Just like last year, failed to wear a shirt that says this today like I said I would.

Where’s my holiday spirit? Two years running and I still haven’t pulled it together.

“You should write something tonight…for your friends…” she says. I’m in sweats, sitting on my bed in the dark with the laptop humming from a perch on a pillow. The TV is locked on to the History channel, I know I’m half way to Neverland already and it just isn’t going to happen, but I tell her I’ll try, exchange a few loving words and hang up. Minutes later the laptop is on the floor atop a pile of knitting books and I’m in my go-to-sleep position on my right side with my arm jammed between my pillows.

Drifting off her words bounced around my head along side animated fat drop shadow bubble font images of the words “peace”, “friendship” and “connections”.

When I was in London two years ago I found myself reconnected with someone I’d been in third grade with in Anchorage. I remarked at how small the world was.

A few weeks ago, a friend was in a car accident; the same friend who made the request of me last night. Last week when she found herself still sore, she inquired about my massage goddess and I pointed her to the website for the business. The world proved itself smaller still, since the owner of the practice and my friend had worked together fifteen years prior.

Oddly enough, I also knew the man though my WAKA team during the summer of ’05. He was on the team along with Ebeth, who I stayed with in London. Hm.

The point is – if I have one – that time changes some things, but it will never change our need to reconnect with our past. To be reminded of how far we’ve come, to reintroduce us to our dreams, to remind us what we felt like when we were young and too naive to let our hearts close up, or to bring us awareness and the reminder to be present *today* and right now via the crack of a wet towel to a big bare mental bootie — it all serves the same purpose and presents the same lessons.

1) While you’re so busy with your rush rush rush self imposed completely unnecessary drama, don’t forget to live.
2) We are all connected.
3) If we are open to what the universe puts in front of us, a great adventure will almost certainly follow.

I think I might need to attach electrodes to myself and program a device to deliver 1.21 gigawatts of electricity a few times a day just do I don’t forget the lessons…again.

Sometimes when The Mc explains things – like telling his mother why I won’t be joining him at the farm this weekend – he unintentionally makes me sound like a superficial twit with completely jacked priorities.

My friend Ken has proposed that the US stop creating and placing warning labels on any and all items, indicating that no only could we weed out the weakest links, but we could save a bundle on our car insurance a fraction of our ridiculous government spending issue.

Today, I’d sign that petition in a heartbeat.

Cranky? Me? Never.

I wanted to be a writer.

Scratch that – I still want to be a writer.

A metric shit load of things have blocked my path – crappy grades, ADD, being self reliant at age 23, jobs that consume me/my IQ/my time, and eventually…fear.

This week, local consumer rights-self made man-please let him run for mayor personality Clark Howard had this gem of a link in his weekly newsletter:

Budget Travel’s 10th anniversary will be in 2008–and to celebrate the occasion, we’re devoting our June 2008 issue entirely to our readers. Which means you’ll be the ones doing the writing and the photographing! We truly can’t do this without you, so please read below to find out how you can contribute.

I sent it to The Mc who assaulted me with completely biased if not overly supportive words of encouragement. I sent it to Kel who responded with “me like!”. That’s good enough. Maybe I need to stop running from the dream and start chasing it instead. Maybe not this exact opportunity, but something similar of my own creation.

I sat for a second and thought through some of the “why not” scenarios when logic made a remarkably timed appearance and pointed out that I lack inspiration and potentially even drive. I didn’t argue.

Where can I find a writing coach for ideas that inspire, criticism that comforts, and round the clock availability?

Right here on this vera blog, me thinks.

So here’s the deal, kids: I’m going to give a few ideas a whirl, and I’m going to tag them under the category of “Writing Project”, and you’re going to provide comments with likes and dislikes and maybe even throw some ideas my way about subjects/topics/locales from my past that I should tackle and in the end I’m going to stick my neck out and do something with what I learn during our adventure. What that looks like ideally is travel writer, but what it will look like in actuality is a place only you and I can find together.

Are you up for it?

I can’t see “drought” and not think “draught“.

Mmmm. Draught.

I’m going to hippie hell.

We’re waiting for the World Series to start and I”m suffocating my wowIcouldn’tgiveashitness with a brownie and a tall glass of ironically fat free milk.

We’re snuggled on the couch in the media room with Grayson passed out on The Mc’s lap and Amber in the hall plotting to destroy us with regurgitated food piles when I smell wax. Wait. Not wax. Plastic – which triggers the memory of trying to burn down the house when I was making breakfast for my seester and I forgot about the candle I lit in my bedroom and…well..that’s not important here. What’s important is that after having melted plastic splash on my face at fifteen, it’s an odor permanently ingrained in my snout history.

I run down the hall and the stairs and swoosh into the kitchen with my plate still in hand and stand in front of the dishwasher with my nostrils flaring. I’d started it twenty minutes prior and it wasn’t making any noise (oh PS please don’t tell the drought police?) and I stood in front of it waiting for goo to spill onto the floor or a gremlin to pop out and ask what I’d like to drink or something other than the big fat nothing that was happening.

Maybe the heater is on? I open it and find that yeah it is, and there’s water in the bottom…and after two more tests and two more passes I go back up stairs and tell The Mc to listen for the dishwasher.

We bicker for a minute over my tendency to prematurely unload and he says “you know I’ve been worried about that”. I ask why and he says “because I got a recall notice, it was on my list of things to do last week”.

Like you, I was curious as to what – specifically – it was for. You know, because it might be pertinent.

“The heating coil.”

Of course it is.