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Disparate Realities

Posted on November 25, 2014

This week was intended to be a break. Getting away from work, home, school, everything but each other. We are not amusement park people, we are not, “We’ll take the works package.” I’m not sure why I pressed for it, what happened to make me say, “Let’s do the Orlando thing,” but I did. And we are. We promised one another that we’d roll with whatever happened—lines, crankiness, anything. We hadn’t expected bomb scares/suspicious luggage delays or tornado warnings and biblical deluges, but lo, they passed. I let a few snarky comments fly, but other than that, it just didn’t matter. Until last night. I’d been in my happy, little bubble when I opened my laptop and Sean asked, “Have they announced a verdict?” My mind…

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Not One Child—Ferguson & Michael Brown Are the US

Posted on November 24, 2014

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” Martin Luther King, Jr. I don’t feel incredibly comfortable writing about the verdict in the Michael Brown case, but I feel equally awkward not writing about it. A child died, ultimately, no one will be held accountable in the eyes of the law. Let that sink in, a life gone and no one serving time, but his parents in a lifetime of “Why our son?”   I am in Orlando reminding my daughters not to touch every single surface because we are in one big, pulsing, germ dome. Other parents are teaching their sons not to look suspicious or be in an environment where they might be…

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Travel Travails Triumph

Posted on November 23, 2014

If it weren’t for suspicious luggage and whispers of a bomb scare and a subsequent lockdown in the baggage claim at Orlando’s airport, I’d have written a proper post. Instead, there is this: a post with two images that capture the most important things about today—the anticipation of an adventure as seen from the window seat and then, after so many hiccups…             And a trip to the beach to do cartwheels and scream as they leapt in the surf hours after bedtime had passed.     Sometimes dwelling on the goo in between isn’t worth the time.

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Bench Seats and Marriage

Posted on November 21, 2014

I was driving into work, the defroster melting the last bits of frost from the windshield, and the sun shining from the east as if to further the process along. I rode in silence, the air so cold my eyes watered. My mind was blank, deliciously so. I watched the blur through the window, happy to be awake. Quietly I began to think about setting an intention for the day. I felt sheepish, what good could setting an intention do anyway. I make lists all the time, the writing of the items doesn’t make them get done any quicker, if anything it just feels as if it puts my failure to finish in bold. An intention, Amanda. What is my intention? I licked my lips and…

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