origami

two cups of wealth, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I'm learning how to make origami to remember my Grandfather, who died in January of 2002.

These two cups were created by using one of my grandfather's canceled checks - this one written on May 1, 1995 to Oneota Housing in the amount of $170.00.


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oh, how I dislike this

Dear Reader,

Those ugly little waste of time people who create and spread spam have found their way into my blog. That nice confirmation code feature seemed to work for quite a long time and I've appreciated it, but their bored little bots have started ramping it up and I don't much appreciate their activity.

No big deal really (other than the question that buzzes persistently like a flood plain mosquito, "Why?"), but for now I have switched the commenting options over to *moderate*, which means that if you choose to leave a comment - and I do hope you will continue to do so - you'll probably get some sort of message that reads "your post will not immediately appear, blah blah blah".

I'm not doing this whole ridiculous moderating thing for the ego trip or for the hassle of being hassled, but I do hope you'll understand that that spam garbage really can start to put a kink into one's happiness and contentment and I, for one, am not willing to coexist with either trolls or spam unless it is imperative. I'm not thrilled about changing the commenting options to *moderate*, and I apologize if this seems like an extra step for you, but I'm willing to take sensible precautions to prevent further infestation. Dig?

time

I cannot promise very much.
I give you the images I know.
Lie still with me and watch.
We laugh and we touch.
I promise you love. Time will not take that away.

-- Anne Sexton

pretty -- ugly

God help you if you are an ugly girl, 'course too pretty is also your doom, 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room.

-- Ani Difranco

You scored as Albert Camus, You are Albert Camus, so you are one sweet absurdist. He built largely upon the framework of existentialists before him, but introduced the concept that life is absurd, but that we should continue living anyway. You have strong liberal leanings, although you annoy the Communists. You are susceptible to driving fast, and possibly crashing into a tree. Which Existentialist Philosopher Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

menstruation

dirty old moonlight, originally uploaded by McBeth.

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

-- Gloria Steinem

unfilled wishes

JC, table for two?, originally uploaded by McBeth.

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.

-- Dorothy Canfield Fisher

the dreaming days

Is the proper term 'unconsolable' or 'inconsolable'?

Whatever. Whichever. I am that. It doesn't make sense that I'd have anything to feel in particular need of consolation, but that fact hasn't seem to dawn on those chemicals and situations that cause mood upheaval lately. Whatever. I am that.

I should have found something to do when I woke early again this morning, this time at 4a.m.

I've been having bad dreams again, or maybe I've had a constant marathon of bad dreams that I haven't remembered a blessed thing about. If so, I am grateful not to have to feel like someone has peeled my skin off with a rusty potato peeler while I've slept, and I wish those I'm having now would go away.

This morning's dream began innocently enough. I was living in what apparently was my regular city but it had become one of those 'wave of the future in the industrialized world' kind of metropolis. Getting anywhere was a time- and labor-intensive venture. New corporate development everywhere. What used to be fields had been bulldozed to beyond a centimeter of its life into magnificently steep hills and valleys.

My dream mother had called me, not sure why an alimony check from my father had not arrived from the state agency responsible for issuance. She had waited months for the funds though it hadn't occurred to her to place a phone call before this moment in time: she believed she had to physically show up, in person, to get a meaningful response. But she was afraid to drive the admittedly complex maze of roads, as if they themselves had become a governmentally constructed way of keeping regular people from getting where they really needed to go.

As I would do in a non-dream state, I agreed to take her where she needed to go so she could get the answers she needed. She was babysitting my niece and I'd already agreed to run my son on a car part errand (the story of his early driving years: always another part) so, to make the best use of our collective time I drove my son and myself to my mother's house. In my dream I was driving a micro-mini car that hadn't the space for three passengers, so we switched over into my mother's car - a huge monster of a Suburban or a Tahoe or something equally reprehensibly too much.

I acted as though I was a capable behemoth driver, winnowing through tiny passes, narrowly avoiding side-view mirror clip-offs in tight construction zones, guiding us op and down and around steep grades and implausibly tight curves. Mom held on, screeching 'watch out!' when I was navigating particularly tight places. I held my tongue, chose not to further complicate the situation by asking if she'd ever considered a less bulky and imposing and fuel-inefficient vehicle. I'd guess that the answer would not come as a surprise, nor would it be anything I was remotely interested in hearing.

The building we arrived at was the government's solution for one-stop shopping. Gleaming and too tall to see the top floor when standing outside at the bottom floor. From the main entrance one was required to travel through a maze of elevators, escalators and too-bright corridors, all of which provided travelers a way to get to airline terminals that also were located within the building but on the far side.

My dream niece had an understood penchant, as many children do, for public restrooms. Whether she had an actual physical need to relieve her bladder pressure or whether she just wanted some automatic paper towel dispenser play time was unclear, but she had to go, she insisted. Harrowing traffic had also left my mother feeling inclined to make a "quick stop, just to be sure". I figured, "oh well, why not?" then spoke briefly with my son and we agreed to meet up at a specific location further along. He'd have a few minutes to hang out to do whatever he wanted to do while he waited for us.

Bathrooming done, my mother, my niece and I continued along to our agreed-upon meeting place. It was an industrially noisy and chaotic intersection, so we took a long relaxed pause to locate my son. We didn't see him. Longer wait. More looking: still no kid.

My mother was becoming agitated, worrying that we wouldn't get to the office before it closed for the day and my wiggly niece was, despite her deep admiration for her older cousin, growing impatient. I pulled out my cell phone, pushed '9' for my son's preprogrammed cell phone number, and listened to it ring until, unanswered, it switched over to his voice mail message. I spoke apologetically to the machine, saying how I'd appreciated his patience when he had only wanted to pick up a car part. I said we've been waiting here at our agreed-upon meeting place for quite some time and that Gramma was starting to become vocal and nervous and about how she worried that we wouldn't get to the offices on time.

I hesitated, then said I was going to continue along to that office with Grandma and his cousin. I asked him either to call me back or to send me a text message so I could figure out where he was in relation to where were were headed so we could reconnoiter. I told his voice mail that I loved it, then pressed 'end' to complete my call.

We stayed close together, my mother, my niece and myself. Periodically my niece would ask why her cousin wasn't with us, where was he anyway? Each time she asked I'd glance down to my cell phone in my right hand; each time I'd swallow a little more concern while trying to calmly respond, 'I dunno. He hasn't called back yet, honey'.

My mother, my niece and I stepped into yet another elevator compartment after we'd waited for the passengers to flow out like a small carful of clowns. The panel of buttons was unclear, unmarked, seemingly planned purposefully to discourage passengers from going where they meant to go. My niece was eager to be the official elevator button-pusher, so after weighing out the probability of pushing the button that seemed most likely to get us to the office my mother required, I directed the official button pusher to press the circle labeled '21'. The elevator made whirring and cooshing noises, and eventually the doors opened. One look around and I knew I had guessed incorrectly: the walls and floors were decorated in an aerospace travel motif of reds and silvers.

We had not yet located the alimony office; we had arrived at the TWA terminal. Busy -seeming people sped past us on all sides. Try as we did, nobody would stop to help us figure out how to get where we wanted to go. My niece asked again, 'Where is cousin?' 'He'd know what to do', she assured me. I checked my cell phone again. No messages, so I sent off another brief text message: 'call me please?'. My mother's agitation grew. That office, she insisted, will be closing soon. I cannot - WILL not - come back here again.

What to do? What to do?

I moved my niece and mother to a small recessed area against a wall, telling them in jerky words DO NOT MOVE FROM THIS PLACE. I'll try to find someone who can help us, but you must stay together and you must not leave this spot until I come back for you. My mother was spiritedly displeased at the situation but my niece seemed to understand the stress of the situation so she asked my mother to tell her a Bible story. My mother's ire was short-lived and vaporized instantly as my niece redirected her into sharing one of her greatest passions with her progeny, and I felt a spark of renewed hope that I might have a few moments to get information that would help us to proceed.

I chose one potentially useful looking woman from the next batch of clowns to exit the elevator. She was wearing a red polyester knee-length skirt with a matching vest over a shiny block-patterned long-sleeved polyester dress shirt buttoned with small white buttons up to her neck. Her shiny orangeish-blond hair was cut into a sensible grown lady style, straightened with an iron then curled under at the ends, just below her jawline. I noted with some surprise that the crisp TWA woman was coming directly toward me, as though she knew we needed some help.

Ah! Finally!

The woman's smile and calm demeanor came as a welcomed change after the scores of people whose apathetic indifference to our questions had made me wonder about the inner workings of their animatronic robot parts and pieces behind their garments. The woman stopped immediately in front of me, then she leaned in to utter some inaudible thing.

I said, "I'm sorry, but I couldn't hear you. Could you please repeat what you just said?" She whispered something again but, again, I could make neither heads nor tails of what I couldn't hear. I repeated, "It's so loud in this corridor! I'm terribly sorry, but I just can't hear you. Can we go to a quieter place?" She didn't seem to hear me, either. We continued in this way for several minutes longer and it was apparent that we both were becoming frustrated.

Finally, reaching for my arm, she leaned into my and in a fake cheerful voice she hissed, "We need to have a word with you, ma'am".

"We who?", I asked, "who is we? See, my mother, my niece and I seem to have gotten ourselves lost and we - the three of us, I mean - would appreciate your help to get to our destination". Still holding one of my arms, she reached for the other. "It's about your son".

My dream self felt a wave of relief tingle down my arms into my fingers.

"Oh good! I've been waiting for him to call me back since we got separated near the public restrooms on ground floor. I was beginning to worry because he hadn't returned my call and several text messages", I replied.

She looked at me as she held my arms in her hands, really looked into my eyes, trying to say something unspeakable with the blue surrounding her shrunken pupils.

"It's about your son", she emphatically repeated. Dread replaced the short-lived tingly relief.

"What about my son? Where is he?"

As if on cue, several brawny men appeared in the corridor, clustered in a semicircle around something, blocking my view of whatever it was. The two men leading the pack stepped to either side. Behind them was a person who very much resembled my child in stature and appearance. The man's hands were bound with plastic handcuffs.

"What are you people doing here? Where is my son?". My dream self had already begun to disengage from my shrilly shrieking voice.

"There was a problem", red polyester lady reiterated. A problem with your son. A problem with your son. A problem with your son.

I quickly glanced over to the recessed area of corridor where my mother animatedly reenacted the story of baby Moses in the rushes to my niece.

What problem? What happened? Where the hell is my son?

I looked again at the young man standing with assistance between the pack of men I'd determined were guards. He was tipping back and forth, staggering, lurching, balanced into an upright position due singularly to the band of guards surrounding him, holding him in place. His eyes were rolling around vacantly in their sockets, in different directions one from the other. Dried blood crusted the inside corners of the man's mouth, and crusted over spit mixed with who knows what else, maybe vomit, it looked like, splattered across the lower half of his face, as though he'd gotten sick on a Tilt-A-Whirl with no way of stopping either the ride or the barf fest.

The man was my son. That lurching staggering plastic-cuffed apparition of a person was my child.

I tried to loosen red polyester woman's grip from my arms, howling obscenities, demanding to know right goddamned now what the FUCK they did to my child. I wailed my kid's name repeatedly, right at him even, but nothing was registering; he looked soulless and confused and gone.

Just as three of the guards moved from their positions as bracing agents for my son, the woman emotionlessly whispered, "There was a problem. According to our information he took too long."

Motherfucking cocksucking sons of bitches have done something to suck the life out of my kid and she's still stuck in her goddamned "There's a problem" loop?? She's fucking right about a problem existing, I screamed in spit-laden chunks of grieving horror.


Still in that calm telephone attendant voice, she spoke in barely-audible tones, describing something about how during a routine surveillance process it had been noted that he was taking too long to use the restroom.

"Are you fucking KIDDING ME?", I laughed hysterically, "You electrocuted or tasered or drugged or whatever it is that these fucking lunatics did to a perfectly pleasant reasonable kind and gentle person because he couldn't fucking PISS fast enough for you? Is that what you're actually trying to tell me?"

My vacantly gazing son lost his balance and, with two less guards to help him balance, began to list forward. I escaped the grabbing hands of red polyester lady and her two thugs, shaking them scratching them kicking them with all my might to be able to catch my falling child.

I've no idea what might have happened after that because I woke in a sobbing panic, unable to catch my breath. I raced to my son's bedroom, stifling my sobs into my forearm, watching to see if he was there and then, reassured as to his whereabouts, I stared at him to determine that he was still alive. He was laying on his right side, arm wrapped tenderly around his girlfriend's waist. He was still and obviously sleeping, but I had to stand there to watch watch watch the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders.

He is fine.
He is fine.
I am fine.
He is fine.
He is fine.
I am fine.
He is fine.
He is fine.
I will be fine.

The only thing I could think to do after having reassured myself that my kid was alive and only sleeping was to make my bed. I made my bed well, tightly, smoothly, evenly. The pillows were just so. I needed order; I needed badly for something to be immediately right, to be okay, to not be messed up, to be fixed.

Neat and pretty bed.
Fixed bed.
Tidy bed.
Better bed.

Breathe.
Breathe.

Too much rain

sugar river flood, originally uploaded by McBeth.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What's the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

-- Buddha

awakening

awakening, originally uploaded by McBeth.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

-- Woody Allen

excuse me, sir.

So what's new, we needed to fill the gas tank.

KD pulled into what once was a service station, now a convenience store. If you want service you'll need to step out prepared to supply your own because the lone clerk is busy inside tearing off lottery tickets and restocking the Camel Ultralights.

Though I do tend to make myself useful when I am driving solo, I have assigned myself a gas station slash convenience store job when she is driving us in her vehicle. I can't stand just sitting there in the passenger seat waiting waiting waiting. It's like one of my childhood nightmares of old ladies wearing a virulent dose of Roses!Roses! come to life when, from my third eye, I see myself sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle, my seatbelt clicked firmly into its slot even after the engine has been turned off. That, my third eye tells me, is the luxury of someone else will do it-ism. Someone else will pump the gasoline. Someone else will check the oil. Someone else will educate my child. Someone else will pay. Someone else will work the sour painful issues out.

So I gave myself a job, a task, a way of contributing to the health and wellbeing and general maintenance of her vehicle and of our non-legal marital happiness. The job I picked -window washing - is easy and fairly quick and frankly, thrilling because aside from building and sustaining relationships, and despite my efforts to thwart worries re: the potential eternal ramifications of my earthly sloth, I really really love clean windows. That helps.

When I set to a task I must have the proper essentials. Must have. Must. I believe that Efficiency begs from all thinking beings simply that we try our best to come prepared or get prepared or at the very least have some inkling of the dots between A and K and what tools will get us from one point to the next to the last with least amount of resistance. When I wash car windows at gas stations slash convenience stores I have to feel assured that I am using an adequate squeegee. I have to have a good feel about the squeegee, that we'll work well together.
I examine the netted sponge side to estimate how long that thing has been sitting in the hanging bin of watered down mosquito souped windshield cleaner, and exactly how nasty brown the sponge surface has been permitted to get by the Two Bics for a Buck clerk who sits inside, unable to feel obligation or to suggest that anyone should have a nice day. I do an eyeball (and occasionally a sniff) check on the sponge side but the rubber strip has to be manually tested for its firmness and squee-ibility. A fully scrubbed and dribbly windshield will simply have to cross its legs if the squeegee blade leaves even one sloppy track, while I walk from island to island swapping out one bent wand for another one that looks very much like mice snacked on the rubber blade between lap swims up in the fluid bucket. I'll trade them like B-Leaguers until I'm convinced that I have the best one for the job.

It was in the midst of my island hopping that I accidentally eavesdropped. I was exactly between islands #2 with the young angry punk who had already serviced his fuel needs and who was headed for the liquor locker inside, and #3, where a Chevy Surburban bearing Oklahoma plates was parked. In the back seat of the monster 'burban I could see the silhouettes of two stubby child car seats, with small bobbing heads flinging themselves back and forth within the spaces between the padded head braces. In the front passenger seat sat a young petite woman with smooth long brown hair. A swarthy 30-something GI Joe-looking military guy wearing the trademark and nearly fashionable brown/tan blend fatigues had just paid for his purchases inside and was returned to the Suburban to rearrange the kids and repack a cooler he accessed from the back door.

I also noticed a man approaching island #3 from - well, I don't know from where. He just appeared. One moment he didn't exist; the next he was walking toward me with his eyes squinting to a place just beyond me. I wondered for a moment if we were about to engage in a race to the squeegee bin hanging there on island #3 and, if so, which method might I use to take him down. Maybe I could temporarily incapacitate him, just long enough for me to get a head start to the squeegee bucket. Dangerous, I can be. But quick? Not so much; any small edge I could find would be a good thing if it came down to a running contest that I was unlikely to win.

Mystery Man came neither at me nor for the squeegee bucket, but instead toward GI Joe and the cooler into which he was distributing a fresh bag of cube ice. I had a disturbing microsecond flash vision of two complete strangers beating one another senseless after Mystery Man makes disparaging comments about GI Joe's ice cubes or something equally stupid. I'm aware it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have such a thought (about complete strangers, no less) but that's the danger of microsecond flashes because they lead a person to leap to a conclusion which may or may not be accurate and there's no real way of prechecking one's assumptions as the action is unfolding itself in real time.

Mystery Man thrust his hand outward. It wasn't a fist he had formed, though. His hand was extended palm open and up. Friend. Peace. Calm. He cleared his throat then called out, "Excuse me, sir?". I was now standing next to a nearby gas pump able to hear them like anyone who might be standing around outside next to fuel pumps, but I suppose with slightly more interest than the young punk, for instance, who appeared to ignore them in favor of attending to the six pack of glass bottles clinking against one another on the seat next to him.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Suddenly aware of the fact that he was the sir being addressed, GI Joe turned around. His hand tentatively raised to meet Mystery Man's hand. As they shook right hands they each automatically reached with their left hands to embrace forearms . I love that gesture. It reminds me of the smell of Aqua Velva; of my paternal grandfather gussying up in that uncomfortable sweat-inducing dark blue polyester suit for Sunday church services. It reminds me of gentlemanly integrity, a quality of being I fear might be slipping away in younger generations when the method of greeting consists far more regularly of elbow toasts and shoulder bumps and mumbled 'aight's. The forearm grip and the firm handshake combination might be one of the reasons I'm unashamedly drawn to men's forearms, to the muscles and shape and density of them, to the difference between theirs and mine. When men shake hands like this I feel confident and safe, like no bad will happen after the handshake; like they've both sealed some invisible contract, an agreement that they're both watching, that both will take care to do what is right, to have one another's backs. Like maybe they'll look out for me, too.

Their hands remained clenched while Mystery Man continued,
"Thank you. I just wanted to tell you thank you. I don't know where you've been or what you've had to do but I want to tell you that I'm grateful for your service and well, just thanks man."

I don't think GI Joe from Oklahoma had been expecting this sudden and somewhat surprising outpouring from a stranger at a gas station slash convenience store in Wisconsin. He nodded his head and replied in an equally Aqua Velva-y way, "No problem. Glad to help".

It's no surprise to any who know me that I do not support war. I do not value bullying. I don't believe in killing or oppressing others to be the best, whatever that means, and I don't support my government's seeming inability to get a grip on the facts and figures of the messes we've inextricably involved ourselves in, and in places we have no business policing. I do, however, support the individuals making the effort toward peace. Our soldiers. Their soldiers. I don't want harm to come to any of them, not one, not on either side. I want their mothers to step in with arm jerks and hissed insistent cautions that they each apologize to the other right this minute for not sharing the swingset like the good friends she knows they can be.

There were myriads of moments to learn from after the Viet Nam war ended, but one of the biggies for me was about accepting the person despite the action. I was a small child during that conflict and have only vague memories of evening news reports on my parents clunky television in Davenport, Iowa, but I remember seeing jostled bumpy footage of hippie protesters and the old Brillcremed men with their stern matter-of-fact tones and their wide ugly ties, who refused to listen. In social terms, we erroneously placed our faith in the Brill boys while keeping one nervous collective eye on the hippie protesters because well, you just never know what those free-thinking dope smokers might do. When our GIs returned from Viet Nam we didn't exactly roll out the welcome mat for them. We treated them poorly, we ignored them, we abandoned them when they most needed our support -every one of us, whether we agreed with the war or felt duped or hated every bloody moment of it. They needed us and we responded by abandoning them.

Reaching a destination sometimes consists of a hundred tiny steps in the right direction. The perfect solution for peaceful coexistence might not be self-evident in every situation, but the ethical and moral sensibilities that can lead us toward that place are. In teasing out the one or two Very Important Lessons to learn from wars gone by, I would suggest that respect will never be too high a price to pay someone else for their service on behalf of me and my country. Do I like to think about how he may have ended someone's life? No, not so much. But if he did actually take someone else's life I don't imagine it was a thrilling event for him either.

Like garbage collectors, our soldiers get the smelly hot difficult shit work that nobody else wants to do. Sure, the army television ads make military service look like a scene out of an adventure movie but even Indiana Jones got to sleep in a real bed away from the sandstorms and snakes; our military personnel don't have that made-for-TV luxury. I needed that reminder. I needed that check. McBeth, you don't need to agree with the action but you do need to respect the person.

My heart squeezed achingly while I watched the exchange between these two men at gas station slash convenience store island #3, as each revealed the real and powerful good in himself and in one another.

I heard a chuckle. It was the universe laughing at me, along with me, as I breathed a quiet sigh of relief for not having to cap that nice Mystery Man's knees in a race to the squeegee bucket, after all.

character

pride07 ttt, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose.

-- Evan Esar

joy

jo, swinger, originally uploaded by McBeth.

To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special.

-- Jim Valvano, NCU basketball coach

the thrill of night driving

puh-leeze ... put that thing away

Now I'm not one to point and giggle at any particular subgroup of society but ... oh, wait - what am I saying? Sorry, lost my head there for a moment; I do too snicker at all sorts of subgroups, including those to whom I belong.

But c'mon, is THIS what senior adult male bonding is supposed to be about?





Fellas, take a note: If you want your penile health to be taken seriously, do not under any circumstances - ever never ever ever never - show your beloved what you and your buddies do in the privacy of your guy's weekend away if THAT is what it looks like.

Thank you.

is this motivating?

i on u, originally uploaded by McBeth.

holiday

3 kayak trailer, originally uploaded by McBeth.

I would like you to relate with people, to love, to move in millions of relationships -- because they enrich -- and yet remain capable of closing your doors and sometimes having a holiday from all relationship... so that you can relate with your own being also.

-- Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

refresh

after the rain, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Affliction comes to all not to make us sad, but sober; not to make us sorry, but wise; not to make us despondent, but its darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plow enriches the field...”

-- Henry Ward Beecher

pocket lint check

Hey there.

Please pardon this non-commercial commercial break, but I'd like you to do something.
Call it a favor, if you want.

There this smart sexy (obstreperous, even) chick who, by way of modern day internet genealogy, would be related to me as a friend of a friend -- let's call her Bunni.

She had to deal with a lot of ugly and complicated health issues as a result of having a disease called neuroblastoma, which she was diagnosed with while still a wee one. Frankly, I think she has totally kicked that stupid disease's ass; she has not permitted either herself or others to treat her like a crip. She keeps that brisk sharp mind busy putting words to her life and goodness, but she does it well. And (stronger woman than myself) she's going to drag herself through this year's upcoming 24 hour Blogathon 2007 to raise money for the folks at the Neuroblastoma Children's Cancer Society.

She's getting sooo close to reaching her goal of $1000 but she's not there yet.

~~here's the where you come in favor part~~

Think about one thing you indulge in each week. Bottled water? A good 70% dark chocolate bar (or five)? Coffee at the drive-thru place so you don't have to get out to get java on the way to work? A mani/pedi? A gossip rag (oh, I do so enjoy a good snipefest)? Leaving too many lights on? Daily newspapers? Whatever that thing is, how much will you spend for your 'It' thing each week?

Now I'm not one to stand in your way here; if you want to buy 13 different daily newspapers then go for it. Simply follow that by sponsoring Bunni.

Or, if you've finally hopped on the good ship Sensibility and want to go an extra bold step I'd respectfully suggest sponsoring Bunni and also giving up your It thing for 24 hours. See? See that?? Don't you feel all impressed by your own great self just considering the possibilities? My my my, that does look good on you!

Sign up to sponsor Bunni HERE

I mean it.
Go do that.
Now.
I'll wait here for you while you do.

obstreperous

women together, originally uploaded by McBeth.

Recently a young mother asked for advice. What, she wanted to know, was she to do with a 7-year-old who was obstreperous, outspoken, and inconveniently willful? "Keep her," I replied.... The suffragettes refused to be polite in demanding what they wanted or grateful for getting what they deserved. Works for me.

-- Anna Quindlen