A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm!

Platitudinal

But You Should Have Heard What Was Coming Out of My Mouth (Day three hundred twenty-two), originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Just because something is trite, doesn't make it less of a sentiment or less of a truth.

Yes, it's trite: said a million times before, sometimes inelegantly and mostly clumsily, but if it's been said it's most likely because it's the truth.

Is a sunset any less beautiful-- any less a sunset-- because it's been oohed and aahed and admired and sighed the world over?

Does it magically become high noon or sunrise, just because you happened to call it sunset yet again? It couldn't be anything other than what it is-- and yet--

And yet, some sunsets are more sunset-magical than others, are they not?

Some days, we remember that fateful, iconoclastic, sweetly sorrowful moment where the illusion of light is shattered and we come face to face with the impending darkness that surrounds us as we hurtle through space within this squashed sphere we call earth.

Some sunsets, though sunset be a trite word, are more than just sunsets.

And yet, we still call them that.

Blame Google Maps

A tangled web of streets, leaning slightly in every direction.

A spangle of names, some of which trigger primal memories.

A third-world city, tucked in amongst the mountains.

A wave of patched memories surges from deep inside, but crashes nowhere. 

It's been twenty years, but that time may as well never have existed.

Maybe someday I will be back again and explore something I will not recognize at all.

The streets will bend into themselves, making knots and revealing buildings that were never there before

Maybe someday I will feel the early morning mountain frost on my bare knees again, and feel like I never left at all.

In Focus

The Hip Not Taken (Day two hundred forty-two), originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

It's no secret: I love September.

September has its problems, of course: after all, school starts around this time of year and I HATED school for many, many years. I have dramatically revised that view in light of a couple of facts:

1. The more school you attend, the more fun it becomes
and
2. Jesus Tap-dancing Christ! Schools take your children for HOURS at a time, and many do it FOR FREE! Are they insane?!

Back to September: there is something magical about it. Now, I realize I may have used the word "magical" to refer to pretty much every single month of the year. Here's an unscientific breakdown:

January: Magical winter! With magical warm spell somewhere in there!
February: Magical Valentine's day! Magical frostbite! Magical Don Meow's birthday!
March: Magically delicious on account of Leprechauns! Magical cherry blossoms! Magical first day of spring!
April: Magical spring! More magical blossoms! Magical rise of temperatures!
May: Magical roses! Magical dogwoods! Magical disappearing hemlines!
June: Magical sixteen-hour-of-sunlight days! Magical sweat!
July: Magical fireworks! Magical heatwave! Magical barbecue!
August: Magical sweltering heat! Magical produce! Magically quieter city!

I brought on the magic and I have made myself puke. God, how can anyone be so damn perky all year long? But the point is that out of ALL THAT MAGIC, September is pretty much as filled with fairy dust and happiness as is possible-- really.

Because September is cheerfully ordinary, and somehow, we all sigh a sigh of relief. Life can start as we know it, once again.

There is comfort in routine-- the same comfort that starts to chafe and stifle in a few short months*, true, but that for now feels like a familiar pair of slippers or an object to hold which comforts us and whose shape we know so well we can imagine its contours with our eyes closed.

Life takes on a sharp focus, just like mornings do-- some warmer still, but many more taking on that defined ring of crispness that means we can slow down and bundle up and cozy up inside.**

Happy Magical September, everyone!

___________

* I am seriously starting to suspect that some people are never, ever stifled or chafed by routine.

** I feel I should do the rest of the Magical year.
October: Magical pumpkins! Magical motherfreaking HALLOWEEN!
November: Magical THANKSGIVING! Magical Herr Meow's birthday! Magical tons of days off!
December: December is not magical. Sorry.

The Reflection Gets Tired, Too

Mid-Atlantic Stream (Day two hundred twenty-four), originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Reflecting, reflecting, reflecting.

I am slowly grinding to a standstill.

I think I am getting tired of examining my life and that of others; of trying to explain motivations and secret motives and hopes and dreams and longings.

I am getting tired of looking at myself and looking at my life as detached as if I'd emptied the contents of my purse and were superciliously trying to inspect those items in their entirety, and the bottom for crumbs and stray hairs.

Sometimes I don't want to know why I do something.

Sometimes, I don't want to explain it to you either, or to anyone.

I want to live a life free of contemplation and examination and neurosis. I want to be like my cat, who happily licks her own asshole clean with nary a thought as to why this would be something that would make the rest of us throw up, were it our fate.

For the dog people, picture something similar but also involving the eating of shit-- shit that isn't even yours to begin with.

I am tired of finding my motives.
I'm tired of psychoanalysis and tired of knowing that there is something wrong with me-- because there is something majorly wrong with me and with my life.

It's nice to know that even when I ask for the oblivion of lack of introspection, the neuroses won't leave me alone.

You know, the "hot poker digging into my side" kind of nice.

Appreciative

A Pretty Cyclist (Day two hundred nine), originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Being female sometimes --well, often-- means feeling intimidated by the beauty of other women.
We women love to undermine and belittle each other, however subtly.
And, let's face it, sometimes it's easy. When we see things we find unflattering, we speak up. We make catty comments. We roll eyes. Yes, yes: it's true! Stereotypes exist for a reason: for every enlightened woman who knows her own beauty and self-worth in both internal and external matters, there are ten who are going to pass around the National Enquirer's "Best and Worst Beach Bodies" issue down the aisle at the grocery store.

But then sometimes you see someone who is pretty and it makes you happy.

Maybe it's a nice outfit, or the way they are perched just so on a cute bike, like it happened to me the other day.

Maybe it's a beautiful pair of eyes, that defies you to look; or a gorgeous head of hair; or a stunning, warm and happy smile.

Beauty that makes you happy deserves to be spared from jealousy: it deserves to be shared and it deserves to be told it's made you happy.

I guess I'm all about the happiness these days.

Filled With The Intent

I just said goodbye to a few plants I've known and loved.

I'm a little sad, even if a couple of those plants were dwarf Alberta spruces and, having pulled them out of their cheerful green glazed pots without gardening gloves on (so macho of me!), they left little thorny spikes all over my hands.

(Who am I kidding?  I'm blinking back tears as I type.)

The spruces' spines seem to have more teeth than they really do.  They seem to embed themselves in the skin and they gnaw and they prick.  You feel itchy and even a little bloody.  But then you dust your hands off and they come out too, with docility.  It's a little like magic.

Dead plants: they make me feel like a failure.

I see the little plant corpses and feel I've failed them-- they trusted me blindly and I, in turn, did not repot them promptly; did not water them enough; gave them too little plant food.  Really, I forsook them.

I lost them.

Why is it that sometimes it takes small, nearly insignificant details to make us feel the hurt that bigger things do not seem to impact upon us?

___________

Curious about the title?  It comes from the poem "One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop.  You should read it.

17-- The Star

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

                     Ralph Waldo Emerson

__________________

It's been a while since I've written a little nothing about tarot cards, and I felt like tonight was the night.

Aren't you all lucky?

_________________

When it comes to symbols, everyone likes to ascribe either completely positive or negative qualities to certain archetypes.  So far in the cards I've discussed, symbols like Death and The Hanged Man tend to draw nothing but the negative interpretation; cards like The Magician and Justice tend to make you think of nothing but goodness.

(Of course, if you bother to read through some of my posts, you will see that I enjoy pulling rugs from under feet.  But I digress.)

The Star is an ambiguous card, as it is a card of peace and calm and actual goodness, but the kind that you can usually only find when you reach into the deepest and often darkest part of yourself.  It is a card about finding that essence of who you are-- not of who you wish you could be, or who you project to the world you are, but the person that sometimes exists only deep within yourself.

The card shows a woman dipping a toe in pool of water --a symbol of the subconscious mind-- while keeping one foot grounded.  She holds water with her jug on one hand, maybe to drink from it or just to contemplate it as she pours it back into the pool.  The other hand is watering the soil beneath.

She is naked and vulnerable in the night, as many of us so often find ourselves-- lost in nightmares and horrible thoughts, sometimes of our own making.  Wading through the deep and murky waters of the things within us, that we can't even begin to understand, sometimes we can get lost in the mud.  We obsess.  We toss and turn and give up on sleep. We wake up in a pool of cold sweat, feeling that our lives may never again be the same.

But sometimes, we can see the goodness and the strength buried deep within ourselves.

There is nothing so horrible within ourselves that can't benefit from a little stirring of the waters-- a little contemplation, or analysis.  There is nothing so painful that we can't eventually embrace it and forgive that part of ourselves and be on the way to letting our own buried-deep goodness shine. 

If we let ourselves go deeply enough into that dark night, and trust that we can actually do it, we will eventually find the way to peace and self-acceptance, so we can let our little light shine.

In Which I Also Reveal I'm a Cheap Date

This one is for all the waiters and waitresses out there.

Wait: is it now politically incorrect to call them "waitresses"?  Is this another feminine form that, like "stewardess" and "actress" before it, has been sacrificed because of a misplaced sense of indignation where a feminine form of a word (as if the word cared) is equated with discrimination and mistreatment of an entire group?

I can't keep track. 

Awkward Like an Elizabethan Collar

Elizabethan Garden, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

I know an insane number of Elizabeths.

Well, maybe "insane" is not the right word-- and as far as I know, most of the Elizabeths I know are not insane either. But definitely, the occurrence of this name within my circle of acquaintance is relatively high; not as high as the Christinas I know, but it's up there and it's more than five.

Plus I couldn't find any pictures of a Christinian Garden. So there.

Anyway, I'm not naming names, ironically so, but some Elizabeths in my garden are battier than others. So maybe there is something to the insanity here. But fear not, gentle reader --and especially gentle reader named Elizabeth: this post is not about you if you're named Elizabeth.

Or is it?

This post is about self-promotion.

Metamorphosing

Thicket of Cherries, originally uploaded by Madame Meow.

Spring is ironic because it's a beautiful event that is the walloping harbinger of life, and then death.

It happens so quickly, all this beauty. All this fragile beauty that makes some of us so sick and renders others of us into zombies who can't drive and who think they can find parking down by the Tidal Basin when it's 11:30 am, 79 degrees, and more than ten thousand other people have had a similar idea.

And then the long summer settles in, and nature becomes fat and matronly and eventually she becomes ugly and jowly and then she becomes a haggard, disheveled hag who chases you away with icy words and an acid tongue of frost.

Bla, bla, bla. I lost some weight.

I find myself emerging from a cocoon of ugly and haggard and jowly and for the first time in years I feel light, like I can enjoy the sun. Call it postpartum depression that got stuck in the DC mail; call it sudden impending modest amounts of hotness getting to my head; call it really bad timing, considering that I'm here and feeling good and pretty for once in a long time, and there's no one to cast admiring glances in my direction.

Well, no one except for this one kid, who had to have been over ten years younger than I-- he seemed to want to flirt with me earlier today, despite the fact that I was in feeding Thunderdome with the toddler.

I was baffled. I haven't really had to fend off the admiring glances for the past eleventy-or-so years, but it seems there is a first time for everything.

A first time for everything, Including having a very young guy think it's dead sexy that I'm getting pelted with partly-chewed pieces of bread. Maybe he ate paste as a kid.

3 ~ The Empress

I don't see Naomi Campbell and necessarily think, "Empress."

This is something that bothers me.

_________

At the end of the summer, Dolce & Gabbana released five fragrances named after tarot cards.  Being a bit of a sucker for scents and ditto for the Tarot, I was completely intrigued.

Most of the scents I frankly found a little blah.  If a perfume is to be based upon the Tarot, I kind of expected it (or them) to be grand and maybe even a little over the top and garish.  Instead, they are mostly understated: the kind of perfumes you could wear every day and not think much of them, for better or for worse.  I did buy one of them --but that is a topic for another day.

Needless to say at this point, however, I did not buy 3-L'Impératrice, though it was kind of pretty.  

________

The Empress is the card that relates more classically to women as matrons, mothers, etc.; in other words, this card is less unsettling than yesterday's.

And so, Naomi Campbell and her crackpot, tantrum-prone self just doesn't jell with the idea of a representation of a definitely more wide-hipped and flabby-bellied self than she portrays. 

Yeah.  That's it.  That's all I've got for now.  Technically I do have more-- there is a part of me that is kind of itching to know exactly why some people in the modeling world keep on recycling themselves beyond the point of interest, but I think reinvention is more in the realm of the Wheel of Fortune.  Let's face it: there are some cards that are more appealing than others.  And there are some cards that speak to me more than others.

________

Incidentally, I feel I should talk more about yesterday.  But.... let's just say that I am running on a major sleep deficit, so this is all going to have to wait until the weekend.  Because this theme is fertile, but at this point I am starting to realize that I'm doing this NaBloPoMo just for the discipline of the writing exercise and not so much for the deep pearls that are dropping from my fingertips.

I Feel Busy (Not So Sure About Witty or Light)

The problem with technology is that it cannot read your body language and pick up on your avoidance clues.  It just sits there, patiently humming and standing by and, before you know it, you have ONE THOUSAND pieces to read in your Google Reader.  

One thousand things calling my attention:  things that at some point in time I have deemed precious and worthwhile enough to add to my reader, so I can keep up with them. 

One thousand plus things still waiting for my attention, only it seems they are the thousand closest to the bottom of the totem pole.

This is a new feeling for me: the feeling of having things to do and feeling like I may not have enough time to do them as much or as well as I would like.  It all started with baby number two; and then with Monsieur Meow traveling more and more; then picking up my local writing project; now I'm taking a photography class; and trying to run (ha!); and attempting to introduce some yoga routine into my life as well.  Suddenly life has taken on that old but familiar urgency of long-ago-- the weird, adrenalin-fueled stabs at making more things work in the same amount of time.

"I am a Type B!" I want to tell my life.  "We're supposed to be laid back!"

She laughs and points out that I always seem to have time for Facebook. 

(But it's Facebook!  EVERYONE has time for Facebook-- it's like a God-given right.)

Today the day and night balance each other perfectly, on their way to wintry short days and lack of light.  Seems fitting to want to make changes in this season that does just that.

Thank you to all who have commented since my last entry: I appreciate you greatly, and hope to be replying to you in some form or another in the near future.

It Hath Thirty Days

When September comes, I can't help but be philosophical.  And I don't think I'm alone-- for many children in this world, this time of year signifies a rite of passage-- a reckoning of time changing and maturity.

And the suddenly cooler days and nights that are the harbinger of autumn-- together with the ever-shortening days and the inescapable burden of sweaters and schedules-- make life seem that much more serious and ephemeral.  Summer is gone; the fun seems gone.  Real life must once again begin.

Today I was driving Herr Meow back from yet another appointment (because who knew paperwork could just evanesce?) and listening to Phlash Phelps on Sirius.  

Brief aside: I love morning deejays.  Specifically, the oldies stations always seem to have the most fun, peppy, trivia-laden morning DJs and that appeals to my almost compulsive obsession with insignificant dates and bits of things no one else seems to remember. 

Phlash Phelps broadcasts on Sirius/XM and he does the morning duties on '60s on 6.  Within the show, he has a city of the day segment, and today's was Poland, Maine.  Poland was, in fact, the city of the day because today 70 years ago World War II started when Germany invaded Poland.

"Oooh," went the little old lady from Maine, today's winner. 

She guessed right, but she had no idea.

_____________ 

As we drove back home and crossed the Douglass bridge, I choked up a little.

The sky was the most perfect, painful, awe-striking shade of cerulean blue, and it seemed powdery and flawless and endless.  I figured it was an atmospheric phenomenon-- something having to do with the cooler temperatures making the sky appear more like a beautiful, enormous vacuum and less like a cyclorama above our heads.

This is the sky that made me think of the first of September.  This sky is the one that saw the first glimmers of what would be a long, painful and scarring war; the same sky that was pierced by rogue planes in New York eight years ago ; the same sky that has seen so much death and destruction side by side with lovely milestones, and the same sky which hangs a full corn moon to help feed the Native American tribes.

This is the sky under which I was born.

Happy September, one and all.

Surf, Turf, Lurrrrrrf

Ah.  Am blogging outdoors.  Is nice.

 

(edit-- this post took well over a day to write, but since I liked the way it started you get to read the whole bit as is.  If I were blogging outside right now, my computer would be dead, as it is raining.  hard)

I must say, there are few things as pleasurable as blogging outdoors.  The only more pleasurable thing would be to have some sort of full-time cabana boy getting me frou-frou little umbrella drinks and water with plenty of ice.

It helps to be in a good mood to tackle a seemingly easy but yet delicate and important meme.  Bohemian Girl tagged me for a Stuart Smalley ("...because I'm good enough...") meme and I am complying today.

I must say that today has been kind of a self-esteem day.  My friend Kat and I went to the beach with the little guys, which was a place I wasn't sure I wanted to visit -- mostly because I guess that I hadn't realized how much of a body issue I'd developed after giving birth.

I jiggle.  I wobble.  I cottage-cheez.  I pucker in places that shouldn't pucker.  I have muffin top.  I have stretchmarks.  I have way too many moles and I never shave that one spot on my calf that always has a few sticky-outy hairs.  And.... and there is always an and.... I am woefully white.  I don't really tan at all, not even when I have tried (I have stopped).  I just burn, tan a microscopic amount, and then I'm back in white.  (Note to AC-DC: I smell comeback song)

I would have denied myself all summer from such a fun and simple treat as a trip to the beach, just because I intuited that I would look horrendous and FAT in my bathing suit.  And a bikini?  Hah.  Not unless I give ice cream up from this day forward.  But Kat pushed in a loving way and off we went.  And I was self-conscious, but glad.

And you know, I don't think I looked too bad in my little one-piece; and it was all okay.  The beach was warm and relaxing and fun and forgiving.  And then there was a very large woman sunning herself with no problem and no self-consciousness, and there was a very pretty mom of an older kid looking great in a bikini.  And for a few hours, I could let go of my judgmental self and just build a castle in the sand.

And it was FUN.
______

So, without further ado and doing away with the false modesty bit, here are Ten Things I Like About Myself:

1. I like my eyes.  They hide behind glasses, it's true, but they are large and almond-shaped and laced with very long eyelashes and framed by very expressive eyebrows that look plucked but seldom are.  They are boring and generic brown but it's a pretty shade of light brown with flecks of yellow and green.

2. I like my feet.  Not only are they an ideal size for finding at every store--8 to 8 1/2-- but they also stayed the same size after pregnancy and they are cute.  They have cute chubby toes and look good in really dark polish and don't have a super-high instep or fallen arches or bunions or hammertoes or any permanent scars from years of abuse (yet).  And since I love shoes, my feet take one for the team more often than not when breaking in new shoes.  So, thank you feet.

3. I like being funny.  I'm pretty sure that even if people haven't openly acknowledged it I have made them laugh out loud more than once, because that's what I do and that's who I am: Laughey McLaughingkins.  Go ahead: that was an atrocious non-pun and yet I see you rolling your eyes and suppressing a smile.   Within that funniness bit, I must admit I like coming up with nicknames for everyone and everything.  Now, you may not like the nickname I may come up with for you, but I can guarantee I'm in stitches.

4. I like my intuition.  We all have our shortcomings and our blind spots, but I know I can always rely on my sixth sense to help me out.  It's a pretty good thing to have, and I think I have a pretty good one.  I can spot fakeness and weirdness half a mile away.  It seems to be temporarily disabled when pheromones are involved, but otherwise it's a pretty good little intuition thingy.  The kind of intuition that is fabled by men --who sadly, tend to have it but don't listen to it because "it's a woman thing."

5. I like that I talk with my hands a lot.  I gesture and get involved and mimic and go for it whole-hog, and so people who don't speak other languages understand me pretty well when asking for directions (which happens a lot, actually), or when I run into the random deaf lady on the street and need to know what kind of dog they are walking.  (it was a rat terrier, and the lady's SideKick also came in handy).

6. I like my optimism.  I know I don't sound very optimistic a lot of the time on here, but I am a chronic optimist who's in a constant battle with her inner realist.  And honestly, while I know that the world is a rough and rude place, I still am glad when someone who's routinely been austere and rude does something small to make me smile --like saying a hello out of the blue.  I take that small token and realize that there is potential for good and niceness in (almost) everyone.  And so, it takes very little to turn my frown upside down.  Or right-side up, as it were.

7. I like my ability to listen and observe.  Maybe that's a two-in-one but oh well: I do think it's two sides of the same coin, after all.  And listening and observing are essential if you want to get to know people, things, places and surroundings better.

8. Speaking of which, I really like my ability to read maps well.  I'm not just a passable map reader: I am a KICK ASS map reader.  I am an excellent navigator and I always like to explore new routes and figure out how to get from here to there in a better way.  Unfortunately, when I drive I also like to find new and better ways of getting places but since I can't drive and safely look at a map, I end up getting lost in many new and interesting places.

9. I like my ability to find interesting things in the mundane.  I'll sit through bad movies, cheesy shows, and watch people and wonder about the larger themes in what is going on --even if it's not much of anything at all.   It saved me from boredom very often growing up as an only child, and it's saved my butt more than once in my life as a worker bee.

10. This has to be said: I like my boobs.  Not only do they work --and how!-- but they aren't too big or too small and they look pretty good despite having taken quite a beating over these past almost two years.  Or rather, over two years because pregnancy takes quite a toll on them boobays to begin with.  So yes.  Boobies.

Alrighty.  Whoo.... I guess it's hard to love oneself without hiding behind at least a little bit of silliness and/or self-consciousness.  Hmm.  So here: I'm tagging a few ladies so that they may cherish their favorite attributes.

Gents don't usually need the shot of self-esteem in this way, but if any gents would like to be tagged, please speak up.. and as a matter of fact, if you want to self-tag, I highly encourage it.

I tag OC girl, Vixen, Jo, SoloMother,Empowered Kat, comebacknikki,  E:), valiens and the Devilish Southern Belle.

Have at it, ladies!  What do you love about yourselves?

Giving Princess Di a Run For The Money

In this blog, I try to bring you all manner of delectable morsels to help you deal with the crushing pain of day-to-day life.  So you can imagine my utter excitement when, while reading Dlisted (one of *my* favorite ways to cope with the crushing pain of day-to-day life) I ran across this item,

In a world where there is daily death and destruction and horror and Republican candidates who do not "believe" in Evolution (thank you Valiens... I've been muttering that under my breath for about a half-hour now), and staunch defenders of Jerry Falwell, may he rest in "peace" --that upstanding Christian man who thought of fellow human beings who did not fit into his worldview as "aberrations" ... in a world such as that, there are still those moments of genuine wonder combined with pluck that make you go, "OMG what the f...???"

Behold Jodie Marsh:

Isn't she absolutely breathtaking?  Gaze lovingly at her orange skin.  If you need more proof of her orangeness, click here to go to Hollywood Tuna's Jodie Marsh archive.  Behold her cheek in attempting to cover up her elephantine bosom with nothing but a leather strap, tastefully accessorized with rivets or rivet-like things --because nothing lends class to an outfit as much as rivets, right?  Look at the overstretched skin of her breasts, where her ill-fitting implants sit invitingly and beg to be ogled over and over again and eliciting such responses as, "Dear Lord!  Breasts do THAT?!"

Oh, by the way?  She's 28.

Say it with me now:  TWENTY-EIGHT?!?

I've seen corpses look more youthfully 28 than this girl.  Not that a life spent being tabloid fodder in the UK (and blogger fodder here in the US too), and being a stripper and an erstwhile arm candy to tons of F-listers contribute to looking your best.  Lindsay Lohan, take note!!  'Cause the guy you're currently dating --Calum Best or whatever, if you're even still dating him-- is kind of like her discards.  Eww... Jodie Marsh's sloppy seconds sounds bad, especially since this guy who she was engaged to apparently dumped her because she has.... hygiene problems.  *insert pukey face*

But you guys... Jodie is just a regular girl, and she wants to get married.  And this is where your existential angst is going to lift and melt away like Pacific fog:  she is going to do it "The Bachelor" or "Flavor of Love" style!  About time the Brits copied some good American programming for a change, huh?  OMG PEOPLE CLICK HERE!!!!!!!

And doing  a wee bit more poking around, behold her MySpace page! On a related but not thoroughly connected thought, I wonder if the forefathers of our fine nation would have had their own MySpace pages.  I'm thinking that sexy beast, Ben Franklin, would have totally had a pimped out profile-- and he would have probably not needed those silly MySpace page editors, and it would have had Flash because he would have invented it back in the 18th century.  Yeah.
Actually, I wonder if any current politicos have MySpace profiles, because it seems that everyone and their brother has one and it's pretty funny.  (Yes, I have one too.  Shush.)

So yes.  Jodie Marsh, ladies and gents.  It's all so beautiful-- believing in romance and fate and allowing MTV to be the pimp  matchmaker after a nationwide casting cattle call!  I need a good lace hanky to dab my tears, because it's too much to take.

INCIDENTALLY!

WHY IS MELINDA NOT IN THE AMERICAN IDOL FINALE, PEOPLE?????????????

This is almost as outrageous as when Chris Daughtry got voted off  before Elliot Yamin and Katharine McPhee, only that last season everyone was really good.  I thought McPhee was annoying, fake, (McPhake?) and affected, for instance, but you cannot deny that she sang well-- however, she shouldn't have been in the finale with Taylor: it should have been Chris.

Okay.  Digresson over.  Please check out the links and brighten your day with the beauty of Ms. Marsh and remember the immortal words of Dolly Parton: "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap."

A Cut Adored

Confession time: if I could come up with a feasible excuse for getting my hair cut every week, I would.

I love getting my hair cut.  Everything about the experience (save, perhaps, the über hip music blaring through the speakers at Bang at the Verizon Center--note to management:  ixnay the subscription to that one XM channel that should be called "Remember how 90s dance music was totally hot?  Will it still be hot if we randomly insert more modern hits but play the songs on a three-hour loop?") is just wonderful-- from getting my fill of lovingly laid-out tabloids at the waiting benches, to the delightful shampoo and melt-me-like-butter scalp massage, to the moment where I'm delivered into the loving scissors of She-Who-Did-Not-Dis-My-Hair-When-We-First-Met.

Yes.  I've had hairdressers dis my hair in what I can only think was some sort of warped attempt at helpfulness.

______

Happy 4:20!  Happy Friday!  Happy GOOD WEATHER!

And remember: we may not have known what a Hokie was before last Monday, but today we are all Hokies at heart.  We are with you, guys, sending you much love and thoughts of healing.

We are Virginia Tech.