Date: August 17th, 2007

Thursday, August 16

On the same wavelength

So, it’s officially mid-August and yet it feels like Summer has only recently started. All of my colleagues have done their vacationing while I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. It’s been fun. Meanwhile, you pretty people, keep writing and writing and I keep playing catch up and suddenly everyone is married with 2.5 children and a brand new home.

Obviously not true, but the business and the continuation during the summer months has and will always astound me because I’m getting old – whatever, just go with it – and my stamina is waning. Also my creativity tends to get a little punchy punctuated by some quixotic leanings and then downright boring. But alas, thank the Lord for the blogosphere where one can never be bored and others can be capricious and I can just read and smile.

On THAT note, let’s get on with things, shall we? Because I’ve been having a bit of an issue lately with women. Though brevity is not my strengths, I’ll just say that no matter the situation and amount of denial women attack each other. It’s in our nature and we can all deny it until we’re blue in the face and then pull the “But not me!” card and yet we women all do it. I don’t know how men are, but women? We have the amazing ability to roll right over each other at times and I find it most distressing and unnerving. Thus my bit of elation when Mamma Loves brought up the subject recently and I did a little giddy dance because I’m not the only one who feels this way and nothing makes me feel better than knowing that I am not the only one who thinks one way:

Maybe it's because of my feminist leanings, of my approach to the world, but I don't think women do each other any favors by knocking each other down...by judging each other because of their decisions...by setting themselves apart to feel better about the choices they have made.

When I take my brief respites from contemplating why women are the way that they are, I contemplate change and moving and friendship. It's all in one little package for me as of late because I've recently moved back to my hometown with some of the same friends from years past still here and I often find myself wondering about the friends from this place that I have since become unfriendly with. The people that I might see at my 10 year reunion or maybe during Christmas, but there are loads of them who it feels like just vanished into thin air. And I must admit that at times, I think about them and during certain weeks in the month, I'm taken aback and filled with sadness that I've just let friends go. Alas, Piouscoy has gone through the loss of friends and writes about it far better than I ever could:

She looked around the classroom to make sure no one was listening and then she pointed at the boy sitting across the room who had two parallel lines shaved above both ears like Vanilla Ice. “HE’S the cutest one here,” she proclaimed, rather proudly.

So I think I'm just going to start calling this "Things I am thinking about and look! Other people have these thoughts too". Case in point I mentioned a few times during that giant estrogen filled conference in Chicago that I don't really write about being black and for ages none of my readers knew that I was black and guess what?! I'm black. I don't feel like it's a necessary thing to discuss ad naseum and if someone does point it out for me and if it's done rudely, then I reserve the right to write about you and why you're an asshat and that's pretty much the only time it comes up. That said, I have wondered in the past and currently as I get new readers, whether or not I have an obligation to point out the fact that I'm black and/or discuss it. Though my picture is on my about page so if there is any question, the answer is fairly obvious. Anyway...guess what?! Lawyermama, had the SAME questions that I did. Amazing:

Do bloggers have an obligation to write their racial/ethnic/cultural (not to mention sexual, etc.) identities into their texts? Do *readers* have an obligation to seek that information out? How do we navigate this issue in a community that allows - even encourages - certain degrees of invisibility?

I'm also on this travel kick lately and Austin will hopefully be one of my destinations (Dear Southwest: No matter what anyone says about you, I will always be there for you. Now please send more drink coupons. Love, HB) and it's a destination that Princess Pointful has just returned from. I've heard interesting things about Austin mostly about it's awesomeness, but never about the armadillos:

Lesson #1- If it weren't for their natural armour, evolution surely would have decimated the not-so-mighty armadillo. These fellows have the unfortunate habit of jumping into the air when frightened. They also enjoy roaming the Texas interstate. As such, when facing a large pick-up truck coming rapidly in their direction, rather than just staying put, where the truck could easily pass over them without damage- they leap into the air, directly into their front grill.

And finally, I also can be too nice, but not that nice. In fact Sizzle's friend might be a saint for overlooking the red flags but I'm with her, I see them headed up the mast and I'd take cover:

She’s a nice girl and she has tried to dismiss these red flags, attributing the lack of cuteness to the lighting and the comment to possible shyness and his bad breath to an addiction to coffee. It IS Seattle after all. But we all know that being “nice” is only going to get her so far.

I'd take cover with just my thoughts with are the same thoughts that everyone else is thinking. And I'm just amazed.

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