Before There Was Me

Mark & Margaret.  Before there was me, there was them.

I have been much inspired by Viv's post about her dad. She made Ed real for me. She made him a little bit alive again for herself, I think. But since I am compelled by my untrammeled egocentricity to make this blog about Me, Me, Me, this post is not precisely about M & M (Aren't they beautiful over there? Weren't they just cool?) but about what I discovered about them, long after it might have done the three of us any good.

Okay.  Let's give the old Beginner's Mind a shot here.  It appears that parents are -- kind of like Soylent Green -- made of people! And before your eyes glaze over with the absolutely brain-killing obviousness of that statement, just stop for a minute.  Breathe.  It took me about 51 years to get a toe in the water of "Hey. Margaret was a human being."

All my life people told me I was just like her.  She had to live 88 years and die (more than a decade ago) before I could start to realize:

She was just like me.  UhOh.

And Mark?  Forget about it.  He died at 42 when I was not even 2.  He wasn't just an icon.  He was a god.  I was probably six or seven before I realized he was not actually, The "our father who art in heaven."  And the idea that he was "watching over me?"  Not comforting.  In the extreme.

In the dawn of Me History, Mark & Margaret created my universe and placed me at the center of it.  They named the animals. They brought the food.  They made fire.  And gravity.  They set the rules. They told me The Story of Elizabeth Ann and when my father, whose voice I do not remember, "went away?"  Margaret picked up the thread and devised the great Myth of Mark. When I say, "Myth," I don't mean to suggest it was untrue.  It's a Joseph Campbell thing.  And a lovely myth.  But it wasn't Mark.  Any more than my Myth of Margaret was Margaret. 

So I'm loading the dishwasher yesterday.  And making a lot of judgments about how I'm doing it and wondering if I should be doing something else, something better, something more ... worthwhile right then.  Such as a Good Person would do. The kind of person who would not be unexpectedly crushed by the universe as punishment for Something. And experiencing the miasma-like, hypnotic and overly-familiar little tune that plays, with all its variations of theme, in my head pretty much all the time.  "Ah, maybe you're just lazy. Are you lazy?"

And There. She. Is.

Should I blame her for that?  NuhUh.  If your parents abused you in ways that were truly cruel and you blame them for that, you're completely entitled. 

But if they screwed up?  If they gave you Life Rules that weren't much help or messed you over in major ways?  If you hear their voices saying things that don't do you a bit of good?  If you can point to a number of occasions when they were just TERRIBLE PARENTS?  Cut them a break.

Forgive them.  And while you're at it, if you're a parent and, actually, even if you're not, forgive yourself.  Just a little bit.  You came out of the darkness into the light.  You had about 15 minutes to figure the world out. And then you were on your own.  Your parents (who'd had that exact same experience a shockingly few years before) tried to keep you safe and make you good and love you to the best of their ability which never, never expressed the frantic passion of adoration and fear that was in their hearts for you most of the time.  Those folks?  Forgive them.  Love them.  Love their memory.

Try to know them for a minute. See them.  Recognize them not as gods, but as you. But exactly.  Confused. Scared.  Pissed off.  Awkward. Having a bad hair day.  Hating their boss.  Destroyed, almost obliterated, by an unexpected death and another and another.  Hungry.  Weak.  Forgetful.  Capable of  well-intentioned mistakes, inexplicable bad moods, unbelievable carelessness, fully-intended anger and general meanness.

Also, figure that, like you -- and definitely like me -- they were probably driving through an intersection, trying to make the light and not kill someone, when you asked them what f**k meant. Because that pretty much sums parenting up for me. Human. And conducted most of the time on the fly, ineptly, and without even a speck of parental wisdom.  At the point in a child's life when the parent was, to all intents and purposes, God.  Or Goddess, as the case may be.

So, Mark & Margaret. Look at you two.  The more I know about me, the more I understand about you.  And the more I understand about you the more my heart just breaks open to everything you have always been for me. Because parents -- though human -- are the people in your life no one else will ever be.

I had no idea who you really were.  Probably still don't.

You are more beautiful and mysterious than I could ever have imagined.

I wish I could sit us down and tell you that.

Then you could tell me to vote for Mitt Romney and how I should do my hair.

And, Margaret?  Remember how you always said, "One of these days you'll understand. I wish I could be there."

Today's the day.  And me, too.

The Lamott Report

Anne Lamott appeared at the Allen Theater at Playhouse Square last month as part of the William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series. (Another good reason why it's great to be a writer in Cleveland, OH.) 

I went because, like most writers I know,  I was encouraged by Anne Lamott to write when I could not bear my own self-imposed belittlement in that area.  She encouraged me as if she were my best buddy in the world and sitting right there on my couch.  That is a really bad iPhone photo of her famous encouraging book to the right of this sentence. >>>>>>>>>>>>>  See?  


I took along my heart, which was bursting with gratitude, and it turns out there was a big theater full to the brimming over with folks bursting their hearts just like I was.  (I thought it was going to be just her and me, like on my couch, back in the day.  But it was fantastic all the same.)  

When I got home, inspired and re-energized,  I emailed a bunch of people about what it was like.  And now I'm sharing that email with you.  Enjoy.  Pretend you were there with Anne Lamott and me, on a couch in a big auditorium with masses of other potential and actual artists, listening to her tell you how to respect your dreams. 

Here's my report on what I did on my Anne Lamott Vacation. 

Beginning with a (related) digression: I remember reading somewhere about Elvis (Digression, Capital D) that the inevitable, debilitating effect of having all that attention -- the energy of all that undefined wanting focused on him all the time -- caused him to self-destruct and blah, blah, blah.  

I don't mean to suggest that Anne Lamott is self-destructing.  To the contrary.  She seems essentially well put together to me.  But I was struck by that little, sort of raggedy (it's the hair, which is awesome) woman, standing up there in the spotlight all by herself, wise and welcoming and glowing like she does -- and just receiving waves of hungry, frustrated creative energy and the desire of hundreds of people to be just like her, plus a raw abundance of pure worship and admiration -- and gratitude, of course, weeping, blubbering, speechless gratitude.  And then sitting there, after all that,  signing hundreds of books.  Wow. Remarkable.

She was great.  She was human.  She encouraged everybody.  She reminded us that if we want to write we need to put our butts in the chair at the same time every day and write.  She said nobody needs to watch the 10 o'clock news and that if you don't, you only miss where all the fires are, and that if you're the fire chief's wife, maybe you do need to watch, but if you're not, right there is 45 minutes when you can write every day.  And for investing that 45 minutes you'll get  maybe 30 minutes of actual writing time.  And the first paragraph will be crap.  She said that nobody needs you to write.  And that as a matter of fact it isn't even in the best interests of the people around you for you to write.  I completely get that because it's a miracle Bill has made so much space for me to do that.  Lucky writers such as I have supportive loved ones, but I can see how it doesn't really pay folks to have us do this craziness.

I believe what helped the audience the most was how uncompromising she was about her confidence in our capability to lead the lives we want and how unflinching she was about sharing her own fears, doubts, and shortcomings. 

She is stunningly generous. She delivered her presentation in the manner of someone who's just tripped over something and is willing to proceed to give you what she has that she thinks you need, without trying to find her balance. It appears to me that, as a person who has but exactly the same insecurities, terrors and dark, dark thoughts that I have, she trusts something to bear her upward when she's fallen too far -- trusts without proof, without insurance, without any particular peace of mind. (I suspect this confidence -- given the considerable testimony -- comes from her spiritual core -- as someone who says her prayers go, something like, "Hi. I guess we both know we have a problem here.")

Plus, she was wonderfully funny.  Just adorable.  End of story. 

Except that I keep thinking of things.  She quoted Shirley Jackson as saying, "A confused reader is an antagonistic reader."  True.  I believe this.  She recommended Middlemarch.  I do not want to read that.  And Salinger's Nine Stories, which I've forgotten.  And Ram Dass's The Only Dance There Is, which I remember.  

I'll pass along anything that occurs later.   In the meantime, I am channeling Anne Lamott to remind us all:  Put your butt in the chair and write.  (Or dance.  Or sing.  Or paint a picture or a room.)  Listen to the Anne Lamott in your bona fide creative soul and just do it   Do it every day.  If you skip the 10 o'clock news, you'll have time.

HappyLutions to You!

So, the ladies in my arthritis water class are generally supportive about almost everything, but they completely mocked me when I told them my New Year's resolutions would be only things that make me happy.  

Right away, Janice pointed out, "Good luck with that on April 15."  It appears she believes there's nothing happy about coughing up your taxes and that, unlike Martha, I couldn't be happy in a federal prison.  Quite possibly she's right about that, too. Bunk beds and orange clothes, yuck. 

But, actually, I think I just expressed my Happy Resolutions plan poorly.  I don't mean I plan to only do happy things -- somebody has to clean up the cat barf, after all and sooner or later it will be my turn. 

I mean that, here today, as 2011 fades, I am only going to make resolutions to do things that raise my spirits, encourage my better nature and, thereby, make me happy.

Here's the deal.  I have two or three really big, bright, wonderful goals for this year.  And, from many decades of experience, I've deduced that the absolutely worst place to store goals you care about is anywhere close to a New Year's resolution. It's way too dark and cold in there, and the moaning of the broken and lost is simply too dispiriting. Also the Guilt and Blame Levels (GBLs) are way too high for the support of optimism.  Or maybe even life itself.

Here's what I meant by happy resolutions.  First of all, I'm only making five.  Not ten. Why does it always have to be ten?  I want to abandon five absolutely jewel-like Happylutions with tender regret and whisper, "Sorry. You guys are alternates.  Maybe next year.  Or maybe if one of the ones I pick gets voted off the island.... We'll see."  

(FYI:  Moving into SweetieFry http://www.facebook.com/SweetieFry

didn't make the top five.  Je regrette.)  

The key distinction is that these are things I rejoice in gravitating towards.  If I happen to forget all five for a week, I don't want to say, "Oh crap. I am a toadlike failure, as was clearly inevitable."  I want to murmur, "Oh, wow.  I've got a ton of happy to catch up on."  

So, only good, only nurturing, only generous and kind, feel-good mini-parties on my resolutions list this year.  

These are them:  ("Screw good grammar" isn't on the list either, but what the heck.)  

#1.  Breathe like it's a spa treatment.  

#2.  Be alert for improvement.  When improvement is identified, celebrate.

#3.  Pay attention: Notice. Listen. Smell. Touch. Taste. Savor. Love. Be. Repeat.

#4.  Be kind to somebody.  Anybody.  Start with you and work outward.

#5.  Be grateful for something.  Anything. Everything. Maybe even taxes.

#6.  (Cut yourself a break. Give yourself a bonus.)  Invoke festivity.

That's them.  Aren't they pretty?  Sweeter than a SweetyFry. 

To you, I say, Happy New Year.  With all the incandescence of #5, I say that I am grateful for all the magical goodness that has come to me this year, all the kindness, all the healing, all the promise, all the generosity, all the love. (You know who you are.  If you got this, you know.) 

And, with all the kindness I can muster from #4, I invite you to make your own Happylutions.

XOXOXOAnnie 

 

U R BLES

Quick!  Before Christmas.  Before New Years.  Before I forget.  I want to write this down.  Because it's the sort of thing that can really make a difference.  And it's also the kind of thing that wears out, wears off, gets lost in the day-to-day.  Like it never happened.

Here it is.  It's Monday at about 6:35 p.m. -- dead dark and drizzling.  There I go, driving The Flying Tomato across the familiar intersection of Lakeshore & 149th, with the green light in my favor.  And there it was.  My brush with Eternity.

Eternity was coming straight at me, driving a Cleveland Police cruiser, doing approximately 65 mph with its full complement of flashing red and blue lights.   (And siren blasting, I'm sure, although I missed that somehow in the amazement of the moment.)

It was large.  And quite colorful.  And close.  I registered a big-flashing-red-and-blue UhOh. And my foot saved me by stomping on the accelerator ASAP.  In an instant I was across the intersection and kind of parked.  In good repair and excellent health. With probably 3/4 of a whole second to spare.

Spared.

I was spared!  Realistically speaking, in my smallish red car with my 10 lb. Le Creuset pot full of hot sweet potato and lentil soup on the floor of the front seat, I would have been -- upon impact with that cop -- a) crushed dead and b) covered in soup. And probably have damaged the police person pretty badly, too.   Not what I had planned for the evening. 

So, I drove calmly up the hill, ignoring the little voice that said, "Holy sweet jumping lizards, that was close!"  I drove past the Nela Park Christmas lighting display, marveling at how great it is this year after being only "just okay" last year, and ignoring the fact that there seemed to be a red VW bug, the very spitting image of mine, limned in glowing light, on the lawn. (No kidding.  Go look.)  Just driving along, and watching my speed to avoid the evil spy cameras on Noble Road and ignoring the fact that I was, mostly accidentally, still alive. Not dead or injured or even hot-soup-spattered. Spared.

I had a little more trouble, though, ignoring the white sedan in front of me with the vanity license plate that read (with vanity plate economy)  U R BLES  Oh, c'mon.  Truly?  And was Marley's Ghost driving?  Not as far as I could see. 

I  finally got the message. One wouldn't have to buy into the woo-woo of it all perhaps -- though I probably did.  But the wake up call?  For sure.  Because whether it was the hand of God, or the dance of the Universe, or the good offices of my fast right foot, I was alive and well and on my way to book group. No harm.  No foul.  Spared.

So, right away, that begs the question: "Spared for what?"  Because we know people in books and movies always say, "She was spared to do some good thing in the world."  Or "She was spared and finally appreciated the preciousness of her one human life." Or. "She was spared and gave poor Bob Cratchit a big turkey and a nice raise."  Or other things along that line, usually with examples.

Spared for what?  That's a great question.  Because if I look back -- and if you look back, you'll no doubt see this, too -- I've had a lot of close calls in my life.  As close as that, if not as colorful.  And I'm willing to entertain the possibility that others I don't even know about brushed by, like an asteroid, tumbling through the darkness, just as close or closer.  How about you?

So we're living The Spared Life, you and I, and probably everybody alive.  And I've found in the last handful of days that The Spared Life is a very fine thing if you keep inquiring of it, "Was I spared for this?"  To do this good thing?  To save somebody without knowing it?  To pass along the U R BLES message in short hand or long hand?  To move through the world as if the commonplace were holy?  That's a good question.  And best left open so it can keep moving unimpeded through the world.

Then, when annoyance strikes and I say or do or think something REALLY PETTY?  Here's a good question to ask:  "Was I spared for this?" Did I get rescued from the intersection of Soup & Death to be my old familiar jerk?  Surely the Universe had something a little more generous in mind.  Or, if we believe some holy, wonderful Something was not in charge right then, maybe it could be just me or just you with a suddenly better idea.  A kinder, better, more loving, more ultimately satisfying way to be.  In honor of the pure unbridled generosity of ... The Gift of Life.

Gratitude.

So, here's my Christmas/New Years message unto myself and to you:  I am thankful to have been spared to intend to be a better, kinder, more generous, less jerkier human being.  I am renewed in my sense of gratitude for family, for friends, for home, for my juvenile delinquent cat, for my unmanageable lake and this extraordinary moment.

I tell you this not so you can watch for me, going about, doing good, because you'd likely be sorely disillusioned.

What I wish for you is that you ride my little hair-raising experience into a happily enhanced appreciation of your own gratitude-worthy life.

And to Marley's Ghost in the white sedan, I say, "God bless us, everyone. No exceptions."

And especially, "BLES U."

I kissed a book.

This is a revelation less provocative than some and more suggestive of insanity than most. 

I'm reading The Art of Fielding and I am in love.  I'm not in love with the author, although I pause in my reading occasionally to bless, if not kiss, him.  I'm in love with Henry, with Schwartz, with Owen, with Affenlight, with Pella. Even just a little bit with Herman Melville -- who woulda thunk it?  I'm bedazzled.  Bewildered. Entranced.  My heart is busted right open and filled with the light that pours out of this book.

Which I guess accounts for why, having read the end of Chapter 15, I was so touched and exhilarated by the beautiful delineation of the human soul contained therein, that I planted a big smackeroo right on the screen of my iPad.  Which I never kissed before.  I swear.

[I know.  I know.  Let's set aside for a moment the issue of did I really kiss a book if I had to kiss it through a glass screen. Isn't that more of a prison visit, after all?  I actually do share your passion for the smell of libraries and the deliciously tactile experience of a "real book." I do.  But I also subscribe to the heresy that a book is a dance between two fully participating humans--writer/reader--and that dance can be danced on just about any medium which displays or purveys words that can be deciphered.  (If you've ever read a book on an iPhone, you know what I mean.)  And in my present state of mind, I can say with confidence that if Chad Harbach had written The Art of Fielding on &$#@*^% gum wrappers, I'd still be his girl.]

Have I read all the way to the end?  Can I guarantee anything about even my own satisfaction when all's said and done?  No.  I'm a rampaging reader and I think it's indicative of how much I'm loving this book that I keep stopping.  And waiting.  Actually savoring.  I'm studiously not reading reviews.  And this isn't actually one of those either.  This is a blog.  It's about me, me, me.  There are lots of reviews of this book out there in the world.  I'm entirely happy to keep it that way.  This is love, after all, and it doesn't bear a lot of poking and prodding.  It just is. 

I have a cherished memory of my penchant for crazy kissing that comes from the exhausting, exuberant days when our son was a baby. I kissed him of course, on his darling pink toes, on his downy head, on his angelic belly button. He was infinitely kissable. One late afternoon I was coming up the basement stairs with a load of freshly dried laundry -- baby shirts, baby pants, baby diapers (yeah, those were the days) -- and they smelled so incredibly baby and I was freaking tired out of my mind, of course, and not accountable for any of my actions.  So I planted a big old kiss right on the laundry.  I kissed a load of laundry.  With all my heart.

Sue me. 

I read all sorts of books.  I love all sorts of books.  I love books that serious bookers turn their serious noses up at. I mean it.  I have adored some bona fide trash. The New York Times and I are often not of one mind.  But I almost never pick up a book that from the first handful of words is as incandescent as this book is for me.

Over the top?  Well, duh.  Do I care?  Not a whit.  Am I in love with The Art of Fielding?  A book about baseball, for goodness sake? Yup.

Sue me.

New Post. Really?

Spring turns into summer.
Summer dissolves into fall.
Fall hovers on the abyss of October.
Where was I?

BOLO.  Be on the lookout. For a blogger on the lam?  That's me.

Here I am.  At last. 

So, actually.  Where was I?   So many places.  So little time.  Right here, I feel compelled to comment on the American Mindset which suggests that if one has not realized certain ambitions and accomplishments by the coming of autumn, one has wasted the summer.  Not true, I say.

Here's what I was not doing:

Publishing a novel.  (More about that in a minute.)
Learning Italian.
Training for a marathon. Or a half-marathon.  Or a five-mile, three-mile, one-mile run. 
Reorganizing the garage.
Redecorating the living room.
Hosting a Lake Day.
Finally, finally, getting into the kayak.
Becoming in any way better looking.
Getting in any way younger.
Writing in this blog.
Wasting a summer.

I had my summer.  Heaped up and running over.

I awakened early and mostly rolled over and went back to sleep, noting that yes, at 5 a.m. in June, the sun is already up.  Hurray for it.

I sat at our table with family and dearest friends on a fine number of occasions, relished the good food and savored the presence of the folks.  Sometimes the table was inside.  Sometimes the table was outside.  Always the table was safe under the canopy of love.  Dear friends.  You know who you are.

We had a lot of rain.  I love rain.  Mostly, I enjoyed the rain.  Mostly, I enjoyed the thunder ... if it came from at least three chimpanzees away.

We had bugs.  Not so many this year, but persistently returning. I don't love the bugs but I'm down with them.  Ephemeroptera.  They earn their name by living one day and dying overnight.  Go you, little bugs, I say.


We had a hot spell.


We had a cool spell.  And as noted, really, quite a lot of rain.


The pond got renovated and restocked.  We watched and blessed, but did not name, the new fish.  Nine goldfish surviving.  Possibly ten, but they move so fast, who can count them?  Four Golden Orfes (I'm sorry.  Is that NOT just the best name ever for a darting, shimmying, leaping little yellow fish?)  Two shubunkins.  (I'm sorry.  Is that NOT the stupidest name ever for those calico-colored beauties?)  


We lingered on the decks, not nearly enough.  But there were sailboat mornings and sunset evenings and screaming girls dragged about on inner tubes (only one or two, but still ... a little screaming girl goes a long way.) There were breakfasts and lunches and dinners consumed in the presence of a Great Lake and a lot of wistful squirrels.


There were raccoon nights of unprecedented bravado.  Those furry bandits care even less about where they go and whom they menace than the Honey Badger.  And we know The Honey Badger (to put it politely) don't give a ... darn.

I revised the novel.  Because:  


I found -- so serendipitously ... thank you, Lynn ... thank you Universe -- a writing partner who, having been writing and writing all along, has had a real novel published and because she is a stellar human being, let me read and comment on her latest novel-in-progress and agreed to read and comment on mine.  

If there were -- buried deep in my heart -- an alter ego who somehow knew what I had left out, what I was still searching for, what the book needed in order for it to be the book I could love without reservation and send whole and plenty-good-enough-for-me back into the forest where The Crafty Readers lurk?  That would be Tina.  

Tina, I can never be grateful enough. You are the pen pal I wanted when I was ten.  And also the one I needed this summer.  

Plus, thanks for introducing me to the awe-inspiring Mojito Literary Society and another *#(&@^ go-round with the *#&@^ Artist's Way.  *#&@^, I say. *#&@^!!!!  Which is exactly what the Honey Badger would say. 

So I spent, no, lavished, a lot of my summer on rewriting Somebody's Bound To Wind Up Dead.  Making it better.  Making it so good.  Loving it again.  

I read an incredible number of books, with both of my wonderful book groups and on my own.  I read classics, magnificent stories, terrific reads and enjoyable crap.  Fast and indiscriminately.  I loved them all.  Reading is so fun.  


I listened to retreats conducted by Pema Chodron, my defacto spiritual teacher. I listened to them in my car on my way to working out and on my way back from working out, several days each week.  Pema has taught me a bunch of stuff.  She is kind.  Compassionate.  Forgiving.  Encouraging.  And on tape.  So she couldn't beat me with the big stick for being a lazy student.  Not that she would, of course.  But that she should.

I'm learning from Pema to stay with what's uncomfortable or scary or sad and to be glad for life when it's sweet and sour and itchy and grouchy and good and bad.  And, once every two or three days, to be present and awake to whatever's here and now. For about 30 seconds.  I'm also learning to forgive myself for not being present every minute of the damn summer.  I'm learning all that from Pema.  Thank you, Pema.  I'm grateful.  No kidding.


I got my knees back.  Both of them.  I worked them out sufficiently to make them wholly acceptable unto me.  I need now to work myself out enough to make me wholly acceptable unto them.

I went places with Bill.  Stayed home with Bill.  Talked with Bill.  Ate the above-mentioned breakfasts, lunches and dinners by the Great Lake with Bill.  Lived another summer with Bill.  Lucky, I.  Thank you, Bill.  Always.  

The same goes for John. And Allie.  And Cujo. And all my other dear, dear people. You know who you are. 


And now summer is over.  Savored to the full extent of an idle, distracted, regretful, forgetful mind.  Which is a lot of savoring, it turns out.  


Let's BOLO for winter now.  

And in case you don't know from watching a lot of crappy crime-related TV, BOLO is explained in the post located right below this one.  


Summer may be over, but the blogger is back! 

BOLO: For Spring

If you knew me well, you'd know that, in much the same way that the kid from "The Sixth Sense" saw dead people, I see (and write about) crimes.  Mystery.  Oh, yeah, and dead people.

But not actually dead.  And not actually people. More like potential, imaginary, fictional dead people.  Like, if I were to find myself in the beer cooler at Dave's Super Market, I'd go "Wow, what if someone walked in here and there was a dead person (a blue dead person) leaned stiffly up against the six packs of St. Pauli Girl."  How cool (NPI) would that be???

It's like I'm living the first five minutes of "Castle" or "Bones" over and over again.  In my head.  At the store.  Only not as gross.  I'm usually eating something or planning to eat a little something in the next two or three hours or so, so I try not to be imaginative in that  gross and disgusting, sort of liquidy, way that Castle and Bones specialize in.  Eeww.

My point?  Getting there.  I LOVE those stories and I relish all the lingo.  Like recently I encountered BOLO in Tina Whittle's debut novel The Dangerous Edge of Things. (Read this novel. I read it.  I loved it.  It's way fun.  Just do it.  And if my just do it recommendation isn't persuasive enough, see my review at Amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Edge-Things-Randolph-Mystery/product-reviews/1590588193/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending And ask me why I have such a ridiculous user name there.  Go ahead.  I ask myself, myself.  Lizzie?  Really?)

I'd seen BOLO in books and heard it bandied about on TV before but I had to look it up.  It means Be On The Lookout.  As in "As soon as I saw Frankie Brancusi leaned up against the six packs of St. Pauli Girl in the beer cooler at Dave's, I put out a BOLO for Ralph "The Iceman" Boyardee.  'Sonofabitch is at it again,' I muttered, 'and this time, he's mine.'" 

I like BOLO.  It's the kinder, gentler kid brother of the APB.  "Keep an eye open for ....  If you happen to run across....  When he shows up at the N-Spot .... lemme know.  But for crissake don't shoot him.  Just, you know.  BOLO."

Now for the non-crime, philosophical application.  My experience suggests that if you put out a BOLO for something you'd like to see in the world or in your more immediate life, it has a better chance of showing up. (I know.  Woo woo.  Wackyass.  New Age bs.  Get over it.  Choose to be happier, you sour cynic.)

What I really need right now is some serious spring.  I have two new bionic knees and it's tough to get them up to six million dollar speed inside the house.  Walls will stop you.  Plus it's been slimy, icy, dark and rainy/snowing for quite some time and a change would be appreciated.  Therefore I invite us all to BOLO for spring.  And to give us all a little boost, here are some signs of Spring in Cleveland that might be interpreted as signs of winter in other, less challenging climes:

The small round "lakes" in the roads are no longer frozen over into teeny, tiny skating ponds.  Check.  (And swerve to avoid.)

Ten thousand ducks are engaging in a social convention that can only be described as "duck speed dating."  Check.  (In case anyone ever asks you where baby ducks come from, tell them Lake Erie.  It's a kind of single's bar.  For ducks.)

Against my better judgment and in spite of my kind warnings, daffodils are popping up like the true morons they are.  Check.  Check. Check check check.

The buds of the leaves of summer 2011 are clearly delineated  against the blank gray of the sky.   Check. 

The grass is green.  Greener.   Checking.  Checking.  Keep checking.

The wild garlics are springing up like the creepy intractable weeds they are.  Soon the garden will be in full and lavish ... ah ...  smelly garlicky weed bloom.  Check.  Pewie.

Now it's your turn.  BOLO for spring!  It'll make you happier, I promise.  And if you happen to see Ralphie B.  hanging out up at Dave's, lemme know.  But for crissake, don't shoot him.  Just, you know, BOLO.