I can hear the wind talking outside,
With its moaned vowels and blustering h’s.
It wraps its arms around my home,
Begging for a hug before it head off on its way.
The wind can never stay long;
It’s always so quick on its heavenly road.
But those moments when it speaks to me
Are like whispers caught amidst a throng.
Evansville, all hail to thee.
True and loyal we will be.
And we’ll fight fight fight
With all our might.
Cheering with pep and vim for white and purple.
And with every victory
Our hearts with praise will fill.
And we’ll back you with a Rah rah rah!
All hail to our Evansville. UE!
I attended the University of Evansville and I am an Ace through and through. Yes, our mascot is a gambler and it’s rather apropos honestly. I have had to take some serious gambles, some risks in my lifetime. Risks with big payoffs.
I left home for college at seventeen, traveled thousands of miles away from home to attend, far from family, friends, or anyone I knew.
I married my first and only boyfriend, a man whom God brought into my life only days after telling God that I was done looking for myself, that I trusted Him to show me who He had for me.
I decided to stay home with Elizabeth for the first year after she was born, giving up my job and our second paycheck to do so.
Life is full of risks, full of gambles, but I have been very blessed that the risks that I have taken have paid off and things have turned out well. And even if they don’t in the future, I know that I have family and loved ones to lean on and help me through it.
I have no idea how I got home tonight. It’s a twenty-minute drive from my dance class back home and I don’t know how I got from there to here. I totally zoned out as I drove. A hundred things must have gone through my head as I drove, one thought or train of them blending into another. Before I knew it, I was slowing down to stop at the STOP sign at my street. And, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you everything I was thinking about. I just let my mind roam, though I know that I thought about some important things, I drafted a story beginning or two, and I had thoughts that made me tear up.
Sometimes it’s nice to just let the train take you where it will, even if you never know how you got there or where you came from.
My characters know what they are signing up for when they first start talking to me. Or, at least, they should know. I am not kind to the characters I create. Their stories are often forged in pain and heartach as much as in growth and triumph, perhaps even more so. I have characters who have lost their families, who have suffered unspeakable acts, who have found that their perfect lives were little more than the shiny red skin on a rotten apple. I am very unkind to my characters.
Perhaps my husband put it most succinctly last night: “When it comes to characters, happy is boring.” And, oh, how right he is! When my characters are happy and content and all is right with the world, I get bored. So I’m just supposed to write happy moments, that’s it? No, I can’t do that. I need adversity for my characters to overcome, pain to write them through, losses to help them deal with. I can’t write strictly happy. One of my characters once called me the “self-torturing writer” and it’s true. Often, most of the issues that I end up having with my characters are of my own making. Because of my love for drama, my characters often aren’t in bliss for too terribly long, even if they have worked damn hard for it. I do like to see them happy but, as I said, I don’t often know what to write aside from picket-fence scenes.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my characters. Very much! They are complex and colorful and full of depth. They are smart, strong, caring, heartbroken, high-flying, deep-feeling, self-aware but self-deprecating, and I love creating great, intricate stories for them. They are wonderfully willing victims who give me the power to create worlds, castles in the air to which I can escape, new people to learn and new stories to tell, inner strength to develop, loves to find and lose, and triumphs to achieve from the rubble of failure. I wrap my stories around me like a cape and watch my characters walk and live upon its hem.
Dresses from Modcloth.com
Stolen from OpusElenae. Every November, she does something called NaBloPoMo, or National Blog Posting Month. It came about as a spin-off of National Novel Writing Month, which also takes place in November. The goal is to write a blog post a day, all month. I have decided to follow my wifey-friend’s suit and try to post every day in November.
So, for today, here is this probably-not-so-surprising declaration.
I love dresses. Absolutely love dresses.
I love feminine fashion and being girly. I am a huge fan of feminine fashion, loving the fit-and-flare, 50s and 60s style dresses, sweaters, skirts, and open-toed shoes that resurfaced this past spring and summer. I bellydance, love to clean and cook when I’m in the mood (and, yes, I have done so in heels and pearls before). I also wear jeans, shovel snow, deal with all the technology in our house, and shoot archery. Yes, I still consider myself feminine. I expect my 4-and-a-half-month-old daughter to one day run around in a tutu and rain galoshes, to put on camo and go hunting with her grandfather, and to love the pretty dresses that her grandmothers buy for her.
But, as for me, I would fill my closet with dresses if I could. Dresses that flatter, satin that feels like cool milk against my skin, lace that froths in the light, chiffon that flows and clings in all the right places and ripples like water when I walk. I love it all. It makes me feel beautiful and graceful and it’s one of the few things that I do for myself that makes me feel so. So no matter how old I get. You’ll never get me to give up my dresses.
MWGS: Mom, Writer, Geek, Superwoman 