Zeus

A girl should probably finish a book before reviewing it, but I’m going to tell you right now that I’m totally digging Zeus by Tom Stone.  It’s both a personal and historical biography of the god and I just adore the way that Stone manages to straddle the line between treating the stories with reverance and making sure that his audience understands the history that informs the stories.

He does an excellent job, I think, of explaining how the Proto-Indo-European sky god, Dieus, finds his continuation through Zeus and, if you look carefully at Dieus (sometimes called something like Dyaus Fater or Dyaus Pater) you can see how we continue to invoke some memory of him when we call on the gods Zeus, Jupiter, and Tyr.

I often wonder about that–when many different names refer to the same god and when they refer to different gods.  I’m prepared to believe that Gotan, Wodan, Odin and Othinn are all the same god under slightly different names.  And maybe I’m okay with believing that Jupiter and Zeus are two expressions of the same god.  But I’m not so ready to believe that Jupiter and Zeus and Tyr are.  Even though I’m perfectly fine with believing that they are indeed continuations of the same god.

A theory we’ve discussed before for why the northern gods are so interested in the lives of humans is that their experience of time is much differen than ours.  For them, the present, the past, and the future are all jumbled together in some way we don’t understand.  Baldar, for instance, is dead and not yet dead and not yet even born.  Loki is Odin’s blood brother.  Loki has already betrayed the gods. The world is ending and it is just beginning.

But we experience time linearly.  We have a past, a present, and a future and because of this, we can do something that the gods cannot.  We can change the future.

Which means that the only possibility the gods have for change comes through us.  That’s their stake in us.  We bring change into their world through bringing change into our own.

That is, I think, part of the lifecycle of the gods that we don’t quite get, steeped as we are in the mythology of a god who clearly changes but claims he doesn’t.  But this is how gods reproduce and pass along their wisdom, through the change people make in the heavens.

For thousands of years, Zeus didn’t have a body.  And then we gave him one.  And then we relegated him to myth.  And then folks came to admit that they believed those myths were true.  And so he returned.  And so on and so on.

Anyway, it’s a great bookand I’m really enjoying it.

Happy Day

Well, Massachusetts let gay people get married and the world didn’t end, but maybe that’s just because it wasn’t a big enough state.  But now, one in ten Americans lives in a place where gay people can get married.  Surely, two people who love each other being able to make a legal committment to each other and enjoy the protection of the law is a cause for great concern and thus must surely bring about the wrath of someone.

Starting just about now.

Or now.

Um, right now.

Okay, now.

Anything?

Hmm. 

Anyway, I tease, but I really do think it’s nice.  Congratulations, Californians.

Here’s to hoping we’ll see the rest of the country go your way soon.

BREAKING NEWS! White Man Proud of Country!

When you hang around the blogosphere a while, you begin to suspect certain things about people.  I am convinced, as you know, that Nate the Pan-Galactic Blogger Blaster is an undercover FBI agent.  And I grow more and more convinced that Bill Hobbs is a creation of The Onion.

Mmm. Here, We Eat Dirt and We Like It

Today the TNGOP is urging radio stations across the state to play “patriotic” music in order to show Michelle Obama how much Tennessee loves America, unlike Michelle Obama, who hates America so much she’s married to a U.S. senator.  Because, of course, that’ll learn her.

On the one hand, I have to admit, I love this stuff, watching Hobbs act like some two-bit hack blogger.  On the other hand, it’s kind of embarrassing to watch Hobbs acting like some two-bit hack blogger now that he’s got this big important political job.

I mean, please.  Is this their argument?  Don’t vote for Obama, his wife’s not grateful enough?

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Why You Should Buy a House with Kathy T., Even if You Don’t Need One

She has snacks!  She piles you and your loved ones in her car and gives you snacks!  America, if there’s anything more pleasant than driving around town, munching on snacks, and looking at houses, I can’t think of what it is.

And I can’t think of what it is because I’m a little fried after a day of driving around town, munching on snacks, and looking at houses.

We must have looked at nearly twenty houses and by the end, we were just aimlessly circling blocks because those blocks contained young, shirtless, sports-playing men playing sports without their shirts on.  We were having profound philosophical discussions about how, if you had to live in a neighborhood with a clear gang problem in a house right next door to an active crack house (I should point out that this is my typification of the neighborhood, not Kathy’s), would you want to live in the neighborhood with the glistening, muscular, shirtless young men playing basketball or the glistening, muscular, shirtless young men playing soccer?

I, myself, lean towards the soccer players, because they have such nice butts.  Still, to each their own.

The Butcher brought a camera to take pictures of the houses.  I now have a camera full of pictures of the Nashville skyline and snails.

Anyway, it was a good day, but it was kind of a bust.  We saw some houses that had been rehabbed, but had floors so soft and rolling I was a little afraid we might fall through from just the weight of the three of us.  We saw some homes in neighborhoods so sketchy I didn’t want to get out of the car.  We saw rehabbed homes that looked like they’d been rehabilitated by guys on acid, with cabinets that didn’t line up and counter tops that seemed to have come from other houses and ceilings in one room lower than ceilings in another.  And I can’t even begin to tell you how many “two bedroom” homes are counting on you not minding that one of the bedrooms has two doors because it’s basically also functioning as a hallway or how many “three bedroom” places are counting the room they’ve converted from the garage with a door to the outside as a bedroom.  Is there high demand for having a door to the outside in your bedroom?

And, oh, the tiny kitchens.  The teeny tiny kitchens, without dishwashers.  And the rooms added on by just enclosing porches or garages or whatever.

We saw a lot of houses that, if put in the hands of a good rehabber, could be amazing places to live, but, of course, we don’t have those skills or the money to pay someone else to do it.

I think we’re going to have to broaden our search.

You Mean, It’s not All Wine and Roses After the Illegals Go Home?!

I’m supposed to be in Inglewood in an hour and I’m not even in the shower yet (the Butcher’s not even up).  So, I leave you with this post from elle, phd about how employers calling ICE in is not about protecting hard working Americans, but about a larger strategy of intimidating the work force.

Lovely.

Anyway, this is some crucial reading.

The F*** You Factor

Everybody’s talking about why Obama can’t win Appalachia and the reasons seem to range from David Oatney’s elitist diatribe against elitism (I think, though I could be wrong, with his use of “effete” and while at the same time bragging about his own family, that he’s not opposed to elitism, he just doesn’t like the soft, almost-”faggy” kind) in which he claims that Obama can’t win in Appalachia because his supporters are pompous jerks who think they’re better than the “regular folks” from Appalachia.

Of course, this makes no sense because if there’s one group that everybody makes fun of with impunity and who almost everybody else thinks is a bunch of inbred idiots running around raping tourists and marrying their cousins all while listening to the dulcet strains of NASCAR, it’s folks from Appalachia.  If Appalachians want to decline to vote for people who look down their noses at them, they are left with only voting for old school country musicians and I don’t recall Ralph Stanley running for President this year, though the libertarians keep switching candidates so I just could have missed it.

Then Josh Marshall chimes in with his theory that the folks in Appalachia just don’t like black people because they are violent, self-reliant ignoramuses who see black folks as a symbol of the inegalitarian stratified slave-holding coastal monied South they could not be a part of.

This also makes little sense for a lot of reasons but the main one is that THERE ARE AND HAVE BEEN BLACK PEOPLE LIVING IN APPALACHIA.  Where do you think the “tri” in tri-racial isolates comes from?  White, indigenous, and Martian?

Now, I’m not any smarter than David Oatney or Josh Marshall so I’m probably not going to come up with any better reason why Appalachians aren’t voting for Obama than they are, but this being the internet and me being me, I’m going to give it a try.

I think that Appalachians aren’t voting for Obama because fuck him.

Why?

I’m sure for some folks it’s because he’s black.  And for some folks because he’s a secret Muslim.  And for some folks because he’s got book-learning.  Whatever.  It doesn’t matter.  Just fuck him.

But mainly, it’s because of the audacity of hope, I think.

When you are a group of people who has repeatedly been kicked in the teeth every time you turned your face to the sun to enjoy just a sliver of beauty, when you have given generations of your family to work under mountains struggling to carve coal out of rocks to set aside a little for your family to do a little better only to have the coal companies up and leave town, when you bring industry to your community only to find them poisoning your water and putting their slushy garbage in ponds above your schools, when your kids are disproportionately the ones who fight and die in wars, when the only thing the people around you want to do is escape, either through fleeing to the cities or through drinking or drugs, when any fool with a Bible can call himself pastor and encourage you to pick up snakes and drink poison, what’s hope?

It’s got to seem like so much bullshit.

So, fuck him.

I think what Oatney won’t admit (but is hinting at) and what Marshall can’t understand is that asking people to have hope when there is so little reason for it is, yes, inspiring to some, but to others?

To others it sounds like just another in a long line of sweet talking folks making a lot of promises that, if you dare to put your faith in them, will bite you in the ass as hard as it can.

I mean, come on.  We all know these folks aren’t so much for Clinton as they are against Obama, because we know they don’t normally like Clinton.  She’s still the same old castrating she-devil feminist bitch who can’t keep her man at home they’ve always hated and I just can’t believe they’ve suddenly discovered that she’s just a person and not the symbol of all that’s wrong with America that she used to be.

I think it’s just that what she represents is, to the folks in Appalachia, much less potentially painful for them than Obama, and so fuck him, they’re throwing their lot in with her.

The Nashvillest

So, I went to check out The Nashvillest because both Newscoma and Chris Wage recommended it (and I do everything Newscoma and Chris Wage both recommend.  That’s how I ended up with this giant back tattoo that says “Newscoma and Chris Wage” in Latin.  Or so they say.  I don’t know Latin, so I don’t really know.  I’m hoping it says that, anyway.) and I cannot second their recommendation enough.

I didn’t know Nashville lacked such a thing, but now that I see it, I love it.

Ugh, I’m Full and a Little Sad

Today I saw a house on line so cute I had to drive over and eat it up.  Just put it in my mouth and chomp, chomp, chomp.  So, I drove over to check it out and it has no yard!  None at all.  Six and a half blades of grass attempt to scatter themselves about just trying to give it a good show, but there’s nothing.  It’s like half a lot or something.  I don’t know.  I’m just crushed.

I don’t need a big lot or anything, but I must be able to at least have a back yard that is bigger than me.

I wonder if it would be feasible to buy a lot and steal the house and put it on the lot I bought.

I am Too Immature for My Job

Today, I received an email containing the answer to my quandary about how one encapsulates both Don Quixote and The Matrix in one image.

And let’s just say that, while there’s nothing specifically untoward about the picture of the young man*, I don’t believe I’ve ever been so scandalized by the hint of a little hair.

You know…

Down there.

———-

*The photos on this page are cropped but still may not be safe for work unless you’re used to shouting “Oh my!” unbidden at your desk.

Also, I don’t know Spanish, so there may be something scandalous and inappropriate written on the page I’m linking to, but let’s assume that it’s just what it looks like, a bunch of artists farting around in front of a most post-modern Cervantes.

Length or Width?

Bob Tuke is walking across Tennessee.

To prove something. I’m unclear as to what, other than that he’s a dumbass.

We used to ask my Grandma A. to tell us about the good ole days and she would say “I had to go around every morning and collect everyone’s chamber pots and clean them out. It took us all day to cook dinner. And we had it good. You’ll never convince me that a world full of toilets and microwaves is somehow worse than when I grew up.”

I feel that way about Bob Tuke’s gambit. Rather than walking across Tennessee, why don’t you drive an hour, stop, and spend the time you would have spent walking actually talking and listening to folks and their concerns? Enjoy the technology previous generations of Tennesseans brought to us.

This just reminds me of what strikes me as not quite right about Tuke.  He’s a nice guy and he means well, but he just doesn’t quite get it, I don’t think.

Don’t try to gimmick me into believing that you’re some kind of regular joe.  Just be one.

What’s Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander

It’s funny to watch your ideological opponants come around to “discovering” that what you’ve been saying all along is true.

Bill Hobbs, for instance, says:

The first goal of a bureaucracy is self-preservation of the bureaucracy, and the best tools to achieve that goal are expanding the size and scope of the bureaucracy and extending its reach further and further into more and more people’s lives.

Was he talking about the TNGOP’s efforts to extend the government’s reach into my vagina?  No, of course not.  But isn’t it funny to see these folks who are constantly braying for the government to intrude into the my personal decisions right here in this state moaning about the government of another state intruding into those people’s personal decisions?

And then, here’s Ben Cunningham trying to sound the alarm about how more men are losing jobs than women (a kind of gendered recession, if you will). To which I ask, “Oh, excuse me, isn’t that how your beloved free market works?  Here are a bunch of overeducated folks who are still paid less than this group of undereducated folks for bullshit reasons we’ve been complaining about since the 70s and earlier and your feelings are hurt that the cheap educated labor is in higher demand than the expensive uneducated labor?  Well, then, sweetie, maybe you should have fought harder for us to be paid the same as you.  Sucks when the uneven playing field backfires on you, doesn’t it?”

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic.  I am.

It’s just that we’ve been saying for a long time that these mindsets are going to bite us all in the ass and the conservatives have been acting as if, as long as what’s happening doesn’t affect them, it’s okay.

And, frankly, it’s not okay.

(See, Newscoma for more about the not-okay-ness of our current situation.  Please dwell upon these sentences: “We are sharing food at the office. Some folks don’t eat if we don’t so we do.”  And let me make it clear what you are reading here.  Working people cannot afford to eat and buy gas.  Rex Tillerson, who runs Exxon Moble makes over four million dollars a year.  Just saying.)

An Open Letter to Engineers who Deal with Water

Dear Engineers,

I just read this post by Redneck Mother, which you should read, too.

I’ll wait here.

Here’s my question.  Could New Orleans have a safer life, granted, as a smaller city, if the main branch of the Mississippi didn’t run through it?

It’s clear that the river is trying to flip main channels and run to the Gulf through the Atchafalaya River.  At this point, why are we stopping it?  Doesn’t it seem more reasonable to tell people right now, “Hey, the river’s coming and we can’t stop it.  Yes, voluntarily giving up your towns (and granted we will lose some towns) is going to be rough.  But a lot less rough that what will happen when the river finds its way around what we’ve done.”  And this seems to me like it would take a lot of the strain off the levees in New Orleans along the river.

I don’t know.  Clearly, there are some holes in my reasoning.

But I’m just curious as to why we don’t let the river do what rivers do, especially since artificially keeping it from doing that seems to be exacerbating a problem.

Curiously,

Aunt B.

 

An Open Letter to You Gun Nuts

Dear Gun Nuts,

As you know, I read you faithfully, even though I disagree with just about everything you say (except when Say Uncle says kind things about me; I think we both know I agree with saying nice things about me) and I have come to learn some important things.

One, treat every gun as if it is loaded.

Two, don’t point at anything you don’t want to shoot.

Three, keep your finger off the trigger unless you are fixing to shoot something in the next second.

Four, the stuff that comes out of a barrel of a gun can kill you by driving pieces of metal into you.  It does this by being propelled by an explosion cause by gunpowder.

Five, things can still be dangerous, years after being made, hence the trouble with leaving, say, landmines around.

I have come to accept these five things as Truth. (Ha, and it looks as if y’all have trained me well in your rules, even though I didn’t know they were actual rules.)

So, I find it hard to make sense of the story of poor Sam White.  Why would he have been trying to “restore” something he surely should have called the bomb squad in to deal with?

Confusedly,

Aunt B.

May I Brag On My Dad a Little Bit?

Usually, a girl gets one present a year from her folks for her birthday.  This year, apparently, my dad is doing the purchasing, since he’s got nothing else to do but sit around the house and heal up (well, and get ready to retire, but so far that seems to consist of him saying “You want to fight about what at which board meeting?  Let’s schedule that for June 23.  Did I mention my last day is June 21?  Oh, hi, yes, you want to piss and moan about what at which gathering? How’s June 20 work for you?  Did I mention I can’t retire on the 21st because that’s our wedding anniversary?  I must make the 19th my last day.”

Mom said something recently about the 8th being his last day.  I would just point out that, as you Methodists surely know, he’s supposed to stick it out until Moving Day that first week in July.

God, that cracks me up.).

Anyway, so my birthday isn’t even until next week (which I am celebrating by attending the International Country Music Conference, with a big black marker and rebranding it the International Aunt B. Conference, just letting you participants know ahead of time that I expect your papers to somehow reflect the new theme of the conference), but the presents have already started to roll in from my dad.  First, there was the gold earrings I needed, but didn’t remember telling him about–gold hoops with actual gold posts, so that they wouldn’t turn my ears green.

And then… And then… My dad bought me black wool yarn so that I could make myself a witch’s hat.  He bought me a set of crochet hooks in ascending sizes so that I can stop making everything with my awesome K hook. 

And today I got Tom Stone’s biography of Zeus.

I about fell over.  Frankly, it shocked me even more than him using “gay” in a non-perjorative way and that was so shocking that the Butcher and I were still mulling it over this weekend.

The BBC’s Robin Hood

I have to confess that I cannot watch that show.

And here’s why.  This, my friends, is the hero of the show.  And this is supposed to be the guy we hate.  But I ask you, my friends, who can believe it would be such a horrible fate for Maid Marion to end up with him?  And there’s no Roger Miller.  You could make do missing one or the other, but not both.

My Happy Thoughts

Today, the dog was laying in the sun, all curled up with her snout pointed at me and I had to stop what I was doing and lay down with her, curled like two c’s, there in the warmest spot in the house.

Every day, I feel very lucky to have her and I am embarrassed at how much I thought my parents taking her in was a mistake.  I mean, yes, it was a mistake and yet, it has unfolded into one of my greatest fortunes.

I think about that in terms of y’all.  When I first started blogging, I was a lonely, weird, introverted, uncomfortable mess who lived in Nashville, but not really in Nashville and thanks to you, I’m now a happy, weird mess who’s going to buy a house!

I don’t know.  It’s hard for me to say how much it means to me to have you as my community.  It sounds so cheesy and yet where else can a person like me go and ask a question like “what should I be on the look out for?” and get such damn good answers, thoughtful responses, and stuff?

Thanks so much, you guys.

Really, if I ever see you napping in a sunny spot, expect me to snuggle up next to you and rub your nose and tell you what good readers you are and how happy you make me.

Misheard Lyrics Better Than the Right Ones

Yesterday, we were driving around listening to this group the Butcher likes, which I have never heard of (he told me not to admit this to you, because, according to him, it will give you the impression that I have been living in a cave… Ooo, speaking of caves, I wonder if the old Demonbreun place is available?), My Morning Jacket and I thought we were listening to a song with the lyrics “Another Heartbreak for Breakfast” and I was like “Wow, that’s really powerful” but no, it was something else, not that great.

Which reminds me that when the Boston contingency was going to Graceland, I was reading up on Paul Simon’s lyrics to the applicable song and it turns out that it is “As if I didn’t know that, as if I didn’t know my own bed.”

What?!

I have, all these years, heard that as “As if I didn’t know that, as if I didn’t know my own heart,” which, clearly, you can see, is a million times better.

In fact, now that I think about that, you could probably combine those two snippets into a song that would make folks cry just to hear it.

Reproductive Justice

I told the Archcrone that I would blog about reproductive freedom issues today but I got busy doing other things.  I do, however, want to point you to her post and to Rachel’s post.  Reading them together gives you a pretty scary picture of where we are as a state.  For instance, in Rachel’s post, we learn that folks are all upset about Planned Parenthood having a fund-raiser for Mother’s Day.  In the Archcrone’s post, we learn that there are 19 counties in Tennessee with no ob/gyn.  Our infant mortality rate in 2004 was 8.6 per thousand births and we don’t even track pregnancy-related complications that kill the mother.

But here’s the thing I cannot stop thinking about: this report that the Archcrone links to.  In 2006 just over one in ten girls between the ages of 10 and 17 in the state of Tennessee gave birth (3552 births or 11%) but almost 14% (4378) of girls between the ages of 10 and 17 were pregnant.  One hundred and twenty of those girls were younger than 14.  In Davidson county, there were twenty of these girls.  In Shelby county, there were sixty-two.

I will repeat that.  In 2006, there were 120 girls younger than 14 in Tennessee who were pregnant.  Twenty of those girls came from here.  Sixty-two came from Shelby county.

I was reading the Helter Shelter archives over at the Scene and the dude said something about how the trouble with contractors from Tennessee is that, like all Tennesseans, they have an independent streak a mile wide and, if they don’t know something, they’ll just make it up.

I keep thinking about that, from a lot of angles, when I look at trying to figure out how we might fix this stuff.  I mean, when you think that thirteen percent of teenage girls were pregnant in 2006 and that that’s an improvement over where we were ten years ago when the rate was one in five or back in 1990, when it was over one in four (and if you want to think about something scary, think about how the pregnant teenage girls in 2006 are, in part, the daughters of the pregnant girls from 1990, which means, women my age becoming grandmothers), how can you not despair when you think about them trying to make a better life for their families?

It’s just a fact: if an individual woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body, she cannot be free.  A woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body if she is not taught about her body and how it works.  A woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body if she does not have access to the healthcare she needs when she needs it. And a woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body if she is being preyed on by evil jackasses (dudes who fuck 11 year olds).

And if a woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body, she is severely hampered in her abilities to achieve economic independence and security.  I mean, if she’s not in control of herself, how can we even talk about economic independence?

I don’t know.  I’m tired and I’m angry at child-fuckers and I’m so damn tired of this state playing “It’s all about saving the babies” when there are at least a hundred living breathing little girls every year who needed saving from the fuckers who exploited them and knocked them up and we didn’t do jack shit for them.

I know, I know, it’s so much easier to love an ideal, to love the little babies in your imagination, all pure and innocent and deserving, and much less easy to go to the mat for actual people who frequently let you down.  And so we all get in our vehicles and drive through the streets of Knoxville mourning our great tragedy while meanwhile we revel in our abstinence only education, we glory in our party bunkers while family services go under funded, and so on and so on.

But hey, whatever.

Happy mother’s day, y’all.

May next year, the number of children joining the ranks of mother continue to decline.

After a While, It’s Hard to Say Which is Which

After a while, the houses all start to run together.  The street names–Greenwood, Woodlawn, Greenland, Riverwood, Creekwood, Woodwood, Woodforest, Forestwood, Forestforest, Forestlawn, Lawndale, Dalewood, Woodgreen, Greenwood–all seem to come full circle after a while.  Did we drive down this street already?  Did we look at that house already?

If we bought that house, could we fix it with a coat of paint?  Is that house too close to Briley Parkway and the new Home Depot or will that be a selling point in the future?  Sure, we could walk to FUBAR from here but is it safe to walk to FUBAR from here?  Why is that house surrounded by a fence with barbed wire at the top pointing inwards?  Is tinfoil really a good substitute for blinds? If you’re living on a block with a $500,000 110 year old house on it, isn’t that house always the burglar magnet?

It’s frazzling, to put it mildly.  I’m waffling between being excited and being a little overwhelmed.

In other news, we finally have a new neighbor.  He seems nice, but also frazzled.  His cat ran away when he tried to put him in the house.  We tried to make him feel like there’s a chance the cat will be back.  I hope so anyway.  Losing your cat like that is rough.

My Secret Identity

Oh, I forgot to tell you the weirdest, funniest part of this whole thing so far.  So, I’m talking on the phone with the banker, going over my credit report and she’s asking me about this charge and about that charge and there, on my credit report, is a loan of my mom’s and my mom’s Discover card (thank goodness my mom is also all about the timely bill paying).

But I explain that, because my mom co-signed on my first car loan and because she’s Betty [Our Last Name] and I’m Betsy [Our Last Name], our credit has been entangled for almost all of my adult life, though we keep repeatedly going to the credit bureaus and saying “This is her stuff” “This is mine” and they keep claiming to have it straight, this stuff still keeps popping up.

And then she says, “Oh, well, that’s probably because this credit bureau has you listed as aka Betty with this different social security number.”

Like I’m sometimes running around the world pretending to be a sixty year old woman!

Maybe my mom is trying to pass on her whole identity to me, as is rumored Marie Laveau did, so as to seem somewhat immortal or at least unnaturally long-lived.

It’s funny to me, too, because we find ourselves at similar life stages at the moment as well.  She and my dad are also going to be buying a house in the next few years and are going to be moving at the end of June out of a parsonage and into secular housing.  They’re very excited about the house that they’re renting until my mom retires.  They sent me pictures of it last night.  It’s very cute.

You know, my mom did have a run-in with Marie Laveau.  Do you all remember that?  When we went to New Orleans that summer and we took the cemetery tour?  Remember how my mom had those spots in her lungs and the doctors didn’t know what they were?  And how, there we were, walking through this concrete city of the dead in the hundred degree heat and my mom leans against this tomb, just to get some respite from the sun, and when she pulls away from the tomb, there are three red crosses for wishes granted, transferred from the tomb to the back of her white shirt.  And then we moved to the front of the tomb only to learn that it was the final resting place of Madam Laveau.

My mom, of course, is not one to wonder at stuff like that.

But I am.

Good Morning

I stayed up way too late last night looking at houses on Realtracs and I got up way too early this morning because I couldn’t sleep wanting to look at houses on Realtracs.

I’m busy compiling a list of things I do and don’t want in a house.

And now, dear readers, I ask, if I were sitting at your kitchen table with you right now, sharing a cup of coffee, what advice about homebuying would you have for me?

The Thing We’re not Talking About

The Gift Giver says:

One’s own house is best, though small it may be;
each man is master at home;
though he have but two goats and a bark-thatched hut
’tis better than craving a boon.

And I, my friends, am going to hang that in my house, when I find one, which I can, because I have “gorgeous credit” and I have been preapproved for a loan.  And I think I can do a little better than a bark-thatched hut.

Help Me, My Brainy Readers!

What is a word that means “The Study of Letter Writing”?

Epistolism?

Help!

Songs About Places You Know

One thing that tickles me a great deal about living in Nashville is that it’s like a giant small town.  Eventually, you feel like you know someone who knows someone who knows the person you’ve just met and you start to realize that the folks at Wendy’s recognize your voice when you hit the drive-thru.

The other thing that tickles me is that I now live someplace that is also a part of the cultural imagination. I was listening to Steve Earle this morning and thinking “Hmm, I could drive down Lewis Street.”

Eh, I got nothing.  I’m the least fun girl when I’m stressed.

I’m distracted and blah.  Sarcastro dropped off a big bag of yarn from his mom this morning.  It’s beautiful.

That’s all I’ve got.