Playing House with the BFF's

There are so many reasons why I love these two women. Not insignificant among those reasons is their ability to translate their real life best friendship to the small screen in a way that is so wildly relatable. They can turn on a dime from bladder compromising improv-based hilarity, to an emotional poignancy that puts you in the room with them, it's so palpable. Add to that the fact that they are genuinely kind to their fans, and utilise social media to show their gratitude for the support they're given. I hope that USA Network sees this show for the gem that it is and gives these ladies a platform to finally claim their spot in the firmament of great comedy duos. And yes, they are that good. I encourage people who aren't familiar with their work to check out their first sitcom together, "Best Friends Forever". It only got six episodes, so brace yourself for the soul-wrenching, Nancy Kerrigan "WHHYYY?!?" when you're done with the last episode, then move on to the balm of their 10-episode first season of "Playing House". You won't be sorry. For an added treat, go find them on Twitter(@lennonparham & @Jessica_StClair), and see how awesome they are for yourselves. Tell them I sent you and give them my love (even though they already know that they have it). 

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/playing-house-lets-have-babybug-your-eyes-205952

It's Alive!!

I've been away for a while. Apologies to anyone who actually follows my ramblings. Life has been encroaching on my time a little more forcefully than usual lately. (I know, the nerve, right?) My frustration level is at an all time high, so you can look forward to a few indignant rants in the near future. Also, I'm still working on the fairy tale re-write and I look forward to publishing it here as well. I just have to work out some of the logistics of protecting the material from infringement. Blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that's all for now. I'll keep you posted from my perch if anything new and exciting comes down the pike.

Actually, if anything exciting IS coming down the pike, it's probably stuck in traffic, thanks to the fine folks over at PennDOT. Bastards.

In a Sentimental Mood

In the course of excavating my life, I've unearthed some long-buried artifacts from my past. For the most part, I've been able to turn them over delicately in my mind, smile or wince, depending on the nature of the memory, and then put them back into whatever dark and dusty corner of my mind from which they emerged. Lately, however, I've been spending a great deal of time with a particular set of memories. I was very close to my great-grandmother. I was the first born in my generation (on both sides of my family), so I held a special place among my siblings and cousins. It was a mantle that didn't particularly suit me. I don't care much for the expectations of others. It makes me unhappy and tense for other people to super-impose their own standards onto my particular "abilities". My nan - that's what I called her - seemed to understand that about me, and somehow always knew how to deal with me. All of the memories I have of my time with her are marked by a profound sense of peace. I miss her terribly.


Ellizabeth "Bessie" Gossett was born on October 15, 1897 in London. She came to America very early in her life. She met my great-grandfather Frank in her early teens, and they were married in 1912. Family lore has it that they were on their way to the little country church in a horse drawn carriage, with the preacher in another carriage ahead of them. The bridge to the church was out, apparently, but rather than postpone the ceremony (or take it as an omen of discouragement), they had the preacher stand in his carriage and shout the vows to them. They were married standing in their own carriage. They managed to have a drive-thru wedding while Las Vegas was still just a bowl of sand. My great-grandfather bought a substantial parcel of land in Collierville, Tennessee, a rural Eden on the outskirts of Memphis, and built every structure that stood on it. The main house was a rambling, one story farmhouse with a big kitchen, a sturdy front porch, and an almost comically sloping floor. They added bedrooms as they added children - my grandfather Lonnie, his brothers Wallace and Herbert, and my great-aunts Lavelle and Opal. Frank died in 1957 (ten years before I entered the picture), when the tractor he was driving overturned, rolling on top of him. Nan was the one who found him. Years of living on a farm had toughened her. I'm sure she was devastated by the loss, but I never heard her speak of it. She poured herself into her family and moved on. The farm fell into disrepair. I remember that there was still a fair amount of livestock in the form of pigs, horses, a couple of goats and a coop full of persnickety chickens, but the barn, which must have been impressive in its day, was strictly forbidden as it had become a battleground for snakes. rats and owls. Keeping us out of the barn was, strangely, not a problem.

So much of my childhood was coloured with my experiences on that land, and by Nan herself. The memories go to the bone, engaging every sense. I remember the cold porcelain and never hot enough water of the old claw-foot bathtub. Nan's feather bed, to which I was quarantined after being felled by a stubborn midsummer cold, holds a place of particular reverence. It was the site of what stands to this day as the best sleep of my life. As an adult, plagued by insomnia, I've spent many a night pining for the somnolent charms of that old feather bed. I remember the old side porch, with its dark, worn wood and old tin roof. One of my fondest memories of that porch was when I was about 10 years old. It was early summer, before the heat really started to feel like a schoolyard bully, making us shrink from even the thought of going outside to play. The porch was a small, screened in structure that ran alongside the sitting room. It looked out on the side yard, and beyond that, the cornfield. There was just enough room for two rocking chairs, tucked into an oasis of potted plants. It was storming that day, and Nan and I sat rocking slowly, each with a bowl of fresh snap beans in our lap, readying them for that evening's meal. We would break off the ends of the beans and drop the finished ones into a big glass bowl on the floor between us. Snap, snap, plink. Snap, snap, plink. We didn't really talk--the din of the rain on the tin roof would have made that difficult, anyway. It sounded like the old song..."Every time it rains, it rains Pennies from Heaven." There we sat, shrouded in the hypnotic, metallic thrumming and clean smell of the downpour, the perfume of the plants and flowers (this memory always smells like the colour green to me), and the rhythm and sense of purpose of the task at hand. Whenever I am wearied by modern life, I retreat headlong into that memory as if bursting through the doors of a church and calling "Santcuary!". It is one of the very few instances in my life that secured me to the "now". My mind wasn't ribboning out behind me toward the past, nor was it rocketing ahead to the future. It was just there, in that moment, and I was perfect and happy.

This was a point in my childhood when I still dreamed of a "normal" future. I usually slept in the front room of the house that used to belong to my Aunt Opal. It was a tiny little jewel-box of a room, with a low, mahogany bed set. The wallpaper was covered in vines and roses that are undoubtedly less faded in my memory than they were in reality. By then, the room was more a gallery than a bedroom. It housed an impressive collection of family photos, some being a century old and a beautiful, rich sepia tone. There were hand tinted portraits of my great-great-grandparents, with their stoic faces. Pictures of my grandfather and my great uncles in their uniforms, going off to fight in World War II, so handsome and full of purpose and pride. My great aunts, so young and lovely it made my heart swell. Pictures of my father and his sisters as children, surrounded by cousins and blinking against the sun. My whole beloved family. I loved that room. It managed to smell lived in without a trace of stagnance or mustiness. It was just comfortable and peaceful. I always imagined that some day I would marry and bring my husband there, and introduce him to the generations of faces that had watched over me while I slept, dreaming of the very idea of him. It would have been a lovely circle to complete.

Another anecdote that comes to mind, speaking of bedrooms, pertains to the room across the hall from mine. It was much larger, and I believe it served as the boys' room when my grandfather was growing up. My commandeering the smaller room for myself was something of a coup, considering that the larger room was acknowledged by nearly everyone in the house as being legitemately haunted. I kid you not. Even at the point when our family tree was devoid of infants, a baby could be heard crying in that room. My second cousin Richard took great pleasure in relaying the story of Nan's one and only miscarriage, and her subsequent refusal to allow the fetus to be buried. "What happened to it?" we asked with an even mixture of skepticism and wide-eyed fear. "No one really knows," he replied eerily. We avoided that room with the same fervour that marked our avoidance of the barn. The year that my Grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary, we took the opportunity to have a corresponding family reunion. Family came to Memphis from all over the country, landing at the various family residences in the area. We stayed at Nan's. In the course of figuring out the sleeping arrangements, a number of us volunteered to sleep in the "Haunted Room" as it had been officially dubbed. I was 20 then, and well beyond the paranoia of childhood ghost stories. Richard was there. Some of my siblings and other cousins were among the volunteers. The room was a patchwork of pallets and sleeping bags. It took some time to get everyone settled in and quieted down, but we managed to get through the night without incident. The next morning, we were restoring the room to its pre-slumber party state. None of us had spent any more time there than was warranted by the occasional childhood dare (think Boo Radley's porch in "To Kill a Mockingbird"), so naturally, we were curious, which led to a fairly thorough exploration of the room. We did everything short of drawing straws to determine the unlucky soul who would be charged with opening the closet door. My brother Sean won(?) the honour. No goblins or ghosts there, just old coats, some folding chairs and a stack of old blankets. There wasn't even an ominous door to the attic to fuel the imagination. Very anticlimactic. It was then that I noticed an old curio cabinet tucked into an alcove in the corner of the room. It housed a collection of mementos that apparently belonged to my Nan. There was an old picture frame, shrouded in a thin film of dust. A swipe of the thumb across the glass revealed a hazy black-and-white photo of my great-grandfather lying in his coffin. Okay, chill number one. There was an assortment of dried flowers and other memorabilia, the specific significance of which was lost to us. I noticed a lovely, hexagonal, amber coloured glass jar with an ornate, cut glass stopper. It was very pretty, and obviously very old. I picked it up, holding it gingerly and turning toward the window. When the light hit it, I noticed that the glass itself wasn't amber, but was instead coated on the inside with a reddish brown film. I held the jar up to the window, and as it tilted slightly, something shifted inside it and came to rest against one of it facets. Everyone around me leaned in to examine it. It looked like an old doll of some sort. The film inside the jar was practically transparent in the center of each facet. I adjusted the jar to center the doll and get a better look. Who would put a doll in a jar?, I thought. I could make out the over sized head, the tiny body, and two tiny arms, drawn up and together. Realisation crept into each of our brains at almost exactly the same moment. My god, this is a human fetus. THE fetus. Nan's miscarriage. Holy sh--everyone started screaming and running for the bedroom door. Everyone but me, that is. Though I was horrified at the truth of our discovery, and was most definitely startled by the outburst, to my credit, I held on to the jar. My mind reeled as I considered the truth behind all of the ghost stories from my childhood. A truth that not even the tellers of those stories had been aware. Then I started to cry. Not out of fear, but out of genuine, mournful sadness. This was not just evidence of family lore that I held in my hands, it was part of my family tree. A tiny little branch that never got the chance to bloom. I took a ragged breath, patted the jar, and placed it back in the cabinet, just as gingerly as I had taken it out. The curio took on a very different air. There in that spot were remembrances of all the things my Nan had lost. Here they were close by, and safe in a way that she hadn't been able to keep them in the past. I felt the horrible weight of trespasser's guilt. I closed the door of the cabinet and left the room. Everyone else stood in the foyer, some still racked with the "heebie-jeebies". I was too spent to find the humour in that. It was obvious that I had been crying. One of my cousins made as though to comfort me, but I deflected his arm. I patently forbade everyone from relaying the incident to anyone else in the family, and threatened them with bodily harm if word of it ever got back to Nan. As far as I know, no one ever betrayed that.

That trip was significant for a number of reasons. It was, after all, my grandparents Golden anniversary. It was also the only official family reunion on my father's side of the family. Many of the relatives I met that weekend I had never seen before, and haven't seen since. It was also the last time I ever saw Nan. Leaving that old house to return home was always a whirlwind of activity. Packing, loading the cars, the obligatory care packages of leftovers that materialised out of nowhere at the last minute, the final sweep of the house to ensure that nothing (or no one) had been left behind. As the family made their good-bye's, I turned to look at Nan, standing atop the little slope that led down to the driveway. She was almost 90 then. She seemed so small and frail, but rallied against it with chin up and hands on hips. I walked slowly up to her. The slope of the yard made us nearly the same height. I remember the smile on her face and the wisps of hair that had escaped their loose bun blowing around her lovely, crepe face. Standing in that yard, surrounded by our family, we put our foreheads together, placed out hands on one another's faces, and shared a silent moment. It was a gesture we shared from my childhood. Everything I had learned about her that fateful weekend had only deepened the bond I had with her. The family had fallen silent during our little display. My eyes had welled up by that point. Nan patted my cheek, whispering "Be good, little one." I nodded, told her I loved her, and kissed her good-bye. We both knew that we wouldn't see each other again. The last time I saw her, she was standing in front of the old house waving good-bye to the caravan of cars and RV's that spirited her family back to their lives. I was off to university that Fall, and then to California after that. Life took hold, and I never made it back to Collierville, as we both knew I wouldn't.

She always said that she wanted to live to be 100. I got the phone call from my brother Sean on January 3, 1998. One hundred years, two months and nineteen days after my Nan came into this world, she left it quietly and calmly, passing in her sleep. I never got over the fact that they buried her without me. It was all so fast. I still reel a little when I think of it. The family sold the old house and what remained of the land to the vulturous developers that had hounded Nan for the last decade of her life. It was the beginning of the estrangement I have from my family. The house was razed. "New" homes were erected in its place. That beloved old house has been relegated to memory and imagination, taking its place alongside my beloved Oz, Narnia, and the Shire of Middle Earth - all of the places I spent the happy days of my childhood. Nan is with me, too. Whenever I'm tired or angry, I hear her voice come out of my mouth in the slight lilt of my English ancestry. The words "Be good, little one" are always in my ear. Those dark and dusty corners of my mind hold mementos of all the things I've lost over the course of my life, even the shriveled remains of my former self. It's nice to know that I come by that tendency honestly.

My Dogma Ate My Homework.

I had a very educational early life. By that, I mean that I could read before I was five. I've heard people talk about the moment when all those lines and squiggles "decoded" and became words and numbers. I don't ever remember them being lines and squiggles. I watched a lot of television. I don't mean that I sat mindlessly in front of the "electronic babysitter". I mean I watched. I started to pair words being spoken with the words being displayed in advertisements. I would walk through the grocery with my mother pointing to labels and saying the names of different products. My mother wrote this off as a simple parroting mechanism. Then I started reading store names, billboards, movie marquees. Polly want a precocious child? Aside from this, I was also very artistic as a child. From the time I could hold a pencil, I was drawing. I drew swans a lot. I think it was an early indicator of a latent "ugly duckling" complex, but that's a subject for another post. The drawing paved the way for early attempts at writing. I would sit for hours with magazines and newspapers, copying the letters and numbers. In retrospect, I might as well have shot myself in the foot. By the time I got to the first grade, I could already do all of the things they were charged with teaching me. I have such a vivid memory of the short-lived excitement I felt as I stepped off the bus for my first day at Paxton Wilt Elementary School, clutching my pencil box and writing tablet. I had visions of great stores of information that would be made available to me, of all the books I would get to read, and the problems I would get to solve. Once in class, however, I was shocked and disappointed that all I was offered was a slow introduction to the alphabet. Seriously? I raised my hand, albeit tentatively, and inquired when we would get the chance to actually read.

"But you can't read until you learn your alphabet," I was told.

The problem was that I already knew my alphabet, and proceeded to tell my overly perky teacher so (I couldn't abide such energy that early in the day, even at the tender age of six). My proclamation was met with skepticism, until I was forced to recite the entire alphabet for the class. Even though I was able to do so, she still had her doubts, and with a yardstick, she approached the front of the classroom where the letters were displayed on a long banner above the chalkboard. She pointed to random letters in relatively quick succession and I announced them just as quickly. Her perkiness faded and she leveled a narrow gaze at me. The other children were silent, staring at me like I had two heads. The experience taught me to stand up for myself, and it prepared me for a lifetime of similar scrutiny. It also taught me that I didn't need other people to teach me things.

In the ensuing years of my public education, I grew to hate school. Not because it was hard. It was just bothersome. I resented being told what and how fast (or slow) to learn. My only salvation was that we moved a lot when I was young. By a lot, I mean that I attended eight different schools in twelve years. I had the blessed distraction of having to adapt to a new environment over, and over, and over again. Ad nauseum. Amen. Teachers and administrators never knew what to do with me. I usually refused to do homework. At the same time, I consistently tested in the top one percent of students my age in the country. Take that. They tried putting me in an "advanced" program in the third grade in an effort to "engage" me, as they put it. Nice try. Not only did it not work, but to this day, I don't think I've met a more arrogant, pain in the ass group of students. EVER. I made it to the sixth grade before I put my foot down. I basically demanded that I be put back in regular classes, and threatened to fail everything and stay in school until I was thirty if I wasn't. My parents caved. I went back to "normal" school and got to have a semi-normal pre-adolescence. I still hated school, but I'd learned to keep my mouth shut and play the game by then. I started doing my homework, but kept my grades squarely in the average range, being ever careful not to stand out. That takes more planning than you would think. I was fine until high school. My first year was spent at Moore High School in Louisville's south end. Nightmare. It was over-crowded, violent, and drug-ridden. I cut school more days than I went. My parents, who had divorced by then, were called in for a meeting late in the school year. I was failing four of my six classes. I managed a D- in another class, and a pity C in Art. In spite of this, I still scored in the top one percent of the country on my achievement test scores. Again, take that. After much discussion -of which I was not a part - it was decided that I would be passed to the next grade level, based solely on the merits of my test scores. I was living with my mother at the time, and after more discussion within the family, I decided to go live with my father in southern Indiana. My mother was a musician at the time, and she had the opportunity to do some touring. With me safely ensconced at my father's house, she was able to take advantage of the opportunity. Win/win.

That fall, I started my sophomore year at Clarksville High School. It was as close to bliss as the situation would allow. Clarksville was a small town, and the school was an appropriate reflection of that - not overly crowded (I graduated 3 years later in a class of 111 people), with an attentive, somewhat colourful faculty. I became involved in extra curricular activities, LOVED my teachers, and was given a fairly wide berth to learn what I wanted. The entirety of my sophomore year was spent atoning for the academic sins of my freshman year. I spent most of the year on the honor roll. Most of the people with whom I would become friends in my junior and senior years confessed to me that they hadn't even known I had gone to the school that first year. At the start of my junior year, I was called into the guidance office. The counselor, Mr. Strauss, was an intelligent, empathetic man. As a guidance counselor, he was an absolute dream. I'd had him as a civics teacher the year before. He knew the kind of student I was, and I knew the kind of teacher he had been. He was also aware of my academic history before coming to Clarksville. I remember sitting in front of his desk, calm, but not knowing why he had called me in. He sat, hands folded in front of him, carefully considering how to begin our conversation. "I'm not sure what to think of you," he finally confessed. I laughed nervously. "Let me explain," he continued, leaning forward. "When you transferred to this school, your transcripts made us a little nervous. Normally, someone with your, um, "history" usually presents disciplinary problems." I smiled sheepishly. "Imagine the surprise of all of your teachers, myself included, when we were presented with an intelligent, attentive, articulate, sensitive student."

I was confused. "What are you trying to say?"

"What I'm trying to say, is that I've never encountered a student whom I wished I could just turn loose in the world. But I can't. I want you to understand that. You have to be here, and you only get one pass at this part of your life. I don't want you to get in your own way. Enjoy it. Participate. Make friends. High School isn't just about homework and tests and grades. It's a practicing ground for life. Don't screw it up, because once you get out of here, it gets harder, and less forgiving. I personally would hate to see someone like you miss out on the opportunity to contribute something special to the world because you turned your back on it."

It was a conversation that changed my life. It was the first time I ever felt like someone really understood where I was coming from. That even though I'd spent my entire youth learning how to fit in, I had never once felt that I actually belonged anywhere. He was telling me that it was okay. And I heard him.

From that point, I took a very different tack with school, both academically and socially. I became involved in the theater department. I went to almost every sporting event. I made lots of friends, and not just the jocks, or the band geeks, or the cheerleaders, or the Honor Society kids. I made friends with everyone. It's a tendency I have to this day. I harbour a strict non-discriminatory policy in inviting people into my affections. I don't care if you're male, female, black, white, gay, straight, rich, poor, young, old - if you can deal with my crap, I'll deal with yours.

I had as close to a normal, happy high school experience as I could have hoped for. The only snag I ran into was with my senior year English class. In the second semester, we were told that our graduation assignment was to write a research paper, and that if we failed the assignment, no matter what our performance in the class had been otherwise, we would fail the semester. That ultimatum sparked the radical in me, and I stated outright that I had no intention of completing the assignment. I already knew that I had fulfilled my English requirements for graduation, and didn't need the passing grade, so I made good on my word. I refused participation in any in-class activities connected to the assignment. Conversely, I scored perfectly on every test and assignment related to the rest of the syllabus. My teacher, Dr. Lewis, professed that I was, by far, her best student, but she was forced by policy to fail me. I knew from my younger siblings that mine was the last year that that particular policy was in place. My rebellions aren't always pretty, but they get the job done. Dr. Lewis and I had dinner a year or so after I graduated. Despite that one experience, I was profoundly fond of her. She was the first person to tell me that I had the soul of a writer. When I finish my first book, it's already dedicated to her. That night at dinner, she asked why I had done what I had done. I stated simply that the policy wasn't fair. It was ridiculous to limit one's ability to pass any course to the successful completion of one assignment, when so much time and effort went into the other elements of the curriculum, apparently for no reason whatsoever. I also told her that it would have been different if that second semester was devoted solely to the research paper. It wasn't. We still had weekly vocabulary assignments, required reading and reports to do, on all of which we were graded. It was a lot of work. She agreed, and said that for as mystified as she had been at my refusal to do the paper, what really knocked her for a loop was that I continued with the rest of my assignments as though nothing had happened. I laughed and confessed to her that I actually enjoyed the other assignments. I couldn't very well sacrifice everything. We had a good laugh about it. A year or so later, she wrote a sweet, very honest letter of recommendation for my college application, including an account of that incident. I was told the admissions office got quite a kick out of it, receiving a letter of recommendation from a teacher who had given the applicant a failing grade.

Unfortunately, my one year of college was marred by personal demons that I'm still battling in one way or another to this very day. I'm sure I'll write about those demons eventually, but from the time they reared their ugly little heads, they've commandeered every ounce of intelligence, patience, resourcefulness, and adaptive capabilities that where forged in the fires of my mercurial education. I realise more and more as I get older how lucky I was to cross paths with some of the people I encountered along the way. I'm also thankful for the attention I was able to pay to the less conventional lessons they offered me, because somehow, my brain had tackled the conventional ones waaay ahead of schedule.

I don't know that I'll ever make another attempt at a "formal" education. I seem to have done alright without it. I still have an inherent curiosity that guides and grows my acumen at every turn. I still love the quiet sanctity of a great library or museum. I've always been grateful for the mind that I was given. It's the only thing that has instilled in me a sense of universal balance against the harsh realities of a "difficult" body. Hopefully someday soon, I will be free of those difficulties and will finally be able to explore the true potential of my brain. My experience has bred in me the tendency to look for the lesson in every triumph and difficulty of my life. Those are the lessons that have stuck with me over time. Those are the only grades that ever mattered to me. The ones I've given myself, that have allowed me to look my own reflection in the eye, and know that even though the road has been long and hard, Graduation day is just around the corner.

To Marketing We Must Go

It's late. I turned on the computer against my better judgement. While checking e-mail and Facebook, and the myriad other sites I frequent, I got a delicious surprise - Jay has a new video! Yaaay! Sometimes, insomnia has its perks. So, my entry is a little different this time. I'm doing my part to help promote my dear, sweet friend.

Here is the new video. Tell your friends. Buy his CD. Fear my wrath if you don't (kidding!). But seriously, you won't be disappointed.

Enjoy.




Bonus tracks - the other two "official" videos:






I'm going to TRY and get some sleep now.

Jobless the Hutt...

Last fall, I left my job with the intention of moving to New York. If you've read the previous "Flight of Daedalus" post, you know how that turned out. What I didn't write was an account of the five months I spent not working. It was, at turns, restful, challenging, lazy, frustrating, solitary, and ultimately, indulgent. I was determined to take a break from my overly complicated life, from humanity, and from my normal routine. I was tired. I've been a part of the work force since I was sixteen. Actually, I started working the coat check at my grandparents night club a little earlier than that, but my point is, I'd been running in the rat race for over a quarter of a century. I wanted a vacation. In retrospect, I could have done without the "indulgent" part.


This divergence from my normal workaholic existence left behind it an unfortunate and appalling wake. I gained about 35 pounds. Mind you, these weren't 35 voluptuous, "more of me to love" pounds. Nooo. These were 35 "Oh my God, it's coming this way, and it's hungry" pounds. They're lumpy, bumpy, ugly pounds. Seriously, once you pass the age of 40, all of the rules change. It sucks, but as the song says, "That's just the way it is...". Indeed. The thing that did me in over the duration of my sabbatical was a steady diet of take-out Chinese food--with all of its sodium--and no-cheese veggie pizza. These things are fine in moderation, as can be said of just about anything, but when the bulk of your calorie intake comprises them for several sedentary months, with not nearly enough fluid intake, you're asking for Trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with Z and that stands for zaftig. I'm also reasonably sure that, thanks to me, Nabisco weathered the stock market crash fairly well. It is both a blessing and a curse that Oreos are vegan. Just doing my part to bolster the economy.


Now, a normal person might be satisfied to to simply shrug off this predicament as part of the normal course of ageing. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll tell you--I'm not normal. I'm just getting around to having something of a life. I need this old bod' to hold up as looong as it possibly can. In that spirit, I took a deep breath, rolled up my sleeves, and started working out. A lot. I'm sure that there are gym rats in this world who spend a great deal more time at it than I do, but I'm just getting started. I've gone back to my habit of preparing all of my meals ahead of time. I drink about a gallon of water a day (yes, a WHOLE gallon). I'm taking my supplements, getting enough rest, and managing my stress as well as I can. It seems to be working. Granted, it's only been a few weeks, but I have the advantage of muscle memory. I was a gymnast, and then a dancer, when I was younger. This body has been through some extreme changes over the last couple of decades, but it does remember some of its old ways. Not a moment too soon, might I add. I'm very stubborn about not giving in and buying bigger clothes. In fact, I'm certain that button and zipper manufacturers around the globe are uniting as we speak to issue a fatwa against me.

I can't say how much weight I've lost thus far. I can definitely see that I have lost weight, but I threw out my scale about a month ago. I figured that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it for the right reason: My health. I didn't want to be a slave to a number. I know plenty of "skinny" people who are in horrible shape. That's not what I'm going for. I want this body to be a reflection of its health and well-being, not a reflection of some ridiculous, emaciated standard of beauty. I want to be able to do my job without feeling like someone needs to carry my tired, broken body home in a shoe box at the end of the day. I want to be able to participate in the world around me (eventually). I don't think that's asking too much. Especially considering that I'm not looking for any short-cuts. I'm willing to go "old school" and work for it. The lines of this body have already started to smooth out and draw up and in to their original(ish) positions. By my current estimates, I should be in glorious, glamazon shape by mid-July, at which point I'll go to a costume shop and buy myself a Princess Leia space bikini. You know, the one she was wearing when she strangled the crap out of Jabba. Yeah, that's what I think I'll do.


Just because the rules have changed, it doesn't mean that the game is over.

Once Upon a Time...Coming Soon

While going through some old papers, I discovered a weathered, partially edited copy of a short story I wrote several years ago. It was a favour for a friend who was given a writing assignment for her "Gender in Sociology" course in college. The assignment was to write a fairy tale, with yourself as the main character. Given that the course was not in her major, and that she had an excessive amount of work to do for the courses that were, she approached me at work and asked if I would like to have a crack at it on her behalf. The story I ended up with was called "The Weeping Princess", but given the short amount of time I had to write it, I was only able to complete a first draft. Even at that, it was a pretty good first draft, and everyone who read it was very fond of the story. I just always wanted to take another pass (or two) at it. Having found the original, I'm currently doing just that. It's rather long as it is, and in the course of the re-write, it's bound to get longer. I'll more than likely break it up into several parts and post each one as I finish it. My eventual goal is to turn the story into a novel, but for now, I'll try to stay as close to the original story line as possible. So, consider this a "Heads up!", and stay tuned. I'll even see what I can do about a "happily ever after".