It sounds like a headline from the Onion

Woman applies for new Tennessee driver's license and receives it twenty minutes later. I know. That sounds like some impossible headline from The Onion. Like when the Supreme Court said, "Same-sex Marriage? Big Whoop. Who cares?" That was a funny headline from the spoof site.

But I bluff you not. I actually departed work today to go obtain my state driver's license, which I should have done two years and two months ago but somehow didn't (see also: unpleasant chore avoidance). Instead I flashed my Massachusetts card with pride, long after I owned real estate there.

You can imagine my dread, having this long overdue task ahead of me to complete in the middle of the work week, on Sept. 11 no less, and then 20 minutes later I receive it. In fact, they were calling my number BEFORE I had the whole application filled out. The!!

So, to review:

• I didn't arrive first thing as I was supposed to.
• My MA driver's license was due to expire so something was guaranteed to go wrong in the next week.
• I had to go straight from work which means I had to take the motorino which means I was probably going to crash on my way to get my driver's license because my life is that ironic.
• It's the Department of Motor Vehicles for crying out loud.
• All the employees were totally courteous.
• I had all the right documentation, despite fact that I can't find anything of importance ever but still find the user's manual to the baby swing that we gave away 3 years ago.
• I got my driver's license in less time than it sometimes takes to buy post-it notes at Rite-Aid.
• TWENTY MINUTES, PLAYERS!

I believe this is proof that either the Cleveland Indians are going to win the World Series this year or Jesus' return is very imminent. Possibly both.

In no particular order, my thoughts on child models, Sara Bareilles, hard work and lip gloss

People occasionally ask me why I haven't gotten my daughter into modeling. And, oh, what a sweet compliment, and wait, are we being serious because, haha, have you seen my kid beeline the second she smells me reaching for a camera, but also, hmm, yeah I do hear kids who model have a fun time and money sacked away for college is always nice, and --

I don't know. It's just...

Sara Bareilles practiced a whole year before she performed a rendering of Elton John's song in front of other people.

***

I finally watched the documentary Miss Representation that is a clarion call to not only change the messages we are sending about women but also to change the message-makers. Women are surely in the minority at the top echelons of media companies that are producing messages of misogyny, sexism, violence toward women that come pouring out of our screens and speakers like a fire hydrant. Hey, womyn's studies. How yooodooin'?

This Miss Representation movie? Scared. Me. Like no horror flick ever did.

Maybe because we're all living it. The credits stop rolling and the horrors of women objectified don't stop. One particular part of the documentary that most sobered me was about reality television portrayals of women. Truth told, I never watch reality TV because I don't have the talking picture box networks in my house. Lame. But I did once upon a time, and I remember  teasers for certain episodes. It is all about the promise of a catfight. Or the promise of Real Housewives getting real with one another, which we all know couldn't be any more staged.

We have made celebrities out of women who do nothing for the cause of anybody but themselves, oftentimes by doing really awful things to others. Or! We celebrate women who do nothing but put on lip gloss. All hail and honor. Let us unveil the mighty secrets in glossy magazines of how The Kardashians Korporation accomplishes the smoldering lip. A magnanimous contribution to humanity. Bow down in reverence.

Over there, Sara Bareilles is practicing. She's banging hard on the keys to get her craft just right.

***

We saw Sara Bareilles last night and she amazed. Such a strong voice with real range and such a charismatic performer.  I was pretty much convinced that we are going to hang out at some point in the near future, Sara Bareilles and I, because we totally connected. She was cracking all kinds of jokes and she knew I was down.

One of my favorite moments at the concert was when she played Elton John's "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road." She said it took her a year to practice before she even dared share it with an audience. "Because it turns out it's a really hard song," she said. The way she played it was just...sacred. She captured the range of emotions and notes so well. She had mastered it.

And this was Sara Bareilles. Thrice-nominee of a Grammy award. She's gone platinum and stuff. She still practices with dedication and she is not afraid of hard songs. She told the audience to look in the other direction if she messed up, or to just look at our phones until she gets back on track. She welcomes the unscripted moments.

I'm not saying Sara Bareilles or anyone else who sings and plays instruments is the paragon of womanhood in America. I just appreciate people, women especially, who are willing to do the hard work to produce something bigger than themselves. Whether that's a song or an opus, a garden, a foreign relations policy, a computer tablet.

*** I don't have a hard position on my kids modeling or learning karate or wearing fake mustaches all day long. I just want to teach them about hard work in service to others; the only work worth doing to reap real and eternal rewards. My children are only on lease to me for a limited time. I don't just want my daughter to know her worth, it's my job to imbue in her a strong sense of duty, to not be afraid to lead with heart and head and work hard with her hands. If she is called to sing and play like Sara Bareilles, then I hope she bangs the ivory out of those keys after much practice and even then, I hope she's not afraid to mess up. Because therein lies the beauty in this unscripted, unphotoshopped marvelously flawed, hard, unpracticed life.

That's the kind of modeling business I can get behind.

Making friends in a post-freshman orientation world

Where I work and play, the bees are buzzing and it is time to make honey.  That is, the first year students are slowly trickling back into the utopia we call Campus and soon waves of their elder classmen will join them. Their friendships and acquaintances will be fostered by orientations and organized meet and greets, and I will feel anguish for them because of all the forced extroversion it takes to get through the first few weeks of school. Is all the ice broken yet or do we need more icebreakers? I will also feel a tinge of envy, because after this? There are few times in life when you are starting something new along with everyone else in the room, besides the teacher.

I think this makes it hard to make friends as an adult, sometimes. The gal behind you in yoga is the grand poobah of bikram, and you are only a sweaty novice. The colleague whose cube is diagonal from yours is so cool. But he's been there for years and is a little jaded.

A  fringe benefit of becoming a parent is that a whole new orientation begins. It is less orderly but it is needed more than any other time. Excepting maybe orientation for the Peace Corps. When your life's geography suddenly shifts from the coordinates of places you had once spent time, e.g. uninterrupted moments in the dressing room at Banana Republic, to slightly less enchanting places called Tot Lot and Little Gym and the playland at McDonald's, you need people who will be miserable good company there with you. Parenting young children can be so lonely, and there on the island where the language spoken is in signs and phrases repeated over and over and over, a person can start to go crazy and forget his or her first language, the language of grown-up conversation.

I am forever blessed by the parents in our neighborhood that I first met when we lived in Boston. They are the dearest of friends, the besthearted of people, and the most generous of spirit that I will likely encounter this side of Heaven.

We got to visit our friends Acey and Sonya and their three beauts this past weekend in Savannah (with a pit stop to see Euni and Jeff in ATL - holla!!), because we don't get to Savannah nearly enough, three times in four months is just totally NOT enough times in Eastern Georgia for one famiLee!

Our children are older and speak a less fractured language and together they played long hours in the hot sun. But we, their parents, are still speaking a language of camaraderie, freely associated song lyrics from our childhoods, and the kind of laughter that makes one's face hurt.

When we are younger, the moment of recognition that someone is a friend is usually born of a clear commonality. Oh, you, too, like "My So-Called Life" as much as I do? Let us wax poetic about how well we like it and do it as much as possible. Friendship.

On the island of parenting small children, I have found that the moment of recognition that we are indeed friends who can be relied upon and trusted with confidences and dreams is when we get to share in something like this and we are enriched by it and can't wait for it to happen again: Mama, can we paint our vaginas? Yes, that happened in the space of this past weekend and it will forever be etched on my heart, the heart of a parent of young children who was made not so alone by the best of friends.