Act Up

Crises are unavoidable. Crises are terrible. We had going through pain, dissolution, betrayal, and loss. But when a crisis unfolds in your life, remember to ACT UP.

A: Acknowledge the suck. Whatever is happening feels like the worst. Lean into that feeling. This is the time to cry, to scream, to rail against the world for not being fair.

C: Continue. As much as you would prefer to shit down physically and emotionally, you cannot. You must continue to live your life. You must continue to love yourself and others. Get moving. Get out.

T: Take responsibility for what you own only. Don't let someone else's crap become yours. But you can't disavow that which is yours either. Reflect on what part you or your actions may have played. Own that. Learn from that.

U: Use your resources. No person is an island. Don't let shame or embarrassment keep you from reaching out to loved ones or professionals and asking for help. That's what they are there for. Don't try to do everything alone.

P: Process to proceed. You can't make real progress out of a crisis without doing the work. Some chunk of this work will be emotional. Have those internal dialogues. Figure out what your logic says to you and how you feel. How can you best go forward now? What more do you need to succeed after this? What have you learned?

Book in Progress:

It is never easy to keep the crazy at bay.... that's what Micah thinks as she pours herself another class of red. The crazy just hovers ready to pounce much like 2 Socks the cat as he goes after a long neglected dust bunny that floats across the floor.

2 Socks takes a moment to run full force at the dust ball, missing it and slamming his bulky tuxedo body into the table leg. A little red wine tops over the rim but stays put.

Crazy... the word echoes through her head. If you know you are going crazy, that means you actually can't be right? Stupid therapy and transcendental meditation. Like every other middle aged woman in her sphere, Micah had been in and out of various therapists offices since her twenties. Her current therapist was way more groovy than Micah is normally comfortable with. But she is trying to push her limits and  comfort zones. Of course this has led to crazy beating down her door. Try meditation, says the therapist.

But what if I am too good at it? Why didn't we think of that? Scheduled holiday break plus vacation meant two weeks without therapy. Perfectly good time to try meditation. Wrong.

It was a Tuesday. Micah hates Tuesdays. It is psychically the farthest day from the weekend. Anyway. A Tuesday. Micah decided to meditate. She sat quietly and focused on all the chaos of her family and work. She imagined it as a storm in the sky. She let the imagery take her to forming the clouds, the wind and some snow for fun. She could see the storm so clearly as she formed it in her mind. Micah never imagined it would actually form as blizzard that was hitting New Orleans.

Total coincidence. Just happenstance. The fact that Micah is now concerned she has the power to control the weather... no the fact that she just thinks such a thing could be possible has forced the crazy flags to full mast.   So New Orleans never gets blizzards, does not mean it could not happen. Weather is unpredictable. Climate change is real. Weather is changing because of it. It could be her. That would be too crazy to contemplate. 

Triggers Aplenty

So I survived the #me2 and Time's Up movement when it first got going. It was hard, but I made it through with a modicum of tears. This latest Dr Ford and Kavanaugh shit is leaving me pretty fucked up. I am just sad. I know what it means to not report. I've seen the effects of reporting. Hell I wrote the letters of response in some cases..." we see no clear evidence...." When it is he said/she said someone's career is more important than honesty or justice. I watched Anita Hill get before the nation and talk about the humiliating sexual bullshit she endured and nothing happened other than she became a household name. I never want to be a household name. Every instance of BS at this campus, I have seen the women who spoke up have to leave. I have seen the women who kept silent, endure. That's the way of our world. Speaking up too often outweighs the trauma of the initial incident. Women know the meaning of the term "return on investment" and "gray area"

14 Years

14 years is too long to wait for retribution. A certain university president just resigned due to an anonymous email accusing him of plagiarism. Technically the allegations are true. I recall pointing out the passages that hadn't been cited and were just plopped verbatim onto the page back when I saw the dissertation. At the time I was pissed by his laziness, not just with the dissertation, but with all of the other writing he had done through the course of acquiring his degree. I was pissed and disappointed in many of his then failings as a human being. I won't go into the details. But 14 years is too long to wait to make this public.

Now it is just tacky to bring up this sort of failing. I will pause to say that I don't feel this way about everything - actual crimes that harm people should be punished no matter how much time had passed. In this case, the man's contributions and successes after this degree should far out-measure his laziness back in the day. It is only because of his success now that this is even an issue. If he didn't have the smarts and skills represented by the degree, he would not have gotten to the point where this sort of allegation could be so damaging. I can't see continued laziness being rewarded for this long. I just can't.

I know I didn't turn him in. I think destroying his career this far out is inviting some serious bad mojo or karma.   But now I am going through the list of folks I know who knew, and wonder. Who did it? What was the motivation? Was it G who is now retired and is full of the need to right past wrongs? Was it A who is in the midst of his own success? What made this come up now?

Did someone hate him so much that they decided the moment he had his dream job was the right time? And it was his dream job - the pinnacle of his success as he defined at the beginning of his career in higher ed. He told lots of people that one day he would be President of ---. And he's done it. Only to have it ripped from his grasp. What sort of person holds on to bad feelings this long? I am glad that I got over it. I can't imagine holding on to that sort of toxicity. Not good for anyone. 

Follow Up on Match

So, I heard back a few weeks later that while I was a viable match after further testing, my match was no longer eligible for treatment. That could be good. It could be bad. I hope that he was responding well to his treatment and no longer needed my cells. I am not convinced, but it could have been and I will never know. 

Anniversary Life

Last night was my 21st wedding anniversary. Yes, we've been making the joke that our marriage can now legally drink so it no longer sees the fun in it. While out to drink after a lovely dinner, I got a text from Be the Match. A whole different set of life changing match making was in the works on our wedding anniversary. I appear to be a good match for a 66 year old man with a condition I couldn't spell yet alone recall.

I immediately agreed to do whatever was necessary - after initially considering that I may save the life of a Trump supporting bigot - but I don't ever have to know so I can pretend he works for the Southern Poverty Law Center instead.

Anyway, I was shocked by how emotional I was reacting. I have tears just thinking about this. I can imagine the hope that this man and his family must have with a match a possibility./ Be the Match details the commitment of time, travel and discomfort that will be likely. I don't just go down the road to the hospital and donate some blood like I initially thought. Yes, I get now that the non-surgical donation option involves several days of treatments in advance of several hours of fluid draw. I weigh my discomfort and the annoyance/inconvenience of this again someone else's dying and it seems a pretty clear trade off.

I have just sent in my consent papers to have my initial sample tested further to see if we are indeed a good match for one another and to ensure that the sample provided at the time is not indicative of any health risks. I will keep you posted.....

Thoughts on Marriage

What is the key to staying married? Staying married. Realize that shit is going to crop up and you either deal with it together or you'll deal with it separately. Therapy has a better return on investment than divorce. Realize that there will be days when your spouse gets on your last nerve; when his breathing bugs the shit out of you. 9 times out of 10 - it isn't actually him. It isn't even you. It is stress from work, from bills, your hormones or exhaustion that is being incorrectly but oh so conveniently directed at your spouse. Ignore it and hope that you both don't feel this way at the exact same time.

People claim that marriage is about compromise and sacrifice. I call bullshit on that. Marriage is inherently a selfish act. It is a relationship whereby you are a better you because of your spouse. Together you are the best individuals you can be. A healthy marriage isn't full of sacrifices; it is full of opportunities for growth. Over the last decade or so, we've known you as individuals and as parts of a pair. We can safely say that you've grown well together and that together you are better yous than you are apart.

May your married life be drama free. May your marriage be punctuated by laughter, peppered by doggie kisses, strengthened by your individuality, underpinned by friendship, and reinforced by your love for one another, May you giggle twenty years from now when you look at each other and realize, "we're married."

Songs for Animals

Our animals have their own theme songs. I have a hard time keeping them straight so I am making a list.. I can't recall a few so they will be blank until I recall

Cats:
Popo: Macho Man by The Village People
Orsino: Love Fool by The Cardigans
Alistair: I'm Afraid of Americans by David Bowie
Callisto: Polyester Bride by Liz Phair
Rocco: something by System of a Down?
Basho: Glamorous by Fergie
Mineaux: Help I'm Alive by Metro
Juno: Dog Days Are Over by Florence & The Machine
Harpo: Fancy by Iggy Azalea
Van Gogh:




Dogs:
Lily: Brown Eyed Girl by every cover band ever; I Feel it All by Feist
Cixous: Scooby Doo Where Are You? theme song
Austin: Tub-thumping by Chumba Wamba or whatever; Breezeblocks by alt-J; Home by Dotan (He was also a big Dave Matthews fan)
Stella: Stellar by Incubus
Kurzweil: Bicycle Race by Queen (you know, because he really gets excited by bicycles)
Dacia:  I Love It by Icona Pop

Spring time was always my favorite time of year....

Yesterday Prince died.......

I have seen a number of artists pass over the years, Kurt Cobain was the voice of my generation. Favorite punk rockers went to sleep and never awoke. Earlier this year the great David Bowie passed. Death and music go hand in hand. None of these deaths hit me quite like Prince's.

Let me be clear. I am not some great Prince fan. I never owned an album. I admire his work and his artistry. It is only with his passing that I realize the tremendous role he played in my life as I grew up.
My first memory of Prince was secretly listening to Darling Nikki on a school bus as we headed out to a field trip. Purple Rain was an album I wanted to own, but there was no way my parents would allow it in the house at the time.

I am the MTV generation. I grew up with videos playing every day. It was the only thing we watched in our household. Prince was always there. He was the background. I could sing along to Little Red Corvette. Knew all the words to Raspberry Beret. Diamonds and Peals seemed to always be playing somewhere in the background of high school.

As a young child, my first inkling of domestic violence came from the song When Doves Cry. I knew relationships could be complicated. Prince taught me that. I learned that masturbation existed. I had never heard the word before Darling Nikki and her magazine. I began to understand that sexuality should be expressed and discussed - not just puritanically hidden thanks to songs like Cream.


From Prince himself, I learned that gender identity could be fluid. A guy could wear heels and a blouse and rock it. I learned that my binary world view was limiting and not the way I wanted to go forward. I learned that life could be complicated and that it was okay.


Thank you, Prince for making me a better person. Always cry for love; never cry for pain.....

Daddy Issues

So I love and adore my father, but since his remarriage and retirement, he is becoming a person I have less and less in common with. He resides in an insular, Fox News watching, Christian Identity-based community in West Virginia. The toxins of his environment seem to be reshaping his identity and his values in ways I find frustrating and sad.

The person I always thought of as reasonable, is now reactionary. I am having a hard time dealing with this. He is not going to leave his new home. I don't want or expect him to. He is loved and supported there. I just wish the values he had imparted on his family of origin were also loved and supported. It is like the infrastructure that he once helped to build, is being forgotten and left to decay. His reality no longer resembles my own.

Religion

I must confess that I am not at all comfortable with people who claim to be religious, who have personal and meaningful relationships with their Lord. For those few people who have this and yet don't seem self-righteous or judgmental, I simply admire them. It is the other folks - the ones that want to discriminate against gays, remove evolution from school texts, rewrite history so that we are a Christian country, boycott a company for not affirming their religious values, and ship all Muslims off to the Middle East - that I have real issues with. The bible does NOT define marriage as "one man and one woman." At no time in the New Testament did Jesus say that homosexuality is wrong. Only the woman-hating, slavery is okay writings of Paul make these claims.

I come from a family where religion was used as the impetus for neglect, abuse and finally the dismantling of the family itself. My mother valued her time at her church over being a mother and housewife; valued her religious leader over the safety and well-being of her children; enabled her commitment to religion to justify her disowning her children and finally ending her marriage. Thankfully her religion provided the opportunity to annul the whole thing so she did not have to think about it any more. Now my father, who used to be the sane one, is allowing his religious beliefs or "values" as he calls them to alienate his daughter and her wife. I think all of this would be sufficient to from a psychological point of view explain my preference for logic and reason over emotions and beliefs.

I know people who do not let religion be used in this unhealthy way. I know people who are able to successfully balance their beliefs with healthy homes and families. They amaze me. It is like watching a complex magic trick and not understanding how they do that.

My issues with religion appeared before I understood the negative impact religion was having on my family. I remember my first major "logical awakening" very clearly. I think my experience actually mirrors the experience of those who find God or have a spiritual awakening, only mine was juxtaposed I suppose. I was sitting in church on Good Friday, attending mass as was required. We were at the point in the service whereby we were called to enact the trial of Jesus and yell, "Crucify Him." I had a slight out of body moment and was slammed to the ground with the realization that this particular exercise seemed wrong and sick. I was not personally to blame for Christ's execution. Spending time and energy on crowd-think was uncomfortable. Then I looked at the giant crucifix at the head of the alter. It seemed that this church did want to emphasize the suffering and man's inhumanity to man in a way that I at that moment thought was wrong. Week after week, I would go to church and stare at the dead Jesus on the cross that was the point of focus. I would listen to the mass which included the miraculous trick of turning bread into flesh and wine into blood. I got sicker and more uncomfortable. I felt like I was surrounded by crazy or had woken up in an episode of Twilight Zone. Bear in mind, I was in high school and still had to continue attending mass every Sunday feeling increasingly uncomfortable and disenfranchised from this reality.

Once I was out of the house and answerable to myself for my time, I tried out a few of the other Christian churches, but at this point it was too late. I looked into Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism. I could not make sense out of these beliefs or their applicability to my life. I tried being agnostic, imagining a God that served as creator but little else. I couldn't get there.

I am left with atheism. I am good with that. I don't want to imagine a God that either doesn't care about the world's suffering, is powerless to do anything, or has some great plan that really sucks for most. A belief in no god gives me comfort. I know that I am responsible for my own actions. I am responsible for the choices I make and the consequences I endure. I have control over what I can control. I am empowered to the degree I can be. I work to be a good person, because I know that goodness is the better choice. It is logical. It is safe. It is comforting.

Dorothy Jean

For many years growing up, I thought my grandmother was the most glamorous woman ever. She had an old Hollywood grace about her. I thought she looked like Ginger Rogers. A stunner as a young woman, my Grammy was born into poverty. Her parents were Polish immigrants that either met on the boat or had an arranged marriage (or both) depending on who was telling the story when. Her father was a very handsome man who worked as a coal miner in Wilkes-Barre, PA. He had quite the temper and once killed a man in a bar fight. Strict Catholics, Dorothy lost her older sister to a botched abortion in her youth so she knew the perils of illegal and unsafe abortions quite personally. She would be quite vocal on that one subject. In the 1940s, she became a pen pal like many other young girls to GIs off at war. My grandfather intercepted her letters to another soldier who was either already married or just a player and unworthy of Dorothy's attentions. My grandparents fell in love over the course of their correspondence. When Grandpa returned from the war, they met for the first time to get their blood tests, meet family and then were soon married. My grandmother was not yet 18. It was clear to me that she wanted out of her town, and was ready to find a new adventure. In 1948 she lost her first child and nearly lost her life. Despite being told to avoid pregnancy for a while, she successfully gave birth to two more sons (including my father in 1951), a daughter and then they adopted their next child from Korea. The family was living in Boston. My grandfather worked for an engineering firm. My grandmother went to work once the kids were in school as a psychiatric nurse so she would have something to do and so my grandfather could go to school and earn his BS in Engineering from Northeastern. As a couple, they were inseparable and liked to keep busy. Grammy had her first hear attack at 50 and they both slowed down some. During their early retirement years, they had moved into a retirement community in NH. Grandpa would do general maintenance and Grammy would monitor blood pressures and blood sugars for the old folks. They drove the bus every morning for the special needs students in the area. Grandpa would drive and Grammy would monitor the kids. Parents had the relief of having a qualified nurse to supervise their morning rides to school. Things slowed down considerably in 1996 when Grandpa was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. They moved to another retirement community outside of Sarasota, FL. Grammy nursed him through his treatments. Grandpa was on the mend but Grammy's health issues began to hinder them both. She suffered from Reynaud's syndrome, lymphoma, heart disease, broken bones, repeated blood infections. It was a slow, unpleasant drop in her quality of life. She had always told me that she believed in the power of one's own brain. If she wanted to lose weight, she would self-hypnotize as she called it. She would talk herself into being less hungry. I think she talked herself out of living in the end. She was done. She had a good run.

Bible Verses

One of my biggest pet peeves right now has to do with the use of the bible as a rationale against gay marriage. Let's be clear. There are many passages in the bible. Three mention gay sex. Let's explore what they say and whether they provide a clear reason to oppose gay marriage. Genesis 18-20: The tale of Sodom & Gomorrah. So god destroys the cities because everyone is having sex with everyone and everything. Oh and then Lot's daughters sleep with their father because he was such an awesome man they want to preserve his "seed". Incest is apparently just fine. So is drugging your father so he doesn't know you are raping him. Are you fucking kidding me??? Leviticus 18: Lots of rules about who you should not have sex with, and homosexual sex is expressly forbidden. But in the same book so is eating a steak that is cooked raw, eating shellfish, getting your ears pierced, getting a tattoo, mixing your fabrics, clipping your sideburns, eating fruit from a fruit tree during the first 3 years. Also, I don't know any good Christians who are regularly slaughtering lambs and bulls as sacrifices. Also men are only allowed to marry virgins. Good luck there. Paul mentions homosexuality a couple of times in his letters to the Corinthians and Romans. But Paul is a pompous ass. He also says that women should not talk in church, and that it is okay to own and sleep with your slaves.

My Masculine Mind

All the BS arguments about how women are one way and men are another aside, I listen to people in a way that is most associated with masculinity. I do not simply listen and offer supporting affirmations. I just don't do it. My mind instead starts churning out possible variables and solutions. You have presented me with a puzzle or a problem and I want to help you solve it. That is the way my mind works. I take on the sharing of your burden. It becomes mine as well. I game theory it out with several Boolean type pathways. While this is especially useful for me professionally, it does not always meet the needs/expectations of my friends and family. They know my limitations and strengths. If they present me with a problem, I will present them with options to explore. If they want someone to just listen in a non-judgmental way, they talk to my husband.

Songs for Living (Songs for Warriors and Chemo Patients)

Needed an upbeat list of life-affirming songs to use to get through the rough patches. Pretty sure I could just listen to any album from Polyphonic Spree and I would feel better, but a play list is much better! All: Vida Blue All American Rejects: Swing Swing Alkaline Trio: Movin Right Along Alkaline Trio: Blue Carolina Alkaline Trio: Time to Waste Black Eyed Peas: Alive Black Eyed Peas: I Gotta Feeling Blink 182: Josie Blink 182: All the Small Things Blink 182: Feeling This Blink 182: Party Song B.o.B.: Airplanes Dropkick Murphys: Warrior's Code Dropkick Murphys: My Hero Dropkick Murphys: Never Forget Green Day: Having a Blast Green Day: When I Come Around Green Day: 2000 Light Years Away Green Day: Christie Road Fall Out Boy: Phoenix Fall Out Boy: Dance, Dance Florence & the Machine: Dog Days Are Over Florence & the Machine: Shake It Out Foo Fighters: Times Like These Foo Fighter: My Hero fun.: Stitch Me Up Gym Class Heroes: The Fighter Jezabels: She's So Hard MIA: Paperplanes No Doubt: Just a Girl No Doubt: New NoFX: Bob Outkast; Hey Ya! P!nk: Raise Your Glass P!nk: Don't Let Me Get Me Pitbull: Rain Over Me Polyphonic Spree: Soldier Girl Polyphonic Spree: Get Up and Go REM: Shiny Happy People REM: Fall On Me Shakira: Hips Don't Lie Tom Petty: Freefalling Tom Petty: American Girl

Song to Die to

My best friend since college (other than my husband) has been dealing with her sister's recent diagnosis of brain cancer. This is her second cancer and despite the chemo and radiation will most likely be terminal. Very heavy stuff. But my darling friend is staying strong through this - providing support to he family often to the detriment of her own sanity and health. Stress takes a toll. That said, she has a friend who also has a sister that is dying - only this death is a matter of days and hours not years. So she started making song recommendations for this sister to listen to while in hospice care. I though the idea of a soundtrack for death makes a lot of sense. We have had mixed tapes or now playlists for all of our major roadtrips and life events. So I need ideas of songs to die to. I will start the list. I am doing this alphabetically by artist. The mix itself will have to be better thought out. AFI: Girls Not Grey (Davey Havok will be so proud to be on this list! And to be fair, Sing the Sorrow will make you wish you were dead if you listen to it all the way through) Airborne Toxic Event: Does this Mean You're Moving On Alkaline Trio: I'm Dying Tommorrow Alkaline Trio: Live Yound, Die Fast (from Agony and Irony) Alkaline Trio: Mercy Me (from Crimson) (There are a ton of Alkaline Trio songs that are really appropriate, but I won't list all of them, just a select few. I will limit myself to three. Seriously, you could just pick any album to die to) Beastie Boys: Bodhisattva Vow (from Ill Communication) Beastie Boys: Intergalactic (Hello Nasty) BoB: So Hard to Breathe (Strange Clouds) Concrete Blonde: Walking in London David Bowie: Ashes to Ashes Everclear: So Much for the Afterglow Fall Out Boy: Calm Before the Storm Incubus: Stellar Jezabels: Into the Ink Jimmy Eat World: My Sundown (Bleed American) The Lawrence Arms: Necrotism Metric: Help I'm Alive MGMT: Love Always Remains Motion City Soundtrack: Fell Like Rain My Chemical Romance: The End New Pornographers: Go Places No Doubt (TaLk Talk Remix): It's My Life Panic at the Disco: She Had the World (Pretty. Odd) Peter Shilling: Major Tom The Pogues: Streets of Sorrow Polyphonic Spree: Its The Sun Stars: Winter Bones (Five Ghosts) Thin Lizzy: Sun Goes Down Tori Amos: Winter This list will be a work in progress of course. My next song list will be songs for chemo. I think a playlist for undergoing chemotherapy would be important to have on hand. Dropkick Murpheys The Warrior's Code will definitely be on that list and Jezabels She's So Hard.

Bandwagon's Full. Please Join Another

So I have lived the last fifteen years or so on the cusp of being mistaken for a crazy animal person. We currently have three cats and three dogs inside our house. We have had slightly more than that over the years. I think we had 5 dogs at one time - but were trying to find homes for the fifth one and did so successfully. Any new dog we find on the streets, we try to place outside of our home. Sometimes we are successful, sometimes we are not. Our 11 year old yellow lab wandered into our yard on MLK Weekend over ten years ago. We found two different homes and neither worked. At the time we already had three dogs and four cats. We managed with the four and four balance for quite some time. Dogs and cats do not live as long as we would prefer so the packs have changed over years. We still have one of the original cats who is going on 17 and running strong (knock on wood). Our last adoptions of dogs have resulted in a 5 year old doberman who hates/loves our 2 year old pit mix. We keep them separated - but that is another story altogether. Bottom line: we have no plans of adopting any other dogs while we have the two youngsters. So we can envision a day when we have a single dog again. I mention all of this because while we have been fortunate to have financial help several years ago when a dog needed surgery and we were going to have to struggle to pay it, we have never had to ask friends and family to chip in to afford an adoption fee or to afford the daily necessities for our animals. A couple I know are planning to adopt their second adoptive child. In addition, they have three biological kids and I thought 4 was on the way. All of these children are well under the age of ten. They are asking for donations to support the addition to their alreadsy crowded household. To my mind, the rules of animals and children care are the same: you should not have more than you can afford. When the quality of life suffers to that point, I no longer think of you as a parent, but as a hoarder. Like with all other hoarding, you are feeding some sort of never fulfilled psychic void and have no business doing this at the expense of your family. As the oldest of six children myself. My mother had 8 pregnancies... one was premature and did not make it, the other did not make it to birth. I am pretty sure that for her motherhood became a type of hoarding. She had no identity of her own and became obsessed with having children. She did not ever actually engage with us after the new baby smell wore off however. Don't get me wrong. I love and adore every one of my siblings. I am happy that they were all born. I just wish we had been born into a different household under healthier circumstances.

In Case of My Untimely Demise

My husband and I attended a memorial service for a friend's father last week. It was a Methodist service for a man who was active in his church and married to someone who took religion very seriously. As an atheist, I just kept thinking how very different my and my husband's memorial service should/would be. The widow wrote a eulogy for her husband of 48 years which was read by the minister. She shared some family memories and then spent a good deal of time talking about how proud she was that her husband dedicated his life to God and the church and would walk with him on streets of gold. It all seemed very.. well.. silly, I guess is the appropriate word (though I hate to think that of a loved one's goodbye). This sense of an afterlife simply does not equate to my logic. As we were driving back, we spoke of how we thought our memorial services would go down. I of course had a horrible thought that what if we died on the way back without leaving instructions? I could just see my mother organizing a funeral mass for me complete with rosaries for my soul. My husband's parents would do their Methodist version of this. I was horrified. My husband says I will be dead so I won't notice or care. I am a bit of a control freak so I figure I should lay out some instructions. My husband and my sister read this blog from time to time so either one of them can use this blog entry as my instructions. So this really is a note for them. You may continue reading, gentle readers, as it might be of interest. First off, these instructions may be updated formerly should I be fortunate enough to live a long life. Right now, this is it. I want to be cremated. If any of my friends or family want a portion of my ashes, they may have them so long as they do not try to do anything magical or religious with them (My mother cannot have them). The cremains may be otherwise dumped on the parade grounds at LSU. I would like my life and death to have a marker - though not the traditional cemetary kind. I don't think there are any more Oak trees on the campus to endow and have a marker under (which is my first choice) so you will need to find an alternative. If you get stuck, the bricks in front of the Tiger Cage are like $200. In lieu of flowers, donations should be made to Friends of the Animals or directly to the Companion Animal Alliance of Baton Rouge. I would like to see my friends and family have a memorial service for me. I do not want any unflattering photos of my to be shown. I will leave it to my husband if he is still alive and my BFF Karen to collect and review any pictures. My sister in law Kristin should have final say. I trust her to be the most picky. She is a professional after all. The service itself I would prefer to be on campus (The Lawton Room would be perfect). Sharla or Beverly will know whom to contact and how to organize this. You should put them to work. They are good at this sort of thing. You may find them through my Facebook contacts. I do not want there to be any mention of God or Jesus as that is not how I roll. I understand that memorial services are about the living, but I think they should respect the dead as well. In terms of content, I would like the following - Prelude (Jimmy Hendrix's Lil Wing should be played as it was our wedding song and remains a favorite) Welcome (Stafford would be a good master of ceremony and could take care of this) Reading: Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock (my favorite poem) Song: Amazing Grace (Beverly should sing this - she may be joined by Sharla and my mother in law if they wish) I really like this song and the other spirituals listed. This will be my god-allowance for my more spiritual friends/family Series of speakers (whoever wants to say a few words is welcome) Song: In the Garden (it makes me cry and will be appreciated by the god crowd) Eulogy - not sure who gets stuck with this responsibility. Decide amongst yourself. Processional: Summertime (Cole Porter's version as Summer is my favorite time of year) I think that is everything. There should maybe be a second reading, but I don't think we need to drag it on. Love you! Keep Mom from Catholicalling this all up. (Following the memorial, everyone should drink profusely. The Chimes would be a good location as I spent over 20 years drinking and eating there. Perhaps reserve the room downstairs? Just a thought.)

Ryan Lanza's Crappiest Day Ever

Yes, my heart breaks for the friends and families of the twenty six innocent people who have been killed today. I can't help but think that Ryan Lanza's day has been pretty crappy too and he has my sympathy (which would be quickly revoked should he turn out to be in any way involved.) What a nightmare scenario. You are going about your day in Hobokin, NJ. It is bad enough that you have that as the starting point. You are minding your own business and then all of a sudden your Twitter and Facebook feeds are blowing up naming you as a mass murderer of children. Your picture is everywhere. You name is mud. And that is not even the worst part! You find out that your mom is dead. Someone you know is certainly dead in your Mom's house. Your father has yet to be located according to the news. Your brother is dead AND a mass murderer of small children. The police show up and take you away in handcuffs and this is filmed for all to see and comment on.

Marriage is what bwings us togetha today

So Obama continues to be president, and the US Supreme Court will be reviewing marriage laws. Albeit this same Supreme Court has a member who thinks homosexuality is akin to beastiality (and oral sex must be a gateway sex?). But there are nine of them for a reason (yes, I had to look that number up. A dozen sounded better to me). I don't understand why people cannot be rational about marriage. Why do you care if Becky and Jane get hitched? This is not a religious thing. It is a practical one. Marriages are legal contracts between the couple and the State. That is it. Sure, some folks like to wrap Christ into their lives and their marriage ceremony and make it magical. But he never married (according to your Bible anyway) so he does not care. Marriage is nothing more than a contract. A powerful contract that enables you to pay joint taxes, own community property, and sit by your loved own's bed side in an ICU. It is the State and the couple agreeing to give one another certain rights and responsibilities within the relationship and within the State. Marriage enables you to commit your spouse should shit get crazy. Marriage enables you to determine the best interest of your partner should s/he be in a coma. Marriage means you do not have to testify against one another in a court of law. Marriage means if you marry a tax cheat, you both lose the house. Marriage means you are a "family" in the highest legal sense. It is a responsibility based on mutual trust and contractual obligation. So, yes marriage must legally involve two human beings. Dogs can't enter into contracts. Asshole. Marriage is not something magical - though it hopefully feels super special. Marriage is not something that will magically make society better or worse. Marriage is not undermined by the people getting married - just their marriages are in the case of poor choices. Marriage is not sacred. If it were, so many of you would not be serially marrying and divorcing within your churches. Marriage is not about having children or raising a family. (Having children is about having children.) Marriage is not something that you should unreasonably limit.