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There is so much inside me that I’ve got to say,
… so I will create while the other mice play.
A silly old song or just a small rhyme —
but I’ll give it my heart,
and my hands,
and my time.
If someday my words bring a smile or a tear
the world will remember …
… that I have been here.

Over my desk, I have this “poem.” It’s cross-stitched alongside what appears to be a cross-stitched mouse sitting at a desk writing. It’s supposed to be inspirational, I think, for a writer to have something above his/her desk about writing. So I have this incredibly cheesy thing. The mouse’s desk has a candle, books, a globe and even a little statuette of a cat on it. There’s a grandfather clock, and even some crumpled up papers around the floor around the mouse.

However, because of how cross stitch works, I can’t tell AT ALL what the mouse is doing. I understand, from the “poem” that he’s supposed to be writing, but I can’t tell how. I can’t tell what is his hand and what hi his pen and maybe he has glasses or that’s the back of his pen and it’s a big fancy quill? Or maybe he just has some walrus tusks.

I’m including a photo with this blog post so you can see how confusing it is.

It’s one of those things that’s so homely and so kitsch it goes past ironic, clever kitsch and into this kind of sad authenticity.

I would like to point out that it does inspire me. It’s cheesy and stupid but somebody spent a lot of time making it, and it’s really well-done stich-work. Somebody did give this their hands and their time. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, but how you used it. I’m not going to cross stitch a mouse doing something I can’t tell what he’s doing, but I am going to put time in to the things I care about, that I do.

So I’m watching the Olympics Opening Ceremonies, and it came across my mind to tweet (on my Twitter) the observation that the U.S. did not invent rock ‘n’ roll — we merely imported it.

And seriously. We did.

It’s all really emotional, the Olympic Opening Ceremonies. First of all, at the beginning, everything looked like a rave in the Shire. Second, it’s all beautiful and majestic and so many people are working hard together and making something epic and wonderful and like purposeful heart-wrenching. And everybody on my Twitter is talking about how they’re getting teary-eyed.

But I’m not.

And then I hear the opening riff of The Who’s “My Generation.” And it happens. My eyes fill up. My chest hurts. I feel it.

Good rock and roll makes me weep. God save the Queen.

A short list of things that have happened recently on my “vacation”:

1. On July 4, I drove from my house in Atlanta to my mom’s house in Mansfield, Ga., then left my car at her house and drove her car to Myrtle Beach, S.C. It’s about a seven-hour trip.

1a. I got a rather large speeding ticket on the way. I also could have been arrested because my mom’s car is registered in the name of her company but titled in my grandfather’s name. My grandfather has been dead since 2006. Apparently, you do not have infinite time to update things like that. The car’s title, registration and insurance didn’t match one another, and none of it matched my driver’s license name or address. This, combined with the fact I was driving 92 miles per hour in a ridiculous Mercedes S600 (which apparently is only driven by foreign dictators), raised some red flags. My court date is in September.

1b. When I arrived at the house in Myrtle Beach, my mother was waiting at the door for me.

1c. Once I got into the house, mom said “I have something to tell you,” and put her hands on my arms. “I have nerves,” she said. She was trying to say “I have news” and “I’m nervous,” but it came out as “I have nerves.” (This is likely the most accurate, self-aware statement she has ever made.)

1d. Her news was that there would be a dinner party at the house in a couple hours and the whole neighborhood had been invited, including this guy mom had decided was good-looking and in his thirties and therefore I was going to talk to, fall in love with, marry and be pregnant by the end of the year. ($40*)

1e. I did talk to this guy at the party, but mostly my mom flirted with him, nonstop, for three hours while I helped cook and clean up.

2. On July 5, I spent three hours in a gigantic golf and tennis warehouse store. I have zero interest in golf or tennis, but it seems everyone in Myrtle Beach is into golf.

2a. My mother called me downstairs to my aunt and uncle’s part of the house to introduce me to a four- or five-month-old baby. I tried talking to her, but we had absolutely nothing in common. Then she sneeze-barfed on me. ($25*)

3. On July 6, I had a burger at my 2nd favorite burger place on earth (the River City Cafe in Myrtle Beach.)

3a. We also went out to dinner for my stepfather’s birthday, and my mom was kind of rude to me, our friends and the hostess. I got her to apologize to the hostess.

4. And then I spent July 7 in a car riding back to my mom’s house with my stepdad.

At no point in this beach vacation did I set foot on the actual beach, though it was less than 2oo feet away from the house.

*A few months ago I instituted a policy: whenever my mom mentions that I don’t have a boyfriend, it’s a $5 charge, that I’m not married is a $10 charge and that I don’t have children is a $25 charge. She owes me about a million dollars. So far, that sum is not enough to actively dissuade her from making these comments. The fee schedule was set up after the past seven or so years of me trying to explain to her, as nicely as possible, that it hurt my feelings when she made comments like that, and it was highly frustrating for her to continue insisting I needed to do things that made me happy, but was constantly nagged about boyfriends/husbands/children, when I wasn’t really interested in any of the three. Since trying to explain she was making her daughter very upset didn’t work, I decided to put things in a concrete perspective she might understand, thus the fee schedule was born. However, like I said, it still isn’t working.