Give 'em Hell Alabama!

As you can see I've dedicated my blog to University of Alabama football this season. It looks like Bama has a good chance of winning a national championship this year, the first time since 1992, which was my senior year. To say I was close to the team would be an understatement. They were like family. My roommate hung out with Kevin Lee and I briefly dated John Copeland. We hung out with all the players, not as groupies looking for husbands (because there were many of those) but as college students who enjoyed spending time together. I even went to church with the coach, Gene Stallings. For years I've been looking forward to seeing my Tide return to its former days of glory. And yes, I have been neglecting my blog duties, the main point of which is to make both you and me think.

For the past few months there have been lots of interesting things happening in the news. Outrage spread across the nation amongst conservatives when President Obama made a speech to school children and paranoid conservatives accused him of "indoctrination" without so much as even hearing his speech. Then when the Nobel Prize Committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize, even the faithful jumped ship to declare "the president hasn't done anything yet". Everyone fell in lock-step with the opinion that he had been given the prize not for what he has done, but for what he wants to accomplish. But I disagree. Even if that was their reason, I disagree with the concept that getting elected the first black president of the United States, a great nation with a history of slavery and discrimination, is "nothing".

For one day in November 2008 this country, and by consequence the entire world, faced the very real possibility of electing the wrong people to office, expanding the war in Iraq, and doing nothing to support the economy except wait for wealth to trickle down and for the economy to fix itself. But that didn't happen because the person with different ideas had the ability to make us see past his race and get himself elected. He took a nation, half of which would feel significantly more comfortable with someone who looks like their own fathers in office, and he did what no one else in history has been able to do: he changed their minds. And in doing so he created a paradigm shift for the human race. Now the leader of the free world finally, for the first time in history, actually looks like the rest of the world. Are you seriously telling me that this historical achievement isn't worth recognizing?

There is no such office as "President of the World" because if there was Obama would have won it. The Nobel Peace Prize is the next best thing and the closest the world can get to telling us they are, for the first time in eight years, willing to follow our leader. Is it about race? Yes and no. He didn't get elected because of his race, but he certainly could have lost the election and even world support because of it. Like it or not, he and his achievements are a symbol of our nation's progress and awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize was recognition for creating that progress. But, this blog is called "Mind Massage" so in the spirit of massaging your mind I'd like to offer a different view, one that one of my friends, Malika, offered me when I shared my opinion with her:

"Well, if that's the case then they needed to have created a new category".


Hmmmmm......

Did I mention Malika used to be my boss?


Then last night the House of Representatives passed healthcare reform and now my conservative friends are livid. And what do I think about that? I think it's a step in the right direction and the main people who are opposing it will, just like the "Cash for Clunkers" program, be the main people who exploit it once it becomes law.

I think insurance companies need to be put in check and should be required to pay for care for "pre-existing conditions" if a person and their company have been paying their insurance premiums.

I think doctors and medical schools should put greater emphasis on identifying symptoms in their infancy and providing preventive care. And insurance benefits should pay for preventive care such as the use of vitamins and supplements to change what's going wrong inside a person's body, instead of waiting until an illness is chronic, a tumor has formed, a gland has stopped producing the right level of hormones, or an artery is clogged.

I think the FDA needs to stop allowing food sources, food processes and food additives to make us all sick, and pharmaceutical companies need to stop being allowed to sell us "cures" that cause even more and greater illnesses.

I think instead of rushing products to market both the FDA and the pharmaceutical companies need to do more research and take the time to create foods and cosmetics that are pure and healthy, and medicines that can actually make people better.

And finally, I think that if the blue dog Democrats didn't pass the bill that's a good sign there's something wrong with it. I heard Governor Haley Barber, a Mississippi Republican, say that both Democrats and Republicans could agree on 80% of the bill. So what if you think he's a redneck? It's their country too. And just because Republicans wouldn't work across party lines or even preserve basic constitutional rights when they were in power doesn't mean Democrats should continue the pattern now that they are in power. Democrats should take the high road. The Senate needs to do the work to trim away the 20% that the blue dogs were opposed to and make the bill a true bi-partisan effort. And if it doesn't fix the problems I listed above then it needs to be revamped until it does.

But enough about that. All of these things are going to have to continue to pass without any more commentary from me. For the time being my heart and my attention lie closer to home. In the coming weeks as we watch the Tide continue to roll, I'll be right here cheering "Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, Give 'em Hell Alabama!"

Roll Tide!

Find more music like this on UA Black Alumni Network

Serena William's 2009 US Open Foot Fault

This is, so far, the best story I've found on Serena William's US Open foot fault incident. The foot fault call had suspicious timing. I play tennis and we all pretty much do the same thing on every serve. If Serena did have a foot fault it is highly unlikely that the first one came at match point. So why call that foot fault on that particular serve? Serena's anger was justified but there is no way to excuse the way she expressed it. If the tournament officials had let her get away with that tantrum they would have been accused of showing favoritism to a celebrity.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, let me catch you up. Serena Williams was playing Kim Clijsters in the 2009 US Open tournament in New York. Clijsters had won the first set 6-4 and was leading the second set 6-5 but Serena was serving at 15-30. Which means that Clijsters needed 2 ponts to win the match and Serena needed 4 points to stay in and go to a tie break. As Serena was serving, a line judge, a small asian woman, called a foot fault on Serena's second serve. This means that Serena Williams, a woman with 31 aces, more than any woman in the whole tournament, the next being her opponent Clijsters who had 14, had double-faulted due to a foot fault call. Serena lost her temper, walked towards the judge lifting a tennis ball in her fist and reportedly saying "I am going to shove this fucking ball down your fucking throat." I watched the match on TV and couldn't hear it. But whatever she said, she kept talking and lifted her racket club-like at the woman, using it to make her point.

Afterward Serena turned around to continue serving and the woman got up and walked over to the chair umpire's desk and told the chair umpire her version of what had just happened. The Chair umpire called out the tournament supervisor and the referee and they met with Serena at the side of the court. During that meeting you could hear Serena clearly say "Are you scared because I said I was going to hit you? I'm sorry." And later she said "I did not say I was going to kill her!" She was visibly shocked that the woman had felt threatened by her.

Should Serena apologize? The answer is clearly yes she should for making someone feel threatened. I am worried about Serena. I wonder if the whispers and questions about her size may actually be cause for concern. Does she want it bad enough to use performance enhancing drugs? I don't know. I saw her in an earlier inteview after a different match and I noticed that she was moving her facial muscles erratically. I remember thinking "Wow, that must be all that residual tension releasing. She must have been really holding herself in and controlling herself to now lose control and start making so many faces like that." It was really odd. But to see her come uncoiled on the court, I felt so badly for her because I knew that later when she calmed down she would regret those moments.

If I were Serena I would use this experience consructively to do for foot faults what John McEnroe and shot spot did for bad ball calls. We know they happen. Help implement a system to challenge them. She has the resources to obtain every tape and video camera footage of that moment that she can get her hands on and have it all reviewed. I don't know for sure what it would show but probably something along the lines of numerous foot faults happening on both sides of the court by both players. That could be a driving force to remove a bit more of the human bias out of the judging system. This issue has existed for a long time. It needs to be settled once and for all and Serena is just the woman to do it. Then she can go down in history not as the "angry black woman" stereotype who lost it in a major tournament, but as the woman who took control of a situation that has plagued too many for too long and she finally set it right.

What Happened at "The Shack"?

OK, I haven't blogged in a while. Actually I have but decided that I'd written things that didn't need to be posted. But today a friend of mine on Facebook asked me for my unbiased opinion about the bestselling book, "The Shack". A flood within me was unleashed and below is what came out. Enjoy...

I've read "The Shack". It took me a while to warm up to it because of the style of writing, but after I did I loved it! I think the concepts in the book reflect my essential truth, which is that we are all here for each other, to be in relationships with each other, to know each other and to love each other. And that judging and condemning each other for ANY thing under ANY circumstances is the worst possible thing we can do. Now here is my controversial opinion: I am glad that God is presented as female in several forms because that is a truth I've known and struggled with for a long time. Biblical written tradition would have us believe that all deity is male. That is a Middle Eastern social construct which snuck in and inserted itself into Biblical tradition because the authors were from the Middle East!. Hellooo....that's where women have to cover their faces! The Bible was oral to begin with - no writings. It was never meant to be frozen in time by words and stuck in the social customs of some other time and place.

Ok, now having said that, I don't mean to say that God is female. I mean to say that I believe The Bible when it says that God is neither male nor female, which means he loves us all equally.NOW as a good Christian girl I have to say that I still believe that women are the gentler, fairer sex. As such we have a calling, per se', not to declare ourselves stronger and rub it in men's faces. It is BECAUSE we are the gentler, fairer sex that we should introduce and wield the truth gently, lest we end up in the same place that the so-called feminist movement / equal rights left us which is having women to do ALL the work and ALL the decision-making. That's not how it was intended. Men are stronger in some things, women in others, but the differences cancel each other out. Women are not meant to be heads of the household, not any household, not God's nor Man's, but it is because we want men to be stronger :-) not because they actually are.

My Inauguration Experience

I arrived in Washington D.C. on a Sunday afternoon and the father of a friend of a friend of a girl I'd never met before picked me up at the Metro station and drove me to the apartment I would be renting for the three nights visit. He was very kind and friendly and showed me around the place, then left me to get settled in with assurance that I was only a short walk from where the bus would pick me up to take me to the nearest Metro station. He drove away and I was left alone in Fairfax, Virginia thinking everything was settled. I was going to meet other travelers from Omaha that night in downtown D.C. for dinner.

I unpacked and then went outside and waited. The bus never came. Eventually I walked back towards the apartment building and tapped on the car window of a hispanic man, and asked him if I was waiting in the right place. He pointed at a bench and I walked back. A few minutes later he pulled up beside me in an old Ford mustang. "The bus probably isn't coming this late on a Sunday" he said "Can I give you a ride somewhere?" Don’t try this at home, but I scanned him quickly to see if I felt safe with him. I did, and I got into his car and thanked him. I would later learn that his name was Jorge, a 13-year veteran of the marine corps, an employee at a large engineering firm, and a gentleman. “I’m not doing anything the next few days” he said, “and I have the day off. Call me if you need anything.” And with that he had offered me his card.

Not wanting to impose on Jorge, I tried riding the bus again the next day, but it still didn’t come. After waiting for almost an hour in the cold I thought about calling a cab but my cell phone was dead and I had accidentally packed my charger in the wrong suitcase. I had to be at the Hart Senate office by 4:00pm to pick up my ticket. It was only about 9:00am but I knew that time moved fast and using the Metro and waiting in line I could run out of time quickly. I walked a little along the sidewalk in the suburbs looking for someone who I could ask to borrow their cell phone and fished in my purse for Jorge’s card. He came and offered me a ride to buy a new charger as well. I bought him lunch and he spent the day with me in D.C., waiting in line to pick up my ticket at the Hart Senate building and then patiently shopping with me at the mall at a place appropriately named “Friendship station”.

After the inauguration was over I had to make one last trip to the Metro to get to Reagan National airport. My landlady, the girl whose apartment I was borrowing but whom I had never met, came to pick me up early in the morning. Just like everyone else I’d met during my experience she was kind and sweet and very gracious.

People are asking me what feels like a million questions about my inauguration experience.
"Did it feel historic?" Yes, very. I got goose bumps and cried when Aretha Franklin sang. "Were there mostly black people?" I don't know but I don't think so. There was no race out there. Just people. "Did you go to an inaugural ball?" No, I had tickets to the Garden State (New Jersey) Ball but I was too exhausted to attend.

The one question that no one asks is "Did you meet any interesting people?” That’s the one I want to talk about most. Because, you see, I met and chatted with tons of people but the ones who were the kindest, the ones who I leaned on the most and who offered me hospitality throughout my visit: Jorge, the girl whose apartment I borrowed at the last minute who got up early Wednesday morning to drive me to the airport, her father who directed me through my first trip to the Metro, picked me up and showed me around.....they were all Republicans. None of them had anything at all to do with Democrats or the inauguration. They were just citizens of the city who wanted to reach out and be a part of this historical event in the best way they could.

Am I proud of Obama? Of course. Do I have high hopes for him? I think anyone who can do what he's done can do almost anything. But the person, or rather people, I am most proud of is us, the American people. Both the Democrats who saw past race and came together to elect Obama and now the Republicans who can see past politics to offer their support in a time when our nation is experiencing perhaps the greatest surge of unity since before the civil war - just when we need it most.

I just finished reading this and I thought how can we ever unite the rest of the world if we don't have unity ourselves? Perhaps the greatest threat to our nation is not anything outside of us, not the Taliban and not war in the Middle East. It is partisanship and the idea that our values have to keep us apart. The solution - get to know each other, call on your neighbors.

Update on the Conspiracy to Kidnap My Mail

For those of you who read "Christmas in the Modern Era" and were sad or upset when I said "no one will ever love me - ever", calm down, I was only kidding. People love me.

The cards came later. Some of them arrived on time and I just hadn't picked them up yet because I'd been out of town. It's mostly my own fault I'm not getting my mail. To fix the mail problem, I went online to the post office web site and temporarily changed my address so that everything will go to the PO Box. When I do the "permanent change" I will incorporate my street address into it even though they have different zip codes. Take that, post office!

Christmas in the Modern Era

My internet is down and my mail isn't being delivered to my home. Between these two problems I have lost almost all contact with the outside world. I can't blog. (I am writing this from a hotel). I've gotten no Christmas cards this year. My boyfriend ordered and shipped me a Christmas present and I'm pretty sure it's already shipping swiftly back to it's manufacturer. You see I travel a lot for my job and I'm not the best about letting my postal carriers know when I'm going to be gone for days at a time, so they took it upon themselves to decide that if I was going to let my tiny little box get so crammed full of mail that there was no space left for all the junk and catalogs, then I didn't deserve to get any mail at all. Thank goodness I still get my J-Jill, Ann Taylor, and Talbots catalogs, my Lucky Magazine, my Bed Bath and Beyond coupon, and that little packet of coupons everyone gets, you know, the important stuff.

My credit card bill on the other hand never makes the cut. I tried to work around the problem by renting a post office box and informing my credit card companies, other creditors, mortgage bank, and utilities that my address had changed. But one company is still holding out, no doubt in an effort to give me as many chances as possible to pay 30 days late so they can jack up my interest rate to 25% and enslave me for the rest of my working life.

All of this bothered me, but it didn't really get to me until they started messing with my Christmas. Now it's gotten personal. Now it's part of a vast conspiracy to make me believe I will never have a normal life and that no one ever has - or ever will - love me. Aha! but what's a normal life, you ask? Well duh -don't you remember the sitcoms on TV in the 80's? I grew up in the Dynasty age, the Reagan era, when the worst thing that could possibly happen to you was something on an after school special. And I was finally "there". My house was clean, my job was great, my credit was good, and my love life was atrocious - just like on Sex and the City. I had it all.

Did someone find out about my wonderful birthday and all the birthday cards I got? Did they get wind that I was paying my bills on time? I can just imagine someone saying "This has GOT to stop! Great friends, Good credit, birthday cards, and an increasingly popular blog (ok, I can dream), plus a black president!!?? Who does she think she is? A Cosby kid?" (What's disturbing is when I conjure up those words in my head, my mother's image pulls up alongside it - like a Google search). Realistically what might have happened with my cable is that my neighbors moved out and when they did the cable company accidentally discontinued my internet service along with theirs...but then again, maybe that's just what "they" want me to think.

Freedom!!!

Can you feel it? There's a fresh breeze blowing across the country and rippling across the world. Complete strangers are smiling at each other and finding an excuse to talk, feeling an unspoken bond. That's called American spirit. That's called freedom.

The freedom of black people in this country began when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and ended on November 4, 2008 with the election of President Barack Obama. It has taken us 145 years to become free. Here's the thing that most people don't know, but rather they feel it in their spirit: as long as all Americans weren't free, none of us were free.

When I look into the eyes of the people who voted for Obama, whether they are black, white, Asian, Hispanic or Native American, I see freedom. I see release. I see equality. One step closer to freedom for one of us is one step closer for all of us. When I look into the eyes of the people who voted for John McCain, that is, when they will actually look me in the eye, I see disappointment, but I also see something else, something I never expected to see. I see relief. I see that they are relieved that a racial barrier has come down and they didn't have to compromise their religious principles and their values and vote for a Democrat in order to make that happen. For most of them, it isn't that they were racist (well, no more than most of us), it's just that their side didn't have a black man running. So they get to live in a country where a black man can become president without having to participate in the process of making it happen. Now THAT's Freedom!

President Barack Obama was right: He's YOUR president too. You're Welcome.

Why Intellectual Women Don't Like Sarah Palin

Like the previous post, this post began as an email discussion with one of my friends, this time a female friend from Alabama. We are having a discussion about how intelligent, college-educated, otherwise articulate women descend into an inarticulate rage, eyes narrow into slits, breathing becomes ragged, and a dirge of insults begin to spew of which "moron" is the one most frequently used...all whenever the name Sarah Palin is mentioned. Allow me to explain why.

First, it's not just because she's not qualified. Palin initially declined the offer to be Vice President. Why? Because she didn't know what the job involved and hadn't been preparing for it. Most professional women and candidates for office, male or female, have been preparing since they were in college at the very least. You don't accept the job of running the country as an afterthought. But we don't hate her for that. After all who in their career hasn't done that? It is a commonly known fact that in order to be successful and climb the ladder you have to accept positions that (a) are slightly uncomfortable and feel perhaps a little over your head and (b) you know you were chosen because someone likes you (or your influential friend or relative) and (c) someone asked you out of the blue.

But what kind of woman shamelesly and scrupulously benefits from the hard work and long, long years of preparation of another woman and, more importantly, from her failure? It's as if Hillary Clinton was in a wedding and when the preacher asked if anyone had a reason this woman and man shouldn't be joined please speak now, and when the American people spoke and Hillary was out, Palin stepped up, linked arms with the groom and said "I'll marry ya!!" Palin doesn't seem to feel any remorse for hopping into a bed that Hillary Clinton spent years making. That brings me to the third point. She is allowing herself to be used as a political tool.

McCain picked her to create the illusion that the Republicans were having a historical election of their own. That reason alone makes her selection a slap in the face to every highly qualified woman in the country.

But someone's gotta be first and isn't it true that the best way to change an establishment is to first become part of it and then change it from the inside out? That brings me to my fourth point.

She's using her newfound celebrity status to promote the idea that Barack Obama is a terrorist, a muslim, dangerous to the country and all sorts of other negative and irresponsible claims. I'm surprised that so many people don't understand how she evokes such emotional responses. I understand it and so does every woman who's ever used her beauty, feminity and sunny, outgoing personality to win friends and influence people. In the south for centuries the surest way to get a black man in trouble was to have a white woman accuse him of something. But I'm sure she doesn't know anything about that. Which leads me to my fifth and final point.

She's out of touch and not just because Alaska is so far away it could be another country. She actually believes that America is full of "hockey moms" and "Joe sixpacks". She's running for the American people, not as the diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-talented, religiously tolerant melting pot that we are and that our founding fathers intended us to be, but as the American public that she'd like for us to be. As a consequence she's not going to be president of the people who live in the housing projects or of the people who live in upscale condos downtown in large cities because she's never done that and she doesn't know them. She will take an oath of office to serve only the kinds of people she's seen and lived with and whom she thinks represent the entire country.

Until this election she hasn't given a thought to anyone beyond Alaska and people like her. And who can blame her? She seems well prepared for the job she was aspiring to, governer of Alaska. She just wasn't preparing for this job.

Guest Blogger: Dave on "Media-logical Myths"

The post below was written to me in a note by my friend Dave. He read my blog post "Dear Media" and had some particularly interesting insights. I asked him for permission to post it and he said yes. I think you'll enjoy reading this as much as I did:

Dear L/L,

Sounds like you are almost as excited by the election hoo-ha as I am. I find myself unable to watch any of the debates or election coverage because it is all so trivialized with people yelling at each other and trying to make something meaningful out of things that are frankly insignificant, meanwhile ignoring the important elements. We did this twice when George Dubya ran and the mess today is our deserved reward. If we make a better choice this time it will be largely serendipitous since none of the main stream media seems willing to do good old-fashioned reporting. Worst of all, the media seems to have generated certain myths or plot lines, for example "John McCain is a maverick" , that they can't seem to rid themselves of despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

What I find absolutely most intriguing is how the media buys into republican representations of democrats for being "elitists", key evidence being that John Kerry drinks green tea and Barack Obama eats arugula although both of those are on the menu at most mainstream casual dining restaurants these days and are available at wal-mart and every other grocery store I've visited.

When I think of "elitists", I think of someone who went to an elite private high school and then got admitted to Yale despite his weak high school academic record , getting admitted only because he had a father and a grandfather who created a legacy for him at Yale, and then was admitted to Harvard Business School despite a weak academic record at Yale. He then used his family connections to get a variety of postions in the family businesses of oil and politics proving largely incompetent in most of those positions.

When I think of "elitists", I think of another someone who managed to be admitted to the Naval Academy, an elite publicly-funded academy, despite his own self-described "undistinguished" high school academic record, perhaps getting admitted only because he had a father and grandfather who were four-star admirals and who created a legacy for him at the Academy. He succeeded in compiling a dismal academic record in which he graduated 894th out of 899 in his class. (As an aside, do you suppose being the legacy of two four-star admirals might have been a factor in the Academy graduating him at all?).

He ultimately divorced his first wife to marry an exceptionally wealthy trophy second wife, hobnobbing with the rich and famous, even being reprimanded by the United States Senate for his inappropriate relationship with a central criminal from the savings & loan scandal. Yes, according to the media he was a "war hero" forty years ago, having achieved that status for being shot down over VietNam and abiding by (most) of the military code of conduct although he himself acknowledges that being shot down doesn't make one a "hero" . One might also question how many Naval pilots were allowed to continue flying after destroying four military jets in non-combat duty, perhaps raising the question as to how much influence his father and grandfather, the aforementioned four-star admirals, had to exert on his military career.

When I think of elitists, I don't think of someone who came from humble beginnings, growing up in a single parent household, living with his maternal grandparents for much of his life, starting his college career at lowly Occidental College, and EARNING his way into Columbia and Harvard. I don't think of someone achieving sufficient academic success to be selected as editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review and then going on to teach at the equally prestigious University of Chicago before launching a career in public service. Rather than "elitist", I would see this type of individual as the star of a Horatio Alger dime novel; a rags to riches achievement of the American Dream and someone who pulled himself up by his own bootstraps while gratefully acknowledging all the support and assistance he received from many people along the way.

Two men who largely squandered the special opportunities they were afforded by their respective powerful influential families and another man who earned his way from the bottom to the top. Which of these would you be most likely to describe as "elitist" ??

Ah, but when the facts don't fit with the preconceived story as told by the media elite then the facts must be ignored for mythology is more powerful than reality.

Yesterday, I Voted

Thursday morning I woke up mentally preparing to go to work. But before I could get out of bed something inside nudged me and reminded me that I had something important I needed to do today. I had been toying with the idea of voting early for weeks. With my job and the way I travel I never know what could happen on Nov. 4th and I didn't want to end up missing election day, and especially not such an important election. I knew today was going to be my best chance to vote hassle-free.

As I got dressed, something inside me said "Wear your best...for this is an important day, as important as a wedding". So I took extra care getting dressed. I wore nice (although still appropriate for work) clothes and I carefully applied my makeup and wore my pearl earrings and my diamond and pearl necklace. This was a special day. Today I was going to become "an equal". Maybe I have always been an equal on paper and legally but, for some reason that I had not yet worked out in my head, I felt more equal today than others.

I looked up the address for the election commission in my blackberry. I've only lived in Omaha for two years so I knew I'd have a little bit of a challenge finding it. As I drove down 120th and crossed Fort street, I thought of my home in Carbon Hill, Alabama and of my grandma voting. I remembered how she had taken me with her to vote, standing proudly in line and how, as a little girl, I had wondered what there was to be so proud about. I would often have moments like that, like when I was eight years-old and I finally got to walk to Dee Wright's Cafe by myself. I was surprised to see a sign in his window that read "We serve people of all races and colors". "How odd" I thought in my eight-year-old mind, "why would anyone need to say that?" He might as well have had a sign announcing that the sky was blue.

"Wow" I thought. I was about to participate in the election of Barack Obama. I was about to bring him one step closer to becoming the first black president of the United States. The magnitude of what I was about to do finally started to sink in. Images flashed in my head: images of people marching in Alabama, arms linked, signs waving, policemen with clubs. Images of people hanging from trees, some of their bodies badly burned. I thought of the people who had been intimidated into not voting and of how much courage it took for them to even walk into the offices. That's why my Grandma was so proud. THIS, I thought, THIS MOMENT is what she had worked for. It was what they had all worked for. It was for ME TO HAVE THIS MOMENT.

That's when I gasped, realizing that I had never voted for anyone who looked like me nor had it ever ocurred to me that I would ever have the hope of doing so. And I had accepted it as my reality. "We have never been free before" the realization crept over me slowly, "because we have never been able to do this. None of us have ever been truly free. The possibility of becoming president, this is the last thing, the last step towards equality. The last step to freedom."

"I will not cry, I will not cry" I thought. But the tears fell anyway. They ran down my face from beneath my dark sunglasses. I wiped them away with my hand and wondered if people driving by would look into my car and see the emotional black woman, and wonder why.

As I expected it took me several attempts before I finally found the election commission office. First I had turned around at 114th and Dodge, then I circled back through West Corporation's industrial park. I finally gave in and called the office to ask for directions. "Two blocks south of Dodge and one block West of 114th" the young man had answered me helpfully, almost as if he wanted me there. Perhaps he didn't know I was black. "Stop that" I thought. I finally found the office tucked away on a back street off 115th and Davenport. People were lined up out the door and around the parking lot. Clearly I had to turn my attention to figuring out where to park. I drove across the street where I had seen people walking. "You here to vote?" asked the man in the white utility truck who had waved me to a stop. "Yes" I said. "Well you can't park here" he announced proudly. I smiled at him and said "Ok, thank you" as brightly and cheerfully as I could. He obviously enjoyed being an obstacle. But something in the back of my mind reminded me that relative to the history, this little delay was less than a speck of dust. I think he knew it too. He just wanted to help put it off for as long as he could.

I decided to try my luck at getting a space in the actual parking lot of the election office. It looked like people were leaving fairly regularly. Sure enough I thought I saw a space near the door but dismissed it thinking it must be handicapped. As if reading my mind the people standing in line in front of the door began to wave at me and point to the space. "What? really?" I looked again. "Yes! Come on! Right here!" they waved and cheered. It seemed somehow appropriate, even metaphorical, that there was one little man who wanted to get in my way but many more people welcoming me in.

Dear Media....Don't Take the Bait

Here it comes. The election and inaugeration of America's first black president. And along with it, here come the crazies who are going to try to get their five minutes of fame by doing something negative. Already stories are starting to pop up about dead bears with campaign posters and things hanging from trees. Folks in California put our future president's head on a food stamp surrounded by derogatory racial stereotypes like fried chicken and watermelon.

Autherine Lucy desegregated my alma mater, the University of Alabama. John F. Kennedy was the first Catholic president. George Washington was our nation's first president while were still a wobbly toddler and someone in the congress actually suggested making him King. Someone's gotta be first. It's YOUR responsibility, dear Media, not to encourage some basement-dwelling, mouth-breather longing for love and acceptance to decide that denigrating the first black president might be a quick way to get their own reality show called the Evening News. In fact, I can already imagine the reports, so popular that they become like a reality show called:
"Who Said (or Did) Something Racist Today?"

I'm not suggesting that if we ignore it, it will just go away. But most of these "pranks" are just angry expressions by people who are unhappy and feel powerless about a changing world. Last year when that kid shot up Von Maur in Omaha he did it because he was depressed and to get attention. Don't give that unhappiness, that depression, those cries for attention any more power than warranted. Because like Lee Harvey Oswald, it won't be the real culprits who will put their face on the crime. It will be the aforementioned mouth-breather, stirred to a frenzy by the insanity he sees on TV, and a little warm fuzzy encouragement by the wrong social club.

All those years of "liberal media" name-calling has got you on the defensive now, dear Media, and you're ready to show the world that you can be as tough on a Democrat president as you have these past eight years on the most incompetent world leader in history. They know you're afraid to be accused of sweeping things under the rug. They're gearing up for it and they're going to manipulate your good journalistic ethics for their own dark purposes to wage a campaign of fear and ensure that no other great men of color, like Colin Powell, will ever have the audacity to run for president again.
Don't...take... the bait.

The Scariest Halloween Ever

Frankenstein is loose, just in time for Halloween...and no, I am not referring to McCain or Obama.

There's a story out about Senator McCain and how he was booed tonight at his own rally in Wisconsin for saying that Senator Barrack Obama is " a decent man". These are the same people who are supposed to be conservative Christians for family values. Amidst cries of "traitor", "treason" and "kill him" aimed at Senator Obama, Senator McCain tried to reason with what has become the Republican mob and they turned on him for being decent himself.

I have been mostly silent throughout this election cycle because I did not want to offend my Christian brothers and sisters. But the tme for silence is over. A man's life is being threatened.

Sarah Palin has been applying the principles she learned from the "Republican Campaign for Dummies" playbook, using scare tactics and emotion to win the loyalty of her supporters while ruthlessly tearing down the reputation of her opponent who in this case happens to be a good and decent man. What Governor Palin lacks is the sophistication, political savvy and, yes, downright evil genius of the men who wrote that playbook. What do you get when you give that kind of power and that sized audience to a political outsider with very little understanding of the issues defining her contest but with a talent for cheerleading? You get a mob of frightened, angry people roused into an emotional fervor, irrational, irresponsible, and downright dangerous.

If Obama does win the election, and it looks as if he will, the American people are going to need to unite behind the new leader. Obama is a good man, a decent man, a man who worked hard for everything he's ever gotten in life and left behind the potential wealth a Harvard education could provide in order to live a life of service and, for a time, poverty. He is an example of the best our country can produce. But instead of being proud of him as we should all be, the American people are being told to demonize him, and they are happily and willingly obeying. He is more Christ like I think, right now, with angry mobs yelling at an innocent and, yes, a good man who has dedicated his life to serving others, than at any other time. And the people who should recognize his story best are not even noticing because he once ate a meal with "the unclean". Like Christ, he is not being condemned for what he has done, for he has done nothing wrong, but rather he is being condemned for the people he has known.

The use of these hate-mongering tactics are blinding people to the goodness of both of these men. Right now McCain, bless his heart, is the only member of the Republican party I see who is trying to lead his supporters to behave honorably and to have respect for the political process. I respect him for it and history will remember him well for doing so. But he has lost control of his protege'. Palin, his female Frankenstein, has got control of the mob and someone could get hurt.

Dear Media: Stop calling it news...

Have you no shame? Have you lost all ability to distinguish between real news, propaganda, and tabloid sensationalism? Don't they teach the difference at any of the universities any more?

Nothing Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt do is news, not which baby they adopt nor from which country they adopt it. They could adopt a whole country and it would still not be news.

Nothing Britney Spears does is news anymore for anyone. Even the 12 year-olds have moved on. There's no one left who cares except drag queens. The girl showed her hoo-hoo to tabloid photographers. All of those grown men who were drooling over her catholic school girl outfit for years finally got their coup de gras. There's nothing left to see here. That's one reason she's no longer news. Here's the other...

She didn't even have the sense to get paid for it. This indicates a serious deficit of intellect. No one is calling her retarded (excuse me, developmentally challenged or whatever they're calling it these days) but the child is clearly not right. Just because she can speak clearly, has the use of all of her limbs, and doesn't drool does not mean that her celebrity status should make her fair game. You wouldn't do this to anyone in the Special Olympics. Don't do it to her.

Barrack and Michelle's fist-bump was not news. It was a slow news day so you just picked something cute. I get it. But you shouldn't take for granted that the rest of the American public will get it. Look what happened with that New Yorker cover. From now on when you run stories like that you should start it with, "We know this is not news, but...." Or maybe "Here's something cute for you." I don't care how you do it, but please find a way to make it clear when you're using irony or showing something for human interest or "color commentary" (no pun intended).

John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is not news. Ok it is news-worthy, but it is not news. She's not the first woman and in fact has no distinction whatsoever. If you haven't noticed, the rest of the country moved on years ago when Geraldine Ferarro was the Democratic nominee back in 1984. If anything this just shows that the Republicans are 24 years behind. Once you've had a female VP nominee 24 years in the past, and a female presidential nominee in the current year, a female vice presidential nominee, especially one with so little to recommend her, is not news, it's a publicity stunt.

Grandpa McCain is at it again...

The Republican strategists on the news are calling McCain's choice of Sarah Palin "vintage McCain" because it is shocking and unexpected. But it is also vintage McCain because it is short-sighted and naive. He has put politics and winning the election ahead of what is best for the country. To state the obvious, the woman has no experience and no qualifications to be President of the United States. But to McCain she is a "wise choice" because she doesn't fall in line with party politics. If you follow that line of logic doesn't that make Obama an even wiser choice? These are the kinds of shocking shenanigans Grandpa will pull when he is in office.

I love elderly people. I am the only person in our church "singles" group who is under the age of fourty. I call the ladies "the Golden Girls" and I love having lunch with them every week. I am also entertained by them. Some of them are still mentally sharp and quick. Others are a little fuzzy around the edges. By my estimate, based on McCain's inability to follow his own logic he's just a few short years away from needing a live-in nurse to watch him and make sure he doesn't try to wash his clothes in the oven. Seriously, are my Republican friends really going to elect this guy? Because if so I'm convinced they'd vote for Reagan if he were still alive, alzheimers or no alzheimers.

This is not a step forward for women, although in McCain's mind it probably seems like it is. In his world view choosing a woman whose only qualification is that she is argumentative just like him and a "chip off the old block" is perfectly acceptable. After all, for his generation it was perfectly ok to pass along a company to your son just because he was your son, whether he was capable of actually running the company or not. Folks, that's what he's doing with our country. He's chosen an heir for his company - us - the United States of America. Now Grandpa's standing back in the corner giggling because he thinks he's shocked us by doing something wild and crazy: he chose a girl!!

I'll bet his next trick will be the "watch me pull my finger apart" trick.

Remember that TV show where Geena Davis was president because she was chosen as the running mate of an aging candidate with a bad heart? Someone needs to tell Grandpa that Hollywood already has that script and his character dies and the show gets cancelled.

Ken

I've never written about a boyfriend before, but this one's different. This one's made of the real stuff. So enjoy.....

I have a new boyfriend. His name is Ken.

Ken lives in Hawaii and came to the "mainland" (which is what they call the continental U.S.) for a conference. He arranged to visit Omaha and me while he was here. I'm not good at planning visits. Ok I am good at it, but it's hard for me to combine planning with fun. My entire life I have either been in charge or I have had fun, but I've never done both in combination. So imagine my surprise when this weekend turned out not only well, but astoundingly so. It was like something out of a romantic movie. That's how I knew it couldn't have been me. It had to be this new combination called "us".

We've been planning this visit for months. I've been very excited and as the time drew closer I was imagining all sorts of romantic things we could do. Then out of nowhere, after calling me 2 or 3 times a week every week, Ken suddenly stopped calling the week before his visit. Actually I hadn't heard from him in almost 2 weeks because he'd been working in a remote location.
I knew he was at his conference.
I knew he was busy.
I was fine.
I was calm.
It was no big deal.
I knew Ken, and he had probably left his cell phone charger back in Hawaii and his conference was in Chicago. I've done the same thing myself.

By Tuesday night I was distraught. Where was he? Why hadn't he at least emailed? I was becoming frantic with worry. I consulted a friend. "No offense", she said, "but why is he coming all the way from Hawaii to see YOU?" (This is the same friend I wrote about in "Independence Day". ). That was her idea of "support".

Well I'd asked for it. It was either talk to her or stress out over not talking to him. Finally she had some good advice: "Just email him" she said, and I did. He emailed me back within minutes. First I was relieved and happy....then I was pissed! He was sitting right there in front of his computer and he hadn't even bothered to email???

On Wednesday night I replied back to his email with one word..."OK". I was trying not to seem upset, but he knew. He called the next morning and apologized. He understood and he didn't try to deflect the blame back onto me with a "you're overreacting" the way most guys would. He'd been busy just like I knew he had. Seas were calm again.

By then it was too late to do any of the stuff I'd been considering. There was no time to go to the grocery store to get the ingredients for a home-cooked meal perhaps by candle light. I had wanted to spend our first evening together on Friday night in the romantic, curtain-enclosed booth at "Spezia" but when I called the booth was already taken. The girl insisted I couldn't have it for the entire weekend. I kept insisting that she check again and finally she found a spot for us on Saturday night at 8:30. Not what I had in mind but that would have to do.

I waited for him at the airport, watching as people de-boarded, searching for his face in the crowd. Finally I spotted him. "Ken!" I yelped. He had the most elated look on his face when he hugged me. "Oh no" my mind panicked "he's going to kiss me". I looked away and held up a hand. "Sorry I can't do PDA" I said softly, trying in vain not to ruin the moment. He gave me a look of disappointment but understanding and he followed me down to baggage claim. I didn't know it but he had no idea what "PDA" meant. Hours later he was trying to figure out why I didn't want him to use a personal digital assistant.

First stop 7 Monkeys for dinner. It's a bar and grille, but the dinner menu is decent, and since I'd been too distraught to plan I figured I might as well show him my world. We couldn't get the little room where I'd had my birthday party. It was full of some other women. Ken pointed out to me that it was called "the Frolic Room". "Really?" I asked. It turns out there is a sign above the door of the room. I'd never noticed. We had a good time and the waitresses who knew me even stopped by to say hi.

Next we went to "Micks". I wasn't sure about taking him there. Not quite friends, not quite family, it's hard to understand or explain my relationships there. It's one thing to tell Ken about the place, but it's entirely another to take him there and expose him to it. Would he be jealous of the time I spend talking to other people? Would he feel left out? He was neither. He was cool and mature and took it all in stride. I hugged all the people I normally hug and hung out with all the people I normally hang out with and Ken slid into my world as if he'd been there for ages and his comfort and ease became mine. It was nice to have him there, a date I had neither to protect nor avoid, but instead expanded my world and enhanced my relationships with my friends.

The next morning, to my utter delight and amazement, Ken took my car and went to the grocery store to get food to make me breakfast. As he headed out with my car keys, I hopped into the shower to get ready for my tennis lesson. I had given him strict instructions: he had to be back by 10:15 am for me to get to my lesson at 10:30. Little did I know he was outside having a showdown with my car, Alexia, my white Land Rover, who refused to let a stranger mount her. The key wouldn't turn in the ignition and the car alarm went off. He struggled with her for a while pushing any combination of butons and finally got the car to start. How I never heard any of this I have no idea.

Next he tried following the directions I had given him for getting to the grocery store. He made a wrong turn right away. (It was my fault) Out here where I live you can go from civilization to farmland in a matter of minutes and have no idea how to find your way back. Somehow he found Mecca, aka Wal Mart, and got food and (here's the big miracle) found his way back again in time to make me breakfast and still get to the tennis lesson. When I came out of the shower, dressed in my tennis outfit, there he was frying eggs with not the tiniest look of distress on his face to let me know the ordeal he'd just been through.

He sat patiently in his jeans, T-shirt, and cowboy boots while we played tennis in the hot sun. Whenever I looked over at him to see if he was admiring my shots (or my shorts), he was doing neither. He was watching the instructor intently and I could see him mentally correcting and comparing his own game. I'd worried briefly about being self-concious or embarrassed. Normally I play pretty well but I haven't had a lesson in a month and here I was playing in front of my new boyfriend. I needn't have worried. After the lesson he met my friend and tennis partner, the married woman. "He's cute" she mouthed to me as we were leaving. She has no idea.

In the late afternoon, after lunch, we went to the Omaha zoo. I haven't been to the zoo since I was 8 years old and went to the Birmingham Zoo on a school field trip. I remembered it being hot and stinky and the monkeys wiping feces on the glass of their cage. Not my idea of a fun trip. I haven't been back since. But apparently Zoos have changed in the past 30 years. (Imagine that?) I've heard good things about the Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha and I figured Ken would like it. Plus I've been dying to see the butterfly exhibit so we went straight there. We saw lots of butterflies but I admitted being dissppointed. "What's wrong?" Ken asked, "Were you expecting to be covered in a cloud of butterflies?" .................................................How did he know?

The place is really nice, covered in trees, like walking through a forest. We walked everywhere, to the giraffes and the big cats and bears, and there was a nice breeze throughout the place. The giraffes were tall, elegant and gorgeous, my favorite of all the animals. There were kids everywhere. I don't know why that surprised me but it did.

We went home happy and only a little tired and took a nap on my chaise. Then we got up and Ken went to his hotel room to dress for dinner and I went to shower and get ready. When he came back we only had a few minutes to get to Spezia and make our reservation in time. I was dressed in an elegant but simple little black dress with my hair up, and he was handsome in his navy sports jacket and slacks. He held the car door on the passenger side open for me and for an instant I thought "I should drive" but it was fleeting. If he wanted to be a gentleman and drive I shouldn't deter him. So I dutifully climbed into the passenger seat and he went around and got into the driver's seat of Alexia. As if it were scripted, the key wouldn't turn. "Ok," Ken said "This is what it did last time. Now what do I do?"

I had no idea.
It hasn't done that to me in years since the first months I owned it. "Just push the key in and turn" I said.
"I'm trying" he said, "it won't turn".
"Try pushing the unlock button" I offered.
Nothing he did worked. The car alarm went off and I pannicked a little.
"Oh my Gosh, We're not going to make it to our romantic dinner" I cried inside. I was beginning to get discouraged and impatient with the whole situation but Ken was being so good I tried not to show it. We switched places and I tried doing the same things I'd just watched him doing. Still nothing. "Hand me the manual" I said. He did and I read it frantically, finding nothing that would help. Back and forth we went, reading the manual, switching places trying to get the car to start. I was getting crankier and crankier and he was so calm it was calming me down, keeping me from melting down and giving up completely. Finally, a half hour later at 9:00pm I vaguely remembered something about turning the steering wheel to get the car to unlock. Sure enough it worked. Relieved we set out for the restaurant. "But they've probably canceled our reservation" I worried aloud. Ken, ever the gentleman and ever prepared to take care of things, offered to call them. He pulled out his cell, listened carefully while I spelled "Spezia" for him two or three times, and then called directory assistance for the number. I listened impressed as he carefully pronounced "Sss-Pee-zee-ahh" into the electronic voice system. Even he was surprised when the system understood his pronunciation and got the number right away. He contacted the restaurant. Our reservation was secure.

We had our romantic dinner, and afterward came back to my place and had a walk under the stars around the pond. "A starlight walk" he called it. The evening was cool. We walked slowly, me in my black dress and now wrapped in my shawl, and him in his navy jacket, looking up at the sky and straining so long my neck started to hurt. He pointed out the big and little dipper and I learned that what I had been calling the little dipper was really the throne of Cassiopeia.

My Version of "And Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room?

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise

Dirty, impoverished, enslaved and poor
Not even allowed to walk through the front door.
Not good enough to sleep in your bed
Turned up your nose at this nappy head.

You can have nothing, was their solemn cry
I'll take even less, I dared to reply.
I want nothing that I do not earn,
I could not enjoy it, now watch me and learn.

Fast forward to now and look at me,
Didn't you know this is what you would see?
Had you no eyes, no brain or no heart?
Had you no imagination to predict this part?

I'm a dark ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Adapted from "And Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou.

Only Human

"Is that a tattoo I saw when your shirt raised up?" one of my new friends asked me during our softball game. When I answered no, she added, "Oh, I was thinking maybe you had a wild side we don't know about." I squinted briefly at her, shaking off the tiny questions that fluttered and glistened like soap bubbles all around my head..."What was she looking for?" I wondered. "Why would it matter if I have tattoos?" Only later did it occur to me that what she had probably been seeing were the scars from the fibroid myomectomy I had in 2005. I don't have a tattoo but there have been times I've considered getting one.

Her curiosity and search for my wild side is understandable. It's only human to look at someone we like and admire and to make comparisons. Recently I wrote a post called "Independence Day". I've said before that all of my posts write themselves and that one was no exception. It strained to get out of me like a child and I couldn't understand why it begged to be written so badly. After it was created I felt bad about what I had written about my friend so I took it down and buried it in my drafts folder. Then tonight it occurred to me why it needed to be written. For years somewhere deep down in the recesses of my mind I have been chiding myself for not being more competitive professionally like my friend. And then when I found out her life hadn't turned out so well after all and I wrote this post it came across like I was gloating, or worse yet, revelling in the failings of my friend. But I was doing neither. I was only being human.

Any success I have is God's,
my failures only, belong to me
There's no need to search for scars
I have plenty
though they may give you comfort to see
and I don't blame you if you do
after all you're human too

The Center of the Universe

Yesterday was my birthday and I awoke feeling like a princess. I felt like I should lie back on satin pillows all day while I did my laundry. My boss had accidentally sent out my birthday announcement a day early so the emails with birthday wishes had already started to come flooding in. You know that feeling of anticipation you get on the day before a holiday? That's how Wednesday felt, like Birthday-eve, so that by the time the actual day arrived it was built up to the point that it felt like a national holiday.

I have never had a birthday like this before. When I was a child no one ever made a big deal out of my birthday except to talk about it all day long. So although I knew the day itself was special it never occurred to me that I should feel special too. My ex-husband tried to make me understand. He was the youngest of three kids and an only son with two teenage sisters when he was born, so he'd always been treated like a prince. He'd had birthday parties his whole life and because his birthday was during the school year and his mother was a teacher the entire school was invited. He feels sorry for us poor kids with birthdays during the summer.

My first birthday after we started dating we went out to dinner with the married couple who had fixed us up and he gave me at least 6 or 7 presents. I remember a tennis racket, a gold necklace, and I'm ashamed to say I can no longer remember the rest of the presents. I was so touched. I didn't feel that my birthday was special but I did know that I was special to him. I don't think there was any doubt after that day that I was going to marry him.

After we were married he started having birthday parties for me to which he would invite all of his friends and make them all buy me presents. He would even tell them what presents to buy. It felt a little bit like when the teacher makes the other kids play with you at school. He would have invited my friends except I didn't really have any. It's not that I'm unfriendly. Quite the opposite. It's just that I was still pretty new in town and the one thing I've forgotten about having a boyfriend is that once you do you no longer hang out with anyone else. Come to think of it, not having a boyfriend in Omaha has been sort of a blessing because it's forced me to get to know lots of other people. (There I go looking at the bright side of things again).

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday at 7 Monkeys, a bar and grille on 156th and Maple in this room. I love this room because it feels like it was meant to be used in an episode of Sex and the City. I think people who know about this sort of stuff would call it art deco. It was my first attempt at getting my friends from different groups together. I have church friends, bar friends and work friends. I didn't invite everyone I know because of course some of my friends just aren't going to mix well with others. Honestly if some of my friends met some of my other friends they'd be so mad at me they'd never speak to me again. If you don't believe me click the link. So along with a tinge of guilt over all the people I didn't invite, there was a feeling of warmth and happiness that I could get everyone together under one roof without having to get married (or die) to do so. After we left 7 Monkeys we went to Mick's! where, I was surprised with a birthday cake lit up with candles. I don't do surprises well, especially when they make me feel like the center of attention and a room full of people are all looking at me. This is due to the childhood trauma of having been raised in a household of about ten aunts and uncles and getting whippings everytime someone called attention to me. There was no such thing as good attention. Attention equalled trouble as far as I was concerned from about age 3. That's why I was shocked to feel no strangeness, no trauma, no feeling of wanting to run and hide when said cake and candles were brought out. All I felt was love from everyone in the room.

In the months since I've written this, the sentiment "all I felt was love" has often been mistaken for "in Love" with Mick. I have to smile because that is soooo my sister. It means that my search for her through my blog-writing has worked and she's "here" in my heart, where I wanted her to be. I have added "from everyone in the room" because that's what I felt and those are my words, not hers. I apologize to anyone who misunderstood. No hard feelings. Even I didn't fully understand till now.

My sister left this world in 2003 and she and I never understood each other. We approached life from completely opposite directions. For me the bar experience was my way of stepping out of my perfectly engineered life and getting a little messy, walking in her shoes and better understanding her choices, of finding the part of myself that I rejected because I didn't like the reflection that I saw in her - my gift of understanding to her and her gift of creativity and of open-mindedness (and open-heartedness to me). I think if she could have given me a birthday present this is exactly what it would have been.

The Nanny Diaries...

Well the vacation is over and I'm back home. It was an interesting weekend. My friend brought her 8 year-old daughter along because the child's father, my friend's ex, lives in Florida. My friend spent half the day in my hotel room working on the book and the other half in the room she was sharing with daddy and daughter.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for a divorced couple to be friends. I am friends with my ex. It works for Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. But my ex didn't steal my credit card on my last visit to see him. I don't pay the mortgage on a house for my ex to live in, a house we nearly lost in foreclosure because he was gambling our income away. The problem with being friends with an ex like that is there is always an elephant in the room that everyone is trying to ignore. And no one sees elephants better than kids.

At one point the child threw a HUGE temper tantrum because she wanted to go shopping with mommy and me. Eventually this tantrum landed in my room..... with me....alone. This seemed an odd time to leave her with me, I thought. I wondered if mommy and daddy were spending quality time together.

I hugged her and comforted her and told her that mommy loved her and we wouldn't be gone long. I remembered my training from sales school....get them to say three yes's and you've got them sold. Maybe it would work on kids too.
"Who bought you a sewing machine today?" I asked.
"Mommy did" she said.
"And who got to pick Mongo's for us to go eat the best lunch ever?" I asked.
"I did" she said.
"And who played with you in the ocean today?" I asked.
She had caught on....."Not Mommy!!!!" she wailed.
"Yes, Mommy did" I said. And I could see her resolve to stay mad melting away.

Eventually she calmed down and I went to take a shower and change. She sat in the room watching tv and when I came out she was entertaining herself by pouring the $4 bottles of hotel room water out the balcony window. Probably on somebody's head.

Moments later mommy showed up at my door, furious! What was taking me so long?? I was scathingly criticized for comforting her daughter during her tantrum. I was accused of letting an 8-year-old take advantage of me. Didn't I know when I was being played by a child?

Um....she's a child. She's 8. She has by default permission to "play me". It's my responsibility to figure out what it is she really needs and then meet that need so that she will no longer find it necessary to "play me" and she can learn to ask for what she needs in an honest, respectful and healthy way instead of manipulating. Call me old-fashioned.

"What did you say to her?" my friend asked.
How was I supposed to answer that? I tried to make you look good you b-word?
"I appealed to her sense of logic" I answered.
Impossible for my friend to understand because her sense of logic only appears for short bursts of time, 2 to 3 minutes max.

"Do you ever doubt yourself?" my friend had asked earlier in a totally unrelated conversation.
At this point I am seriously doubting my taste in friends.

Independence Day

This is the 4th of July weekend and I'm spending it at the beach with my friend. We are writing a book about her life and her career. She's an engineer and also has a business as a professional coach and she wants to use the book as part life lessons, part professional coaching instruction manual.

I love my friend. She and I have known each other since around 1992 when we worked as interns for the same company. I was the quiet, studious little engineer, the one who put her head down, obeyed orders, did what I was told and worked hard. She was the political juggernaut who behaved as if every assignment she was given was a fight for civil rights. I imagined it was exhausting to be her, but she had some good points. She was always questioning the establishment and policing our management to make sure she was getting the same treatment as the male engineer in our department who, let's be honest, was given more perks and seemed to do much less work.

She was the first person who pushed me to compete at work. Up until that point I had never seen work as a "competition". For the most part I still don't, but I know that just because I don't naturally function that way doesn't mean I can ignore the fact that most of the professional world does. She was right, if a little over zealous about her message. You have to stick up for yourself, look around, and make sure you compete and fight for what you deserve or no one will give it to you.

After I graduated and finished the internship we lost touch. When last we saw each other she, ever the ambitious one, was getting ready to take her GMAT exam and enter MBA school. I on the other hand was just interested in getting my feet wet, using my degree, and finding out just what an engineer was and how I would do it. I took a small, unglamorous job in a remote area of Alabama where there were no professionals and no one to date. I didn't hear from her for years and assumed she'd gotten her MBA and was continuing her fast track career to the top. A few years later I saw her picture in Ebony magazine and she was being featured as one of the most eligible single African American women in the country. "Good for her!" I thought, and I was proud of her because it seemed that she was well on her way to getting what she had always wanted and what seemed to me her birthright. She was beautiful and outgoing, popular with men, and hungry for career success. Meanwhile I was dating my college sweetheart long distance and content, though lonely, in my tiny little garage apartment in Alabama.

Cut to today. Her career has been derailed several times. She's been making bad decisions about men, especially men with whom she works. She's started her own business as a professional coach but is finding it hard to find clients. She's been married and divorced with a man who steals from her, has a gambling problem, and forfeited on their home mortgage. She is a single parent, struggling to maintain a lifestyle just beyond her reach and spoiling a daughter who doesn't know how fragile it all is. I am also divorced but with no children, no foreclosure, no gambling, no debt. My career has also been derailed a couple of times but the position I have now is a perfect fit.

So now here we are, on the beach, writing a book. I'm trying to listen without judging and without advising her or playing armchair therapist. It's always easier to see where other people have gotten stuck, much easier than it is to coach and unstick ourselves. What's shocking is the number of things our lives have had in common. It's as if God gave us the same material to work with and then sat back to watch what we'd do with it.

I wonder if she is getting the same value out of this experience. I doubt it, but I can always hope....

Prelude to Apocalypse

The power was out last night for a big chunk of Omaha. I drove around town looking for hot fast food and every McDonalds was closed. That's how I knew it was bad.

I had spent the early part of the evening stuck at work. I had headed home twice but had been stopped by the high winds and common sense which told me I was safer where I was for the moment. Some people left anyway and I have no doubt many of them ended up with hail-damaged cars and stalled on flooded roads. When the winds finally died down and it felt safe enough to leave I passed along highway 75 North headed home and the southbound lanes, only a few feet away but separated by construction barriers, were flooded.

When I got to my neighborhood the traffic lights weren't working but the people had the intelligence to automatically turn it into a 4-way stop, driving politely and in an orderly fashion. My kind of people. Intuitively smart and organized. No traffic cops in sight and none needed.

By 9:00pm I was starving. I wanted a hot meal, not the cold food that was spoiling in my refrigerator, so I was finally forced by hunger to leave home in search of food. I instinctively started towards West Omaha but it was instantly clear that things only got worse in that directon. All of the lights were out and all of the businesses closed. At 132nd and Maple, the home of my Baker's, several power line utility poles had been blown down by the strong winds and crews were out working on them. Traffic was routed south.

Most of the traffic lights weren't working. I drove through the busier parts of my neighborhood surveying the damage. The Omaha police force was out directing traffic at the major intersections. Giving up hope of finding food, I decided to head towards the bar where at least I would find the comfort of good company, good music, and good drink. But the bar was closed. Apparently the damage was widespread.

On the way there I had to enter the other, neglected part of Omaha, the part that the city government seems to ignore or at least considers less important. Things were worse than I thought. 90th and Maple, usually an ok area, was like the land that time forgot. It was a drive deeper and deeper into chaos. No policemen in sight. Trees and debris still littered the streets. Some folks were smart enough to treat the major intersections as if they were 4-way stops, but others had no clue and either sat there in their cars holding up traffic or driving randomly into the intersection with no sense of order. Bless their hearts, these were definitely not my people.

When I got closer to the bar in Benson the IQ seemed to go back up again. There is for some reason a series of traffic lights, one after the other, in the middle of streets instead of at intersections. I imagine these were placed there in the old days to allow the people to cross the streets safely to go into the businesses, but now it just seems odd and antiquated, but also quaint and sweet. In fact that's how the people were driving...cautiously, carefully, not systematically and clean like in my neighborhood but with a different kind of system that indicated an awareness and politeness for all the foot traffic in the area.

By now I was really hungry and getting cranky. I drove back towards West O a different way, along Military which had to be better than driving down Maple where at one intersection the people seemed to be trying to drive in order but there were too many who wouldn't follow the system. At that intersection I did something that is uncharacteristic for me: I lost my temper. I honked at a car that drove out into the middle of the street. "Relax!" yelled a man as I drove past him sitting at the bus stop on the same corner. He was right. I needed to relax. These are the types of conditions that either bring out the compassionate side or the worst in people. In my defense, I was also hormonal.

Finally I found a Burger King that was open. It was located, of all places, at 72nd and Sorensen, considered a "bad part" of Omaha but in a newer and relatively nice area. I smiled at the fact that, in the midst of all that had happened, it was this section of town that was up and running.

The entire drive had looked like something out of the beginning of a disaster movie. Traffic everywhere as if people were looking for something...food....answers...lights...other people.

I got my food and headed home. I promised myself that I would make use of this experience by making a list of all the things I'd realized I needed. I mentally added cans of tuna and baked beans to the list. Should I get a generator? A grill? If this ever happens again I want to be prepared so that I can be hospitable and helpful to people, not cranky at them.

And a child shall lead them: 4 Boy Scouts

When I wrote "Tornado" a few days ago it was because it seemed like a good story. I almost left the word "surviving" out of the title because to use that word implied that there was a possibility of not surviving and honestly that thought never entered my head. I believed when I went to sleep that night that I would wake up the next day, though to what I didn't know. There were no fatalities that night and no reason to expect that there would ever be any this season. "Surviving" was just a word.....just a title....just for sensationalist purposes. I have since taken it out.

Who am I that I should even know one, much less two, of the young boy scouts who were killed in the tornado last week? I have been in Omaha for not quite two years. I have no kids the way most people my age have. I don't have teenagers to get me involved in the community. I feel like I know almost no one, although of course that is not true. But how on earth could I possibly know two.....????

In my usual fashion I considered skipping the memorial services. I sat at my desk. I prayed. What else could I do? I checked the news, I cried for these young children who would never get to live as grown-ups, I emailed my friends to pray. Then one of my co-workers asked me if I was going to one of the memorial services. "Are you going?" I asked her. "yes" she said. "Then I'll go too." I was going for her. I never know what I can do in those situations when I am not close to the families. I don't see what good my presence would do or how they would even know I was there. But I would go with my friend.

After making the decision to go to one, I decided that I should also go to the other one. I left work and went alone. The place was packed. I was the only black woman in the audience. Well, if you count the bi-racial teen then there was two of us. She looked at me accusingly (as teenagers will do), as if to say "you didn't know him, why are you here?" I just looked at her and smiled slightly, letting her know that she was right, I didn't "know" him the way she did, but sometimes adults just do things because they're the right things to do. I wasn't going to get caught up in race that day.

I wasn't going to think about myself at all. I could have easily sat there, a tall black woman with locked hair dressed professionally in a bright yellow bolero jacket and black slacks, amongst these plain Nebraskan folk, many of them farmers in their ordinary clothes, and I could have felt very much out of place. In fact for a few minutes I did. The people who normally hug me barely gave me a look. Some of them seemed to want to avoid me. "Why?" I wondered. "Is it because they don't want to show how familiar they are with me in front of all of these strangers?" No matter, I could forgive them and show them grace and mercy. Things will be back to normal later. I was not going to get caught up in my own thoughts and feelings of being an outsider, not now. This was not the time. The young man we were memorializing wouldn't have cared. That was his lesson, his example to me: to put my social anxiety aside and not let it get in the way of life.

He was the least self-concious kid I've ever seen. His total lack of self-conciousness reminded me of my brother when we were kids. This young boy scout was a constant reminder to me that life wasn't about appearances. He didn't seem to care that he wasn't "cool" or to even realize it. He was just a good, sweet, little kid going through that awkward teenage phase who loved God and who lived life with more enthusiasm than anyone I've ever seen. I have been self-conscious all of my life. But for Sam I would do this, sit here and forget about myself and just be a human being sharing in the feelings of other human-beings. And an interesting thing happened: My clothes and my race melted away and all that was left was me.

You can say as one of my Catholic friends did that God had no message in what happened, that sometimes bad things just happen. "Some people say 'everything happens for a reason" she said, "but that's not true. God does not treat us like pawns in a chess game. He loves us more than that." These were her words, and I mostly agreed with them.

OK, not pawns. Not chess. Not a game. But God doesn't interfere? Are you kidding me?? Has she READ the Bible??? God does nothing BUT interfere. It's good because it's the only way we know he exists. I didn't say anything. Riding home from the memorial service wasn't the best time.

What I don't believe is that 96 people can be hit by a tornado in the middle of a wooded campground surrounded by trees and ONLY 4 of them be killed. Have you seen the pictures? That place was destroyed. THAT is the miracle. But then why those 4? I don't know. But read 13 year-old Sam Thomsen's sermon that he read at church just a few months ago. If it doesn't move you or touch your heart, you don't have one. Then let me know what you think.

Barrack Obama's VP: General Wesley Clark

Ok, Mr. Obama, I know you didn't ask me but just in case you're paying attention I'm going to offer my opinion on who you should choose as a running mate...

General Wesley Clark.

The only way he could be any more perfect as a running mate is if he were a woman.

Ok, I know this is where I'm supposed to provide the compelling arguments in his favor, showing that I made this judgement based on information rather than some emotional or traditional reasons. I started not to do this. I started to leave this article just as it was, ending with the "woman" comment above. But I can do better than that.

I've decided to leave the emotional/traditional/"I think he'll be a good president because his Daddy was a good president and that's good enough for me" type decision-making to the people who follow that pattern of behavior. (I swear to God an otherwise intelligent female chemical engineer once said that to me about Bush). Plus I shouldn't just assume you know the reasons. I am an intuitive and intuitives tend to expect people to fill in the blanks. It's a compliment to you really. But the world is ruled by S's - sensing people who need information and detail, and as much as I give out information as an intuitive, I receive it as a sensor, meaning I like detail. So here are the reasons, but before we go into detail about "why Wesley" I think it's best to start with a discussion of "why not Hillary?" Here's why not:

Reason number one: For Mr. Obama, winning over Hillary's supporters may mean losing his own. There are a lot, and I mean a LOT, of people who hate Hillary. If Mr. Obama were to add her to his ticket, he would undoubtedly lose some of the swing votes he had; those nice, intelligent, thinking Republicans and independents who want to vote for change. Sure, he would gain her 18 million supporters, but there's no telling how many of his own suppporters he would lose in the process. That's just not good math. You NEVER alienate your own base just to get more votes. That type of action would make him look weak and, well, too political.

Reason number two: She still wants to be President. She didn't stretch out her own campaign that long just to be VICE president and I don't think she would be happy to accept the traditional role, that is, being there just in case something happens to the President and in the meantime providing the occasional swing vote in the Senate. John Adams called it the most useless job ever invented by man and Hillary is anything but useless.

Which leads us to...
Reason number three: We would have two Presidents. I don't think she could stop herself from pushing her own agendas even when they contrast starkly with his. That would be a serious distraction from taking care of the business of getting the country back on course.

And here are the reasons for choosing Wesley Clark as his running mate:

1. Obviously his military background
2. He didn't just serve in the Army, he achieved the rank of General. They don't just hand those out for good attendance.
3. He served in Kosovo so he has experience dealing with a war in the Middle East. Hmmm, wonder why we'd need THAT qualification in a leader?
4. He was valedictorian of his class at West Point. I have nothing against C-students. I was one myself in college. Yes it's great that we live in a country where a C-student can be elected president, but hasn't that theory failed?
5. He's a relatively young 61 years old.
6. It's hard to overlook how handsome he is. That's gotta bring Hollywood running.
7. He is both multi-ethnic and multi-religious. He's White, Jewish, Methodist, Baptist and Catholic. Plus he's a southerner who was raised in Arkansas. You can read about how this is possible in his bio, but to my mind that's got to draw in a lot of different votes that Barrack Obama may not have gotten otherwise. Hey, if you look far back enough, he's probably even black.
8. He was aligned with Hillary in the primary. And since he's run for President before it's probably safe to say that she was considering him as her running mate. That means representing her agendas without having to actually represent HER, thus perhaps skimming a few of her 18 million votes and leaving the die-hards still voting for John McCain out of spite, which honestly makes them the same as people who voted for Bush because of his father and isn't that where the irrational people belong?
9. Clark is going to continue to hold his own ideas while remaining loyal to the President.
10....I don't have a reason number 10 yet. I've decided to reserve that spot for if and when Clark is chosen and the media starts pouring out all the laundry, clean and dirty.

P.S. Has anyone noticed that no one is asking who McCain's running mate is going to be? It's almost as if no one cares.

Tornado

As I lay in my bed asleep Saturday night, my dreams were injected with a faint high pitched whining sound. The sound kept getting louder. "I think that means you need to wake up" a voice in my head said, as in my sleep I tried to figure out where the sound was coming from.

I awoke to realize it was the weather alert sirens going off. "Oh great" I thought. "I wonder how long that's going to go on?" I was not yet awake enough to realize that the sirens were not a test, but were alerting us to a real weather threat which meant I needed to take action. Groggily my body started to move. For some reason I had slept in my yoga pants and a t-shirt, not my usual sleepwear, so I was basically "dressed". Throwing back the covers I could hear the wind and trees blowing outside, the rain hiting the roof and sides of my condo with more force than normal. I think it was those sounds that finally jolted me into reality.

I remembered my friend A's words from the other day, "You're in the interior of the building surrounded by other homes, AND you have a basement. You're SAFE." His words played like a recording in my head and reassured me. As I headed for the basement stairs I spotted a pair of sketchers at the back door, the ones I normally wear to play golf. I grabbed them to put on and ran down into the basement. For some reason I went straight to the window and looked out, trying to see the exact moment the tornado would touch down. I could see my neighbor's basement lights were also on, letting me know that they were taking this as seriously as I was.

I turned away from the window and looked around the room, my mind finally grasping the entire situation and starting to think about what I needed to do. I had no chairs down there, and no folding chairs to bring down. A treadmill and an eliptical machine were placed in front of the window. I could actually lie on the treadmill, but I would have to move it away from the window. Other than that, the basement only held boxes of christmas decorations, a lamp with a fisherman's basket for the base and fish shadows on the shade, and a single bottle of red wine on a little wine rack, the beginning of my wine collection. "No, look at EVERYTHING" my mind said. My goodness my mind is so much smarter than "I" am. So I re-surveyed the room again and this time I acknowledged the roll of remnant carpet against one wall. Hmmm...

I grabbed the carpet roll and dragged it into the small closet-like space between the stairs and the innermost wall. I unrolled it and the space was instantly more inviting and comfortable: a shelter. I moved the little box containing a camp stove out of the way, hoping. My hopes were rewarded, there was an outlet back there. I brought over the plastic tub of Christmas ornaments and the fisherman's lamp, making a nightstand of them and plugged the lamp in, then ran back upstairs and grabbed my pillow and the duvet off the bed. I had my paperback copy of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejdice and a bottle of water. It was a cozy little shelter and I was ready to settle in.

Hmmm, not quite.

I needed my cell phone. Another trip upstairs. This time I also grabbed my purse and the six-pack of water I'd bought at the store that day. Back downstairs. I lay there and read a while, but the floor was too hard. I'd never get any sleep. I remembered a foam mattress I had in one of the extra bedrooms on the 2nd floor. But I didn't want to go back up there and get it. I thought of my male friends and how, if one of them were here, they would do whatever it took to make me comfortable and would go get it for me. "But I have no man" I thought. "Then you must do for yourself whatever you would want a man to do for you" said the survival instinct that had been guiding me all night. Up I went.

As I was getting the foam mattress, dumping the clothes that were stacked on it to the floor, I spotted my sleeping bag sticking out of a box. I thought it was long lost back in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but there it was right when I needed it. I grabbed it too. On the way back I grabbed a bag of Cheetos and a bag of Pepperidge Farm oatmeal raisin cookies. Back down stairs and spread out first the foam mattress then the sleeping bag. I lay down on it and it was more comfortable than my bed upstairs. "Now you have everything you need", I thought. I looked at the clock on my blackberry. I knew I'd been pressing my luck. "There are to be no more trips upstairs" said my survival instinct, quite firmly. The clock read 2:29 am.

I lay there and read for a while. I have to admit I liked the adventurous feeling of it. I was safe and comfortable and having Jane Austen to read made me feel even more secure. Just before I drifted off to sleep, I reached up and turned off the fish lamp and turned on the little flashlight I'd had in my purse, using it as a nightlight and hoping it would keep the spiders away. I slept well under the circumstances. I dreamed that the exterior wall of my basement was blown away to ground level and my neighbor's entire building was gone. When I awoke everything was in tact. I went about my normal routine and later in the morning I checked the news online to see if any of Omaha had been hit. The first tornado had touched down at exactly 2:30am.

The Hillary Experience

Sooner or later, we as women all have to go through this. No matter how beautiful we are, or how smart, or funny or athletic or 'pert near perfect we are...sooner or later we're going to have to let go of something that we knew for sure was ours.

It's official, Barrack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president, but Hillary Clinton still won't end her campaign. The papers today are full of details and analysis about how Clinton, a virtual shoe-in, lost the nomination anyway. And everyone has accepted it except Hillary.

I have to tell you that I can relate to this. I know what it is to be the perfect candidate, to have everyone supporting me, and to be the assumed heir only to lose anyway. Not in an election, but in love and romance. In fact, I am learning at almost the exact same rate she is. But unlike her I have a great example to watch. I have a bird's eye view of the fact that despite her perfection, Barrack Obama is in fact the perfect candidate right now. There's no disputing it. I like to think that the Universe always works this way. Yes, I may have been right, but I'm not right now. So my job changes from proving how perfect I am, to exiting the stage with grace and dignity and supporting the true winner.

Hillary, my dear, I am sorry you are having to learn this lesson so late in life. The fact that you can live to be 50-some-odd years old and not have the sense to know how and when to bow out gracefully makes me feel blessed that I am learning it right now. The universe is a wonderful instructor. In what I have come to call "the Hillary experience" it is showing me just how carried away one can get with the concept that determination, hard work, and desire will get you there.

The reason Hillary lost the nomination can be debated by the experts, but I can tell you exactly why, in my humble opinion, she is not the right candidate right now. It's because she's myopic. The fact that she's so doggedly determined to stay on a course when it has so obviously failed is evidence that she is disturbingly similar to her predecessor, president Bush. I'm afraid that under her we would have had 4 more years of going full speed ahead in the wrong direction, even if it is in the opposite direction.

What has touched me most about all of this? How gently and patiently and respectfully the rest of the Democratic party has handled her, refusing to push her out or to criticize her. Even if she hasn't behaved with dignity, they have certainly treated her with some. It encourages me that there is still decency and a sense of respect for her intelligence and her abilities, for her position as a former first lady, and for the historical significance of what she was trying to accomplish and it reminds me of a time when honor and respect still existed in government.

Flying Trolley

I had a choir performance last week. True to form, I had no idea where it was.

Ok, I had SOME idea. It was taking place in Florence, Nebraska as part of Historic Florence Days. I drive through Florence every day on my way to work. The place is all on one street, maybe 4 or 5 blocks long, with a big park right off the way. We'd probably be performing in that park, I thought, but just in case we weren't I had my blackberry with me so I could pull up the directions in the email our choir director had sent. I always have a contingency plan.

I arrived at the park with plenty of time left. There was already someone in the park playing instruments and they didn't look like they were leaving any time soon.

"Maybe if I park here and watch, I'll see some of the other members pull up". I parked and waited. No one came. I started to worry. Time to pull out the directions. (Like a guy I always ask for directions only as a last resort, but unlike a guy I don't wait until the situation is hopeless.)

I found the email in my blackberry but when I scrolled down for the directions they were in an attachment instead of in the body of the email where I could have easily read them. "No problem" I thought, "I'll just open the attachments". But the attachments wouldn't open. I looked at the clock and my extra time was starting to melt away. What to do? I called the director but he didn't answer. I considered driving in to the office, logging in, and checking the email and I even started driving in that direction but quickly realized I'd never make it in time.

I parked my car and walked to a sidewalk book vendor who was part of the festivities. Before I could even ask I heard her say to one of her customers, "I'm getting ready to go hear the singers." Great!

"Where are the singers going to be?" I asked.
"Over at the old depot" she said.
"Where's that?" I asked. (You mean there's more to this place than only one street?!!)
Another lady, a customer, started explaining the directions to me, but my mind was racing too much to absorb what she was saying.
"Look" I said, "I'm one of the singers and I need to get there quickly."
"Oh, you're in luck" said the owner. "Here comes the trolley. He'll take you."
Great!

I stood at the curb and waited for the trolley. I hadn't paid a lot of attention to the directions but I had listened enough to vaguely realize he was pointed in the opposite direction of the depot.
"No problem" I thought "I've got plenty of time for him to circle the block and take me back. How big could Florence be?"

I got on to the trolley and explained my situation to the driver. He wasn't real clear but he did say he could take me and I made it very clear that I only had like 20 minutes. You can drive clear across the entire city of Omaha in 20 minutes.

I took a seat, smiling and saying hello to the other passengers, happy people with children and ice cream cones. The driver continued on his tour and it didn't take me long to realize that, despite my obviously desparate plea to go straight back to the depot, he was going to do his ENTIRE tour.

We went to a church, past a school where we stopped for someone to get off and buy fresh baked goods, and then turned down a dirt road. Oh dear.

I cautiously made my way up to the front of the trolley, not easy to do when it was wobbling around on the dirt road and I was still wearing the skirt and high heeled sandals I had worn for church that morning. "Sir", I said, "I really do need to get to the depot immediately." He said nothing." On my way forward I noticed he had a tip basket. I fished throuh my wallet. I had about 4 singles, a ten and some twenties. I only had a few minutes left. "Please, sir, if you could get me to the depot, I'm in a huge hurry and I'd really appreciate it." I dropped the ten in his basket to show him just how much.

The trolley lurched forward as he floored it. As we flew through the streets of Historic Florence I was pretty sure we were making history right then because it's safe to say that trolley has never gone that fast before or since. Oh, and he got me there on time. I even had time to warm up.

Spring Fever

I watched two robins playing in my backyard today. They were flitting about and I don't know how I knew, but I could tell something romantic was going on. "Oh how cute" I thought, thinking it looked like they were trying to mate.

Wait **nose wrinkling** how Do birds mate?

Anyway, one of them started making a lot of noise that vaguely resembled "get off of me"! The other one persisted and kept chasing about until they finally ended up in a patch where a lot of other robins seemed to be hanging out playing and relaxing. The fighting couple annoyed the happy robins and they all started to take off. "Hmm....Just like humans", I thought.

One robin continued to chase the other around the yard, not bothered by the fact that they'd annoyed all of their friends. "Hmm....must be the boy trying to pounce on the girl" I thought. Then I took a closer look. The smaller female was actually the one doing the chasing. It was the big boy who was running away.

"Awwwww....REALLY just like humans", I thought, smiling.

Blessings & Success

When you move to a new city there's no one, even after two years, who really knows who you are. Our lives are a crazy quilt of experiences that have shaped us and if we're lucky there are a few people who've been around long enough, and understand us well enough, that they know the story for every patch. My best friend is one of those persons. Without these people to vouch for our stories and explain our quilts, the rest of the world will just come to its own conclusions and will quite often get it wrong. That is frustrating. That is what I'm feeling right now.

My move to Omaha was the final step in reaching my life's goals. Not because I wanted to live in Omaha, but because moving here allowed me to take the last step in my career; the final step I had dreamt would define my career success. I know that sounds odd, but my dreams never included a specific place, just a description of my job and my lifestyle. And now I'm living it.

You would think that people would be happy for me, especially other Christians. You would think that when I say "look, look what the Lord has done" they would see me and say "Amen. Praise God". But they do not. They say "what makes you think you're so special that God would answer your prayers when he doesn't answer anyone elses?"

It's true, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if the majority of Christians are this way, but the ones I keep encountering do not believe that God actually answers prayers. And so when I tried to have this conversaton at lunch last Sunday, I think I offended someone at the table. Yesterday the sermon was about, you guessed it, success, and how we don't know how to measure it, and the ways in which we measure it are not God's ways. And the minister, as he spoke, looked pointedly at me, or so it seemed.

I was shocked...disappointed...disillusioned believing (incorrectly) that that he was preaching a sermon about something I had said without ever hearing my side of the story first. A sermon based on heresay. This happened to my best friend years ago when we were in college. I no longer remember what the sermon was about, I only know that my friend was mentioned in a sermon or speech of some kind and she was highly offended, so much so that she stopped going to church there and eventually changed schools. She was only 18 or 19 years old and she handled it remarkably well for a young girl her age.

If this man knew me or anything about me he would be circulating petitions to make me the poster child for success. I was so shocked that I could imagine having a crisis of faith if I had been younger. I could imagine doubting the existence of God. But thankfully I am 38, not 18, and I felt, not a crisis of faith, but shaken in my belief in worship assemblies and ministers who think they know it all; men who forget to follow the caution they preach cause a world of trouble. Just look at Jeremiah Wright.

I prayed about this as I drove to work today, my best time for prayer. If I had been saying what he thought I was saying, then yes, that would be cause for alarm. People should not think they are better than other people, or that they are blessed because of their actions or because "God loves them more".

"We don't know", said the minister, "if something is a blessing or if we are a success until we look back."

I agree, and I do look back. I keep journals and I can go back almost 15 years and read my own words of prayer. I can (literally) look at my life and all around me and I can see the answers. I am sorry if everyone hasn't done this. But my telling of it and my rejoicing in it does not make me prideful. Has every prayer been answered? Of course not. But every answer is a blessing.

New note: Added June 4, 2008:
Of course I couldn't let things hang like that and let this fester, so I called my minister and told him how disturbed I was about his sermon, and asked him if there had been any discussion about the lunch conversation. I was relieved when he said no. I told him about my 15 years of journalling and he was really affirming. He said "Good for You" and told me that is exactly what he was trying to get people to do with his sermon. (He really IS a good minister & I felt guilty, but relieved and forgiven...whew)

Told ya the universe does that. Of course it could have been just that once the topic came up, people continued to talk about it all week until it finally worked it's way to the minister and he thought "ah hah, that would be a good topic for a sermon!" But I think if that had happened he would have told me.

Nahh....

New note added:
Looking back I think the reason I experienced this is so I could understand and relate to the traumatic experience of my friend. Thanks Universe.

The Problem with Blogging

The thing about blogging is that someone almost always inevitably reads more into a post than I intended. I once had to delete my entire blog because one of my reader’s thoughts got carried away. That’s why my blog profile says I’ve been a member since 2004, but my posts only date back to 2006. I deleted the two years that I wrote prior to moving to Omaha.

So now I can see it happening again. No sooner did I write about my “psychic connection” to an ex-boyfriend then I can almost see the weeds starting to grow and choke other relationships. Not to worry. Honestly, I have this sort of “psychic connection” with almost everyone I know and care about. I just wrote about him as an example because it’s particularly strong with him, not because we’re closer than most, but because we both have a quality I haven’t been able to articulate yet. I’m not a Star Wars geek, but the best way I can put it is “the force is very strong with both of us”.

Sometimes I meet people who have no “force” at all. He is the first person I’ve ever met whose signal is strong. I have nothing to do with him having it. It was there when I met him. Our meeting was a coincidence of someone who is really “loud” (him) meeting someone who has a really sensitive “ear” (me).

One of my qualities as a "receiver" is that I hear and reflect back, the result of which is that people who are around me begin to develop their own abilities. So if you and I, dear reader, have never shared a thought or called each other when one of us was thinking about the other then we probably haven’t known each other long enough or well enough. But if you hang in there and relax, I’m sure we will.

Grown-up Easter Barbie

Sunday morning. Here’s how it went:

8:00am. Alarm goes off: beep-beep-beep. Slap! Snooze.
Alarm goes off again. Slap! Snooze again.

Repeat above about 10 times. Why that many? Because I actually got up around 9:20 and the snooze goes off every 8 minutes.

Great. Now I have 10 minutes to get ready for church and 30 minutes to drive. Stumble to the shower.

Out of the shower. Glance at clock. That's ok, I can drive to the church in 20 minutes. 10 minutes to get ready and 20 minutes to drive.

Now what to wear? Hey, it’s Easter! That means I should wear something pretty. Pull out floral skirt. It’s probably too big. I haven’t worn it since I lost weight. Try on skirt. It’s not too big. Curse skirt and hang it back up. It’s too floral and Hawaiian-looking anyway. This is church not a luau.

Hmmm…what else? It’s cold today. Not Easter-like at all. Not like the South. Better wear something pretty AND warm.

Oh, there’s my long white linen skirt. Admire it. It IS pretty. Check the size. Definitely too big. Try it on. Yayyy!!!! It’s too big!! Definitely going to wear this skirt. And it’s ankle-length so I can wear boots! (I love boots.)

Now what top? Black linen with the white embroidery? Try it on. Hmm..verrry slimming. Looks good with skirt. Am I really that slim on top? I look almost delicate. Nevermind, black and white are definitely not Easter-y. Back into closet. Will keep in mind for funerals. But it's too pretty for funerals. Maybe for a festive spring funeral.

Hey there’s my yellow linen jacket with the ruffles all around the edges and sleeves. Never worn it. Verrrry feminine. Too feminine? It’s from J-Jill! It’s allowed to be too feminine. Anyway is there any such thing? Probably not. It’s Probably too big. Try it on. Hmm, lovely. Too big in a way that fits, not too loose.

Now, I have an outfit. Glance at clock. Ok, well I can get ready in 5 minutes and get there in 15.

Walk into bathroom. Pull my hair back. Why doesn’t it look right? And why does it look different depending on the angle I pull it back? Because they’re different angles, duh…now get a move on. Pull hair back and take it down. Repeat at least 10 times.

Well that took long enough. Don’t even THINK about makeup. Exit bathroom. Glance at clock. Ok if I leave now I have 10 minutes to get there.

But I need a coat. Which coat? And perfume.

Glance at clock. Drat!! 5 minutes!!!!!!!!! I’ll never make it!!!!!!!!!!!

Walk towards garage. Pass powder room mirror and get a glimpse of almost full length of outfit, including lime green coat which looked very Easter-y in the closet but on me just hangs.

Great. Everything’s too big. I look like a pastel-colored bag lady. Maybe I should…..

“Oh no you don’t” I think…….and mentally push myself out the door.

Made it. Only 5 minutes late. Service ok. Go to Easter brunch with girlfriend. Two little girls who are mixed half-black/half-white walk past our table holding the hand of their mother who is white. The older one looks at my girlfriend and makes a shocked face.

“Don't be shocked” I think, “You’re going to be one of us some day”. (Unless of course Barack Obama wins president in which case you'll get to be whoever you want to be and your skin color won't matter, I continue my mental conversation with her. )

They walk by again later. This time I catch her eye and flash her my best “grown-up Barbie” smile. She smiles back and gives me an “Oh my, you look like a princess” look. “Yes, and you’re going to be one of us someday” I give her a knowing look and a nod back. This time she looked like that would be just fine with her.

There, that's better.

Let There Be Light

The ultimate destination of faith is to come to that point where you realize that (1) eternity is a very, very, very long time and (2) no situation is permanent and (3) suffering may seem like a bad thing (OK it actually IS a bad thing) but imagine the monotony of a life with no struggles or growth...it would be like a world without seasons. Saying suffering isn't bad would be like saying winter isn't cold. It is, but you can avoid freezing and sometimes even manage to enjoy yourself.

I would love to live in a "spiritual Hawaii"......a world of no problems; a paradise. But to live in a physical world with changing seasons, well......... that is like living in Omaha, Nebraska. The winters are long and hard here to be sure, but not impossible and not nearly as bad or as long as they seem. Just like all suffering, it looks far worse to the people who aren't going through it. The dread of it is worse than the actual experience.

A friend of mine at work emailed me the story below. I've heard it before and probably you have too. But it is exactly what I think of Christianity. The people, believers and atheists alike, who believe themselves to be good people because of their own abilities are like candles that think they lit themselves.


Does Evil Exist?

The University professor challenged his students with this question.

"Did God create everything that exists?"

A student bravely replied, "Yes he did!"

"God created everything?" The professor asked.

"Yes sir", the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are, then God is evil."

The student became quiet before such an answer. The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "Can I ask you a question professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor does cold exist?"

"What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?" The students nickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460? F) is the total absence of heat; all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."

The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily example of man's inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.

The young man's name -- Albert Einstein

Match Dot gosh-darned Com

So I just changed my profile on Match dot com. First of all, may I tell you how much I hate actually being on that site? But I have found that starting out by telling guys how much you don't want to be online dating......is not a good way to start off.



I've been out with two guys, one of whom is quite possibly gay and who obviously (since I am calling him gay) has not been invited to read my blog. Ironically the gay guy (ok, ok "Metrosexual guy") is turning out to become a pretty good girlfriend. So here's a sampling of a possible profile...... :




When I was very young my aunts used to tell me I should become a model. (I know that sounds conceited, but stay with me here, I have a point). I didn't, because I didn't want to get paid to have strange men look at me. Now I'm a member of match dot com and I am actually paying money to have strange men look at me. How ironic is that?



So, what would you like to know about me? I'm smart, fun-loving and easy-going. I have a great sense of humor and can be very funny. I love to laugh. I like to play tennis, belong to the Jane Austen Book Club, and travel a lot, especially for work but also for personal recreation. I like to try to stay in shape so I just got some new excercise equipment delivered to my home because I find that with travelling I excercise a lot in hotels but when I'm home my workout routine gets interrupted. I hope you like to stay in shape as well. (Not that I expect you to be a model. Most male models are gay...not that there's anything wrong with that. A woman can never have too many gay male friends. Anyway...).



I like to think of myself as a citizen of the entire country rather than only one city. I am relatively successful. I'm very outgoing and everywhere I go I am constantly meeting smart and interesting people. I look for, and usually find, the good in everyone.



If you're still reading this then hopefully we have some things in common and if that's true then you are a rare and special person. If we actually do get a chance to meet I hope you will realize what a privilege it is just to call each other friends.



P.S. If you've changed your profile lately you'll notice that match dot com now gives us about a quarter of an inch of space in which to type a profile of 4,000 words, so you can never actually see what it is you just typed. What is up with that?

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

Went to New Orleans this weekend. Had a bachelorette party for "the bride". Well, not so much a bachelorette party as just a girls weekend. My brother asked me if he'd be seeing me on the next "Girls Gone Wild" video. That prompted many thoughts & questions in my mind...

First......What's he doing watching a Girl's Gone Wild" video? Yuck!
Second...I think at the age of 38 I no longer qualify to be called a "girl". At least I don't think the sleazeballs who create those videos would consider me one...
Third... If I did "go wild", I'd have enough sense not to do it on a video.
And fourth.... If he knew anything about my friends at all he'd realize I am the wildest one of the bunch, even if you consider them all collectively, which means there is absolutely zero chance of a video ever happening.

We must be the only women on the planet who've gone to New Orleans to celebrate a pending nuptial and went there to enjoy the food, art, culture, and weather. As boring as it sounds, we toured art galleries (my favorite was Galleria Bella on Royal street - check out Randy Cooper's wire mesh shadow art. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen. The shadows cast by the wire mesh actually show more detail than the mesh sculpture itself.) My favorite artists there are Antonio Gravina, David Chandler, and Marso Savaro. I also think I like Ann Copelan, but I'm not sure.

At a place called "the Brass Monkey" (yes, I know that sounds like a dive bar but it's actually a cool antique artifacts shop) I discovered Sabino glass, a type of glass made with milk. It has a blue-ish milky hue and it feels soft, like soap. I've been wanting to become a collector of something. You know how people collect teapots or mugs or thimbals or (if they're like my ex-husband) comic books. Well I've decided I'm going to collect Sabino glass! I decided to start my collection with the Rabbit. He's the little fellow you see up top of the post.

For years now rabbits have been becoming a sort of good luck charm for me. Whenever I see a rabbit something good is happening in my life. I first noticed it happening back around 2002. I would see a rabbit.....and then something good would happen. Or vice versa...something good would happen and then I'd see a rabbit. There's an old wive's tale in North Carolina that on the first day of the month you wake up and say "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit" (with the proper accent of course) and it will bring you good luck. It doesn't matter what form the rabbit comes in. Sometimes they're stuffed. Sometimes they're real. last week in Wyoming I was working with one of the switchmen, sitting outside in the truck waiting for trains to go by, when I saw three white rabbits in the snow. First one appeared, hopping back and forth over the tracks, and then another, and then another. They were barely visible against the snow. As if to make sure I didn't miss my rabbits, the Universe sent me another one. We left our spot and drove over to where my car was parked. There in the grass in front of the building, near my car, so close I could have walked up and petted him, was a brown rabbit. He was just sitting there, not even afraid when we walked near him. I think I'm going to collect both bunnies AND Sabino glass.

The highlight of the weekend was having custom perfumes created for each of us at Borboun French Parfums. We got to name them. I named mine "Lyrical". I also have another scent but I don't want to reveal its name here. Anyway, they both smell heavenly, and the cool thing is that each of our perfumes smells exactly like us. That is, each scent matches the wearers personality. And amazingly, considering we made them all together, in one sitting, at the same time, none of the scents fit any of the rest of us nor do they smell similar to each other. I also had two amazing discoveries:

1. Almost anything smells good on me. Ok not almost. Everything smelled good on me. (I like to think it's because I am a happy person so my body chemistry created happy smells) And..
2. No matter what scent she put on me, after leaving them on a while they always combined with my body chemistry to end up smelling the same.

Another cool thing about this is that once they have your scents on file, they keep the formula. So friends and family can call or go online and actually order perfume, lotions, shower gels and whatever else they carry, either for me or for themselves, all in either of MY two signature scents. It's like the ultimate gift registry.

Not to worry, we did get our groove on at Bourbon Cowboy. There's nothing like walking past a wide open club full of people doing their version of dancing to some great R&B/Hip Hop sound to pull us in so we could "show 'em how it's done". Yes, the bride wore an "I'm the Bride" sash. And yes, we got up on one of the platforms and "performed". At one point we were joined up there by three other girls, so there were six girls dancing in all, three white and three black, all in sync, in a very small space. But the interesting part about this was there was not a drop of alcohol among us. None of us had even had so much as a glass of wine. We're just cool like that.

But what would a weekend in New Orleans be without jazz? We started the weekend on Friday night with dinner at Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro, followed by a live performance in the back room of the bistro by Ellis Marsalis, the grandaddy of the great Wynton Marsalis and the first family of jazz. We finished our weekend with brunch on Sunday morning at the Ritz Carlton hotel (we didn't stay there, we stayed at the adjoining Iberville suites which were much cheaper). The garden was beautiful. in all my trips to New Orleans I've never noticed how many beautiful courtyards there are. We had some time before our flight left Sunday afternoon so we decided to get in some shopping. Real shopping this time, not the art-browsing, "we're not actually here to buy anything" type we'd done the day before.

My friend, "the bride" got into a huge bruhaha at one of the stores where we were buying our designer knock-off purses. She had, against my advice, bought a Juicy Couture knock-off the night before, and then had carried it around to the various places we went, including dancing at the Bourbon Cowboy. I'd advised her against it, not because I was worried about the purse, but because one of the earliest rules you learn when you go out with a group of girls is "every girl watches her own purse", which as you grow older translates to "never carry a purse out dancing" to which was later added the corollary: "especially to a bachelorette party".

As she was buying the purse I had flashbacks to my early college years when I was still young and naive and I'd gotten stuck sitting at the table because I was watching the purses. It didn't take me long to figure out that the sooner I got up and got out on the dance floor, the less likely I was to be the one benched for the night. Hence the rule. The one thing all good bridesmaids know is that the rules don't apply to the bride, so I knew if she wanted me to watch that purse, I'd watch it. I was going for prevention. But here's the thing: Her maid of honor is her twenty-six year old sister. I'm not sure at what age you write the rules in stone, but I know it's not that young. The sister/maid-of-honor who outranked me insisted that she buy the purse RIGHT NOW. I don't know what the hurry was, but the bride bought it (both the advice and the purse).

The next morning when we went back to buy the fake Coach I'd wanted she noticed a rhinestone was missing from her purse and she demanded her money back. The store clerk pretended he couldn't find her original receipt (it mysteriously turned up later). There were all kinds of things wrong with this picture. The important thing to know is that while all of this was going on I noticed that we had thirty minutes left to get our luggage out of the hotel before my credit card was going to be charged for an additional half-day. While she was still arguing with the store clerk and waiting for the owner to arrive, I raced back to the hotel (20 mintes), up to our room, finished packing everyone's stuff, and had it packed and was loading it on a cart (10 minutes) when the bride and her sister returned. All my travelling experience came in handy. They had packed a lot of their stuff already but there was still a lot left lying around. I have packing down to an art science. I even knew who's stuff was who's and which pocket in which bag to put it so it's owner would find it. The girls walked in and checked. I hadn't missed a thing.

As we were leaving on Sunday, we were sitting in the New Orleans airport after our flight was delayed. The inbound flight at our gate de-boarded, and there strolling off as cool as you please as if he weren't the least bit famous, we spotted the great Mr. Ellis Marsalis.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit....

Insert Ego Here

I once had someone tell me that I am different in my emails and on the phone than I am in person. In other words I am, in his opinion, different in print than I am in person. No offense to my friend but this is utter and complete hogwash. I am exactly the same no matter what context you find me and anyone who knows me for any length of time knows this. Nevertheless, I respected his opinion. That was a year and a half ago and I've been pondering it ever since.


So if I'm not different then what is it that made him think so? What was different about me in person that wasn't coming through in print? The answer finally came to me today. The one factor that changed from one medium (print) to the next medium (face-to-face) was........him.


I remember once writing to him after he criticized me about something that it seemed to me that all of the things he was complaining about were my reactions to him or qualities that he brought out in me. It wasn't me he didn't like, it was the effect he was having on me. When I write, it is pure, but when we interacted his presence was affecting the message.


The odd thing is that this was not the first time this had happened. I had an ex-boyfriend who did the same thing, complimenting my character but criticizing me constantly whenever I was with him. He told me that if he ever had a daughter he wanted her to be just like me. "If you did" I asked, "would you want her to date a guy just like you?" You should have seen the look on his face.

Karmic Lesson about Karmic Lessons

In my post "Karmic Lessons" I pondered how every time I have a critical thought about someone I have a life experience to teach me what it feels like to live with their condition, and though I have been receiving those lessons for a long time, they now seem to be occurring with increasing rapidity. I didn't exactly phrase this as a question, but I did wonder why things seem to have speeded up....what used to take weeks or months to understand now happening in days. This, by the way, doesn't just happen with criticism. It happens with all my questions.
Case in point:

Today's sermon at church was called "The Dimmer Switch" and the point was (and I am typing this straight from my notes so I can get it right) from Larry Osborne:
"the longer we walk in obedience, the more subtle distinctions that were once indescernable become obvious....things that we would have never noticed at first suddenly can't be missed."

In other words, the lessons have always been occurring. Walking in obedience all of these years has enabled me to discern them better and apparently with increasing rapidity. I asked a question and I got an answer.

There's got to be some sort of term for this; that I could write a post about a situation - the gift of discernment in "Karmic Lessons" - and the post itself received an answer today, making it the perfect example of the condition it was meant to describe.

(If you're getting a headache reading this, just imagine the one I got trying to write it.)

Problems Men Never Have

Well, not most men anyway.....

Yesterday I attended a shower for my friend, "the bride". Afterwards one of my other friends left her purse behind and I was chasing her around trying to give it to her. I decided to try her cell phone but she didn't answer. I was annoyed. "Why doesn't she answer her cell?" I thought. Only after I located her and handed over the purse did it finally occur to me why: because it was probably in her purse and I had been carrying it around the whole time. In my defense, the ringer wasn't on. "This is the kind of problem a man would never have" I thought.

The theme for the shower was "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and we were instructed to wear our little black dresses and pearls. Earlier in the day just after I had gotten dressed and was standing in front of the mirror it struck me that this is how I look all the time. I think "Breakfast at Tiffany's" has never gone out of style in the south. I decided I needed to be a little more over the top and add a longer strand of pearls. It's funny how the mind works. As I struggled to fasten them, straining and trying to avoid my curly locks in the back, I wondered how old this particular strand was. Was this the strand I'd bought at a good department store or one of the cheap stores? Just as I had that thought I heard a pop followed by the "tap-tap-tap-tap-tapping" sound of pearls raining down all over my tiled bathroom floor as I pulled too hard and broke my necklace. I was heartbroken. Guess that answers my question.

You think that's all don't 'cha? Oh there was more.

Earlier that day I'd been putting on panty hose when I heard a menacing "zip"as my thumbnail ripped through and the run zipped up my leg. "Oh yeah, I forgot to file that nail". Good time to remember. But not to worry, I had a backup plan: spray-on panty hose. Yes, you read right. I got it at Walgreens to wear for New Year's Eve but it had been so cold I'd worn real panty hose instead. The weather this weekend was gorgeous and a shower with just a few of the bride's friends, most of whom I barely know, made this the perfect setting for my experiment. No crowded party, no public display to worry about, nothing could have been safer.

The way you put these "panty hose" on is you spray them (or "it") on your legs and then you rub it on like makeup. In fact that's exactly what it is. It's makeup for your legs. "Brilliant!" Later on at the shower I showed off my new legs. They looked airbrushed....just like a photograph. All the other girls were very impressed and asked where they could get some. Everything was great and I left the shower. After going to all that trouble to get dressed I wasn't ready to go home and undo it all, so I decided to stop by and visit a friend on the way home instead. The sun went down and it got cold...really cold....should have worn real panty hose cold.

Taking the Bit Too Far

My family does this thing I like to call "taking the bit too far". It's what happens when we are starting to become very comfortable with someone but we haven't completely established trust yet. We lose all sense of boundaries and we say whatever comes to mind, some of which might be better left unsaid. I don't know where this habit comes from, but we all do it, not just my immediate family, but every aunt, uncle and cousin. We all start at different ages but it's almost inescapable. For years I thought I'd escaped it but it turns out that I'm just a late-bloomer.

Meandering

Yesterday at church the sermon was called "Meandering". Without getting into the religious-sounding aspects of it, what I took away from it was that I might enjoy life more if I just relax and let things happen rather than trying to control every aspect. Sometimes it's better and healthier if things don't go according to plans. (Ok, he didn't say "relax". He said spiritual growth occurs when life isn't going according to plan and quite often this is actually a very painful time in your life but it's when the most growth occurs. (But you know I'm an optimist, so....))

I guess the lesson must have really sunk in because I had an 11:50 flight out this morning and I knew the moment I woke up that there was no way I was going to make it. Don't ask me why. There are various reasons, but sometimes I am just so overwhelmed with the amount of "stuff" I have to get done that I don't do any of it, and I knew this was going to be one of those days.

So around 9:00am I called our travel company and asked to reschedule my flight. The woman I got refused to even check on it. Apparently customer service on short notice wasn't her thing. You know those people who are great crisis managers who could get you out of a third world country just after a terrorist attack? She's not one of those people.

I got off the phone and pushed through trying to do my errands, hoping that maybe somehow I would make it in spite of myself. Around 10:30 I called the travel company again. This time I got a guy named Dustin who has helped me out in the past and who, I remember, is AWAYS helpful and positive. But even he couldn't get me out of this one. "If you miss your flight to Denver" he said, "you won't get a flight to Rock Springs (Wyoming) until 2:45 pm tomorrow". Well, that's no good because I have a a meeting tomorrow at 9:30 am. I told Dustin not to do anything yet.

I called the customer I have a meeting with and tried to reschedule. I couldn't get him. I left three voice mail messages. Finally out of desparation I got a receptionist to interrupt him in a meeting. He sounded annoyed but he said he would check his schedule. It started to sink in that if I reschedule and piss this customer off there may be repercussions in sales & marketing that will reverberate back to me. Could I lose my job over this? Over one lousy, "my sense of time is malfunctioning" day? I don't know but I think I'd better give Dustin another try and see if we can't make a miracle happen. I called the travel company back and this time I specifically asked for Dan.

"What if I fly to Salt Lake City?" I asked. "Could I get there tonight?" Dustin checked. After about 30 minutes of calculations and negotiations he got me a one-way ticket to Salt Lake City, a one-way car rental to drive to Rock Springs where I would drop that car off, exchange it for an SUV, and keep the same flight back on Thursday. Holy.....

I breathe a sigh of relief and disbelief. I can't believe it, but somehow I can believe it. I'm going to make my meeting. I'm not going to reschedule it. I'm not going to piss anyone off or be fired.

Now THAT is what I call SERVICE. "Thank you" I said, "you have been an ANGEL today". If I had a job to offer Dustin I would have hired him in a heartbeat. I should at least send him a fruit basket, but I don't know his last name. I vow to myself that when I get a chance I'm going to find out.

When I started meandering, I thought I'd lose my motivation to be a top performer. But Dustin's performance and dedication to his job somehow lit a fire under me. I decided right then and there that I would be more motivated on this project. If he was willing to do all of that just to get me there, then I owed it to him to do my best too.

My Lifelong Friendship with Books

"So, do you like Barnes and Noble?"

I can't tell you how many times I've been asked that question. I don't know why but the answer is always "No". I think I might be some sort of a book snob.

Growing up I read a lot. My best friends were characters in books. In fact I tried listing them here and am ashamed to admit that I have forgotten some of their names. Here are a few: Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables), Laura Ingalls Wilder, Pippi Longstocking (although I wouldn't have actually been friends with her because she got into too much trouble), Beezus & Ramona, Scout (To Kill a Mockingbird), The Little Princess, the March sisters from Little Women.....see...I've forgotten so many. I'll have to look them up and do a complete list here later so that I can keep them forever. In fact, this is going to be one of my evolving posts so watch for it to expand and change as I ponder this subject and my thoughts evlove.

I think of characters in books as real people and bookshelves as the places where their homes reside. Something about large book stores feels like my books have gone "Wal Mart". They're cheap and available to the masses and while I can appreciate that, it's just not a dignified place for them to be. They shouldn't be dwelling amongst "Car & Driver " magazine or "PowerPoint for Dummies" or all the other books that are for "non-readers". They should be in houses, libraries or in the best treasure chest of all, old book stores. I just love old book stores. When I walk through the doors I can smell the dusty pages and decaying covers and my mind instantly feels "mmmm.......I'm home."

I don't read as much as I used to. That's on purpose, by the way. I decided some time during college that I should spend less time reading books and more time getting to know real people. So if books are my lifelong friends, then like most of those, I haven't visited them lately. I don't stay in touch. I think about them every now and then and we pick things up as if we've never been apart, only for me to lay them back down again promising I'll visit more often and meaning it, but more often just hasn't seemed to come around yet.

Ya'll....I'm so drunk

(Don't be alarmed, I'm not really, that's just the title.)

I've been in Omaha for almost exactly a year and a half. I grew up in Carbon Hill, Alabama, a town of about 1900 people with an excellent school system. Most people say I don't have a Southern accent, but people with a good ear for accents can hear it loud and clear. In other words, it's there it's just very...hmm.....educated and correct. I can't help it, I've always talked this way. I can remember when I was growing up adults would ask me "how'd you get to talking so proper?" And I would think, "duh, because I can read and I don't want to slaughter the English language." Flippant thoughts for an 8 or 9 year-old so of course I never said it out loud or I would have gotten smacked across the mouth for it. When I drink at the bar or I'm around other southerners my accent becomes more pronounced.

My favorite bar in Omaha is Mick's. I especially like when there is anyone remotely classical playing. Last Tuesday they had my favorite type of music, rock/pop/folk with classical mixed in. There was a couple called Montana Skies with an electric cello. It was awesome. I was talking to the duo after their set. "What part of the south are you from?" they asked me. "Alabama" I said. "We grew up near Atlanta" they said. I could not hear their accent either so maybe they were avid readers as children, like me.

This week at another restaurant I was asked this question again. I gave my usual answer "Alabama, but people tell me all the time I don't have an accent". One girl said "oh I can hear it" and then she proceeded to ask me to repeat certain words over and over. "Aww, that's so cuuute" the crowd coooed. I have no idea what they were talking about, I didn't hear a thing, but we'd been sitting there since 7:00-ish and by then it was 11:00-ish. I'd had several drinks.

Today on the tiny little plane taking us into Rock Springs, Wyoming the subject came up again. "Oh I love southern accents" the lady in front of me said, "My father was from West Virginia so hearing that accent always makes me feel like home."
"I hear your accent" The guy sitting behind me chimed in. His accent was far more pronounced than mine and I told him so. He was a gentleman too. I haven't gotten motion sickness in years but the plane was moving a lot and I was sitting in the back. I almost passed out once and thought I was going to, well, hurl at least 3 different times. I turned to ask for his help. I didn't want to get sick on the nice lady in front of me. He hastily passed me the white bag from his seat pocket. "Here use this" he said. It turns out he'd spent 3 years in the military in Charleston, South Carolina but now lived back home in Ohio. "3 years?" I asked, "I spent 26 years in Alabama and you sound way more southern than I do." His accent was definitely more pronounced than mine. Or so it seemed to me.

I rarely drink during the day but on this particular occasion I'd had a long layover and had eaten lunch while sitting at a bar. (It's the only place you don't have to sit alone.) I'd gotten into an interesting discussion with an older woman who was a mechanical engineer in the aerospace industry and a young girl who'd recently graduated from nursing school and was going to New Orleans to help with Katrina relief. On the plane, the guy from Alaska sitting two rows ahead and to the right turned and said "Living in Alaska, I LOVE hearing a girl with a southern accent." I think he said something about melting but I'm sure I blushed and turned my head. The blood rushing to my ears made me tune him out.

In Dale Carnegie class we were told that our stories should always have a point, but sometimes mine just don't, or maybe I prefer to leave them open-ended and let people find their own points. So I'll end with a joke:
What is the mating call of the southern belle?
"Ya'll......... I'm so dru-unk".

Neverland

Up until I was about 4 or 5 years old, my sister and brother and I all slept in the same bedroom. That bedroom has always reminded me of the nursery in the Peter Pan stories. I don't remember how many beds there were in it at the time, but there was an old-fashioned dresser in between the beds. It was composed of a long narrow mirror in the center that reached almost to the floor, flanked by two shorter mirrors, and two sets of drawers that looked like built-in nightstands attached to either side, and a little bench (or maybe it was a dressing table) in the middle. It set in front of a large window that took up most of one wall. After hearing the story at school, I was convinced that one night that window was going to fly open and Peter Pan would fly in and all three of us would fly out with him.

My older sister, of course, was Wendy. My brother was John. I considered where I fit into this story. Since the only girls were Tinkerbell and Wendy, that left me to be Tinkerbell, and that made sense because I did have the most faith of us all and I was feisty like Tinkerbell. If anyone could believe we could fly, it was me.

I don't remember the color of our walls, but I do remember my uncles using an overhead projector to project bedtime stories onto them. It was like having a movie theater right in our bedroom. Like sleeping in a fairy land.

Just before he started school, my brother was moved out of the nursery and it became "the girl's room". I was upset. Where were they taking him? I know I must have made a fuss. My brother, although a year older, doesn't remember any of this, but I do. I remember one of my aunts (I don't know which one) was unusually patient with me and explained that he was a big boy now and he wasn't going far, just on the other side of the wall to sleep in the big boy's room. Whoever it was made me understand that it wasn't proper for him to continue sleeping with us. I looked around. None of the other big boys slept in this room so it all made sense to me.

Win / Win

Normally I would not care who's going to get the Republican nomination, but for some reason I found myself hoping for Huckabee. "Hey, what are you thinking?" my common sense interjected, "You should root for the WORST Republican candidate, that way Obama or Clinton will win". McCain should be way easier to beat. If Huckabee gets the nomination he'll get the votes of the nice Republicans who want to vote Democrat on the sly. McCain can't do that. More votes for Obama/Clinton! (I registered as an independent but I don't think I'm fooling anyone.)

For some reason my heart wouldn't give up. "But I LIKE Huckabee" I whined internally. "Hmmmm......well, one good thing about Huckabee is that if the Republicans do cheat and win like they have in the past, the American people will still have a good president." (pause while that sinks in.........) Huckabee it is!

Karmic Lessons

Ok, so I realize in my post "Clear the Transaction" the second story about the debit card contained absolutely no Karmic lesson at all. I know people read that with a puzzled look on their face thinking "did I miss something?" No you didn't miss anything. I edited out the real story because it made me look like a snob and because it made the post too long. But here's what actually happened.. .....

Before the manager came over, the clerk who had been ringing up my groceries noticed that one of my lasagnas was defrosted. "This is defrosted ma'am" he said, holding it up, "want me to get you a new one?" I wanted to say no. I should have said no because when I picked that lasagna out of the freezer I distinctly noticed that they all had wrinkly boxes and they all looked exactly like the one I had. But I shrugged and said "sure" thinking he was the expert. Then he called a kid over who looked pretty clueless but eager to help. He sent the kid to get my lasagna. "Great" I thought, "he'll never find it".

Why did I think that? Because this was no ordinary lasagna. This was Amy's Organic Lasagna and it isn't kept with the rest of the frozen food, it's on the opposite side of the store, so obscure that only I, the handful of people who buy that brand in a Baker's, and the person who stocks that freezer know where it is. Most people who buy stuff like that go to the tree-hugger stores like Wild Oats.

So while the manager was screaming out to the entire store that I could not afford to get a hundred dollars out of my account, and I was trying to keep my composure, the kid had darted eagerly off before I could think of a way to tell him that it wasn't where he probably thought it was.

I stood beside another young man who was going to push my cart out. I tried not to tap my foot or huff impatiently but I'm sure my demeanor gave me away. "What's wrong?" the young man asked generously. "Well, I know that kid didn't know where that lasagna was but I didn't tell him because if I'd told him it would be like insulting him before he's even made a mistake." The young man ,who was a little older than the kid, said something helpful and soothing. "How sweet" I thought. He is well on his way to understanding women. We stood there for about 15 minutes which feels like an eternity when you are blocking that narrow aisle of space on the way to the door. The kid finally showed up, panting.

"I can't find it" he said.
I didn't say anything but gave the other young man a look that said "what did I tell you?"
"It's not with the regular frozen food" I said. "It's in the produce section over there", I pointed.
Off the kid went again and returned in about 2 minutes.

The following weekend on the way out of church the lady who organizes our singles lunches told me where we were meeting for lunch. "It's the Olive Garden at Lakeside" she said "do you know where that is?" "Oh sure" I said and darted eagerly off. I know exactly where Lakeside is and how hard could it be to find the restaurant once I got there.

As it turns out, it was very hard. There had been a fleeting moment just before I had answered her that I thought I should ask her for directions just in case. About 20 or 30 minutes later I was still driving around Lakeside trying to call them on my cell to ask where it was.

"I can't find it"I said.
She didn't say anything critical, just directed me to the right location.
I arrived there in about 2 minutes.

I had to laugh as I realized I was experiencing exactly what that kid had gone through hunting for my lasagna. Ok so the kid wasn't such an idiot after all. The church ladies were much more gracious than I had been. They didn't tell me "I told you so" or lecture me on why I shouldn't be so hesitant to ask for directions. They were just happy to see me. They hadn't even ordered, but instead had waited patiently for me to arrive.

"Patience" I thought, "but that's not enough. Be gracious about it." Got it.

Getting to know you...

So I recently am corresponding with a new friend online and was asked about myself, how I grew up, my culture, etc. It's interesting how I was able to express myself as I wrote. I thought it would be good to post it in here.....

I grew up in Alabama and lived there for about 6 years after college and then moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee where I lived for about 8.5 years before moving to Omaha. My family is mostly in Alabama. I was raised by my grandmother who has since passed away back in 1994. I am the youngest of three. My sister, the oldest, died in 2003 and my brother, a year older than me, is in the Army in Tacoma, Washington.

My mom lives in Birmingham and I help take care of her. We've grown closer since my grandma died but the reason my mom didn't raise us is because she was considered too irresponsible by my grandma. As an adult I have learned that my grandma was right so I've been essentially mothering my mother and giving her the nurturing my grandma didn't. This past Christmas when my brother and I (who never fight) got into an argument, my mom behaved like a mother towards me for the first time. It was the best Christmas present I've ever had.

I was raised Church of Christ and I attend regularly. I don't want to sound like I am apologizing for my spirituality nor do I want to seem like I am chest-beating and proud of it. It's just simply who I am. If it helps, I am not into "rules". I think Christ came to show us how to love so we would no longer need laws. But different people are on different levels of maturity and some still need the structure of rules to define their limits. Religion is a matter of laws but spirituality is a matter of love, and love always comes first.

The Illusion of Race

I have decided that for U.S. Americans, race is just an illusion. I came to this conclusion for many reasons. My great-great grandfather "looked just like a Chinaman", I was told long ago by my grandma (or maybe she said Indian). This explains the Asian (Native American?) slant to my eyes. My father spoke with a Carribean accent (Or maybe it was French?...Congo?...who knows?). My sister-in-law is Asian. My niece is half-white. I stopped calling myself an "African American" about 10 years ago and switched to calling myself just "black" when I realized the term was designating my skin color, not my racial background. My success in life is due in large part to the wonderful schoolmates, teachers and community in the small town in Alabama where I grew up, most of whom were white, but all of us had every opportunity to be and do almost anything.

At my church there is a grown white woman whose sister and brother are black because they have different fathers. She's nearly my age, not one of the new millenial bi-racial kids you see now all over the place. Her nieces and nephews are both white and black. Her brother married a white woman so his kids look white. Her sister married a black man so her kids look black. Never in my life have I seen more evidence that all of us are only one parent or grandparent away from being either white or black in skin color.

When I still lived in the south I was stuck between feeling the racism of the past and behaving with the bold confidence of knowing I was equal. Thanks to my year and a half in Omaha, Nebraska I no longer struggle with that. I feel liberated and free to walk into any room or business and look around and know that I have more in common than differences. My expectations, demeanor, and attitude are the biggest contributors to my experience, not my skin color.

In countries where the entire population is still one ethnic group, race may still be considered a real factor, but no longer in the US. I hope that all Americans who have longed for equality to become a reality can now see in the victory of Barrack Obama in Iowa that their battle has been won. The fact that he can win Iowa means that racism is almost extinct.

I admit that I had not decided to vote for him for president. My support was leaning towards Hilary Clinton years ago before she even announced her candidacy, while she was still first lady. But to see the change in attitude of the entire country with the victory of Barrack Obama in Iowa is amazing. It's like the entire country is breathing a sigh of relief..."ahhhh, we are not the racists we thought we were" and "see, we were just waiting for someone who was really qualified". Previously in this post I had written that this country was in fact once as racists as we seemed to be, but I am going to recant that. I am changing my opinion on the idea that America is fundamentally and historically racist. I think if that were true the civil rights movement wouldn't have been successful. None of the progress towards equality would have been possible without the cooperation of all races. I am going to cling to that thought.

Recently several states have been issuing apologies for slavery. All rational inteligent Americans want to repent of slavery and racism and finally put them behind us and actually practice the values the current administration likes to pretend to have. An Obama victory might do more to restore a return to family values than anything any Republican candidate could do. It would bring about a huge healing process for the entire country. We might finally be seen throughout the world as the example of Democracy that we proclaim ourselves to be and perhaps be redeemed not only from the hypocracy of slavery but also from the humiliation and ignorance of the Bush administration.

Clear the Transaction....2007

For years it has seemed like I've had this strange Karmic-debt-thing going on in which every time I critique anyone in any way I then have to experience whatever it is that I critiqued about them. I think it is the Universe's way of teaching me empathy. In 2007 the volume seemed to be turned up. Lots of lessons in succession. What used to take months or years to occur now happening in mere days.

Last week on the plane from Seattle to Denver there was a woman seated in front of me who took what seemed like forever to get in her seat despite the fact that she was travelling with a small child and had boarded quite a while earlier. She was blocking my seat and had taken up what seemed to me like more than her share of the overhead space and had her coat spread out up there like a sheet, so that I had to ask her to move it over to make room for my carry-on. I noticed as we got off the plane and she pushed the baby stroller that she was walking with a bit of a limp. By the time I got home my right foot was so sore from wearing flat shoes while Chistmas shopping that the only way to keep from dragging it in a Quasimodo-like gait was to walk very slowly. My limp lasted 3 days.

A few months ago at Baker's I was paying with a debit card and I tried to get cash back. The machine said "can not complete transaction". I informed the cashier and he called the manager over. "YOU CAN'T GET A HUNDRED DOLLARS" the manager said so loudly that quite possibly every person at every register could hear. "um, hey lady how about leaving me a little dignity?" I thought. Now everyone is going to think I don't have a hundred dollars in my account when actually the register just won't handle a withdrawal that large. Then the screen went blank. "Swipe it again, I cleared the transaction" she said. As it turned out I didn't need either as much cash or as much dignity as I thought I'd needed.

I asked for these lessons. I think it all started back when I was 11 years old in Sunday School and our teacher, my uncle Luther, asked us "if you could ask God for any gift you wanted what would you ask for?" I remember my friend said money. I said wisdom and knowledge because if you had those you could get anything else you needed, including money, right? I remember wanting to be as wise as Solomon and thinking that if, at age 11, I had enough sense to ask for the gift that keeps on giving then I must be pretty wise already. Well it turns out that like truth, wisdom is a two-edged sword. Most of the ways to get it are painful and, once you get it (or some), you keep needing more painful and oftentimes humbling refresher courses on how to use it.

Years of lessons finally culminated this Chistmas in a final exam of sorts. The lesson? Have faith in People as well as in God. Quiet faith. Patient faith. Positive, good-natured faith. Time for the application. I can't wait for 2008!!!!!!!

The Highlands

I'm coming to the end of 4 days in the Highlands. No, not the Scottish Highlands, the Highland Park area of Five Points South in Birmingham, although, there was a guy actually playing a bagpipe outside the church on Sunday morning. He was wearing a green plaid kilt and everything. The bagpipe music being played on a beautiful fall morning outside a grand old historic church in the middle of the square behind the fountain surrounded by trees in full fall colors was breathtaking. That experience alone was worth the trip.

I stayed at the Hotel Highland, formerly the Pickwick Hotel. Five Points is one of my favorite places in Birmingham. The whole area feels like a park, especially in the fall when all the leaves have changed color and it is gorgeous. One of these days I'm going to buy a "real" camera so I can have my own photos of it. My room had a great view.

Speaking of "colorful" I met some interesting people on this trip. I met a successful young, black enterpreneur while I was outside in the courtyard. He's self-made, energetic and reminds me of an up-and-coming Donald Trump. He invited me to dinner that evening and we had sushi at Surin West. (I don't normally "like" sushi unless it's tempura but both the super crunch and the crunchy shrimp were to die for. (I also never say "to die for" but sometimes you just run out of adjectives.) He just randomly stopped and said hello and introduced himself because, he said, he could tell I had a good heart, which is cool. I didn't read anything into it. If he was trying to pick me up he was going to have to be a LOT more obvious than that. Engineers are dense (ok, stupid....we're stupid) when it comes to reading people. I can't believe how many people don't know that!! Plus he has a fiancee he's been dating for 15 years who is very successful and very wealthy. 15 years????? That is one patient woman.

I've been trying to work on my "harmless as a puppy approachability". I had just finished watching the movie "10 Things I Hate About You" and that girl, Kate, was me in high school: smart, sarcastic, and with a shield of invincibility; possessing an odd combination of frailty and venom so that you weren't sure if I was going to start crying or punch you. Most stayed away but the few who were brave enough to try became bosom friends. I should have suspected something about myself years ago when I saw the original "Taming of the Shrew" at the Shakespeare Festival and wondered why everyone was so hard on Kate.

Follow-Up to this post: Thursday, Nov 29th:
Last night when I wrote the phrase "bosom friends" I was specifically thinking of my friend Jenn. She was the first person to ever use the term to describe our friendship. She chose it because when we met in 1999 we bonded over the fact that almost 30 years ago as children we'd both loved "Anne of Green Gables" (long before the series became popular in the mainstream). In the story, Anne Shirley and her friend Diana were bosom friends. I haven't heard from Jenn in a year. We lost each other when I moved here and eventually changed cell phones. I had written down all the numbers from my old cell and I'd been adding them one-at-a-time to my new cell as I called people. But when I called Jenn her cell had changed too. We'd both disappeared into the void. Guess who called me this morning at 8:00am? You guessed it....Jenn! She got married and moved to a different state. She said she'd been missing me so she called a mutual friend who then called another mutual friend. I've missed her too, but I didn't think of the words "bosom friend" till last night. I have no doubt that it was a shared thought between us. I only wonder which one of us thought it first.

Fact-Checker

Back when I was thinking of becoming a journalist I always thought it would be stressful to have to get all the facts right all the time, mostly because the entire public would be scrutinizing whether I had it all right or not. As an engineer I work in facts all day long, but when I'm on my own time and especially when I'm blogging I tend to place more emphasis on "feelings".

Yes, I do have feelings. Even though my Meyers-Briggs type says I'm an INTJ; I think my thinking-T becomes a feeling-F whenever there's no work to be done. Just like my introverted-I becomes an extroverted-E whenever I'm feeling very comfortable in my surroundings or with a particular group of people or when I'm giving a performance and I'm well rehearsed. It also changes when I've been socializing a lot or, conversely, spending a lot of time alone. In other words, these two characteristics, my T/F and my I/E are VERY circumstantial.

As a consequence my blog, though mostly factual, contains some statements that aren't so much facts as they are my feelings about the facts. For example, when I said I drove 800 miles a week to North Platte, that's not a fact. If you look at a map of Nebraska, North Platte is actually 285 miles away from Omaha, which makes it 570 miles round trip. But there were several times when I was taking Dale Carnegie that I had to make the round trip twice in one week which means I drove 1140 miles. So I kind of mentally averaged all of my trips over the twelve week period and kind of came up with 800. It wasn't even a conscious mental calculation, just a swag.

Another example is from my post about Baker's grocery store. I think (and I'm not checking to see) that I said there was something like 24 inches of space for my groceries. I don't know what I said and since I'm blogging it's not "fact-check time", it's feeling time. I only know that it felt like it was only a few inches and that's what matters most. But it is a fact that my stuff didn't fit. Probably only about 1/3 of it did.

So you know, most of it is true, but sometimes the facts take a backseat to my feelings. I'm no journalist but I think I'm probably as accurate as one and I don't even have fact-checkers.

Mary & Martha

I just went back and read "Genesis" and realized that my sister and I sound like Mary and Martha. Are all sisters this way? There was never any doubt in my mind that her openness was a blessing. I like to think I am not so much like Martha because I did know and appreciate this about her. If my sister had been around when Jesus was in human form she would have definitely been worshipping Him more than anyone around. More than me. Foot-washing with perfume and using her hair to dry his feet? That was so her. You think it's beautiful when you read about it, but that's only because you're reading it. When you see people like this in the flesh you almost never recognize them for what they are unless, like me, you are looking for them and sometimes even then they're hard to recognize.

Unlike Martha, I would never have complained that I was doing all the housework and she was wasting time. I kept my eyes on my own paper. I would have enjoyed every minute of what I was doing and if I found myself not wanting to do it I would have just stopped. That was the thing about both of us that we had in common. I'm glad we figured it out before it was too late. I can remember praying about our differences and worrying that it would forever separate us. "Just love her as she is" the answer came back loud and clear. "She's doing the best she can with what God made her and if she could do any differently, she would." So I stopped wanting her to change and I just loved her.

This picture of her was taken on my wedding day. At her funeral one of her friends told me that she'd come home afterward the happiest she'd ever seen her. I think my wedding day was when she finally realized that my way could lead to happiness too. There was a moment in the ladies dressing room at the church when it was just the two of us alone. "I love you sissy", she'd said in that childlike way of hers. "I love you too, Pearl" I'd said wearily. And with that exchange I think we each finally achieved a blend of our two kinds of love; her emotional kind and my practical action-oriented kind finally morphing into two loving, whole, well-balanced women.

Genesis

If you haven't been around since the genesis of my blog then you won't know why I started it. I deleted all of that. But I keep feeling compelled to put it back in.....to explain myself. You see, that's why I'm here in the first place....to be open. So I'm going to put it back, "my genesis" and leave it once and for all....

It all started when my sister died. She had always been the expressive, emotional one. I have a sister who is three years older and a brother who is one year older and, to my mind, they always seemed to be alternate versions of myself. They were sort of "what ifs". My sister was what I would have been if I hadn't been afraid of all the scrutiny and punishment we experienced as children. I admired her because she had the courage to face her deepest desires and to express them to others and to hope, actually hope, that those desires could be met. Well, it was either courage or lack of self control. This doesn't make any sense, does it? Let me start again...

We were raised by our grandmother. She was a good woman in her way; a smart and brilliant woman. But she was the product of an old southern "slave culture", and when under duress she reverted back to that. She raised her own 15 children the way white slave owners raised children: with strictness and without affection. But she knew in heart that was wrong so she tried to temper it as much as she could.

When she took us three away from our mother for reasons of her own, she was way too tired and stressed to bother with trying to be gentle, what with having to raise 15 kids of her own. So she raised us three with almost no gentleness and no affection, not as a white slave-owner would raise their own children, but as actual slaves. I didn't understand this until I read the work of Frederick Douglas and realized that the descriptions of his own childhood sounded almost identical to my own even though I grew up in the 70's and 80's. I won't go into any more detail than that. If you want to know more about it read his autobiography. But the end result was that we three were raised as subhuman with almost no understanding of what a human being ought to want and feel. So we had to figure out our humanity on our own, in our own ways.

My sister went about doing that by seeking physical affection from whomever would offer it. She was always writing love letters and poetry. She left herself wide open and vulnerable. She was often punished, beaten, or ridiculed for her troubles but that never seemed to deter her, as if her creativity had a life of its own that was worth risking her well-being. I saw her behavior as a lesson in what not to do. My reaction was to do the opposite. No one knew what I was feeling or thinking if I could help it. I was very guarded, very protective. I trusted no one and everyone in a way, with a very limited trust, because I wouldn't let anyone get close enough to actually hurt me. She, on the other hand, was constantly being hurt. I can't say that I envied her, but she did live, in my mind, a life of much greater freedom than I did. She was always taking huge risks and exposing herself, but she did exactly what she wanted. I was very cautious and took the path of surest success regardless of what I actually wanted to do. She danced, wrote songs, wrote poetry, stripped, club-hopped. I focused on school, got straight A's, got the easiest scholarship available to me, went away to college and took up engineering because I knew it would allow me to support myself. It didn't matter that I had a greater interest in english literature, politics, and journalism. Law school was too expensive and might require me to go into debt. Journalism paid too little and would require me to be more creative than I thought was possible. My pleasure never figured into a single decision I made and her pleasure was the sole basis for every decision she made.

When she died I realized that I hadn't needed to explore pleasure because she had been doing it for both of us. With her gone, I felt cut off from the world. I finally had to face how closed off I was and I didn't like it. I felt starved for self-expression. I missed her poetry and her songs. I needed something. So I started this blog to learn to become more open; to trust people; to take the risk of exposing myself and to face the fear and know that I could live through it.

Road Rage

Last Sunday morning as I turned off the road that runs in front of my condo, I suddenly heard a horn blaring at me. Looking in my rear view mirror I saw a man in a big black truck bearing down on me. I didn't know what he was blasting his horn about, he was not that close to me until he purposely got up on my bumper. He was gesturing and mouthing words the way people do when they have road rage. I hadn't seen him coming before I turned. He must have come over the hill pretty fast. Anyway he was really angry at me and he shot me a bird. A bird!!! I haven't been shot a bird in....in.....I can't remember how long. I was shocked. outraged.

Hmm...what to do? I blared my horn back at him. I pressed my breaks and almost came to a complete stop. He didn't hit me. I slowed down to about 25 mph and kept that speed to the next intersection. If he wanted to act like an idiot because he thought I'd slowed him down then I might as well give him something real to complain about. He stayed right on my bumper as we creeped along to the next intersection which is only about a half mile down the road. I kept expecting him to pass me but he didn't.

When we got to the intersection he pulled up beside me and started rolling down his window. I rolled down mine. I had no idea what to expect. Was he going to cuss me out? He kind of laughed nervously in that "I'm not picking a fight but I'm ready for one" kind of way and said "hey that was a red light back there."

I didn't know what I was going to say but I looked him straight in the eye and said firmly in a loud, calm, crystal clear voice........

"I......Apologize"

He rolled his window up and drove on.

What???? Did I just say "I apologize"? Why and for what? I don't know what I expected to hear coming out of my mouth but that wasn't it. But after it was out it seemed like it had been the perfect thing to say.

And then I drove on to church.

Epilogue:
Now when I said "I apologize" it had nothing to do with conscious thought. It was born of pure reflex from an attitude that I take with me to church on Sunday mornings, which is to treat everyone with calm and respect and to behave so that everyone keeps their dignity. It came from years of conditioning almost since birth. I wonder what I would have said to him if I hadn't been going to church. I hope the same thing, but I can't be sure. I don't go to church every day, only on Sundays. But I think that incident motivated me to at least try to behave every day as if I was.

Mistaken Identity

This post was originally written back in October 2007 but was posted on July 8, 2008.

This is a very funny story, but in order to tell it I have to admit something about myself of which I am not proud. I have been internet dating.

I know, I know, everyone's doing it these days. I had decided it just wasn't for me. A few months ago I played in a golf outing with my friend and we were paired up with two great girls, both of whom met their current boyfriends on the internet. So I thought I'd open myself up to the opportunity. Again.

Now I could write a book about some of the initial contacts I get. The latest was "your pretty". That's all it said. Right next to it was a picture of Bubba sitting in a hot tub grinning. I wanted to respond to him, "My pretty what?" I may not get a date but I sure get entertained. I deleted poor Bubba.

Recently I got an email from a nice respectable young man who's probably too young for me but he's smart, a hard worker and somewhat impressive. I thought I would humor him and maybe encourage him a little bit. At the very least I could perhaps build his ego up so he would have confidence for the next girl who might be right for him. So I emailed him back thanks for his interest in me, etc. A few days later I got an email from him. There was my picture beside the email so I know he was looking at it while he was writing. He started out talking about me, complimenting me. Things were going just fine until I got to the next paragraph.

That's when he started telling me he liked the way I had talked about us snuggling (huh?) and cuddling (what??) and cooking dinner (me???) together on New Year's Eve. I barely cook on regular days, much less holidays.
I stopped reading.....What???
I read it again. It got more descriptive. More physical. More graphic.
I would NEVER talk that way with a man after one email!! I wouldn't talk that way after one date! He was responding to some other girl's email smack dab in the middle of mine! And it wasn't just a brief mention of what she'd said. There was a long paragraph dedicated to her suggestions of what she'd like to be doing with him on New Year's Eve. I don't know what she said but he liked it and I could tell he was very excited about it. To his credit he seemed to have enough sense to be a little cautious about a woman who was being so forward, but you could tell he was also very optimistic.

After I got over my initial shock all I could think was, "hmmm......Is THIS how women get men interested? Talk about physical stuff right away??" And then I had to laugh at myself. Here I was reading this email to another girl and I was taking a lesson from it. I guess it might have hurt if I had been dating the guy for a while, but under the circumstances I thought it was funny.

I wrote him back. I told him I didn't know who he was talking to but she must have written one heck of an email. I never heard from him again but I'm flattered he liked my face so much that he accidentally stuck someone else's personality into it.

Stickers and Gold Stars

Last night I graduated from Dale Carnegie class. It's been a long 12 weeks. I've been travelling back and forth 800 miles a week to North Platte for work and then attending this class on Tuesday night from 6-9:30. I am exhausted.

Part of my exhaustion is my own fault. I like to go out with the group on Tuesday nights after class. There's 19 people in the class and 8 to 10 of us will go out afterward. It's fun. And after spending the week alone in the wilderness of North Platte, our weekly post-class get togethers have been nourishment for my soul. Heck, the actual class has been pretty good for my soul too.

A few weeks ago, as part of an excercise on showing appreciation the class was asked to write down something we admire about each person on a sticker. On the last day of class we each got a sheet of paper filled with stickers of all the nice things people had to say about us. I told you this class feeds my soul. Here's what was on my stickers....

I admire your honesty and sincerity........coffee guy

Smart, Passionate, and Creative.........hearty humor guy

You are a VERY SMART, CARING person. You will go far & achieve anything. I can't say enough good!.......happy grocery girl

Professional & excellent manager; kind & sincere. Very driven and courage radiates from you. You are a star! ........ most popular girl

Smart. Makes the best of everything. Encouraging..........restaurant papa

You are strong, confident, and willing to take constructive criticism the right way. You inspire me.......department store "go getter" gal

I admire you for your heart and your ability to talk about things very personal to you.......Big teddy bear

A kind soul. Kind & friendly. Always looking for ways to better herself, and (my favorite) Goes with the flow......grocery gas cheerleader guy

A very sweet & inspirational person. Strong & very open with her emotions......... strong silent type

I admire your values and determination........big farm boy

Strong Presentation......game show host

You're very gentle with people and as a result they truly enjoy you as a person. ......George Clooney clone (this one's my favorite cuz I do try to be gentle with people but I feel like no one notices )

Very professional with all the best qualities of a manager blooming ........tall farm boy

Great personality and genuinely interested in others........hot rod mama

Genuine interest in others, hard worker, intelligent.........cheerleader girl

Very approachable and friendly. A positive person! Shows genuine interest in others! ........the chief


They are like signatures in a high school yearbook, aren't they? Ok, I know we were told to write nice things, but I still like reading them. I really enjoyed the class because of the people. Truth be told, the whole thing did start to feel like high school after a while, especially when we voted for outstanding performers in every single class. It felt like high school all over again and I started to hate going. The same girl kept winning everything and you can't help but like her cause she's so darned nice and she does work hard for it so she deserves to win. I felt the same frustration of wanting everyone to feel loved and part of the group and watched as they created their own hierarchy that kept them out. And, just like in high school, all the popular kids loved me, but I stayed just on the fringe, frustrated for the underdogs and never quite feeling comfortable being part of the "in-crowd" as long as there was anyone left behind.

Nice Suit

I've worked for two other Fortune 500 companies and I've never even met a vice president of one of them, let alone the CEO. That's not true this time. Last Thursday I had my second chance to meet him when I went to a reception on the executive floor of my company. I was really excited leading up to the event. Not knowing what to expect, on the day before the event I had asked a colleague/friend of mine who is a veteran of these things what I should wear. "Business attire", she said firmly. Well I wear "business attire" every day, don't I? "Is what I'm wearing business enough or do you mean I should wear a jacket" I asked her. "A jacket" she replied, quite firmly. So I hauled out my new suit that I had bought to wear for some previous trip but had never worn because the meeting turned out to be casual. It is a beautiful suit, I must say. It's a safari brown linen. Not the kind of linen that wrinkles as soon as you put it on, but lined and blended with something (I didn't read the label) that gave it enough weight to keep it wrinkle free without being hot. The jacket has a belt that ties at the waist, and these large pockets on the front just below the belt that gave me the look that I was ready to bag some big game......either on a safari in Africa or at a large corporation. I wore it with a white linen blouse with a collar that stood up out of the suit just enough which, coincidentally, added to the African safari look, but not so much that it looked like a butterfly collar from the seventies.

There were all sorts of people there from all levels of the company. One man had even brought his "lady friend" with him (her words, not mine). She hadn't gotten the memo about the attire though, and she was dressed in a white lace body-hugging, low-cut, leave nothing to the imagination cocktail dress and high, high heels, and *gasp* had painted herself in bright gold body glitter accentuating her shoulders and cleavage. It was not subtle. Hmm, I thought. Maybe she didn't know.

The executive floor is beautiful. There's lots of glass and beautifully decorated offices with expensive artwork. Halfway through the event the CEO made a speech and invited everyone to take a look at his office and even sit in his chair. I had already toured the floor but hadn't been in his office yet (it just seemed sort of intrusive until he made the offer). After the speech I made my way through the crowd and into the office where several of the other people had already ventured and were sitting in the CEO's chair and taking pictures like tourists. One the way I chatted with Ms. Body Glitter. "What do you do?" I asked. "I work for (major) airlines" she said. I didn't ask her what she did for the airlines. When I arrived in the office, someone had spilled food in the floor and one of the wait staff was sweeping it up with one of those carpet sweepers........Honestly, I sighed, you can't take some people anywhere....

Now normally under such circumstances I (ashamedly) admit my inner snob would recoil in horror at all of this lack of decorum. But, I thought, he (the CEO) knows what he's doing. If it's good enough for him then it's good enough for me. So I trotted out my "good 'ol girl, I love everybody self" (I do, truly) and started introducing myself and being friendly to everyone in the room. I walked around shaking hands and introducing myself and asking everyone where they were from and where they worked. I met one woman who said she worked on a floor near mine. "I'm surprised we've never met" I said. "Well, I'm not, I never come up here to this floor" she said. "Oh, neither do I!" I said surprised, "this is my first time here". "Oh", she said....you look like you belong here".

I smiled. Good suit.

P.S.
The next morning Ms. Body Glitter came to the conference assembly wearing another less formal but still inappropriate cocktail dress. Hmm.....I thought. Again??? Did she not take any clues from last night???? Well, maybe it's all she packed, I thought. (she was from out of town). As she passed me we made eye contact. She gave me a look that told me she read my thoughts and no, that wasn't all she had packed and yes, she had worn that outfit on purpose. We didn't speak to each other as we passed......we just nodded imperceptibly....a sort of truce....an unspoken agreement by each of us to acknowledge and respect the choice of the other......and went on our separate ways.

Bridesmaids

I'm only 37. I'm about to turn 38 on July 10th. I am the oh so intuitive Cancer . <---Check me out there. Check yours out while you're at it. This one has stuff for couples too if you scroll to the bottom of the screen........ Speaking of couples, did I mention I have been asked to be a bridesmaid in the wedding of a friend who, let's face it, I barely know. I'm flattered. This girl, by the way, seems to have a very good read on me so far. I never realized I was that easy to get to know. Maybe it's come about with age. And speaking of age, didn't bridesmaids used to have an age-limit, like, I don't know....30? Like I said, I'm flattered to be asked. I love weddings. I have only been in a few but so far have had to wear no ugly dresses. Ok there was one polyester number but it was in a flattering haulter-criss-cross style. The fabric was from 1976 although the wedding and thus the dress pattern was from closer to 1996. The dress for the upcoming wedding is strapless satin in a burgundy color. <---Click here to see it. Very nice. I've never worn a strapless dress in my life. This bride is less conservative than most of my other friends but then she's also younger. A brave choice to have bridesmaids wear strapless dreses. Most brides wouldn't want to be calling attention to the acoutrements of the other girls. And you know brides of old have traditionally made their bridesmaids look like hookers, prom queens, or debutantes. Come to think of it, maybe the dress styles have been the reason for the age limits in the past. Anyway, I'm glad that the age limit of everything seems to be rising as the life expectancy increases. Seems fair to me. I hope I am still being asked to be a bridesmaid when I'm 50.

I feel like I should be out celebrating the last few days of being 37 rather than considering ow I'm going to celebrate turning 38. I think I will start a new trend.....celebrating the age of the year I'm leaving rather than the one I'm heading towards. Sort of a "wasn't 37 fabulous" party. Anybody with me?

Post script:
I just re-read this and realized I typed "only" 37. Good for me.

New Hair Do

Oopsy Daisy

I was talking on the phone the other night with my new friend Dana. He was telling me about all of the things he was going to do with his family while he was visiting his hometown of Salt Lake City, Utah. One of the things he was going to do, he said, was take his mother's 77 year old husband "jeeping".

"What's jeeping", I asked innocently...sigh...I have so much to learn...

Actually I had a pretty good idea of what "jeeping" sounded like it was. Something very similar to "mud-riding" in the south. Something offroad. Something that could turn the jeep over. They were men, it was a jeep, there had to be either dirt or danger involved, right?

Right.
The husband (also known as Dana's stepdad only Dana NEVER calls him that...I wonder why...) just purchased himself a new jeep and wanted to drive it on narrow winding roads along the cliffs of Utah and he thought it would be a great idea if Dana drove it for him. "that doesn't sound like a good idea to me"...the words just slipped right out of my mouth. (I hate when that happens.) Dana just chuckled in a way that said "probably not, but I'm still gonna do it".

This afternoon he called. From the hospital. My heart was in my throat. "Remember when I said we were going jeeping?" he said. "Yes", I said calmly, as inside I was waiting for the news....my mind racing....there'd been an accident?....he was hurt?.....maimed?.......the old man fell out of the jeep?!!! What???!! For God's sake what?!!! He paused for a while...

"Has there been an accident?" I asked, again calmly. "Yes" he said. "My mother fell down a cliff."

His 66 year-old mother had wanted to come along and then had gotten scared and got out of the car and was taking pictures. She had slipped and fallen down a 15 foot cliff. Dana said her face looked awful. She had gotten some pretty bad cuts, was bleeding a lot, and her upper lip was badly swollen. Dana told his stepdad "we should call a hospital and have her airlifted just in case she has internal injuries". A 66 year-old woman probably with brittle bones from osteoporosis...I'm thinking that's a pretty good call. The stepdad said "Oh she's probably fine we can just drive her to the hospital. She'll be fine". No wonder he doesn't call this man his stepdad. Meanwhile Dana ran down the side of the cliff and picked up his elderly mother and carried her up to the car, removing his shirt and pressing it into the cuts on her head to stop the bleeding.

They drove her to the hospital. Not Dana. He was sitting in the back seat holding and comforting his mom. No, the 77-year- old man who thought she was fine did all the driving. I think he drove closer to the speed limit than I do on an average day on my way to work...and I'm a slow driver...just ask anyone. The stepdad made sure to stop at all the traffic lights.

Did I mention that Dana's 21 year-old daughter was in the car with them and could have (at least I would think she could have) held the shirt on her bleeding grandmother's wounds while Dana drove and the nearly-octogenarian stepdad could have sat on the sidelines? No...? I didn't....? That's because Dana didn't mention the daughter was even there until that point in the story. I had asked him several times why he didn't drive, but at that point I realized he just needed to know he'd done his best. So I said, dutifully, "well, you can't do everything". Good girl, Lisa.

When they arrived at the hospital Dana carried his mom through the doors that read "Emergency". The people inside looked at him quizzically and then explained to him that this was not the emergency entrance. At that point Dana, still holding his bleeding elderly mother in his arms since apparenly these people didn't "do" strectchers, yelled a few choice words at them and asked them why they labeled a blankety-blank entrance "Emergency" when it was, in fact, blankety-blank NOT the blankety-blank emergency entrance. Then a nice lady showed him to a bed where he could lay his mother.

Fortunately the stepdad was right. The hospital found no internal injuries after a CT scan. They picked the rocks out of her skin and sewed her up. No more jeeping with the old man.

Whew.....what a relief.

Baker's

My favorite place to grocery shop is "Baker's" on 132nd and Maple. "Favorite place to grocery shop" is kind of a misnomer because I HATE grocery shopping. It ranks right up there with visits to the gynecologist and to the dentist among things I hate to do. But one has to have certain things. In my case on this particular night the things I had to have were beverages, specifically bottled water (I LOVE "Fiji" artisan water) cranberry juice (to ward off bladder infections) and Berringer white zinfandel. I can do without food but have found that I will brave the horrors of a grocery store to get my favorite beverages.

So last night I'm at the store and the only registers open are the self-checkout lanes. Oh, did I mention that one of the things I do to avoid the grocery-shopping people is to go late at night when the store is empty? Because to be honest it is not the store I hate as much as the people shopping in it. I don't know why. It's not personal. The stock boys I love. I can take or leave the clerks. But the other shoppers just....

One of the bad things about the self-checkout, as convenient as it is, is that there's no room to put your stuff. So when the voice says "Please place your groceries in the bag" after about 4 items there's no space left. And if you move your stuff the voice will tell you to put it back. I had a shopping cart full of bottles. With 4 cases of water, 4 jugs of juice and 2 bottles of wine I had stuff everywhere. Just as I am scanning my final items and trying to figure out where to place them up walks this couple in their, oh...mid 30's, with a case of beer and a couple of other alcoholic/party implements. So I start to feel the stress of rushing to finish so this couple can have the register. I speed up a little....I feel that nervous internal quake you get when people are waiting on you...you know the one...like the way you feel in the airport security line when you have to take your shoes off and the people behind you are huffing and puffing because you're holding up the line.

The guy, clearly sensing my distress, goes "why don't we just go to that other register over there"....meaning the completely EMPTY register where there was NO ONE, instead of the one covered with all my bottles. And the girls goes "No this is fine, we can wait" (for me to finish) and she takes the case of beer from the guys hands and places it in the baby seat of MY SHOPPING CART. And just where did she think I was going to put all of those bottles after I took them from the 6 inches of self-checkout space? I had wondered if that was liquor I smelled on their breaths across the 3 to 5 feet of space between us, but that just cinched it.

At this point I just stopped and looked at her. I know what you're thinking but I didn't give her "that look"...the angry black woman "oh no you didn't" look. It was more of a "this situation was already funny, but I'm going to hold back my laughter of disbelief and just look at you until you realize what you just did" look. Also known as the "you can't be serious......?" look.

The girl looks at me, trying to look as sober as she could and says something. I don't know what she said. What I heard was "why are you looking at me like that?" At which point I replied "This is my cart. I still need it to take my stuff out to my car". At which point she removed her case of beer.

Sigh.....you just can't make this stuff up.

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