nakedjen

Naked With Intention

I get asked this question a lot.  A whole lot.  I also get asked, a whole lot, how I keep from getting arrested since I seem to just show up naked in the most unlikely of places?  Is there some sort of special something that I do to avoid arrest?  Is there some sort of practice to becoming as comfortable as someone like me seems to be as I am in my own skin, willing to just be naked in the presence of others, clothed or not, without really batting an eyelash?

I think if you've read my words for long enough you already know these answers so you can skip this post and just carry on with whatever it is that you happen to be doing on your own Friday evening that makes you happiest.  I might suggest that it include hugging a few people that you love, perhaps even a few that you don't even know, sharing some glitter just because and if you happen to be living on the East Coast of these United States, making certain you have some drinking water, a working flashlight or three, DOG FOOD FOR THE DOGS, snacks for you, and to just get ready to even, maybe, have a little naked dance in the rain.  I would do it, but we all know I'm bat shit crazy.

Back to Phil's question.  The thing is this all just takes practice.  It really does.  There are those places where public nudity is actually accepted and encouraged although I am going to be the first to admit that I'm not even a big huge fan of those particular places.  I'm far more of a fan of natural hot springs or places like my beloved Oregon Country Fair where we have sanctioned communal nudity and everyone is so relaxed and nonchalant about it that you really do realize that good heavens all bodies are just so incredibly beautiful in their unique differences!  Seriously.  When you see so very many naked bodies all together, each one just as beautiful and different and special and exotic as the next, you realize that we are magical creatures and our bodies are all as unique as our voices and our hearts and should absolutely be shared.

Now, I'm not suggesting you take off your clothes and go walking down the streets of your neighborhood. (Or, actually, maybe I am). I realize that when I do that many people exclaim that I'm an exhibitionist, that I do it to shock people.  My own mother, Emily Gilmore, insists that I do it because I have some screws loose and just absolutely MUST have people STARE AT ME. 

It really isn't about that, actually.  Not really.  I actually even have my own very strict internal set of rules about where and when I'll get naked, even in the very most public of places.  I will admit that if there's just a bit of shock value, that's okay.  But it is more, for me, to get others to reconsider their own individual notions about nudity.  About our bodies.  About exactly why it might be so offensive, so wrong, so awful to have a fully naked woman standing on a street corner.

However, I am suggesting, I am, that you dip your own toes as far as you can into the places where it feels the most comfortable for you.  I have always said that we can't exactly go about fighting wars if we're all standing around naked because there's no where for us to keep the bullets.

I live in this world naked. I can't live in this world any other way.  What I am enchanted to know is that there are others who can't live in this world any other way, as well. 

Naked with intention.  Now, there's a political platform we should perhaps all consider.

 

I been away a long time.

I have absolutely horrific timing.  I'm a terrible dancer, for starters.  You do not want me as your dance partner.  Ever.  Do not even ask.  I will embarrass both of us, more you than me, even, and you'll wish to the heavens that I'll just hurry up and take my clothes off and get naked just to create a larger and more dramatic distraction that actually gives people a more reasonable purpose to point and laugh. 

You think I am making that up.

I promise that I am not.

Next time, just ask me to dance.  Then, see how fast you beg me to get naked.

The timing business is crashing down around me today and it has nothing to do with dancing and it has nothing to do with being naked.  Wait. Actually, maybe it has everything to do with dancing and everything to do with being naked.  My heart is so full of the sad that my head can't even wrap around what it is that I need to say.

I know I need to absolutely say this: The Oregon Country Fair begins tomorrow and as the fates would have it I am not going to be there.  Naked and dancing and covered in glitter with my fine fairy family celebrating the best that is me.

I just typed that sentence and I'm not going to lie to you.   I'm now the naked girl at her computer screen with tears streaming down her cheeks.

SUCK IT UP, NAKED GIRL. 

(That was from all of you, Internet.  I hear you, loud and clear.)

I'm sucking, oh goddess, yes I am. At a whole lot of everything in quite spectacular ways right now.  But, yes, Internet, I promise that I'm sucking it up, too.

Anything Is Possible. Anything Can Be.

When my nephew was born, what feels like a million years ago, but really is only eighteen, my sister's life and my own life were on such divergent paths that it was difficult for us to find a place where they even crossed.  I was traveling nearly full-time with the Grateful Dead and never in the same place for more than a few days and she was a married school teacher living in Utah who had just become a mother. 

My nephew, #22, was born in December and I remember stopping by my sister's house on a snowy afternoon to meet him on my way from one place to another.  He was very much an infant and as infants will do he didn't do much but drool and stare at the world around him with a knowing curiosity.  Even then, he did have a knowing curiosity.  Still, I handed him rather quickly back to my sister and told her I'd be back when he was three. 

I know I upset her by not being far more enthusiastic about the miracle that she had just bestowed upon our family.  In the ensuing 18 years since his birth he's turned out to be one pretty amazing kid.  Of course he has great parents and that certainly makes a difference.  I know we all say that about our progeny, that they're amazing kids.  I think, honestly, that if we can find delight in our children and they still want to share their lives with us when they stand at the door of adulthood, well, someone somewhere did something right. 

There were commencement services.  Services that included the right of passage, for #22, from high school student to high school graduate followed by a big family celebration in his honor.  Here's what I shared with him on that day.

I admit that my friends and I haven’t done the best job of handing you the world on a silver platter. It’s in crap shape, honestly, and I wish I could say I’m sorry and I had the secret treasure map or a bunch of keys or even some cool virtual reality game to hand you and say, “THIS IS THE ANSWER TO THE FUTURE OF THE PLANET!”

I don’t.  What I do know is that no one does.  That’s the first thing I will tell you.  If someone tells you they have all the answers, go ahead and listen if you’d like., but remember you have all the answers, too.  Every single one of them because that’s what really living means.  Making all your own answers up as you go along.

The second thing I’m going to tell you is that life is about the really big SPECTACULAR MESSES.  I mean truly SPECTACULAR.  Ones that leave you breathless and wondering how you’re even going to, well, survive?  I do hope you’ll step out on the occasional limb, dig deep in the mud of your own soul and get REALLY MESSY.  Please.  It’s in the mess that you’re going to find love and passion and what makes your own soul really smile. 

Next: Refuse to wear uncomfortable pants. Ever.  Promise me this.  It’s not worth it.  Vanity is going to get you nowhere and you’re only going to look ridiculous unbuttoning the top button because your pants are too tight after you enjoy that delicious meal.    Trust me on this; the uncomfortable pants rule must stand.  Just say NO.

Remember, #22, that everything will be all right and that anything, absolutely anything is possible.  So dare to dream really big dreams.  You are absolutely unrepeatable.  You know there’s a magic about you that is all your own.   It really ain’t what you got.  It’s how you work it.  You’ve known this since you were old enough to talk.  I trust you will not forget it.

Don’t just do well.  Do good, too.  (Hug some trees, please.  Swim with some dolphins.  Share your sandwich and for goodness sakes recycle).  Thanks.

Pause.  Think before you speak and remember it is sometimes far more important what you don't say than what you do. 

So, pause again. 

And look at the view. You will never, ever be disappointed if you take the time to stop and look at the view.

 

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

Something I ate is something I should not have eaten.  I know this because I’m having trouble discerning which direction I should be facing the toilet.  I am not very pretty at the moment.  Things are more complicated because I’m at my sister’s house, not at my house.  The dogs are with me and I contemplate just crashing on the cold tile floor in the guest bathroom, but the heavens have literally split open and there’s thunder and lightening crashing across the skies, rain is coming down sideways in fierce buckets and my dogs are terrified that we are all going to die.

NeverNakedBeth is not very sympathetic.  She tells me to just get over myself, suck it up, and take my dogs home.  Where I belong.  I tell her she’s the world’s worst mother.  That wasn’t a very kind thing to say, I know.  Not nice at all, really.  I actually know that she’s a terrific mother.  I just can’t believe she’s watching me wretch into a toilet, knows the weather conditions outside and is kicking me to the curb.

I’m so out of it, truthfully, that I’m not even quite certain of the chain of events but the next thing I know I’m being told to get in my car and that NeverNakedBeth is driving me and the dogs home.  Her husband will follow and bring her back.  All of it feels crazy, but my own body is being so uncooperative that I can’t really muster the energy to try to sort out a better option and I know that there’s no way I can drive even though it is only 20 miles from her house to mine.

“You know,” I tell her, “The last time this happened I was in Sweden.  I was absolutely positive that I was going to die.  So I called Dave in Santa Cruz and made him stay on the phone with me for 12 hours, so he could call the front desk at the hotel if I suddenly expired!” 

“Jennifer, no one does that!”

“It seemed like the only thing TO DO at the time.  I really thought I was going to die!”

“But, seriously, who does that? Who keeps someone on the phone for 12 hours just because they don’t feel well and think they might die?”

“Dave did it for me.  I suppose that’s a reason we’re not married anymore…”

“You think?!?  You’re just difficult, Jennifer.  We love you, but you just make us really tired!”

She continued driving.  Really slowly.  Through the buckets of sideways rain and navigating the accidents that were littering the highway on either side.  It seemed to take forever to get from her house to mine and we rode in silence while I tried my best not to vomit in her lap.

I know I make my family really tired.  I know I am challenging and difficult and exhausting and, oh their favorite word, special.  I do know that it is really not easy to be my sister, or to have me as your daughter, that life with me as part of your family has more than a dash of the unexpected and not always in a delightful way.

I often say that we choose our friends and they often become our family.  For years I was really quite good at cherry picking a smattering of soul friends who made a great naked family and that worked very well for me.  They’re still my family and they all know where they live in my heart.

Since I’ve moved to Utah, my family, that I didn’t choose, has really and truly become not just my family, once again, but also my friends.  I adore them, truly, madly, deeply.  Which is not something I might have said at any point before this and I feel really blessed to be able to share my crazy mixed-up life with them.  They gave me a soft landing when I was shattered and needed a place to go.  Family can be good like that.  Mine was especially good at keeping their door and their hearts wide open.

I am lucky that I am loved so fiercely by all of them in spite of me.  I just need them to know that I love them just as fiercely and with every single fiber of my heart.

Love in Full Color

I called the house at least five times that morning.  Starting at 11:00 a.m. I called every phone of every person who lives there.   It is a bit ridiculous in this day and age that there are five different phone numbers to call to reach the occupants of one dwelling.  I'm not sure this is exactly progress.  Especially when not a single one of them seems capable of actually answering the phone.

I know it sounds a bit hypocritical for me to be the one to be complaining about the non-answering of telephones, but I will admit that there's a part of me that is a bit nostalgic for those days when there was just one telephone in a house.  That rang with a bell.  A real bell muffled somewhere deep inside.  It was attached to the wall and if you were at our house it had a really long cord so that whomever was talking could wander the rooms like a big caged tiger.  My aunt was particularly good at this wandering and pacing bit. She even occasionally snarled and spent so much time on the telephone we had to toss her the occasional steak to keep her from starving.  But the thing was, the phone rang.  And rang.  And rang.  Someone eventually answered it.  Or did not.  But you, if you were the one calling from your own similar phone from some other location very far away, felt rather confident that things were working and signals were traveling on the wires criscrossing the planet and that somewhere down the line a phone with a bell was RINGING and that if it wasn't answered perhaps no one was at home.  You didn't think you were just being ignored. 

Now, you wonder all kinds of things about the phone that is supposed to be so smart, that piece of cheap overpriced plastic stuffed with data and silicon chips and the calls that you try to make with it.  I feel like I have to believe in fairies that somehow magically flutter with wings to carry my call on its way across the magic bits of air to where it is supposed to go!  When there's no answer, no voice-mail, just a pre-recorded operator voice saying the number I have reached is unavailable, I know there are a million oddities that could have caused this to happen, but because I am me, I mostly think that I'm just being ignored.  Pfft.

So with no answer, none, I went back to the task at hand.  I was making colored powder for the Holi Festival of Colors that afternoon.  They sell colors for the festival at the Krishna Temple, but you don't get nearly enough for the money that you spend and I had sorted out the way to make it using the herbs that I had on hand and corn starch procured from my ever helpful National Cash Store.  They were actually having a sale on corn starch and not that it is expensive, but it felt like kismet to find it for 3 for a $1 when it was exactly what we needed. 

My poor Cuisinart will never be the same, I fear, and my kitchen looked like a Leprechaun and a Unicorn had engaged in a massive Thunderdome event, but we had five one gallon bags of colors ready to throw.  No one, though, was willing to answer a phone, still, and the skies were threatening snow and I while I had rainbows of love inside my heart, it would have been nice to have some sort of dangled carrot of enthusiasm from the troops in Lehi.

This is the part of the story where my sister, NeverNakedBeth, makes an appearance as the best mother of teenagers.  NeverNakedBeth actually chose to answer her phone.  When it rang.  I told her I had been calling and calling and that I really wanted to speak to HAC (my 15 year old niece) but she was NOT ANSWERING HER PHONE.  NeverNakedBeth sighed and said, "Nakedjen, this is the thing about teenagers.  You have to have absolutely no expectations.  Then when they do something unexpected, it's like lollipops and gumdrops and rainbows all at the same time.  It's fantastic.  But the rest of the time, you've had no expectations, so you just can not be disappointed.  Best way to handle teenagers.  Now, HAC was planning to go with you.  So just go to the house, walk in the door and tell her you're there to go!" 

"Really?  Just show up.  She'll get in the car and go with me?"

"Oh sure," murmured NeverNakedBeth.  "You'll just have to drag her out of bed.  I'm sure she's still asleep.  By the way, JSC wanted to go, too, but I think he's made other plans now."

"He does?  I'll take him with us.  He should totally come!"

"Well, just go to the house and you all can figure out who wants to go where.  Remember, no expectations.  Then there are lollipops and gumdrops and rainbows!"

My sister and her family live about 30 minutes away from me.  So I got to the house at 2:30 p.m. and found HAC sound asleep in her bed. 

"Dude, it's 2:30.  I've been calling you for hours.  Why don't you ever answer your phone?  If you want to go to HOLI, you need to get up and find some clothes.  Do you want to go?"

"Um, hello?  I'm sleeping.  I don't even know where my phone is!  But, yeah, I want to go.  Can you get out of my room?!"

"HAC, I want you to know your mother understands how to raise teenagers.  She told me that the key is to have NO EXPECTATIONS and then when you actually do show up, it's all gumdrops and lollipops!"

"Yes, we've trained her well."

"I think JSC wants to go with us and I think he should totally experience this."

And in that moment, NeverNakedBeth and JSC wandered in through the door.  I asked JSC if he wanted to go with us and he decided that would be totally cool, but he needed to shower first. 

"JSC, you need to wear all white.  Put on the BAPTISM clothes!"

"Nakedjen, did you really just say that?," giggled HAC.  "Like he's so going to wear those!"

The kids disappeared and eventually reappeared wearing white and ready to go. 

We were all in the car, on our way, when JSC announced that he needed to be dropped at Wendy's to hook up with a girl. He is 17, he is a senior in high school, this behavior in the real of teenage boys is, well, expected! 

"Dude, you're ditching us!  We invited you to go with us, some girl calls, and now you're ditching us for her.  Lame!"

"I'm not ditching you. I talked to A yesterday about going, she thought she had to work.  Now she doesn't.  I want to drive down with her to keep her company!"

"JSC, let's read the writing on the wall here.  You're in the car with us, you have plans with us, girl calls and WHOOPS, BUNNY, big change in plans, you're now going with her!"

"Wow, so much anger!  Where's the love, Nakedjen?!"

I burst out laughing and have never, ever felt so absolutely proud.  Where's the love, indeed?  Words can not explain how awesome it was to have my 17 year old used to be oh so straight laced nephew say this to me. 

So we dropped JSC with A at Wendy's.  Love is young, love is extra wild and when you're 17, love is found in a car ride shared on the way to the HOLI FESTIVAL.

Meanwhile, HAC and I continued on our way and arrived at the festival with our five gallons of colored powder, ready to throw it in the air and celebrate spring, celebrate love.

  

At the gates we met a security guard who was not so happy with our zip-lock bags.  Not happy at all.  So unhappy was he with our five gallons of colored powder that he CONFISCATED all of it as contraband.  Just took it.  1-2-3-4-5.  Gone.

And this is the moment, the very moment, where I realized that my days in Utah have surely, truly, absolutely not been wasted.  Because HAC looked at me and with a real glimmer in her eye said, "You watch that dude, I'm going to get our powders back!"

It isn't that I encourage breaking the rules.  I just encourage righting the wrongs.  The fact was, and HAC assessed this all on her own, there wasn't any consistency in the way the SECURITY GUARDS were confiscating contraband colors.  Just after we had our stuff taken at least 10 (yes 10) other people waltzed right through the gates with their OWN COLORS.  If they were going to take ours because NO OUTSIDE COLORS WERE ALLOWED, they should take ALL THE OUTSIDE COLORS. 

HAC figured that out all on her own, came to her own conclusion and took it upon herself to get OUR COLORS back.  She used all the best tactics that I've taught her about making yourself invisible (she's a born FAIRY, I swear it) and marched right up to where the guard had deposited our colors, grabbed all FIVE GALLON BAGS and confiscated them right back. 

We spent the afternoon tossing colors in the air, at each other, at the throngs of revelers and trying our best to breathe.  Eventually, we found ourselves in the mosh pit.  I looked over at HAC, crushing her own body willingly against the heaving wall of humanity and the permagrin wouldn't leave my face. The both of us were each like colored kernels of corn, popping here, popping there, up for air and then under legs and feet and elbows and swirling tornadoes of love infused colored dust.

It was pure magic. We were pure love. 

Three years ago my life imploded, turned upside down, and I when I woke up, I found my heart still beating in a Salty City in Utah.

And that has made all the difference.

 

 

 

 

The Valedictorian

I've written about my relationship with my father here before, I believe.  I feel like I must have, at some point, only because my relationship with my father can only really be described as bombastic at the best of times and it has taken me, well, my entire life to sort out that I will never be the daughter that he wishes I would be.  The truth is, I can be the Valedictorian of WORLD PEACE and show up and stand up for human rights and teach children to love and respect the planet and fight for truly affordable medical care for our citizens and cook and share organic meals with the hungry, all in the very same day, even, and Albert, my father, will just sigh, look up at me over the edge of his Wall Street Journal and say, "All those privileges you've been given and this is all you've got to show for it?"

I am the son that my father never had.  I also, sadly, have just never been good enough for him.  At anything.  No amount of A's, no amount of blue ribbons, no amount of awards to put on shelves was ever quite good enough.  It is crazy the amount I tormented myself in an effort to be the very best me I could be to win his approval only to ever hear from him the ways that I could have been better.  Much better.

On my birthday this past January, my father shared with me that he'd been reading this blog.  All of this blog.  The archives, the recent entries.  Every.single.word.

He surprised me with his compliment. "You're a damn good writer, Jennifer."

I waited for him to follow that with, "But here's how it can be much better...."

Before he could, though, I interrupted him and thanked him for saying that I was a good writer and then reminded him that I had "all those privileges..."

"That's right!  I spent a lot of money so you could write a complete sentence.  With all that money I spent, you should be writing for the New York Times...not on some blog."

And there it was.  Once again.  Damn good writer, but not quite good enough.  Even on my birthday.

For the past month or so, I've been having trouble finding my words.  I've been effectively silenced.  I keep writing words, lots of words and not sharing a single one of them here because they don't feel quite right, suitable, good enough.  I know that my father, Albert, is reading for comprehension and the seven year old Nakedjen who so very much wants him to just love her and be proud of her is worried that he'll look over his Wall Street Journal and decide whatever I have to say, whatever it is that I've just shared, whatever part of my own soul that I've just bared, just is not good enough.

The truth of the matter is, though, this blog and the words that I write here are far more important to my own health and my own sanity than anything, any words, any criticism, that my father, Albert, believes or could possibly say to me.  I've got 47 long years of life lessons, of knowing, that even if I'm the Valedictorian, that it will just never, ever, be quite good enough for him.  So, fuck it.  Yes, fuck it.

What I do know and truly believe, though, is that it is absolutely good enough, no make that great enough, for me. 

It's not easy being Albert's daughter and the son that he never had. 

There is a beautiful silver lining, though.

I give the world and its humans and dogs my very, very best every moment of every day. 

Anything else just might not be quite good enough. 

 

What I Didn't Know

Prompt: Appreciate. What's the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

This will shock many of you, but I believe it may shock her most all.  Emily Gilmore.

I spent the last 20 years of my life making quite certain that there were 3500 miles between us and had difficulty finding any sort of common ground with her.  Sometimes, truthfully, it felt as if this planet just was not large enough for the two of us and I was going to have go find another one to inhabit.  My world seemed so completely upside down from her world that I had trouble understanding how I could possibly share any part of her genetic make-up.  I knew, of course, that she was my mother and for this reason I loved her.  I did not like her very much.  I was a stubborn petulant spoiled child, I will admit, who could not let go of nor forgive the mother of my childhood. 

Emily Gilmore now lives just 20 miles from my house.  Over the past year we’ve spent more time together than I think we have in all the previous twenty years combined.  She’s not the same mother she was when I was five. 

I also am no longer five.

We actually are far more similar than I would ever want the Internet to truly know, but I’m telling you because it’s absolutely true. 

I’m grateful she’s close enough now for me to know if she’s still breathing.  Crazy, but true.  I also am truly grateful she’s close enough for me to hug often and tell her that I really do love her.   She may still make me occasionally lose my mind, but she is my mother and I’m really lucky to have her.  Lucky, indeed.

In My Neighborhood

 

 

December 7 Prompt

Author: Cali Harris
caligater.com
@caligater

Prompt: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

There’s a very extensive virtual community of amazing and beautiful and lovely people that shares my heart in absolutely important and significant ways.  Truthfully, it is far more than just one community, but that is the nature of the Internet, and while there is certainly some overlap, some criss-cross, some patchwork like a comfortable and well-stitched quilt, each of these communities is uniquely its very own.

At the same time, since arriving in Salt Lake City, I’ve made a very real and concerted effort to create real tangible community for myself right here.  This hasn’t proved as easy as I would have hoped, but I’m persistent and I am not giving up.  I’ll admit that my beloved Coffee Garden provides my most immediate loving community and I’m so grateful that I moved back to this neighborhood so I can truly relish their company on a daily basis. 

Of course, there’s Sundance, my beloved farmers at the Famers Market, there’s the Raw Food group, my book club and the folks who also drink Kombucha.  There’s the crowd that wanders the gallery stroll on Fridays and the ladies who lunch with me daily at the University where I work.  I’m not complaining, too loudly, that I’m sitting alone on Saturday nights with nothing to do.

I am just raising my hand, waving it in the sky, and saying that in 2011, I’ll vow to participate even more actively with the people who truly live in my neighborhood and walk on my streets.  They have smiles and stories and love to share.  I want to know them even better.

One Happy Meal

Months and months ago, I'm not even quite sure when it was, I was on the phone with my youngest sister, Robin.  The fact that I was on the phone with her is rather unusual and notable for both of us because I never know where my phone is and Robin rarely, if ever, calls me.  We might be sisters, but we tend to communicate using our special sister psychic powers.  Phones are for amateurs.  Or bad news.

On this day, though, she had bad news to share and was gulping and sobbing into the phone.

"The vet says that there's nothing we can do for Duval. Nothing.  That we can't do any radiation or chemo for him."

Duval, for those of you who are new to this story, is Robin's beautiful dog.  He's more than a dog, though.  As I say so often about our furkids who happen to so selflessly share their lives with us, Duval is a god with four paws who absolutely chose Robin as his familiar and who carried her heart every so gently on his four paws and took her care and well-being as his most important job.  Ever.  He was born to do nothing else.  He worried constantly about where Robin was and how she was feeling and because of this the two of them were just always together, better together, never separate. 

The cancer sentence is always grave. Duval's cancer was neurological and rare. Nearly impossible to treat.  The outlook was especially grim and on that day, so very long ago, not a single one of us was prepared to hear it. We certainly were not ready to accept it.

I was doing my best to give big sister calming and soothing and loving advice, to dig deep and offer possible holistic solutions, when I heard Robin shout, "I need a Happy Meal please, but make sure you hold the onions on the cheeseburger!"

Then she said to me, "Jennifer, I'm going to just kill this dog with McDonalds!  At least he'll die happy."  Then turning to her beloved dog, she continued, "Won't you, Duval?  You don't even know you're sick.  You just want to wag your tail and make everyone happy! And that's what I just need to let you do.  For all the rest of your days."

I couldn't help but laugh.  Robin was in the drive-thru ordering her dog a Happy Meal.  Indeed, a Happy Meal was Duval's most favorite meal in the world.  If Robin couldn't save her dog with special cancer drugs, she was going to give him the very thing that always made his tail wag the most (other than Robin herself). 

I listened as Robin moved forward to pay for Duval's spcial medicinal meal.

"Hello, Boo, you got your baby with you today?!" I heard what has to be the kindest and nicest McDonald's employee in the entire nation say to my sister.  "I've got his Happy Meal.  No onions, just like you asked.  I just know he's going to love it, just like always.  You're a good mama taking such good care of him."  Obviously, Robin and Duval were regulars at this drive-thru and well-loved.  Very well-loved.  "You have a beautiful day now, you hear? I'll see you again, soon."

The entire exchange just made me smile.  We are a family of crazy dog people, I know.  It's legendary the things that we, as a family, will do for our dogs.  Robin is no exception and her devotion to Duval knew absolutely no boundaries.  None.  She trusted her heart to that dog and he gave her every moment of every single breath that he had.

She gave him Happy Meals and Duval gave her the Happy.  Every.Single.Day.

This morning, Robin had to say goodbye to her beloved Duval.  The world, our world, has lost one very marvelous wagger of tails.  He was a most handsome blond man who filled all who encountered him with smiles and genuine joy.  Those of us who were lucky to know him will miss him greatly.

Happy trails, Duval.  We're all, every one, much better for your love and I promise to wag more and bark less.  xox

naked is naked and naked is me.

i took naked photos yesterday morning. because i keep getting emails from folks saying, "are we getting naked friday photos?!! it has been a really long time..."

and it has. been a really long time. i know this.

it isn't that i don't enjoy being naked. or celebrating it, in fact. because, i do! absolutely.

i'm just in a space, at this moment, where i'm feeling like putting naked pictures of myself on my blog isn't something i really should be doing.

and, yes, my photos are already splashed all over the place out there. i know this. i'm not going around deleting them all or trying to capture the ones that are already polluting the internet.

part of it, i guess, is that i'm in the process of rethinking exactly what it is that i'm doing with my life. perhaps i'm having my own mid-life crisis of some sort? god only knows. i just know i'm in my own HEAD a whole hell of a lot (and it isn't the best and most fun place to play) and i keep thinking about what's next?! i'm barreling towards 50. which feels like a place where a person might have some sort of fucking clue?!

but that's the cruel joke of this life, i think. some of us get the answers right from the start and then others of us spend our life taking off our clothes, changing costumes, putting on new ones and stripping bare again, because nothing ever quite feels like it fits us. at all.

i know i'm happiest NAKED. but i also know i spend a whole lot of time and energy explaining myself NAKED. and that is where my biggest issue is right now.

if i have to explain, if it takes all that energy to get everyone else to truly "get" it, is it really even worth it to me? what is the point?!? 

naked isn't just a person without clothes.  naked isn't nudity. naked isn't pornographic, even. naked is a life lived bare, without apology, very much out loud, fiercely and furiously and generously and in gratitude and sometimes, yes, it is really fucked up and full of flaws and mistakes, but because it is naked, you're going to see all of it.  there are no covers, there is no screen, there is no filter.

naked is naked and naked is me.  a picture of a naked me might not even say all of that.

and that is just a small dark glimpse into my head at the moment. there's lots more cavernous canyons of crap. but since they're mostly full of crap, it's not even worth attempting to vomit it out here.