The thing about blogging...

After you blog for awhile and belong to Blogher and E-How, is it just me or does everyone start to think about how everyone else is doing some days?
I have read that all human DNA is only separated by .10% which pretty much makes us all the same. Maybe that is why I get the feeling after reading other blogs that we are, well, friends.
I wonder every day how Anissa (Hope4Peyton.org) is doing, and wish her husband could update more. There is Ree (The pioneer woman) that I have to check on the ranch from time to time :) There is the gay fathers with their little adopted MaKenzie that I adore as well as the American woman working for the embassy in Sudan (Facts are strictly optional) that is hysterically funny and I always hope she is finding the wine she needs to function over there. Anyway there are more but the point is that we all write at Blogher for the same reason when it comes down to it. Just to know that our lives matter and our opinions and no matter how different we are or the paths we took to get here, each one of us brings something to the table that the rest of us are looking for.
Everyone who has emailed me and the friends I have made seem just as important as the friends I grew up with. You make me smile and appreciate how I get through my life the same way that I wish nothing but good for everyone's blog I read.
So while it is amazing how many strangers have come together to help Anissa and her family get through this I guess it isn't that hard to believe since we have, you know, about the same DNA.

What Coffee Really Stands For

We all have this thing in common called coffee. We meet under the pretense of "Let's have a cup of coffee" or when we don't want an evening to end someone will suggest "grabbing a cup of coffee before we go home". I tend to think all of our great memories somehow revolve around that perfect cup.

I can remember being in my early teens and going to our next door neighbors with my mom. She would always have a pot on and we would sit for hours talking and I remember never wanting those evenings to end...Just one more cup?

I have my Grandmothers cup that she always had coffee in. I had to have that cup when she died just short of 100. It never fails to remind me of something she said when I look at that cup.

I am right now drinking out of the first coffee cup that my husband bought me. After 17 years so many things have come and gone or sit in a jewelry box but this cup is a constant in my everyday life. Makes me smile. When I visit somewhere that I don't want to forget I always buy a coffee cup ensuring the memory will never go away.

If you listen to people they can tell you where their best coffee experience was. There is just something mesmerizing about it. It is the one thing we have in common with people from all over the world, and I for one am thinking World Peace if we could all just sit down for...a cup of coffee.
Nyn
Ps...It's also "the best part of waking up"

Burying bodies in the backyard

At a recent family party I was looking at everyone there and how there are roles we assume in life, how we got them, and why we keep them. I watched friends and extended family that also were there, seeing the big cosmic joke that we are even on the same planet let alone one backyard.

I have two brothers and although we have decided we would bury bodies for each other if needed (no bodies yet... whew) I noticed it's the same digs at each other being thrown, the ones that are funny with those underlying...tones. We don't fight, ever. It's one of those unwritten rules out of respect for my mom. That and the fact that if we ever did, well... our roles would be shattered.

I notice that the strong ones, are not strong, the weak are...not, the ones that assume the money roles should hand those badges over asap and the bitchiest ones have the best hearts. Then I wondered if all backyard gatherings play the same game.

I have cried over my role, I have wanted to set everyone straight and call them out more than once. Then I realized the reason I don't isn't because I am afraid, or because I don't have a backbone. The biggest reason is that I have seen the aftermath when loved ones decide to stop the label they have been given and how the dynamics of the backyard changes...right then. Forever

So, Before I turn that yard into an episode of "The Real Housewives" Of Atlanta...


I will remember all the times we laughed so hard at something no one else would find funny, or when I have been at the bottom of my soul needing help and those faces were there to pick me up. I hope when all of them look back, my(cute)face is included in their mental images. I raise my glass to all of them, every face around me has impacted my life. They have made me stronger and wiser, and brought infinite amounts of joy to my life, laced with enough ammo to give a shrink a bestseller.

So as I was getting ready to leave and my brother got his final shot in to get my blood pressure up I looked around and just thought...Touche, nicely played. I left there with my role in life still intact knowing as pissed as I was thats the backyard where I belong and if that means burying a body for one of them tonight...I'm in.