One Word for Wednesday

AHHHHH!!!

Okay, I said it would only be one word but I lied. This week, last week and next week are all SUPER DUPER stressful for me. And really I feel like screaming...so:

AHHHHH!!!!!

Postcards

So I wish life was as easy as a Spring day. Sadly, mine is not. Now, do I absolutely LOVE my life? Yes. Do I wish it was easier? Not really, I just wish I had about three extra hours in the day and more energy. But as the French say, c'est la vie. (It's just life). There isn't anything exciting around here to report except, work, work, work all day long!

I was fortunate enough to be a part of a poetry reading in my American Literature class last Tuesday. It's very rare that inspiration and a warm-ness wash over you while sitting inside a classroom on a wonderful Spring day. But hearing some of Ms. Andrea Barton's poems did that for me. I just sometimes forget to stop and smell the roses I guess. Well, this is her poem "Postcards" I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Postcards

I have to find a different space. I think the way that I will hurt you back
is to go to every city that makes postcards of itself and send you one with the directive,
“Wish you were here.”

I won’t stay anywhere for very long—stop at a gas station for a postcard or two,
a state-shaped magnet, diet coke and cheese crackers.

Every familiarity will change in proportion to my distance,
will mark that I am opening my car door in the elsewhere of corn fields
and distressed billboards until I recognize nothing in the foreign faces.

I will drive with purpose. I will drive in a way that throws up dust
or pothole debris, the wet muck sopping against my undercarriage.

When I am tired of driving, I will tell my friends stories that have nothing to do with you:
of how I slept at a rest area just past the bridge between Memphis and Arkansas
or met a couple in Arlington who made soaps for a living.

I will tell them how the accents became thicker, more difficult to understand,
how I rose to the occasion in a chess match with a farmer named Temple.

I will pray every day for people on the interstate with somewhere to get to,
will love them for being strangers.

And I will tell friends later if they ask, that I am wonderful—that I have been every place—
that I have learned to interpret loss and how it is always the same:
an empty postcard of a solitary windmill that stutters on an unused field.

Andrea Barton

Bucket List

I FINALLY FINISHED! I feel such a great sense of accomplishment for creating this list. I am still working on the 101 in 1001 list but knowing I have put the bucket list out in the world makes me want to work on the other one a little harder. So here is what I came up with as the big dreams in my little life. I wonder what others think about it and what other peoples' dreams are...hmmm.

Meet a genuine celebrity

Win a contest/sweepstakes

Visit all 50 states--upon visiting each state put a pin in a map of the US

Visit Australia, South America, Asia, North America, Europe, Central America, and Africa--upon visiting each place put a pin in a map of the world

Buy a pair of Manolo Blahniks and Christian Louboutions

Cultivate a vegetable garden and keep it alive for a year!

Buy a car because I want a new one, not because I totaled one

Own my own home by age 30

Actually help another person

Adopt a piglet

Learn to drive a stick shift

Receive a post graduate degree

Adopt a shelter dog as often as I can

Take part in an electoral campaign

Grow enough sunflowers one summer that I can give some to others!

Keep a list of all the books (serious and fun) I have ever read

Plant a tree and watch it grow!

Go to the Final Four games for March Maddness

Take my Daddy to the MAC football Championship

Bring my child to watch Alabama win another football national championship

Do yoga on the beach in Bali

Take a cruise through the Mediterranean

Take my Momma and Mark to the US Open in New York, the French Open in Paris, Wimbledon in London and the Austrian Open in Sydney (not all in the same year)

Do something out of my comfort zone

Fire William's pistol, just once in a shooting range

As I grow and as I change, update this list with new adventures and new challenges

It feels really fitting I put this up on Easter Sunday. Easter marks the beginning of Spring and the coming of Summer. Easter means new life and a world filled with love. I hope everyone feels the same calm that I felt during Holy Week, especially Holy Thursday. Hoppy Easter!