Greetings from sunny Virginia!  Wish you were here!  I know it seems as if I’ve dropped off the face of the earth the past few weeks, but there has been much going on in this corner of the world…

--As far as I know, Jay will be home in less than 24 hours!  I won’t quite believe it until he is actually on the ground in Norfolk, but it looks as if this crazy long deployment is finally over!

--Patrick is five months old! He is rolling over! He is babbling and squealing! He is starting college in the fall! (Okay, it only feels like that...)

--The release date for Fairy Tale Lust is less than two months away!  There will be a flurry of activity soon! (And there is a Fairy Tale Lust blog, too!)

--The deadline for Dream Lover is two months away!  Have you started writing your story yet??

--Because of the devastating flooding in Nashville, the RWA conference has been relocated to Orlando. I’m still trying to decide whether I’ll be making the trek to my home state (in July) for the conference.  Let me know if you’ll be in attendance!

--My sweet Wilbur kitty died on Mother’s Day.  He was 20 years old and had been sick for a long time, but it’s still hard to believe he’s gone.  His brother from the same litter Orville died 7 years ago and I still miss him.  Annabelle has only been gone since last January and I swear I still see her.

--I turned 43 last week.  How did that happen?  I had a terrific birthday weekend of yummy cocktails, much laughter and a John Hiatt concert. (I still have his autograph on my body!)

--I celebrated my first Mother’s Day over the weekend, too.  Pizza with friends and lots of baby smiles.  It was almost perfect.

--The coming year is going to be fabulous.  I can just feel it.

Wilbur

1990-2010

Twenty years is a long life for a cat.  And yet, it doesn’t feel quite long enough.  He was the last of the old guard.  His brother/littermate Orville died in 2003 and his little sister Annabelle died in 2009.  Up until he got really sick a year ago, he was the lowest maintenance of all the cats.

Goodbye, Wilbur kitty. We’ll miss you.

I made a new friend recently.  This is not something that happens often for me-- though I’m becoming more open to the infinite potential friendships around me.  She is someone I have known for awhile, on the periphery of my life in that I-know-you-from-Starbucks kind of way.  I feel drawn to her in a way I can’t quite explain-- a way that I’ve felt only a handful of times in my life (and not always acted on)-- so I reached out to her on a compelling whim and found the feeling was mutual. Odd how life works, isn’t it?

In many ways, we have nothing in common, my new friend and I. Often, that is exactly what pulls me to someone.  I find inspiration in people who are different from me.  Sometimes, the differences are only superficial and I discover common ground and shared perspectives.  I think it may be that way with my new friend.  In some ways, she is the person I wish I could be.  She gives off the most positive vibes I’ve been around in a long time. I aspire to be that kind of positive force in other people’s lives.

My friend has two dozen tattoos.  I have one.  I am contemplating a second tattoo, though I can’t decide what I want.  A week or so ago, I asked my friend about her various tattoos.  She pointed to each one (those that were visible or easily exposed) and told me their stories.  Many of them, I was surprised to learn, are about-- or for-- other people.  She has tattoos that were designed by others for her, she has tattoos that she got to honor people in her life.  I found myself balking at that.  The idea of letting someone else decide what goes on my body-- or choosing a tattoo to represent someone else?  Um… no.  I’ve been married for nearly 20 years and the idea of getting Jay’s name tattooed on my body makes me feel a little queasy.  It’s my body.  Right?  And yet…

People mark us in other ways, don’t they?  Ways less visible than an ink outline with color and shading.  They leave their imprint in places we can’t see, often in ways we don’t like or can’t decipher for years to come, if ever.  We carry these internal tattoos around with us and show them off for anyone who will listen.  “This is how I’ve been marked,” we say, without really saying it.  No one is unmarked.  Positive and negative, we bear the scars that others have put on us, on our soul.

So why does it bother me so to contemplate having a physical reminder of another person on my body?  It doesn’t seem to bother my friend at all.  Her body is a canvas for her life experiences, a map to the places she’s been and the things she’s done and the people who have touched her life.  Her skin is a deliberate creation of memories.  I admire that.

I don’t know what my next tattoo will be.  I want words-- a phrase or stanza or sentence--something to reflect the writer within.  I have this notion of letting others choose the words for me-- to let those who know me best give me the words to tattoo on my body.  I don’t know that I can bring myself to do it, but there is something powerful and compelling about the idea of bearing the words chosen by others.  What would they choose, I wonder?

I like signs. No, I’m not talking about billboards or those hideous marquee type signs or any sign that advertises anything.  Though they can be appropriated for helpful purposes:

Or just head-scratchingly amusing:

No… I mean those little signs that tell you you’re on the right track or maybe redirect you to the right track.  Or just remind you what’s important.  You know, hearing a song on the radio and the lyrics just fit your current life or situation and give you a moment of crystal clear awareness.  Or overhearing someone say something that resonates with you on some deep level you don’t even understand.  Or seeing a picture or a person who looks familiar and like someone you haven’t called in a long time and you call them, because you had that urge. And when you hang up, you’re glad you did.

True story:  I was in Target and having a bad day, wrapped in my own little cloud of despair.  I was walking down an aisle toward a woman with a baby who had something smeared all over his face.  As I passed them she said, “You are a hot mess.” For one split moment, I thought she was talking to me. Because, you know, I was a hot mess.  But of course she was talking to the baby.  Still, it kind of snapped me out of that moment and made me smile.  Who knows, maybe she was talking to me.

So, I was in Starbucks the other day-- pause for the gasps of surprise-- and on the way to order my coffee (iced venti black and white mocha, 3 pumps each, no whip, extra shot), I passed a guy with a Mac.  Of course, us Apple people are a rare and special breed-- pause for acknowledgement from the downtrodden PC folks-- and I acknowledged him with a smile and nod. Of course, it’s important to note that at this time I did not have my computer out and was, in fact, carrying it in my nondescript, non-Apple displaying laptop bag. So he might have thought I was hitting on him.  In any case, as I glanced away, his notebook caught my eye.  It had two stickers on it: the trademark Apple logo sticker and a sticker that said LOVE WINS.

Huh.  LOVE WINS.  Black background, white letters.  Nothing fancy.  That resonated big time.  Simple message, big meaning. LOVE WINS.  I think we forget about love in the midst of everything else.  All kinds of love-- romantic love, sexual love, parental love, platonic love.  Love is all around us (to quote a song), but most of the time it’s hard to see it for all the other dreck.

Oh lord, here goes the sappy writer mama, waxing poetic about love, right?

Yeah, probably.

In any case, LOVE WINS has kind of stuck with me.  I wish I’d taken a picture of the sticker on the Mac guy’s notebook, or at least asked him where he got it, but that probably would have only added to the strange-lady-hitting-on-me vibe he was probably already getting from me.  So I Googled it, wondering where to get my own LOVE WINS sticker.  Uh oh.  Turns out it’s a Jesus thing.  So, I’m not particularly religious and the church connection is a bit off-putting, but that doesn’t change the fact that the message is true and meaningful. One of those signs.

Turns out, if you Google images of LOVE WINS, some pretty interesting things turn up (including some images of… uh… sexual love in all its glory).  Here is a sampling.

Putting blank street signs to good use:

This is lovely. Perhaps I’ll buy it for myself:

Or maybe just tattoo it on my body. Though I’d prefer a prettier script:

I had never heard of the band The Autumn Film, but Love Wins is their motto and they have an awesome sticker to go along with it:

Finally, how could I not love this one most of all?  The funny thing is, I remember getting this cup myself some time ago and the message didn’t resonate with me then the way it did when I saw the sticker on the guy’s notebook. Sigh…

No matter how it’s packaged or presented, one thing I know for sure:  Love Wins, baby.  Believe it.

(P.S. I snagged the top two pictures from Amber L. Rhea’s tumblr Shades of Mediocrity.  I love her tumblr blog, even though I can’t keep up with her posts!  It’s filled with all sorts of thought provoking stuff and awesome pictures of birds and babies and signs of all kinds.  We seem to share many of the same interests and she’s even quoted me a couple of times.  Hard not to love someone who thinks I’m quotable.)

syn·chro·nic·i·ty definition

Pronunciation: /ˌsiŋ-krə-ˈnis-ət-ē, ˌsin-/
Function: n
Inflected Form: pl -ties
: the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

It is human nature to look for patterns in things-- sometimes we look for connections where there are none, just to satisfy our own (often subconscious) internal panic at being confronted with something foreign and unfamiliar.  But sometimes I find patterns in the strangest things, connections between people and events that make me wonder if there is some message to be gleaned… Surely I’m not the only one who does this and then wonders what it all means?

Social networks and blogs are fascinating experiments in synchronicity. I have this wildly diverse group of friends who I connect with through Facebook or blogs-- ranging from childhood friends I haven’t seen in 30 years to current friends I saw last week, writers, editors and artists to friends of friends I’ve never met.  And yet, just this morning, three intersections:

--I am friends with two people-- one I know from real life, one I only know from her blog-- who are raising goats.  Not only that, but both have been awaiting the arrival of baby goats! I suppose baby goats are usually born in the spring, but it’s interesting to read the updates from two people in different parts of the country.  And baby goats are freakin’ cute, by the way.

--Three different writers I know are currently reading Rainer Maria Rilke.  I have only read Letters to a Young Poet and now I feel inspired to read more of his work.

--I followed two links from two very different genre writers and ended up at one of my new favorite writers, Karen Maezen Miller, the author of Momma Zen.  She has a new book coming out-- Hand Wash Cold, which is due out… tomorrow.  Which also happens to be Patrick’s babysitter’s birthday.

One last synchronistic moment for today (at least so far-- it’s only noon)… as I was in the middle of this post, The Police came on Starbucks radio.  The song was “Every Breath You Take” from the album… Synchronicity.  No kidding.