A Giant Leap For Mankind

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Fifty-six years to win a game.  I don’t even have the patience to let my nail polish dry properly, much less wait around for a lifetime to see a sports team make history.  But bless those Giants fans, many of them sure did.

Why is it such an important day in the Bay Area today?  Today, November 1, 2010, the Giants won the World Series for the first time since 1954, their first time in representing our City by the Bay.  Rally ‘round the dugout, boys!  You sure done good. 

Am I a baseball fan?  Nope.  I don’t follow much of any sport.  But as an Englishman who has come to call the Bay Area his home observed on the blog Left Coast Voices, “there is something magical when a city gets behind its team.”  People far and wide and all across the country have gotten behind the underdogs, and carried these small Giants to victory against the spittin’ and sparrin’ Texas Rangers. 

A die-hard baseballer that I know posted this on Facebook last week:  “All the fair-weather Giants fans are coming out of the woodwork. Where were they until October???? Seriously... people who don't even like baseball are the biggest Giants "fans" now. It's sickening.”   I understand his frustration at being overlooked in his loyalty by legions of “new money” fans, but there is nothing like a community bonding together over something, anything. And the Bay Area is a community unto itself, that is ferocious in its diversity and its bonds.

Like everyone else across the country, in a time that has left our bank accounts as empty as our Twittering hearts and minds, a glimmer of an American moment has taken shape tonight.  Politics, races and creeds were forgotten, and a tradition was shared by parent and child alike as generations came together.  As the closer, Black Beard Wilson, stepped to the mound and threw the last out, it was like a wish for better times ahead whistled across the home plate. 

Here’s to victory, big and small.  Here’s to victory for us all..!

Skin Deep

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The question of the hour.  “What have you been writing all summer?”

I should just tattoo “Nothing” on my middle finger and be done with it. 

If only that weren’t typed with such a heavy sigh.  If only I could lose myself in the bright light of the gargantuan monitor that sits before me in this darkened room, and spill myself like a glass of blood-red wine all over the keyboard.

Like a lost lamb who knows she’s headed for a slaughter, I’ve just been wandering aimlessly, looking for a way out anywhere I can find it, but I’ve known all along that the only way out is through the grinder.

The words aren’t there, other than some rather deep pontificating on venues such as Facebook, or calling in to the local talk radio station and sounding off.  Having a mock-political debate with people, knowing full well I sound like I know what I’m talking about, but truth be told, don’t have a clue.  It’s just another way to vent, and hear the sound of my own desperate voice.

Seems I was a pretty angry young woman at one time.  I grew up, got married, built a fairy tale life, then it all came down like a castle made of sand in a crushing tide.  Now I’m just an angry old lady.  I have aches and pains, am eccentric and crotchety, and bitch incessantly about the youth and how the world’s gone to hell in a handbasket. 

And I’m not even done with my thirties yet.

Ever hear the story about the frog and the scorpion? 

I want to write.  I think.  Maybe I don’t.  Maybe now that I’m being discovered, I want to be hidden again.  But like a witch’s curse, it’s my nature.  It’s what I do.  Eventually, when the medication wears off, when the fleeting glow of flirtation fades, friends have walked away or stayed, when wisdom steps in to take the hand of the loneliness of being a writer – I will write.  Everything else is skin deep, but writing is as deep in me as a razor’s cut in the skin. 

It’s too late, I’m out there.  And you can’t take it back once you’re out there. 

As the good doctor said (see clip above), maybe I should just try writing again.

Letter To A Friend I Never Had

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I like people.  And then again, I don’t.  I’d never make it as a professional gambler because, while my experience with lies and deception go deep in my history, the expressions on my face give away too much – no hiding behind a mask for me. 

So, why then do I still have the feeling that I’ve spent my entire life hiding behind brick walls?

Human interaction is my life.  It’s my lifeblood.  Without others, I’d have nothing to write, nothing to say.  There would be no feelings or emotions to fuel my fire – and fire is something that sits in the dark of my belly.  I need people, but the truth is it seems nobody ever needs me.

It gets harder and harder every day to put myself out there.  Sometimes as the sun sets, my thoughts pour out of me, spilling across the horizon, melting into the pinks and oranges and blues.  Who ever really hears them?  Like the stars in the sky that go unnoticed, these thoughts just twinkle for a brilliant second, then somebody pats me on the head and I’m stupidly grateful for that. 

I’m not the best friend to have.  I speak my mind, throw my opinions in the face of others, and am impatient as hell.  I ask a lot of my friends in return – that they listen to my superficial ranting and raving and complaining. 

Every so often, someone comes along and humbles me.  Someone touches me.  Someone leaves their mark. 

I’m not even forty years old, and they’re dropping like flies around me.  The strangest thing is, they are people I have never had the blessing to meet, so why does it hurt like a whipping with a willow switch?

There isn’t a day that has gone by in the last eighteen months that I haven’t thought of Carolyn.  She passed away in March, 2009.  I can’t explain the connection we shared over the world wide web, but the loss of her slapped me so hard I can still feel the sting on my cheek.

Several months ago, I found out my friend Bryan died while incarcerated in prison.  To hear a stranger’s voice telling me this – it leveled me.  Bryan and I had never laid eyes on each other, but knew the road map inside each other’s minds as we traveled them together over years of correspondence. 

Tonight, I received a goodbye letter.  A goodbye, and we never got to say hello.  I’m already missing him, and I never even knew him.

No, wait - yes, I did.  I do.  Right from the beginning of our Facebook friendship, he touched me on a level that most don’t see, or don’t want to see.  Behind the funnyman, there was a little boy who pulled at my pigtails to get a laugh but saw, too, what was behind the freckled face.  Reaching out with random thoughts, shyly holding out my hand, it was reassuring to know that my fingers were touched in return – even if lightly so. 

It all started over a night of music celebrating the sounds of summer. 

This man, whom I will call friend because he fell head over keyboard into my parameters of such a label, needs one himself and has been failed by many.  How do I convince him to let me try?  What words can I pull out of my magic hat to convince him that taking my hand may be a chance, a risk, a gamble, as he wages his battles – but a better alternative than becoming the Quasimodo of the 21^st century?  Being alone is a sad thing. 

I don’t want him to be sad, but everyone is at some point.  What I want more is to listen when he is, whether at a distance or side by side.  Never do I want to miss the chance to know someone new, to create a memory that will bring an ember of warmth on a winter day. 

Am I foolish to fall in like so easily, so quickly?  Perhaps.  I wouldn’t trade it in for all of the sunshine, lollipops and roses in the world. 

Yes, Steven, there is a Santa Claus...

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     Steven A Green  Write Me.... ;-)

 Kymberlie Calkins Ingalls September 26 at 5:37pm

And what is it we are to write of to you, dear Steven..? About the heat today that is only saved by the cool breeze that whispers through the tall trees, blowing softly like the kisses of a southern belle across a gentleman's cheek?

Or how about the state of affairs today, tomorrow and yesterday..? The poverty that is rising from beneath the ravenous cracks of the very earth that has crumbled beneath our greed? The standards and practices of those who holler in demand, seeking attention from we who know better? The tragedy and the miracles that blend together in a destined dance of wisdom that one in a thousand will stop for perhaps one second to understand, to contemplate...?

Should we write words of love? Words of seduction to place doubt in your mind, possibly to be followed with a strengthened bond of matrimony chasing said doubts into the deepest, darkest corners of your mind where they will only rear their head on a black night beneath a full, mytstical, magical moon..?

Do you wish us to write of the touch of lonely that arises at 2am when the lost souls find each other in the universe and bond without a word or a sound, but a feeling - of comraderie at being awake when the whole wide world is fast asleep..?

Shall we write of fables, heroes and tall tales in the stories of princes and princesses, wicked witches, phantoms, merry bands of misfits and gift-bearing jolly old men? 

Or do you wish us to keep it at a simple hello, meant for a friend old or new, who is reaching out to us for a touch that will linger in your heart when a shade of blue falls upon your weary mind?

What is it we are to write of to you, dear Steven..?

~ K

Bridge For Sale

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Every Saturday night I spend at a racetrack, watching good ol’ boys and girls drive in circles and playing in the mud.  It’s a great American pastime.  Every Saturday night, for as long as I can remember, I’ve also stood and saluted Old Glory as the National Anthem is played, listening to those around me singing along, watching children raise their hands to their hearts, and then come the cheers at the same part of the same song every Saturday night – “for the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”

It is the land of the free, for some.  For others, not so much.  Perhaps my idea of freedom is different from those around me, because I see it to mean “equal.”  Equal in rights, in opportunities, and in benefits. 

Look around.  We’re not so equal, are we?  There is an entire population of people in the United States who are not allowed to marry.  Such a simple freedom, to be legally bound and morally committed to another person, and yet they are not allowed.  As in, it’s against the law.  And now I hear that there’s a movement to actually make homosexuality a crime again.  Are you kidding me with this?  It’s your way or the highway? 

Look around.  There are still people who are being policed based upon the color of their skin.  There are many in our country who remember what that was like, for it to be illegal or “frowned upon” to exist.  To walk into a building, to drink water from a fountain.  To stroll on the sidewalk alongside other human beings, to be hated simply because they came from somewhere else in the world, brought to our home under duress and punished for it.  To be hated for the slant of their eyes, or lighting a menorah.  Today there is a state that has set us back fifty years with their law allowing them to target anyone they think could be here illegally.  They could get a whiff of refried beans on your breath and demand that you whip out your proof to be here.  While I get frustrated too with those here against the law, we all know that it’s just giving too much power to some you know will abuse the hell out of it. 

Look around.  We are supposed to have separation of church and state.  I don’t see it.  We pledge to “one nation, under God.”  In God, we apparently trust our money – it’s written right on the currency.  It may not have started out pertaining only to a Christian God, but the majority have interpreted it that way and have run the marathon with it.  What if you are not a Christian?  What if you are of a different culture, believe in a different God, or Goddess?  But we are told to pledge our allegiance to both God and America, and should we, or more tragically our children, dare to utter a protest, even civilly, it’s blasphemy according to everyone who thinks being born in the good old U.S.A. means a judge’s gavel came with our birth certificates. 

Look around.  People in years past have gone to war to protect our “freedom,” and for those who’ve done it with the truest intentions in their hearts and their minds, I thank you.  But why should you believe me?  Why should you believe any of us, when so many have come home from various battles war-torn, chemically and mentally beaten, and abandoned by the people they swore to defend?  It’s shameful the way veterans are paraded out on holidays, but as soon as the fireworks fizzle, they’re forgotten about by a government who finds more importance in getting paid for a three day holiday than taking care of their soldiers. 

Look around.  There are people who escape paying taxes to support their freedom every day.  Free from having to work, having to earn their provisions.  Then there are those who lost half their income, that they work hard for, to support those same people.  Sure wish I had that kind of freedom.  Free to sit on my ass and populate the country more on a welfare dime.  Remember when “government assistance” was created to actually assist those in need?  Now everyone is under the microscope of judgment, because too many have gotten out of control.  It was stated last week that one in seven Americans are now at poverty level.  I guarantee not every one of seven qualifies for assistance.  Isn’t it pathetic that too many employees working for the big W can’t even afford to shop there?  Freedom comes with a price, that the upperclassmen have made impossible for the rest of us to afford.  Many have just flipped the worker bees the big bird, taking everything they can get their grubby hands on, leaving those who are truly down and out to sit with a shameful cloud over their head.  It’s not even that we live beyond our means, we’re simply trying to own the basics and keep up with the ever-modernizing world.  It’s not that I’m against paying taxes.  I’m against only some having to pay them, and seeing the revenue thrown in the toilet that only in the last few decades has everyone been allowed to use. 

Look around.  We are free to be a sick population, but not free to medicate ourselves.  It is illegal to purchase prescription drugs outside of our borders.  The US companies were selling to Canada, Mexico and B.F. Egypt who would then sell it to us for cheaper than our own pharmaceuticals were, but we will no longer be allowed to eliminate the American middleman who does not have our best interests at heart.  Consensual homosexuality, they want to make a crime.  Plain old screwing a stranger simply because they can is apparently okay, though. 

Home of the free.  Unless we’re  gay, colored in skin, or poor.  Free to speak our minds, as long as we’re pledging to God and leaving the turban at home. 

Eye In The Sky

Dear Moon:

Wonder sometimes what it is you see up there.  Such a cold, gray, gloomy color, and yet in your glow I see shimmering glimpses of color, reflections perhaps of all the eyes staring upon you, casting their wishes and shedding their tears. 

Do you ever wish you had the power to grant the prayers that are whispered beneath you?  Maybe you do bring life to those desperate pleas.  Maybe you are the Higher Power that has so many names and faces down here on Earth.  Maybe you pull the strings, change the tides, and guide our destinies, under the names of God, Buddha, and Venus.

You have been my friend, my watchful lover, my confidante and soul mate.  You have bathed me in spirit when I’ve lost mine, given me hope when I had none.  In your light I have cried, loved, hated, and healed. 

Is there a Man hidden deep inside?  Or are you just an eye in the sky, as the song tells us? 

What are your wishes, your dreams?  Who watches over you when you cry at the lunacy you see below?  Does anyone wipe the tears away, or do they just rain over us without your will?  Does anyone ever notice when you are big and bright and beautiful to behold..?  Are you a lonely creature, up there with no pets, playmates or passionate embraces?  Are you an eye of solitude, of judgment? 

In my questions, I seek the answers to myself.  In your strength, I gather my own. 

Love,

~ Me

Dirty Little Secrets

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So, here’s the thing. I grew up in a tire shop, surrounded by guys. I also hang around a racetrack (cars, not horses), surrounded by mostly guys. Most of my friends are men. And you know what? I’m a flirt, too. An incurable, yet harmless one. So I consider myself to have been pretty smart in choosing to marry someone who is secure enough that he doesn’t lose control of himself because I happen to hang around other men, and he’s never asked me to change who I am.

But I’ll tell you what – I’m getting pretty damn tired of being everyone’s dirty little secret. I just want to meet new friends, enjoy the ones I have, and that includes acknowledging in public that such a friendship exists. Being able to say hello, to chat online, be Facebook friends. This is why I find it difficult at times, to be honest, to be friends with women. It frustrates the hell out of me to see their distrust of their husbands, boyfriends, friends. And if they can’t trust me, then what’s the point of my even trying to build a friendship? Even if that man and I did have a past fling thing or relationship, get over it. Obviously he and I have. He’s with you, and I’m with my husband.

I tried to do something nice for a friend a couple of months back, and while he seemed thankful about it, what came out as being more important was the very fact that he knew me. And it became such a big deal that in the end it really soured my feelings about said friendship. We’ve been meeting occasionally for lunch for over a year now, and I thought he’d become more comfortable about being seen with me. But finding out that we knew someone in common – suddenly there had to be concocted stories and a bunch of other bothersome b.s. and now I wonder.. is it really worth it?

Another – I would post occasionally on his Facebook wall, in response to his own posts, and soon began to notice that my comments were disappearing. Idle chatter type posting here. Finally I asked him what was up, and was told “She’s not really comfortable with the fact that you and I had a thing.”

At the track – there’ve been wives who give me the evil eye just for saying anything to our friends beyond “Hey, great race..!” My husband’s even pointed it out to me, and he’s not exactly the paranoid type. I’m not some dipstick groupie looking to score, and I resent being thought of as such.

Not really sure what the solution is, but it gets tiring, old, and hurtful. If you have reason to believe I am after something you feel belongs to you, come and get me. But stop first and take a look at your own home on the range, and maybe figure out a) why he’d be looking, b) why you’re not giving him enough reasons to not look, and c) where that leaves you when I’m long gone out of the picture.

The end result is that I’ve become someone expendable, someone these men walk away from and sometimes very abruptly, because I’ve become the problem they don’t want to deal with anymore. Just wish I could tell from the beginning who’s going to go running. It would save me the time of trusting, of believing them that my friendship meant something.

Go, meat..!

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There's a local place here in town, called Kinder's, and it's a butcher shop/deli where they slow-roast the meats for the tastiest sandwiches around.  It is a scent that reaches far and wide, and today coming down off of Hwy 4 in Concord, it wafted to my hungry tummy leaving me with a desire to nibble on some tender balltip steak. 

As I rounded the corner from the exit with a Black-Eyed Peas beat thumping all around me, suddenly - much to my husband's chagrin as I laughingly.. lovingly... told him later - suddenly there was a whole other kind of meat treat on the horizon..! 

Big ones, short ones, sculpted ones, even dirty ones - wandering the parking lot, sitting on their tailgates, walking to their trucks, talking man talk that every woman secretly wants to eavesdrop on.  I'd never put much thought about it in all the years I've driven past or stopped in at Kinder's, but apparently it is the noontime mecca of where to go man-browsing. 

It was a nice little jolt of superficiality on a hot summer's day, and for that I want to thank all of the clean men, the tired men, the sweaty, sexy men.  Thank you for being a great landscape along a dismal highway.

Anger Management

I was sitting in a writers group the other night, and we were taking turns reading our works, everything going swimmingly.  Then someone read something about a blanket that her mother had "lovingly stitched" for her great grandson, and this woman's brother (also a member of said group) reminisced, saying "Yep, Mom put much love into those blankets." 

I suddenly had a flash that came and kicked me right in the stomach like a bully on a playground.  My grandmother, and my mom too, spent many hours crocheting blankets for people, especially us grandkids.  Maybe it was fresh because it just happened my deceased grandmother's birthday was the day before this meeting, so she was fresh on my mind.

Or, maybe it made me leave the room with rare tears in my eyes because all I could think was ... it's all a damn lie. 

It's bad enough to have memories lost in space, stripped from my mind, taken from me by age and circumstance.  But to have what was left ripped from my heart and washed in horror and hatred at the things I've recently discovered falling out of my family tree like rotten fruit... it left me feeling weak, vulnerable and quite foolish standing in a strange bathroom trying to calm myself and not break down. 

I hate crying.  Makes me look like shit - eyes looking like red rice puffed cereal, face all flushed, lips swollen like a fresh Botox job.

I'm not ready yet to talk about the things I've found out.  Someday, just not yet.  All I know is that I'm angry.  Years of blame, of my guilt that never should have been, years of contention - all for nothing.  Not a damn thing.  All the years my grandmother refused to comfort me, understand me... once again, there is no vindication in being the victor, especially where dead people are involved.

My husband tried to tell me "I'm sure she didn't mean..." Yes she did. 

Like the time I asked my stepdad "Is it true that Grandma thinks I'm prostituting myself to pay the rent?"
"Do you really think she'd say that?"
"Yes.  I do."

My grandmother's golden rule was drilled into my head, unrelenting like an oil rig on a hot Texas day: "Say what you mean, and mean what you say."  So she meant every word that ever came from her southern, judgmental lips. 

Ten years after her death, it's a whole new sting.

Adam and Steve walked into a bar...

and exclaimed, "Wow - that fig leaf Eve has on is simply fabulous!"

Do you see how they don't hate on Eve for having girl parts?  They embrace the differences between them.

"but it's cool for Tom Green to hump a dead moose
We ain't nothing but mammals.. Well, some of us cannibals
who cut other people open like cantaloupes
But if we can hump dead animals and antelopes
then there's no reason that a man and another man can't elope"

This is a perfect example of where our priorities lie. Our American society rallies around the flag, tooting our horns about freedom and civil rights. And yet.. there seems to be this big to-do about letting only certain people marry. The last I checked, the technical definition of marriage is "the joining of two people in commitment." So, seriously, wtf..?! 

We really do glorify things such as obscene acts with animals, rolling around Hollywood in a drunken stupor, laughing in secret at the jokes we don't want our friends to know we think they're funny.  How about finding love and life ever after on a reality show?  Sell yourself on television for a rose and a ring, this is acceptable.  Two people in love who want to marry and commit themselves to each other - this is somehow going to ruin your life as you know it? 

Many view marriage as a religious ceremony, and traditionally it is. However, I thought we were supposed to have a separation of church and state. Why is it we haven't just made marriage a civil thing across the board; him and her, he and him, she and her. If you want to go off and have a religious something or other on top of that, have at it, much as we do now. But, everyone should have the right to marry, divorce or live in so-called sin.

For those who are afraid "gay" is contagious, grow up and get over your cootiephobia. It's the most ridiculous and paranoid thing I have ever heard. If you truly think that homosexuality is hell-worthy, but in the next breath forgive those who rape, pillage, mutilate and murder others, perhaps your heart isn't as pure as you'd like to believe. Come on down from that pedestal - I'm here to tell you how lonely it can get up there. When you are more accepting of others for their differences, you'd be amazed to see that you'll get more love in return than you could ever dream of.

And refusing gay couples to adopt children? What will they pass on - Tolerance of the hate that surrounds them? Forgiveness in the face of judgment? Commitment? Unconditional love? Or maybe, just maybe, they will save a child from a life of loneliness, abandonment, and abuse.

I can tell you this - my gay friends and relatives would never rape me, as some of my heterosexual species has done. My gay friends don't play games with me, or hurt my feelings on a regular basis as my competitive, jealous girlfriends have done. My gay friends accept my being different from them more so than my actual family does.

If Eminem can get over himself long enough to sing these words, do you really want to go through this life thinking someone like Marshall Mathers is more enlightened than you are?

You have every right to your opinion - that's me accepting this about you.  I just don't have to agree with said thoughts.  The problem that I have with some of the things I hear coming out of the mouths of religious babes ("hate the sin, not the sinner." "Science has nothing to do with it." "I don't care what they do, as long as I don't have to see it!") is that it hurts others.  And there seems to be little interest in rectifying that.  It's God's way or the highway.  The thing is, your God isn't everyone's.  But a surprising amount of gays do believe in a God who loves them unconditionally. 

I invite you to have a seat at my table and break bread with my sister, my cousin, my cousin-in-law, and my friends. Look them in the eye and have a discussion about why they don't deserve the same rights you do. That they are not worthy of the love that you have or have had in your life. Tell them all about how they've sinned. Make sure to look them in the eye when you do, it helps get your point across that much stronger.

Then go home and look yourself in the eye in your mirror. It's so much easier to preach to the intolerance that you don't see inside, much harder to "save" the stone-thrower who stares back at you.

Tuesdays With Anthony

I had lunch with a dear friend today.  I've missed him, and our afternoons together.  Anthony is a minister, and to know anything about me whatsoever is to know that this isn't my usual crowd.  Last year Anthony and I resumed our friendship after sixteen years of absence, and it has been just like a day at a familiar, friendly beach.  The tide goes out, then washes back in and leaves a clean, wet sandy beach to write new words on.  We exhausted our Tuesday afternoons and took a break for these last six months, but now we seem to have resumed these sessions again.

I'm a person who, as obsessive as I am with music, has an individual ringtone on my phone for just about everyone I know.  The song I chose last year for Anthony was "Ooh Child," an old 70s tune by The Five Stairsteps.  "Some day, we'll get it together and we'll get it all done, someday when your head is much lighter.  Some day, we'll walk in the rays of a beautiful sun..."  It's such a hopeful song - something I don't know much about - and there was a day after we'd spent hours talking and sharing, that I heard it randomly and knew it would forever be my Anthony song. 

I believe in signs.  Anthony would say a sign from God, I say a sign of destiny.  A sign to show me every so often that I'm on the path I should be, even when I don't always know why.  I've been stalled this summer, creatively speaking.  There are things going on that I've not been wanting to write about.  Big things I have been grappling with, that I'm not quite certain how to process.  I've done a hell of a lot of work on myself this year, sorting through things in the attic that is my mind - discarding what I've kept for so long, saving what can serve me in the future.  I've put myself out into the world, regardless of the repurcussions.  There has been support and backlash both - some have been surprising to see where the loyalties lie. 

Sitting at lunch with Anthony today, involved in a debate over our differences in God vs. Science, it was a refreshing reminder that there is someone I can trust to have these discussions with.  We are willing to accept the other's differences while being comfortable enough to express our views, without the consequence of judgment.  I don't have to be politically correct.  I can just be myself.

As I walked away from one of his warm hugs, I could feel the thoughts already wanting to express themselves, stimulated by a meeting of the minds.  I was ready to be me again.

And I swear, as I turned on the car, my iPod set to "shuffle," and the next song to come on didn't sink in at first, but there it was.  My sign. 

Welcome back, Tuesdays.  I've missed you.

Happy Birthday to me...

I exist.

I wasn't sure I was aware of this, until today.  Sure, I touch things, can smell a rose and see the clouds in the sky.  I often find myself asking the question, "When my voice echoes through the woods, does anyone ever listen..?" 

The messages began trickling in just before midnight, August 9th, 2010.  Happy Birthday.  Truly I wasn't aware that so many people out there in the world were paying attention.  Facebook has, at last, proven its worth to me.  Not only was my personal page flooded with posts, but my work page as well. 

I existed.

My birthdays tend to take on princess-like proportions, thanks to the generous and loving nature of my husband.  But beyond my immediate circle of friends, I honestly didn't realize that others noticed.  I've spent the better part of this year analyzing a few things and taking a good hard look at my now 39-year old face in the mirror.  Can't say that the reflection was all too clear.  In fact, last week I asked a friend of mine if it was okay to quit at 40.  One more birthday, we'll make it a good one, then I can call the whole thing off. 

I'm tired..!  Truly I am.  There are days I am so overwhelmed by every damn little thing!  And I want to get off of the merry-go-round.  I want to sleep.  Want to not think.  About anything. 

I have a year to decide where I want to be, who I want to see me, and what I want to do.  What can I accomplish by the end of my fourth decade, and the better question will be - do I want to accomplish a single thing at all?  Maybe it's time to stop making everything about me, and see the others around me. 

No, that's way too enlightened for the likes of this old girl.

In the last twelve months, I have climbed ladders (not mountains.. I'm a bit of a gimp, you know..!), looked straight into the sun and been blinded by it, reached out to many and have been shot down by several.  Where does that leave - or lead - me in the next twelve?

Where do you anticipate finding yourself as you wander through the next twelve pages on the calendar..?