...the sense of being which in calm hours arises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously from the same source.... Here is the fountain of action and of thought.... We lie in the lap of immense intelligence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Better Late Than Never...

[Donna and Josh are discussing what should be done with the budget surplus]

Donna Moss: What's wrong with me getting my money back?

Josh Lyman: You won't spend it right.

Donna Moss: What do you mean?

Josh Lyman: Let's say your cut of the surplus is $700. I want to take your money, combine it with everybody else's money and use it to pay down the debt and further endow Social Security. What do you want to do with it?

Donna Moss: Buy a DVD player.

Josh Lyman: See?

Donna Moss: But my $700 is helping employ the people who manufacture and sell DVD players, not to mention the people who manufacture and sell DVDs. It's the natural evolution of a market economy.

Josh Lyman: The problem is the DVD player you buy might be made in Japan.

Donna Moss: I'll buy an American one.

Josh Lyman: We don't trust you.

Donna Moss: Why not?

Josh Lyman: We're Democrats.

Donna Moss: I want my money back.

Josh Lyman: You shouldn't have voted for us.

So why do people vote democrat again?!

It requires courage to cast the accumulated myths of a lifetime to the wind. Our natural desire for simplicity, certitude, and the approval of others occasionally causes us to defend even our most flawed worldviews as if our very lives depended on them. Dead belief systems are difficult to bury for in doing so we enter a world we do not recognize; we watch the carefully crafted towers of our understanding crash down in ruins and we lose an integral piece of the only reality we have known, reinforced and imprinted on our minds by a thousand voices, internal and external.

-John Perazzo

WannaBuySomeCornforaDolla?

Regrettably I am unable to embed this hilarious video of Conan O'Brien birdwatching in Central Park. The hosting website shrewdly disabled that ability in order to avoid detection from the epic fail that is NBC as they most assuredly would force the site to remove the video if it was discovered. Racist communists!
Still, go. watch. now.
That is all.

http://www.noob.us/humor/conan-goes-birdwatching/

Trust Few.

I'm going to say upfront I haven't the slightest idea where in the world I'm going with this, but then again, I hardly ever do. However, you've now officially been forewarned. Rambling to commence in 3...2...1...
While I have had a number of boyfriends over the years I have actually had an abnormally disproportionate share of first dates. Fair to say ratio here is easily 10:1. I long ago decided as a single mother it would be important to drastically limit not only casual dating but also limit casual-yet-time-consuming friendships. I am happily and loyally committed to and nurturing of my few close relationships; I am simply extremely selective of those people and groups I become closely associated with. Like everyone else in the world I've experienced the perils of not being so selective...and I personally found that path leading to severe disappointment. Do I feel as though those involved with the aforementioned disappointment are inherently bad or evil people? No. This would be stupid, as I was involved, too. Look at me- I am too cute to be evil:

This, my friends, is the face of anti-evil.

Additionally, I realize the people/groups involved did not make reprehensible decisions that were wholly or even partially responsible for undeserved hurt and pain. I do not feel this way now yet employ these examples anyway because they are typically the starting players in the self-reinforcing cycle of thought a lot of folks-including myself at times- get stuck in after going through a painful experience. The nasty cycle mostly involves placing blame, playing victim and, you know, whining. A lot of whining. If you're stuck in that cycle try donating a bit of your time to a good charity organization or, and I say this with all the love in my heart, try getting the f*ck over it. You'll thank yourself later for cutting what essentially is a self-indulgent pity party short. Shockingly enough, living in the possibility of the present is a hell of a lot more satisfying and fruitful than dwelling on the sad memories from an unchangeable past. This lesson has been a hard one to learn, and I'm still learning everyday. ...So what was the point of this? Damn tangents. Ah, yes. Trusting a precious small few. Moving along...

Love All.

Please do not confuse my limiting close associations with not liking or spending time with many people who are not...er...close associates. Rather understand the distinction between a dear confidante and a fond acquaintance, a distinction not signifying that I love either one less than the other. Love them differently, sure. But not less, not hardly. I am lucky to love so many special people, all in different, beautifully enriching ways.

(Important to note I definitely do not love certain people, but comparatively that list is limited. Off the top of my head: I definitely do not love child molesters, rapists and Bill Maher.)

I just...hate that guy. *shudders*

Almost everyone else I know, though, I honestly love. This natural tendency is more than likely a result of being a southern belle and watching Pollyanna 14,789 times as a kid. I have heard the naysayers mock this way of life. (Mostly the chronically unhappy & icky atheists, also a few friends and family members, too.) But frankly, my dears, I don't give a damn. While trusting few and loving all are paramount in the way I approach life, so is that last part of the Shakespeare quote:

do wrong to none.

Finally, the easy one. Well...at least easy to explain. Whether it be betraying the trust of a special friend by knowingly disclosing a sacred secret or causing a noticeable dent on a car door and opting to flee the parking lot instead of opting to leave a note- no matter how justified you feel you are- knowingly causing harm to someone else ALWAYS comes back to take a chunk out of your ass in the end. Who knows, perhaps all of the blessings and joy in my life have absolutely nothing to do with loving all, trusting few and doing wrong to none, maybe it's all been fate...but something tells me that Shakespeare might just have been on to something.

Oratory Should Raise Your Heart Rate. Oratory Should Blow the Doors off the Place.

I have decided that every Sunday I'm going to do my damnedest to post a quote or two from one of my favorite television drama series, The West Wing.
My affinity for this particular show needn't be discussed here in great length but I will say how grateful I am for the television network Bravo for generously running the series in it's entirety while I was on bed rest for a lengthy portion of my pregnancy. Bravo for Bravo! Heh. The timing kicked some serious ass. I am also grateful for losing the remote and my subsequent inability to change the channel as desired when the third episode from the first season began.
I remember watching the first few minutes in a recalcitrant huff, muttering my disgust with liberal Hollywood while frantically digging beneath the covers for the ever-elusive clicker. But quite like magic my disgust morphed into startlingly eager interest as the palpable chemistry between Donna and Josh was revealed through their exchanged banter.
By the end of the episode I found the *entire* cast (sans Moira Kelly) to be refreshingly talented and the cleverly unfolding storyline to be remarkably captivating. The long Steadicam tracking shots down the corridors of The West Wing were a huge bonus and made what normally might have been exhaustive dialogue into instead irresistibly entertaining parlance.
And, oh my- the exquisite writing. Writing at times so moving it brought me to tears, other times so hilarious it provoked a deep belly laugh lasting longer than a full minute, easy. It was the writing that kept me coming back for more and it was the writing that demanded the immediate purchase of all seven seasons on DVD.
Needless to say, I happily acquiesced to the demand. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, there it is. My inner nerd has reared it's ugly head and refuses to be contained any longer.
I'm kicking off this tradition with one of my favorite short-but-sweet quotes...
And by the way, thanks for reading. You rock. :)

"Words. Words when spoken out loud for the sake of performance are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can't."

~President Josiah “Jed” Bartlet, The West Wing

Cross It! Cross Your Heart!


One of our favorite scenes from the movie UP:

http://is.gd/efqql

My daughter repeats her rendition over and over and over...and over. Daily. And it's too cute to not share. :)

http://is.gd/efqST

Down...But Not Out

"If you're still hanging onto a dead dream of yesterday, laying flowers on it's grave by the hour, you cannot be planting the seeds for a new dream to grow today."
-Joyce Chapman.

Not all that long ago I was invariably dreaming a fantastic dream. This special dream filled me with hope, and not the kind of hope you might have when you throw a penny in a well and wish for something. No, this kind of hope was much more potent and made up of two elements - desire and enduring expectation of this desire coming to fruition.
Detailing the specifics of this dream seems unnecessarily garish therefore I beseech you to use your lovely little imaginations and fill in the blanks.
Well this dream did not ever come to anything, not anything other than a whole lot of hurt. I know they say if you never take risks, you'll never gain anything. But what do those same people say to someone who has risked everything and lost it? While there is wisdom to gain in failure, wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who said that experience is the best teacher and only fools will learn from none other?
Sometimes taking big risks will pay off in the end. And other times, well it quite simply won't. At least not in the way that we might have hoped. Sometimes dreaming a dream that seems too big, seems that way because it is.
While I do not understand why certain things have happened and why I have needed to feel the hurt that I have felt, I do know that it was for a reason. And I do understand that when adversity strikes we always have two options: get bitter or get better. So I choose the latter, I choose to realize it is a blessing to be reminded that winning does not always mean you go home with the jackpot, sometimes it means you break even and live to try your luck another day.

I’m the happiest mother of the loveliest daughter, Grace. My little squirt is at the best stage, the one commonly referred to as the Articulate-But-Still-Has-a-Lisp- &-Finds-Everything-Interesting-&-is-Super-Adorable Stage, my favorite stage so far. It is just us girls and it seems as though all we ever do is giggle, learn and play together. Our life is simple and completely carefree.
Thankfully it will be a while before we find ourselves chasing uncomfortable sleep across long nights spent on buses traveling to some sort of competition because I wanted to chaperone her first overnight school trip. Longer still before we face miles of required paperwork for college enrollment. Those experiences, or some variation of them, are coming sooner than I would like, but not THAT soon!
For now our glorious days are filled with whimsical activities such as making butterflies out of rolled cardboard and adding sparkles galore to most reachable flat surfaces. We have facilitated and eagerly witnessed plants grow out of wet paper towels inside plastic bags, which led to plans for our own garden someday. We've also spent entire afternoons whispering secrets behind cupped hands while under a makeshift tent of foam noodles in a swimming pool infested with surprisingly friendly sharks & heroic elves.
I am incapable of imagining how life could get any better than this, but I know it will continue to get better if we continue giggling, learning and playing together.

Just a few years ago I was faced with the wonderful and terrifying task of choosing the name for my precious unborn child I was carrying. I was eighteen years young and the biggest decision I had made before this one was probably what dress I was wearing to prom. I was, in a word: petrified.
I love the special story behind my name. It gives me an incredible sense of worth and purpose. I wanted the same thing for my daughter.
I finally decided to actually meet her before I named her. I just felt compelled to spend time with her before I chose the name she'd have for the rest of her life. (Or at least until she decided to change it to Princess Consuela Crapbag.)
After she was born it took me three whole days to name her. When I was going through possible names, one name continued to stand above the rest: Grace.
After spending those first few days with her I knew there was no other alternative. This was my little Grace. My miracle through the storm. She is my saving, amazing Grace.

grace:

how you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain. and, so it is with life, which for many of us becomes one big gigantic test followed by one big gigantic lesson. in the end, it all comes down to one word. grace. it’s how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light.

I am so blessed to have her. I do not deserve her. Life is hard and I cannot imagine it without Grace. And to think of the countless nights not so long ago I was on the bathroom floor...begging and pleading with God to just let me not be pregnant. Man.
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. He knows what He’s doing. When He takes something away there’s a reason. I can’t help but smile knowing such an awesome God is looking out for me and my daughter.

Never love a wild thing.... He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up.... If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.

~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly

“You know why late flights are good? Because we cease to be earthbound and burdened with practicality. Ask the impertinent question. Talk about the idea that nobody has thought about yet…Be Poets.”

-Jeremiah Bartlet on The West Wing

That whole flying at night thing is superbly underrated, as far as I’m concerned. If I have my way, all of my future flights will be under the blanket of moonlight, surrounded by infinite flowing clouds and radiant stars.

I had always thought the above quote was incredibly romantic but never had the chance to understand the meaning firsthand until my recent connecting flight from Denver back to San Antonio. As the plane picked up off the ground, I decided on watching a movie, even though it would cost an unreasonable eight dollars. “Watching a cute movie at night is one of my favorite things anyway and it would be cool to see one on an airplane” I justified to myself as I searched for the needed earpiece in my polka-dot carry-on bag. After an unexpectedly strenuous search through the contents – which included, but was in no way limited to, my lip gloss, gum, books, ticket stubs, digital camera and iPod – my hands finally fingered the slippery headphones, tangled together and buried deep beneath the rest of the airport necessities. Just as I triumphantly plugged them into the armrest, the plane made a slight turn which caused me to absentmindedly glance out of the circular window and into the vast, moonlit sky. At that moment my eyes were met with the fullest, most inconceivably beautiful moon I have ever known. Without realizing I was doing it, I heard myself audibly gasp and let out a very dreamy, very loud sigh. Immediately becoming aware other people might think I was a nut job for making those noises while longingly gazing out of an airplane window, I timidly turned my head to face the others in the cabin. Feeling a wave of relief, I observed that I was not the only one taken aback by the awe-inspiring sight that was the righteous hunk of reflective rock before us. Reassured my unspeakably high social status on the plane filled with strangers indeed remained intact, I turned my attention back to the alluring nighttime vision right outside of my window seat.

The minutes that followed were the kind that a person does not easily forget. You see, there is something about being that close to the starry sky that seduces the senses to a point of no return. Casting the thought of the eight dollar movie purchase out of my mind, I unplugged the earphones from my armrest and returned them to their true home, my iPod.

After a few decision-making seconds of scrolling through the song options, my mind was dancing to the melodies of Let Go by Frou Frou, Delicate by Damien Rice and Death and All His Friends by Coldplay, to name a few. It took only a couple of chords into the first song to begin day-dreaming extraordinary dreams; I was completely lost in the shimmering abyss before me, and the moment was perfect. As the minutes went by and the dreams revealed their entire selves, I started to recognize these fanciful dreams as familiar remnants of my imaginings from the past. This got me wondering…why is it that I ever stopped dreaming these dreams to begin with? They are obviously things I still want, things still deeply planted in my heart, so how did I lose sight of them without even realizing I was doing it? I don’t know if I lost hope or hunger for those dreams therefore they gradually tapered off into the world where all of those lost dreams go, but I do know this dreamy late night flight brought desire to have them back, which was a magical happening all on its own.

As we were soaring near our destination and the end of our flight, the pilot relayed the weather conditions and time in my sweet San Antonio. After he seemingly finished by offering his thanks for choosing their airline, he added:

“Don’t let the reality of being stuck on the ground stop you from dreaming big. Take care everyone.”

My heart jumped as the West Wing quote flashed by my mind. I walked off the plane, feeling the cool air hit my face and sweep up in my hair. I took a deep breath and smiled knowing my enchanted nighttime flight home inspired more desire than I could ever have expected...and I haven’t really stopped smiling since.

Why is it that most of us women are so damned catty? Why are we so often irritated by women who “have everything”? Why is it that when faced by a fellow female with a flawless face, bangin’ body, hot hairstyle, sun-kissed skin, faultless fashion sense, estimable education and a vast vocabulary it’s often cause for any “regular” girl to become poised to attack? And my God if you add fluency in multiple languages and a successful career with a twist of modest integrity, chances are you will have a full-fledged jealous rage brimming right under the surface. (Sometimes not quite under the surface.)

While I can relate to the almost instinct-like negative response, e.g., “wish I would have been born into HER family”, “why didn’t God give me genes like those”, “I bet she’s a stuck-up bleep”, these days I find that I have a very different reaction when first becoming acquainted with such a woman. Instead of “hating”, I admire. I am almost drawn to them in the sense that I want to know their secrets! I want to learn about how they view the world, how they view life. I want to know what is it that helps them to set themselves apart. To put it bluntly, I want to know how I can be like that too. Because who says I cannot be? Moreover, who says you cannot be? Do you not desire to be in great health, have a killer wardrobe and haircut all while perhaps having a high-paying job that you love? Because who ever told you that you cannot, lied.

What's that you say? Stop the presses! You mean no one other than yourself told you those things?

Well quit lying and get a grip, because darling you can have it all.

You may find that it would serve you well to stop “hating” on those women who seem to have all their shit together, and start taking note of just how possible it is for you to achieve every similar goal, and more.

I wish I could just scream this from the rooftops, but for now my blog will have to do: You can do, have, or be anything the girl next to you can do, have, or be. No matter who that girl is, what she is wearing, what man is holding open the door for whatever car she drives. You can have it all. The real question is: Will you even try?