Do you want to be friends? Circle Yes or Yes.

Uh, I should be editing the last fifteen pages of my manuscript right now, so I decided to do a blog post instead.

I don't care for editing. Even though I'm SO CLOSE. Okay, I'll make this a fast blog post then. The sooner I edit, the sooner I get my writing chocolate.

Anyway, Kimberly at Temporary? Insanity put up an interesting post today where the last line finishes something like, "Reality never was found in front of a computer monitor."

But...

I kind of wonder.

Barring one, my dearest friendships are the ones I have through blogland right now. Is that sad? Or artificial?

I guess it could be considered pathetic that my closest connections are with people I don't really know, but it's the truth. As much as I enjoy my ward, and participate in just about every activity it offers, I haven't had a bonding experience with these women like I have with many of my blog friends. We connect socially, enjoy movies or frozen yogurt together, and I think they like me well enough. But there's no mental connection, or even very many shared interests. It took me almost 18 months to figure out why and the reasons are varied and mundane but the main thing I needed to figure out is: there's nothing wrong with me. It's gotten me to a place where I go to activities when I'm invited but I don't stress when I'm not, which I did all the time before. The truth is, if I was hosting a dinner party for some of my favorite blog friends, I wouldn't invite any of my social/ward friends. It's just not a great match. My friends in my ward are friends of circumstance where my blog friends are friends of choice.

Um, I kind of think that's better.

Is it less or more real? Hm.

Well, none of you guys can watch my kids for me while I run to the doctor, or bring me brownies if I'm sad, or go to the movies with me. BUT. . .you would if you could. I know that. I'd do it for you. Except for not watch your kids, because I don't care WHO you are, your kids will take a lonnnnnnng time to grow on me. Don't take it personally. But I would definitely do the brownie thing. Double chocolate Ghirardelli mix. Or maybe make you chocolate cookies from scratch. So I think that's real. I guess then the question is, Would we want to hang out with each other a lot if it were an option and I wasn't the only Mormon mommy blogger in HB, CA.? That's a little harder.

There are some of you I'm sure I'd want to hang with. And there are others of you that I'd want to spend occasional time with drinking deeply from your mind and spirit (in a non-Edward Cullen kind of way) and then let some time go by before doing it again. That's okay because I represent both things to other people, too. For some people I'm the laugh-a-minute girl and for others I'm the dig-deep-and-philosophize girl. I like the variety in my friendships. But I don't spend much time on the blogs of folks that I wouldn't want to hang around in real life. It's not a conscious choice but neither is it a startling realization.

Anyway, I've reached a decision. I do think reality CAN be found in front of a computer monitor. However, to Kimberly's point, everything in moderation. Real doesn't equal good if taken to an extreme.

Nonetheless, I consider you an extremely good friend. And you. Oh, and you. You, though? I think we're more just chat buddies, 'kay?

I should have said his "breadbasket."

Man, I love it when one of my posts is met with the sound of one hand clapping.

Sigh.

Well, here's a truly outstanding post from InkMom that I've been meaning to link to for a while. Go check it out. You won't be sorry. She's is SUCH a good writer.

http://imnotcrazymommy.blogspot.com/2009/07/hidden-potential.html

Happy Thursday.

Zookeeping

There was one of those kids at the petting zoo when we went to the fair on Saturday. YOU KNOW the kind. Running around berserk while his mother gazed at her navel. He was maybe five, and he was terrorizing a little piglet, trying to ride it, I think. That's a different attraction.

I looked around in disgust, trying to figure out which delinquent parent the future delinquent belonged to so I could give her my crustiest evil eye. Just when I was about to throw myself between the kid and the animal, a harried-looking woman squawked, "Get off that pig, Anthony!"

Sheesh. Finally. How do you bring your kids to a petting zoo where they are sure to lose their minds over their first encounter with a llama AND NOT KEEP AN EYE ON THEM? Which reminded me. . . where was Baby G?

In the corner. Smacking a wallaby.

SMACKING A WALLABY.

He did it out of love, kind of like when he punches his dad in the nuts and then asks for a quesadilla. Or nails me in the boob and interprets my whimpers as a request to do it again because THAT'S a fun game.

But nonetheless, smacking.a.wallaby.

And then I saw the lady standing nearby, trying to shoo him off and figure out who he belonged to so she could give his mother the crusty evil eye.

I made his dad go get him.

I hate Perez Hilton.

*I've been debating on posting this because it's not exactly edifiying. I am extraordinarily cranky right now. But. . .I'm also too cranky to think of a different blog post. I promise if you come back on Wednesday, I'll post about puppies or something.

If you don't know who he is, do me the favor of NOT checking him out. I refuse to even link.

Now, let me confess before this rant continues: I like celebrity gossip. I have no idea why. I don't even mind a little snark mixed in with said gossip, which is why I check TMZ.com regularly. (I'm not going to embarrass myself by telling you how often.) I also wander over to the home pages for Us Weekly and People. Oh, and PopSugar.com.

There, I said it. You may sit in judgment on me for the rest of this post.

Back to Perez Hilton.

I CAN'T STAND HIM.

He's a blogger that runs a celebrity gossip site and I'm pretty sure nothing can make me angrier in a shorter amount of time, which is why I quit reading him shortly after I started reading him. Let me be clear: I saved some brain cells that way.

He is poisonous.

It's one thing to take jabs at people, but this guy is the biggest hypocrite EVER. His site goes way beyond the wink-wink, nudge-nudge of who is dating who or whatever. It goes all the way back to middle school, which is the last place I remember seeing those "slam books" where people wrote insults about each other and then passed the book around. He rips on people for their clothes and hair, sure. But he usually goes past that to ripping on their looks and weight.

That stuff's just mean. (Have you seen this guy? 'Nuff said. I'm not trying to be mean, too. It's just a fact.) So are the obscene words and drawings he makes on their photos, like an emotionally stunted sixth grader. It's never been funny. Not once.

But that's not the really hypocritical part. (Um, okay, it's actual pretty hypocritical). THAT comes in when he sets himself up as some sort of truth-saying moral conscience. He rails against bad celebrity behavior and claims the moral high ground in his diatribes against people like Chris Brown. Fine. Whatever. That guy deserves some abuse of his own.

But Perez Hilton has also taken it upon himself to "out" several celebrities who had chosen to remain closeted until he made that decision for them.

???

He considers it his duty because he's openly gay so he's acting like he's doing the gay community and society in general a favor by doing this. I won't even explain his logic because it's stupid. And it's just a lame cover for him and his efforts to get more page hits. At least be honest about that, you know? Anyway, that's hypocrisy example #1.

Next is two highly publicized recent dust-ups. The first was the whole Miss USA kerfuffle, where he again decided to be an activist for gay people everywhere whether they want him to be or not, by going on a rant against (the admittedly idiotic) Miss California for her pro-Prop 8 position. I can't stand the girl myself, but she does get to say what she wants to about her opinions and her opinion happened to accurately reflect the majority of the voters in her state. But as a judge at the pageant, when he got the answer that wasn't what he wanted versus the contestant's honest opinion, he blew up. He recorded and posted his rant the next day, and sounding belligerent and inarticulate with his name calling ("You're stupid and ugly"? THIS is how you make your point?), proceeded to ream her and cause a media firestorm.

I have zero problem with him having his opinions and wanting to be accepted as a gay man, no matter my own political views. But to seize for yourself the title of spokesman for your cause and then use the spotlight to defend it with first grade schoolyard insults?

Really?

Ignorant, but not hypocritical. Until...

You factor in last month's debacle where at a party, Will.I.Am of the Black Eyed Peas confronted him and asked him to stop insulting Fergie on his blog (and Perez is mean about her--very mean). Perez couldn't handle being called on his stuff and responded by calling Will.I.Am a (insert ugly homophobic slur here). Oh, the irony.

No, oh...the complete hypocrisy.

He got punched for it. You know what the public reaction was?

Um, Will.I.Am gained a whole new fan base. (Although he didn't throw the punch).

Perez, being the socially tone deaf individual that he is, took to his blog again in a lonnnnnnng video rant the next day talking about how violence is never the answer.

I guess he never got that lesson about how words hurt worse and all that.

Anyway, GLAAD, the organization that most media outlets turn to when they want a REAL mouthpiece for the gay community, issued a statement saying Perez Hilton needed to apologize for his slur. And it STILL took him days to publicly back down. I think he only did it because he was getting torn apart in the media and on the internet, not because he really saw anything wrong with what he did.

Then he committed a huge gaffe after Michael Jackson died, announcing the news on his blog and then speculating that it was a ploy to drive up ticket prices for his concerts. Yeah, lots of people none too happy about that.

I read an Entertainment Weekly article a couple of weeks ago that analyzed the sensation that is Perez Hilton and they couldn't find ONE person to go on record to defend him publicly, even among his so-called friends like Lady Gaga. One famous New York gossip columnist called him a parasite. Even his own kind can't stand him.

Here's the thing. I don't mind celebrities getting called out for idiotic behavior. It actually doesn't bother me in the least and in general I find it funny when people expose those folks' emperor's new clothes foolishness.

This Perez guy, though...

Look. I know it probably wasn't easy for him to grow up as an overweight, Latino homosexual. There are three fronts right there that people will come after you on, and it's wrong. ALL of it. And I realize that artists will often mine their pain for material, turning it outward as comedy or using it to fuel artwork or as a well they tap when acting. But Perez isn't an artist. He's a punk kid who calls people names for a living BUT has the nerve to act like he's providing some sort of public service in doing so.

My beef with him isn't that he's mean or petty. It's that he's NOT HONEST ABOUT IT. You don't see any more clearly than the rest of us, Perez. In fact, I'd say your perspective is severely JACKED.

That's why I quit reading him months ago. I don't hang out with people like that in real life, and I refused to be one more hit on his stat counter. I just wish the rest of the media would ignore him too because I am so tired of this guy.

Wordsmith

I'm coining a new phrase.

Stupid tired.

That's how tired I am. It's beyond exhaustion. I'm so tired it's making me dumb.

I have no idea why. I woke up yesterday morning after a good night's sleep and I was tired. I moved through the day feeling like I was underwater.

It might have been the heat. Beach people are used to about 80-85 degrees and a near constant breeze. Our homes aren't even built with air conditioning. On the rare days the mercury climbs higher than usual, our circuits fry. If the breeze isn't blowing, we twitch.

I don't know what's going on.

But whatever it is, I'm stupid tired.

No wonder.

On my first day of freedom, I bought white bread. It felt subversive and rebellious. A great way to start my career at BYU, no?

I was on my own in the apartment-style dorms of Heritage Halls and I got to buy my own groceries for the first time. My list was full of the forbidden items I didn't get while growing up. That's how I ended up with white bread. I was sick of wheat bread. I wanted the Wonder Bread goodness my friends got to eat. My mom just shook her head when I plopped my first loaf in the cart.

She knew what I didn't.

Wonder Bread isn't so good. The wheat bread we ate growing up with its rich nuttiness was much tastier than the bland, anemic loaf I brought home.

I can't even tell you how many times I learned that lesson the hard way: listen to your mother. I'm stubborn, so...lots. Over and over again until it stuck.

Boys will treat you with more respect if you aren't hanging out of your clothes. Get enough sleep. Don't forget to pray.

I only wish white bread was the last and worst of my transgressions. The list is long and embarrassing.

It turns out I learned something else from my mom. I've learned a little something about putting the past behind me and about forgiveness of myself as much as others.

And my kids eat wheat bread.

Janet

He murdered her, I guess. The evidence was overwhelming and I'm sure he was tried and convincted. It was too close to the Lacey Peterson thing for the whole country not to be one big raw nerve when another young wife went missing. It was a huge story, breaking through even the usual local Los Angeles coverage of gang wars and movie premieres.


They found her pretty fast, stuffed in a dumpster under a mattress, I think. I'm not sure he even tried to lie about it. The dead girl's mother was on Oprah within a couple of weeks. I couldn't watch. I don't know if she was bitter or angry or eerily composed. But I knew they would talk about him and I knew it wouldn't be good. He deserved whatever they said.

But his mother didn't and I was afraid my heart would break for her, for every person that thought he wasn't raised right, for everyone who wondered who could birth such a monster.


He was Janet's kid. And Janet was my friend.


She was my customer first. She looked like she'd be one of the rich, snooty ladies that often shopped with us, but she was beautiful, warm and kind. Every year she came in around Christmas and picked up expensive sweaters for her daughters and daughter-in-laws. She came in for their birthdays, too. I must have sold her a sweater that went to the daughter-in-law that died.

At first she was my favorite customer because she was sweet and always good for a sale. But then I just liked her, so I recruited her to come work for us. She was shocked because she didn't think she could do it. Deep underneath her perfect hair and make up, she lacked confidence. No way could she sell, she thought. Who would buy from her?


Turns out, everyone. She was twice the age of anyone on the floor and twice the salesperson. Better than me, even. She loved helping the customers, took genuine delight in helping them find the outfits they needed. She became their favorite, too.

I think pride in herself drove her to excel. I can do this, she would say in amazement when another happy client left. And she'd hustle even harder. She certainly didn't need the money that she got for her few shifts a week. Her husband was a pediatrician, my pediatrician's partner, in fact. A cold man, her husband, for being married to a woman so warm. I never liked him.


But Janet. . . was everything good. She had a thoughtful word for everyone and when I became a mother, struggling financially, she brought me large flats of formula samples from her husband's office to help. That was Janet, a bone deep nurturer who had sacrificed much in her life for others. Especially her kids.

I never met the son who did it, who took hs wife's life because he was afraid she would unravel the web of lies he'd spun around himself. Or maybe I did. Her kids stopped in some times. But I would know a murderer if I'd looked him in the eye, wouldn't I?

We probably all think that.

When the news broke, I panicked. I was hundreds of miles away now, no longer working with my sweet friend. I hadn't for two or three years. But I knew she was devastated, her heart breaking for the girl who died and the child who killed her. She took her kids' failures to heart when I knew her, wondering if there was something she could have done better; something more than sacrificing to support her husband through medical school, living in a modest home while they paid back loans and long after, doing without little luxuries for herself so her kids could have every music and sports lesson they wanted because she never had them as a child. Something more than love and worry about them, something more than pray for them fervently in heart, something more than have taught them the gospel.

No.

I didn't know if the people around her embraced her or shunned her, but I wanted to help, to remind her of the wonderful woman she was and not as I feared she saw herself: the mother of a monster. She was the mother of six children who each had their agency. Five exercised it wisely. She was a bright face in my day during difficult and challenging months, and a sweet and gentle spirit always.

I had no contact information for her but I knew enough to dig around and find an address. Then I wrote a letter, poured out my hope for her, and my love and gratitude and my prayers.

I mailed it. I don't know if it was lost in a shuffle of other letters, maybe some not so kind. But I hope not. I hope that she opened it and read it and knew in that moment a small but tender mercy.

For Debbie, who said I can't take a bad picture...

Thank you for believing in me.

I'm the extra cute one on the left. (Without the beard).

The higher the hair, the closer to heaven.

Vacation mom chic.

It seemed only fair that if I posted glamour shots that you guys should get to see the truth, too.

The outcome from Wednesday's "voting" is that if you're a writer, you probably liked the top photo. The non-writers (a/k/a normal, well-adjusted people) picked the bottom picture.

I don't know what that means. Ultimately, my husband liked the bottom one too, so that's what I sent in.

As a follow up, I thought that I was repulsed by low fat mayo. Turns out, crop pants on men makes me just a tetch queasier. Note to the guy at the movie theater today: No. No, no, no, no, no. No.

Potpourri

I read a really good book on vacation. Actually, I read 11 books on vacation. It was a great vacation.

Anyway, I really dug All the Stars in Heaven by Michele Paige Holmes. It's LDS fiction. Sort of. Neither of the main characters is Mormon and they don't become Mormon, which for various reasons, I find kind of cool. There's actually not much Mormon stuff at all, to tell you the truth. It's just a great, clean read. The story is suspenseful, moves fast, has great characters, intrigue, and romance. A kick butt book.

If you've got teenage daughters, they should check out Altared Plans by Rebecca Talley for some fun summer reading. It reminds me very much of ye olde BYU days. It's about a girl who gets dumped at the altar and swears off marriage. BUT. . . there are more cute guys than she can shake a stick at, and one especially who catches her and tempts her to change her anti-marriage stance. Also on book business, I had to get my author head shot done for my publisher. My fabulous sister-in-law is a professional photographer so we did a super glamorous photo shoot on Father's Day. What you do not see in these pictures are all the crazy kids running around four feet away and my husband, my brother, his girlfriend, and my in-laws all staring on in curiosity.

You should be very impressed that I kept a straight face. Well, in these two pictures. Pretty much not in the rest of them.

Anyway, the debate is raging. Um, not raging. More like, I like one picture and everyone else likes the other. So this is the question: which of these should stare at people in a rather startling manner when they open the back of my book?

If I had my druthers, I'd pick this picture. It's my favorite writer-y picture of myself because it's me, staring at a manuscript with my pen poised to strike.

In other news, I'd just like to say that low-fat mayonnaise is an abomination. Just sayin'.

If you have a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Instanbul

It happened again.

I got another letter addressed to me by my maiden name. I've only been married for a few years, so. . .whatever. Take your time. The state of California is the biggest offender. I won't even tell you the story of one agency I've been dealing with, because I will get angry and throw things again. Moving on.

It's such a pain to change addresses. Worse to change to your married name. I bet I'll have the same email address until I'm 84 and then I die because the idea of changing it makes me twitchy. Too bad it's cute_young_and_under_thirty @ defunctISP.com (Don't click: it's not real. Duh.) and I've already had it for twenty years. I've had that email address since before email was even invented. I got it right after Al Gore invented the Internet. He called me up and was like, "I have this great opportunity for you. It's free to join," and that's how I got my address. Or else it was at BYU when the computer monitors still had green letters and everybody had to go to the library to check their email because laptops were still just a twinkle in Apple's eye. One of those two.

I was saying. . . ? Oh, yeah. Those logistical changes are a pain.

Which is why I'm wondering . . .

How the holy crud do entire COUNTRIES get away that? You ever met anyone from Iran? You ever heard them call themselves Iranian? NO. But I bet you've met quite a few Persians in your time. (This could totally be a Southern California phenomenon like Little Saigon six miles up the road. Second largest Vietnamese population in a city outside of Saigon. Little Persia, per se, does not exist except for as a network of widely strewn homes in all of the wealthiest neighborhoods along the SoCal coast).

And Thailand? I like Siam better. It may have something to do with my partiality to Yul Brynner.

Although I think Myanmar is a more interesting name than Burma. Except that it reminds me of Miramar which reminds of Top Gun which reminds me of the volleyball scene and then I lose my train of thought again.

Huh.

Oh, I know. Hello, Czechoslovakia. (I totally did not get that right on my first attempt.) Oh, wait. No, not hello. Goodbye, and say hello instead to the Czech Republic and . . . what? Serbia? No. Hang on. I'm hitting the Wiki. Oh, it's Slovakia. Uh, that should have been more obvious to me.

BTW, geography? Not my special talent.

I'm sure these countries have very good reasons for changing their names, but like. . .

Who makes it official? The U.N.? I bet it's not. I bet it's Rand McNally. You're NOTHING if you're not in their atlas. You can drop Babylon for Iraq when Mr. McNally says you can.

I wonder if there's a special international Dead Letter office where mail sits because it was addressed to the wrong country. Like maybe there's some poor sweepstakes winner who never got to claim their Publisher's Clearinghouse Winnings because it was addressed to Javier Nieto in Santo Domingo instead of the good ole (or kind of new-ish) Dominican Republic.

Can I tell you how tired I am of hearing the phrase, " The former Soviet Republic of Zxcrstgnstan, etc."? At least I can say "Soviet Union". Didn't care for their Olympic dominance and would as soon take on the republics one team at a time, but it's still easier to say. Not that I'm trying to bring back the Iron Curtain or whatever. One Germany is easier than East and West so some of that stuff worked out better. Anyway, in a shocking twist. . . I digress.

You know, I bet this whole post is the whole fault of geography. I don't think my brain realizes that my body made it back to Huntington Beach (a.k.a. Surf City--it's only a matter of time before it's not just a slogan) and it's still hanging out in Bear Lake somewhere.

Maybe just don't mail me anything. Except chocolate.

No, wait. Do. I'll just have to never, ever move from this address.

More Counting.

I feel blessed today.

I feel blessed every day, actually.

But I feel especially blessed today.

Why?

No real reason.

And that's the nicest part.

This is a VACATION?

For the most part, I've been in a stupor. It involved wiping faint traces of drool from my keyboard and staring at the laptop screen like it knows something I don't.

But I outsmarted it.

I finished the rough draft of my second manuscript yesterday despite my laptop's best efforts to lure me away with Solitaire and BBC news feeds.

Did you hear the important part? I FINISHED. The rough draft.

I ate carne asada and fried ice cream with my family to celebrate.

I am sorry I haven't been bouncing around your blogs the last couple of days. I'll be back prattling on (and on) soon in your comment boxes.

But today, I'm going to take a moment to breathe in the fresh air here at my lakeside writing retreat and enjoy the victory.

Then I'm going to figure out how to trim about 20,000 words out of my story.

Did I mention I prattle?

Countdown.

True facts that just ought to be written down somewhere.

1. Sweet and salty is better than just sweet or just salty. It is.
2. Babies may not be reverent in Sacrament Meeting but old people are super loud in Relief Society.
3. Turns out if I eat more calories than I can burn, I will have a permanent grudge against my scale.
4. Hydrangeas make me really happy.
5. The hours I wasted watching soap operas as a teenager are hours I can never get back. I know this. And I still watch Next Top Model marathons on cable.
6. Sometimes I don't feel like having my mind improved. At those times, I play too much Scramble online.
7. I'm crazy about my husband and kids.
8. I am NOT long-suffering. The very notion seems. . . idiotic. This suggests to me that I may also be struggling with humility.
9. Very little in this world makes me as happy as garlic on just about anything. Especially when combined with butter. And cream. But maybe not oatmeal. Let's not be too literal here.
10. I understand that it's very fashionable to disdain Facebook. I really like it.

That is all.

The second amendment states that I have the right to free speech and you can't make me feel bad for my opinion. Right?

I'm one of those people. I admit it without shame. The national anthem plays and that's it: I cry. Doesn't matter if it's the beginning of an Angels game or the gold medal ceremony for curling at the Olympics or a montage of soldiers with the anthem in the background. Actually, that makes me especially cry.

I love the 4th of July, too. I love the food and the fireworks and the cheesy patriotic TV specials (another guaranteed cry fest) and the parades and the red, white and blue clothes, and flag-lined neighborhood streets. I like Dixie cups shoved into chain link fences in flag shapes and I love "Support our Troops" bumper stickers.

That's right. Even a card-carrying Democrat can express her open patriotic fervor.

After 9/11, I stuck flags on my car and blared Lee Greenwood's Proud to Be an American at every opportunity. Some people say the song is jingoistic. I don't care.

Did you know that there's been a small movement to make that our new national anthem? I can't get behind an anthem that uses the word "ain't" (now matter how well it reflects our current cultural language habits). And well before that there were rumblings about making our anthem "America the Beautiful" or even "My Country Tis of Thee."

It's been said IN THE PAST that I don't adjust to change well. And in that PAST, the idea of changing our anthem seemed down right heretical. Make my eyeballs twitch-curl my toes in a bad way-set my teeth on edge HERETICAL.

But.

But.

Let's consider it. Really consider it. NO knee-jerking.

To be fair, we only ever sing the first verse of our anthem so let's compare apples to apples. Or being as this is a patriotic pursuit, let's compare apple pies to apple pies.

We'll start with "The Star Spangled Banner." (Just a note, the title alone is pretty fantastic imagery when you stop to think about it.)

Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Does it capture the spirit of America? This war torn past, this dawn of hope breaking after a night of brave soldiers digging in and defending liberty? That last line about the land of the free and the home of the brave is pretty good stuff. And yet...

Is an ode to our flag. . . is that what we're all about? Does our flag tell the whole story? Does the song really circumscribe all we are into its lyrics?

Then we've got America the Beautiful.

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

Yes, we have pretty countryside. But to say it sums us up? That's sort of like having a story with only a setting and no conflict or characters. It's not a story at all. So I vote. . .no. Conditionally. We'll come back to this one in a minute. The best stuff isn't in the first verse.

And then there's this final choice:

My country,' tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountainside
Let freedom ring!

I know some of you will completely ignore my right to speak freely without being contradicted (I learned that right in civics class) and pitch rocks at me in the comment box, but although it lacks the majesty of our current anthem both in imagery and musical composition, the CONTENT of the lyrics. . .

I think hits a little closer to what we're about. It's a simpler song, little more than a ditty, maybe. I don't know. I'm kind of on the cretin side of musical education. But the words, though simple, are right. They are about our country as a whole, not just our flag. It's about our love of freedom.

But.

I don't think I can vote for it.

You know what I think would make the best anthem of all? Let's go back to "America the Beautiful" but move to the second and third verses. These are the words that I think tell who we, as a nation are, the words that best memorialize all of our greatest bits:

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness! America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

I have never made it through the third verse. I just can't. I love it.

Happy Independence Day, everyone. Be safe and happy.

Sigh. Just one big, exasperated sigh.

I know a lot of folks participate in Wordless Wednesday. I'm not sure whose circus that is, but I should probably join it. Because I am once again confronted by a situation where I used lots and lots of words and gained . . . um, well.

Let's go to the film.

Remember Baby G's avant garde explorations of the tension between permanence and the ephemeral abstract expressed through his Sharpie scribbles on the wall?

I had a long talk with him about it. I really did. It included words like "No, no" and "No, no" and I think I probably added some "No, no"s to that. I put him in time out. I took him back to the drawings and told him "No, no" again. Then I hugged him and told him I loved him.

Baby G is very smart. He thinks about things. He considers carefully the size of objects he will put in the toilet, the best angle to use when launching my cell phone over the balcony, and the best spill zone for cereal to acheive the maximum effect. I know he thought long and hard about what I meant when I said, "No, no" approximately 8,047 times on Thursday. Clearly, I meant "no Sharpie". That's why he used pencil when he went back to do his enhancements yesterday:

I guess I do have words. I just can't say any of them.