And in the end…there is love.

I get by with a little help from my friends…

Posted on Friday 22 August 2008

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Sometimes my life gets dark. The sun fades behind clouds. The dark before the dawn stretches on. I fold in on myself, unable to see my hand waving in front of my face.

But then, in a corner of my life, there’s a whoosh and a flare. A flickering candle of friendship.

A friend calls me and won’t let me just say that I’m “okay.”

The darkness quivers.

A friend can tell that something is wrong by a word on a computer screen.

The darkness shakes.

A friend asks me what I’m doing despite her own darkness.

The darkness breaks.

A friend hugs me.

The darkness lightens.

A friend makes me laugh.

The darkness wavers.

A friend prays.

The darkness scatters.

A friend loves.

The darkness flees.

Brandy @ 11:06 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve got nothing…

Posted on Sunday 17 August 2008

I always try to blog on Sunday. So, my Monday morning readers will have something fresh and funny/insightful/brilliant to read. I don’t want to let you down, dear readers.

But seriously? I have nothing today. So I’m going to make you work. I’ve decided that one of my life goals is to be on the Ellen Degeneres show. Yes, you heard me. I have very lofty goals in my life.

The only issue is, I have absolutely nothing that would warrant my appearance on a talk show. So that’s where you come in. How can I get on the Ellen show? I want your brilliant ideas since I apparently have none! Thanks :)

Brandy @ 3:51 pm
Filed under: Compassion and Uncategorized
I RAN for Rwanda

Posted on Thursday 14 August 2008

So, I just realized I never updated you all on my Run for Rwanda race. So in an effort to be concise, here, for you dear readers, is a bulleted list detailing my morning.

  • Arrive at 7:30. Walk around a bit, trying to “warm up.” Whatever that means. Watch the real runners do some laps around the park. Real runners are weird.
  • Realize at 7:45 that I’m already sweating. Start wishing I had a milkshake.
  • Get herded over to the starting line. Face the wrong way until some kind lady old enough to be my grandmother gets me turned around.
  • And we’re off. Lordy it’s hot.
  • Do my first mile in 11 minutes. Not bad. For me, anyway.
  • I love running with African music in my ears and my family and friends cheering me on.
  • Half-way point. I may die.
  • It’s hot. Did I mention that?
  • Ah, water.
  • Hmmm, you shouldn’t drink water that fast when you’re dehydrated. It makes you want to puke.
  • Listen to the water sloshing around in my stomach as I finish my second mile. Twelve minutes. Meh.
  • Round the corner and see two of my favorite people cheering for me. Actually, they cheered until I go to them. Then they just started screaming “RUN FASTER.” Geez.
  • Must. Run. Final. Stretch.
  • Getting chills when it’s 90 degrees is a bad sign.
  • Laugh as one woman shouts mere feet from the finish line “Don’t worry, the misery’s almost over!”
  • Greeted at the finish line by the friend who got me into this whole running thing. Don’t fuss at her because if I open my mouth I will puke.
  • Check finish time. 40:30. Little disappointed. But did I mention it was hot?

Well, that’s it folks. Oh, but because of your support, I raised the most sponsorship funds! More than $800! I even got this nifty trophy :)

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Brandy @ 7:45 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
Numb

Posted on Tuesday 12 August 2008

A week ago, all I wanted was numb.
I didn’t want to feel.
Self-preservation.
Protection.
Survival.

A week ago, I decided to shut down.
It was easier that way.
Hidden away.
Blank.
Alone.

But last night, my resolve crumbled.
A friend made me laugh.
A child made me smile.
A hug made me feel.
A kiss on the cheek made me happy.

So the numb is fleeing.
And while the pain is still there.
The love is stronger.

Today I will feel.

Brandy @ 1:45 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s all good fun until someone loses an eye

Posted on Tuesday 5 August 2008

This weekend, I went with my cousins to a local Renaissance Festival. Rest assured, there are more posts forthcoming about said festival. Weirdness abounded.

But today, dear readers, I want to share with you what happens when two males sit atop a log and pay money to beat each other with a sack.

It starts out simple. Everyone’s smiling and happy.
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Dad lobs a few gentle hits. Son realizes this may be the only time he can hit his dad in the head with a sack without being grounded. He goes for it.
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Son doesn’t know what’s coming. Look at that innocent face.
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Father realizes he can hit son with a sack without Mother saying anything. The glee wells up inside him. Look at that gleeful face.
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Son begins to slip. He sees his life flash before his eyes.
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Surely, father’s paternal instincts will kick in now. Right?
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Not a chance.

Brandy @ 12:19 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Read any good books?

Posted on Monday 4 August 2008

I have stolen this blog from a bunch of people. And I don’t even care. I’m about to fall asleep at my desk, so this is my afternoon distraction.

I am not exactly sure what this list is, but it has something to do with the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program, though I couldn’t find this list on their website to verify that claim. I stole it from CJ. Apparently the NEA estimates that the average adult has only read six of these books. At least, that is the statistic that is bandied about the internet. So, basically, this is a random unverified list with a random unverified statistic attached to it. But let’s see how I do anyway, shall we? (Hint: more than six.)

Here’s how it works:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Mark in red the books you LOVE. (I didn’t do this. Oops)
4) Reprint this list in your blog

  1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
  2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien: I tried. It just didn’t happen
  3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte.
  4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
  5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
  6. The Bible
  7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
  8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
  9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
  10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
  11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
  12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
  13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
  14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
  15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier: I checked it out of the library. Does that count?
  16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
  17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
  18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
  19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
  20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
  21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
  22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
  23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
  24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
  25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
  26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
  27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
  28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
  29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
  30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
  31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
  32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
  33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
  34. Emma - Jane Austen
  35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
  36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
  37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
  38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
  39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
  40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
  41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
  42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown: Too trendy
  43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
  45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
  46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
  47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
  48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
  49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
  50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
  51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
  52. Dune - Frank Herbert
  53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
  54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
  55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
  56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
  57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
  58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
  59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
  60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
  62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
  63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
  64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
  65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
  66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
  67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
  68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding: Seriously?
  69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
  70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville: Wow, lots of classics I’ve never read
  71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
  72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
  73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
  74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
  75. Ulysses - James Joyce
  76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
  77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
  78. Germinal - Emile Zola
  79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
  80. Possession - AS Byatt
  81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
  82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
  83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
  84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
  85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
  86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
  87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
  88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
  89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
  90. The Faraway Tree Collection
  91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
  92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
  93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
  94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
  95. A Confederacy of Dunces
  96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
  97. The Three Musketeers
  98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
  99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
  100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - No WAY am I ever going to read this.

Hmmm, 28 out of 100. I need to add some books to my list at the library!

Brandy @ 2:58 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Brown Lady and Cleopatra’s Adventures at the Park

Posted on Thursday 31 July 2008

Last night I went to the park with my friend, Krissy, and her kids. Krissy is from India. That will come into play later in this story.

We were hanging out at the slide area when a little girl comes up to us and starts chattering away. Here are some excerpts from our time together.

Girl: (to Krissy) Do you want to play princess?

Krissy: I am a princess.

Girl: (blank stare) I’m a fairy, and OH MY GOSH, there’s burning lava all around. I’ll save us. ABRACADABRA. Okay, I fixed it.

Me: Can I be a fairy too? What’s my fairy name.

Girl: Hmmmm, Princess Cleopatra.

Me: Nice. What’s your fairy name?

Girl: Pablo.

Me: Interesting. What’s her fairy name (pointing to Krissy)

Girl: *mumblemumble*

Me: Did you say Nita?

Girl: NO. *mumblemumble*

Me: Rita?

Girl: YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND.

Me: Wow, I just got reprimanded by a 5-year-old.

*Krissy finally figured out that her name is Uniqua*

*Krissy and I wandered off, when said little girl comes running after us*

Girl: HEY BROWN LADY.

Me: *SNORT*

Krissy: I have a name little girl. It’s Uniqua.

Me: *SMOKER LAUGH*

*****************

I really hope that comes across as funny as the actual event was. Because, good golly it was funny.

This is Princess Cleopatra, signing off.

Brandy @ 8:37 am
Filed under: Uncategorized
Poser

Posted on Monday 28 July 2008

Last night, I was running through my neighborhood. It was not a great run. I felt like I was moving through mud, my feet dragging across the sidewalk. In between songs blaring on my iPod, all I could hear was the scuffing of my shoes on the sidewalk and my raspy breathing.

Even my shadow seemed to mock me. My legs looked short and stubby. My form seemed wrong. I could see my phone bulging out of my pocket. Real runners don’t need a phone. They’re not afraid they will pass out. In my other pocket, my inhaler formed a lump against my hip. Real runners can breathe without inhaling misty drops of medicine.

I felt tears prick behind my eyes as I imagined the thoughts of the people driving past me. They were probably laughing at me. At my red face. My creeping shorts. My flailing arms.

What was I doing. I was just a poser. Not really a runner. I was just embarrassing myself.

But then, I remembered a blog I read a few months ago by Kristin Armstrong. Kristin is a runner. A real runner. Worlds away from me. But she said something that resurfaced just as I was ready to throw in the towel.

A surefire way to get picked on is to speak up, act out, try new things, make mistakes, say what you feel, risk, reach out, put it out there, have opinions, ask questions, be deliberate, be hasty, be vulnerable, be real.


An image comes to mind of an overweight person running…red-faced, perspiring, angled shorts surely chafing, slowly working their way around the track. Would any runner, worth the salt on their sweaty face, scoff? Are you kidding me? No way. When I see someone like this, I smile and nod like I do anytime a runner passes by. Except in this case, on the inside I am cheering. Any runner knows how hard it is to begin, to motivate and to fight inertia. Our instinct as runners is to encourage.


And most runners carry this same sentiment even out of the shower and into normal clothes. And that is the gift we share, our offering to the world, especially to those who cannot run a mile (or 3, 6, 13, 26.2) in our shoes, so to speak.

Those words reminded me of a dear friend, another runner. She’s amazing, and sometimes I’m surprised by her encouragement. I always feel like she should be laughing at my feeble attempts at being in shape. But she doesn’t. She cheers me on when I feel like I’ve failed. She speaks life into me. She is one of the reasons I haven’t stopped.

So, last night, I kept running. I didn’t break any land speed records. I continued to plod along, one foot in front of the other until I made it home, soaked in sweat, my head pounding. But as I stood in the shower a few minutes later, I felt just a tiny spark of–what was it–pride? accomplishment?

I’m not ready to give up yet.

Brandy @ 12:56 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
What an idiot

Posted on Friday 25 July 2008

Do you ever do anything really stupid. Like, after you’ve done it, you can’t even believe you did it.

I do things like that about once a week. On a good week.

So, instead of another picture post, which I know you’re all sick of, I’m going to share an idiot moment from last night.

For two years, I’ve been going to a Bible study. We meet at the same place every week. I’ve gone to this couple’s house well over a hundred times. Keep those facts in mind.

Last night, I pull up to their house, walk to the front door–and it’s locked. That’s weird, they never keep the front door locked. I lean over and peer into the window next to the door. Huh, that’s weird. They got a new couch. And they painted the living room. And…wait…these people that I’m staring at. The ones sitting on the couch. The ones staring back at me. I don’t know them. Oh. Crap. I’m at the wrong house.

I stand up and begin backing down the porch stairs. Then I turn around and start running. That doesn’t make me look guilty AT ALL.

Then I hear the door open behind me. ohcrapohcrapohcrap

“It’s two houses down,” a smiling lady on the front porch tells me. “It happens all the time.”

Oh, no, it doesn’t. It might happen to new people. But they don’t try to open the door without knocking. It does not happen to people who have been to the house before. More than 100 times before.

Once I got to the REAL house, we all laughed over the story. And what could have happened.

What if the door hadn’t been locked? What if I had walked in, plopped down on the couch, and started commenting on the new furniture? How long would it have taken me to figure it out. Would it have been before or after that poor family called the police.

So there you have it. I’m an idiot. Over and over again.

Brandy @ 4:11 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized
Happy Birthday Amanda!

Posted on Tuesday 22 July 2008

Today is Amanda’s birthday.

Amanda is one of my favorite people in the world. Even if she can’t be serious in a picture for two seconds.

No seriously, she is. She and I have similar philosophies when it comes to food.

And I don’t just love her because she’s my cousin. I love her because she would do anything for me. She would take a rhino horn in the butt for me.

She would drink pineapple through a straw with me, just because I asked her to.

Amanda and I are quite different though. She is adventurous and likes to scale large rocks using her entire body. I would rather read a book about scaling large rocks.

But we work well together. She wrestles a mountain goat with her bare hands, and I take pictures of her.

But our differences don’t matter when we’re together. Together, we form this mighty duo. This athletic, nerdy, beautiful, smart duo.

She’s always been there for me. She’s cried with me. Laughed with me. Spoken wisdom into my life. Occasionally knocked some wisdom into my life. Sings for me at weddings.

I know few people who are more kind, more beautiful, more caring, more grounded than Amanda. Even children like her. And children are good judges of character.

I’m blessed to have her in my life.

Happy birthday, Amanda! Have your cake and eat it to!

Brandy @ 2:18 pm
Filed under: Uncategorized