Is something wrong with me?

Am I not normal?

Is there a website where one can purchase more hours for the day and a little extra energy to go beyond just heating the dino-shaped chicken nuggets? I’d LOVE to decorate cakes for the sick and shut in, and create jewelry that expresses my concern for women’s equality, but who has the time? I can’t even keep up with who got voted off Dancing with the freaking Stars.

Come on all you creative people, fess up. Martha Stewart’s got an army helping her keep it all together. Are you running a sweat shop out back by the barn???

Eight or nine years ago I was working for one of those supplement companies. I had moved up from the phones, seen a couple of promotions and there I found myself, feeling important, managing deadlines and expectations and pushing pens; people. It was my first real career job, and when they offered me a demotion or the door I was deflated. Disappointed. Disposable.

Disposable sucks. Like Hyundais and yellow-boxed cameras with only plastic parts.

Luckily for me though, I had been disposed before. The first big letting was parental, and then, the summer before my junior year at State I was let go by love.  My position, eliminated.

I cried a lot and begged his mother to talk some sense into him. Spent several weeks just staring off in space. But then I got bored and got creative. Found a job out of town and a school out of state and eventually I was the one letting go. Getting on with it.

As Christmas is the season of giving I guess my first love called me the first break I flew home. Said he loved me still. Said he loved me enough to let me go find me and I believe Him.

Although it’s scary as hell to walk away from comfortable and into a new state or new state of mind, being let go is not always the same as being let down. In my experience, being let go is most often being set FREE.

just like with dieting, however, it’s  never good to jump into anything completely. so instead of writing something actually meaningful, i’ll just tell you what i’m reading.

same kind of different is a fantastic true story of a homeless man and an art dealer who strike up an unlikely friendship thanks in part to an inspired dream by an inspired lady named debbie. i’m about halfway through and i adore her. and denver the homeless guy.

i’m into true stories these days. people are cool. thanks people, for getting off the couch. may i follow in your footsteps and soon peel my but off our butterscotch seat of love.

anyway, here are a few post topics i’ve been writing in my head…

     – does satan exist?

     – top 5 things to do on the pot

     – bundt baby bundt

     – what i’m reading (House on Mango Street, A Million Little Pieces, Operating Instructions)

     – family values

more on those later. tonight, i just want to say that this parenting gig is the craziest thing. i put zo’s new toddler bed together last night and she freaked out when she saw it this morning. i had to pry her from her new primarily-colored pillows to change her diaper, and she cried all the way to skool days wailing, “my zoe’s big girl bed…i sleep!” even still, i was prepared for a mini battle after her bath tonight.

but she was great.

we read a few books, turned on the sleepy time tunes, and she was out.

as we’ve been sharing our bed with her since january, i want to dance. but more than dance, to cry.

1) Appreciating everything my husband does for me.

Af’s the laundry guy, is AMAZING with Zoe, takes car of the car and the garbage, walks the boys twice a day, fetches things from up or downstairs when I’m too lazy to fetch them myself, and is just an all around GREAT catch, but I know there’s more. After over six years of marriage it’s easy to take things for granted so I’m thankful for this opportunity to really examine how much easier he makes my life and living it.

2) Playing supermom.

Because Africa is so great with Zoe I often take a back seat and let him manage the madness. She’s perfect 80% of the time, and I know it sounds weird, but I’m thrilled to take on that not-so-super 20%. Single mothers keep it together every day, day after day, right? Surely I can keep my cool for 12 short weeks!

3) Taking control.

Being married has given me license to let a lot of things slide (gym attendance, budgeting, lipstick application, regular prayer and time with the Good Book, yadda, yadda, yad) and now that I have no one to blame but myself, I’m going to try to get a little better at a few more things that matter.

Pray for me freinds and neighbors. And pray for my favorite Africano.

May his butt remain unbitten and his pockets fill to overflowing.

I’ve been attending the local chapter of the National Speakers Association to hone my presentin’ skillz, and I must say that the organization draws a unique crowd. Last night we heard from local Chad Hymas, who is awesome, but had me participate in a random “exercise” to illustrate a point about our need to give more and take less. Chad’s a paraplegic, and talked about our need to change our habits in order to conquer life’s obstacles. Anyway, he asked me to volunteer in this little project where he had me try to take a drink from a water bottle without using my hands.

And suddenly there I was, barefoot on the floor trying to unscrew the lid from a water bottle with my teeth.

I am not the most limber of people, and was therefore praying the whole time that all those Fiber One bars I’ve been eating since joining Weight Watchers would not cause a major flatulation, and that if said occurrence were to happen, former Utah Jazz basketball great Mark Eaton (who is 7’ 4” and was seated right next to my hunched frame) would not hear it. Luckily, the other dude who was also participating in operation embarrassing as hell soon discovered that the best way to drink from a bottle without hands is to simply ask for help. Some little old Relief Society lady opened his bottle and gave him a drink, then the whole crowd turned to stare at me. And Mark. Who then had to pry my bottle from my stinky flats feet and then give me a sip as well.

Too bad it wasn’t Kobe.

That’s right friends… Beckham’s balls in all their photoshopped glory.

Where, you ask?

Not at the porn shoppe, no.

Thursday afternoon, April 2, 2009, at the ghetto salon where I’m now getting my hair done.

I had to do a video shoot for work last week so I went in for a quick cut and a little color and came out COMPLETELY SOILED. My new hairdresser, Natalie, was clipping away when a blonde with a removable ponytail came waltzing in talking about Organics and a new salon in the avenues. She was a total character from one of the Real Housewives Of series and I was digging her until next thing I know she and Nat have me pinned under the dryer and are forcing me to check out all the nudies on Nat’s laptop. She showed me a full body of Beckham and several close-ups of his member, followed by a heart-shaped, pink-dyed Julie she did for one her clients at Valentines. (Only $40!) Needless to say I was STUNNED and sat there like a complete dork trying to figure out if I should laugh, cry, or run screaming from the building.

My friend Tony says she was trying to hit on me. Strange love indeed.

Most folks around here act as if they’d rather be shot than make eye contact with a stranger, which brings me back to the elevators in our building. We pile in there, push our respective buttons and then pretend to text or stare straight forward so as not to have to feel bad for refusing to make nicey nice with the other people inside. I hate this, but like a sheep, have followed protocol.

This morning, just in on the basement level from the cold and freaking rain a woman I don’t know actually held the doors for me and then said with a bright and cheery smile, “Good Morning! How are you?” I almost passed out. She was getting off on 5, me on 7, so we chatted about the crappy weather for 6 floors and when the door opened for her to depart she looked me straight in the eye and said,” Have a FABULOUS day,” and I believe she actually meant it. 

And so I will.

In fact, I’ll go beyond having a fabulous day. I’ll tell other people to have a fabulous day too. For one week I vow to say hello to someone on the elevator every time I get on there. And I vow to tell them to have a fabulous day even if they don’t talk back and look at me like I’m a freak from happyville.

It’s been 11 years since Junot Díaz’s critically acclaimed story collection, Drown, landed on bookshelves and from page one of his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, any worries of a sophomore jinx disappear. The titular Oscar is a 300-pound-plus “lovesick ghetto nerd” with zero game (except for Dungeons & Dragons) who cranks out pages of fantasy fiction with the hopes of becoming a Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien. The book is also the story of a multi-generational family curse that courses through the book, leaving troubles and tragedy in its wake. This was the most dynamic, entertaining, and achingly heartfelt novel I’ve read in a long time. My head is still buzzing with the memory of dozens of killer passages that I dog-eared throughout the book. The rope-a-dope narrative is funny, hip, tragic, soulful, and bursting with desire. Make some room for Oscar Wao on your bookshelf–you won’t be disappointed. –Brad Thomas Parsons