we are only made of air and dust

shared by the lovely takenoko on her google buzz (I swear, google rolls out these new bells and whistles, and much like facebook redesigns, I never quite get the hang of them, but I play along just the same)

"I was raised by a single mom, and I turned out just fine"

You know, I've been lucky in that I've never had to do a hospital stay (except for when I was born) for myself. I've stayed in hospitals overnight to watch over my grandmother, and I was there during the long convalescent period at home, and when she was dying. And I was there at the end.

My grandmother mostly did the hands on parenting while I was a wee Safflet, and my mom did the 9 to 5 money job, but yes, I am a child of a single parent, and I'd like to think I turned out fine too.

I'm still working on kindness and acceptance and being less judgmental in my old age, but for the most part I am awesome.

Anyway this is a thank you to the good nurses, the health care officials, the doctors, and to the single parents who worked so hard and so long so that we could have everything we needed.

to kitsune714 who is on call and probably having the worst day ever (tm), I'm thinking good thoughts and I miss you.

I bought The 50 Greatest Love letters of all time today in an attempt to find inspiration in something other than the wrecking ball of exhaustion that has been my life (I've been too busy to be depressed, instead my room is. It looks like a landfill. I'm currently sleeping in my grandmother's room so I don't have to deal with it.)

my favorite love letter so far...

"I showed him that I was altogether bruised and broken---that setting aside my health which, however improved, was liable to fail with every withdrawing of the sun--that the common advantages of youth and good spirits had gone from me & that I was an undone creature for the pleasures of life, as for its social duties.

His answer was---not the common gallantries which come so easily to the lips of men---but simply that he loved me---he met argument with fact. He told me---that with himself also, the early freshness of youth had gone by, & that throughout it he had not been able to love any woman---that he loved now for the first time & the last."

Elizabeth Barret Browning in a letter to her brother George, explaining her elopement with Robert Browning


Kind of makes all my mixtapes o' longing seem pale and shy, doesn't it?

(  a snippet of a verbal mix tape in sentences and sighs )