What's in a name? Let's find out.

I looked through the dares one at a time. Some of them scare me senseless, which is probably good. Some of them I think I'm not ready for. Some of them I don't think I really need...which probably means I really do need to look at them harder. This is all to say, I didn't know which dare to pick first. And while a favorite or two stuck out at me, I thought it best to let the fickle finger of fate pick where I would start. So www.random.org helped me pick out this very special dare for our very first one. I think it's a good one. Are you ready?

"Dare To Not Label Yourself"

Now I'm not going to share all the wisdom Natasha Kogan gives us in her book. But the basic idea is right out there...we all label ourselves in ways that are limiting, self-depreciating, or simply not helpful. The fact is, we can choose to shed those labels. My challenge for you, and me too, is to pick three labels you've given yourself and challenge them this week. I'll see you soon. MUAH.

Take a ride with me. I dare you.

Back in the summer of spending every moment of time I might actually have to face myself trying to make friends with with anyone who would talk to me on the Internets (as long as they were women who had children and didn't have any interest in setting me up with someone) I happened upon a website one day. I wish I could remember how I got there, but somethings are just supposed to happen. This website is a promotional site for author Natasha Kogan's book The Daring Female's Guide to Ecstatic Living. I adored the concept of this book and I wrote to the author right away with the intent of starting an online "Daring Circle" with my Myspace girlfriends and they were eager too. Natasha sent me a free book, and because I wanted her to get something out of it from me, I encouraged all my friends to buy one, and bought one for my first friend who issued me a really good dare. My friend Cyndi won that challenge and I blissfully sent her one in the mail along with a box of goodies for "BARK bags" for her kids. And we really tried, but school started again and everyone kind of floated off in different directions and our circle bottomed out before we really even got started.

This spring, Cyndi's life met some unexpected changes...changes that would have set most of us on our ears. Cyn's bounce back obviously awed not only me, but everyone who knows her. About two weeks later she was telling me on the phone about lunching with a co-worker who has gone through her own messy divorce and she was revelling in Cyn's bounce-back factor. "How do you do that?" she nearly sobbed on Cyn's shoulder. Cyndi told me she went home and pulled this book off the shelf and re-read the note I'd written to her..."Pay it forward, girlfriend." And so she took it to her friend and told her to get daring.

And in doing so, she did the same for me. I went upstairs that night and started digging through my books. I found it fast and I carried it around for a few weeks before I really even looked at it again. But now I know...it's time to get daring. My life is ready for it.

I'm inviting you down this daring road with me, and if you come I'll feel like I'll finally be paying up my promise to Natasha to start a daring circle. But whether you ride along or just spectate, or maybe a little of both, I promise nothing, except maybe something to laugh about or something to cry about, hopefully something that makes us feel alive.

I'll be sharing some of the dares from Kogan's book (which I think you should buy for yourself...you'll love it). And I'll endeavor to dare myself to do them, and report back to you the results. You can share, or not. Send me email's or comments, or blog them yourself.

Dare #1 coming up shortly. See you there.

It's about time

"Hey Ei, you've been awfully quiet, whatcha been up to?"

I cocked my head and thought about it for a moment. I thought about telling her about how blissfully uneventful my summer had been, how I'd been spending a lot of time reflecting on who I am and what I'm doing with my life, how unhappy I've been with the answers and yet lacking the resolve to change them. I thought about telling her how I'm actually caught up on laundry, but the rest of lives has been slipping away. I considered saying a whole lot more. But the visual of having to call a paramedic to summon her from a coma after bearing my soul to her was pretty painful. So I smiled and shrugged, "Y'know. Kids." Her eyes flicker with recognition. She doesn't have any kids. "Yeah, I guess I do."

Two years ago I found myself wandering familiar terrain, single life, with a whole new set of rules...children, an ex-husband, an aging post childbearing body, and very little curiosity for anything left. At the time a friend told me that the hardest part would be when all the loving kind support I'd received had gone home and tucked in, when the children settled down, and I had to actually look it all in the eye. That took longer than I expected, but that's where I've been. Well, I've been there for awhile. The distractions of life have been plentiful...and my own mad skills at avoidance, well they are pretty amazing.

But more and more lately, I am reminded that I have a long life in front of me, and as much as I love my children, making my life about them would set us all up for frustration...me, them, and certainly their father and the people in his new life. The thing is, my kids are making remarkable progress, growing and stretching in their lives now. They'll always have a hole in their hearts for what they have lost, but now is the time for them both to flex the muscles they've gained from the hard work of recovering. And maybe it is time for me to start too.

Damn it. Didn't want to be sappy. Sorry it is a habit I'll have to work on.

So there is step one of having a weird, quiet, good, moody summer. Admitting you have a problem. Step two is figuring out what to do about it. There isn't a local chapter of "I Got a Divorce and Never Quite Got Around to Getting a Life Anonymous." I don't do bars (thankfully). I don't have all consuming hobbies. I could, I suppose look at all this as a failure. I'm choosing instead to look at it as a blank slate to be filled with beauty and thought. And it's all mine. Let's do this thing.

What Father's Day means to me

My whole association with the rite of Father's day is a little, um, skewed I suppose. As a child, I purposefully became "ill" so as not to have to attend day camp on the day they made Father's day gifts, I "forgot" announcements about father daughter teas, terrified that my mom would decide she should stand in, or worse yet, that she would send my grandfather. In my married days, I tried to really do something MANLY for my then husband on Father's day...neglecting the fact that I really know nothing about what constitutes acceptably manly versus stereotypically manly and I'm a poor organizer anyway. But hey I tried, and it is the thought that counts, right? Well, mainly it's the thought...for most people, anyway.

Since becoming a single mom, I've been back to rather wanting to hide away from father's day activities. But today I volunteered to help out with children's programming at church. We sat in a circle on the floor and we "lit" our chalice (a lovely little battery operated tea light) and as ever, our children let us glimpse their lives by telling us their joys and concerns. There was the usual assortments of birthdays being celebrated, grandparents coming to visit, doggies who were lost and found, and this week some stories of bailing out the basement. We came to the serious little blond girl sitting in the sitting in the corner. She frowned as she thought about what she wanted to say, "It's Father's Day," she sniffled, "but my daddy is in Iraq so he doesn't get to have a Father's Day." Her daddy, is in fact one of the nicest men I've ever met and it hurt my heart to see his little girl so obviously missing him. How different it made me feel. It made me remember that Father's Day, and Mother's Day too, is really more about the children.

It was brought to my attention some time ago that Mother's Day as it was introduced by Julia Ward Howe in 1870, had little to do with moms sleeping in or getting jewelery, or having a spa day. It had nothing to do with moms being appreciated at all...it was instead a call to action, a call to mothers to use their maternal voices for peace.

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.

Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

It has occurred to me that Father's Day was really just created as a "Me too" holiday, someone thought that what was good for the goose was good for the gander...and so it all is really just an extension of my UU fore mother's call for peace. The only thing any good mother can do in honor of Father's Day is to be a good mother. Continue to fight for the good of our children, which always includes their fathers...the ones who wake up and honor you on Mother's Day and the ones who don't, the ones who build go-carts, and the ones who build character. Father's day is about making sure that kids have dads to go round with, not about ties or barbecue grills. And also about the sacrifices we all make to make sure that can happen. Father's day isn't about gifting a father with a manly day, it is about gifting a child with a father, for every day. Thank goodness for Father's Day.

Can you feel it?

Oh yeah...Loving Day. I just love that story. I mean could they have had a better name? Sigh. Well yeah, I know, I'm not the worlds biggest proponent of ANY marriage, but I think it is a personal choice you should be allowed to make (oh STOP it, I'm joking...mostly). But I wanted to take a moment first to say, I tried yesterday to post a few THOUGHTS about Loving Day but Blogger ate my post, so I ended up quickly just posting the nice little blurb my friend Becky gave me. Not even with the way cool picture of Mr. & Mrs. Loving.

The reason I had no time is...well...if you haven't heard, we've had a little rain here in Central Iowa. I was out filling sand bags with my coworkers for fun, just in case we had a repeat of what happened in 1993. Luckily, so far, that has been just busy work. And hey, I have something new to add to my resume (although I don't think my impatient boss will be giving me any recommendations based on my skills in this area.) Anyway, I just wanted to take a minute to remind you that the battle that Mildred and Richard Loving fought in 1967, the year before my birth, made lots of happy couples whom I adore possible today (not to mention, assisted in making possible two little people whom I love desperately). I also wanted to remind you that there are many of our fellow citizens out there who are desperate to marry someone (don't ask me why!) and it is not legal for them to do so. Don't let the battle end with the Lovings.

So that's my soap-box portion of the evening. I would like to tell you that my day was all kinds of Love Thursday magic, but that wasn't in the cards for me, so instead I'll leave you with Elton John...because I've had this song stuck in my head for days.