Over at Kelly’s place.  You know what to do.

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We’ve had one open house with four visitors, one actual official-like realtor showing, and no offers yet.  Please keep praying.

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I’ve been exercising a bit every morning right after  I get out of bed.  Am I the only one who doesn’t feel better after exercising?  Wheezing, aching, point-tenderness?  Then again, I also want to not die any earlier than I can possibly manage. So I keep trying.  Intermittently.

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I’m part of two panels at the Catholic Writers Guild Live next month.  Go, and do not miss this conference again.

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I’m making some invisible headway on Never Let Me Down Again,  the working title for the sequel to Don’t You Forget About Me:

I got so stuck that I’ve had to resort to writing exercises.  One of them is a sunblock of my own invention: Through Line.  It’s based on the Through Line from Method Acting.  It’s great in that it provides action verbs that can translate very well into layered characterization and later into deeper imagery.  All that is my way of saying that I’m glad I majored in Theatre instead of English.

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Speaking of theater majors, tomorrow I’m going to a mini-reunion for my college department.  I’ll be seeing the people I worked with over twenty years and eighty pounds ago.  I’m excited and truly looking forward to it.  I’m also a bit anxious.  These people have a lot of reasons to look down on me.  However, I have lots of reasons to love them.  So, I’m going.  All additional decades and pounds of me.

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My only thought on people who’ve decided to go through colossal changes to their bodies and how people relate to them:  I am reminded of The Woman Who Wasn’t There. All my life I’ve seen people become what at some essence (fashion-wise, social-wise, DNA-wise, whatever-wise) they are not.  I have been one of those people.  Sometimes I wonder if I still am, though in my typically bass-ackwards way.  I am painfully uncomfortable maintaining any kind of facade, though that’s through no virtue of my own: I am just too scatterbrained to keep up any kind of a lie for very long, .

We’re all looking for acceptance.  I’ve seen people search for that acceptance by, either deliberately or subconsciously, seeking out groups who have a rule, unspoken or otherwise, to reject nobody.  I think that’s why it’s pretty important to teach our kids (and, ahem, ourselves) to accept who and what we are, because there’s always gonna be someone who wants you to be something you’re not.  If I’ve learned anything from the dubious virtue of being too scatterbrained to spin the plates of a public-vs-private-face, it’s that when we’re secure in who and what we are, we don’t even want to put up a fight or a front over how much acceptance others owe us.  They can’t give me what I don’t need because I already have it.

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I wanted to end with Charleston.  The piece that’s taught the me the most on it is by Jen Fitz.  Jen Fitz is my spirit animal.  My southern, laid-back, quietly observant, subtly charming spirit animal.

In reading and praying over the list of victims, the one who resonates the most with me personally is Tywanza Sanders.  Yes, he was a young black man, and I’m a middle-aged white woman.  However, when I saw his age, I saw myself a few years ago, the only twentysomething at a Bible study, the youngest by thirty years.  So, as strange as it sounds to say, in some small way, I’ve been in his seat at the Bible study.  Would I have stood up to take someone else’s bullet?  I’d like to think so.  May he pray for me as I’ll pray for him, that I can be courageous like he was.

Another reason to be Catholic: in the communion of saints, we can become friends with people we never would have met, on this earth, either because of human constructs or simple physical distance.  God willing, when we ourselves reach heaven, those friends will be waiting for us, arms outstretched, shouting, “Finally!  You made it!”