Desperately Seeking Season

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When explorer John Smith made landfall in America and began charting the shoreline of the East Coast, it is reported that he sailed into Maine and immediately turned his ship around, citing the upper reaches of New England to be the over-cold. I tried to do the same thing when I first arrived to Maine, but the flight crew of United Airlines insisted I disembark the vessel. Fortunately, it was August and Maine was suffering a heat wave, a term I use laughingly since I was raised in Arizona where heat waves are only declared once the asphalt roads begin to bubble and people perish upon setting out to collect the mail.

That first winter in Maine was a tough one on which to cut my teeth. The harsh temperatures were unrelenting and heavy snow dumped upon the coast for what seemed an entire calendar year. Wisdom comes with winters, I muttered often. And it did. I grew wise to many things I had previously considered hyperbole or lore, like black ice and deadly icicles that plummet from rooftops. I also learned of the crowning jewel of coastal winters: the snowy mix. Nothing makes dressing, driving, walking, and choosing to go on living more difficult than a snowy mix.

Through the hardship of winter, though, I learned of its requiem. Spring. In places I have previously lived, spring arrives like a parade. The throngs of people are eagerly waiting for it to begin, and just when you think you have enough time to duck inside a restaurant to use the facilities, it’s marching by. Spring arrives differently in Maine. The grip of winter eases hesitantly and with several false starts. Snow boots become rain boots and then snow boots again. We prepare with equal diligence for Easter and Nor’easter. As the states to the south of us showcase their cherry blossoms and open-toed footwear, those of us in the over-cold are still existing on chili and wondering if it’s time to take down the holiday wreaths.

School releases for Spring Break, a much less ominous title than its precursor, February Break. There isn’t the same exodus from Maine during this week. You can face your fellow townspeople the week before without fear of hearing their plans of treason which include traitorous words like Mexico and Florida. While we’re not yet taking a break from spring, it’s the break we need to start searching for it. Spring is no easy find here. It beckons quietly, probably because it’s covered by mud, and we’re forced to scour our surrounds for earnest signs of it.

At long last we take note that the snow-hardened earth has waged its land-grab upon the slush. Animals long forgotten make their presence known by rummaging through the garbage again. Ten layers dwindle to two or three. Crockpots resume their post as
storage for pens and unpaid bills.

Spring in Maine allows for the sort of reflection typically mustered at the seam of a new year. It brings time for introspection and a renewal that comes with not wearing flannel for extended periods. To take an ambling walk under sunlight and to glimpse a harbor that has broken up its last floes of ice reminds us that while it’s still cold, it’s no longer the over-cold.

You have outlasted another winter, which is more than the earliest settlers could claim. Feeling victorious – and maybe slightly sunburned – you return home to relocate the down jackets and shovels to the recesses of the garage. You spruce up and make space, both within your home and your self. You are struck by grandiose ideas of converting your mudroom into a sauna or a guest bedroom. You stand proudly in your home which has been denuded of the trappings of winter, admiring the lightness that spring cleaning affords, when a voice emanating from the television seizes your attention.

6 to 8 inches of snow on Thursday.

And suddenly you wonder if John Smith’s boat might still be out there, bobbing in the Atlantic, ready to take us all down to Virginia.

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Badger Me

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I’m going to write something.

Soon.

I am going to write something soon. I’m declaring it outwardly because that’s what gurus tell you to do to inspire an inward impetus. I think that just means to involve others in your inaction so that they can badger you about your progress. But no one becomes a guru by saying, “Make friends badger you.” It’s much more inspiring to advise a stuck person to declare their intention. So I am declaring my intention to make the words that clang around inside my brain hemispheres siphon through my fingertips that lie slack across the keyboard.

But, please, also badger me. To write. And to buy toilet paper because we ran out three days ago.

–

In the meantime, this is the video of my show.

 

 

Darwinian Evolution – Part II

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This is the conclusion to the start of this story.

—

There is not a more powerful thing to echo inside the ears of a poor traveler than the siren song of free food. With that, I allowed her to push me into the waiting shuttle bus.
The bonfire towered in the distance. A daunting column of orange with flames licking the setting sun. The silhouettes of youthful bodies, toned by hiking and surfing, jerked and swayed, backlit by the glow of the fire. I moved tentatively toward the tribal scene, convinced I was about to be scalped and made into a teepee. Just as I was about to turn around, someone grabbed my hand and pulled me in the direction of the heat. Before I could protest I had fallen into the pulsing group of strangers. The girl who had taken my hand yelled above the din, “Take your shirt off, mate!” I looked around and noticed everyone in various states of undress. Bathing suits, bras, underwear. I strained to recall the morning, before I had boarded a plane bound for this unkempt place, to remember what undergarments I had thrown on. If my memory drew beige, I was keeping everything on. I peeked under my neckline and saw I’d worn black.  This is fun, I breathed, before slipping my shirt over my head.

The next couple of hours were a blur of dancing in the midst of crackling branches and spiraling smoke. I was introduced to people from the ends of the earth, all strangers before this night but united in wanderlust and diminishing bank accounts. We shared – but mostly I listened to – stories about the quirks of life Down Under with the kind of easy cadence reserved for intimates. The conversation turned in the inevitable way it does among backpackers to the next stop on the trail. The casual way with which these rootless souls tossed out locations like Bali or Jakarta or Singapore as though they were their grandmother’s house made my skin itch at the thought of returning home. Going back to the Midwest, back to Pre-Med, back to the loaded question, “Was it fun?”

Before I had to face the shame of revealing that I would no longer be galavanting around the world to the swarm of globetrotters, a booming noise rang out over our heads. Our eyes darted in unison toward the direction of the sound. A man, cloaked by the shadows cast by the fire, called out, “It’s time for The Game!”

You could tell by the way he said it that ‘The Game’ was capitalized. It was a thing that carried lore and probably fallen contenders. He continued on, his words traveling through the smoke and flames like errant embers, to describe a swimming competition. A tradition among the backpackers who traveled to Darwin. The idea was to coerce as many hostel guests as possible into swimming out to a deep point in the sea until we all had to race back to the sand, scramble on to the shore, and attempt to seize a prized T-shirt on the beach. The first to nab the T-shirt won his stay at the hostel for no charge.

I looked around at the faces of my new comrades. Some had a visible glint of excitement in their eyes while others held that I’m-too-drunk-to-even-walk glaze. But every one of us, me included, stared out at the ocean blackened by nightfall. Now I’d seen Jaws enough times by this point in my life to know that bad things happen to those who swim at night. I stood up and started to brush the sand off my still unclothed thighs, expecting my tribe of half-naked travelers to join me.

They did not.

They were trotting down to the water’s edge. I turned toward the idle shuttle bus and began to walk toward it when a voice yelled, “C’mon! This is fun!” I stopped dead in my tracks. The F word again. I pivoted to stare at the person goading me. I threw the clothes that were still in my hand into a heap on the sand.

I lined my toes up against the lapping water. Goosebumps staked claim to my body despite the balmy summer air. I looked out across the black sheen of the ocean, my mind drifting to what could lie beneath. The foam swirled around my ankles as I started into the surf. The hooting of the others had ceased, giving way to an eery quiet as everyone waded into the shallows of an ocean few had ever before touched. I slid under the water, allowing it to rush over my shoulders and head, before I broke the surface and began swimming to the invisible junction of black sky and blacker sea. With each stroke, I felt as though I was dredging a spoon through pea soup. The water was warmer than that of any ocean I’d ever been immersed in. It felt murky and thick and filled with sediment. I put my head down and continued to put one arm in front of the other when my torso was bumped by something on my right.

I gasped for air and flailed my arms, struggling to regain my bearings in the dark while staring wide-eyed into the abyss beneath me. Laughter rang out, and I realized with enormous relief that I had collided with someone – a human – in the dark.

The swimmers formed an uneven starting line and we awaited our signal, each of us silently treading water and fixing our gaze on the beacon of the bonfire in the distance. When we heard our bell, we all lurched forward, swimming with as much heart and energy as our underfed, under-rested bodies could manage. Every several strokes I had to raise my head to relocate the bonfire, my lighthouse ablaze, and recalibrate my direction. The churn of the water and the kicking of feet propelled me through the water, until I felt the grit of the sand graze my fingertips. I rose to my feet, water streaming from my hair and body, and began to run. I could feel the presence of other bodies but my fight-or-flight impulse had taken grip and I had lost control of my senses. I could only run. Toward the fire. Toward the T-shirt. Toward fun.

The sand flew under my feet as my eyes scanned in vain for the T-shirt. I saw it at the exact moment I felt someone overtake me. I hurled my body through the dark, arms stretched, through the night air. I hit the ground, fingers encircling the T-shirt, as a heap of other racers landed in a pile around me.

We all lay there for awhile in the sand, chests heaving and eyes unblinking, unable to do or say anything. And then I started to laugh. I laughed until tears sprang out of my eyes. I laughed until everyone else began to laugh also. We laughed with abandon until the mysterious man who had organized the race crouched before me.

“Now that was fun!” He said, staring into my eyes.

“Yes,” I panted. “That was fun.”

And it was.

I stayed an extra couple of nights in that hostel because I could and because it was free. And because I needed a couple of nights to recover from a conversation the next morning with a Darwin elder who told me that the ocean teems with crocodiles and that only a crazy person would swim in it.

Or a fun person.

—

Darwinian Evolution

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You should all read this piece because it had the very distinctive honor of not winning the travel writing essay contest it was submitted to. It’s about a time in my life where I had to teach myself to have fun. Nudity is involved. Australians, too. If you read this in the Bangor Daily News, part 2 will follow on Thursday.

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I had been living in Australia for the better part of a year, which seemed – on the front end of the trip – to be more time than I would want, but after enduring the twenty-hour plane ride, it turned out to be the minimum amount of time I would need before I could face it again in reverse.

I had chosen Australia as my place of study on a lark. Seated in my academic advisor’s office, surrounded by glossy magazines with crisp images of the Great Wall, Stonehenge, and the Colosseum splashed across the covers, I murmured, “What do you think about Australia?” He leaned back in his chair, his fingers tapping at his face, as he mentally escaped to a memory Australia had once handed him. A smile played upon his lips before he said, “Well, if you can’t have fun in Australia, you’re not capable.”

That was the word that I needed to hear. Fun. I’d spent the last three years in a ruthless Pre-Med program, struggling to keep pace with foreign exchange students who possessed more intellect in their earlobe than I did in my frontal lobe. Things crystallized inside of that shabby office, and the loftier concepts of history, art, and foreign language felt suddenly short-sighted as compared to the more elemental idea of fun.

Moving somewhere for the pursuit of fun proved complicated for someone who had fallen out of practice with it. What does one pack for a year of fun? How much money do I need to have for fun? What level of SPF is fun? Is living without antiperspirant fun?

It hadn’t taken long for the Aussies and other study abroad students I had made acquaintances with to realize that I was a struggling student of fun. My existence within my new university became startlingly similar to the one I had been living in the United States. I could be counted on to attend class and provide notes to those who had slept through it. I would stay sober and drive the revelers home at the end of the night. Let’s just say that everyone knew whose door to knock on when they needed an extra international phone card or some aspirin. They knocked on a different door when the situation demanded condoms or cigarettes.

When the University announced that there would be a week-long break in classes to allow the students time to prepare for finals, I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to know I’d have ample time to collaborate with my study groups. That was until I learned that all of my study groups were going to be collaborating with the Great Barrier Reef. Everyone was heading north to take in the sights and sounds of the famed Gold Coast. Room after room in my apartment complex was evacuating as though the place had caught fire. Hastily packed duffle bags were thrown into the hallways as students frantically called out to no one, “Have you seen my passport?”

I, of course, knew just where my passport was stored. I hadn’t used it since arriving to the country. I pulled open the center drawer of my desk and saw my passport lying across my Biology syllabus and my return ticket to the United States. I fingered the small booklet distractedly, mentally tabulating how few weeks remained before I would be exiled home. I flipped open the passport, staring at the imprints collected from trips already taken, the memories of each already yellowed and folding up at the corners in the drawers of my mind. A voice from the hallway pierced my silent musings.

“So I guess we’ll see you in a week then?”

I turned to see a friend paused at my door, bag in tow. I looked down at my passport once more before meeting her gaze.

“Actually,” I stammered. “I’ll see you in Cannes. I’m going to hit Darwin first.”

The landing gear slammed against the pavement and the plane shuddered down the runway just as I had finished thumbing through a guidebook of Darwin. I hadn’t learned anything of import other than that absolutely everything in the Australian city of Darwin will murder you. Be it lightning or spiders or snakes, each one a ubiquitous and lethal foe. While the plane taxied toward its jetway, I glanced at the Accommodations section of the book once more and scrawled the address of the first hostel listed across the back of my hand. I was fast depleting my bank account, already taxed before I had spontaneously decided to travel to the land where everything kills. A cheap room bursting with bunkbeds of Danes and Swedes was the only way to keep my ship sailing.

The taxi deposited me at the mouth of a bustling swath of roadway. I trudged along the sidewalk, passing restaurants and nightclubs I couldn’t indulge in, toward the screaming red building that I knew – by smell alone – had to be my hostel. I entered the lobby through a doorway strung with wooden beads. The beat of an American dance song – probably one that had failed to become popular in the U.S. – assaulted my eardrums as I peered over the check-in desk at the top of a head that had not yet swung up to notice me. I cleared my throat. She didn’t budge. I reached over the counter and touched her shoulder. She flew back in her chair, startled, and stared at me as though I was the first tourist to ever check in there.

Before I could inquire about vacancies, she scurried around the side of the desk and scooped up my bag in her wispy arms before turning heel. I worried momentarily that someone might steal my valuables, which were pitiably limited to a bottle of American antiperspirant and a tube top. She dashed back into the room, arms emptied of my bag, and began scooting me toward the door.

“You’re going to be late for the bonfire on the beach!” she screeched.

“That’s okay. I’m not really a bonfire kind of…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she interrupted. “There’s free dinner.”

———

Part Two to follow…

Show Video

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Remember when I harassed you all to come to my comedy show? Many of you came, and I’m very appreciative. And those of you who only come to Maine for summer camp, I appreciate you asking for video of the show.

Here is a snippet (the last 10 minutes). The whole video will be up soon.

Ignore my ends. I know I need a trim.

 

Taking Care of Business

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My younger brother is in the Navy, and is currently stationed overseas. While he busies himself with trifling matters like preserving the safety and liberties of American citizens and maintaining freedom of the seas, he asked his family to pledge one thing in return.

Take care of his car.

The responsibility of caring for a brand-new Land Cruiser that rivals a Boeing 747 in both size and price has fallen squarely to my parents, but because I’ve come in for a visit, I decided to lighten their load and pick up my share of automobile maintenance.

I think he’ll be really pleased. I’m buffining and shining. Yielding and merging. 10ing and 2ing.

Nothing Really Happens

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If you’ve been reading along of late, you already know that I’ve been trying to live a bit louder. I have been experimenting with some new things in an effort to outgrow my personal borders. Mostly I’m concerned with being a person who doesn’t always say, “I won’t,” in favor of being someone who can say, “I have.” Even if they become my lasts, I am determined to set some firsts.

So running out of gas on the highway fit nicely into my new paradigm.

No car I have ever driven has run out of gas before. I have run out of windshield wiper fluid. I’ve run out of good CDs. I’ve even run out of gas money, but that was easily enough worked around by actually getting a summer job instead of just talking about getting one. To run out of gas while driving was a totally new experience, and one I had wondered about for much of my behind-the-wheel life.

I have a storied reputation of awaiting the illuminated gas tank symbol before bothering to fill the tank. Even when its glow attracts my eye, my tendency is to believe that I still have a few hundred miles before I need to pull into the station. When the needle droops glumly to the Empty line, I raise my eyebrow at it and think, “You were made by an American car manufacturer who surely accounted for my preference to remain seated and my life outlook that gas is an inalienable right,” before returning my gaze to the road ahead while trying to remember to hold my speed at the rumored optimal gas-metabolizing rate of somewhere between 20 mph and 70 mph. I can never remember exactly.

I recall very nearly running out of gas while riding with my father once. We were traveling the lonely expanse of highway that connects Phoenix to its desert cousin, Tucson. We had made the trip to see Eric Clapton perform, one last homage to father-daughter activities before I would leave the state for college. My dad, of the same gas tank-challenging ilk as I, was confident his old Land Cruiser would reach home on the well of petrol we had. His bravado began to erode as the exit we needed loomed an uncomfortable distance ahead. Like an airplane pilot preparing for a hairy landing, he began to systematically switch off all the dials, stripping our road-bound fuselage down to the essentials. The radio was grimly silenced. The air conditioning was ominously gagged. I clutched the undersides of my seat for fear that I might be shed as unnecessary cargo especially given the extra pounds I’d picked up in the lethargy of senior year.

As we barreled toward our off-ramp, the neon beacon of an Exxon lying just beyond, the lights on the dashboard began to flicker. At least I remember it happening that way. Though I also remember asking my dad if we had time to stop at Arby’s first. My mind ranged into the morbid, and I began to hope we would run out of gas, if for no other reason than I would finally see what happens when you do. Surely a villainous cackle rings out through the car before a hazy demon billows out of the steering wheel to damn our souls. Maybe the gas tank explodes in a fiery display of orange and Michael-Bay-film-slow-motion? Or perhaps an automated voice informs us that the car will begin drawing fuel from an emergency reserve that only the dimwitted drivers of the world ever get to learn exists. I imagined that the instant the car swallows that last droplet of gas, the glove compartment automaticall fills with hydrofluoric acid, burning your proof of insurance and car title and stripping you of all the medals and privileges of driving. At the very least, Keanu Reeves would come into play.

I didn’t find out that night since we made it to the pump before any of those outcomes came to pass. It took fifteen more years of pondering, of challenging the convention that cars even need gas at all, to learn what really happens when the gas runs dry. Are you ready to hear what happens?

Nothing.

Nothing happens. There are no violent shudders, no wizards, no explosions, no confetti. When the gas tank empties while you are driving, nothing happens to your car other than it begins to decelerate. You press your foot upon the gas pedal but instead of speeding up, your car is slowing down. The forward inertia that you are losing is so gradual, however, that no one else in your car is even alerted to it. The cars behind you won’t even notice because – much to my surprise – no banner announcing This Dipshit Just Ran Out Of Gas unfurls across your back windshield. In fact, the whole event is so peaceful that even you, as the driver, scratch your head and wonder what is going on. Then that banner that doesn’t appear in your window suddenly unrolls in your head as soon as you glimpse the level of the orange and disappointed-in-you needle.

Once your car slows to its unavoidable resting place, all you can do is wait. You make a few phone calls to see if a friend or a mechanic can rush to your aid with a portable container of gas. That’s all you can do, really. Because if you are the sort of person who fails to drive to the gas station in the first place, you’re sure as shit not going to walk to it.

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10 Reasons You Should Be Glad I Didn’t Blog In My Twenties

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I had taken a short hiatus from writing to work on my comedy show, which I performed this past week. Finishing it has led to that day after Christmas feeling. I need something new to sink my teeth into. Then I remembered I have this blog that I had been neglecting. My funny friends decided we all needed a boost and a writing prompt so we’re linking to each other and listing the 10 reasons you (and I) should be glad that we were not blogging in our twenties.

1. My capri anxiety was at full-tilt, leaving little time for even basic needs.

2. The entire Internet did not need to know that if you drank two glasses of wine rapidly and then crossed your eyes just slightly before looking at one of my boyfriends, he looked exactly like Ben Affleck.

3. Twenty-something friends are way less cool than 30 and 40-something friends about reading ‘to protect her privacy, I will refer to her as Schmessica’ in posts.

4. Every month there would have been a post entitled This time I really seriously must have Toxic Shock Syndrome.

5. Every other sentence would have included the parenthetical aside: (Do you think my boss knows about this blog? If yes, do you think he also knows that I never lock the door when I’m the last to leave and that my Sun Chips habit was probably responsible for the mice?)

6. How many times would you have really wanted to read, “I’m writing this from the bathroom of a restaurant where I am trying to pull the Tampax dispenser off the wall in hopes that there is an escape tunnel behind it that I can use to avoid returning to this first date.”

7. It would have been much more awkward to have to bang on the wall of my apartment and yell, “Can you two move it to a hotel room tonight? But first remind me of your wireless password!”

8. I related every milestone, achievement, and setback to the TV show Felicity. Now I only do it in my head.

9. Every post would have ended with a vote on the question, “Given all this information, who would you say broke up with who first?”

10. It’s difficult to be creative when the oxygen flow to your brain is restricted as it is when you have to wear a bra. Every day.

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Now click over to visit my funny friends:

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How’s Your List Holding Up?

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We are six days into the new year, and I – like many of you, I hope – am loosening my grip on my resolve to do better and be better. Here are the resolutions I fear I’m falling short on:

- Stop trying to look like Kim Kardashian and just look like Kim Kardashian.

- Secure a multi-million dollar recording contract.

- Wear less: urine, Spanx, food in my teeth, Medium stickers on my shirts, and hairties that got lost in my hair.

- Wear more: zipped pants.

- Scream less: For the love of everything holy, can we get through a goddamn doorway faster than the Texas A&M marching band?

- Also scream less: This laundry room is about to see an NHL lockout situation!

- Leave less iPads on the front lawn.

- Take Savannah Guthrie’s job. So we don’t have to hear the name Savannah anymore.

- Eat more: meals at the table.

- Eat less: In the bathroom and in general.

- Learn to ask where a lot of things are instead of just the pharmacy in Spanish.

- Learn where all the cowboy’s have gone.

- Make Rick Moranis famous again.

- Stop clicking: my nails and links entitled “Shark Tank Explodes Inside Mall In China.”

- Dabble in the exotic large animal trade. Except Silver Backs; They seem temperamental.

- Watch that Jessica Simpson movie that grossed $24 bucks and some Swedish Fish sales.

- Popularize hand signals while driving.

- Visit a polar ice cap. And stop them from melting.

- Visit a fiscal cliff. And stop things from falling off it.

- Bear witness to a Sea World orca trainer attack.

- Gather Hilary Clinton’s hair into a high ponytail.

- Stop eating food off the free sample plates and pretending I didn’t know they were 90% covered in pee.

- Wonder less about why I bought a Jennifer Convertibles sofa.

- Perfect my Diane Rehm voice.

- Talk to my Navy Seal brother over Skype without signing off, “You know, I was the favorite child before you had to go become a national emblem of heroism. But whatever. I still have better hair.”

- Campaign for Obama’s re-election.

- Remove ‘refried beans’ from the Special Skills section of my resume.

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It’s going to be a tough road in 2013…

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13

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Five years ago I called my parents at their home in Arizona, which was always inconveniently and often sadly far from my home in New York City. My dad answered their home phone, an innocuous action yet one that still knocks me off balance every time it happens. His tone, which normally gallops through the phone and fills the ear on the other end of the line with warmth, sounded smaller and tighter. After what seemed an interminable lapse of silence, he began a tale that involved a driver who’d had a seizure. The driver’s car passed over a median and through lanes of oncoming traffic before overturning and finally slamming into cars parked in a parking lot. The EMTs who had arrived to the scene looked on, befuddled that anyone – that everyone – had managed to survive.

The driver was my mother.

I didn’t hang up the phone after my dad vowed that my mother was fine and that she would call me when she was awake. I only lowered it, with a trembling hand, to my lap and stared at the floorspace around my feet. My mind registered very little for awhile before the vague outline of something I’d not yet resolved myself to floated into my consciousness: I wanted a baby.

Beyond the rasher reasons shaped by the specter of losing my mother, like that my mom should know the smiles of grandchildren and that I could never truly be gotten by my own children if they never knew her, there was a quiet conviction growing in me that a child would buffer the high winds of life. That a child could galvanize the thin casing that surrounds our fragile organs and would set in alignment my reasons for doing anything each day. That a child would be my lucky number.

I looked down at my phone. It was 1:13 when I decided to change my life.

13 is an emotionally significant number in my family. It was the number that adorned my father’s baseball uniforms from the time he was a boy through his years playing professionally. It was the number my brother and I each chose in our own sporting pursuits in part to pay homage to him though also in hope it may confer some of his athleticism to us. It resides within our passwords. It becomes encircled on our calendars. The number 13 is inescapable for us, and it turns up all the time, slapping us in the face with its relentless serendipity.

2013 has tiptoed close. I can feel it moving underneath me. And I know that I need a change to my life again. I’m not sure of what needs to change, and without knowing what, I have very little clarity on how. I only know that a change is what I need. I have many wells of joy burrowed deep into the soil of my life. Good kids, good health, good hair among them.  But I’m not immersed in those wells. I’m stepping around them and peering into them from the high ground. I’ve been aware of this void for awhile now, and I’ve tried some corrective measures, like yoga, and fewer carbs, and tailgating less. I tried inviting friends who lack the sarcasm and pessimism I cloak myself in, like the slimming black clothes I always wear, into my circle.

None of it worked.

2013 represents my return to the drawing table. I am going to try some things that make me uncomfortable – beyond wearing leggings and using public toilets- to see how I respond. I have to because I drew my lucky number five years ago, and now the ticking of time has put up the number 13. And my mother, who nearly lost it all in that accident, boldly changed her life last year, and everyone is reminded of it when they see the tranquility that now colors her eyes.

I haven’t determined what those things should be yet so until they occur to me, I’ll probably just start with some situps.

Like 13 of them.

—

(Brave New Year, folks. Thanks for reading. Thanks for listening. For me, they’re the same thing.)

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