Sometimes, Melissa runs her legs. Sometimes, she runs her mouth.

Month: July 2010

Ah a new challenge

I was surfing around on the net and found the SITS girls and thought I would look around. They are doing the 31 day ProBlogger challenge. (oh wait, the actual link to the 31 day ProBlogger Challenge is here) I thought I would play along.

Day One: Write an elevator pitch.

An elevator pitch is supposed to help others understand the blog as well as “draw them in.” Eh, I’m not sure I care if people read or not. Okay I care a little bit or I’d be doing this in a moleskin book. then again I do have friends in a lot of places.

Okay here we go.

I’m a thirty-something single lawyer, runner, food and animal lover with a penchant for self improvement as well as running her mouth as well as her legs and this blog is where I leave my notes.

The only problem with that is that even though I’m a lawyer, I rarely, if ever, write about the law on here. There are attorney client privilege concerns and there are also concerns that someone will find my post via google and by the time he or she finds it, it will no longer be good law. That bothers me.

But a person’s job does give a hint as to a person’s soul. It shows an interest. It implies a certain level of intellectualism and intelligence. (okay now I’m expecting flames of antecdotes of the “idiot lawyer” that you or YOU may know).

Hrm…. but I missed the point where I like to read books and watch fancy pants and trashy movies. Or that I have perfectionism streak which leads to angst and insecurity.

One woman’s outlet to prevent killing and maiming the world at large. Hee. that makes me sound absofuckinglutely nuts. It’s dangerous. people will wonder if I will find their physical address via their IP address and hack them to bits.

Okay probably not.

Gosh this is hard.

“This blog is like a bulletin board where I put all thoughts on it like post-it notes”

heh. yeah but it’s close to another blog’s tagline.

A thirty something attorney with a wide variety of interests who likes to run her legs as well as her mouth.

Eh that’s going to be it.

Well I run my mouth as well as my legs. There you go.

Wordless Wednesday

NAACP

My NAACP membership card

ripples

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

I’ve been through some bad shit in my life. The kind of shit that causes me to wake up in the middle of the night screaming, drenched in sweat. After the shit, I have been absolutely positively unable to have more than two alcoholic drinks in a public place at one time. I am vigilant about locking my doors and when I lived alone, I would lock the door to my bedroom as well as the outside door.

Sometimes its’ really bad but I am able to work, I went to law school, and have done some pretty awesome things so for all practical purposes, I haven’t let it control my life but there are some marks. My grades could have been higher or I could have… well… that is pointless really.

So when I read this letter from the advice column “Dear Sugar,” I cried like a girl.

You will never stop loving your daughter. You will never forget her. You will always know her name. But she will always be dead. Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will. Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live though it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. Therapists and friends and other people who live on Planet My Baby Died can help you along the way, but the healing—the genuine healing, the actual real deal down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change—is entirely and absolutely up to you.

It was a letter from a woman who miscarried her baby. It was a girl. It’s a year since it happened and she is still not over it. Sometimes, I wonder if I have ran far enough. Sometimes I wonder if I have healed enough or if I am at a point of “better.” It’s been real hard to admit that a little pain over “the shit” is still going to be there. I have the psychological equivalent of a bad knee. Sometimes it’s just going to hurt and that’s the way it is. Sometimes I wonder if that attitude is just me giving up. Sometimes I’m just tired of it being there like a monkey on my back. Sometimes I just want to stab my brain with a butter knife and hope I hit it.

For many years, I ignored “the shit” and went all bad ass with the “I’m not going to let this affect my life.” That worked for a while but like running on a sprained ankle, eventually it just gives out. And that’s what happened to me. One day, it was like the pain had just built up over time and then by the time, I just couldn’t take it anymore, it had become this big insurmountable thing that was smothering me.

So I have cried and screamed and begged and pleaded with God, Buddha, the devil, and any other deity, god, or goddess that I thought would listen. I wrote in my journal and talked to a therapist. Over time, it goes less and less. I guess it’s doable now but I can still have someone say something or read a blog post and be taken back in time. When this happens, I end up spending a night crying in my bed until exhaustion takes over.

So reading that post reminded me of how far I’ve come and how far I have to go. Oh and I cried like a baby.

Weekend

Do you know what lawyers love to talk about when they go on a retreat?

Restaurants, video games, and trashy TV.

the shack

Shed and flowers

Coloring all over the place

A while back, a couple of my Little Rock twitter friends wrote about race after reading a startling statistic about Arkansas. I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been. See, in what will be the ultimate cliche of all time, my friend who died a couple of months ago, Angela, was black.

october2007 034

There’s a picture of her at her daughter Alexis’s birthday in 2007. Crap, I can’t believe that was almost three years ago. Even more crap, I can’t believe my friend is dead. Well I’ve known . . . knew Angela since we were in kindergarten and we became good friends in high school. That’s a lot of years.

She wasn’t my only ethnic minority friend. I’m not even sure how many I have. I have enough that I would have to think about it to actually give a number. My first boyfriend’s parents came here from India and he was first generation. I’m not quite sure how I got to be so comfortable around different races other than to say that my single Aunt had a Laverne and Shirley type roommate situation with this black lady named Debra when I was growing up. Actually Debra is back at my Aunt’s house but apparently sometime during the late 80s, early 90s, Debra got married and moved out. Maybe I’m just easy going. I don’t know. I know for high school purposes most of the other white kids in my smart kid classes were also members of the country club and that added an interesting little twist to the whole small town social seven circles of hell known as high school cliques.

I do know that racism is alive and well. I saw what happened to my friend when she was in the running to be valedictorian. It was ugly and obvious. Ethnic students are given lower grades by white teachers, even if it is the exact same paper as the experiment in the link did. That study has been replicated so many times. I’ve heard all of the statistics about black people going to jail more than whites.

I’ve also seen what it does to individual people. I’ve seen the unfairness. I’ve seen how it slowly sinks in and how some people become bitter. some people become sad and yet others just quit trying altogether.

I don’t quite understand it. It’s something that should be so easy and yet it seems so hard. If you don’t know somebody, you don’t know somebody and assuming things about someone you don’t know is stupid. Why be mean to people you don’t know? Why go around assuming someone is lazy or stupid or anything because of their appearance? Putting other people down as a means to feel better about yourself is desperate and sad.

I wish I had some deep meaning prose that would inspire but I don’t. Others have done it better in other venues. People just want to be liked and appreciated. They want to be loved for who they are deep down underneath all the bullshit.

G20 protest shenanigans.

You’re sexy
you’re Cute
take off your riot suit.

Now that’s a way to protest.

Cover me… Cover you.

I admit it. I love cover songs. They’re a guilty pleasure. Sometimes, they’re a not so guilty pleasure. Some cover songs are amazing and surpass the original. Others could be described as pure satire or butchering. Some are an attempt to disturb the soul of the composer of the song from heaven or hell. They’re just that bad.

here are some for you to gaze and laugh. Or whatever.

This is Hallelujah by Sheryl Crow. Hallelujah was written by Leonard Cohen and is more notorious for its many covers than the original song. Everyone from Rufus Wainright to Bob Dylan to KD Lang have recorded covers of this song and that is not including the myriad of covers done in concerts.

Bitches Ain’t Shit by Ben Folds. “Bitches Ain’t Shit” was originally performed by Dr. Dre . It’s a hardcore misogynistic gangsta rap song talking about wmen being hoes and going to county jail. OH lord. The first time I heard this, I laughed so hard I cried.

Jonny C covering “Baby Got Back” My friend Rebecca found this little gem. This is also a white dude singing a rap song with an acoustic instrument.

I Will Survive by Cake. This is a remake of the ubiquitous and beloved disco classic by Gloria Gaynor.

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