Here I Go Again

 The other day, I was going about my usual weekday routine, returning calls to people who'd left messages at the agency where I work with music playing in the background - a perk of working from home. I subscribe to a music service that gives me access to pretty much anything I want to hear. I usually pick an artist for the day, pull them up in the service, hit shuffle, and don't think about it anymore. But on this particular day, I happened to be between calls when the opening notes to one of the songs started. Just like that, I was back in my senior year of high school, hanging out at my friend "M's"  house with the rest of the group that felt like the entire world to me at the time. Left to Right: R, me, K, and M.  And no, there's nothing wrong with your computer screen. We were *that* pale. The fall of my senior year, I had a slumber party for my 17th birthday. This was 1990, before grunge was a thing in our part of the country. The morning after the sleep...

 I am a person who needs projects. I think it's because my paid work doesn't produce tangible results. So it helps me to have something I can look at and touch and know that's what my time and effort yielded . One of my current projects is finding new things to eat from the limited ingredients which I both can eat (per my eating plan) and want to eat.  I find myself eating a lot of eggs on this plan. They're quick and easy and something I really like. I can also have a decent selection of vegetables and a small amount of goat cheese. Put this all together: omelet!  Now I have never been good at making omelets. I can cook the basic components of an omelet, and it tastes good, but it does not have the structural integrity of an omelet. It's just a big, mixed-up mess. What does a person do in 2021 if they want to develop a skill? Turn to YouTube, of course! I found lots of videos, and I may try some more of them in my ongoing quest to master this dish.  Here is the vid...

 I can be a mess of contradictions at times. I mean, we call can, can't we? But mine feels particularly pronounced. I once had a young child look me right in the eye and say, "You're a double-minded girl!" He was, I think, speaking from an evangelical Christian paradigm, and referencing the double-mindedness that Scripture warns against. But there's a truth to it. Case in point: I consider it the very definition of unfair that these cards exist and I don't have someone who would appreciate them as a significant other. This kind of dark sensibility is a big part of who I am as a person. I enjoy books and television shows about serial killers. I once wore out a mix tape that had nothing but "Something I Can Never Have" by Nine Inch Nails repeated over and over on both sides. (Is that really a mix tape? Probably not, huh?) I named my cat Lisbeth Salander, after the antagonistic protagonist of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo . Even my very name means ...

 Do you ever have one of those days where every bad decision you've made in your life just sort of piles up on you and you feel like a miserable excuse for a human being who has wasted your time on the planet and won't ever be happy because how can you deserve to be happy when you're just a giant screw up and also guilty of writing ridiculous run-on sentences? Yeah, I'm in the midst of one of those. It's just the absolute worst. It was brought on by a Netflix re-watch of a favorite show, of all things. I usually do this each year in January, because I find January to be the most depressing month of the year and I really enjoy this show so it kind of counteracts the misery. But I didn't do that this year, I guess because January felt more hopeful than usual, with the end of 2020 finally arriving.  This show debuted in the fall of 2000. I had gotten married that June, and it already wasn't going well. This program aired on the evening my husband had his bowlin...

 We are entering one of the hardest times of the year for me: the weeks leading up to Mother's Day. Again, I am not going to get into a bunch of medical details, but I learned when I was in my 20s that physically having children was not going to be a possibility for me. It's not something I think about all that much anymore, but it's always there, a phantom ache that can cast a shadow at the most unexpected of times - or times that are completely expected, like holidays that prompt people to talk about how nothing anyone can ever do compares to being a mother, or how you can't really know what love is until you're a parent, or any number of other (inadvertently?) hurtful things people say.  A few years ago, I wrote this poem as I was contemplating the arrival of this dreaded day of the year. While it was specifically inspired by this particular unfulfilled dream for me, I think it can apply to many other unwanted life circumstances. It was written from a small, opti...

 You know that feature on Facebook that shows you things you've posted in prior years on today's date? I have a love-hate relationship with that thing, because sometimes it pops up with things that just gut me. But other days it shows me things that definitely bring me a moment of joy. Then there are days, like today, where it does both. Many years ago, when I was a lawyer in private practice,* I was indirectly involved in a seriously awful criminal case. I won't go into the specifics, but a really young girl had to testify against her own father about things that many adults can't even bring themselves to mention. She got into my heart, and one night when I was thinking about her and everything she had been through, this poem just came to me. I wrote it in exactly the amount of time it took to get the words down on paper. It is obviously inspired by a similarly titled work by Dr. Seuss, but is not intended in any way to infringe on his copyright. (If you are from Dr. S...

 Today was a gorgeous day in the greater St. Louis area. As I generally do on Sundays, I had lunch with my family at my sister's house. I got takeout from one of my new favorite places, Crushed Red , and headed across the Mississippi, a Karin Slaughter audio book to keep me company. The windows were down and the sun was shining and it was just a wonderful day.  I also received this item, which I had ordered to commemorate 30 days of being on my program, and it just happened to arrive on the day I hit 50 pounds of weight loss. (Not that I'm focusing on that, but it was a fun coincidence.) That's really all I wanted to say, just that it was a particularly nice day. I'll leave you with one of my all-time favorite mood booster songs. And no - it's not "Happy" by Pharrell.