From Fingers, Fortune

I type. I type fast. Somewhere around 120 to 130 words per minute. It’s a gift and a curse. Lately, because of my intense love of money (or is it.....yes, it's the intense love of my college-aged son), I have been typing transcripts for a court reporter in my home. So....I work 8 to 5...where I also type a good part of the day....I head home for lunch so I can get in a few more pages of typing....I go home after work and type some more....until around 8:00 p.m. At that point, I’m ready for some serious relaxing. But I do wonder.....how can the bones in my butt, a butt so well cushioned, hurt so much from sitting?
I’d like to go away. I’d like to go to Bora Bora in the South Pacific and stay in one of those over-the-water huts. I’d like to have a two-foot straw and a bucket of rum punch at my side and think of absolutely nothing but the extreme present. Just swim, snorkel, soak up the sun, eat, drink, sleep and then repeat at least five or six times. Alone. Completely alone.

Meet Me In the Deep End of the Pool

I live in a 106 year old house. The acoustics are amazing to me. It has wonderfully high ceilings and a foyer that’s as big as a living room. It’s just perfect for dancing my way through every single track on Jack Johnson’s "In Between Dreams." Jack and I have done a lot of dancing lately. And yet.....I’m nowhere near being tired of him as my partner.

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in Knoxville, Tennessee. I met a friend for lunch and enjoyed a couple of hours of good company and good food. By 3:20 I was in the water at the pool and enjoying the afternoon sunshine. I like floating on my back in the deep end of the pool. My ears are just beneath the surface of the water and I can hear myself breathing. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Long and slow breaths. Calming. I move my arms from my side slowly across the top of the water and above my head. When my fingers touch, I move them back to my side. Like when someone makes an angel in the snow. I look up at the blue and white sky. And all the jumbled thoughts in my mind start slowing down..........

The Good, The Bad and the Downright Depressing

The Good: So my 20th Mother's Day and my son's 20th birthday arrived. I knew my son would be sleeping until early afternoon. I walked downstairs and he had left a basket of flowers and a book on the coffee table for me. And a card. Yep, my son, otherwise known as "I don't do cards...." bought me a card and even wrote more than Love, XXX in it! :) A nice Mother's Day indeed. We had a nice lunch together, stopped by Wal-mart for some necessary Wal-mart junk (we shopped for his birthday the day before) and then he headed back to Murfreesboro where he'll be working this summer. The Bad: Before he left he confirmed that he had, in fact, dropped his GPA below the "do or die" line and had lost his lottery scholarship....which just happens to be $4,000 a year. We were afraid this would happen. He missed it by .12 of a point. Easy come.....quickly goes. When you lose it, you can't get it back. There's no need to rant and rave about why my son lost his scholarship. He knows why he lost it. I know why he lost it. He feels bad about it. I feel worse about it (trust me). The Downright Depressing: After he left, I got on the scales to see the results of a solid week of delectable denials, good exercise (okay, fair exercise). Oh, the needle moved all right. Just not in the right direction.

Say What?

My son will be 20 this Sunday. Wait up, Life! Quit walking so fast! It feels weird. My son.....20! Yes, that’s right. I was a very young mother!
If I’m feeling a bit old as my only child turns twenty years old, I can only imagine what I’ll feel like when I’m forced to say, "My son is 30."
He was born the Wednesday before Mother’s Day, 1985, in Atlanta, Georgia. It was the day of the 100th anniversary of the invention of the syrup to be known as Coca-Cola. It was also the 40th anniversary of VE-Day (Victory in Europe). The day the pubs in England ran dry of beer by about 9:30 p.m.
Maybe it won’t be so bad when he turns 30. Maybe he’ll be wildly successful in the music industry (currently studying recording industry management). Maybe he’ll be an entertainment lawyer (very interested in attending law school after undergrad). And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally have a savings account.
So this Mother’s Day will be special. My son will honor my life and I will honor his introduction to one of the best decades of life!

Extermination in the 1800s

I sort of backslide last night and got really intimate with my TV, but I don’t want to talk about it, okay? :) Just gotta pull myself back up and get back on the wagon, right?
I recently learned that in 1838, then-Governor Lilburn Boggs signed an extermination order to get rid of the Mormons (Boggs and Joseph Smith weren’t big fans of one another) in Missouri. Okay, it was 1838. There wasn’t a whole lot of "justice" going on. What I think is so interesting is that this Order stayed on the law books in Missouri until 1971. Amazing! In 1971, then-Governor Bonds publicly rescinded the extermination order and apologized to the Mormon people. Shouldn't this tidbit of religious persecution history should be in our mainstream history books? It seems important. I was a history major in undergrad. I recently was speaking with an esteemed U.S. history professor and he didn’t know about this either! At least he relieved my "lack of knowledge" guilt. But now he knows. And so do you.

LWLTV (Life With Limited TV)

So, yesterday.....I went home from work, fed the cat, changed clothes and hit the streets. I live in a very urban area and I walked for about 20 blocks, looped back around to the house, grabbed my book, and headed down to a local coffeehouse.....which was closed. Sat for a while on the steps, read, and walked home. Finished some laundry (terribly exciting thus far, eh?), made some beans and rice for dinner and THEN......turned on the television set! Watched a recording of Grey's Anatomy (love that show) and one other show (no, it wasn't The Batchelor; gimme a break! ha) and then the TV went dark at 10:30 and I took my book to bed with me.
Ellen....I still miss you (in my opinion, she's one of the funniest women around)!

What Desperate Times Call For.....

So.....some changes need to be made. I reached out and made the first one this morning. I pointed the remote towards my VCR and CANCELED the mindless TV programs that I record each day (Sorry, Oprah and Ellen; I'll miss you AMC!). This, the first step of several to come. Can I do it? What will the withdrawal be like? This must be what it's like to be an addict. You know it's mindless. You know it doesn't help you in any meaningful way. You have a big desire to stop. Yet, you continue to do it day after day after day after day. So, now....understand, I'm NOT giving up TV entirely. Not yet, anyway. Baby steps, baby steps. But I can promise you that I will not watch American Idol this week. Nope. Not me. I may check out who got booted off on the internet though (hey, one can only take so much TV withdrawal the first week). And I just might watch Survivor this week. I'll do my best to limit myself to one hour an evening, plus the news. I said I'd try. It may not be pretty.