I've been tagged...


by my good friend, Kara Sutton. The other day, when she and I were hanging out, she mentioned that I should write on here more, and I've been meaning to. Truly. It's just that...I haven't. So, this is an excuse to re-introduce myself to this blog. And try to actually use it.

Okay, here we go. Seven random and/or weird facts about yours truly:

1. I have sat here for about 15 minutes trying to think of seven things to mention and instead became mezmerized by the way the sunlight was flickering on the leaves of the tree outside my living room wndow. Which led me to think of the word "dappled", which led me to think of the etymology of that word, which led me to look it up. And now I am back.

dap·pled (dāp'əld) Pronunciation Key
adj. Spotted; mottled.

[Middle English, probably from Old Norse depill, spot, splash, diminutive of dapi, pool.]

I guess this can be used to demonstrate that I have an insatiable desire to know WHY all the time.

2. According to my husband, Zack, the question I ask the most, and often is, "Why?". It drives him crazy. I don't even realise that I'm doing it. But, see #1 above. It makes sense that I do. Zack now satiates this desire in me by buying me random books like, "Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask Your Doctor After Your Third Martini". Zack knows me really well.

3. I, too, like Kara, love to make lists. I have them everywhere. I find that I can't sleep at night with everything that's racing around in my brain and when I write it down, I feel better.

4. I ADORE GARLIC. Anything with garlic in it makes me happy. I used to make garlic toast so much as a kid and teenager that I have now ruined my sister, Erin, for life. She can't stand the smell of it because of me. But I LOVE IT SO.

5. I used to think, when I was a little girl, that my guardian angel was french. Now I know that she is a large black woman named, Mimosa. Which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the book "The Shack" in which God is portrayed as a large, black woman. I had a dream about Mimosa years ago. Actually, I've had two dreams about her. In the first, I was me, only as an old woman, and Mimosa told me some amazing things and then I played with my grandkids in the snow. The second dream I had, Mimosa held me in her lap and hummed a song while I wept and wept. It was intense.

6. I hear colour. Some of you already know this. For me, every note and tone I hear has a different colour. I tend to base everything off of my piano, though. To me it's the only place where the colour is the best. If that makes sense. For instance, the yellow of the Middle C of my piano is better than the yellow of other Middle C notes that I hear. Every piano and instrument makes the same colours for me in the sounds but the...saturation? is different. I assumed that everyone heard music this way. It's only in the past couple of years that I finally found out that this isn't so. Werid for me though. It's like trying to understand that no one else can smell anything, or something.

7. I miss acting. I used to love to act when my mom was alive. And then, after she died, I stopped. Mostly because there was no one to take me to auditions, but also because I didn't have the heart to do so. I sometimes look at the audition section in the Creative Loafing just to see what's out there. I don't think I'll ever do it again, because, weirdly, despite what people seem to believe about me in DROVES, I don't like being on stage. But, I love the theatre so much!

And there you have it.

I don't think that I know seven people who blog who will actually DO this but I'll try.

Well, here goes...

Kara Pecknold

Rachel Bos

Kelle Ortiz

Cindy Stephens

Heather Whittaker

Jennifer Carr

Jayna Christopher

Beer

I miss it.

I will start my own beer brewing company.

Too much to do today to start on the actual writings I have been writing that I am planning on writing about.

Soon.

On a side note, for some reason, this pregnancy has caused my body to create copious amounts of mucous which congregates in my sinuses and face. I'm going through tissue paper (the nose kind, not the gift kind) in mass quantities. As in I am taking out whole TREES here.

I need to get up and get dressed.

Zack just walked through the room and informed me that my boobs are looking exceptionally beautiful this morning.

I have just looked at them long and hard and from this angle there doesn't seem to be all that much of the beautiful about them. They look predictably mammary-ish to me. And sore.

The day looks pleased with itself. Looking out the window it seems to have a smug quality, as in,

"Yesh. I know. I AM lovely."

Alright.

Must.

Pull.

Myself.

Together.

Stuff.

To.

Do.

Out Of Practice and Overwhelmed

I am too much of a perfectionist mixed with idealism and high expectations. This tends to paralyze me.

For instance, I love to send letters in the REAL MAIL. I start planning out how I am going to send them, and how I will make the paper by hand myself and...and...illustrate the whole thing! Yes! I'll write a book that is really a letter! Perfect! And then I'll start on it, and realise that the paper I'm using is all wrong, or that I'm not feeling particularly inspired that day and so I stop altogether, instead of just writing a letter to the person I care about because I wanted it to be AWESOME.

Stupid.

I buy cards in the store, 4 and 5 at a time sometimes, thinking,

"I shall send these out very soon to so and so, and so and so..."

I go back to the cards a bit later and find that I don't like them anymore.

"How did I even find these at all interesting? I should just make a card myself..." And then the cycle starts over.

I haven't been writing much at all. Everything that has been happening in my life lately has been so overwhelming that when I even attempt to think about attempting to think about writing the thoughts of my head down I want to crawl under the covers. Or eat a cookie.

Anne Lamott once said, and here I'm paraphrasing, "To write anything you just have to start writing. Don't be intimidated by the blank page in front of you. Just start."

Here I go.

My new marriage. It's more than I ever dreamed. I am so blessed. Zack and I are such good friends that talking with him is easy. But last night, he came home, and immediately went upstairs to brush his teeth and clean up because he knows how much the smell of cigarettes bother me now. He came downstairs and we began talking about how we're both having to adjust to so many things at once. He misses our "porch time" together when we would sit outside and have a couple of drinks and I wasn't bothered by the smoke and would smoke a couple myself. We were getting into a groove of sorts, he and I, and he said he was so looking forward to being a young married couple.

"Now, I KNOW where you're going to go with this because I KNOW you. I am NOT saying that I wish you weren't pregnant or that our lives are ruined because of it, I'm just saying that you have adjusted better to all of this than I have."

It was true, I was shutting down and clamming up.

I love that he calls me out on stuff about myself.

It's true though, that we have struggled a little bit these past few weeks since finding out about the baby. I have turned into a walking mood bomb and my sense of smell rivals that of something that smells really well. I dunno, a dog? A dolphin? I just asked Zack,

"Honey, what is an animal that has an amazing sense of smell?"

"Uh...a pregnant woman?"

Right.

It's funny, I almost deleted what I just wrote up there.

I am gun shy when it comes to sharing. Is it too much? I don't want to overwhelm anyone with my overwhelmingness, which, according to my computer, isn't even a WORD.

So, yeah, navigating the waters of pregnancy to the love of my life when we haven't even been married 2 whole months yet.

Navigating the unavoidable ickiness that comes with divorce. Zack and I walked through hell and back when it came to the ending of our prospective former marriages. The fact that he and I found each other, and that it's such a beautiful relationship, is a testament to God's grace and mercy. He and I have such a huge sense of gratitude and respect for each other because of how bad things were BEFORE.

All that to say, this brings up the next issue I'm dealing with. Zack's ex-wife has turned out to be the most bizarre, odd, selfish woman I have ever known. I'm sure she has her side of things. Everyone does. Lord knows we all have done really stupid stuff in our lives.

Part of me wants to really share about this. Part of me wants to vent. Part of me wants to rip her a new one.

But I won't.

I, myself, have been unfairly judged and slandered by people who thought they had me figured out. So who am I to do the same to someone else?

Oh dang. I have to go. I will write more later.

Okay. I'm back now.

Today has been a good day so far since the start of this post.

I was thinking, though, about how to best go about the slow dissection of my thoughts and have decided that I shall categorize them and write about each category as I go.

Here's what I want to write about in depth:

Zack and I's story

My marriage now and how I view it

My child and step-children and the one on the way (Yours, Mine and Ours)

Music

Search for Community

My relationship with Kent Coffee now

And then the other various sundry of randomness that is left over...

I need a nap now. See? Just writing about this makes me tired.

Happily In Shock...

I have been married to Zack Arias now for one month and twelve days.

It's awesome.

We were unlucky in that I started my...ahem...punctuation, the DAY after we got married. Five whole days of, "We're married! YES! Oh wait...just hang in there..."

Has anyone seen the commercial where Mother Earth, dressed in a snazzy suit, keeps trying to give some vacationing girls a "present". Upon their refusal she sighs, looks about and then squeals, "Oh look! A newlywed couple!" and runs off gleefully.

That happened to us.

But then, and sorry to be so blunt, we got down to BUSINESS. ;-)

We still found time to move into a new house, get the boys rooms set up, school supplies, the OneLight DVD launched, my Dad's birthday, some friends over for dinner, etc. Then we were off to the west coast on August 8th.

This was the time line from that point on, and bear with me, this is going to be boring, but I need to do this for myself!

August 8th -- Flew into Seattle, couldn't find a hotel, ended up at the 6th Avenue Inn, it was awful
August 9th -- Moved to the Hotel Andra, it was AMAZING, I had a show/house concert in Arlington, WA
August 10th -- the OneLight workshop mixer/party in Downtown Seattle
August 11th -- the OneLight workshop at the Mars Hill Downtown Campus
August 12th -- drove the rental car down to Portland, had the OneLight workshop mixer in Portland (stayed with Boone and Jacqi the whole time in Portland)
August 13th and 14th -- OneLight Workshop in Portland (I basically LIVED in Powell's bookstore and ate Sushi everyday)
August 15th -- Tried to drive back to Seattle but traffic was bad so we drove up the coast of Oregon, stayed the night in a hotel near the coast
August 16th -- Had another house concert in Maple Valley, WA (stayed with the couple who threw the concert)
August 17th -- Zack flies home to the ATL and I fly to San Diego
August 18th -- I had a day in San Diego
August 19th -- Picked up Michael (my guitarist) from the airport, show at the House of Blues that night
August 20th -- Show North of Hollywood at the Canyon Club
August 21st -- Day off in LA hung out with Noah (my drummer) and his wife Courtney and Michael
August 22nd -- Show in Hollywood at the The Key Club
August 23rd -- Show in San Francisco at Cafe Du Nord
August 24th -- DRIVING DAY. Drove all the way from San Fran to Seattle
August 25th -- Show in Seattle at the Triple Door, I find out that my step-dad had passed away, I was upset that I wouldn't make it to Craig's funeral
August 26th -- Show in Portland at the Aladdin Theatre, was having a hard time composing myself, couldn't stop crying about Craig
August 27th -- flew home, 6 am flight, come home to an empty house as Zack is in North Carolina with family for Craig's funeral
August 28th -- Picked Phoenix up from school! Zack came home around 6pm. It was so good to be with my two favourite people again.
August 29th -- Phoenix and I leave for Destin, Florida for the Singles Retreat I was asked to play for. DIDN'T WANT TO GO. Show was very hard. Felt like I was playing background music for a "christian" meat market. Noticed how much everything SMELLED. And my mammaries were hurting. Moody. Thought I was about to "start"...you know, the punctuation.
August 30 -- Drove home, got there around 6pm and was EXHAUSTED, more than usual. Fell asleep right away.
August 31st -- Zack shoots a wedding all day. I start to suspect that I may not be getting that kind of punctuation. Not a period, an exclamation point! After I put Nix to bed I did a pregnancy test. It was 10pm. No question. It was positive. I started to freak out in a good way. And cry in a good way. And thank the Lord!

Okay. Out of logging mode and back into writing mode.

When Zack came home I had a martini waiting for him and as he came into the kitchen I said,

"Close your eyes and hold out your hands, I have something for you."

I placed the test in his hands, "Okay, open your eyes."

He stared down at the test and I watched as a perplexed look crossed his face, then comprehension, then shock and he looked up at me,

"Really? Seriously? Wow! How...really?"

Later on, as we were getting ready to go to sleep, he rolled over and nuzzled me saying,

"I'm a viral man!"

"No honey, you're virile, not viral!"

I figure I'm about 5 weeks along, not far at all really. But goodness gracious am I already starting to feel it!

I cannot express how thrilled I am. I thought I couldn't have any more kids. I've had two miscarriages since Phoenix and part of me won't really relax until I'm at least 12 weeks.

PLEASE LORD LET THIS BE A GIRL!

Phoenix was overjoyed when we told he and Caleb. He teared up and ran to me laughing and crowing,

"You're pregnant, you're pregnant! I'm going to have a sister!"

He wants for me to have a girl, too.

Caleb wants me to have a boy.

Zack? He keeps saying, "I make boys."

I really want to prove him wrong! ;-)

I took another one the next morning, Labor Day actually, just to be sure.

Yup. I'm pregnant.

I am beside myself with joy!

Blue in San Diego

It's 1:05 am out here on the west coast. I am exhausted. And I have been crying uncontrollably for about an hour or so now. Not big boo-hoo's, nothing like that. It's just that the tears won't stop rolling down my face.

I'm on the road, opening for Edwin McCain, AGAIN.

I love the man, I do, but his people are not my people. (mostly...there are a few who "get" me but it's RARE)

Tonight was the first night of the tour at the House of Blues in San Diego. I was the opening act, as I will be on every show on this tour. Every venue has a local act that will play after me and before Edwin.

Anyway, the room was pretty full, Michael, my guitarist and I were playing well and the sound filled every nook and cranny with a lovely resonance. I told jokes and people laughed and seemed to like the music. I suppose. I mean, they clapped and didn't talk during my set which, for those of you who've tried playing in front of people who don't know you, is AWESOME.

Then the next act went on.

You couldn't have found a person who looks more opposite of me.

Skinny.
Blond.
Er...
Skinny.
Blond.
Oh yes, and tan. Like brown.

If you pushed all of my freckles together into once place, say...my shin, I might possibly be as tan as she was. On my shin.

Her music was nice, her voice was nice, she did a nice job. I didn't stay for her whole set as Michael and I hadn't eaten yet and we were STARVING.

She sold 20 CDs.

I sold 5. And those were to the four dear friends that I got into the show on my guest list and one nice lady named Toby who apparently follows Edwin anywhere she can. So...right.

The lithe, brown, blond? The LBB?

Her name is Dawn. Men hovered around her like butterflies and she would raise her eyelashes and flutter them about, lifting her brown hand coyly to cover her bright smile and laugh a laugh that sounded like little tinkling bells.

I watched this in amazement and then, upon turning, promptly walked into a wall, causing the man next to me to grab my arm and say,

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, " I replied turning crimson, "I haven't yet mastered the whole rearranging my atoms thing very well yet."

He then looked perplexed and I tried to stammer out an explanation which only made it worse. I made my escape, through a door this time, and went to get the rental car that was parked in the parking deck across the street. It cost me TWENTY- TWO DOLLARS to get it out.

I pulled up in front of the entrance, threw on the hazards and then was told that I wasn't allowed to park there AT ALL. I had to move to the other side of the street. So around a couple of blocks I went, grinding my teeth and trying not to feel like a failure.

What am I doing wrong?

Is it because I'm not pretty enough?

Is my music boring?

Why am I doing this?

It's so hard not to feel discouraged when these songs are pretty much my heart and soul put to melody. When people respond with a "meh...I like the skinny blond girl's songs better..." I feel even more damaged than I already am.

Who am I fooling?

People love it when I sing other people's songs.

"I love it when you sang that song at church!"

Yes. That was my voice, singing someone else's heart and thoughts. But my heart and thoughts?

Meh.

So, I've been crying. Mostly I think from frustration at myself for even being bothered by this. There's this part of me that always pulls myself up by my bootstraps and says,

"Get over it. Get over yourself. Just deal. You're not dying, you're not allowed to wallow."

But yet...my heart hurts.

Rejection hurts.

All of this is coming, too, at a time when I am trying to figure out what role music should play in my life. I've struggled with this for a long ASS time. My darling Zack tells me he's torn too, between whether I should pursue music full time or have me at home with him. He says that he feels selfish thinking that because, according to him, I have something to offer people and he thinks I need to do something with it.

I want both.

I need to get some sleep as we have to get up and drive to north LA tomorrow.

I'd love some feedback about the pursuing music thing. I'm not looking for compliments or pats on the back. I'm looking for honesty here. I'm needing some friends to help me through this. I don't have many friends. Of those friends not very many are women. Of those, none of them are a musician and a mommy and a wife all at the same time.

I'm longing for community.

Ah, but that's another post altogether, and tears of a different kind.

G'night.

"i"

My friend from Vancouver, Tracey, whom I met through my best friend, Kara, shared this on her blog and I found it so fascinating that I am sharing it here as well.

"The article below, by Caroline Winter appeared in the New York Times August 3 08. I've reprinted it in its entirety but the original can be found here. In a western world inflated with Self, I find this slice of language study a little fascinating. Stand back and take a think of how over time our use of language shapes our minds and how our minds shape our behaviour and how that spirals back and forth in and around itself.

Uhhuh. Rhetoric and language analysis contain within themselves the spectrum of the Humanities studies and entertain my mind to no end."

THE ARTICLE:

Why do we capitalize the word "I"? There's no grammatical reason for doing so, and oddly enough, the majuscule "I" appears only in English.

Consider other languages: some, like Hebrew, Arabic and Devanagari-Hindi, have no capitalized letters, and others, like Japanese, make it possible to drop pronouns altogether. The supposedly snobbish French leave all personal pronouns in the unassuming lowercase, and Germans respectfully capitalize the formal form of "you" and even, occasionally, the informal form of "you," but would never capitalize "I." Yet in English, the solitary "I" towers above "he," "she," "it" and the royal "we." Even a gathering that includes God might not be addressed with a capitalized "you."

The word "capitalize" comes from "capital," meaning "head," and is associated with importance, material wealth, assets and advantages. We have capital cities and capital ideas. We give capital punishment and accrue political, social and financial capital. And then there is capitalism, which is linked to private ownership, markets and investments. These words shore up the towering single letter that signifies us as discrete beings and connote confidence, dominance and the ambition to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

England is where the capital "I" first reared its dotless head. In Old and Middle English, when "I" was still "ic," "ich" or some variation thereof - before phonetic changes in the spoken language led to a stripped-down written form - the first-person pronoun was not majuscule in most cases. The generally accepted linguistic explanation for the capital "I" is that it could not stand alone, uncapitalized, as a single letter, which allows for the possibility that early manuscripts and typography played a major role in shaping the national character of English-speaking countries.

"Graphically, single letters are a problem," says Charles Bigelow, a type historian and a designer of the Lucida and Wingdings font families. "They look like they broke off from a word or got lost or had some other accident." When "I" shrunk to a single letter, Bigelow explains, "one little letter had to represent an important word, but it was too wimpy, graphically speaking, to carry the semantic burden, so the scribes made it bigger, which means taller, which means equivalent to a capital."

The growing "I" became prevalent in the 13th and 14th centuries, with a Geoffrey Chaucer manuscript of "The Canterbury Tales" among the first evidence of this grammatical shift. Initially, distinctions were made between graphic marks denoting an "I" at the beginning of a sentence versus a midphrase first-person pronoun. Yet these variations eventually fell by the wayside, leaving us with our all-purpose capital "I," a potent change apparently made for simplicity's sake.

In following centuries, Britain and the United States thrived as world powers, and English became the second-most-common language in the world, following Mandarin. Meanwhile, the origin, meaning and consequences of our capitalized "I" went largely unchanged, with few exceptions.

One divergence stems from the Rastafarians, who intentionally developed a dialect of Jamaican Creole in order to break culturally from the English-speaking imperialists who once enslaved them. Their phrase "I and I" can be used in place of "I," "we" or Rastafarians as a group, but generally expresses the oneness of the speaker with God and all people. "I and I" is thus, in some ways, a conscious deviation - really the exact opposite of the English ego-centered capital "I."

Not long ago, certain presidential candidates could have used a bit of the "I and I" spirit. At the close of the primary season, the news media scrutinized Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama's use of the first-person pronoun, the implication being that a string of "I" 's signifies ungracious self-inflation. On the last day of voting, Clinton led the pack with 64 "I" 's and McCain followed with 60. Obama's "I" count lagged at 30, and he was the only candidate whose combined "we" 's (37) and "you" 's (16) outnumbered his "I" 's. These were spoken pronouns, but, of course, our understanding and use of language is informed by the printed word.

So what effect has capitalizing "I" but not "you" - or any other pronoun - had on English speakers? It's impossible to know, but perhaps our individualistic, workaholic society would be more rooted in community and quality and less focused on money and success if we each thought of ourselves as a small "i" with a sweet little dot. There have, of course, been plenty of rich and dominant cultures throughout history that have gotten by just fine without capitalizing the first-person pronoun or ever writing it down at all. There have also been cultures that committed atrocities even while capitalizing "you."

Still, there seems to be something to it all. Modern e-mail culture has shown that many English speakers feel perfectly comfortable dismissing all uses of capitalization - and even correct spelling, for that matter. But take this a step further: i suggest that You try, as an experiment, to capitalize those whom You address while leaving yourselves in the lowercase. It may be a humbling experience. It was for me.

Caroline Winter, a 2008 Fulbright scholar, is a Brooklyn-based writer.

What I did on Monday...

...is something I've heard about. I've read about it. I've seen it on screens. But Monday was my day.

I'm sitting in a darling house in the City of Decatur. It's raining outside and I am sitting right at the front door in order to capitalize on the free wi-fi signal floating about. This is a four bedroom, two bath, ADORABLE house that I found and Zack and I both fell in love with it. But we didn't want to shack up together. And we have been talking about getting married for a year now. We took things slowly. We went to some counseling. Shook our heads in amazement at how bizarre, and yet lovely, life is that he and I found each other. We know we're an anomaly. We feel like we "live outside the city gates" because of our relationship and yet we're so much in love with each other ( and not just the googly-eyed kind of love, nay this is DEEP, although Zack does makes me weak in the knees) and so grateful, too.

Saturday Zack proposed to me.

Monday we were married.

We're having a "real" party and ceremony on October 10th for our friends and family. We wanted to go ahead and get moved in and get the boys settled before they start school and I head off for my west coast tour in August. For all two people who read this blog, you're more than welcome to come! Just let me know and I'll give you the details.

Life is such an adventure!

I thank God everyday for Zack Arias. And now, he is my husband. And I am his wife.

I am Meghan Arias.

It feels like home.

A Duet

I came across this poem whilst on Poetry Magazine and LOVED this man's writing style. Brilliant.

A Duet
by Kevin McFadden

Art was long.
Paul was short.
Art sang the song.
Paul was the sort

who made one up
as if from air.
Paul had more gift.
Art had more hair—

which isn't to take
away from Arts.
Many sing well
if someone starts,

and it robs no Simon
to get paid like Paul.
Along was Art's way
to be singing at all.

If Paul robbed some,
it's harder revealing.
What stuck in his mind,
he stuck to concealing

so koo-koo-ka-choo
would stick in our heads.
It wasn't Garfunkel,
someone said Simon said

when they parted acts.
Debts one forgets.
Acoustic is fraught
with strings over frets,

taken together,
taken apart.
Paul lifting from life.
Life lifting from Art.

My hands...

...are covered in ink stains from a wayward pen.

It's 1:34am Alaska time. Even here, I am a night owl, even though the night here lasts for two hours. The sun stays up until about 2:30am and rises again 2 hours later.

I have learned some things whilst on this trip.

1. It's hard to take a nap in the back of a moving 31 foot RV while driving through mountains.

2. All doctor's offices look the same. They are all in on it together. They must meet, once a year or so, and discuss exactly how to make it as much the same as possible. The only exceptions are the magazines, which must be indigenous to the location but still a few months out of date. I had to go to the Valdez, Alaska Hospital/Medical Center because of ear issues that rendered me dizzy. Zack and I sat in the examining room for something close to an hour waiting on the doctor. I got so bored at one point that I rifled through the cabinets, found the latex gloves, blew one up, turned it into a chicken using a sharpie I had in my purse and then wrote on its side, "This is what happens when you leave people alone in an examining room for an hour." I then stuck my latex chicken creation in a drawer. The third one down on the right side, if you were curious.

3. I am starting to learn a new language. It's called "Photog". I am actually starting to grasp all of the terminology that gets thrown around.

4. Texas Hold 'Em. I discovered that I am good at this game. I just learned how to play and it is WAY too much fun. Give me a cigar, a beer and some cards and I am ridiculously happy.

5. I have discovered that I am also quite good at seeing cobwebs. I see them everywhere. And not in a "Oh, poor Meg, she's seeing things..." sort of a way. Nope. I just happen to notice things like cobwebs. Like now for instance. There's one on the fan above my head.

6. I don't hang out with anyone any more these days. It's not that I don't want to, but that I am too busy. And so, therefore, I don't want to initiate anything with people that I genuinely love and want to be with because I know that everything will be one sided and they will have to succumb to my schedule and that is really awful and so I choose to never call anyone. I seriously realised this about myself on the flight TO Alaska. I think it was somewhere over Canada, right around the time Phoenix's drool was running down my left arm from where he had fallen asleep on my shoulder and the old man behind me was fussing at the flight attendant for charging him too much for his sandwich. Somewhere in there.

7. I tan better than I originally thought I did. My arms are startlingly brown compared to my stomach, which is startlingly pale. I am chocolate and vanilla.

I am tired of typing out numbers at this point. Phoenix said something so funny on the drive to Valdez, which, may I say, is stunning in its beauty. I kept trying to take pictures and then would frown in disappointment at the result. Pictures will never do those mountains justice. I saw glaciers and how their path had formed the valleys we were driving through, mammoth waterfalls tumbling down the sides, white topped peaks so cold and so high they have their own weather system. All this beauty and it took my breath away and I called out to Phoenix,

"Phoenix! Look at this! Are you seeing these views? They're beautiful!"

"Yeah Mom, I'm playing my DS but I can see them in my periphery."

I should go to bed.

Less than 24 hours...

(this is a rambling ramble of a post...just sayin')

...until my CD release show.

My very first.

Not CD, but a CD release show.

I am excited. This album was born out of a lot of heartache and pain and love and grace and redemption.

I only blog here when I have things too personal to share over at my website. My website is new, completely redone with all my little collage-y designs that I like making so much.

Songs To Sail By.

I was interviewed by Paste Magazine yesterday for the podcast and website and the interviewer asked me where the album title came from.

"That", I said, "would take far too long to tell. Let's just say that when I was writing these songs I felt lost in an ocean, struggling to keep my head above water and crying out for someone to rescue me. And I unexpectedly was. There was this image in my mind of resting in a huge ship, the night sky above me, and these songs were the songs that came out of me while drowning and then sailing."

I don't know if anyone reads this blog. I'm not too worried about that. I'm starting to realise how cocooned I have been these past two years. Once I left my (now) ex-husband, I crawled inside a shell, in some ways without planning to, to keep myself from the hurts and to keep from having to see myself.

All that is changed now.

I have changed. Echoes of my life two years ago come back at me and I find myself pining away, not for the dead marriage that I mercifully am no longer in, but of the friends and people that I intentionally and unintentionally alienated.

How does one go back and try to retrieve something locked away? Can one do it? I want to apologise to so many people but don't know how to do it in a way that would even begin to scratch the surface of some of those deep deep hurts and misunderstandings.

"I was such a different creature, when I was lioness, and locked up in a prison, and pacing for the people."

Quoting myself. But it's true.

I've been in counseling now, talking about these things. And it was pointed out to me how I was like a cornered crazed animal, wearing a mask of "everything is fine".

I don't know where this post is going. And it really only makes sense to myself.

My darling Zack is across from me, both of us typing away. I have found, in this man, so much love and friendship and...healing. I could weep from the redemption of our story. There are some, I'm sure, who probably hate us and for that all I feel is deep sadness. If they could see how God has moved so mightily in our hearts and lives...and in typing that I see how I still have places where I need to let go.

I have nothing to prove anymore.

People will say what they will. I'm chuckling as I write this. It's precisely that I CARED so much before what people thought that I got myself into so much trouble. I was always trying to prove that I was okay and had my s*** together.

I hope that tomorrow night goes well. It's been a bit like being with child. So many women I used to know are pregnant. Something I LONG for. I LONG and literally dream of children I don't have. I tend to dream of the three babies I miscarried. One before Phoenix and two after. This album is the closest thing I have to another child.

That seems pathetic to write. But it's true. I am called to this. God has been very clear with me on this fact.

"Keep your eyes on me. Don't listen to the naysayers. This is what I would have you do. I gave you a spotlight mouth. I gave you heartsong melodies. Eyes on me."

I am trying, Lord. Reading Kelle's blog challenges me to dig deeper. But honestly, I am finally at a place where I KNOW that I am not damaged goods. I've walked around for 2 years now thinking that I wasn't able to be fixed and that I was to be written off. So digging deeper with God wasn't even an option for me.

A lot to get off of my chest. I see that as I type.

Zack is calling me to come and spend time with him on the porch and, when love calls, I go there.

I am a very bad blogger person...

...rather, I am bad at blogging.

As a PERSON I am not so bad.

At least, I think.

This is what is swirling around in my head at this very moment:

Flowers in pots.
Why is Phoenix pooping in his pants?
A longing for Key Lime Pie.
A longing to be a skinny girl.
A longing to just realise that I will never be a skinny girl and to stop longing for it.
Wishing I was deeper than wishing to be skinny.
Reading Lolita in Tehran.
I hate being in limbo, my back is breaking from this limbo.
I want to dance the Tango, in high heels, with sweat trickling down my back.
Feeling dizzy, literally and figuratively.
Horny. I'm really horny.
Now I'm thinking I shouldn't have written that, but ah...it's true.
What shall I make for dinner?
I'm getting my hairs cut tomorrow and this makes me very happy.
I miss being eight years old.
I like my pretty dress.
Trying to stop using the word "love" with everything. I don't "love" everything, I really LIKE things, I am fond of, for instance, Newcastle Brown Ale but I don't LOVE it. Well, maybe I DO love it...
I want to build my own recording studio.
I wish I could learn how to be more content.

I feel too much.

My little boy...

...isn't so little anymore.

Tonight he performed in his school talent show.

I think I'm going to have to enroll him in theatre classes or something now because, as he said,

"I LOVED that. That was so much fun. Even with all the people looking at me."

Hmmm. He's definitely my kid. Although I don't LOVE being on stage. I just like playing music. But Phoenix has a definite love for it.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ziPOq6w8yo]

New Songs...

...two of them today.

Bus Stop

VS 1)
I wrote a sonnet
In blue ink, on the bus stop.
We watched the snowing
With the sun so warm on our backs.
Watched your lips moving
As you tugged on your sweater
Sleeve and wondered aloud,
"What should we do?"

CH)
It was the calling birds
Who brightened up that day.
It was the minstrel man
Who passed along the way
At the bus stop downtown.

VS 2)
Sat in a diner
Our feet outstretched, on the bench.
We watched the people
With our chins cupped in our hands.
Talked of the future
As you tugged on your sweater
Sleeve and wondered aloud,
"What will we do?"

(Chorus)

Musings (I don't really have a title quite honestly, as per usual, this will have to do...)

VS 1)
I am scared and recognise these patterns
Fending off these dragons as best I can.
I have come up with several reasons why
This feels like it is all falling apart.

VS 2)
Catch a breath and try to rest
From years of flying much too fast to really heal.
Some would say to run and some would say to stay
But in the end it's you I'll fight for.

CH)
Now, I'm wrapping up the scene and waiting for you.
Now, I'm writing down these words and waiting for you.
Now, I'm hoping you'll be there when this is done.
I hope you're coming for me.

VS 3)
This road we have walked never made sense
And times I was so lost in the dark.
Can you see the homelights burning
Calling us to lay aside our weary hearts?

(Chorus)

Oh be brave...

Songs To Sail By...

...will soon be born into the world. Many thanks to my best friend, Kara, for the designs she's come up with for the album artwork.

There is so much more to be written but it will have to wait until later. We have three headshots coming into the studio today and I have to write a post for my actual website and send out an email to my mailing list. And then there's the OneLight registrations I'm behind on, and getting packed to head up to Cumming to spend the night with Zack's family.

Too much to do...