Month: September 2017

All of my friends from college spent time with me on the football field.

I know I’ve mentioned my Marching Mizzou career at least once. (I just used the word Career. To me, the word Career is like the word Woman. Have we ever talked about the adult words that I’m not yet ready to embrace even though I’m technically an adult?) I ate sushi for the first time with my band friends. I did laundry in the middle of the night with my band friends. I ate a Thanksgiving turkey on the roof of a house with my band friends. I wrote bad poetry with my band friends. I did a lot of things that I won’t even mention here with my band friends. I tried to bake a turkey in a microwave FOR my band friends. These people were everything to me. They were my family. They are my family.

Why am I singing songs about this when nearly 30 years have passed and I can’t even remember the last time I held a mellophone?

You guys, it’s because Meredith joined the marching band and she currently plays vibraphone and suddenly I have that marching band feeling again, but this time there is no drill to learn. All I have to do is sit in the stands and cheer (and volunteer to donate cookies and bottles of water and time). I’m loving it.

I shot this video more than a month ago. That’s Meredith playing the vibraphone on the far right. Her hands. They fly.

The next several Saturdays will be filled with competitions and funnel cakes and award ceremonies and hoodies and clogs and band kids and band parents and halftime shows and hot chocolate and nothing but goodness.

I’ve been waiting for this.

(Also, I’m moderating my comments now because the deluge of spam is already a pain in the ass for me, and I don’t want it to become a pain in the ass for you. I would take a knee for you, you know.)

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Things are happening on this end. First off, I believe my comments are being hacked by Russians, and that probably isn’t true at all, but I *am* getting entirely too many meaningless comments and links from someone whose name looks Russian and I’m not even going to use the word collusion here because even seeing that word ruffles my feathers, and I would rather stay peacockian. (I recently read that peacock feathers represent a pure soul. You should hang out with me sometime. My pure soul is a gift I like to share.)

But enough about the Russians! (Somewhere in Russia is a person (or many people) with whom I could hang out and eat food and drink whatevers and talk about music and books. I hate that I will probably never meet that person.)

My parents are moving into a house that is approximately 12 minutes away from my house. Because they currently live 47 minutes away, the 70 minutes I’ll soon be saving on the back and forth can be applied to something else—like the creative writing class I’ll be taking in November! The class description holds the word Unleashed, so God only knows where we’ll be two months from now.

Finally, if you’re local: Please know that I’m selling local honey. A local farm ships their honey to a friend in Springfield. Said friend infuses the honey with amazing herbs and fruits and whatnots and then I sell it out of my house. Flavors include: Bee Raw (it has pollen floating in it, which is just weird and crazy good), Show Me State (it’s barbecue honey and tastes amazing on roasted vegetables), LaZENder (it holds chai spices and lavender, and I have the honey version AND the maple syrup version), and Purple Haze (lemon peel and lavender and vanilla extract and a single hair from the arm of Jimi Hendrix). ((I’m kidding about the hair.)) Anyway, if you’re interested, I can hook you up. Just shoot a message my way. (I’m a horrible salesperson. Just know that this is good stuff. The best stuff. The stuff I’ve been addicted to for the past two years.) I am Oprah Winfrey, and this honey is my favorite thing. My pure soul would not deceive you.

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Ah, Labor Day Weekend. Congratulations to the American worker for your economic achievements. It is because of your diligence that our country is in such great shape today. Wait a second. Did you just say that our country isn’t in such great shape today? North Korea who? DACA what? Harvey and Irma and our president is, well, Donald Trump?! I hope everyone was able to find a bit of peace and comfort over the weekend. All we can do is our best. I ate a raspberry-filled jelly donut and for roughly 37 seconds, nothing else mattered.

Harper went to a party on Saturday, which led Meredith to invite a friend out for dinner and exploring. We ended up at Mangia, where the girls ate bricks of spaghetti at a table for two. (Big glob of spaghetti baked into the shape of a brick. Life is magic.)

After dinner, we walked. As we walked, I started feeling nostalgic for the time Jeff and I lived in the city.

So much to see. So much to inspire thoughts and movements.

Also, you might stumble upon a litter of fresh root beer kegs.

We eventually made our way over to a record store. A record store that had ZERO copies of Loveless.

While at the record store, Meredith’s friend bombed a display with a tiny paper crane. She tries to leave one everywhere she goes.

I can’t remember the last time I felt an Amy Krouse Rosenthal Beckoning of Lovely-esque joy. All because of a paper crane.

(Watch the video. I wish we all lived the way AKR did.)

Paper Cranes. Fold 1,000 and a wish will come true.

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