For instance, the Kentucky Derby is my fave sporting event. This year, I had a near-miss with my bet. All week long, I had insisted that I’ll Have Another- after all, that’s a pretty familiar phrase for me. But, then, at the last possible moment, I decided to bet my big money (ten dollars) on Liaison. Never go against your ogenblik, as Jay Leef would say. (Although, I’m not sure that’s even the right word that he says.) Never go against your first instinct.

Luckily, I had five dollars left over after having placed bets for various friends/family, so I stuck it on I’ll Have Another to win. And, win he did. I ended up with $82 extra dollars in my pocket! So, yay!

Another of my May musts, is the East End Yard Sale. I love, love, love this day mostly because I love to wander around Charleston’s Historic District and see so many people I love. I wasn’t keen on shopping much this time, although I did get another Madonna statue. A girl can’t have too many immaculately conceived beings looking out for her in her bedroom, right? No wonder I can’t get a date.

East End Yard Sale

Hahahaha… I’m just kidding- I can totally get a date.

The third thing I love about May is my friend Greg’s totally great Red Party. I haven’t been for a couple of years and might have to skip it this year, too. But, I love that it’s an option and- even if I don’t make it- I’ll know that all of my Commie friends are out at the farm having fun.

I know this is a lot of bullshit mumbling, but per usual, I just had to write something out loud to get my voice back.

Here’s hoping that this weekend brings us closer to a Triple Crown Winner!

Oh.
My.
God.

There are not enough exclamation points for me to adequately express to you how much I love the paintings that are there now. The artist is Tracy Stuckey and all I really know about him is … well, everything on his bio, which you can find here.  The only other thing I know about him is that he must be some kind of genius. If I had eight thousand extra dollars, one of the paintings would be mine. Alas, extra dollars are a thing of the past for most of us, am I right?

Still, I really, really wish I could buy Red White and Blue El Camino. Or, Walking Truffles and Soufflé. Or What a Dangerous Life, 1 and/or 2.

First of all, I love the size of the paintings: they’re big! And bright! And, they’re funny and sad and sexy- and horribly NOT sexy- in the way that Hollywood is sexy/not sexy… and I love them. They remind me of the image I had in my mind about how California would be- before I moved there, of course. But, they also remind me of how California actually turned out to be. Not that the paintings are necessarily set in California- maybe only a few of them are. But, oh… I just… it’s hard to describe how incredibly flawed, but incredibly accurate the narrative is.  Which, I gather might be the point.  Or, one of them, at least.

Whew.

Anyway, seeing the paintings knocked me into a tailspin of nostalgia Googling the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in quite a while. I Googled the ranch I used to live on in the desert and, thanks to Google Earth and the street view, I was able to see how the place looks now. I searched old friends from Los Angeles on Facebook and reconnected with some of them. And, I dug out some old journals that I’d written about my days in sunny SoCal.

All of this is to say that I really want to write about everything that went down back then, but where to begin? And, what do I do now that my children have caught my Google addiction? They’ve both admitted to Googling me, which makes me fear them more than I already did. Can I still tell all the stories of my misspent youth now that they have the power of the Internet at the tips of their grubby little fingers?
We shall see, dear reader- we shall see…

Tonight, my friend and Esse Diem blogger Elizabeth Gaucher and I will chat LIVE (8 pm EST) about writing and blogging. I just really wish you’d join us!

Oh, and, speaking of writing and blogging, I’m still working on my piece for today. (It’s still Monday, after all, I’m not late yet.) Tonight’s chat will be good for me because I’ve been struggling a bit to try to figure out what I’m willing to share in the blog and what I’m not. I’ll be interested in getting EDG’s take on things. Hope to see you there!

Anyway, traditionally my plan for Ash Wednesday is to get my ash in church (get it?) during the noon Mass at Sacred Heart.  I don’t go to Sacred Heart very often during the year as I’m a member of a smaller, more relaxed Catholic church in South Charleston. Because of that, it feels special when I get to go to the more conventionally beautiful co-Cathedral with its massive marble altar and ornate gold-plated Tabernacle doors.  Spiritually speaking, I get more out of my own church community, but sensuously speaking, I delight in the older, more formal church.  I love the cool feel of the dank air as it hits me upon entering the sanctuary, the sound of the heavy wood doors echoing behind me, the creaking of the rows of kneelers being taken down or put up at all at once, and the perfume of the candles and incense.  Oh, my God- (<–literally) I just love it!

This year my routine was the same. I left work right before noon to walk the three or four blocks from the main library to the church and as I did, I thought about how both buildings are sacred to me.  The library has that great, musty, old-book smell, and the floor feels as hard and cold underfoot as the church’s does.  Outside, the sun shone brightly and the air was warm with an occasional cool breeze that made me pull my coat together. Walking past the Peanut Shoppe, I could smell the warm, roasted nuts and homemade caramel corn.  I rounded the corner and passed a friend’s shop, the handle decorated with rainbow-colored, knitted, yarn and a sign that read: “Pull ‘cause you’re cool”.  Picking up the pace to a jog, I greeted several friends and acquaintances who were heading to Capitol Street to spend their lunch hours over soup or perhaps a scoop of creamy butter pecan ice cream.  Slowing as I neared the corner of Leon Sullivan Way, I stopped to offer a quarter to a fellow churchgoer who needed just a bit more time on her meter.  Her smile of thanks made me feel glad that I happened to have some spare change in my pocket.  It was a lovely and beautiful day in Charleston and by the time I entered the church my heart was brimming with love and happiness.

Now, I’ll pause to let you know that, ordinarily, sitting quietly gives me time to think.  And, thinking- for me- is not always a good thing.  Some of my thoughts are not the greatest (I look fat; the electric bill is ridiculously high; I wonder why she said that; what’s the meaning of life; etc.) and, furthermore, my thoughts can be quite loud.  Luckily, yesterday I was able to focus on the whole “Word of God” thing, so sitting there quietly turned out mostly okay.   When it was time to reflect on my own intentions, I was able to send up a prayer for a well-loved man in town- a friend and former neighbor- who had passed away that morning- I tried to remember the sound of his thickly-accented speech as I thought of him.  I prayed for a newly married friend, friends who are engaged, friends who are pregnant, friends and family who are caring for sick loved ones, and- of course- I prayed that God would keep an eye out for my little ones.  But, mostly I asked God to help me stay out of my own way: to help me do more listening, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting, walking, greeting, smiling, spare change-ing, kneeling, praying, loving, doing… and less (ahem) gosh darned thinking. 

I’m pretty sure happiness is about action.  Or, as the King (and by this I mean Elvis) would say: A little less conversation, a little more action.  What better time to take action than during Lent, right?  Fasting, praying, and almsgiving- those are all actions.  So, to that end, I ambled back to work, stopping to grab a veggie sub from a local, independent shop that will close soon.  I heard the warmth in the voices of other customers who offered words of concern and regret for the owner.  I listened to his careful optimism as he thanked them and assured them that he would find something else.  Back at my desk, I savored the sweet-hot of grilled banana peppers under gooey melted cheese on a warm, soft bun and felt grateful to the man for this delicious sandwich. (Which, incidentally should have been my one full meal of the day, but wasn’t.  Ah, well… I try.)

So, for these forty days, I intend to focus on action. (Also, not drinking alcohol.)  If you’re in Charleston and you happen to see me sitting alone with a pensive look on my face (or drunk), please- for the love of God- say something to snap me out of it!

Of course, trying to write wasn’t what I did first.  I took the kids to see the Princess Bride, stopped at the store on the way home, fixed dinner (bagged Caesar salad, a smorgasbord of frozen pizza, and pie for dessert- it’s Merry Monday, after all), did laundry, washed dishes, put the kids to bed and then sat down with my laptop.

I opened a blank Word document and set about writing what I had intended as a piece about the impermanent nature of things. (Look for it on Thursday.) But, just in case there was any last minute inspiration to be found, I headed on over to the Facebook.  I thought I’d just check in and out every few minutes- you know- how I do.  But, when I checked it there were a bunch of people talking about the Princess Bride which featured prominently into the piece I was getting ready to write.  And, everyone was so witty. 

Oh, no! What if, by the time I posted my piece to the blog, people were totally over reading about how everyone LOVES the Princess Bride?  What if my post were already irrelevant before it had even been written?  And, why take paragraphs to write stuff that could probably be summed up in a Twitter-length?

(An aside: did I just coin a new term there?  A Twitter-length?  A unit of measure… like a league or something? Should I submit that to Urban Dictionary?)

Anyway, I became distracted. Fearful.  STUCK.

“I need something,” I said to my boyfriend Chet.  “Like, make something up that we can do that’s fun when I’m done writing in about 45 minutes.”

“A reward, you mean?”

“Yeah, but what’s that thing you always say?  Like, when we have to do chores around the house?  What do you call it?”

He paused.  “A carrot, you mean?  Like, you need me to dangle a carrot?”

“YES- that’s it!  I like when you say that.  It always reminds me of this fabric poster-y thing I used to have in my room when I was little.”  And then… “I wonder if I could find a picture of that on the Internet.”

Which is how I spent the next twenty minutes:  conducting Google image searches for “seventies fabric wall hanging rabbit carrot” and “fabric poster bunny carrot string”.  Mostly, I got a lot of ideas for Easter crafts, plus some adorable photographs of actual rabbits, and several images of half-naked or scantily clad women.  (I would’ve guessed that I might come across a Playboy Bunny or two, but- no- these were just random topless women, which I guess is a staple of any web search, anywhere, ever.)

“Maybe I need to write my story out by hand,” I said.

“Yeah, I think you’re getting distracted by the Internet.  You write on paper and I’ll see if I can find the rabbit thing.” 

Chet took the laptop from me and I grabbed a legal pad and pen, stacked them on top of my clean, but unfolded laundry and started up the stairs.

But before I could get very far: “Found it!” my hero exclaimed from the other room. 

How is that even possible?  I’m usually the only one that finds anything around this house! Well, it turns out that it sort of really was me who found it, if you count the fact that I suggested changing “seventies” to “vintage” wall hanging.

Sure enough, there it was listed on eBay for $18 and with free shipping, at that- a piece of my childhood for under twenty bucks!  I reminisced over his shoulder for a minute, silently debating whether to buy the thing using PayPal (which I guess I’ve decided is a form of play money based on the way I throw it around), but ultimately I resumed my long, lonely march upstairs to my doom. 

I mean “writing”- “to my writing.”

Seriously.  How can something I say I want to do- something that (when it works) is so fulfilling- be so goddamned hard?

Settled into my bed, I began crafting my story again, coming at it from one angle and then another, occasionally pausing to remind myself that my very favorite President (after FDR), one Mr. William Jefferson Clinton, wrote his entire book My Life longhand.  Certainly, I could churn out one lousy blog post this way.  (Save for some sporadic journaling and my even more sporadic Morning Pages, I usually write on a computer.)  I just hoped my hand wouldn’t cramp up.

About five minutes and two complete sentences in, I heard a muffled sob from across the hall.  I threw down my paper and  went to check on my little girl, who was sitting up in her bed.

“I can’t sleep,” she cried.  “Didn’t you get my text?”

(Oh, what, Internet?  So, we text in the house sometimes, so what? My grandparents’ house on Virginia Street used to have an intercom system.  There’ s no difference.)

Anyway, my daughter has been texting me from her dad’s when she can’t doze off.  And, even here, I’ve noticed it takes her longer to get to sleep lately.  I’m worried about her.  But, tonight, I smoothed her hair back off her forehead, opened my Kindle, and played her the theme song from the Princess Bride. She had loved the movie earlier in the evening and this seemed to settle her in for a good night’s sleep.

Child soothed, and hopeful to finally get this thing written, I climbed back in bed with my trusty medium-point Bic and my legal pad.

“Is that the original version of that song?” Chet, who had since come to bed, asked looking up from his game of Angry Birds.

“It’s a live version, but it’s the same guy.  Willie Deville,” I reply.

“But, did Mark Knopfler write it?  Because he did the music for the movie.”

Now, I’m confused.  I look up from my writing.  Two more words down on paper.  I’m really flying through this thing. 

“Well, right, but doesn’t that just mean that he picked the music out and stuff?  Like, you know, how Danny Elfman or T. Bone Burnett does all the time?” 

I mean… I think I’m right on this.  But, just in case he doubts me and also because I’m not totally sure about it, I decide to Google.  Thanks be to God for the Google.  I know I have something to do- some writing to get done or something, but I just really need to know if Mark Knopfler wrote the music in the Princess Bride, or just coordinated it, or whatever.  But, this particular Google search (“Mark Knopfler Princess Bride”) was cut short at “Mark Knopfler Pr” because before I could finish, Google suggested this: Mark Knopfler Prank Calls. 

Why on earth would Mark Knopfler be making prank calls and to whom?!

I could go on for a while about the rabbit hole that Mark Knopfler’s prank calls became for me, but suffice it to say that I didn’t get back to writing until I had listened to several very angry people trying to figure out why (a totally American-sounding) Mark Knopfler would be screwing with them over the phone.

Which brings us up to speed.  Or, would have just about brought us up to speed, had I not had to type all of this after writing it out on paper.  So, I guess, we’re not so much “up to speed” as “twenty minutes behind”.  But, you get the idea: we’re almost here.

Yes, here I lie (but, only not really, since I am typing the words- sitting up- that I wrote out in cursive about, oh, twenty minutes ago)… here I lie, struggling to write about something that’s happened to me here in the big city, only to find that I can’t even make it out of my own head.

“Does this ever happen to you?” I ask Chet.  (Or, asked him, when he was awake and not snoring, which is not now, but was then.) 

Chet is an artist.  He paints, he sculpts, he draws. (Sometimes nude women, which I don’t care for, but I digress.)

“Do you ever start to paint, but instead of it being fun, it feels like someone’s shoving bamboo shoots under your fingernails?”

He looks at me again and says, “Well, sure I do, you know that. Sometimes it’s really hard to even get started.”

“What do you do about it?” I beg, demand, beseech, ask.

And, though I know that he’s already focused again on his Stupid Zombies game, he throws out the one thing I need to hear more than anything: “Sometimes you just do something shitty.”

So, that’s my (shitty) story and I’m sticking to it.  I’d better be working hard tomorrow while you’re all over at Esse Diem so you’ll have something better from me on Thursday.  In the meantime, laissez bon temps roulez!

2 Women. 1 Town. 10 Stories.  Or, Esse A Go Go, if you prefer.  On an alternating daily schedule, we will post stories to our blogs of something that’s happened to us in the greater Charleston metropolitan area.  Maybe it’s something funny, maybe we’ll make you cry- who can say?  But, we’ll at least be here, you know?

Elizabeth gets things going today on her blog Esse Diem.  I can’t wait to settle in and read what she has to say.  That should keep me busy for about fifteen minutes this morning which means those are fifteen minutes that I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to write about tomorrow.  Not that I’m worried or feeling any pressure or anything…

(I mean, I just made plans to go home and take a nap at lunch for Christ’s sake.  How is anything going to happen for me to write about if I’m napping?!)

Oh, well.  Like my homegirl Scarlett O’Hara, I’ll worry about that tomorrow.  In the meantime, do yourself a favor and check out Elizabeth’s first Charleston tale.

I miss my friend Fred.  He was here for over a week and it was great- plus, we actually accomplished something and that felt awesome.  Now he’s headed back to sunny Florida which sounds great except that he lives in the most depressing city ever.  According to some bullshit item in Men’s Health. I don’t even see how that’s possible, Men’s Health.  I mean, the climate is mild, the beaches are beautiful…  and you rank Lincoln, NE as one of the least sad cities?!  I was in Lincoln, Nebraska for 48 hours once and I wanted to curl up in my hotel bathtub with a shotgun.

But, I digress.

I just miss Fred.  I wish my sister would fall in love with him and then they’d get married so that Fred could come to the family reunion every year.  Also, Christmas- he’d be really good at the gift exchange.

Last night, he and I presented our written, but still to be filmed, web show Bad Reception for consideration at the Arts Council’s Square Meal fundraiser.  Square Meal is a really cool mini-grant program that gets the community directly involved in funding the arts.  Check out the link if you get a chance.

Our presentation went really well and we got words of encouragement from a local filmmaker and offers of help, but we lost the mini-grant to a play about domestic violence called Battered, Not Broken.  Honestly (and objectively) their presentation was not as organized or informative, but the subject matter and speakers were emotionally compelling.  I hope the play does well and I also hope that Fred and I will be brave enough to try our presentation again.  It was a really awesome experience.

The only other thing I have going on today is that I’m starving for lunch, but don’t want to go get it.  I don’t even want to walk downstairs to pick up something that’s delivered. I think I’ll post that on Facebook and hope that someone submits it to whitewhine.com.

xo,

a go go

P.S.  If a certain writer/musician/video impresario/journalist is reading this, I hope he will feel compelled to check his Facebook messages and make sure he’s responded to all of them because perhaps he didn’t see the one where I said IN LOUD WORDS, “CALL ME!”

Okay, actually, I don’t pay a million.  I pay, like, eighty bucks for the domain name per year.  But, still.  Why pay that if I’m not going to live here, right? 

So, I need to step it up a bit.  I know I’ve said that before, but this time I really, really mean it.  And, I totally DO intend to sing still.  I just need some time to lose a few pounds or else I will have to sew several flags together in order to cover my entire body.

In other news, my friend Fred is visiting from Florida.  I’m super happy about that because he is actually one of my best friends and I don’t often see him in real life.  Last night, I tried to get a big group of in-town friends together for dinner at Pies n’ Pints so that we could talk about art and politics and philosophy- I was thinking Capitol Street as the Left Bank.  It ended up that only a few friends could make it, but the ones that did really brought their A game in terms of convo. 

When we got home, we watched Martha Marcy May Marlene which I thought was pretty good until I realized that I kept waiting for the plot to develop, or thicken, or do anything.  Actually, at the beginning of this rehash of last night’s events, I had forgotten that we even watched the movie, so overshadowed was it by what we watched afterward- the Wild Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. 

Oh.  My.  God.

I don’t even know what to say about it.  Go.  Watch it.  See for yourself.

Tonight, West Virginia (which I guess some guy at ESPN thinks is still part of Virginia) is playing in the Orange Bowl.  The first thing I want to say about this is that I’m happy there’s a bowl that still has a normal name.  And, secondly, I am super excited to watch the game at home with my guy and my babies.  Which is to say that I’m super excited to lie on the couch and face in the general direction of the TV while I doze off.

xo,
a go go

If you’re out there reading, thanks for that.  I miss my little blog when I don’t write in (on?) it.

JK.  I know that the world is not going to conform to my desires, which is most definitely a good thing.  But, it does seem like the minute I start asking for some kind of help from a higher power, the people (ahem… very small people who are closely related to me) in my life decide to behave as badly as they can.  I wonder if it’s just a coincidence.  Or, are there, in fact, no coincidences?

Anyway, I’m exhausted.  I spent the day running kids to and fro and getting very little appreciation- or respect, for that matter- in return.  I’ll still say a little prayer of thanks tonight for the little ingrates and hope that things will be a little better tomorrow. 

I at least got my little girl’s bedroom cleaned out and am ready to start on step two of making it cool: window treatments and furniture rearranging.

It was a beautiful day today, too.  So, there’s that…