Rachael

So let me get this the hell straight (so to speak). The United Church of Christ has this ad. It shows two bouncers standing at the door of a church, letting some people in, keeping others (a gay couple, a black boy and girl) out. Then it says, "Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we." It’s an open invitation to worship with them. It’s a lovely ad. See it HERE.

ABC, CBS, and NBC won’t air it, stating it’s too controversial with today’s heightened focus on "moral values."

Here’s what kills me. CBS actually announced this: "Because the commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and
other minority groups by other individuals and organizations, and the
fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a constitutional
amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this
spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the (CBS and UPN) networks."

So because the Bush administration wants marriage to be only a union between a man and woman, because they’re trying to write hate into the Constitution (for the first time ever making the Constitution exclusionary), the media outlets can now officially discriminate against people of color and people like me. Wouldn’t want to offend the moral majority, now. Soon, I’m sure, NBC won’t show "Will and Grace," because there might be gay people on it. No, that MAKES money for the network, doesn’t it? So that’s all right.

Fabulous. My stomach hurts.

Write them. Do it. I hate writing letters like this; it never seems to feel like we’re making a difference. But maybe we will.

Here you go:
nbcshows@nbc.com
netaudr@abc.com
www.cbs.com  (click on feedback on the bottom and the e-mail form will pop up)

Enjoy your weekend, all.

Late post tonight, but I’ve got several things on my mind and want to dump them here before I go to work.

#1 – I miss Lala. I’m really trying not to, as I think she’s out in the woods being all meditative and content. Really, at heart, I’m a meditative, content person. I should try harder to match her in this right now. I think (from what I glean in conversation, haven’t done my own reading yet) that one of the ideas in Buddhism is to try not to become Attached to things or people, as all will change. Yeah, well. I’m attached. I understand that everything changes, everyone dies, people go different places, get sick, suddenly like sushi after never liking it before, yes. I know. I’m okay with that. I’m not asking for any kind of permanent permanence here. I know that’s impossible. But I MISS her. In a pouty, foot-stomping, petulant, sulky way. Attractive, I’m sure. Stomp.

#2 – I woke up feeling cruddy again. But not too overly cruddy, and I decided I would worry less about the marathon if I went for a training run, so I did. It was a hard run, lungs working overtime in the cold, and it was a rhinoceros day as I lumbered around Mills (my new favorite run — Em, tell your mom!). But now, after my bath, tucked up on the couch, I feel so much better, physically AND mentally. Weird.

#3 – A comment from Dear Reader Cathy really got me thinking. She said, "I’m not a writer or a long (or short) distance runner, but it seems to
me the two activities have something in common. 1. Only an almost crazy
person would attempt such a feat. 2. You must love it or you wouldn’t
do it. 3. When you’ve hit that 17th mile (or whatever it is) you need
the someone to run with you or cheer you on." And then she gave me a great CHEER.

I’ve hit the high miles in the novel, haven’t I? I worked on it yesterday! I did! And I will today, too! I realized this: They’re right about running a marathon when they say it’s in two halves. The first half is 20 miles, and the second half is the final 6. I found that to be utterly true when we ran the practice marathon. The first twenty were pretty hard, but the last six were grueling and almost impossible. And that’s where I am in the book. I’ve cruised through the first twenty metaphorical miles, and now I’m looking up a great big six mile hill. I’m exhausted. But I know I can do it. Step by step. My reward is once I’m done, I’ll get to start another! I love the magic of writing without (really) thinking, just letting the characters do whatever the hell it is they want to do. I love the lack of control I have I over them. What’s hard is this part, the reining in, the choices I have to make, the connections I have to draw or redraw or erase. Erg. It’s going to take a while. But with this marathon metaphor in mind, I feel for the first time that it’s not insurmountable. Thank you, Cathy. Wow.

#4 – I think I forgot to tell you this. Lala was recognized in Trader Joe’s by one of my readers. I was astounded. Personally, I’ve only ever been recognized at Yarn Things. It was Dear Reader Laine, and I had JUST been telling Lala about her. Laine, how’s the move going, anyway?

All right. I think that was it. I’m going to watch a spot of TV before dragging myself and my novel off to work. Have a good night, y’all. Love on someone, okay?

I can’t decide how to take care of myself right now. Really, it sounds odd, but I just can’t seem to figure it out. I can’t decide how my body is feeling and what I should do about it. I’ve felt feverish off and on for days. I was totally ready to call in sick tonight if I woke up feeling the same way I felt when I went to bed. But I feel better now, and might even be up for a run. A short one. Maybe? I can’t decide. Will that make me feel better? Or worse? No way of knowing. I could just stay on the couch, which my heart knows is sensible, but sensible is also getting my training runs in this week. Next week, the week before the race, I’m not doing ANY training runs, to give my shin splints a final break. This week, it feels like it’s important to do them.

I’m babbling. I’m grasping at words, any words.

You know what I’m NOT doing? Yeah, you probably do. I’m not writing. Haven’t since I moved. Right now I’m at the point where I’m re-reading the novel slowly, making notes, and deciding how to change the damn book so I can finish it. Hard, hard work, and I’ve been putting it off. And off. I have to get rid of one integral character completely (or at least make her a minor support character). And I’d like to plot it out. I didn’t want a plot when I wrote it, but two years and a very bad memory later, I think I need some help remembering what I’ve done in five hundred plus pages.

I’m moved. No more excuses. I’ll work on it today. And I’ll take it with me to Hawaii. Yow. Just want to be back IN it. It’s good when I’m in it. Right now I’m standing next to it in a bar, bumping elbows with it, but refusing to acknowledge its presence.

No more excuses. Except this one: No running today. I’ve decided. If I’m not sure how I feel, better to err on the safe side. Just had to write it out.

Now I just have to Write It Out.

Harriet likes to ride with her nose right up to the cold-air vent in my car.

I feel like I did when I was twenty-five and in snow for the first time: I noticed that snowflakes really DID come in snowflake patterns. I had always thought that was just poetic Hallmark-license. I like learning things about dogs at thirty-two, things that probably everyone else knows, like the air vent thing. And how when you pick up their poop with the plastic bag, you have to feel that it’s actually warm. That was so surprising, and gross. Deal-able, sure. But who knew? (You did, probably.)

The animals did pretty well last night. Adah opened the accordian doors to my bedroom and then reconsidered hastily when she realized what was on the bed with me.

And here she is next to me, a few minutes ago. Doesn’t she look disgruntled?

That’s because to my left are these:

Can you tell by Miss Idaho’s proximity to my computer how teeny she is? Here, this might help:

And another tense moment:

I think if Lala knew about this photo, she’d come right back from Buddha Camp. Digit is a son-of-a-bitch, and for a second I thought he was going to go all whirling dervish on the dogs. But no, he just leaped off the couch in disgust.

And knitting! Dogs and cats and knitting, all in one day! Alert the media! (Aside, related to none of this: I’m highly irritated that I’m still fighting off whatever it was that I had last week. I had a fever all last night when I went in to work some overtime, and now I just feel stuffy and cruddy. I need to get BETTER! I leave for Hawaii a week from Thursday to run the marathon. There. I’ll go make more tea. Back to knitting, which is where I was going.)

I love this gansey so much.

Like, SO much. I thought about making it a Christmas present er sumpthin’, but I just can’t. I can’t give it up. Plus, I’d better mail the Boys their Cromarty, so this will take its winter place. It’s going to be fitted, friends. I have to warn you. I was really worried about running out of yarn, so I made it a mite small. A sexy gansey? Oxymoron, or an idea whose time has come?

Pattern is from Silver Creek Classics, number S-806, available here. I only bought it because I had seen and touched one made from this lovely, lovely wool at MDS&W. The pattern picture? Tres early nerdy eighties. But I love it. Have I mentioned I lurve this pattern?

Babbling too much. I’m cold and may go back to bed for a nap before work. But I might knit a leetle bit more first.

What’s truly weird is how I felt yesterday, when I picked up Lala’s dogs for a sleepover. I felt giddy-happy. Almost ecstatic to see their little jumping happy heads.

See, I don’t know from dogs. I’ve never, ever been a dog person. Whatever. I thought they were sometimes cute but dumb, and drooled a lot. I just figured it out: They get you by making you feel like the most important person they’ve ever seen. I’ve always seen Lala’s dogs when, duh, Lala was around. They freak out when they see me, but they really freak out when they see her, so before yesterday I’d never had the opportunity to open the door and watch them lose their little minds in sheer joy that I was there, that I was just who they wanted me to be, that I was the most wonderful, beautiful, head-petting person they’d ever, ever seen or hoped to see.

It makes you puff right up with pride and then you have to HUG them. It’s easy to hug Harriet, harder to hug Miss Idaho, since she is, after all, only five pounds, but I managed  with no serious injury on anyone’s part.

And then driving them to my house, they were so HAPPY that they were in the car with me. Then home, they were so HAPPY to be outside. Then going in the door, they were so HAPPY that they got to come inside.

(Dude, I might be a dog. Must think more about that.)

And inside, the cats just growled. There was no happiness in cat-land last night. Both of them did eventually get off the top of the refrigerator, and they slept on the living room couches, but it was with the highest level of disgust. The dogs don’t even pay attention to them. Perhaps that’s the problem, actually. They’re feeling slighted by not being chased?

It was totally selfish, me getting the dogs. I sleep SO much better at night with them in the bed. See, during my day-sleeps, my cats are the best. They cuddle and purr all day with me, and I sleep like a log. My night-sleeps are horrible, since Adah wakes at 2am and spends, literally, the next FOUR HOURS jumping from my head to my feet to my head to the bookcase to my head to my hands. She’s a jumper and a pouncer, and I have no doors in this house to lock her out of the bedroom (just accordion-style doors that she learned to open within the first thirty seconds of being in the house). But with the dogs on the bed, Adah does not jump on my head. And the dogs sleep late. It’s a lovely thing. I’m using them again tonight, too.

Pictures tomorrow, maybe? And I’m working on a gansey that I’m loving, a pattern and wool I picked up at Maryland Sheep & Wool, and I can’t remember when I’ve had such fun knitting a pattern. Cromarty was amazing to knit, but it was so HARD, and required constant graph reading. This pattern is memorize-able but still fun on every damn row. Love, love, love it. Worried I’ll run out of yarn. I’d hate to be making a vest.

(As I post this, both dogs are on the couch next to me, and Digit just crept across the living room floor and skulked up to sit on the other side of me. It’s obviously not that he likes me, because right now I’m prolly pretty low-down on his list of favorite things. He’s just asserting his right to me. This is better than TV.)

Holy cow. You MUST see the Rachael, the Em, and the Iris, done as only Zay can. Go HERE.