can.

While in a spate of bloghopping today (avoidance, thy name is McBeth) I came across lovely Sara's blog.

One of the entries pointed both toward another blog and to a youtube.com video which, if I do this thing properly, should imbed itself into my own blog (with props to all the aforementioned).


I'm feeling useless worthless less-than overscheduled underrested uninspired not-exactly-loved-in-the-way-I-need-it and mostly like eating worms. Additionally, I'm premenstrual, which means for me that if my emotional pressure could be measured with a cuff like my blood's is, I'd be tachy and unstably heading toward stroking out.

So the following message, while potentially cheesy to those of you who have better things to do than listen to an oddly unsettling contemporary Christian soundtrack background while receiving a potentially profound lesson, hit me with a sucker punch to the diaphragm.

Big tears, lost air, you can imagine the rest on your own. It weren't pretty but it was necessary and it felt positively awful and wonderful. But that was my mess ... go make your own.

If, after watching the 4:14 video you realize that you are the father, or if you wish you could have had that father, or if you are being called upon to be that father, or if you are that son, or if none of that makes any sense but you just having a hard time of this life you're trying to live moment-to-moment it may help you to remember, as it did me: you can.

*if you want to learn more about the Dick and Rick, check here at TeamHoyt.

hard and amazing work

The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.

- Anna Quindlen

what's not to love?

theo, cloudia and the magnificent molars by McBeth.

I was so lucky this weekend. I got to spend a couple of hours in Iowa with one of my sisters and her growing family. My youngest nephew, Theo, is happily and comfortably making his way in the world so far. Whenever he can, and even when he knows he's pushing his luck to do it, he grabs up his big brother's Barbie (Charlie's renaming is pronounced 'Cloudia') for a nibble.

When I look at Theo I see the very young version of my only brother, who was the youngest of five kids. The eyes, the sweetness ... if Theo turns out anything like Quinn has so far, he's going to be a heartbreaker. And to continue the comparison, Quinn is gentle and kind. He learned that no hearts need be broken, even when he was turning down potential love interests right and left.

When I look at Theo I see my own baby who had pretty blonde ringlets until that first painful (for me) haircut. My baby is dating now. He's busy making plans about what he wants to be and how he plans to do it. I think I've done an adequate job thus far in my own parenting but whew, those years FLEW by. He was a baby and then he wasn't.

I wish there was some adequate way to communicate this to my sister, who is in for her own discoveries raising her boys. I suppose she'll learn it for herself quickly enough.

finally

it's about time! by McBeth.

Michana and David have been together for 19 years. During those years they have raised her son into adulthood together, they have seen serious health crises through together, they have built their lives together.

Mike and David got around to getting married last weekend. Their wedding was the nearest thing to uncreepy and anti-society-says-we-should weddings I've ever had the good fortune to be asked to attend.

Some (probably well-intentioned, but) misguided pal suggested to Mike that she shouldn't wear her wedding band (which they've had for several months) until after the ceremony. Pardon? 'Sez WHO?', sez me. So this expression, to me, was priceless.

"FINALLY."

promise to remember

sharing secrets by McBeth.

“Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

- A. A. Milne

summertime

relax. it's summertime. by McBeth.

“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

dove love, pt. III

full bellied by McBeth.

While gardening today at J&L's I discovered a nest that had fallen from a tall tree last night. Nearby there was a dead baby bird. I pointed it out to J. and we both sighed sad sighs for the little one who didn't make it. One more eyeball scan across the grass and I spotted another nestmate - still alive but injured and not looking so great.

With no parents in sight anywhere and feeling some urgency about getting care for this one, I scooped it up and we created a little homemade nest out of paper towels and a tiny wicker basket. I picked up a small canister of baby bird food on the way home (a formula mix similar in consistency to human infants' mix-with-water stuff) and hand-fed it every half hour or so until I could locate a wildlife center (at our county Humane Society) who would know far better than I how to best care for the orphan. Little bird is there now, as is the baby bird food which they can use to feed it and others; no doubt they'll be far neater with the hand-feeding than was I.

I'm starting to see this mourning dove/bird pattern emerging in my daily life. I wonder what that's about.

on purpose

the kiss by McBeth.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

- Dolly Parton

jealous of the moon

Jealous of the Moon

Trying on a brand new dress
But you haven't worn the old one yet.
You've come too far, to turn around now.
Giving up a good fight.
You're as strong as anyone.
You're back when you started from,
I see you're back where you started from.

Staring down the stars, jealous of the moon
You wish you could fly.
But you're staying where you are,
there's nothing you can do,
if you're too scared to try.

Drag your pretty head around
Swearing you're gonna drown with a beautiful sigh and a river of lies.

Staring down the stars, jealous of the moon
You wish you could fly.
But youre staying where you are
there's nothing you can do
if you're too scared to try.

Why don't you call me, I could save you.
Together we'll find a god we can pray to that will take you by the hand.

I hate to see a friend of mine,
Laughing out loud when she's crying inside,
but you've got your pride.

Staring down the stars, jealous of the moon
You wish you could fly.
But you're staying where you are
There's nothing you could do, if you're too scared to try.

You're staring down the stars,
You stay where you are,
You're jealous of the moon, but there's nothing you could do if you're too scared to try,
If you're too scared to try.


- Nickel Creek, from 'Why Should the Fire Die?'

adapt

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative.
-H.G. Wells

if it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck

Yes, and even if it has four legs and has a mysterious "ook" message encoded on its side, it's still probably a duck.



My niece and sister came to visit overnight this past weekend. At five years of age Audrey is, as a close friend of mine once put it, a force of nature. Maybe she's making up for the lost time she missed in utero having been born three months early back on Thanksgiving Day '00. Maybe there's a genetic wildness - an edginess - which the womenfolk in my family have passed along through generations. Hard to say. She's certainly something.

Whatever the reason, she's testy and cranky and demanding, joyous and silly, exhausting and exhilirating and this year I tell her that she's my very very very favorite five year old niece in the whole world. And in return, she draws me beautiful animal pictures on Post-it notes.

Saturday morning I woke to find Audrey and my son talking to one another in quiet voices in the kitchen, each selecting doughnuts from the box I'd picked up the night before. I wasn't aware either knew to use their quiet voices without adult intervention, and I watched them working together, their comparative big- and little-nesses such a contrast to one another but their cousinness a solid lifelong bonding relationship.

I sat on the stairs watching down on them, thinking about the weird and often hilarious secrets my sibs and I share with my cousins. As far as I know, nobody ever told the grownups the truth about Pat's lip burns. He was a guitar-playing rocker teen who'd done his personal interpretation of one of the guys from the rock band KISS. One thing became clear: the KISS guy was much more experienced in holding lighter fluid in his mouth then blowing it out to 'breathe fire' than was my cousin, who set his fuzzy pubescent moustache aflame. I wondered what stories my son and my nephews and nieces will hold as their common history when they're older.

After breakfasting I set Audrey up with drawing materials, and unobstructed access to both the toy box and Saturday morning cartoons. I told her that it would be so nice of her to let her mama sleep in and I promised that I'd play with her when I returned from providing momtaxi service for my son who had to work that morning.

Aud was ready and waiting for me when I returned. She had a list yea long of activities she really really wanted to do and each had to be done immediately. I reminded her of rule #1 (frankly, it's rule # only since once we can get it going, the rest mostly falls into place): First Things First. What did she want to do FIRST? And then what? And what after that? Once we talked through her eagerness to do everything and had seperated it back into smaller pieces she visibly relaxed back down from the spiral she'd been whirling herself up into.

The first activity she selected was a bath. She raided the plastic storage container drawer in the kitchen, precariously balancing as many bowls, lids and storage containers and she could fit between her belly and her chin. I dribbled some bubble bath into the running tub water, hoping she wouldn't ask me what kind it was because, well, because she's the question-asking kinda kid who does ask such questions and I wasn't sure how I would answer ... "Well sweetheart, this delightful lily scented concoction is called Total Bitch. Now enjoy your soak darling!"

She flipped and flopped, sliding back and forth, pretending she was a shark on the hunt. Sharks are very spashy creatures, I said. I'd never had a shark bathe in my tub before so we agreed that it would be a good idea to lay a few towels along the floor side of the bathtub to prevent water loss, since - as Audrey pointed out - sharks really need all the water they can get. Aud ingested mouthfuls of water, spouting portions of it straight up over her head in a human girlish illustration of what she called 'a whale fountain', giggling fantastically at herself each time gravity yoinked the stream back into her face.

One of the cats meandered into the bathroom. He was visibly torn between his fearful dismay for that girl in the bathtub who makes unanticipated splashy fast moves and his magnetic attraction for the warm water in the bathtub he so loves to drink. Artie's fear was prevailing, so in an effort to keep him in the bathroom Audrey sat down a plastic bowl of bathwater for him to drink from the floor. I appreciate that she at least recognizes that she can be a little too much for the critters; that she tries to accommodate them whenever possible.

One of Audrey's favorite games right now is Let's Pretend. The tubbie version she was attempting to play went something like this:

Okay let's pretend that someone is the parent and someone is the baby. Whoever wants to be the parent raise your hand! (I remain blank, unmoved.)

Whoever wants to be the baby raise your hand! (Still unmoved.)

She becomes concerned that I am not participating in the game and, possibly thinking that I do not understand them, reviews the rules for me. She is mid-sentence in the review when I raised my hand.

Yes?

I become animated and clap my hands eagerly. 'I want to be the marmoset!'.

Beffie, there is no marmoset... (dramatic sigh, clear commentary on what dolts old people can be sometimes) Okay, whoever wants to be the paaaaarent raise your haaaaand!!! (I am watching attentively, silent.)

Okayyy whoeverrrrr wants to be the baaaabyyyyy raiseee your haaaa--
I thrust my hand into the air repeatedly, like what's his name on 'Welcome Back Kotter': Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Mista Kottah, pick me! pick me!

Yes? You want to be the baby? She's using the pretend voice of a teacher.

I want to be the marmoset!

She rolls her eyes and hits the bath water with both hands palm-down. You are not very good at pretending, Beffie. You don't understand. You can pick the baby or the parent. You can't be anything else, only the baby or the mommy. So what's it gonna be?

I do so love to tease her.

My sister woke during the Let's Pretend game. She peeked in to see what we were up to in bath land. I pointed sleepy sis to the fresh coffee in the french press pot downstairs and by the time she returned to join us I was in the process of flummoxing Audrey with my desire to be a pretend marmoset.

Mama was back on active duty Audrey geared up both one silliness notch and three volume degrees, but the remainder of the day's visit, complete with her admonishing warnings like 'Not YOU, Mom. I want my favorite aunt in the whole wide world to do that with me', was a sweet reminder of the power of our connection.

comfort zones

"If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone."

- John Maxwell

courage

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear."

- Mark Twain

karmic justice

sideswiped by McBeth.

All I can say is this: when we actively make the choice to lie about something - before we open our mouths to let that first slippery word slide out - we'd best be sure we're willing to live with the consequences of the matter for which we are about to create untruths.

i.e., wanting to get your boyfriend to work on time so he won't lose his job = one thing. Making up a story to the police to make it look less potentially haphazard? Hmm.

mourning: dove

fly away home by McBeth.

I’m finding myself unexpectedly sad today.

I was shooting some self-gratification and record-keeping photos of what and where I had planted in the garden earlier this afternoon and accidentally disturbed the mourning dove father who, as I’ve come to understand, is the parent who sits on the nest during the morning/afternoon periods, later spelled by the mother dove who takes the later afternoon/nighttime shift.

The doves made themselves a cozy nest in the flowerbox immediately outside the back door of my home. I hadn’t planted the pink cascading petunias quickly enough into it and the day I had set in my head to get the flowers planted, well, those birds had agreed upon an entirely different use for my planter – and their idea won.

In an overnight operation they first hastily threw together some grass and discarded brushed-out cat hair into a nest-like pile. The day after the nest appeared, the eggs appeared: two tiny white eggs kept warm under mother or father dove for the next two weeks.

Last Thursday I carried my camera with me when I took a brief walk around the block, and when I returned from my mailbox I discovered the freshly-hatched first dove chick, its sibling not yet done with his or her own incubation. On Friday I peeked from a window to check their progress and found chick #2 fully hatched, nestled in next to the slightly larger, slightly more robust older sibling. Hurrah, they both made it!

Over the weekend I found a couple of opportunities to share the little bit I’d learned online about mourning doves with adjacent neighbors’ three granddaughters. They really wanted to play with my three cats, two of whom had escaped while I had been taking baby bird pictures with the door half-open, but the girls’ love/hate relationship with all-things-fanged-and-clawed made the petting too difficult and exciting to do without giving Puppy (the cat) a nervous tic, so I’d suggested that there were some wild birds that were not my pets but they’d be welcome to come look at the wild birds as long as we all could agree that we’d only use our eyes ~ not our hands ~ to see them. The girls agreed and we’d all tiptoed quietly over and they took turns being lifted up next to the flower box to see the new little lives growing in the nest.

The youngest granddaughter (oh, maybe 4 years old?) wanted to know if the birdies would bite her. Would they bite her with their sharp teeth? Why are they looking at us? Where’d their momma and daddy go? Why won’t the baby’s momma want to come back if we pet them? Her mouth couldn’t issue the ticker of questions as fast as her brain seemed to be tapping them out.. Later she announced that they were going to get cats and dogs. I asked her if her momma knew that they were going to have lots of pets. ‘Not yet, but we’re gonna. Because I like them’.

I watered the plants late last night and, as I stood in the dark with my hose spraying a cold stream of water over the white columbine and the pink pincushion flowers, the girls reappeared, asking if my cats could come out to play. It was past the kitties’ bedtimes, I said, but maybe the next time the girls were visiting I could bring one out if it isn’t too late. They asked to see the birdies instead and I said it wasn’t a problem as long as they remembered our agreement. Headsful of braids bobbed eagerly as they slowly approached the nest. Middle sister squealed about how cute the little birds were and she proceeded to show me the way she could jump rope three different ways. Shortly, they were off to the local fireworks with their family and we waved goodbye to one another.

In part I’ve been so eager to watch these mourning doves because I’ve never had the opportunity to have them nest and reproduce literally in my backyard, on the back of my home. In part, I’ve been so eager to watch these mourning doves because I like having that everyday piece of the natural world to share with the kids in my neighborhood, who for so much of the time are unsupervised or who just might be up to something naughty – who could possibly be redirected into something less troublesome if a grownup could simply notice them and give them a few minutes’ attention. In part I’ve been so eager because despite my increasing age there is still a wondering child alive and well in me, a young child whose grandmother used to say ‘Oh! Look at THAT!’ and she meant it sincerely: let’s look at this amazing thing together!

When I peeked into the unattended nest I discovered one robust young dove blinking back at me. Hello sweet little confused bird! But the second baby was no longer alive. There’s no clear indication of what happened or why it did not survive; its body had been pushed to the side of the flower box, out of the nest, and I imagine eventually the parents will fling it over the side for the four foot drop to the ground, where another animal will find a valuable and necessary use for it.

In the meantime, I’m trying to keep a healthy perspective about how nature works in the perfect way it should work- and completely without my interference. I’m awfully sad, though. I imagine it will be a hard thing to explain to three little girls who made a promise to me to be gentle with these wild animals that sometimes there are things completely beyond our control – even beyond the promises we make – that cause unexpected results and there’s no amount of discussion that can change them...

I’m not ready just yet to put my completely support and enthusiasm behind the remaining (surviving, healthy, lambchop chubby) little bird. Maybe in 24 hours I’ll feel less tired, less overcome. For now, I’m mourning the dove.

my baby love

double dove love by McBeth.

mourning doves, for their quiet beauty, have such inauspicious beginnings.

going postal

going postal by McBeth.

Hi. My name is McBeth and I have a thing.
(you: Hi McBeth.)

We all have our things, yeah, and that helps me to keep my own thing in a kind of well-but-barely-balanced perspective.

My thing is mail.
I don't mind receiving it.
I just somehow forget to check it in any regular kind of way.

And then even when I do remember to unstick the 43 pieces of junkmail mixed in with the 11 important things from the tight confines of the corner cluster mailbox over and across the street, I just can't get myself to open and respond appropriately. The stuff just piles up like Pisa waiting waiting waiting. It's practically a dare for me, the mail pile hoping I'll add that final camel's back breaking postcard.

And then the thing that happens is that kind'v 'if I'm not looking at it, it ceases to exist' profundity that we marvel at in young infants because they're actually WORKING ON overcoming the thing. But I can vouch for not being the slightest bit admirable in that "awww lookit there, she's growing up so quickly!" ways because I'm nearly 40 years old and the cuteness goes away for those near and dear to me after various agencies over time have temporarily shut off various functions important to my life to get my attention about how important it is to--

(a) receive the bill
(b) open the bill, reviewing carefully
and then
(c) pay.thedamn.bill.


I felt rather proud of myself today for bringing the mail in. My son approached me, asking if I had. "Why yes darling, I did in fact bring in the mail - what, it's not like I don't always eventually get to it. Anyway, why do you ask?"

He was looking for his paycheck. Now I cannot say with one hundred percent assurance that I did not see that paycheck in the tiny pigeonhole of a mailbox, but I WAS juggling a camera and about 62 pieces of mail. So it is within a certain realm of possibility to me that his paycheck could have accidentally been "misfiled" along with the crappy junk mail into the big garbage dumpster outside.

I've crawled into that big ol' stinky dumpster before for lesser things, but I'm not excited about second-guessing my second-guesses, so if his paycheck IS in the dumpster, it'll stay safe and sound for one more day. Otherwise, the check might just show up in tomorrow's mail.

The entire episode has exhausted me to such a point that I believe I shall take a headache remedy and lie down for a while very shortly.

merge

ooh by McBeth.

Wordlessly, she cast aside for me any misunderstandings I might up until that point have had of her.

She was a woman in her late 50s, her ash colored hair coiffed into the style she’d seen what seemed like only days ago, modeled on the front of that Jiffy pattern by the petite blonde for the Surfside Blue butterfly dress she made for the luau-themed party the neighbors had thrown in ’82. She herself was also petite and, she had recently learned, receding into her own shell, as her bone density had been busy structurally deteriorating without ever even having had the decency to utter a sound. She and Dale, her husband of 40 years last June, may have thought they had reached a polite but final détente over the toilet seat issue early on in their marriage, yet it continually found new and different hosts in which to implant itself between them. This newest incarnation was the forward and backward adjustment of the driver’s seat in their car.

Why it was just this very morning while he was searching for a tie to match the loafers he would wear – the ones that don’t pinch his corns quite so much – when Dale had bellowed from behind their bedroom door about how he’d nearly ruptured his spleen yesterday because she’d neglected to put that goddamned car seat back where it’s supposed to go. She distractedly sighed ‘Sorry honey, I guess I forgot.’ in the general direction of the hallway while sopping up a small coffee spill on their otherwise spotless Formica kitchen countertop.

He emerged from the bedroom whipping the tail of the tie around in a circular motion a final time. He slipped the wagging tail through the ball of tie material below his neck and wiggled it into a neat knot, muttering to no one in particular but in her general direction.

“A man has to be able to count on a few things, yanno. Think of the medical bills we’ll have to wade through if I’m injured! You’d have to take care of all of ‘em on your own because I’d be laid up in a goddamned hospital bed, that’s where I’d be. How’d you like that, hunh? I have. To be able. To get into my own damn car. Without. Having to check it out first. Do you understand that?”

She kissed him on both his cheeks the same way she’d kissed both his cheeks every day without fail for 40 years, and as Dale shoveled his arms into his suit coat she reminded him that supper would be on the table at 5:30 tonight. He left the house grousing about last week’s meatloaf leftovers and after the door slam echoed for a few seconds, she was again alone in the tidy and quiet kitchen.

‘Dale just doesn’t understand’, she thought to herself. ‘He is a good man and he has provided well for the two of us over all these years. I suppose the thing is his strength lies not in any deliberate flexibility he may have, but rather in his ability to push through’.

She transferred the remaining cup from the sink into the dishwasher and set to making a list of needed items from the grocery store. Anticipating another potential meatloaf tirade, she opted instead to prepare the baked chicken Dale liked so much. Rice, chicken breasts, cream of mushroom soup … oh, and maybe a salad on the side. She performed a perfunctory check of the canned goods cabinet to verify that she would need another can of soup. ‘Oh dear, when did I use up the last can of beef broth? I’d better add that to the list too’.

A brief moment of panic set in as she reached for her handbag and the key ring. “What day is today?” she asked herself. If it was Wednesday Dale would have taken the car to drive to work. If it was Thursday he would have taken the public bus to meet with John for coffee at the diner after which John would drop him off at work. But a quick scan from inside the front door window of the short driveway and along the street revealed no vehicle.

She moved to the door separating the house from the garage, unbolted one lock and unchained the safety lock while she peered from the open crack into the dark garage. There it is. That Dale, he has a way of making his opinions abundantly clear. Just to hammer home his point he’d rather let her do the insignificant extra work of opening the garage door than having to admit that he may be overreacting.

With purse and keys in tow, she slipped between the driver’s seat and the steering wheel. Reaching below her she fiddled with the seat adjuster until the seat skimmed forward, repositioning her torso to within inches of the steering column. She backed carefully out the driveway, apprehensively looking over both shoulders before entering the stream of traffic.

It was when she merged into the fast-moving highway traffic in which I was already driving that our lives intersected.

The on-ramp, a usually empty and extra-long stretch of here’s your chance, was full to bursting behind her. A driver somewhere fairly far behind in the pack impatiently honked a car horn, frustrated with her puzzling adherence to the 55 mph speed limit. I glanced briefly out the passenger side window of my car at the weary look in her facial features; at the droopy edges of what I estimate was once a very pretty mouth. She clenched her elbows against her sides, the ‘7’ and reverse ‘7’ shapes of her arms meeting up at two matching steering wheel points, around which her small bony hands were wrapped like two terrified starfish.

Tentatively, she glanced up and out her driver’s side window toward me. Our eyes met; the edges of my eyes curled slightly upward into what I hoped would look to her like gentleness, like nobody demanding something other than goddamned meatloaf, like the possibility of merging without always having to submit to the faster and larger vehicle.

She looked toward me for only another second or two. Her veiny starfish fingers clutched tightly at the wheel, then relaxed, then fastened themselves firmly again as she pitched her steering wheel to the left, merging ahead of me with increasing speed into the swift flow of speeding commuters.

“Dale is lucky to have you in his life”, I whispered to myself. I tried to keep her car in sight, but as the traffic unremittingly washed around and over her, she was gone.

and in other news...

bill bennet explains marriage



My vote for best quote of the interview:
"Divorce is not caused because 50% of marriages end in gayness"
-Mr. Jon "They're Sensible but They're Lucky Underpants" Stewart

call me McXuanzong

There's no particular reason the photo there is accompanying this; I simply shot it and liked it.

Maybe it's the perspective of a wedding that few of us pay attention to any more (unless 'we' are under the age of five)? Do you pay attention to what you are looking at in an active way, taking in clues from the scene to put together an apt explanation for what might be happening? Cool, me too. At least I try to fill in the missing bits with sensible details.

So who needs the heads and faces (if 'we' are five years olds attending a wedding) when the pretty golden shoes, the lacey gold thread on your aunt's pink linen dress and the strange habit of throwing flower petals onto a white runner are the details you remember of this event when you return to reflect upon it in 25 years?

-----

I took a Discovery Channel quiz this morning; again - with no real purpose in mind. I sweat through a very tight tiebreaker (all metaphorical, I assure you. My eyes weren't even fully open yet. The morning coffee ritual, you understand...) which revealed that if I was to be suddenly imposed as Empress of Everything it is most likely the latest incarnation of Tang Xuanzong that I would most resemble.

But see, I have a theory about what I'd want to be Empress OF. Being shot into a position by no other reason than people just stroking their chins and suddenly coming to some enlightened decision could have disturbing and far-reaching consequences not only for me, but for all those poor fools who would say 'You are our next Empress, McBeth. It's true! We read it in our morning tea leaves which are NEVER known to fail'.

Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. There are our two givens, right? So if I can convince the sages to let me be the Empress of My Own Self (EMOS, for short) I would be ruling over a kingdom of ...baa-daa-bing... one. The damage I would probably inflict no matter if it was purposeful or due to neglect would be mitigated somewhat by the citizenry stats in my kingdom.

Sure, if they're willing to just let me sit there looking like the Empress of Very Much More Than She Really IS, I'd willingly fill in and hold the spot until the tea leaves revealed a slight miscalculation which would lead to a new Empress being installed. But only as long as we all understand I don't want to rule everyone else - not really, I just want to be the Queen of Me.