You are happy now because we are coming back.

Or maybe, I’m projecting. Maybe, I am happy.

Yes. That’s it, dear readers. I am so happy to be here talking, even for a few moments. Even for a breath.

Don’t worry:

Show me one person who doesn't think this is the cutest pup ever, and I'll show you a liar.

In a few weeks, my sweet husband and I are moving to Chicago which will be a fun and scary adventure. I will try my best to keep you updated with photos and stories and how many times a day Geoff pulls poop out of the cat’s litter box (usually 10). All the important things.

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving/have a lovely holiday season! I love hearing what people are thankful for and seeing how they’ve reflected on their year and searched their hearts. Right now, I am thankful for words written, words spoken and unspoken, for my home, having people to miss, having people who miss me, for my cat who sleeps next to me whether I want him there or not, for my mother’s smile and my dad’s laugh, for them still being here, for my grandparents, for being married to man that doesn’t blindly fix me but helps me see my holes so I can fill them myself, for Ashley’s heart, Lora’s wit, Lindsey’s childlike abandon, Elysia’s perceptiveness, Layne’s honesty, for this space, for you, and for this:

Always this.

What are you thankful for?

So, I’ve watched this trailer like 30 times the past few days, and I’ll probably watch it few more times because I just. can’t. stop. I know I’m going to love this film. Just from watching the trailer I feel nostalgic for that feeling of falling in love for the first time. The way it wrecks you.  It’s not a deep love but it’s honest– untainted, untamed. I remember crying the first time I realized I was in love, because I didn’t understand how to comprehend the emotions I was feeling. It was a new, selfless love that planted its roots in my chest and squeezed so tight I could barely breath. It’s that feeling I miss sometimes, that virginal realization that you’re all in and you can never go back.

Hottie husbad, right?

PEACE AND BLESSINS

^THIS^

Here I am at work, trying to figure out my schedule for school this fall. It is pretty crazy: being a full time student, working two jobs, and balancing interpersonal relationships. I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever be this good at multi-tasking again. Really, truly, more than likely…

this is my golden age of getting shit done.

I’m really enjoying it though. I’ve learned how to take time for myself amidst all the things that need/want my attention. I’ve learned how to balance, something very near to my heart [me being a libra and all].

I wonder if anyone else feels like they can only get things done now. Right now. Exactly here it must be finished and perfect. Ya know?

I mean, I know plenty of pessimistic, procrastinators. I used to be one. But, at this point in my life I just want to excel. I want everyone to be happy with me and what I am doing for them. Sure, that’s a burden and it’s not necessarily even my responsibility. And how can I expect to continue doing things like this [writing, this blog, restoring a house, working, going to school]? Then I am reminded of friends like Christopher Newgent and our own Ashley Ford who continue to do all the things they want and most of the things people want of them.

They are two that truly know the secret to balance. [Perhaps...and even if they don't, they are certainly putting on a convincing show.]

I suppose our quest now should be to devise a plan for balance, or at the very least, a sort of sketch that each person can take and shape to fit them.

The first and foremost rule: YOU DO YOU.

The second most important thing: Stay active. While it’s ok to take time for yourself and even something that I consider incredibly important, you need to participate in life. INVESTIGATE. Note the word “invest” tucked in gently. By considering details, you are investing in life. You are striving to avoid complacency.

Finally: Organize. Everyone needs a method of evaluating and ranking tasks. Everyone needs objectives/goals. And how you go about deciding what is worth your time is entirely up to you. But, it needs to be done if you are truly going to stay invested in your life and your plans.

What does everyone else do to stay fulfilled and busy and a part of something?

Is it more or less important to you?

Make this a discussion, I’m interested in what y’all have to say.

It is that inherent thing we are always talking about, the “I just know I am cut from different cloth—maybe paisley or something. But anyhow, my star is like the brightest and I know I’m going to hand the world something fabulous.”

I mean, would we be writing, if we didn’t think we had something worthwhile to say? The ambiguity of being a writer doesn’t last. You are no more amorphous than a cherry pie.  And, I suppose the point I am trying to get at is Have you ever noticed how writers approach commenting on blogs?

I was on a writing blog the other day scrolling through some articles and comments, etc. And I was reminded of something I learned in French class.

In France, if you are going to correct someone you begin by apologizing. You use the full and formal title of the person addressed and then you say, “Excuse me, I’m so very sorry but you are incorrect. Civilly and humbly yours, X.”

When a writer comments on a blog with some sort of dispute, they tend to butter up the other writer first. Then, they commence correction. Next, they thank the first writer for being so articulate as to allow them to spot all the holes in their argument, only they do this in a manner that makes those outside the know feel as if the exchange could be nothing shy of civil.

[Here is an example I stole from an unspecified forum]

LANCELOT: “when some asshole publisher and asshole writer decides to take this only thing I concede to holding complete control over and decides I’m wrong and changes it without my say-so, I’m going to fucking flip out.”

WILLHELM: “So, if an editor uses his will and desires to alter my work, especially in a such a seemingly rare and odd way, I can’t imagine myself getting upset over such an issue. Again, I just mean this as what your thoughtful response brought up in my head.”

GENNIVIVE: “I have to default to Willhelm on this. It seems strange to me that one would think of writing as something they can have complete control over. I mean, I suppose you do have complete control over the words you put on the page, but you have no control whatsoever about how a reader is going to receive those words.”

LANCELOT: “Well that’s what I mean, Gennivive. The only thing I have complete control over in this entire fucking miserable world are “the words put on the page.” That control does not extend to a reader’s interpretation. I’m fine with that. I advocate that.

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Willhelm!”

Do you understand what I mean, reader?

Does this help:

I suppose I’m just curious if anyone else has noticed. Is there a specific etiquette one should follow as a blog commenter?

THIS has some suggestions for commenting. What do y’all think?

I can’t wait until everything comes together. Not only for
you, dear reader, but for the Chickz. We need our blog. It helps keep us
together even when etc. You know that line. It’s true though.

Anyways, recently, I was asked to do some book reviews for a
blog I really like. I’ll for sure keep y’all posted about that as I learn more
info and eventually get something up on that blog. It’s called Autostraddle.
It’s a lesbian blog. But hey, it don’t matter your orientation, you might
really enjoy the blog. So, check it out, if’n ya like.

even if you're orient, click the pic. check out autostraddle.

Right now, I’m currently preparing myself for the first
parting of Elindsia. Lawls.

But, really. She’s leaving for like 7 days. It’s going to be
weird at the very least. Plus, I have to take care of her cat, who doesn’t seem
to appreciate my loving hugs and kisses very much.

Now, now, enough about my life. I wanted to get down to some
writing biz.

OK. It’s really called Journaling, but it counts!

 Who journals? Yeah. I
know, teenage girls or Christian moms with fantasies they can’t tell their
husbands. These are the tropes right? But, have you ever tried to write a short
story and found that it just mirrored whatever situation you currently find
yourself wading through? Doesn’t it seem weird that every character you’ve
written has brown eyes, brown hair, fair skin and bangs?

"Oh, idk, this is basically how I think of my latest character. Yeah, the one that lives in a house with all those writers and her girlfriend."

Maybe she really likes New Orleans, jazz music, and cats

See writing sample below:

“There is a quaint smell of piss and Bourbon. The bar is dark and still as an empty womb. When I walk inside, I know I have been here before. Perhaps, many times. I think I come here when I can’t remember why. Why do I live? Why don’t they? Why?  My heart convulses, seizing with life, flushing gore through my purple veins. I sit at the bar and try to remember. I ask for a shot of Jim Beam. The bartender nods in my direction, calling me by name.”

[from years ago...but fo realls, I shoulda written that shit down in mah journal. Also, did I really use the words "seizing with life" ?]

Seriously. The way to solve this problem is by journaling.
They always say, a writer writes. Or something clichéd along those lines. Well,
I say, a writer journals, then writes.

It’s the same concept as free-writing. In fact, journaling
is basically free-writing! It’s a way to clear your head and really write
outside yourself. I know this is scary. But, consider putting it to the test.
Write a letter to your parents or your best friend or someone else who’s close
to you. Tell them everything that’s going on: how the leaky sink keeps you up
all night, how you think your cat is retarded, how your boyfriend can’t sing
and is constantly trying to. Now, whether you send the letter or not is up to
you. The idea is just to get you into the right frame of mind. Your journal is
your friend, confidante. But, they only listen and let you figure the advice
out for yourself.

After you’ve written the letter, try brainstorming more
about that story you’ve been working on…even try editing. Look for instances
where the character hits too close to home. Then, decide if it’s relevant to the
story you’re trying to tell. If not, cut it.

So, you enjoyed your first journaling experience. Now, get
yourself a journal. It’s sometimes hard to find one that isn’t too cheesy so I
have a few other options so that you can really have the journal you want.

+Try looking online. I’ve found some places that will custom
make a journal,  but they tend to be
expensive.

+Buy a cheap notebook and decorate it however you please.
Decorate as time passes. It’s yours, do what you want.

+Moleskins are always a good choice. They come in different
colors and sizes. They are pretty convenient for the journal[er] on the fly.

+Lastly, and my personal option, refurbish an old book. Cut
the cover off, make your own blank pages, and glue the cover to those. It’s
called up-cycling. And, it’s fun. There are several different places to find
tutorials online for book binding. Also, if you live in the area, I can teach
ya!

Lavender is my fave

My best friend is one of the hardest working people I’ve ever met.

She got pregnant with my god-daughter, Aubrey, our junior year of high school and still graduated valedictorian. She gave birth to her son the summer after graduating from college (in four years) and started her first f teaching position about two weeks later. Then, she started and finished her Masters degree in two years–all while teaching ESL students full-time. This is normal for Ashley.

When we were seniors in high school, Ashley got in my face. That was not normal for Ashley. We were walking to class, she was telling me she was beginning to worry about another girl in our class who had been steadily creeping up our class rank and was clearly trying to graduate with that precious V. Ashley had held tight at number one all four years, but this girl had recently crept up to number 2. Before the pregnancy, since our freshman year, Ashley told me countless times she was going to graduate Valedictorian then go to Notre Dame, possibly with a softball scholarship. She knew what she wanted and she knew how to work for it. So, when her beautiful daughter came along and at least two of those three goals went out the window, she put all her energy toward the first one–and being a good mother, of course.

I was listening to her that day in the hallway. I heard everything she said about this girl. Ashley is in no way a mean-spirited person, but she is pretty competitive. This girl was coming for her and Ashley wasn’t angry–but she was dangerous. I did not share her love of competition. I mean, I got it. She was raised by a football coach. Our high school’s football coach. I was raised by…well, my mother. Who is also not competitive unless it’s in an argument. A character trait I, unfortunately, inherited.

I always thought a big part of the reason Ashley and I were such good friends was having nothing to compete over, which is why she surprised me so much that day on the walk to class. She played volleyball and softball; I was all about band and theater. She wanted to be valedictorian; I just wanted to get into college. We were both into leadership, but were involved in so many separate activities, we were never trying to be leaders of the same organization. There was never any reason to compete. We didn’t even like the same kinds of guys! The only man we’ve ever agreed on to this day is Optimus Prime.

In-between her hissing venom about the rank-crawler, she turned to me and said, “This is kind of your fault.”

“Um. Huh?”

“You’re probably the smartest person I know and you just refuse to work hard for anything. I shouldn’t even be thinking about her. I should be trying to beat you for valedictorian.”

I was pretty damn dumbstruck. Let’s be honest, my entire educational life, my teachers have been telling me that I was capable of more than I was giving them. Didn’t matter if I got an A or B there was still a note: Good job, but not your best. Specifically not MY best. Maybe your classmates best, Ashley Ford, but not YOUR best. And yeah, they were right. You see those little standardized tests aren’t just used to pinpoint and label the children who are a bit behind, they also stick a big fat gold star next to those students who might be baby-geniuses.

That’s right, Lucky Reader. You are now skimming the words of a bona fide baby-genius.

For all of elementary and middle school, I was given tougher books to read and more difficult spelling lists than my classmates. Then, I had to go to another classroom with a few other kids like me so we could learn at a level that was less boring for us. They eventually had to start busing us to other schools with better programs they couldn’t afford to offer us for part of our school day. I was usually the only black child in my “special” classes and definitely the poorest.

When the other kids brought in reports they’d typed on their computers at home, or had money for lunch and didn’t have to whisper, “free lunch” to the cafeteria workers who then had to look up your name in a big orange binder, I was embarrassed. I made up for my uncomfortable poorness by making the other kids laugh. I spent more time doing that than working hard, which meant I got in trouble for not doing assignments, but these classes were about potential not production so I never reached my goal of getting kicked out of the program. I missed my poor friends at my poor school a lot. I hated being a baby-genius when I was a baby.

Hear this, dear reader: I’m not a genius. I was a precocious child, I was funny, I knew much more about life than I should have or was expected to. I was a child who loved to read. I am an adult who loves to read. When you start reading your mother’s novels in the second and third grade, your ability to retain information is going to be better than your second and third grade peers. I was not great a problem-solving, seriously, fuck a context clue, I was just an exceptional remember-er. This definitely helped in school, but I wasn’t going all Good Will Hunting on the homies, or nothing. I was a smart kid, no doubt about it. Maybe even a little smarter than most, but by no means was I, or am I, a genius.

Still, my teachers, professors, mentors, and best friend were/are right. I haven’t done enough with my potential. I’ve settled in the most terrible way. I’ve settled for myself. I’ve rationalized my way into a life that’s nice, but not great. Instead of seeing stepping-stones, I see flat surfaces to rest on. Indefinitely. Not because I have no motivation, not because I don’t have desires. I do this out of a very real fear.

My greatest fear is actually having all that baby-genius potential firing through me, combining it with my secretly stubborn motivation, maybe even a little new-found competitive spirit, that elbow grease (which may actually just be cocoa butter) and missing every mark. What if I have to look into the faces of every person who pushed me up and up and up and see nothing there but disappointment in a fail investment. People are INVESTED in me. My life, my accomplishments, my failures matter to people.

I’m at this place in my life right now where I’m tired of giving people 75-90%. I’m not an adult genius, but I am kind of smart, and Haven Kimmel winked and told me I was “funnier than most”. I’m ready to try to blow somebody’s mind. Maybe not everybody’s mind, but somebody’s. Maybe even, a few somebody’s. I’m ready to start giving my life a whole lot more 100% investment.  I’m pretty sure that’s what baby-genius Ashley Ford would have wanted, the ability to be smart on her own terms. I’m pretty sure that’s what people who love me want. It’s what I want.

I’ll make good on those investments.

I spent the night before my wedding dancing for hours with my family in my living room. By dancing I mean yelling Journey lyrics until my throat was raw and shaking my arms and hair more than my hips. Everyone was there– my parents, my grandparents, my sisters, my cousins and their spouses, my aunt and uncle, my college roommate. All singing and swaying, not in unison but still together. I don’t even know how it all started; the night morphed from conversations in the kitchen to a dance circle in the next room with my eleven-year-old sister whipping her hair and shaking in the strangest ways. And then we ran. My sisters and my mother and my cousins, and I. We opened the back door and ran into the pitch black of my backyard, swallowing the darkness into our overheated arms. I ran in circles and squares, and my legs never got tired. It reminded me of the nights I spent playing capture the flag when I was younger. Like I was running that fast to get to the other side of the yard, my side, the safe side, and when I did everything would be ok because I had helped my team to win—that feeling. Except there was no flag, no team, no competition, just me and the women closest to my heart running around in the grass like kids a third of our age. And it wasn’t weird. It sounds like it now, writing it out, but it wasn’t at the time. It was like we were all releasing something, but at the same time clinging onto pieces of our bodies, memories, things we couldn’t place or recognize at the time but we knew were there and couldn’t let go.

So while most brides spend the night before their big day going to bed early and completing the final steps of a beauty regime, I spent hours writhing my body like a drowning fish and running like mad towards some unspecified place, some unspoken but understood level of winning. It felt surreal but necessary, like there was no other way that I should be spending my last single night, except right there with those exact people, doing exactly what was I was doing. I woke up the next day and married by best friend in a beautiful ceremony in which I did not cry  (because I didn’t want my fake eyelashes to fall off, but also because I couldn’t stop smiling). And at the reception, my family and I danced again. It was different that time, I think. More celebratory than theraputic.

All the women in my family are filled with intense strength and unmatched passion.  I have met few women who can handle their lives with as much grace as they do (minus the chickz, of course). I think sometimes they deal with their lives, jobs, and relationships so well, they forget about the joy that lives inside their bellies, waiting for them to let it bubble over. I’m glad that the physical distance we experience on a daily basis doesn’t affect the closeness we feel to each other, and we can still spend a night stomping around my living room and running through the grass with complete abandon, drinking deep from the pool of memories and sorrow and love and hope that binds us so close together.

Things are happening right now, important things, hard things, big things, things that tire us like the wailing of sirens in the morning. Moving is a theme of our lives right now and that’s making blogging a difficult task for us. I am speaking for all the girls here, but I think they’d agree if I said, we’ve sorta hung a sign on this virtual door saying, “Be back shortly” in loopy red writing.

Don’t get me wrong, we’re here, physically. Ask us things, take us out to coffee, tell us you love us so much. But, seeing as the website is currently under construction, we’ve kinda begun to get our own personal lives in order before getting back into the swing of this here thing. [I've mentioned this but we've got this cool web designer guy going to town on the site right now. He's like magic or a man in an orange protective helmet].

Here is a short list of what’s been going on with the Chickz:

*Abby Hines became Abby Grindle and the other five of us dressed in our wedding finery and went out to support the blushing bride.

*Lindsey has found her various game systems: Nintendo, GameCube, Sega, etc and is currently attempting to rule the world of gaming.

*Lindsey and Lora moved into the house, they are sharing the apartment below Ashley and myself (along with Mr. McNelly). Layne has yet to move but will be around August. (She’s just ‘cross town from us other gals). And, Abs is around the block with her hubby.

our house.

*I have been diligently working and searching for more work. I just secured a second job at Tradehome Shoes in the mall (Sean Lovelace, come see me and I’ll sell you some nice hiking boots and running shoes)!

*Ashley Ford has been working on decorating her new bedroom. It looks stunning thus far. She also works two big-girl jobs!

*Lastly, Lindsey, Lora and myself are trying hard to acquaint the three cats in our lives: Sampson, Pol Pot, and Ghenghiss Khat. So, needless to say, a lot of hissing and cat drama.

Dear readers, the darling few of you who have kept with us during this time of slow reading, we sincerely promise to bring you a spankin’ new website with new and stellar material soon.

We love you guys.