My great-grandmother Morrison fixed a book rest to her spinning wheel so that she could read while she was spinning, or so the story goes.

1. Today's first line title is from Crow Lake by Mary Lawson, and it was chosen because its inference of multi-tasking as an age-old proposition seemed to fit the moment. And also because way back in high school, I started a short story with an eerily similar sentence. I wonder if Mary Lawson is someone I know from those days who stole my line, or maybe even the whole substance of my story? Probably not, but imagination is a powerful flake out mechanism. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

2. This week has been rough. Smooth as glass on the surface with turbulence and swirling eddies just beneath. It's getting better though, especially as the weekend draws ever closer.

3. 'The Dark Knight' movie was everything it has been hyped to be and then some. I loved it. And I can highly recommend seeing it on an IMAX screen, which at 3500-sf is both magnificent and awesome. Not to mention bigger than the floor plan of my entire house. Talk about larger than life.

4. Despite my posts of recent days, our jaunt to the mountains was quite lovely. We visited the tourist town of Blowing Rock, explored Grandfather Mountain (including walking across the mile high swinging bridge, which was a personal fear conquering challenge/endeavor), ate fabulous food, stayed at a quite luxurious Inn complete with an Innkeeper named Pat, visited a sweet little North Carolina winery, and generally amused ourselves with a variety of laid back amusements.

5. It wasn't quite the adventure into mind-clearing solitude I had envisioned, however. Need I say more?

6. People around the office today seem to be in a heightened state of adrenaline fueled quasi-frenzy. People around the office today need to chill the fuck out already.

7. After months of dire drought conditions, we've gotten so much rain in recent weeks that there are mushrooms growing in the potted plants on my deck. And also, from the strange but true archives, have I mentioned we have two guineas running around the neighborhood? Nobody has a clue from whence they came, but they seem to have settled in for the long haul.

8. I'm all headphoned up, ready to listen to Obama's speech from Germany, Rush Limbaugh's description of "Hitler's phallic tower" as the backdrop be damned. I mean seriously, wtf? (As an aside: I've listened to Rush on my lunch hour for years. It's an "educate yourself slash know thine enemy" sort of ritual that I can't seem to break. Also serves to get my blood boiling racing for the afternoon ahead.) (An aside aside: fantastic speech. As usual.)

9. The harpy criticism of Obama by this ilk, this right wing nut job layer of our American political spectrum, has ballooned to hysterical proportion. While they continue to chant their "Rev. Wright" mantra enough times to meet their apparent daily quotas, and come up with new and ever less clever names for the candidate and his supporters, and discuss gossip column-style irrelevant minutia, John McCain and the credibility challenged Tucker Bounds continue to leave me mouth agape at the seemingly endless stream of McCainiacle gaffes and outright absurdities. The fawning, wall-to-wall coverage of Obama has received some just criticism. But from where I sit, the errors of omission in the non-coverage of the McCain camp foibles is truly reprehensible stunning.

10. Front page of the official McCain website today: "It's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair. We want you to be the judge. Click here to watch the new video and vote today!" So dignified, clever and classy! Not the least bit petulant and green with envy! [Ed. note: link removed as the little contest has been removed from his site, or at least the front page - imagine that! Too bad, in a way. Was a rather illuminating glimpse.]

11. Did you know there are only thirty-seven days until opening day of the Mountaineer football season? And only forty-four days until I get to see said Mighty Mountaineers and Pat White live and in person again? Yeah, baby. Cannot wait. College football: ain't nuttin' like it on God's green turf.

12. My husband is dragging me to the driving range tonight. He claims it's so we can "hang out together" and "teach me to love the game", but it's really because he is playing twice this weekend and needs the practice. I can't decide whether to take a golf glove or a book and reading glasses. Am leaning toward the latter.

13. I can't remember the last time I ate a hot dog, but I've been craving one - daydreaming about them - all day. Maybe even a footlong. With chili, mustard, onion and slaw. And a beer, golden and ice cold. How weird is that? Pretty weird. But maybe not as weird as the craving I had recently for kale with vinegar. I satisfied that one by eating big bowls of the stuff every day for a week. It occurs to me that if I take that tack with this current hot dog obsession, clogged arteries may ensue. And we surely wouldn't want *that*, now would we?

Let the morning take you right on through the day.

It's the little things.

A cup of coffee on the deck in the early hours, in those cool dewy moments before the heat arrives. A nudging, weaving leg rub from a kitty who loves you. A juicy, ripe nectarine for breakfast. A series of body stretching, psyche bending yoga poses to work out the night's kinks. A calendar full of wide open spaces.

A quiet mind in a rare moment of stillness.

A seedling of an idea, reaching for daylight.

A smile, tugging at the corners of your heartstrings.

A waiting day, ripe with the promise whispered by a morning, full to overflowing with the little things.

Permission, granted or otherwise.

This day was long. Made more so by a collection of dangling things that needed finishing, by the searing heat that smacked my face every time I dared to walk outside, by the ragged and jagged edges that won't be smoothed.

This day was long, and it isn't over yet, although were I an optimist I could at least opine that we're closer to the end of it than we were when it started.

______________________

They stand behind me, hovering, apparently clueless as to the way this practice rankles me, stirs me up, makes me want to stand on my soapbox and give speeches about manners and patience and, yes, the good god damn, God-given right of self-sufficiency. But I don't stand on my soapbox. I don't even turn my head to vex them with a sideways version of the evil eye tossed cavalierly over my shoulder. I just endure, get through it, wait impatiently - and pre-annoyed-ly - for the next great fly in the soup of my life.

______________________

She says it lightly, without a second thought. She says it and laughs it off, while the words don't so much make their way to my understanding as splatter in my face. I'm insulted. Or is it mortified? Or maybe the right descriptive is wounded, but then I can't even seem to settle that debate inside myself right now. I don't have the energy for it, or really even the desire. I shouldn't care. It shouldn't matter. Somehow it does. Not her petty words and small mind, but my inability to give myself permission to digest, process, or respond.

______________________

It's a twisted trail I'm riding, full of blind curves and treachery. It's one I've ridden before, one I'd rather not ride again. The days are long, and getting longer. The nights are hot, draining and tiresome. Somehow, the not wanting it isn't worth the effort of stopping it.

So the hours roll over me.

And I let them.

Inside out.

I lay my head on the pillow the night before, bags packed for a trip to the Carolina shore, my mind already halfway there. Early the next morning, my eyes pop open a full fifteen minutes before the alarm is scheduled to go off and I am greeted by my husband's voice filling me in about the unimaginatively named Tropical Storm Three hovering out in the Atlantic ocean, destined to ruin whatever ideas of fanciful idyll I may have harbored. "It's going to rain all weekend. We should go to the mountains instead," he says, confident, as always, in his snap judgment call that leaves little room for argument.

Disappointment shunts the anticipatory giddiness out of the way and huddles in that space just between my stomach and my heart, lodged there in foreboding fashion.

I pad down the stairs, put on a pot of coffee and log onto the computer, no idea what I'm looking for exactly, but determined not to let this one night slip away.

I'd seen this place online before, and so it was "familiar". One 6:30 a.m. phone call to an 800 number later, and the last room on the property was securely reserved in my name. The price was exorbitant. I really don't care. Already, my mind was recalculating, readjusting itself to a new destination, a new place that was anywhere but here.

An hour later, we're on the road, me behind the wheel, him sleeping, reading the paper, critiquing my driving. Him telling me to pull off at the exit with the Bojangles, where the only thing on the menu I can order without sabotaging the previous four weeks of Weight Watchers was a cup of the worst coffee I've ever had.

And I go along without saying a word, knowing the minute the cashier said, "Is that all?" that I had already allowed the weekend to slip away, to pull me asunder. That any romantic notions I may have had about dropping the barriers between myself and the world around me, the ones that shield me from it and it from me, were lost.

This weekend would be spent like any day, any weekend before it, making accommodation to the whims and moods of someone else. Striving to please, to meet - or exceed! - the expectations of another. Managing myself - my guard, my responses, my own whims and moods - to prevent imbalance, to promote a good time for all, to ensure nobody is disappointed, or uncomfortable, or annoyed, in me, by me, or because of me.

This weekend would be work, against a backdrop of breathtaking scenic beauty, in the comfort of an exclusive, luxury room at the Inn.

But there would be no getting away from the one thing I most desperately need a break from.

Me.

The me I've come to believe - rightly or wrongly - the world expects me to be. The me who is drowning out the me I want to be, until I can barely hear her voice or feel the pulse of her heartbeat anymore.

It's fifteen different shades of ridiculous and forty-three different shades of sad.

But it's one shade of true.

______________________

We're headed home. Him behind the wheel, me feeling more satisfied than I thought I might, enjoying the green mountains on display outside my window. We've just left a lovely little winery, a nice end point to a nice weekend trip. I look over at his profile and feel compelled to kiss him on the cheek. Maybe it's the five sips of wine we tasted, but I'm suddenly filled with a breath of fresh perspective, despite myself, and a tingle of gratitude.

"It was a great weekend. Thanks for coming with me."

"What the hell? Why are you *thanking* me? Like you had other options or something?"

In less than a split second, the sickening fluster of humiliation forms like a ball, right there in that same space between my gut and my heart, flushing its heat upward until I can feel it on my cheeks, feel its sting in my eyes. I settle back in my seat and attempt to look relaxed and comfortable in my own skin, attempt to tamp down the searing embarrassment, attempt to dam the brooding tension forming before it can seep out into his awareness.

I lay my head back and gaze out the window to my right through blurry eyes, pretending to watch the world go by, holding my breath.

"It sure is pretty around here," I say, because it's the only thing that comes to mind and I have to say something before too much time can pass.

"Yep," he replies, and my breath comes back to me.

I close my eyes and we ride the rest of the way in a silence that only one of us knows is awkward.