Hello Kitty, Goodbye Kitty

I can't fathom a sadness like this clings without end, because if it did, I can't imagine anyone wanting to undertake it again.

I was in no business to be a pet owner. I was 20. And a full time college student. A full time sorority sister. A full time employee with a full time job. But I was also full of a lot of love too, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at Katie's Pet Depot one block south of Wilshire, and half a mile from UCLA, I'd walk, on my lunch hour, to visit the animals there in the window for adoption. It was soothing. An hour to myself, away from my sort of terror for a boss, and a terror of a world.

When asked if I'm a cat person, I say "I'm whatever my landlord will let me have in an apartment person." And in most places I've lived, those are cats.

I made smalltalk with dogs, and cooed at gerbils, softly petted bunnies in large circular glass enclosures, and talked up one, Sandy, who told me I needed a cat in my life. I hadn't thought I needed one, but she was Sandy, and who was I to tell this Sandy, and her adopted animals, I didn't need them.

They needed me, if anything.

Ok, I said, I'll take this one.

I drove back after work, picked up Sophie, and there we were, at home, pet owner and pet ownee. I was 20 and I'd never had my own pet. I'd had family pets, and if something belonged to me, reported directly to me, it was much more in the shape of a mouse or a frog or a turtle. Sophie was able to show me affection in a way I'd never experienced with Templeton my rat from age 8 through 10, or my mouse, who lived one evening before falling victim to my terribly cunning team of dog and cat. But Sophie was also able to show me, too, I wasn't enough. And after 3 months, she sent me out to find a pet, a companion, a cunning partner, for her.

I had been a pet owner and she a pet ownee for 3 months, so I didn't know how to procure a cat for my cat or a pet for my pet, so I started with the simple: I'd just tell people that's what I wanted to do. Universe, give to me what I ask. Through one coworker, and her mother, and my coworkers mother, and her coworker, came my coworkers mother's coworkers friend, and alas an address, somewhere deep down the 110 in the mountains of Pasadena.

There lived a cat, age unknown, only that she'd been pregnant before age of consent and delivered a litter herself. All living in the outside, mountains, fending for themselves. In a word we've learned never to utter, save for just saying "the c word" her entire litter was eaten by coyotes.

She knew sadness too early, and home, she so desperately needed.

"She likes you!" they said. While I'd come to learn, she liked everyone, that night I took her home, Madi Lynn I named her, and there began a 3 weeks of a mistake, I was sure I had made.

There was hissing, and hiding, and mean looks. "I got her for you, Sophie! Be nice!"

And just as everyone said, just as I was ready to turn around and drive her back up the 110, friends, fast friends they became. This apartment, and each one I had after, also became theirs.

I've always said a pet is the most interesting of friends, because they know you like no one else. They know you at your weakest and most vulnerable, they know you through years and a decade of your life, that you see mirrored back at you.

Your only obligation: take care.

And through college, 7 bosses, 3 jobs and 6 apartments, I tried.
And she, me.

There were these nights I was so full of energy I could not sleep, or days so low I needed love, and we'd turn on the music and dance.
And dance.
and dance.

A project, any project, she was there. She was there to provide absolutely no assistance. She sat on my hand as I wrote away. Attempted to write away. Laundry, a car wash, even a trip down the street to be noisy, she came with.

I slaved away, she rolled in the dirt.

It's in her absence, that I do what has to be typical, split my time with beating myself up, and mourning the loss.

I tried to give her away on more than one occasion.
We didn't get along.
She bossed me around.
If she wanted wet food in the middle of the night, she woke up to tell me.
She looked like a kitten, but she roared like a monster.
It's how she got away with murder.

She liked spicy tuna rolls
and flaming hot cheetos
wet food and dry food and every kind of food food
and on more than three ocassions she'd steal pizza right out of my hand.

So when I saw her Tuesday night, out of the corner of my eye, chatting away on the telephone, her shaking unable to walk, deplete of herself, I knew that emergency care she required. We ruled out kidney failure, and diabetes, hyperthyroid perhaps, but that would require more tests. It wasn't this, but maybe that, there was no way to be sure. She was pumped with IV fluids, and sent home, skinnier, and frailer than I'd ever seen her, in just a day she went from someone I knew, to no one any of us knew.

That night we slept side by side. Her eyes laid open, mine too. When I finally met sleep, she snuck away. I awoke that morning and searched the house. Every time I'd find her she'd find a new place to hide, be by herself, saying to me over and over she was ready to go.

I drove her to the vet.

You have three options, I was told. All of them require many tests, hospitalization, xrays. Poking and prodding galore. But her quality of life was gone. That won't ever return. She's ready to go.

I thought about my 20s, that big ol' chunk of my life, made better by her, if though most of it was me declaring we didn't get along. I couldn't let it be marred by me clinging to an inability to let her go.

She had made her choice. I just had to accept it.

There are things I would have done different. I could have been more patient. Probably not have offered her to every stranger and Jehovah's witness who came to my door. But what I never would have done different is have her as my friend. Or in saying hello, be afraid to say goodbye.

Please Uncover Your Eyes

The LA Times byline for LA Baseball yesterday read -

"You may now uncover your eyes."

I don't proclaim rocket scientist status, and my ACT and SAT score got me firmly in to a state school, but I do know it's generally impossible to read with your eyes while covering them.

When I embarked on my baseball loving life a decade ago, an embarkment foolishly to win the heart of a college aged boy whom caught my eye, I did so as a fan of the Dodgers. I lived in LA, the stadium was close, and he was a fan. I was 21 and that's what you did in the year 2000 when you know as little about life as you can read covering your eyes.

Two and a half years, three apartments, and ninety five arguments that all amounted to one thing - you're the wrong guy - I left that relationship with one mug, two cats, and a brand new hobby.

I had to decide if I liked this team on it's own merits.

My mom had always been a fan of the pro and con list system.
But what if there are so many pros mom, but there's this one con, I mean that you just have to give more value to.

We moved to a weighted pro and con system.

The numbers added up and by thorough accounting, proper vetting and all intelligent due diligence, it said one thing:
You're a Dodger fan.

I wish any of that was actually true, because I had tried one evening to make it mathematical. But love, love is more complicated than an IRS tax form and rocket science.

I loved them. I loved the Dodgers.

So for all of us who fall below the measure of rocket science status, an attempt at an explanation of love does justice to proving us as feeling, thinking beings, smarter than the proverbial smartest.

I sought in cushion of my mid-20s to prove my independence, and proclaim an identity in individuality.

I was now just a baseball fan, I said, one hand on my hip, brows burrowed, sassy shoulders moving to and fro.

I'd also like to pretend any of that is true, but I bought a cute Cubs hat at Lids in Glendale that I wanted to wear to ball games, and I was in law school, so I came up with an airtight argument should anyone ask.

I'm told life is less about seasons and holidays, and marked more on measure of our growth. We're born needing help, and then fight to "do it myself mommy." We grow in to wearing our Minnie Mouse dress to school everyday because we can, and dismiss judgment, until time we care about peer feedback again.

I'd tell you I care about what other people think about me - if you tell me what day and time you'd like to know.

For years spent exerting identity, comes equal years seeking belonging.

Succeeding at these years depends on what side of the coin you cling to.

So 30 years of life, 10 years of a baseball enthusiasm, and one very used up Cubs hat later, I proclaim while reserving all ability to modify at any time in perpetutity,
I'm a Dodger fan.
I'm a Dodger fan more so than a pro and con list,
a pro and con list weighted and given value,
tested over failed relationships,
disappointing season endings,
and a losing start.

But as only a Dodger sportscaster will say, someone with absolutely no objectivity, a home opener is the beginning of your season. And today we won.
So today I uncover my eyes,
forget last week - like you do when you grant forgiveness to those you love,
and say:

It's time for Dodger baseball.

A Place with Promise

I haven't really thought much of heaven. In the same vein as I refuse much to care about the day after the much talked about day in December 2012. If I go, I go. In the meantime I tell people I love them a lot. And besides a childrearing where to open up the box to a gift, I must have had already drafted my first draft of a thank you note (before being allowed to write it on the nice paper), I believe strongly in the thank you note. For the reasons we are all familiar with, etched in concrete in our cliche, it could all be over, and I want people to know I'm really thankful. And I hope they have a great birthday. And I'm sorry for their loss. Because those things can't be said when we leave, and those around us leave, or when we grow distant.

Thank you so much.

So I don't know if it's the being really present in my gratitude of todays gifts, or the writing of cards which keep me and the US Postal Service busy, I forget about heaven. It's somewhat surprising since even at stop lights I like to long at drivers in cars next to me imaging where they work and live, what cereal could be their favorite, whether they're in love and where they bought their sunglasses and what makes them dream.

I can create a story and a visual around a parked car - until I get honked at.

But heaven is a place I don't think of much, to even my own surprise.

Easter and the rise of Christ is a reminder, and death. A death is a reminder.

Even the worst in most animals in better than the best in people. They are beloved because their innocence is not forced or in fear of disappearing, and their lifelong need to belong to you never dicipates.

My little cat is an asshole, and most time I see her in the hallway I greet her with a "oh you're still here." But I secretly love her. Like I love a lot of people - and as this story goes - animals outside of four corner box of my immediate life.

Several weeks ago a bunny I petsat for - for 10 years, passed away. For it's life it was always good with dogs, and even reasonable affectionate with humans, but as long as I knew him, he'd never let me touch him. This past December, he sat in my arms, and while I claimed some win for finally getting what I'd always wanted - to pet him, I knew now that his stobbornness had washed away from his spirit, he'd too fade away. Unable to hop anymore, losing control over his back legs, he no longer belonged in this place. He died not many months after.

Last night, my adopted family's treasured adopted rescue also succumbed to failing kidneys and old age. Named Wendy for the Peter Pan classic, I only imagine most write or speak or remember their animals for being supremely "happy," and she, well so was she. I had tried to kidnap her on ocassion declaring she'd be happier living in Los Angeles with me, but unspokenly we know the obvious, this dog was happy right where she was, and anywhere she was. She dug, and took a very much needed nap on your lap, and not like your dog, she was a very good dog. The best dog.

When my friend emailed me today to tell me, because she knew I'd want to know, we spoke of how her cat, Promise, would very much welcome Wendy to heaven.

I hadn't thought about heaven, I thought. But I did, I started.

"Oh I bet Promise just looked over her shoulder at Wendy there, rolled her eyes, and turned her head away."

We both laughed. Promise was something else.

But in thinking of Wendy, and Promise, and that bunny hop hopping his way in to the afterlife, I thought about heaven. A place and story constructed in my head, to find comfort in their loss, in their presence. That their memory, their interaction, with me, and each other, will remain intact. Their spirit, finding permanence after their life. In my mind do they always live? Or hippity hopping, taking long afternoon cat naps, and chasing cats, they will have for always. I will only chase the dragon to know. In the meantime I just like to think of them, be a bit sad, and smile with the gratitude of their presence in my present.

Things I Knew You Know?

In moments of clarity I'll admit there are worldly and things beyond this world more important than baseball. God and love, family and peace, among them. But in other moments I'm more convinced it's those very things that draw me back every year. What I ask you is more calling than fresh sod on opening day, and another opportunity to say the words I come to be served back in September with a side of defeat, "this is the dodgers year, I know it." So it's of no value or consequence I proclaim enthusiasm for another new season, or that this is the year the dodgers take it all, or that I will be unreasonable entertaining any other conjecture.

Gainful employment, and the Dodgers refusal to reschedule opening day around my schedule, means another year of absentee status from opening day. It makes my tender heart melt and cry and bleed, and other illusions of metaphor, but it just is. And a lot of life is about learning to know the stuff you ought to have knew. People in process, we are. And I, no exception.

This year I swapped my blues for an Angel opener. I scurried and shuffled my ballet flats as fast as they'd go, and got to Anaheim in time for the middle of 1st - not bad for commuting 40 miles in rush hour and after I'd walked across a business park, a busy street, and the Angels parking lot, I'd made it. I parused the pop's popcorn, and sat down to watch some ball. Within minutes I fell in immediate discomfort. I'd had some health problems for the past months, but not rising to the point it would take over a good ballgame.

When I sat in silence, I could be ok. I'd say in repetition, "you're ok, you're fine, this will pass, there's no sort of pain that is beyond what you can handle. you're ok, you're ok, you're ok." But when someone would speak to me, because this isn't out of the realm of what's to be expected at a social engagement, I learned I couldn't speak inside my head and reassure my pain, and listen. I excused myself several times, just to be alone, and be in pain alone, until by the 7th inning, I knew this wasn't something I could handle anymore. I couldn't handle this on my own.

"I'm going to have to leave. You stay, I'm going to urgent care."

I tried to call in advance to let them know that while it was 9:30 I was going to break every law to get there by 10:00 by closing and to wait for me, but it was the 7th inning stretch, and while I chose to suffer in silence, fans showed their enthusiasm for the opening of baseball in the way I would have, had I an ability to. I couldn't get through, so I just had to make a run for it.

I'm unfamiliar with Angels stadium. So much unlike the way I know Dodger stadium. I know longtime consession workers, and have hung out with the ice cream guys in their breakroom. But here I was sad and sick and in pain, and lost. I'd never left a baseball game early in my young life, and in a way I can't express through english venacular that also made me so sad. I took what ended up being the longest way out of the stadium, and once I reached a series of ramps that seemed to make no progress towards exit, I prepared to run.

Now if you know my boyfriend you know he loves Angels baseball. Like a lot. So what business did I have to say, "leave and come with me." I couldn't.

But I got to the bottom of those half dozen ramps, and there he was. "Did you think I'd really let you leave and do this on your own?"

I was guilt ridden, but I had to make it before closing. In ballet flats, I ran across two parking lots, major traffic barriers, and a concrete wall, when I made it 4 minutes before closing.

The Angels won, and by the next day I felt better, if for now. The Dodgers lost their first couple games, and that in no way gave my pain a relief. But when I look back over my life, over baseball, the opening days, the 2 grand slams in one inning and 4 home runs I once saw in a September, the spring training games, and trips across the country to see rivals play in Wrigley and drinking beers with Cardinal fans, I have no other choice but to put this at the very top. Because for the reasons I've described, baseball to me is about a showmanship of being the very best you can be everyday, and that image of my boyfriend, the biggest baseball fan I know, leaving his opening day early, to run half a mile with me to urgent care, is what I always knew the best in people was, you know?

The End of The World

Now I can't imagine it's ever ideal to begin ones narrative with a title like ours, one that can only lead readers to the most obvious of conclusions: my Barbie pink high heels have been kidnapped. Stolen. Held hostage for ransom. Missing in action. Now perhaps it even invokes an illustration - me and my closest shoes, gathered around a small grave, heels held low in respect, for the tomb of the missing totally adorable shoe. But, no, alas, they are safely tucked in my closet at time of print.

Let's take a look. Yep, yep, there they are. Safe and sound.

So then with a title like ours, what is left? See overserved and forced to drink peach bellinis (forced I tell you!), an invitation to teach a creative writing class on literary construction of your "own planet" to a group of elementary school kids, and being made to watch movies like 2012 and History Channel documentaries on (insert our title here) by my boyfriend who clearly is not aware of my aptitude to be horrified by these things for days, and you have me, thinking about (insert our title here again), a lot.

I have always asked many questions. Why? But why? But then why? The reason I was single so long? Now so very obvious.
My father in order to put the final punctuation in my questions, said, "I think they just did that to make you ask questions, Rebecca."

That worked for a time - like most cork stoppers, but then air seeped in destroying the wine. As a (near) (alleged) grown-up I can't imagine the world functions on scientific principles doing things in strict order for purposes of making one Rebecca Simone Wareham ask questions.

Bluff I call on you Papa Wareham.

I don't blame him entirely. I was quite wordy, even then, and how was he supposed to enjoy his classic rock and the fine Los Angeles weather what with my blabbering in the backseat, and sometimes the front, and on the lawn, and in the rocking chair, and in my bed, and kitchen table. The man should have been able to eat in peace. But no, I had questions.

As a (near) (alleged) grown up, I give the internet most of my questions, and become satisfied with whatever lies it dishes and diseminates. And while the internet is valuable in this way, when it comes to people, well I never once did or do or will trust someone with a lot of answers.

See when you ask enough questions, you're bound to, by the simple laws of physics and nature and Jeopardy, get yourself an answer, even sometimes in the form of a question. So the end of the world at hand, seems a question, that lately, if you count Nostradomus as lately, so many have the answer.

Like so much of what I've described, and how I've lived, thinking about the end of the world - California cutting off at the San Andreas and floating in to the Pacific ocean, plates being shifted playing Twister with continents, hot spots getting damn cold, all of it ending December two years and change from now - well it just becomes two thousand and twelve questions. Questions that really have more to do with living, then ending. I wonder how people will live differently knowing as some do with many answers, that the world is ending. Would people not have that additional child to add to their family? Not move? Not start a business or invest or learn a new skill. Would life end before the end? Or would it, in cliche induced frenzy, start?

One car ride home from dinner, my boyfriend asked me what I'd do if the world ended.

"I don't care," I said.

I don't care I said, in my best twelve year old tween-ness bratty voice and tone and face. I don't care. But I don't I explained. I have control over so little. I am, at my most basic, a human, with responsibility to do my best, and a lot of trust in God seeing me through. If this is it, cool.

Cool.

But it clearly wasn't over then - because I didn't stop thinking about it. I've had dreams. And when my grandma brought up the 2016 Rio Summer Games, I did my best "eh I don't know those are happening for sure." It clearly has made me unnerved. And not in a way that makes me question my tween response. Only in a way that the questions, only build. Only in a way that can possibly be done, to make Rebecca Simone Wareham, of Valley Village, California - ask more questions.

Pride

I often travelled the 405 "towards Santa Ana," for no larger reason than I was going south, and the sign indicated I was heading in the direction of SA. Once one would get to Santa Ana, the signs swap to "towards San Diego." On the way home you repeat the same in some reverse pattern. "Towards Santa Ana." "Towards Los Angeles." "Towards Sacramento." Such in this way. It wasn't until I found a pretty awesome man, dated this awesome man, and met his family - that I found a reason to go "towards Santa Ana" for the purpose of going to Santa Ana.

There's a lot of things I like about Santa Ana, and only one of them has to do with the Long John Silver's. I enjoy his family and I'm pretty lucky they include me in a lot. The pressure to support the Dodgers with intense Angels pride, bears strong on my soul, but it tests my fan hood and Angels fans are sort of endearing to me.

Had I not found said awesome man, and such explained to you enjoyable family, (and a nearby Long John's Silver), I'd never a cause for exiting the 405 or giving the 22 a whirl. And because of such an occasion, in Santa Ana, across from a freeway, in an unassuming strip mall, I found the first "Moose Museum" I've ever seen. And believe me I've looked.

The next portion of this story is going to read a lot like a movie critic who didn't get an invite to the premiere - or a movie studios feared would tank never letting it be reviewed prior to opening day. In sum, I've never been. See I've always been on my way to something - dinner, lunch, for some grander purpose, and explaining I was two hours later because I've been wandering around a moose museum doesn't seem like proper acceptable sort of rationale, that while I'm endeared to them, they would become in anyway anymore endeared to me. So I like to pass by, seeing it through my drivers side window, and in my best three year old girls whine I want to go.

I've driven by it now five times. Or could is be half a dozen? Irrelevant perhaps that is to the effect it has on me at each passing. Like counting sheep to usher in sleep, or like my friend did once to bring her back from a bad pot-brownie trip, I like to start counting things.

Brunette actresses with names starting with S
Ethan Hawk movies
The number of obstacles set up by Kevin in Home Alone
All the baseball movies I can think of
European countries alphabetically backwards
Animal nouns with identical singular and plural - deer sheep bison salmon trout fish swine.

Moose.

It's uninteresting to anyone that isn't me, I will profess in all honesty, but I do it. And the same three year old whine that wants to go to the moose museum, thinks it's cute to call them mooses and fishes and sheeps. Again, un-hilarious, to anyone that isn't me.

I'm an LA girl with two housecats and as much beastly knowledge as I get from watching Animal Planet, fraternizing with PETA workers in front of KFC, and visiting the zoo. I know about as much about moose as I do Ethan Hawk movies as I know about lion. Which isn't enough to have an opinion about, let alone write about, let alone create something meaningful to say. But I like to look things up and have been reading up as of late about lions. And lions are much cuter than moose, so let's talk about them.

The regular plural of lion is still lion, but when organized in communities, the lion becomes a pride. Prides or nomads, depending on the amount of lion in the group and the sex. Many times when the adolescent male lion is outcasted at reaching certain age, it joins a nomad. But traditionally, when discussing the lion in groups of more than singularity, pride is how it is referred.

If you leave out the violent, and the searching for food, and most of what's on Discovery Channel, I find the lion to be beautiful, regal, strong. One with nature and caring of each other and their young. (Cuddly, if only in my own head). The name pride to describe a group of them sounds appropriate.

Last night, with a slit of moonlight through my vertical blinds, and the comfort of reaching bed after a long day, I started counting and thinking of this word which comes to me at times, now more often than it ever did before, more than discussing lion, more often than simply to reach sleep at days end - pride.

I cannot define pride in any grander way than you can find it under the P's and before you get to Q in the dictionary. Instead I tell you only what it means to me.

In youth, pride to me was arrogance.
In teenage years, pride was know-it-all-ness.
In early adulthood, pride was independence.
And in my life now, it means none of those things.

You could, for all practical purposes, move pride from after P and before Q, to B or L for what it's worth - because it's radiating definition in my reality has shifted so dramatically off its axis, it's rotated itself around the sun. In the me of the now, pride feels a lot more like humanizing. And the closer I come to shattering pride, the closer I come to the common human condition: needing help and not feeling pity for asking for it. Doing as much as I can, and then accepting of help, knowing that my selfness is rooted strongly, in the belly of something that is radiating, expanding, nomadically changing, as to loose interest in maintaining a youthful clinging to any need in pride. It stings at times, more often than not to remind that growing pains means humanity, and fear does guard it, masking it, but as the lion is the strength of the wild, and moose dominate that strip mall, to lose pride, is only to gain in what I've always wanted.

To be.

I, Resolve

I do the anti-climactic, the ultra-cliche, and on New Years tell you I'm grateful.

And I resolve.

It was the last day of the year. I ran home, to tornado through, grabbing three things I'd methodically prepared to take, and whirl out. I had got as far as half down the drive, when God, a force, an energy, a storm chaser - stopped me in my spinful tracks. A flat tire.

I imagine as tornados rip through Oklahoma fields ripping up corn and berries and spreading dust over it's remains, building steam and stopping for none, they aren't subject to flats. It's as if my force, my God, said you call yourself what you want. Build yourself up, tear yourself down, but tornado you are not. Whirlwind you are not. Destroyer you are not. Faster than the wind. That you are not. You are human. You are frail. You are candid and see through as a lace blouse. I see you. I see you for who you are: someone in need of guidance. In need of direction. In need of a protector.

It was a friend who, in 2006, let me in on a little known secret I share: there is no good news, no bad news, no news, that is better or worse than any other news. It's all life. Not to be judged or prioritized in terms of importance. Getting a job, losing a job. Finding love, losing love. A new pair of underwear, a sassy pair of boots. A trip around the world, a romp to the grocery store.

It's all stuff.

Life.

That when viewed through goggles of non-judging, allows one to meet it, handle it, learn from it, move on from it. It injects emotion, and then lets one not be tortured by it. It's a lot about just being and is-ing and floating-like on the salt filled Dead Sea of life's tornadoes.

Be-ing and is-ing has been the lesson of 2009. Even if in to the wee-hours of the last day of it's year I fight it, it's still the lesson it set to teach. And on the first day of 2010 I close my notebook, power off my laptop, and accept it.

I tore home that last day of the year. Got half way down the drive. And a flat tire pulled the air out of that tornado, too. It was the middle of the night. I was alone. I had somewhere I had to be. And I had no way of getting there. It was raining, to boot.

In any story worth telling, there is always rain.

I woed to myself. Why me - in my Nancy Kerrigan whine. I had tried to be a good person, why me, God? Why me?

I got inside, shelter from the misting rain and called he who has my heart.

"I'll be right over. You know when I was younger I worked changing tires."

Well, well, well.

He picked me up, changed out my tire, in the next 24 hours, brought it in for patching, done by my favorite mechanic free of charge, and replaced.

Woe is me replaced with woo-hoo is me.

2009 brought unemployment, finally a once wonderful job turned terrible job I loathed, more unemployment, sadness, and at times jubilee. A wedding, a trip, a big birthday, and the birth of new favorite babies.

Sadness. Jubilee. At times stretching so thin as to make me feel invisible.

I don't know a lot. But I know when I listen to that friend's advice, and I remember it on the last day of one year and the first day of another, I'm soothed by the knowledge that when I am, I can be, and it just is, life will give me just exactly what I need when I need it most. A flat tire to stop me. A friend to fix it to humble me. The ability to show gratitude for it all through my favorite of avenues: the written word.

I resolve in 2010 and in all the decades I live, to trust, to not judge, to let my heart be taken. To notice that clock on Pico Boulevard that says 2:11pm at 2:11pm. To order the apple cobbler when the feeling takes me. To go to the gym less and listen to myself more. To wear rainboots in the sunshine. And play barefoot in the rain. To write a whole book I will sell at the store and people will read on their summer vacation.

To be. More often than not. I, resolve.

Happy New Year.