Anecdote:

Tomorrow I’m flying back to the middle of things to visit my bests and longests, and to Mardi Gras.

I’m warning you I might forget you.

For the last decade, Kansas City’s Mardi Gras celebrations have softened my winters considerably.  I have learned the ancient art of hot glue, painted portraits of kings and queens of France, cut many a crinolation and wrapped it in tinfoil, marched cheerfully while freezing, said hi to the same people every year even when we don’t know each other any other way, worn wigs, worked hard with staplers and plastic flowers and sequins and glitter and lace and ribbon.

Kansas City Mardi Gras doesn’t have a thing to do with showing your tits or drinking too much, though you could do either, and as long as you are cool about it, it would be fine.  It’s about making stuff and wearing crazy things and making noise, all good habits.

When I was a little girl, I wanted to go to a ball in an Irish castle wearing a green dress (somewhat like Grania O’Malley, though that is a different story.  Mardi Gras has completely satisfied this dream, though I still have not been to Ireland.

Mardi Gras, stomping off, sillying off, dancing off, sweating off, freezing off, tinfoiling and hot gluing the winter into submission.

I hope my plane makes it on time.

Anecdote/deep spiritual thought:

I had three conversations today that made me feel better.  It is so important to tell people you like their black floral print dresses because their boss won’t exactly let them wear prints, supposed to be just black, but she’s breaking the rules because February is her least favorite month, too.  Tomorrow she will be wearing a cat shirt, also not plain black, even though she knows her boss will be in.  She’s working a double!

My second conversation came from me asking for advice.  There are really kind people everywhere who have earnest desire to help.  I wish I had figured that out sooner, but better late than never.

My third conversation came from, “How are you?” and reminded me that other people struggle with exactly the same stuff as me, and we feel better when we know that, we stop thinking everyone else is perfect and has it all figured out.

Wear your black florals, shipmates!  Ask for advice!  Ask people how they are and let them answer!

Something beautiful:

To A Stranger

Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,
You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me
as of a dream,)
I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you,
All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate,
chaste, matured,
You grew up with me, were a boy with me or a girl with me,
I ate with you and slept with you, your body has become not yours
only nor left my body mine only,
You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass, you
take of my beard, breast, hands, in return,
I am not to speak to you, I am to think of you when I sit alone or
wake at night alone,
I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again,
I am to see to it that I do not lose you.

– my old friend Walt Whitman.

Mustering resources….

Let’s begin here, I love wondering what people are doing to make the babies laugh, sometimes you can’t see, who knows, but wow, they’re like people when they laugh (warning, the second baby is insane):

Joke stolen from the internet:

Q: What’s a specimen?

A: An Italian astronaut.

Anecdote (forgive me, I taught the word introspection today):

A few years back, I was awesome at my job-job, everyone loved me.  The last couple years, I feel like I’ve done very little right.  Is this because I am different, or they are different?

I wonder about the difference between ego and confidence.  As a recovering A student, I wonder, if your confidence doesn’t come from your ego, what exactly does it come from?

Well, this I know, the overall goal is becoming more open, softer.  Which leads us to….

Deep spiritual thought:

What I like about art is the very thing that makes people fear it.  It enlarges us.  I am a better and more honest woman for having…admitted my locked-away feelings of the years.  I am larger and better and softer and kinder and more open than I was resisting knowing what I knew.  It is always this way with art…. We rise to the occasion that life offers us.  I like a woman better who admits to missing and still desiring a former husband than I liked the woman who pretended so well that she was above caring for him since he had been the one who walked out.

Let’s close with this, it’s cruel, but I like it, we used to do this to my little brother, too.

Let’s close with this, it’s cruel but I like it

You thought I forgot about you again, I was just giving you space.  I knew you would be fine.

Almost everyone I know has had some kind of revelation or throwing up against fate like a stone wall in the last week.

Thus….

Something beautiful:

Commit yourself to watching this video for a while, I know it seems stupid, but it’s actually nice.

There you go.  That’s better.

Another beautiful thing:

Here’s the flower that just bloomed at our house:

Humor:

See how hard I’m trying to make it up to you, gone two days?

http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-would-never-ask-an-audience-to-put-their-hands-i,37862/

Misc:

What if you had gotten this for Christmas?  You could have been PROFESSIONAL, CASUAL, and DRESSY all at the same time!  I photographed this while I was waiting for my prescription eye drops when my eye went crazy after Thanksgiving, I’m so glad that’s over: