Around the Subject

Full Circle

2012-02-16T21:23:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago (give or take a few months), I started my legal career as a public defender in Louisville, KY. I was newly divorced, living on my own for the first time, and ready to take on the world. That first year was the most fun I've ever had at a job -- and also the hardest I've ever worked.

Life moved itself along, both my personal and professional lives, and I left the PD's office, did some other things, then wound up TOTALLY JOBLESS for over a year. Have I mentioned that before? Sorry, I know it's dull. The only thing duller than being unemployed has to be reading about someone being unemployed.

But today we're not talking about dull unemployment, because today, ten years after I started as a public defender, I am starting over . . . as a public defender.

I've moved over to a different county, so it won't be EXACTLY the same. But it still feels strangely like going home again. I know how to do this job, and I know I can do it well. And real life gets to start up again. I don't have to check job sites, and when someone asks me what I do, I have an actual answer. And it's an answer I can be proud of.

I'm excited, and not just a little terrified, and happy. Wish me luck.

A Post in Lieu of Presents

2012-02-14T15:50:00.001-05:00

Oh, dear.

It just never occurred to me that we would be "doing" Valentine's Day this year. Not that we here at the Lewis household aren't crazy in love, but it's just an odd time. I've started a new job, but haven't gotten paid yet, so funds are, shall we say . . . lowish. I'm taking a writing class that meets on Tuesday nights and the big day just happens to fall on Tuesday this year. And a few years ago, after a particularly not good Valentine's restaurant experience, we have been staying home and cooking a nice dinner instead.

Imagine my surprise when my Valentine announced that he had made as-yet-unrevealed dinner plans for us, and I think there might be a present involved.

I've spent the day wracking my brain, trying to think of a way to come up with a present. I did a lot of handmade stuff for Todd for Christmas, so I'm a bit tapped out of ideas. And I just can't bear to subject the poor guy to homemade granola bars for Valentine's Day AGAIN. (Yeah, I may have done that one more than once.)

I was going to crochet a hat, because crocheting is so fast, but a couple of hours into it I realized what I had forgotten -- I suck at crocheting hats. I don't know what it is, but there's some mental block that I have. They always turn out looking not quite like hats. So I abandoned that and moved on to thinking of presents I can pay for without a paycheck. I thought about getting some nice locally roasted coffee beans and maybe some cool candy bars from Trader Joe's. OR, maybe a cool new beer, or a magazine subscription to one of those outdoorsy magazines he likes. So I dash out to the car for a whirlwind shopping trip, and . . . the car won't start. Like, at all.

Now here I am, grounded for the day, with no Valentine's present for my sweetie. Not even a card. And here's the thing: my sweetie is AWESOME. He makes me laugh. He's smarter than anyone I've ever met. He's my fiercest advocate and my very, very best friend. He totally deserves a present.

In writing class, I've been working on a poem, and I don't think it's very good. The trouble with my awesome sweetie is, he's too awesome to put into a poem. But that's all I have today, just one little substandard poem.

About You

I tried to write a poem about you
But I wrote about the wind and its cooling breeze, its whispers that drift through my hair,
And frigid gusts that nearly knock me over.

I wanted to write about you
But kept thinking of the ocean, the dark depths that frighten me, waves that carry me,
Soft tickles that caress my sandy toes.

I meant to write about you
But the sun was insistent, so I wrote its blinding brightness, its scalding heat,
And its kiss on my summer skin.

I wanted to write you, but I wrote this --
This poem that I wrote when I tried to write a poem about you.

Happy Valentine's Day, Todd.

Namaste, Bitches

2012-02-13T11:29:00.000-05:00

Please forgive me if you find this post title offensive; I saw it on a t-shirt, and have been dying for one ever since. I just feel that it sums up my philosphy of, well, everything.

I may bow to what's honorable in you, but there's no need to get all touchy-feely about it.

In the Great Year of Unemployment, yoga became a big part of my life. I had been to a few classes before, but it had never really stuck. This time, thanks to A LOT of free time, a desperate need for some emotional peace, and a fantastic teacher (Hi, Rebecca!), it stuck. It was very, very sticky.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first: yoga is great exercise. It will make you sweat, and make you out of breath, and you'll be sore the next day. (There's really no way make that sentence non-suggestive, so just go with it, 'mkay?)

But what I have fallen in love with is a lot less obvious.

First of all, yoga completely changed how I feel about my body. Truthfully, I have spent 38 years hating my body. Mostly, it sucks. It's too big, both in height and weight, and it's very slow-moving. It can't catch or hit anything that is thrown at it. It trips a lot. It gets tired way before anyone else's does.

But in yoga, I discovered some things to like about it. It's pretty strong, and it's surprisingly flexible. When I'm patient with it, it will sometimes do things that I never thought it could (camel pose, I'm looking at you). When there's nothing to trip over, it's graceful, and it has some great balance when it's allowed to really concentrate.

These don't seem like big things. But armed with just these few things to like about my body, I started to stand a little straighter and prouder, and feel just a little more at peace with it. I almost started to apologize to this poor ol' misunderstood body for being so mean to it all these years.

Then there are the spiritual aspects of yoga. The Southern Baptist Convention can denounce yoga practitioners as heathen she-devils all they want, but yoga brought me closer to God. It's a discipline that demands patience with yourself, the universe, and God, if you believe in one. It also stresses acceptance of things as they are, and a practice of living in the moment, being aware and conscious of your present.

I'm probaby not expressing this very well. But I can tell you, on a spiritual level, yoga helped to fill in a gap in me. It didn't replace my religious beliefs, it just rounded them out, made them more personal. My time on that yoga mat became my time to be with God, to grieve for lost things, to rejoice for what I have been given, and to listen for what might bring me peace.

'Cause you know, everybody could use a little more peace.

Namaste.

A Friday Morning Tale of Woe

2012-02-10T08:34:00.000-05:00

I have a cold.

Yes, I realize that hardly qualifies as a "tale of woe," but it is a particularly sucky cold, especially since I am now gainfully(ish) employed and do not yet have sick days. So I am at work(ish), sneezing and sniffling and looking "fried," as one new coworker informed me. (Thanks for that, by the way, coworker.)

My teeth hurt.

This might seem to you to be unrelated to a cold, but according to Dr. Interwebs, that is a sure sign of a sinus infection. Did you know that? I surely did not, but when I realized I was seriously contemplating pulling all the teeth out of my mouth with my own two hands, I looked it up. And we all know that if Dr. Interwebs says it, it must be true. Anyway, they really hurt. Last night I found myself rubbing some kind of sore throat spray on my gums, thinking it would numb them, and all it did was make my lips numb. Really, really numb.

So last night my inner, crunchy yoga-loving self decided that I should pull out my neti pot and try to fix up my errant sinuses. For my less crunchy readers, let me just briefly explain: the neti pot is a little genie's lamp looking thing that you fill with hot saltwater and pour into one side of your nose and let it drain out the other side.

Yeah, right about now you are thinking just how sexy I am, aren't you? I thought so.

Anyway, I got out the little pot last night and poured it into one nostril (I hate that word. Nostril. Yuck.), and waited for it to drain out the other side. And waited.

And waited.

And the water never drained out. It didn't go anywhere. My poor, poor little sinuses are so swollen that even WATER can't get past 'em.

This morning I decided to try again. It just seemed like the crunchy, yoga-loving thing to do. I got the water really hot, stirred it up with the salty stuff, and poured it into a nostril. (yucky word again)

And that hot, salty, water promptly backed up and refused to drain out the other side again, sending half of it gooshing out the original nostril (yuck) and the other half going down my throat.

Dude. That hurt.

I totally water-boarded myself. At 6:00 a.m.. With hot saltwater.

From there, the day can only get better.

Sometimes TV Makes You Think

2012-02-08T21:43:00.001-05:00

Todd went away for a cross-country skiing weekend last weekend. (I think he had to go damn near to Canada to find snow.) I spent the weekend recovering from three whole weeks of being gainfully employed. Goodness me, was I tired. So tired that by 10:00 on Friday I was yawning over my girls-night-out beer and had to come home. Saturday I made it through girls-night-out wine until 8:00. Yep, all the crazy cool kids are jealous of me and my wild partying ways.

Catching up on important TV is about as wild as I get these days. Weekday evenings are so busy that I have to watch everything on the weekend, and let me tell you, it takes some serious time management skills to get it all in. There's Switched at Birth and Glee, then there's Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries. Not to mention Once Upon a Time, House, and The New Girl. And I haven't even started the new season of Downton Abbey.

We have to watch Justified during the week because it's just that awesome.

This weekend, since I was already on a couch and TV binge, I watched Tombstone, because I just finished a fan-tucking-fabulous book about Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, and I can't wait until the February Reading Round-up to tell you about it. Doc Holliday is my new obsession. Quite a change of pace from my other literary obsessions, like vampires, and demons and ghosts and things that go bump in the night.

Speaking of demons . . . (and no, I'm not going to talk about Republicans again, at least in this post) I discovered a fan-tucking-fabulous British TV show on Netfllix called Apparitions. It was cancelled after six episodes (probably because it was so good and I liked it) but man, were those six episodes something! It's about a priest who does exorcisms and becomes wrapped up in a war between Satan and God. If you are a fan of scary possessed characters, you'll love it.

I'm not Catholic -- I'm perfectly happy being Presbyterian, or what my father calls "almost Catholic" -- but I was amazed by the intensity of the ritual and prayer engaged in by the priests and nuns on the show. It was full of scenes in which one priest would dash in and out of a room, yelling "you stay here and pray!" in the same tone that an action character would say "you stay here and set that bomb!" or whatever action characters say.

It was very exciting. There was one scene in which a priest PICKED UP an athiest doctor and, I shit you not, THREW her out of the room so he could keep up the praying. There was praying with rosaries, and crucifixes, and praying that made people's EYES BLEED. Several times I found myself yelling at the TV, "PRAY HARDER, PRIEST GUY!"

Man, I wish I could pray like that. It would come in so handy. If people made me mad I could PRAY at them. And if some situation needed fixin', I could be all, "hold this while I pray about this right quick." I could be like a praying superhero. As things are, my praying is more . . . um . . . we'll call it subtle. I've never had to throw anyone out of the room to do it.

Subtle praying is very polite, but maybe it doesn't get the best results. 'S something for this almost-Catholic Presbyterian to think about.

What Goes on in My Head When I Blog

2012-02-01T18:05:00.002-05:00

Writing is a strange thing.

I can have millions and millions of ideas hanging out in my head, having a big old kegger of a party, and the minute I sit down to actually write, all those damn ideas have drunk their fill and passed out for the night. Then sometimes I think I have nothing at all to say, and I pick up a pen, and something comes out. Not necessarily a good something, but a something.

I decided to take a creative writing class this year to try to even things out a bit -- actually, who am I kidding? I decided to take a writing class to actually make me sit down and write. As an angsty teenager/young adult, I wrote ALL THE TIME. Granted, it was all crap, but I produced mounds of it. Picture Danielle Steele as an angsty young adult poet, and that's about the volume (and quality) of stuff I could churn out. The less angsty, adult me is lucky to end up with one poem a year.

Last night was the first night that we actually "workshopped" in class, meaning we sat around and read our stuff and asked for criticism. I hadn't participated in such a thing since college, and had forgotten how unsatisfying it can be. When I am told my piece is good, I assume they just don't want to hurt my feelings, and when they criticize it, I assume they want to get smacked.

Just kidding about the smacking part. Sort of. I promise I won't smack anybody in this class. I mean, there's that one really annoying guy, but he's not in my workshopping group, so I'm pretty sure I can avoid smacking him. I'm almost positive.

Last night I read a poem I am working on -- I keep working on poems to avoid trying to start a novel -- and I kept asking them if it was just too syrupy sweet, and they kept saying no, and I kept thinking maybe they're wrong, and at the end of the night I'm still wondering if it's too syrupy sweet. I wish I could call my college poetry writing professor and ask her. She totally made me cry back then with her razor-sharp criticism, and I know she would tell me the truth.

She would also tell me that "razor-sharp criticism" is trite and overused. And I think she'd be right. I knew as I was typing "razor-sharp criticism" that it is trite and overused. Hell, I think I've probably used it before myself. But I just went right ahead and wrote "razor-sharp criticism" anyway because it's my blog and I don't care what she says. (If you read over this post, you'll find lots of such word choices. "Churn out," for instance. Really, there has got to be a better synonym for "produce" to use in this context, and if you can think of one, please let me know down there in the comments.)

But I honestly do want honest criticism. (See, now I'm wondering if using two variations of the word "honest" in that one short sentence is a nice, quirky construction or just a plain old annoying redundancy.) I want the kind of honest criticism that results in a big, fat book deal, hordes of adoring readers, and perhaps J.K. Rowling calling me up on occasion just to chat because we are both such popular and lauded writers that regular people just can't relate to us.

I don't think that's too much to ask, really. I paid my $99 for the class, so I deserve it.

Well. Actually, it was $75, because I got an alumni discount, and I didn't actually pay it, because it was a gift (thanks, Mom!), but still.

(Sigh) Writing, it sure is strange.

January Reading Round-up

2012-01-31T10:13:00.000-05:00

I read a lot.

No, really -- I don't think you understand. I read A LOT. If books were methamphetamine, all my teeth would have fallen out and I would on the Walgreens hit list for buying too much Sudaphed.

I read so much that it has recently occurred to me that I have probably completely forgotten about alot of what I've read. I wish I had been keeping a log or something about the stacks and stacks of books that I go through, like my best friend from college who has multiple binders logging all her reading experiences. But since I haven't done that, I have decided to do monthly review posts of what I've been reading. So here we go!

I started the month with book that has been getting alot of good press and decent reviews, The Last Werewolf. It had all the things I usually like -- a supernatural aspect, nice long length, decent writing, etc. And, well, it sucked. It sucked so bad that I didn't even finish it, which is odd for me. Man, was that one boring werewolf. I gave up about a third of the way in because I was just tired of long monologues about how difficult it is to be a werewolf, and be the only one left. Sheesh, Werewolf, just grow a pair and get on with life, okay?

After that, I raced through a bunch of sort of atmospheric mysteries. The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes, Don't Breathe a Word, The Cloud of Unknowing, In Search of the Rose Notes, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter -- all decent, dark mysteries. I enjoyed them all, and would recommend any of them, but doubt I'll remember much about them in a few months.

One mystery that stood out, though, was Before I Go To Sleep. It was awesome. The main character is a woman who, after an accident, cannot form new memories. She starts keeping a journal of her daily life, and through the journal she starts to realize that things are not what they seem. Granted, it's not a totally original idea; the Guy Pierce movie Memento did it better, and Fifty First Dates did it funnier. Nevertheless, this book grabbed me and I couldn't wait to keep reading it and see what happened. You can't ask for much more from a book than that.

We can put The Kingdom of Childhood in the category of Not At All What I Was Expecting. An odd little book about a female teacher having an affair with a young male student. For some reason I was expecting the writer to want me to be sympathetic with the teacher, and it took me awhile to realize she didn't. In fact, I hated that teacher. But the portrayal of the student was wonderful. Overall, I liked it quite a bit, and as I write this, I'm realizing that there was a lot in it to ponder. And I like pondering.

The White Devil was a book I had been looking forward to. Justin Evans wrote one of my all-time favorites, A Good and Happy Child, and I had great expectations for his new one. I think my expectations were a little TOO great, because even though it was good, and spooky, and nicely written, I was kind of disappointed. I wanted it to make me think, like Good and Happy Child, and it just didn't. It was a nice, haunted boarding school story, but I'm not dying to tell people about it like I did with Good and Happy Child (that one's a great read around Halloween, by the way).

I finally got around to reading another book that's getting attention from literary types, The Night Circus, and for once, I thought the literary types were spot on. This book was fanTASTic. I was terribly sorry to see it end. The basics: two magicians stage a contest between their students, but don't tell them (or the reader) what the contest really IS. They have to figure out the rules as they go along, and as you read the book, you have to figure out what the HECK is happening. It's hard to describe, but wonderful to read. It was one of those rare books that made me truly irritated that such places and people don't exist in the real world. Trust me, you should read this book

It was hard to find a follow-up to The Night Circus. I tried to keep up the circus theme with The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb: A Novel. It was a nice book, and it sent me straight to Wikipedia to find out everything I could about Tom Thumb, P.T. Barnum, and the title character, Lavinia Bump. There's not much to find out, actually, hence the title inclusion of "A Novel." The author chooses to focus on the relationship between Lavinia and Barnum, so ends the book long before Lavinia's death. I'm actually hoping she writes a sequel, her treatment of Lavinia as a character was so engaging.

If you've stuck with me through all this wordiness, let me sum it up for you: do NOT read The Last Werewolf. DO read The Night Circus -- heck, you could even read it twice.

Exciting 2012 Thing #1

2012-01-30T16:25:00.000-05:00

A post or so ago, I mentioned that there is some fun business going on in these parts, and today I'm here to tell you about one of them.

This funness starts out with some not-so-much-funness. As you may or may not know, for the past year I've been playing violin with the local Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Orchestra. (I play a very sketchy second violin, only because there is no part for third or fourth violin.) I've been having tons of fun doing so, despite being neither Baptist, or a seminary student-- I suppose I am Southern, so that counts for something, right?

Well, evidently it doesn't count for much, and most of the other orchestra members were in the same boat, because a few weeks after our last concert back in November, we got dumped.

As in, kicked to the curb.

As in, don't let the music stands hit you on the way out.

It was a sad situation; many of the members had been playing together for years and years, and the orchestra itself has been in existence since, oh, sometime in the early 1980s, I think. Add to this personal sad situation the general community sadness of losing our professional orchestra this year as well.

But! This story does not remain sad, oh, no it doesn't! Because this group of saucy musicians (and me) -- those Formerly Known As The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Orchestra -- decided to stand up and FIGHT! for our RIGHT! to PAAAAR . . TY! (Thank you Beastie Boys, for that inspirational tune.)

We have reformed, in an as-yet unnamed, entirely musician-run community orchestra. (Trust me, a snazzy new name is on its way.) It's terribly exciting. Never again will we be at the mercy of another organization to tell us when, where, or what to play. We will be entirely independent, which is more rare than you might think. Professional orchestras, as well as most amateur orchestras, are funded, and therefore controlled, by other, non-musician entities. We're going to be way cooler than that.

The exciting-est part for me is that I get to make up for my lack of stellar musical skills with my legal skills by being a part of the Interim board. I'm so proud to be part of this endeavor, and will be sharing upcoming concert dates with you, the loyal readers of Around the Subject. Be looking for a performance in the month of May!

(Maybe we'll just do that Beastie Boys tune. Hmmm . . . . )

Sunday Musings -- on Politics and Prejudice

2012-01-29T20:44:00.000-05:00

One day last week, I said something really stupid. (Well, I probably said several stupid things, but one sticks out and that's the one I'm going to tell you about.) In training at my new job, I spend every single minute of every single day sitting with the only other trainee. We aren't having in-depth conversations, but we've gotten friendlier as the training has progressed, and have laughed and made casual conversation pretty easily. A couple of times current events have been mentioned in passing, and we've very superficially talked about some of the recent Repubican debates.

During one such conversation, I said, sort of offhand, "I assume you're a Democrat, right?"

He looked SUPER puzzled, and said, "No. Why?"

Oops. Foot. In. Mouth.

Now, I will say that there were some legitimate reasons for me to assume his political leanings were similar to mine. For instance, he had mentioned that his father is in an appointed governmental position, and our state government is, at least technically, Democrat-run.

But the honest truth is, I assumed he was a Democrat because I like him, and found him to be friendly and easy to get along with. That's about it. It didn't occur to me that he could be those things, and also be a Republican.

In my awesome Sunday School class, we are reading and discussing a great book by Carlton Pearson, called The Gospel of Inclusion. In it, he discusses why he doesn't believe in Hell, and why he does believe that everyone -- every single person -- is already "saved." I love that while reading this book, I can spend a lot of time nodding and agreeing with his ideas. Does God love people of all religions? Yep! All races? Yep! All sexual orientations? Yep! All political affiliations? Ye -- wait, what?

I guess for all my protestations that I am super inclusive and accepting, I have my own areas in which I'm not very accepting at all. And there's not really a good excuse for that. It's something I know I need to work on. Truthfully, I need to work on WANTING to work on it.

So that's my Sunday confession.

Geez. I feel like I need to go hug a Republican or something.

Employed!

2012-01-24T21:49:00.000-05:00

You should all feel sorry for my poor little blog, abandoned here for over a WEEK while I jaunt off to a shiny new job.

The job, well . . . I'm not sure how shiny it really is. It's hard to wrap my mind around a position in which I am hired for a maximum of nine months and not a minute more. It feels not much like a real job. Sort of "job-ish," if you will. So the job search continues, because I don't know about you, but I hope to live a lot longer than nine more months.

I was terribly worried about adjusting again to the working life, but I think I'm doing ok. In fact, it occurred to me earlier this evening that I have WAY more energy than when I was at home all day. And more energy is a good thing, because boy howdy, have things picked up around here. I shall be filling you in on some exciting new things in the next few days.

In the meantime, have a gander at a moment from my first days of work at My New Job-ish Activity.

Co-worker: So, how many kids do you have?

Me: None.

CoW: None?!?

Me: No, not yet -- maybe eventually, but I'm getting kind of old, I guess. (me, chuckling at my own attempt at a little self-deprecating humor)

CoW: Why, how old are you?

Me: 38.

CoW: Oh. Yeah, you are getting kind of old.

Awesome.

Well, awesome-ish.

The End of the Lost Year

2012-01-16T16:44:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow I will report to a job for the first time in 13 months.

When I lost my job last year, I never dreamed that it would take me over a year to find a job, and that when I found one, it would be a temporary (9 months, to be exact) position with no benefits and a substantially lower salary than the one I lost.

No doubt about it, the career path I was on is over. That's not to say my CAREER is over, but that particular path? Yeah, it's pretty much sunk. And much of the past year has been consumed, at least mentally, with coming to grips with that.

I could give you a long examination of how I've dealt with it and how it has felt, etc., etc., and in fact, I've written such a thing here and deleted it three times already. Maybe eventually I'll figure out a non-boring way to write that.

But today, I'm just as nervous as that first day of school. I'm nervous about sleeping through my alarm, about finding my way to the right building, about what to wear, about whether I should take my lunch, who I'll sit next to, who I'll make friends with, and a whole list of things I can't even articulate.

Good grief. I think I'll go lay out my clothes.

Crunchy Times at the Lewis House

2012-01-12T18:43:00.001-05:00

I never thought, in million years, that I would ever desribe myself as "crunchy." You know, like one of those granola, run your car on discarded french-fry oil types? I always thought I leaned more toward the high-maintenance end of the spectrum, what with pedicures, and a healthy Sephora addiction.

But lately . . . well, I'm starting to at least sway over to crunchy. I guess it started with wanting to make something for Todd, something homemade, for Valentine's Day last year, and finding recipes for homemade granola and energy bars. Those were highly successful around here, and are in regular recipe rotation.

Then one day I ran out of my favorite Bath and Body Works sugar scrub, and knew I was too cheap to replace it, so I started looking into how to make it myself, and realized it was totally cheap and easy -- and makes a fantastic Christmas gift, too!

THEN, I read about this method of facial cleansing with a mixture of grocery store oils, and tried that, and it is awesome, and along with the homemade facial oil I made, makes my skin all soft and pretty.

From there, I was sold. I now spend a lot of time gathering recipes for homemade bath and body products. So far, I've made the facial cleansing oil, facial moisturizing oil, sugar scrub, aftershave, shaving nick salve, mouthwash, lotion, and body oil. All completely natural, and custom-scented with essential oils. And I don't know if this is too much info for you about my personal hygiene, but I'm TOTALLY considering making my own deodorant.

The more I read about essential oils and natural herbs and remedies and such, the more interesting it is. As a lifetime migraine sufferer, I'm really starting to think about all the junk that I put in my body -- both through foods and prescription drugs -- along with all the junk I slather ON my body. I mean, I love a good fancy-smelling lotion as much as the next person, but I can't even pronounce half of what's in the ingredients list. And I just don't think that all those chemicals can be good for me. I'd really like to see what my poor little brain would do if it is given a chance to be prescription-drug-free. People survived for many generations without all the fanciness that we get from the pharmacy these days.

And, yeah, I'm tired of giving half my money to the insurance company and the other half to doctors and pharmacist.

So now, I'm giving a lot of thought to learning as much as I can about all this to see just how healthy and homemade the Lewis House can become. It's way too late for me to go to medical school, but I'm still plenty young enough to become a certified herbalist, and just HOW cool would that be?

Pretty cool, I think. (Although I'm still not planning to give up on that Sephora addiction any time soon.)

The Perils of Being a Trial Widow

2012-01-09T23:00:00.000-05:00

So, at the risk of opening myself up to home invasion burglers and such, I'm going to report that Todd has jaunted off to the wilds of Hardin County for a trial which is expected to take three weeks to complete, leaving me all alone -- and lonely -- to hold down the for. It's a bit worrying, because the last time he left home for a trial, which was just a couple of months ago, all the proverbial hell broke loose around here.

See, before I came along, Todd had a cat, Tom. And Tom survived the arrival of not one, but two dogs to the household. But he was really always Todd's cat. After living with me for eight or nine years, he started to let me pet him, but only if I were lying down. Standing up, I scared him.

Todd had been gone in trial for about a week when Tom found his way out of the basement door. I wasn't terribly worried at first, because he was kind of indoor/outdoor cat, but he stayed gone for a long time. For days and days I left the basement door open, hoping he would come home.

On one of those days, I made plans to meet my mother in Richmond for lunch, and becaue it was supposed to rain, I left my spoiled dogs, Penny and Sam, in the house. I got halfway to Richmond, and got a phone call from the electric company that he was there to fix the water line (which had conveniently sprung a leak the minute Todd left town, resulting in a no-water house for several days) but wasn't going to get out of his truck with "that dog" in the yard barking at him.

"Wait, what? There's a dog in my yard?"

"Yes, a big black dog, and he looks like he's going to bite me."

Unfortunately, I couldn't really reassure the guy that if it was, indeed, my dog, he didn't have to worry, because yes, if it was Sam, he would most definitely bite some random LG&E guy. (Beware, prospective home invasion burglers.) So I turned all the way around and came home, where Sam had let himself BACK in the house through the open basement and looked me in the eye and flat-out LIED about being outside in the first place.

The next night, after scouring our block yelling for Tom with no luck, I went to bed, Sam and Penny tucked into their beds next to me, and we all went to sleep. Then, I woke up around 3 a.m. to the sound of a barking dog. One that sounded strangely familiar. I turned on the light to see Penny blinking at me, but no Sam. So I ran outside -- in my NIGHTIE -- to find Sam barking his fool head off, running up and down the street.

I think he was looking for Tom. And I think at some point, he decided that Todd was also AWOL, because he was just crazy until Todd came home, escaping the house left and right, running away from me, and generally actin' a fool. It was a mess.

Finally, Todd finished the stinkin' trial and came home, and Sam calmed down to his normal self (allowing Penny to go back to being the "bad" dog of the house). But, sadly, Tom never came home. Ever. And it's still very sad and I still feel guilty somehow -- I'm pretty convinced that Tom decided Todd was never coming home and living with me was just too horrendous to contemplate, so he ran away.

You can't really blame me for being kind of nervous now with Todd being gone. If he comes home this time to a missing pet . . . well, it's going to be tough to explain. If you happen to see any loose animals in your neighborhood, CALL ME. It might be one of mine, missing their Dad.

Out in the World Without Training Wheels

2012-01-05T23:14:00.001-05:00

This past year, for my birthday Todd gave me a fancy new road bike. It's awsomely fancy. Like, in a totally girly way. It's white, with black flowers -- yes, FLOWERS -- painted on it, with some red accents. Awesome. I was very excited that the salesman talked us into an actual "girl" bike. I mean, yeah, I'm tall enough to ride a men's bike, but I'm totally a girly girl at heart.

So, now that I have a real road bike, Todd was determined that I learn to ride in clips. (For the non-bikers, this means your shoes are clipped in to be attached to your pedals.)

Now. Let's just get it out there. I often fall down. I trip over things. Recently, I fell off an ottoman -- for no apparent reason. I have -- no joke -- wrecked a STATIONARY bike. So, this clip thing is no small deal.

What ensued was a series of what we now fondly call "low-speed crashes." These are the ones where you glide slowly to a stop, realize you can't get your foot loose, and have time to analyze exactly where on your body you are going to hit the ground, the curb, or whatever happens to be nearby. Low-speed they might be, but they hurt like the dickens, and leave some impressive bruises. They sometimes result in persons-who-are-definitely-not-me sitting on the same curb and having a good cry.

But, to my surprise, I learned. And learned to actually like the clips. And now I even go on solo rides in the neighborhood. As in, by MYSELF. Up HILLS. It's shocking. And a little scary. Sometimes cars like to go by really fast, and sometimes TARC buses like to share a lane that really isn't big enough to share. I'm generally a very meek and accomodating bike rider; I like to just stay out of everyone's way and try not to be noticed. I leave the road rage to Todd, he's WAY better at it.

Today, though, I went for a ride just as all the parents were lining up their cars for pick-up at the elementary school near my house. I was cruising along, enjoying the brisk air, feeling proud for riding my bike all alone, when some dadblamed mom whipped her car out of the line, directly in front of me, causing me to swerve, yell, "HEY!" and frantically reach for my nonexistent horn to beep at her. I finally managed to unclip and come to a screeching stop, and I opened my mouth to yell some of my best ex-public defender curses at her, when I realized there was a whole school's worth of elementary school students staring at me. So I contented myself with an inward fist shake, and blurted out, "Thanks a LOT!" As I rode away, I half-yelled, "SOME people need to watch where they're GOING!"

She never even turned around to see my first ever biker's road rage. And I guess as rages go, it was pretty lame. But when I finally stopped fuming, it occurred to me -- Todd's going to be so proud.

Well, hello, 2012!

2012-01-04T21:28:00.004-05:00

Well . . . so . . . here I am!

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's been an age since I've posted on here. Like, multiple ages. Like, I tried to erase the date of the last post in the hopes that I could convince you that it hadn't really been that long.

Things are really different than when I posted last. Mostly, I'm different. After suddenly losing my job on December 15, 2010, (more on that at a later date), I've spent the past year unemployed. It's a position I never thought I would find myself in, and it's been an experience that has taught me a tremendous amount about myself and my life (more on that, later, too).

I've been telling myself for the past few months that as soon as I got a new job, everything would not only change back to the life I had before, but that it would change into something even better. And when that happened, I thought I would start writing this blog again. But here's the thing that I've decided is true: life is what it is, in spite of all the things we wish it might be, and if we don't just go ahead and live it -- well, we'll be missing out on the only life w e get.

So, if last year is to be fondly known in my history as "The Lost Year 2011," 2012 is going to be "The Year of Living 2012."

And, yeah, I'm a-gonna blog about it.

2009-10-25T21:48:00.002-04:00

Well, okay, so I didn't do the promised vacation blogging. Suffice to say, it was a great trip, we had a wonderful time, blisters and all.

Life is just so busy, and so blessedly full, and blogging doesn't seem to get squeezed in very often, so I'm on hiatus for the near future. Thanks for reading!

Drive-by Blogging

2009-09-10T20:16:00.004-04:00

Okay, is anybody besides me surprised that there's no internet access in Yosemite? Seriously, I think I thought I'd be able to whip out the laptop on any random hike. Turns out, not so much. Right now I'm on my 15 minutes of alloted internet time at the Yosemite Park Library, where they have an actual CARD CATALOG. Like, with cards.

So here's the deal: having a great time, this place is gorgeous, survived backpacking, wish you were here.

More to come, with pictures out the wazoo.

Oh, I'm IN The Blogging Spirit Now

2009-09-04T20:50:00.003-04:00

Okay, taking a quick break from packing to say . . .

WTF, America? Seriously? The myriad of problems in the world, and we have to fight about Obama -- AKA Potus, AKA Leader-of-the-Free-World-and-Therefore-a-Pretty-Important-Person-Whether-You-Like-It-Or-Not -- addressing the school kids of the nation to talk about improving the SCHOOLS?!

And I had to say a big ol' no-fucking-way when I read a boatload of online comments about how inappropriate it is that Obama interrupt MATH to address the kids. I don't think math is what we have to worry about; I mean, obviously we have done a nationwide turnaround in our math skills; it seems that now we can actually count up a MAJORITY correctly.

I did give some thought to whether I would feel the same way if A)I had a child myself; and B) it was GWB addressing said child. And I came to the conclusion that I would not object to my child hearing the address.

And when said child got home, I would say, "Said Child, that man that addressed your class today? That man is a moron -- no, really, a MORON. And in this house, we don't vote for morons. Now go practice your violin."

Brush Off the Cobwebs and Come On In

2009-09-03T22:47:00.003-04:00

Hello? Hello? Is anybody here?

Whew! It sure is dusty around the ol' blog. I haven't been here in an age. I've been suffering from a little blog fatigue, I think, and am trying to decide what, if anything, I want and plan for Around the Subject. Partly I wonder if you are tired of reading about my life, and partly I'm tired of writing about it. Partly I've let the blog become more of a day-to-day-what-I'm-doing kind of thing than I intended originally. Partly I want to stop thinking and talking about writing fiction and start writing fiction.

In the immediate moment, though, I am getting ready to go on vacation, and I really like doing vacation updates, . . . SO, if there's anybody still around these parts, check back in the next ten days or so, and I'll try to have some fun stories and pictures.

Oh, and on this vacation, I will be BACKPACKING for two nights. As in, PEE IN THE WOODS-type backpacking. If nothing else, you'll want to hear about that, right?

Working on Career #2

2009-07-14T22:27:00.002-04:00

I finished my one year of violin lessons as required by my 101 Things list, and while I knew I definitely wanted to continue with lessons, I wasn't particularly sold on the specific lessons I was taking. Over the past year, I saw two things which made me really want to do MORE on the violin than what I was doing. The first was the TOTALLY ROCKIN' electric violin player with the Led Zeppelin cover band. Man, was she the coolest.

The second was Ben Sollee, who is ONLY the most awesome, kick-all-kinda-ass cellist I've ever seen. He was the co-coolest, definitely.

So, as of last week, I started with a new violin teacher, who is letting me do some celtic music, lots of fun duets, and is generally helping me with being a musician, rather than just playing a bunch of notes. I'm pretty excited about it.

I'm thinking someday, when I'm . . . oh, maybe 50-ish . . . I can be in my own heavy metal-bluegrass-celtic jam band, and I'll have my own electric violin, and I will be the coolest, too.

You'll all come see me, won't you?

We're All Friends Here, Aren't We?

2009-07-13T21:22:00.003-04:00

So . . . if you're one of my two, maybe three loyal readers, you will have noticed that Around the Subject was locked up tight and inaccessible for awhile. Yeah. I have reason to believe that a defendant I have been prosecuting for nearly four years found this blog, and it bothered me a bit. But, after considering things four a few weeks, I decided that what damage was done was done already, and also, that I'm not really ashamed of anything I put on this blog. Trust me, things I am ashamed of are not displayed here for the world (or my three loyal readers) to see.

Seriously, do you think I would be silly enough to tell you on this blog that I ate out of a bowl the other night that Penny had licked, without realizing it at first, but then even after I realized it I decided that yes, the damage had already been done, and I might as well finish what I was eating? 'Cause I'm a little ashamed of that.

Are you sensing a theme here? A damage-has-already-been-done theme? Me, too. So it shouldn't surprise you that since the chips-salsa-margarita damage was already done this afternoon, I may as well do some chocolate cookie damage later on.

I Don't Know About You, But I Would Be Inspired . . .

2009-07-12T17:24:00.002-04:00

Overheard in Sunday School:

Sunday School teacher: Do you know what "inspirational" means?

Kindergarten kid: That means that Jesus can buy everyone a new car.

Finding a Little More Me

2009-06-10T22:07:00.003-04:00

Starting when I was an angsty adolescent, and all the way through college, it seemed to me that I "thought" in poetry. That's not really impressive, because my poetry was always of the free verse variety -- it's not like I was speaking in iambic pentameter or anything.

But somewhere along the line, after college, I sort of lost that thought process, and I've spent all the years since alternating between accepting that as something in my past and trying desperately to get it back.

So imagine my surprise when suddenly, this week, little snippets have been coming along. Last night, as I was falling asleep, I was composing a poem, and I kept thinking, "I should get up and write that down." Of course, I didn't, and of course, this morning, I couldn't remember it at all.

But this afternoon, I DID stop and write down a snippet, and damned if it didn't turn into a whole poem -- the first in years.

Granted, it's a very bad poem. But it IS a poem, and it has a little of that voice that I used to have, and that makes me happy. That makes me feel like I've reconnected with an old friend.

Cool.

On Cheating on My Blog

2009-06-09T22:26:00.002-04:00

That damn Facebook. I resisted for so long, even after creating my profile, and just recently I've gotten hooked. Now I find myself thinking in Facebook-speak:

Kara Lewis is watching TV.

Kara Lewis is blogging.

Kara Lewis is wondering why she didn't eat some chocolate cake earlier.

Kara Lewis is wishing it was Friday already.

Kara Lewis is ready for bed.

Kara Lewis is going to bed now.

Kara Lewis is really going this time.

You get the idea. Aside from being just generally annoying, such thoughts make me think I am channeling Bob Dole, which is just scary.

On Stupid Book Covers

2009-06-04T22:25:00.002-04:00

This past Sunday afternoon I had a rare opportunity to mosey around a bookstore with absolutely nowhere else I was "supposed" to be. Why I picked the worst bookstore in town for that outing, I don't know.

As I usually do, in recent years, anyway, I went to the sci-fi section first. I swear, every time I look around the sci-fi section of a bookstore or library I realize why I resisted my natural sci-fi leanings for so long:

It's the covers. Man, the covers of sci-fi novels suck. There are two kinds. Either a woman in a ren-fair costume with long, flowing hair and a heaving bosom, or a big bunch of spaceship and metal. Both equally embarassing.

On this trip, I was really excited to find a book by Robert Heinlein, since he's one of my favorite classic sci-fi guys, and a lot of his books are out of print. This was a single volume of two new-to-me novellas, one featuring a favorite character from some of his other novels. It seemed like a no-brainer.

But the cover? It featured an idyllic, Utopian landscape, with a man and woman dressed up like Trekkies lounging on the grass (the man in a Thinker-like pose), seemingly in earnest conversation with a short, furry and vaguely humanoid creature. In the background -- a huge spaceship.

Aside from the fact that I kept having to hide the damn cover everywhere I took the book, it totally ruined the reading experience for me. Because wouldn't you know it, I had to read about four fifths of that book before I got to the damn creature, and the whole time, all I could think was, "WHERE IS THE CREATURE?"

Sheesh. I might as well chuck it and read romance novels.

This Catch-Up Sounds Kind of Depressing, But I Swear I'm Not Actually Depressed

2009-06-03T22:50:00.003-04:00

Wow, it's been a while since I've been around this blog, hasn't it? I think I have some blog ennui going on. It's a strange combination of running out of blogging ideas, and increasingly wanting to work on other projects . . . oh, and having a migraine every day for the past 12 days.

Yeah, migraines. I watched the season finale of The Medium the other night and was totally jealous of Allison's completely operable and non-malignant brain tumor. Yes, I realize such envy is tempting the fates and all that, but if you've ever had this many migraines in a row, you understand.

I'm busy being a trial widow for what will probably be most of June, while Todd is doing a capital trial in Hardin County. Sam, Penny, and Tom and I are lonely. Tom especially, since he STILL does not in any way consider himself my cat, even though we've lived together now for nearly six years.

Speaking of long relationships, the priest-stalker, who I've been prosecuting for three and a half LONG years, was found incompetent to stand trial last week and is now foot-loose and fancy-free. I have warned my minister that she is not any kind of new church member that we want, should she turn up. Un-Christian of me, I know.

I handled a case today of a woman who refused to regularly take her child to school. I swear, I can handle thugs and drug-dealers and shoplifters all day, but a damn crappy parent just pisses me off. Interestingly enough, it was the only case I've ever done that everyone in the courtroom, defense counsel, law enforcement, and prosecutors alike, felt should be in jail. I guess nobody likes bad parents.

It's 11:00 p.m., and so far, my poor little brain is not writhing around in its shell, trying to escape through my eyeball. I'm going to bed with all my fingers and toes crossed.

S'more Heaven

2009-05-18T21:42:00.002-04:00

Against all weather odds, Todd and I went camping this past weekend. The forecasts were pretty dire, including rain, rain, and more rain, then oh! it's Sunday and you're ready to come home, so, dry.

But we totally got lucky, because the only rain was on Saturday morning at about 5:00 a.m., when we were snug as two bugs in our tent. It's amazing to me, when I consider the me that I was before I started dating Todd, that I actually enjoy camping, but with Todd, I really do. It's such a quiet activity. We don't take radios or anything that makes noise, and we putter around our little campsite, and cook, and sit by the fire until I fall asleep in my chair, then we snuggle into sleeping bags. What's not to like?

This trip was a bit different because a couple of our good friends met us for half of the trip, bringing their almost-four-year old with them. He's a hilarious kid, who says "Yikes!" alot, and my new favorite expression: "You can say that again don't say that again." Hilarious. The only thing is, if he tells you I fed him pizza with pickles and macaroni on it, it's a total lie. It was peppers and pepperoni, I swear.

We're back to civilization today and already scheming about our next trip. Civilization sucks.

101 Things: Day 400

2009-05-12T22:34:00.002-04:00

Well, since I am woefully behind on blogging these days, it shouldn't surprise you that I am writing my Day 400 post about a week late. But really, when you're talking about 1,001 days, what is a few days?

Unfortunately, the past 100 days haven't been very productive. (Obama has accomplished WAY more than me. I am a slacker.)

Lose 20 pounds. Woohoo! I am on my way. I had really hoped to get to the "lose 30 pounds" mark during this 100 days, but alas, it was not meant to be. I was on a big roll, and then after vacation -- although, oddly not WHILE on vacation -- I hit a big crash and burn and then had to deal with the same 3 pounds going off then coming back on for nearly two months. Bummer. I think I'm on track now, I've actually lost 23.6, so I'm really, really hopeful that by Day 500 I'll be at 40 pounds lost.

Take at least 3 yoga classes. I've mentioned this one a few times, already. I am a semi-regular yoga-class-taker now, and have bought my own mat which I am anxious to use. I like yoga, I like it a lot. And even if the guy who teaches my class does freakily resemble a pretzel at times, I am determined to keep on keepin' on.

And, yeah, that's it. But seriously, there are so many things in the works, I have great expectations for the next 100 days. I'm still going through the Artist's Way program, and I'm THIS close to settling on my novel idea (frightening!). In June, I will have completed my one year of violin lessons (and I'm going to keep going). I've been trying and trying to go on my Cave Hill Cemetary walk, and I think I'll get it in soon, probably combined with my little solo picnic. My roller blades are sitting out ready to go, and best of all? I am SO going to see Mellencamp in July.

So watch out, Day 500, I'm gonna kick your ass!

This Post Doesn't Even Have a Title

2009-04-28T22:15:00.003-04:00

I wish I were going to write something beautiful and insightful tonight, but yeah, I don't think that's happening. It's Derby Week in the Hall of Justice, which means light dockets and lots of leaving early. Last week was kind of a hard week, both work-wise and social-commitment-wise, so I'm taking it easy this week.

Here are some things I am loving this week:

Yoga. Believe it or not, I like it, and I think it's even exercise.

Korean food. Had it for the first time tonight, and it was mighty tasty. I ate a fermented black bean, and I would totally do it again.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Two. I'm rewatching, since I got Seasons One and Two for my birthday. Ahh, the good old days, when Angel was hot, Buffy was a virgin, and Spike was still deliciously bad.

Dollhouse. Oh, Joss Whedon, how I love you. You have made me love yet another show, even though you made the poor choice of Eliza Dushku as the star.

My new air popcorn-popper. I haven't tried it out yet, but I'm super excited about it, since I'm a weirdo who likes neither butter, oil, or salt on my popcorn.

You Think I'm Just Lounging About, But It's SO Not True

2009-04-15T22:22:00.003-04:00

I'm so very tired, you're only getting a skeleton-y post today with a smidge of what I've been up to . . .

1. Canoeing on Saturday. Not the best exercise in the world, but such a gorgeous day. Canoeing, and even more so kayaking, are two things that Todd introduced me to that I have really loved.

2. Easter Sunday. Big church crowd. Lots of brass fanfare-ing. Lots of bad food-eating at Brunch. Tried a walk in the park later, but it didn't make up for all those bazillion points.

3. Skipped Weight Watchers meeting for first time since January 1. (See above re: Easter brunch.) Back on the wagon now.

4. Saw foot doctor on Monday. Bad, very bad. More shots, maybe surgery.

5. Today, yoga. Holy Namast-oly, was that hard. I fully expect to be dead by tomorrow morning.

6. Also today -- I broke a nail while swimming. Don't ask.

A Brief Addendum to Yesterday's Post

2009-04-10T08:27:00.002-04:00

I've been saying that my legs are really achy, and I don't think my husband believes me. Last night they were SO achy, I dreamed they had been cut off and reattached.

Joining the Club

2009-04-08T23:11:00.004-04:00

A few years ago, I decided I was going to walk a 4K race, one of the Polar Bear Grand Prix races they have here in the Winter. I don't really know why I thought this was a good idea, I know I didn't do much work to get ready for it.

So on the morning of the race, I start out walking, and realize that there is no one, and I do mean no one, who walks as slow as me. I panic, and decide that I don't want to be last, so I'll RUN the race. I reasoned to myself that people always talk about the adrenaline, etc., and I figured that would get me through the race and maybe I would beat at least a few of the slowest walkers.

Well, adrenaline got me through about three fourths of one of the four Ks, and I called Todd to come get me.

After that, I very publicly denounced the whole "race" culture, and swore that I'd never attempt to walk one again, and in fact would never run anywhere unless there was something really big and scary chasing me -- like maybe that #41 from the UConn women's basketball team.

But recently it's started to bug me, that while I have surprised myself with bike riding, and swimming, and kayaking, and camping, and a whole host of things, I have never gotten over that hump of at least being able to run around the block.

Then I was told by more than one person that running will "melt the pounds off like butter," and that it is a "brutally effecient" exercise that gets big results fast.

Since I'm going for that 77-pound weight loss in one week, I figure I should give it a try. So I've been doing the Couch to 5K program.

The first week I handled the 60 second running intervals okay, and even increased my speed a little. Today I did the first day of week 2, which moves up to 90 second running intervals. And let me tell you, those extra 30 seconds KICKED MY ASS.

I thought I was going to have to apologize to the woman on the treadmill next to me for breathing so loud, then I realized she was wearing headphones, so maybe that muffled my gasping a little.

And a few times I felt myself moving farther and farther toward the end of the treadmill, and had to make myself use enough umph to not fall off the back. I often seem to veer off to the side a bit, too, so I'm thinking my run is not the most attractive-looking thing in the workout room.

And I absolutely cannot imagine running for a WHOLE 5K. Or even for three minute intervals, which I think comes up next week. So all you readers out there, all FOUR of you, please keep your fingers crossed that I can get through the whole two-month program without breaking a leg, or having a stroke or something. And I'll let you know when I hit that 77-pound week.

But -- boy howdy, are my legs sore.

And You Thought I Wasn't Interested in Basketball

2009-04-07T22:04:00.003-04:00

I have watched one basketball game all year . . . hell, one sporting event all year, period. Apparently I am bad luck because SHEESH. This UL/UCONN game is pretty depressing.

And since we all know that I know nothing about sports, let me just say this: HOLY CRAP THAT ONE PLAYER FROM UCONN IS SCARY! That #41? If I had ever been inclined toward dating women, she would scare that notion right out of me.

That is SO not nice, I know. But, really. Someone should tell her that she would benefit greatly from a nice hairstyling and a deftly applied smoky eye. And the color of that uniform? It does NOTHING for her.

See? I CAN have an intelligent conversation about sports.

Monday Stuff

2009-04-06T21:31:00.004-04:00

1. Today, because my violin playing was so bad, Hannah (my teacher) decided to "cheer me up" by playing for me the next song in my line-up to "show me what I have to look forward to." Two lines into the song, I started laughing. I thought it was a joke, see, because it was SO RIDICULOUS to think I could play that. I even said, "Really, do you think I'm ready for that?" Luckily, my current song is so hard I will likely be 40 before I get finished with it. Oh, and can I just say that Vivaldi sucks all kinds of violin ass?

2. At Weight Watchers tonight, I lost 3.8 pounds. And I was TOTALLY not happy with that. You know why? Because I was hoping for more. Just 77 more pounds tonight, and I would have been done.

3. If I have one weakness as a cook, it is that I never remember that more is not always better. I made a Pampered Chef recipe for a chicken club pizza that I had at my party last week, and put waaay too much chicken and cheese and bacon on it. Now I feel like I need to just go eat lemons until sometime around Wednesday. Blech.

4. I went back to the holdover today to talk to a pro se defendant, and another defendant said to me, "Are you a lawyer?" When I said yes, he asked, "Are you a public one or a REAL one?" Hooh, boy, was that the wrong thing to say to me! So I said to him, "Boy, was that the wrong thing to say to me." Then I told him that I'm a prosecutor and that I'll be watching out for his case.

5. I am once again trying to work my way through The Artist's Way. The first few weeks demand that I figure out who is to blame for my stagnant creativity. I'm pretty convinced that it was that college poetry writing professor who laughed so hard at my poem, then at the end of the semester, asked me to read it again so she could laugh at it some more. Yeah, I'm thinking it's totally her fault that I didn't write Harry Potter.

Keeping the Parties Straight is Half the Battle

2009-04-01T22:43:00.002-04:00

Often, I love my job. It can get stressful and annoying, like any other job, but seriously, I can't think of any other place I could work that would have the equal measures of drama and comedy.

Just the other day, a woman comes to the door of our conference room, and asks, as people do a hundred times per day, "Has my case been called?"

One of my co-workers began the endless process of trying to get out of her which of the 200 cases on the docket was "hers."

"Are you the defendant?"

"What?"

"Do you have charges against you today?"

"Huh?"

This is the point at which I usually get thoroughly exasperated and turn the whole mess over to someone else. This time, the woman got exasperated first:

"Look," she said, in a tone that clearly showed she thought we were all totally dense, "I'm the VICTIM . . . NOT the vic-TOR."

Oh, yeah. Courtroom comedy. I couldn't make this stuff up.

The Highs and Woes of Weight Watching

2009-03-31T17:26:00.002-04:00

Okay, I recognize that you might eventually get a wee bit tired of hearing about my weight loss efforts, but you know what?

I get a wee bit tired of my weight loss efforts.

When last we visited this topic, I was most unhappy because I had gained four tenths of a pound. In the week following that tragedy, I worked pretty hard, even foregoing ice cream when Little and I went to see Cirque du Soleil (which was FABULOUS, by the way). Because I had been so worried about missing a meeting on the upcoming vacation, I went all the way across town to go to a DIFFERENT meeting the day before we left.

And a wonderful meeting it was, because I lost 3.5 pounds. Cool. Sunshine and rainbows, and all that.

So I go off on my vacation, in which I not only figured out where the hotel gym was, but actually went INTO it and WORKED OUT. ON VACATION. Never have I done such a thing. Then, when Todd went on his Eagle Scouts-only backpacking trip, I walked SIX miles of the South Rim Trail. I have to admit, though, I ate a lot of what I wanted to eat, and by Friday, had given up counting points altogether.

When we got back? I lost ANOTHER 3.5 pounds. Boy howdy, we were talking SERIOUS sunshine and rainbows at that point.

So, for those of you still reading along . . . last week was hard. It was the final week of Lewis Birthday Stretch-Out, and it involved one drinks with friends, one doughnuts with coworkers, one dinner with hubby, one dinner with dad, one cookies with coworkers, a second dinner with hubby, a dinner with niece, and a dinner with brother and sister-in-law. I tried, I really tried, but apparently I did not try hard enough, because . . .

Is the suspense killing you? Hello? Is anyone still there?

Anyway. I gained four pounds. No, not four tenths, FOUR POUNDS. One, two, three FOUR pounds. Huh. Didn't see that one coming.

There are no sunshine and no rainbows around here this week. No, sir, just rain and clouds and carrot sticks and water. Birthday Stretch-Out is officially over.

Books!

2009-03-30T21:42:00.002-04:00

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite things about vacation (and then I promise I won't talk about vacation anymore) is vacation reading. I always use it as an excuse to go on a book-buying spree, and I try never to go on a trip of any significant length without at least four books, and truthfully, five or six is better. (Whoa, long sentence there.)

So with my vacation reading, and one post-vacation splurge read, I feel like I have lots to report.

The book I was most excited to read, and the one I devoured almost as soon as we got off the plane, was Replay, by Ken Grimwood. I have something of an obsession with time-travel novels and short stories; it all started with that damn Christopher Reeve movie, and just keeps going. This book was tons of fun and led to some great vacation conversations. It's about a man who is repeatedly sent back to himself at age 18 to live his life over again; he has full memory each time, so his experience build and build on one another. I spent an inordinate amount of time figuring out what I would do in such a situation. Think about it, it's a tough one.

My other reading selections were total vacation fluff. At least they were supposed to be. I made the mistake of picking what looked like a silly little fantasy tale, Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story. Sounds harmless enough, doesn't it? A story about Cinderella's fairy godmother and her life after Cinderella? Well, it was TOTALLY not HARMLESS at all. Turns out, it wasn't about a fairy godmother at all, and instead was about an elderly woman who has so much guilt over an incident in her youth that she goes crazy, lives a lonely life, and kills herself in the end! Yeah, that was NOT what I wanted out of vacation reading. Sheesh. I know I just spoiled it for you if you were planning on reading it, but I consider it a Public Service Announcement.

The other book I just finished, well, I'm not going to spoil it for you because it's part of a series by a pretty popular writer, and I don't want to put you off the whole series on the off chance that you plan to read it. Let's just say that I picked up what was supposed to be a lighthearted mystery, only to have the main character's husband DIE AT THE END. There's no other way to say it, that just sucked ass. I swear, I think I'm going to write the auther a letter, just to say, "Dude, what the fuck?"

Anyway, since my Spring fluff reading is getting kind of depressing, I think I'll just go ahead and finish that new Joyce Carol Oates novel that I got. You know, the one based on the Jon-Benet Ramsey murder? It should be a real laugh a minute.

Did You Miss Me?

2009-03-26T21:22:00.006-04:00

Well, the sad fact is, all good vacations must come to an end, and this was definitely a good one.

Las Vegas was, well, Vegas. Unrelentingly tacky, ridiculously nouveau riche and an all-around assault on the senses. The best thing about Vegas is that it is on the way to the Grand Canyon.

Because the Grand Canyon is as beautiful and serene as Vegas is ugly and obnoxious. Really, you can't take a bad picture at that place. If there's a complaint to be had, it's that you run out of ways to say, "Wow."

Todd being Todd, he did an overnight backpacking trip to the bottom of the canyon. Myself, I figure you can see the bottom from the top and there's nothing down there except more dirt and a muddy river. I stayed on the Rim and walked and shopped and got horribly sun-burnt . . . and was exceptionally glad that my husband came back alive.

Yes indeedy, I like vacation.

Please Stand By

2009-03-16T11:23:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid, we had whatever the regular ol' TV was, before cable and satellite and such nonsense. Pretty frequently, there would be a message that popped up on a blank screen like so: "We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please stand by." The part of me that was destined to be an English major used to think the wording was a little odd, like it was telling me to stand next to the TV in order to fix the problem. (I also am never comfortable with the sign that says "Bridges Freeze Before Roadway," because it sounds like the "before" is a spatial issue, not a temporal one, but that's another post entirely.)

Anyway, the point is, we are experiencing technical difficulties here at Around the Subject, which just means that all our computers are broke-ass. That's one reason posting has been a bit infrequent, lately. Hopefully the situation will be resolved soon.

In the meantime, we are drowning our electronic device woes by GOING ON VACATION! Woo-hoo! We'll be in Vegas for two nights, then the Grand Canyon for three, then a stop at Boulder City for one night before home. I somehow doubt that the Grand Canyon is a wireless internet mecca, so I'm not expecting to do much posting while I'm gone.

Try to carry on without me.

Can a Girl Get a Break Around Here?

2009-03-09T21:31:00.003-04:00

I tell you what, it is definitely Monday around here, at least it was between 5:30 and 7:00. First, I had a terrible violin lesson -- I swear, sometimes I think my teacher thinks I am playing badly just to annoy her. That is NOT the case; I would, in fact, love to be able to play double stops AND vibrato EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME, but it does not yet seem to be in the cards for me.

Second, I experienced the ultimate Weight Watcher tragedy -- I GAINED .4 pounds this week. Combined with my stunning loss last week of .4 pounds, it seems that in the past two weeks I HAVE ACCOMPLISHED ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Okay, I'm taking deep breaths now.

On a happier note, on this day just 39 years ago, a teeny little baby was born, and wouldn't you know? He was just destined to "come live with me and be my love."

Happy Birthday, Todd! (Even if it IS Monday.)

Next I Might Experiment With Prison Tats

2009-02-23T20:49:00.003-05:00

I'm coming back around to blogland after being in a funk most of last week. Why? Heck, I don't know. I just started feeling old and washed up on Tuesday night and stayed that way until sometime last night. Weird.

I'm hoping that Sephora has a lenient return policy, because I discovered that the worst thing to do when you're in a funk and feeling old is go to a makeup store. There were two choices: go the way of the expensive, anti-aging face creams, or toward the funky, gothy, makeup.

And if you know me at all, you won't be surprised that I came home with a so-purple-it's-almost-black lipstick and an eyeshadow combo with the catchy name of "Demon Lover."

Yeah. So, it turns out that Demon Lover eyeshadow and purply-black lipstick aren't the best look for going to play in your church orchestra. Luckily, I figured this out before I actually left the house.

Sigh. I blame it all on the fact that Eminence High School never had a goth set among the students. And now, at 35 (and no, I'm not even acknowledging that 36 is coming up in March) I yearn to be goth. I long for black makeup and combat boots the way other women covet those little blue boxes from Tiffany's. It's a heartbreak, I tell you.

Of course, I also long for red cowboy boots, and I came very close to buying a $12, pleather biker jacket the other day. And, many times since Halloween, I have fantasized about going to work wearing my snazzy blue wig.

Really, the courthouse is pretty dreary, visually speaking. A nice blue wig might cheer the place up a bit.

Do Not Despair

2009-02-16T20:46:00.001-05:00

That last post down there? Kind of depressing, and I just had to pop back in to say I'm actually not depressed at all, because I LOST 2.4 POUNDS THIS WEEK! Woo-to-the-hoo!

From the Department of Making You Feel Better About Your Life

2009-02-16T20:30:00.002-05:00

So, I handled a case today with a 19-year old defendant. As in, born in 1990. I was having a hearing on charges of Attempted Murder from an incident in which he (okay, allegedly) shot a guy "thrice" (and yes, that's what the officer put in the report) over a dice game.

Last week this dude was indicted on a Murder charge.

Some time ago, he was indicted on charges of Assault in the First Degree. Each incident was entirely separate, no relation between any of them.

Did I mention he's 19 years old?

Suddenly, I don't even feel guilty about the pile of laundry I'm ignoring.

Ah, Memories

2009-02-12T20:02:00.004-05:00

So, Valentine's Day is coming up, and I'm desperately trying to think of something besides chocolate, chocolate, CHOCOLATE. It would help if Tastespotting would do some pictures of a nice green salad, or some steamed broccoli, just every once in awhile.

Valentine's Day is weird. No one really LIKES it. Men feel forced to perform (I'm talking about flowers and chocolate here, so get your mind out of the gutter) and women feel pressured to have a man who does the "right" thing.

Me? I've got a husband who has pulled out some fantastic V-days. One year I got a piano. Seriously. And the next year I got an engagement ring. No kidding. Poor guy, I think I gave him a Literary Edition Trivial Pursuit game, or something lame like that.

But the Valentine's Day to beat all time had to be last year. I briefly posted about our trip to Key Largo, which happened to fall on V-day, but I don't think I really told the story of that actual day.

We got up early, kayaked eight miles off the coast of the Keys to a tiny little deserted island with only the teeniest strip of beach, just big enough for a tent. The weather was gorgeous; we splashed around in the Sound to cool off, and tramped through the mangroves on the island. We cooked our campfire dinner and carried it to the end of the little pier to eat it. We sat on the pier and leaned against each other to watch the sunset.

Then the sun went down. Then I said, "What was that noise?" Then Todd said, "It's a rat, over there." Then I said, "They're everywhere!" Because they totally were. They were everywhere. Tiny little nocturnal rats came swarming out of the mangroves we had walked through to our beach. Ballsy little suckers, they would walk right past the fire and sit down next to you, and I SHIT YOU NOT, ask if you were really going to eat that s'more, or if they could have just a taste.

I admit, I cried. At my insistance, we zipped ourselves up in the tent and huddled there all night. When we got back home, we discovered that the Key Largo Wood Rat had been deliberately placed on that island because it was endangered. They were trying to SAVE THE DAMN RAT. And Todd thought that was the coolest thing ever.

And somehow, that sums up why I think Todd is the coolest thing ever.

Hope you have a lovely Valentine's Day, completely rat-free!

I Think Someone Stole My Saturday

2009-02-09T21:15:00.002-05:00

Oh, for pete's sake, it's Monday. I don't know how that happens so FAST! Here's some randomness for you and your own personal Monday . . .

1. At my Weight Watchers meeting tonight, I lost 1.2 pounds. Todd cannot understand the misery that comes with being told you have lost 1.2 pounds when you hoped for, at minimum, 2.2 pounds, which would put you into a "new" set of numbers, or, even better, 4 pounds, which would earn you another five pound gold sticker.

2. I have discovered that there is a strong inverse relationship between how hard I practice the violin and how happy I am with my playing during the week and how much I suck at my actual lesson. (Or is that a direct correlation? Anyway, if I do good during the week, I suck ass at the lesson.)

3. I have officially given up on finishing Todd's Christmas scarf this winter. Goodbye, poor beautiful, cable- and bobble-filled scarf, I will see you in the Fall and you will be ready for Christmas 2009, I swear.

4. Edgar Sawtelle never did start to suck. It was beautiful and heartbreaking right until the end. I balanced out all the heartbreak with the latest in a fabulous werecat series. Ah, trashy supernatural romance novels, how I love you.

5. In organizing some files at work this afternoon, I realized that I have been prosecuting the priest-stalker since August 2006. When I started her case, I wasn't even married yet. Sheesh, priest-stalker, can't you give me a break?

6. This Friday, the latest Joss Whedon show debuts on Fox. Who is Joss Whedon, you ask? He's ONLY the creator of the best TV show in the history of TV shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So I am sure you can imagine my excitement.

7. Little and I went to a "Solve the Sherlock Holmes Mystery" event thingy at the Frazier Historical Museum a few weeks ago. We failed utterly at solving it. I felt so guilty about our performance that I'm reading some Sherlock Holmes stories for the first time ever. He was a wee bit pompous, wasn't he?

8. After making fun of them mercilessly on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, I am listen to The Ting Tings incessantly. They make me want to put on my blue wig and dance.

8. I have a new dress from Old Navy that I got for $9.99, and it's totally cool. (Told you this post was going to be random.)

Maybe I Should Invest in a Nice Kazoo

2009-02-05T22:39:00.003-05:00

I tell you what, if you want to learn to play a musical instrument, I hope you are still under the age of eight years old, because that will make it a heck of a lot easier.

I started learning to play the piano when I was, oh, maybe seven? And honestly, I don't remember those first little plunks on the keyboard. I'm sure they were horrid, but what I really remember is how after about ten years of lessons, at age seventeen, I was actually pretty good. The getting from horrid to pretty good is all a blur.

So being right back to horrid on a musical instrument, at age 35, is excrutiating. I just started violin lessons again in June, after taking a few years off (I got in a snit over learning third position, which everyone HAS to do, and quit), and I'm liking the whole process quite a bit.

Then my teacher said that not only do I really HAVE to learn third position, but I also have to learn VIBRATO, the really cool wah-wah sound that makes a violin sound like a REAL violin.

Well, I tell you what, my vibrato sucks ass. It's been sucking ass for weeks on end now. A few weeks ago, Hannah, my teacher, gave me a book to work on which has me do fun exercises called "wavy arms" and "sticky taps," and calls for me to put a drop of superglue -- the book stresses that it should be imaginary superglue -- on my fingers. And in the process of these exercises, I figured out a way to sort of do a fake vibrato, which sounds fantastic, and which I apparently have a natural talent for, but which isn't technically correct.

In fact, it's so technically incorrect, that I'm not allowed to do it anymore.

So I'm back to practicing wah-wahs with the metronome, and fighting the urge to wack myself over the head with the violin and take up macrame or something.

Ah, the indignity of it all. Isn't it bad enough that I am the only student at the WHOLE music school over the age of ten? And that every week, I discuss my progress with a few third-graders while their moms look on indulgently? I guess not.

To make matters worse, I recently finished the Suzuki Book Three, and the first day I showed up to a lesson with Book Four, I apologized for getting the wrong thing, as Book Four was OBVIOUSLY so much harder than Book Three that I had clearly missed Book Three-and-a-Half.

But you know what? There IS no Book Three-and-a-Half. Poor Todd, I should probably get him some nice ear plugs for his birthday.

What's Making Me Cry More Than an Episode of Charmed

2009-02-04T20:15:00.004-05:00

My name is Kara, and I am a compulsive book-club-joiner.

No, not the ones where you meet up with friends once a month and pretend to talk about a book while drinking wine from a box, but the ones where you get FIVE BOOKS FOR A DOLLAR and then have to buy two more to "fulfill your commitment." I've joined and gotten out of them several times, and they always get me back with that FIVE BOOKS FOR A DOLLAR promise. Seriously. Five books. For a dollar. Who could resist?

So the only problem with these book clubs is that you have to decline that "featured selection" every month or they send it to you automatically. I forget this sometimes. Okay, a LOT. And I get a LOT of books that I didn't mean to order; some are crap and some are pretty good.

Last month I got one such shipment of books and tossed them aside, but came back to them this week when I ran out of reading material. What I found was a book of such wonderful fabulousness that, even though I'm only halfway through it, I have to tell you about it.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. This is nothing I would have picked up on my own. I don't know if you've noticed, over there on the sidebar, but I tend to read a lot of books of the same type. A friend of mine told me that she was looking through the list one day and clicked on the one that sounded the least supernatural and sci-fi-ey, only to find that To Sail Beyond the Sunset is actually a sci-fi classic about time travel.

I don't think I can really tell you what Edgar Sawtelle is about. There's a boy who is normal in every single way except that he can't talk, can't make any sound at all. There's a dog-breeding farm that breeds dogs of no particular type that are all, every single one, extraordinary. There are dogs who can make murderers confess and dogs who can read sign language. There's a perfect little family, and each member has his or her own secrets.

This book is captivating. So much so, that a while ago, I was lying on the couch reading, and came to a scene so heartbreaking that I actually caught my breath, put the book down, sat up, reached for it, then decided I should do something else for awhile, because crying gives me migraines.

I've about reached the halfway point, so I suppose there's still time for the book to start to suck. But what I'm more afraid of is that it's not going to ever start sucking, and when I'm finished with it, I'm going to miss those damn characters like my best friend moved out of town. It's a perilous business, this reading of books, and you don't always come away unscathed.

101 Things -- Day 300-ish

2009-02-02T21:20:00.003-05:00

Day 300 came and went last week during The Great Ice Storm/Power Outage of Louisville 2009, so I missed blogging about it. Not that I lost power and COULDN'T blog, I just didn't. Something about being snowed in makes me feel extraordinarily lazy. I spent the days wandering around the house, watching a little TV, reading a little, playing a few notes on the violin, then taking a nap to recover from the hardship of it all.

Anyway.

So, Day 300. I haven't been the most industrious 101 Thing-er lately, but chill out, dude, I still have 701 days. Here's what I DID do:

Work on a political campaign. Okay, so I didn't sit around at some candidate's headquarters for weeks on end lettering signs and scheduling stump speeches, like in the movies. What I did do was make two days' worth of phone calls at one of the Louisville Democratic Party offices for Bruce Lunsford, John Yarmuth and Barack Obama. It wasn't much, but that, combined with my teeny little financial contribution, t-shirt wearing, and yard sign-having, made me feel like I was invested in the campaign. And what a campaign it was! For the first time in a long time, I think people were voting FOR something, rather than just AGAINST something else. And DAMN, did it feel good.

Lose 10 pounds. For fuck's sake, I've only been working on this one since, oh, THE VERY FIRST DAY OF THE 1001, but I finally accomplished it. Back in the first week of January, I posted about my New Year's Weight Watchers Ritual. Believe it or not, I have stuck to it since then. That's four whole weeks! I'm not gonna lie, often I feel like a barely sober alcoholic who's scared to walk past a liquor store, but I'm hanging on. I would love, love, love, to be able to mark off the 20 and 30 pounds lost by Day 400.

Make a fleece blanket for myself. I should probably have a picture of this, but I don't. Just take my word for it that the blanket is quite pretty, all in shades of turquoise blue and brown, very snuggly, and very warm. It was fortuitously finished just before the above-mentioned Ice Storm of 2009, and was an integral part of all those snow-day naps.

I don't know about you, but I'm already looking forward to the next 100 days!

WooHoo!

2009-01-22T21:18:00.004-05:00

My, how time does fly! The post-Christmas letdown has been totally wiped out by the insanity, joy and amazement of inauguration day. Wow. I didn't realize that I was holding my breath until it actually happened, and I could let it out.

There were so many fabulous moments of the day . . . the worldwide "Yes, we did" celebrations . . . the second-littlest Obama taking pictures and getting Joe Biden to take one for her . . . the power and solemnity of his speech . . . the joy on his face as he walked with his wife in a parade . . . it was all just fantastic.

Okay, I'm out of adjectives. But you get the picture.

Wednesday morning, Todd informed me that if I didn't get out of bed, I was really going to be late. I replied, "The country is in good hands and I'm going to sleep late."

And yesterday and today, it's been fun to get in my car after work, listen to the day's executive orders, and know that I agreed with each and every one.

It's a new era, people, if you haven't already, get the hell out there and celebrate!

Showing Off, A Bit

2009-01-11T22:03:00.007-05:00

It occurred to me that I never posted any of the pictures Todd took with his fancy new camera of all the Christmas baking and sewing I did. He's been doing some really cool stuff with it.

Does this look like a food magazine, or what?

A montage, if you will, of all the yummy stuff that got sent around to various people:

Christmas sewing, for my nieces, sister, and sister-in-law (they're zippered bags for makeup and other things that need to go in zippered bags):

And while I look just hideous in this photo (I was a wee bit tired), Todd loves it so much I thought I'd post it, anyway. We like to call it, "The Dark Side of Holiday Baking":

Drive-by Blogging

2009-01-09T08:15:00.002-05:00

- - - - - -> screeching into blog on the way out the door to work . . .

1. While waiting for my violin lesson, I heard a little boy ask his mom, "Are the years getting shorter?" She wearily replied, "Yes, shorter ever year."

2. Individually wrapped Dove dark chocolate is 1 point per piece. I consider this knowledge crucial to my survival this week.

3. One thing you shouldn't say to a prosecutor if you are hoping to "get out of" your possession of marijuana charge: "Wadn't nuttin' but a couple-a joints."

4. The success of a Sigg water bottle, even a fancy purple and gold one, is totally dependant on said bottle's owner closing the top before puttling it in her purse.

5. You people out there must be really good at thoughts and prayers, because Hank is doing much better and there is some cautious talk of actually going home!

It's That Time Again . . .

2009-01-05T20:56:00.003-05:00

I know I said just yesterday that the holidays were over, but I nearly forgot about the one last holiday wrap-up ritual that I celebrate every year: the January Weight Watchers meeting.

I admit, I am a Weight Watchers snob. I have been known to change meetings lickety-split if I don't like the meeting leader, and woe be to the Weight Watchers leader who has lost less than fifty, okay, I'll be honest, one hundred pounds. I can't tell you how many intros I've sat through, only to roll my eyes when ol' Sally Skinny-ass earnestly tells me that she's managed to keep off a whopping twenty pounds for two years.

My favorite leaders have been the ones who deal with the kinds of issues I deal with. There was Debbie, who cut the elastic on all her underwear because they were digging into her legs. And Jean, who ate an entire bag of chocolate covered pretzels while grocery-shopping, and had to stand at the check-out lane while the clerk called a manager to find out how to charge her for something that could no longer be weighed.

And my favorite, Angie, who decided that she was just NOT going to be tempted any longer by the Halloween candy she had bought, so she "pitched" it out of the car as she drove down the road. Then she got pulled over for littering, and the cop made her go pick up all the candy. (This same leader also confessed that she had thrown away candy she had just bought at Kroger when she ran into a WW member in the parking lot.)

These are women I can relate to.

So I was pretty pleased when the leader tonight informed us that she had lost 103 pounds, that sometimes she has to use three days worth of journal pages to fill in all the food she ate in one day, and that she was so cheap with her points that she preferred to buy the "nasty" Kroger plain oatmeal so she could eat more of it (with copious amounts of the aforementioned Sweet 'n Low). Oh, and this Christmas, she ate a whole sweet potato pie -- by herself.

Yeah, I could get to like this woman.

Singin' the End of Holiday Blues

2009-01-04T16:18:00.005-05:00

I suppose since I have to go to work tomorrow and work a WHOLE WEEK, as in five days straight without a day off, that Christmas is officially over. Here's some randomness to get me back in the regular blogging spirit . . .

1. I am not making resolutions this year, just sticking to my list of 101 things. There are a couple of things I want to do more of this year, like violin practice, baking, and making fun stuff, but no resolutions.

2. A church member this morning informed me that she was googling our church name and this site is one that comes up. Do you think that means I need to clean things up around here? Naaaah.

3. My lovely, lovely stepfather has been dreadfully sick and in the hospital since just after Christmas. Today, things seem to have taken a turn for the better, but it's been rough for him and my mom. If you are the praying sort, I know they'd appreciate it.

4. I discovered the Negotiator books over the holiday, and LOVED THEM. It's always great to find a book that you really like and then discover that it's the first of a series. I finished those up and have moved on to an earlier series by the same writer, The Walker Papers.

5. Those pecan squares I made for Christmas? The ones by Ina Garten, with nine sticks of butter? Totally not worth it. Next year I think I'll make just five batches of peanut butter kisses and be done with it.

Whew!

2008-12-21T22:32:00.003-05:00

Whew! I was getting a little nervous, but I'm happy to report that the Christmas sewing is TOTALLY done!

I would be glad to show you some photos, but I don't trust those people on my gift list to not peek, so they'll have to wait until after the big day. I was very pleased with how everything turned out.

All of the "must-do's" have been done, so for the rest of the week I'm going to be just enjoying myself. I am going to bake some more cookies, just because I want them (oh, those peanut butter kisses, how I underestimate their power!). The poor blog has been feeling neglected, after it's November pampering, so I have to get it back on track, too.

Hope your Christmas preparations are moving along as nicely as mine are!

A Brief Holiday Update

2008-12-15T22:18:00.002-05:00

I've got the Christmas crud. No, that's not a Scrooge-y thing, just that little tiny bit of yucky sick you get when you work too hard at being merry.

Last week nearly did me in. There was Christmas cheer every night for seven nights straight, and it was supposed to be eight, but I had to wimp out on the last one. (Sorry, Bryan!) I also wimped out on half of my work day today and spent the afternoon and evening vegged out on the couch doing absolutely NOTHING to prepare for Christmas, which is now not even ten whole days away.

I cut out the contract knitting for Santa almost entirely, but added contract sewing, and lots and lots and lots of baking. So far, the Lewis household has the following waiting to be packaged up for gift-giving:

dark chocolate and walnut toffee
German chocolate fudge
peanut butter fudge
milk chocolate walnut fudge
date balls
butterscotch bars
almond biscotti

Still to come are Ina Garten's pecan squares, chai snickerdoodles, chocolate crackle cookies, and peanut butter kisses.

Sheesh. The contract sewing won't be done until the weekend, which is cutting it mighty close. Mighty close, indeed.

Oh, Yeah, I'm in the Christmas Spirit Now

2008-12-10T21:11:00.003-05:00

It's been a few months of fantastic musical experiences. There was Ben Folds in October, the Totally Rockin' Led Zeppelin cover band in November, then last night, my church hosted the Peter Mayer group in concert.

I told a few friends and family members about this concert over the past few weeks, but let me tell you, if they come back to my church next year, I will be DRAGGING everyone I know to see them. They were that good.

This group, fronted by Peter Mayer, an extremely talented guitarist who plays for Jimmy Buffett as his day job, also includes a Native American flute player, a piano player, drummer, and bass player who could each hold their own as solo artist, and my personal favorite, an eighteen-year-old fiddle player from Kentucky.

The music ranged from various influences, sometimes sounding like jazz, sometimes bluegrass, and occasionally hard rock. There was a smidge of traditional Christmas music that would always morph into something even better, and lots of original music.

So, guess what -- you missed out this year, but write it down for next December, because I'm SO not kidding about the dragging you there. You won't be sorry.

Ghosts

2008-12-04T22:40:00.002-05:00

I'm finding it so very strange today, this story about the Anne Gottlieb case.

When I was ten, Ann Gotlib was twelve. My mom used to take me shopping at Bashford Manor Mall. I liked it because there were sunken-in TV-watching areas, and some stationary carousel horses I could "ride."

Ann Gotlib frequented that mall, too; one day her bike was found leaning against the front wall, and Ann herself was never seen again.

It's funny how much I've always remembered this event. In my mind, it was the dividing line between when kids in this area could go anywhere safely, and when they couldn't. Maybe because she was a kid, like me, and about my age, but it stuck in my head.

So today it was announced that the police have a prime suspect in the case. Unfortunately, he's dead, so the odds of any real "closure" to the case these 25 years later are pretty slim. I can't imagine what her parents have felt all these years; what they feel now. I don't know if this will feel like reopening an old wound, or if they will be glad for people to be thinking of Ann again.

I, for one, am glad that Ann and her case have not been forgotten, after all.

Christmas Cheer, Sneaking Up On Me

2008-12-03T22:17:00.002-05:00

I had another rant -- on a totally different subject from yesterday -- all planned out in my head, but I had such a pleasant evening, I decided to forego the rant for a day or two. (I'm sure I'll get to it eventually.)

Tonight Little and I went to an event organized by Big Brothers Big Sisters, where we blew our own Christmas ornaments at Glassworks. I've always wanted to do one of those, and it was fun and interesting, and as always, we had some great conversation. (Largely about Twilight these days, we're a tad obsessed, I admit.)

But what struck me about the evening was a brief conversation we had with the artist who was doing all the real work on the ornaments. He introduced himself to us, then introduced his own Little Brother, who was assisting him. I asked the Li'l Bro how long they had been matched, and he said, "Three years."

So I asked the artist if it was because of him that Glassworks began doing this event with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and it turns out that is the case. He told us that he had made a few ornaments with Li'l Bro, and just decided it was something he could share with the whole organization. He said he just wanted to give something back to the community.

I was impressed. This guy seemed like just an average, really nice guy, with a super cool job, who decided to share something he had, not only with a person he has a relationship with, but with everyone else, too. We could use more people like that in the world. I fervently wish that I could remember his name to give him some good publicity, seeing as how he's an artist and all, but I can't, so . . . "Way to go, Glassworks Big Brother guy!"

[Oh, just an update on yesterday's rant: it seems that the state is interested in some sort of arrangement to take over Otter Creek Park. Keep your fingers crossed that the arrangement is a good one, and that it actually comes to fruition.]

Where is the National Park Service When You Need Them?

2008-12-02T22:29:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I took ONE day off. I don't think ONE day in thirty is too bad, huh? Nevertheless, I am back today!

Today's post is about budgets. And parks. And mayors who should step back and give somebody else a shot.

If you follow Louisville news, you will already have heard about the fajillion and one dollar budget shortfall that has some people getting forced "furloughs" from their jobs, and others biting their nails lest they be permanently "furloughed." So yesterday, the Mayor-who-has-worn-out-his-welcome announced his latest plans for making up that shortfall. None of it is pleasant, of course, but one really sticks in my craw.

(No, I'm not really sure what a craw is. I hope it's nothing dirty, because this is really stuck in mine.)

The one that really gets me is the abrupt and unprecedented closing of Otter Creek Park. The Mayor-who-has-really-crap-ideas-about-budgets announces that it is losing $500,000 per year, and in the same breath, informs us that the park has 500,000 visitors each year.

I'm no math expert, for sure, but even I can see at least one way to stop the park from losing money . . . CHARGE A DAMN DOLLAR ADMISSION FOR EVERYONE TO VISIT, STUPID-MAYOR!

A few other ideas: 1. Open the lodge that has never been open as long as I remember. 2. Offer seasonal memberships. 3. Host a mountain bike race. 4. Promote group hikes and dog-walking events. 5. Offer special city-wide fishing licenses. 6. Charge for all-inclusive wedding packages.

Etc., etc., and all that. I'm sure there are other people who can think of better ideas. The point is this: No one was given the opportunity to come up with better ideas. No one was questioned about whether the park matters to them.

It's no small irony that the His-craptacular-ness holds himself out as being the bigtime "fitness-crazed" Mayor, the great chosen promoter of the "Healthy Hometown." Yeah, well, this doesn't really fit into those ideals very well, does it?

At a bare minimum, the Mayor-who-hopes-we-are-all-asleep should be forced to provide a plan for the park's future. One can't just ignore a vast swath of land and hope people forget about it. Does he plan to build a wall around it? Lock the gates? Donate it to the state?

Hmm . . . that last one's not a bad idea. How 'bout it, Governor Gloomy-pants, want to come bail out a poor park?

Caution: Holiday Sappiness Ahead

2008-11-30T22:33:00.002-05:00

Today at church we "did it up right" for the first Sunday of Advent. I love Advent, and I wanted to write about Hope today, because we light the candle on the first Sunday of Advent to represent Hope. But what I decided is, hope is too big to fit into a blog post.

I know, that sounds like a total cop-out. It's true, though! Hope can't be summed up or boxed into a little greeting card sentiment. It's what gets us through all the badness of the world and tumbles us right into the good stuff. It's what you try to hang onto when you don't have anything else.

It's why we make plans for a career.

It's why we get married.

It's why we adopt pets, and learn to knit, and have babies, and set our alarm clocks, and go to church on Sunday, or skip church to go kayaking, and watch sunsets, and write bad poetry, and tune into our favorite new show even after we know it's been cancelled, why we fill up the crockpot before work and buy tickets to a play and start blogs and say "I love you" before going to sleep.

Because we hope.

Hope is everywhere and all the time, but ESPECIALLY at Christmas. I hope that you're hoping something right now.

Ummm, Is It December Yet?

2008-11-29T22:15:00.002-05:00

Today, I got up early and went for a hike to a scenic overlook and gathered chestnuts to roast, had a big breakfast buffet to totally negate the hike, went for a drive back towards home, and stopped to take pictures of a bunch of wild turkeys. (What do you call a bunch of wild turkeys, anyway?) Visited a fish hatchery, learned that baby trout are wee little things you could miss if you didn't look closely, came home to my crazy, crazy dogs who seem to have gotten crazier over the weekend, went out for pizza and watched a lame-o horror movie.

Phew! This relaxing is hard work! We at the Lewis house are pooped, but it's a good pooped.

And yes, now that you mention it, I am a teeny bit tired of every-day blogging. My life, while quite interesting to me, is not full of general-interest stories, at least not EVERY SINGLE DAY. Come December, I will stop boring you with the dull bits.

Instead of Shopping . . .

2008-11-28T22:02:00.003-05:00

. . . we had the loveliest of days, knitting and reading (for me), mountain biking and new-camera-testing (for Todd) and some fine Autumn kayaking for both of us.

Now we're hanging out, watching Star Wars, and Darth Vader is just getting ready to take out poor ol' Obi Wan. So, for now, I'm outta here . . .

Thankful

2008-11-27T21:55:00.002-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

I'm still totally stuffed from Thanksgiving "dinner" (more of a late lunch), but we are comfortably ensconced in our Dale Hollow State Resort Park Lodge room, and the olives, cheese and crackers are starting to look almost yummy.

I'm really thankful for Thanksgiving, to remind me of all the wonderful things in my life . . . and to let me eat pecan pie while I'm thinking of them!

Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving . . .

2008-11-26T22:47:00.004-05:00

Whew! We are in a flurry of activity around here tonight. What with the house cleaning, and the car-key making (those suckers never did turn up) and the last-minute shopping bits, you'd think it was Christmas Eve, rather than Thanksgiving Eve!

Tonight I did something one should never do on the night before Thanksgiving -- went to Kroger. Luckily, I only needed a few things, but boy howdy, there were some men there who were obviously on a Mission From Their Wives. One guy was leaning on his cart with his elbows, wondering loudly to anyone around, "Where are the freezer bags?" Then there was the guy who was all cheesed off at one of the Kroger employees, "Well, this is a FINE TIME to run out of WHIPPING CREAM!"

Earlier today I took part in another Thanksgiving Eve tradition: the annual Get Your Client Out of Jail for the Holiday Day. I was feeling pretty generous, and let a couple out. It was the earnest little newbie public defender that got to me. I remember that day from my first year . . . one bad-check-writer chick was so grateful that she hurled herself into my arms and yelled out as I was walking away, "God BLESS you, PD Lady!" It's nice to be appreciated, you know.

Tomorrow we're heading out for Thanksgiving dinner, then a few days away. (There will be blogging, though, because Novemember STILL isn't over.) I'm packing up my knitting, the fantastic-book-I'm-reading-that-I'll-blog-about-later, and my violin, and that's all I need (plus my sweetie, of course) for a few days of quality thankfulness.

This Was My Evil Plan All Along . . .

2008-11-25T21:11:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I received the following text message from Little:

"hey when can i borrow that Twilight book from you"

SCORE!!!!!

Chalk up one potential reading convert for me!

Dang

2008-11-24T22:02:00.002-05:00

Monday morning, 8:00 AM: Plan day. Industriously park car, with violin safely locked inside, on street at bus stop. Ride bus to work to avoid parking fees.

Monday afternoon, 4:00 PM: Begin packing up to leave work. Put on coat, look for car keys and bus pass. Find bus pass. Do not find car keys. Dump out contents of purse. Take deep breath. Curse.

4:15 PM: Arrive at bus stop moments after bus pulls away. Realize have forgotten scarf and gloves and worn Spring jacket. Estimate wind chill at approximately 30 degrees below zero.

4:18 PM: Enter bank lobby to wait for next bus.

4:19 PM: Get annoyed at bank employees staring at me, go back to bus stop.

4:20 PM: Call husband to complain re: missed bus and lost keys. Hang up when face is too numb to talk.

4:25 PM: Am grateful for dude lighting cigarette at bus stop, think flame might give off enough heat to ward off frostbite.

4:45 PM: Board bus. Stew re: lost keys.

5:00 PM: Arrive at car. Open unlocked hatchback, crawl into backseat, unlock doors. Search car. Do not find keys.

5:05 PM: Start walk home with purse, lunch bag, violin, and music. Call 411 for number to music school. Get three wrong numbers. Curse.

5:15 PM: Arrive home. Break into basement. Cancel violin lesson.

5:30 PM: Call car dealer to inquire re: cost of replacement key. Replacement cost $230. Remember that at least saved $7 parking fee.

DANG.

Hedging My Bets

2008-11-23T22:15:00.003-05:00

Today's passage at church was that familiar, "whatever you do to the least of my people, you do to me" section. I swear, I did NOT remember how much hellfire and brimstone is in that passage! All that stuff about sheep and goats, and people on the left and on the right, and going to hell for ever and eternity . . . it was enough to make one poor woman get all teary-eyed while relaying a tale of some dude who asked her for "gas money."

"What if that was God, and I MISSED HIM?" she wailed.

Here are my thoughts on the matter:

1. God doesn't go around disguising himself as the homeless (or the gassless), hoping to trick us into condemning ourselves to hell.

2. God doesn't send anyone to hell.

3. If God WERE going to send me to hell, it would probably not be JUST because I didn't give money to that guy who stand outside the courthouse with a walker, asking for change. (Especially because that guy is totally a faker; I've seen him CARRY the damn walker.)

4. I should probably be nicer to people, just in case. I might need all the help I can get.

I wonder, does it count in my favor that I always dismiss the charges against people who are charged under the "panhandling" statute?

'Cause I do. Every time.

It's That Dreamy Edward Cullen, Again

2008-11-22T22:26:00.003-05:00

Well, we did it -- Little and I went to see Twilight today, along with just about every female between the ages of 10 and 35. It was just lovely, I have to say.

I've been thinking way too much about the popularity of these books. They are not classic literature, for sure, but oh, so compelling. This boy is quite simply the fantasy boyfriend, the boy that every adolescent girl dreams of. One who loves you obsessively and protectively, who would face down beasties and meanies and even PARENTS for you.

Oh, yeah . . . and he's a bit stalker-ish. I said he was the fantasy of ADOLESCENT girls, didn't I?

Anywho. If you are a girl who's an adolescent, or a woman who used to be a girl who was an adolescent, go see the movie -- better yet, read the books. Books are ALWAYS better than the movie, don't you know.

I Wonder If She Had a Hotel Room?

2008-11-21T23:01:00.003-05:00

If you know me in real life, (and since I have approximately 4 regular readers, all of whom DO know me in real life, the odds are pretty good that if you're reading this, you know me) you'll remember that for the past two years, I have been prosecuting a woman who is stalking a priest.

No, (in case you DON'T know me) I am not exagerating, it's been two years, and she really is stalking a priest. Anyway, you should also remember that this woman is bat-shit crazy. Recently, she began leaving irate messages for my boss, complaining about my overzealous prosecution.

Yesterday, one of her messages, which had the "Young and the Restless" theme song playing in the background, included this tidbit:

" . . . and THEN, Ms. Lewis CONVIENTLY kept me in jail past the inauguration, because she KNEW I was planning to go."

You're welcome, President-Elect Obama. You're very welcome.

More Not-Funny Stuff

2008-11-20T21:15:00.002-05:00

This morning, as I was pulling out of my driveway, our next-door-neighbor-that-we-like waved me to a stop.

"I haven't seen either of you for a few days, but I wanted to let you know . . . "

[dang, I thought, Penny's been barking and got the animal cops called on her again, or Sam broke out of the pen again . . .]

" . . . we had to put Molly down."

Molly was the next-door-dog-that-we-liked, an old golden retriever who would slooowly come out into the yard a few times a day, and if we were outside, she would come over to the fence and Sam and Penny would bark wildly at her, like she was the cool-older-kid-next-door, and we would pet her through the fence. She never barked, she just looked at you with her great big golden retriever eyes, and you couldn't help but like her.

So Becky and I stood outside in the cold, both of us tearing up over Molly, and when I drove away for work, I had to do some serious blinking and gulping, and was very thankful for my new Maybeline waterproof mascara.

It's been many months ago that our very good friends had to put their little Alice down, and I remember tearing up over that, too. This is an event that I've never had to endure, and boy, am I hoping for a miracle that lets me never go through it. These silly animals, that come into our lives, and pee and poop and puke on stuff, and eat our books, and lick our chins and never once care that we need to lose some weight or that we lost our temper over something silly the other day . . . what would we do without them?

Man, I need some Friday fripperies soon.

Sometimes, There's Nothing Funny to Talk About

2008-11-19T21:58:00.003-05:00

When I was a Public Defender, people often asked me, "How do you sleep at night, representing those criminals?" I usually responded, "Like a baby, thanks."

Now that I'm on the other side, I still get those questions occasionally, "Don't the horrible things you see keep you up at night?" Usually, the answer is no, except that sometimes I stay up late telling funny stories.

Then there are the not-so-funny stories. Some are pretty damn bad.

Like the three year old victim I heard about this week, whose horrific injuries just won't leave my mind; the victim I would seriously consider bringing into my home to live, just so I could be certain he wasn't hurt again.

Like Marco David Chapman, who committed a terrible, heinous crime, but was a victim himself. I can't bear to think of forgiving him, but I can't bear to think of the state allowing his suicide-by-execution. It is for people like him that I am so grateful I believe in God, for surely only the God I believe in could offer him forgiveness and healing.

I don't think my job gives me any more access to horrible stories than the average person has; maybe it makes me notice them more. And on those days, the days that the stories hit me the hardest, I fervently wish that I had decided to be a librarian.

I don't have kids. If you do, please give them a hug. It could change their lives.

Watch Out, Martha, Here I Come

2008-11-18T21:05:00.003-05:00

People, the holiday season is upon us. I know this because: I nearly froze my nose clean off while waiting for the bus; the respective parts of my family have scheduled out the traditional get-togethers, and my sister has put up her Christmas tree.

So, while Todd was filling in as blogger yesterday, I started Christmas shopping. Because I am a sadist (or sado-masochist, I can never remember the difference; nor do I actually know how to spell sado-masochist), this Christmas shopping entailed buying supplies for some Christmas present crafting. (Seriously, what is it about Christmas that makes me want to MAKE stuff?)

I would love to tell you all my crafting plans, but you might be someone who will be the recipient of such plans. Here's what I can tell you: I got some really nice ______ that I'm going to _______ with ________; and some ___________ that I'm going to make into _____________ for __________, _____________, and probably _______. I also got some _______________ to fill up with _________.

Oh! and I'm going to make some _______ and some _________.

There. Merry __________ to ya.

A Distinguished Guest Blogger . . .

2008-11-17T21:51:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone out there in that crazy world-wide-web place. It’s me, Todd. I appear in this blog as a character occasionally. I’ve now been asked to appear as a special guest blogger. I like to be short, and to the point. Therefore, here are my guest observations:

Sara Palin: Ruined the word “vacuous”

John McCain: Who?

Barack Obama: Pretty cool. Smart. Kinda nerdy

Joe Biden: Uhm, clean?

Jennifer Moore: No idea. She’s the head of the Kentucky Democratic Party, and clearly did something to piss off that guy at pageonekentucky.com. Thought she deserved an honorable mention.

Daniel Lewis: OK, I was thinking about that red-head guy from Band of Brothers, and now “Life”—but it also happens to be my brother’s name. Both pretty cool. Not the Last of the Mohicans (he had a cool name, then put the word “Day” in as some kind of consonant middle name. A marketing ploy in other words).

Junk food: Pure evil. Evildoers brought this evil evildom upon us.

Wheat bread: Cool. Mavericky, even. Also Clif Bars. I can live entire weekends on Clif Bars.

Flyfishing: It’s actually fun. Makes the phrase “high class fishing” not a contradiction in terms. Will not, however, lead to “an understanding of life,” or cure mid-life crises. I will not write a book about it.

YMCA: OK song, even better place. Even if you’re not a Christian, or a young man.

Flyleaf:This is a band my “Little Brother” introduced me to. I don’t get it, find it a little scary, and so that makes me an old dude.

Kara: My wife. Great lady. Way hipper than me, as you can tell.

That is all, and thank you for your support.

Sunday Confession

2008-11-16T21:40:00.004-05:00

Here's the thing:

I woke up this morning at the appropriate time, went downstairs, had some breakfast, shifted around the paper, etc., etc., and decided that I might skip Sunday School and go to just church instead.

Then, I putzed around a little more, and decided that I'd just skip church altogether.

I know, I know, shocking. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they don't dock my Presbyterian elder pay.

Oh, right . . . there is no pay. Anyway, I don't expect to be fired.

And People Wonder Why I Stay Home on Saturday Night

2008-11-15T22:50:00.004-05:00

I did my monthly Saturday in the Domestic Violence Intake Center today, and it gave rise to a few questions.

1. If you were afraid of an ex with whom you might have children, would you track him down at the club and spit on him?

2. If your ex with whom you might have children spit on you, would you knock her over and kick her?

3. If you ex with who you might have children knocked you over and kicked you, would you bust out his windshield and headlights?

4. If you were either of the above people, would you run to the courthouse to file charges on the other?

5. If you were on a jury, would you convict either of these people?

6. Would you convict both?

In the words of one of our illustrious judges, "Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'."

Good advice, I think.

Friday Night Dinner

2008-11-14T21:41:00.002-05:00

Tonight I cooked a birthday dinner for my dad. One thing I have decided, I really like cooking for a smaller group. I don't think I'll ever be the "cook Thanksgiving for 50" type, but up to about six people, I think I'm doing pretty well.

Here was tonight's menu:

Guinness-braised beef short ribs
Horseradish mashed potatoes
Southern-style green beans
Cranberry-ginger relish
Chess pie

Doesn't that sound nice and fattening and yummy? Chess pie, in particular, kind of amuses me. Somewhere along the line, someone decided to dump a bunch of sugar, butter and eggs in a dish and call it pie. Tasty pie.

So we had a nice relaxing dinner, and I sent my dad home with his birthday presents -- a second, whole pie, fair trade coffee, homemade smoked trout and beef jerky.

Because everyone should get to eat pie for breakfast for their birthday stretch-out month.

We're Scraping the Bottom of the Post Barrel, Folks

2008-11-13T22:01:00.002-05:00

Lordy, lord, great googly moogly, etc., etc. I am POOPED. I'm telling you -- plumb-TUCKERED!

This has been one long week. I've had church meetings three nights, and a fantastically-expensive-face-care-product party tonight. AND tomorrow night I'm cooking a birthday dinner for my dad, AND I have to work Saturday, AND I have plans with Little on Sunday.

So, while I had been pondering a nice, thoughtful post about how we all have special gifts and how we use those gifts to enrich one another's lives, I'm just too dad-gumbed tired to think about any gifts right now.

Instead, you get this mildly amusing tidbit:

Tuesday night, at one of the church meetings, we listened to a presentation on how to attract new members to the church. It was actually a pretty fun presentation; he suggested a nickname, HBPres.net, rather than our actual church name, Harvey Browne Memorial Presbyterian Church. And he told us about a bumper sticker campaign, with some suggested bumper stickers.

They were all nice and light-hearted; for example, "Feel Good: HBPres.net" and "No Steeple, Good People: HBPres.net" (my church doesn't have a steeple, get it?).

Another odd little physical fact about my church is that the main entrance doesn't face the street, instead, it's around the back, facing the parking lot. So, he suggested the following bumper sticker:

"HBPres.net: Our back door's our front door."

I have maybe been hanging around the courthouse too long, because that has a decidedly non-churchy connotation to me.

(And Mother, if you don't get it, I'm not explaining this one!)

He Wasn't Amused

2008-11-12T20:38:00.002-05:00

Today in court:

Dude: Man, can't I just get a fine or somethin'?

Me: No, you could go to jail. You're on probation, and you're charged with Carrying a Concealed Deadly Weapon and Possession of Marijuana.

Dude: That wasn't a weapon, it was a stick! A stick, to keep the dogs off me!

Me: Oh, because they were attracted to the smell of the pot?

You Know You Would Have Your Own List, Too

2008-11-11T22:13:00.004-05:00

I volunteered to work on a concert that is coming to my church, and I'm in charge of supplying and setting up the "green room" for the musicians. For some reason, this seems totally cool to me. They gave a list of their requirements for the room, and it's pretty reasonable; it includes things like bottled water, fruit juices, veggies and hummus, and precisely two 70% dark chocolate bars.

So, anyway, this got me thinking about what I will demand in my own green room when I am touring with the Led Zeppelin cover band, because, you know, it's never to early to hammer out such details.

Here's the list I have so far:

1. Canned diet cokes, iced down, with cups and crushed ice
2. Bagel Bites, three-cheese variety, slightly overcooked
3. Brownies, fudgy type, with dark chocolate chips
4. One pitcher of beer-ritas, on the rocks, with salt
5. "Everything" flatbread, with Capriole goat cheese
6. Mini ham and cheese quiches
7. One large fleece blanket
8. Assorted magazines (Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart, Eating Well, etc.)
9. Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVDs, seasons one through seven
10. One de-clawed cat who likes to be petted and doesn't bite

Yep, I think that would make for one quite cozy green room. Actually, I could just live in such a room if it had maid service as well.

Random Thoughts Monday

2008-11-10T22:33:00.002-05:00

1. If you're going to be Presbyterian, you should know going into it that Presbyterians can't do anything without establishing a committee, mapping out what council that committee reports to, and scheduling a meeting. You should also know that said meeting cannot be accomplished in less than two hours. Dinner should never be postponed until "after this quick meeting."

2. I'm very, very pleased with our First-Lady-Elect, largely because she appeals both to my girly side and to my career woman side. Both sides of me are willing to overlook the fashion faux-pas of a dress she wore on Election night, largely because the dress she wore to the meeting today with the Bushes was so totally FIERCE and made Laura Bush look like Ms. Frumpy McDowdypants.

3. Has anyone noticed how much Laura Bush is starting to resemble Queen Elizabeth?

4. The socks I wore to work today, while very fun, what with their glittery leopard print and all, were also very itchy. Itchy socks make for a long workday.

5. I confess that I used a can of cream of mushroom soup in dinner tonight. I am so ashamed. I blame the long Presbyterian meeting and the itchy socks.

6. If dinner involves cream of mushroom soup, it is smart to forego dinner and skip to the biscuits and elderberry jelly for dessert. Actually, you can skip the biscuits, too, because elderberry jelly just freakin' rocks.

7. My violin teacher told me today that I trill better than she does. Apparently, all the trilling angst I went through as a middle school piano student paid off. I will be incorporating lots of trills in my upcoming debut with the Led Zeppelin cover band.

I Said Some Days Would Be Better Than Others

2008-11-09T21:53:00.002-05:00

Look! A joke to distract you from my lack of blogging material:

Why do elephants wear sandals?

So they don't sink in the sand.

Why do ostriches stick their heads in the sand?

To look for elephants who forgot their sandals.

Lame Weekend Blogging

2008-11-08T22:17:00.003-05:00

Hmm. I think the reason I don't blog much on the weekends is that in terms of humorous/touching/mildly interesting stories . . . my weekends are a little lame.

But I love my lame weekends. Especially ones like this one, with summer gone for good and autumn in full swing. Perfect weather for traipsing through the Farmer's Market, buying brussel sprouts and butternut squash and salad greens and cooking them all for dinner.

Perfect for spending way too long in the sci-fi/fantasy section of the library, loading up on escapist books.

. . . for lying around watching DVR-ed episodes of Doctor Who and falling asleep on the couch before the plot even gets going.

. . . for taking a crunchy, leaf-filled walk with Sam.

. . . for baking chocolate chip cookie dough so it doesn't "go to waste in the fridge".

Ahh . . . autumn.

This is Going to be SO Great

2008-11-07T22:48:00.003-05:00

Oh, man, oh, man.

You know how I said the other day that I've been thinking alot about whether God has a plan for me?

Well, I figured it out! Monday morning, I'm going to quit my job and get started on my new life goal . . .

. . . to play electric violin in a Led Zeppelin cover band!

Seriously, it's going to be so cool! I'll grow my hair out kind of like that super cool chick that used to be in the band on the Happy Days, and I'll get a tattoo, and I'll wear leather and stuff, and I'll pierce something else, like maybe my lip or my eyebrow, and I'll sleep late every day and play smoky dive bars every night and probably get to meet Barack Obama because he's cool, too, and man oh man, will it be cool!

I'm so not kidding, people.

[And lest you think that there is no such thing as an electric violin player in a Led Zeppelin cover band, I saw one tonight, with the Louisville Orchestra, so it's a totally workable plan.]

Monday morning. Quittin' my job.

I'm Coming Down From My Election High, Now

2008-11-06T22:17:00.002-05:00

What I am about to tell you is so scary, so potentially traumatizing, that I warned my mother about it in advance so she would be prepared.

We have a mouse.

Like, living in the same house that we live in.

Oh, the horror. Tuesday I was lying on the couch, watching The Lost Room, and I saw a little black shape dart from the door to the TV stand.

"Odd," I thought.

A while later, I saw it dart back. That's when I called Todd at work.

"There's a mouse. In our house and I'm scared."

"Go get Tom and tell him to catch it."

"Tom doesn't like me, he only catches things for you, remember?"

"Oh, yeah."

So I went out and got the dogs, and they sat around and stretched and yawned and played rope, and didn't catch the damn mouse, which is apparently smart enought that when it saw Penny come into the room, it thought to its mouse self, "holy crap, that dog is CRAZY and I'm staying right here under the cozy TV stand where it's safe."

It hid out all day until just before the wondrousness that is Barack Obama was declared King of the World, and just as the TV was announcing that news, the damn mouse ran across the floor again, and all of us -- me, Todd, Dan His Brother, and Kelley Dan's Wife, AND Tom the Cat -- freaked out and didn't know where to look. We all pretty much agreed on the king declaration, and the mouse stayed hidden some more.

This morning I was sitting on the couch, eating some cereal, and that mouse came out from under the TV stand, and I SWEAR, he stopped, looked at me, said, "Oh, having some breakfast? I wouldn't mind having some myself, and by the way, when you go to work, can you please leave the TV on CNN so I can keep up with any Cabinet appointments?"

I'm not kidding. If this keeps up, I'm coming to live with you.

Yes, YOU.

Maybe Tomorrow I'll Be More Coherent

2008-11-05T19:58:00.002-05:00

Okay, one more post on the happiness that is the 2008 election, then I'll shush it.

It's been just a surreal day! All of the displays around the world of sheer joy are just amazing. So many people in so many different places who are finally smiling and laughing with us, and PROUD of us again . . . it's just wonderful.

I will never forget that moment when President-Elect Obama and his family emerged onto the stage, to take their place as our future.

Hope is a wonderful thing.

Election Day

2008-11-04T16:47:00.002-05:00

Okay, in an effort to keep up the blog-a-day thing, I'm posting NOW, because I'm afraid I'll be too caught up in the TV later.

As in, when the totals start coming in.

As in, when hopefully we can wave goodbye to the last eight years.

As I type that, though, I'm reminded that the last eight years haven't been ALL bad. During those years, I became single, graduated from law school, and got oh-so-happily married again. I became a public defender, and later switched sides to be a prosecutor. I saw my mother get oh-so-happily married. I adopted two loveable mutts. My husband became the first Division Chief of the first ever Elder Abuse unit of the Commonwealth's Attorney's office, and later moved onward and upward to the Attorney General's office. I read a lot of good books, saw Hedwig on stage, and learned to play the violin (sort of).

In retrospect, it's only the parts of the last eight years that George W. Bush had control of that sucked all kinds of ass. Like money, and gas, and religion, and the environment and stuff. So I guess I'll keep the proverbial baby and throw out that icky Republican bathwater.

It feels like New Year's Eve around here. Like the night before Christmas. Aren't you excited?

Thank You, Mrs. Dunham

2008-11-03T18:01:00.004-05:00

I just heard on the radio that Barack Obama's grandmother died in this morning's early hours. The irony is thick enough to be considered trite if you tried to write it into a novel. If all goes well, Obama will, within 48 hours of her death, become his own little chapter in the history books, as the first African-American president. Many times over the past weeks I have thought a fervent little prayer to myself that the woman who raised him be allowed to see it happen.

I've been thinking alot lately about God's plan for me, because I believe whole-heartedly that he has one for each of us. And I've been thinking that while not everyone is destined for greatness, maybe those not-so-great of us are destined to help someone else on their road.

And isn't that a pretty big form of greatness all of its own?

If I didn't believe in God, I would be just too heartbreakingly sad to think of this woman missing out on the history she helped to create. And since I DO believe in God, I admit to shaking my head a little at what seems to be just not quite fair -- that just like Moses and his Promised Land, Mrs. Dunham ALMOST got to see a dream come true.

Then again, since I believe in the KIND of God that I do, I have to laugh a little at the humdinger of a victory party she'll be throwing in heaven.

For those of us still muddling along down here on Earth . . . don't forget to vote. It's important.

A Bit of Improv Never Hurts

2008-11-02T19:47:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I dragged my party-pooped self to one of the local Democratic Party headquarters to make calls for -- I thought -- the Obama campaign. I for some reason assumed I would be calling people in other states where Obama still has a fighting chance, but I was actually calling local people who are registered Democrats, just to remind them to vote and to ask if they were voting for the Democratic ticket.

It was easier than I expected, what with the script and all. The worst problem was the automated calling system, which I think gave itself away as soon as the person answered the phone, because most people just hung up before I could even say hello.

Then there were the people that managed to listen to, "Hi, I'm Kara from the Louisville Democratic Party," before they hung up on me. I tried talking faster -- hii'mkarafromthedemocraticparty -- but they usually still hung up before I got out the whole spiel, which is a shame, because people, I was going to offer you a RIDE, for fuck's sake.

Seriously. I'm tempted to call and request a ride to the polls myself, just because I don't like to drive, you know. I mean, the polls are just around the corner from my house, but maybe they could be persuaded to take me to the store, since they were already out and about.

The calls did get a bit dull after awhile, so some improvisation was tempting:

Me: Hi, I'm Kara from the Democratic Party, calling to remind you about the election this Tuesday. Can the Democrats count on your vote this year?

Callee: No, I'm going to be voting Republican this year, actually.

Me: Oh, well don't forget, they've moved the election to Wednesday. That's WEDNESDAY -- we wouldn't want you to miss out.

Just doin' my civic duty.

The Great Blog Experiment, Day One

2008-11-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

Wait, what time is it?

Dang! It's just a smidge after midnight on November 2, but since I'm making the rules around here, we're calling it November 1, okay?

So, yeah. I'm going to blog every day this month. Some days will probably be better than others, just to give you fair warning.

There's been a lot going on in the past week around here. Wednesday was my third wedding anniversary. All I have to say is, I STILL think I married the right guy, and how cool is that?

Last night we hosted our annual Pass Out Candy and Have General Fun Halloween Party, and a good time was had by all. I think I'm quite fortunate that I can have parents, in-laws, step-parents, siblings, and friends, all in the same house, and everyone gets along swimmingly! Even the Republicans were on pretty good behavior, outnumbered as they were.

I didn't really want to go all out in a costume, but I wanted to wear a blue wig, and since it was my party, that's just what I did. I love my snazzy blue wig. I wish I could wear it to work. Heck, I wish I could just post a picture of it, but since we've still got those two broken cameras, there are no blue wig pictures in the foreseeable future.

Tonight, I knitted my poor fingers to nubs, but more on that tomorrow . . .

I Can't Believe I Read the WHOLE Thing

2008-10-26T22:01:00.004-04:00

I had grand plans of super-cleaning my house this weekend in preparation for the Greatest Halloween Party Ever, but since Todd was feeling kind of sickly, I couldn't be bustling around the house making a lot of noise, could I? Of COURSE not. What kind of wife do you think I am?

So, instead of cleaning, I finished up Breaking Dawn, which concluded my whirlwind reading of the ENTIRE Twilight series, which I started on Tuesday. As in, five days before I finished them. All four books.

I feel vaguely embarassed by this, like I spent the weekend doing something shameful. Like surfing the 'net for porn, or campaigning for McCain or something.

But I have to say this: I loved, loved, LOVED those darn books. The teenage angst! The overly dramatic heartbreak! The barely-hidden message of morality! The vampires! The werewolves!

Oh, and I wish I was named Bella. I may have a child soon, just to name her Bella.

Now I'm totally all geeked-up and anxious for the movie, which comes out November 21, not that I checked or anything. I am SO making Little go with me for opening night. I might even wear fangs.

And in case you thought I spent the whole weekend with no intellectual stimulation, never fear, I rounded out my Sunday with The Incredible Hulk, Edward Norton version. And as much as I love me some Edward Norton, it still doesn't stand up to the wonderful Eddie's father himself, Bill Bixby.

Crap, I guess I have to go back to being an adult tomorrow.

I Should Have Just Walked

2008-10-21T21:15:00.004-04:00

When I first started riding the bus to work, the "31" bus route was a nice, relaxing ride from Frankfort Avenue to the Hall of Justice. I could knit, read a book, and just ease into my day.

Well, no more.

It's not that I didn't see it coming. Some months ago, I started riding the "19" bus because the "31" was getting a little crowded.
This morning, I arrived at the bus stop with time to spare, (I didn't even have to drive my car to the stop and screech into a parking spot next to it) and sat for a minute, then saw my bus coming toward me.

Unfortunately, my bus had a sign flashing, "Sorry -- Out of Service." That sucker just drove right past me without so much as a little slow down or wave. And there were people on it! I know they were there, those tinted windows can't fool me.

So I waited, and before long, here comes the "31." It stopped, and I got on . . . along with approximately five hundred million and three other people. There might have been five hundred million and four, or five, but I couldn't see all the way to the back of the bus because around four hundred million of the passengers were standing up in the aisle.

I scrinched myself into a spot where I could balance on my left pinky toe, as long as I lifted my right foot four inches off the ground and mushed it into my left leg, reached my left arm over four people to grip the pole about nine feet off the ground, perched my right arm approximately seven inches behind and to the right of me, and draped my purse, gym bag, and lunch bag over my right index finger.

Oh, and held my breath.

Every time we stopped, started, or went around a curve, I had to tense every muscle in my body, shift my weight to the toe next to my left pinky toe, and pray that the polish from my last pedicure would hold me up.

I knew things were getting bad when the young girl in a wheelchair said, "Heck, all we need now is some BLIND person to try to get on with a DOG!"

AND . . . the next stop was the blind school, where, indeed, some poor blind person (with some super-cool facial piercings) and his dog got on.

As soon as the people in front saw him, someone yelled out, "We can make room for the dog, but not you!"

Yeah. Maybe Todd was on to something with the whole bike-riding thing.

101 Things -- The Second 100 Days

2008-10-19T20:18:00.002-04:00

Whew! It's a little dusty around here. I've been a very bad blogger, but wanted to pop because it's time for another 101 Things update. So, here we go . . .

Read at least 4 non-fiction books in 2008. I read The Center Cannot Hold, which was absolutely fascinating if you are at all interested in mental ilness. Persepolis was quite a departure from my normal reading material, since it was not only non-fiction, but was in a graphic format. I liked it, and it went very quickly. The Nine was an excellent picture of the Supreme Court which clarified a lot of issues for me. Mockingbird, a biography of Harper Lee, made me very sad, and I think I'm going to have to read a biography of Truman Capote next. I could recommend all four books.

Read a book to learn more about US history. I'm going to count The Nine as fulfilling this category, although I think I'll try to read something else, too. This book really cleared some things up that have been confusing for me since law school, and I think it would be equally interesting for a non-lawyer. It's worth reading for the insights into Sandra Day O'Connor's personality.

Enter something in the State Fair. Well, I entered three somethings. That's all I have to say about that.

Make mint julep liqeur. It's finished and sitting in my liquor cabinet. I'm trying to wait until Derby next year to drink it, but it's very tempting.

Play in my church orchestra. Yay! I've done this twice, which I think makes me a regular member. It's fantastically fun for me to pretend to be a real violin player.

Be a Big Sister for at least six months. Little and I are still truckin' along, having a good time. She has been a wonderful addition to my life.

I was feeling like a 101 Things slacker, but that's actually quite a few things marked off. Honestly, though, I think I've done all the easy stuff, and I'm going to have to put some more effort into the next 100 days . . . especially with those pesky 10 weight loss items.

You're going to see a return to regular blogging around here in the coming weeks. I decided that while I'm not ready this year for NaNoWriMo, I'm going to do the blogging portion of the contest, which means I have to blog EVERY DAY in November. You may get tired of seeing me by the end of the month!

A Note From the Kentucky Coast

2008-09-24T23:31:00.005-04:00

A few years ago, Todd and I took what turned out to be one of my all-time favorite vacations, to Seattle, the San Juan Islands, and Mt. Rainier (Todd doesn't go to vacations with just ONE destination. Does this really surprise you?).

For some reason, ever since I was about high school or maybe college-age, I had just KNOWN, deep in my heart, that Seattle was a very cool place to be. Turns out, I was totally right, and I still say that if I ever win the lottery or otherwise become suddenly wealthy, I am moving there, STAT.

But -- this post is not about the many cool things about Seattle, it is about one very uncool thing that we encountered there.

We stayed in a cool (of course) hotel in the University District, which had a breakfast buffet every morning in the room that turned into a jazz club at night (cool, huh?). One morning, I was sitting there, eating my hard-boiled egg, and waiting for Todd, who was doing something obscene, like jogging, or something. I'm sure I was reading a book, and was in no way looking to make friends with anyone.

Unfortunately for me, I chose a table next to some woman from Idaho who was in town visiting her son at the University of Washington. She was, apparently, looking to make friends, and chose me.

"So . . . where are you from?

"Kentucky," I replied, in what I hoped was my not-quite-unfriendly-but-definitely-not-friendly voice.

"Oh." (reflective pause) "Do you have JOBS?"

Seriously. Do we have jobs? Like, where we wear shoes?

The conversation did not improve from there, and in fact deteriorated to the point at which Idaho lady very earnestly inquired as to whether we expected to suffer damage from the hurricane which was, at that time, pounding the East coast. You know the East coast, right? The one that ISN'T ANYWHERE NEAR KENTUCKY? (Actually, through the whole trip, we encountered similar people who, upon hearing we were from Kentucky, would say things like, "OH! I have a friend in Atlanta, do you know her?")

I'm sure by now, if you're even still reading, you're wondering what the hell this has to do with anything at all. Well, believe it or not, it is TOTALLY relevant, because last week, Hurricane Ike completely lost it's little hurricane mind, and blew all the way up to KENTUCKY, into Louisville, and through my little street, and knocked my power out FOR A WHOLE WEEK. That's seven days, folks, and I had to count them all without the benefit of lights, air conditioning, or a COMPUTER.

So, Idaho lady, I humbly apologize for making fun of you and your silly hurricane question for three solid years. That was TOTALLY my bad.

Things I Wouldn't Know If I Didn't Have Little

2008-09-08T21:22:00.004-04:00

I'm sure you will be glad to know that in the time since my last post, I have not been just LAZING around doing nothing. Nope, I have been learning lots of cool stuff.

For instance, I learned that Miley Cyrus made 2.1 million dollars last year, and the only reason that she didn't make the 7 million that the kids from High School Musical made is that unlike those ho-bags, she doesn't debase herself doing endorsements and ads for various products.

I also learned that it has now been comfirmed -- CONFIRMED, I tell you -- that "7 Things I Hate About You" is, indeed about Miley Cyrus' ex-boyfriend Nick Jonas. This is obvious, of course, to anyone who has seen the video and noted that the dog tags she is wearing are actually Nick's diabetes alert tags.

I learned that thinking about a teenage singing sensation wearing the diabetes alert tags of her singing sensation boyfriend, in lieu of something passe like a class ring, just gets funnier and funner the more you think about it.

I learned that when hanging out with a 12-year-old friend, sometimes you will go see movies that you wouldn't ordinarily see, like maybe, oh, I don't know . . . HOUSEBUNNY . . . and you will find that the movie is actually hilarious (even funnier than diabetes alert tags) and that you laugh longer and louder than the actual 12-year-old.

I tell you what, I can feel myself getting cooler the longer I hang out with that kid.

Bless Our Hearts

2008-08-28T20:57:00.002-04:00

Just as soon as Olympic-fever subsides, I get caught up in a new obsession: the Democratic convention.

Hated Hillary's speech, loved Bill's, thought Michelle's was very solid (and her family frighteningly Camelot-like), and teared up to Joe Biden's son. Right now, I'm listening to poor ol' Al Gore while blogging.

Poor ol' Al. I can't seem to say his name without putting "poor ol'" in front of it. (Kind of like I can't talk about my niece Maddie without adding, "Bless her heart." She just seems to require a bit of extra blessing. Bless her heart.)

Poor ol' Al is that quintessential uncle that everyone has -- the one who is just so damn nice, and gives you such nice presents, that you desperately WANT to be interested in what he's saying, but blast it all, he's just . . . well, boring. Bless his heart.

One of the reasons I think of him as "poor ol'" is that for him, it must be extra heart-breaking to think of how close he came to winning, and how close we all came to NOT being in a senseless and endless war, to NOT worrying incessantly about gas prices and budget cuts.

Seriously, it'll still break your heart if you think about it too much.

Something else that broke my heart today? The elderly lady with dementia who was in court trying to get back the money she posted for her granddaughter's bond. I'm sure you can guess that granddaughter skipped out and left her high and dry. The worst was when the judge asked her how much it was, and she said, "One hundred and FOUR dollars," in such a reverent and awe-stricken voice that you just knew that $104 meant something necessary and unattainable to her.

I guess that's the place we're all in now, where a lost $104 dollars may mean not having luxuries like dinners out, or it may mean not having necessities -- like dinner.

It's a fascinating and exciting time; tonight we will see the first African-American presidential candidate nominated by a major party. Tonight is the beginning of our chance to make up for the past eight years. I hope everyone is watching. I know I will be, and I will be thinking about that one hundred and FOUR dollars the whole time.

Reflections on the Ky State Fair

2008-08-17T20:56:00.002-04:00

Oh, Kentucky State Fair, how I love you. You come around every year, faithfully, and give me new things to think about. Here's this year's Top Ten:

1. Whoever's idea it was to shut down the MAIN GATE to the fair at 5:00 p.m. on what would probably be the busiest day of the whole shebang is going straight to hell. I am so not kidding.

2. Bunnies are universally cute, but ANGORA bunnies -- with their slightly disheveled, prom-queen-the-day-after look -- are the absolute cutest.

3. Some people, although they deserve at least an Honorable Mention for their Caramel Banana Jam and their Tawny Port Wine Jelly, AND their fair isle knitted Christmas stocking, get nothing, and that is sad.

4. Other people, who sweep ALL the jam and jelly and fruit and vegetable categories, might want to give someone else a chance at some point. And I don't care what the rules say, if your address is Charlestown, INDIANA, you might REALLY want to step aside.

5. While we're on the subject of Christmas, I have seen what I want from Santa next year, and it is a Nigerian Dwarf Goat. I will love it and pet it and call it George.

6. In some parts of the state, mullets are still in, as are mohawks.

7. Babies, by which I mean those folk under the age at which they can stand unassisted, really should not be at loud beer tents, performing their first table dance to "Brown Eyed Girl" at 11:00 p.m. Nor should they be encouraged to raise their tiny little fists in the air to ANY tune by Hank Williams, Jr.

8. If I can see your ass poking out from under your clothing, and you are standing straight up, you are not wearing a skirt. That is a belt.

9. Gold lame dresses and gold high heels are NEVER appropriate for a state fair. On the other hand, RED COWBOY BOOTS have been confirmed to be most fashionable, even in August with a mini-skirt.

10. I'm serious about the cowboy boots.

Today's Political Rant

2008-08-14T21:42:00.003-04:00

Okay, this has been bugging me for several days, and I've finally just got to say it:

John Edwards, was that piece of ass really worth everything it cost you?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

I was SUCH a fan of John Edwards. For months, I walked around whining that Edwards was totally getting the shaft, that the only candidates anyone could focus on were those spotlight hogs, Hillary and Barack, and that we were going to miss out on the best candidate.

And boy howdy, was I wrong.

I keep hearing things like, "Well, his wife was in remission when he had the affair," and "Well, the baby isn't his," and my personal favorite, "Well, she's forgiven him, so we should too."

And all I can think is this: what if Edwards had won the nomination?

We would lose the presidency. Again.

We would lose the country. Again.

Maybe if I were married to John Edwards, I would have enough love for him to forgive him for such a devastating betrayal. Maybe I could forgive his risking our marriage and our life together.

But I can't forgive his risking my country. I can't forgive his taking such a chance with MY future.

I wonder if he thinks it was worth it?

Someday I'll Write a Real Post Again

2008-08-12T22:14:00.004-04:00

Ack. Forgot to post. Here's an update:

1. Dropped off my Ky State Fair entries on Sunday, and am anxiously awaiting the results. I have high hopes for that blasted Christmas stocking.

2. Been totally captivated by the Olympics in the past few days. Seriously, is there anything cuter than that men's gymnastics team? So wholesome, so disgustingly all-American.

3. Changed my haircolor. Again. This change prompted the following conversation with one of my Sunday School students:
Him: Didn't your hair used to be black and white?
Me: Yep.
Him: Do you know that now it's black and purple?
Me: Yep.
Him: Why don't you have kids?

4. Signed up for Facebook. Apparently, I don't have any more high school and college friends than I did . . . well, when I was in high school and college.

5. Saw The Dark Knight and it was totally depressing. Heath Ledger's dead, Morgan Freeman's divorced, and Christian Bale is a DV perp. Saw Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants with Little, and it was much happier.

6. Finally gave into the summer reading temptation of the Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels. And, now I'm hooked. Darn those fascinating vampires!

7. Broken things around here are multiplying at an alarming rate: Both digital cameras -- broke. Laptop -- broke. Car -- broke. Sunglasses -- broke. (Okay, so that last one I broke myself in a snit when I lost my car keys AGAIN. None of the rest are my fault.)

Vacation Good, Bad and Ugly

2008-07-28T18:39:00.003-04:00

HELLO!!! (waving hand frantically, in hopes that someone is out there)

I'm back! Did you miss me? Did you notice I was gone?

It seems like it's been forever since I've clicked on "new post" around here, but I guess that's what vacation will do to you. Given the state of the Lewis family computer (half-broke) and both Lewis family cameras (also half-broke), I wasn't able to do my usual trip play-by-play for the blogosphere, but rest assured, we did indeed go on vacation.

Last Sunday we scooted out of town and headed for Asheville, North Carolina. I had never been there before, and I can give it an only slightly qualified thumbs up. The thumbs up is due to lots and lots of fabulous restaurants, really cool shopping (if I were an "alternative smoker" I would have found lots of shops for my "alternative smoking" needs, if you get my drift, wink, wink), and a serious micro-brew beer scene. The slight qualification comes from the fact that I was TOTALLY a crime victim while in this town.

Yep, my wallet was "lifted," as they say. I was a might peeved (read: fucking pissed off), and even more so as the charges started to roll in on my checking account. I am quite the considerate crime victim, as my wallet was full of the following: my checkbook, a check written from Todd to me, my debit card, two credit cards, my driver's license, and my social security card. Not to mention my Qdoba card, which entitles me to a free chips and salsa on my next visit.

We got stuff mostly taken care of, meaning the bank and both credit cards have refunded all the money that was spent. Oddly enough, a detective called me before we got home on Saturday, and said that the wallet itself had been recovered, so it's being mailed back to me and I'm hoping my ID is in there. Even odder -- today, in the mail, I received my checkbook, stamped "found loose in mail." Weird, huh?

So, anyway, we left Asheville for less crime-ridden pastures of Bryson City, where Todd did a lot of fishing, and I did a lot of loafing around the little town.

And for those of you wondering what crazy thing Todd got me to try this time, I have three words for you: white water rafting. Yeah. All I can say is, I did it, and the fact that I cried for the first two miles doesn't discount that fact in the slightest. I did it, and I don't ever have to do it again.

And You Thought Finding a PENNY Was Good Luck

2008-07-15T07:50:00.003-04:00

Once again, I am starting a week with the resolution to be nicer to people. Mostly to random people . . . OK, to criminals. Criminals are people, too, right? So I should be nice and kind to them, right? Well, that's what I tell myself all the time.

This dude comes up to me yesterday with a charge of Possession of Marijuana -- not the most exciting crime in the world, and really, for how easy we are on that crime, we should all be out smoking a big ol' doobie on our lunch hour, because we can all totally afford a $25 fine and court costs, and hey, marijuana might just make us all nicer to other people, thus obviating the need for be-nicer-to-people resolutions.

So I offer dude his fine and costs, and he says to me, "I don't think I'm guilty."

Fine. In the interest of being nicer, I will not point out how your not THINKING you are guilty wastes my time, when you in fact ARE guilty. I will instead say, "Okay, today is your arraignment and we will enter a plea of not guilty for you and set your case for a pretrial conference."

Dude: "Well, see, I found it."

Me: "Found it?"

Dude: "Yeah, I was just walking down the street, and I found it. Somebody else's pot, just laying there, so I picked it up and then right after that I got arrested. I just found it."

Now, this, as we all know, is a lie. Seriously, raise your hand if you believe this dude.

That's what I thought. But, instead of pointing this out, I nodded sympathetically, sighed dramatically, and said to Dude, "I know. Happens to me ALL THE TIME."

Ten minutes later, Dude comes back up to me and says, "You know that fine? I think I'll just take that. It'll be easier. Even though I JUST FOUND IT."

I didn't even hit him. I just said, "You know . . . that's actually NEVER happened to me."

Dude: "Yeah, I know."