change of address card

so the last indignity blogger's unleashed on me is that when it brought back the posts it ate, it conveniently squelched the post in which i announced that i'm over this place. so i took my writings to wordpress:

http://magnoliathoughts.com

this is - for realsies this time - the last post here. join me at the new digs, won't ya?

THAT. IS. IT.

after the blogger outages, i have decided that i am done with this platform. i'm leaving this one up, mind you, but i'm heading over to wordpress. behold, my new home:

http://magnoliathoughts.com/

the new place has all the content of this one, except it will also feature the two posts blogger decided to eat between tuesday and now, and new stuff going forward.

join me at the new home, won't you?

[drops mic]

today at 11:01AM eastern daylight time, i walked out of my last exam, put in my headphones, and cranked one of my very favorite crazy-aggro middle-school jams. i walked down the hall, out the door of the school, and as i crossed the street to head to the train, i may very well have said out loud, peace, bitches. and by may very well i mean that's exactly what i did.

it. is. over.

today marks the last day i will ever sit for an exam, have to contend with school procedures, or otherwise live as a student. my formal education ended today. the last time i ended a chapter of my academic career was a mere 385 days ago. then, i was elated, yet filled with a sense of sadness. when i left LSU, there was something there to miss. i missed - and still do, by the way - the school, the people, the attitude. i miss louisiana, even when its elected officials do boneheaded and wildly reactionary things on a near-hourly basis. LSU was amazing, indescribable and criminally underrated as a legal educational experience.

but this? hmm. i will benefit from having this name on my resume for the rest of my life. i spent 70 large on a year of education, and the benefits will filter through my career. i can always say that i'm a [fancy school which shall not be named]-educated lawyer, and people will say, wow, how impressive! that's an amazing school. but when they say that, they will be wrong. it's a great name. but it's not, by ANY definition, an amazing school. that would imply that it's a place where learning and collaboration are encouraged and valued. and folks, that is not the case.

what my fancy LL.M. institution encourages is paranoia, competition and grandstanding. everyone is selling something, all the time. even things that are supposedly good - charity work, fundraisers, etc. - are done not from a place of genuine selflessness, but from a place of look how awesome this is gonna be on my resume! i'll bet i can get a seat on the pro bono committee at [fancy law firm i'm clerking for] once they hire me. everything is tinged with an overabundance of caution. they're nice, but not friendly. they're pleasant enough, but not open or warm. their smiles don't reach their eyes; their eyes are too busy watching you to make sure you're not gunning to knock them off their perch.

i ran across some great friends at this school. i will miss seeing them every day as we all go back to our lives, scattering across the country (or in my case, staying here). it wasn't a total loss. i laughed a lot. but i am not, and will never be, nostalgic for this. there is no bitter spiked through this sweet. i got what i needed from these people. i am now shut of officious administrative policies, unnecessary restrictions, socioeconomic elitism and religious health insurance. (hmm, how novel - to follow MY conscience in my own healthcare decisions, not someone else's.) i got what i sought. now it's time to end this association and move on with my life.

peace, bitches. i'm out.

throwback: the wall

[let's go back to the very, very beginning. there's been some significant alteration in circumstance since this one was written. first, the old; then, the new.]

february 11, 2010: the wall
maybe it's the weather. maybe it's the season. but i'm starting to notice a certain... ambivalence, maybe, in my dealings with the other boy. we're both physically and emotionally close to each other, just as we have been the whole time. but it's starting to dawn on me that we're as involved with each other as we'll ever be. i think this realization has led to my disengaging a little.

he's been a constant joy and a thorn in my side for the entire run of this relationship. i love what we are to each other. but i hate, hate, hate the fact that there's this ever-so-thin wall between us, one that's entirely of his building. he's made the choice that this will only go so far. i've gone, over the course of things, from KNOWING he'd see the light, to HOPING he'd see the light, to realizing that he never will. and what is "the light?" well, basically, it's the fact that there's not another woman on the face of the planet who will ever care for him the way i have, do, and probably always will. i can't stand the fact that a) this is true, b) he can't or won't see it, and c) even if he knows it, and even if some part of him wants it, he can't or won't go there.

i love this boy. it's a deep and complex situation. but the foundations we've built this relationship on are so messed up that there's no possibility of things ever being white-picket-fence-ish between us. i guess it's asking too much to turn a lover into a partner, even if that lover was - and still is - your best friend. it's also asking too much of someone with so much iron will to remain aloof to break the wall down and let someone in. i wish so much that he'd drop the defenses. i just don't see it happening. i want him so much. i care about him so much. but, without malice, he's really doing a number on me. he cares about me as much as he can, and i know that. it's up to me to decide whether that's enough.

[so yeah, in the words of a fellow writer, your guy has become your man. as it happens, he took the plunge. we had a state of the union talk the other night, which is a big feat for him. i asked him what made him say lo those many months ago that he thought we had a future. his answer was more cryptic than what i expected: i don't know what i meant, specifically. i just know that i finally reached a point where the sense that it would go well between us was stronger than the fear, the risk, that it would go poorly. well, how has it gone? it was definitely the right decision.

there's no question that our origins are complex. the story of how we eventually fell in love ain't the kind of story you can tell grandkids. our time horizon is all jacked up. but none of the details matter. it's all window dressing. he eventually threw a line down and hoisted me over his wall. he realized that i was right, that there isn't another woman on earth who will love him the way i do. we went emotionally all the way in that talk the other night, and i told him in no uncertain terms where i see this going. he's on board, too. it's hard not to rush, to get to the shining future in the distance. but one thing all of this living i've done in the last few years has taught me is that the destination is not always the most important part. the journey matters, too.

turns out, to quote the man himself, you got what you wanted. yes, babe, i did. how 'bout that.]

glad to have a friend like you

[soundtrack. i am deeply sorry in advance for the visual here. it was the best the internets could do for me. go get the original free to be... you and me for the good stuff.]

i've been thinking a lot about compatibility. it's a very fungible concept, as you can be compatible with someone emotionally, but not practically (see also my ex - great guy, but being funny and sweet isn't enough to form a life). there's the kind of compatibility that makes you friends, the kind that makes you lovers, and the kind that makes you a "soul mate," inasmuch as i believe in that concept. it's hard to describe what makes you compatible with someone, but just like justice stewart said about obscenity in jacobellis v. ohio, you know it when you see it. (yeah, i know i just quoted a supreme court case in a blog post. i'm a lawyer. what do you want from me?)

being a blogger has added a whole new dimension to this idea, too. i started writing here in january 2010, really on a whim. i don't exactly know which layer of the cocktail of emotions that was swirling through my system drove me to reach out to the internet to find an audience. but i did it, and my lord, i couldn't be more glad that i did. turns out that there are tons of people all over the country who are kindred spirits in one way or another. there have been reconnections to old friends. i've made new friends based on political agreements or similar tastes in music. i've found people whose life stories have closely (if not damn near identically) tracked mine. i've met and commiserated with the divorcing and divorced.

in other words, it's made me feel less alone in this journey to know that there are others out there. this is the good side of blogging/social media and all this connectedness we have in the twenty-first century. and when you're young-ish, contemplating a drastic life change and sure that you're the only person suffering like this, the real-life world can be a lonely damn place. but lo and behold, y'all are out there to be supportive, warm and friendly, in ways that in many cases people in my flesh-and-blood life could not or would not be.

and now that i've turned the corner into the new life, you've been there to root for me and the man. i love that more than i can say. as the back-to-school chapter ends, and i go back to my adult life already in progress, i'm thrilled to see what happens. and a large part of that happiness and confidence going forward happened because i've had some great support from some people who really, truly get it. i am not alone. i never was. i've had kindred spirits out there to rely on for advice and laughs, and all it took is finding some compatible people.

i'm a lucky woman to have friends like y'all. :)

far and wide

i had a brief text conversation with a good buddy of mine the other night, one of my very favorite people. we were chatting back and forth, and he said, [the place he lives, where i used to live too] is more challenging without you. boy, oh boy, do i know that feeling.

see, when you're moderately itinerant, as i've been in my post-teenage life, you pick up friends wherever you go. college friends? they're all over the country. law-school friends? they're somewhere i'm not. everywhere i've lived, i've gained myself amazing friends. and though quite a few of them are here, quite a few more are not. and that's not even including all of you fine folks out here in blog-land, scattered far and wide across the country.

i used to have a recurring dream when i was younger. it took place at my old high school, under the giant oak trees dripping with spanish moss. we were having a barbecue, and it was a perfect reunion of all my friends from every stage of life. i used to wake up from that dream vaguely depressed, because i know it's just not possible. but what if, for just one day, i could have everyone i love in one place? maybe the beach, maybe the mountains. food, drinks, nice weather? man.

life is challenging without friends. i have a nice clutch of them around, and that helps. but sometimes, the person you want more than anyone else is thousands of miles and a time zone or two away. that sucks. but that's life in the twenty-first century, i guess. i just wish i could have a drink with my nearest and dearest more than once a year. or longer. sigh...

bouquets

so what do you do when the whole world is celebrating, and all you can do is look through the window from the outside?

i didn't do a mothers day post last year, largely because i spent that day packing and giddily contemplating my escape from the old life. but now, this year? i definitely woke up feeling out of sorts for (at least at that moment) no reason. i was just a bit prickly, but i chalked that up to the fact that i truly hate life for about the first ten to fifteen minutes of every day. i don't do mornings. but then, quite out of nowhere, the man and i had a full-on feelings-hurt yelling argument about something thoroughly stupid. it was resolved. but i was then, and still am, rankled about it. i said, i feel like i did something without meaning to. don't worry about it. but it sticks with me when i cause harm for reasons unrelated to the incident in question. and the reason why i'm upset today?

women getting roses. friends cradling babies. heartfelt testaments to love and devotion from goofball football players on twitter. pink bats during the damn nationals game, for god's sake. and me? well. i have a grandmother to call in a minute, and a stepmom who loves me to death. it's not like i'm lacking for love and affection. but it's just not the same, and even though this is the fourth mothers day without her, it's no better. in fact, it's worse. i know what i don't have, and it stings. badly.

so i really do hope that everyone out there celebrating has a fabulous mothers day. sincerely. but as for me, i just kinda wish the whole thing would go away. it's just another reminder of what happened. there's nowhere to send flowers today, no brunch reservations to make. the only bouquet i could give would be scattered in the waters of the gulf of mexico.

happy mothers day.

glad you see it my way.

the women in my family could teach a master class on the black art of manipulation. some of us (me included, i hope) understand that skill, along with the dark power it gives us, and act accordingly. we respect the dangerous nature we have. others, on the other hand, have honed that blade to a deadly razor sharpness, swinging it wildly to ward off danger and mold the world around them into the shape they most desire. and as much as i believe in the equality of the genders, i find a special difference between men and women when it comes to twisting people. i've known some bad men in my life. these guys have been evil, criminally and morally. they've done some low-down, snake-like things. i've met men who can persuade people very well. but the very best manipulators i've ever known in my life have been women. these women weave tapestries to get what they need, what they want.

in to kill a mockingbird, scout says, again, as i had often met it in my own church, i was confronted with the impurity of women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy all clergymen. it's a common theme in many religions: women as temptresses, sirens, seductive and dangerous. hell, it's why a lot of backward tribal cultures force women into body-covering draperies. they don't think their men are tough enough to resist the inherent power of a woman to draw a man into the ways of sin. it's completely, twistedly paradoxical: women are so powerful that they have to be subjugated for the good of the culture.

but there's a tiny grain of truth to the idea that many women have special skill in convincing people - regardless of gender - to come around to their way of thinking. and i've never seen a better set of connivers than the ones with whom i share a bloodline. to watch the poison cast between these women, given with the sweetest of smiles, is a sickeningly fascinating sight to behold. it's glorious in its horror. you admire the skill as you loathe the result. and it's my goal to walk the razor edge between using the good aspects of our family business to my advantage and eschewing the dark, twisted side of that talent.

i could wreak so much havoc with this. it's a damn good thing that i don't want to.

battle of the bulge

kim pointed out to me that is, in fact, international no-diet day. i happen to adore this idea. basically, the goal of the day is to stop freaking the hell out about how your body doesn't resemble [insert impossibly skinny/buxom/etc. starlet here]'s body, relax and have a freaking cookie if you want to. and i fully support that. i am someone who once allowed my weight to get radically out of control for all the wrong reasons, then managed to get myself to a happy place that is far from kate moss territory (is that a dated reference?). but i like how i look. i'm curvy. i can walk from capitol hill to far-northwest DC without praying for death. i'm pretty healthy.

but by this culture's standards of beauty? this size-6 skirt wearer is still looked at as fat. and that, my dear friends, is about the stupidest fucking thing on the planet. that thought bears repeating, in bold, because it's so true: the fact that someone with my body type is considered "fat" is totally fucking stupid. really. what's wrong with us? stars' lives are too important to us. if someone paid you hundreds of thousands of dollars to work out all day long, you'd be impossibly skinny, too. you'd also be miserable as hell.

but that's not even the real point. not even close. the point is that our national obsession with body image is another symptom of what i like to call "mind your own damn business" disease. we care just way too damn much as a society about what other people are doing. we are a nation of nosy, bossy busybodies who can't resist passing judgment on others as if the way we individually live is so all-fired sainted that we have that kind of moral authority. here's a news flash: no we don't. no one person has the right to make another person feel small, stupid or unworthy over the superficial. the fact that we've made it a national civic religion is the height of disgusting.

the side effects of this affliction are absurd at best and unspeakably harmful at worst. there are practical deficiencies. for example, i went to buy t-shirts at a nationally renowned upscale casual clothing chain associated with preppy people. i bought smalls, as that has been my shirt size of late. strikes me as weird; not to overshare, but i wear a 34D brassiere. small is not something that seems to go along with that. but when i put the first shirt on the next day, it hung off me like it belonged to the man. turns out that this chain has created new sizes. they now run from extra-large at the top... to DOUBLE-EXTRA-SMALL at the bottom. this new "xx-small" size is the rough equivalent of the same chain's small from three years ago. vanity writ large. not to mention extreme inconvenience. all in service of being as "small" as you can be.

and that's anodyne as hell compared to the side effects to people's emotional health. eating disorders. public ridicule. scorn and derision. big people being shown on the news from the neck down like they're cattle being led to slaughter. (this is something that never used to bug me, but on further reflection, horrifies me as insanely cruel and juvenile.) plastic surgeries that are closer to ritualized mutilation of people's bodies, all in the service of being "perfect." it infects ALL of us, no matter what we actually look like. so many beautiful, smart and amazing women look in the mirror and see things that make them sad, depressed, and worse, all because some preening OTHER in the world says, nope, you're just not good enough.

well, no more. it's hard enough as it is to be a woman in the world these days, as TKOG reminded us today. we need to stop letting venal, small, mean people make us feel bad for NO REASON. love your body. do what you need to do to be healthy, but do NOT make yourself a slave to vanity standards that have no bearing in reality. you're beautiful. ALL OF YOU. trust that, and follow what you want for yourself to live YOUR best life.

and if you want that damn cookie? eat it, relish it and love it. 100% guilt-free. you're so worth it.

taking my talents to...

gaah. sorry. i swore i wouldn't make the lebron joke, but i did. yes, kids, as i mentioned yesterday, your humble blog proprietor is on a business trip to south beach. i'm tax-credit-geek-ing it up at the fanciest hotel i've ever set foot inside of in my life, and at the end of day two, with tomorrow morning left to go, i have a few little observations about the town, the hotel, and life in general. (gee, i know it's just shocking that something like this would trigger musings in me, eh?)

first of all, south beach is... well. the beach is beautiful. the water is crystal-clear and this really amazing blue color. this time of year, even though it's the atlantic, the water's not even ice-freaking-cold like it is up in virginia and points north. after yesterday's session, i spent some time wandering on the sand. i must've looked hilarious: dress skirt, blouse and bare feet. the sun soothed my nerves and did me good. but the town? oh boy. basically, all of south beach that's not fancy hotels or snotty clubs is tacky shopping. it's a slew of beat-up art deco buildings that have been tricked out to sell ed hardy and affliction. in fact, the miami beach city buses are all, without exception, covered in ads for affliction t-shirts. south beach: where even the buses wear affliction. that says it all. the whole town's covered in a light layer of sleaze. ick. i was glad to get back to our family condo 25 miles north.

the hotel is beautiful. but i would never, ever, no matter how rich i ever get, stay here. why? two reasons. first off, the staff has all been instructed to address guests in that weird overbearing pseudo-formal friendliness. i don't expect working adults to treat me like they're my hired help and i'm lady of the freaking manor. just be the valet guy/dude who brings pastries/concierge lady. we're all grown here, and i don't need (or, honestly, want) you to suck up to me. but the other guests clearly do, and corporate expects it of them. it's uncomfortable. additionally, the hotel has its own "security staff," designed to keep the icky people out. this in and of itself wouldn't be an issue... except that they station their people BLOCKS off the premises, and they have these bruiser dudes just harass people off the property. off-putting in the highest. i'm sure famous and important people stay here all the time. great. but if i ever get to the point in my life where my wealth and/or status lead me to think i need defending from reality, i give anyone reading this permission to smack me upside the head. it's deplorable.

so what has this experience taught me? first and foremost, i cannot WAIT to start work again! this conference is sponsored by my old/new employers, and even though i don't start for another 18 days, i feel at home again. hell, the managing principal of my old/new office just stopped me in the hall and told me, and i quote, welcome home; we missed you. hell. yes. but i think more importantly, doing these fancy things reminds me that i don't do what i do because i seek material riches. (i mean, don't get me wrong; material riches are nice, and if that happens, so freaking be it.) i'm here because i love my work. i want to be the best damn tax lawyer out there, give my clients and my employer my absolute best, and completely immerse myself in my chosen industry. and i want to do all of this while staying the teacher's kid from the gulf coast.

the louisiana lawyers i met while in school had the right idea about their attitudes towards practice and life. the most important thing in that clique is to do your job well while maintaining your, for lack of a better term, niceness. no one likes a rich jackass, gallivanting around like he owns the world and demanding that everyone kiss his ring. that's what this hotel attracts: over-moneyed and under-classed jerk-offs in tacky t-shirts, acting rude. i prefer to be humble, be modest, be graceful. oh, i will work my tail off, and i will take pride in my accomplishments. but my talents will speak for themselves, and i will not EVER allow the confidence i have to turn me into a monster.

now, if you'll excuse me, there's a cocktail party that requires my presence. time to go get my tax-credit-geek drink on.

how do you tell someone?

well. that happened.

being still kinda new to this whole divorced-woman thing, i have no idea how to handle certain situations. for example: how do you react when your ex, in the middle of a business conversation, suddenly asks you who your boyfriend is?

uh, whoops. see, turns out, genius mags responded to something related to the tornado on a friend's facebook page with a reference to the man's family. this friend is one of the people i got in the mags-ex mutual-friend draft, but she didn't cut the ex off. (not that i expect her, or anyone else, to; who people are friends with is their business and their business alone.) he read that, and, well, hilarity ensued. oh, and did i mention i was walking down massachusetts avenue at the time, between union station and school, on my way to take an exam at the time?

to call me gobsmacked by this is an understatement. my first response was, do you really want to do this now? i mean, it was 10:00 AM. he was at work. i didn't really want to deal. but yeah, he did. and since i make it a point to be as direct as possible with him these days, i flat-out told him, yeah, [the man] and i are dating. and then i answered his questions as briefly, directly and succinctly as possible. to reference nada surf again, i told him honestly, simply, kindly but firmly. i didn't make a big production, and i avoided a big tear-jerking scene. we finished our business and got off the phone without incident.

at least, until i got to school, when i shut myself in a bathroom stall and cried for a solid 10 minutes.

i'm traveling today, at a three-day conference in glorious south beach. (meditations on that are forthcoming.) i don't really want to relive the emotion. but somehow, telling the ex that i a) have a man and b) he's, well, the man, someone who was a huge part of my life through my entire relationship with the ex, was thoroughly shattering. i mean, why should it? it's not his business. he even said as much as he asked. i guess that was the last step in severing the emotional ties between us, inasmuch as they were there in the first place. but good GOD, how hard. i can't even get into how hard that was. anyone else out there been through this before? what did y'all do? what CAN you do?

i just hope i did that right.

big man on campus

this isn't a history lesson post because it's not the history of me, per se. it's really a bit of history on the man. (good thing he doesn't read this. he'd get all embarrassed at me telling stories on him like this.) now, my man is quite handsome, brilliant, scathingly hilarious, and in his way a classically-trained southern gentleman under all the profanity. but he's also the master of self-deprecation, so when you compliment him, he gets all squirmy and scoffs it off with an eh, no i'm not.

but while that's all true now, not that i'm biased or anything, it was also kinda true when we were kids together. even as early as eleventh grade, he was a bit of a rock star among my gaggle of girlfriends. i can't think of a single girl we knew back then who didn't at least have a passing crush on him at some point over the years. i can recall one night when we were all at officers' training for our mock legislature program (nerd club! nerd club! the man's roommate would say here). the man was running for youth governor of the whole state, and for the speech he gave at that event, i gave his introduction. the night before the speech, the girls i roomed with and i stayed up late giggling over boys. topic A-number-one? the man. i can't believe you get to introduce him! jealous. seriously. it was like that.

i had the biggest unrequited crush on the planet on him back then. even as i set him up with a friend of mine, telling her how great he was and how much she'd be into him, i secretly wished he'd rebuff her and take up with me instead. but of course, he didn't. we wound our separate roads romantically, taking huge stumbles along the way, and all the while, i would think sometimes, i wonder what would've happened if he'd picked me instead of her? i knew the whole time that there would never be a girl on this earth who would care for him the way i did. 

'course, he didn't know any of this at the time, he says. teenage boys are oblivious! you have to make things clear or they just miss them. i think about our younger years these days sometimes, usually when he's sleeping and i'm not quite there yet. part of me is still that teenage girl, wondering how he passed me up back then. i mean, even though he (unbeknownst to him, apparently) had his choice of us, and he chose a few of us, there was always me, standing there beside him no matter what. i mean, i know what would've happened if we'd gotten together at seventeen. we'd have broken up and probably never spoken again. the way things went is so, so much better.

sometimes at night, i look at him there, arms wrapped around me, and i think about how i'm the luckiest girl in school to have landed the big man on campus. i know it's silly, and it's a spectacularly juvenile way to feel, but it's also such a thrill. all i ever wanted when i was fifteen was to be on his arm. lo and behold, here we are. wish fulfillment never felt so good.

milestone

ok, so remember how i said the other day that i wouldn't tell my 9/11 story? well, i feel the need to do it in light of last night's news, because it has a lot to do with my opinion of last night.

i waited tables in newport news, virginia then, as well as going to school. i got home monday night, showered and laid down in time for letterman. but i fell asleep with the TV on, and weirdly, i awoke to the dulcet tones of bryant gumbel on the CBS early show. he was interviewing a guy named stewart, who was a waiter at a cafe by the world trade center. stewart had a comically excessive lisp, and he was dramatically recounting the story of the idiot who crashed into the tower with his plane. i got out of bed, got some cereal and sat down in the living room with my roommate. we switched to ABC, which had brought out peter jennings. we ate breakfast and marveled at how stupid you'd have to be to crash into the biggest damn thing in the country. hell, couldn't you see it coming?

then, as they focused on the tower, a second plane entered the shot. peter jennings said, oh, my good god. the second plane hit. my roommate dropped her spoon into the bowl. clank. there was a moment of dead silence all around us. things got very real very fast. she dashed to the phone to call her husband, on duty on his ship. they were, as she spoke to him, sending the fleet out to sea. they were fine, but he'd be on the ship for the foreseeable future. as we talked, the crazy stories started flying about attacks everywhere. i called the man, who was still just my best friend at the time, who was living up here in DC and on his way to class when it happened. as we talked, the plane hit the pentagon.

the roommate and i did what any twenty-year-old would do in that situation: we panicked. we threw changes of clothes into the trunk of my car, called our parents to check in (i called my daddy out of his eighth-grade class to tell him, and ended up being the one to inform his middle school that the shit was going down) and sped across the commonwealth of virginia to my erstwhile tiny mountain college town. we knew no one was bombing that place. we were safe there. we got there before my boyfriend got back from class, so we went up to his room to drop our stuff. his buddy came into the room, stricken. did you hear about [our friend]? oh, god. we had a friend, two years ahead of us, who worked at cantor fitzgerald. no one had heard from him. that's all the guy said; he turned and left the room.

we went to dinner that night with a collection of people, including someone's dad. that man was already, less than 12 hours after the initial impact, screaming about turning the middle east into a glass parking lot. i could not listen to it; we left. on the car radio, someone at the college radio station found a recording of marvin gaye's rendition of the national anthem. we got my roommate settled with another friend with a spare bed, then the boyfriend and i went to bed.

that's when i cried.

so when president obama took that lectern (and i'll share my observations about the media treatment another time; that was fun for me too) and told me that the mastermind who made all that horror happen, murdering so many people and triggering all manner of repercussions for the living left behind, the reaction was immediate: yes. absolutely yes. i had the bloodthirsty instinctual moment of that's right, you fucking bastard; you'll never hurt us again. i had the moment of grief blended with relief for my dead friend and his family. there was so much else.

this is not the definitive answer to the war on those who hate modernity, egalitarianism and freedom, because let's be honest, that's what this is. but my god, what a milestone, and it feels damn good. the triggermen of this mission, those insanely brave servicemen who stared the bastard down as he cowered behind his teenage wife and pulled the trigger to end his life, are owed our undying thanks, as are all those who have served and will serve to defend us. the people who planned this maneuver to go down as they did are amazing.

we've earned a victory lap as a country. we did the world a service by taking that bastard down. mark the occasion however you feel appropriate: joy, peaceful reflection, meditation, whatever. what an unbelievable milestone. but tomorrow? back to work.

stuck with you

[soundtrack. warning: unabashed mushy to follow.]

if there ever was a so-called honeymoon period between me and the man, we've flown past it, gone careening through the middle stage and crash-landed hard into stereotypical old-married-couple-style territory. that can be demonstrated in a lot of ways - our propensity for being total homebodies comes to mind, for example. but perhaps the clearest way it shows is that, for the first time in our lives together, we get snippy with each other. yep, we argue now, and not always in the debate way. we bicker over little things from time to time.

the other night, for example, i had to run an errand at my dear ol' nutball daddy's house, so we headed over there after we left the baseball game. it was going to be a quick thing, but daddy had food, served drinks, and we ended up passing a few hours we hadn't planned on at the parents' place. i didn't think anything of it, but he was... grouchy, i guess. so i pressed the point. we had one of those tetchy little back and forths that anyone in a long-term relationship knows well. it didn't last long, and it got resolved, but it was still, like, the fourth one of those in the last few weeks.

so i said, you know, it's funny; we've fought more in the last six months than we had in the previous fifteen years.
what's your point?
don't really have one. just think it's funny.
he smiled, that kinda crooked little smile he has when he's about to be clever, and kissed me on the forehead. well, that's what happens when we're stuck with each other.

stuck with each other. yeah, guess we are. and i couldn't think of anything more fun. i said at one point last night, we are well past the point where we feel the need to out-polite each other. you know, when you're in a new relationship, and you're both so interested in making the other one happy that you do all that, what do you want to do? oh, no, i insist, you pick the movie. no, i don't mind that you just did [little thing that bugs the all-holy hell out of me and would ordinarily make me launch a temper fit of biblical proportions but for the fact that i think you're nice and i like dating you]; it's fine. yeah, we left that territory a long time ago, if we were ever there at all. so now, out come the times when we call each other on our annoyances, stand for our preferences a little harder. and with that comes a little bit of rough water. but the rough stuff always ends with a smile, a joke, a kiss and a mutually acceptable outcome.

yes, it's true, my dear; i'm so happy to be stuck with you. now, and always.

priorities

i'm in one of those emotional places that tends to cause issues. not dangerous ones, just annoying or problematic ones. i have four exams: tuesday, saturday, monday and next thursday. i have a TON of work to do to get ready for them. and do i care?

NOPE. not a damn sight. in the words of one of my fellow LL.M. burnouts, like honey badger, i just don't give a fuck. it was possibly an error in judgment to go back to school after i earned my law license. i could not give a rip about this. here are the things i currently care about, in order:

1) the man
2) my friends far and wide
3) the job (23 days until i'm a wage-earning grownup again! eee!)
4) the conference in miami next week
5) the baseball games i'm attending today, tomorrow and monday
6) the caps series (stupid tampa bay.)
7) my waistline
8) school. kinda.

what the hell? i used to be queen of the school buffs. i wasn't that kid who'd remind the teacher to give out homework, but i'd obsess over everything assigned. even when i developed a procrastination problem in high school, i still turned out good work. but now i'm confronted with a dilemma: i do NOT care about doing the work, but i DO care about the results. it's problematic, to say the least. in fact, i should be working right now. am i? that's a negative. i'm watching the draft and, well, doing this. motivation and i are not friends, and i clearly have issues with priorities.

but the sun is out, the sky is blue, and i have no damn drive whatsoever. this is not a combination for academic success. let's see if i can force myself into doing things right for the rest of the exam period. push, push, push, right?

sigh.

history lesson #3: the pledge

the week was hard, so very hard. i mean, it's not like everyone doesn't have their own where were you when the towers fell? story. i won't get into mine here. but the week of september 11 was one of those times when every single moment is burned into my memory in a hazy, oversaturated palette. i was in the tiny mountain town of my boyfriend's alma mater the day they fell, back across the commonwealth a day later, and back again that weekend to mourn the fallen.

what a crazy week. the first thing that greeted me when i walked into the fraternity house that friday was the dozen white roses in a crystal vase, ringed with a wide black ribbon, sent from nationals to commemorate our fallen friend. it didn't get much easier. we all drank together like it was the last night of prohibition, but the tone was off. we drank out of confusion, anger, sadness, rage and a desperate need to reset things. after all, it was normal, okay again, if we drank on a friday night. that was what life was before everything went wrong.

i told the story of the football game before. that night, we went back to the house. there was more loud, confused drunkenness downstairs. hell, i blame no one. we were kids, and what the hell did we know about grieving? most of us still had most of our grandparents living. so the boyfriend and i went upstairs to bed, just to steal a moment to ourselves. we were twenty-two (him) and twenty (me). we were seniors. we were going to graduate into a world that just got turned onto its head. every single thing we thought we knew had been tilted in some way or another. the only thing we had to cling to was each other. so we talked about this. we held onto each other, and as we did, he said to me, will you marry me?

really? yes. will you marry me?

we kept it to ourselves that night, calling our families and friends in the morning. we spread the news, one person at a time, all through the day. and it was a nerve tonic for everyone we spoke with. one of our friends threw his arms around me and yelled, thank god! good news! so how could we ever think we were doing anything but the right thing? and that little, tiny voice, back in the dusty corner of my head, whispering are you sure? it was nothing. we made the pledge, and in that moment, the reeling chaos of the world fell away. we were strong, we were certain, and that made it okay.

god bless alabama

this soundtrack, and this entry, are special to me.

see, i talk a lot about my louisiana connections around here, as well as how much the gulf coast matters to me. i talk also about my city-kid homeland, our nation's capital. i may have even mentioned that, heavens preserve us, i was born in new jersey. but the place that made me, formed me, educated me and gave me so much of the good in my life is the heart of dixie, the yellowhammer state herself: alabama. i am, at my heart, an alabamian. i spent the bulk of my days on this earth, my entire K-12 education and one year of college, 15 years in all, living in mobile, alabama.

mobile was spared yesterday. north alabama? well, this speaks for itself. devastating. horrifying. words can't say. how bad is it? well, last may, i drove back from DC to louisiana to attend the wedding of one of my girls from law school. passing through birmingham, i got caught in a massive gully-washer of a storm. HUGE gusts of wind, torrential downpour, the whole nine. the sky was this weird shade of green, and there was this kind of whooshing noise all around me. i was driving the tank of an SUV i'd rented to move myself up to DC, so i stayed on the highway. but when the clouds parted, it was pretty clear there'd been a twister of some kind. that was scary, and it was absolutely NOTHING compared to what happened yesterday. this was horror. entire towns have been wiped off the map. hundreds are dead. thousands are homeless. that monstrous tornado cut across the entire state. that's over 200 miles of biblical destruction.

it hurts my heart to see places i love in peril. and folks, this is as perilous as it gets. people i love are homeless, or facing huge repairs. (the man's family, scattered up there, is all accounted for, thank god.) so if you get around to it, here are some ways you can help my homeland out.

there's always the red cross. they're awesome.

team rubicon is a phenomenal organization: they're veterans who come in and help with medical care in times of disaster. kinda like modern-day MASH units, but for civilians.

this blogger has a good aggregation of other links, too, some specific to alabama and others with national reach.

and if you're in DC, there's a fundraiser at gin and tonic in glover park saturday night at 9:00 PM.

my heart aches for the heart of dixie. alabama gets a bad rap in this culture, but it was a damn nice place to be a kid. ('BOTB, gillian, andy and erin in particular know what i mean.) i love that place more than i can describe. it's where i met my love, where i learned to climb trees and turn coquina shells into butterfly pictures. i sat under dogwoods, sunned on white-sand beaches, and yes, loved the fragrance of the magnolia tree drifting on the breeze through my bedroom window. it gave me everything. i'm going to give it something back. will y'all give too?

this child of alabama thanks you.

inner city blues (make me wanna holler)

yeah, it makes me wanna holler
throw up both my hands...
panic is spreading
god knows where we're heading


the high priest of socially conscious soul, marvin gaye, wrote those words. he hasn't been with us on earth for 27 years now, but i think if he were, he'd invoke these lines again today. good, sweet lord, the damn birthers won. the president of the united states of america gave in to the pressure of a motley troupe of psychopaths and demonstrated - AGAIN - that he was born here. now, keep in mind, the only reason this is an issue in the first place is that there is a dangerously insane swath of our population, which now has power because a) there's an internet and b) there's entirely too much time to fill on television networks, that just can't accept the fact that a black man with a weird-sounding name got elected president. that's the truth. this is xenophobia, racism, and unbridled paranoia, and that's all.

what president obama should have said, from the very beginning, and every other time, is this: you only ask because i have a foreign-sounding name. if i were named barry o'reilly, you wouldn't care. (oh, and by the way? if this were about 110 years ago, a man named barry o'reilly would be way too irish to be president. hell, jack freaking kennedy was almost too catholic to be president.) that was, and still is, the only answer that applied. you don't legitimize crazy by taking it seriously. you treat it as it should be treated. you IGNORE it.

it's not like this is going to calm them down. hell, andrew breitbart said on twitter that (and this is a direct quote) film-flam [sic] the mystery man president has earned skepticism over his bio. i wanna see the college courses and professors he sought out. (ew. i feel dirty linking to that talentless, raging hack.) see? it's on to the next thing. nothing the white house does to attempt to pacify the fear-drunk rattled nutballs will ever be enough. this is why the man says that the internet is destroying society: it gives these people a forum, an echo chamber really, where they can talk to each other, and seeing their insanity in print makes them think it's real.

you might think that i'm being intemperate, that it's too partisan of me to be this mad, or something. um, no. this isn't about politics or ideology. this is about the fact that today, delusion triumphed - trumped, if you'll excuse the pun - over reality. and this happens WAY, WAY too often in 2011. when i was a young adolescent, a baby adult if you will, i used to say all the time, i can't wait for the grown-ups to start acting like grown-ups. you think when you're young that the adults are serious, sober-minded people who think logically and follow the rules. well, if there was ever a time in which that was true, that time is as dead as marvin gaye himself is.

sane people SHOULD be angry about this, regardless of ideological difference with the president. this is a full-on assault on so many things that make america amazing. are we really going to be bullied, cowed into abeyance, by a bunch of mindless twits who can't stand the idea that a non-white person holds the highest office in the land? that is so powerfully un-american that it makes me shake with righteous indignation. they're always on about wanting to take "their" country back. these people aren't motivated by american patriotism. the trash they spew sounds more like iran, to be honest with you. america is a country for everyone and anyone. we do not distrust people because their names sound funny. we are better than this.

so congratulations to the carnival-barker birthers and their ragged parade of stupid, venal bigotry. congratulations for dragging us further and further away from our best and brightest ideals. this is the united states of america, damn it all, and we are BETTER than this. we are better than these tiny-brained wastes of DNA. the sooner we remember that, the sooner we can heal this insidious infection that's eroding our core. the sane, the rational, the reality-based part of america, the part of our populace that refuses to succumb to this beck-fueled mind rot? WE'RE the ones who need to take the country back. not just OUR country. THE country. e pluribus unum, remember? out of many, one. those small, petty fools want to splinter, to divide, and to subjugate anything they think is "other." that's not our way here in america. WE. ARE. BETTER. THAN. THIS.

makes me wanna holler indeed.

just like heaven

the man and i, being engaged intellectual types, tend to get into fights about the issues of the day. this can be a lot of fun. hell, i am a lawyer; i love to spar, and especially with him. he's a formidable opponent, too. the one time i competed against him in mock-trial in high school, he took me to the woodshed. it was a bloodbath. but i'm better now than i was then, and we lock horns every once in awhile. these are intellectual standoffs for the ages. once, his roommate sent the following text to him, overhearing us as we debated late into the night: dude, there are MUCH better things to do with your girlfriend than that.

but because we are who we are, sometimes things get heated. and we had a battle last night that careened far from the dispassionately academic and deep into the personally-held belief arena. i did my best not to, but i lashed out a bit. he cut me; i cut back. we tussled back and forth for hours. finally, though, i could not disguise the fact that, frankly, he was hurting me. much to my tough-girl chagrin, a tear slid down my cheek. god, how frustrating - no better way to totally undercut your argument than to start crying in the middle of it. i looked down into my lap to try to get it together.

it startled me when i felt the touch of his finger on my cheek, brushing away each tear that fell. i didn't see him there. he held out his arms to me, pulled me close. you ok? i laid my head against him, and we unwound the hurt feelings together. i'm sorry i said that to you, love. i didn't mean it. i'm sorry, too. i didn't mean to make you so upset. he talked into my hair, the way he does when he has something emotional to say. you know how much i deeply respect your opinion, right? i love to argue with you. you're so smart. he kissed me. you know i love you.

this, what i have with him, is my own personal heaven on earth. to be able to have something so authentically fulfilling, on so many levels, brings me to my knees with the sheer power of how great it is. i actually find myself at a loss for words. well, except for a few: i don't know what i did to deserve him, but i'll gladly do it again and again.

own it

[disclaimer: in the immortal words of ice-T, people have to learn how to tell stories without implicating those who may not want their stories told. to the best of my ability, i do this here.]

this whole divorced-woman thing is really an onion. every day, there's a new layer to the process. i'm starting to feel like a cliche here with all this SELF-DISCOVERY. not that i'm not grateful to be a better person, to have a chance to spend the rest of my life in a much better frame of mind and all that. i'm just a little bit over feeling like a damn self-help book.

but then i think about how few people really do understand the concept of living authentically. that in and of itself sounds so silly, but let me tell you how vital it really is. not being true to what you want and doing your level best to get it is... well, it's corrosive. it eats you alive from the inside out. and people just settle for hiding themselves behind images of what they think people expect them to be, all the time. i woke up and said no more, and it's a new dawn, a new day, and a new life for me since i made that call. it's bliss, frankly.

so why do that to yourself? why be secretive, or worse, duplicitous? why tell the world you're something, when you know full well you're something else entirely? it makes me sad. why would you tell people who love you grand, sweeping falsehoods that are easily uncovered? especially when the circumstance about which you're lying could have actually happened but for the fact that you didn't want it to? to call that dissembling insults the word. not only is it a lie, though, it dishonors the love we have for you. do you think we're going to care, whatever the truth may be?

life is too damned short to live a lie. it really, really is. so be what you are, especially when you know the risk of that is low. wrap your arms around everything and own it, up, down, left and right. i can tell you from experience that living free of faking it is the only way to do it. if you actually want to live, that is. existing is an option too, i guess. but really, i've done that too. this is so, so much better...