That’s right! For those of you following my misadventures into the wonderful world of Chicago burlesque, I have completed my first class. There was no huge ceremony. No tassel was switched on my nipple or anything (Though, that’s an idea there.). Still, it had that feeling of gravitas that only living life can provide.

The girls in my class are great and I’m happy that quite a few are going on to the next class. Each one has their own little thing that makes them awesome. One of the girls is a tiny little thing but has the look of a 1920′s ingenue with long, tightly curled brown hair with just enough frizz to make it look like she was lucky enough to not have to do anything. She wakes up ready. Another is just filled with light and happiness. Her smile is contagious. Also, when she’s not shimmying around town, she writes amazing short little fictions. The third young lady came in a little late and never let it hold her back. Every time we do drills or run the dance she looks like this Grand Dame, taking a moment to let her skirt fly. There have been many more who have dropped in and out but these girls are who I would consider my classmates. We’ve watched each other go from barely able to keep our eyes up to staring forward with confidence (on our good days).

Our teacher is great as well. I’ve been on the audience side of the burlesque world in Chicago for over a year now. Red Hot Annie was someone who I had seen perform many time. She is owner of Vaudezilla, which is where I take my classes and my favorite burlesque troupe in Chicago. They do free shows all the time and they are filled with all kinds of girls and boys taking it off! Annie has been very encouraging throughout the class and she has this great ability to find the thing we’re good at and then make us feel really great about being good at it. No matter your level there is something beautiful in your movement and when Annie finds it, she tells you. She also is a great proponent of, what I like to call, “Fake it ’till you make it.” (This is also known as the Jowett family motto. We use it proudly.)

It was funny the other night. The next level class is starting so we are normally off to our cars, train stops and awaiting significant others. Last night the four of us just kinda hung around. Asking over and over to each other, “You’re going onto level two, right?” and “Are you on the Facebook?” Even though the back and forth only lasted a few minutes before we were off again it felt different. We had done this together. We has showed up, suited up and seen what happened…and we liked it.

Right before we left Annie was talking to the Grand Dame about how important it is to have a group of people to go through this life-changing process with. Some people to depend on and commiserate with. Standing outside the studio I thought…

“Here’s some friendships waiting here.”

Osama Bin Laden has been the focus of offensive efforts in the name of our freedom and liberty since before that infamous day, and really for sometime before, making a sure name for himself in these last 20 years. There are numbers beyond the ones lost here to him and they come from all over the world. One thing to be said for the man, it doesn’t really appear he did anything small. Not that I knew the guy. Anyway.

Ending up on CNN I watched as the time was pushed back and back again before the news ruined the President’s surprise by announcing that the body of O.B.L. was in American custody, making his death provable through merit of “asset.” There was something so poetic about this way of describing the burden of truth. Asset, that’s really all that corporal thing is after all. It’s not your legs or nose that make you, it is the energy that fills that void, which motivates those legs, that make it more then an object. Still, while being as hopelessly true a statement as possible, it sends a little chill down your spine to here life reduced so thoroughly.

I can hear the gasps from here.

“But he was an awful man!”

“He deserves to suffer like he made others!”

“Rabble rabble he took our jobs!”

There is no good or bad

Celebrating death makes us look bad

Violence with violence. Peace with Peace.

This short little video from the wide world of the internet reminded me that. I love all of you. We are fellows. Such is the contradiction of our social technology.

Happening upon this video within the boundaries of the kingdom which our computer bent brains so honor, Facebook, I first thought it would be a light moment of distraction. (From what, I’m not sure if I’ll ever really figure out. We as a species seem pleased to plug in and live in a constant distraction of computer, facebook, twitter, news, netflix, hulu, check-ins, badges, ironic rss feed, imaginary vacation planning, screendow shopping and, of course, HUGE amounts of pornography which, just so you know, I think is awesome. You can rest assured, should I ever answer that query you would be hard pressed to find me so that I could even let you know that it’s been figured out. Hopefully that would mean a point of enlightenment had been reach where I had committed to the simple lifestyle of my brethren before me.) Instead I found this wonderful message which, in turn, reminded me of my father.

I remember one time when I was about 10 or 11, I’m not really sure. I could have even been much younger then that. Whatever. It doesn’t really mater to the rest of the story.

I remember one time when I was around 10 my dad and I were hanging out. This was something that regularly happened in my family. It was my dad and us three kids so every Friday one of us would get a “Night Out With Daddy.” As the oldest, I got my night first, to my delight and my sibling’s horror. You’d pile in the car with Daddy while the other two stared from the porch of our Grandparents who lived in the house next door which, just so you know, IS AWESOME! Imagine Grandparents spoiling but EVERYDAY! Still, let’s not joke. My Grandpa don’t take no crap but as long as you had your grades straight and weren’t giving the ‘rents a hard time, it was smooth sailing through microwave popcorn with Grandpa in front of the big screen. The only time it wasn’t the BEST TIME EVER was when you were watching one of the “Others” (My brother and sister) leave on a “Night Out With Daddy.”

“Night Out With Daddy,” here forth referred to as NOWD simply because I’m sick of typing it out, normally involved a really high class place like Rock Ola Cafe or Olive Garden. OH! When the Olive Garden came to Hampton the NWOD’s became even more awesomer! We might not have even been hanging out on a NOWD. My dad just has always made time for us together as well as alone. I hope it’s something I can do with my children.

So, we’re somewhere together and I remember it being when everyone first started really going to tanning beds. Like, I remember girls going to the tanning bed for the 8th Grade Dance and stuff. I guess that would have made me like 11. The girls going were older then me. So we’re alone in the car and we’re just talking while he’s driving. Somehow the whole topic of tanning comes up. Maybe we were talking about someone who was super tan or something. I’m not sure.

“I’ve made a decision,” he said, turning as much to look at me as driving would allow, “I’m only going to think pale girls are good looking.” I sort of looked back with the confused expression. “No, seriously. Being tan like that is so bad for you but the reason everyone does it is because famous people are tan and models are tan. Everyone on TV is tan.” I was kinda starting to get where he was going. “But they do that because people keep thinking that tan is attractive. If everyone stopped thinking tan looked good then there would be pale famous people and models and TV people. A silent moment of understand passed as we both absorbed the moment, nodding to each other.

I’m sure I responded with something really profound like, “When we get to Red Lobster can we get the cheesy biscuits?” This being a stupid question because you ALWAYS get cheesy biscuits! It’s the reason you GO to RED LOBSTER. It was my favorite NOWD Resturant…love them biscuits!

Now, I’m pale, and sometimes, I won’t lie, I hate it. Like when I walk outside and the sun hurts my skin like I’m some sort of vampire half-breed (I’m thinking it’s around 6.25%.) or when I just walk to work and end up with a pink arm but I wouldn’t trade it. On that day pale kinda became a way of life for me, a healthy habit.

Look at that. My Dad taught me something.

Anyway…check me at twitter.

Me Tweeting the Deets

Look At This Fucking Hipster

Mute and Happy

How funny that in these
last few days my words
have become thoughtlessly
absent considering the
words I spoke.

The words I spoke!

Leaving me a delightful
glowing secret illuminating
part of my life in utter
blatant truth.

“No you don’t,” he says
with tickle & smirk.  “I hear
you whisper something else
in my ear.”

I did.  Didn’t I?

That was a stupid move.

Now he has the upper hand
with my war-torn, forlorn
heart of hearts, aching with
robots & nautical stars
tattooed on the inside of wrists.

Fear…

fear…

fear…

EXHILARATION!

It is Chicago.

Well guess what?  Chicago sucks!  That’s right!  I said it.  Chicago sucks the big old donkey balls on this one.  For one.  It’s cold.  Cold as cold.  Second.  It’s cold and windy.  Third.  THE COLD.  Seriously.  When I first moved here I had it easy.  The winters, those winters, were warm-ups.  Warm-ups to the hell that is Winter 08-09.

I have never been so sick of snow in my life.  Actually, I have never been sick of snow in my life.  No matter what, I’ve loved it.  Being from Virginia snow is a bit of a rarity and when it does comes it leaves only a dusting which typically melts by the end of the day.  We would go to visit the fam in Michigan and I would delight as we came north.

The closer we got, the more signs there were.  It would start with a simple flurry as we crossed from Maryland to Pennsylvania.  There would be no snow on the ground but the few stray flakes were encouraging.  By the time we were settled on the Turnpike there was snow on both sides of the road, a sign of recent plowing that followed through Ohio until we reached the snowy expanse of my father’s home state.

When I moved to Chicago it was one of the things I was looking forward to.  I was looking forward to spending a snow-filled winter.  I was happy to need boots for the first time in my life.  I was glad to be living the lie of a fool!  Those winters were nothing.  This was a real winter.

Still, the summers!

Oh my Goddess, the summers!  There is nothing in comparison to it.  That I had not prepared for.  I had no idea that I would be giving up 105 average temperature weeks for 75 or jellyfish filled waters for fresh clear lakes.  Though, I do miss the vastness of the ocean sometimes.  With the lake you can feel the other shore.  The ocean is like standing on a horizontal cliff.

In the summer Ed B. and I spend almost every spare moment at the beach.  We’ll get off work or get up on Saturday, throw on our swimsuits and head to the nearby beach.  We’ve got an umbrella (Hey, I’m Scottish.  I burn easy.) but other than that we travel pretty light because it’s a 5 minute walk back to the house.  We’ll hang until about 11:00 and then head back home for lunch.  Then it’s back to the beach before coming home for bbq, expertly prepared by the hubs.

So now I sit.  It is sunny and beautiful but still cold.  Now I’m just sick of it!  I get your point winter.  You are the man!  You rule my world with an iron fist.  I bow down before your cold fury and give you the outside world until you decide to torment another hemisphere.  In the mean time I’m going to look outside, pretend it’s August, and I have the best AC in the world.

Flash forward to almost ten years later and I have listened to g-mail.  Now I have a constantly growing inbox with thousands of messages.  A high percentage of these are unread or junk that I keep because I’m “going to get off that list” or “finally use that.”  Instead, I never do and my inter-clutter grows.  In those ten years my life and how I live has simplified but my online life has blown up.

This all started with AIM.  My freshman year of college I got AIM.  It was amazing.  Hour after hour I spent talking to friends and…well…I don’t even remember what it was that I did to waste time on it.  Still, I did.  Little could I know that in a few year I would be balancing several social networking sites for different groups and myself along with online role-playing.  How could I imagine the world of twitter in the year 2000?

So, the complication has increased online while I seek to simplify my real life.  Now, I’m realizing, I must do both.  I must find a way to live simplier and to do that I must have a simplier online presence.  (I’m also playing with the idea of vegitarianism but this southern girl loves her bacon.  We will see.)  Until they make digsby for mac I’m going to tackle each one but, to not get overwhelmed, I thought I would start with one…mail inbox 0.

I figured, “How hard can it be to delete e-mails you haven’t looked at in 7 to 10 years?”  That was before I realized what I was burying in my inbox.  There are, of course, the important e-mails.  The “this is your username” and “welcome to” messages.  Then there are other corpses.

First, there is a huge section of e-mails from when I worked with Easy Street Players.  It’s nothing but a bunch of back and forths about costumes, scripts and set needs but, for some reason, I’ve never gotten rid of it.  It’s been over a year since Easy Street existed and my life has pushed me away from theatre and back home to music but I still hold onto these relics for unknown reason.

Mail Inbox o: Easy Street Mail…gone.

The next is a quick e-mail I sent to my brother while he was in Iraq.  It simply says “Hello.  Just wanted to say I love you!”  That was all I could do.  You see, my little brother is a hero.  He went to Iraq and did work that saved that lives of others.  He did it without concern for his own well being and to this day says it was his best assignment because he “really felt like” his “job made positive changes.”  He sometimes talks about going back.  It makes me scared.

Now, our family got off easy.  My brother, the hero, had a rather safe job for being in a warzone.  Originally he was suppose to be in RV’s, driving through the IED filled streets, taking down data.  I was pretty sure he was not coming back.  At the last minute something happened and the people at his training realized how smart Hero was and somehow he ended up being the guy who processed all that data.

This meant a few things for Hero and our family.  He was now much more valuable to the military and so kept in much safer conditions.  He was not really allowed to leave base much.  He found it frustrating.  We found it comforting.  In short, being smart and nerdy saved my little brother’s life.  Still, we worried and so, one night up after a really awful dream filled with sand and burnt flesh on September 11th of 2006 at 3:48am, I sent off that little line to him.

I had not realized the date until the next day.

At 11:18 that night I got a response with large green letters at the top which said, “Classification: UNCLASSIFIED.”  I guess I posed no threat to the US military but it was still a little unnerving.  It started back with “Then I will send one back saying that I love you too!”  He then went on to talk about seeing Drowning Pool play “Let the Bodies Hit the Floor” the night before at the concert.

Most of the times I talked to Chris it was by phone.  That was the only e-mail I sent.  I would feel guilty over it but, to be honest, it was all I could do.  I kinda pulled myself away from it, worried that if I started thinking of my brother as alive and somewhere else it would hurt worse when the inevitable happened.  I did not have a positive outlook on the war and figured that our family had the worst luck.

I was wrong.

We had the best luck and my little brother is home and a hero not only to the military but to me and our family.  I’ve held onto that e-mail to remind me to push myself and not take anything for granted.  It’s there to tell me to suck it up and say what I need to say no matter how hard.

Mail Inbox 0: Brother in Iraq E-Mail…starred.

Then, in the deepest recesses, I found something truly unexpected.  A few years ago I had a falling out with a close friend.  This breakdown happened while we were in different parts of the country, so most of this downward spiral happened via e-mail.   I had thought that I had deleted all those messages a few months ago.  I wasn’t mad or anything I had just been holding onto them for some unknown reason and I was very happy with the way my life was shaping up and I decided I needed to stop holding onto stuff and punishing myself over it.  These messages were like an anchor connecting me to this time.

Now, I’m not happy with what happened and I, like all people in situations like this, wished things could have been different but I also see the other side.  The whole event gave me a clearer picture of the person I wanted to be and the kind of people I wanted in that life.  It sucked at the time but my life has turned out pretty well so I would not undo it because, in someway, it helped get me here.

There were a few times when I tried to get back in contact.  This attempt wasn’t because I was looking to get my best friend back.  I was looking to move forward.  A clean slate and a fresh start to simply be.  To not worry about accidentally offending that person anymore and know they were as okay as I was.  I guess, even though I didn’t particularly like the person anymore, I still loved them.  They had been like family and, despite the fact that I didn’t want to be buddies, I did want to know they were okay.  The reception was, understandably, less than warm and I realized I needed to leave it behind.

So I deleted the e-mail…I thought.

What I actually did was compile them into one single e-mail of everyone they had sent and all the ones I had sent in return.  There it was, starring at me, everything that imploded our relationship into smoke and ash, the whole back and forth.  I wanted to sit down and read it.  I wanted to masochistically tear open the healed white-pink of my scarred skin, cracking through my ribs to prod at my own heart with dirty fingers.  I wanted to listen to Dashboard Confessional in a corner while I read “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”  I needed an argyle sweater…STAT.

Instead…I deleted it.  That’s new to me.  The old me would have already been on chapter 2, cursing the paper cuts and, at the same time, thinking I deserved them.  I just want to be living in the moment, feeling the now.  The things that happened, happened and there is nothing I can do to take them back.  Besides, when I truly live in the moment, I find myself happy.

I find myself noticing the delight of the couch blanket against my skin.  Zoning in on now I find my husband’s smell mixing with the outside air to make the sent of our home.  I hear his sigh and feel a shiver run up my back.  (I am still so attracted to him that I often need to take myself a little out of now or I would be naked more than society allowed.)  My cat is so beautiful and the moment I take notice of her with my eyes she senses my presence and walks over to be with me.  We sit and just are.  We don’t stimulate, we just be.

There was also a copy of my first wedding ceremony in there, too.  Now gone.

Mail Inbox 0: Past relationship disasters…deleted.

So, I did not reach the singularity.  I am not at zero, but I am at 72.  That is quite an improvement.  Maybe one day I will be as cool as @harper.  In the mean time, I have to go.  My husband is flirting with me from across the couch and this blog no longer seems important.

The next picture has the princess’ grandmother. I’d like to incorporate her in honor of my own.

This one is not only a cool picture but I love the sisters grouped together at the bottom. Really it gives me a reason to use a ton of nautical stuff too.

Now I just need a billion dollars for ink.