. Anything I put on here would, of course, still follow the Pancake Plan of finding beauty and happiness in life, however abstractly or subtly. What do you think?

Notes from a parking spot

2010-04-06T18:38:00.001-07:00

I don't have much time to write, but I haven't posted in a few days. I'm sitting in my car in a parallel parking spot downtown on main street with my laptop open on the dashboard. Fresh from my husband's high school soccer game. They lost. Waiting for him to drive the kids back to the school and meet me downtown for food.

The word on the street is I got busted for blogging at work. Hence, my longer absence than I would have liked. How did this happen? I friended my boss on Facebook and he used it to read my blog and nail me for some revealing things I wrote about my blogging intrigues at my work computer. Doesn't take me that long to write. It's not like I'm not doing work or something, not getting things done. Whatev.

So from now on I have to write in the in between times of my life. Like now, in my driver's seat in the dark, with carhorns and kids yelling to each other across the street. It somehow makes me want to string words together even more, now that time for it's hard to come by.

Now I have to close up and meet Daniel. Don't worry, whoever is actually reading this - I'll be back tomorrow.

In Transition

2010-03-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

It's going to harder and harder now to stay inside, to pretend to be an adult making money, pulling my economic weight. I am blaming solely the close sunshine, the air laden with the odor of blooming dogwoods and the yellow pollen. The cool, green grass subtracts years off my age back to about twelve, when I was still rolling around in it and clothing myself in it and in the meantime discovering womanhood.

The dogwoods remind me of it especially. They smell like menstration when fully bloomed, just like I did. I wore white jean shorts that day. Some boys I didn't know pointed at my crotch and cackled at me when I walked to my mom's car after school let out. But I only found out when I got home and went to the toilet. I told my mom I had chocolate in my underwear, but when I showed her she gave me the ultimatum.

"That's your period," she said, after deliberating then smiling like she'd discovered a lost secret, "You're becoming a woman."

The words tugged at my chest, as if someone was taking something away from me against my will.

"I don't want to be a woman," I said, and I cried for an hour, burying myself in the blankets on my mother's bed.

Later I walked out the front door into the summer heat of the South that can't accurately be called air. Down the road lived a horse named Lobo, whose owner had told me I could come brush it and pet it whenever I wanted. My size 5 Nikes took me straight to Lobo's gate, and I cried for awhile longer, explaining my newfound crisis to him and wiping my face on his mane.

When I saw in his silver-dollar brown eyes that he understood, I patted him and walked to the old Civil War graveyard overrun with ivy and anthills across the street. It was the only place in the neighborhood - the only place in town, I was certain - where you could get a cool breeze on a 92 degree day. In the summer, the atmosphere of the graveyard was damp and mossy, calming and reticent. It was only in autumn, nearing Halloween, that the neighborhood kids payed any attention to it and it became somehow ominous and creepy.

Of that day it's all I can recall. I'm sure I walked back home, ate supper with my family, returned to business as usual, as much as a little girl can with blood leaking from her vagina for the first time in her life.

The dogwoods, the tiny white flowers clustered, turning pink with bleeding edges as they age, will fall off and lay their backs on the hard brown earth in a few weeks. Spring seems to be the most short lived of the seasons, the adolescent season of transition. But it's the most florid and langourous, when things rise with new life and shed a bittersweet husk.

Part Irish, Part Cherokee, Part Elf

2010-03-30T07:19:00.001-07:00

I figure I'd better go ahead and blog now or it might not happen today. The reason is because, if I know what I'm going to write about, I tend to think and think and build the idea until it's much too big for a blog and then because something of an opinion essay and potentally a dissertation. That just can't be.

Woke up this morning, went to the toilet with the song "Indian Outlaw" playing in my head for some reason. It's this Tim McGraw country song from like 1994, and I haven't heard it in years, let alone ever cared to hear it anyway. I suppose I know the tune by default because the side of my family I grew up around is a bunch of southern mountain folk, with a few hicks and a couple rednecks (there is a difference). This is not a bit of fact I am neither proud or ashamed of. It's where I come from. So, back to the song. As I was washing my face and brushing my face and humming "...half Cherokee and Choctaw...", I recalled that there was some controversy over "Indian Outlaw" within the American Indian tribes in the US. Being descendant more than one Cherokee ancestor, I kind of felt guilty for having looping in my head.

So I looked it up when I got to work and found that the controversy was over the stereotypical language about American Indians used in the song. I read the lyrics and yeah, they're dumb.

I'd like to know what percentage of Cherokee heritage I have. I guess it doesn't really matter, I'm just curious. I've been on a good many Native American websites and forums for different purposes, and the general consensus I've noticed is one of exclusivity, that if you're not full-blooded and part of a tribe those who are think you're sort of silly for trying to figure out your Indian roots. I know I've got to be less than half Cherokee, but it'd be nice to be able to place myself genes-wise. I'm dark-haired, dark-eyed and yellowish-tanned, with a round face and high prominent cheekbones. Kids in school used to always ask if I was Chinese/Hispanic/Italian/whatever else. In college it was sort of a joke and my friends just started calling me "ethnic". I know my looks come from my Indian genes, I just wish they were closer to my generation so I could claim them more easily.

So here's to being American, Southern Appalachian, a hodge-podge of Irish, Scottish, Cherokee and who knows what else.

Now, let's think about what's been good about today so far:

1. I didn't get any speeding tickets today. I was soo cautious on my way to work this morning. In fact, they should have pulled me over and given me a pardon for yesterday's offense for such defensive and apologetic driving.
2. My boss is out sick. Hence why I am blogging so early in the day. I may be getting too comfortable though, because I'm on my second cup of tea for the day and I still feel like I haven't quite woken up yet.
3. A lovely new writer I'm currenty enjoying. Her name is Theodora Goss and she writes these strange fantastical short stories. I'm reading her collection entitled In the Forest of Forgetting. I will definitely be writing more about her in a later post. For now I'm getting to know her stories better.

I wish work was like class and you didn't have to call in if you wanted to skip. I just want to go outside and play.

Actually I'd like to be making my way into this enchanted forest:

Yes, I think I'd much rather do that. Maybe I can find the Elves and they can tell me my heritage. Maybe Theodora Goss lives there somewhere.

Off-Days and Silly Finds

2010-03-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

It feels like way too long since I've been here. I didn't mean for it to be; I always look forward to my next post. But, incidentally, I had to actually do work at work last week a good bit, so I didn't get time to write at my office desk. And we don't have the internet in our apartment, which my husband has been talking about rectifying. Hopefully we'll have it soon. Still, things have happened over the last few days I haven't written, though some are more pleasant than others. Let me start with the unpleasant to get them out and done with.

Not-So-Great Things:

1. I was in a sad mood last night and tried to blame it on Daniel for not being exactly what I needed when I needed it. Thing is, he does an amazing job of that pretty much all the time. We just missed a bit yesterday, that's all. You have those off-days. Yesterday was one of them.

2. I got pulled over for speeding on the way to work this morning. As you probably can imagine, no matter how much I try to think about positive things, this fact is like a nasty rusted anvil dropped in the bottom of my day. If I have a certain allowance of happies alloted to me at the start of each day, being pulled and ticketed subracted at least half of them. This is on top of the ones I woke up without due to this sort of hangover I had from being sad and upset last night.

3.....this sucks, I'm not doing this anymore!

I'm supposed to be focusing on good things here. Enough. Enough head-hanging and venting. I have things to be happy about.

Things-to-Live-For:

1. And this is number one every day. My husband loves me and cares about me more than anything in the world. Even if I act like a bitch sometimes, he's still beside me trying to help me work through it.

2. A great find I had last week. The company I work for owned Ray-Ban eyewear back through the 1980's and 90's up until a few years ago, and they'd sell sunglasses and other things to employees from this closet-type-room-turned-store. I was in there last week opening boxes for a company product giveaway for employees to celebrate the launch of a new product. I came across a few relics that have obviously been holed up in the store-room for some time. This is the best one:

I tried to tell my boss they might make a few bucks if they put this obviously awesome Wayfarer mirror from the 80's on ebay. I was serious, but I'm pretty sure he didn't take it that way. 80's styles are currently vogue again, if only he knew.

Here's another time capsule for you.

Let's play "Guess That Decade".....the 90's! That's right. I'm pretty sure if Topanga from "Boy Meets World" met this sexy Ray-Ban model in a coffeeshop after a DMB concert, she'd drop Corey in a second.

3. I haven't blogged about this at all yet, but now it's official: I'm going to Ireland in June! Daniel and I put down the deposit and got our airline tickets this weekend. We'll be gone about 3 weeks, touring Southern Ireland. I have always wanted to go, so this is a lifetime wish coming true. I'll definitely blog a bit while we're on the road there.

Ok, I suppose I'll get back to work now. At least spring is here to stay for a bit.

Being Awake

2010-03-23T12:05:00.000-07:00

I am, at the moment, secretly and illegally (I'm sure) typing this blog at my desk at the slow end of the work day. The process is made slower each time I hear commotion in my boss's office like he's getting ready to come to my desk and tell me something and I have to minimize the Blogger window and pretend like I'm working. It's a very, very tedious and nerve-racking enterprise, writing for myself at work. I shouldn't do it I suppose, but it gives me a little extra rush of adrenaline that makes blog-writing seem tantalizingly forbidden.

My boss just walked by. I have to finish this sentence by the time he starts back from the copier.

Speaking of the copier...my old friend. I spent the rest of the time after lunch yesterday and the whole morning today at the copier printing 200 copies of a 48 slide Powerpoint presentation. Now, it wasn't that bad, at least I had something definite to be doing on which no one could question the utilization of my time. It is obvious in our office why I have to stand at the copier the entire copying session - the damn thing jams all the time and you have to open it up and pull out the crumpled, masticated papers - culprits of the copier sabotage. At least I had my iPhone with me and played Epic Pet Wars until I couldn't level up anymore. Then I started getting really bored and began looking up game ideas for my sister's bridal shower I'm throwing her this Sunday. If you know me, you know this is a dangerous sign of severe boredom.

I wanted to write yesterday about the small adventure my husband and I had this past weekend (I was prevented from doing this by being chained to the copier). As I am now somewhat comfortably seated and somewhat unbothered at my desk, I can properly tell the tale.

Friday morning we lazed in bed, dozing in warmed folds of blankets and each others arms while the room colored to the sunlight. We didn't turn on the TV, but dressed and drove to Cracker Barrel for a late breakfast of French toast and jellied biscuits. That first meal, like the waking, was free to do as it wished, meandering and taking its time. Despite this, we were packed and leaving the apartment by noon, leaving a key over the doorframe for my mom to feed the dog.

I didn't know where we were going, and I suspect Daniel didn't know either at first, but we headed towards the mountains, always a good start. Daniel used the maps application on his iPhone. He doesn't like to type in a starting point and destination, rather he enjoys spreading the map with his fingers and finding a route manually, even accidentally.

"Am I allowed to know yet?" I asked, trying not to act too curious.

"Thought we'd check out Saluda."

His parents had talked about Saluda, a small mountain town where they sometimes went to visit a favorite restaurant. I'd wanted to visit Saluda when I heard about it. I wanted to feel the smalltown-ness, walk through the antique stores and hear the quiet between the foothills.

We stopped in Saluda and lingered aside the sloped main street, making our way from the tiny elementary school building, past the eateries and shops, towards a forlorn playground and small skatepark blown through with debris. We thought perhaps a storm with strong winds had visited the town a few days before.

As we closed our car doors and crossed Saluda's railroad tracks, relics or technology we could not tell, I didn't have to ask him before he gave up the answer like a hidden bouquet.

"We'll drive through Landrum, then to Tryon," Daniel's mouth was stitched up at the corners, he was giddy with the opportunity to please and lavish upon me.

Sometimes we go to a restaurant in the private-feeling town of Landrum, the Hare and Hound. We passed through, stopping for fishing licenses at a hardware store across the street from the restaurant. Daniel's never been fishing, and seeing as how my Dad took me every year from a very young age, I plan on teaching him this Spring.

Tryon, to me, means horses. I rode when I was a kid, going to shows in Tryon. Daniel, being the serendipitous navigator, sniffed out a horse show going on at a park. We parked to tresspass and onlook at the show, where riders were mounted on tall, muscular mares and geldings. Mostly the sun had incubated the different smells into a singular, langourous odor of horse hide and shit, which wafted down to the wide creek where we sat on rocks in the shade and watched a little girl try to catch tadpoles. I leaned on Daniel's shoulder and stared at our shadows on the water below us wavering, a single shadow lump instead of two separate figures. You couldn't tell we were two different beings by looking at the shadow. You couldn't even tell we were human.

I took pictures with my phone since I had forgotten my camera, and we packed ourselves back into the car where it sat, its leather baking in the raw spring sun.

On to Columbia, where we always knew we'd end up. We arrived a few hours before Dave Bazan would climb onto an already-humid tavern stage, and walked the streets of Five Points below USC Columbia. Later, we met Daniel's older brother and some of their friends to eat a bite at a Mexican restaurant and watch them get blasted on Dos Equis.

After the show - which was too long - Daniel and I got a room at a Holiday Inn Express outside Columbia. It was 1:30AM now, but we made love until we fell asleep like we awoke that morning, holding each other.

Few pictures I took with my phone:

This is the girl at the creek. She kept asking her mom, "How do people catch tadpoles?"

Daniel inside the hardware store in Landrum where we got our fishing licenses. He looks like he is brooding over the tiny hats below his face (which are really normal-sized hats on a wall beyond him). PS - An old lady won $8 from the lottery when we were in the store waiting for our licenses. She couldn't stop bragging.

This is a horse at the horse show in Tryon. A girl was letting it graze a bit away from the riding rings and I asked her if I could take a picture. I'm sure she thought I was a little creepy.

Getting a chance to breathe

2010-03-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

It seriously feels like Friday to me. Maybe because I am not going to work tomorrow! A couple of weeks ago when I was feeling rather upset about generally everything, my sweet and loving husband suggested we both take a day off and just go driving somewhere. Tomorrow is that day, and we may even stay overnight somewhere.

Thing is, I haven't been allowed to know what we're doing. At first I was all, well how can I plan accurately for us being gone when I don't even know where we are going and how long we'll be there? But then I started to realize how nice it would be if I just left all the details to Daniel and he just surprised me. I can tend to try to control, in some way, just about everything in my life, if I am left to it. This is why the day off with no agenda will be good for me, and my husband knows it.

The only thing I know about the trip is that we are going to end up in Columbia tomorrow night to see Dave Bazan at New Brookland Tavern. Daniel is a big fan, and I got him the new album, Curse Your Branches, for Christmas this past year. We went to see Bazan in Asheville a while back, which was the first time I had heard him really. I enjoy his music, and I really like his newest album. Though, he is really depressing (God knows I don't need any pushes in that direction) to listen to sometimes because his music and lyrics are quite melancholy. I'm looking forward to the show, where I'm sure I'll be out of place among the scenesters who still think they're ahead of the fashion world while it passed them by a few seasons back.

I can't wait until work ends today so I can start my weekend! The only (and I mean only) downside to this is that I won't get to blog for the next couple of days, unless I bring my laptop and find somewhere to sit and blog for a bit on the road. Even if not, I'll take plenty of notes and pictures and share our small journey when we return.

Tonight is the only high school soccer game Daniel has to coach this week, so it'll be a late night. Don't mattuh, ahm sleepin' in tomorrow (he better let me).

P.S- I need advice....keep growing hair or cut it all off? What do you think? Here's my hair now, with waaayy too many layers growing out from my last super-short cut last September:

It's clearly overtaking my face. Should I go Natalie Portman-short or keep growing it and get a trim? My inclination is to leave it alone because I hate having to think about it at all. But today is a particularly irritating bad hair day, so that's why I'm considering this.

Weird Spirits

2010-03-17T08:09:00.001-07:00

I'm in a strange state of mind today. Daniel and I both woke up late this morning and I never really blinked all the sleep away until about 10:15AM. I'm still barely holding on to cognizance, with little enthusiasm for much of anything. I just want to get my work done and get the day over with. At least the new season of Ghost Hunters comes on tonight.

I know, I'm a dork for watching Ghost Hunters. And not in a cool, I'm-a-hipster-dork sort of way. More like the same kind of dork I am for knowing Celine Dion did a cover of Cyndi Lauper's "I Drove All Night", let alone knowing any Celine Dion song at all. That kind of knowledge, random as it is, will not get you the title of Random Info Coolster, it'll get you something more like Knows Stuff Nobody Cares About.

I'm still watching Ghost Hunters anyway.

Speaking of ghosts and dorkiness, I have this app on my iPhone that allows you to take photos then insert images of ghosts somewhere in the picture. These are highly amusing to me, and I've victimized most of my family, and quite a few of my friends with the application, who aparently have some haunting spirits hanging around. My husband has more than a few.

My husband let our ghost out of the closet

I think ol' Civil War Sam wants a bite of my Dad's casserole

We think that Sam, by reappearing in different places is trying to bring us some message. Once, he appeared in the living room behind Daniel from a gray smoke long enough to psychokenetically tell us that the South will rise again. We told him to go to hell but he says he's been there, and they don't got separate sections for blacks and whites so he decided keep hanging around in Limbo.

Do I have a creepy little girl floating behind me? I feel as though I do.

Civil War Sam is relentless, following me and my sister to Cracker Barrel one morning. Give it a rest Sammy....I mean seriously give it a rest.

Ok, back to work now. Blogging at work is a bad idea.

But pictures of my family with ghosts in the background...that makes me smile.