I would love to tell you that I am on time for everything, that I am punctual. I am not. Not even close. But, you see, I never knew this. I lived with a military husband who moved earth and mountains to make sure we were never late to anything. I always prided myself on how on time I was to everything. When we lived in Germany, our godparents were late to the Christening of Cheyenne, and I thought “Well, that will never happen to me.”

Famous last words, right?

Fast forward to today. I am happily divorced and late. To EVERYTHING.

I don’t mean to be late. I try to be on time, but times move different for me in some weird way and then there is the INTERNET! Reddit isn’t going to read itself, yo. One more click then I will get in the shower!

And if I am late that means that my kids are late. This is one area where I really fall down in parenting. I balance it with the knowledge that my kids have never watched any of MTV’s inane programming. I still come out ahead, I think.

Combine my new found sloth-ness with my (nearly) teenage daughter’s unwillingness to leave her bed for any reason and you have a recipe for school morning disaster.

Me: I’M LEAVING!!!

Chey: I’M ALMOST READY!!

ME: HOW LONG, DAMMIT?!

Chey: FIVE MINUTES!!

[Ten minutes later]

Me: I’M WALKING OUT THE DOOR!

Chey: NO YOU’RE NOT!

Me: WATCH ME!

Chey: I DON”T HAVE SOCKS!!

And on and on and on.

Cheyenne has been late 35 times this year. Let that sink in. THREE FIVE. 35. 3 x 10 + 5.

Finally, the school has had enough. Any more tardies and she gets Saturday detention.

Which we will be late to, no doubt.

Close up of the organ at Westminster Hall in Baltimore, MD.

Organ Pipes at Westminster Hall

I have told you time and again how much I love twitter? (Even though my dearest friend is all, “I don’t get it.” Well, of course she doesn’t get it. She still reads books on paper. So retro!)

Well, twitter decided to change their interface. And this isn’t a small change – it’s pretty dramatic. Like 40′s film noir dramatic. I love it.

But, oy! The bitching. If I had a dime every time someone tweeted an iteration of  ”I hate the new twitter” I would have five dollars. Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but if I have to listen to you complain, I damn well better be earning more than five dollars.

So I have decided to let you in on a secret;

THINGS CHANGE.

Yes, they do. Sometimes it is for a good reason, sometimes it’s not.

Don’t like it? Don’t care.

I feel the same way when I see people lament the loss of newspapers. Actual print. I just don’t understand all the mourning. Newspapers have been around, what? three or four hundred years? Why was it assumed that they would be around forever? And don’t give me the ‘loss of excellent reporting and unbiased opinion’ argument, because I will choke on my laughter while I say *cough cough Hearst cough cough Murdoch*.

Even worse is pining for what never was. For instance, when people my father’s age reminisce about ‘the good ole days’ when people showed ‘respect’. REALLY? Yeah, I see a whole bunch of respect pouring out of those fire hoses from the Civil Rights movement or the gender pay gap. I think we have different definitions of respect.

Wow, tangent much, Amy? What were we talking about again?

Oh, yeah. Twitter.

It changed.

Adapt.

Stained glass detail in downtown Baltimore.

Stained glass detail

As many of you know, I started the Blogger Body Calendar last year. This year I decided to have some sort of breakdown. It was awesome. And by awesome…I mean terrifying. Putting my foot on the floor each day was a chore. But I did it. In the meantime, there were things I just couldn’t do – like make simple decisions, like open email, like run a blog.

Enter SUPAHBECKY! She swooped in and took this project over. And has seen it to fruition. But she was new to the process, so enter

SUPAHALEX AND SUPAHALISON! They quickly realized I wasn’t getting my shit together in enough time to be of any help and stepped in did it. My gratitude for this is endless.

The Blogger Body Project now belongs to the awesome project Band Back Together, and I couldn’t be happier. And having said all my thank-yous I give you the final product:

The 2012 Blogger Body Calendar;

It is for sale here: http://www.zazzle.com/2012_blogger_body_calendar-158736621140849659

All proceeds go to Violence Unsilenced.

Another big thank you to all the ladies who posed for this worthy project.

GO! BUY!

P.S. Please make sure to stop by Alex’s Blog, Becky’s Blog,and Alison’s Blog.

I love this picture, it is a good representation of how much nature respects our burial traditions. Which is not at all.

Here’s the thing. I think graves and our system of burying people is an INCREDIBLE waste. Basically, we take someone whose soul is gone, pump them full of toxic chemicals, dress them up, and then stare at them for a few hours. Then we put them in the ground atop a few feet of concrete in a box that will be there FOREVER, and then cover them with dirt. And in 50 years no one will even care who is in that box. There is just no need for it. Because in a hundred years your tombstone will be covered in dirt and no one is going to care what your casket looked like or what dress you were buried in or what you looked like at the funeral. When I die, take everything medicine can use, burn my body and scatter my ashes somewhere. I’ll be dead. I WON’T CARE.

Yes, yes I am full of sunshine today, sue me.

Century Old Grave in Westminster

The kids are going to be gone again this Christmas. You would think that would be my daily rant, but it isn’t. I am so happy that I don’t have ‘do’ Christmas. Christmas is a hassle. A huge dance of traditions that I don’t even like. I wasn’t always this way – I, like most new moms, cherished those times with my kids when they were younger and the magic of Christmas was infectious. I braved the busy malls, the lines to see Santa, the Black Friday deals, and the mountain of wrapping that came with making sure that my kids had a ‘good’ Christmas.

Now that they are a little bit older, they don’t expect quite as much, and I am so damn grateful. And when I stripped away all the things that make this season such a chore I realized something –  I don’t really like Christmas. If you’ve followed this blog for a while you know that this isn’t a new gripe. I just find the whole ritual tedious, obligatory, and governed by archaic traditions I am ‘supposed’ to be following. And I think we all know how well I do with words like ‘obligations’ and ‘supposed to do’.

This year I have a reprieve. The kids are going to their Dad’s for Christmas break. I shall dance with joy when they board that plane.

I was hoping that this meant that I could get away without having to decorate too heavily, I mean they aren’t going to be here….so what is the point?

But…NOPE.

I still have decorate AND put up a DAMN TREE.

Oh, the humanity!

At least there is eggnog, and bourbon. Lots and lots of bourbon.