A poem by Ted Kooser

How important it must be
to someone
that I am alive, and walking,
and that I have written
these poems.
This morning the sun stood
right at the end of the road
and waited for me.

Won't you please come home?

The FHA creed

We are the Future Homemakers of America.
We face the future with warm courage and high hope.

For we have the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious values.
For we are the builders of homes, Homes for America’s future,
Homes where living will be the expression of everything that is good and fair,
Homes where truth and love and security and faith will be realities, not dreams.

We are the Future Homemakers of America.
We face the future with warm courage and high hope.

A little more Hall & Oates

America's Sweetheart

This is what reference librarians do at the end of the quarter to goof off. Here's a list of everybody referred to as "America's Sweetheart" on the first 10 pages of the Google results.

Sandra Bullock
Ruth Etting
Mary Pickford
Katherine Heigl
Betty White
Meg Ryan
Meghan McCain
Nicolas Cage
Julia Roberts
Drew Barrymore
Jennifer Aniston
Shirley Temple
Connie Francis
Sally Field
Debbie Reynolds
Jessica Simpson
Tina Fey
Lea Thompson
Shawn Johnson
Kirsten Dunst
Ann Miller

Better than a cup of coffee

Just watch this. There, don't you feel better?

A place to belong

This song was very popular my freshman year of college, and it was sort of my mantra. Like the singer, I imagined a future day when I would have all of those things: a place of my own, someone to talk to, to be a star (at least in my own mind.) Well, dare I say that, 16 years later, I finally feel like all those things are coming true? It's been a long time coming, but I fervently hope and pray that it's real this time.

Poetry corner

I've always liked this poem, and I think it expresses how I feel right now. Sometimes you just need somebody to help you figure out what you want, and there's no shame in that, as long as you really are figuring out what you want. But I also understand that, paradoxically, it's the people who really do care about you who will hesitate about doing that, while people who really don't care think nothing about forging boldly ahead. In other words, life is complicated!

She Was Waiting to Be Told
Deborah Garrison

For you she learned to wear a short black slip
and red lipstick,
how to order a glass of red wine
and finish it. She learned to reach out
as if to touch your arm and then not
touch it, changing the subject.
Didn't you think, she'd begin, or
Weren't you sorry ...

To call your best friends
by their schoolboy names
and give them kisses good-bye,
to look away when they say
Your wife! So your confidence grows.
She doesn't ask what you want
because she knows.

Isn't that what you think?

When actually she was only waiting
to be told Take off your dress --
to be stunned, and then do this,
never rehearsed, but perfectly obvious: in one
motion up, over, and gone,
the X of her arms crossing and uncrossing,
her face flashing away from you in the fabric
so that you couldn't say if she was
appearing or disappearing.

My Facebook woes

It's hard for me to admit it, but I'm starting to think that Facebook was a bad idea, and I'm starting to wonder if I should leave. The amazing thing about Facebook is that everybody you know from all walks of life can come there and mingle together and know every detail of your life. The bad thing about Facebook is exactly the same thing! I've been having a problem lately. People who barely know me in real life today, but think that they know me because we went to 3rd grade together or once had spouses who worked together or once sat 6 rows apart in a history lecture feel perfectly qualified to comment on all aspects of my life and insert themselves in discussions that really weren't meant for them. I find it hard to believe that most of these people would ever say those things in real life, and if they did, I wouldn't associate with them. My solution is to delete their comments from my wall, but that isn't working so well either, since that leaves big gaps in my history, and also makes it seem to others that I'm being cranky for no good reason. Is there a solution to this other than the final solution, which is to defriend them, which seems even more draconian on Facebook than it does in real life?

Oh, well, at least this blog is still a place I can vent and know that absolutely nobody is ever going to read it! ;)