Notes from the Red Bird House

When I learned that a friend's daughter was having some 'issues' with her liver, I made a quick no-brainer decision. If she needs it (and if we are a match, of course), she can have part of mine. I'm an organ donor, or so it says on my drivers' license. I'm a big believer in giving away what you have that you no longer need or want, especially if someone needs or wants it more than you do. I've given away clothes, furniture, and money over the years. I live by the creed 'what's mine is yours' and I walk my talk as best I can. So when I heard about my friend's daughter, the decision was easy. I know it's not an old sweatshirt or a couch or $100, but I don't need my whole liver (they say they grow back, kind of like a lizard's tail) and she might could really use it. My liver's a good one, slightly worn and a bit finicky at times, but she'll get the job done. The poor girl in need is barely twenty-one. She hasn't even ...

                It wasn’t how I planned to spend my Friday night. Red wine with Erin. I hated these nights. I hated a lot of things, if I was being brutally honest. In no particular order – red wine, ugly breakups, my uncomfortable sofa, poetry (God, I hated poetry), selling cars, being broke. I could go on and on. Erin, though, always tried to get me to see the sunny side of things. I suppose it’s what best friends are for. This particular Friday night, I was ready to fuck the sunny side of things.  I told her as much.                 “Fuck the sunny side, Erin. I mean fuck it. Really fuck it. I can’t do it this time.”                 “You damn-well will do it. That girl wasn’t good enough for you. She cheated on you and lied constantly. Lied. She wou...

"Falling feels like flying 'til you hit the ground..." ~ from a cool country song by Chris Stapleton I'm eighteen days away from my forty-eighth birthday and I have to say I don't recall ever approaching a birthday or the start of a year as positively as I am this one. I truly feel like the best part of my life is yet to come, my best stories as yet unwritten.  I guess I'm just in a good place, though I have no idea how I ended up here. I have goals, plans, dreams, a mission. A novel nearing publication. The creation of  "brand". More graduate school. Plans for a new life's work that doesn't require wearing an orange apron. A job I can tolerate in the meantime. Fast runs. A solid backhand and confident volleys. A vacation decades in the making.  It's not always easy, though some may think I make it look pretty easy. I go non-stop all day, every day because you don't get something from nothing. And I'm kind of afra...

When I started thinking about writing this blog about a month ago, I had a few different goals in mind. For the blog and for my running. How did so much change in a month? I finished the Austin Marathon Half Marathon in 1:46:18 on Sunday, good for fourth in my age group and a mere forty-five seconds away from placing third. I also happened to come across the finish line ahead of 6,310 runners. Only 381 people - men and women from ALL age groups - finished before I did. Last night, when I finally let the results sink in, I realized something very important about myself (and thus the change in the blog and my running). A month ago, I planned to write a blog about becoming a mid-pack runner and how not winning could be just as rewarding as getting a Coors beer can trophy or a lump of lacquered cow shit on a plaque. I was going to write a blog about alternate goals and the enjoyment of just being out there and able to run. Then on three months of "training" (i.e. running long...

I've determined, after really not much thought at all, that the reason why I don't blog much anymore is because I have become boring. Once upon a time, I was accused of blogging life rather than living life. This was when I wrote what probably seemed near constantly. Stuff happened or came to mind and I wrote it. It had to be moderately interesting stuff - being an out lesbian in the middle of the Bible Belt sure didn't hurt - to create a moderately ambitious following. Needless to say, I haven't been approached by a hot woman in a bar in years claiming to know my name because she's read my blog. Tell me again how I blogged rather than lived life. Now, I'm apparently doing neither. Granted I'm older, more mature, I no longer live in the Bible Belt, and I have a girlfriend. I don't hang out with a bunch of hot thirty-somethings who like to drink and watch porn. I don't go out much if at all and I'm not a shining lesbian star in a homophobic univ...

I had a conversation with myself on Saturday during my weekly long run. I'm training for a half marathon and, on Saturday, I planned to run more-than-seven-yet-not-quite-eight miles. I was in good spirits at the start. The weather was sunny and cool. The trail (the Lady Bird Lake Hike & Bike trail in Austin) was surprisingly not jammed with people. A couple miles in I still felt good which isn't generally a given with me and running these days. Many days I suffer from the first step to the last; luckily Saturday wasn't one of those days.  [I think I need a preface here - When I do my "long" runs, I don't stretch them out into out-and-backs. In my twenties, I'd go out for a fifteen miler and occasionally be seven or more miles from home. I don't do that anymore. The absolute last thing I want it to crap out and have to walk MILES back to my car or house. Instead, I do short loops. For example, the Saturday run I started talking about above involv...

Yesterday, a co-worker said something that I haven't really been able to shake. We were talking about his family. In explaining his father, my co-worker said that he thought his father's problem had been that he never took risks. He played it safe, too safe in my co-worker's opinion. Granted we were talking about the family finances and why his father had often worked three jobs, but that's not why his comment - stated completely in passing on our way to further conversation - stuck with me. I'm not worried about finances (though I probably should be). I am, however, worried that maybe I haven't taken enough risks. Come on, Stacee, really? You moved from Muskegon, Michigan to the near backwoods of East Texas because you were in love with a woman who arguably wasn't courageous enough to love you back. Then after one Sunday afternoon in Austin, you decided to uproot yourself and move to a city where the only people you knew were a crazy ex-girlfriend and her...