P@@P my stepdaughter says...

"Daddy says can you bring him the bigger screw-up driver please."


<re: Justin Bieber being too old to be her boyfriend> "I know. When I'm a teenager he'll be an adult, and when I'm an adult he'll be even older, and when I'm even older, he'll be dead!"

"Nan is afraid of dogs, but she would like mine. Except I wouldn't let her near Ace. He bit my vagina yesterday!"

The Hunger Games

By D Sharon Pruitt [CC-BY-2.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

It hurts. The movie - The Hunger Games - if you watch it, it hurts. I've been home for about an hour, and I'm still zombie-like, stunned, trying to find my numb place. I suspect Tristan feels it too. We've spoken only a handful of sentences since we left the theater. Something dark, palpable, heavy. It weighs on us, that which words cannot transmute to air. I shy from the cliff of tears, the inevitable tumble of pain.

My mother tells me I just feel things more strongly than others do. I can't speak for others; thus I can't know if there is truth to the latter. But as for the former, it is one of the deepest truths I know about myself.

I. Feel things. More. Strongly. 

Springy-Dipping

Photo by; Darkone [CC BY-SA 2.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)],
via Wikimedia Commons

No! It's way too damn cold out here.

It's Spring now, remember?

It may be the first day of spring, but it's maybe 40 degrees out here at best, and I'm wearing my huge winter coat.

I know, you're ridiculous, the mild North Carolina winters have made you soft. Totally too warm to warrant that coat.

The water's bound to be even colder. We'll freeze to death. Plus the sound is dirty. Storm water, sewer overflow, the signs that recommend not putting your head under? We could get a skin-eating infection and die.

Crap Your Legislator Says

Part of the ongoing saga of Mrs. Awj Goes to Frankfort....

***

Representative X: "You know why crime rates are so much lower in Europe? Because they have real consequences. They don't have kids doing all these drugs because in the Netherlands they hang you for drug offenses."

Riiiight....and by right I mean you're an f*ing moron. Just to be sure, I checked and (a) the Netherlands banished capital punishment from their criminal laws over 130 years ago, and (b) Amsterdam. You just made Dubya look smarter by comparison. *facepalm*

***

Compost Happens...Change Does Too

By ExplicitImplicity at en.wikipedia (flickr/
Transferred from en.wikipedia) [CC-BY-2.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
from Wikimedia Commons

Read the first two installments here: Compost Happens...I Hope and Compost Happens...Of Course!

***

In 2010, having lived and worked in five national parks from sea to shining sea, I returned to Mammoth Cave at long last. The guide force was still the same family I knew and loved – equal parts endearing and exasperating. But left to their own devices for five years without my outbursts, they'd changed all by themselves. 

Compost Happens...Of Course!

By alexkon from Jerusalem, Israel (Flickr) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], 
Catchvia Wikimedia Commons

Catch the beginning here: Compost Happens...I Hope

***

So I added too much newspaper, water, and yeast, too many nuked-and-frozen banana peels, and too little soil. And in less than a week's time, I'd become the world's most successful indoor farmer. Of gnats, that is. I fished out and trashed the banana peels, tried to rearrange and dry out the bins a bit, and made approximately five thousand fruit-fly traps. At two weeks, the feeding frenzy finally commenced! Tragically, not of the worms, but on the worms. My poor little wriggly babies. The damn fruit flies had laid eggs in my compost bin and were literally eating my invertebrate farm animals alive! Noooooooooo!!! It was the most disgusting thing ever.

Compost Happens...I Hope

By Red58bill (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0
(www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

My second summer working and living at Mammoth Cave National Park, I decided it was time to walk the talk. If I was going to encourage visitors to be stewards of the Earth, it was time for me to start being a better one myself. Recycling and using less A/C was not enough. I was going to start composting.

My co-workers' number one suggestion was: “Throw it out in the woods. The varmints 'll compost it fer ya.”

1,000!

Off on a Tan(JEN)t passed the 1,000 pageviews milestone today. Yay! Thanks for following along!

A Week at the Y

I joined the YMCA in January because they have yoga classes and, more importantly, their promotional offer to waive the one-time join fee was just days from expiring. How could I not join and let such a great deal go to waste? Now two months later, the Christmas money I'm using to cover the monthly dues is almost gone, and I might be fatter than when I started. This is likely because when I exercise, I eat. (Case in point: I went to two yoga classes back to back this morning, and just followed them up with tea and red velvet cake at the coffee shop before starting this post.) And if I added up the number of times I've actually gone to the Y, I'd discover that I've only done a week's worth of exercise in two months. My willpower and motivation are awesome. And by awesome, I mean completely awful. But because I'm uber-judgmental, these handful of classes have been humorous, humbling, and healing.

The Truth

Having tried in vain since November to change it, or at least avoid it, I must now swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth:

I don't like being a stepmom.