Quotes Worth Repeating

"I's tryin' to be good and didn't get me a cookie."
-Woman leaving Sidamo coffee house. She was a little overweight and may or may not have been wearing a hair net. You may have had to be there for this one, but it was kinda hilarious. 


"That's the third time in a row that mo fo's gone and locked itself on me!"
-Man referring to his car in the alley outside my house. I feel like this is a time when reading your owner's manual definitely comes in handy.


"When me and you gonna go see a movie?"
-Davino, one of the hoodies that hangs outside my house
"Umm, probably never."
-My response, not the least of which was due to the fact that he'd just finished telling me about his boil ("BAWL. I had a bawl, you know what dat is?"), how he'd gone to the hospital to have it operated on, how it had then gotten all infected and started oozing nasty stuff, but not to worry, it was better.
"Oh it's like dat huh?" -Davino
"It is like that." - Me 

ROOTS

For those of you expecting a treatise on Kunta Kinte, I am sorry to disappoint. Contrary to starting on dusty African soil, my roots took hold in a small country town in lower North Carolina. My great grandmother Lucy Hipps had twelve children: she popped out six, took a five year break, then popped out six more. If I never knew anything else about the woman, that fact alone would be enough for me to give her mad props. Of these, there were ten boys and two girls, and at least until I reached high school, all of them were still living. They, of course, all went on to get married and have their own kids, which, if one does the math, is already an insanely large dose of relatives. My Grampa's one of the original boys and therein lies my tie to this family circus.

The Hipps have a website, and the other day, I made the mistake of asking my mother for her log-in info so I could visit it. It appears the Hipps have taken it upon themselves to singlehandedly repopulate the Western Hemisphere. Every five minutes, there was a newsflash that someone else was having a baby, and while I know the original twelve, their children, and can even name half of the great-grandkids (of which I am one), we are now reaching epic proportions. Names are being flung around the family site like confetti, and only about 25% of them still have Hipps somewhere in the mix. People are marrying Joneses, Grahams, even Yoshinos, and our numbers passed into the hundreds some time ago. Needless to say, I am not yet contributing to this melee, although my brother has already treacherously jumped on the bandwagon by producing what I'm convinced is the world's cutest fat baby (ah BOO BOO), but if we're not careful (and we won't be), the annual Hipps Family Reunion is going to turn into the Hipps Family Conference, with 65% of the participants being under the age of 16. Going to restaurants is comical: Hipps, party of 2,000. Even outside of your standard childbirth, people are divorcing, re-marrying, absorbing pre-fabricated other families, adopting, what have you, and our family tree has rapidly become a family shrub. Add to that the twelve strains of quirky that we've inherited from the original gangstas, get us all together, and it really is a travelling circus, the biggest you've ever seen. We've already started doing in-house variety shows, we put on our own golf tournament (complete with trophies and award ceremony), one of my great uncles is infamous for conducting illegal tours of private property (it's for the children!), and at least two of the brothers have been professional clowns, my Grampa included. EGAD. Taking a stroll through my bloodlines gets weirder every day.

applicable quote of the day

"You get tired of thinking about yourself all the time when you're a writer... It gets wearisome, all the bellyaching and feeling and thinking about the world and how you interact with it." - Donald Miller

Amen to that.

A Healthy Dose of Discontent

I was just walking down the street today, mindin' my own, talkin' to the Moms, when in the middle of our conversation, she makes the very mom-like comment, "well, you're not getting any younger." Wow. Even though I kept rapidly putting one foot in front of the other, because I was late to work again, my world came to a screeching halt. Seriously. I could almost hear the squealing of brakes and tires as my somewhat comfortable little existence braked so fast my chest hurt from the seatbelt. Here I am cruising along, thinking I'm clever at having manufactured my life in such a way that I only work part-time, sleep till noon, and often have more free time than I know what to do with (oh wait, I think I'll just sleep some more), and then she has to go and say something like that, pouring salt in the ever growing wound who's scab I began picking at a couple of weeks ago. It's all I've been able to think about these days, especially since my birthday is creeping up with all the leisure of a speed locomotive.

I used to love my birthday. I still declare March 1 as the day when I absolutely refuse to do anything I don't want to do. Yet now, it brings with it all these dismal thoughts of the massive amounts of time that have already passed, the scarce minutes remaining in what people term my "youth," and an immense dissatisfaction with my current path of choice. Why am I not riding a gondola in Italy right now? Why does my life feel like anything but an adventure and why are people giving me books to read whose sole intent and purpose is to make us question the completely uninteresting aspects of our lives? I can't handle much more of this. It's overwhelming me to the point of not being able to do much about it save finding some series/movie to watch online that completely numbs my mind to the havoc being wreaked upon it by this debilitating discontent. I could use my own dose of radical vision, instead of hearing church vision talked about so much with all this excitement about things that I couldn't feel more removed from. I. Just. Don't. Feel. It. My apathy seems unable to be more inopportune. Can I just stop thinking for once in my life about being a person who chose differently?

Day 6

Six days. Six days, my friends, of Washington’s worst blizzard. In addition to near white out conditions, we’re all becoming overly familiar with the people we live with. Whether it’s your roommates, or your family, I think all of us are getting a bit too much quality time. We can’t even get pizza in this mess. One call to the pizza place is answered by hysterical laughter and an “Are you crazy?” when asked if they’re delivering. Needless to say, we’re getting equally familiar with all the leftovers in the fridge, and I’m thisclose to discovering how often I can eat reheated pasta without gagging.

I walk outside and feel like I’m on the set of The Day After Tomorrow, the only exception being that unfortunately Jake Gyllenhaal is not going to pop out of the next snowbank. In fact, any other humans that I do pass in this winter wasteland can only be recognized by the fact that they seem to have arm and leg shapes. Nothing much more than that is distinguishable. We all look like reverse versions of the yeti, dark amebic figures floating along the streets. This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. At several points during the day, I was unsure whether it was still actually snowing or the wind was just blowing everything around in huge annoying gusts that made it nearly impossible to walk without getting it in my face. I lost count of the number of times a snowflake managed to find its way directly into my eyeball. AGH, blink, blink, blink. I think the sense of magic went away the minute the ridiculousness of the literal tons of snow sitting around sank in. They’re calling for more snow on Monday. What the?? When will my world stop resembling Russia? If this is what it’s gonna look like if the polar ice caps melt and all the movies are true, you better start turning off those lights, Peeps, and stop leaving the water running when you’re brushing your teeth. Energy conservation isn’t just for tree huggers anymore.

DC or Siberia?

Even though I’m longing for spring days warm enough to wear flip-flops, another of God’s eighth day creations, I kinda love this wet, fluffy white stuff. It transforms the world outside, hiding all the dirt, putting a halt to the world’s business, forcing people indoors and encasing cars in snowy white tombs along what used to be streets. For once, the earth is quiet. The only noise is the sound of the wind or the soft powdery thud of a falling snow drift. Standing outside, the flakes falling like feathers on my cheeks, I could believe in magic. I half expect a little gnome to come crawling out of his little snow hut, his red pointy hat speckled in white, green velvet shoes leaving pale powdery imprints. Even Dixon is taking part in the magic by making his acting debut as a snow ball, a chilling, yet stirring performance.

I take back what I said about the December blizzard. THIS is the most snow I've ever seen in my life. I even love it when chunks of it are being thrown at me and I'm being shoved into a bank of it by a friend. There's a huge six-year old inside that just wants to run around kicking all the big piles, throwing armfuls of it up into the air, doing cartwheels in the street and making snow angels in blanketed parking lots. Snow does that to you, chasing away concerns even if just for a day or two.

Bittersweet and Lovely

Ya know, I could spend my life sitting in coffeehouses, eating their cookies, drinking their dark, bitter magic in a cup, listening to their trendy art nouveau music and eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. Provided that the conversations aren’t about breast feeding that is. It’s a good thing this whole writing thing is catching on with me, as I can make any of these places my office for the day. I usually commandeer a spot by the window and sit right smack in the middle of a splash of sunshine, a dose of which can usually chase away whatever depressive thoughts I’m entertaining, thoughts I entertain far too often. I think they’re the curse of creative minds. It’s like we think too much, in too much depth, and on too many planes about everything that’s happening around us and to us. Yet I feel this is a blessing as well as a curse. I wonder if it’s because life overwhelms us, the reality of time passing and realizing how transient things are, how brief, and yet also how achingly beautiful.

My favorite quote from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town is at the end when Emily has died and is standing with the stage manager. She asks him “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it... every, every minute?” He responds,  “No. Saints and poets maybe... they do some.” That scares me sometimes, not realizing life while I live it. Often I get busy and too social, and I’m doing so much and filling my time with so many things that before I know it, weeks have passed, months, years, and I find myself not having much with which to mark the passing of time. I don’t take in the moments for what they are; I don’t appreciate that the minutes spent with other people are small, but incredible doses of eternity, for the soul is an eternal thing. I panic sometimes just before sleep. I’ll feel this uncontrollable slide into the future, ache for times past that are now just memories, want to re-live them, widen my eyes, engage my senses and absorb more. It’s what makes life so bittersweet and lovely, I suppose, for the future always holds those moments too. It's the uncertainty that I often find unbearable.