Originally published Decmeber, 17 2006

i’m not the most coordinated of beings, we all know this, but this morning’s debacle makes it to number 2 on my “you did what?” list of klutzy accidents (no. 1 is cutting my finger, deep enough to cause some nerve damage, on a smoothie).

normally, i’m not a hair drying kind of girl, but it’s cold outside and i am sick, so this morning i figured it’d be in my best interest not to leave the house with a wet head.  so, i pull out the hair dryer, dust it off and proceed to dry my hair.  all is going well.  now, i’m not 100% awake yet (due to the fact that it’s a) morning and b) i’m sick) and it’s all steamy in the bathroom and water has condensed on the hair dryer making it slippery and I, naturally, drop it.

in the scramble to catch the hairdryer before it hits the ground and breaks into a million pieces all over the floor the hot, metal blowy part ends up smashed up against my stomach.  so today, i’m sporting some low cut pants because i can’t tolerate anything rubbing on the huge, hair dryer shaped red welts on my tummy

moral of the story:  don’t let beth near electrical appliances before ten a.m.

Originally published November 20, 2006

..is it a little messed up that my family has a healthy % of cherokee ancestors, yet we celebrate thanksgiving…um, yay for the half of my ancestors who forced to other half to walk the trail of tears and handed out small pox wrapped in a blanket as if it were a gift??? yeah…

seriously, though, i guess was just wondering if anyone other than me had some mixed feelings about things this week…i mean, aside from the above, we shoot turkeys so full of hormones that their chests are overly enlarged to the point where they can hardly walk; we glut ourselves on food while others have nothing; we are more excited about the “day after thanksgiving” sales than we are grateful for the over-abundance of people with whom and things with which our life is already blessed; we teach our children that thanksgiving is about a day of harmony between two cultures, but we practice bigotry and intolerance in our everyday lives…

…the only redeeming value i can find for thanksgiving is that it does — as much as it can in it’s plasticized, overly commercial way — remind us that we should be thankful…

…and so this year i am thankful for awareness; for each opportunity to open someone’s mind, however gently; and for each and every one of you who have made this last year – which could have been so much worse — just a little bit brighter.

Originally posted September 27, 2006

is there anything that rolling a little maker’s mark across your tongue can’t cure?

whiskey and i first met around the time i started teething.  gums hurt cause you’re cutting teeth? rub a little on. fussy baby? dip her pacifier in a little whiskey-coke and she shuts right up

we continued our acquaintance throughout my childhood years–let’s just say i could make a whiskey-coke before i could make a pb&j.

during adolescence we were strangers (because please, against what did i need to rebel?).

but we picked right back up in college and became good timin’ pals

now, whiskey and i are old friends.  that comfortable pal you tell your troubles to and who wraps you in a warm, fuzzy glow.

my experiments thus far lead me to believe that whiskey is, indeed, a cure all.

Originally posted on September 23, 2006

“To be obliterated, destroyed, completely demolished until my soul and all that I know of myself are reduced to rubble and ash is all that I ask of you. I give you the power to grind me into dust so that I can have the divine experience of making myself anew; of becoming a truer, stronger, more indestructible version of myself. To lose myself, to drown, to be sanctified by unholy fire; this is my wish, my desire — to rise like a phoenix from the ashes and shine for all eternity.”

inspired by Anselm Kiefer’s Drache (go see it at the high already, top floor, new wing)

Originally published on June 23, 2006

do you ever hear something and are just as shocked by your reaction to it as you are by the thing itself?

when i was growing up there was a man who owned a convenience store at the end of my road and every time i went in there he would give me candy.  this probably started when i was a blonde-ringleted five year old and continued until i graduated high school and moved away. as childhood things will, this man and this place have always been frozen in time in my memory — one of those simple pleasant places in your mind that you never question and always believe will exist.

and then today i hear that this man, this frozen-in-time, dispenser of joy-in-the-form-of-sweets died last night.  i am shocked at its suddenness  and sad for his family. and i am surprised at how sad i am personally — sad that this once solid, stationary part of the fabric of my memory has ceased to exist. sad that this person, who i knew only superficially, but for so long, is no longer around.

i wonder if he knew he was a childhood icon to the little girl down the street who is not so grown up as one might think?

Originally posted May 18, 2006

why is it that some words echo in your head for days?  someone can tell you a dozen nice things and then use one word, even if they mean it in a nice way, that holds a particular meaning for you, and awaken the specter of self-scrutiny that you have painstakingly been singing to sleep.

but that’s one of the more interesting (and fucked up) things about language, isn’t it?  even when we speak the same language, we often don’t speak the same language.  conotation and personal association have so much infulence on our interpretation of every day words that you never really know if someone hears what you are saying as you intended it.

is learning someone’s personal language what we really mean by “getting to know someone”?  are one’s friends (and here i mean real, true friends) the people who can interpret you and who you, in turn, can interpret?

Originally posted May 3, 2006

so i was woken up at 2:30 this morning by the sound of my lovely fat monster of a cat hacking up a hairball outside my bedroom door.  nice.  thanks for that.  so i haul my tired self out of bed, blearily clean up cat puke, wash my hands and stumble back to bed.  round 1:  cats 1, beth 0.

no sooner had i drifted back off to sleep, hoping to be rewarded for my noble cat puke clean-up with some lovely dreams, than my other furry monster (who gave the fat cat the hairball to begin with) decided that he needed attention (and now, damnit!) and proceeded to butt his head against my face and meow.  not being able to sleep with a cat nose in my eye i complied.  round 2:  cats 2, beth 0.

Originally posted  March 19, 2006

A year ago today my uncle lost his battle with lung cancer. I spent time with him when I could during that year, but wish that I had come home a little more often. I was 2 hours from his house, on my way down from Virginia when he passed. I knew the moment it happened and looked up at the sky and saw a hole appear in the clouds letting gentle rays of light shine down. It was a peaceful moment.

It was not until days or maybe even weeks later that I fully realized what I had lost. This person who had been such a part of of my life — though often in the background — left a silence that is still hard to deal with. I know the drill of loss — it’s ebb over time, the guilt you feel when a day first goes by without thinking of them, how it sometimes catches you off guard when you realize they are no longer around — but it doesn’t make it less painful to know what to expect.

So today, instead of moping or lamenting to the heavens, I will think of him as I cook (he was always up to taste one of my culinary experiments), toast him with a drink just a little too early in the day (because it’s five o’clock somewhere, as he always used to say), and I will enjoy what I can see of him in myself and know that I am a better person for having had him in my life.