Pretties.

I bought these tulips a couple weeks ago, and I just uploaded the pics off the memory card. They were so gorgeous against my apple-green wall.

Where I left off.

Well, it took a couple days but the freaking headache finally went away. Sheesh!

Anyway, this writing class...it's been really interesting. It was a six-week workshop in Becky's wonderful scraproom above her garage. We all sat at a gorgeous wood table and wrote. I snagged the chair on the side of the table where I could look out the window at her view of Back Creek...oh, I'm so pea-green with envy about her room with a view!

Becky lost her daughter to MS three years ago, and began her writing workshops as a way to talk with others about writing your story, writing through grief, telling the things that need to be told. I have come to admire this lady so much...she is such a giving, creative person with such a deep wound. I admire the way she's surrounded herself with people to teach and to learn from.

This workshop was more emotional than I had anticipated. And I wasn't completely comfortable with that. But it was a chance to get back into writing, and I explored a couple of memories that I hadn't totally understood before. Foremost was my memory of going to Washington D.C. to protest the first Iraq war 15 years ago. It was funny how it popped into my head one morning and demanded to be re-examined. Maybe I'll post the bit I wrote about it here sometime soon.

Speaking of writers, Sarah Vowell was on The Daily Show last night, and I missed it because I got caught up in some Olympic moment, so I made sure to catch her tonight on the repeat. I just read her book Assassination Vacation last week, and really enjoyed it. I like her essay books better, but how can you not love someone who makes pilgrimages to presidential assassination sites? And I mean, sites that are really, really peripherally linked. But she makes the links all come together.

The main thing I always remember from Sarah's writings is her description of going to the first GWB inauguration in 2001 and bursting into tears when he finished his oath of office. I can totally relate, although in 2001 I was still too much in a state of shock for tears. The tears came for me on Election Day 2004. Ugh.

Sarah is a year older than I am, and grew up fundamentalist Christian, which makes me feel sort of a peer connection with her, but she's about a million times more sophisticated and educated than I am, so I know I'd be completely intimidated by her. I can forgive her that, but she's friends with Jon Stewart and gets to sit and crack wise with him on The Daily Show, and that is hard to get past. I'm turning pea-green again.

Speaking of Jon Stewart, although I still profess my undying love for him, he may have to share that love from now on with Stephen Colbert. Man, I love that guy! I always loved him on The Daily Show...I loved how he would say the most appalling things with this really wicked look in his eyes. Wicked isn't even the word for it...it's this amused devilish gleam that is amazingly attractive. Mm.

And now he's got his own show where he absolutely skewers the Bill O-Reilly/Joe Scarborough pompous blowhard stereotype, and I love it. LOVE it. Jon at 11 pm and Stephen at 11:30...I'm sorry, but Letterman and Leno could never in their wildest dreams be so cool, funny and subversive.

I had other things swirling around that I wanted to write about, but my feet are soooo coooold from sitting here...I need to break out my electric blanket. I've been freezing all night!