How to save a life

I don't care if my kids don't look like me.

They don't have to be a special order of brown eyes, black hair, brown skin, plum-colored glasses and a perfect smile. 

I thought of this today when I was listening to a fav podcast of mine. The subject was the unexpected topic of adoption. Apparently November is national adoption month. 

I'm not adopted, neither am I in the position to adopt. I want to get married one day and have kids of my own - hopefully twins - a boy and girl (that way I can just go through childbirth once). But I have thought about adoption as something I could see myself possibly doing one day, whether I have my own kids or not. 

My muse? "Slumdog Millionaire."

I love bollywood movies and the Indian culture in general, so I was really excited to rent this film a year or so ago. Yet it's a film I'm afraid to watch again. Don't get me wrong, I loved it. But after the intense roller coaster drama, followed by the happily-ever-after-song-dance-ending, I sat on my living room floor starring at the TV screen for some time in a heavy sadness. I was thinking about the Indian orphans in the film - their rough street life, the circumstances they had been dealt yet didn't ask for. It made me want to hop on a plane and save a life - to give one of those little ones a better existence.

I thought about all that when I heard the podcast today. 

It doesn't really matter if a child ends up in a home where nobody looks like them, in a neighborhood far removed. What matters is that he or she has a home to go to - and a family that loves the child as if he or she was from their own DNA. 

As the blog turns

I was going to write about how much I enjoyed seeing The Weepies last week until a mild illness got in the way. Then I thought about turning that post into why I can concentrate better listening to music (i.e. Weepies) while doing homework than with the TV on (which makes me totally ADD).

But then this theory got debunked today when I spent all afternoon working with the TV playing soap operas and me actually engaged. The funny thing is I'm not even into soap operas anymore and I could never sit through an episode of "All My Children." But I got drawn into it today. I got hooked when I saw a courtroom scene disrupted by some random guy who walked in. Mouths dropped left and right. Not knowing what was going on I thought,  He probably came back from the dead or something. 

Sure enough, I was right.

Soap operas are the only place where people come back from the dead as if it's a normal process of life.

To be like this

I have a handful friends who don't give a dime about what other people think of them. From time to time, they remind me about this fact in the funniest of ways. An old high school acquaintance comes to mind. To this day she's still the same - loud and proud and quick to tell you she doesn't care if you try to rain on her parade. She'll just parade louder.

I'm glad for people like her and yet envious at the same time, as if they've found a slice of life that I haven't been offered yet. Or maybe I've already been offered it and am too afraid to taste the foreignness of it. Maybe it's something I have to develop a taste for.

I am stuck between not caring and caring. I blame it on the people-pleasing side of me.

Shall it rule no more.

I am one who likes paving her own path yet at the same time wonders what people are thinking about me when I do or don't do. Am I too much me? Not enough me?

But that's silly to think - how can you fail at being you?

You only fail when you start listening to everyone else - to the people who haven't really invested in you to begin with, and at the end of the day, could care less. Yet why are their voices the loudest?

I tell myself that the only voices that matter are God and my momma  - and every once in a while not even my momma. A few older mentors in my life matter too. I guess when I get married I can add my husband to that small list. And perhaps his mom - because everybody cares about what the mother-in-law thinks, whether they admit it to themselves or not.

My newest fix

Mark Ronson's latest album "Record Collection."

I heard about him listening to NPR a couple of days ago. Haven't downloaded the whole thing - just my superfavs: Record Collection (Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran sings the chorus, which initially attracted me to the album).

Somebody to Love Me (with Boy George) is also catchy, though the video is horrible.

And though I didn't buy it, I kinda like Circuit Breaker in all its video-sounding 1980s gameness.

Attraction of the day

I was on my way to lunch today when I saw A CAR ON FIRE! In a church parking lot!

Flames and black smoke poured out of the car, which was parked nice and neat in one of the vacant spaces in front of the church.

As I drove by slowly, I did a double and triple take. I couldn't figure out if I should stop or not. Maybe it wasn't real. Just for show, you know. Maybe it was part of a church message like: You'll burn in hell for ... for ... just 'cause. 

Okay, maybe it wasn't a church message. What church burns cars for fun?

What really happened to make a car go up in smoke?

As I drove by, I saw a man, woman and child stand on the other side of the church, peering around the corner at the car in flames. Maybe it was theirs. They kept their distance. I was surprised no one was yelling. It was the calmest car-on-fire scene ever. Even Hollywood couldn't have reproduced it better. A few cars pulled into the church lot. For a second, I had to remind myself that I wasn't a reporter anymore and that I didn't have to call an editor.

But should I stop?

With three cars pulling into the lot, I decided to keep on going. To not get involved. Yet, something pulled at me as I drove off. I felt like a bad citizen. If that were me standing there and my car was on fire, I'd want people to stop. I drove on for about a quarter of a mile. At a traffic light, I contemplated turning around. That's when I heard the sirens of a firetruck. All would be well.

Hmmm . . . Okay, so maybe not so well - somebody is out of a car - but at least the fire was put out.

Phases of You

Dear You,

I'm sorry I hurt you. Though, I don't have a clue what I've done.
Maybe it's the not doing that was a problem. When I don't know what to do, where to go - I freeze up and pray that the angels move my feet for me.

Dear You,

Sorry I didn't pick up on your subliminal emotions. I don't think I'm wired correctly to read them - so I stopped believing. I gave up on fairy tales a long time ago. If you want me to know something, then please tell me. I promise I'll be kind.

Dear You,

I'm so glad you put up with me and all my aloofness. Being aloof is my only defense against the potential of a broken heart.

Dear You,

Haven't heard from you. Are you being aloof too? If so, we have more in common than it seems.

Dear You,

I haven't forgotten about you. Every night I sit and remember the oddest phases of our friendship. I've pieced together all your subliminal moments and replayed them in my mind. I get it now. I get you now. But a part of me is still unsure - Please help me believe in your fairy tale again.

Dear You,

I'd like to give you a second chance. Or rather, let you finish the first chance - the chance I kept blocking. I was wrong about you. Let's start over again.

A poem

Sometimes I hate feelings.

They can lead you astray and point you in the right direction all at once.

And there's nothing you can do about it, except perhaps just sit and enjoy the ride. You can try to fight it but at some point - maybe days, weeks, months or years down the road - you find yourself in the same predicament again. Same thoughts. Different guy. Or perhaps not.

You breathe in and feel, and it hurts.

The thought of him makes you smile and terrifies you all at once.

Me and the Russian

So last week I ran into a Russian guy at a bookstore.

Sounds spyish, doesn't it?

I promise I don't work for the CIA.

In fact, looking back, maybe he worked for the KGB. He had his eyes on me in the magazine section. I was flipping through mags at the neighborhood Borders and had spent a good 15 minutes or so looking through a special edition of Communication Arts magazine. At $24 a pop, scanning it for free was all I could afford. I saw the white-headed, middle-aged guy in my peripheral. He was browsing like me. I thought nothing of it.

After I had my fill of magazines, I turned and started to walk off. That's when I noticed his eyes jump back on me. I smiled my friendly hi-stranger-in-a-bookstore smile as I walked away. That's when he stopped me.

When he spoke, his first few sentences sounded like unknown phrases dispatched in a thick foreign tongue. I couldn't digest it, except for the fact it sounded eager.  It made me feel overwhelmed - until he started making sense.

English language. How I love you.

The man asked if I was an artist. After all, I was looking in the arts section of the magazine racks.

"No, no," I said. "I'm a student."

"A student? Oh," he said, as if he just lost out on a prize in a game show - like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" - an easy question that people mess up on; They get hung up on a trick answer.

"I'm studying advertising," I told him.

He told me he was an artist who has been laid off twice this year. He has been living with his daughter in Atlanta ever since.

"The economy," he said. "Who would have predicted this?"

That's when I noticed a little gap in his front two teeth - just like mine. For a moment, I felt like I knew his whole childhood. Maybe it was as awkwardly interesting as mine.

I love international people. I had to ask where he was from, to which he replied Russia. Land of the cold freezing winters Russia.

We chatted for a minute more about art and Florida before he said goodbye.

I wished him good luck on the job hunt.

As I wandered up the bookstore stairs, I wondered if I would run into a mysterious man in the Mysteries section. You know - tall and handsome. The kind you read about in books.

Fiction contest hopeful

So I entered my first fiction contest. Don't know if I'll win, but it's cool to actually be submitting something.

Though the deadline isn't until another two weeks, I knew I wouldn't have time to commit to writing a short story from scratch - not with a billion projects from school and other things demanding my attention. So I decided to go through some of my old stories - some written recently for class and others that have been sitting around in old notebooks collecting microscopic dust.

I decided to go with a story I wrote a while back during my first year of college at Georgia Southern. I still remember the night I wrote it. I lived on campus at the time with my roommate/bff. I think she had some friends over. After a while, I wanted to get some fresh air.

There's only so many places you can go without a car at night so I headed to the campus library. For once, I didn't feel like goofing off on the Internet. I was eager to write. So I sat at a computer and started typing, not knowing what was going to come out. I kept typing.

And typing.

The story just told itself, like a lot of my stories end up doing. Before I knew it, I had an epic short story with an awesome moral twist inspired perhaps by the late great Flannery O'Connor - one of my favorite authors. I quickly emailed it to a few of my friends I still kept in touch with from my high school AP English class, who said they loved it. After I wrote it, I printed out a copy for myself, always hoping I'd get around to typing it out again so I can have it on my personal hard drive - it was lounging around in email world at the time. So finally, after all these years, it's on my hard drive and also sitting in a stranger's inbox, waiting to be reviewed for the contest.

Here's hoping something good comes from it.

Have the solo wedding cake, and eat it, too

"For those men who left the messages and want to marry me,
I appreciate your message and kindness.
However, please do allow me to have my own wedding first."

The quote is from the blog of Only&Only's Wedding - also known as Chen Wei-yih, the 30-year-old Taiwanese woman who has decided to marry herself - since no worthy suitor has turned up. The big day is this Saturday. She has nearly 4,000 people cheering her on through Facebook.

When I heard about this solo wedding deal several things went through my mind:

1. She has to be doing this for the gifts. Have you noticed the massive amount of presents couples get when they get married? It's like a fountain of freebies from Bed, Bath and Beyond, which is cool because that place is crazy expensive. I wish someone would shower me in free BBB stuff!

2. She's doing this for the dress. Every girl dreams about walking down the aisle in a beautiful wedding gown. I guess she doesn't want to wait any longer for that. Kinda understandable, but it doesn't seem as fun walking down the aisle in a wedding dress if there's no hot guy waiting for you at the altar. Talk about awkward.

3. Why on earth would you marry someone that's just like you? Even if it's you and you like you? Where's the variety? The spontaneity? Wouldn't eating dinner for one be odd? You'd have to pay all the time. 

4. How are you going to carry yourself over the threshold for the honeymoon? What about the first dance? And if you get into a fight with yourself, would you give yourself the silent treatment?

You laugh, but these are all valid questions.

All kidding aside, I'm not sure what to think about this solo wedding thing. But it's Chen's life and she's free to do whatever she wants. She says, "We must love ourselves before we love others." True. But I can love myself without having to spend $5,000 or so on a wedding to prove it. At least she'll get free gifts. And if she ends up finding her true love, which I believe she will somewhere down the road (I mean, come on, she's already got proposals coming in since news of this went global), she'll get wedding gifts twice and wear a wedding dress twice, with no messy divorce involved.

I think I'm starting to see the brilliance in her plan.  

The awkwardness of new

It seems every few years I pick up and go.

New job, new town, new experiences, new something. 

It takes a while to get used to new, even when you force feed it to yourself in small doses periodically. 

This time around, the new is Atlanta and school.

"Everyone, please welcome the girl who can't get enough of new." 

"Hi there girl who can't get enough of new."

"Hi everybody."

It's weird being in a new metropolitan sphere after recently spending four years in a place where I was typically the youngest person in nearly any given crowd.

Now, in school at least, I feel like one of the oldest ones, even though I'm not really that old in the grand scheme of age in Atlanta itself - recent birthday aside.

October seems to be a popular month for birthdays. For many, the feeling of growing older is - depending on age - either not enough or much too new.

I met a girl, or shall I say, a young woman, yesterday during church, who said she newly turned 29 and feels old compared to her other friends.

"It's the oldest I've ever been," she said.

I was amused at that comment.

"Just wait until next year," I said.

What I should have told her is, if she wants to feel young again, move to Florida.

Anyway, isn't 29 like the new 19 or something? It's funny how people say things like that to make the growing-older population feel better - as if Benjamin Button-ing ourselves is the key.

Just embrace the newness of age. Embrace the newness in everything, no matter how awkward it seems.