Pearl, the Prickly Pear

For Der Fotograf...

2012-02-10T14:21:00.001-05:00

A gentleman on Twitter had requested a link to the song that Zack used on his short film Transform. If you haven't watched this yet, I highly encourage you to do so. Not just because he's my husband and I think he's a genius (which he is, he really really is) but because it truly is a beautiful work of art. I didn't know he was going to use this song until he showed me the film itself. The song was recorded during practice one night with my band back in 2007. Michael Westbrook laid down the brilliant guitar work that you hear and Noah Alexander, my drummer, did a little remixing of it. It turned out really lovely for something that started out in such a rough form.

So, here is a link to the song if you'd like to have it.

Thanks to @derfotograf1967 for spurring me on to share it again.

Click here for the song Window

"All the windows of my heart I open to the day." - John Greenleaf Whittier

Show at Eddie's Attic on Feb. 1st!

2012-01-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

'Tis true, friends.

I have a show. Rather I shall have a show. A show is on the horizon. I will eventually, in a matter of 9 days, step onto the stage at Eddie's Attic and attempt to play and sing songs in a pleasing manner.

I think I clarified that enough, yes?

I'm the opener for Erick Baker and Mieka Pauley, two very talented musicians. Erick is actually managed by my old manager and she has pretty good taste in music. I mean, she managed ME at one point, so that's good. Heh heh. ;-)

As you can see, I am the guest that is special. I'm just grateful that the word special wasn't put into quotation marks.

If you live in the Atlanta area I would be honoured if you made your way to Decatur and up the stairs to Eddie's Attic, found a cozy table, ordered some ridiculously good food to nosh on and opened yourself up to a night of good music. I mean I'm really thinking of you here. Thinking of your well being. You very well might NEED this. Who doesn't need attic stairs, cozy tables, yummy food and music? No one I want to know, that's who.

I'm looking forward to seeing your lovely faces.

(In case you missed the link up there you can go to http://eddiesattic.com and purchase your tickets there. Thanks!)

"And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Need For Solitude

2012-01-11T22:40:00.000-05:00

I haven't blogged in 84 days.

So.

There's that.

I am not a blogger. But you probably knew that already.

Currently I am writing in a "Starbucks" in a Barnes & Noble somewhere in Newnan, GA.

Why Newnan?

Because the wifi signal at Serenbe went kaput earlier and I decided to go for a drive and find one. Now I'm here. It's the closest place that I could find that had a wifi signal that wouldn't relegate me to sitting in an Applebees. Or a Krystals. I can't decide which is worse.

I arrived at the Inn at Serenbe a little after 5pm on Monday, the 9th of January. The girl at the Guest Relations house immediately knew I was who I was because I was the last person to check in for the day. She gave me my key with the small cowbell on it, showed me the layout of the community, and wished me a good stay.

It took me 10 minutes to actually find my room. I lugged my suitcase up and down stairs in the Farmhouse, trying to find my room number. I finally found it, off of the front porch, completely secluded from the rest of the house. I unlocked the door, dragged my suitcase inside, took a look around and promptly began to weep.

I mean weep. I mean the long makes-the-stomach-hurt crying.

I have been battling some seriously bad depression since the beginning of September. I had been sliding into it for a while before that, but I refused to acknowledge it. I hate, utterly abhor, feeling weak. It's a problem. Zack says it's my pride, which is probably true. I don't like needing anything. I don't like feeling vulnerable. To admit that I wasn't doing well felt like defeat. And I was already feeling so defeated in every other aspect of my life that to admit that I was depressed felt like I had nothing left at all.

I was defeated in my music.
I was defeated in my writing.
I was defeated in my journaling.
I was defeated in my painting.
I was defeated in my mothering.
I was defeated in my everything.

Or so it felt.

It was all I could do to get out of bed in the morning. Everything made me feel on edge and anxious. It was if all my nerves were on the outside of my body. Like a sunburn of the soul. I was a hairpin trigger away from blowing up.

So here I am, at Serenbe, in a last ditch effort to try and regain a bit of myself back.

(I'm now back in my room, by the by. Shortly after I started writing, three pimply faced boys sat down at the table next to me and proceeded to play wretchedly bad music over their laptop speakers. Loudly. In the bookstore. I glared at them. I raised my right eyebrow to show my annoyance. They were clueless. I left.)

On our GoogleCal it reads, "Meghan Out Of Town to Write Her Book".

I've done none of that. Of the 6 chapters I've written thus far, not a single word has been added to them. Not another chapter. Nothing.

I brought a journal. Wanna know what I've written so far?

"I tend to draw snails a lot."

"Pinot Noir.
Stuff in a jar.
Martha the waitress.
Harry Connick overhead
And a restaurant
to myself."

"OMG.
Lamb Risotto
at The Hill
in Serenbe
for the win!"

I know.

I know.

The sheer brilliance that was wrought forth from my hand is almost too staggering to be believed. Please. Stay your desire to begin sharing with the masses as I'm not sure the general public is ready for such heady artistry as this.

I have been doing a whole effin' lot of nothing. Mostly sitting here in this room. It was pouring here yesterday and yucky and cold today, so I haven't done any walking about the farm here. I've been sleeping. A lot. Reading a lot.

Feeling guilty. A lot.

I know that I need this. I know it. I'm just having the damndest hard time accepting it.

Why is it so hard for me to accept that I am enough just sitting here? That if I didn't sing another song or write another word that that would be okay? That I would be okay? That the opinion of those who love and know me best wouldn't change?

I can feel myself recharging. This is a very very good thing. I am an introvert. People who don't know me well tend to think otherwise but really, when I am in social situations, I assume a role; I think of it like real life theatre improv and by the time it's done...I am done. I think it's safe to say that for every hour I'm around people, even my family, I need two alone to make up for it. I was so far overdrawn in my recharging that I was damaging my body.

Well. I'm going to go sit someplace else now. I have the whole Serenbe Inn to myself right now so I'll go look and see if there is anything to read in the library.

I hope that all of you are well. I hope that perhaps this makes sense to some of you, or that perhaps this helps you make sense to yourself. That you are enough. Where you are. I'm learning it, too.

For those of you who are introverts as well, I think you'll enjoy this article. I know I did. It made me laugh!

Caring For Your Introvert

"The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space, free from the outside pressures, which is the incubator of the spirit."
Marya Mannes

One From The Archives...

2011-10-18T01:48:00.000-04:00

...because I have been so absolutely and utterly and overwhelmingly SWAMPED.

It's a good thing, though.

I had a lovely coffee time with Mindy Fletcher today and in our getting to know one another's she mentioned that she and I had once worked for the same company. It reminded me of this post I had written around this time of year 5 years ago.

Five years ago.

Five years ago.

And I shake my head.

I was touring quite a bit then. And trying to navigate being single mom and still follow my heart. Now I'm navigating being a mom to four boys and being happily married and STILL trying to follow my heart.

So, because I have been wretched at posting anything of merit lately I humbly offer this bit of past writing to you and sincerely hope that all of you are doing well.

A Movie Moment Of Sorts

In the times where I am not traversing major highways and byways to play my music in far away places I am a music instructor for Courtnay and Rowe, "Atlanta's Premier In Home Teaching Service". I have about fourteen students total ranging in ages from six years old to fifteen and tonight I added my fifteenth student. This student is the first adult student I have had this year. Quite a nice fellow he is, and he lives literally down the street from me with his wife and their cat in a darling little apartment complex.

Complex is right.

I arrived five minutes early to make sure that I wouldn't be late.

Aren't you glad I cleared that up for you? That would be a Captain Obvious moment.

I called my student to let him know that I was there and that I could see his building, which I really thought I could, based on the number of his apartment on my directions sheet. He gave me a few more instructions on how to find it and I said, "Great! Well, I'm outside now so I'll see you in 30 seconds!"

I walked, so very confidentally, towards the building I thought he was in and realised that it wasn't downstairs, it wasn't on the street level and neither was it upstairs.

"Hmmm," I thought, "they must be on the other side." And so I walked down the path towards the street, turned right onto the sidewalk and made my way to the path back down the apartment on the other side.

I was pause here to mention that only a half hour earlier the city of Atlanta had been beseiged with a fantastic thunderstorm, resplendant with lightning and rain that blew sideways. It was just a joy to drive in, I must say, especially in Atlanta, why it was postively a picnic!

(Insert a dramatic stage wink here.)

As I gingerly picked my way down the sidewalk next to the street, I was very careful to avoid puddles (I usually would be careful to step IN them as it's loads of fun, but I was WORKING...and had on cute shoes) and was mere feet from the little sidewalk that led back towards the apartments on the other side, when barrelling down Clairemont out of nowhere came a large bus. A bus for our very own Metro Atlanta Rail Transit Authority. MARTA! In seconds I was covered in a wave of water that had pooled in the street at the exact location where I happened to be. I am not exaggerating when I say it went over my head.

I was soaked.

I stood there, in shock, for a good minute or so, although I did have the presence of mind to actually move away from the street.

Dripping dirty water I made my way down the path to the next set of apartments where I was thrilled to find that they also weren't the right ones. Back into the parking lot I went where I was discovered by my student. He had gone looking for me when I hadn't shown up right away.

What a sight I must've been. My jacket, skirt, hair, shoes, everything was dripping wet.

"Hi! I'm Meghan! I'm your piano teacher. I was just baptised by a MARTA bus, you know...they do that sometimes. Aren't I a lucky girl?", and I extended a wet hand in his direction which he very kindly shook. He showed me into the apartment (which had been on the other side of the complex and in my defense the numbers are not AT ALL logical...) explained to his wife what had happened and his wife immediately offered to put my jacket into the dryer. I was given a towel to dry off with and then we began the lesson.

He did quite well and is now supposed to practice playing, "Jingle Bells", as silly as it sounds, so that he can get his right and left hands to learn how to play well together.

I am now home, showered and warm and just thought I would share this moment with you. I seem to have lots of crazy things happen to me and I wonder if I have some sort of built in "odd moments" magnet somewhere in my body.

I'm swimming around in the Brothers Karamazov again and so I think I shall snuggle back down into the couch and pick up where I left off in the pages.

Sarah -- A Scottish Lass Whom I Love

2011-08-22T22:14:00.000-04:00

Please, please friends, listen to this song my friend,
Sarah, wrote the music for. It makes me melt. It causes me to be still.

O For A Heart by Sarah DeShields

You're Welcome.

The Voice, or, how I auditioned for a reality T.V. show and lived to tell about it...

2011-08-07T04:35:00.000-04:00

This past Friday I spent nigh on 5 hours of my life standing in line for an experience that lasted all of 7 minutes. Maybe.

I never auditioned for American Idol. I never wanted to. Granted there were a lot of people who said that I should, or asked me why I hadn't, or asked me if was going to, or asked me why I wouldn't, but it simply wasn't something I ever thought was for me.

"I'm not a pop singer. And I feel more comfortable playing an instrument anyway. And I don't have the 'look'."

I don't think I ever replied exactly like that. I have, for your benefit, condensed it down to what I think I might've said had one caught me on a day where I had had enough sleep, lunch and coffee all in the same day. Which never happens.

Then, this year, The Voice sauntered its way onto our television screen.

The first time a commercial for the show came on Zack turned to me and said,

"You should totally be on that show."

"Why?"

"Oh c'mon. With American Idol you were always saying that they picked a lot of those people based on their looks. Here it's not even an option."

I shrugged. But secretly I was interested.

From that point on, it seemed that every time the commercial for the show, or the actual show was on (Yes, we watched it. Yes, we were rooting for Dia.) either Zack or Caleb or Phoenix would turn to me and say,

"You should try out for this show."

At first it was cute. Then it grew to a level of annoyance that, upon them even turning my way, I would narrow my eyes and scrunch up my mouth really tight, like one of those old people faces made out of pantyhose.

Then came the announcement that they were CASTING! FOR SEASON TWO!

"Do you think you've got what it takes?"

BLAM! BLOO! WOW WOW WOO WOW!

I chewed the inside corner of my lip. Ran my tongue over my front teeth. Scratched my nose. Yawned.

The thought I was trying to suppress wriggled out from underneath the weight of my subconscious and ran smack into my not subconscious and lay there gasping for breath for a moment. Every other thought that was vying for my attention - Desire For Chocolate, Do I Need To Pee, Is that Hawke I Hear, I Really Should Have Drunk More Water Today Why Didn't I Drink More Water, When Vincent Van Gogh Cut Off His Ear Did It Affect His Hearing All That Much Really And Could He Have Potentially Grown His Hair Long To Hide It - all stopped and stared.

"Maybe!", it squeaked out finally.

"Maybe what?", I replied. In my head.

All the other thoughts swiveled their attention back to the tiny squeaky thought.

"Maybe you have what it takes."

I stared at it for a moment. Raised my eyebrow. You know, in my head. Because I have eyebrows inside my head, too.

"I should be kicking you out right about now. However. You may stay."

"Thank you very much. May I have some water now, please? And a nap?"

Shortly after that I found myself on The Voice website. Then I was signing up for an Artist Login that made everything feel very official.

August 5th.

I kept it a secret for a little while. Then I showed Zack the email.

"Whoa-hoh!", he said. “Good for you! This is gonna be awesome.”

I told my family.
I told my counselor.
I told a couple of close friends.

There was a point where what song exactly I should audition with became a big deal. At one point Zack was scrolling through the top 100 songs on iTunes trying to find a popular song for me to learn. I was scoffing at his suggestions.

“I”m telling you,” he said, “this is a pop show. You’re gonna have to learn pop songs.”

I don't listen to the radio. Everything on the Top 100 list was crap. I think I recognized maybe three artists? Maybe six. But I wouldn't know the songs. At all. Is this good? I dunno. I'm woefully ignorant of current culture. This either means that I am very cool or that I am getting old.

I ended up narrowing it down to three songs that I love to sing, pretty much all the dang time:

Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen
One by Harry Nilsson
All I Need Is Everything by Over the Rhine

These are very popular with myself.

Friday, August 5th, rolled around. I got up. Got the boys off to school. Zack left for the studio. Caitlin, my little sister, showed up at 10am to help me with Hawke and I crawled back in bed.

I laid there and stared at the ceiling.

Do I really want to do this?

I had been sent an email with my "OFFICIAL ARTIST AUDITION PASS". There was even an audition time on it. 2pm. I was to print it out and bring it with me, along with my photo ID.

Do I really want to do this?

I said that I would.

But I could totally go to a bookstore and write and read and have some coffee and spend that time on something FUN.

And that's when I knew that I didn't really want this. But that I should do it anyway, because I said that I would. And who knows? Maybe. And if “maybe” then maybe I would want it.

If you like me I'll like you. Or something like that.

Zack came to pick me up at 1:30pm to take me downtown to AmericasMart. It's this humongous group of three buildings that I had never been in before. Twenty-nine years that I’ve lived in this town and I don't think I've ever been inside AmericasMart. After having been there now, I'm okay with the fact that I wasn't, or hadn't, before. Did that make sense? Possibly. I'm going to go with it.

I was a wreck on the way there. I was picking a fight and word stabby.

"Do I look okay?"

"YES! Of course! You look beautiful!"

"Well, you didn't say anything when I got in the car and I didn't want to ask but because you never tell me I look nice I had to ask. AGAIN. I just want you to notice me blah blah blahasdaoruitqhrigaosidgnaorihghrgoaidgablahblahblah...."

This is where I would like to walk up to myself in this remembering of it and punch myself in the head.

Who is the biggest dramatic dumb dork right now?

Raises hand. Me. I am. Hi. Where’s my trophy?

Zack dropped me off at the corner of Peachtree Street and Harris. Kissed me.

"Good Luck. I love you."

I got out and walked to the first entrance I saw with the AmericasMart sign on it.

A woman was standing just inside the door. She took one look at me and said,

"The Voice?"

"Yup."

"Go back out, turn right, turn right at the light, turn right again and you'll see the line."

"Ack. Okay. Thanks."

I turned right one block too early, ended up walking the long way 'round and finally, FINALLY, found myself at the back of the line.

I passed so many people walking to the back of that line. They all stood there, hearts practically hanging out of their chests, every kind of person one could imagine, the hope and longing was so strong the buildings were humming with it, it was coming off of them like heat waves on pavement.

Speaking of heat waves it just so happened to be about 98 degrees outside that day. Positively balmy. I was so pleased to feel my shower freshness disappear into the rivulets of sweat running down my back. I practically heard my hair declare, "Well sh*t. I give up."

I won’t go into detail about the girl behind me who was going on and on about her recording deals and how she’s worked with so and so and been with him and her and them and those guys. When a man with a microphone walked by the line and said,

“Who wants to sing on the radio?”, she squealed and yelled, “I do!”

She was pretty, and tall, and because she sang A LOT, I can tell you that she had a decent voice. I finally couldn’t take hearing her talk about her anymore and put earbuds in and proceeded to listen to The Boxer Rebellion. This made me look strange, I’m sure, as they seem to cause me to launch into a lot of really bad air drumming. Fortunately the line was moving relatively quickly and soon I was inside of a loading bay area of some kind. The line snaked around 5 times before it finally led back outside.

This was in the last bit of the line before heading back outside.

The entrance.

Then, blissfully, I was being ushered into the actual inside of the nirvana of air conditioning. A big burly man checked my ID against my audition pass, a nice lady checked the content of my bag.

"Oooh. You brought yo'self a orange! It's kinda small doh ain't it?"

"It's a clementine."

"A whut?"

"A clementine."

"Oh yeah! I had one uh deez before. I jus' figure if I'm going to eat a peez o' fruit I gon' get a big one! You fine. Go on up the 'scalator."

Up the escalator I went. And up. And up. Then there was a wide open space with just a huge banner at the end. As if to say, This show is such a big deal we are going to devote this entire space just for this banner.

And yet another escalator. Then another wide open room with twelve lines. Six on one side and six on the other. A nice man directed me to the left lines,

"Pick from lines 2-6. Whichever is shortest."

I picked line number 4. Stood. Waited. About two and half hours had passed since Zack had dropped me off. Waited.

A girl asked me,

"Do you know what's going on up there?"

I shook my head. Nope. All I could see a ways up was a long table. With people sitting at it, looking official and stuff.

Finally I sat down on the floor, peeled my clementine, drank my water and pulled out my book, “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott. One of my favourites. If you’re fond of reading you should go read it. Right now. Go on. Get out out of here.

I was munching away on some cashews, blissfully reading, when one fell down into the dark abyss of my cleavage. I looked around to see if anyone was looking in my direction. Should I go fishing for it? Would it seem I was getting my jollies? Or would people think, Oh look. She must’ve accidentally dropped a bit of cashew into her mammary crevasse. I debated. I went for it. Right then a woman in the line next to me leaned over and said,

"Do you go to Trinity?"

I whipped my hand out and made a big show of brushing off the front of my dress.

"Not anymore. But I used to!"

Dear God. Please let her have not noticed that I was trying to stave off the potential cashew butter in my bra.

We struck up a conversation until my line started moving faster than hers and the people around us were becoming visibly annoyed. I said I'd find her on Facebook and then realized too late that I didn't know her last name. (She found me though. Hi Paige!)

When I got up to the table I was given a blue wristband by a girl who was so bored I almost reached over to prop her chin up for her.

Someone else directed me to the right side of the room where another person showed me to a row of ten chairs. There were about 40 rows of 10 chairs on the left side of the room and the same on the right side where I was. All were full or being filled. Across the room people were erupting into cheers and everyone on “my” side of the room quickly gathered it was because a row of people were being directed someplace else. The rows around mine sort of started to bond. Singing and dancing and laughing. I was texting the "play by play" as it were to my family and a couple of close friends.

At one point my dear Jenny R. messaged me,

"Just remember; they cannot eat you. No matter what."

and then,

"Oh geez. This is worse than a Shamalayanamama film. Whatever his name is."

My sisters were telling me that I had this. No problem.

I wasn’t so sure.

Betsy told me she was sending a Chocolate Prayer Cupcake with Holy Spirit Sprinkles.

That made me hungry.

The rows across from me were being ushered out of the room. Everyone started to get louder as their nerves began fraying.

Finally my row was asked to line up and we followed a girl up another escalator to...

More rows of chairs.

*facepalm*

In the bathroom girls were primping and doing vocal exercises.

"If you sing the melody but while blowing your lips it will help warm you up."

"MMMMMMMwwwwwwwAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHhhhhhh!!!!"

"Do re mi fa so la ti do! Do ti la so fa mi re do!"

Another half hour later a woman counted out ten of us in sequence and led us to a wide hallway with rooms on either side, all with signs, all with ten people standing outside, all with gray carpeted doors, all with a human being wearing a headset standing outside.

I was waiting outside of room A2. Waiting. You know. Because that is what life was about now, it seemed. I was going to wait, being led up different escalators to sit in rows of chairs, to then stand outside of doors until I could no longer remember what I was waiting for exactly. Just a mind numbing series of halls and white walls and...

THE DOOR WAS OPENING.

The ten of us, now my treasured companions in this saga, watched as the people who were in the room came out, a bit dazed looking, and had their blue wristbands cut off. But there were only eight people. We were whispering now. "Only EIGHT." Rather the other nine were whispering. I was quiet.

The door was closed again. Then an adorable couple came out. He of the black hair, she of the perfect waves and fedora hat. They were each holding a red piece of paper in one hand and each others hand in the other. A man seemingly appeared out of nowhere and instructed them to head down the hall. The rest of us, lined up like cattle, watched in wonder, some even started to applaud, as they walked further into the building towards the glowing light of promise. Which was probably a window or something, but from where I stood, it looked an awful lot like promise. But I’ve been mistaken about that before. Sometimes promise is found under a rock, or buried in ivy, or inside old warehouses. Or inside me.

I digress.

We handed over our audition passes to our headsetted human being and then walked through the door into a drab, boring, gray room. There, at a folding table, the kind one finds in any church fellowship hall anywhere ever, sat the casting director. Next to her sat another woman wrapped in a blanket. I suppose she was cold. We had been told outside that the casting director was the main director for the show. The head honcho. Great. You know, no big deal or anything.

We sat in the chairs provided and the Head Honcho Casting Lady lifted up the first audition pass and called out the first name.

It began.

A girl with a church voice.

A girl with a small quavery voice.

There was only one guy in our group. A nice looking man with a white "doorag" on his head that was then topped with a white ball cap with the tag still on it. I found myself wondering why he was wearing both. Had he forgotten that he had already put on the rag...of...doo? Was his head prone to getting cold? Did he realize the tag was still on his hat? It was dangling near his ear, did it bother him? His name was Wayne? Leroy? I don't remember now. He sang. It was...okay. I noticed he had to adjust his key lower when he got to the chorus. I wasn't impressed.

One girl just talked for a couple of minutes. She couldn't start. Finally she launched into Adele's "Rolling in the Deep". Her voice was nice but she cracked several times. I inwardly winced for her.

One little girl, and I mean little because she was...tiny...short and little, with white cowboy boots and bleach blonde hair, got up and sang Etta James "At Last". She had a good voice, it was strong and as she sang her whole body moved and swayed. One could tell that she loved to sing.

Then.

"Meghan?"

I walked to the white line marked out on the floor. Actually I kind of clomped over to the line because my foot had conveniently fallen asleep.

All I could hear in my head was,

"Daisy, Daisy sour cream. Fresh and tasty naturally, a dip for you and a dollop for me, Daisy just goes with family so do a dollop do do a dollop of Daisy..."

I stared at the very very gray drab walls. I looked at the two poor ladies who had been sitting there for God knows how long.

"How many times have you heard "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen today?", I croaked out. I was going to woo them with my charm. I was going to just charm their socks right off.

"Uh...not very many times.", the H.H.C.L. was looking over some papers in front of her.

"Well, that's what I'm going to sing for you then!" and I smiled and twisted back and forth a bit. And then launched into this.

The bit of Hallelujah that I sang. Please understand that I did this in one take to give you an idea of what I might've sounded like. The End.

Then I sat down.

A couple more people sang.

Then the H.H.C.L. asked the little girl in the white cowboy boots to sing something else.

"Something current. Off of the radio. Something country perhaps? I'm looking at your cowboy boots and assuming country?"

The girl looked dumbstruck.

"Uh. I dunno. I mean, I know some songs but..."

"What was your back up song?"

"Amazin' Grace."

The director shook her head.

"How Great Thou Art?"

Again, shaking of the head.

"I can sing another Etta James song?"

"No, no. You're a young girl, what kind of artist do you want to be? Do you have anything? Anything current at all?"

"I could sing Rolling in the Deep, I guess, but that girl just sang it.", and here she gestured over to my side of the room.

"That's okay. Just sing that."

So she did. But I could tell she was focusing more on trying to remember the words than really sing. She did fine. The H.H.C.L. looked over at the woman in the blanket. They shrugged.

I thought to myself, if they ask me to sing something current I'm hosed. I was going through every song I could think of that I thought could work and found that I was looping through a mixture of songs from The Cure, The Boxer Rebellion, Aimee Mann and the Daisy Sour Cream jingle. I was royally screwed.

But the H.H.C.L. never even looked my way.

She looked at the guy.

"Wayne," (I'm calling him that 'cause I can't remember his name) "keep your phone on. If you don't hear from me by 8pm tonight that means you're not through. I'm marinating on you. Everyone else, thanks so much for your time. Have a nice weekend."

And just like that, we were done.

The little girl in the white cowboy boots was devastated. Her eyes were already pooling with tears by the time we reached the escalators. She was wearing coloured contacts, they were a very brilliant shade of royal blue and that, mixed with her tears, made her eyes look like glass marbles. I reached out and touched her on the arm.

"You did a great job."

She nodded soundlessly, already on her phone, trying to keep it together. I hurt for her.

Down down down the escalator.

Out out out the door.

I sent out a text to my family,

"I'm kind of shocked at how disappointed I am."

And I was.

It was 7:30 when I walked out of the doors and into reality again. Out to the sight of a man digging through the garbage cans across the street looking for food. Back out to the reality of the heat. Back out to the sight of tourists squinting at signs telling them that they were where they were but where was that exactly? Here. You are here. At this red dot.

The ground outside AmericasMart was littered with discarded hope. I could imagine the feeling of it around my ankles, like kicking through leaves, fluttering and a bit crunchy, already brittle. I folded my hope up. Tucked it behind my ear to look at later. Right then I needed to call Zack. Right then I needed to figure out where in the H-E-double hockey sticks I could get my hands on a good margarita.

A big one.

I ended up getting my margarita. I haven't looked too closely at my hope yet. It's safe though. It's sitting quietly on my bed side table at the moment. I suppose I'll pick it up in time for the ATL Collective show this Wednesday at Eddie's Attic. I'll sing my heart out through the songs of The Clash. I'll bring my hope out on stage with me and give it some room to breathe.

It's 3:45am and I should go to bed. So, Goodnight then, gentle readers.

"Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops... at all."

~Emily Dickinson

Three Years

2011-07-21T10:54:00.000-04:00

Zack Arias is my best friend.

Ever. Ever. Ever.

He is, without a doubt, my favourite adult.

He is an amazing father.

He is hot. (And a minimalist)

Today, three years ago, in the DeKalb County courthouse, I got to marry him. It wasn't a fancy wedding. We didn't need fancy. We just needed each other.

We had a chance to get fancy at the reception three months later. So MUCH LIFE has happened since this picture was taken. It almost feels like 15 years ago.

My heart is so full of love for you, Zachary Brandon Arias.

Happy 3rd we-were-married-on-this-day Day.

"It's easy to understand love at first sight, but how do we explain love after two people have been looking at each other for years?" ~Author Unknown

For your listening pleasure...

2011-07-17T22:12:00.000-04:00

Some of you may have already heard this remix/cover of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep". If not then I hope you enjoy this.

I'm Rolling In The Deep of laundry right now so I'll shall go.

More soon.

I was so busy trying to rest...

2011-07-09T03:27:00.000-04:00

...that I neglected to post what I came up with creatively for June's word.

It's crap.

Aw geez. It's not crap. I need to take that negative and make it a positive!

(Insert a turn to the camera, a big ol' wink and a sparkle off of my left incisor)

Here's what I came up with:

(imagine me peeking through my fingers as you look at it)

Thar she blows. I wrestled and wrestled with this one.

Not literally. Although I did just start to chuckle at the thought of me getting all WWF with it though.

"What was your process in creating this?"

"Well, since I was using a birch wood panel and not a standard canvas, I cleaned and treated the wood first. Then I added the white paint in small bits until I achieved the effect I was going for and then I PILEDROVE IT INTO THE GROUND! I threw it off the ropes of the ring and smashed it with a CHAIR!!!!!"

Wiping, wiping, wiping my eyes. Oh the hilarity.

I do not rest well. In anything. I find it difficult to sit in one place, comfortably and not start to feel guilty about the things I think should be doing. I suffer from insomnia because my mind will not stop cycling though all the things I think I should be doing. I am having to teach myself how to rest. Force myself.

I must do this or I am going to shut my body down.

Yes, yes. I'm in counseling. Hi, Sarah! (waves) ;-)

Tally ho! Onward to another topic!

Betsy* wrote me to let me know that she had selected the word for July. She's going to post her June word any day now.

And the word iiiiisss:

Bird

Birds! I love birds! Let's see what happens with that. In the meantime, stay posted for I shall soon share with you some things that have been pop-rocking around in my brain as of late.

It's 3:13am. That's stupid. I need to be in bed drooling on a pillow right now. You know, resting and stuff.

"Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop." ~ Ovid

*By the by, I took Betsy's 4 week Art Journaling class that she teaches and it rocked my face off. If you live here in the Atlanta area you should go. Now. Do it.

Contact Betsy

P.S. I love the Ovid quote. I have been percolating over it for days. Thus the reason it ended up in the painting. I'll blog more about it later. In the meantime, does it resonate with any of you out there?

June's Word :: Rest (and a bit about Sela Ward)

2011-06-17T05:47:00.000-04:00

I am in Paris.

Paris.

I am having the hardest time turning off. I am having the hardest time relaxing. This is the first time in my WHOLE life where I have traveled by myself, with no one or nothing to care for but myself, and without it being work or music related. It's a "just 'cause" trip. My dear friend, Kara Pecknold had decided she was going to spend close to a month in France, her first week being spent in Paris, and I jumped at the chance to go. It was on the calendar for months, "Going to Paris with Kara no if's and's or but's".

So, here I am, and I am having panic attacks, not sleeping well (of course, when I have ever slept well?) and have been shedding a lot of tears.

I know. I know. Rich people problems, right?

I wrote to Betsy, with whom I'm doing the Word for the Month project and told her that I thought the word "Rest" was what needed to be focused on this month. She responded with,

"I'm not surprised; rest is written all over the pages of my journals - both as a prayer and a reminder to self."

I think it's funny that I chose that word, knowing that I needed to focus on it, and then, when I get to a place where I can finally rest, I can't. And, neither can Kara because it seems that I've been snoring. That's not embarrassing at all.

Geez.

On another note here's a bit from an email I sent to Zack yesterday that I wanted to share:

Kara and I were out till past midnite last night. We spent close to five hours at the Bar Hemingway in the Ritz Hotel. So amazing. Two women and a gentleman sat down at a little table near us and were talking and I thought I recognized one of the women. I leaned over to Kara and said, "I'm positive that she's an actress or something. Her face is so familiar."

Kara agreed that she definitely looked very familiar but that neither one of us could place exactly where she was from.

"Definitely not a famous famous person, but like smaller roles and TV movies and stuff.", Kara said.

"I'm going to go over there and ask."

"No! You'll embarrass me!"

"So, go to the bathroom or something and while you're gone I'll be the dumb American friend who embarrasses herself."

"No! Just wait till they get up to leave, then ask."

So that's what I did. They got up to leave and walked out and I almost didn't follow but it was bugging me so much! I HAD to know or I was going to think about it all night.

I ran after them and caught sight of them just as they were about to turn a corner down a long hallway.

"Excuse me!", and then a bit louder, "Excuse me!"

She turned around, her companions looking at me curiously.

"Hi there. Um. I know that this is awkward but...I'm really terrific at awkward actually."

The mystery woman laughed at that.

"So, yeah. I think you know that my friend and I were sitting at the table next to you?"

She nodded.

"Well, there is something about you that is so familiar and yet my friend and I couldn't place it exactly. Do you have a well known doppleganger? Or are you an actress and, because I have had a couple of drinks, I can't recall your name because I can't even recall MY name at the moment?"

She laughed again and said,

"Yes, I'm an actress. My name is Sela Ward.", here she extended her hand. "What's yours?"

"Meghan. Meghan?", I was joking, "Yes, I'm positive it's Meghan."

We shook hands and I said it was nice to meet her and wished her a pleasant rest of the evening and walked back to the bar.

Kara was looking at me expectantly when I came back.

"Well?"

"Sela Ward."

"AAAAH. OF COURSE."

Later on Kara went downstairs to use the bathroom and struck up a conversation with two English ladies that had also been sitting near us. They had been wondering about Sela as well and Kara told them how I had gone out on a limb to ask.

"Yeah, we were trying to place her but," and here Kara, as she was relaying the conversation back to me, laughed, "They said, yeah but how do you Google what someone looks like?"

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time."

John Lubbock

May's Word :: Redemption

2011-06-02T17:48:00.002-04:00

As mentioned in this post May's word was "Redemption".

I ended up writing a...poem of sorts. Or something. It started off on bits of post it notes, moved to a note pad, from there to a word processing document and finally onto watercolour paper that I then sewed into my journal. I don't have much to say about it as it kinda speaks for itself other than it was a very healing bit of creativity for me.

I'll post the images that I scanned and also type out the words as well.

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Redemption or A Cautionary Timeline Gospel Tale

Would that I were able
I would open my chest
And lay bare my heart
To try and show the crests
And ridges of the scars
That I carry around with honour.

One would think,
(After the damage it has sustained)
It must be a mechanical thing,
All whirrings and tickings,
Cogs and wheels moving
In a steady march of unceasing rhythm.
But, I assure you,
It feels even more deeply than
It ever has.
Loves more deeply than
It ever did.
While not yet residing in utter abandon,
(No, that won't come until this body falls away)
This heart of mine wraps its arms around
This life
And weeps with wonder at
The Restoration at
The Put-Back-Togetherness at
The Redemption
So lavishly shown.

Here is a timeline:

You see at four.
At eight.
At ten.
My heart was badly bruised
By the hands
By the fingers
By the tongues
By the lips of men.
At thirteen
My heart was shattered
By the death of my mother.
By the death of my father.
(Oh, he was physically present but long dead gone.)
At fifteen my heart was shot through
By the words of a man of God.
At eighteen I had not a heart left.
Twenty and a half and I married a manboy
But didn't have a heart to give him.
Twenty-two and a month I birthed a boy
And I shared some of his so big heart.
But I was a mother without a mother.
My heart arrested.
I did not know how to love.
I did not know what it meant.
Twenty-seven and I drowned in the sea
Of the marriage I never should have
Entered into in the first place.

(For all the young girls out there,
You must be sure you know who you are first.
I am a cautionary tale.
You do not want the kind of pain
That arises from ignorance
About yourself.
About what marriage really is.)

So I forgive the girl in me
Who made up stories to ease the pain.
And I accept the love extended to me
By the one who died to take it all away.
Even when I gave up on him
To try and save myself,
He still took the remnants of my heart,
All dusty on a shelf,
Poured a heavenly gold
To aggrandize the cracks
And kissed all of my scars
Never once taken aback
By my excuses,
My shame,
My guilt,
My lies.
My lies.
My lies.
My lies.

Here is a list:

A redeemed clean heart.
A renewed right spirit within me.
(Albeit ever and always in process.)
A husband who thrills me.
(He is radiant and ruddy, outstanding
Among ten thousand, even millions.)
A quiver full of boys,
Four arrows I delight in!
My family who loves me.
True friends who have stuck by me.
New friends who truly see me.

I look around
At the life that I live
At the LIFE in my life
And here come the tears,
Oh here comes the rain again,
And I think to myself,
"I am walking redemption.
I am living PROOF of redemption."
For I didn't receive everything I deserved,
But instead everything I didn't.

Thanks for reading. I'll let you know ASAP what this month's word will be!

Off to make dinner. ;-)

A story about how I vanquished evil...

2011-05-30T11:18:00.001-04:00

Last night when I was merely making an attempt to locate an emery board, or even better, nail clippers with which to take care of a broken bit of right hand forefinger nail, a roach the size of a small rodent tried to ambush me in my bathroom.

I knew immediately by the foreboding sense of pure evil that I felt upon walking across the threshold of my bathroom door, that the "thing", if even indeed it is worthy to be labeled with even so much an innocent sounding word as that, was staring me down with its nefarious eyes, causing my skin to crawl.

(Which then made me think that I might have one ON me, if one knows what I mean. That feeling that comes about upon sighting an icky crawly creature of some kind? The minute one's skin has an itch or a tickle one commences to twitch and flap one's arms about in an attempt to GET THE DAMN THING OFF.)

I whipped about in a lightning speed 180 degree turn and there it was, lurking above my doorway. I am sorry to say I did not respond coolly. I didn't stand akimbo with my eyebrow raised defiantly. No, I hollered. Not screamed mind you. I full on hollered and tore out of there so fast Speedy Gonzales would have been impressed. (That is if he were actually real and not an animated character on Looney Tunes, which, in my opinion, is one of the few really great cartoons out there. Not these sad excuses for cartoons that I see on Nickelodean these days.)

I knew that I had to kill it or I wouldn't be able to sleep knowing that it could potentially crawl on me in the middle of the night. Oh the HORROR!

Grabbing the roach spray from under the kitchen sink, I tiptoed my way back into my bedroom and stood in front of my bathroom doorway trying to steady my pounding heart.

"One. Two. Three!", and with that I ran and jumped into my bathtub, did an about face, and watched as the filthy thing, who was still lying in wait for me above the doorway, caught sight of my weapon of choice, turned tail and scurried into my bedroom.

I will not bore you with any attempts at false humility. No, I was brave. I was. I charged after it, spraying lemony scented death above my head and yelling,

"DDDIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Then it fell off of the wall and behind my dresser and, I have to admit, I did a strange hopping dance, my feet alternating in mere nanoseconds in their respective times on the floor. I think I was making small "eep eep eep!" sounds.

I sprayed liberally behind the dresser and hopped up onto my bed and, much to my delight, watched as it emerged from the shadow under the dresser, writhing and wriggling where it died, right under the very edge of the dresser, on the right hand side, close to the front and near the bathroom door.

For a good two minutes I waited to be sure it was truly vanquished. I then sprayed a small passing dust bunny for good measure. Just to be sure. Just in case it was something else in disguise.

To be honest I haven't yet disposed of the remains of my enemy. No, I knowingly, after much thought, left it there to serve as a sort of warning to any of its kind that I am not to be trifled with. It has nothing to do at all with the fact that I can't bear the idea of having to get close to it. Nothing of the sort. Or the fact that I secretly fear it is waiting for me to get close enough to scoop it up with a very long bit of newspaper or something only to attack me. No, I'm just going to leave it there for a few more hours. Just as a warning.

You know.

I am a winner.

Well Diversified

2011-05-24T00:30:00.000-04:00

Things are ridiculously busy here in the Arias household as the boys count down the days till summer break starts. Which is May 27th. In case you were keen to know when the City of Decatur school system deemed it the right time to release the children into their long awaited freedom.

Hawke turned two years old on May 16th. Isn't that NUTS? Do any of you remember when he was born? Wasn't that, like...a couple of weeks ago?

Excuse me whilst I go and fetch a cold cloth for my head as I am feeling faint.

Well Diversified.

I have been laughing about these two words since Friday night.

Lemme 'splain.

Friday night Zack and I took the boys to the Mellow Mushroom Pizza near Piedmont Park on Monroe Drive. For all of you non-Atlantians it's here:

View Larger Map

It's yummy. There's actually a Mellow Mushroom about a mile from our house. However, this particular one we were going to Friday night was special because it was in close proximity to three awesome places. Of which we went to all of them.

Richard's Variety Store

and

Rita's Frozen Custard

and

Trader Joe's

It's the scenario that went down at Richard's Variety Store that I wanted to describe to you.

The boys knew that they could pick out a little sumthin' sumthin' in the store. I was there primarily to look for any cool birthday party supplies that they might have. And to look at their books. And the Oriental rugs. And the bandaids that look like bacon. And the stationary. You get the idea.

We had decided to go to Richard's first, before dinner, because they were going to close in an hour and we knew we wouldn't have time to eat dinner and walk over before they closed. Needless to say everyone's blood sugar started declaring war on each other so Zack and I told the boys it was time to wrap it up.

Caleb and Joshua had each picked out a small gadget that they wanted to get but Phoenix was still in one of the toy aisles and when he heard it was time to go he started to run around looking for something to get. He ran up to me, where I was standing at the checkout counter, with a large book of something involving pop-up images and dinosaurs and before I even had a chance to really see it he said,

"Actually, no. I don't want this.", and took off for the back of the store. In a flash he was back with a huge box of Legos.

"Good news! You can buy this for me and so therefore save yourselves the trouble of paying me any allowance for 6 weeks!"

I admit it. I kinda probably made a face that looked mom-ish and adult-ish and squawked,

"WHAT? Oh good grief, Phoenix! I am not buying you a $60 box of Legos! Caleb and Joshua picked out something SMALL. As in $5 small. You are not getting this."

His face crumpled into anger and he said,

"Fine!" and stormed off towards the back of the store and SLAMMED the box back on its shelf and, raising his knees high and mashing his feet with every step he took, as if to leave footprints in the cement floor, he tornadoed his way to the front of the store where he flung the door open with an angry flourish and pounded his way over to a bench.

And he sat down.

And crossed his arms.

And glowered.

And I laughed.

Not at him.

He couldn't see me from where I stood still finishing up the payment process.

No, I laughed at the sheer amazement I felt when watching him because...I realized fully that he is so much like me.

Let me rest my head on the desk for a moment. (and there was sighing. Lots of heavy sighing)

I walked outside and scolded him for being so ridiculous. That his brothers had each picked out something small, and that it was time for dinner. That if there was something in the store that he REALLY wanted that I would go back in with him to get it.

Phoenix got up and walked back into the store. I asked Zack to take Caleb and Joshua on over to Mellow Mushroom and get us a table and followed Phoenix back inside. I could tell there wasn't anything that he really wanted. He stood there looking around, at one point picking up a set of stackable measuring cups that looked like Russian Stacking Dolls. He feigned interest in them, poring over the box, before setting it down, all while "hmmmming" and mumbling "interesting", under his breath.

"So?", I said. "What was it that you wanted? Besides the box of Legos? Or are you going to take up baking?"

He marched over to a shelf of something and, without even really looking at what he was reaching for, grabbed a box, handed it to me and said,

"This."

I looked down at the small box. It was a $5 Transformer of some kind. But the cheap $5 kind that only lasts for about a day and that I knew he wouldn't play with.

"What is it?", I asked and watched as he quickly glanced over to see exactly what it was that he had handed me.

"It's...a Transformer! I love Transformers!"

"When was the last time you played with a Transformer?"

He put his hands on his 10 year old hips and, in a tone so rife with attitude my jaw almost dropped, said,

"Well, you won't ever know will you? Do you have a way to document my toys and how often I play with them?".

I almost hauled off and gave him a spanking. Empathy for my mother welled up in me. In that moment I thanked her and my dad for allowing me to live. Because I know, you guys, I KNOW, that I was this wretched to my parents.

"No, Phoenix I don't have a system. And neither do you. I don't HAVE to buy you anything. You're lucky that you have the option to get anything at all in the first place. So, because of this attitude, and your rudeness and your disrespect, we're LEAVING."

"Moooommmm! I really want the Transformer!"

"No!"

"Fine! I can't help that I'm well diversified in my playing habits!"

And with that he marched marched marched his way out the door, across the parking lot, onto the Mellow Mushroom patio, where he made a big show out of sitting at the table NEXT to the one that Zack and the boys were already sitting.

Hawke, whom I had been holding on my hip the whole time, looked at me and said,

"Whoa. All done. Bye bye!"

Well diversified. And then I started guffawing there in the store while the lady behind the counter eyed me nervously. I made sure to get all of my laughing out before I walked over to join the boys. I made Phoenix sit with us and then told him he had till the count of 5 to get his attitude in check or he was going to sit in the car.

He did. At the last second. ;-)

And he's only 10, ladies and gentlemen.

Heaven help me.

"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky."

Fran Lebowitz

A Math Problem. Kinda.

2011-05-12T12:25:00.000-04:00

To all my ladies out there.

I has a question!

Hang on.

You menfolk might possibly deal with the phenomenon that I am about to describe but, and here I mean no offense, not that you would be offended, I highly doubt that you deal with it all that much.

But weigh in* if'n you want to. I mean, golly, the other night, when I was out all by myself on Mother's Day, wandering the shoe aisle at Target, and happened upon a pair of verysexyshoes, I took a picture of those v.s.s's on my feet and posted it on Twitter asking people what they thought. I received a lot of lovely lady responses and a couple from some menfolk.

One of the menfolk was very forthright in his opinion. He said,

"If there is separation between the heel and the sole (so it doesn't look like straight platforms) yes, esp with a skirt."

Well done, sir! Well done indeed!

Jeezy Chreezy. Have you spied any rabbits on this trail I just went down?

Look! There's Alice!

"Alice! Remember to grab the key BEFORE you drink the stuff out of the bottle that says, 'Drink Me'!".

Or wait, was it eat the cake...

"Or maybe it's the cake! Aw, heck just stick the dang key in your pocket before you imbibe or ingest ANYTHING!"

C'mon everyone.

Back over this way.

Obviously my mind is addled from the mental taxation of trying to keep a certain two year old from shoving avocado up the dog's nose.

What I was orignally going to ask you is - and now that I've come this far it seems stupid to write but...

How is it that I have lost 2 lbs and yet feel fatter?

What the crap-a-doodle-doo is that nonsense?

And gosh darn it I didn't LOSE those 2 lbs. I beat them off with a proverbial baseball bat and sent them home crying to their momma.**

Huh. <----- (An indignant one at that)

Lose my ass. Well, I wish.

Hurumph.

You know what I mean.

So what is this? A weird form of math?

My weight
- 2 lbs
- my emotional outlook
- bloating?
+ 64 oz of water
+ darling frock
- looked better in it last week
+ the desire for brownies but not actually eating any
________________________________
I think I look fatter even though I'm not

Can anyone explain this in a way that won't make me want to scowl at you?

;-)

"Mirrors should think longer before they reflect."

Jean Cocteau

*HA! Now that you've read this far, and know what the post is about, I can now say,
"No pun intended."

**Not that I condone beating anything with a baseball bat, especially if that anything/one is of the age that it would still run home, crying, to its mother. You know. Unless it happened to be a roach. Then, I say, swing away. Gleefully. Yelling, "DIE EVIL FIEND!"

Happy Mother's Day

2011-05-08T00:06:00.001-04:00

Erin is on the left and I am on the right. Circa 1982? Ish?)

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of my mom. For those of you who didn't know, she died when I was 13. She was 36. In the picture above she was about 26? 27? She had around 10 years left to live. And I wasn't old enough to know yet the questions I would need to ask her.

To all of you who still have your moms, please, please, please. Hug her. Call her. Ask her questions about HER. Relish that she is still with you.

And to all of you who ARE mothers out there - we are in a wild, hard, joyous, heartbreakingly beautiful and mostly thankless journey. I am glad to be in the "club", as it were, with all of you.

"My mother is a poem
I'll never be able to write,
though everything I write
is a poem to my mother."

Sharon Doubiago

April's Word :: Surrender

2011-05-03T07:47:00.005-04:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am a couple of days late in getting this up on the blog.

I apologise.

I thought I would have time while I was in Seattle with my husband, Zack, while he was teaching in the creativeLIVE studio. I never really had a chance to sit down and properly write anything out. Hawke came with us on this trip and while the Lord in heaven above knows that I love that baby boy with every fiber of my being there were moments when every fiber of my being wanted to duct tape him to a chair just to keep him stationary. For. Just. A. Second. Dear. LORD. Will. He. EVER. Stop. EVAR?

Zack and I agree that Hawke is, by far, the most stubborn, opinionated, free spirited, fearless child that we have. He is more than a handful. He is totally ours. ;-)

I digress.

I wrestled with Surrender. I didn't like what it brought up in me.

With Betsy it brought up something very different. A gorgeous painting. I love it so so much. Do me a favour and check it out and come back over here when you're done.

See?

My wrestling with surrender made me face some hard stuff. I realised that I needed to let go of the desire for my old naysayers and even people I once called friends, to...what? Give their approval? Say that they understood? I dunno exactly how to put it. But it bothered me that I was holding on to this old hurt and wanting to be vindicated somehow.

*raises eyebrow*

I didn't want to surrender that. My surrendering meant forgiveness. I think you know what I mean.

And so out came the following words:

Waved a white flag in a small coffee shop
To help end an unwanted war.
The train wreck that came when I made up my mind
Placed sentries on guard at the door.
Too much weight placed on all of the hurt.

Sift through the words of the "I said" "They said",
Carry them into the night.
Cover them up with the bravery lines
That I carefully draw in my mind.
Too much hope placed on too many minds. (Mines?)

I sat down at the piano and began noodling around. I wasn't ever happy with the verse melody but I recorded it just the same. While I was working on the song out came these words,

"Heaven please help me, oh help me let go.
Heaven I'm asking, help me, let go."

And then, while I was actually recording the song, out came,

"I open my hands, I open my hands."

That wasn't planned. But there you go.

This was recorded at 4 A.M. and I never went back and changed anything. It was written and recorded all in one night (or day, as it were...).

And now I share it with you.

Click on the title below to listen...

Heaven Help Me

Just a snapshot, my version of a snapshot anyway, of a moment in time. A time I'm grateful for.

Now, if you haven't already, go check out Betsy's take on surrender.
It was her turn to choose the word for May and she chose the word "Redemption". I love this word. Love it. I'm looking forward to the process of working on this one.

Thanks for sticking it out with me as I struggle with trying to find the balance of mommyhood and wife...liness and being an artist. ;-) I shall persevere, however. I shall not give up. Too much is at stake. I believe it was Robert Louis Stevenson who said,

"Saints are sinners who kept on going."

Well keep on going I shall.

Word for this month...

2011-04-10T18:50:00.001-04:00

Alright folks.

As mentioned in this post the word for this month is "Surrender".

Betsy sent me a list of words she had settled upon and I sent her some of mine. She said I could choose first and Surrender practically climbed on top of the other words in its attempt to get my attention. Which, in my opinion, wasn't very surrender-y of it.

There it stood, waving and falling all over itself, while I pretended not to see it. I tickled the other words, trying to get them to wake up and most would only roll over and open one eye, their expressions all but saying, "Meh."

I got the hint.

I surrendered to the capital "S" Surrender.

Before it becomes May, I shall post here whatever creative creativity blooms out of me after I've had time to chat with Surrender and get to know it a bit better. I have a feeling it's going to teach me quite a lot.

In other words and completely unrelated, I am currently sitting in a bagel & coffee shop on 8th Avenue and 25th street in New York. This picture does not adequately show how much cream cheese is on my bagel. There appears to be an entire TUB of the stuff on it. My expression is to show my concern. My concern over where that cream cheese will go once I eat it. Later on, in hindsight, meaning when I'm sighting my hind, I'll see exactly where it went.

Anyone else want to join this ride? If so, when the time comes and I post my Surrender related bit, put a link to yours in the comments and I'll make a list and we can all see. I think that would be fun. Maybe not as much fun as a whole huge room full of really bouncy mattresses but it would be close.

"Prince Humperdink: 'Surrender!'
Westley: 'You mean you wish to surrender to me? Very well then, I accept.'"
The Princess Bride

"All art requires courage."

2011-03-24T12:12:00.000-04:00

This is my blackboard.

Or rather a bit of it. It's 8ft by something feet. It's big. It's my sanity board and how I help all of us keep track of what's going on in this busy house week after week.

But, up there in the left hand corner, see that?

"All art requires courage."

I've been more courageous as of late. I've been writing again, in the midst of the unpacking and transition of moving into a new house. By writing I mean songs. By writing I mean melodies. I confess I've been a little bit...well - A LOT a bit like a whiny three year old stamping my foot and pouting and screaming, "This is not how I like to make things!!! I want it MY WAY. I only want to be creative when things are how I LIKE IT TO BE ALL THE TIME."

I don't have the luxury of staying up till 4am every morning writing like I did when it was just me and Phoenix. I would sleep for a couple of hours, have morning time with Phoenix, breakfast, walk him to school and then go back to bed till it was time to get him from school and then go to work teaching music lessons.

I struggle with the creative during the day. I'm such a nighttime inspiration kind of a girl. But now I have four boys to care for, a husband I work with, house to clean, laundry to wash, etc. Even if I had an idea during the day, I'm not sure I'd have the time to act on it!

Conversations lately with my dear friend, Betsy Garmon, have opened my eyes to not letting this stage of my life beat the music and the words out of me. Betsy has really shown me that I need to learn how to work with the parameters I have in the here and now. That there IS a way to be a wife, a mom, a producer AND myself.

Betsy and I are going to start a project together. Every month or so we'll choose a word and create something around that word. Sure, it's been done before but LORD I am jumping at the chance to embrace this catalyst and run with it. Whether it's a song, a short story, a painting, I will post my interpretation of the word here and Betsy will do the same on her blog.

I'm feeling courageous. And when I start feeling courageous. Watch out. It's about to get crizazy up in here.

What about any of you? Got any advice? Feel the same way? I want to hear your thoughts, too, please.

"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is." Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, 1915

A Post. About stuff. Like I do.

2011-01-25T14:52:00.000-05:00

This man is the love of my life. The simple fact that I am married to him proves that there is a God in heaven and that God loves me. At least, it proves it to me. Not that I needed more proof, but it's there all the same.

I'll pause here to give all of you time to roll your eyes at my sappiness.

Blah dee blah dee bloo.

Here is a picture of an advertisement for dental jewelry that I took when I was in a country far away known for it's excess and tall buildings and palm shaped islands:

There. Was that distraction enough? Isn't the above basically just a very very very fancy filling?

"Oh. You enjoy candy and aren't fond of brushing?"

"Yeah. I mean NO! This is my dental jewelry. I'm hip and with it."

"Sure."

(I am drumming my fingers looking around at the utter state of chaos that is my house. There are boxes everywhere and nothing is where it should be. The light falling on my dining room table has created a spike shaped shadow, an arrow of sorts, pointing to my Cherry Coke Zero can. I pick it up - empty. This is a sign that I need another Cherry Coke Zero. Actually, it's a sign that I need some water. Actually it's a sign that I need to stop typing boring random meaningless drivel and get back to my point.)

What was my point?

Oh yes.

Zack is in Miami right now, teaching a OneLight Workshop. He'll teach another one in Tampa on Thursday. Friday he'll fly home in time to have dinner, go to sleep and then, Saturday morning it will be Moving Day for us Arias'.

It's been nearly two months since we closed on our house and now, after a few revisions to it, i.e. adding a spiral staircase with a secret wardrobe entrance, knocking down a wall to make two rooms one room, making old fireplaces functional again, painting, etc., we get to actually LIVE there.

The wonderful thing about our new house is that it's 10 houses up the street from my favourite house from my childhood. The park is 3/10ths of a mile away, and our backyard backs up to the Decatur Cemetery, the same cemetery that I played in as a child.

When the realtor** was showing us the house for the first time, I stood in the backyard and looked around me and started crying.

"I've never had an emotional response to a house like this before."

"That means this is your house, then. I knew it, Zack knew it, we all knew it when we walked in."

"It's amazing. I played in this very same cemetery when I was a kid. I'd run around with the neighbourhood boys playing war. I gave myself the moniker "Major Idiot". The seed pod cone thingys off of the Magnolia trees made for great grenades. We'd hide behind tombstones, ripping the stems off of the cones with our teeth and launch them overhead. Now my kids are going to play here."

Sigh.

Getting old is great.

I do not fear it.

That's not true.

Once I get past 36 I think I'll be fine. But that is a bit of writing for another time.

I have to go now. I have a little Hawke to wake up from his nap so that we can pick Joshua and Phoenix up from bus stop and school. Then to get dry cleaning dropped off. Then mail from UPS Store picked up. Then to get Caleb from school. Then haircuts. Then homework. Then dinner. Then chores. Then showers. Then bedtime stories. Then more packing for me. And then, hopefully sleep.

Oddly enough I don't miss Zack because I miss the help, although his presence and help is sorely missed, I just miss him. He is my friend.

This is a good thing.

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal, that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with the simplicity and wholeness with which one chemical atom meets another."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

**Funny side story: Our realtor, Derek, was the wedding coordinator for my first marriage. Through a series of events and running into each other he became Zack and my's realtor! I told Derek I hoped I had better luck with this house than I did with the marriage! Ba dum bump.

Analog vs. Digital

2011-01-14T13:03:00.006-05:00

Zack and I have a friend named Billy. He's another one of those lifetime friends. The stuff we've been through together is kind of remarkable when I look back on it. But that's neither here nor there right now. That's a post for another time. Or a couple of chapters in a book. (wink wink nudge nudge)

Billy manages to blog even less frequently than I do, but when he does it's always good and his latest blog post brings up a question that I have been proverbially masticating* on for a while now.

Print or PDF? Analog over Digital? Book over E-Book? Go read Billy's post so that my rantings will make a bit more sense. ;-)

Will books go the way of vinyl records? Sure, still around, but for a small group of people who look upon them with nostalgia and collect them and say things like,

"There's just a warmth I get from them as opposed to listening to a CD or an mp3."

I, for one, find it strange. Who would rather read a book on a machine? Who wouldn't want to hold a BOOK? And don't give me the malarky about saving the environment or trees or what not. Go watch Tapped first and let's get that sorted before we start tackling the paper in books.

So. What do you think?

Are you more analog or digital?

*masticate

Cowboy boots, Ice, Loretta, friends, etc.

2011-01-12T14:59:00.001-05:00

Currently my ankles are crossed in my very-much-falling-apart-but-I-don't-care-because-hell-they-are-comfortable-and-so-therefore-I shall-walk-around-in-them cowboy boots as I sit here at my desk at Usedfilm Studios. Mumford and Sons are playing in the background and Zack and Dan are talking about a website that has pictures on it shot by a person who does a thing that is cool. You know, like they do. It is good to be back here in the studio.

Zack and I ventured out from our house today for the first time since Sunday morning. In case you aren't up to date on the nuances of Southern weather, we had a big ol' snow storm hit us late Sunday night. Up to a foot of snow in North Georgia. We had at least 5 inches here in Decatur and, for us, that's a big deal. On Twitter there were hashtags of #snowpocalypse and #hothtlanta and #SnowMG. Then, because we have about 20 salt trucks in the entire STATE all the roads became icy and criz-azy because the snow kinda melted just in time for everything to freeze again. I'm sure all you people out there who are used to snow would have a grand ol' laugh at the expressions of us perplexed Southerners as we attempt to navigate this foreign substance known as ice.

"ARGH! This stuff? I recognise this stuff. This belongs in a glass! To cool off a DRINK."

Check out this link for a laugh... Hothlanta

And this guy ice skating down Peachtree Street.

Loretta was calling my name, which is rare. Well, actually, it isn't rare, it's just that I've been ignoring her in order to take care of other things. The one time I actually had time on my hands to go play, however, she was covered in snow and far too cold. So I took a picture of her from the bathroom window.

The fact that I haven't played in Loretta in months and that I haven't touched my piano in nearly the same amount of time is another post altogether. Every time I begin to look in the direction of those topics I get all twitchy and sad and anxious.

One of my very best friends, Kara, from Vancouver, was here in town last week and flew out the DAY BEFORE we were snowed in. I won't go into the details of why Kara was here, only to say that it involves her health and an insurance company that directly correlates to an accident that Phoenix, she and I were in in June of 2006. An idiot woman decided to turn left in front of us, which is usually a fine idea, if you turn when you still have TIME. Not, "Let's see...that car is very nearly here so I shall turn NOW."
Needless to say, Kara sustained an injury to her jaw and the idiot lady insurance company has put her through the wringer for it.

Bastards.

I ended up explaining far more than I intended to.

Anyway.

Kara is just brilliant. She's the kind of friend who has stuck with me through EVERYTHING. She's the kind of friend who, because she is friends with me, gives me hope for myself. You know? Do you have a friend like that? Kind of like,

This person is wonderfully wonderful. This person is my friend. Voluntarily. This person has not once said, "You are too much. You are icky. Your stuff is too much." This could quite possibly mean that I am actually alright. I am, by default, not so bad.

Do you know what I mean?

I'm digressing.

While Kara was here she listened to me download everything I didn't know I needed to download until I did. A couple of questions from Kara and out it came.

Most of my stress came from the feeling of utter chaos in my head. So. Much. To. DO. Where to start? So, Kara, in her way, sat me down and made me prioritize and then mapped out 24 hours in a day and helped me figure out how to manage it. Without feeling like a failure.

I wept later on that night, after we had all gone to bed. It meant so much to me to have the fury and chaos in my head wrangled and roped in and branded onto a piece of paper. Now manageable. No longer running around wild up in there.

I'll let you know how it goes.

In other words, thanks to those of you who have written to know why I haven't been blogging. The answer is simply that I've been too depressed and overwhelmed and haven't felt that I had anything worth saying. That and because when I do have time to write it's on for the book I'm working on.

Peace. Peace. Peace. Peace with myself. Perfectionism will be the undoing of me if I don't learn how to be kind to myself.

In other other words I love my Zack Arias. The man drives me INSANE sometimes but he still melts me when he walks into a room and that, my friends, is saying something.

"The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye."

Winston Churchill

British Animal Voiceovers

2010-12-19T12:19:00.000-05:00

Zack and I have been laughing about this all morning.

Enjoy!

Found: Christmas Songs (a repeat from last year...)

2010-12-16T09:22:00.000-05:00

The following post was originally written last year. I've received a few requests for these songs again so I thought I'd dust this one off!

My sister-in-law, Ginger*, asked me in an email the other day if I had recorded any Christmas songs.

At first I thought..."Uh...no...." and then I remembered, "...WAIT. YES. I have recorded some songs!"

I was a part of the Peachtree Presbyterian Christmas album in 2007 that the musicians there did to benefit Safehouse Outreach Atlanta. My old drummer, Noah Alexander, used to be their main sound guy dude and I think I'm not remiss in saying that he put it all together. He's a good one that Noah.

I wish he wasn't in L.A. playing with this band. That's not true. I am happy for him. No I am not. Yes I am. No I am not. Yes I am.

Anyway. I recorded my versions of Drummer Boy, What Child Is This and a song I wrote, Magi. (I'll type the words out below in case you care to know what exactly I'm singing.)

So, you can have them for free if you want.

Or, if you really want to be really awesome, you could DONATE a little sumthin' sumthin' to help them out. They didn't ask me to do this, but if you did, you would rock. A lot. Like the Casbah.

What Child Is This

Magi

Drummer Boy

Magi

Oh we saw it
From far away
Wisely sought it
To see what made
The glow
And why the sky was so lit up.
Lord knows something must be up.

Moving quickly
Through the night
Ever onward
To see the sight
The glow
And why the sky was so lit up
Lord knows something must be up

A starlight baby boy
And shepherds with flocks
Angels are humming in lovely frocks
Waiting to enter onto the scene
Watching us travel
Watching us travel

Stars will often
Light a way
Leave you breathless
A cause to praise
The glow
And why the sky was so lit up
Lord knows something must be up

Chorus

He is like no other child I've seen
He is like no other child I've seen
He is like no other child I've seen
He is like no other King I've seen

Chorus

There you have it, friends. Hope you like them. More importantly, though, I hope you have the sort of peace that is beyond understanding, love unlimitless and joy everlasting as we enter into this season of remembering who these songs were written for in the first place.

Blessings.

*Ginger is a writer, you can check out her stuff at http://gingergarrett.com because she rocks at what she does.

Mystery Reader + Joshua = Randolph the Reindeer

2010-12-07T23:00:00.003-05:00

Not Rudolph.

Randolph.

I was the Mystery Reader for Joshua's kindergarten class this morning.

It's a lovely concept. I was the Mystery Reader for Phoenix back when he was in kindergarten. Which feels like it was just yesterday. I can't believe he's in the 4th grade now.

I digress.

The day before you are to read to the class, you send in three clues about yourself. Mine were:

I am a musician and I love to write songs.

I am the only girl in a house full of boys!

I want to learn how to fly an airplane.

I arrived at the classroom at 10:30am on the nose and knocked on the door and a chorus of little voices sang out,

"Come in!"

When I walked though the door I saw darling little people all squirming and wiggling trying to see who I was.

"It's my other mommy!", I heard Joshua yell and he jumped up and ran over and almost knocked me down with the force of his hug. I'm not going to lie, I teared up at that.

"She makes silly faces and says funny voices!", he yelled, "it's awesome!"

"Hi everyone! I'm Meghan. You can call me Ms. Meg or Meg or Meghan or Ms. Meghan or, in a pinch, Gorgeous, if you forget my real name." This was lost on the students but the teachers in the room chuckled.

"Fortunately for me I MAKE funny faces, I don't have a silly face, at least I hope not; and I MAKE silly voices, I don't actually have a silly voice. I am here to read you the story of Olive, a little dog, who helps out Santa!"

I held up the book I brought, "Would you like to hear it?"

"YYYYEEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!"

"Okay then! Here we go!"

I proceeded to read them the story of Olive, the dog, who overhears the "Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer" song on the radio. When she hears the part, "All of the other reindeer", she gets confused because SHE thinks it's saying, "Olive, the other reindeer."

This concept was lost on the children but for one kid, who, when I read that little bit, yelled out,

"That's CAH-RAZY! 'All of the other reindeer' and her name is 'Olive' and 'ALL OF' and 'OLIVE' sound the SAME!"

He's an adorable kid, with the kind of face that, when you look at it, you can already see him at 45. You know what I mean? Some kids are like that. He's one of them. Too cute.

I pointed out funny little moments in the illustrations like the fact that, while Olive is on a bus to the North Pole, there is a penguin hanging out on the side of the road.

"That guy, right there? He is WAY lost. Penguins don't live in the North Pole, they live in the South Pole."

A little boy piped up, "Christmas penguins live in the North Pole!"

How could I argue with that?

By the time Santa Claus entered the story a forest of little hands shot up in the air,

"I have a question!"

"I have a question, tooooo!"

"OOOOH ME TOO!"

I pointed to one little boy behind Joshua who's longing to ask his question had caused him to contort his body in a Bikram yoga like position.

"Yes? What is your question?"

"I saw Santa Claus one time when I was a baby."

Ah, the classic 5 year old I-have-a-question-no-you-don't-it's-really-a-statement phenomenon.

I called on a little girl who was staring at me with longing.

"How about you? Do you have a question?"

"I saw Santa Claus one time, too, at the mall, but I was too scared to go see him 'cause I was scared."

This "I have a question no really it's a statement" business went on until, somehow, we ended up on the subject of birds and flying and then one boy shouted out that he had a chicken.

"Chickens can't fly though, really.", I said. "They can only get a little ways off of the ground."

"It can get on our roof!", he crowed (pun intended).

"REALLY? Then maybe you have eggs on your roof!"

That flummoxed him. He stared at me with an expression of horror at the thought that there might be eggs on his roof.

I finished the story and then led them all in the Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer song, complete with all of the "Like a lightbulb, like Monopoly, etc." bits.

I made my goodbyes and slipped out, with the teacher mouthing, "Thank you." I mouthed back, "No, thank YOU."

Because truly it was so much fun. I love little ones. And Joshua's face, beaming up at me, melted my heart.

Tonight, at dinner, as we went through our "best part and worst part" of our day we talked about how I read to Joshua's class.

"What story did Meghan read, Joshua?", Zack inquired.

Joshua's eyes darted to me, then back to Zack.

"Uh. Um. It's a story about reindeer."

"Yes, but what KIND of reindeer?", I hinted, winking at him.

"Randolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer!"

"Randolph?", the whole table started laughing.

Oh well. He might not have comprehended it all that much but at least Joshua seemed to enjoy it!

A ball of fluff, a new house and a dirty kitchen...

2010-12-06T01:20:00.000-05:00

I sat down to write and everything I wanted to write about suddenly became very shy and decided to hide.

What to say? I am writing, just not here. I'm trying to write a book.

It's hard work writing a book. Well, at least the kind that I WANT to write. I suppose one could sit down and write something like,

"Once there was a big ball of fluff. It lived somewhere in South Georgia, on the floor of a 1940's bungalow, in between the living room drapes and the wall. A wall, you might care to know, that was painted the most atrocious shade of mauve one has ever seen."

This story about fluff could be stretched out into chapters and then put into book format and - Ta Da! There it would be. A book. About fluff.

Anyway. I'm trying to write a book that isn't full of fluff. Rather one that is substantially more substantial than fluff and it's kicking my butt.

*sigh*

I have good news!

Zack and I, as of Friday, December 3rd, became the proud owners of a 100 year old house here in the City of Decatur. She's gorgeous and we can't wait to fill her with all manner of various wonderfulnessesses that are US. You know how it goes. Being renters there's only so much one can do. So it's down with icky awful yellow wallpaper with icky awful flowers. It's away with bad pink paint colour in the dining room. It's up with dress patterns and sheet music! Globes and books! Horatio the deer head above the living room mantel! Zack and I have been joking about somehow procuring the hind end of a deer and mounting THAT above the mantel and Horatio in our room which is on the other side of the fireplace. The idea of that sends us into fits of laughter. ;-)

Currently I am trying to avoid the kitchen. Here, in our rental house. An hour ago we said goodbye to a few dear friends that I invited over to help us celebrate Zack and his birthday today. I made homemade Beef Stroganoff and we had White Chocolate Banana Cream Pie from the Buckhead Diner (which the getting of that is a story in and of itself as while I was waiting for the restaurant to get it ready, Hawke ran around to each table trying to high-five and fist bump everyone who was dining...) and there was wine and beer and much much much laughing. We're a silly bunch. All that to say the kitchen is ridiculous.

Why am I writing such drivel?

I remember. This house. That we have lived in for over two years. This house is the reason that Zack and I eloped in July of 2008 instead of waiting for a proper wedding in October 2008 instead. This house is where our lives came together into the melding of families and this house is where Hawke was literally born, upstairs on the landing next to the bathroom and down the hall from our bedroom in an inflatable tub while I imagined I was a squid. ;-) This lovely little house has housed a lot of living and for that I am grateful.

I need to go clean that stupid kitchen. Zack said that I shouldn't, that it can wait until morning but I despise coming down to a dirty kitchen. So off I go. But I'll be back. I'll not wait so long to write again.

I promise. I've something brewing in my head I want your opinion on internetz, so get ready!

Has it really been this long?

2010-10-21T22:43:00.000-04:00

I cannot believe so much time has passed.

So much life is happening right now that I can't keep up with it all.

Phoenix turns 10 years old tomorrow and then we leave for New York on Saturday. I shall try to catch you up, for those who care to know, while I'm there. I have a feeling that being away from all the things I have to do will give me a chance to write.

Here's hoping.

And hoping all is well with you in your corners of the world.

Do you know the Muffin Man?

2010-09-11T10:14:00.001-04:00

Good afternoon, gentle readers.

(I know, there I go with the gentle readers again. Blame Mark Sam Twain Clemens. If he wasn't so darn inspiring.)

I am writing these words from a flat in London, on Drury Lane, sitting at a little round table, by an open window that has long, floor length curtains that are currently gently blowing in the breeze. I have a cup of tea to my left, a sleeping baby in the bedroom and a husband off teaching 15 people something he is very, very fervent about - the craft of photography.

I do wish my sisters were here because having my sisters around makes everything instantly one hundred times better simply because.

You know what I taught myself today? That putting in one too many bottles of water into a shopping basket, that is hanging on the handle of one's stroller/pram will cause it to topple over backwards. This will send the contents of one's shopping basket rolling every which way, might even cause one to shriek loudly so that anyone within 20 feet will stop and stare and will cause one's baby to yell "UH OH!" and start laughing hysterically.

Yes, this happened to me. In a Sainsbury's on High Holborn and Kingsway and when I left one poor fellow was still trying to get loose blueberries out from underneath where the soups are kept.

********************************************

I sat for a while remembering the Twin Towers and shaking my head over all of the nonsense in media right now about the crazy old pastor in Florida. Such a surreal thing to think that a man could hold such sway, hmmm? Had he been ignored in the first place, had the media not taken his bait, none of this would be such an issue!

Ugh.

Anyway.

This blog post is about as boring as they come. I'm going to stop now and get to writing some other stuff over here in this other place that I have on this laptop.

I hope everyone is well.

Any recommendations of places to see and things to do while I'm here? This is my first time and I'd love some insight.

There isn't going to be a last installment...

2010-09-04T13:50:00.000-04:00

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

For Part Four Click Here

For Part Five Click Here

For Part Six Click Here

For Part Seven, Dear Anonymous, Click Here

For Part Eight Click Here

For Part Nine Click Here

***********************************************

Because.

Well.

There isn't one yet.

I've been thinking a lot about this.

I suppose that the last installment will be written by someone else a few days after I've left my cumbersome body and, hopefully, am sitting down with Jesus over coffee and pestering him with kisses and questions. Hopefully everyone will have had a big ol' party celebrating what a fandamntastic life I had. I hope that it is said of me that I loved and that I loved well and that I did not run away from life but right smack into it, that I wrestled with it and danced with it and high-fived it, and that maybe I wasn't graceful about it but, "GOOD LAWD did she ever live every last drop out of her life."

I will not live life afraid.

But, also hopefully, none of you will have to think about any of this for, oh I dunno, let's say...sixty-three more years. I'm having a birthday on September 14th where I shall turn thirty-two whole years of age and to live sixty-three more years would put me right at ninety-five and, right now, I think that is a very respectable age to have managed to have accomplished.

Now, when I have reached ninety-five and I'm still a blast and hanging out and living large I'll reconsider.

Are you still with me, gentle reader?

I don't know why I just called you a "gentle reader". No, wait, yes I do. It's 'cause I was watching a Ken burns documentary on Mark Twain and Mark Twain used the term, "gentle reader" and I LOVED IT.

And should it be Gentlereader? Like Gentlemen and Gentlewomen?

I digress.

Let me at least fill you in on what happened after the debacle of the Paul and Puck show.

**********************************************

To back up a bit, the very same day Puck called Zack was the very same day I posted this post.

So, what did I do after the Paul and Puck show?

I went back to packing that's what I did. That's what we both did.

It was time to move our two separate households into one.

Finally.

Phoenix and I were so excited to get out of the upstairs of Zack's studio which is where we had been living for eight whole months. Sharing a 13 x 10 foot room. But that's another part of the story altogether.

But, and this is obvious, the moment I treasured most was the moment all married couples treasure.

The first night when one climbs into bed, next to your beloved, and you get to stay there. You don't have to go home.

It feels impossible to try and put into words the joy we felt. Such a simple thing to go to sleep next to the person you love. But you all know a bit of what we went through to get there, and what I've told you isn't even all of it, and so to simply write,

"We went to sleep.", feels surreal.

But that is just what we did.

**************************************

Those last few days of July and the beginning of August were a whirlwind.

Zack and I never got the chance to honeymoon and so, because I had a tour on the west coast in August, and he had a couple of OneLight Workshops to teach out west too, we flew out to Seattle together and had 2 weeks of us time, between shows and workshops, before he flew home and I flew to San Diego to finish out the last 2 weeks of my tour.

It sucked when he left for home.

I missed my family. I missed Zack, I missed Phoenix, I missed Caleb and Joshua.

I was conflicted. I love music. I love to play. I love that 45-60 minutes when I can get lost in the music. But the music business? That I am not fond of. But, it seemed that that was the price I had to pay in order to do what I loved to do.

But, driving up from San Diego en route to Los Angeles for the next show, with my guitarist extraordinaire Michael, asleep next to me in the passenger seat, I prayed.

(This is Michael Westbrook. His guitar-er-ing is incredible. This was taken backstage at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco...)

"God. I feel pulled in two directions. You know how much I struggle with the balance of music in my life and everything else. I need you to give me some direction. I need a sign or something."

A few days later Zack's step-dad, Craig, passed away while I was back in Seattle to play another show and I seriously considered canceling the next night's show in Portland and flying to Charlotte, North Carolina to be there for his funeral. Zack talked me out of it, said that I needed to finish the tour, and so I did, with a heavy heart.

I flew home from Portland, and immediately picked up Phoenix from school, got us both packed and we hit the road the next day for another show I had in Sandestin, Florida.

You know what was ROTTEN about that? I got to see Zack for 12 whole hours.

I digress again.

Phoenix and I just soaked each other up. I missed him like macaroni misses cheese.

The drive down to Florida was fine except that I just felt...weird.

I couldn't put my finger on it. I tried, too, poking my stomach, poking my legs and my back trying to figure out just why I felt so...funny.

The night after my show in Florida, Phoenix begged for breakfast from the hotel room service and, when the food arrived, I lifted the lids and there lay a gorgeous Belgian waffle for Phoenix and Eggs Benedict for me.

I must've made a face because Phoenix said,

"What's wrong, Mommy?"

"It's just that my reaction to this food would normally be one of YUM! Instead, it's one of meh. No thanks."

In fact, I felt queasy. And I noticed my sense of smell was off the hook. Off the chain. Off the map.

All you ladies out there know what's up, yes?

I still didn't.

The fact that I could very well be pregnant with none other than a HUMAN BEAN* had not registered in my brain at all.

I have something called PCOS, have had three miscarriages and was told that having Phoenix was a miracle because...(All you dudes! Look over there!) my inner lady parts don't play well together.

"Prepare yourself.", my last OB/GYN said. "You will never be able to have any more children."

When Zack and I had talked about the prospect of having more kids I dismissed it.

"It's not even an issue. I can't have anymore anyway. While I would love to see what a Zack and Meghan baby would look like, sadly, it's not going to happen."

Phoenix and I headed home from Florida and it was somewhere between Eufala, Alabama and Columbus, Georgia that my brain sat bolt upright.

"HANG ON A SEC."

"What? What is it?",

"You feel pukey. You feel tired. You have the smelling capabilities of a Marvel comic Superhero. You feel funny in general. You see where I'm going with this?"

"Uh. You don't mean - a baby?"

"YES. That's is what I'm telling you, you. A baby."

But, because I am SO smart, I dismissed it.

"Silly brain. I have screwed up inner lady parts."

So, since my brain wasn't getting through to me, life decided to.

At a chinese restaurant, as per usual.

Phoenix and I had arrived home and he wanted chinese food and since Zack was still shooting at the weekend wedding we went.

I didn't eat much. But I did crack open my fortune cookie.

It read,

"The answer to the question you were asking will come about in the most unlikeliest of places."

I practically spit out my drink.

"C'mon Phoenix, we gotta go."

"Where are we going? Are we going home?"

"Not just yet. Mommy has to stop by the drugstore for something first."

I bought four pregnancy tests.

I put Phoenix to bed, and instead of waiting until the next morning, like the test suggested that I should, I whipped that test out right then and there at 9pm and didn't even have to wait the 2 minutes the test said it would take to display the results because WHAMMO it was positive.

I looked in the mirror and I was shaking.

"Holy Shit."

And I started laughing. And I started crying.

"Mommy? Are you okay?", Phoenix was calling to me from his bedroom.

I went to his room and was immediately struck by how huge he was.

"I'm fine, little man. Wait. Wow. You are such a BIG GUY now, huh? I remember when you were a little baby! You were a baby! A baby! You were a baby and I used to carry you around without effort and you were little and tiny and a...baby!"

I was babbling.

"Um. Okay, mommy. G'night now, okay?"

I had a martini ready for Zack when he got home that night.

Told him to close his eyes.

Placed the positively positive test in his hands.

He was speechless.

We were 258 days away from meeting this guy.

The fortune cookie was right. I really think that Hawke was the answer to the prayer I prayed in the car driving north in California. This doesn't mean that I don't struggle still with how music is to fit into my life, if you've read any of my previous blog posts before you ought to know that by now, but it was the best thing for me and my family. It was hard going to my manager and saying, "You know that album that I just released that I was supposed to tour my butt off in support of? Yeah well...something's come up...".

But he's the best something that has come up ever. I cannot imagine my life without Hawke in it.

******************************************

This has not been the best bit of writing thus far, and for that I apologize. I've been working on this post for a few hours now, in between feeding, and playing with, and picking up after the aforementioned human bean that Zack and I made. Zack gets home from Las Vegas tonight and I am aching to see him.

We've been married a little over two years now. And it was two years ago this weekend that I found out I was pregnant with Hawke. But, oh how full our life has been! Feels like so much longer than that, in a good way.

My story is a crazy one and I thank you for sticking it out this long. It's been a beautiful thing to write this all down.

Thanks for reading.

*I wrote human bean on purpose. Read it in a book once and loved it. Just in case you thought I was struggling with the word, "being".

A Bit Of A Pause While I Figure Out Where To Go Next...

2010-08-24T17:23:00.001-04:00

I cannot tell you how much it's meant to me that you guys have stuck it out this long with me in the telling of our story.

Based on all the comments and emails and messages and phone calls I've received I've decided to delve a little deeper and perhaps write this out a little more thoroughly.

Perhaps I shall compile all of these combinations of letters that I have strung together into words, words that will reach their little font-y fingers out and join hands into sentences, into a party of paragraphs, that will march across pages that are carefully bound inside my favourite kind of binding, between the covers of a book.

Stay tuned. Well, stay tuned if you WANT to. I have a bit more of story to share. I would love to hear...read? - your stories. Some of you have already sent them and I have laughed and cried and prayed and wondered aloud. I once heard someone say, "The story is rarely simple." I, for one, am grateful I have a story to share at all.

I'll leave you with this bit from Winnie-the-Pooh, whom I love.

"Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called. :: A.A. Milne

Click here for the last little bit...

The Paul and Puck Show* (Or, the Holy Spirit told you to do what?)

2010-08-20T11:00:00.002-04:00

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

For Part Four Click Here

For Part Five Click Here

For Part Six Click Here

For Part Seven, Dear Anonymous, Click Here

For Part Eight Click Here

**************************************************

The conversation, from my end, went more like this:

"Hello?"

"Who?"

"EXCUSE ME?"

"Oh, the Holy Spirit, hmmm?"

"Do you know me? Have we walked together? Do you know my story?"

"How did you even get my number?"

I was squirming in the passenger seat at this point, in utter suspense over what was going on.

Zack talked for a little bit longer, said goodbye tersely and hung up.

"So. That was someone named Puck who said that he's a missionary of some kind and that we used to go to the same church but that he no longer attends there because they are a church full of heretics. He said that he knows you, and knows about us, and that the Holy Spirit told him to call me and ask me if I thought if my relationship with you is valid. When I asked him if he knew me, knew my story, his response was that he had heard about us from a very reliable source. I told HIM that if he wanted to sit down with me and talk with me face to face then fine. But not to go calling me on the phone, throwing out statements about a situation that he knows nothing about. I told him to email me if it meant that much to him and we could talk it out like men."

I was flabbergasted. I was glabberfasted. I was...angry.

"If your relationship with me is VALID? What does that even mean? And the Holy Spirit told him to call you? It's a good thing he's wrong because that would mean that the Holy Spirit is a whole f***ing DAY LATE!"

"I didn't bother telling him that we were married. I think it's kind of funny! I'm hoping that he emails me. I hope I get to talk to this guy face to face. We'll see."

"Why? Why would you want to waste your time on something so...stupid? It's not even important. I don't want you wasting your energy on this. It doesn't deserve the effort."

A few days later, however, as we were starting to pack for the move into our new little house Zack received an email. Not from Puck, though, but from a guy named Paul.

Paul had at one time been Zack's small group leader at a church that Zack went to before starting to attend Trinity. I knew Paul and his wife, too. Paul wrote Zack to say that Puck attended a group that he led in his house and that it was at that group that Puck learned of our relationship. They had been discussing our relationship so that they could pray for us, he said.

Right. Uh huh.

Paul went on to say that Puck told him of his conversation with Zack and that now they BOTH wanted to meet with us. Would we be willing to do that?

"Heck, yes.", Zack said, dashing off a reply. "We'll meet with them at the studio."

We met them one morning, a couple of days later, at the studio. I instantly recognized Puck. I remembered him as a shy, soft spoken man with a beard and a kind of turban headdress (it sounds strange but it was actually kind of cool looking...) from Trinity. Paul was the same as ever, and we all smiled grimly at each other while shaking hands.

To be fair I don't remember all the details of our conversation. Zack would be able to add in more detail. I was in a kind of shock, I think. I remember being referred to as "the adulterous woman" a few times.

That was fun.

There we were, recently married, being told by two dudes, one we didn't really know and one we hadn't spoken with in years, that we weren't walking in righteousness - that we were to no longer see each other despite how we felt. They had been praying and felt that God had called them to talk to us about our sinful ways and that we needed to repent.

"It's hard but we feel this is the right thing to do."

I didn't really ever speak. Zack spoke for both of us. He still hadn't let on that we were married yet. He was kind of enjoying that, I think.

They were quoting Matthew 19 to us, again referring to me as a "fallen woman".

"Zack you have a legitimate reason for being allowed to divorce G_____. You couldn't control what happened there. You're the innocent party. But Meghan here, she does not have grounds for divorce."

Zack interjected, "You know what's interesting? Just a chapter before that Jesus tells everyone that if their hand or foot causes them to sin to cut it off and if their eye causes them to sin that they should pluck it out. Does that mean, Paul, that if I found out you were looking at porn that I should take you up to Home Depot to buy a chainsaw to help you cut your hand off and help you pop your eyeballs out?"

"Well, that's just hyperbole...", Puck muttered.

"The next thing you guys are going to tell me is that your wives wear head coverings and aren't allowed to talk in church!"

It got very quiet. And then Paul cleared his throat.

"Actually, our wives DO wear head coverings and they aren't allowed to talk in church."

Zack and I looked at each other. Whoa. Huh. Okay.

"Ah. Well then never mind, then." Zack was almost laughing. "It's obvious that you guys have a more radical approach than we do. I don't know how all of this works. Meghan and I didn't make the decision to get divorced lightly. It wasn't something we chose because we were bored. What I want to know is, according to you, what should we do now? You see, we're married now. We were married the DAY BEFORE Puck called to say that the Holy Spirit had told him to."

We watched as what Zack said registered in their brains.

"Wait, you're married now?"

Zack held up his left ring finger and wiggled it.

"Yup. Now what? Are we supposed to divorce each other and try to remarry our ex-spouses?"

Zack was just teasing them now.

Paul was flustered. You could almost see his brain exploding. Puck said nothing.

"Well, I mean, you obviously can't get divorced again. You are now bound to each other. I am not sure what to say at this point. We came here today to tell you that you should no longer be together. That your relationship is sinful. We didn't know that you were married. I don't know what else to say."

There was some chit chat after that. Paul told Zack that he wanted to continue the conversation that had been started about how Paul felt that the church had gone way off course from where it was supposed to be. Zack told him he would welcome any discussion about it.

We never heard from them again.

And we didn't mind a bit.

*I wanted to title it "The Pee Pee Show". Then I realized that I have been too deeply immersed in testosterone with all of these boys running around. And, obviously, Paul and Puck are not their real names. The smallest one is waking up from his nap thus the reason I'm going to be continuing this mess for later...

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

Hamburger Cayenne Cake

2010-08-20T03:32:00.003-04:00

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

For Part Four Click Here

For Part Five Click Here

For Part Six Click Here

For Part Seven, Dear Anonymous, Click Here

*************************************

If one likes hamburgers and also likes cayenne pepper and also likes chocolate this does not mean that you should put those ingredients together into say - a cake.

I can speak from experience that one should never eat chocolate cake and cucumber at the same time. They are flavours that I love separately but together they are wretched.

Sometimes it seems that couples come together and make cakes (marriages) with no guidance, without any knowledge of what it means to make a "cake".

"I like you! And you like me! You have ingredients that I like! Let's put them together!"

They've seen cakes. They've watched them being made. It looks easy.

And they end up with Hamburger Cayenne Cake. And then are told that that is what they get to eat for the rest of their lives.

(If you are assuming that I am the cayenne pepper you would be right.)

**********************

K____ and I made a very odd looking cake. And a wretched tasting one to boot. We did, however, manage to make a darling cupcake in the form of Phoenix who came out all butterscotch and toffee, warm and lovely, with a scattering of nuts.

I was terrible to K____. My realization of the mistake of my marriage had been softened by the birth of Phoenix but it reared its ugly head once his babyhood changed to toddlerhood. I won't go into all the things that K___ did and didn't do because, in the end, it was I that ultimately couldn't keep eating...well...the cake.

If there are any fingers to be pointed in all of it, I point them at myself. I was cruel and heartless and disrespectful and manipulative and careless with K___. I castrated him with my words and I did not love him the way that I should have.

But I couldn't see that then. I was like a caged animal, a lioness, and I was dangerous. To myself. To others. I said and did things that make me cringe now at the thought of it.

I became depressed and angry and shut down. I knew all of the verses, I knew all of the "but you need to's..."

And, like you all know, I pulled the plug. In K___'s story I am the bad guy. In a lot of peoples story I am the bad guy.

Why am I sharing this part of the story? Because I want you to know that despite the romantic love story that Zack and I had, and, thank God, still have, that I wasn't blameless. I know you know that. It's just...there are stories behind stories under other stories. And sometimes I wonder why everyone tries so damn hard to make it simpler than it can ever be. We all want to say,

"This part goes here. And that part goes there."

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. It's when they don't that we all need each other the most. Unfortunately that's when most of us give up. We spray that, "I'll Be Praying For You" air freshener towards the ginormous pile of shit in front of us and hightail it out of there.

I've done that more times than I care to admit.

Does this make any sense? I'm just typing out loud here.

Just...think about what was in their cake. Okay?

(off of my soapbox now...back to the story...)

************************************************

The night that Zack took me out on that date is etched into my memory. What he wore, the way he smelled, the wine we drank.

When he said,

"Begin transmission.", the hairs on my neck stood up, (the way they so often do around him) and I felt the hugest sense of peace and joy.

Peace.

Joy.

These are fruits I highly recommend.

The months after that are a blur. We were together. It's sappily indescribable how wonderful it was to just BE with the man I loved. Jeepers. Nauseating, isn't it?

Zack's brother, Chris, and sister-in-law Andrea, recommended a counselor for us to see,

"Because, after all," Andrea said, "If you can drop off some baggage the size of a refrigerator before jumping back into marriage again that's something you ought to look into."

So we did for a while, driving 40 minutes to see a guy that Zack and I both liked and respected. He pointed out stuff. We cringed. We dropped off suitcases and trunks and whole rooms.

During this time I was recording the album "Songs To Sail By". All of the songs that I had written during that tumultuous saga of ours were being put down for posterity, recording them in closets and sometimes in the grand sanctuary of a Presbyterian church at 3 am. We planned the album release in June of 2008 and were talking of an October 2008 wedding.

And then I happened upon a little 4 bedroom, 2 bath house for rent in Decatur that was affordable and in the right school district and immediately called Zack. We loved it.

"Should I move in with the boys and then in October you and Phoenix move in? Or should you and Phoenix move in and then I'll move in with the boys?", Zack was standing in the backyard under a natural archway of trees and ivy.

"I don't know, I just know that we have to get this house. We just have to. It's too perfect."

I stepped into the archway with him. There were lightening bugs in the trees above our heads and mosquitos blanketing me. Zack reached for my hand.

"What if we don't get married in October? What if we get married now?"

I turned towards him, "What do you mean now?"

"Like, as soon as I get back from Denver now."

"At a courthouse?"

"Exactly."

I kissed him.

"Let's do it!"

On July 21st, 2008 Zack and I, along with my sister, Erin, and our good friend Hassel Weems, met at the City of Decatur Courthouse and waited out in the hallway for the Magistrate Court to open. Hassel took pictures and Erin laid hands on us and prayed and then our names were called. We stood in front of a judge with a voice like Barry White and very simply (but oh so not simply everything that had taken place to lead up to this not simply), me with my ingredients and Zack with his, we got married.

We made, in my humble opinion, something close to a Mexican Chocolate Cake.

We celebrated at the Brickstore Pub with some lunch and a couple Newcastle Brown Ales, bid farewell to Hassel and Erin and, in the most romantic way, went to the City of Decatur Watershed Management to apply to have our water turned on.

The next day, our first full day of being married, we went to the Apple store to buy ourselves wedding presents of an iPhone each.

"Happy We Are Married Finally Present!", I crowed as we each received our white box full of iPhone goodness. We hadn't yet figured out the whole SIM card thing, none of the numbers from our old phones had been transferred over yet and so, while waiting at a QuikTrip gas station for our gas tank to fill up, Zack's phone started ringing.

"Oooooh! My very first phone call on my new phone!"

"Who is it?"

"I dunno. I don't know anyone's number anymore!"

We kind of laughed as he answered the phone.

"Hello?"

"Is this Zack Arias?"

"Yes."

"My name is P__. I am calling to ask if you feel that your relationship with Meghan Coffee is valid?"

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

Dear Anonymous... (a short intermission to address some questions...)

2010-08-12T12:45:00.002-04:00

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

For Part Four Click Here

For Part Five Click Here

For Part Six Click Here

The following comment was left on my last blog post and I thought it was interesting so I thought that it should be addressed before moving on. Now, I don't want this to become some sort of weird back and forth between myself and anonymous commenters. That's not what this is for.

Here is the comment:

"Seems interesting that the grace you have found for yourself (as you should) you cannot seem to have for G______. Does it occur to you that perhaps she too married too young, before she knew herself, realized she too had made a mistake? Yes, maybe it came out sideways as anger, but was really frustration and feeling trapped? Perhaps she doesn't deserved to be publicly put on display, without her permission with so many people that know and can recognize her? Her children, your children can read this account - is it possible it is skewed without you even knowing it? Your anger at her hurting the man you love is (sic) understandable, of course. But can you not see that she just made some of the exact same mistakes as you? This is your blog, your story to tell, but be careful in the assumptions you make of others. Words put out there cause hurt and pain that is not so easy to undo. And you all have a lifetime of still dealing with each other. Not just with G____ or K_____ but with the children involved."

While sharing this with Zack, and as we were talking about this, I asked him to go ahead and write out some of his thoughts on this.

So, here he is.

**************************

Hi all. What Meg has started here is a telling of "her" story. No matter how you try to tell your own story you have to realize that there will always be other people connected to your story. Some people step into your life with a positive role to play. Others step in with a negative role. Other's still play a role where they bridge the gap of being both a positive and a negative force in your life at different stages of your relationship with them. "Other people" will always be a factor in your life. You, yourself, are an integral part of other peoples' stories right now. If they were to go tell their story I'm sure you would play a role in that telling.

Meg has not named anyone in this story. IF you personally know the people she is referring to then you already know most of this story. None of this should really be new to you. In fact, Meghan has only told small parts of a larger story for the others involved. It is not her intention to sit down and write an exposé on the lives of others. She's giving just a bit of a look at the people and events connected to our lives for the sake of giving you, the reader, context of why this or that happened. If it was her goal to "out" others then she could write some juicy stories. If the other folks wanted to "out" us they could tell some juicy stories as well. It's how Hollywood stays alive.

If you are over the age of 20 and have ever gone through a break up or been close to one then you know there are two sides to each story. You know that each side is always a bit skewed in favor of the one telling it. We've all met the bitter people in the world who, when telling their own story, their pitfalls always fall on the shoulders of others. It's the "victim" mentality so prevalent in our culture today. Meg is doing a pretty good job of airing her own dirty laundry here. Is it all of her dirty laundry? No. Some of her crap doesn't fit into this story and some of my crap doesn't fit in this story but know this... she owns up to her crap. I should know because I'm the one who usually has to point it out. :) (Just so you know I'm perfect. Not sure if Meg told you that yet or not.)* What I love about Meg is if you ask, she'll tell you. We have both lived part of our lives with a veneer over who we were and that never worked out very well. We'd just rather lay ourselves out there. Warts and all.

As for our kids reading this? Most likely they are not reading this. They aren't on Facebook or Twitter and they don't google our names. Of what has been written though is nothing that we ourselves would not tell our kids. I have often told them about mistakes I made that are age appropriate for them. As they get older, the more I tell them. There are certain things we will not tell our children and that's pretty much the grievances we have toward their other parent.

I've really screwed some things up in my life. I've been a horrible steward of gifts given to me. I've flushed great opportunities right down the drain and being a parent, I feel, gives me an obligation to tell my children these stories so they don't do the same stupid things I did. As they get older the more they will know more about us and the more they will understand the challenges they face. It is our hope and prayer that they learn from this and know what to expect in life. We will never sit our children down and say "Let me tell you what your mother or father did...", at least not to the full extent of their actions. They, like you, may know some key events or issues because they were there when things went down so some of it isn't news to them. What we will say is, "Let us tell you what WE did."

As to the commenter's line, "This is your blog, your story to tell, but be careful in the assumptions you make of others. Words put out there cause hurt and pain that is not so easy to undo."

Assumption - A thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof.

A single assumption has not been made in Meg's story so far. We've both been on the receiving end of those words that cause hurt and pain. Meg has not been saying hurtful things compared to all the things that could be said in this story.

Also note that the telling of this story is not finished. You are watching it in progress. You may feel it is going in a certain direction only to find out later that it makes a turn you are not expecting. This isn't any type of bait and switch scheme but Meg began this process as a way to get to some deep questions, concerns, and uncertainties that are simmering in her heart right now. I honestly do not know what sparked her to do this but I'm glad she's doing it. It has stirred issues inside of me that are unanswered. It's making me take note of my life at this point to see where I am as a husband. I wasn't the best husband in the world in my first marriage. Takes two to tango and all that but ultimately I feel the responsibility of that marriage falls on my shoulders. I know the heartache and pain associated with divorce and God above knows I don't want to ever go through that again. Our kids know it too and I don't want them to go through with it in their lives.

As for giving grace? Trust us... we have extended grace in multiple ways. You know why? Because grace was extended to us. In Matthew, chapter 18 there is the story of the unforgiving servant.

Our ex's can tell you of heartache brought on by the actions and inactions of Meg and myself. We have not lived without sin nor without regret. Please understand this. Understand also though that our hearts were broken. We still deal with it. It still surfaces. It's still painful. It's still a story that we ourselves are walking out. Grace has not been cheap and therefore we respect grace and extend it. There are some who have not extended any back to us. There are some people who will still not make eye contact with us. There are some who say a lot of things about us. Their are words that are said that still cut to the bone. There's grace for the world but not for Meg and Zack.
To those we say... you didn't walk in our shoes. When it got ugly and messy and uncomfortable to walk along side of us, you walked away. When it was darkest for us... you took your light elsewhere.

If you think that Meg and I walked through a little crap and now live a postcard life from paradise then we want you to know that isn't the case. Events in our lives, actions we took or ignored, etc... still effect us today.

We walk... but we walk with a limp. We live... but we live outside the city gates.

This story is about Meg but more it is a story about us. How we got here. What we do with our lives now. What questions are still unanswered in our own hearts. It's a beautiful mess.

More to come.

Cheers,
Zack

**************************

So.

There's that.

Thank you, my love, for sharing your thoughts.

;-)

My hope is to show, through these little writings of mine, something deeper. I'm getting there, slowly. I'm walking this out and inviting all of you along with me. I want to always live my life in a way that is transparent and wide open. Nothing good comes from hiding or pretending or wishing away or denial.

And if all you're getting from this, Anonymous, is that I'm trying to make G____ or K___ look bad then you're missing the point entirely and that, m' dear, can't be helped. This is about putting ourselves out there in the hopes that someone, somewhere will read this and be encouraged that they're aren't alone or be slapped upside the head for being stupid (like me) or be inspired or motivated to do, or sometimes NOT do, the thing that they feel they are supposed to.

Zack and I believe in a book that is filled with stories of complete and utter misfits like ourselves. Stories, that, if in the headlines today would be juicy and shocking and most of the characters would definitely be frowned upon at church! (And facing some pretty serious criminal charges...) Someone wrote those stories down 'cause they felt that God was leading them to. I, for one am grateful. Here are all of the stories of people who royally and spectacularly effed up, and then here is Jesus, who didn't screw up at all, and he showed up to tell you that you are loved in spite of what a misfit you are. In spite of your foibles and stupidity, YOU ARE STILL LOVED.

Thank God.

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

*Ha ha. Very funny, Zack. Let's just say we're both perfect at being imperfect, no? __m

A Bit of Going Back Before I Go Forward (or Nice Is Different Than Good...)

2010-08-12T01:55:00.005-04:00

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

For Part Four Click Here

For Part Five Click Here

When one makes a mistake one is allowed to fix it.

Usually.

There is a reason there are erasers on pencils.

That there is a delete key on keyboards.

Command Z (undo) on Macs'.

White out for paper.

But if one makes a mistake in getting married? If one hadn't a CLUE what one was getting into?

Tough.

You made your bed now lie in it.

*********************************

I was almost 18 years old when I met K___.

Almost 18 years old is very very not old.

I was one of the more messed up and confused almost 18 year olds you would've ever met.

Looking back on myself then, from where and who I am now, is surreal. Other than my general rotundity and clumsiness I'm a very, very different person.

Myself at almost 18 was a hurting, scared, tired, self-medicating, work-a-holic. One of my defense mechanisms was lying. It gave me a sense of control. I couldn't control the situations around me but I could control, I thought, what people could do to me. It was a sad, scary time in my life. My mother's death when I was 13 shook my world so much that I never got a handle on life for a long time after it.

Looking back now my siblings and I needed some serious counseling and deep, deep love. Instead we were sort of left to our own devices. Our father was severely depressed, losing his wife and best friend at the age of 35 (my mom was 36 when she died), with four children from ages 13 to 4 years old to care for, one with Downs Syndrome, left him utterly incapable of giving us the love and assurance we so desperately needed. This is not a slight towards my father. He did the best he could. Now, as an adult, I can look back on that time with so much more grace and understanding but, at the time, I was not so forgiving. There were times he was so hurting and depressed he couldn't keep a job and so it was the money I made working at various restaurants (First job was at McDonald's inside a Wal-Mart. Basically the Hell of HELL) and my sister, Erin's, money made from babysitting jobs, that kept us afloat. The church that my family had been a part of for years growing up did a great job helping us out for the first few months after my mom's death but then, after a while, life took hold, and people began to forget and move on. Again, as an adult I get that. But oh LORD did we ever feel abandoned. There was no one to help us kids and, dare I say my father, walk through the grief and shock of losing the most wonderful woman ever so so quickly.

Wow. Even typing this out is hard. The swirl of emotions and hurt that begin to surface...

It was a dark, dark time.

There is so much more to this part of my life that I could write about (Maybe one day I'll have the courage to write it all out fully) but the reason I've shared this much is to help you get somewhat of an understanding of why I grew into such a confused and depressed teenager.

And why K___ was so attractive.

K___ grew up in a suburb of Atlanta with two very nice parents who had very nice jobs and lived in a very nice house with 3 or 4 nice cars and he and his siblings each had their own very nice rooms and went to very nice schools and generally everything was very, very nice. He was, in a way, the black sheep of the family in that he was a musician, a bass player, and had grown his hair long and wore odd clothes and was deeply immersed in the Christian music scene when I met him. He was going to college, but failing, and didn't really have a job and was living with his parents. This would prove to be a pattern later but there was no way I could know it then.

He was 23 when I met him in a band he was in that was looking for a lead singer. I showed up for the audition, they liked me and asked me to join. Then I found out they were a Christian band. Not only were they a Christian band they were a Christian RAP band. Not only were they a Christian rap band they were a Christian rap band I had seen once and made FUN of.

Wha?

I liked Christians. I considered myself to be one. I did not, however, like the music they made. I joined anyway, flattered that they liked my voice and song writing style and drawn to the sense of community that I so desperately longed for.

It would be a short lived band, 5 months later we would go our separate ways except that K___ and I had developed a budding romance. A budding romance that turned into love. He was my first kiss and made me feel good about myself. Me, the bungling, depressed, goofy girl that I was. K___ was a very handsome man and very, very nice. He walked with me through a mental breakdown and put up with the slow dismantling of the lies I had built around me. When he proposed to me a little before my 20th birthday I said yes. Because that's what one is supposed to do when someone so kind and nice proposes.

You love me enough to want to marry me? REALLY? No one has loved me in a long time. Very well, I'll take that, thank you.

Eight months later, two weeks before our wedding, as we were sitting in the car in a TGIFriday's parking lot, I told him that I couldn't marry him.

It was while inside the restaurant, an hour earlier, that the realization hit me. I remember I had been doing a little puppet show for him with the salt and pepper shakers.

"Hey there Salty, I think you make food taste better sometimes. But not on cookies. On cookies you're gross!"

"Oh yeah? Well you're gross on cookies, TOO."

I looked up at him and thought,

This man is not my friend.

He's nice. He's kind. But we're not FRIENDS.

I don't find him remotely interesting at all.

I feel like I'm just entertainment for him.

But he's been through so much with me.

He loves me.

This all went through my head in a split second and I tried to dismiss it. Pushed my meal around my plate, made jokes about the decor, excused myself to the restroom where I stared in the mirror panicked at my realization, came back and sat down, sang the praises of the ice cream in the dessert...

Just don't think about it, Meghan. Just don't think about it and it will go away. Just be very still.

As though I was trying not to throw up.

In the car, though, out it came.

"I can't marry you!"

He was shocked. He was hurt. He cried. He pleaded with me. Said that I just had cold feet. Said that he loved me. Reminded me of all the people who were coming, all of the preparations that had been made, the dress that I had had made to resemble my mother's wedding gown, the cake we picked out, again all the PEOPLE. All the people who were coming.

I felt terrible then.

I acquiesced.

That was when I made my mistake. That was when I let my fear of what other people would think of me dictate my decision. I tell you now that every decision I look back on with regret have been the ones I have made when I was worried about what people would think.

I told myself I was being ungrateful, that women would love to be in my shoes, about to get married to a nice, handsome, kind man. That finally I was going to be taken care of. Someone was going to take care of me. The fact that he loved me would be enough.

And so, in March of 1999, I got married. It was a lovely day. A lovely wedding.

6 months later I would write in my journal,

"I made the biggest mistake of my life and I don't know what to do. There's no one I can tell."

6 months after that, 2 weeks before my one year anniversary, I found out that I was pregnant. I was ecstatic. I wrapped myself up in the coming arrival of a whole new person and dug in my heels.

In October of 2000, a month after my 22nd birthday, Phoenix Dorian was born and my life exploded with joy. I would endure anything for this child. I would die for this child. Any misgivings about his father were pale in comparison to what I would do for Phoenix.

There was no going back now. My bed was well and truly made, and slept in, and the sheets rumpled.

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

Supernovas (the 5th installment of craziness...)

2010-08-06T02:24:00.003-04:00

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

For Part Four Click Here

"I was listening for your feet
With my ear, pressed hard upon the ground.
I was waiting for your thunder and quake
And love you finally came.
Alleluia."

I Was Listening, I Was Waiting ~ Songs To Sail By ~ M. Coffee & C. Quinn

***********

I really left on quite a cliffhanger, didn't I?

It wasn't my intention to do so.

Yes it was, it totally was.

What I meant to say was that I didn't mean to make it sound so dramatic because, now that I think about it, the circumstances that brought Zack and I back together weren't THAT bizarre or disturbing. Well, hang on. They were bizarre and disturbing TO ME. And to Zack. And to the rest of my friends and family. But in the grand scheme of oh, life, perhaps not so much.

I was at my Father's house one very very average day around the end of April 2007. He and my step-mom, Carey Lynn, lived about a mile and half away from my place and I would drop by quite a lot to see them.

I think I was sitting at the kitchen table when my phone rang. I remember that it was Carey Lynn who, in mid-sentence, looked down at my phone there on the table, picked it up, looked at the caller ID and said,

"It's Zack.", then again kind of yelling it this time, "It's ZACK!"

"Zack?", the hairs on the back of my neck all decided to stand up at once. And then they all stretched.

Carey Lynn sort of threw the phone in my direction and I sort of caught it and there was this crazy sort of hot potato game moment where I couldntquitegetmyhandsonthephoneohmigoshohmigoshohmigosh...

"Hello?", I attempted to sound as demure and collected and nonchalant as possible.

"Hey. Where are you?", Zack's voice jumped through the phone, ran around to the back of my neck and woke up all the hairs again.

I was so stupid over the fact that I was on the phone with him that it took me a second to realize that he had asked me a question.

"Huh? Oh. I'm at my dad's house, why?"

"I'll be there in five minutes and tell you all about it."

"Well, okay then! See you in five!"

I hung up the phone with Carey Lynn looking at me expectantly,

"He's gonna be here in five minutes! I look like HELL. Carey Lynn I need to borrow some make-up or something!"

"Yes, of course, use whatever you need!", she gestured towards the bathroom and I ran in there and went from death warmed over to not going to scare anyone just in time to walk out onto my parent's back porch to see Zack walking up the driveway.

What is it that causes that glowing feeling when one sees the person one loves? I'm trying to pinpoint where it starts exactly. For me it feels like it's in my chest, my sternum, and, at the risk of sounding completely cheesy and corny...without sounding completely nachos, it's like a supernova* of LOVE.

When I saw Zack Arias I was so happy to see him I about fell over. Which isn't hard for me in the first place much less when my sternum, nay, my very HEART, is love supernova-ing and stuff.

He was carrying a stack of paper about an inch thick that he set down on the bench there on the deck.

"Last night I came back to the house and noticed that G______ was acting a bit squirrelly, a bit strange. Something was off. So, this morning, after she left for school, I started looking through some of her things and I found this in one of her backpacks.", he indicated the paper. "When I saw what they were I knew that I needed to tell you."

(Zack was still living in "the house" as he called it. He didn't even call it "home" just "the house". To give you an idea of the kind of man he is, he agreed to stay in the house until G______ finished a certification training she had started. He didn't have to, he didn't want to but, as he saw it, it was what he felt he should do to help the mother of his children.)

I picked up the papers and started to flip through them.

Then I realized what they were.

They were print outs of emails and messages from Myspace. (remember Myspace?)

She had broken into my personal email accounts and my Myspace account and had been reading them and printing them out.

I was flabbergasted. They ranged in date from December of the year before to just a couple of days prior. At first I thought that perhaps she was trying to get some dirt on Zack and me, that maybe she had been looking for evidence of us still seeing each other but, no. There were very personal emails in there, ones where I shared with good friends how life was going, song lyrics that I had emailed to myself to remember them, etc.

"How in the world did she get into my email?"

"She must've been snooping through my computer and found old saved iChats between you and I and found where you shared your iTunes password with me and started plugging that password into anything she could think of."

Whoa.

He went on, "I thought you should know because this is a criminal offense, no different than opening someone's mail with wrongful intent."

"This is very wrongful. This is weird. You know she told me how she had been spying on me in my house, right?"

I was shaking. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up again but this time not with excitement but in anger and this time they were joined with goosebumps. I could hear them all muttering and tut tutting and cracking their knuckles.

(Geez. No they weren't. Neck hairs and goosebumps don't have knuckles!)

Zack was giving me a knowing look.

"Well, Meg, you were in my front yard when she told you, remember? In the middle of the night?"

I bit my lip, "Yeah, well...I wasn't looking in the freakin' WINDOWS!"

"You need to decide what you're going to do. You could press charges. I'm going to tell her I found this stuff and that you have it now and that you know about it. Immediately change your passwords to EVERYTHING. I'm sorry that this happened."

We hugged each other then and then sat there for a little bit just enjoying the presence of the other. His hand was resting on his lap and I can remember the sight of his fingers slightly splayed across his leg.

Funny the things one remembers, hmmm?

*********

Zack and I sort of never stopped seeing each other after that day. We eased into it slowly, and by the time he had finally moved out of "the house" and into his own little place in July of 2007 I had actually furnished his entire house, at his request while he was traveling. He threw a Fourth of July BBQ Party in his front yard, invited his entire family and introduced me as, "his friend, Meghan." Which I was, and, in case you were wondering, I still am.

In September, for my 29th birthday, he threw me the most amazing birthday party I have ever had. It was so lovely it's worth its own telling, but not now. It's incredible to me to think back on that time. To think about how, just the year before, I had been singing my heart out to Zack on the Eddie's Attic stage not knowing he could hear me in the parking lot, and then to have him so fully present in my life.

It was the beginning of October, shortly after his divorce was final, that he asked me out on a date. An honest to goodness real DATE. He found a lovely wine bar in Oakhurst called Palate and we sat outside on the patio, under a gorgeous old tree hung with candle lanterns. We couldn't deny anymore that we loved each other. We didn't have to deny anymore that we loved each other.

Zack picked up his wine glass, raised it a bit and said,

"Begin Transmission."

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

*A supernova (plural supernovae) is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy, before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short interval a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span.[1] The explosion expels much or all of a star's material[2] at a velocity of up to 30,000 km/s (10% of the speed of light), driving a shock wave[3] into the surrounding interstellar medium. This shock wave sweeps up an expanding shell of gas and dust called a supernova remnant. ~Wikipedia

Romans 7:15 (Look it up, it'll make sense...)

2010-08-01T05:24:00.007-04:00

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

For Part Three Click Here

Chapter Part Installment 4 (I've not been consistent with my sequencing and so now it's all muddled)

"I'm running scared from a ghost,
The ghost of myself.
I've no hope left in what I want,
Just the memory of your direction.

I need real, I need truth
I need promises to stay my long long nights.
And where is the meaning?
And all of the healing?
That all of us prayed for?
When I tried to pray what was right?

I'm reaching up and I'm hoping
That you are still there.
I need to know you still hear me
That I am not lost in what I bear.
That I am not lost in what I bear..."

Psalm Two ~ Songs To Sail By ~ M. Coffee

**********

I started this at 1 a.m. though now it's closer to 2 a.m. and this is my third attempt at writing this fourth installment although I've written it five or six times out in my head.

This isn't the easy part to write. Not because of anything horrid but because it was the hardest part. Shall I just launch into it then?

The clean and lovely version would be that I left Steve's bookstore basement toy store/art studio blissful in the knowledge that Zack loved me. That I spent the next...why, the next YEAR...working and being an amazing mommy and volunteering at soup kitchens and baking homemade pies for the elderly neighbours I didn't have and smiling wistfully to myself, feeling lucky at this amazing time in my life to grow and become a better human being.

Instead I think I ended up drinking way too much that night on the bus and, Brent, Edwin's monitor guy, had to help me into my bunk. I woke up with a ridiculous hangover in Boston and let the wife of the sound guy convince me I needed to go shopping where I ended up buying a shirt that said, "No Photos Please" in bright pink letters across the mammary area of my body. (In my defense I didn't try it on and didn't know that it would feature that area of my body so prominently. I'm a real prude...)

Instead, the next day, I called Zack on the phone, knowing that he would answer.

Instead.

Instead.

Instead.

Oh, yes. It was hard not to want to see each other after the high of that bright November. I tried to convince myself, actually, I DID convince myself that love like ours couldn't be kept down by anyone or anything and that was that.

But that wasn't that.

"That" was just my piss poor excuse for not dealing with the fact that as much as Zack and I wanted to do the right thing we were failing miserably at it. We would speak on the phone, or email, or steal quick moments together. "That" was the very sad month of December where everything was stolen. (Except for Christmas Day when my father and I took Phoenix to see Night At The Museum and who should be sitting 4 rows in front of us but Zack and Caleb? That was weird. And not stolen.)

It would be a mutual friend of ours, J___, (I'll leave her name blank for now until I find out if she wants to be known) graciously, and with that fantastic no nonsense way she has, stepped in and gave us a proverbial spanking.

This is my attempt at paraphrasing what she said,

"You guys are using each other to fill a void and so subsequently are not dealing with the very real issues at hand and so therefore you need to stop using each other and both go down with your "ships" as it were and stop clinging to the other. If you continue in this way, without addressing how you got here in the first place, you will fall apart all over again."

Ouch.

In looking back at the volley of emails that were going back and forth I want to reach back through time, grab myself by my shirt front and yell,

"SHUT UP."

'Cause good LAWD was I full of excuses. I was so scared to have be alone and deal with my shit I was throwing out all kinds of stuff just to validate...ANYTHING.

I can't speak for where Zack was at this time, really. I know that he was horribly depressed and dialed my number dozens of times only to hang up at the last second.

Finally, at the beginning of 2007, it was done. The contact ceased. It really and truly did. And that was when I plunged into the scariest place and yet the most healing...ist place I had ever been.

**********

I was pathetic at first.

I was alone.

Yes, yes, I had Phoenix and roommates but I had no one to "check in" with but myself. Which meant that I had to actually look at myself.

It was awful. The worse part? Realising that a lot of the things that I thought were so horrible in my marriage, a lot of the things about myself that I had attributed to my woefully wretched marriage, were STILL PRESENT. That my issues were still my issues. That I had more issues than National Geographic. (I feel that I have gotten my issues down to a much more manageable indie magazine size. You know, like...one issue every 3 months kinda magazine...)

I'm making light of this precisely because it was so painful. I grew very small and still on the inside. And then I let go. Then I started dealing with it all. That is when the healing began. I stopped looking to everyone else, anything else, literally got down on my knees, sometimes face down on the floor and gave myself up to God.

Now, some of you may not like God. Or believe in God. Or want to hear about God.

To that I say...

Tough. It's my blog and I can write about God if'n I want to! ( I just cracked up laughing so hard I got the hiccups. Awesome.)

I can't deny the undeniable. I said to him, "I'm sorry. Here's everything. I've made a mess out of it. Somewhere in there is my heart, if you can fix it, I'd be more than grateful."

And God did fix it. There were moments in my little room where the presence of God was so strong I would feel as if I was about to float off of my bed.

God would show me something about myself that I needed to work on and sometimes, like a little kid, I'd run around doing anything but face it. But then I would. I would pout. And point at it and say,

"That is very very ugly and awful and I am not like that AT ALL."

When, in truth, I was. Being faced with one's own brokenness and, dare I say it? Sin, is down right 'effin gross.

I used to say that my decision to get divorced was just like the decision to cut off a limb because of gangrene. There was so much infection that if it hadn't been cut off the whole body would die. I still believe that. The only thing was, now, I was having to face the fact that most of that gangrene had set in because of me.

So. Much to my surprise, I grew up. I began to heal. I walked with a limp. But I was healing.

I was doing GREAT.

Until the night I allowed a friend of mine to buy me a couple of drinks at a Friday night fundraising event, (Extra dirty vodka martinis) and I ended up in front of Zack's house around midnight with the notion that I needed to PRAY for him.

*facepalm*

I want you to know that I was going to leave this part out. But, I figure I've shared everything with you thus far, why stop now? I mean, HECK. If I"m going to mortify the snot out of myself I might as well do it PROPERLY.

So.

There I was, in the dark, mooning over his "hoooouuusssee....sob sob sob....and his caaahhhhhaaaaarrrrrr!!!!! snort snort blubber blubber...", when I saw someone moving down the front walk and who should it be but?

G_______.

We both gasped.

She spoke first, I remember that.

"What are you doing here?"

I think I launched into some crazy account about the fundraising party and the martinis and that I felt like I just had to come over here and pray...It was so lame I started to sober up a bit because of the lameness.

G______ knew all about Zack and me. He had been very up front with her about it and, according to him, she had said,

"If you feel like you have a chance at love with Meghan Coffee, you should go for it."

Wha-huh?

(Come to find out later she was trying to trap him...)

So there we were, standing in her front yard somewhere close to midnight. She pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to me.

I took it, gratefully. I sucked on that cigarette as if it was the only thing in the world worth paying attention to. Trying to act normal, you know. Just hanging out in the front yard of the man I loved but wasn't supposed to love having a cigarette with his wife in the dark of midnight.

I know we talked a bit but the only part I remember is the following:

"Zack and I have a history together."

"If you have a history together then why don't you want to keep it that way?"

"Because I don't love him and I don't want him."

"You don't want him. You don't want him, but you don't want anyone else wanting him either."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

"I'm sorry about coming over and disturbing you like this. I've had a little too much to drink."

"I came over to your house one night, too. I stood on your front porch. I could see you through the window."

Cue the record scratching noise.

Er.

Whoa.

That gave me the heebeejeebees.

I got out of there pretty quickly after that.

The next morning when I woke up I laid there in bed moaning audibly. Phoenix came in to see what was the matter.

"Mommy? You okay?"

"No. Yes. Yo."

"It's 8 o'clock and my tummy is hungry."

"Okay, I'll get you some breakfast." I swung my legs over the side of the bed and onto the floor. I sat there and moaned again.

"OOOOHHHHHMIIIIIIIGAAAAAWWWWWD."

"What? What happened, Mommy? Do you have a migraine?"

"No, bud, Mommy had something happen that she feels really embarrassed about."

"Oh. Like the time I assidentally sneezed chicken nuggets all in Eden's hair at school?"

"Yes. But a million times more embarrassing."

"Oh.", and in that darling Phoenix way, "That's horrific."

Four months would pass before I would hear from Zack again. And when I did it would be because of a most bizarre and disturbing reason.

That I shall write about later. 'Cause right now it's 5 a.m. and I need some sleep. ;-)

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

New York, New York... (Things were looking up but we didn't know it yet...)

2010-07-29T14:17:00.009-04:00

(Part 3)

For Part One Click Here

For Part Two Click Here

If you happened to be in a park known as Central Park and it happened to be the one that is located on an island made out of buildings and people, known to most as Manhattan, and you were near the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 5th Avenue, and you decided to head east down 81st Street and then take a left on Madison Avenue, a little ways down on the left you would find a bookstore that has a toy store in its basement.

Crawford and Doyle is the name of the bookstore and it was into this bookstore that my friends Jessica, Billy and I wandered one November day the year before the miracle of the rescue of my heart took place. In other words it was November of 2005. ;-)
Jessica, I remember, picked up a book by Joan Didion called The Year Of Magical Thinking. She bought it, too. (You should read it, it's wonderful. That is, if you like to read, or can read tolerably well. I figure you're here, reading this, you might enjoy Joan. I digress...) While Jessica was roaming the titles, I wandered towards the back of the bookstore and came upon a narrow set of stairs going downwards. And, because I was curious, I went down those stairs, went through the little door at the bottom on the right that I found there and walked into a tiny room full of miniature figurines, paintings, the smell of turpentine, the smell of pipe smoke and, not least of all, in fact the room was more full of him than anything else, Steve Balkin.

Here is a picture I found of him...

Jessica and Billy found me down there talking to Steve, for talking with Steve is one of the great joys in life. He is an ineffable character, full of stories and notions and motions all while puffing away on his pipe. Using the restroom in his little space one finds stacks of empty pipe tobacco cans. When I met him he was in his Adam and Eve stage of painting. They were in everything he created. He was especially taken with Jessica, and how could you not be? She is tall and lithe and lovely and has a way of being that reminds me of a 1920's ingenue lounging languidly in doorways. It makes men get all melty and swoony. Steve called me, "darling Hobbit". I still call myself that to this day. I left Steve's space after a couple of hours...a couple of days? feeling a little braver, a little happier and a little curiouser as to what else might be lying in wait in places I wouldn't have expected.

It was to Steve that I went the second day I was in New York. I needed him to keep something safe for me.

You see Zack's email had left me bereft and crushed. Not because of what he said but because I knew he was right and I knew what we had to do. Or not do. Rumors were starting to fly around the church at this point and I was getting phone calls from people who were saying everything from,

"You must not love Jesus because your actions say so."

"You are suffering from delusions of grandeur. You just want to be a rockstar."

"You disdain motherhood."

"How can you call yourself a Christian?"

The first night in New York I couldn't sleep and so I got up and walked to a diner on 9th between 43rd and 44th. I sat in a booth facing the door and wrote Zack a five page letter. I poured out my heart to him and ended it by writing,

"I never saw you coming. Never in a million years would I have ever known that you would be the one to show me what love could be. But I want you to know that you have my heart and I will wait for you as long as I have to. Even if I'm old and gray and tottering about I will still wait for you."

So to Steve I went with my book of a letter. I told him everything that had taken place since I last saw him. He took my letter and thumb tacked it to the wall by the door.

"That's where it will stay until you tell me otherwise.", he said, his pipe dangling precariously off of his bottom lip. "You walk in the door and there it will be, on the left, safely tacked to the wall."

I thanked him profusely and he smiled at me,

"I have one word for you, Meghan, and it's this: Patience. Patience, child. Everything will work itself out, you'll see. If things are as you say they are then it will only be a little bit of time."

"Just please do me a favour, Steve? If no one comes to get it by November 6th, will you please destroy it? I don't want any ol' person coming along and reading it."

I knew that Zack was going to be in New York for the first part of November to teach a workshop he had started on the side, he was calling it the OneLight. In response to his heartbreaking email to me all I said was this:

"If you want to know my response to this and how I feel about you and this whole situation I have left something for you in a toy store in the basement of the Crawford and Doyle bookstore on Madison Avenue between 81st and 82nd Streets.

{end transmission}"

I went onto Boston and then home. Songs began to pour out of me then.

"Keep an open hand hold
No one will ever be yours and yours alone
You've got some diving to do
Find all the places where you've been run through
And then the sight of his face when he comes into view
There he is right in front of you
Murmuring lips in your hair, feels like home
Your Jericho comes down when he's around
Your Jericho comes down when he's around..."

Jericho ~ Songs To Sail By ~ M. Coffee

November 3, 2006 was the day I opened up my email and there saw an email from Zack and when I opened it up there was a picture of my letter, thumb tacked to the wall. Another email came through, this time with a picture of the letter lying open on the leaves somewhere in Central Park. And then yet another email with a picture of a reply from him tacked to the same wall.

I started weeping. He still cared for me then. He cared for me enough to go and get my response. I thought I would burst open with joy.

That was a very bright day.

Later on that bright month in November I was back on the road, this time with Edwin McCain on his northeast tour. As the bus inched its way through Times Square, and pulled to a stop in front of the BB King Blues Club, I was already out the door and making my way down the subway steps before Edwin and the guys knew what had happened. I knew I only had a couple of hours before sound check to get to Steve's.

I bounded down the stairs and burst through the door breathless. Steve stood up from where he had been hunched over a canvas, smiled and pointed to the wall where I had left my letter. There, tacked to the wall, was a little note. On one side it read, "SHMILY" (which stands for See How Much I Love You) and on the other side it said, "From a car to flight #374 to a car to the #2 to the Q to the #4 to you..."

I looked up at Steve, tears rolling down my face,

"He loves me! He still loves me!"

Steve relit his pipe, blowing a cloud of smoke up towards the ceiling,

"Of course, why wouldn't he? Now, tell me what in the world has happened! I've been dying to know. And how is that glorious Jessica of yours?"

{to be continued...}

Click here for the next part...

The Middle Part Is Where It Fell Apart (Chapter Two & Three & Four)

2010-07-28T21:47:00.008-04:00

...maybe Chapters 5, 6 and 7. I've really no idea.

Time for more soul bearing, vulnerability and bad writing. Here goes...

**********

There are moments in a woman's life where she feels invisible, moments where she looks in the mirror and cannot truly see herself at all. Maybe this invisibility isn't merely relegated to women. Perhaps you fine gentlemen out there struggle with this, too. ( I suppose men want to be seen as strong and respected and, I suppose, badass. Women, really, want to be seen as lovely and want to be cherished and desired.) One forgets that there is any loveliness in oneself at all. Especially when one is proverbially drowning. When drowning the last thing on one's mind is, "Yes, but, am I desirable? Would anyone love me? Would anyone ever want me again?".

Ergo, when the words,

"I really want to make out with Meghan Coffee", tumbled out from Zack Arias' lips I about fell off of the porch swing.

I think I laughed. I think I said,

"Really?"

Honestly this part is a bit jumbled up for me.

I remember he was talking to me about a movie he loved called, "Human Traffic". He was trying to explain to me why he loved it so much. Something about a guy who's looking for love and it was right there in front of him the whole time. I wasn't much hearing what he was saying at this point. At this point my mind was racing a million miles a second.

My thoughts went something like this:

Look at this amazing man, such a good friend. He's handsome (look at those lips....stop looking at his lips, Meghan. STOP LOOKING AT HIS LIPS MEGHAN!!!) and smart and talented and funny and strong. I've watched him go through hell in his marriage. We've both been crawling through the trenches, fighting side by side in our marriages, trying to help each other out. He's encouraged me, I've encouraged him. I respect him so much. He's been here all along....

Sounds familiar, no?

He brought me out of me reverie by saying,

"There's this song that you have to hear, I have it in my car. C'mon, let's go listen to it."

His car was a godawful ugly ol' minivan that was the colour of gold and bronze. It was glonze. It was brold. It was ugly. There weren't any back seats that I remember. He hit play on the CD player and "Belfast" by Orbital started to play. A woman's voice, plaintive, filled with longing (or was that me?) poured out of the speakers.

He laid his head back against the drivers seat and closed his eyes and for a couple of minutes we just sat and listened to the music.

And then, before I had time to think, I kissed him.

And he kissed me back.

And it was the best kiss of my entire life.

Everything fell away. I was drowning again but a different kind of drowning. This was drowning into breathing. Drowning into living. I dunno, drowning into sweetness. Drowning into what hallelujah feels like.

We ended back on my porch sitting across from each other and looking at one another shyly and not without a little wonder and a little fear.

It was now near dawn and so we said goodbye with bleary-eyed smiles and a hug. I watched him drive away from my living room window. I tried to think about what had just happened but every time I tried to my brain would wave a white flag.

"Not right now, please thank you. I am very very worn out."

***********

Later on that day what had happened the night before was starting to sink in.

Oh shit.

What did I do?

I made out with Zack Arias.

It was awesome.

NO, MEGHAN. NO IT WAS NOT AWESOME.

Well, yes, yes it was.

The making out part was awesome. The fact that I shoudn't have, THAT part is not awesome.

(It would be 6 months later that I would write the line for the song December 1st which says, " I regret the moment, but you I don't regret. I regret the falling, but you I don't regret...")

Zack called me to discuss what had happened.

"Meghan, I don't know what happened last night. I'm overwhelmed. All I know is you're fire and I'm gasoline and if the two of us are put together shit is bound to blow up."

He would later say that he was feeling a nice cocktail of excitement and guilt with a garnishment of shame.

Which was exactly what I was feeling.

"I'm so so sorry."

"Yeah, me too."

"You're a really good kisser, though."

"Yeah, so are you."

We decided it was just a random thing, two broken people. It was something that shouldn't have happened. We left it at that.

**********

Neither one of us could stop thinking about the other.

For me, it was as if a light had been turned on in my heart and everything was clear and made sense. It was my mind, though, that was having a hard time.

I packed up all of my stuff and moved Phoenix and I across town to a darling apartment right near Decatur Square. My little sister, Caitlin, and one of my best friends, Jessica Tilley (now Hodgman) came along for the ride as roommates. I wanted to be close to my family and wanted Phoenix to go to Clairemont for school. I renewed my contract with the private music instruction company that I worked for and tried to get Zack out of my mind. But I was having a hard time. One night I sat down at the piano and a song came out that I knew was for him. I quickly recorded the piano and recorded the vocals sitting in my bathtub and sent it to him in an email. That song was "Song Without A Name". (Aren't I clever with song titles? No. No, I am not.)

Zack's car broke down. He lived in Decatur. His studio was on the other side of town. Where I had just moved from. Would I be able to give him a ride every now and again?

It was futile.

We were hanging out. We tried to convince ourselves that we were being very professional but in truth we just wanted to see the other. Our hearts were being drawn together. Every time we'd say, "this is the last time we can hang out. We really need to be careful."

He told me how he felt as though he was sailing a beat up old rusty ship, lost at sea. I told him how I felt that I had been drowning, trying to stay above water.

"Well then", he said, "I'm throwing you a rope and bringing you on board."

I went to my family and my best friends again. Told them, "I think I'm falling in love with Zack Arias.".

My dad said, "Well, your timing is horrible. But I really like him."

**********

September of 2006 marked the beginning of a month long tour with Jay Clifford. Just me and my piano traveling up the eastern seaboard and some southern states as his opening act.

While I was on the road Zack was planning on throwing me a birthday party as I was turning twenty-eight. In fact I turned twenty-eight while I was in Winston-Salem. I was going to be back in town to play a show at Eddie's Attic in Decatur a couple of days after my birthday and then head back up the coast with Jay again.

Zack called me while I was in Winston-Salem to tell me that he wasn't going to throw me a party anymore and that he wasn't going to come to my show. He told me how he had had dinner with a friend who also knew K___ and had told his friend everything that had been happening. His friend was upset, and said that if Zack went to my show that he was going to tell K___ what was going on.

"I've been wanting to tell K___ about this anyway", Zack said, "but I don't want it going down like this."

The next night I was at Eddie's Attic and hoping against hope that he would show up but I didn't see him and so, the last song I played was a song called, "Not Easy To Love", that I knew that Zack loved. During the bridge I began singing,

"I'm sorry, my love. I'm so so sorry."

When I walked out to my car I found his UsedFilm card on my windshield and when I got home I found flowers on my front porch along with a card and a framed picture of a train. It was a shot that he had taken while describing it to me on the phone and faintly, barely perceptible, he had photoshopped along the train cars the words, "Easy To Love".

Here is a bit of the email he sent me that night:

"Dear Meghan,

As you are aware, I could not join you at your party. But that doesn't mean I didn't show up. :) "I might not make it to the party," I thought, "but I'm still going to get there."

Fantastic movie moment of the night.....

I was hauling ass around town getting a few things ready to drop by your place. My plan was to swing through the parking lot next to Eddie's, call you on the phone, have you come to the deck and I was going to serenade you with your own music from the parking lot. It was going to be my "Say Anything" moment with John Cusack holding the boom box while playing Peter Gabriel.

That didn't happen. I suppose your set started later than I was expecting or it went longer. I pull through the parking lot, park illegally, and I mute my stereo. Mind you, I was playing track 12 (Not Easy To Love) all day as I had the opportunity to do so. I hit mute and I was stopped dead in my tracks by hearing you already singing Not Easy To Love to me through the speakers from the back deck of Eddies. I pulled up within 10 seconds of being synched to what I had playing in the car.

I sat and I listened to you. My love, you have nothing to be sorry for.

Oh how I was warmed by making it for the last song and it was wonderful to hear the applause. I was clapping too and looking like a fool to those sitting on the deck. :)

I left my signature on your car as best I could since I could not find a pen.

AS for the items at your house. I had arranged everything on the front porch and as I was leaving it seemed as though the front door was slightly cracked. I checked it and it was open. I had called Jessica to leave the front porch door open and I wonder if she thought I meant the door to the house.

I stepped inside and missed you so much. I'm so head over heels for you. As much as I'm pulling the emergency brakes and cutting the fuel lines at the moment, know that I'm no where even remotely "done with you." That's why you got the card that you got.

Another year being beautiful. Another year being bold. Another year being brave.

Jacob had to work for years for his. Another year ain't so bad.

I'm sorry I couldn't be at your party. I'm walking a fine line at the moment but I so needed you to understand that while I wasn't there, I was there. And you can't even imagine how breathtaking it was for me to pull through that parking lot to hear the one song I so wanted to hear tonight. And Meghan, I heard you. I mean, I HEARD you. I heard your heart.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. You are so easy to L word."

It wasn't long after that that Zack went to K___ and told him that he had kissed me. Told him that he was falling for me. And he apologized. It was hard on him. He had tried to, back in the day, be a friend to K___. Remember?

"I'm David. You're Bathsheba. He's Urriah."

He and I both were wanting to talk to our pastor about the whole thing but, since I was on the road still, Zack went first. We both were trying SO HARD to be good. We were trying to keep things open. We didn't spend time alone together. We didn't touch each other. We truly wanted to be people of integrity. People of integrity who were falling in love with each other while still technically married to other people.

Right.

I know.

During this time I was a constant whirlwind of guilt and happiness. It was the strangest thing. I both loved hearing Zack's voice and felt guilty at the same time. We would say we weren't going to spend any more time together but then cave in a couple of days later and one of us would call the other on the phone.

I would listen to Cat Power's song "Good Woman" over and over and over.

"I want to be a good woman
And I want, for you to be a good man.
This is why I will be leaving
And this is why, I can see you no more.
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever

I don’t want to be a bad woman
And I can’t stand to see you be a bad man
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love
This love forever
And this is why I am leaving
And this is why I can see you no more
This is why I am lying when I say
That I don’t love you no more

Cause I want to be a good woman
And I want for you to be a good man."

I sent this email to the pastor:

"Hello [Pastor].

I'm on the road until next week. I get back into town late sometime
Monday night.

Currently I'm in Charlotte, NC. I've been on the phone what seems to be
non-stop since I left town, I have a few questions for you as, I'm sure,
you do for me. I am an open book. Ask me whatever you want. I've been
in a blender for a few months and have grown accustomed to the feeling of
being pureed, as it were. I figure I'm not dead yet, none of this has
killed me physically (although I'm definitely experiencing what it means
to die daily) and so shall keep walking around, doing my best, sometimes
succeeding, mostly failing.

I will not try to put words to any of this via email, unless that's how
you want to go about it.

I have always respected you, [Pastor]. I know you must be beyond disgusted
with all of this. I suppose you'll want to box me about the ears. I
deserve it, to be sure, although I've done quite a lot of it myself
already.

I'm being called to sound check. Must go.

Until then,

Meghan"

I was on my way to New York for the last two shows of the tour when I got the following email:

From: zack@usedfilm.com
Subject: To all ships at sea...
Date: September 21, 2006 12:17:19 PM EDT
To: meghan@meghancoffee.com

Hey Meg,
Well, I had my meeting with [the pastor] as you know. I once told you that no one was able to stand in the gap between you and I. Well, [the pastor] successfully proved me wrong. He came with God and I didn't. As I said, it was a real "Nathan" moment. A few things he said could have been summed up easily with "You are that man."

When the truth is? We messed up my friend. There are a ton of explanations but there really are no excuses. I'm owning my part and taking responsibility for what has happened. The number one thing I have come to realize is there is nothing I can do to make it better except to do my part to not make it worse.

You won't be hearing from me beyond this email for quite some time to come. You want to be a good woman, and you want me to be a good man... well, we have to enter radio silence for that to happen. And cell silence. And email silence. And chat silence.

I'm truly sorry about all of this. I have already lost three friends (you, K___, and [friend]) and others are still on the fence. The price has gotten high, as it should, for what I have done.

I can tell you that nothing else came up in the meeting. I'm at peace with my confession of our time together, our kissing, and how close our hearts were drawn together. All things I'm having to give up and walk in humility about. I've been knocked from my horse and beat about the head. Again, as I should. I know why and how it happened but it just should not have happened. Not like this and now, if we are to maintain integrity, honesty, and seek reconciliation to those we have hurt, we must own it and end it.

So, to all ships at sea, maintain radio silence until this storm's fury has ended.... It's going to be a long lasting storm.

Cheers,
Zack

PS - When the truth is... it is freeing to not live in lies, deception, and shadows. I'm gonna miss you Meg.

{end transmission}"

{to be continued...}
Click herefor the next part...

How This All Started (Chapter One)

2010-07-28T14:19:00.010-04:00

Had you told me five years ago that I would one day be married to Zack Arias, have made a gorgeous human being with him (AKA Hawke) and be the happiest I've ever been in my life I most likely would've have smiled at you, excused myself for a minute and called the cops.

Beepboopboop...ring, ring...

"What is your emergency?"

"I need you to come rescue me from the crazy person I'm with right now. I fear for my life."

Zack and I, to some people, weren't supposed to happen. Zack and I, to some folks, are an aberration. Whatever you do, don't fall in love with someone you go to church with, especially when you're married to other people.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Where to start? Because start I shall. I'm going to write out this whole crazy story, bit by bit.

This may shock you. It may not. Either way, I'm going to lay it all out there.

***********

Zack and I met, interestingly enough, online. The internetz. The church that I was a part of (Trinity Vineyard, my home, my family) had just planted a church of our own in Atlanta and all of us on the leadership team were buzzing with the possibilities and the thrill of starting an amazing place for community and worship. We had a church forum on our website where everything from "Is Time Travel Possible?" to "I have a couch for sale..." was discussed.

It was here that Zack showed up.

I knew him only as "usedfilm".

He only knew me as "mcoffee".

My friends and I would wonder aloud sometimes, "I wonder who this usedfilm guy is? The stuff he says is really interesting!"

Zack had started coming to Trinity a few months prior to joining the forum and had immediately felt at home. He was still trying to recover from his wife leaving him and Caleb when they lived in Texas. When I met him he was working at Kinko's and his wife, G______ had recently come back and they were living in a crappy apartment in Roswell.

We eventually met one night at church. I don't remember much about that meeting but that he wore a beret backwards and had that beard he's so known for and that he was pleasant. Over the course of a few months, in various conversations, he learned that my husband, K___ and I, had been separated for a few months but that we were back together and trying to work things out. Zack filled us in on what had happened to him and how he was trying to work on his marriage too. He asked if I would consider trying to reach out to his wife,

"She'll think you're cool and I think she'd listen to you."

I told him I'd try. I did try. I hand picked G_____ to be a part of a small group I was leading at my house. It proved to be futile though, as she wasn't the easiest person to communicate with. She did not love him, she hated him and the only reason she was with him was because she couldn't handle the guilt of leaving again. Those were her basic thoughts. One couldn't really sway her from them.

(I must stop this to mention that I am currently in a coffeeshop and directly in front of me is a man having a rather animated conversation with what appears to be an invisible person all whilst he covers himself in hand sanitizer. "I do love a good sponge", he is saying, "and listen to that jazz!" Now he is rearranging the parts of a sandwich he has just procured from a pocket somewhere. "I should be allowed to...mumble mumble...but it ain't gonna happen. UH OH!", he claps his hands loudly, "I have no idea! I'm going to open a non-profit with free services...mumble mumble...")

I must say I find it interesting that right when I began to write about a difficult person to communicate with a person who obviously has issues communicating has chosen to sit here. Huh.

I'm worried that I am not making sense. I'm not trying to write anything great here. Just trying to...get it out, you know?

Plow on, Meg. Plow on.

Life continued. I tried to not drown in the despair that was my marriage. There were times where I felt as though I had a few moments of floating but mostly it was a constant struggle to stay above water.

I was in the foyer of the little church that Trinity rented on 14th Street, right after church one night, when Zack walked up and said,

"I think God has told me to quit Kinko's and go back to photography."

"Really? Wow. Well, you absolutely should. If you don't you'll always wonder, what if? You know? You're too good not to."

I watched as he began to shoot more and more and even hired him myself to shoot my press kit photos. That was February of 2004. I was going to make a real go at my music again. In December of 2004 my marriage to K___, already so flimsy, crumbled again. K____ moved out and we separated again. I remember meeting with Zack and my friend, Kara Pecknold, at EATS on Ponce around that time. Zack was trying to encourage me to stick it out. He was sermonizing about how we had to stick it out in our marriages no matter how beat up we became. We had to keep pushing up the hill.

"Yes, but how long can you take a hill? How long before it kills you?"

He didn't have an answer. He was in pain, too, in his marriage, and trying to convince himself of the very things he was preaching.

"You know what, Meg? I'm better friends with you than I am with K___. I'm going to reach out to him and try to help."

He did try and help. He did befriend K____. He did a better job of befriending K___ than I had G______, that's for sure. This would come to haunt him later.

I was in a lot of emotional pain, my heart was broken, but I pulled myself up by my bootstraps again and gave it another go. I decided that I wasn't allowed to be a musician and a wife and focused on working full time teaching music and being Phoenix's mommy and that I wasn't going to play music for myself ever again.

The new year of 2005 I made the following declaration:

"My music is dead."

"That's stupid". Zack said, upon hearing my declaration. "You're too talented and you have music the world needs to hear."

"Whatever. It's dead."

"Whatever, you're wrong. Give me some of your EP's. I want to pass them around to some people I know."

"Ugh. Okay. But it's stupid!"

He and I would talk every now and again. He was a buddy, a guy I saw at church and I admired how hard he was working at his photography. His name was spreading at this point. Everyone knew Zack as the music photographer and he was a regular fixture at Octane, the coffee shop down the street from my neighbourhood. He was hopeful for his marriage as G______ was expecting another baby In July, a fact that shocked him to no end as G_______ made it very clear she wanted nothing to do with him.

"It was a Halloween Party", he said, "she had a bottle of wine."

"Well congratulations anyway!"

"I know! It's crazy!"

It was August of 2005 that Zack called me up.

"Hey. I think I want to be your manager."

"My manager? Why? I don't play anymore, Zack, you know this."

"Well, I think you should. You see...", and here he paused for a beat, "...I kinda already booked you a show."

"WHHHHHHHHAAAATTT?"

"Yeah, it's at the 10 High on September 12th. 11pm."

"That's two days before my birthday!"

"Then consider it a birthday present."

"You're a dork."

I couldn't believe how happy I was.

"Okay. I'll do it."

And I did. And it was great. A good number of people showed up that night. That show led to my being asked to perform at Eddie's Attic with Edwin McCain for a Holiday Special being filmed by Turner South. That led to Edwin loving my music and asking me to go on tour with him.

Zack was ecstatic.

"See! I told you!"

He called himself my quarterback because shortly after that he passed me off to Edwin's manager who took me on her roster of artists. Just Edwin and myself. I was amazed. Here I thought music was dead and Zack just proved me wrong.

The beginning of 2006 was a blur.

Zack was busy shooting and I was busy touring and writing music for a new album. Every once in awhile we'd check in with each other.

Sometimes he would stop by my house when the christmas lights were on to chat and have a beer. It was known in the neighbourhood that when the "fairy lights" as I called them were on on my front porch that you could just drop by. Anytime.

I miss those days.

It was the beginning of June of 2006 that my marriage officially died. Or I finally drowned in that despair I mentioned. The nail in the coffin, the last breath as it were, came in the form of a City of Atlanta sheriff who knocked on my front door and presented me with papers stating that my house was being foreclosed on. Again. For the 3rd time. The mortgage hadn't been paid in 6 months. I had been promised that this would never happen again. That I was going to be taken care of. That I didn't need to work anymore, that it was going to be fine.

It wasn't fine. I went to my family and told them what had happened, the same old same old. The same scenery.

They understood.

I asked K___ for a divorce and waited for the lightening to strike me dead. It didn't.

**********

One night, right while all of this was going on, I got a phone call from Zack.

"Hey, I'm in your neighbourhood, I just dropped an intern off at her brother's house and saw that the christmas lights are on. Can I drop by?"

"Of course you can! I'm in my pj's but I have beer, c'mon by."

Zack had just finished shooting a wedding and we sat on my front porch with Newcastles on a lovely June evening and he asked me what I had been up to. It had been a while since we had chatted.

I was swinging on my porch swing, looking at my toes when I said,

"I've asked K____ for a divorce."

There was silence and I braced myself for the inevitable sermon that I knew was coming. Zack never held back what he thought. We had both been raised that divorce is not an option. That you hang in there until you die or it kills you.

The silence continued and I looked up surprised.

"Go on", he said, "tell me why. What happened?"

So for the next 20 minutes I poured out everything that had happened, or in some ways, didn't happen.

He was surprised. He and K____ and a few other men were in a small group together.

"I had no idea this was happening. K___ gave no indication of this. Man. He's about as sharp as a bowling ball, hmmm?"

"So...give it to me", I said. "I know you have stuff to say."

"Actually, no I really don't. You see, I was going to share with you that I'm asking G______ for a divorce. I can't do it anymore. I can't live like this anymore."

And then he shared where he was.

There we were, two broken people, sitting on my front porch, feeling like our lives were about to fall apart.

We had another beer or two and then, at some point around 2am I said,

"What are you thinking about?"

Zack would later tell me that right then he had been sitting there, looking at me swinging under the christmas lights, thinking,

Here is this amazing woman, such a good friend. She's beautiful and smart and talented and funny and strong. I've watched her go through hell in her marriage. We've both been crawling through the trenches, fighting side by side in our marriages, trying to help each other out. She's encouraged me, I've encouraged her. She's been here all along....

When I asked him what he was thinking, he started to laugh,

"I need another beer first."

"Okay.", I got him another beer first and when I came back and sat down he said,

"Meghan, we're buddies right? I can be straight with you?"

"Of course."

"Okay, well, what I was thinking when you asked me what I was thinking was.... I really want to make out with Meghan Coffee."

{....to be continued....}
Click here for the next part...

On a scale of 1 to Proverbs 31 woman...

2010-06-26T01:00:00.007-04:00

...I am hovering somewhere around...

24.

That is, if the number 31 meant BEST. Like going to 11.

Which I know it doesn't work that way, the numbers are supposedly supposed to numerically number the many wise wisdoms of Solomon.

I had a lot of fun with that sentence just now.

What I want to know is...

When his wife read this, assuming that she could read given her station and such in life, did she concur?

"Let's see...worth is far above jewels, yes that's nice, I like that...good not evil...yes, true too, well, there WAS that time I stuck my cold feet on your back but that wasn't really EVIL evil...(reading) Looks for wool and flax? It's been a while, you know I am really not fond of the feel of wool, it makes my skin crawl, I told you this.... Aw! Thanks for the shout out about the vineyard, babe. I wasn't sure it was going to work but it's come along quite well..."

Right.

I found a website where the different verses were broken down into what they mean in single words and here is what a description of the Proverbs 31 woman looks like:

Rare
Precious
Trust-worthy
Kind
Works Joyfully
Goes the extra mile to get the best goods
Disciplined
Good with money
Diligent
Energetic
Compassionate
Provident
Elegant
Industrious
Influential
Poised
Wise
Manages her home
Praiseworthy
Distinguished
God fearing
Honoured

Um. *raises hand* How many of you ladies look at that and think, "I need a drink."

No?

Yeah, me neither.

I think I can say that I have just a few of those attributes. Sometimes. But never, NEVER at the same time. For instance, I don't think that I have ever been poised and elegant in my life. I tried once and I'm pretty sure I fell down.

My friend, Jessica Tilley-Hodgman, wakes up every morning and BAM is already poised and elegant. What am I even saying? She prolly sleeps poised and elegantly too. ;-) She'd make the perfect sleeping princess for a prince to find and lay a wet one on her. And by wet one I mean a kiss, not a wet WIPE. Although now I'm cracking up at the mental image of a prince gazing down at his beautiful princess, whilst birds and small rodents and a male and female deer, who have nothing better to do, watch as he gently lays a wet one/wipe over her face..or maybe not, maybe not her face, maybe he's polite and just drapes it over her knee...the music swells...

But I digress.

More than digress, that wasn't a rabbit trail, that was a...mole hill. We all just got stuck under a rock or something.

Anyway.

My point to this WHOLE POST was to say that I am actually okay with being a Proverbs 24 woman at the moment. There are rare moments where I feel like I'm even attaining say, 30.5 and I look around and my house is picked up and I'm dressed in something lovely and I have make-up on AND shaved legs and pits and my kids are angelic and the laundry is in process (never done, I have learned. It will never be done, it's just a clothes purgatory, a never ending story of cotton, linen, rayon and other synthetic fibers forever...) and emails are caught up on and I've played the piano or the guitar and made Zack laugh and dinner is cooking and just everything feels marvelous for about 2 whole minutes.

I do wish old Solomon had thought to put in stuff like a sense of humour,

"Wittiness and silly voices frequently pour forth from her mouth,
Her children laugh at her antics and rise up and call her hysterical."

Or that he mentioned something about her being spontaneous and building a fire in 90 degree weather.

He could've written something like,

"She is spontaneous and joyful, and doesn't let stuff get all swirly in her head and make her feel like a crazy person with trying to get it all done AND be an awesome mom and wife...and she...still fears the Lord blesses the blessings and stuff..."

He'd make it much more succinct and to the point.

Blah dee bloo.

I wonder if someone read that chapter aloud to her, maybe it was Solomon himself and she thought,

"I appreciate the sentiment but damn that's a lot to live up to."

Did she exist? Or was "she" merely the ideal to attain?

I dunno. I do know that I do want to be all of those things. And I do want to be at least 5 of those characteristics at the same time sometimes.

I'm working on it.

So...anyone with me on this? Or are the internet crickets chirping and all of you are suddenly remembering that thing you gotta go do?

P.S.

I think this Chesterton quote is hilarious...

"Variability is one of the virtues of a woman. It avoids the crude requirement of polygamy. So long as you have one good wife you are sure to have a spiritual harem." ~ G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions, 1910

Cinema Eyes

2010-06-08T20:37:00.002-04:00

Just thought I'd share with you the first recording I ever made. I recorded the vocals in a closet that held all of our church's sound equipment. My friend, Billy, and I hung up rugs to help muffle the noise in there. Needless to say I sneezed a lot.

Cinema Eyes is the first song off of the Cinema Eyes EP that I released back in 2005.

A lifetime ago. Or five years. Another life ago. So much has changed since then.

Click to listen to it here

The music I'm writing now is worlds different, at least, it seems so to me. Which makes sense given the different sort of world I live in these days.

And yes, I'm writing music now.

We're on speaking terms again, my music and I. We're still shy around each other, awkward in conversation, not sure what to do with our hands but we're trying and that is a very very very good thing.

"I sing like I feel." ~ Ella Fitzgerald

Where I write you a letter and you pretend you got in the mail instead of bills...

2010-05-25T00:45:00.003-04:00

I'm shutting down when I want to be wide open

2010-05-20T01:08:00.003-04:00

I am raging on the inside right now.

The desire to throw things and scream and cry and just let it all out is practically overwhelming me.

For the past five minutes I have lain here with my hands on the keyboard, my face buried in a pillow (I'm on my stomach, stretched out across the couch) trying to figure out how to proceed.

I am scared. When I really stop to think about it, to analyze it all, it comes down to fear.

Scared of what, you say?

I haven't seen or heard a melody in almost a year. My creativity has run off to play with the kids down the street and always picks me last for kickball.

My health is failing me on so many levels, i.e. having to have my eardrums replaced in order to save my hearing, hypothyroidism, insulin resistance, PCOS, weight gain that came out of nowhere...

I'm scared to look in the mirror. I don't recognise myself any more.

I'm scared that I weigh 198 lbs and I'm only 5 ft 3 inches.

I'm scared that I even typed that.

I'm scared of what people will think of me knowing how heavy I am. I hate this. I don't want to care. But I do.

I'm scared of my past. Well, I'm more scared of other people's perception of my past, if that makes any sense. Which is silly.

I'm scared when it comes to music because I wouldn't know what to do with it even if I DID write something. But then I think, to hell with it, I just need to get something out. I feel like a pressure cooker. I feel like a ticking time bomb.

I'm scared of trying to schedule being creative around a 2 day a week 3 hour long Mother's Morning Out program. The idea that I can only attempt to write anything between the hours of 9:30am and 11:30am Tuesday's and Thursday's makes me feel crazy. My songs have never worked like that. They used to show up at all odd hours of the day (Some even ones, too) and I remember having the capability to hear them clearly, to play with them. Now they seem like they're downstairs, in another room maybe. I can hear them but faintly. Mostly not at all.

I am scared that my life seems to have been relegated to a calendar and scheduling and who has to be where when can you go here do that wait we forgot that we have to do this too I don't have socks you boys need a haircut we're out of milk oh shit a poopie diaper oh was that a melody idea CRASH what in the hell was that Hawke stop eating the dog food I need to bring the snacks for class tomorrow Gracie stop eating the garbage what is for dinner Honey we need to do a critique for the blog pay the bills laundry laundry laundry shower try to look presentable wait was that a melody idea oh Hawke is up from his nap time for snack pick up the boys...

*sigh*

Zack gave me a talking to earlier.

We take turns in this. He gets into a funk and I give him a talking to, call him out on his bullpoop and tell him he's being stupid and that he needs to get his head out of his ass and remember what's important.

Well he gave me that talk tonight.

It's much easier to give it than to take it.

I have no sense of direction right now. I have this amazing little studio in my back yard that my darling husband got for me and I have yet to spend more than a few hours in it.

TOTAL.

I don't know how to balance creativity and motherhood.

I'm either one or the other. I'm that way in so much of my life. All or nothing. Black or white. Feast or famine.

I don't know much of what this post is about. I guess it's to say,

"Hey everybody, I'm a big, fat, stinking mess."

And if ONE person tells me to "Just give it all to Jesus" I will LOSE IT.

I already know every single phrase we Christians pull out to give to other Christians during rants like this. It's like our own box of Pithy/Cliche tissues that we pull out when someone has icky "What the hell is wrong with me?" snot running down our faces.

I don't mean to sound harsh.

It's just....I don't know.

I just... ugh.

I need a hug. I need space. I need a little room to breathe. And, yes, I need God to help me figure this poop out.

All I know is that I am not being a very good wife and mommy right now.

One of my favourite authors is Katherine Paterson and she wrote one of my favourite books, Jacob Have I Loved. In the book she writes, "To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another." That's exactly how I feel right now and it frustrates the hell out of me.

I'm shutting down when I want to be wide open.

I long to have direction and a purpose again.

I long to not be, as Shaw once said, "a feverish selfish little clod of ailments..."

Ack. I'm done ranting.

Thanks for hearing me out, or not, if you didn't. ;-)

I found the Shaw quote I was thinking of by the by...

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy." George Bernard Shaw

If I could, you know I would...

2010-02-16T00:36:00.002-05:00

...but I cannot.

There is much afoot these days, in my physical world but in my heart also. I am fighting for some elbow room, fighting for my place to have time to create but it is proving harder than I thought. That just means I have to tighten my bootstraps and dig my heels in a little harder.

And right now Zack is "figure skating" in his socks in our living room.

Thank the Lord for my dear husband. That man makes me laugh like no one else can.

I will return.

I promise.

Young @ Heart

2010-01-14T01:29:00.003-05:00

I have not blogged in a long longity long time, she stated, dutifully.

Captain Obvious.

Zack and I happened upon a documentary called "Young @ Heart" on PBS the other night. You can read about the whole thing here. I wept through most of it. At one point I was sobbing. The moment when this beautiful old woman began singing, "It's been seven hours and fifteen days...since you took your love away..." and I was done for.

My sweet husband was baffled by my tears and snotting about and hand to my heart gasping. I kept repeating, "This is blowing my mind. Is it blowing your mind?"

Zack looked at me with a bemused expression,

"It's not blowing my mind. I'm enjoying it, to be sure, it's interesting, but it's not blowing me away."

"Well, it's blowing me away."

After the show was over Zack asked me why I thought I was reacting so strongly to it.

"I don't know. I'm still trying to process it enough to put it into words."

A little bit later I made the attempt.

"I kept thinking about this time when I was eleven or so and mom and all of us kids were in a Taco Bell eating lunch. At a table for two next to the window were a little elderly couple quietly eating their lunch. I didn't take much notice of them but my mom did. In retrospect I realise she was watching them quite intently.

While we were still eating the couple got up and shuffled and tottered to the door and there the old man tried gallantly, albeit desperately, to open the door for his wife. As he struggled against the weight of the door tears began streaming down his face and his wife was patting him on the back saying, "There, there, darling, there, there...". My mom got up and helped him open the door and the couple thanked her and, while wiping away tears from his face he said to my mom, "I used to be so strong."
My mom sat back down at our table with tears in her own eyes and such a far away expression.

I'm just starting to grasp the concept that I will never be the "old" version of me. I'll just be me with a bit more wisdom and what not. I've often said that it's the mirror that changes, not me. I've never become the "30 year old" version of myself.

Does this make sense?"

(That was something like what I said. I can't possibly remember everything that was said. Obviously. I mean, I have been able to recall quite well conversations that were rather monosyllabic in nature like, "Can you pick up some milk?" "Yes." "Great, thanks." I think you know what I mean.)

Zack and I had quite an interesting conversation about oldness and elderlyish things. I quite like that by the time my kids are my age it will be quite normal for Grandma's and Grandpa's to have tattoos and peircings. You know? Most of the people I know have some form of body art. I remember Phoenix asking, "Mommy, what happened to so and so's mommy? She hasn't got a ring in her nose!" Every mommy he knew had a nose ring it seemed!

I'm sure it's been said somewhere before but, why is it, right when people become the most interesting, they get written off and shoved into a corner and deemed "old"?

I wonder how I will handle that label when it applies to me. When it might seem like an injustice when I most likely will FEEL so young and yet my body will have betrayed me.

Don't be surprised if you find I have joined the Young @ Heart chorus when I am old and lovely. I'll do a rousing rendition of "Paranoid Android".

In other news I am...overstimulated? Stressed? Overwhelmed?

My little hunting camper turned studio, Loretta, has basically been finished and is ready for recording but I haven't had the time to add the finishing touches. I.e. cushions and curtains and rugs. Oh my. And it's been cold. Ugh.

Hawke is teething and is sprouting what must be, by the way he's been acting, the largest, most toothy teethies ever known to mankind. He's fractious and frictious and perfectly incapable of getting comfortable whatsoever. In fact, as I type this at 2am, he is next to me, hooting and humming and squirming and fussing.

I am behind on everything.

Time with my husband.
Time with the boys.
Laundry.
Cleaning.
Grocery Shopping.
Emails.
Friendships.
Family.
Exercise.
Weight loss.
Sleep.
Time for myself.

And don't even get me started on studio stuff. Zack is taking this year to shoot only personal work and I have been nose deep in casting and production stuff and OneLight emails and DVD shipments and finances and planning and conceptualizing and...

I am tired.

Right now, I'm looking forward to being old. To the time when life will seem slower and I'll most likely look back on this time with fondness and "remember whens?". Even now I feel the second hand has sped up with late for a tea party white rabbit tendencies and I am chasing after it trying to give it a sedative.

"Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life." ~Charles Dickens

Found: Christmas Songs

2009-11-28T01:24:00.006-05:00

My sister-in-law, Ginger, asked me in an email the other day if I had recorded any Christmas songs.

At first I thought..."Uh...no...." and then I remembered, "...WAIT. YES. I have recorded some songs!"

I was a part of the Peachtree Presbyterian Christmas album in 2007 that the musicians there did to benefit Safehouse Outreach Atlanta. My old drummer, Noah Alexander, used to be their main sound guy dude and I think I'm not remiss in saying that he put it all together. He's a good one that Noah.

I wish he wasn't in L.A. playing with this band. That's not true. I am happy for him. No I am not. Yes I am. No I am not. Yes I am.

Anyway. I recorded my versions of Drummer Boy, What Child Is This and a song I wrote, Magi. (I'll type the words out below in case you care to know what exactly I'm singing.)

So, you can have them for free if you want.

Or, if you really want to be really awesome, you could DONATE a little sumthin' sumthin' to help them out. They didn't ask me to do this, but if you did, you would rock. A lot. Like the Casbah.

What Child Is This

Magi

Drummer Boy

Billy Collins...

2009-11-13T00:24:00.002-05:00

...is a favourite poet of mine and I love this poem.

Just sharing. To share. You know. Sharingly. I've got my own words but they're all napping right now. Which is the unfortunate side effect from feeding them too many insecurities. I've tucked them all in and turned the lights down low and, hopefully, when they wake up they'll be gleefully ready to be written.

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

~ Billy Collins, The Trouble with Poetry.

An email, that I sent and am posting here, to vent...

2009-11-04T21:20:00.003-05:00

Post Partum Depression is a bastard.

2009-11-02T01:11:00.003-05:00

Post Partum Depression sucks.

Sux.

Is a bear.

Leaves you bare.

A lot.

Especially when it doesn't occur to you that that is what you have. ( When it doesn't occur to one that that is what one has? Grammar. Love. ) And I didn't. For some reason I thought that the panic attacks and the anxiety and the anger and the nerves about to snap would all go away. That somehow it was my fault. That somehow I needed to get my BEEP together and pull myself up by my bootstrapseses and DEAL.

Zack was doing his best, God bless him. He'd look at me with an expression like,

"Where in the hell did you go?"

I didn't know. All I knew was that I was having the hardest time LIVING. Not in the "oh I want to die" kind of way. Just, wow. Life is very, very hard and so I'm gonna go upstairs and pull a Rip Van Winkle and all of you can just stuff it until things make enough sense in my head to wake up.

The crazy part? Life wasn't/isn't very very hard at all. AT ALL.

I have the following:

An amazing, adorable, talented, funny, hard working husband who loves me so much and is so good to me.
My sweet Phoenix and my stepsons Caleb and Joshua. All who warm my heart and are such good boys.
Hawke, who is a DREAM baby. Sleeps through the night. Hardly cries. Smiles and coos and travels like a champ.
A lovely little house.
I don't HAVE to work. ( I do, but I don't HAVE to. I just can't NOT work. Blech. )

I could keep going about food and clothing and running water and toilet paper and the internet and pretty, pink lamps and key lime pie and trips to New York and my family and fresh flowers in teapots and Hawke's hand on my face while nursing and my slightly out of tune piano and central heat and air and books and being able to read said books and the luxury of three pillows in bed at night and lipstick and ripe avocados and being alive for 31 years and Lindt chocolate truffles...

(deep breath)

My friend, Jenny Runkel, called me out on it. She called me one day about 6 weeks ago or so and while talking she simply said,

"Meghan, what's wrong? You sound sad."

"I am sad. And I don't know why."

She convinced me to go to the doctor. Jenny even talked to the doctor before I got there as she ended up having an appointment with him the same day as me only earlier and told him,

"My friend, Meghan, will be in here to see you this afternoon. She's going to tell you that's she's really fine and that it's not a big deal and that it's really nothing, but she's really sad and she just had a baby and she's not herself so don't let her wiggle out of it."

Or something like that. Jenny knows me really well. ;-)

So I go. And the doctor says,

"Oh, you're Meghan? Your friend Jenny, she told me about you!" And he told me what she said. And I cried and said she was right. He listened as I explained about how in theory I should be very very happy but that I wasn't, that I was very very sad and how guilty I felt because that didn't make SENSE. That I was avoiding emails and phone calls and most communication with people that I really like and love simply because I didn't have the energy. I couldn't DEAL. That I have a hard time admitting that I need help. That admitting I needed help was akin to saying I wasn't good for anything. As I said that I realised how silly it sounded.

He said three words that actually scared me.

"You are depressed."

Aw man. C'mon. Don't tell me that.

He prescribed me a little white pill called Lexapro.

I started taking it about 5 weeks ago.

2 weeks into it I started to recognise myself again.

Zack did, too.

I'm not all drugged up or weird or anything. I don't understand all of the medical science behind it per se. I just know that the parts of my brain that had decided to wage war against each other have now opted to sit around my cerebellum and sing Kumbaya. But efficiently. And with zest! Happily! This situation looks a bit stressful! It's okay! We'll make a list!

I'm still heavier than I ever have been ever ever ever. And I still have stressful things going on right now. That. I. Would. Totally. Write. About. But. I. Can't. On. The. World. Wide. Web. Oh. Em. GEE.

But.

But.

I am a blessed, blessed lady. And I'm thankful for the brains of scientists and researchers and doctors who were creative in coming up with a little white 10mg pill that helps brains like mine make sense to itself again. I'm thankful for Zack who has been so patient and good while I wrestled with this other me that wasn't me.

Does that make any sense?

I have 14 tons of laundry to fold. It's nearly 2am. There is so much to do. I'll make a list.

Tomorrow.

Right now, I need to go crawl into bed with my beloved and let this mind of mine have a rest.

G'night.

"Good morning, Eeyore," said Pooh.
"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning, which I doubt," said he.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."
"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."

~A.A. Milne

How Hawke got his name, (or How Hawke got his name AND remained intact...)

2009-10-08T16:12:00.006-04:00

Warning:

I say the word penis a lot in this blog post. See? I just said it. I have the ovaries to do it, too.

The following is to be sung to the tune of O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree.

O Circumcision O Circumcision
You are mean to boys penises!
O Circumcision O Circumcision
There's no point to your existence!
You take what God gave little boys
And cut it off, makes me say, "Oi!"
O Circumcision O Circumcision
You are mean to boys penises!

Yesterday an old friend of mine, Jen Gordon, posted the following article on her Facebook page.

A Dad's View Of Circumcision

Here is a small snippet of it:

"My wife and I were concerned that our son might one day develop an ear infection, and our research indicated that, although extremely rare, it is possible for an ear infection to lead to more serious health problems ... so, just hours after he was born, we had a doctor cut off his ears.

Completely insane, right? Then can someone please tell me how it ever became “routine” for parents to have part of their newborn sons' penises lopped off?"

I LOVED IT. It very succintly summed up why I've always been against circumcision unless it's absolutely medically necessary. I read it aloud to Zack and he said,

"It's hard to argue with such well put logic."

And this little discussion reminded me that I haven't shared how Hawke ended being called Hawke.

This will all tie together, I promise.

Shortly after I found out I was pregnant with Hawke, and we still didn't know what he was going to be, ( I mean, we knew he was going to be a baby but what KIND had yet to be determined) Zack and I began the fun times of determining what we were going to call this baby for the rest of its LIFE.

I already had the girls name picked out. There wasn't a need to pick out a boys name in my mind because I KNEW that God was going to give me a girl.

Dahlia Kathleen Arias.

Done and Done.

Zack suggested, gently, that we should probably come up with some little male names, too. Just in case. I remember he was driving, I was in the passenger seat, the boys all in the back of our big ol' conversion van. It was sometime in October, around a year ago now, and we were headed to Helen, Georgia.

Why?

'Cause. What could be better than driving to a small, over rated, Germanishly influenced decor, self described "Mountain Beauty with a touch of Bavaria" tourist trap when you're 13 weeks pregnant?

"Boy names! Great! Right!", I began to joke around. "Let's see...you have your two spies. Caleb and Joshua and I only have one bird! Phoenix! So, we should have another bird name."

Zack chuckled as I began to spout off different kinds of birds.

"How about Eagle?... Cardinal?... Falcon?... Robin?....Hawk?... Griffin?...", I trailed off as Zack looked at me and said,

"OOOOH! Hawk! I love that."

I looked at him increduously.

"I was joking. As in not being serious. As in kidding."

"No, really! I love the name, Hawk! We can put him in tree bark diapers and teach him how to hunt for his own food."

We laughed. I thought that it was done.

It wasn't.

We found out that we were having a boy on December 5th. On Zack's birthday to be precise. I had the ultrasound tech seal up the results without telling me if it was an innie or an outie and surprised Zack at his party with all of our family and friends around us and he opened it up while we all waited with bated breath.

"Well, it would appear that I make boys!"

I cried. But just for a little bit. (Now I can't imagine Hawke being a girl. He is so perfectly perfect. But at the time I so had my heart set on having a girl...)

So then the name hunt began in earnest. Some of you may remember some of the names we were throwing around.

Atticus.

Oscar.

Quinn.

Beckett. (my favourite)

And...Hawk was still on Zack's list.

After one of our pre-natal visits our midwife brought up the issue of circumcision.

"Here are some articles about it for you to look over and read. I personally don't recommend it but everyone has different thoughts about this."

"Oh, we're not going to circumcise him! Not even an issue!", I crowed.

Zack looked at me askance.

"We're not?"

Our midwife looked at both of us and said,

"Looks like you have a discussion ahead of you."

For a couple of weeks Zack and I went back and forth about the issue of whether or not we should leave our sons penis alone or not. Back and forth and back and forth.

It all culminated on December 23, 2008. We were in a TJ Maxx in Buckhead doing some last minute Christmas shopping and we had been HEATEDLY discussing our unborn child's penis and the state we thought we he should be allowed to exist with it in for the REST OF HIS LIFE. Things had gotten intense a couple of times. We simply could not come to an agreement on it. While in TJ Maxx Zack walked over to a rack of baby coats, all orange in colour, picked one up and said,

"Awwwww. Look! How cute!"

Now, this threw me a bit because up to this point Zack had never oooohed and aaaaahed over baby clothes. He's just not that kind of a guy. So I walked over very curious to see what was illiciting such a response from him.

It was this coat only orange.

"Look, it says Hawke and Company on it. Hawke! With an "e"!"

"Hmmm. Hawke with an "e". That's kind of cool."

And then, from out of nowhere, I had an epiphany right there in TJ Maxx.

"I'll make you a deal, Zack."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"I'll give you the name Hawke if you give me my son's foreskin."

Zack laughed, "Like, in a box? Okay!"

"NO! You know what I mean. I'll agree to the name Hawke if you agree to let him remain...intact."

Zack stood there rocking back and forth thinking about my proposition.

He sucked in air between his teeth,

"Geez. Hmmm. Okay. You have a deal."

Right then and there we shook on it. And just like that our son had the name, and the penis, he would have for the rest of his life.

I'll save the story for how he got the middle name, "Danger", for another time.

So, there you have it, folks.

I am going to go get ready for Zack and I's date night.

And kiss this guy hanging out in his bouncy seat, too.

Mimosa

2009-09-07T01:56:00.003-04:00

In my previous post I mentioned that when I was much younger I imagined that my guardian angel was French. I couldn't tell you why, I suppose I thought it was romantic at the time. I don't remember making the decision to have a French guardian angel I just...assumed it. Nevertheless, it wasn't until I was twenty-two years old that I met my angel, Mimosa. Not in my waking life, both times were in dreams. Those two dreams, though, were some of the most real and intense dreams I've ever had. I don't usually remember my dreams at all but I remember my Mimosa dreams vivdly.

The first dream I had was so real and good that I can still see it.

Mimosa and I were sitting on a porch swing and we were both many years old and watching my grandchildren playing in the snow. I was not stunned at the idea of the snow, it seemed a given, normal - and not the wet, icy poor excuse for snow that we occasionally recieve here in Atlanta. It was perfect snow. Purposeful snow. Snow with confidence. I knew, the way one knows in dreams, that I was in New England somewhere. My grand-children, those darling creatures, rolled around in happy delight making forts and men of ice dressed in dapper scarves.

I remember I had red earmuffs on and a badly knitted scarf that I know I made myself. Mimosa had a face like like the moon, it gave off a faint radiance. Her skin was smooth, a dark mahogany, and she had a crooked smile. Her eyes were brown and always a little watery and, when I asked her about her eyes, she told me that there were so many beautiful things, and so many heartbreaking things in the world, that she was ever and always on the verge of tears. She had on a perfume like roses and when she moved the fragrance came off of her gently, without me realising it, everytime it was a surprise.

The swing we were on was creaking a bit and I got up to get some oil. The front door was hard to open, I had to push hard against it wanting to stick. My house, it was my house I’m sure, because of how sure I was in walking through it, was old in a good way with arched doorways, full of knowing and smelled of cinnamon and spice and something like the smell of cookies or perhaps a pie cooling. I didn't think to see what it was, it wouldn't have made any sense to do so at the time.

I hummed a little song to myself, and opened a door to some sort of pantry, flicked on a light and rummaged through an assortment of odds and ends in drawers and then pulled out the oil.

On the way out I caught a glimpse of myself in a hall mirror. Spry, a little rosy cheeked, my hair in tufts around my face and silver. My eyes were a bit droopy but I saw that they were still lovely and I had beautiful smile lines. I was still me.

Back out onto the porch I went and there was Mimosa swinging away on my porch swing. I oiled it up nice and slick, and the creak subsided and then left in a huff. It would be back.

Mimosa and I talked about everything. I wish I could remember it all. I was wise and full of stories and I made her laugh long and hard.

Mimosa told me that Jesus is an excellent dancer and that he can throw a mean curve ball. She told me that God has his very own snowflake designer and that the snowflakes sing praise songs on their way down. Mimosa knew lots of things. She told me that nobody realises how much God roots for us (he always wants both teams to win their soccer games) and that he hates to see us feeling lonely. She told me how he has a laugh so long and wide that you feel like you could swim around in it and that he knows by heart the recipie for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

I looked at my hands and rubbed at the wrinkles, pulling at the skin to make them look smooth, clasped them together and played “Here is a church, here is a steeple…”

I heard someone call my name and I looked as an old man made his way up my front walk. He had a spring in his step and white hair. He wore a pea coat and a grey scarf. His eyes were kind and I was happy to see him. He was my friend and I introduced him to Mimosa and offered him a cup of coffee. He lived down the street from me with his wife and their two cats. His wife was an excellent gardener, I could always count on her to give me fresh tomatoes in season and their yard was a glorious mess of beauty, always in bloom.

My grandchildren were making a ruckus and calling me to play so down the porch steps I went to throw myself into the snow and wave my arms and legs about, creating my own elderly snow angel. As I lay there, all my precious ones piled up on top of me, my earmuffs went off somewhere and the snow got into my ears and I heard faint singing, a whole chorus.

I whooped and hollered with those kids. My feet were cold and I looked down and, no wonder, all I had on were a pair of Chuck Taylor’s.

I made my way up the front steps grunting and groaning, Mimosa squawking over “what a mess I was.” My down-the-street friend did a little dance and opened my front door for me. I walked inside and then I woke up.

The second dream I had with Mimosa was a few years later, when I was going through the hardest, most gut wrenching time of my life. My marriage to Phoenix's father was falling apart, my life was a mess, a charade of me trying to keep up an appearance that I had half a clue of what was going on. I was wretched. I was stuffing a lot of hurt and anger and rage and I could only last for so long before I'd lash out and say hurtful things. I now liken that person I was then to a lioness in a cage. One night I went to bed so tired and miserable and desperate that I asked God to please let me die. I know, I know. It sounds so dramatic but oh, at the time I felt it so keenly. I feel asleep crying and in my dream Mimosa came and scooped me up and held me in her lap just like a child and hummed and prayed and stroked my hair while I wept and wept. When I woke up I felt a little braver, a little better.

Interestingly enough, a couple of years later a dude named William Young published a book called The Shack and my brother in law gave it to me for Christmas. In that book he portrays God as a large black woman...if you haven't read it that won't make sense, but I found it highly amusing!

Anyway, just thought I would explain who Mimosa is. Perhaps you think me odd. But...huh.

I AM odd. And I am really okay with it.

So, you are more than welcome to think that.

I must now get some sleep. I've been up for nearly 24 hours.

G'night.

The Vitreous Humour

2009-09-02T02:55:00.006-04:00

vitreous humour
n.
1. The clear gelatinous substance that fills the eyeball between the retina and the lens.
2. The vitreous body.

A while back Zack, out of the blue, said that he thought I should write a book and for every chapter have a song to go with it. I laughed, then thought about it, then laughed and then kept thinking about it.

Unrelated to his crazy idea (of which he has many, and often, it makes life very interesting...) I had been mulling over and thinking a lot about how people see. Not just in the literal sense either, but other's perceptions of what is happening or what is in front of them.

Let me try and explain.

I love that there are four Gospels because it provides an almost three dimensional view of the person of Jesus. They are all very different views but all recognisable as the same person. Or, for instance, if I were to find a model to sit for a portrait in front of ten different artists the outcome would be, I think, remarkably interesting. While the model would be recognisable by their basic form, the pictures painted would all be very different. I wonder then, which portrait is the TRUER portrait? Who is really seeing the model as they are? Seeing as how we are all so very different ourselves, with our own "filters", how can we know what we're seeing is really how it IS or is it how WE see it? The possible, and known, misconceptions that can take place are mind boggling to me. I, myself, have been a victim of, and a perpetrator of, this very thing.

I began to form an outline in my head of how I would go about trying to illustrate this and, with Zack telling me to, "Write what you know.", decided to go back to the death of my mother as my point of reference, her death and her person being the central force around which the rest of the "characters" orbit. Or, her death and her person being the model of which the "characters" are painting their view of her. In this way, I hoped to show how several different perceptions of the same thing can end up being vastly distorted from one another with similar instances even though everyone is perceiving the same thing/moment/person.

Am I making any sense?

I have the following characters/chapters:

The Preliminary Discourse
My Mother/Brendan (baby boy who was stillborn)
My Dad
Myself
Erin (sister, 18 months younger than I)
Brett (brother, 4 years younger than I and who has Downs Syndrome)
Caitlin (sister, 8 & 1/2 years younger than I)
Guardian Angel, to be sung in french (when I was 13 I firmly believed that my Guardian Angel was french. It wasn't till later that I met Mimosa in my dreams)
The Church -- (I'll need many voices for this, I want to try and capture the night some of the church members prayed that she would be raised from the dead.)
My Aunt Linda
My Grandmother

My mother and baby brother's chapter will be blank, at least I think so now, as the thought of attempting to write their perspective is daunting to me. I'm already challenged enough by the idea of attempting to write everyone else's perspectives too! Obviously, I can go to my dad and say, "Is this about right?". Not so with mom.

There will be a few melodic themes that will tie into each other, most not even noticeable to most people, but I will know how they flow together. The most noticeable will be between my mom, my dad and my brother, Brendan's, songs.

Right, so that gives a basic idea. The songs are coming faster than the words for the book are. I have parts of the book written, some with words so sparse they almost seem sad on the page but I am not in a rush. This is a labour I do not intend to bully out of me. Just like my sweet Hawke this "baby" can take as long as it needs to.

All that to say I actually quickly (and badly) recorded one of Erin's songs as a melody that sounded like her. It came to me from out of the blue and I just hit record using GarageBand. I didn't bother to correct the piano mistakes. I then sang over top of the piano the first words that came into my head. The structure of the song isn't necessarily set yet. For those of you who are songwriters you will get this and for those of you who aren't, and who are possibly thinking, wha?, it just means that, for me, the foundation has been laid but I haven't yet decided on the way the "place" will be laid out.

When I grow up
I want to be
Just like her
It's her I want to see in me.

I will take care of you
'Cause no one will care for us
One day I'll be taken care of
Someday I'll be worth enough

This goes here
And that goes there
I will keep us all together
I will tidy up our fear

Here is the song if'n you want to hear it...headphones are best.

After our mother's death Erin fell into, whether rightly or wrongly, the maternal role of the household. She clung to the routines our mother had made and desperately tried to keep things normal. She is dear and sweet and good and feisty and I admire her so much.

Just thought I'd share. Remember to take the recording with a grain of salt. Or with a grain of something equal in size to a grain of salt. In other words, don't expect too much. ;-)

Soon and very soon I will be able to really start properly recording the songs in their entirety, along with the other instruments that each one calls for. They really do, by the by, you know, call.

Ring ring...

"Hello?"

"Er, hullo. This is ah...the song you were just humming? The one you haven't named?"

"Oh, HI!"

"Um, yes...so, might I suggest a french horn to be added to me, please?"

"Request noted, I'll get on that. Finding someone who plays it, I mean."

It's 3:24am and in 6 hours I have to drop of my beloved at the airport where he will go to the Big Apple and capture beauty with a seeing black box and I will stay here and hold down the fort that isn't a fort it's our house but oh my perhaps I shall build a fort in my house.

G'night.

Department of Driver Services

2009-08-31T14:31:00.006-04:00

As I type this as I am being sadly serenaded by the woefully bad hold music of the DeKalb County Recorders Court.

I cleverly managed to procure a speeding ticket on the way to having tea with my sister, Erin, and my friend, Kara Sutton way back in July. Erin was with me when it went down. I was deeply into a heated story involving something that happened with my...a person who is my (muffle muffle asdfhljd) and wasn't paying attention to the speedometer and then,

"Oh no. Tell me those lights aren't for me."

They were.

I'm notoriously bad at getting speeding tickets. Going fast is more fun than going slow. I know that that isn't RIGHT. It's not that I am blantantly giving the "man" the finger or that I don't care, I'm just...thinking about other stuff I guess. It's not malicious is my point.

Anyway, shortly after that we left for Australia and the boys started school right after we got back and our new employee started working for us and we were in meetings for the restructuring of UsedFilm Studios and then we had a OneLight Workshop and Zack and I started working out and somewhere in all of that I was apparently supposed to show up to court to pay my ticket.

I didn't.

I forgot about it.

So, today, in the mail, I received a very official notice stating that my driver's license is about to be suspended for failing to appear in court.

Ick. This arrived in the mail right after I had just come back from the YMCA where NOTHING happened even though it was SUPPOSED to. Namely I was supposed to have had my Fitlinxx appointment where the trainer person sets up the weight machines to remember who I am when I put a personalized pin number in them. It's very high tech for this analog girl, I gotta tell you. Anyway, I went rushing in there to drop off Hawke to make it to this appointment only to be told by the childcare ladies that they were closing. I about lost it right there because I was still getting over the migraine that I woke up with this morning and I dragged myself out of the house in an attempt to thwart my stupid head from ruining my day.

(deep breath)

And THEN I called Zack to lament about it and he was busy or something and wasn't LISTENING to me and I felt like he was bored or something so I did the very mature and grown up thing and HUNG UP ON HIM.

I know. I'm (cough) awesome.

I can't tell you why I did that other than it's possible I was momentarily reduced to having the behaviour responses of my eight year old self due to a flux in the barometric levels shifting on Clairemont Avenue.

Hang on, amazingly enough a person has come on the line.

Okay.

So.

I just have to pay a fine of something something (ouch) and my license won't be suspended. I'm really fine with that. The suspension part. Not the fine part. The fine part is not fine at all.

Hawke is now fussing because I made him lay down on his stomach. I am an EEVEEL mother for subjecting him to such a torturous endeavor.

Off to make the humble pie I'll be eating when Zack gets home...

The picture taking process...

2009-08-21T20:25:00.003-04:00

...and my hatred of it leads me to believe that perhaps I should take up the camera.

I've always heard that photographers hate having their picture taken, that they prefer to take them.

I HATE having my picture taken.

Perhaps I would prefer to take them.

This is all stems, I know, from the fact that I am currently the heaviest I have even been in my life.

EVER.

To the point that I simply do not recognise myself anymore.

I really want to erase what I just wrote. As I write this I feel the tell-tale signs of an all out crying fest about to unleash itself and I really don't want to have that happen.

I feel so shallow and superficial for even letting it bother me. To even give it room to...breathe as it were. I have an amazing life, an amazing husband and amazing children and yet I find that I dwell on my weight a lot lately.

Sherri, the girl that we have just hired to join us on the Usedfilm Studios team, has very graciously offered to watch Hawke for me so that I can start working out.

This is a start. One I am grateful for.

Today Zack wanted to take a family "portrait" of all of us while Kara was here. The very thought of it made me want to throw up. We started to take some pictures of all us together and I wanted to crawl out of my skin. I couldn't have been more grateful to Hawke for needing to eat when he did. I got out of there as fast as I could. Watched as Zack, Erik, Kara and Sherri danced and did silly things on the cyc wall and taking pictures of all of it at the same time.

I know of all the stuff about how we, as a society, are mass marketed to and that our perceptions of what is and isn't considered beautiful are all wonky but HELL, I still can't shake off this overwhelming...what's the word.

Self-Hatred.

I need to stop whining.

A woman named Jen Gordon I knew once wrote something like, "Put on your big girl pants and get to work!"

This is what I need to do.

But it feels hard.

And I know that I am not the only one that feels this way, especially all of you women out there.

I think what paralyzes me is that I know how at times how harshly I can judge, how critical I can be towards others, and I assume that everyone is being equally critical of me.

That was not an easy thing to admit. Nor was it easy to write. But dang it all, I refuse to be anything but authentic.

Even if it's not easy.

Ugh.

I'm not even sure of the point of this post anymore.

I have a lot of soul searching to do. Because this self hatred I'm dealing with is infecting me. It's eating me up. And it's a silly thing to be infected with.

Forgive the indulgent nature of this post.

Royskopp and...stuff.

2009-08-16T22:46:00.004-04:00

Watch this, if you have time. If you feel like it.

What Else Is There?

I have this song in my head a lot these days. I find myself humming it at all times. I am pleased because I usually have either,

"All BYYYYY myself..." or "I wanna know what love IIISSSSS..."

At any point, when I stop, and nothing is in my head, one of these two songs will rise up in my brain and I will start singing them. There are even times when I inadevertantly combine them and it ends up being,

"I wanna know what love is all by myself..." and then I catch myself, and look around, and hope that no one has heard me because, let's face it, it sounds...odd.

If I could I would write more here. But my time for writing has been usurped by...oh LIFE. This is a good thing. Much better that than not writing merely because nothing happens and therefore have nothing to share.

Right now Zack and I have been beautifully consumed by this:

Dope, Soap and Hope

There is more to the story and if you have time, I recommend that you go back a blog post on Zack's blog to get more perspective.

My piano and I are on speaking terms again. Not that we meant to stop speaking to each other, but it became harder and harder to hang out because so much time had passed and, like in life ( I know you know what I mean ), how do you START again? It feels awkward and overwhelming. Does that make sense? I laid my fingers on the keys and let a little song play out and shyly we made amends and left me grinning at how stupid I was to let so much time go by.

I wish I could get over my insecurities enough to do this in real life.

I adore my husband. I am madly in love with my husband. I never, ever thought I would know what it is like to be in a marriage that inspires me and spurs me on and would be filled with so much joy.

Joy. I have joy. I am stupid busy and my life has been dramatically changed and flipped upside down and shaken up but it's the best sort of earthquake I didn't know I needed.

Just wanted to put that out there.

Light is to Photography as Sound is to Music

2009-08-03T08:33:00.005-04:00

As I write this I am sitting in a gorgeous house (Zack is sitting here, to my left and wants me to write that it's, "like a drug dealers house in Miami..."), on a river in Surfer's Paradise, on the Gold Coast in Australia. It's a little after 10:30pm here which means it's about 8:30am back in Atlanta. We are here because Zack was invited to teach, along with JoeyL and Nichole Van, as a part of this workshop and the opportunity has been amazing.

The other night I was talking with Ainslie, her daughter Jade, and Will and they asked me how Zack and I met.

So, I went into our story. I gave them the...condensed version. Not because I couldn't tell them the whole thing but because we didn't have time!

"You need to turn this into a screenplay or a book!", Ainslie said. Jade agreed. Will informed me that it was, "Five times better than The Notebook." He even confessed to have teared up a little bit during the telling of our story.

Which brings me to the title of this post. I've been thinking of writing down our story for quite some time now. It's not your typical run of the mill kind of a story. It's messy at times. There is a lot of pain. But oh, there are beautiful moments, too. So many beautiful moments. Movie moments.

I need to write it down.

I may put snippets of the book here as I go, to give you an idea of how it's progressing.

I am a little homesick.

I am tired.

I have run out of words.

I need to store them up carefully, not spend them carelessly. I need to be a conservationist of syllables. I am spread too thin right now and I feel it deep down.

In the meantime, you should all go over and read this post by This Is Yellow. Her writing is what my writing wants to be when it grows up. And I'm fairly certain I'm older than her. ;-)

Here are a couple of pictures of Hawke, just because. He's 11 weeks old now. Here he was a "model" for Zack for a lighting demonstration.

Head tilt = Ah. Dor. Able.

Looking at toes...they're his favourite things right now.

Absolutely Nothing...

2009-06-27T01:06:00.014-04:00

Let me try describe what is in my head at the moment. Or, to be more specific, how I AM.

I think that is what I am going to do.

I chopped all of my hair off yesterday. Well, I didn't. I paid a man a lot of money to do it and I LOVED IT when I left. Today, I do not love it. Today I think I am too...round to have this haircut, thus ensuing a lot of moments of me making faces at myself whenever I happen upon a mirror.

I am in Zack's boxers ( he has more than one pair but I see that that could be read as though he didn't and I suppose I could've started this sentence with "I am in a pair of one of Zack's myriad choices of boxers.", but I didn't and now here we are stuck inside of these parantheses...) and a tank top and just before I started this random writing I was peeling the skin off of my chest where I forgot to put sunscreen on when we were at the beach. Which, Lord knows, I only got to experience for about 45 minutes for the 2 whole days we were there but I made a damn fine dinner of Chicken Cordon Bleu one night and took a bath in a jacuzzi tub that did not jacuzzi.

I am rambling. I know this. It's my blog. I can do that. No, I have not been drinking. No, I am not on anything. This is how my mind works. ;-)

Hawke is to my right, on his very own couch cushion and I am on the other one. This is an important detail you see, as any attempt to try and share a cushion and all parties involved begin to collapse in on one another. It is a couch that eats you and that doesn't go well at all with my moderate claustrophobia. I can start to freak out when my arm gets caught in my jacket sleeve.

What did the General do with his armies? He put them in his sleevies!

Speaking of arms, Hawke's left arm is thrown over his face in the cutest "woe is me" pose imaginable and he is sound asleep. I have just given him a bath in a collodial oatmeal mixture that is made by a company who's name sounds like a sneeze.

"Ah-VEE-no!"

Currently Craig Ferguson is on the television, his silly snake mug (the one he drinks from, not his FACE) on the screen as I type this, but the sound is muted. I don't normally watch television but I've had it on for a while now and I realise, as I write, it is because I am lonely. Mostly for Zack. I miss that man something fierce. Typically I can go for days by myself and be happy as a lark.

There are adults on the screen there and it gives me a false sense of something. I might just use that last sentence as a lyric in a song. When that ever happens again. When it comes down to Hawke and the house and OneLight stuff and laundry or the piano - all the aforementioned tend to win. As in NOT the piano.

My piano is sullen. I can feel it staring at me.

I am fond of attributing personalities and human like characterisitics to things that aren't human. This actually has a name, "anthropomorphism". I learned about that from an older gentleman who went to my church when I was little. He overheard me making up a conversation between two dandelions that I had picked and a calculator. I remember this vividly although, for the life of me, I cannot remember what the conversation was ABOUT.

He loomed over me, his head blocking the sun, and said,

"Ah, a fellow anthropomorphist."

I, naturally, said,

"Huh?", in the eloquent way of a seven year old.

It's nice to have a name for my quirky habit and when I meet other people who do this I relax a little bit. I can only maintain "normal" conversations skills for so long and then I start slipping up and saying the things I'm really thinking and, depending on the kind of person I'm talking to, that can be very good with nods and laughs and exclamatiions of recognition or very bad with a lot of perplexed expressions and awkward moments.

I get the latter mostly. ;-)

But then I think, don't we all feel like this?

In thinking about anthropomorphism...I once had an entire story line going on with my pack of Crayola markers. It got quite intense but then I lost Orange and he was an intregal part of my narrative and so I lost interest.

Does anyone write limericks any more?

See, if Zack were here all that I am writing out would be things that I was actually saying out loud.

Did I mention I miss him? He's out in San Francisco where he was speaking at places like Twitter and Google. Literally. There are places where these names are. They "exist" in buildings and people work there and make these names, that we throw around casually, like...you know, happen.

Well. This feels very vulnerable. I have thought quite a few times now in the 7 minutes I have been sitting here since putting the period after "vulnerable" that perhaps I won't post this.

Aw heck. Might as well.

My right leg has fallen asleep and is now exploding with fireworks and I want to brush my teeth and the TV is off now and Hawke hasn't moved but he's breathing which is good and so I'm going to take us upstairs gingerly because of my leg and brush my teeth and try to go to sleep.

I feel naughty for purposefully leaving out the proper punctuation for those words up there.

"Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression. "
~Bronson Alcott

:-)

Amen.

The Effects of Everything -- or "Hi. My boobs are huge."

2009-06-04T17:48:00.005-04:00

I am having the sort of day where I am crying for no apparant reason and my head hurts and nothing fits properly. My thoughts are jumbled and illogical and nothing is RIGHT.

In other words I just had a baby 19 days ago and my body is in full on rearrangement mode in the attempt to get everything back the way it was.

It sucketh mucheth.

I am dealing with the following:

- Instead of not being able to see my feet because of my ever growing tummy I am now unable to see them because of my mammaries. Seriously. For all you menz out there who possibly read this, I'm sorry. I don't mean to make you uncomfortable. But oh HALP. I am a human cow.

- I am drowning in boys. Hawke makes boy number four. Two of them I didn't personally bring into this world but nonetheless I feel the weight and responsibility of raising them keenly. Right now, however, the three big boys, Caleb, my Phoenix and Joshua are all on my last nerve. I'm not proud of that. It just is what it is. Zack thinks it's very funny, for instance, to point to Hawke and say,

"Look. We have ANOTHER one."

- Where did this appetite come from? WHAT THE HECK. I am ravenous all the time. The women who are reading this are saying,

"You're breastfeeding, lady, go figure."

I know this. But Jeezy Chreezy. Most women gain their weight DURING pregnancy and then lose it after. ME? I'm going at it backwards.

- I haven't played the piano properly at all lately.

- I feel bad because I am not pleased as punch at my new role of essentially being a milk truck for Hawke. Someone tell me this is normal? My life revolves around his nursing. Logically I know that this will eventually have to end, I can imagine say...at least 5 years from now and think, "Okay, he won't be nursing THEN. At some point between now and then things will normalize. I'll get a little bit of me back." It's not that I don't like nursing. I find it amazing that my body can provide food for my sweet boy but GOOD LORD. I don't feel like I'm making sense anymore.

- I don't feel like I'm making sense anymore.

- At all.

- I have cabin fever out the wazoo.

- What is a wazoo?

- I miss my husband. He's here, physically. But, what with my sleep deprivation and taking care of Hawke and mood swings and weirdness, and with him working and helping around the house and taking care of the boys, we haven't had a proper conversation in a long time. This makes me very, very sad. Zack is my best friend. In the whole world. I know that it will all feel normal again, it just makes me ache that it's not right now. I'm pretty sure I just butchered the usage of commas in this sentence.

This post isn't very interesting. Just me trying to process. Thanks for bearing with me.

I look forward to being myself again. I'm going to try and not be so hard on myself when I get there.

18 days overdue + impromptu prayer + Fox Bros. BBQ + Zorro, the Gay Blade = Hawke Danger Arias

2009-05-30T18:32:00.011-04:00

So.

Where to begin?

This is going to be a long post. I can feel it. It is not going to be a post full of prose and my usual ruminating and I am not going to wax poetic. I'm too damn TIRED.

;-)

As I write this it is 6:15pm and my little nugget is sound asleep. He is now 14 days, 3 hours and 29 minutes old or 20,369 minutes old in total.

Wait. Now he's 20,371 minutes old.

Let me address a question I'm sure some of you are asking.

Why in the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks was I allowed to go 18 days past my due date?

The answer to this could potentially be quite long. I'll try to keep it short.

Because I was having a homebirth ( I mean, I DID have a homebirth but I'm getting to that part...) the option of being induced was only an option if there was something wrong with the baby or I had gone TOO far past my due date. At which point my midwife would've said, "Okay. Off to the hospital with you."

Without stepping on too many toes I personally think that induction of babies has run rampant in this country, with a lot of babies being born before they're supposed to based out of fear and hospitals and doctors worrying that they could have a lawsuit on their hands if, and that's a BIG IF, a baby didn't make it because a mother was allowed to go to 42 weeks or even beyond. That, or some doctors find it easier to schedule THEIR life when they know when the babies are "due" to be born.

Not all babies are "done" at 40 weeks. They're just not. Hawke needed 42 weeks and 4 days before he was ready.

It would be as if one had an apple tree and watched the fruit start to grow and then once the first fruits started to ripen then decided that ALL of the rest of the fruit must be ripe, too. Sure, one could pick the fruit, but not all of them would've been ready. Not all of the apples would be bursting with sweetness!

Does that make sense?

It makes sense to me. And my Hawke is BURSTING-SO-FREAKING-FULL-OH-MY-GOODNESS-NOM-NOM-NOM-I-COULD-JUST-EAT-HIM GOODNESS.

Okay.

I'm off of my soapbox now.

I had been having false labour pains all week. To the point that I actually called Debi, my midwife, and said, "Okay, I think I'm in labour."

To which she replied,

"Uh huh. Sure. Call me when your contractions are 3 minutes apart."

She's a smart lady. She's heard a lot of pregger ladies in labour over the phone. She wasn't impressed with me. ;-)

And she was right. My 5 minute apart contractions went AWAY. I don't know where. Somewhere else. This made me VERY MAD. Zack and I had gone to dinner to Scalini's the night before, when I was exactly 42 weeks, so that I could ingest their Eggplant Parmigiana. And I mean ingest as I am not a fan of eggplant. Eggplant is not a very pretty vegetable. It in no way resembles an egg for one, much less a purple egg. I digress. Zack's entree was better. The garlic rolls were to die for. I digress again.

Thursday came. No baby. I went and got a pedicure and tried to avoid eye contact with everyone there because I knew if ONE person asked me when I was due I was going to punch them in the eye.

Friday came. I slept until 3pm that afternoon, which ended up being a very good thing. Looking back on it now one of the more amazing things that happened was that Melanie Dilley showed up on my doorstep. Her husband, Scott, was working on building a dog run in our backyard for Gracie (he's also the guy that did our studio buildout) and apparently Melanie had stopped by to see Scott. I hadn't seen her since December! I heard a knock on my door and I opened it and there she stood, lovely as ever, a straw hat hanging down her back and in her fantastic British accent she said,

"I'm here to pray for you."

"Oh! Well, okay. Great!"

So she came in and very simply placed her hand on my shoulder, while I sat at the dining room table, and she prayed for me. Prayed for Zack, prayed for Hawke, prayed for our other 3 boys, prayed for the house. She prayed a lot of things. And it blessed me so much to have good words spoken. To have someone else speak things aloud that needed to be said. To interceed. I needed that prayer time.

While that was happening Zack was at the studio doing a shoot with Dallas Austin for a magazine (that shall remain nameless at this time because I can't remember if we're allowed to say which one it is or not) and apparently Dallas's manager or someone had gone down the street to Fox Bros. BBQ restaurant and brought some back to the studio. So when Zack came home he wanted BBQ 'cause he had been smelling it for a few hours.

So we went. And it was good. They have this appetizer called Texas Fries that has more calories than one should eat in a week.

Let me say that by this point I had decided that the baby was never going to come. My friend, Que (who's son Aiden's middle name is also Danger!) wrote to me to say that at one point she wondered if she had contracted some crazy disease where she had all the SYMPTOMS of being pregnant but wasn't ACTUALLY. I started to think that maybe that was REALLY HAPPENING TO ME.

We came home and tried to watch "So I Married An Axe Murderer" because Zack had never seen it and I think it's funny but we got about 30 minutes into it and I could tell he hated it. Then he put on "National Lampoon's Vacation" because I had never seen it and he thinks it's funny and we got about 30 minutes into it and he could tell I hated it.

"How about Zorro, the Gay Blade?", Zack asked.

I was incredulous.

"Really? Really? Ugh. No.... ", and here Zack smiled his "I'm going to show all my teeth and look really stinkin' cute" smile.

"Geez. Fine."

We started that and 5 minutes into it I was hooked. That movie is hysterical.

"2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits, a Peso. All who love Zorro, stand up and say so!"

During the whole movie I was feeling...funny. I dunno how to describe it. My lower back was aching and I kept having to pee. And by that I mean MORE than I usually do which is crazy because I was already doing so much of that already. I was only comfortable sitting on a Yoga ball that my step-mom let me borrow on the day I THOUGHT I was in labour.

We watched Zach Galifinsdrasdfildgguwdsld (Galifinakis) Live at the Purple Onion after that. So funny. Not recommended if you're uptight or offended easily. Just a warning.

But oh my goodness I was laughing so hard. And Zack and I were eating Red Vines and I forgot momentarily that I was miserable. We headed up to bed around 2:30am.

An hour later I was sitting up in bed thinking, "Boy was I STUPID for thinking I was in labour before. These HURT." The contractions just started, BAM. No slow building up or anything. Just all of a sudden they were 2-3 minutes apart and lasting a minute or more. Zack called my sister, Erin, who lives in Conyers and then called Debi. Debi was just leaving the Athens area where another lady had just had her baby. Poor Debi. Back to back babies!

By 4:30 am Erin was at our house and I was still working through contractions and when I wasn't having a contaction Zack was making me laugh and I was euphoric because DEAR GOD FINALLY THE BABY WAS COMING OUT.

I had a water birthing tub all set and ready to go in the upstairs landing of our house, right by the bathroom and down the hall from our bedroom. A La Bassine birthing tub. I loved that thing.

Debi and her assistant arrived sometime around 6 am? I got into the tub and basically never left.

Well, I got out to use the bathroom. And one time I had this crazy idea that I would feel better if I could labour on my bed but one contraction into that idea and I was cussing like a sailor and saying, "THAT WAS A BAD IDEA."

Erin told me later that she knew I was really head deep into active labour when I became very curt with everyone.

"Turn the lights off. And cut the music. No more talking. Shut the dog up."

Debi checked me around 2pm and said that I was only at 6 inches. This made me almost want to give up. I hit that point where I thought, "Who in the heck am I kidding? What was I thinking?" And I was dealing with all kinds of negative images floating through my brain. And right then I remembered what Melanie had said to me after she had finished praying. She said,

"You're going to hit a point where you're going to wonder how you're going to do it. You're going to start beating yourself up and questioning everything. Go ahead and start thinking now about how you're going to deal with that."

So, when I hit that point, my way of dealing with it? I gave up. Or gave in. In a good way. Weirdly there were two "daydreams" that helped me. Everytime I had a contraction, (Which hurt like a MOFO. With Phoenix I had laboured for 12 hours on induced pitocin contactions but was eventually given an epidural and, also, 8 and 1/2 years had gone by since I laboured with Phoenix so I had FORGOTTEN...)

Anyway...

Where was I? Oh yes, everytime I had a contraction I imagined that I was a...this is kind of weird but...a squid. I don't know why. The imagery of my arms and legs being all limp and my stomach area being the area of concentrated energy made me think of a squid. The other "daydream" image was every contraction was really me being hit in the stomach with a cannonball that sent me flying through the air and, again, my arms and legs just sort of dangled.

I can't believe I just wrote that. But. Hey. There you go. Not romantic. I wasn't reveling in the life that was about to make his entrance into the world. I wasn't breathing with hee hee hoo hoo's and going to my happy place.

I was a squid who was also a multiple cannonball victim.

20 minutes later the most primal, insane feeling came over me. I knew I had to push. That was kind of cool. In hindsight. In the moment I felt almost animalistic or something. And apparently by the way I cried out, Debi, who was downstairs said,

"She's ready to start pushing."

Everyone rushed upstairs and Debi checked me again and I was at 10cm.

I pushed for 3 minutes.

And he was out.

With Phoenix I pushed for almost 3 HOURS.

Hawke?

3 MINUTES.

Here he is about...oh...10 minutes old.

May 16, 2009. 7 lbs 12 oz. 21 inches long. Head circumference 14 and 5/8 inches. Born at 2:46pm.

We have more pictures, and Zack has some video footage, but, interestingly enough, not as many as some might think. Zack was busy helping, and sitting with me, and holding me while I pushed. And the pictures we do have I'll share eventually.

It was an amazing, amazing experience. And I think it's sad that in the state of Georgia having one's baby at home is illegal. That my amazing midwife, Debi, would have been arrested if found out. It was redeeming, too, because my mother was going to have had our baby brother at home and their deaths and the complications surrounding it made some of my family think that Erin and I were crazy for wanting to have our babies at home but it was OKAY. I haven't spoken to Erin about this but I think I wouldn't be remiss in saying that we both have a feeling of, "There you go, Mom. We got to do what you wanted to do."

Ah, but there I go, inching my way back up on my soapbox.

I'll share more, later, about Caleb, Phoenix and Joshua's reactions and what they think of him. They love him, by the way... ;-)

Right now, I'm going to go snuggle with my newest boy. Who is now 20,462 minutes old.

Nothing to Report.

2009-05-06T12:49:00.002-04:00

My life has become monotonous.

My due date came and went.

I'm now 8 days overdue.

I can't really do much anymore as I am limited in what I can do physically.

I'm not going to write anything more as it only serves to make me even more peevish.

The next time I post something there shall be something about a BABY in it. With PICTURES. And DETAILS.

Wanderlust

2009-04-30T13:40:00.002-04:00

I wrote this awhile back and meant to post it and didn't. So I am posting it now.

What to say. It's 3:30am. I should be sleeping. I have far too much rolling around in my head. I have the strangest sensation of wanting to just pack up and go somewhere.

77 degrees. Streetlight outside and a halo of fluttering creatures drawn to the light. My slumbering azalea bushes. Catch-me-if- you-can front yard but watch out, you could fall down, scrape a knee or two.
In the window next to me sits myself, typing just like I am. Only my other me is in the sleeping azalea bushes, balanced lightly on their tops, hovering in midair.

Let's go on a trip. Find some roadside restaurant, meet a waitress named Jackie who has blonde hair and calls us, "Sweetie". Watch as she pulls a pen from her hair somewhere, cocks her hip ready to write. Order the special with fries and talk about God and Love and how you can't separate the two.

Hit the road, no maps, just plenty of conversation and a book that shows you where all those awful tourists traps are, let's go see the big ball of rubber bands. I'll roll down my window, turn on the oldies station and stick my hand outside, feel the currents, pretend it's an airplane. We're in slow motion, this is where the rain could start and then we're through that patch and looking behind to see how very dark, look how dark is that sky.

Stop by some ocean for a late summer swim, get the sand all over everything, in our sandwiches, in our ears. Just for one day though, I don't want to have to use too much aloe lotion. I burn easily and not just literally. Stick around for the sunset and I would tell you a story about the time when my sister and I swam out to a big boat full of men who catch fish for a living. Big, burly men with loud voices, real, working hard, strong.

We stood chest high in the water, watching them pull in thousands of fish with their nets, while we shrieked as the fish that escaped tickled our legs. Let's pretend we're mermaids, let's pretend we're looking for our dolphin friends, let's pretend.

How we waved to our mother on the beach. And she's calling us in, it's time for her to check us, rub us down with lotion again, smooth our faces with mother hands, and are you hungry? We should've kept waving, she died a few months later. And now I'm aching.

I look at mirrors, watch them change while I stay the same. Our scenery is lovely, I try to take it all in. Play my game where I see how long I can keep counting white dashes. They're like train cars, you have to stay ahead of them or you'll lose track.

It's my time to drive now, you sit back. I'll drive in the dark, lights on, music low, empty roads that will start to call us home.

Bull Shop

2009-04-26T22:02:00.003-04:00

Alright then lovelies.

Since "What Is Left..." went over so well I thought perhaps I could share with you what I quickly recorded today.

I've had the phrase, "I'm like china in a bull shop.", rolling around in my head for MONTHS now. Really. And then, the other night, a torrent of words came out of me while Zack and I were sitting at the dining room table.

"Zack, quick, grab that piece of paper over there." And he did. And I wrote what you see below.

(there are chords off to the side from another song I was working on. I don't remember what that one is now.)

The music itself, especially the piano part, is something I've been muddling around with for a couple of weeks. By muddling I mean that I would walk past the piano (which is OUT OF TUNE. I know this. It's driving me nuts...) and my fingers would play out the pattern for a few seconds and then I'd be off to do something pressing like...laundry or making sure that homework was being done. ;-)

This afternoon however, right after Zack had taken all of the boys to Caleb's soccer game, right when I was about to lay my head down on the couch cushions for a much longed for nap, what happened? My piano locked me in it's gaze and everything sort of clicked in my head.

Now. I am due to have a baby in TWO DAYS. So my lung capacity is non existent. Also, I recorded this with GarageBand in our dining room. There are piano mistakes. There are vocal mistakes. There is a ton of room noise and, if you listen very closely, you might be able to hear the boys cleaning the kitchen, as that is what they were doing when I decided to throw a little accordion on this after dinner.

Okay, I'm doing the classic preamble that every musician does when what they're offering is less that absolutely PERFECT. (which for me, it never is.)

Just again, give me your honest thoughts, but keep in mind to listen to the song and the melody and not the production value.

Please. ;-)

Who knows, if I get enough of these songs together, we might have the makings of my newest album here, folks.

Here are the words:

Bull Shop (click the song title to download the song)

I try
To paint over
All of my unsightly spots
And glue back on all of the
Parts that fell off.

I'm not gonna lie
When I say
I'm falling
Apart at the seams
From the way
I've been trying
So
Hard

I'm like china
In a bull shop.

I try
To smooth down
All of my jagged parts
And protect with vigor
As much as I can of my heart.

I'm not gonna lie
When I say
I'm falling
Apart at the seams
From the way
I've been trying
So
Hard

I'm like china
In a bull shop. (everytime they've come around I've met the ground again...everytime...)

Everytime they came around I met the ground again
Everytime they've come around I've found the ground again
Everytime you've come around I've found I've made more sense
Everytime you've been around I've found I've made more sense

24 Days -- My life with a hearing aid so far...

2009-04-24T16:30:00.006-04:00

Some of you may remember a couple of posts ago where I talked about my hearing loss.

On March 31st I made the trek back up to Duluth, Georgia where Julie, my audiologist (yes, I have my very own audiologist! Lucky ME.) had my hearing aid ready and waiting for me. My sister, Erin, went with me as Zack was in Dubai at that point and I didn't want to go alone. Erin wasn't about to let me go alone anyway!

I was very...what's the word...very...nervous?

No.

Not nervous.

Hesitant.

Maybe that's it.

Prideful.

That's totally it.

I was feeling too proud to go through with it. Which is weird to write that, but it's true. I don't like being dependant on ANYTHING. I'm chock full of stubborn Irish pride and the idea that I needed something to make me better made my skin crawl.

That, as I read what I just wrote, is RIDICULOUS. I think my heavenly Father has just very gently, with a velvet sledgehammer, pointed out something I need to work on.

(sigh)

Great.

Anyway, we went into Julie's office and she had everything ready to go with the hearing aid hooked up to a computer. The computer had taken my audio test results from the last visit and programmed into my little hearing aid what it "thought" I should be hearing. Julie showed me how to fit it over my right ear and insert the plastic little "tulip" into my ear canal.

I can't describe to you what it was like the second Julie turned it on. Erin said my face registered utter shock. I had the sensation of wanting to lean to my right, as if I were a cartoon character who's ear had suddenly grown to mammoth proportions.

I could hear the fan of the air conditioner. The rustling of paper. Voices from another room. My own breathing. Erin stirring in her chair.

"How does that sound?", Julie asked. "Is it too loud?"

"No! No! It's amazing. I...", I was speechless. I just sat there and started to giggle.

"In a few minutes your brain will get used to the new level of sound and bring everything center and normalize what you're hearing.", Julie informed me, "Now let's go through the different settings."

She turned on two other settings explaining how each one changes the "mics" on my aid allowing me to isolate what I'm hearing. It's really quite amazing.

It's also amazing how discreet it is.

Check it out, when I have all my hairs down, obviously, you can't see anything:

(Wow. How DO I manage to be so sexy.)

And then, even if I were to have my hair up, or in a headband, it's hard to see:

It's made a huge difference in my life. Zack can tell when I don't have my hearing aid in because I'm talking louder. I'll be chattering away about something and he'll pat my arm and say,

"Honey, go put your hearing aid in."

:-)

So, if you've ever met me before this, and you've thought to yourself:

That, is a very loud lady.

Now you know why!

The next step is the surgery on my left ear to try and save the hearing there. The name of said surgery starts with an "m" and is fun to say but not to spell. So I won't attempt that. For those of you who pray please be praying that we can find the money for this surgery as Zack and I both don't have health insurance and the cost of the surgery and hospital is going to be very, very steep. Because I'm a working musician I can qualify for a grant through NARAS (those crazy people who do the Grammys) and their MusiCares program. I've submitted paperwork for that and crossing my fingers that they can help pay for some of the cost of the aid (which was $2K) and hopefully offset the cost of the surgery as well.

Of course this all has to wait until when the baby decides to make his appearance. My due date is technically the 28th so what...3 days left? But, I've resigned myself to him arriving sometime in July. I'm exercising my expectations management here, folks. If I tell myself he's coming in July and he comes early well then, what a lovely surprise!

See? That's how I have to operate in order to not get too peevish. Of course I say all this and yet there is still the follwing on our iCal...

That's all for now.

Oh.

By the by, thank you to everyone for your feedback on the song "What Is Left...". Your thoughts and encouragement are very helpful to me!

What do you think about my posting more ideas like that here? And you could give me your input?

What Is Left...

2009-04-06T07:25:00.002-04:00

I've been up all night simply because I couldn't sleep.

Not a wink.

I've been piddling around the house straightening up and staring off into space and just generally feeling lonely.

And then, around 5:30am I was at the piano, like old times, and I realised why I wasn't able to sleep. It was because I needed to get a song out. I need to TUNE MY PIANO. It's sketchy.

I must say, it's been awhile since I've had uniterrupted times with my piano. I've been by myself pretty much all week and of course now, right when everyone is about to come piling back into the house, THAT'S when my brain and heart decide to start speaking to each other about songs.

Here is what was recorded:

What Is Left...

It's only Garage Band, using the built in microphone on my MacBook. It's really, really rough but I like that you can hear the birdsongs at the end. I'll let it simmer for a couple of days and then, if I think it's worth continuing, I'll record it for realz on ProTools.

The words were actually written awhile ago, I don't remember what sparked them, but the melody came in full force early this morning.

Here are the words:

What is left when the words run out?
And what used to be an ocean
Turned into river
That found a creekbed
On up into a spring

Into a heart of a mountain
So stone cold.
Into your heart of a mountain
So stone cold.

What is left when the words run out?
Every man is an Adam
Every woman is an Eve
All of us failing in
How things are supposed to be

Crying out for our hearts
To be unburdened
Crying out for our hearts
To be unburdened

What is left when the words run out?
I am a shrinking violet
Scared of your scorn
That these words I have written will
Be met with a lukewarm
Response of indifference
That I am a drama queen
But what you need to know is that I love you
In spite of all of this

This from a heart
Of a woman
That is blazing for you.
This from a heart
Of a woman
That is blazing for you.

I'm a little curious as to what you think of it. And please, no patronization. If it's boring say so. ;-) I can't stand it when people indulge in flattery. When it comes to music, honesty is always best.

Less than 24 hours till my beloved is home.

I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Busy, busy, busy and then there is deal with my ears...

2009-03-26T18:44:00.004-04:00

I just wanted to pop in here and let you know that I haven't forgotten about this blog at all.

That's not true.

Yes I did.

Well, partially.

I'm currently living in a whirlwind, which is interesting, because I have had absolutely NO prior training for such a phenomenon.

As I type this Zack is going through and double checking everything he has to pack for Dubai. He leaves tomorrow. Ugh. He'll be gone until the 7th of April and I am going to miss him like...like...someone would miss someone they loved dearly who was on the other side of the world.

I have 4 weeks and 5 days left until this boy in my belly is due to arrive. This is not a lot of time. I have a lot to do. I'm having him at home and there is a bit of preperation necessary beforehand to make sure it goes smoothly. For instance, I still have some drop cloths to buy from Home Depot!

Then there is this other something that has been weighing on me so very, very heavily. It is the slow degeneration of my hearing. I haven't wanted to talk about it, or write about it, or think about it or deal with it at all. I've had ear problems my whole life, since I was very young. I had more ruptured ear drums than I can count. According to my dad my mother had bad ears, too. So, add that to the list of things my mother gave me. Muscular calves that do not play well with cute boots, a wrinkle in between my eyebrows, pale skin that does the burny thing in the sun, a ridiculously horrible temper, and bad ears among other things.

I finally broke down a couple of weeks ago, crying and producing all kinds of fun mucousy moments and told Zack that I thought I might have lost the hearing in my right ear completely. He demanded that I go to the doctor. NOW.

So on Monday I finally went to the ENT. I almost turned around 3 times. I was that scared. I was that willing to maintain my willing suspension of disbelief.

My fears were confirmed that things weren't getting better. They were getting worse.

I've lost pretty much all of the hearing in my right ear and have to get fitted for a hearing aid. And not even the kind that fits discreetly in my ear. No, I'll get the kind that hangs out on the outside of my ear in order to get the best...reception? Sound quality?

It'll look a little something like this.

I still can't believe that this is real.

After the baby is born I'll have to have surgery on my left ear to see if they can save the hearing in that ear as I have already started to lose hearing there as well.

I cannot begin to express how much this terrifies me.

Typing all of this feels surreal and terrible because it means that it IS REAL.

I have always said that I would rather be blind than deaf. I would rather have no limbs. I would rather not be able to speak. As long as I could HEAR.

If you pray I could use it.

When I was 12 years old I was cast in a play with Stage Door Players called Stone Soup. I was the youngest member of the cast playing the oldest character in the play.

Why?

I could do the best old lady voice. Playing a woman who was hard of hearing.

How ironic.

Free form thoughts and stuff to check out...

2009-03-09T21:44:00.004-04:00

It's been one of those days where any attempt that I've made to make sense to myself has been rendered futile by outside circumstances. I feel the only way to remedy this is to make no attempt to make sense at all and merely rattle off everything that is bouncing around in my jumpy castle of a head at the moment.

: The picture on the wall is crooked.

: I can't breathe. This man cub is treating my right ribcage like it's a couch cushion he wants to warm his cold feet with.

: I am worried about Phoenix and what to do with him and how to handle him and Oh LORD just this thought alone makes me tear up. His teachers say his intelligence is so off the charts that it's almost a handicap and that he thinks about and is dealing with emotions and anxieties normally reserved for adults and he's SO SENSITIVE. He is paralyzed by his need to be perfect in everything, which, to the outside world, comes off as laziness. I am scared at how much he is like me. So much like me. Heaven help my sweet boy.

: I can't wear my wedding rings anymore 'cause of swelling and I find myself obessively rubbing my thumb against my finger out of habit, momentarily freaking out and then realising why they aren't there.

: Zack is still smoking. This scares me and makes me sad and I wish he would stop. We buried his father because of his father's years of smoking.

: I bought a lovely rug from CB2 and Gracie promptly threw up on it the first night.

: Zack's video "Transform" has had close to 90,000 views in 3 weeks or so now and the response from those who have watched it have been truly overwhelming. This has been on my mind a lot lately as I realise just how many of us long for authenticity so much, but rarely know what to do with it when it's right in front of them.

: Getting excited over the lunch meeting that Zack and I have coming up with the guy that came up with this. His name is Brandon McCormick and we're hoping to help him with whatever he needs. Just to be a part of something so, so good.

: I would give anything for some homestyle hush puppies right now. Seriously. I'm drooling.

: My ex-husband is engaged! I'm wondering if I'm weird because I am SO STINKING HAPPY FOR HIM? Truly!

: Watched this YouTube video today that my step-son, Caleb, wanted to show us and flipped out. I had never heard of Stevie before. It's really cool, albeit from a while ago.

This isn't everything I've been mulling over but enough to make me feel a little more sane.

AND OH!

Jennifer wanted to see a picture of my big ol' blackboard that I keep in my kitchen. It's how the Arias household manages to have a modicum of organisation. Jennifer, this is for you, friend.

Must.

Do.

Laundry.

Ugh.

Plastic Forks and Me.

2009-03-01T03:17:00.000-05:00

I found this bit of writing from last year.

I struggle with feeling
That all my parts
Were the ones leftover,
In the back of some heavenly stock room,
On the highest shelf,
Sandwiched between the plastic forks and some angelic decorations;
Angelic decorations used for some angelic theme party in some angelic anteroom
And then promptly forgotten.

I stare in the mirror
And try to recognise
What I wish wasn't mine
And yes,
I know,
The Almighty doesn't make junk
And who am I to say He was wrong?
But Dear Lord,
Is it ever hard to be a girl these days.
Dear Lord
Is it ever hard to be me these days.

That longing in me,
To be a beautiful creature,
That wish in me,
To be a graceful measure
Of womanhood in blossom,
Is squelched when I find myself
Tripping-falling-stumbling-crashing-slipping
Into everything literal and figurative.
And brushing my hair back,
Trying to recover,
I catch sight of myself,
In the random windows of eyes
And blush at the picture
Of such a silly,
oddly made
woman.

"Said Goodbye to Dad today"

2009-02-27T19:05:00.003-05:00

My husband, Zack, wrote this blog post just a bit ago and I decided to repost it here.

I'm going to go play the piano for a bit and work some of my grief out through my fingers.

So many of you have written, called, and commented I feel the need to let you know that Dad passed on from this life and into the next one this morning. I was very fortunate to have been by his side. My father was strong. He fought the good fight and the doctors and staff at Emory University Hospital could not have given him any better care.

The hero in all of this is my step-mother Elaine. She stood by her man. She loved my father so deeply and so passionately. She is strong and beautiful and is going to miss my father so much. They had such a beautiful life. She adored my father.

Thank you to all of you who have been thinking of us and praying for us. Thank you for all the support all of you, known and unknown, have given to us. My entire family appreciates all of your emails, comments, and messages. Dad is in heaven. The rest of us are still paying rent.

And to find a smile in all of this….

Let the southern good ol’ fashioned church lady casserole pot luck begin. I don’t know what ya’ll do elsewhere in the country, but when we die in the south, we make some damn good food.

Now, go love on your family while you still have them and while they still have you.

Cheers,
Zack

Again…. Thank you everyone.

Kathleen

2009-02-26T01:21:00.004-05:00

(That's my sister, Erin, on the left and me, on the right. My mother, of course, is the one in the middle.)

My mother, Theresa Kathleen Brett, was born on July 17th, 1955 in Saint Augustine, Florida. The irony that such a pale, red headed creature was to be born in the hot, humid, freckle producing state of Florida is rather interesting to me. Irish skin is not well suited for bright sun light. We like clouds. And moors. I digress.

Upon the news that his new sibling was a girl, my Uncle John threw up his hands in exasperation but my mom's sister, my Aunt Linda, was beyond thrilled. They had been told by my Grandma Polly, their mother, that if the baby was a boy that John could name it and if it was a girl Linda could name it.

Linda "won".

The sticking out of tongues insued I'm sure.

John was eleven and Linda was nine when my mother was born and so the arrival of such a tiny person was perfectly wonderful and they could not wait to see her. When they were finally ushered into the hospital room with their mother and new baby sister the suspense was killing them. Polly eagerly held up the most darling little red headed baby they had ever seen and said,

"Here is your sister!" and she smiled at Linda. "Well? What are you going to name her?"

Linda, eyes wide, gazed up at her sister and proudly said,

"Her name is Theresa! For Saint Theresa!"

(Now there are several Saint Theresas'. I am not quite sure to which one she was referring. If she were around right now I'm sure she could tell me. She would, too, along with a whole lot of other stuff that I DIDN'T ask about but that she would volunteer anyway. She's in California, however, most likely having a very deep conversation with her dog. I'm not kidding.)

From across the room a voice growled,

"No. Her name is Kathleen. Not Theresa."

My grandfather, Brendan, sat in a chair next to the window and as he said this he stood up and put his hands in his pockets.

"Kathleen is a good Irish name and I'll not have my newest daughter named anything else."

My grandmother seeing the inevitable tears and sobbing that were about to emerge from Linda smiled tensely at her husband,

"Brendan, I made a promise to the children that they could name the baby. You were there. You agreed." Her teeth were clinched. She didn't want to ruin this lovely, little moment. Polly was just glad that Brendan didn't stink of alcohol.

"I know what you said, and I know what I said. But we're not calling her Theresa. Her name is Kathleen."

Linda burst into tears again and Polly reached out to her and said,

"Listen, her first name will be Theresa, but we'll call her Kathleen, alright?", and with that she looked back and forth from her sobbing daughter to her glowering husband and again made an attempt at a smile, "Her birth certificate will officially say, Theresa Kathleen Brett. That way everyone is happy."

My grandfather huffed and shrugged and nodded his head and Linda smiled wanly at her mother and wiped her face with the backs of her hands. My Uncle John sat in a chair, swinging his legs. He had really wanted a brother.

That is, I'm told, how my mother was named.

I never knew my Grandfather. And, when I think about it, neither did my mom really. He was an alcoholic and he and my grandmother divorced when my mom was still a baby. My grandma remarried Harry Paeglow, our beloved Papa Harry, when my mother was around 3 or 4 and he was the only "dad" she ever knew.

For all that, though, her father, Brendan, gave her her name. Her real name. She always hated the name Theresa. But she lost him. The last time she saw her father was when she was six years old and that was only in a car as he slowly drove down the street past her house. It didn't dawn on her who it was until the car had turned the bend. That would be the last time she saw him.

Thrity-six years later, another Brendan would play a huge role in her life as the other Brendan she lost. My brother, the baby boy she was carrying, would be stillborn. She named him Brendan Joseph and then, thirteen days later, she would, as I was told repeatedly by well meaning people, "Your mom went to heaven to be with Jesus and that baby boy...."

I don't know how heaven works. I have, like I assume most people do, a very hazy conception of it despite the books I've read and the accounts I've heard.

It's UNKNOWN.

I don't know if Brendan is up there, perpetually in a newborn like state or if he's...grown up, moving from infancy and into boyhood, skipping the awkward pimply, sqwaking, hormone driven pre-teens and is now an almost eighteen year old young man preparing to take his heavenly SAT's. I do like to think that when my mom "arrived" she was greeted by a large, buxom angel with rosy cheeks and bifocals who then handed over my brother Brendan with much oohing and aahing and a, "He's such a joy but I'll bet he's glad to see his momma!"

I like that idea.

I don't have many stories of my mother's childhood. Most of my stories of my mother are based from my childhood. There are a few, however, that stand out. Ones that I've heard my grandma Polly tell over and over and a few I remember my mom telling me herself; in those rare moments when she would share about herself and I was, by the grace of God, cognizant enough to pay attention.

One of my grandma's favourite stories to tell about my mom goes something like this:

"Everyday, around 4 o'clock, the neighbourhood ladies would gather in our backyard in the space between our yard and the neighbour's house behind us and we would have afternoon tea. Kathy was around two years old and was the cutest little thing you ever did see. I had just made a brand new little frock for her to wear and Linda convinced me to let her dress Kathy up in the new dress along with a frilly pair of socks and little, white patent leather shoes. Linda has always loved dolls just like I do, you know. She collects dolls just like me. See all of my dolls? This one looks just like Kathy, see her red hair? Your Uncle John gets so mad at me when I buy dolls but I can't help myself. I even have 'em under my bed...where was I?"

"You were saying that Aunt Linda has always loved dolls..."

"Oh, right. Well, Kathy was just like a little living doll to Linda, she had so much fun dressing that baby up and playing with her hair. She got Kathy all dressed up for tea and then led her outside. Kathy had a stubborn streak, even at two, she never grew out of it. You have it too, you know. Your mother would call me in tears because she would spank you and you wouldn't cry! You're the most stubborn girl! Why you were so rotten I'll never know. (and here she squints at me) What did you go and get a tattoo for anyway?"

"I like them, Grandma. In fact, I have two of them."

"What are you going to do when you're old, though? You'll be an old lady with tattoos?"

"Grandma, if you think about it, when it comes to my generation all of our grandkids will grow up thinking that grandmas and grandpas with tattoos are NORMAL. There are going to be DROVES of old people with wiggly, wrinkly tattoos! You were talking about mom, remember? Linda was leading her outside?"

Grandma then waves her hand as if to erase my words out of the air.

"Yes, yes. Humph. You are the craziest girl. So anyway. Kathy didn't want Linda to hold her hand, she wanted to walk by herself. All the ladies were just squealing with delight over how darling she looked as she toddled across the grass but then, all of a sudden, Kathy stopped and looked down at the gorund. Then she raised her foot, wearing those little, white patent leather shoes and said,

'Awwwwww, shiiiiit.'

She had stepped in some doggie doo doo! I was mortified but the rest of the ladies started laughing till they cried and then I did, too. Kathy knew she had done something funny and she laughed, too, and it was just the funniest thing you ever saw. Don't you think that's funny?"

I always nod my head. It IS funny. What's NOT funny are all of the dolls that are staring me down while she tells this story. I love my grandma, I do. She is spunky and kooky and adorable. She just has WAY TOO MANY DOLLS. It breaks her heart that I don't like dolls. Erin, my sister, she likes dolls and so I can only imagine, upon the deaths of my grandma and Aunt Linda, the copious amounts of glassy-eyed, silken haired, weird dolls that Erin will have to contend with.

It's now 2:08am and I was already exhausted when I started this. But, I have words running around in my brain these days that are quite determined to get out and so here I am. And here I go.

To bed.

Night.

2:57

2009-02-24T02:57:00.003-05:00

I should not be awake.

I should be asleep.

I can't sleep.

I am going to hate life in the morning.

My brain, as per usual, has started a mutiny against me and simply refused to stop whirling and twirling.

I am missing my mother. Spending the yesterday and today in the hospital with Zack watching his father fade away has brought the loss of my mother to the forefront of my thoughts. What I wouldn't give to talk to her face to face, woman to woman, adult to adult.

I suppose I am writing just to write. Even this drivel here is just a way to get myself started, to get all of these thoughts out of my head. Blank pages are scary. I am not good at starting things. Or finishing them. How telling. My gravestone shall perhaps read,

“Here lies a woman who hated beginnings and was horrible at endings but was very, very good in the middle.”

Where to start?

My mother was a shoeshiner and my father was a stripper.

I had a mother once. My whole life is now divided into when I used to have a mother and then the time after I didn’t. It is the Grand Canyon of my life. It is the Continental Divide.

There were already four of us when my mom and dad announced that they were pregnant again. We were on our way to church and we stopped at a fast food restaurant, one involving Kings and Burgers, for breakfast. This was a treat as breakfast usually consisted of cereal and milk or oatmeal. I remember so clearly the way the restaurant looked. I remember the way the sun came in the windows. It was late February, I think, maybe early March so the sun wasn’t the robust sun of summer, it was thin and wan, it was almost gloomy in the restaurant that morning.

I don’t remember how it was told to us, the news of the impending arrival of another sibling, I just remember our reaction, all of us whooping and hollering and making a racket. What didn’t register then, but registers now, were the knowing looks between my parents. My mother’s face, smiling and yet so tired. I didn’t know yet that my mother had started to fade away from herself. To children all mothers are tired, they don’t know yet there are places in mothers that are still young and hopeful, places that still feel beautiful and long for adventure. If your mother is still alive and you are reading this, put this away immediately and go to your mother. Look her in the face long and longer and ask her,

“Who are you when you are not being mom? Tell me about who you are.”

It’s not that mothers don’t love being mothers, no, ( I am a mother and count it the highest calling in my life), but there is more to them than the honour of having YOU. Their purpose in life isn’t simply to function as YOUR mother. If you think that then you are very selfish and ought to be ashamed of yourself.

I never got to find out who my mom was when she wasn’t being mom. I was too late. Or she left too early.

The baby was due in November. November 9th, to be exact. My mother was miserable that summer. She had to wear support hose because her legs were swelling. She turned 36 that summer, on the 17th of July. I can remember her belly and the swelling under her swimsuit, the freckles on her thighs as she waded into the pool at the athletic club by our house. She was taking water aerobics, the lone pregnant woman amongst the elderly, all moving their limbs in a graceful, albeit with pruny fingers and toes, strokes about the pool.

That was the summer my body blew up. The summer I was twelve about to be thirteen. My chest and hips started expanding rapidly. I wasn’t skinny and scrawny anymore. I was awkward and chubby and my body was determined to betray me in every way. It was horrifying. My mother took me bathing suit shopping. She picked out different styles, stood in the room with me as I struggled into and out of that array of torturous lycra humiliations, ( which, may I add, hasn't gotten any better ). We finally settled on a black and white striped one with a polka dotted little skirt on it. I thought it looked like an old lady swimsuit. Mom informed that it was “flattering”. I didn't want flattering. I wanted the old me back, the one who ran without bouncing, who the one who didn't have to deal with menstruation and the idea that I could now have offspring if my "garden" was "watered".

But, "flattering". I can see now that my mom was very aware of how clumsily I was lurching into my teenage years. I can see how she was trying to help me learn to make sense of myself. I don’t know that she ever knew that every time I dove headfirst into the water that summer the top of my suit would flip down over my breasts and I would have to hike it back up before surfacing. This made it very difficult to pretend to be a mermaid. Mermaids do not hike, mermaids effortlessly EXIST while moving BEAUTIFULLY. They do not scramble about with their hands in order to yank up an offending bit of old lady suit that has escaped to their waist. I can only imagine the eyefuls that the boys with goggles (no pun intended) were privy to that summer. Flattering yes, good for diving and actual SWIMMING? No.

This has helped.

I think the notion of sleep has wooed my mutinous brain.

I might write more about this.

But then again, I might not.

I'll leave you with a song that was recorded live about 4 years ago or so. It's called "Untitled #2017". I had a band I called "Mercury Theatre". We started playing the song to see how we wanted to structure it and as we played it we just sort of...kept going. And I kept singing whatever thoughts came into my head at the time.

Untitled #2017

Good Nighting.

Good Mornight.

Window

2009-02-20T01:13:00.004-05:00

Well Ladies and Gentlemen, here is the song that Zack used for his short film, "Edit::Transform"...

You can only get it via podcast here as I intend to use this blog as a place to share new songs as I write them. You can give me feedback and then they might make onto an actual record. (I'm working on another right now...)

Under the Advanced tab in iTunes click on "Subscribe to podcast" the URL is --http://meghanarias.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

You should be able to download it that way...

The song itself is only 5 minutes or so long and was recorded on a whim one night with my bandmates about a year and half ago. I found it not too long ago and shared it with Zack and he flipped out and asked me to email it to him.

The next thing I know he's made a film. ;-) I didn't know how or what he was going to use the song for. I was blown away.

If you'd like more info on my music you can visit my Website.

Edit :: Transform

2009-02-18T13:29:00.004-05:00

Some of you may remember this post where I mentioned that Zack wanted to create something. And he wouldn't really tell me about it. I just knew he was working away on it, specifically something for Scott Kelby.

Who is Scott Kelby?

Scott Kelby is an Adobe Photohop guru who has written several bestselling books on Photoshop and has a very popular blog. He asked Zack to be the "Guest Blogger" for today.

He showed me what he was up to last night. And it blew me away. I wept as I watched it.

I.

AM.

SO.

PROUD.

OF.

HIM.

And other words, too. Just...he's just so...dang it. He's so great. I am so lucky to be married to someone where we each inspire the other, you know?

PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO WATCH WHAT HE MADE.

You can go to Zack's blog, read his thoughts and follow the link there to Scott's blog to watch it.

I think you'll like it.

Letterboxing

2009-02-16T15:57:00.006-05:00

I am always looking for things to do to get our boys OUTSIDE.

I stumbled across this website for Letterboxing quite by accident. And was immediately intrigued. And then I got excited.

Here's the back story, if you're interested.

Letterboxing, bascially, is a like a treasure hunt type game. Small boxes are hidden in various locations—usually outdoors, though many are planted indoors as well—and the creator of the box will release clues so others can go out and find them later. The box is expected to have a logbook that finders can log into and a unique stamp, usually hand-carved, that the finder can stamp into their own personal logbook as a record of all the letterboxes they've found. Most letterboxers have a unique stamp to represent themselves, called a signature stamp, that they stamp into the logbooks found inside letterboxes so others who find the letterbox later know they found it.

Make sense?

The first thing I did was to tell Caleb and Phoenix the whole concept and they loved it. So, we went to the bookstore to find the, and here I quote Phoenix,

"The most perfectly perfect logbook goodness that exists in the world."

We all decided on this one:

Then we had to come up with our "team" name, something appropriately cool enough and then come up with an image to go along with it. Caleb and I came up with the name, "The Bedhead Spies" and Zack came up with the stamp image. I bought a make your own rubber stamp kit and Zack created this:

We then decorated the inside cover of our Perfectly Perfect Logbook:

So, our total Letterboxing supplies consist of a homemade rubber stamp, an ink pad, a compass, a pen and our logbook. Using the letterboxing website I located a series of letterboxes that were hidden in the Decatur Cemetary not far from our house. On Saturday Zack and I took the boys, even Joshua, and starting from the main entrance gate, proceeded to follow the clues given to find the letterboxes.

IT WAS SO MUCH FUN.

Even Zack and I were getting into it, a lot, actually. The boys would run ahead, yelling and freaking out and having a blast and Zack and I would look at each other and just start giggling hysterically.

"This is AWESOME."

Here are some pictures from Saturday:

You can see in the first picture one of the stamps from another "team" that had last found that particular box before us.

We went out again on Sunday (yesterday) to find a few more and, once again, it was great. We're looking forward to finding some all over the country. I've told the boys that when Zack and I are in San Francisco this weekend that I'll do my best to find one while I'm there.

Speaking of boys, we have some serious hamster cage cleaning that needs to take place. Walking into their rooms is something akin to walking into a cesspool when it comes to the...pungent smells their hamsters create.

;-)