{Originally Posted at Generation Cedar}

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon)

Is it possible, in this noisiest-of-ever-century, that we hardly ever hear, hardly ever see anything much?

Have you ever noticed your world when the power goes off? It’s not just that you can’t check your email… it’s a deafening silence that might drive some crazy if it lasted long enough. All the hums and quiet roars are dead, and we are left with much less–or is it more?

I think if we don’t live on purpose, we won’t live at all. If we don’t see through the daily whir, and hear through the daily buzz, we might just miss the life we were intended to live.

If you’ve lived very long, you know that life isn’t that long. Can we say as someone did,

“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.”

It’s not hard, really. It’s not sky-diving and Rocky-mountain climbing…

It’s another warm hug today; choosing to cast a gentle glance in the direction of one you love, rather than a day-worn scowl.

A walk outside, closing your eyes, and raising your face to the warmth of an autumn sky. Saying out loud to your children…”Isn’t this world glorious–the one our Lord created?”

Curling up to read Dr. Seuss again, ending with a tickle. Speaking words of life into someone’s heart.

All these smallish things, woven together over a lifetime make a life well-lived.

{Originally published on Writing My Wrongs}

“Serendipity: to make discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things not in quest of.” – Wikipedia.org

It’s been two days, and I am still shaking. I still cannot catch my breath. I still feel dizzy and disoriented. I feel drained. Depleted of all my energy.

Ever been in a car accident and end up okay, but also end up shaking and traumatized for a few days? I feel like that.

My breathing becomes more rapid and shallow, and my eyes well with tears just recollecting the events that transpired this past Sunday.

Yes. I visited the amazing powerful Claud. Claud and I met at a diner in the same town that my daughter goes to school in. Of course I knew this. Of course I let her know. Since we have not met face-to-face and only correspond via email, I felt it terribly important to let her know this. Why? Well, I was very concerned that if, by any force of any god, we ran into each other she might think I had become some crazy stalker. I am a bit crazy but I am not a stalker.

My daughter made it clear when we first reunited that she did not want to meet YET. I have not pushed. I have developed the relationship slowly, followed her lead and let things flow as they may. That being said, I won’t deny that I am anxious to meet her. Anxious to sit with her and share coffee, talk books, look at her beautiful face, hear the sound of her voice, listen to her laugh. To touch her again. To be back in the same room with a piece of my soul that left me 20 years ago.

I told her of my visit via email. She did not respond. That was okay. I felt I had done my duty of “warning” her.

Saturday morning I happen to check her away message on AIM. It says “parents”. This confuses me. Was she home for the weekend? Was she sick? Did something happen? On a whim, I check her school academic calendar. I learn that the weekend I will be in town is parents weekend. Her aparents will be there the same time I will. We will all be breathing the same air.

I get nervous. I rethink my plans with Claud. I decide against canceling. I realize I am being foolish. I cannot plan my life around where she is at any given time. I cannot avoid that part of the state simply because she is there.

So, I go. I drive 70 miles to visit Claud. As I enter the town we are meeting in, I cross over a street named Michael Avenue (name changed for privacy). I gasp for air. Its like a tidal wave hits me. I shake. For the past year I have been mailing letters and packages to my daughter’s school on Michael Avenue. I felt like crossing that street was like going over a threshold, opening a gate, passing into some sacred space. Her space.

{Originally Published on Recovering Straight Girl}

The smell of fall is in the air here in the Pacific Northwest. I’m not really ready to let summer go but fall is my favorite time of the year. More than January 1st, fall feels like the time to begin again–a new year–a new time of possibilities.

We’ve had a fun summer and I’m beginning to be ready to dive in to the world again. I’ve been cleaning things up in my office, my home, and in my head. Taking stock of what I have, what I need, and what to do next. It’s a little exhausting at times, but I know it will all pay off in the end.

I was having some apprehension about starting school again. HG and I decided that changing schools would be a good idea and I applied to the school I want to attend last spring but did not follow up on my admittance until just last week. I think I was having anxiety about it and figured if I put it off too long I could just take some online classes at the community college I attended last term. But I did decide to follow up and did send them the info they needed and did register for classes as a non-admitted student until everything is processed. Yesterday I filled out all of the financial aid info that I know they will need as soon as everything is processed, cleaned out all of my files, recycled an entire garbage can of paper, and got ready to mail two important items that will (yes, Universe, WILL) bring me some money.

I’m making room for great things to come my way.

In a few hours I will pick up my father from the airport for his visit here with us. I don’t think that I realized just how anxious I am about this visit until I woke up this morning at 2:30 a.m. and couldn’t go back to sleep. Usually when something is coming up that I’m not sure about I just put it aside and deny it awhile. It works out for me actually, because I think while I have it set aside in my denial I somehow process through it a little bit.

This visit brings up a lot of things for me. Obvious things like Why Now? Why Now, after all this time, does my father want to come and visit? I’m glad he does and I’m very much looking forward to it but I still hear that voice in my head that says, “What’s wrong with me that he didn’t want to come before?”

{Originally published on the Busy Dad Blog.}

How do you define a parent? Of course, there’s the biological way, but if our celebrity counterparts have taught us anything this year, a forty pound DNA match and Bugaboo stroller a true parent does not make.
No, to be a real parent you need to get into character a tad more (ironic isn’t it?). How do you know when you’ve successfully crossed over and truly embraced the biggest role of your life?

Here’s my list:

1. You don’t know what you’d do if they never invented the phrase “we’ll see.” Who is the genius who thought of this? He or she should get a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. It’s the platinum card of our parental phrase arsenal. Why? Because it allows you to defer the “no” (and the whining) to a later, more convenient time or locale. When a request is made, the answer “we’ll see” is a win-win. The child holds onto the hope that this request may still be granted, and therefore withholds all protest. The parent buys extra time, during which the child may forget about the request altogether, or you’ve made it home, where whining can be sufficiently contained.
2. Your currency reference shifts to Bionicle (or other) toys – In my younger days, the CD served as my go-to currency reference. “What? Sixty bucks for this shirt? I could buy like four CDs with that!” As I got older, it became rounds – “Aw man! I could have bought at least five rounds with that. I’m never playing blackjack again!” Now that my transformation is complete, my money bitching resembles something more like this: “What? $3.30 a gallon? That’s like 1/3 of a Bionicle!”

{Originally posted on EyeJunkie.com}

Cultural Context:
A tradition dating to the ancient Greek games which calls for a halt to fighting during the Olympic games, ensuring the athletes’ safe passage to and from the events. Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek (speedskating, 2006) has called for the tradition to be revived with a cease fire in the Darfur region during this summer’s Beijing games. He also founded an organization called Team Darfur which encourages athletes to play a part in raising awareness and bringing an end to the crisis.

On August 5, the Chinese government revoked Cheek’s previously issued visa, preventing him from attending the Olympic games in Beijing just one week before he was scheduled to arrive. Although the government was not required to state the reasons for disallowing Cheek, it is widely believed the decision was in response to his work for peace in Darfur and his criticism of China’s lack of action in the region. Team Darfur has expressed concerns that other athletes are being discouraged from expressing views about the issues as well. Read the AP article here.

Sad.

{Originally published on Melissa Jill’s blog}

I’m back in Phoenix having some great memories from my two weeks in the Bay area. Michelle and Brent were married Thursday in Half Moon Bay.

Brent is a farmer in Iowa and Michelle, originally from Arizona, has moved there to be with him. So this was a destination wedding for them.

This wedding was so special to me and here’s why. If I wasn’t already born into an amazing family, this is the family I would want to adopt me:

{Originally published on greeblemonkey}

Basically, here’s the deal. Seeing as June and July have been a complete BLUR, I have really not paid any attention to my family, much less the news till right about, oh, 60 seconds ago. So, when Bryan brought up the South Carolina license plate controversy, he got a big. fat. blank. stare.

After the obligatory Fill-Aimee-In-On-The-Stuff-She-Has-Been-Missing Conversation, and a few Google searches, I started to get mad. REALLY mad. In a nutshell, South Carolina has authorized a vanity license plate with the words “I Believe” plus the image of a stained glass window and a CROSS over top of it. Clearly an indication that “I Believe” in Jesus Christ. CLEARLY a violation of the separation of church and state.

Have they lost their minds?

But before I go any further with my indignation over this situation, whatever happened to the POINT of a license plate in the first place? WHY does every state have 15,000 variations of design? I know this sounds crazy coming from a graphic designer, but here lies the place where my design sensibilities hit the road, Jack. The PURPOSE of a license plate is for you, me and any random police officer to IDENTIFY a car at a glance. How am I supposed to do that when someone can purchase their own oh-so-special Buffy The Vampire Slayer license plates? What happened to ONE STATE, ONE PLATE? This *is* like an official testament from the holy mother of all departmental clusterfracks, the Department of Motor Vehicles, right? So, not only are you going to make it harder for me to identify the person who just sideswiped me, you are also going to make it harder for me to get through that everlasting line because Granny Smith can’t decide between the University of Florida or Florida State University – you see, she has a grandson at both schools, don’t you know! And maybe she could just get one plate from each and put them at either end of the car??? Wouldn’t that be special!? OH, SHUT UP.

One state, one plate.

And NONE of them should be religious.