bird by bird

The subject line is the best. It's like Inspector Gadget.  

Grandpa Don took AL's phone out of her hand and said, "Go in the other room. I'm gonna twitter ya." Then Grandma Sharon said, "Oh, Donnie. You need an account to do that." To AL she said, "Did you know the Pope tweets?" (I think she saw it on E!)

Hey you, yes you. You person reading this. Thank you. Thank you for commenting or not. For smiling when you read or not. For thinking, "That's interesting." Or not. Thank you for sending me a message. Thank you for taking a minute to read or look. There is something so universal about the human experience, and I think that is what makes blogs work. It's why I love reading them and why I love contributing to the blogging community. It's why I can post something like "Semi-colons are dumb" and get three separate messages protesting my grammatical slander. It's why I can read about teaching with a zipper down or buying perfume and hating the smell and feel connected to someone. I can read about people I love and their lives in Paris or Alaska or Australia . Or in the bedroom next to my bedroom. Or in the cubicle next to my cubicle. Or in a trailer across town. This is just to say, thank you for blogging. And thank you for following.

Be flexible. Be understanding. Be tolerant. Let it go. Spread the word. Let's change America. Or at least, my family.

On Friday I talked KG into going to Carey's for happy hour. I called her when I was outside her house to pick her up. She answered the phone and told me, "OK I'm outside your house." We decided to meet there and hung up. It seems like whenever I need a paperclip, I can only find bobby pins. And whenever I need a bobby pin, I can only find safety pins. And whenever I need a safety pin, I can only find paperclips. It's a vicious cycle. I made my bed this morning for the first time in months. I used to make my bed every morning, but I don't anymore. I wonder what's changed. KS is at a Law School prom tonight. I don't know if that's actually what it's called. But that's what we call it. I was never asked to Prom in High School. Is that embarrassing? I went anyway. That is embarrassing. Today was a day that I was caught off guard. I wasn't expecting it, but it was triggered at Palm Sunday (or Saturday) mass tonight. "Sometimes ...

This Is Just To Say By: William Carlos Williams I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

$1.00 for who can guess what building this is in at USD.

SS hates everything about newspapers: the smell, the texture, everything. JK's socks never match. She snorts when she laughs. Everything about chewing gum makes KS gag. She likes the sound of typing keys. When asked how his day is going, IL always says, "I have no legitimate complaints". CC refuses to touch the bottoms of shoes. She needs a fan to sleep. So do I. LS never walks up the stairs, she always runs. She puts the bowls on the top rack of the dishwasher. I never do. TB always looks when I say, "Don't look now but..." GD hates the rumble bars on roads before stopping at stop signs. JN makes the best sound effects for explosions and weaponry. KG tells me, "Here's the thing" and then, "The thing is..". She spends no less than 6 minutes when brushing her teeth. MM likes sitting on a chair with her legs propped up. She looks great with her hair in a bun. EH pinches me sometime for no reason at all. JG gives tight hugs. DK prefers ...

Sometimes, when I read the mini-feed on facebook and I see that someone has posted something I was just talking/thinking about, instead of thinking, "wow, that person and I have a lot in common" I think, "Is someone following me?"

When book titles go bad.. or when publishers go bad.. or when literate American readers/consumers go bad...

DO NOT READ LS. I REPEAT DO NOT READ LS. If you are not LS..

"Whatever we may do or attempt, despite the embrace and transports of love, the hunger of the lips, we are always alone. I have dragged you out into the night in the vain hope of a moment's escape from the horrible solitude which overpowers me, and still each of us is alone; side by side but alone." -"Solitude" by Guy de Maupassant

One year ago today, I had a bad day. A very, very bad day. But I came back from class and found these beautiful tulips from my friend GG, and I was reminded of Spring and the goodness that still exists in the human heart. GG has been such an understanding, reliable, and comforting friend these past couple of years. On this day last year and still today. Thank you, GG, for being here (or there) always.

He would have been 51 today. I would have spent at least 10 minutes in the card isle of Wal-Mart trying to find the funniest/most appropriate birthday card. I would have spent another 10 minutes writing him a personalized message. In the card, I would have told him that he was turning into an old man...that he was looking more like Grandpa every day. (He was looking more like my Grandpa every day). I would have bought him a gift certificate to buy new fishing lures. And red licorice. I would have burned him a copy of the Neil Young greatest hits album that I just bought. I would have had it in the mail on Friday so he would get it by Saturday. I would have called him to wish him a happy birthday. We would have talked about the healthcare reform bill and the KU loss. Mostly he would have explained these two things to me. I would have asked questions and he would have answered them. We would have talked about the flooding at Blue Dog Lake. And Bitter Lake. He would have asked me about...

I hate Alaska.  Alaska sucks so much it has to pay people to live there. Alaska is manic depressive. Alaska breeds people like Sarah Palin.  Alaska is cold. Alaska doesn't fit in with all the other states.  Alaska is the kid at the lunch table sitting by itself because no one wants to be associated with Alaska.  Alaska is like a pimple on the forehead of Canada. Most of all, Alaska sucks because it took my friend SG away. It said, "I'm keeping her for three years. You can't see her anymore." Well... Alaska didn't know about this little thing called Skype. Skype lets us see and talk whenever we want!! Like tonight when I came home from an English potluck and SG came back from racing outhouses on ice (weird, i know). We went behind Alaska's back and we Skyped. Alaska= 0 Skype= 1

 I accidentally stumbled across an old email this afternoon. And after reading it, I realized that I'm not the same person as the person who wrote it, anymore. And that makes me happy. And that makes me a little bit sad.

My sister loves this Bob. She makes me listen to him when we drive because I gave up music for lent (but she didn't). I like this Bob too, but I have bad memories of my mom blaring him before school when I was a kid. I'm not a morning person, and I wasn't back then. I love this Bob. And I would love to be his Tambourine WOman. He's a poet who plays the guitar, piano, and harmonica... and he's from Minnesota. I couldn't dream up a better soul-mate, except maybe if he had been born 40 years later. My mom loves this Bob. She can't get enough of America's Funniest Home Videos, especially the videos of babies and wedding mishaps. I will always be thankful for this Bob making my mom laugh again (and his truly inspiring work with the Olsen twins).

I am not Irish, but I love lucky charms and I often mis-type 'me' for 'my'. (eg Where is me beer?). I also love beer and the color green. And I worked at an Irish pub as a server one summer. So no, I am not Irish. But I do love this holiday. Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

ST convinced me to trick KG and tell her she forgot my birthday. It backfired. Big Time. $25 Wal-Mart cake Big Time. She bought me this: And I want to buy her this:

Little AL and I went to a John Mayer show in Omaha. Then, the Lightfield ladies went to Minneapolis and met up with the little-er Lightfield ladies and their dad, (my uncle) Ed. We stopped at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts where I wondered why I'm not an art student. We went to an aquarium and little AL was a crab. No, she actually wasn't. She never would have posed for this picture if it had been true. I went to a fish fry at a Catholic Church. Getting drunk in Church was just the beginning. This picture tops the irony cake. Finally AO and I celebrated her "breast feeding's (almost) over party"! It was great to see her like this.

"Sex Without Love" by Sharon Olds How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Beautiful as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other's bodies, faces red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love the one who came there with them, light rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? These are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the lover for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio- vascular health--just factors, like the partner in the bed, and not the truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own ...

It's amazing to me how much personality my cats have. I guess when we named them after the geniuses behind "Cecelia", we should have known they would bit a little weird. But they are more than a little weird. Garfunkel likes carrying things around in his teeth. Little things like hair ties and underwear and big things like slippers and the bathroom rug. He drags them around the house. The rug is 3 times his size. Also, he sleeps on his back and upside down. He jumps up on our piano and walks across the keys. It makes a terrible sound, but I like to hear the piano played. Simon, on the other hand, is afraid of life. Clapping, the vacuum, outside, and sudden movements send him into hiding for days under a bed. Or one time, inside the box spring of a bed. When Simon hops up on a lap, he walks around for 10 minutes at a time getting "situated". His paws have the similar effect as a baker kneading dough. Sometimes he presses his paws in so hard t...

Kurt Vonnegut says, "Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." It's funny because this is the exact reason why I tell my students to use semicolons.

I saw John Mayer in Omaha tonight. It went a little something like this: Nothing to do Nowhere to be A simple little a kind of free Nothing to do No one but me That's is all I need I'm perfectly lonely Cause I don't belong to anyone And nobody belongs to me

PT just showed this to me. It's a video of Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing an impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. As much as it makes me happy, it makes me just as sad. It's like, She doesn't play, but he used to play enough for the both of them (and he did always grab her butt). This could have been them.

And I quote: "I stirred my last batch of gravy You don't have to be my baby"

Honesty is the best policy. Don't beat around the bush. It's better late then never. Cliche, cliche, cliche. You know what isn't cliche? Being honest, being direct, and doing it now. So that's exactly what I am going to start doing. "I'm sorry students; I spent the weekend dancing on tables at a bar in KC so I don't have your essays graded" "Yes mom, you asked, and I am going to tell you. Those do look like 'mom jeans'" "You drive me crazy" "I'm sorry ---, I appreciate the offer, but I'm just not interested" "Yes, I'm in my second year of grad school, and I just spark-noted the novel before class"  "Ouch, that hurt" Amanda being blunt: It's for your own good. You can be blunt with me, too.