A Word from the Management

Despite stringent protests from the Queen Mother, this blog will be undergoing a makeover, mostly due to the facts that a.) the author no longer considers herself a firefly and b.) the author is less enchanted with fireflies because they keep sneaking into her room and she is forced to smash them. It's most unromantic. The completed product will hopefully be up in the next few days. The site's URL will not change, but everything else is going to be different. Hopefully you will enjoy the end result! Many thanks. --The Mgmt

Height Hath Not Its Privileges

Mom decided that she'd like to play photographer for a while today. She's actually really good at it--I wish she'd take the time and take a class or two to develop her unpolished skill. All that to say, though, that she had me help her herd Aubrey and Evan into the van and we all drove out to the local Municipal Park to take some pictures.

The temperature is only vaguely boiling today, so it truly wasn't bad. I had a good time helping her be artsy-fartsy and working with the location. She even took some pictures of me when the occasion called for it, the sly devil. We were just finishing up when the swing set was freed of small children, and we all went over there to take a few final pictures. There was much lovey doviness as Evan pushed Aubrey on the swing and they smiled together. They moved off to the little climbing wall when I thought I'd be clever and swing for a while by myself while I waited for them to be finished. I'd walked behind them holding sunglasses and stuff, so I felt a few little travels through the air would be in order.

However, there was a problem that didn't appear, at first, to be totally insurmountable. The swings were too high for me to get up on easily. Now, let's just take a moment and examine this little dilemma, shall we? I'm five feet, two inches tall. Just how tall, pray tell, is the average CHILD? The child that's supposed to be able to play on the PLAYGROUND? How are kids that are only four feet tall supposed to be getting up on that gargantuan swing? But I digress. A little jump was in order to get up into the swing.

As luck would have it, my usual poise and grace in such times was with me. Yes, I'm sure the picture is coming clear to you now. As I lifted myself, I landed in the seat. I experienced a brief moment of victory...that is, until I realized that I was slowly falling BACKWARD. I managed to hold on long enough to land somewhat lightly, but the fact remains that I was on my back looking up at sky.

This has happened to me too many times for it to be a surprise. Of course, being me, I started to laugh at myself. About three milliseconds later, I could hear Mom's, Aubrey's, Evan's, and the lady on the big swing that I didn't know's guffaws joining with me in the air. Ahem. They enjoyed themselves for a while, until I finally managed to get back on my feet and brush myself off. A girl wearing a bikini who obviously thought she was hot stuff sitting on a nearby bench wouldn't look at me. Maybe she thought klutziness was contagious. Who knows?

It all goes to show that no day is normal when I'm around to fall flat on my butt. My mother is still laughing about it downstairs. I like hearing her laugh, so I won't complain. Much.

I was going to include pictures of my victory, but my computer's rioting. I'll try again later.

Country Concession

I have a confession to make, dearest readers and friends. It shames me to the core to admit it, but I have to get this off my chest. I, your lovely Katie and Queen of Pseudo-Rivendell...actually is starting to like country music. Yes, you did read that correctly. I was renowned for my abject loathing of country music, and there is a lot I still strongly dislike. If the accent is too heavy and it sounds honky-tonk, forget it. But there is a whole new realm of country out there that I just feel myself being drawn to.......

Sorry. Just squished an ant. How did an ant get on my computer???

But I digress.

To continue, this country music is so happy and joyful, and...and...so deeply and inherently southern! When I put in Nickel Creek, or Carrie Underwood, or Little Big Town, or Rascal Flatts, or my newest obsession, Keith Urban, I just have to get into it. These are people that are in touch with the heartbeat of America. The south still remembers patriotism, honesty, and the fact that there was a man named Jesus. I mean, look at these lyrics from the Little Big Town song "Boondocks":

I feel no shame
I'm proud of where I came from
I was born and raised in the boondocks
One thing I know
No matter where I go
I keep my heart and soul in the boondocks

And I can taste
That honeysuckle and it's still so sweet
When it grows wild
On the banks down at old camp creek
Yeah, and it calls to me like a warm wind blowing

It's where I learned about living
It's where I learned about love
It's where I learned about working hard
And having a little was just enough
It's where I learned about Jesus
And knowing where I stand

You can take it or leave it, this is me
This is who I am
Give me a tin roof
A front porch and a gravel road
And that's home to me
It feels like home to me

And then, of course, we have the magnificent Keith Urban. I can’t fathom how this guy suddenly became so incredible to me. I mean, isn’t he the dude that’s married to Nicole Kidman? And isn’t he an Australian? How did an Australian get such an amazing country voice? What, did he make a deal with the devil or something? It’s beyond me. I’m utterly baffled. But I do love his music. My current favorite is “Stupid Boy,” some of the jewels from it being:

Well, she was precious like a flower
She grew wild, wild but innocent
A perfect prayer in a desperate hour
She was everything beautiful and different

Stupid boy, you can't fence that in
Stupid boy, it's like holding back the wind
she laid her heart and soul right in your hands
And you stole her every dream and you crushed her plans
She never even knew she had a choice and that's what happens
When the only voice she hears is telling her she can't
Stupid boy, stupid boy

Come on, those lyrics are amazing! You can’t help but agree with me, because I’m just awesome like that. The end result is inevitable. Just give up the fight and move on with your day. Just kidding, of course, you’re welcome to dislike the lyrics—I just won’t understand your reasoning for this lack of judgment.

In any case, I was contemplating this new love of mine earlier today. I’ve had a very pleasant day so far. After some getting-Shelby-to-work confusion this morning that had me up a little earlier than I would have liked, I got dressed and left to pick up eighteen pizzas for Mom’s yearbook workshop today. Let me tell you, folks, eighteen pizzas that have just come out of the oven that are packed into my little bitty car on a ninety-degree day put out a LOT of heat. I could have sworn that I was the nineteenth pizza that was suddenly in an unusually shaped oven. However, I soon had the pizzas unloaded at the school and I was free to go about my business. Mom’s boss was kind enough to give me some gas money for my troubles, and I ended up using it for lunch. I, being the dork that I am, sat in the corner of Burger King with my little meal and read “Jane Eyre.” Hey, I’d finished the Howl’s Moving Castle books and I don’t have my C.S. Lewis yet. Besides, I really like Jane. She’s so innocent, but with an astounding depth of perception.

After this nerdy repast, I got into my car and began to drive toward the other end of town. And yes, I was playing country in my car. Loudly. There I am, alone in the driver’s seat, and I’m TOTALLY rocking out to “Where the Blacktop Ends.” I’m bouncing my head and drumming on the steering wheel and singing along, and I was having the time of my life. It was terribly refreshing. And that’s what I did in-between the myriad of other errands I had to run—the bank, Target, and then back down to pick up Shelby at work. I was kind, though, and didn’t force her to listen to my country. She doesn’t like it. We’re going to have to work on that one.

So if you need something that’s just cheerful and fun and has some great instrumentals, give country a chance.

Why????????

I have but one question for the universe at the moment. I'll write more later. My questions for this precise moment in time is this: Why is it so dang hard to write a book? More to the point, why am I so terrified of ruining it? I have so many ideas and I want to do a good job. Everybody says that you should just write out your first book and then throw it away, because IT WILL be crap. I don't want what I write to be crap! I'm under enormous pressure here to go against the tide of experts. In the words of Mork: heavy sigh.

To Everything There is a Season

I’ve been in a contemplative mood lately, which isn’t all that unusual for me. I believe that writers should be observant, and more highly aware of the emotional elements that are around them than other people. How can you write about human nature when you do not attempt to understand human nature?

However, the things that I’ve been contemplating are not the sort of things that one wants to publish for all the world to see on a blog—all the world meaning everyone from my beloved cousins in Arkansas to weird internet people that peruse other people’s websites just to leer and make creepy comments. Hence my long silence from the blogosphere that I love so well. Still, I find that I miss watching my sister’s face light up when she reads some silly thing I’ve written, and I would truly love to get my mom off my back (love you, Mama!) so I guess I’ll write tonight about one of the smaller things that I’ve been thinking a lot about in the past few days. Yes, children, tonight I’m going to tell you all about some of the goals I have before I get run over by a rampant moose, or however God chooses to remove me from this earth. Knowing the black cloud that seems to loom over my head, the moose alternative seems highly likely. But I digress.

Here is a list of some of the things I want to do. I like making lists, but it is hard for me to organize them, so this list is not entirely accurate in the area of preference. Still, I’m sure you’ll get the general idea.

Before I get become the first person in history to die by a light falling out of the ceiling at a movie theater, I want:

To be married and have a family
To dance ballet again, maybe even have a solo en pointe
To sit on a green hill in Ireland
To go into space and see the stars up close
To play “Rhapsody in Blue”
To have a book published
To sing before an audience, songs like “On My Own” and “Learn to Be Lonely” and “Into the West.”
To be an aunt
To learn how to ride a horse and go galloping across a field
To become fluent in a language while living in a foreign country

Here’s hoping that some of these will one day happen.

What are your goals?

General Warnings to the World as Learned Through Yesterday's Events

1.) To the little birdie that delights in standing on my air conditioner unit at five in the morning and singing to greet the dawn, this warning: While what you are doing may be faintly romantic, it is undeniably disrupting to the old REM cycle. Continue in your present course, and I can assure you that you will be cat food.

2.) To those people that think blasting air horns at graduation, I caution you this: There are usually grandparents in the audience, trying to enjoy watching their descendants pass through the easiest part of life and into the next phase of their existence. If you think using air horns and whistles while sitting right behind them is wise, you have no one but yourself to blame if you give them a heart attack. Not to mention the fact that when you have succeeded in giving me a migraine, I will have absolutely no hesitation in grabbing a yearbook from my mom and beating you upside the head with it. The choice is up to you.

3.) To all the lovely fathers that decide to wait until the last minute to purchase Mother’s Day gifts—I WILL laugh out loud at you when I pass the card aisle at Target and see no less than ten fathers there all trying desperately to find something half decent to give their wives. Just don’t try and make it one of those amusing cards that usually begins: At least you…

I can assure you that if you tell the mother in your life that at least the third eye on the back of her head doesn’t need contacts or something else asinine, you will NOT be getting those golf clubs on Father’s Day that your kids will cheerfully perjure themselves to say they bought for you.

Ownership

I can see it all around me
The magic.
I can see it, taste it, hear it
But I can never feel it.
It is never my own.
Why is it that I can see what so many people cannot,
Yet I am never owned by it?

Those who ignore it, those who undervalue the magic
They always find it.
They don’t know to what they owe their happiness.
Yet I, who have always appreciated it,
Yes, loved it,
I can never seem to catch it.
It slips away from me continually in an unending chase.
I’m tired, deeply.

Oh, I yearn to know how many times I must surrender.
How many times must I look for a reason,
When none exists?
How long am I going to be in the refiner’s fire,
But never know the glory of the flame?
When will I be removed from the furnace
And be seen as a sparkling jewel?

I don’t ask for much, only for a reassurance of the end result.

When will the magic possess me?
When will I be able to look at it?
Hear it.
Taste it.
Touch it.
And feel it?

I can see it all around me
The magic.
Yet I am never owned by it.
I, who have always known it as a friend,
Would welcome it, cherish it.
People ignore it all the time.

I would not.

When will my time come?