Searching For Stars

Everybody Wants Kung Fu Fighting: The Great White Ninja of Digital Marketing

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 21:40:13 GMT

Carl Douglas: Kung Fu Fighting

Film: Beverly Hills Ninja

Sometimes a movie scene follows you through life.

Or maybe it is not the scene at all… just the feeling of it, looping quietly somewhere in the background.

For me, one of my favorite echoes goes all the way back to a sleepover night with my brother Bobby and our friend Trey, watching the ridiculous, lovable chaos of Beverly Hills Ninja starring Chris Farley.

We laug hed the entire time.

Not at one specific line. Not even really at the plot.

What stuck with me was the body language.

Chris Farley rolling across the floor trying to move like a stealth ninja, completely committed and completely ridiculous at the same time. The kind of physical comedy that makes your stomach hurt from laughing.

Somewhere in the cultural background of that memory lives the song Kung Fu Fighting.

Maybe it was in the trailer. Maybe it was just the way martial arts comedy always seemed to carry that soundtrack energy with it. Either way, the feeling stuck. Ridiculous ninja energy, laughter bouncing around a room full of kids, the kind of moment that imprints itself without asking permission.

Sometimes laughter arrives exactly when you need it most. You barely even realize it at the time, but years later you recognize the moment as a kind of anchor.

Looking back now, that sleepover probably happened in the fall of 1997. A strange and heavy year in my life. My parents had divorced the year before. My grandmother had passed away that August after a sudden stroke and heart attack. I was ten and Bobby was fourteen. We were the ones who found her early that morning… and if I’m being completely honest I was still a very fragile and traumatized young child. Everything felt unstable in ways I could barely understand.

And then, all of a sudden, in the mess of life’s chaos… there was that night.

A movie.

A room full of laughter.

Chris Farley rolling across the floor pretending to be a ninja.

For a little while, everything felt safe again. Familiar.

Years later, I started noticing something interesting about the way memories echo through life.

Sometimes they come back as songs. Sometimes as movies. Sometimes as the strange recognition of a feeling you just know you have felt before.

Sometimes they come back as people.

And, in a beautiful and zany way… that was Jamie.

Not because he was pretending to be a ninja, obviously… but because he carried that same kind of energy.

Big hearted humor.

The kind that makes people laugh before they even realize why.

The kind that makes a room feel lighter.

It was that same disarming warmth I remembered from watching Beverly Hills Ninja and laughing until we could barely breathe.

That same feeling of safety tucked inside ridiculous comedy.

Years later I realized something about that kind of energy.

People who make the world feel lighter are often the ones quietly doing the hardest work behind the scenes.

The funny ones.

The kind ones.

The ones who would never call themselves heroes.

Real ninjas rarely announce themselves.

They just keep training.

For as long as I have known Jamie he has been a computer guy. Long before SEO and digital marketing became the world we live in now, he was fixing laptops, running small repair work through Craigslist, helping people figure out machines that refused to cooperate.

Later came the deeper dives.

Classes through Florida Tech. Google certifications. Keyword research rabbit holes that stretched late into the night. Whiteboards full of strategy diagrams. Long hours learning the strange and ever changing logic of search engines.

My role during those years was mostly simple.

Remind him to eat.

Occasionally remind him to blink.

Tight budgets happened. Long nights of research happened. Lots and lots of Taco Bell value menu dinner nights!

None of it felt like a mistake.

It felt like training.

Like a blessing in disguise.

In 2017 we were sitting at the dining table in our home in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Sliding glass doors opened to the forest behind the house. Deer moved quietly through the trees outside.

I was pregnant with our second child. It was a high risk pregnancy, the kind that fills your days with quiet worry, cautious hope and continuous prayer.

Jamie was talking about the marketing industry. About how much of it felt dishonest. Promises that could never be kept. Small businesses getting taken advantage of by people selling shortcuts that did not really exist.

He said he wanted to build something better.

Something honest.

I remember sitting there in my favorite blue chair that we still sit in today, looking out into the trees, telling him something very simple.

I believe in you.

Then we named the company. Together.

Maverick Digital Solutions.

Named after our son. Named after the most honorable thing we had built together.

And like most things that matter in life, the beginning looked small from the outside.

Late nights at the computer.

Research rabbit holes that stretched until sunrise.

Whiteboards full of strange diagrams and keyword maps that only Jamie could fully decode.

There were long stretches where progress looked invisible to everyone except the two of us sitting at that table.

But little by little, things started working.

Clients began to see results. Small businesses started calling back. Word spread quietly from one company to another. A website here. A ranking there. A strategy refined. Another lesson learned.

The training never really stopped.

Jamie kept studying. Kept testing. Kept refining the craft.

If something didn’t work, he figured out why.

If he made a mistake, he owned it.

If a client needed something fixed, he stayed until it was fixed.

No shortcuts. No gimmicks. Just the slow discipline of learning a skill and doing it the right way.

Years passed like that.

Which is when I started noticing something funny about the way the metaphor had been sitting there all along.

The world is full of people who call themselves marketing ninjas.

Some ninjas train their whole lives. They study the craft, practice the discipline, refine their code.

Some just buy the costume.

The difference becomes obvious if you watch long enough.

Real ninjas are not the loudest ones in the room.

They are the ones quietly practicing the same movements over and over until the work becomes second nature.

Over the years, I realized something funny about the way life echoes back on itself.

The Great White Ninja was never just a character from a comedy movie.

He was the Great White Ninja of digital marketing…

sitting across the table from me all along.

The wild thing about echoes is that they rarely start where you think they do.

The name Maverick had been living somewhere in my soul long before that night at the table.

When I was a little girl, my dad and I used to watch the old television series Maverick together. Black and white reruns, late evening television, me curled up next to him under his arm while James Garner outsmarted people with charm and humor instead of brute force.

It was another one of those quiet comfort memories.

Another little anchor.

Another echo.

Years later the name showed up again when our son was born.

Then again when we named the company.

Echoes have a funny way of doing that.

They travel.

They wait.

They resurface exactly where they are needed.

And the truth is, another story had been quietly growing alongside all of this.

A much older one.

Searching for Stars.

I had been writing pieces of that story since I was sixteen or seventeen, filling notebooks with memories, fragments, songs, moments that refused to leave my head. At the time it was just a strange collection of stories and ideas.

Something I loved.

Something I carried with me.

What I did not know yet was that the same company we were building from that little table in Hot Springs would eventually give those stories a place to live.

Without Maverick Digital Solutions, Searching for Stars probably would have stayed inside a stack of notebooks.

Instead it grew.

The business Jamie built created the time, the space, and the strange little corner of the internet where this project could finally breathe.

Which, when I think about it now, feels like another echo.

Another strange loop in the constellation.

Because somewhere along the way the story about music, memory, and echoes ended up being built on the same foundation as a digital marketing company run by a guy who still makes me laugh like a kid at a sleepover.

And somehow, every time I hear that song… or picture Chris Farley rolling across the floor like the world’s least stealthy ninja completely committed to the bit and making a room full of kids laugh until they could barely breathe, I end up right back there wrapped in the emotion of that sleepover memory.

Safe.

Laughing.

Exactly where the echo began.

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Sad Sad City: Greyhounds, Ghost Lands, and Gifts from the Radio

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 19:50:36 GMT

Ghostland Observatory: Sad Sad City

The air that night was heavy with spring, thick enough to taste, soft enough to breathe.

A Texas evening doing what Texas evenings do best: leaning back, letting the heat slip into something slower, sweeter, just shy of cool.

The kind of weather that makes you believe anything can happen.

We pulled into the greyhound track.

I had been here before, not like this, not with my hand tucked into Jamie’s.

Once, long ago, I was just a little girl chasing greyhounds with my brother, thanks to The Simpsons and Santa’s Little Helper.

A handful of dusty weekends made golden by nostalgia.

But tonight, the track wasn’t for racing.

We were newlyweds then not even a month in. Still riding the high of vows and vinyl records and slow dancing in kitchen light.

Jamie and my dad had just started building their own friendship, the kind rooted in laughter and honesty and late-night conversations about music and meaning.

Watching them connect, truly connect… was its own kind of miracle.

My dad’s roommate, Mike, had won the tickets off a radio call-in (a blessing disguised as a fluke) and we said yes without even asking who the band was.

Some nights don’t need explanations.

They just ask for your feet to show up.

By the time we found our place in the crowd, it was already starting to hum with its own low voltage girls spinning in feathered headdresses, strangers pressed shoulder to shoulder, the whole place stitched together by the kind of wild hope that only lives in the corners of broken-down places.

The stage glowed like a constellation.

Ghostland Observatory, a duo out of Austin, Texas, blended electric beats with rock-and-funk swagger, a sound both reckless and deliberate, sharp-edged but full of soul.

They didn’t just play their songs … they threw them like bolts of raw energy into the night.

Sad Sad City wasn’t just music; it was a heartbeat.

An anthem for anyone who’d ever felt lost inside their own life, who still believed deep down that maybe, just maybe, someone out there could still find them.

The song’s reach stretched further than just that night.

Chris Cornell once covered the track, folding its longing into his own ragged brilliance, and handing it to a new crowd of hearts that needed it.

Proof that real songs, the ones stitched out of brokenness and hope never stay in one city for long.

Ghostland Observatory walked out without warning, without ceremony… just presence.

And when they played Sad Sad City,

when that first strike of sound split the air like a lightning bolt straight to the ribs

everything in the atmosphere changed.

The bass dropped so hard it rattled the ground.

The lights went savage slicing the dark into colors we didn’t know names for.

I grabbed Jamie’s hand.

I felt my dad laugh beside me, that real kind of laugh, the one that says I made it, I made it, I made it without having to say anything at all.

And somewhere in front of us, the girls in the headdresses spun and stomped like their hearts were on fire.

We didn’t ask for this night.

We couldn’t have planned it if we tried.

But somehow

by grace, by luck, by the messy, musical mercy that threads broken people back into the world,

it found us anyway.

⸻

It hadn’t been that long ago )less than a year) that the idea of a night like this would have sounded impossible.

Laughing together.

Living together.

Loving each other without the old wreckage pulling at our ankles.

My dad wasn’t just clean he was alive in a way I hadn’t seen since I was a kid.

Not surviving… living.

He had clawed his way out of the darkness with nothing but grit, prayers, and the small, stubborn light he carried somewhere inside him.

E.A.I. gave him tools.

Mike gave him friendship.

But it was his own heart that did the work.

The Hobbit Hole, he called their little place —

small, safe, tucked away from the chaos of the world.

A place where second chances didn’t feel like fairy tales.

They felt like work boots and laughter and folding chairs and potluck dinners.

They felt real.

And somehow, against every odd stacked against him, he had done it.

He had become the best version of himself I had ever known.

Standing there at the edge of a ghostland from my past-turned-dancehall,

under the savage lights and the pounding sound of Sad Sad City,

I could feel it humming in the bones of the night:

Nothing is ever too broken to glow.

Not a man.

Not a track.

Not a city.

Not a song.

Not even me.

⸻

When the chorus hit, it tore through something soft and hidden in my chest

not to break it, but to set it free.

It wasn’t a sad song, not really.

It was a survival song.

A transmission from the wreckage.

A heartbeat that said: You’re here. You made it. Now move.

The crowd surged, one body, one breath.

Girls leapt like wild things under the lights.

Jamie spun me without warning, and I laughed real, loud, messy the way you laugh when nothing hurts for a second, not even the old scars.

“Well, roll the dice, pay the price

Dance with wolves in a pack of lies

The blood we crave shall drive us all insane.”

I didn’t think about who was watching.

I didn’t think about the past.

I didn’t think about anything but the way the ground shook with the beat, and the way the night stretched open above us, full of light meant for the lost.

We danced like forgiveness.

We danced like defiance.

We danced like gratitude so loud it didn’t need words.

And somewhere inside all of it

the basslines, the headdresses, the memories rising up like smoke…

I understood something I hadn’t known how to name before:

You don’t have to be whole to be holy.

You don’t have to be healed to be worthy of dancing.

You don’t have to be fearless to be free.

You just have to move anyway.

You just have to live anyway.

Even in your Sad Sad City.

Especially there.

⸻

I still hear it sometimes.

The throb of a bass.

Ghosts of lights carving open a night that almost forgot how to hope.

The wild spinning of a life that somehow, against the odds kept beating.

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Never Going Back Again and the Life That Found Me: Fleetwood Mac, California Light, and the Sound That Stayed

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 19:45:27 GMT

Fleetwood Mac: Never Going Back Again

I don’t really know what it is. The guitar, maybe. The hum. The softness in his voice. The way the rhythm rolls forward light and intricate, like a breeze through the soul. Every time I hear “Never Going Back Again,” something in me lifts. It’s like the song wraps around my spirit, takes it by the hand, and spins me gently through a feeling I can’t explain, but I know it by heart.

This song has always held a special place in my heart. Of all the music I love, this one rises to the top. It’s always meant something more. Some songs come and go, but this one? I always come back to it. I don’t even have to think about it. It’s one of my forever songs. Not just a favorite one I’ll never skip. One I’ll never forget.

Back when vinyl made its comeback (around 2009) Jamie and I bought one of those retro-inspired record players. The kind with built-in speakers and fake wood grain, part nostalgia, part novelty. We started collecting albums one by one, and Rumours was one of the very first. Of course it was. It had to be. There’s something about listening to it on vinyl that nothing else can touch, the warmth, the crackle, the weight of the sound. You don’t just hear “Never Going Back Again.” You feel it.

I remember dancing in the kitchen when we lived in California to this song… barefoot and smiling, Jamie’s hand in mine. Or sometimes just me, floating through the house to the music, the sound of the guitar filling up the space like sunlight on the floor.

I’ve danced with all three of our babies to this one, tucked against my chest in the carrier, their tiny heads resting near my heart. And every time that line comes “been down one time, been down two times, never going back again” I feel it differently than maybe Lindsey Buckingham meant it. For me, it’s not about walking away from someone. It’s about never wanting to return to the version of myself that came before this life. Before Jamie. Before our children. Before I knew this kind of light. Before the life that finally felt like mine.

This song holds a glow for me. The kind you can’t explain, only feel. Like sunlight through blinds on a slow morning. Like your favorite voice humming low in the next room. Like something quietly eternal.

I don’t know how something so short can hold so much, but it does.

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Bad Moon Rising: Dispatches from the Dark Side of a Small Texas Town

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 19:34:28 GMT

Creedence Clearwater Revival: Bad Moon Risin g

Bad Moon Rising: Dispatches from the Dark Side of a Small Texas Town

INTRO

You know that song Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival?

Yeah… that one.

It’s wild, how much it reminds me of my hometown.

Not just because it’s a classic (which it is), or because it still plays on every radio, gas station speaker, and dad-rock playlist in Texas, but because it somehow matches the mood.

It has this eerie, yet upbeat weird foresight or synchronicity to foreshadowing darkness, like a warning. Like a whisper that something’s about to break. That something might already be broken.

That jangly guitar. That warning of trouble. That upbeat rhythm carrying dark news underneath.

As a kid, I didn’t think about it too hard. CCR was just part of the air we breathed on road trips, in the garage, at fish fries and family reunions. My parents loved them. Everyone’s parents did.

But now, when I look back at where I’m from and all the strange, tragic, beautiful things that happened there, I hear that song differently.

It doesn’t just remind me of home.

It sounds like it.

I grew up in Normangee, Texas.

A small town with one school, a few churches, and a name most people mispronounced if they weren’t from there.

My roots are deep there. So are the stories.

Some of them sweet. Some of them strange.

Some of them I still don’t understand.

⸻

ACT I: Before the Moon Went Bad

Summers in Normangee moved slow.

We had vacation Bible school in the mornings, the Normangee Pool or Hilltop Lakes in the afternoons, and bikes in between. Someone’s mom would drive a bunch of us to the water; someone else’s would bring us back. It didn’t matter who. Everyone’s parents felt like a little bit yours.

Bob’s Corner Grocery sold Farm Girl sandwiches, a local favorite! The fountain machine had crushed ice, the good kind, and everything smelled like cigarettes and Bob’s brisket.

You didn’t really “hang out” in Normangee. You just existed near each other on porches and parking lots and ballfields. Baseball under the stars was more than a pastime. It was a language. A rhythm. A heartbeat.

Our town doctor was a Mason… one of the smartest, kindest men I ever met. He saw people from his own house. You’d show up, sit in a lawn chair out front, and wait your turn. No appointments. No paperwork. No shoes required. Just trust. And a little patience.

This was a town where people waved when they passed you on the road, even if they didn’t know your name. Where casseroles showed up before bad news even finished arriving.

Cake walks and bake sales were sacred.

Sunday meant church, and church meant more than just the sermon… it meant family.

Everything felt wide open. Slow. Safe.

The kind of place that looked like the lyrics to a country song, and sometimes felt like one too.

Maybe even the first verse of something bigger.

Everyone knew everyone, or they knew your people.

Teachers stayed for decades.

Preachers knew your grandparents.

If something happened, word spread fast, whether it was good, bad, or somewhere in between.

That’s just how it was.

And for a long time, nothing felt off.

Or if it did, I didn’t notice it yet.

We didn’t know what was coming.

Not yet.

ACT II: Looks Like We’re In for Nasty Weather

I was at school the day it happened.

Two men robbed the bank. They ran to the cemetery and killed an elderly woman out there.

I didn’t know anything at the time. I didn’t see sirens or hear announcements. I just went to class like it was a normal day.

It wasn’t until later after school, and more so the next day that I started to hear the story.

Everyone was talking, but no one knew how to talk about it.

It didn’t feel like something that could happen in our town.

But it had.

The woman who was killed wasn’t just a stranger to us.

She was someone’s grandmother. Someone’s neighbor.

Someone who showed up to church. Someone who bought gas at the same store we did.

But the part that’s always stayed with me… the part I still think about is this:

My mom had a doctor’s appointment in Houston that day. She needed someone to take her, and she asked a close friend to come with her. A woman she’d known her whole life. Someone I loved too. Her son was my friend. Her family was like extended family to us.

That woman had lost a child of her own, and she used to go to the cemetery nearly every day just to be near him. To sit. To think. To grieve in peace.

And on that particular day, if my mom hadn’t needed a ride to Houston… she probably would’ve been there.

At the cemetery.

Right around the time it happened.

But she wasn’t.

Because my mom asked her for help.

I think about that more than I can say.

It breaks my heart that someone was killed. I don’t take that lightly. But I’ve always wondered, if my mom hadn’t needed a ride that day, if she hadn’t made that call… would there have been two victims instead of one? I can’t shake the feeling that something shifted that day like God rerouted the map, just a little.

Some days, that’s what Normangee felt like.

Like a place where miracles and tragedies brushed shoulders.

And sometimes you didn’t even realize which one you were inside of.

I realized that even in a town like ours where the days felt simple and the rhythm felt known something could shift without warning.

And nothing would ever feel quite the same again.

ACT III: Under the Blade of the Bad Moon

There was a group of boys at our school who called themselves things like Rat Boy and Mouse Boy.

They were older. Troubled. Wild in a way that didn’t feel fun.

They used to steal from the local stores and vandalize houses and abandoned buildings.

They carried a kind of energy that made teachers tense up when they walked past.

And one day, Rat Boy held a knife to my brother’s throat.

We were outside at school on one of those wide concrete walkways that connected the buildings. Not a hallway. Not tucked away.

Out in the open.

While he kept the knife pointed at my brother, he threatened to hurt me next.

I froze. Terrified.

Not because I didn’t understand what was happening… because I did.

This wasn’t just some weird older kid acting tough.

This was real.

This was danger.

And it was standing in front of us with a blade.

He got spooked by a noise and ran off aggressive and fast.

We lived basically across the street from the school.

Just a few houses in between.

The kind of setup where sometimes our golden retriever Max would meet us at school in the afternoon and escort us home.

But that day, we didn’t wait.

We raced home as fast as our feet would carry us, burst through the door, and ran straight to our dad.

He picked up the phone and called the police himself.

What he said was simple. And terrifying in its own right:

“I’m leaving the house with my gun.

You’d better find that kid before I do.”

They found him.

Fast.

And after that, something changed in me.

In the way I looked at school.

In the way I understood safety.

In the way I started to recognize what fear actually felt like.

Up until then, the world had mostly been soft.

But that day?

That day was sharp.

ACT IV: Hope You’ve Got Your Things Together

It started with a hit-and-run.

Someone hit a woman with their car and left her for dead.

She survived and she remembered.

She gave a name. Gave a description.

And when the police showed up to question the guy involved, they didn’t just find him.

They found his wife and children in a wood chipper.

It’s the kind of sentence that doesn’t sound real when you say it out loud.

But it happened.

Right there.

Not far from where we had once lived.

And the man who had been with him, his friend… just disappeared.

Vanished.

No arrest. No trial.

Just gone.

What haunted me wasn’t just what they found.

It was how close it all was.

This didn’t happen in a movie or on the news—

it happened here.

In the same place we grew up, went to school, rode our bikes, and thought we were safe.

The wood chipper.

The drugs.

The murder.

The absolute chaos hiding just below the surface.

That would’ve been enough to carry.

But that wasn’t the end.

A while after I graduated, I got a call from the local lawyer’s office.

Apparently, the FBI had come in.

Turns out a guy who worked there had been embezzling money and funneling it into a Swiss account.

Some of the funds stolen had come from my account.

And they were being returned.

That’s how I found out about the audit.

The theft. The money. The investigation.

That’s how I learned the FBI had already been involved because of the hit-and-run and the wood chipper.

I didn’t know what to feel.

Shock didn’t really cover it.

It felt like the walls of the town were breaking apart,

and secrets were leaking out that had been buried for years.

The day I got the call, I remember thinking:

How deep does this go?

How many things had happened just beneath the surface,

while we were out riding bikes and playing baseball and thinking nothing could touch us?

Maybe the bad moon had been rising for a long time.

We just hadn’t looked up yet.

ACT V: There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise

You’d think it would’ve stopped by now.

That maybe all the chaos had already happened.

That the worst of it was behind us.

However, Normangee still makes the news occasionally.

Sometimes it’s for awesome stuff

like basketball state championships,

local sports legends,

or band teachers who go on late-night talk shows

and play the turkey baster.

But more recently…

it’s gotten a lot more dark and twisted.

A while back, a story broke about a youth pastor.

A predator.

Accused of abusing a young girl.

It spread fast, and my social media feed was flooded with the story.

It didn’t stay local.

It spread like wildfire.

Devon Sawa (yeah, Final Destination Devon Sawa)

even my favorite model, Katie Wilcox, shared the story.

And suddenly, Normangee wasn’t just a small town with buried secrets.

It was trending.

Another headline.

Another crack in the map.

⸻

And somewhere in the background of all this—

still playing in gas stations and waiting rooms and old trucks…

is that song.

“I hear hurricanes a-blowin’…”

When I was younger, it felt like nothing more than an old rock song.

Catchy. Familiar.

Something you danced to and sang along with without thinking.

A song featured in a favorite childhood film (My Girl).

But now?

I hear it differently.

“Don’t go ’round tonight, well it’s bound to take your life,

There’s a bad moon on the rise.”

It sounds different when you’ve lived in a place like that…

Where everything seems fine, until it’s not.

Where tragedy doesn’t knock first.

It just shows up,

sits at your kitchen table,

and dares you to act surprised.

ACT VI: Don’t Go Making Plans Tonight

I don’t live in Normangee anymore.

But I woke up to it again.

Scrolling through Facebook at 4 a.m. (the way you do when your brain won’t turn off) I saw the flood begin. Another headline. Another wave of people posting in disbelief. Another wave of people who weren’t all that surprised.

A man in Houston shot and killed his mother.

Then he drove to Normangee.

And there, just outside of town he shot and killed his father. He killed their dogs. He shot a deputy in the face and arm. Then, in the hours that followed, he took his own life.

There was a standoff. A shelter-in-place. A town on lockdown.

The deputy survived, thank God.

But not everyone did.

I wasn’t there.

I didn’t hear the sirens or feel the ground shake beneath it.

But I knew the rhythm of what was coming.

I’d seen it before. Too many times.

And still… it hit me like a gut punch.

Because Normangee was trending again.

Not for something sweet or strange or even small-town legendary.

But for another headline with a body count.

And I couldn’t stop thinking about how many times this has happened now.

How often it all feels like a pattern.

Another storm. Another name.

Another person who thought they had more time.

That’s what the song always said, didn’t it?

“Don’t go making plans tonight…”

Because in a place like this, tomorrow isn’t promised.

And the calm is never quite what it seems.

Every small town has its songs, its secrets, its shadows.

And some of them never make it past the county line.

But some, like this don’t stay quiet forever.

I carry all of it with me.

The light. The dark. The weird. The beautiful.

CCR always knew. Bad Moon Rising always knew.

Not just that storms were coming.

But that they were already here.

That even when the sky looks calm and the wind feels still,

something can be shifting just beneath your feet.

Even the darkest towns have stars above them.

Even the messiest maps hold moments of light.

Even under a bad moon.

Sometimes, good people live in dark places.

Sometimes, dark things happen in good places.

And despite the chaos and the noise, let’s try not to forget:

light almost always finds a way through the darkness.

I might’ve grown up in a town full of tragedy, with more headlines than we ever asked for.

But somehow between the storms and the stories I carried something else out with me.

The light. The grit. The good.

And even in the shadow of a bad moon, I learned how to walk toward the light.

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I Don’t Want To Wait: A letter of gratitude For Kimberly, and the beautiful family who carries James’s light forward

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 19:15:14 GMT

For Kimberly, and the beautiful family who carries James’s light forward,

There are moments in life when someone we have never met still manages to leave a quiet imprint on our story. A kindness, a presence, a way of loving the world that travels farther than we realize. Your husband was one of those rare people whose light reached beyond the boundaries of his own life and found its way into the hearts of strangers like me.

This letter comes from that place.

Years ago, in 2011, I went through an ectopic pregnancy that nearly took my life. I lost the baby and part of my fallopian tube, and the doctors warned me that I might never be able to have children. What followed was a long, strange, and disorienting season of healing. My body was recovering from surgery, and my heart was trying to make sense of a kind of grief that is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it.

The curtains stayed closed most days during that time.

Not always because it was night outside, but because it was a dark season inside. Sometimes grief has a way of dimming the world for a while.

Jamie and I spent those months mostly in bed, binge-watching TV while life slowly stitched itself back together around us.

During those months of bed rest, when the world felt very small and very quiet, I found myself returning to old reruns of Dawson’s Creek. It was something simple. Familiar. A small pocket of comfort on days when everything else felt uncertain.

Jamie sat beside me through every episode. We watched the entire series together during that season of healing, and without realizing it, the show became tied to that memory of love sitting quietly beside me in the dark.

Sometimes a television show becomes more than a television show.

Sometimes a song becomes tied to a season of life so deeply that years later it still echoes through memory like a quiet lighthouse.

The funny thing is that when we streamed it on Netflix, the original theme song wasn’t even there. Licensing had changed somewhere along the way, and a completely different intro played instead.

Jamie and I both looked at each other immediately.

“Wait… that’s not the song.”

Anyone who grew up with Dawson’s Creek knows the real one.

That opening melody is practically etched into memory.

And even though the version we watched that year was different, the echo of the original still lived somewhere in the background.

At the time it was just a television show.

Eventually, I would realize it had quietly become something else entirely.

Years passed.

Life moved forward the way it does, slowly and then all at once.

And somewhere along the way another small thread of inspiration appeared on a tiny pixelated app we like to call Instagram.

The path that led me there actually started with another artist whose work has inspired me for years.

Christina Sutra has this beautiful, earthy creative spirit that radiates kindness and imagination through everything she makes. One day she shared something with genuine excitement. Kimberly Vanderbeek had reposted one of her reels.

She shared a video afterward about what a cool world it is when creativity and kindness cross paths like that.

Curious, I clicked over to Kimberly’s page.

And almost immediately I understood the excitement.

Kimberly’s page carried a kind of calm that’s hard to describe unless you’ve felt it.

There was a groundedness there. A quiet sense of presence. Motherhood, nature, spirituality, family life all woven together in a way that felt sincere and unforced.

The kind of energy that makes you pause for a moment and breathe a little slower.

I followed her almost immediately.

For a long time, that’s all it was. A quiet corner of the internet where I occasionally stopped to absorb a little bit of peace.

Over time, through her posts, I began to see glimpses of her husband as well.

James.

At first it was just small moments. A reflection here, a story about fatherhood there, a glimpse of family life.

But the thing that kept standing out was the way he spoke about the people he loved.

There was a softness to it.

A sincerity.

The kind of presence that doesn’t try to perform goodness but simply lives it.

And the more I watched their world unfold through those little windows of social media, the more something about it felt familiar.

Not because I knew them.

I didn’t.

But because the love between them was visible in the quiet ways that real love tends to show itself.

In the way he looked at her.

In the way she spoke about their family.

In the way their children moved through the world. Curious, thoughtful, grounded.

You could feel that they were building something beautiful together.

A life full of intention.

A life full of light.

And sometimes when you witness that kind of love from the outside, it does something strange to the heart.

It reminds you of the places in your own life where love has quietly carried you through the hardest seasons.

For me, those memories went all the way back to that dark bedroom in 2011.

Back to Jamie sitting beside me while Dawson’s Creek played softly in the background and the world slowly started to come back into focus again.

Not long after I had been following their story for a while, something strange happened.

The kind of strange that you don’t quite know what to do with afterward.

A few years ago I had one of the most vivid dreams I can remember.

In the dream I was standing in a quiet room filled with warm light. Kimberly was there, in a bathtub, giving birth. The room felt calm and peaceful in a way that dreams rarely feel. Everything moved slowly, like time itself had softened.

James was beside her.

He was holding her shoulders, brushing her hair back, kissing the top of her head, and whispering encouragement while she breathed through the moment. There was nothing frantic or fearful in the scene. Only steadiness. Love. The kind of calm strength that makes the world feel safe.

From where I stood, I could see her shoulders above the water and his hands gently resting around her.

And behind them was this incredible light.

Not harsh.

Not blinding.

Just a radiant warmth pouring into the room like sunrise.

The dream felt less like watching something happen and more like witnessing something sacred. A moment where love was so present that it filled the entire space.

When I woke up, the dream stayed with me for days. It felt too vivid to ignore and too strange to fully explain.

About two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant with our daughter Gracie.

Maybe it was just the wild mystery of hormones.

Maybe it was my mind weaving together the quiet inspirations I had been absorbing for years.

Or maybe it was simply one of those strange moments where the human heart recognizes beauty so deeply that it echoes into places we don’t fully understand.

Either way, the image of that light never really left me.

And over time it became something I recognized again and again whenever I saw their family sharing pieces of their life with the world.

That same light.

When the news came that James was battling cancer, it felt like the kind of moment that makes the whole world pause for a second.

When he passed, the sadness rippled outward in ways that were hard to explain.

Not just because of the loss of a public figure.

But because it felt like the world had lost someone who genuinely believed in kindness, presence, and family.

Someone who believed that life was meant to be lived with intention.

In the days that followed, I saw a video one of their daughters shared.

It was one of those moments that stops you in your tracks.

She spoke calmly, thoughtfully, with a kind of wisdom that seemed far older than her years. At one point she said something that struck me deeply. She talked about how people often say, “I know what you’re going through,” when someone loses a parent.

And she gently explained that they don’t.

Because every grief is different.

Every loss is its own story.

She was right.

I lost my own father years ago, and even now I would never presume to understand the exact shape of the grief she carries.

Grief has a strange way of revealing both the best and the hardest parts of the human heart.

I know that from experience. When I lost my own dad, it broke me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.

Loss invites many voices into the room. Comfort, questions, memories, and sometimes opinions that were never really needed in the first place.

But grief doesn’t need commentary. It needs kindness and light.

There was another profound moment in her message that stayed with me even more.

She spoke about something her dad had told her.

He told her to keep believing in miracles.

Even when things didn’t turn out the way everyone had hoped.

And when she said those words, something inside me shifted.

Because suddenly it felt so obvious.

The miracle he believed in was sitting right there in front of the camera.

In her courage.

In her calm.

In the wisdom she was sharing with the world.

She is the miracle.

All of them are.

The love he poured into the world didn’t disappear when he left it.

It lives on in the family he helped raise.

In the light that still shines through his children.

And in the quiet strength that continues to ripple outward through the lives he touched.

It’s strange how words and songs follow us through life.

Sometimes they arrive during ordinary moments and attach themselves to memories so quietly that we don’t even notice at the time.

And suddenly an entire season of life unfolds again in the space of a few notes.

Now that silly TV show intro carries something else.

A reminder.

A reminder that life moves quickly, that love matters deeply, and that the moments we share with the people we care about are never as small as they seem at the time.

That familiar line still drifts through my mind sometimes.

A reminder that if you look hard enough you really can find beauty and light in the dark.

I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over.

Maybe that’s the quiet lesson hidden inside all of this.

Not to wait.

Not to wait to tell people they matter.

Not to wait to recognize the light in the lives around us.

James seemed to understand that instinctively.

Through the way he loved his family.

Through the way he showed up as a husband and a father.

Through the kindness and presence people continue to describe whenever they speak about him.

Even someone who never had the chance to meet him can see the constellation he left behind.

A constellation made of love, courage, and the beautiful family who carries that light forward.

And sometimes, when the world feels heavy, it’s comforting to remember that light has a way of traveling farther than we ever realize.

I Don’t Want To Wait:

A letter of gratitude

For Kimberly, and the beautiful family who carries James’s light forward,

The Right Stuff: Power-ups, Pixels, and a Family’s Cross-Country Quest

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 18:56:30 GMT

New Kids on The Block : You Got It ( The Right Stuff)

Film: The Wizard

The Right Stuff: Power-ups, Pixels, and a Family’s Cross-Country Quest

Level 1: Press Start

⸻

Wide shot. Living room, Texas. 1990 something.

Sunlight spills through the window, hitting the tan pleather beanbag like a spotlight. I’m cross-legged on the floor, Nintendo humming low in the background. My brother Bobby’s next to me, controller in hand. On screen, pixelated magic: a raccoon tail, a tanooki suit, a sky full of coins. Super Mario Bros. 3. Our favorite.

The movie that plays after….The Wizard doesn’t need to introduce itself. A quiet boy on a quest. A sibling on his heels. California in the distance like a dream you can almost touch. We didn’t call it trauma back then. We just knew it was powerful. We just knew it was us.

I watched it sitting next to my brother, and it’s like something got stored in the cartridge of my memory. The glow of that screen. The weight of that story. The idea that a kid could carry grief, love, and genius in one small frame.

⸻

Smash cut. Present day. Southern California. Jaxon, red Mario shirt, arms raised.

“The escalators and the view alone, this is the best day of my life.”

We’re at Super Nintendo World, finally. Years of dreaming. Matching shirts, wide eyes, hearts thumping like a coin block. Maggie’s in purple, Gracie in baby blue, Jamie in dark gray, myself in royal blue. Each of us coded into this moment, our own characters on a family map.

Jaxon’s the real star of this level, though.

My whiz kid.

He’s got the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia: The First 30 Years memorized. No exaggeration. You can quiz him on any character, game, release year he’s got it. It’s not even about reading anymore. It’s about absorption. Like Mario lore runs through his blood. Like he’s been preparing for this adventure since before he could talk.

⸻

It wasn’t planned, but a couple Valentine’s Days ago, I found myself thinking about The Wizard. I’d been getting gifts for the kids, and the movie just… came to me. A quiet boy. A quest. Video games and grief and love and California. It felt familiar. It felt like Jaxon.

So I gave him the DVD. And just like that, the story began again.

⸻

But really, I think my story started back at a Toys “R” Us in Bryan, Texas.

It was my eighth birthday. It was late, almost closing time. We thought they were sold out, but they’d just gotten a new shipment in the back. I remember the waiting. That high-voltage anticipation. And then… the walk. The clerk bringing it from the back. The checkout. The box in my hands.

My first Super Nintendo.

It came with Super Mario All-Stars.

I stayed up late with my brother, plugging it in, flipping the power switch, watching that red light glow like a sunrise.

I’d been Player Two my whole life.

But that night, I got to Press Start.

⸻

[End of Level 1]

⸻

Cue synth. Cue flash of VHS static. Cue Jordan Knight’s falsetto sliding through the speakers like a sugar rush.

“You got the right stuff… baby…”

When I think of The Wizard, I don’t just think of video games.

I think of sleepovers. Beanbags. Cousins dancing in the living room, twirling to New Kids on the Block with plastic microphones and sticker-covered notebooks. Their music was everywhere. You couldn’t escape it. You didn’t really want to.

That sound?

It was part of the background radiation of growing up in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

It didn’t define me, but it found me—bleeding in through boom boxes, commercials, cousins, and car rides. It was the sound of girlhood fizz, of that funny little edge between innocence and full-blown obsession. That era had a soundtrack, and NKOTB was one of its loudest tracks.

⸻

So when I hear it now, it doesn’t just make me nostalgic.

It places me.

Back in the world where blowing on a Nintendo cartridge felt like a sacred ritual.

Where The Wizard wasn’t just a movie it was a myth.

A strange, quiet, powerful little film that told kids like me that love and loss and video games might all belong in the same story.

That’s the world I came from.

And now? I’m watching my son grow into his own version of it joy-first, big-hearted, pixel-powered.

⸻

Cut to: the car, mid-road trip.

Jaxon opens his Super Mario Encyclopedia like it’s a prophecy, flipping through pages he doesn’t even need to see. He’s got thirty years of Mushroom Kingdom history locked in his brain like a secret level he can enter anytime.

There’s a light in his eyes when he talks about it.

The same kind Bobby had when he got his first Sega Genesis.

The same kind I felt glowing in my chest the night we brought home my Super Nintendo.

It’s in him.

The joy. The reverence.

The complete and total belief that this world is worth memorizing.

⸻

The road trip itself; Texas to California, over 100 hours in the car felt like a real-life warp zone.

We hit every terrain: the deserts of New Mexico, the rocky wonders of Arizona, the neon swirl of Vegas, and the coastal dream of California. It was part Mario Kart, part The Wizard, part old-school family vacation playlist with a twist.

And while we weren’t chasing prize money or arcade glory, we were on a mission.

Jaxon was our Jimmy Woods, silent sometimes, soulful always, driven by something deep and joyful.

Gracie, the smallest, was our secret power-up throwing her arm in the air to Disney’s Zombies soundtracks like a tiny pop star every time the beat dropped.

Maggie Jo brought the strategy, the sass, the fireball energy of a sidekick that might actually be the main character.

Jamie drove with this kind of quiet reverence like he knew we were inside something holy.

And me? I was just trying to soak it all in without blinking too fast and missing it.

⸻

Our shirts said it all.

All retro, all Mario, all 8-bit.

We were the Mario Bros. party no one knew they needed coded by color, bonded by joy, wandering across state lines like characters between levels.

⸻

That’s something The Wizard got absolutely right. It wasn’t just about video games. It was about what we carry with us.

The weight of love.

The echo of loss.

The magic of knowing someone well enough to want to walk beside them, no matter how strange the map looks.

That’s what it feels like to be a parent on a mission.

To watch your child light up in a world you once dreamed of.

To realize the music of your childhood is now the rhythm of your legacy.

⸻

Cue the beat.

“You got the right stuff…”

I didn’t know it back then. But I was getting ready.

For the road.

For the red-shirted whiz kid.

For the level I’m living now.

⸻

[End of Level 2]

⸻

Level 3: Mushroom Kingdom Hearts

⸻

You can plan a trip for months. Pack the bags, count the days, picture the place in your mind a thousand times. But nothing prepares you for the moment your child looks around and breathes in a dream that used to live only on a screen.

That moment happened just after we stepped off the escalator into Super Nintendo World.

Music floated through the air like it had always belonged there those familiar coin sounds and bright, bouncing notes we all knew by heart. We turned a corner, and there it was: a living, breathing version of the game that raised us. Question blocks, warp pipes, moving platforms. It was surreal… but not in the disconnected way. It felt earned. Like we’d stepped into the center of something we’d always believed in.

We were five deep and fully color-coded.

We didn’t look like tourists.

We looked like a team… like we were meant to be there!

Jaxon walked ahead, quiet, focused. He wasn’t giddy. He was locked in. Like something he’d dreamed about for years had finally taken shape around him, and now he was just taking it all in, one pixel at a time.

⸻

We wandered. We played.

We followed the map like it mattered.

Jamie took the older kids on the Mario Kart ride, and I waited at the end with Gracie just standing there, watching for them to come back through the doors. People buzzed past us, ride sounds echoed overhead, and I kept thinking:

This is what it means to live inside a game you used to play.

Not in some fake, overproduced way but in the kind of way that reaches back through your memory and wraps around the people you love now. Like time folded in on itself. Like joy had a version update.

The kids talked about power-ups and coins and rides for the rest of the day. But I kept thinking about how strange and sacred it all was that a video game from my childhood, a movie I watched on a pleather beanbag beside my brother, could echo forward like this… and meet me here, in real life, as a mom, holding my daughter, waiting for the rest of our party to reappear.

It wasn’t nostalgia.

It was something better.

It was connection.

⸻

[End of Level 3]

⸻

Level 4: Desert Hill / Bedrock Slide

⸻

Somewhere between the dusty quiet of New Mexico and the bright pull of California, we made an unplanned stop.

Bedrock City.

Right there off the highway like some prehistoric fever dream. You don’t expect to see Flintstones architecture rising out of the desert, tiny stone houses, cartoon-colored signage, and a gravel road leading you straight into the set of a Saturday morning memory. But there it was. And we couldn’t not stop.

⸻

It wasn’t just a roadside blip it was this incredible village.

Fred’s house. Barney’s place. A little post office.

Concrete structures painted to look like the cartoon, like the animators themselves had stepped out for lunch and left it all behind.

The kids ran wild through it, disappearing into each doorway like they’d time-traveled into a rerun. There were no crowds, no waiting lines… just echoes and sunlight and this strange sense that we’d stepped inside something both forgotten and fully alive.

Gracie stayed in the carrier, tucked close against me, her little head swiveling as Maggie and Jaxon darted from house to house. She didn’t need to run. She was there. She was part of it. Wide-eyed and watching, taking in this oversized storybook we hadn’t meant to stumble into.

⸻

At the middle of the park stood the Dinosaur Slide, a towering metal frame shaped like a long necked dino, with a climbable ladder and a steep, sun-warmed slide wrapped inside its body.

Jaxon went first.

Maggie followed.

They both climbed to the top and flew down like it was nothing.

And in that moment, it didn’t feel like a playground. It felt like a magical world that often only exists in daydreams.

In The Wizard, Jimmy finds peace in the shadow of the Cabazon dinosaurs those looming symbols of grief and memory. And here were ours: a cartoon version, maybe, but still huge, still symbolic.

⸻

It reminded me of The Wizard, in that sideways, soul-humming kind of way.

Not because it matched the plot, but because it rhymed with it.

We even passed Pyramid Lake, same as in the movie. We didn’t plan it that way, but the second I saw the sign, it started to feel kind of like we were really retracing the steps of a legend.

⸻

We didn’t stay long.

There was still road ahead. Still a finish line calling from California.

The strange kind of joy that rises up when you step out of your plans and into the absurd and find magic waiting there in the dust.

⸻

[End of Level 4]

⸻

Level 5: Final Boss / Flagpole Moment

⸻

You always think the big moments will announce themselves.

That the music will swell, the lighting will shift, the sky will crack open and tell you: this is it this is the part that matters. But the truth is, most of the time, it just feels like a Tuesday.

And then suddenly you’re driving west with the people you love most.

You’re crossing state lines.

You’re talking about old video games and listening to Zombies music on repeat and chasing sunlight between mountains and memories.

And somewhere along the way, without ever meaning to, you realize:

You’re not just retracing steps.

You’re finishing something.

⸻

When we finally reached California, it didn’t feel like the end of a quest.

It felt like something deeper.

A full-circle quiet.

A landing.

Jamie showed us places from his childhood, schools, streets, pieces of his past stitched into the map like secret warp zones only he could unlock. And somewhere in the middle of that, we found the ocean.

⸻

I won’t go deep into the ashes here.

That part has its own space, its own gravity.

But I’ll say this: when someone you love is released into the waves, it changes parts of you.

Not in a cinematic, instantly-transformative way.

In a slow, cellular one.

And maybe that’s part of what The Wizard was always trying to say.

That grief doesn’t have to look loud.

That healing can come through joy, through pixels, through presence.

That some quests aren’t about winning.

They’re about carrying a memory, a parent, a sibling, a love.

Long enough to set it down in the right place.

⸻

Jaxon didn’t know all of this, of course.

He just knew we’d crossed the final finish line.

He just knew that California felt good. That the sky was wide and the air was soft and the beach felt like something he’d seen in a game and dreamed in a book and now, finally, stood inside.

He didn’t need an explanation.

He had a controller in one hand and stardust in his veins.

⸻

There’s no power-up for parenting.

No clear boss battle to tell you when you’ve leveled up.

But sometimes, in the rearview mirror, you can see it:

That a movie you watched on a beanbag beside your brother when you were eight can shape a moment twenty-five years later.

That a red-shirted whiz kid with a Mario book memorized can lead you toward the kind of magic you didn’t know you still believed in.

That the final level isn’t always loud.

Sometimes it’s just love.

Passing from one player to the next.

You don’t always know you’re inside a legacy when it’s happening.

But sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get to play both parts:

The kid with the dream.

And the grown-up who makes it real.

⸻

[End of Level 5 / Game Clear]

⸻

TITLE

Dealing With: The Weight My Dad Carried and the Lens We Grow Into

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 17:31:08 GMT

Brandon Hart : Dealing With

This morning felt heavier than it needed to.

Nothing was technically wrong. Life was moving. Kids were loud. The day was already asking things of me before I felt ready to give them. That familiar pressure started building. The kind that stacks quietly. The kind that makes your thoughts pound a little harder than your surroundings.

A song came on.

It wasn’t dramatic. It didn’t demand attention. It just sat there with me, steady and honest, like it knew something I hadn’t said out loud yet. The words circled the same ideas again and again. Coping. Enduring. Carrying things that feel heavier than they look.

And then, without warning, a name surfaced.

I hadn’t been thinking about the past. I wasn’t searching for meaning. The memory arrived fully formed, sudden and intrusive, like a shock to the system.

Fred.

And suddenly, I was thinking about my dad.

When I was a little girl, I watched him carry a lot without saying much about it.

He lost his father as a young adult. His dad struggled with alcoholism and died after a house fire that began the way too many stories do. Cigarettes. Drinking. A body already worn down. My dad survived that loss and kept going.

Later, he struggled with alcohol himself.

He also lost a close friend.

Fred.

When I picture him, I don’t see a clear face. It’s more like a blur. A kind presence. A smile. A baseball cap maybe. He was a friend of my dad’s. Someone who existed safely in the background of childhood. Friendly. Familiar. Good.

What I remember most is the day we found out he was gone.

I don’t remember the date. I don’t remember the season. I remember the feeling in the house. I remember the phone call. I remember the weight that settled into the rooms after.

He had been very sick. Cancer. Pain that wouldn’t ease. Appointments that didn’t bring relief. He kept asking for help. Kept saying he couldn’t live like that anymore.

That morning, he went to the hospital with his wife. He made sure she was settled in the car. Then he walked behind it and ended his life in the parking lot.

As a kid, I didn’t truly understand any of that. I just knew something irreversible had happened.

My mom was devastated. Overwhelmed by grief and fear and the beliefs she had grown up with. I remember her crying, saying over and over that he was going to hell, that this was wrong, that it was unbearable to think about.

My dad went quiet.

It was the first time I remember seeing him do that. Not angry. Not loud. Just heavy. He walked away carrying something I didn’t yet understand. After that, Fred’s name rarely came up. Sometimes a memory would slip out, but mostly he stayed unspoken.

Years later, when my dad was sick himself, worn down by pain and frustration and systems that were not helping him, he said something that scared me more than I expected.

He said he finally understood Fred.

Not that he wanted to die. Not that he would ever do that. But that he understood the weight. The exhaustion. The feeling of being trapped inside pain that didn’t let up.

I panicked. I called Jamie... I made them go to the hospital. I sat with that fear until I knew my dad was safe.

This morning, listening to that song, all of it connected.

The lyrics talk about coping. About losing control. About standing in cold water and finding a way to stay warm. Not drowning. Just enduring.

That’s what hit me so damn hard.

I heard my dad in it.

I heard a man who lost his father. A man who fought addiction. A man who carried the loss of a friend. A man who kept going anyway. I heard the kind of weight that does not announce itself but stacks quietly over a lifetime.

And for the first time, I felt that recognition land in my own body.

I’m not standing on the edge. But I understand the pressure now. The way life piles up. The way stress, grief, responsibility, and love can all exist at once and feel overwhelming. The water is cold. It shocks your system. But you keep swimming.

Brandon Hart’s Dealing With feels like it embodies something important. It doesn’t glorify the storm. It doesn’t pretend the water is warm. It simply acknowledges that sometimes surviving means weathering it quietly.

This morning as the song kept playing and the kids kept moving… the day went on.

But it seemed as though I carried a deeper understanding with me.

Some people carry more weight than we ever see. Some silence is heavier than words. Sometimes recognizing the darkness doesn’t mean you’re lost in it.

It just means you see it.

And maybe… just maybe you start looking for the light a little more on purpose.

The song fades out.

But I’m still here.

Still moving.

Still dancing.

Still searching for light.

TITLE

Signal from the Past, Light for the Future:

I came across this in my dad’s briefcase recently.

He wrote it sometime in the 90s, during a season I now know was heavier than I understood as a kid.

I’ve been told he used to write a lot. He always spoke like a poet, sometimes in riddles, often mysterious and wise beyond his years.

Reading it now feels like getting a glimpse into a version of him I didn’t fully know back then. A window into the past.

And while the words are heavy, maybe even a little haunting, there’s a kind of beauty in them that still resonates.

Because I’ve had the perspective of seeing how the story evolved.

I’m about the same age now as he was when he wrote this… and when I read it, I don’t see someone who was the darkness.

I see someone who was in a dark season.

And there’s a difference.

Because even in that season, things were still growing.

Not perfectly. Not easily. But they were growing.

There was still love. Still life. Still moments of light that made their way through.

I think sometimes we mistake the weight we’re carrying for something we are.

But it’s not the same thing.

The soil was never poisoned.

It was always growing wildflowers, even when it didn’t know it.

And maybe one day,

years from now,

when my son is grown…

when life has had time to press its weight into him the way it does to all of us…

when he’s standing in his own version of cold water,

trying to understand why it feels heavier than it should…

maybe he’ll find this.

Maybe he’ll read his grandfather’s words.

Maybe he’ll hear mine layered beside them.

And I hope he knows this:

You are not the darkness you walk through.

You are not the weight you carry.

You are the one who keeps going anyway.

There will be seasons that feel endless.

Moments where your thoughts turn louder than the world around you.

Times where the pressure builds so quietly you don’t even notice it until it’s already there.

But that doesn’t mean you’re lost.

It means you’re human.

It means you’re feeling.

It means you’re still here.

And if you ever find yourself wondering…

if you ever start to believe the lie that you are the poison, the problem, the thing that’s breaking everything around you,

Jaxon my darling

I need you to hear this, even if I’m not there to say it out loud:

You are not the cursed soil.

You are the garden.

And even in your heaviest seasons…

even in the ones that feel dark and overgrown and impossible to sort through…

there is still something growing inside you.

There always has been.

There always will be.

Electric Ghosts and Karaoke Light: Tesla, Time Travel, and the Strange Power of Song

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 08:32:33 GMT

Tears for Fears : Everybody Wants To Rule The World

Film: Tesla

I don’t remember the first time I heard the name Tesla.

Not in school, not in science class, not from any textbook or documentary.

I remember it through my dad.

I was a kid, sitting cross-legged somewhere in the background while he and his friend Jimmy talked for hours about everything: conspiracies, inventions, God, psychology, space, energy, ancient symbols, the Book of Enoch. Big ideas. Flashlight-in-the-dark kind of conversations. And somewhere in that galaxy of words, Tesla was there.

I didn’t know who he was, but I knew he mattered.

You could hear it in my dad’s voice how he said his name like it was secret knowledge, like he was passing something sacred down just by mentioning him.

That’s the kind of man my dad was.

He didn’t hand you answers he dropped you breadcrumbs.

Let the spark catch on its own.

And I remember one night, sitting around that table, him saying:

“Money’s a necessary evil. It rules the world.

And if you want to understand why things break why good people get crushed

start there.”

I didn’t know it then, but he was talking about Tesla.

About the way the world chews up the ones who just want to help.

I don’t think we ever really learned about Tesla in school.

Perhaps a bit in Mrs. Turner’s class one of the few teachers who truly understood both science and art. The kind of woman who slipped in names that might’ve otherwise been erased. Maybe that was part of her light: making sure the right people weren’t forgotten.

But the real lessons didn’t come in a classroom.

They came in fragments.

In memories. In wonder. In sparks.

In 2010, Jamie and I moved to Hot Springs Arkansas… freshly married, full of hope, chasing beauty in the trees. Around the corner from our house was Mid-America Science Center . That became our sanctuary. One of the first places we visited.

And there it was.

The Tesla theater.

I stood there, staring up at it, and it was like something rewired in me.

A name from childhood. A thread that lit back up.

I didn’t know everything about him yet… not even close.

But I remembered the weight in my dad’s voice.

And I remembered the feeling: This man mattered.

Later, when our son Jaxon was born, we bought a membership and went all the time. He loved it as much as I did. We watched the center grow with us adding skywalks, dinosaur trails, new exhibits. It was like the building was evolving as we were. And every time we passed the Tesla theater, I’d feel that hum again. That pull.

By the time 2021 rolled around, the world had broken wide open… raw and oozing at the seams.

We were still deep in the weirdness of COVID. Still searching for light through the fog.

And then my dad died in October.

I don’t know how else to say it, losing him fucking broke me.

The first year was the hardest. I cried every single day.

And I remember asking myself: Am I going to cry every day for the rest of my life?

I didn’t know grief would feel like this. Like breathing through static. Like never quite plugging back in.

A few months later, Jamie and I watched Tesla.

It was one of those nights where the kids were asleep and we were just scrolling, letting the algorithm guide us. Ethan Hawke. Tesla. I clicked without thinking. I figured it might be interesting. I wasn’t prepared for what it would feel like.

The movie wasn’t like any other biopic I’d ever seen.

It wasn’t a timeline it was a dream.

Half history, half hallucination. Soft edges. Unfinished truths.

And in the middle of all of it, there was this scene.

Tesla, played so delicately, so quietly by Ethan Hawke

walks up to a microphone.

And starts singing.

“Acting on your best behavior…

Turn your back on Mother Nature…

Everybody wants to rule the world…”

And something in me shattered and orbited around my body.

He didn’t belt it. He didn’t perform. He just… sang.

Like a man from another world trying to make sense of this one.

That scene wrecked me in a way I didn’t expect… in the most beautiful way!

Not because of the novelty or strangeness of it,

but because I felt like I was watching a ghost sing the song we never let him finish.

He didn’t want to rule the world.

He wanted to light it.

He wanted to give power away, not hoard it.

To build something that freed people, not bound them.

He was laughed at, stolen from, crushed under the weight of greed.

A man born to bring light buried by men who only wanted to own it.

He will be a child of light.

That’s what they say Tesla’s mother said the night he was born.

Story I heard was there was a storm raging, lightning crashing, they said it was a bad omen. But she looked down at her newborn son, full of faith, full of hope, full of love and said, “He will be a child of light.”

I didn’t just think of Tesla in that moment.

I thought of my dad.

I thought of my son.

My little math genius.

He’s been multiplying since he was two. Talks about time travel like it’s a thing we might actually relatively explore someday!

He’s learned about Tesla mostly through bedtime talks and little homeschool moments.

One of his favorites was an episode of Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum ,

a super adorable PBS Kids show we’ve watched oh so many times, where time-traveling kids meet real heroes from the past. In one, they meet Tesla.

It’s cartoonish and fun, but something seemed to shift in him after it. His eyes lit up like a switch had flipped… like the light recognized itself.

He asks big questions. Wants to invent things. Wants to travel through time. Wants to help people. Wants to understand everything. Wants to shine.

And I look at him and think to myself I know what she meant.

Because I know what it’s like to raise voltage.

To witness it.

To protect it.

To pray the world doesn’t short-circuit it.

Tesla wasn’t asking to be seen.

He wasn’t shouting look at me.

He was whispering look what’s possible.

And maybe that’s why it hurts so much.

Because we didn’t just forget him.

We failed him.

But I believe this:

Light always finds its way.

Even when it’s buried. Even when it’s stolen. Even when it’s mocked.

It finds a way back in.

That zany beautiful karaoke scene hasn’t left me.

It hums in my mind sometimes when I’m watching my son solve a problem.

When I’m looking at the stars.

When I’m wondering what else we’ve lost to time, to greed.

And maybe it haunts me the way it does because of the song itself.

“Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears

a song that’s floated through so many eras, so many minds,

always asking the same quiet question about power and consequence.

It’s dreamy and sharp, soft-edged but warning.

It feels like prophecy sung through synth and sorrow.

And in Tesla, it becomes something else entirely.

Not just a soundtrack, but a spell.

A lament. A final, flickering broadcast from a man the world couldn’t hold.

It wasn’t just a movie scene.

It was a message.

A flicker.

A reminder.

And maybe this isn’t a story.

Maybe it’s a thank-you.

A reckoning.

A promise to remember.

To light the dark.

To keep singing.

Even when the world forgets the words.

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Sittin’ Up in My Room: Where Classic Cool Meets New Joy!

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 08:00:10 GMT

Brandy: Sittin' Up In My Room

I was nine or ten when I first fell head over heels in love with this song.

I had my own TV by then. Not a fancy one. Just mine. It sat in my room and felt like a small miracle. I could close the door, sit on my bed, and watch music videos like they were meant just for me.

I remember watching Brandy and thinking she was the coolest person I had ever seen.

She was calm. Confident. Soft without being quiet. Stylish in a way that didn’t feel loud or forced. Her voice felt smooth and steady, like it knew where it was going.

At that age I pretty much thought she was the definition of cool.

Sittin’ up in my room has lived somewhere in the corner of my mind ever since. Possibly my first intentional cassette purchase. A single. I can still remember how it felt in my hand. Light. Plastic. Something small that felt important.

I would sit on my bed and let it play. Not doing anything special. Just being there. Dancing a little. Listening. Feeling like the room itself understood me.

It was a song about being alone in the best way and it felt so monumental and to me at the time.

I heard it again recently for the first time in what felt like forever (too long clearly) in the most unexpected place. A breakfast spot. Sticky tables. Kids talking over each other. Plates clinking. And suddenly, there it was.

That same song.

That same feeling.

A center point for joy.

For a second, I was back in my room. Door closed. TV on. Cassette ready. A girl sitting on her bed, feeling perfectly content in her own little world.

There’s something comforting about realizing that a version of you still exists exactly where you left her. Sitting on the bed. Door closed. Music on. Safe inside her own rhythm. Not asking for anything. Not trying to be anything more than she already was.

That girl didn’t disappear. She just grew up and learned how to carry more.

And every once in a while, when a song like this finds its way back to me, I remember how good it felt to simply sit up in my room and let joy be simple.

That’s one of the things I love so much about music. It can sneak into the most ordinary morning and suddenly everything lines up. A booth at IHOP . Kids across the table. A song I hadn’t heard in years playing overhead. And just like that, I’m singing it out loud, laughing, moving a little in my seat, letting my kids see me love something. That nine-year-old girl in her bedroom meets the woman I am now, and instead of feeling far away, it feels layered. Old joy, new joy, stacked right on top of each other. A brand new memory built on an old one. Proof that the good stuff doesn’t disappear,it just keeps finding new ways to show up.

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You Get What You Give: Big Daddy Energy

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 07:48:54 GMT

New Radicals: You Get What You Give

Film: Big Daddy

The first time I saw Big Daddy, I was sprawled out on the carpet at Carl’s house, watching a rented Blockbuster VHS spin its magic on the screen. I was a kid. The world was still big and weird and confusing but that movie? That movie made it all feel a little warmer, a little funnier, and a lot more human.

I laughed through most of it. Cried at the end. Fell in love with Adam Sandler a little more than I already was. And honestly? I never looked back.

To this day, Big Daddy is one of my all time favorite films. It’s one of Jamie’s, too. We still quote it, still love it, still share it. We even had a dog (Frankenstein Julian) named after the kid in the movie. Because of course we did. You don’t watch a scene like that and not want to name something Frankenstein.

Adam Sandler is probably my favorite actor… and full disclosure if I’m being honest quite likely my top former celebrity crush. I love his whole essence—the basketball shorts, the absurd fashion, the way he can carry a jar of pickles with heart. He’s the guy who makes being silly look soulful. The guy who makes loving people look easy. He’s got this weird magic where one minute he’s throwing sticks in the park, and the next, he’s raising someone else’s kid with more heart than half the dads in the PTA.

And the ending, I mean come on seriously. That final scene. Julian’s birthday, Hooters, heartstrings tugged just enough and boom... you’re sitting there with a smile on your face, maybe tears in your eyes, and the music just lifts you. It was already a great track. But paired with that moment? so good! The film knows how to handle a soundtrack, plus the trailer is so fantastic. In comes New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give.” The perfect bridge track. Bright, bittersweet, bigger than life. The songs message really seems to meet the energy of the film.

Oh and let us not forget Styx!

“And he taught me that Styx was one of the greatest American rock bands, and they only caught a bad rap because most critics are cynical assholes.”

Honestly? Can’t argue with that logic. Styx is amazing.

And here’s the thing: I used to laugh at that Styx line in Big Daddy. It was funny, sure. But then I saw them live, at The Woodlands, with my dad and Jamie. It was, hands down, the best live performance I’ve ever seen. They covered I Am the Walrus and it blew my entire brain out of my body. The lights, the sound, the joy it was next seriously level. And standing there in that moment, with two people I love, it didn’t feel like a joke anymore. It felt true. Styx really was one of the greatest American rock bands. End of story.

Of course there are also some other great jams sprinkled throughout the film… tracks by Guns N’ Roses, Garbage, and more.

“When I Grow Up” by Garbage blasts through the opening credits as Sonny sleepwalks through adulthood, dropping cereal, dodging phone calls, and pretending his law degree isn’t collecting dust somewhere in the apartment. It’s gritty and ridiculous and kinda sad. But that’s what makes it honest.

The song doesn’t say, “When I grow up I’ll be perfect.” It says, “When I grow up, I’ll be stable. When I grow up, I’ll turn the tables.”

It’s sarcastic, sure. But it’s also low-key hopeful. An anthem for anyone who’s ever felt like a late bloomer or a beautiful disaster in progress.

There’s this feeling that runs through the whole movie, under all the jokes and chaos… a heartbeat that says: you’ve got the music in you. Even when you don’t feel it yet.

And somewhere between the Garbage song, a trip to Hooters, a passionate courtroom defense of Styx and those final end scenes it becomes clear: this movie wasn’t just a favorite it was a little compass. A way to grow up with humor, stay soft in a tough world, and believe in second chances.

Let’s just go ahead and say it: Adam Sandler is a national treasure. Period. End of story. The man walks around in basketball shorts, mismatched shirts, and sandals with socks like it’s a full-time job and somehow, he still radiates more charm than half of Hollywood in a tux.

He’s funny in that effortless, offbeat, lovable way. But it’s more than that. There’s a kindness that slips through the cracks of his goofiness. That’s what hit me with Big Daddy. Yeah, he was immature. Yeah, he let a five-year-old dress himself for court. But the guy had heart. And that heart only got bigger as the movie went on.

That’s Sandler magic. The way he plays Sonny like a guy who doesn’t have it all figured out, but loves hard anyway that stuck with me. Still does. There’s something timeless about characters who choose love, who stumble toward it clumsily, and end up better for it.

Big Daddy isn’t just about parenting or growing up, it’s about finding your rhythm.

And in real life? His persona seems the same way. Married forever. Loving father.

(Fun fact: I read he actually met Jackie his wife through filming Big Daddy and Rob Schneider. She had a tiny role as a Hooters waitress, and they started dating right after filming.)

Word is, he’s always casting his actual kids and friends in his movies. Staying loyal to the weird little family he’s built over the years. He’s the kind of celebrity who makes you feel like maybe there’s a little more good in the world than we give it credit for. Like maybe you really can wear gym shorts to any occasion and name your dog Frankenstein Julian.

Because we did. We really did. Well the dog name part at least! Frankie was one of our most beloved pets, son of Matilda and Atticus, named after the moment Julian got to rename himself. And there was just something about that moment, that spirit. Choosing who you want to be. Giving yourself a name. Finding family in unexpected places.

I was just a kid when I saw it for the first time, and somehow it still feels like a blueprint. Love people, even if you’re a mess. Laugh through it. Dance in the living room. Let your kid dress like a superhero. Don’t take things too seriously. Defend Styx in public.

Because yeah, sometimes life really is just taking out the trash and singing to yourself, trying your best not to lose your mind. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, it ends with someone hugging you in a wing restaurant, while New Radicals plays in the background and everything feels weirdly perfect.

That’s the thing about movies like this. They sneak in under your skin. They grow up with you. They stick.

Time evolves, love grows and

now we have our sweet Gracie.

Always dancing, always tapping her feet to the beat, like she was born with music in her bones.

You’ve got the music in you.

She really does.

And I hope she always keeps it… that spark, that rhythm, that joy.

I hope she and her brother and sister always know that they are part of this strange, beautiful soundtrack.

The one that keeps playing, even after the credits roll.

Because sometimes Cinematic Embers are made of Blockbuster rentals, VHS tapes, a dog named Frankenstein and one perfect song that reminds you, right in the middle of the chaos: you get what you give.

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Somewhere Near Witch Mountain

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 07:00:49 GMT

Film: Escape to Witch Mountain

It didn’t feel like déjà vu exactly… but it didn’t feel like the first time either.

It felt like stepping into a dream I hadn’t realized I’d memorized. Like driving straight into a movie I’d rewound a hundred times—until the colors bled, the tape hissed, and the scenes flickered with that warped magic only VHS could hold. A dream so woven into me, I stopped knowing where the story ended and my memory began.

The fog in Carmel and Pebble Beach rolled in like recognition. Not from a place I’d lived, but from the glow of a screen. A silver sheen of half-remembered light. Escape to Witch Mountain. Child of Glass. Watcher in the Woods . These weren’t just films. They were frequency. They were part of my internal mythology.

This wasn’t just a road trip.

It was pilgrimage.

Part childhood myth, part family memorial, part secret dream come true.

⸻

We found our legends in the clearance bin.

Godwin’s was the kind of grocery store that smelled like old linoleum and Pine-Sol, with a dusty back corner where the video rentals went to die. It’s also where Jamie used to work—long before we ever met, which feels oddly poetic now, like something out of a time-travel subplot. Back then, when a movie stopped getting rented, they’d toss it onto a shelf marked down to a quarter, maybe fifty cents if the cover sleeve was still intact.

That’s how we found Child of Glass . Just sitting there, humming with forgotten magic.

The moment we brought it home, it became sacred. My brother and I watched it so many times the tracking slipped, the picture twisted, and the sound fizzled into soft static. Didn’t matter. We knew it by heart. That movie didn’t just stick with us it attached itself to something under the skin.

It was eerie and aching and beautiful. The kind of story that lingers like a secret.

Years later, Bobby called me out of nowhere no hello, just urgency.

“Lauren, what was that movie we used to watch?”

I didn’t even let him finish.

Child of Glass, I whispered. Like I’d been keeping it safe for both of us.

Some stories don’t fade. They just wait in the dark until you call them by name.

⸻

Not all the movies that shaped me were filmed here but somehow they still showed up.

They traveled with me, tucked in memory, humming beneath the surface like a frequency only I could hear.

Child of Glass wasn’t made in California, and neither was Watcher in the Woods. But as we drove through that strange, sea-wrapped light fog curling around the trees, sky pressing low like a whisper… I swear I could feel them anyway. That quiet tension. That almost-electric stillness. That sense that the veil between worlds was thinner here, like something forgotten might step out of the mist at any moment.

Maybe it’s the way memory folds time. Or maybe it’s just that I carried these stories with me for so long, they’ve started to shape the way I see the world.

Escape to Witch Mountain, though that one was rooted here. Somewhere between Pebble Beach and the pine-lined curves of Monterey, it unfolded on real ground.

As we wound through those roads, I kept wondering if the trees remembered. If the cliffs or the moss or the curve of the coastline had once watched a camera roll past, carrying two children trying to get home.

I remembered everything.

And for the first time, I wasn’t watching it on a screen.

I was inside the scene with my husband, my kids, and this shimmering, impossible moment.

⸻

The truth is, this trip wasn’t planned around me. It was planned around her.

Jamie’s mom passed away a year ago on Mother’s Day. Her last wish was for her ashes to be scattered near the Monterey waters where she used to dive. It was where she felt most alive, most herself. So we came. We packed up the kids, snacks, two miniature dachshunds, and a car full of grief and grace—and we made the drive.

There’s a kind of weight that doesn’t show up in words. It settles in your bones, in the back of your throat, in the pauses between conversations. Jamie carried that weight quietly. I know it was heavy. But even in his own season of mourning, he made room for wonder. For me. For the girl who grew up watching ghost stories on warped VHS tapes and never fully stopped believing in the magic of a well-timed fog.

⸻

I don’t know how much my kids will remember—but I hope something sticks.

Gracie’s still a baby. She won’t remember the way the cliffs curved into the fog, or how the redwoods swayed like they were whispering old secrets. But she was there. She was curled against my chest as the sky turned silver. She was breathing the same ocean air. And maybe that’s enough.

Jaxon and Maggie? I think they’ll remember. Not everything. Not the names of every beach or how long the drive took—but the feeling.

The way I lit up when we passed the Lost Boys house. The way I talked about Escape to Witch Mountain like it was a real place you could find on a backroad map if you knew where to look. The way Jamie and I stood side by side at the edge of the sea, knowing it held both memory and goodbye.

I talk about these movies all the time. They probably roll their eyes in the backseat, even if they don’t say it out loud.

But I hope—one day, years from now—when they scroll past Child of Glass on some dusty digital service, or see “Witch Mountain” flicker across a screen, something tugs at them.

I hope they remember this.

I hope they remember me.

And maybe they’ll smile.

Maybe they’ll feel a flicker of something sacred.

A kind of home.

⸻

I never found those movies scary—not really.

They weren’t horror. They were signals.

They felt like invitations.

Portals. Warnings wrapped in wonder. Mirrors reflecting back the strange, soft power of childhood magic.

Escape to Witch Mountain wasn’t about running from danger—it was about running home. Two kids with powers they didn’t ask for, navigating a world that didn’t understand them, being chased by men who wanted to possess what they could never comprehend. But underneath it all, it was about belonging. Memory. Return.

The moment Tia and Tony find each other—and realize they aren’t alone anymore—that was the magic.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t explosive.

It was cosmic.

It was comforting in a way I didn’t have language for as a child, but somehow already understood.

Child of Glass lived on a different frequency, but pulsed just as deeply. A boy. A ghost girl. A riddle. A house that breathed sorrow. It was eerie, yes—but also full of light.

Like it was trying to teach us how to help the dead find peace.

How to listen.

How to care.

How to believe in what we couldn’t always see.

And Watcher in the Woods? That was another level entirely.

A forest. A girl gone missing. A presence not quite alien, not quite spirit. It buzzed with the same strange electricity I’d later hear echoed in whispers about the Book of Enoch—the watchers, the veils, the rift between worlds.

Not everything invisible is malevolent.

And not everything visible is safe.

But they all had something in common.

They didn’t make me feel afraid.

They made me feel awake.

Awake to the idea that this world is only one layer of the story.

That maybe we were meant to remember something.

And maybe some of us already had.

⸻

I stood beside our children and thought of Tia and Tony. The way they reached for each other in the dark. The way they never stopped trying to get home. I thought of ghost girls who just wanted to be remembered, and watchers in the woods who were never truly gone. I thought of Bobby calling me in the middle of the night, carrying Child of Glass in his chest like a story too holy to forget.

And I thought about how we carry them all.

The stories.

The people.

The places that shaped us.

Maybe we don’t escape to Witch Mountain.

Maybe we return to it.

Maybe it’s not a place on a map,

but a moment in time

where the veil thins just enough

for us to remember who we are.

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A Little Bit of Love: A Band Shirt, A Concert, and Lasting Light

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 06:51:11 GMT

Weezer : A Little Bit of Love

We were just kids in Dallas, singing our lungs out somewhere under the night. I can’t tell you the name of the venue, or the setlist in perfect order, but I remember the feeling: like joy had a pulse, and it was thumping through our shoes. It was my first concert without parents, bought the tickets myself, rode there with friends, and somehow just somehow it felt like becoming a person. Dashboard Confessional played as well, two emotional worlds colliding in one perfect, unforgettable show.

Weezer was the band for me then. My brother had played me the Blue Album in his car, and that was it. I wore the red shirt he handed down, silhouettes of the band printed across the chest like saints in some alt-rock stained glass. I wore that thing like armor. Wore it when I met some of my best friends. Wore it when I didn’t know who I was yet, but knew I wanted to feel the way that music made me feel… alive, loud, and entirely real.

And now, decades later, a song like “A Little Bit of Love” radiates with that same strange warmth. Like the sound of something blooming again. Like an old key turning in a new lock. It’s simple, yeah. But there’s something sacred tucked into that chorus:

“A little bit, a little bit of love

Goes a pretty long way…”

Maybe that’s why it feels like it matters so much. It’s not a song trying to be deep, it just kinda is. It’s the kind of song that doesn’t need a dramatic crescendo to move you. Just a little rhythm. A little harmony. A little reminder of the thing that holds us up and carries us forward.

Weezer’s always had layers goofy and genius, messy and masterful, all at once. But somewhere along the way, Rivers started building myths with the music. You can hear it in the SZNZ project: four seasonal EPs, dropped on solstices and equinoxes, each one shaped by ancient ideas, liturgical rhythms, and classical melodies disguised as pop hooks. It’s weird, and bold, and honestly kind of beautiful.

Like, who does that? Who turns an entire year into a musical cycle with angels, harmonies, and shifting emotions mapped across spring, summer, autumn, and winter? It made me realize: this band I first fell in love with was actually doing something sacred in their own way. Creating modern folklore. Spinning meaning through melody.

Which is probably why songs like In the Garage still land with so much weight. Because even in the early days, they were already telling the truth.

There’s a line in In the Garage I used to sing under my breath like it was mine:

“In the garage, I feel safe

No one cares about my ways

In the garage where I belong”

Back then, I didn’t fully know why it meant so much. I just knew it did. Now? I get it.

The garage is where I go when the world’s too loud. It’s our garage, mine and Jamie’s. It holds our business. Our gym. Our weird little oasis of quiet purpose. It’s where I move my body, steady my mind, breathe out the noise. Where I write. Where I work. Where I craft things with my hands when I need to feel real again.

It’s not glamorous. But it’s sacred.

And yeah Weezer still sometimes lives there, too. On playlists. In echoes. In the way certain songs feel like old friends who just change shoes.

Maybe that’s what this song “A Little Bit of Love” really is to me in a weird way…a friend. One that shows up at the end of a long week, claps along with you in the kitchen, and reminds you:

You’re still here. You’re still light. And love still matters.

That’s the thing. I believe it. Like, deeply.

Not as some corny Instagram affirmation. But as a life principle, the kind you build a mission around.

That’s kind of what Searching for Stars is for me. It’s my way of pointing back toward the light. Through story. Through music. Through memory and heartbreak and joy. It’s about looking for beauty in disaster. Not because the pain didn’t happen but because we’re still here.

Still breathing. Still dancing. Still choosing joy when grief would rather swallow us whole.

My dad used to talk about the Book of Enoch.

Not in a churchy way more like an old-school storyteller with dust on his boots and a glint in his eye. He talked about the parts of scripture that got left out. The watchers. The light. The ones who fell. The ones who rose.

I was young, but I listened.

And something about it stuck. Not the specifics, maybe. But the idea that some truths live in the margins. That maybe what gets edited out still holds fire. That maybe the most important gospels are the ones we feel in our bones, even if no one canonized them.

That’s how this song feels to me.

A Little Bit of Love I t’s not grand, not loud, not trying to be anything other than what it is. But it knows something. About healing. About joy. About how just a flicker of love in the dark can turn the whole room gold.

Same with Searching for Stars.

It’s not a sermon. It’s not a doctrine.

It’s a love letter to the sacred things we almost forgot.

Songs.

Memories.

Laughter.

Grief that teaches.

Friendships that save you at 14 without even trying.

And the quiet belief that love is the real meaning of life… to have it, to give it, to feel it, to leave it behind.

I probably still have that red shirt somewhere.

Faded, maybe. Soft from time. Silhouettes a little blurry now. But it’s still part of me. Like the concert. Like the first time I heard Buddy Holly in my brother’s car and felt something spark.

I think we all have those things, artifacts of when we first felt seen.

For me, it was that shirt. That song. That moment in Dallas when everything felt loud and alive and like it was just beginning.

And now, years later, the songs haven’t stopped meaning something. They’ve just shifted where they live. From the backseat of a car to the hum of a garage. From headphones to kitchen speakers while my kids dance barefoot on the floor. From a high school soundtrack to a grown woman’s reminder that love is still worth showing up for.

Because that’s the thing:

You don’t have to have it all figured out.

You don’t have to shine all the time.

You just have to carry a little bit of love.

That’s enough.

It goes a long way.

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She Gave Me a Beautiful Window Back to My Soul: Healthy Is the New Skinny (A letter of light and gratitude for Katie Willcox)

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:57:12 GMT

I don’t remember deciding to look in the mirror. I was already there, half awake, the house finally quiet in that fragile way it gets after a feeding. Same bathroom. Same light. A body that no longer belonged only to me, still learning its new outline. I tilted my head, not with panic, not even sadness just habit. Like checking a bruise you already know is there. Like waiting for an apology that isn’t coming.

What annoyed me wasn’t what I saw. It was how quickly my brain tried to narrate it. The subtle inventory. The mental before and after photos. The unspoken timeline of when I was supposed to “feel like myself again.” I remember thinking, with a tired little laugh, Wow. I just made a human. And I’m still doing this. Still scanning. Still measuring. Still standing here as if my body hadn’t just done something borderline miraculous. And the most unsettling part wasn’t the criticism it was how normal it all felt. Like this was just part of motherhood. Like this quiet self surveillance was simply another thing you were supposed to carry.

I didn’t necessarily feel it all at once. There was no dramatic breaking point. It was more like a quiet irritation that refused to go away. The kind that taps you on the shoulder while you’re trying to move on.

I remember standing there thinking how strange it was that my body could do something as massive as bringing a whole person into the world and somehow still be treated like a problem to solve. How quickly the conversation had shifted from look what you did to okay, now fix it. I hadn’t failed at anything. And yet, the language in my head sounded like I had.

That’s when something finally clicked not so much with anger or rage, but with clarity.

This wasn’t intuition.

This wasn’t health.

This wasn’t even coming from me.

It was inheritance.

Passed down quietly. Polished to sound responsible. Framed as care.

And once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.

Katie this is where you enter the story…

Someone who said the thing out loud that I had only felt in pieces. Someone who named the difference between discipline and disconnection. Between health and harm.

Healthy Is the New Skinny didn’t tell me what to do with my body. It asked a better question altogether: What if the problem was never your body in the first place?

That question rearranged everything.

You gave me language where there had only been pressure. You replaced noise with permission. You handed me tools not commandments and trusted me enough to use them. And that trust mattered. Because the moment I stopped fighting my body, I started listening to it. And the moment I started listening, I realized how long it had been trying to take care of me.

It felt like getting this beautiful window.

Not to change myself or crawl through but to finally see clearly.

I kept thinking about how these things actually get passed down. Not through lectures. Not through rules. But through the tiny stuff. The comments made in passing. The jokes you barely even realize are jokes. The way you talk to yourself when you think no one is listening.

Especially kids.

Especially daughters.

It hit me one night, sitting on the edge of the bed, that someday they wouldn’t need me to explain any of this to them. They would just pick it up. The same way I did. The same way most of us did. Quietly. Without consent.

That realization felt clarifying. Not heavy. Just honest.

Some patterns don’t need a big exit.

They just don’t get invited into the next room.

And because of you, Katie, I found the strength to stop fighting myself. To stop trying to fit my body into some mold it was never meant to belong in the first place.

To me, you are truly one of the most beautiful women and souls in this universe!

Beautiful is the woman who breaks cycles.

Beautiful is the voice that replaces shame with truth.

Beautiful is someone whose work doesn’t just inspire it liberates.

Thank you for changing how I live inside my body.

Thank you for changing how I mother.

Thank you for helping me choose health over punishment, presence over performance, and confidence that doesn’t ask permission.

You saved me in ways you may never know.

Thank you so much for opening the window.

I’m raising the next generation with it wide open to limitless views of beauty!

Lauren

She Gave Me a Beautiful Window Back to My Soul: Healthy Is the New Skinny

(A letter of light and gratitude for Katie Willcox)

Thank You: Katie Willcox

Beyond the Static: Signals I Didn’t Yet Understand

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:57:02 GMT

Fiona Apple: Criminal

The first time I heard Criminal, I was ten years old.

We were living in an apartment in North Carolina then my mom, my brother, my grandmother, and me it was after everything had already cracked open. The divorce. The affair. The move away from Texas. The kind of upheaval that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but hums under your skin, day and night. I didn’t have language for any of it yet. I just knew I was angry. And sad. And flooded with feelings that didn’t know where to land.

Music was my escape before I knew to call it medicine.

I had a small TV in my room, the kind that glowed more than it clarified, and I watched MTV and VH1 the way some kids watched cartoons. I sat on the floor, close to the screen, letting songs wash over me not for meaning, but for relief. Sound felt like a place I could breathe.

And then this song came on.

I remember being frozen there, cross-legged on the carpet, the room suddenly very still. It wasn’t the video that caught me. It wasn’t shock or seduction or anything I could have named at ten. It was the tone. The piano. The weight of it. The way the song moved slow like it wasn’t trying to impress anyone. It felt transparent and raw…she seemed to embrace real emotional honesty unlike anything I had felt come through that screen before that day.

I didn’t understand exactly what she was singing about.

But somehow I understood the feeling.

It felt heavy. And real.

It felt like truth without decoration.

That was enough.

The song didn’t leave after that night.

It stayed tucked somewhere inside me as I grew quiet, patient waiting for me to grow into it. I didn’t think about it consciously at first. It would surface here and there, on the radio, on a mixtape, years later on a playlist, and each time it felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain. Like running into someone you once knew in a completely different life.

When I was a teenager, I still loved it... but differently. By then, I was starting to understand weight. Emotion. The way love could feel tangled instead of pure. The way wanting something didn’t always mean knowing how to hold it gently. The song began to feel less like a sound I escaped into and more like something that watched me quietly from the corner of the room.

And then, sometime later without a clear moment to point to I caught up to it.

I learned what it feels like to cross an invisible line.

To care deeply and still cause harm.

To love and not yet know how to love well.

There were people I loved before I understood the cost of that word. People I confused. People I hurt without meaning to. Not out of cruelty out of immaturity, fear, longing, and the simple fact of being young and unfinished. I didn’t know then how easily hearts could bruise. I didn’t know how long certain echoes last.

When I hear the song now, I hear all of it layered together the child on the carpet in North Carolina, the girl learning the contours of desire and consequence, the woman who can finally sit with regret without flinching. It doesn’t accuse me. It never did. It simply tells the truth and waits for me to be honest enough to listen.

That’s what I’ve always loved about it.

The song didn’t teach me how to feel guilty.

Life did that.

The song just gave me a place to put it.

Music didn’t save me because it fixed anything.

It saved me because it stayed.

It stayed when my life felt rearranged and unfamiliar.

It stayed when I didn’t yet know how to name what I was feeling.

It stayed as I grew, and stumbled, and learned the slow lessons no one escapes.

That song became less of an escape and more of a witness. It didn’t rush me. It didn’t demand resolution. It just existed steady and honest while I learned how to live inside my own contradictions. While I learned that loving someone doesn’t automatically mean knowing how to protect them. While I learned that regret doesn’t always need punishment sometimes it just needs acknowledgment.

There are things I would do differently now.

There are hearts I would hold more carefully.

There are moments I understand with a clarity I didn’t have then.

And I carry that knowledge with tenderness, not shame.

When I hear the song today, I don’t feel frozen anymore. I feel grounded. I hear the accumulation of years in it the way a single piece of music can hold multiple versions of a person without collapsing them into one. The child who needed somewhere to rest. The young woman who made mistakes. The adult who can look back without turning away.

The music didn’t change.

I did.

And somehow, the song knew I would.

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Poltergeist: A Memory From the Other Side of Sleep

Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:56:57 GMT

Film: Poltergeist

I was six.

Too small to be up that late.

Too young to be watching Poltergeist on my own.

But there I was...

barefoot on the carpet, eyes fixed on the screen, the living room pulsing with static and supernatural flicker.

I hadn’t meant to be there.

I was sleepwalking, though I didn’t know it at the time.

Back then, they said you weren’t supposed to wake a sleepwalker too suddenly. Something about panic.

So maybe that’s why my dad didn’t yell.

Didn’t scoop me up and carry me back to bed.

Instead, he sat down beside me.

The film was already halfway through.

I remember him asking questions, gently

“Do you know what this is?”

“Do you understand it’s not real?”

I nodded. I think I did.

He let me ask questions back, too about the ghosts, the little girl, the shadows and the light.

He answered every one.

Not in a babying way, but like I was someone worth talking to.

Like I could handle a story, even a scary one, as long as I had someone sitting beside me in the dark.

Years later, I heard him tell the story.

From his side.

He said he walked out of the bedroom and into a scene that stopped his heart for a second

his daughter sitting inches from the screen, the blue-white light of Poltergeist washing over her.

He said it looked like the movie poster come to life.

But instead of Carol Anne, it was me.

And maybe that’s why it stayed with me.

Not just because of the movie,

not just because of the sleepwalking,

but because of the way he handled it.

He could’ve been mad.

Could’ve rushed me back to bed, frustrated and tired.

Instead, he stayed.

He made it a moment.

He gave me something I didn’t have the words for yet:

a safe place to ask questions about the scary stuff.

To be curious in the dark.

The Poltergeist score drifted like a haunted lullaby behind it all

soft and eerie, sweet and unsettling.

A soundtrack that sounded almost like childhood itself:

part dream, part fear, part wonder.

Perhaps that’s why I still love stories that hum with mystery.

Why I still write into the spaces between sleep and static.

Because sometimes, even the strangest memories carry light.

Especially the ones where someone sits beside you

and says,

“Let’s finish the movie.”

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Yourself or Someone Like You: Long Day, Jamie, and the Songs That Stayed

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:47:48 GMT

Matchbox Twenty: Long Day

I’ve loved a lot of voices in my life; raspy ones, silky ones, wild ones, broken ones. But if I’m being honest? It’s probably a tie between Otis Redding and Rob Thomas, with Rob pulling slightly ahead.

There’s just something about the way he sings like gravel and soul had a baby and raised it on broken hearts and sunrise drives. I don’t know how else to explain it. His voice has always felt like something I could trust. Like it knew things I hadn’t said out loud yet.

Matchbox 20’s Yourself or Someone Like You was the third CD I ever owned.

The first was Jagged Little Pill, which I managed to convince a family member to buy for me because Alanis, obviously. The second, Tragic Kingdom, was handed to me by Trey with a smirk and the line:

“You need to add this to your collection especially if you’re getting into talented babe music.”

And then came Matchbox Twenty.

I begged my brother to order it for me through BMG those wild, glorious Columbia House days when kids with no money somehow ended up with stacks of CDs anyway. And when it came in the mail, I swear, I held it like it was a sacred object.

We were living in Bent Tree Apartments in Greensboro, North Carolina at the time...me, Bobby, our mom, and nanny. It was after the divorce. The apartment complex was all hills and trees and these magical little tucked away spots that made it feel more like a forest village than a neighborhood.

That winter, it snowed.

We used plastic tub lids to slide down the hills by the park, laughing and spinning until our faces were numb and pink with joy. It was the first time Bobby and I really got to experience snow, and I can still see it that sparkling hush, the slope, the thrill.

And while the world outside was white and new, I was inside with a borrowed CD player thanks to Bobby, who didn’t have to let me use it, but did.

I played Yourself or Someone Like You over and over and over again, like it was breathing for me.

Track two.

“Long Day.”

That song wrecked me in the best way.

The passion in the lyrics, the sound of Rob Thomas just laying his whole soul bare. It felt like he was singing for all of us who were holding it together on the outside but quietly breaking inside. I didn’t fully understand it then, but I felt it. And I kept feeling it for years.

I thought I might never meet anyone who loved that song as much as I did.

Until Jamie.

A few weeks into falling for each other, before either of us really knew we were falling Jamie handed me his CD case in the passenger seat of his white Mustang and said, “Pick something.”

It smelled like Axe body spray and freedom. The windows were cracked just enough to let the late afternoon air twist through the car, stirring up something electric between us that neither of us wanted to name yet.

I flipped through the thick plastic sleeves of the zip-up binder, scanning the covers, hoping for a sign.

And there it was.

Yourself or Someone Like You.

Like a little universe tucked between everything else.

I smiled to myself, slid the disc out, and popped it into the stereo.

The speakers crackled awake, and suddenly, there we were me, him, and Rob Thomas, all sharing the same stretch of highway.

He started singing along immediately loud, proud, and completely unashamed.

I knew every word, too, but I stayed quiet for a second, just listening, stunned.

Because it wasn’t just that he knew the song.

It was how he sang it.

Like it mattered.

Like it lived inside him the way it lived inside me.

And when “Long Day” rolled around and he hit that first weary, worn out note, it was like a handful of stars lit up inside me at once. It felt like finding a constellation I didn’t even know I was looking for.

Jamie beside me, singing it like a prayer he already knew by heart.

The whole night shifted it was like a quiet kind of gravity pulled me closer.

Like two people finding the same star in a sky full of noise.

When Jamie and I fell for each other, I moved into the townhouse he was already sharing with two roommates. It wasn’t glamorous, and it wasn’t totally uncomplicated but somehow, in the middle of all that, we carved out a world of our own.

Our bedroom wasn’t just a bedroom.

It was a tiny studio, a fortress, a starting line.

We had a love seat crammed against one wall, a computer desk against another, a washer and dryer tucked into a closet nearby. It smelled like clean clothes and late nights and all the hope you don’t know how to name yet when you’re young and barely beginning.

Jamie helped me pick out my first real laptop—black, sleek, compact, and perfect—and that night, we sat side by side on the love seat, downloading songs we loved. Making mix CDs. Building soundtracks we didn’t realize we’d still be carrying decades later.

And somewhere between the old favorites and the new discoveries, I found it.

Rob Thomas’ cover of “Time After Time.”

I had loved that song my whole life the Cyndi Lauper version, delicate and aching but hearing Rob sing it?

It was like finding a lost language I had somehow always spoken.

His voice, raw and beautiful and a little broken around the edges wrapped around the lyrics like it had been waiting for them.

For me.

I felt a soft tear well up as we sat there, wrapped in the glow of the computer screen, listening.

Not speaking.

Just letting the music say all the things we didn’t know how to say yet.

That night, sitting cross legged on a secondhand love seat in a too big room, I realized something simple and enormous:

Some voices find you when you need them most.

And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you find someone who sings along with you...time after time.

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Colorblind: Tender and Temporary

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 17:13:36 GMT

Counting Crows: Colorblind

I always know it’s coming. Not by the calendar or the app or the cramp in my lower back, but by the way everything suddenly starts to hurt differently. The laundry becomes a metaphor. The kitchen light feels too yellow. A memory I haven’t thought about in years flutters up and lands in my throat like a moth.

“I am covered in skin, no one gets to come in…”

The song plays low through the speaker, and I am immediately undone. Not in a grand, dramatic way. Just… quietly. Like a soft seam splitting open. Like a single string coming loose in a sweater that held me together all week.

Counting Crows always understood how to ache without asking for permission. Colorblind doesn’t explode it seeps. It’s the sound of feeling too much and saying too little. Of trying to hold yourself together with only your security blanket hoodie and the last spoonful of peanut butter.

And somehow, that’s where I live today.

In this flickering little moment where everything is just a little too much but also deeply beautiful in a way I can’t explain. The weight of memory and emotion and hormones and song and self pressing softly down on me, not to crush me—but maybe to remind me I’m still here.

There’s a kind of sacred absurdity to it crying over a sad song while the dishwasher hums and the dog stares at me like I’ve finally lost it. I haven’t. I’m just a little cracked open today. Maybe I needed to be.

It’s funny, in the smallest way. How the world doesn’t stop for your inner monologue. How you can be falling apart in the gentlest, most cinematic way possible and still get a “Mom will you bake me cookies” mid-spiral.

But that’s life, isn’t it?

Messy and magical. Boring and profound. Sometimes you feel like the main character in a soft indie film scored by Counting Crows, and sometimes you just need a nap or a cup of coffee and someone to tell you that you’re not crazy, you’re just alive.

That’s what this song does for me. That’s what this day is. Not a breakdown. Not a failure. Just a soft season. A swirl of color and fog. A reminder that even in the messy middle of feeling too much, there’s beauty worth noticing. Music worth hearing. Light worth holding onto.

There’s something strangely holy about this kind of feeling.

Not holy like a hymn but holy like breath fogging up a window. Like a quiet truth slipping out between sighs. Like being human and knowing it.

And tomorrow, I’ll probably laugh at myself.

Or forget how this even felt. Or wonder if I was being a little dramatic.

(Probably. Definitely. Who cares.)

Because today, this is where I am.

Under the weight of this song, this body, this heart that just keeps on feeling.

Covered in skin.

Soft and unraveled.

Colorblind—but seeing everything.

Tender and Temporary.

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Do You Realize: A Quiet Spell

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:24:54 GMT

Television Series: Charmed

The Flaming Lips : Do You Realize??

I was probably wearing pajama pants. The kind with stars or moons on them.

The living room was dim except for the flicker of the TV and the soft hum of central air kicking on and off. I was at my dad’s house in Lake Charles, Louisiana curled up on the couch, watching Charmed.

We both liked that show, though probably for different reasons. I loved the magic, the drama, the sisters and their powers. He loved the sci-fi twists, the time travel episodes and, let’s be honest, thought the witches were cute. I’d watch it with him, or on my own when I needed something comforting and a little otherworldly.

That night, the band played live at P3—The Flaming Lips. I didn’t know them at the time, but I remember leaning forward as the music started. Do you realize that you have the most beautiful face… The sound was dreamy, almost underwater, but the words "everyone you know someday will die" cut through everything.

It was one of the first songs I remember hearing that made me feel like time just stopped.

I remember that line landing like a quiet truth I’d already memorized. Everyone you know someday will die. It didn’t shock me. It didn’t scare me. It felt… familiar. Like someone had finally said out loud what I’d been carrying around for years.

By 2002, I had already lost more people than most kids my age could understand. Travis. Tommy. Trey. My nanny. Names that still held warmth, still echoed in photos and birthday parties and bike rides, but were gone. Each loss had carved something permanent in me like tree rings, like scars, like slow blooming galaxies of grief.

So when The Flaming Lips sang it, they weren’t telling me something new. They were joining me in it. Saying, “Yeah. We know. We feel it too.” And somehow, that made it hurt a little less.

I didn’t cry. I didn’t even move. I just sat there on that couch, beside my dad, with the TV glowing and this strange, beautiful band floating on a fake club stage and I felt understood in a way I didn’t have language for yet.

I didn’t write the song down or look it up right away. But it stayed with me. Tucked itself into the folds of memory like a quiet spell soft, glimmering, patient. Years later, after graduation, I got my first laptop and started burning mix CDs like it was a sacred ritual. That song made the cut every time.

By then, it wasn’t just a song from Charmed. It was mine. Something I turned to when I wanted to feel a little more awake, a little more in love with being alive even if just for a minute.

The Flaming Lips pulled me in from there. Their sound was strange and bright and human in the weirdest, most wonderful ways. It was like music for dreamers who had been through some shit but still believed in magic. Still hoped. Still laughed.

And that one line "everyone you know someday will die" it never stopped meaning something. It didn’t get heavier. It didn’t get easier. It just got more… real. With time, with loss, with the quiet ache of growing older and watching the people you love fade in and out of your life. Some forever. Some just for a while.

Now, as a parent, it’s a truth I’ve had to explain. Sometimes through tears, sometimes through metaphor, sometimes just by being quiet and holding space. We’re all here for a little while. And while we are, we dream, we love, we build things. We make mix CDs and write stories and leave trails behind.

I don’t know if this song has brought me closer to my dad since he passed, but it always makes me miss him. Not in the sharp, breathless way. More like a soft pull a hand on my shoulder, a memory folding open.

He was my best friend. The one I watched Charmed with on quiet nights in Lake Charles. The one who told me the truth, even when it hurt, and made me laugh when I didn’t think I could. I wish I had more time. I always will. But I’m so grateful for the time we had... for the love, the hugs, the weird inside jokes, the science fiction, the way he looked at the world and tried to make it better.

Maybe the song is a kind of spell.

Not the flashy kind no sparks, no glowing orbs just a soft charm whispered into your life when you’re ready to hear it.

It doesn’t grant wishes.

It just opens your eyes.

To this moment.

To the people still beside you.

To the way love stretches across time like sunlight through trees.

"Instead of saying all of your goodbyes,

let them know you realize—

life goes fast.

It’s hard to make the good things last."

That part used to make me ache.

Now it makes me nod.

Because it’s true.

The good things slip through our fingers no matter how tightly we try to hold them.

So we love them while we can.

We stay present.

We keep the music playing.

I don’t need forever.

I just want to realize what I have, while I have it.

And I do.

More and more, every day.

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Be Excellent to Each Other: A Tribute to Rufus, Rock and Roll, and the Porcelain Fish of Time

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:21:25 GMT

Films: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure / Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey

KISS: God Gave Rock 'N' Roll To You

ACT I: SAN DIMAS, VHS, AND THE GOSPEL OF SO-CRATES

We were somewhere between the couch and the cosmos—probably a Friday night, definitely the early ’90s. The TV buzzed like it always did, casting soft static light on the living room walls like a time machine warming up.

I was around seven.

My dad and my brother were beside me, forming our original “Wyld Stallyns” trio—minus the band, plus popcorn.

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure wasn’t just funny. It was freeing. A movie where two well-meaning goofballs could flunk their way into saving the entire future—just by being loyal, kind, and mildly competent with a phone booth. It felt like prophecy for weird kids with big hearts and zero plans.

We weren’t just watching history get hijacked we were witnessing destiny get dumbed down to divine levels. And it worked.

“So-crates.”

“Party on, dudes.”

“Strange things are afoot at the Circle K.”

All of it landed like scripture whispered through air guitar.

And then there was Rufus.

Cool. Quiet. Dressed in black.

He didn’t yell.

He didn’t rush.

He just showed up exactly when he was needed.

The time-traveling mentor from the future, with George Carlin’s soul tucked behind his shades.

At that age, I didn’t know who Carlin really was. Not yet. I hadn’t heard the sacred rage, the Seven Dirty Words, the sermons disguised as stand-up. But I felt something. Like there was something bigger inside him. Something true.

That knowing came later on nights I couldn’t sleep, curled next to my mom, as she rubbed my back and laughed quietly at his specials on TV.

It’s funny how someone like Carlin becomes a bookmark in your childhood—not because of what he said, but because of how it felt when he was speaking. Like even the grownups were still trying to understand the world.

And laughing about it was okay.

Back then, though, I just knew Rufus mattered.

He wasn’t just helping Bill and Ted pass history.

He was helping them believe they mattered.

That music mattered.

That being excellent to each other could actually change the world.

ACT II: DEATH, DESTINY, AND THE PORCELAIN FISH

Bogus Journey came next.

Still Bill. Still Ted. But this time it got weird.

They died.

Played Twister with Death.

Went to Hell.

Met Evil Robot Versions of themselves.

Built their own Good Guy Robots to fight back.

If Excellent Adventure was a joyful trip through history class on caffeine, Bogus Journey was a fever dream dipped in existential dread.

I watched it younger than I probably should’ve, with my brother and some of his friends. I was little. The kind of little where nightmares still hang around the corners of your room after the credits roll.

And yeah—Death himself showed up in full cloak and scowl. But he wasn’t the part that haunted me.

It was those scenes where they had to face themselves.

The younger, scarred versions.

The shadowed corners of their own minds.

That part gets under your skin somehow.

It was silly, sure.

But it was also real in that quiet way movies sometimes are when you’re too young to explain what they awaken in you.

The real journey wasn’t saving the world it was facing yourself.

And choosing who you’re going to be.

But even then,even in death the movie never stopped being fun.

They jammed with Death.

They made friends with him.

They let the scariest thing imaginable become a bandmate.

Like grief… that dances.

Loss with rhythm.

Years later, in the middle of my own version of a bogus journey… a hospital, a surgery, the sharp and aching silence that comes after a life ends before it begins—I was deep in the dark. Resting. Reeling. I didn’t want to move.

And that’s when Rufus showed up again.

This time on four legs.

A stray dog.

Uninvited, unexplained, and somehow right on time.

My dad pulled me out of bed to see him.

“You gotta come see this dog.”

And this dog wasn’t ordinary.

He came bearing offerings like some mythical postman of fate:

A kid’s shoe.

A broken sandal.

A somehow-still-unbroken porcelain fish.

I kept the fish. Cleaned it. Painted it blue.

It still sits on my shelf like a relic, my own Circuits of Time artifact.

Somehow unbroken.

Somehow still here.

The dog had faint shadows on his shoulders like light had tried to paint angel wings, but gave up halfway.

My dad named him Rufus, like it was obvious.

Because of course he did.

That’s what Rufus was.

The one who shows up when the light’s gone strange.

When the world feels broken, scary or dark.

When you’re stuck in Hell and can’t quite remember who you were supposed to be.

Bill and Ted didn’t just teach you how to pass history.

They taught you how to show up for the future.

How to believe in people.

How to stay in the band even after death.

The truth was always louder than the plot:

Music saves.

Not just the world, but the person.

The soul.

The moment.

The VHS kid with popcorn on her fingers.

The grown woman trying to stand back up.

I didn’t need a band that could shred

I just needed a reason to keep playing.

God Gave Rock and Roll to You wasn’t just a final act anthem.

It was a statement of faith, dressed in denim and distortion.

A holy thing passed down through speakers and scenes.

He gave it to everyone.

To the weirdos.

To the dropouts.

To the grievers.

To the garage-band prophets.

To the girls who write about ghosts and feel everything twice as hard.

The song wasn’t asking permission.

It was handing out purpose.

ACT III: THEY DO GET BETTER

We passed through San Dimas not long ago.

It was quick just a stretch of highway, a flicker in the memory grid, but something in me woke up.

I sat up straighter.

And suddenly, I was there.

And then.

All at once.

It wasn’t even where they filmed it just the place that inspired the name.

But it didn’t matter.

It felt like sacred ground.

I smiled. The kind of smile that’s been quietly loading in the background for decades…like a memory still syncing.

Because somewhere in me, a little girl with a VHS tape and a head full of time-travel logic was still believing.

Still carrying that message home:

“Be excellent to each other.

And party on, dudes.”

It sounds dumb if you say it fast.

But if you sit with it—if you really hear it—it’s enough to build a life on.

Because it’s not just about air guitars and slackers.

It’s about grace.

About letting people grow.

Letting yourself grow.

It’s about knowing the past is a mess,

the present is confusing,

and the future is… unwritten.

But still?

You matter.

Your friends matter.

Your music matters.

Even the dumb parts.

Especially the dumb parts.

Some dogs are angels.

Some things in life—like porcelain fish don’t break when they’re meant for you.

Rufus was never just a character.

Carlin was never just a comic.

The people we lose.

The pets we keep.

The tapes we rewind.

The lines we remember by heart.

They’re all part of the same massive mixtape.

Stitched together by memory, grief, joy, and the divine comedy of it all.

And when we hit play again—

when we roll through San Dimas

or sit beside our kids

or pass a blue-painted relic on a shelf

we remember:

They do get better.

And sometimes, the ones who save the world

are the ones nobody expected to.

Sometimes they’re just two kids in a garage band.

Or a dog on your porch.

Or a father pulling you back into the light.

Or a girl, now grown, still hearing George Carlin’s voice

like a whisper from the stars.

Not gone.

Just traveling through time.

God gave rock and roll to you—

and it lights the way.

A cassette tape on fire.

A torch that won’t go out.

You don’t need a time machine when you’ve got a great mixtape.

And if you’re gonna face yourself in Hell, bring your band.

Light it up. Play it loud. The future’s listening.

TITLE

This Song Will Change Your Life

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:07:35 GMT

Film: Garden State

The Shins : New Slang

Garden State

This Song Will Change Your Life

A Cinematic Ember for Searching for Stars

There was a stretch of my life where nothing was wrong, exactly.

The days worked. The routines held. I showed up.

And still something felt oddly absent.

Like a radio tuned just off the station.

Close enough to sound like music, but never quite landing.

I didn’t feel broken.

I felt… muted.

Functional. Responsible. Awake in all the practical ways.

Asleep in the ones that mattered.

⸻

When I was young, my emotions didn’t come in small sizes.

They arrived fully formed, without warning, and stayed longer than expected.

I didn’t know how to explain that then.

I just knew everything felt too loud and too hollow at the same time.

One morning, I decided I wasn’t going to school.

I pushed furniture against the bedroom door—not dramatically, just firmly.

It was the only way I knew how to say I can’t do this today.

The response was swift. Efficient.

Questions I didn’t know how to answer.

Clipboards. Soft voices. Doors that closed quietly.

I learned early how quickly intensity gets translated into something that needs correcting.

⸻

Over time, I learned how to be steady.

How to keep my voice level.

How to tuck things away so they wouldn’t spill out at inconvenient moments.

Quiet became a skill.

Then a strength.

Then, eventually, a way of life.

From the outside, it looked like growth.

⸻

By the time I graduated high school, I was already practicing adulthood.

Not the hopeful kind.

The practical kind.

That year, most people were talking about futures: college plans, dorm rooms, what came next.

My parents were unraveling in real time.

My dad disappeared in ways I didn’t yet have language for.

Contact thinning. Distance growing.

The quiet between us stretching longer than I knew how to cross.

At the same time, the house I was living in emptied out too.

Adults leaving. Responsibilities arriving early.

A trailer with no hot water.

A sense that whatever safety net I thought existed had quietly been folded away.

By the time I walked across the stage, I already understood something I shouldn’t have had to yet:

that showing up was not the same as being held.

That summer, I didn’t fall apart.

I adjusted.

I learned how to move forward without asking too many questions.

How to carry myself like someone older than I was.

It looked like maturity.

It felt like going quiet again.

⸻

Around that same time in my life, I met Jamie.

Not in the middle of some dramatic turning point.

Not at the end of anything.

Just in that quiet stretch after youth, when everyone is pretending they know where they’re headed.

We became friends first.

There was no rush to define it.

Just time, conversation, the kind of closeness that builds without needing to announce itself.

He was carrying his own version of quiet then.

The kind that comes after heartbreak.

After loss.

After believing deeply in something and wondering if it’s wise to believe again.

I didn’t know any of that at the start.

And even if I had, I wouldn’t have known what to do with it.

I wasn’t trying to fix anything.

I wasn’t offering answers or reassurance.

I was just there.

Still open.

Still talking.

Still laughing.

Still present in a way I hadn’t yet learned to restrain.

Over time, he told me that being with me felt like coming home.

That he felt more like himself.

That something in him remembered how to believe again.

I don’t think it was because I showed him anything new.

I think it was because I didn’t ask him to become smaller, quieter, or less himself.

Sometimes presence is enough.

Sometimes staying open without instruction, without armor gives someone else permission to do the same.

⸻

When my dad died years later, I didn’t fall apart the way I expected to.

Life kept moving. I kept showing up.

But something inside me went very still.

It wasn’t the sharp kind of grief.

It was quieter than that.

A deeper hush.

The kind that settles in after everyone else goes home.

I recognized it immediately.

I’d been there before.

⸻

Garden State lingers in a beautiful chaotic way in my mind.

Not because of the plot.

Not because of the quirk.

Because it understands that strange space after loss—

when the world expects you to resume,

and you do,

even though something fundamental has shifted.

Andrew in the film doesn’t return home to grieve loudly.

He returns numb.

Managed.

Mistaking the absence of chaos for stability.

I knew that feeling.

Sam doesn’t feel like a character

she feels like an interruption.

She doesn’t arrive with answers or instructions.

She doesn’t try to organize grief or soften it into something manageable.

She stays exactly where she is unguarded, unarmored.

And because of that, everything around her has to adjust.

People tend to call that kind of presence strange.

Unreliable. Too much.

But what I see is someone who hasn’t learned how to disappear to make things easier for everyone else.

There’s a difference.

⸻

“This song will change your life,” she says.

It’s not a dare.

It’s not a prophecy.

It’s said plainly, like an observation.

New Slang by The Shins: songs don’t come looking for you.

They arrive sideways through car speakers, borrowed CDs, half-heard scenes.

They don’t announce themselves as important.

They just stay.

I didn’t know my life needed changing.

I didn’t know I’d gone quiet in ways that weren’t helping anymore.

I only knew that something in me recognized the sound.

⸻

There’s a moment in the movie where the static clears all at once loud and beautiful.

Mine was quieter.

No collapse.

No dramatic turning point.

Just a sensation returning.

A feeling moving again after a long time of stillness.

And that was enough.

⸻

I don’t think music changed my life all at once.

I think it reminded me that change was still possible.

That feeling—real feeling it wasn’t something I’d outgrown.

Just something I’d set down carefully and forgotten to pick back up.

Going home doesn’t always look like packing a bag.

Sometimes it’s realizing the place you used to return to no longer exists.

And sometimes, if you’re lucky,

a song meets you there without asking you to be anything other than awake

TITLE

Get Up, Dress Up, Show Up (A Letter of Light in Honor of Jillian Owens)

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:07:14 GMT

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a mother.

It’s one of my earliest memories...that knowing.

Long before I understood how fragile futures could be, or how quickly a body can turn against the stories you carry inside it.

In 2011, my husband and I saw two pink lines on a test we never expected to turn positive. And almost just as quickly, everything unraveled. There was bleeding. Bed rest. Words spoken softly by doctors that landed like doors closing. A ruptured tube. Emergency surgery. A body barely saved in time and a future suddenly put into question.

What followed was a kind of quiet devastation.

Not just grief, but a fog.

A stillness where days blurred together and getting out of bed felt optional.

My sewing machine sat untouched. The parts of me that loved creating, thrift-store treasure hunting, making something beautiful out of almost nothing they went quiet too.

Around that time, I found someone who believed in getting up anyway.

I don’t remember the exact moment I found her only that I did. Somewhere in the haze, I stumbled onto a blog. Onto refashioning. Onto creativity that didn’t ask permission or require perfection. Onto a woman who showed up daily with humor, intelligence, kindness, and a sense of play and made something beautiful no matter what the day looked like.

Her name was Jillian.

She embodied a philosophy I already knew by heart one that my cousin Alisha used to live by and repeat often:

Get up.

Dress up.

Show up.

Jillian didn’t do it loudly. She did it her way. Through thrifted dresses and careful stitches. Through learning and sharing. Through smiling at the camera with a softness that felt real. She showed that even a day at home could still be a day you showed up for.

And slowly almost without realizing it I did too.

Her website was genuinely great! Thoughtfully designed, beautiful, functional, and easy to follow. The way she explained each refashion made learning feel accessible instead of intimidating. I learned so much from her details and descriptions. She was a truly gifted teacher, and her work absolutely leveled up my upcycling and thrifting skills.

I started checking in every day.

She refashioned clothes, loved thrifting, and had a dachshund named Douglas. Honestly, that alone would’ve pulled me in. The rest though…her beauty, light and the soul of her project just added more layers of awe.

There was joy in the way she moved, in the way she explained what she was doing, in the way she treated clothing not as something precious or untouchable, but as raw material for play. Even on ordinary days, even when she was staying home she showed up as herself. Fully dressed. Fully present. Fully in it.

Watching her felt like permission.

Permission to take up space again.

Permission to care.

Permission to make something simply because it felt good to make.

She wasn’t chasing perfection. She was practicing presence. And in doing so, she reminded me of a part of myself I had misplaced... the part that loved creativity for its own sake. The part that knew how to make something beautiful out of almost nothing.

Slowly, my feet hit the floor again.

I dusted off my sewing machine. I went back to thrift stores and started treasure hunting the way I used to curious, playful, unafraid. I remembered how good it felt to learn something new, to craft, to sew, to stitch, to reshape. For the first time in a long time, I felt like myself again.

I didn’t know you, Jillian.

But I knew your presence. I knew your rhythm. I knew the way you showed up day after day with creativity, humor, and steadiness. I knew the way you stood in your body and let it be seen, unpolished and unapologetic. I knew the joy you carried into ordinary moments.

Watching you felt like witnessing a kind of wholeness.

Not perfection.

Just presence.

The kind that says this life is worth showing up for, even on hard days.

You didn’t know what I was carrying when I found you. You didn’t know how hard it was for my feet to hit the floor, or how much of myself I had lost in that season. But you reached me anyway.

You helped me remember how to stand up again.

How to get dressed for my own life.

How to show up — not for an audience, but for myself.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Thank you for living your creativity out loud.

Thank you for making space for joy.

Thank you for finding beauty in disaster.

Thank you for helping me find my way back to the heart of myself.

My feet hit the floor and I plugged my sewing machine in again because of you!

This light you left behind is real.

And it’s still moving.

In loving memory of Jillian Owens (1982–2021).

Forever Refashionista.

Get Up, Dress Up, Show Up

(A Letter of Light in Honor of Jillian Owens)

Click the Polaroid & follow a link to a YouTube video of Trash to Treasure: 'Re-Fashion Your Clothes' featuring, Jillian Owens.

Thank You: Jillian Owens

Going the Distance: What Grace Left Behind

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:06:48 GMT

Cake : The Distance

I. The Light That Lingers

Before I knew her name, I knew her story.

They called her Aunt Grace. She wasn’t my aunt not by blood, anyway. But in the way that matters, she was something deeper. A woman who chose my family. A woman who lit the path for us long before I ever took my first breath.

She left behind a house in Hilltop Lakes, Texas. Fancy furniture. Antiques. Jewelry. A car. Stories. Maybe even secrets. She left behind a stockpile of wealth literal and legendary, but what I remember most about her legacy is the light she left behind.

Her name was Grace Brown. She was once married to a man named William Wayne “Cockeyed” Brown, a real deal American racecar driver who once hurled a Buick up Pike’s Peak like he had something to prove to the sky. He drove in the 1919 Indianapolis 500 and later opened a machine shop in Kansas City. There are still people out there-mechanics, historians, auto buffs who know his name and search for scraps of his legacy. This one’s for them, too.

They weren’t married long. But long enough to fall in deep. When William died, Grace didn’t just grieve she carried his name like a crown. And then she went on living. Boldly. Loudly. Generously. With dogs and furs and fast cars and good stories and light.

I never met her. But I’ve spent a lifetime walking the trail she left glowing behind her.

History echoes. Especially when you’re listening.

Grace didn’t have children, but during the war she took in kids and teenagers and looked after them like Jo March from Jo’s Boys. That’s who she reminds me of, really. Fierce. Independent. Nurturing. She had poodles, not professors. Pearls, not pens. But she was a March girl in spirit. My daughter Maggie Jo’s middle name is Josephine, partly because of that.

When I was a child, Aunt Grace was a mythical figure. A glamorous, generous woman who helped my grandparents when they needed it most. She helped raise my mom, in a way. She gave us Hilltop Lakes. She gave us a second chance.

And then, years later when I was grown, folding laundry in an Arkansas living room with my mom… she gave me a mystery.

II. The Man at Full Speed

William Wayne Brown wasn’t just a racecar driver... he was the kind of man who treated the wheel like a compass and the open road like scripture.

Born in Dodge City, Kansas in 1886, William lived at a time when cars were still a curiosity. But he saw more than metal and rubber he saw possibility. He built, he raced, he invented. People called him “Cockeyed” because of the way he held his head while driving; tilted, unbothered, as if he was looking anywhere but straight ahead. But make no mistake: the man never took his eyes off the line.

In 1912, he won the Buick Trophy at Elm Ridge, driving a scorched up Model 10 he claimed to have bought for $150 after it had survived a garage fire. By the end of the race, he’d lapped the defending champion. That’s the kind of driver he was: raw, inventive, and just a little wild. The kind that made people sit forward in their seats.

Then came 1913. Pikes Peak. No roads. No rules. Just William, a 1910 “Bear Cat” Buick, and a mountain daring him to try. It took him five hours and twenty eight minutes to summit no GPS, no pit crew, no safety net. At the top, he drove his car right up the stairs of the Summit House, parked it at the highest point, and looked out like he owned the sky.

In 1919, he entered the Indianapolis 500, driving the No. 5 Richards Special. He qualified 17th with a Hudson Brett 6-cylinder engine, clocking just under 100 mph. He made it 14 laps before a mechanical failure took him out but by then, he’d already cemented himself in the ranks of American motor legends.

Later in life, William ran the W.W. Brown Machine Works in Kansas City—a hub of metal, motion, and mind. A place where he turned blueprints into power. He served on AAA’s racing technical committee and remained a fixture in the world of speed and innovation. Quietly, he stayed ahead of the curve until the very end.

He died in 1958. Buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery, Kansas City. But for those who know the roar of an engine or the smell of old oil and glory he never really stopped running.

William Wayne Brown didn’t just go the distance… he was the distance.

III. The Oil Stock That Went Missing

It started like so many family stories do, quietly.

I was in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Grown, folding laundry, living a regular Tuesday with my mom when she let it slip.

“You know,” she said, like she was mentioning the weather, “your uncle might’ve stolen Grace’s oil stock.”

I stopped folding. “What do you mean might’ve?”

And just like that, the legend cracked open.

The story, as it spilled out, went something like this:

After Grace passed in 1977, she left behind a lot. Not just money or stocks—though there were those. She left a house in Hilltop Lakes. Expensive jewelry. Antique furniture. Stories that could outshine diamonds. She left it all to my grandparents Robert and Helen in a Legacy Will. She chose them. She chose us.

At first, everything seemed in place. But then came the shift.

One of my uncles, who was an accountant, stepped in. Took on the role of executor. Said he could “handle it.” Things got quiet. Then odd. Then quiet again.

The oil stock supposedly a physical paper certificate was never filed with the rest of her assets. It was just… gone.

“Misplaced,” they said.

Which is one of those words that sounds innocent until you repeat it a few times.

Misplaced. Misplaced? Like how do you misplace oil stock…Really?

And somehow, not long after that supposedly, my aunt and uncle’s life took a turn toward the glossy. New job. Big house in Sugar Land, Texas. A pool. Business trips. Rome. The Vatican. A rumor that his boss paid for him to go see the Pope. The kind of perks not often handed out to just any accountant or comptroller for an oil and gas company. Or maybe they were, I have no clue!

My mom said my grandfather had written a letter she and my Nanny found once while snooping. It said he knew something wasn’t right. That he had plans to take legal action. Said the money was missing. One day, he went to the bank to pick up a prescription or something and the account was empty or drastically low on funds. That letter was supposedly found tucked away in a drawer at my aunt’s house. Apparently, it wasn’t meant to be seen again.

I never saw it. But the story found me. And it never let go.

It stuck to me like dust on an old road. One of those family mysteries that never quite gets resolved. Like someone turned the page too early and the rest of the chapter blew away.

I don’t know if the oil stock was stolen or if it really existed. I don’t know what actually happened in those months after Grace passed. I don’t know if anyone truly does anymore.

But I know this:

My grandfather was a kind, honorable man. A World War II veteran. A helper. A light. Well loved and respected by all who knew him. And, while I didn’t have the honor of getting to know him myself he remains one of my greatest heroes. He loved my dad like the son he never had, and my dad loved him right back. My Dad said my grandfather never trusted my uncle thought he was a crook, and I can’t help but trust my Dad.

When someone hurts people like that, even quietly, you remember. You carry it.

Not as a grudge. But as a warning. A note-to-self.

Don’t let the truth go missing.

Don’t let light slip through the cracks.

And don’t let “misplaced” be the last word on anything that mattered.

IV. The Battle for Grace

Before there was a missing oil stock, there was a courtroom.

And before there was a courtroom, there was a decision.

At one point in her life, Grace was affiliated with the Church of Scientology. It’s not something many people in my family talked about, but it’s part of her story. For a while, she had written a will in their favor. By the time she met my grandparents, Robert and Helen, everything changed.

She chose them. With her time, her love, her light and eventually, with her will.

And that decision didn’t sit well with everyone.

What followed was an actual legal dispute: Scientology vs. Grace’s final wishes.

I’ve seen the paperwork. We paid for copies of the public court documents over a decade ago. I’ve held the disposition in my hands. This part isn’t rumor or secondhand memory. This part is real.

They accused my grandfather of manipulation. Of trying to take what didn’t belong to him.

He responded with calm fire.

Robert Kowalewski a veteran, husband, father and quiet man of faith stood in defense of Grace’s choice. He wasn’t flashy. He didn’t yell. He didn’t throw around money or intimidation. He simply stood up and told the truth.

He said she changed her mind.

He said she changed her heart.

He said she chose us.

And the courts agreed.

They ruled in favor of my grandparents. Grace’s revised will stood. Her belongings—her house, her property, her heirlooms were officially passed to the people she wanted to have them. To the family she built, not the institution she left behind.

That courtroom battle is rarely talked about now. But to me, it’s one of the most sacred parts of the story. Because it wasn’t just about wealth or ownership. It was about choice. About loyalty. About legacy.

Grace had no biological children, but she knew how to leave a mark on the world.

She left it in dogs and stories and rooms filled with sass.

She left it in my mother’s childhood.

She left it in the way she changed the course of our lives.

And my grandfather? He made sure her voice didn’t get erased.

If there’s a quieter kind of heroism, I don’t know it.

V. What Grace Really Left Behind

The oil stock may have vanished, but Grace left behind something you couldn’t lose even if you tried.

She left behind light.

Not the kind you can measure in wattage or worth. The kind that spills into a family quietly, in stories, in laughter, in the places she made possible. She left it in the rooms she filled with joy, in the friendships she formed with people who weren’t hers by blood but became hers by heart.

And that’s what Grace really left us. Not oil. Not bank accounts. Not property, though there was plenty of that. What she gave us was the kind of wealth you don’t measure in dollars. She gave us the freedom to grow into our own version of family. To rise out of hardship with our dignity intact. She gave us proof that chosen family is real. That light doesn’t ask for a blood test. That generosity, once given, never really dies.

She chose us. And we’ve spent every generation since trying to live up to that.

VI. Going the Distance

Maybe the stock is still out there somewhere.

Tucked into a drawer. Folded inside a file.

Forgotten or hidden by hands that never quite knew what they were holding.

Or maybe they knew exactly what they were holding.

Maybe that stock didn’t vanish.

Maybe it became a company. A salary. A job title.

A new future someone always wanted but never earned.

A quiet fortune built on someone else’s legacy.

Maybe the oil wasn’t just underground—it was underhanded. Or maybe it wasn’t?

But maybe, just maybe it was never really about the stock.

Maybe it was always about the light.

Maybe Grace knew.

Maybe William did too.

Maybe they left just enough of a trail for the rest of us to find them.

Not with court records or receipts.

But with stories. Legends. Mysteries.

Somewhere, William’s still racing.

Somewhere, Grace is laughing in fur and pearls.

Somewhere, my grandfather’s standing in a courtroom, speaking softly but with the weight of something true behind him.

And somewhere in that same light, we’re still going the distance.

Not for glory. Not for gold.

But because they went first.

Because they left a map.

Because love, once chosen, doesn’t disappear.

It just keeps running….

VII. Legacy in Motion: A Soundtrack for Cockeyed Brown

There’s a song that plays in my head every time I think about William Wayne Brown. It’s not old. It’s not vintage. It’s not something from his era at all. It’s from mine.

CAKE.

The 90s.

“Going the Distance.”

It hits with that deep, grinding bassline like rubber chewing pavement and never lets up. You hear it once, and you feel like you’re behind the wheel of something that might fall apart at 120 mph but will look damn good doing it.

He’s going the distance.

He’s going for speed.

It’s the kind of song that doesn’t just describe a race it is one. Breathless, relentless, filled with a kind of dry, smart, understated swagger that only a band like CAKE could pull off. Monotone vocals over adrenaline. Desperation under cool. It’s the kind of track that played in the background of a hundred chaotic afternoons in my teenage years—on burned CDs, late-night drives, folding laundry with angst and purpose.

And somehow, even now, all these years later, it still makes me think of Cockeyed Brown.

Not because he knew the song. But because the song knows him.

It’s in the rhythm. The power. The single-minded obsession of it all. The way the song never slows down. The way it pushes forward, track after track, refusing to pull over even when the engine’s smoking.

That was William Wayne “Cockeyed” Brown.

The original. The blueprint. The driver before drivers knew what was possible.

When I hear CAKE, I don’t just hear music. I hear legacy in motion.

And I can’t help but think:

He was going the distance.

TITLE

Coheed and Cambria: More Than a Band, a Universe! A Searching for Stars Tribute

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 17:00:04 GMT

Coheed and Cambria: A Favor House Atlantic

A Band That Redefined Storytelling in Music

Some bands make great music. Some bands tell great stories.

Coheed and Cambria does both and more.

For over two decades, they’ve built a universe that transcends genre. A fusion of progressive rock, post-hardcore, and science fiction so intricately woven that their albums aren’t just records; they’re chapters in an ever-expanding epic. Their music isn’t background noise. It’s a full-body, cinematic experience.

Few bands achieve what Coheed has: a dedicated following not just because of the sound, but because of the multi-media mythology they’ve created The Amory Wars spanning albums, graphic novels, and novels.

To the casual listener, they might sound like a high energy rock band with a distinct voice. But for those who step inside their world? It’s a rabbit hole of creativity. Once you’re in, you never quite come back out.

⸻

The Amory Wars & Coheed’s Unique Genius

At the core of Coheed’s music is The Amory Wars, a science fiction saga created by frontman Claudio Sanchez. It’s a story of war, rebellion, loss, and fate—set against the backdrop of a galaxy where truth is slippery and the stakes are existential.

Each album expands the story, acting as both soundtrack and vessel—not just telling a tale but immersing listeners in it.

Even if you don’t know the lore, you feel it in the music:

• The guitars aren’t just riffs they’re battle cries.

• The drums don’t just keep time they set destinies in motion.

• The lyrics feel like transmissions coded, emotional, and urgent.

Coheed and Cambria isn’t just a band you listen to.

It’s one you live inside.

⸻

2004: High School, Warped Tour , and the Soundtrack to Change

Seventeen years old. High school hallways.

A fist in the air, shouting Coheed lyrics without hesitation.

“Bye-bye, beautiful! Don’t bother to write!”

I didn’t care who was watching.

Coheed wasn’t just in my headphones. They were in my bloodstream. Their music made me feel powerful, unstoppable—like I belonged to something bigger.

That summer, I saw them live at Warped Tour 2004.

We had tickets for the Houston show, but storms shut the whole thing down.

We could refund the tickets or drive to Dallas.

There was never really a choice.

We packed up and hit the road.

Dallas was blazing hot! The kind of heat that clings to you. Until all at once like a cinematic turn, the sky split wide open.

Senses Fail took the stage, struck the first chord—

And the sky answered.

Rain, all at once.

The entire crowd erupted—soaked, screaming, moving as one. One of those rare moments where music cracks through reality and becomes something else entirely.

Later that day, Coheed took the stage.

And everything shifted.

The moment they started playing, I knew this wasn’t just a performance.

It was a portal into another world.

⸻

Meeting Claudio: The Architect of a Universe

After the set, we wandered through the merch tents, still buzzing with adrenaline.

And then...there he was.

Claudio Sanchez, sitting at the Vans booth.

Not an untouchable rock star. Not some larger than-life icon. Just a guy, in a band, talking to people like it was nothing.

But it wasn’t nothing.

Because what he created wasn’t just an album or a performance it was a world, a movement, a force of nature.

I didn’t fumble over words. Didn’t freeze. Just said hi, got a picture, and bought my first pair of black-and-white checkered Vans.

A simple moment.

But some moments stick.

Years later, on my wedding day, I’d look down and see those same Vans on my feet.

⸻

Motion With Purpose

Coheed doesn’t just make music. They create motion.

Every note surges forward. Every lyric propels you.

And in 2005, I needed that more than ever.

The day I graduated, my mom had moved to Florida.

My dad and stepmom were separating, and my dad left for an Indian reservation in the middle of his heartache.

Bobby and his band, Attractive and Popular, felt like the only family I had left.

My life was untethered, shifting, uncertain.

And so, I did the only thing that made sense:

I hit the road. Eighteen, fresh out of high school, a passenger on a tour headed all over the U.S. weaving in and out of the underground music scene like shadows with purpose, chasing sound, sweat, and something to believe in.”

On our adventure we passed through Coheed and Cambria’s hometown, met people who knew them personally.

It was a surreal, unexpected connection one of those moments where music feels even bigger than before. They weren’t just a band on a stage anymore; they were real, woven into the world I was moving through.

⸻

The Music That Doesn’t Fade

Now, years later, I still listen to In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3.

Not out of nostalgia but because it still moves. It still means something.

Some albums become companions through time.

This is one of them.

And beside me, in the car, my son Jaxon hums along.

He knows I saw them live.

He knows I still love them.

He knows this music doesn’t just play it lives in me.

⸻

A Universe That Keeps Expanding

Coheed and Cambria has built something rare: a universe that continues to grow while still holding space for the people who stepped into it years ago.

Their music isn’t trapped in time...it evolves, breathes, moves forward, and brings us with it.

And for those of us who’ve been there since the early days, fists in the air in high school hallways or soaked in rain at Warped Tour we’re still here. Still listening.

Because some music doesn’t fade.

And some stories?

They’re still being written.

TITLE

Car: There’s Nothing Wrong with Dreams

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 16:59:23 GMT

B uilt to Spill : Car

Some songs start like background noise,

and end up scoring your whole life.

Sitting in the car with my brother Bobby.

Sunset bleeding through the windows,

cold outside, but almost spring.

I was about fourteen.

Too young to know who I’d become,

old enough to feel the ache of wanting something more.

We didn’t say much. We didn’t need to.

The engine was off, the radio was on.

“You get the car, I’ll get the night off…”

It played like it knew us. Like it knew what it meant to feel stuck in a small town,

but still carry a head full of big ideas and late-night dreams.

Bobby had always been the cool one.

The one who knew the good music before it became good to everyone else.

He didn’t explain why songs mattered he just let you feel it.

And that day, I did.

I didn’t know exactly what the lyrics meant,

but I knew how they made me feel

like maybe everything I was hoping for wasn’t so far away after all.

I didn’t know it then, but Car was already carving a space inside me.

That quiet moment with Bobby, the cold air, the half-promise of spring

it was just the beginning.

The song would follow me.

Through every version of myself.

I kept singing it.

In my room. In the car.

Under my breath when I felt lost.

Loudly when I felt found.

I’d sing it to Jamie, when we were first falling in love.

Eyes closed, fist in the air, singing with all my soul like the universe could hear me.

Like the song already knew what we were becoming.

And then I had babies—

these tiny, perfect souls that somehow cracked me open in the best way.

And without even thinking, I found myself singing to them,

“I wanna see movies of my dreams…”

as if those dreams were theirs now, too.

“I wanna see it when you find out what comets, moons, and stars are all about…”

And I meant it with every cell in my body.

I meant it in a way I didn’t even understand when I was fourteen.

That line became a kind of lullaby.

Not the soft, sleepy kind but the cosmic kind.

The kind that says:

“You are made of magic, little one. And I want to be here for all of it.”

The house would be quiet, the kind of quiet that only happens in those

newborn hours when the rest of the world feels like it’s sleeping off its noise.

I’d step onto the Total Gym, easing into slow, gentle squats—

the rhythm rocking him closer to sleep.

And I’d sing.

Built to Spill.

Sometimes Big Dipper but mostly Car.

“I wanna see movies of my dreams…”

At fourteen, those lyrics felt like escape.

A call to the stars.

A promise that there was more out there...more to feel, more to find,

more waiting in the midst of this weird, beautiful life.

Now they feel like a wish.

Not for myself, but for them.

For Jaxon. For Maggie. For Gracie.

I want them to see it all their dreams, their comets, their moons, their stars.

I want to be there when they do.

It’s funny how a song about longing becomes a song about love.

How something that once felt like yours alone becomes a gift you hand down.

Bobby gave me the song without even realizing what he was doing.

We were just sitting in the car, letting the stereo do the talking.

But somehow, that moment planted something.

A seed that grew into a soundtrack.

He didn’t know it’d become a lullaby.

Didn’t know it would echo through dimly lit rooms,

through early mornings and midnight feedings,

through soft rocking and starlit promises.

But it did.

And every time I sing it now,

I go right back to that car,

right back to the sunset,

right back to the part of me

that still believes music is magic written in the stars.

The best songs don’t shout. They linger.

You don’t notice at first

then one day, you realize it’s your memory’s favorite soundtrack

TITLE

Cemetry Gates: Hopewell’s Borrowed Silence

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 06:45:00 GMT

The Smiths : Cemetry Gates

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” —Oscar Wilde

Some kids had playgrounds. I had Hopewell Cemetery.

My mom said it was historical. I thought it was holy.

We lost a lot of people early; friends, family, my grandparents and somehow the cemetery became less a place of endings and more like a neighborhood with long, quiet conversations. I’d sit under the trees, fingers tracing the names in stone, talking to people I missed, or just lying back, watching the clouds drift like thoughts.

Sometimes I’d bring flowers. Sometimes I’d bring secrets.

I didn’t always know what to say, but the quiet never minded. That’s the thing about cemeteries if you sit still long enough, they start talking back. Not in words. In breeze. In memory. In the way the grass leans toward you like it remembers, too.

Hopewell wasn’t eerie to me. It was sacred. Familiar. A place where the veil felt thinner, where I could be soft without apology.

⸻

The first time I heard Cemetry Gates by The Smiths, I felt seen in the strangest way.

Morrissey wasn’t mourning. He was waltzing through the same kind of place I’d grown up in with wit, not weeping. A graveyard, yes, but no grief. Just two people talking, sparring over stolen lines and long-dead poets.

I loved that. The refusal to make it all heavy. The way it said: You can be reverent and still laugh. You can walk among the stones without bowing your head.

“Keats and Yeats are on your side / But you lose / ’Cause Wilde is on mine.”

I didn’t know who I sided with back then, but I knew I wanted to be the kind of person who could throw out a line like that and mean it.

⸻

Oscar Wilde always felt like a kindred spirit to me. Not because I’m nearly as clever, but because he taught me the power of turning pain into punchlines.

There’s a quiet rebellion in humor. A refusal to let sorrow take the whole stage. Wilde knew that. So does Morrissey, in his own peculiar way.

And maybe I didn’t fully realize it then, but walking through Hopewell with a notebook in my lap, scribbling poems and prayers and random observations that was my own weird version of Wilde. My way of saying, I’m here, I see you, and I refuse to be quiet about it.

⸻

People think of cemeteries as places where life ends. But for me, they were where life took shape.

I learned how to listen there. How to remember. How to imagine.

As a kid, I’d talk to friends who were gone, to grandparents I missed with my whole chest. I’d pray. I’d play. Sometimes I’d just be still.

And I think those hours made me a better artist, a better mother, a better human. They taught me reverence not the church kind, but the real kind. The kind that makes you pay attention.

⸻

I still love Cemetry Gates. Still laugh when Wilde wins the line. Still believe there’s something holy about walking among the names and letting your thoughts stretch past the edges of your skin.

I don’t go to Hopewell as often as I used to, but when I do, I bring my kids. I show them the trees. The quiet. The stones that remember our people.

And maybe one day, they’ll hear that song. Maybe they’ll grin at the bickering over poets. Maybe they’ll understand why cemeteries don’t scare me.

Maybe they’ll know that sometimes, the most alive you’ll ever feel is when you’re sitting with the dead, borrowing a little silence for yourself, turning it into a story and realizing, Wilde was right. Even from the gutter, you can find stars.

TITLE

Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss: A Melody for the Stars

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 06:08:53 GMT

Built to Spill : Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss

The first time I heard Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss, I didn’t just listen I felt it. It was the kind of song that made me want to pull over on the side of the road, throw my arms in the air, and run through an open field like I could lift off if I moved fast enough. At seventeen, that feeling meant everything.

Built to Spill had already settled into my bloodstream long before I got my hands on Ancient Melodies of the Future. My brother had made sure of that, slipping albums into my world, soundtracking my coming-of-age years with Doug’s voice, those tangled guitars, that raw and perfect imperfection. But this album this song hit me so much differently.

There was something untamed about it. The way the guitar slurred and lurched, the way the drums felt like they could fall apart at any moment but never did. It was soulful, wild, and free. And I was at an age where I wanted to be all of those things.

So I played it on repeat. I let it move through me, let it push me forward, let it become the sound of a summer where I wasn’t quite a kid but wasn’t yet an adult. I wasn’t sure what came next, but I knew how this song made me feel like I was already flying.

But that summer faded, and by the time fall settled in, I kind of felt more like I was free falling.

I was standing at the edge of adulthood, unsure of what I was supposed to do next. The certainty I had felt in music, in movement, in the wild rush of summer had started to slip away. I didn’t have the answers, and I didn’t have much in the way of guidance either. Just the people I had chosen as my family, friends who kept me grounded when I felt like I was spinning out.

That’s how I found myself one evening in a house that wasn’t mine, surrounded by people who felt like home. It was Carl’s kid’s house his ex-wife Melissa’s (to be exact). I was there with Jessie and Becky, two of Carl’s daughters, along with their niece, Emily and her mother Brandy.

Emily was still a baby then, maybe ten months old. I didn’t have much experience with babies just enough to know they were fragile, breakable things. I was still nervous around them, afraid I’d do something wrong, that I wasn’t careful enough or gentle enough. But that day, Brandy let me hold her.

And I remember feeling overwhelmed by that.

Like it was an honor. Like she trusted me with something precious.

I held her carefully at first, adjusting to her small weight in my arms. And then I started swaying. Rocking back and forth, finding an easy rhythm. Without thinking, I started to hum. And then I was singing, soft at first, just for her—

“Fly around my pretty little miss, why don’t you fly around my pretty little miss?”

I don’t know why that song came out of me in that moment. Maybe because it had been there all along, nestled somewhere deep in my bones. Maybe because I had spent months feeling like I was spinning out, and now, holding her, I felt suddenly and completely still.

There, in that living room, in the middle of all my uncertainty, something inside me settled. I looked at Emily Carl’s granddaughter, Billy’s baby and for the first time in what felt like forever, I understood something.

This.

This was what life was about.

Love. Family. Connection.

The generations that come and go. The lives we shape. The legacies we leave behind.

I kept singing. Kept swaying. Kept holding on.

But life, like music, keeps moving.

Time doesn’t wait. Babies grow, songs fade into the background until you find yourself singing them again, arms wrapped around a new little life.

Emily is no longer a baby. She’s a young woman now, one of those rare, bright lights that the world is lucky to have. And me? I have three children of my own. Two beautiful daughters that I have held in my arms at the same age, singing to them softly, the same way I did to Emily all those years ago.

And each time, I have felt that same grounding presence. That same overwhelming gratitude. That same knowing this is what life is about.

The song never faded.

Even now, twenty years later, it pulses through me the same way it did when I was seventeen. It still makes me want to pull over, run through a field, throw my arms in the air, and sing at the top of my lungs.

And maybe that’s the point.

“Open up your window just in case

You’re a radar built to scan the deeps of outer space.”

Maybe we’re all searching for something...some sign in the stars, some connection, some proof that we’re exactly where we’re meant to be.

“And if you recognize subtle patterns in the sky,

Don’t take it as a sign unless it eases your mind.”

But music does ease my mind.

And I do take it as a sign.

A sign that I was here. That I am here.

A sign to keep moving, to keep singing, to keep my arms open to the wind.

TITLE

A Map Stitched in Time: Tracing the Threads of the Past

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 05:53:09 GMT

Film: Split Infinity

Film: The two Worlds of Jennie Logan

The imagination of a child can take you to endless worlds on the other side of the stars where magic allows time travel to break the space time continuum at any moment…

The First Time Travel Jump—Split Infinity

When I open my eyes, I am somewhere else.

The Shannons’ living room, warm and familiar, the glow of an old TV screen flickering against the walls. I can hear the hum of the VHS player, the quiet rustling of someone shifting on the couch. The smell of popcorn lingers, and for a moment, I forget whether this is real or something I’ve stepped back into.

The movie is already playing. A girl just a little older than me falls through time, slipping between past and present like it’s as simple as turning a page. My fingers curl around the edge of the blanket draped over my legs.

Can time travel be that easy?

Could I do it too?

The hum of the VHS player shifts into something new. The world around me bends again, pulling me from the comfort of the Shannons’. The world around me seems to twist, just like it did in the movie, as if the boundaries between past and present were never meant to stay fixed. With a blink, I’m no longer in the Shannons’ living room, but standing in another time a place where VHS tapes line the shelves like windows into different worlds.

The Next Jump—Finding The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan

Time bends again. A flicker of static, a shift in gravity, and suddenly…

I land in an old video store, the kind with narrow aisles and rows of plastic cases stacked too tight, their corners worn from years of hands flipping them over, reading the backs, deciding what story to take home.

My mom gasps. ‘Oh my God, I loved this movie.’

She holds up a dusty VHS tape, the cover slightly faded, the title in soft, elegant letters: The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan.

I’ve never heard of it. It looks old.

‘It’s about a woman who finds an old dress and it’s hard to explain. She goes back in time.’

She flips it over, reading the blurb like she’s seeing it for the first time in years.

I glance at the price sticker.

A quarter.

Twenty-five cents for a portal through time. Twenty-five cents for a forgotten world.

We buy it. Take it home. Put it in the player. And when it starts, I feel that same pull in my chest the same feeling I had watching Split Infinity, except this time, it’s different.

This time, it’s not just about traveling through time.

It’s about longing for something already gone.

Watching The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan

As I slide the tape into the player, the present starts to blur into something else, something deeper. The room fades as I’m pulled back into another world one where time isn’t linear but dances between what was and what could have been.

The lights are off. The glow of the TV flickers against the walls, soft and golden. I sit curled up on the bean bag, a blanket wrapped around my legs, Mom and Nanny sitting close.

The movie plays soft music, sweeping dresses, an old Victorian house full of ghosts from another time. A woman finds a forgotten dress in an attic, slips it over her head, and suddenly, she isn’t here anymore. She’s somewhere else. Some other place in time.

I glance at my mom. She’s watching, eyes fixed on the screen, lost in something deeper than just the movie.

Her expression shifts, something flickering across her face not just nostalgia, but something quieter, deeper. I wonder what she’s remembering, if she’s thinking about a past that feels just out of reach.

I glance at Nanny. She smiles softly, like she’s already seen the ending but still loves the story anyway.

And then I look back at the screen. The main character is stepping forward, reaching out, pressing her fingers against something invisible an unseen thread between past and present.

Something in my chest tightens.

I wonder if I found the right dress, the right house, the right moment… could I do it too?

As the credits roll and the house around me settles back into its familiar shape, something stirs within me. The time-traveling dreams from the movie pull at the edges of my mind, and before I know it, I’m not just lost in the story anymore. I’m reaching for something real something that could take me to the past, just like the characters I’ve watched.

The Trunk as a Time Machine

I barely make it through the credits before I’m up, heart racing, heading straight for our family trunk.

I climb on top of it, arms stretched out, just like before. Just like always.

Only this time, it’s different.

This time, I know how it’s supposed to feel. The moment right before the leap. The shift, the pull, the breath caught in my chest.

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the air to hum, the ground to shake. My own dress is just an old nightgown, but in my mind, it’s something else. Something older, something from another world.

“Take me back.”

And I swear, just for a second I feel it.

The weightless drop in my stomach. The moment before the fall. The past stretching out in front of me like a thread I could follow if I just reached far enough.

I press my hands against the lid of the trunk, just like Jennie Logan reaching through time.

And that’s when I remember what’s inside.

The trunk feels heavy, filled with memories and moments that stretch across the years. As I sift through the artifacts within, I feel the weight of time in my hands. And then, the quilt worn and stitched with care—emerges from the depths, its history alive in every thread. A family quilt that has a piece of the first Texas flag sewn by Sarah Bradley Dodson ( my great great great great great Aunt) made in the early stages of the Texas Revolution leading up to The Battle of the Alamo.

The Quilt & The Lizard

It’s heavy, worn soft with time, stitched together by hands I never knew but somehow recognize. I pull it out, unfolding the layers, running my fingers over the seams, tracing the history sewn into every piece.

My favorite part of the quilt wasn’t the history stitched into it, or even the small piece of the first Texas flag... it was the lizard. A tiny, hand stitched lizard, embroidered by my great-grandmother Dora. It sat almost hidden, like a secret waiting to be found.

My Granny used to tell me stories about watching her mother quilt, how Dora would sit with family or friends, the soft rhythm of needle and thread moving through fabric, voices low and steady, hands working together like a quiet kind of music.

I used to trace the stitches of that tiny lizard with my fingers, as if I could feel a piece of her there her hands, her patience, the way she moved thread through fabric the same way my dad wove stories about her into my childhood.

Another Stitch in Time – The Texas History Quilt

Quilts tell stories. Every stitch, every patch, a moment in time, held together by the hands that came before.

In middle school, I took Texas History with Miss Madura, a teacher whose husband had supposedly coached Shaquille O’Neal in high school (something we all thought was the coolest fact ever). But the thing I remember most about her class wasn’t basketball it was the quilt. She had our entire class sew a Texas History quilt, with each of us designing a square dedicated to something meaningful from our state’s past.

My square was Sarah Bradley Dodson, sewing the first Texas flag. I remember pressing my pencil into the fabric, painting each stroke carefully, imagining her hands moving just like mine stitching something that would outlive her, something that would be remembered. I already knew what it meant to stitch history together.

I thought about Sarah sewing the first Texas flag her red stripe above the white, a symbol of unity and independence. I thought of Dora and all the hands that had shaped my story before me. I wanted my own piece to reflect that sense of purpose, of heritage, that same sense of possibility, where time bends, and the past reaches forward to meet the present, creating a connection that spans generations.”

When we finished, Mrs. Madura pieced it all together, stitching our stories into one shared tapestry. Years later, at graduation, she brought it back, unfolding it one last time before passing it on to someone else. I don’t know where it ended up, but I like to think it’s still out there somewhere stitched into time, a part of history.

The quilts I’ve seen, the pieces I’ve stitched, all remind me of the time I spent learning our history. But as the years passed, those same threads began to unravel, and the familiar comfort of family heirlooms started slipping away things I once thought would always be within reach.

The Loss Creeps In—The Memories Remain

A letter I used to hold... gone. A name, written in old ink, stolen, sold to someone who didn’t know its weight.

The trunk meant to hold the stories of generations, the heart of our family history lost? I can’t touch it, can’t pass it to my children.

I don’t even know who holds the key to our history.

The origin of our family’s Texas story. My Time Machine!

And occasionally that makes my stomach twist in a way I can’t quite explain. Because I was supposed to be able to pass my hands over those stitches for the rest of my life, for my children to run their tiny hands over the threads of their history.

And though this is a loss that truly aches sometimes, life is about so much more than the possession of physical items. Some of these artifacts may be lost from us, but the history behind them remains.

I take a step back. The room is still. The air holds steady.

But I can feel it like an echo, like a shadow, like something just out of reach.

Some things disappear. Some things slip through time, through hands, through memory.

But not everything. Some become memories that remain.

Maybe history isn’t something behind us at all. Maybe it’s a trail of light, stretching forward, waiting for us to follow it back.

I close my eyes for just a second, and it’s still there. History doesn’t vanish. It lives on in all of us, stitched into the fabric of who we are passed down through generations, carried forward in the stories we tell and the memories we preserve.

TITLE

Riders on the Storm: A Ghost on the Highway

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 05:22:44 GMT

The Doors: Riders on the Storm

Some people move through life like thunderheads on the horizon...distant, restless, always shifting. But my dad was different. He was the steady hum beneath the storm, the rhythm of tires on wet pavement, the deep voice in the night that never wavered, no matter how hard the rain fell.

My dad was a man of his word. The kind who paid his bills on time, who didn’t just make promises he kept them. A man of sharp wit and deeper thought, a seeker of truth, fascinated by the mysteries hidden beneath the surface of things. He found poetry in the unexplainable, wisdom in the wind. And when he spoke about Jim Morrison, it was never just about the music. It was about the man, the mind, the myth—about how Morrison felt things, how he saw the world through some strange and shifting lens, haunted by visions that never quite let go.

I remember him telling me the story; how Jim Morrison, as a little boy, came across a wreck on the roadside, how he saw Native Americans lying hurt or dying, their spirits rising into the night. Morrison swore he could feel them enter him, like ghosts passing through his skin, like echoes of something far older than he could understand.

I don’t know if my father believed in ghosts. But he believed in what lingers. In the way places remember us, the way music carries us forward, the way a storm never truly passes it just moves on.

And now, I feel him in the rain.

In the hush before the thunder.

In the sudden crack of lightning splitting the sky wide open.

In the songs that play when I need them most, like a hand reaching through time, like a voice saying, I’m still here.

There were things he never said outright, lessons he taught without ever needing to explain. That life is a storm, unpredictable and relentless, but you ride through it. That some things aren’t meant to be controlled. That the road never really ends, not even when you reach the last mile.

My dad understood something most people never do, that life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about riding through it. Finding beauty in the wreckage, poetry in the downpour, light in the disaster.

And he did.

He weathered every storm life threw at him, steady and certain, carrying on even when the road was rough, even when the rain blurred the horizon. He wasn’t a man who needed maps—he followed his own path, let the music guide him, trusted that wherever he was going, he’d get there when he was meant to.

And now, he’s somewhere I can’t follow.

When I was little, my dad had a small engine repair shop, and I spent more time there than most kids probably would. I’d walk up from our house, my dog trotting beside me, pushing open the door to the scent of oil and metal and something distinctly him. In the office, there was always a cold drink waiting for me in his mini fridge, usually a Yoo-hoo, like a quiet acknowledgment that he knew I’d show up.

On the wall, above the scattered notes and work orders, was a tack board cluttered with papers and reminders but right in the middle, pinned with a pushpin, was a Little Mermaid valentine I had given him.

On the bathroom door, staring down at me every time I walked past, was a life-size Jim Morrison poster. It was just part of the place, like the music playing from the old stereo, like the hum of machines in the background. Like my dad steady, unshaken, carrying the things he loved with him, always.

He didn’t just love The Doors he studied them. He read Morrison’s poetry, dissected his words, traced the weight of each lyric like it held some hidden map to understanding the world.

Those books Morrison’s ramblings, his visions, his wild-eyed American prayers they were passed down to me like an inheritance, pages worn from time and touch.

And maybe that’s why I think the way I do.

Why I can’t just listen to a song I have to pull it apart, turn it over, find the marrow of meaning inside it.

Why I still get lost in words, in poetry, in the rhythm of things unsaid.

Because my dad wasn’t just passing down books he was passing down a way of seeing the world.

I can still see him behind the wheel of his Bravada, one hand resting on the steering wheel, the other tapping in time with the music.

That car was more than just transportation it was a constant, a thread running through time, a vessel of memory still moving forward even after he was gone.

It’s the car I learned to drive in, the car my brother still sometimes drives today, as if some part of our dad never stopped rolling down the highway.

And the music...The Doors were always playing.

My entire life, the voices, the words, the wild poetry were the backdrop to long stretches of road, to childhood, to growing up, to the moments that linger between dreams and waking.

Now, they are the soundtrack to memory, the echo of my father’s voice in the wind.

And every time I hear Riders on the Storm, I feel it...the presence, the movement, the knowing.

He’s out there somewhere, still driving, still rolling through the rain, still riding the storm on the other side.

TITLE

To My Children

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 04:59:26 GMT

You are the reason the stars still shine for me.

Every piece of this project is stitched together with love, memory, and the hope that you’ll one day understand how much light you brought into my life even on the darkest days. These stories were born from songs that raised me, moments that shaped me, and the people who loved me into being. But more than anything, they are a map back to you.

I want you to know where you came from not just the names or dates, but the sounds, the feelings, the truths that lived between the lines. I want you to see that even in chaos, there was meaning. Even in loss, there was music. And even in silence, there was a voice still learning how to speak.

You are the next verse. The brightest spark. The living proof that love continues, and stories matter.

One day, when you’re older, I hope you read these pieces and feel seen. I hope you laugh at the weird bits, feel brave in the tender ones, and find yourself in the echoes. I hope it reminds you that life doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful... that broken things can still shine, and that your story, whatever it becomes, is worthy of light.

And if ever you forget how much I love you—

press play.

I’ll be right here, in the music.

In the pause between the notes.

In the stars overhead.

Love always,

Mom

To My Children

Thank You: My Kids!

The Adventures of Power: Air Drumming into Oblivion

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 04:49:42 GMT

Rush : Tom Sawyer

Film: Adventures of Power

Jamie and I just really loved this movie! We saw it a few years after it came out probably around 2012 or 2013. I remember we rented it, one of the last few movies we ever rented from the video store before they disappeared. It was the end of the video store era, and The Adventures of Power somehow felt like the perfect movie to close it out with.

We laughed and laughed. It was hilarious just the kind of unexpected, absurd humor that stays with you long after you’ve seen it. But beyond the ridiculousness, there was something oddly inspiring about Power, this air-drumming factory worker chasing an impossible dream.

And then there was Rush.

Rush was already an incredible band to begin with so much depth, so much talent, so many layers in their music. But for me, Rush will always tie back to Carl. Carl loved Rush. He had this Rush t-shirt he wore all the time, and I remember him telling my mom once that when he died, he wanted to be buried in that shirt, a pair of shorts, and flip-flops. He was a classic rock guy, through and through. On weekends, he’d put a Rush CD in the stereo, turn the speakers up, and let it blast while he cleaned out the carport or worked in the yard. That’s how I remember Rush echoing through the house, filling up the space, always there in the background.

So watching The Adventures of Power, seeing how Tom Sawyer was woven into it, made it even better. It was already a hilarious, weirdly uplifting film, but the Rush connection gave it another layer of nostalgia.

If Rush already made the movie better, then this song took it to another level. Because “Tom Sawyer” isn’t just a song... it’s a force. From the opening synth line to the thundering drum fills, it hits with this wild, untamed energy that never fades. The lyrics feel like an anthem for independence, for thinking differently, for chasing something bigger than yourself. Every part of it is iconic Geddy Lee’s sharp, soaring vocals, Alex Lifeson’s electrifying guitar work, and Neil Peart’s drumming, which is nothing short of legendary. The way he moves across the kit, shifting between complex rhythms and explosive fills, makes the entire song feel like it’s charging forward at full speed. It’s one of those tracks that demands your attention, pulls you into its world, and leaves you feeling like you’ve just experienced something bigger than music.”

We weren’t looking for it, but somehow, this ridiculous movie and its soundtrack found us. Like a secret signal, waiting to be heard. We only saw it once, but it stuck with us. Like some cosmic fluke this weird, ridiculous little film we stumbled onto at the very end of the video store era, right before everything changed.

Now every time I hear Tom Sawyer I think of Power too—and I can’t help but be inspired by his passion! We still laugh about it, still talk about it, still bring up random moments from it years later. It’s this underground gem, a secret favorite that almost no one seems to know about. And honestly, that makes it seem even more special.

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Once in a Lifetime: Drowning in Echoes

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 20:53:21 GMT

Talking Heads : Once in a Lifetime

The water runs.

A slow, steady stream, swirling down the drain in quiet, hypnotic loops, disappearing before it can be traced.

I watch, but I’m not really watching.

My hands move scrubbing, rinsing but I don’t feel them.

The motion is automatic.

I blink, and my reflection stares back at me in the window above the sink.

Not just my face, but everything behind me...

A home filled with pieces of a life I built, a life I love.

And yet, in this moment, it feels as though I’m watching it all from behind glass.

“And you may ask yourself… how did I get here?”

The lyric surfaces like an old thought, looping through my mind, circling back in on itself.

How did I get here?

How did I move from one version of myself to another, without ever noticing the shift?

Somewhere along the way, time started slipping

through my fingers.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling the weight of the days.

Somewhere along the way, I started floating through them instead.

Time Slips:A Life in Fragments

The past pulls at the edges of my mind.

It rushes in not as a story, but as flickering moments, half formed and shifting in flashes.

A bonfire crackles against the night.

The air smells like burning wood and autumn.

Laughter moves through the trees, warm, familiar.

For a moment, I can feel the heat on my skin.

But before I can reach for it, the moment fades.

The Teenage Years:The Numbness of Survival

The cold seeps in.

Normangee, Texas. A town that feels like it exists in the space between moments.

A trailer park. A space too small, too dark, too empty.

Electricity that worked sometimes.

Hot water that worked never.

Nights spent staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing, waiting for time to pass.

No money. No car. Sometimes, no food.

A life that didn’t feel like mine.

There were two versions of my mother.

One burned bright, laughing loud enough to shake the walls, dreaming fast enough to outrun time.

She could make life feel electric—wild, golden, bursting with possibility.

Her energy could set the whole world on fire.

And then...

The stillness.

The weight of silence pressing against the walls.

A shadow behind her eyes, something too deep for words.

She would drift, fade, disappear into herself,

and I would hold my breath, waiting for the return of her fire.

I never knew which version of her would wake up each morning.

I never knew how long she would stay.

But I loved her in every season.

Through every storm, through every silence, through every light that flickered and fought to stay.

I still do.

Time passed. Days blurred.

I floated through them, waiting to be somewhere else, someone else.

The Rhythm of a Life Interrupted

A drumbeat.

A Texas night.

Trey behind the drums, keeping time, locked into a rhythm that feels bigger than us.

Bobby on guitar, a song filling the air, laughter in between the music.

Trey was alive in a way that made you feel more alive, too.

And then...

A night that doesn’t feel real.

The kind that splits time in half.

Trey was gone.

A town brought to its knees in a single night.

His mother’s screams at the funeral.

The weight of silence that followed.

The way it never really felt real.

The way it still doesn’t.

Some things, you never get over.

The Music Fades…

A dimly lit coffee shop:Shaky Ground, Lake Charles.

The hum of conversation, the smell of coffee, the low buzz of an amplifier warming up.

My brother on stage, the glow of the lights cutting through the haze.

His hands move across the guitar, lost in the music, in the moment, in something bigger than either of us.

I watch from the crowd, feeling the sound pulse through my chest.

I am alive.

And then...

The memory flickers.

The scene shifts.

The music distorts, warps, stretches.

A different stage, a different night.

Bobby again years later, on tour.

I watch from the side of the stage this time, the energy of the crowd electric, moving in waves.

The music is loud, alive, vibrating in my bones.

I don’t know if I have ever felt more present than in moments like those.

But even those nights—those real nights—slip through my fingers now,

echoes of a room I can no longer step into.

The Void:Losing Time, Losing My Dad

The water still runs.

I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here.

I think about the time that has passed since losing my dad—

How I drifted through time, how life continued even when I wasn’t sure I was part of it.

Some days felt endless.

Other days vanished before I could register them.

I laughed. I lived. I kept moving.

But was I present?

That’s the worst part, isn’t it?

Not just the grief, but the fear of waking up one day

And realizing you weren’t really here for any of it.

The flood of memory feels like falling backward into water sudden, consuming, impossible to resist.

Somewhere beneath the weight of time, I can still feel the ache of what was lost before it had a chance to exist.

My first pregnancy ended before I could even hold the word mother in my hands.

And yet, the grief arrived as if I had carried it full term.

The anxiety followed relentless, sharp, shapeless.

Days stretched into months, and I floated through them, afraid of a body that had failed me, afraid of time slipping forward before I was ready.

Jamie:A Steady Hand in the Chaos

My mind wanders, and memories flash like lightning bolts.

The times we packed up everything and moved, just because.

Driving through states with no plan, no direction,

just possibility stretching out in every direction.

And then...

The rain.

Warm, heavy summer rain, falling in thick sheets.

Jamie and I, soaked to the bone, dancing in the downpour,

barefoot in the front yard, barely newlyweds,

laughing like we had all the time in the world.

Water pooling in our footprints, hunting for crawdads,

thunder rolling in the distance.

It felt like something out of a dream,

like for a moment, the world had paused just for us.

The memories keep looping, cycling, pulling me under,

Until a touch brings me back.

Jamie.

His presence is like gravity, something steady, something real.

His arms find me, his voice cuts through the fog.

A Tether Back to Now

The water still runs.

Jamie pulls me close.

My children laugh.

A sound so light, so golden, it fills the spaces between the past and now.

I let it pull me back.

The past is still there, tucked into the edges of my mind.

The loss, the love, the echoes of every version of me I’ve ever been.

The weight of time still lingers.

But for now...

I am here.

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Subterranean Homesick Blues: Searching for Stars in the Static

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 20:01:49 GMT

Bob Dylan : Subterranean Homesick Blues

Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues wasn’t written for this era, but damn if it didn’t feel like it. Chaotic, fast, relentless. The kind of song that doesn’t wait for you to catch up. The kind of song that, even if you don’t understand every word, you feel it. That rapid fire delivery so urgent, so raw matched the energy of a world unraveling in real time. Every day, a new crisis. Every minute, a new breaking story. Every second, a fresh reason to panic.

You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

But in 2020, the wind wasn’t just blowing it was unraveling.

A gust of panic, a rush of headlines, a world tilting too fast for anyone to find their footing.

It started as a whisper, a ripple in the distance then a wave.

Two weeks, they said. Just a pause. Just a moment to catch our breath.

But the world inhaled, and when it exhaled, everything had changed.

The streets emptied. The doors shut. The static swallowed the silence.

Stay home. Stay apart. Stay afraid.

Or...

Look closer. See through the cracks.

Because the cracks were everywhere, and the truth was shifting like smoke.

The airwaves hummed with contradictions same song, different verse.

Wear this. Don’t wear this. Trust this. Fear that.

The rules changed mid sentence, and no one seemed to notice.

We weren’t driving anymore just passengers on a train with no stops, no conductor, no clear destination.

A loop of flashing numbers, scrolling warnings, voices crashing into one another until everything blurred into white noise.

And just as the world went quiet, the streets exploded.

Fires, protests, anger spilling over like a dam had finally cracked.

A summer of movement, of voices demanding to be heard.

An election looming like a storm cloud.

Everything felt inevitable, everything felt uncertain.

Everything felt like something out of a movie.

The world was coming undone at the seams, and suddenly, I was eight years old again, sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening to my dad unravel the mysteries of the universe government cover-ups, shadowy figures pulling the strings, the kind of theories that seemed too wild to be true, until suddenly, they didn’t. His voice echoed in my head through the static of 2020, through the chaos of lockdowns and shifting narratives, the flickering news cycles that felt less like reporting and more like a script we weren’t meant to question. We talked more than ever then—long, winding conversations where past and present blurred, where his old warnings suddenly felt prophetic. He’d always said the world wasn’t what it seemed, and for the first time, I understood what he meant. The fear, the manipulation, the way truth became something you had to dig for.

Dylan’s wisdom, like a signal through the static.

a reminder that this song had been playing long before we arrived.

A soundtrack to unraveling,

to waking up,

to seeing the world as it was, not as they told us it should be.

And then came the wake.

The post pandemic hush, the world stitching itself back together

with hands still trembling from what it had just endured.

But for me, the world had already unraveled.

My uncle.

My beautiful cousin.

Names slipping into the quiet, into the spaces where grief lingers long after the headlines fade.

October 2021 my father was gone.

Not from the virus, but perhaps “the cure” itself

From the healthcare neglect and the weight of everything after.

The loneliness. The isolation. The slow erosion of a man who had already weathered too much.

And I remember the music.

Dylan’s voice, steady as the stars, unraveling time itself.

A song that never stopped being true.

A warning. A reckoning. A hymn for those still searching.

Because the world didn’t stop.

The machine kept moving.

The outrage cycle spun on, faster than ever.

The next crisis, the next battle, the next thing to fear.

The pump don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles.

And here we are.

Still spinning, still reeling.

Still unsure if we lived through a great awakening or just got lost in another elaborate illusion.

Still trying to cut through the static, to find something true.

The music.

The past.

The voices that never wavered.

The ones who kept looking, never settling for the surface.

And so we keep searching. For light, for truth, for something steady in a world that won’t stop spinning. And still, Dylan’s voice remains woven through time, through memory, through the hum of history, reminding us that the song was always playing. We just finally started listening.

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That Old Black Hole: The Rhythm of Survival

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 19:54:00 GMT

Dr. Dog : That Old Black Hole

Some lyrics aren’t just heard they are felt. They pull, they push, they move through you, like shifting constellations overhead, like the years that change you before you even realize you’ve been remade. That Old Black Hole by Dr. Dog is one of those songs. A force. A rhythm that carried me through one of the most painfully defining stretches of my life.

The years 2009 through 2013 were a whirlwind of love and loss, of new beginnings, heartbreak, and transformation that left me breathless. The highs were brilliant, but the lows cut deep. My first years of marriage felt like an ocean crashing waves of passion and uncertainty, learning how to stand in love while the ground beneath us constantly shifted. The love between my husband and I was tested greatly by grief and fear, by the kind of hurt and loss that carves itself into your soul. The ectopic pregnancy that nearly took me with it. A bleakness that wrapped itself around me, so heavy I wasn’t sure I’d ever move the same way again. a loss so profound it felt like the ground had been stolen from beneath me. The way grief lingers, the way it changes you.

I remember feeling that weight, like the need for armor. Life had cracked open, spilling sorrow and uncertainty into places I wasn’t prepared for. The sharp edges of a reality I hadn’t expected—doctors saying, maybe you won’t be able to have children. (Spoiler alert: I have three because you can’t tell God what to do, and the human body is an incredible force of its own.) But at the time, it felt like a storm rolling in too fast to outrun. I was numb and raw all at once, like I was tiptoeing across eggshells, afraid to take up too much space in my own skin.

I got my eyes on the prize, but it looks just like a mystery.

Isn’t that how life moves? We set our sights on something...stability, healing, answers, but the closer we get, the more it shifts, like constellations rearranging themselves just when you think you’ve memorized the sky. For years, I chased the illusion of certainty, believing that if I just kept moving, I’d eventually find solid ground. But certainty drifts like a celestial mirage always close, never quite within reach. And just when you think you’ve arrived, you realize you’ve been running in circles all along.

There's a spirit in the air, and there ain't no way around it, I was not prepared to lose it on the moment that I found it

But maybe the prize isn’t just something waiting at the end of the road maybe it’s the journey itself, the resilience to keep going even when the path vanishes beneath your feet.

This song became a place to feel everything all at once. A place to heal. I let it pull me through the darkness. It wasn’t just the pain that defined those years for me it was survival. It was the fight for love. It was the way I kept dancing even when I thought I’d forgotten how. The frustration, the loss, the confusion, the desperate need to push forward when everything around me felt broken.

But this too passed, even if it left scars. And the music carried me through.

Now, when I hear this song, I don’t just remember the ache I feel the movement. I feel the rush of survival. Even when the darkness stretches endless and the ground feels like it will never steady beneath you, the stars still burn, constant and quiet. The world keeps spinning, carrying you forward. And you...you are still here, still shining, still finding your way.

Because even when the rhythm is chaotic, even when it feels like you’re lost in the wreckage, the music doesn’t stop. And neither do you.

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So Far Away: The Things That Still Hold Us Together

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:22:02 GMT

Television Series: Reba

Carole King : So Far Away

Reba : I'm a Survivor

Open – You Remind Me of Reba

My daughter told me recently that I remind her of Reba.

Not because I sing (trust me, I don’t) and not because of the red hair or the country twang.

She said it was the way I was smart, fun, sassy.

The way I held things together, even when they were broken.

At the time, I laughed feeling greatly honored.

Now, I think maybe she was onto something.

⸻

Scene One – Melissa’s House and the First Episode

I met Melissa the way you meet someone in a sitcom — nervous, unsure, bracing for the worst.

She was my mom’s boyfriend’s ex-wife, and everything about that sentence felt like a warning sign.

I was sure she’d hate me. I was sure she’d make me feel like an outsider.

But instead, she opened her door and gave me a second home.

Warm. Funny. Kind.

The kind of woman who could stitch a houseful of chaos into something that still felt like family.

It felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain. I’d grown up a Texas girl myself—spent time in Houston, had family roots scattered across the state—and the show carried that same mix of fire and softness that I recognized in the women around me.

It was at Melissa’s house that I first saw Reba.

I didn’t know then that it would become one of my comfort shows, that it would become a thread running through my life.

But sitting on her couch, in a house I once feared and now loved, I watched Reba laugh and cry and carry her broken family with her boots planted firmly on the ground.

And I saw something I didn’t know I needed to see.

Melissa didn’t just open her door once.

She kept showing up.

I remember the day she came to our house carrying a secret the kind of secret you only share with someone you trust completely.

Tucked inside her purse was a pregnancy test.

She didn’t go to her best friend’s house. She didn’t go to her mother’s house.

She came to us.

To my mom.

They sat in our kitchen, laughing and crying and waiting for the little pink plus sign that would change everything.

And when it came, my mom was the first person she told.

Not because it was easy.

Not because it was simple.

But because somehow, despite the weirdness and brokenness and tangled-up pasts, they had chosen each other.

They had become family, in the ways that matter most.

I don’t think I will ever forget sitting on that couch in Benchley, TX at Melissa’s watching Reba for the first time.

A beautiful show about messy people loving each other anyway.

A show about families that didn’t look perfect, but still managed to hold.

Maybe that’s why it felt like home.

⸻

Scene Two – A Different Kind of Family

Carl, Melissa’s ex, my mom’s boyfriend at the time was someone who proved love isn’t always about staying.

It’s about showing up.

Even when the lines blur and the titles shift.

I didn’t make it easy on him. I had every intention of being stubborn, of keeping my guard up, of giving him a hard time just because I could. But Carl didn’t push. He told me plainly: “I’m not here to replace anyone. I’m just here to show up, and I’ll keep doing that until you believe I mean it.”

And the truth is, a part of me softened early on—because my dad, who didn’t say things like that lightly, told me Carl was a good guy. An old friend. Someone I could trust.

Carl and Melissa weren’t married anymore.

They had their own hurts and scars.

But they loved their kids more than they hated the past.

And somehow, they managed to build something steady, something kind, something I had never seen before.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was love.

Real love.

Messy, complicated, and still showing up.

Like the best episodes of Reba, it wasn’t about getting everything right... it was about making the broken pieces shine.

⸻

Scene Three – The Coffee Station, the Subway, and the Butterfly Effect

I think about how life happens sometimes — not in straight lines, but in dominoes.

Little moments tipping into bigger ones.

I went to a concert at The Coffee Station in College Station, Tx because Becky invited me.

Becky (Melissa's youngest daughter) invited me because she knew a guy in a band.

Melissa drove us there, because that’s just who she was the woman who made sure the dreams of other people’s kids didn’t get left behind.

And because I walked into a Subway sandwich shop that night and eventually gave my number to a boy who worked there I thought was cute...

I met Jamie.

The man I would eventually marry!

Funny how a sandwich shop and a borrowed ride can lead you to the love of your life.

Little ripples, little moments.

Moments so small, you almost miss them.

And somehow, it all stacked up and built the life I have now.

Looking back, it all still kind of blows my mind.

It’s a crazy thing, how people cross your path without knowing what they’re setting in motion.

How the smallest choices; a ride, an invitation, a second of courage can change everything!

⸻

Scene Four – Carl’s Daily Ritual

Carl wasn’t perfect. None of us are.

But he loved his kids with a constancy that I have never forgotten.

Every day, without fail, he’d come through the door carrying something for my mom a candy bar, a flower, a Dr. Pepper.

A little piece of love in his hands.

And before anything else, before dinner or television or stories about work, he’d go straight to the phone.

He’d call his kids.

Talk to them one by one.

Every day.

I remember watching his face light up when they answered (if they weren’t already on the phone when he arrived waiting for him to get home) like the sun rising just for him.

He’d bounce from foot to foot, grinning, glowing, sharing tiny bits of the light they shared with him once he hung up.

It wasn’t for show.

It was ritual. It was truth.

It was the clearest thing I ever saw about what it meant to be tethered to love, even when families split apart.

Every call wasn’t a chore.

It wasn’t a box to check.

It was the HIGHLIGHT of his day!

He wanted to hear it all:

The little victories, the funny moments, the small everyday things that most people rush past.

To him, nothing about his kids was ever small.

And if they weren’t there to call, he found ways to carry them with him anyway stories, jokes, bragging rights tucked into every conversation.

Some lessons you don’t even realize you’re learning at the time.

But now I know:

That’s what real love looks like.

⸻

Scene Five – Terry Holliway, So Far Away

Years later, I found myself rewatching Reba — pregnant, on bedrest, curled up under the weight of waiting and worry.

And there it was.

The episode: Terry Holliway.

(Season 2, Episode 15. Aired February 7, 2003.)

Brock and Reba go to what they think is a birthday party, only to find it’s a funeral.

Loss, love, regret wrapped up in the way only Reba could wrap it.

Not with melodrama.

With honesty.

With heart.

And at the end, Reba sings “So Far Away” by Carole King. Her voice was soft but strong, with that unmistakable country twang just enough to make it hers, but still honoring the heart of the original. It was one of the most beautiful renditions I’d ever heard… heartfelt, classy, and full of grace.

The song my mother used to sing in the kitchen, when she thought no one was listening.

Carole King was one of my mom’s absolute favorites her voice, her writing, her soul. “So Far Away” wasn’t just a song in our house; it was woven into the fabric of my childhood, always playing low in the background like a heartbeat.

It wasn’t just TV anymore.

It was memory.

It was full circle.

It was everything I hadn’t even known I was carrying, humming back to me from the screen.

⸻

Final Scene—

Some people stay in your life forever.

Some leave, but never really leave.

Some songs don’t fade out they just weave themselves quieter into the background, still holding the melody for when you need it.

Melissa is still in my life.

Carl’s love for his kids is still in my memory.

And the echoes of kindness, resilience, and laughter that I learned from them (and from Reba) are still in my bloodstream, still in my daughter’s words when she calls me strong.

The world spins us so far away sometimes.

But love... real love has a funny way of holding on, even when everything else moves. Love finds a way to hold the note.

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Thank You, Danny Go!: A Letter From Our Living Room

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 15:50:35 GMT

Dear Danny Go (and Mindy Mango),

We weren’t looking for you but somehow, you found us. It was in the recommended section on Happy Kids TV. Jaxon clicked on it for his sister Maggie, and just like that, something magic happened in our living room. The colors, the energy, the fun costumes, the absolute joy of it all we were hooked. Not just the kids. Jamie and I too. It didn’t take long before Danny Go! wasn’t just something our kids watched it became something we danced to, sang along with, laughed through. Something that made us all feel lighter.

There’s something rare and magical about a show that doesn’t just entertain your kids, but actually pulls you in too. For us, Danny Go! is that magic. Whether it’s “ The Floor is Lava ” or any of the countless jams we’ve rewatched again and again, it’s more than background noise it’s an invitation. To move, to play, to be present. We’ve turned living rooms into obstacle courses, let loose in the kitchen, and found ourselves grinning and dancing when we thought we were too tired to do anything at all. It’s a way to reset a rough day, a cranky morning, or a bedtime full of wiggles . It’s become a happy place.

At first, Danny Go! was just this bright, silly, joyful thing we all loved. But then I started learning more about you, Daniel and Mindy, about your son Isaac, about the love and resilience at the heart of it all. And suddenly, it wasn’t just fun anymore. It was inspiring. The kind of inspiring that sinks in deep because you recognize something in it. I too know what it means to be moved by your children to do something that matters. In its essence Searching for Stars was born from that same place wanting to create light because of the light our kids bring us every day.

Knowing what Danny Go! came from... knowing the beauty and bravery behind it just makes every song, every dance, every goofy costume feel even more meaningful. It’s not just a show. It’s a gift.

Thank you so very much. For the joy. For the music and movement. For the way you’ve turned your story into something so bright and full of life. Thank you for making something that brings my kids happiness, and for letting that happiness spill over to the rest of us too.

You’ve given us more than a show. You’ve given us a reason to dance when we’re tired, to laugh when we need it most, and to remember that play matters maybe even more than we think. You remind us that joy is a kind of medicine, and that silly, colorful, creative love can be a force for good in the world.

From one parent trying to build something inspired by their children to another: thank you for the light you’ve made. You’ve brightened our living room and our hearts.

With love and gratitude,

Lauren

Thank You Danny Go! : A Letter From Our Living Room

Thank You: Danny Go!

Breezeblocks: Fragments in Motion where the Melody Lingers

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 15:32:42 GMT

Alt J : Breezeblocks

Some songs don’t just play they pulse, they linger, they burrow into the spaces between thought and feeling. Breezeblocks is one of those songs. It winds itself into your head, its beat both hypnotic and urgent, its lyrics unraveling something raw, something almost ungraspable. It’s a track that demands to be danced to, yet insists on being understood. And like all great pieces of art, it shifts depending on where you’re standing, how you’re listening, what you bring to it.

For me, Breezeblocks will always carry echoes of a night in Austin. ACL, October 2012. Music in the air, a kind of electricity that only exists at festivals when the right band plays at the right time, and the whole crowd moves as one. But my most vivid memory of that night isn’t Alt-J’s performance. It’s something stranger, more unexpected. A lost dog, a highway, and a moment that, in its own way, pulled me back toward myself.

The Gravity of Sound

At its core, Breezeblocks is about obsession;love that grips too tightly, that tips over into something dangerous. “Please don’t go, I love you so,” the refrain pleads, childlike in its desperation, dark in its implication. The refrain ‘Please don’t go, I love you so’ is a direct nod to Where the Wild Things Are, but Alt-J twists it into something haunting. What was once a child’s longing for comfort becomes something desperate, dangerous, a love that won’t loosen its grip. Alt-J is a band that thrives in contradiction, melody and menace, harmony and havoc. They construct their music like a puzzle, layering sounds and meanings so that no listen is ever the same.

The music video...a masterclass in perspective. Played in reverse, it forces you to question everything you thought you knew. A moment that once seemed like an ending is actually a beginning. Violence unspools into something almost tender. Nothing is as it seems. The brilliance of the video isn’t just in the twist—it’s in the way it forces you to reframe everything. To consider the weight of a moment. To wonder how different things might look if we only rewound the tape.

ACL 2012: A Different Kind of Chaos

My brother was working on tour with Alt-J and had gotten us guest passes to ACL. It was late, most of the bands had already played. Jamie was driving. Bobby and Gus (the keyboardist for Alt-J) were in the backseat. We stopped at a convenience store, and then I saw him—a dog, lost in the middle of traffic, frantic, unsure where to go. I didn’t think. I just moved. Jumped out of the car, called to him, felt his hesitation, his fear, and then his relief as he ran straight to me. He had tags. We called the number. The voice on the other end was young, shocked, disbelieving.

The kid had been at ACL. Had gotten separated from his dog somewhere in the shuffle of music and movement. He was still reeling when we pulled up to his house, still overwhelmed with relief. But the moment he saw Gus step out of the car, his expression shifted from gratitude to pure disbelief. “Didn’t I just see you on stage?” he asked, as if reality had twisted itself in some impossible way.

And maybe, for a second, it had. Before we dropped Pawsky off, Gus had been in the backseat, snapping selfies with him, laughing. Bobby was there too part of the moment, part of the memory. And me? I was just there. Present. Feeling something light, fun and real for the first time in a long while.

The Music That Finds Us

After my ectopic pregnancy, music became my way back to myself. In the aftermath, the numbness, the weight of it I had felt so lost. But music makes you feel, even when everything else is muted. It cuts through, becomes an anchor, a way to exist in the moment when the past feels too heavy and the future too uncertain.

It wasn’t just about seeing Alt-J or rescuing Pawsky...it was about finding a moment of brightness in the middle of everything. It was about music pulling me into the present, about laughter in the backseat, about the way certain memories etch themselves into you, lasting longer than you ever expect them to. An anchor of hope.

Music, like memory, has a way of shifting shape. Some songs burrow in and become more than just sound. They become timestamps for the memories that matter—that night at ACL was more than just a concert. It was a moment of brightness. A reminder that life still happens, even after loss. That sometimes, the smallest, strangest moments rescuing a lost dog, Gus laughing in the backseat, a teenager realizing he just met the guy he’d watched on stage—become the ones that stay with you the longest.

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Without Love, Where Would I Be Now?

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 23:26:13 GMT

The Doobie Brothers : Long Train Runnin'

Part 1. A Name to Keep Me Safe

Whenever I called my Uncle Michael, for a while I’d hear Long Train Runnin’ by The Doobie Brothers on the other end of the line. That song became the one that reminded me of him, representing everything he was to me;protective, steady, and constant. The line “Without love, where would I be now?” resonates with me every time I think of him, because his love and presence in my life were always something that kept me safe, even from miles away.

Uncle Michael was my Dad’s older brother someone everyone loved, someone who had a reputation. He wasn’t a Pentecostal guy himself, but his childhood best friend Sam had become the pastor of the local Pentecostal church in Normangee, Texas. Michael’s influence wasn’t confined to bloodlines, though. He married into a family with strong ties to the church, and many of his friends, nieces, and nephews were part of that world. Even though he didn’t live in town anymore, everyone knew him. He was this rock-solid, dependable figure, and no matter where he went, his name had a ripple effect.

Growing up in a tiny Texas town where the church and school were the heartbeat of life, I was surrounded by that community one that loved my uncle. Even people who hadn’t seen him in years would ask about him when I’d walk through the doors of that old church. “How’s Michael?” they’d always ask. It was as if his presence lived there, in the words spoken, in the love that flowed from the church pews. That love and protection became something bigger than just him. His name kept me safe.

When I was 15, life wasn’t stable. My mom and my stepdad’s relationship was turbulent. We lived out in the country, moving from place to place, no car, no phone, no way to reach out if something went wrong. And something did. Two of my stepdad’s sketchy, drunk, drugged-out friends showed up one day. They cornered my Mom and I in the bathroom. They were much older, and they said things I didn’t know how to respond to. Calling me beautiful and making inappropriate advances. I was just an awkward, prepubescent looking scared 15 year old kid. The situation felt dangerous, unsettling, and I didn’t know what to do.

But then, my mom stepped in. I’ll never forget her words, spoken calmly but with a strength that changed everything in that moment. She said, “Would you like to tell Michael Nixon that? This is his niece… Kerry Nixon’s daughter!”

I’ve never seen grown men’s faces shift so quickly, as if their souls had left their bodies for a moment. Their eyes got wide with fear, like they had just been caught in something they couldn’t escape. “Michael Nixon? The Nixon Boys?” They ran out of that room so fast, out the door, into their car, and down that dirt road like they were in a race. I’ve never seen fear like that. I don’t know if it was the power of his name or what they knew about him, but I was safe.

Without him, without his love, without the reputation that came with it, where would I have been? What might I have gone through in that moment? What would have happened if his name hadn’t been that shield?

Without love, where would I be now?

That question echoes every time I think about him...Michael Nixon, who kept me safe with his love, his reputation, and the fact that he was just, well, him. Even when he wasn’t around, his love ran like a long train, steady and unyielding. The love I felt from him wasn’t just from his actions but from the very idea of him—his name, his reputation, the people he had touched. And I was one of those people.

Now, when I hear that song, I don’t just think of the cool, dependable guy I knew. I think of the legacy of love he left behind. I think of how his presence, even when he wasn’t physically there, always kept me safe. And I wonder, what would my life have looked like without that kind of love? Without the protection and care he made sure I had?

Without him, where would I be now?

Part 2. Wisdom in the Storm

When I think about the Pentecostal Church in Normangee, Texas, it feels like something out of a story a community so tight knit that it seemed almost magical. Brother Sam Manning wasn’t just a pastor—he was the heart of the church, and his wisdom and love permeated everything he did. But it wasn’t just him. The entire church, the community, was like a family always looking out for me. The women of the church many were schoolteachers many had gone to high school with my mom and I always felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. Everyone there seemed to be related in one way or another, and that created a sense of connection that made it feel like home.

I was just a kid, trying to figure out where I fit. Punk Rock Indie Chick (whatever that is) was my identity, my way of expressing my frustration with the world. I wore my jeans and makeup to church, feeling like an outsider in a place where the dress code and customs didn’t quite match who I was. But Brother Sam, despite the differences, never made me feel like I didn’t belong. I was always treated like family, and his sermons weren’t just words they were the foundation of some of my teenage years. His messages spoke directly to my heart, reminding me of faith, love, and the light in the darkness—lessons that still stick with me today.

During those formative years of learning what love really meant. Brother Sam’s teachings weren’t just about words they were about action. And what amazed me most was the way the women of the church his sisters, his family showed that love in everything they did. When my mom was with my stepdad, and we had nothing, it was these women who showed up. They didn’t just preach love; they lived it. They made sure we had food, presents for Christmas, and, most importantly, a reminder that God loved us. They didn’t ask they just showed up. They were there to pray, to offer encouragement, to remind me to look for light, even in the darkest moments.

I can still see their faces, their warmth, their unwavering faith. They didn’t just make sure I had what I needed physically...they made sure I knew I was loved, no matter what. They showed up, day after day, letting their godly light shine without hesitation. Their faith wasn’t just something they talked about it was something they lived. And for that, I’m eternally grateful.

Without love where would I be now?

Without that Pentecostal Church, without Brother Sam’s wisdom, I know I would’ve been lost. I’m not sure I even saw it at the time. Their love didn’t come with conditions. It wasn’t about fitting in; it was about being accepted as you were, about knowing that no matter what, you weren’t alone. Brother Sam’s sermons were part of the foundation for my faith, and his wisdom shaped the way I approached life. And the women of the church they embodied love in the purest way. Their actions, their constant support, showed me that love is a light, one that never fades, no matter how dark things may seem.

It’s not just that their love kept me safe in some of those pivotal moments. Their love became a core part of who I am. The many messages of Brother Sam. The steadiness of Michael’s presence, even from miles away, taught me that I could always be grounded, no matter how turbulent life got.

When the pandemic hit, it was as if the world suddenly tilted off its axis. Fear gripped everyone around me, and it felt like the ground beneath us was constantly shifting. I, too, found myself questioning everything; my future, my safety, the stability of it all. The isolation, the uncertainty, and the overwhelming sense of dread felt like a storm I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to weather. But it wasn’t just the pandemic itself that shook me it was losing my Uncle Michael. His passing in August of 2020, during the height of the chaos, felt almost surreal. He wasn’t just my uncle; he was my Dad’s big brother, his best friend, the man who had been a constant in his life since childhood. Watching my Dad fall apart at the funeral, seeing him lose the one person who had always been his rock, was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to witness. His heartache was gut wrenching, and I couldn’t help but feel helpless as I watched him lose his stability. The pandemic, with its isolation and fear, only magnified that loss. It felt like we were living in an era where stability, love, and connection were disappearing, and the pain of losing Michael made everything feel even more fragile.

But then, Brother Sam’s teachings came rushing back to me, as if they were meant for this exact moment. He had always spoken of staying strong in faith, of trusting that even in the darkest times, God’s light would show us the way. He’d warned us about tough times, but somehow it always felt like he knew this kind of chaos was coming. It wasn’t just a feeling—it was the way he talked about resilience, about holding on to God’s love when everything seemed to be falling apart. His words, almost like prophecy, stayed with me through the uncertainty, and in those moments of fear, I found myself clinging to his wisdom as though it had been prepared for this very storm.

Part 3. The Weight of Love and Loss

Brother Sam’s wisdom and Uncle Michael’s light became a guiding compass through life’s storms. The love they gave me, steady and unshakeable, continues to be a source of strength when I face challenges. Whenever I find myself questioning my path, their teachings are quiet whispers I rely on. I hold on to their lessons about resilience, about embracing faith even when it feels distant, and about the kind of love that doesn’t falter in adversity. They taught me to protect others, to nurture relationships, and to love without hesitation. Without them, I truly can’t say where I’d be now.

As if losing Uncle Michael wasn’t enough, life’s weight came crashing down even harder. Just near two months after we laid him to rest, we lost my cousin Alisha, Michael’s only child. Alisha was someone who carried Michael’s strength and love with her every day, and to see her taken so soon was a painful reminder of how fragile life can be. The air felt constantly heavy as I tried to process one loss only to be hit with another, even more unexpected. To say the grief was suffocating would be an understatement. We had no time to breathe, no space to process. Just one loss after another, each one feeling like a blow that knocked the wind out of me.

But even in those darkest moments, it was some of my memories of Michael and Brother Sam that I clung to. They had always been pillars of strength, and now, with both of them gone, it felt like the ground beneath me was crumbling. Watching my Dad in his grief, seeing my dad’s heartache made me question how we’re supposed to keep going when the people who loved us most are no longer here.

12 months later, my dad’s time came. The pandemic had already taken so much, and now I was losing the last of my anchors. Losing my Dad felt like the final blow. He was the one who had carried me through the hardest parts of my life, and now, I was left to face this cruel world without him. His heartache from losing Michael and Alisha, his struggles with everything changing around him, a cure that only made him sick, his body just couldn’t bear the weight of it all. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, and it’s a pain I’ll carry with me forever.

I lay broken, bruised and destroyed metaphorically for quite some time but eventually the lessons Michael, Alisha (get up, dress up, show up!), and my Dad had instilled in me, well I guess they kept me going. Their love and wisdom never left me, even when they did. Their guidance, the way they lived with strength and love, and the way they endured even when life threw them hard punches it all became part of my foundation. They taught me to keep going even when it feels impossible, to keep looking for the light even when all you see is darkness. And through their wisdom… though it took time, I found the strength to carry on

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Middle of January: The Sound That Stayed

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:28:34 GMT

Victim of Modern Age : Middle of January

It was the beginning of summer, and I was standing in front of the stage at Shaky Ground Coffee House

sixteen, fists clenched, body moving like the music had taken over. The power of it didn’t just reach me it punched through. My brother, Bobby, was mid scream, guitar slung low, caught in that signature motion he always did on stage, half dance, half defiance. And I remember thinking, I had no idea his voice could sound like this.

That night changed something in me, somehow.

I’d seen Bobby play before other bands, other stages but this was different. Victim of Modern Age was different. This wasn’t just sound. It was soul. It was poetry. It was pain. It felt like everything we’d been through, set on fire in musical formation.

The venue smelled like coffee loud but low, lingering like a background hum. I wasn’t a coffee drinker back then, but that scent is burned into the memory. Earlier that day, we’d had shrimp po’ boys at KD’s my first ever grilled shrimp one, and to this day, the best I’ve ever had. I didn’t know it yet, but that little corner of Lake Charles was already locking itself in my bones.

I don’t remember exactly what I wore probably something thrifted Bobby helped me pick out. Maybe that old red-yellow-blue 80s striped shirt I loved the one that looked like it belonged to a hot dog vendor, but made me feel like someone with a story. That night, I didn’t feel the weight of life. I didn’t feel awkward. I didn’t feel out of place. I felt plugged in.

And then came the song.

Middle of January.

“Why don’t you just crawl inside of your black hole,

you know you won’t leave home tomorrow.”

“So why don’t you just drive?

Get in your car and leave this place, never to return.”

I can still hear it. I play that track all the time. For friends. For family. For Jaxon my son who’s been hearing his Uncle Bobby’s voice since before he was born, through headphones while I was pregnant. I tell my kids every time: This is your uncle. This is one of my favorite songs in the world. This is what it sounds like when someone does something with soul.

I don’t know how to explain that version the original. Bobby’s vocals. That exact energy. It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t performative. It was a scream into the night sky. It was the first time I saw the full depth of what music could hold. The ache, the leaving, the staying. The poetry of being young and hurting and knowing you were meant to feel it all anyway.

After the show, we drove around. Bobby, Trista, me. And when I got home, I climbed into the top bunk, stared at the ceiling, and replayed the whole night in my head. I remember thinking: My brother’s going to be something. He already is.

And somehow, that song still plays in the back of my memory loud, alive, and undefeated.

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The Hero Dies in This One: Written in the Chords of Time

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 00:13:40 GMT

The Ataris : The Hero Dies in This One

There are certain songs that feel like time machines...melodies that transport you to places and people that still live in the corners of your mind. The opening chords strike, and suddenly, I’m 16 again, tangled in a mess of emotions, self-discovery, and the raw intensity of growing up. The Hero Dies in This One by The Ataris is one of those songs. It carries me back to late night car rides with friends who felt more like family, our voices hoarse from singing along to every word like they were written just for us. The feeling of being caught between wanting to escape and not knowing where to run… it’s a flood of memories, an echo of teenage years spent navigating the highs and lows of growing up, the weight of loss, and the beauty of finding light in the darkest places. It reminds me of friendships forged in chaos and of the ache of loss that shaped me in ways I never could have predicted.

The song carries the weight of so much loss, a father figure gone way before his time who showed me what unconditional love really meant. The loss of a brother in spirit who left this world far too soon. Losing Trey in our youth crushed us, an entire town shattered by his absence. It felt like a script I hadn’t read ahead of time, like the hero of our story had been written out before the final act. In the wake of his passing, I found an unexpected refuge in new friends, people who had lost just as deeply but carried on with grace. Tiffany became a beautiful angel floating in the background of my memories, someone I barely knew in life but came to love through the stories of those who did.

Tiffany was Clint and Danny’s sister, and Stephanie’s closest friend long before Stephanie ever became mine. I had seen Tiffany in passing at school always surrounded by people who loved her, always carrying that effortless brightness that certain girls seem born with. She was kind, beautiful, one of those sweet popular girls who seemed just a little ahead of me in life. We never had the chance to truly know each other while she was here, but after Trey died and Stephanie and I met, our grief braided itself together. She had lost Tiffany; I had lost Trey. And somewhere in that shared ache, Tiffany became part of my story too, a light I learned to love through the people who carried her.

Somehow, our grief connected us, binding us in an unspoken understanding of what it meant to lose and to keep moving forward anyway.

There’s something about this song the way it builds, the way it aches, the way it just gets it that makes me feel everything at once. It’s the heartbreak of growing up, the gut punch of realizing that not every story has a happy ending, but also the quiet realization that the people we’ve lost never really leave us. They’re there, in the songs, in the laughter, in the way the seasons change but still feel the same.

Maybe that’s what Searching for Stars is all about holding onto the echoes of those who shaped us, finding beauty in the disaster, and knowing that even when the hero dies in this one, their story never really ends.

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The Vision Thing: Lighthouse in the Dark

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 23:52:56 GMT

Simple Minds : Vision Thing

The Vision Thing: Lighthouse in the Dark

(for my dad — you had the vision thing)

Once I heard Simple Minds’ Vision Thing,

I knew it was written for men like you.

Jim Kerr wrote it after losing his dad.

It’s not a ballad. It’s not weepy.

It moves with purpose

like a man who knows grief but chooses to dance anyway.

That line “You got the vision thing”

it’s not about eyesight.

It’s about something deeper.

A kind of strength.

A spiritual compass.

The way certain people just see what matters

and carry it quietly until the end.

They say some people lead by shouting.

Others lead by example.

But some lead by light...

a quiet kind that glows steady,

never asking for praise,

never needing to be seen.

You had the vision thing.

You saw what mattered before I could name it.

You saw goodness in people even when it cost you.

You saw past the moment, past the storm.

You carried something I couldn’t always understand—

but I always felt.

There were years I didn’t realize how much I was watching you.

And years I didn’t know how much I needed to.

But I see it now.

The vision.

The strength.

The love.

Some of us spend our whole lives searching for a lighthouse.

But I had one,

long before I understood what I was looking at.

The jokes.

The smirks.

The songs that played too loud.

The advice you didn’t always say out loud

but somehow folded into my bones.

You didn’t need the last word.

You had the long view.

You had the vision thing.

And I carry it forward, with every step.

Every time I hear that song,

I feel it again...

like your hand on my shoulder from the other side of the veil.

Like you’re still steering the ship,

even when I think I’m lost.

It wasn’t perfect.

Nothing ever is.

But it was real.

And real things don’t die.

They echo.

They hum in the background of our best moments.

They show up in the way we raise our own kids.

In the way we whisper keep going to ourselves on hard days.

In the songs we crank up loud on long drives,

just to feel closer to home.

You had the vision thing.

And now, I carry it too.

Not always gracefully.

Not always with your calm.

But I’m trying.

I see it clearer now.

You didn’t just give me your name.

You gave me your light.

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Forget December: Heartbreak That Found Its Way Back to the Light

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 23:26:43 GMT

Something Corporate - Forget December

“Forget December…”

He came to the back door with hockey sticks in his hands.

The kind with real tape around the handle and a slick black puck tucked under one arm like it meant something. And to me, it did. It meant everything. I was nine years old, skating-obsessed, Mighty Ducks in my blood, and Christmas was still magic. Still intact.

Our living room didn’t have a couch we had a giant tan beanbag instead. A six foot pleather moon crater that belonged to me and my brother, Bobby. My parents had traded traditional for something more… them. Two recliners for themselves. A beanbag for the kids. It was weird and warm and oddly perfect.

That morning, we were gearing up to hit the dentist office parking lot across the street,our makeshift hockey rink whenever it was closed. We had boat oars for sticks and a ball that skidded like it wanted to be a puck. But now? Real sticks. A real puck. It felt like a dream.

I opened the door and there he was...my dad. His hair a little windblown, arms full of the kind of gift that says I know you. I see what you love. (We had also accidentally broken our mom’s kayak ores using them as hockey sticks earlier that month… so they had in addition become part necessity at this point.)

I was buzzing. Bobby was buzzing.

It was Christmas Eve. There was the smell of cinnamon and hot chocolate in the air. The excitement of lights to come and stockings hung.

And then my mom’s voice cut through the air.

“I need to talk to you.”

⸻

“I need to talk to you.”

She pulled him into the bedroom, and the entire energy changed.

I felt it before I understood it.

Bobby and I were halfway into our rollerblades, hearts still racing with hockey dreams, when she came back out shaking, crying, shouting. My Nanny was there too, trying to calm her, trying to shield us, but the truth had already broken through the walls.

He had an affair. It’s over.

I was nine years old. I didn’t understand the mechanics of betrayal. I just knew something beautiful had shattered in the middle of our holiday.

Bobby understood more. He was almost thirteen, and when I turned to him and said, “Come on, let’s still play,” he looked at me with this hollow kind of heartbreak and said, “Lauren, don’t you get it? Life as we know it is over.”

But we still tried…. he still tried, for me. We went outside. We hit the puck across the parking lot and tried to pretend it was just another day, like maybe if we skated hard enough, the world would shift back into place.

It didn’t.

⸻

Christmas morning was quiet.

My dad slept in one of the recliners.

The tan beanbag didn’t feel like a safe planet anymore it felt like a crash site.

My mom moved around the kitchen slowly. I remember her trying to keep it together. I remember all of us trying.

There were still presents. Still food. Still a Christmas tree.

But it felt like we were acting out a play for ghosts.

Like the house was full of invisible memories already ones we hadn’t lived yet, but somehow already carried.

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“…it won’t be better than I remember it before.”

I was sixteen when I heard the song.

Back seat of Clint’s car. Daniel riding shotgun. A Something Corporate CD in the stereo.

I wasn’t expecting it. We were just driving probably coming home from the mall, windows cracked, night settling in.

And then the piano hit.

Andrew McMahon’s voice floated out and the lyrics landed like a gut punch I didn’t see coming.

Forget December. It won’t be better than I remember it before.

I didn’t say anything. Didn’t move.

Just sat there, trying to hide the tears sliding down my cheek like they were nobody’s business.

It felt like the song had been written for me.

For that little girl at the back door.

For the rollerblade dreamer who lost something she didn’t even know she could lose.

Christmas had never quite come back. Not all the way. Not yet.

It still carried that ache. That ghost. That shadow you couldn’t quite hang an ornament on.

But then came Jamie.

I told him everything about the fight, the hockey sticks, the heartbreak. I told him how Christmas had turned into something I couldn’t fully trust anymore. How even the lights felt dimmer somehow, like they remembered too.

And he didn’t try to fix it.

He didn’t tell me to move on or look at the bright side.

He just said, “Let’s go see some lights.”

So we did.

We drove through the rich neighborhoods, the ones where every lawn looked like a movie set. I hadn’t done that in years. Not since Hilltop Lakes. Not since the night the magic cracked open.

I remember holding his hand in the car. I remember the soft hum of the heater and the way the lights reflected on the windshield like stars trying to break through.

That was the year Christmas started to come back to me.

Not all at once. Not like some holiday miracle.

But piece by piece. Light by light.

We spent that first Christmas together at my mom’s place in Petrolia, playing games with my stepdad’s family laughing, eating, passing around ridiculous white elephant gifts. I remember feeling something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

Magic.

⸻

Jamie made it his mission to bring the joy back.

Every year after that, he tried. Even when we had nothing. Even when things were tight.

He reminded me what Christmas could be... not about gifts or perfection, but about love. About the story of something bigger, someone born into the chaos to bring peace.

He told me once, “Our best Christmases are still ahead of us.”

And he was right.

⸻

“And New Year’s Eve came, but nothing had changed. All the problems just got worse…”

That lyric used to haunt me.

Because that’s what it felt like for years.

Christmas faded, and New Year’s rolled in like a silent countdown to more brokenness. My parents didn’t speak. They couldn’t be in the same room. Every holiday was a negotiation. Every celebration had an invisible crack down the middle.

I tried to be okay with it.

Tried to believe that this was just what life looked like after the fall.

But deep down, I missed what we used to be. I missed the possibility of peace.

And then somehow Jamie made that happen too.

He told them, “You have kids together. You have to talk. You have to show up, even if it’s hard.”

And for whatever reason, they listened.

At first, it was awkward. Clunky. A few short phone calls, maybe a shared laugh here and there.

But it grew.

Into kindness.

Into understanding.

Into something like friendship.

Eventually, my mom left her marriage (an unhealthy one) and moved to Hot Springs.

Into my dad’s house.

Not as lovers. Not to rekindle anything.

But as friends. As roommates.

As two people trying to finish the story better than it started.

And they did...

They were roommates for the last five years of my dad’s life.

They co-grandparented.

They laughed again.

They cooked meals.

They showed up for holidays.

And we had real Christmases together again.

Bobby. My mom. My dad. My kids. And Jamie.

Laughter. Light.

No bitterness. No drama.

Just peace.

Just the miracle of what healing can look like when you leave the door open, just enough, for love to sneak back in.

⸻

I still listen to Forget December.

I still remember everything.

But it doesn’t break me now.

It’s just part of the story.

The girl at the back door.

The hockey sticks.

The beanbag.

The darkness.

The music.

The man who brought the light back.

The children who made it eternal.

The memories don’t burn like they used to. They hum. They echo. They remind me of how far the light can travel, even after everything’s gone dark.

The pain didn’t vanish. It just changed shape.

And somehow through Jamie, through the kids, through love and the unbelievable grace of my parents finding peace the true magic of Christmas came back to me.

Not in the same way.

In a better one.

The joy I thought I lost… I’ve seen it again in my children’s faces.

The healing I never expected… I watched it happen in real time between my mom and dad.

The love I wasn’t sure I’d feel again… I’ve felt it in the way Jamie held my hand that first night we went looking for lights. In the way he refused to let the past have the final word.

Because the truth is...

You can’t kill out the stars.

The light always returns. Just not always how we expect. Maybe that’s the most beautiful part of it all.

The World I Know: Bloomin’ Onions and Borrowed Songs

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 09:24:13 GMT

Music: Collective Soul - The World I know

The first time I met Fay, it was at an Outback Steakhouse in Bryan/College Station the same chain I grew up knowing by heart. It smelled like grilled shrimp and dark wood and too much butter stabbed into a loaf of honey wheat bread. I was nervous, maybe a little armored, bracing myself for the idea of dad’s new girlfriend. I thought I was supposed to hate her. I thought it was required.

But then the music started playing.

It was Collective Soul “The World I Know” winding through the speakers like a breath of something bigger. I caught her singing along before I even realized I was doing the same. She had this low, raspy voice, a kind of easy confidence, and for a second, the walls I’d built cracked just enough to let the song in.

She was wearing a green dress, and her fire-red hair tumbled over her shoulders in wild waves. Her blue eyes were bright and kind... annoyingly kind, if you asked the part of me that still wanted to hold a grudge. She smelled like cigarettes and tangerines sharp and sweet, the kind of scent that lingered rough and bright at the same time, impossible to forget.

But I remember thinking it even then: she was cool. Cooler than I expected. Cooler than I wanted her to be.

Some families bond over football games and matching pajamas.

Mine stitched itself together over Bloomin’ Onions and borrowed songs.

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Outback had already been woven into my life long before that night. It was the first place I ever tried grilled shrimp as a kid, the restaurant my dad always picked when he wanted to celebrate something or just when he felt like “breaking bread,” as he called it, with the people he loved. It’s where I ate before both junior and senior prom, where we kept old traditions alive in new cities. Later, it would be the first restaurant we ever took my son Jaxon to with my dad, another generation pulling up a chair to the table.

Maybe that’s why it stuck with me; the song, the meal, the unexpected ease of it all.

“The World I Know” wasn’t a song about perfect things. It was about stepping back and seeing the brokenness of the world, but still feeling the bittersweet sense of hope and survival in the middle of it. It wasn’t about pretending everything was fine. It was about finding something beautiful anyway.

Collective Soul had a way of doing that turning ache into anthems, writing songs that sounded like weathered prayers for a messy, beautiful world.

The World I Know wasn’t just a 90s classic. It was and still is a lifeline, the kind of song that makes you lift your head a little higher even when everything feels heavy.

Before the night was over, Fay bought me a blue Sony CD Walkman (a real one, with yellow headphones) like she already knew music was my language, the safest way to say, I see you.

I thought that night at Outback would be the only time “The World I Know” stitched itself into my life.

But life doesn’t always follow the script.

A few years later, I heard it again the same familiar song playing over the speakers of the same restaurant, after a harder kind of night.

We had just learned that some of our family’s most precious artifacts, heirlooms from the early days of Texas, handwritten letters, even my great-grandmother Dora’s ring had been sold without our permission.

Pieces of our history, scattered.

Gone.

As the song began to play, Fay was crying.

I was just a kid who didn’t really grasp the magnitude of what had been stolen from me.

I thought she was overreacting, too upset, too angry.

But I see it now.

She was crying because she was angry not for herself, but for us.

She was crying because she loved us.

Because she knew what had been taken not just relics, but roots.

Because sometimes loving people means hurting for them when they don’t even know what they’ve lost yet.

The world broke a little that night.

But the music kept playing.

I didn’t understand it then.

But love was already writing a story bigger than any of us could see.

Some things can be lost.

Some things can be stolen.

But the love stitched into your story...that stays.

The Cable Guy: Premium Cable, Premium Memories

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 09:06:55 GMT

Film: The Cable Guy

Jefferson Airplane : Don't You Want Somebody To Love

The Cable Guy

I was raised on music, movies, and the kind of pop culture that burrows into your brain and never leaves. Some kids grew up learning life lessons from their parents. Some from older siblings. And some of us? Well, let’s just say there’s a reason we speak in movie quotes and song lyrics like it’s second nature.

If you were born in the ‘80s and raised in the ‘90s, you know exactly what I mean. TV, radio, and whatever movie you had on VHS weren’t just entertainment...they were background noise for your entire childhood. We memorized sitcom morals, flipped through CD booklets like sacred texts, and built entire personalities around whatever was playing on MTV that week.

And sure, maybe that makes it easy to draw comparisons between me and a certain overenthusiastic cable installer. But let’s not get carried away. Besides, unlike Chip, my friendships have always been entirely voluntary.

Which brings me to Stephanie.

Stephanie was the kind of friend who made life more fun just by existing. She had this perfect mix of casual coolness and contagious excitement never forcing her interests on you, but making you want to love whatever she loved. She introduced me to so many things, but one of the most lasting gifts she ever gave me was The Cable Guy.

I met her my freshman year of high school and we connected almost instantly, though not just over movies. We both knew what it was like to lose someone who meant the world to us. There were gaps in our lives, spaces where people we loved should have still been, and somehow, in that unspoken understanding, we found a kind of comfort in each other. She once told me I reminded her of someone she had lost, and I took that as one of the greatest compliments I had ever received.

I was about fifteen when she let me borrow The Cable Guy, probably sliding the DVD over with a casual, “You have to watch this,” like it wasn’t about to change the way I saw comedy forever. It was a school night, sometime in the evening. I curled up in bed, snacks nearby, and pressed play, unaware that I was about to experience my first real taste of dark comedy.

I instantly loved it. The weirdness, the energy, the way Jim Carrey twisted his usual manic charm into something both hilarious and unsettling. And then the karaoke scene happened.

Chip Douglas throws himself into Somebody to Love like his life depends on it. Carrey’s version is… unhinged. He turns it into a full-blown, manic performance that is both comedic and unsettling. His screaming high notes are borderline terrifying (in the best way possible). I loved it; I absorbed it. It became part of me. And obviously it also made me think of Jefferson Airplane, a band I had already loved in passing but would now forever associate with this scene.

Stephanie was more than just a great friend—she was a bridge, connecting me to people who would become some of my closest friends in that season of life. Through her, I truly got to know Clint, Ricky, and Daniel. I had classes with some of them, but it was because of Stephanie, and her connection to Clint’s older brother, that I ended up in their circle. That’s the thing about friendships like ours—one good person has a way of leading you to other good people, and before you know it, your world is a little bigger and a lot brighter.

And then, of course, there was the Marilyn Manson flag.

Now, to be clear, I was never a huge Marilyn Manson fan. Not that I had anything against him—he just wasn’t my thing. Truthfully he kind of scared me a little. But Stephanie? Stephanie had this Marilyn Manson flag that she no longer wanted, and she decided I should have it. I wasn’t sure what to do with it at first, but then I realized it had an unexpected secondary use: as a deterrent.

At the time, my stepdad had a revolving door of less than ideal drinking buddies, many of whom had an unfortunate habit of stumbling into our house, using the bathroom outside my bedroom, and generally disrupting my peace. But as it turned out, nothing clears a hallway faster than a giant, looming Marilyn Manson flag. Something about his piercing eyes and skeletal aesthetic was enough to make even the drunkest of men reconsider their choices. Stephanie had unknowingly gifted me not just a piece of band merch, but a personal security system. And to this day, I don’t think I ever told her just how well it worked.

By the time I graduated high school and started finding my footing in the world, people had already decided who I was... the hippie. It wasn’t just about music or the way I dressed; it was the way I carried stories from an eclectic past, the way I talked about nature like it was an old friend, the way I gravitated toward spirituality and Native American customs like they were stitched into me. I had a deep love for music, a respect for the earth, and an instinct for finding meaning in the smallest things. So when my dad looked at me in my early 20s and said I reminded him of Grace Slick, I knew exactly what he meant. It wasn’t just the dark hair and bangs it was the energy, the aura, the quiet but undeniable presence. And honestly? I wore that like a badge of honor.

The Cable Guy was the beginning of something for me. It introduced me to a kind of humor I didn’t know I needed. It led me down a path that would later include Death to Smoochy and a dozen other films that took comedy to darker, stranger places. It became a comfort movie, the kind you revisit not just for the laughs, but because it reminds you of a specific time, a specific feeling, a specific version of yourself.

Stephanie gave me a gift in The Cable Guy and a Marilyn Manson flag that once gave me unexpected protection. Life is weird like that. It hands you moments, little gifts wrapped in absurdity and meaning, and sometimes you don’t even realize their value until years later.

The end of The Cable Guy always kind of lingered with me... two people lying in a satellite dish, looking up at the stars. Because even after everything, after all the noise, all the absurdity, all the chaos, all the reruns and rewinds, we all end up doing the same thing in the end. Searching for stars.

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If You Write It, They Will Read Stories Built from Stardust

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 08:40:26 GMT

Film: Field Of Dreams

Field of Dreams

I was curled up in our giant beanbag, blankets tangled around me, Max nestled against my side. Our living room was dim, the television’s glow casting soft shadows against the walls. The beanbag itself was part of my parents’ unorthodox approach to home furnishing (hippie pragmatism at its best). My mom had decided one day that we needed a new couch, got rid of the old one, and assumed my dad would replace it. He didn’t. Instead, he got us the world’s biggest beanbag and a couple of recliners, and that was that. We loved it.

That’s where I first saw Field of Dreams curled into that beanbag, transfixed. I was young, maybe Karen’s age, when I first watched it, but I remember being completely drawn in. It wasn’t just a baseball movie. It was something bigger, something that spoke to me in a way I didn’t yet have the words for. I remember my mom loved the film. I sat still, watching it with unwavering focus.

I didn’t understand everything then, but I felt it. The rhythm of the story, the way Kevin Costner narrated with a quiet reverence, the poetry of it all. And then there was Terrence Mann. There was something about him, about the way he carried words like they were sacred, about the way he saw things beyond the surface. He wasn’t just a character to me he was an idea, a spark, a quiet voice in the back of my mind whispering, you could be a writer.

By the time the credits rolled, I knew. I wanted to write. I wanted to tell stories that reached into people’s chests and held their hearts the way this movie held mine. Someday, I wanted to write something powerful, something that helped someone... that inspired them to believe in something bigger than themselves.

Baseball was everywhere when I was a kid. Maybe it was just the time, maybe it was our tiny Texas town, but it felt like a constant, woven into the fabric of our days. My mom had this way of turning boredom into adventure she’d grab our baseball gear, round up my brother and me, and then set off on foot through the neighborhood, collecting kids like a one woman baseball recruiter. “Who wants to play?” she’d call out, and before long, we’d have a whole field of kids gathered at the park. It felt like something out of The Sandlot, like we were part of some great, unspoken tradition of childhood summers.

I wasn’t just tagging along. I played. I wanted to be just as tough, just as good as the boys around me my brother Bobby, the Greer boys, Trey, Billy, Tommy. Most of my mom’s friends had sons, and they were all like brothers to me. I had to keep up. I had to be cool. Playing alongside them, I learned to be tough, to hold my own, and to push through challenges, lessons that stayed with me beyond the game.

One game stands out in my memory. I was on second base when David Greer stepped up to bat. He swung, connected, and the ball rocketed straight into my knee. Pain flared up my leg, a sharp, breath stealing jolt, but I swallowed it down. I could have fallen. I could have cried. But the part of me that was still just a little girl (the one who wanted so badly to impress the boys) refused to. Instead, I ran. I pushed through the pain, rounded third, and made it home. Trey cheered the loudest, grinning as he called me hardcore, telling me how awesome that was. And in that moment, the pain didn’t matter. I had done it.

Field of Dreams isn’t just a movie about baseball. It’s about belief, about trusting in something even when the world tells you it’s crazy. It’s about faith—the kind that pushes you forward when everything inside you screams to turn back.

James Earl Jones ’ speech still gives me chills. The way he talks about baseball as something timeless, something that connects generations that resonates with me, but it’s the deeper meaning that truly sticks.

Baseball, like music, has this unshakable way of threading through time, binding people together across years, across lifetimes. A song, like a game, can transport you. Suddenly you’re not just in the present, you’re everywhere you’ve ever heard that melody, everywhere you’ve ever stood beneath stadium lights, the hum of the crowd mixing with the echoes of something unspoken yet deeply felt. Both are more than just pastime or entertainment; they are inheritance, passed from one heart to another, uniting people who may have never met, yet somehow share the same story.

When Karen speaks up and says, Don’t sell the farm, that’s the heart of it. It’s not just about the land; it’s about not giving up, not letting fear make your choices for you. It’s about holding onto the things that matter even when everything feels uncertain.

I don’t think I fully understood that as a child. But as an adult, when I hear his words, I feel them differently. They bring comfort. They remind me to stay the course, to keep writing, to keep believing, even when it feels impossible. To keep searching for stars.

I think back to that little girl on the beanbag, wide-eyed and still, taking it all in. Maybe she didn’t fully understand why she felt what she felt. Maybe she didn’t need to. Because she knew, deep down, that she was supposed to be paying attention. That this story mattered. And that one day, she would tell her own.

TITLE

If You See PerryAnn: Parking Lots and Playlists

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 23:19:48 GMT

Something Corporate : If You C Jordan

Track One: New Player Joined

Game Mode: First Day of 7th Grade

Soundtrack: Nervous laughter and new beginnings

Setting: One hello away from changing everything

I spotted her sitting alone,

hair like wildfire,

eyes like the sky before a storm — quiet but aware.

She looked new.

I knew that look.

My mom always told me:

“When there’s a new kid, be the kid who says hi.

You don’t have to be best friends. But you can be kind.”

So I sat next to her and said hi.

I don’t remember exactly what I said.

Probably something awkward. Probably something real.

Her name was PerryAnn.

I remember thinking:

That name belongs in a comic book. Or a band. Or maybe a band in a comic book.

We laughed within minutes.

She had this huge, infectious laugh —

the kind that crashes through silence like a well landed combo.

I didn’t know it yet, but I’d just unlocked something rare:

New best friend: unlocked.

Achievement: lifelong friendship.

⸻

Track Two: If You C Jordan (Play It Loud)

Game Mode: Two-Player Mute with a Stereo on Blast

Soundtrack: Something Corporate on repeat, CD skips and all

Setting: My bedroom, controllers tangled in a pile

We’d mute the game. Every time.

Tony Hawk was on the screen skating his pixelated heart out

but the real soundtrack was a scratched-up copy of Something Corporate,

spinning like it was doing something sacred.

“If You See Jordan” was our song.

We didn’t just play it

we performed it.

Over and over.

Singing like nobody else existed.

“I don’t care if you dye your hair

you’ll always be a little redhead bitch.”

We’d lose it.

Completely lose it.

Rolling, laughing, half-hollering at the absurdity of it.

Perry was a redhead, obviously.

But she wasn’t a bitch. Not even a little.

She was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known.

That’s what made the line so funny. So perfect.

It became a summer anthem

part roast, part badge of honor,

part joke we couldn’t stop telling.

We didn’t care that the game was silent.

We were too loud anyway.

That summer, everything felt that way

loud, bright, stupid in the best way.

Our voices, that song, her laugh

they echoed off the walls louder than any soundtrack ever could.

⸻

Track Three: The Window Unit Summer

Game Mode: Sleepover Survival

Soundtrack: Late-night movies, skipped CDs, and Perry’s laugh cutting through the heat

Setting: One tiny bedroom, one barely-breathing AC unit, unlimited nights together

It was one of those summers where the heat felt personal.

Sticky, heavy, like it was trying to press you into the carpet.

But we had my bedroom.

And we had the little window unit.

And that was enough.

Barely enough, honestly

(it wheezed and clunked and barely reached the far wall)

but we’d cram ourselves into the cool corner anyway.

Blankets in the summer, because we were stubborn like that.

We watched movies until our eyes hurt.

Played Tony Hawk until the controller cords tangled like spaghetti.

Sometimes we paused it all and just talked —

about boys, about bands, about nothing.

Perry stayed over a lot that summer.

More nights than not, I think.

We shared that tiny space like it was a sleepover castle.

Two girls, a stack of CDs, a humming AC unit,

and the kind of laughter that makes you forget how small a room really is.

You don’t realize when it’s happening

but sometimes you’re living through something you’ll never forget.

⸻

Track Four: Back to the Future, Back to Her House

Game Mode: Sleepover Magic (No Controller Required)

Soundtrack: Faint movie fuzz and time travel unfolding in real time

Setting: Perry’s bed, summer haze, a new favorite trilogy in the making

We were just hanging out —

her room, her bed, maybe a bowl of snacks between us,

the TV humming with something in the background.

I don’t know if she planned it or if it just came on,

but at some point, Perry looked at me and said:

“Wait… you’ve never seen Back to the Future ?”

It wasn’t judgment.

It was excitement.

Like she’d just realized she got to be the one to show it to me.

So we watched.

And I fell.

Hard. Fast. All the way in.

The colors, the music, the time travel, the skateboarding, the clock tower it felt like discovering a door that had always been there

but finally opened just for me.

Perry didn’t talk through it.

She just let it happen,

smiling when she knew a good part was coming.

From that night on, it was my favorite trilogy.

All three.

She handed it to me like it was no big deal.

Like she didn’t know she was handing me something I’d keep forever.

⸻

Track Five: Game Paused for Strawberries

Game Mode: Unexpected Upgrade

Soundtrack: Perry’s voice “Just try it.”

Setting: Somewhere between a dare and a snack

I didn’t really like strawberries as a kid.

Too mushy, too weird, maybe too sweet in a way I didn’t trust.

My mom used to sprinkle sugar on them,

but they never landed right.

Perry thought it was wild that I didn’t love them.

She didn’t tease, she just offered.

Held one out like a little dare and said:

“Try it like this. Just plain.”

So I did.

And just like that...

I liked strawberries.

No sugar. No fuss.

Just the fruit. Just real.

I think about that sometimes...

how something so small can stick.

Strawberries have been my favorite fruit ever since.

Thanks to Perry.

Just one of those Perry things.

⸻

Track Six: Black Tees, Blue Jeans, Checkered Vans

Game Mode: Full Character Customization

Soundtrack: Band tees, broken laces, and the bassline of becoming yourself

Setting: One summer, one style, one step closer to the real you

That summer, I lived in a rotation of Levi’s, band shirts, and sneakers that had seen better days.

Usually a black tee —

Get Up Kids, maybe my Universal Warning Records shirt if it was actually clean — worn-in and faded from the wash.

Fraying jean hems.

Shoelaces pulling loose from black & white Converse or my checkered Vans.

I didn’t call it a style.

It just was.

There wasn’t anything curated about it.

No Pinterest boards. No hashtags.

Just me

figuring out who I was without even knowing that’s what I was doing.

Perry fit into it perfectly.

She had her own flavor...

that easygoing, bright-hearted energy that made everything feel a little more possible.

We didn’t talk about identity.

We didn’t have to.

It was stitched into the sleeves of our shirts,

woven into the way we filled the long, slow days.

Looking back, I think that summer was the first time

I started to recognize myself.

Not who I thought I was supposed to be —

but who I already was.

⸻

Track Seven: Halfpipe Summer

Game Mode: Post Office Parking Lot Adventures

Soundtrack: Wheels on asphalt, sneakers dragging for balance, the low hum of freedom

Setting: Normangee, Texas (cracked lots and endless afternoons)

By fifteen, the rollerblades were still in heavy rotation

but the skateboard had officially entered the picture.

Most of my skating didn’t happen on a halfpipe.

It happened in parking lots, back streets, sidewalks...

anywhere the concrete stretched long enough to pick up speed.

The post office parking lot in Normangee was home base.

Rough pavement.

Hot Texas air rising in waves.

Plenty of room to push off, coast, and carve lazy arcs across the empty space.

It wasn’t about tricks.

It was about movement.

About balance clicking into place just long enough to believe you could fly.

We played Tony Hawk on the screen

but out there, under the real sky,

we were making our own runs.

Our own mixtape memories.

Our own game.

No pause button.

No restart.

Just pavement, bruises, and something that felt like freedom.

⸻

Track Eight: PerryAnn, Skater Girl Sidekick (Player 2)

Game Mode: No Maps, No Missions, Just Summer

Soundtrack: Something Corporate spinning and a whole lot of laughing

Setting: Wherever the day took us

Perry wasn’t a skater.

But she didn’t have to be.

She was just there always

laughing, hanging out, singing along to whatever was playing,

making every parking lot, every late-night drive, every game session better just by being in it.

She didn’t need a board under her feet to be part of it.

She was part of it because she was Perry.

Because she showed up.

Because she made everything feel bigger, brighter, better without even trying.

There was no plan.

No destination.

Just the easy way we filled the time.

Music. Games. Skating. Talking about nothing and everything.

And somehow, when she was there, it all just mattered more.

⸻

Bonus Track: Some Friendships Are Just Light

Game Mode: Final Save Point

Soundtrack: The echo of a summer you can still hear if you listen close

Setting: Somewhere between then and forever

Some friendships are loud.

Some are complicated.

Some burn out before you even realize what they were.

But some

the best kind

are just light.

Easy.

Solid.

Real.

The kind you don’t have to question.

The kind that shows up,

grabs a second controller,

sings the wrong lyrics at the top of their lungs,

and laughs with you until the summer slips away.

That was PerryAnn.

That still is PerryAnn.

Beauty and light.

TITLE

Sister Golden Hair: Rays of Light in Motion

Sat, 19 Jul 2025 15:32:44 GMT

America: Sister Golden Hair

Some songs shimmer, lighting up the sky of your memories like distant constellations. Sister Golden Hair by America is one of those songs—a melody woven into the fabric of my life, glowing like a familiar star I can always find in the dark. From the very first strum of the guitar, it’s like stepping into a sun-drenched memory, a moment frozen in time where happiness and movement collide.

I grew up with America’s music floating through the air, thanks to my mom. Their songs felt like home, like echoes of a time both distant and close. But Sister Golden Hair became something more...a melody of joy, a song that seemed to follow me through life’s most golden moments.

I remember the way it felt, driving around with my husband when we were young, before we were married, before we knew where life would take us just two people in love, riding around in his Mustang with the top down. The wind tangled through my hair and this song on the local classic rock station blaring through the speakers. It was a time when everything felt like an open road, when the world stretched out before us like an endless summer.

Years later, the song found a new home in my heart, when our daughter Maggie Jo, came into the world. Maggie brought with her a light so bright it could rival the stars. My golden haired girl, Arkansas native free spirit with a classic California cool style. She is laughter and sunshine, a force of nature wrapped in wonder and curiosity.

I used to hold her close, just as I had once done with her brother dancing and swaying with her in the baby carrier through the living room as she giggled against my chest.

The song filled the space, filled my soul, as I twirled with her close to my heart. "Sister Golden Hair Surprise, I just can’t live without you, can’t you see it in my eyes?" —the words became more than a lyric; they became a truth, a love so deep it could stretch across the galaxies.

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Gold in the Dust: Stay Golden, Ponyboy

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 06:48:36 GMT

Novel: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Elvis : Tomorrow is a Long Time

Film: The Outsiders (book adaptation)

There Was Gold in the Dust

They say God formed the first man from the dust of the ground.

But no one ever said what was in that dust.

Maybe it was just clay and ash,

the dry hush of a world not yet singing.

But maybe

just maybe

there was gold in it.

Maybe flecks of firelight had settled in the soil,

the last sparks of stars that died in silence.

Maybe the earth held ancient shimmer,

buried deep beneath the weight of time,

and God saw it

and scooped it into His hands.

So when He shaped Adam,

He shaped both ruin and radiance.

Humility and heaven.

The fragile and the forever.

And maybe that’s what we are:

dust, yes

but dust with gold in it.

Carrying light we didn’t earn.

Worth we didn’t make.

Shining, not because we’re perfect

but because somewhere in our bones

is the memory of being touched by God.

⸻

The Outsiders

Some stories don’t end.

They just settle into your bloodstream

a line, a face, a feeling

that never really fades.

Sometimes it’s a whisper from a dying friend.

Sometimes it’s the way a book cracked open your chest

when you were too young to explain why.

Sometimes it’s a song that plays in a flashback,

and you don’t even know how long it’s been

since you first heard it

only that it’s still playing

somewhere in you.

I remember the way it made me feel when I first read The Outsiders in school.

I remember thinking it wasn’t just a book it was a mirror.

A bruised kind of beautiful.

A world of boys who didn’t belong anywhere but found something holy in the way they held each other up.

Grease and grace.

Bruised knuckles and beating hearts.

I read it with a highlighter soul,

like maybe if I underlined enough,

I could hold on to the gold parts a little longer.

I can’t remember exactly when I saw the movie only that it felt like watching something I already knew by heart.

Like someone had filmed the inside of the book and pressed record on the ache.

It wasn’t polished.

It wasn’t perfect.

It was boys with names like Dallas and Sodapop and Ponyboy,

moving through a world that didn’t make space for softness.

A world that made them run,

made them hide,

made them fight to protect something fragile inside themselves.

And somewhere in the middle of it

after the church,

after the fire,

after the smoke and fear and burned skin

there’s a moment that stops time.

Ponyboy is lying there.

Still.

Bruised.

Between waking and remembering.

And that’s when the song begins.

“Tomorrow is a Long Time.”

Not loud. Not showy. Just… floating.

A ghost of a song.

You hear it, and it feels like something sacred.

Like a voice coming from somewhere beyond the world.

Elvis Presley, sure.

But the words... those words

those are Dylan’s.

“If today was not an endless highway…”

And suddenly the movie isn’t just about Ponyboy anymore.

It’s about you.

And your brothers.

And your quiet thoughts at night.

And every moment you’ve tried to hold onto something gold

before the world washed it away.

That’s what this story does.

It sings.

It haunts.

It stays.

“Stay gold, Ponyboy.”

It’s the line everybody remembers.

But maybe we never really understood what Johnny was saying.

Not completely.

He wasn’t just asking Ponyboy to stay innocent.

He was telling him to remember what he’s made of.

To remember that even in a world of broken glass and scarred up hands,

there’s still something in us that can’t be touched.

Something golden.

Something God breathed.

Something that doesn’t come from winning fights

or being tough

or even surviving.

It’s just there.

Quiet and glowing.

Buried in the dust,

but never gone.

I didn’t know back then

how many times I’d need to remember that line.

How many nights would come where I’d feel scraped raw by the world,

where I’d wonder if I was still the same kid who believed in beauty,

who believed in people,

who believed in light.

I’ve grown up.

Gotten older.

Watched things break, watched people leave.

But that line

stay gold

has followed me.

It followed me through friendships that felt like family.

Through late-night drives with the windows down

and songs that felt like scripture.

It followed me as I started to understand the kind of woman I wanted to be

not the softest, not the strongest,

but maybe the kind who still sees beauty,

even in the dark.

And now

now I catch myself saying it without meaning to.

When someone shines and doesn’t even know it.

When my daughter twirls barefoot in the living room,

music in her blood.

When my son says something wild and wonderful

about God, or stars like Adam was made from gold.

I think of Ponyboy.

I think of Johnny.

I think of all of us,

trying to hold onto something good

in a world that keeps moving too fast.

And I whisper it, sometimes,

quiet and true

a blessing for whoever needs it:

Stay gold.

⸻

The Song That Stayed

“Tomorrow Is a Long Time” plays in The Outsiders like a ghost quiet, aching, unforgettable.

Elvis Presley recorded the version we hear in the film, but the song itself was written by Bob Dylan one of the great poets of light and longing. Dylan once said Elvis’s rendition was the only cover of one of his songs he truly treasured.

Maybe that’s fitting. A song about love and distance and memory, passed from poet to king, then folded into a story about boys who never had a chance

except, maybe, the chance to shine once.

To be golden.

And to be remembered.

TITLE

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out: Driving Into Forever

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 06:12:08 GMT

The Smiths : There is a light that never goes out

For Jamie (Brightness)

It began like most beautiful things do—

in motion.

A soft breeze against the skin,

the tremble of headlights tracing a lonely road,

in the gentle hush between words, where people with no place left to go find one another.

The moment before a hand reaches out

and finds a home.

Love like this doesn’t shout.

It plays from the stereo at midnight,

spilling out like stardust and cigarette smoke,

humming promises into the dark.

It feels like falling—

not just once,

but again

and again.

Because some hearts don’t settle.

They search.

They wreck.

They run.

They return.

They rise.

They remember how to begin

by learning how to break.

And still—

there is a light.

Not loud, not proud.

Just steady.

Just there.

In the pulse of the music.

In the hush between words.

In the way some songs

sound like staying and healing

even when they ache like goodbye.

A song for lovers who’ve crashed and crawled back,

who understand that the truest light

doesn’t burn out—

it burns on.

And if the world ended tonight,

if the sky split open just past the curve of the highway,

there would be no tragedy

in being right here beside you.

Because to be beside someone

who’s seen all your ruins

and still held your hand?

To love, to lose, to heal. That’s the meaning of it all. It’s everything.

TITLE

Sharp Dressed Ducks: Beards, Bayous, and the Soundtrack of the Swagger That Raised Us

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 21:51:03 GMT

ZZ TOP : Sharp Dressed Man
TV Show: Duck Dynasty

“Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man.”

I don’t remember the first time I heard it.

I just remember the way my dad sang it.

He’d step out of the bathroom, towel slung over his shoulder, steam still rising off the mirror, and the song would hit the air before the cologne did. Obsession, by Calvin Klein that deep, spicy scent that still feels like Saturday nights and Levi 501s. He’d pull on his dress socks with funky little patterns no one else wore yet, throw on a clean black shirt, and give a little shimmy like the world was lucky to have him.

Long black hair tied back. Black mustache trimmed tight. Bright blue eyes that always smiled first.

He was a sharp dressed man, alright.

And he knew it.

The soundtrack wasn’t just in the stereo it was stitched into the fabric of my childhood.

ZZ Top was like gospel.

And that song? It was my dad’s personal anthem.

⸻

Fast forward almost twenty years.

It’s 2012, and we’re in Monroe, Louisiana, temporarily living out of a hotel room with three dogs, a box of inspection papers, and a heart still raw from the ectopic pregnancy that nearly shattered me. Postpartum depression is strange like that it doesn’t care how early the loss comes. It still leaves a crater.

Jamie and I were doing property inspections to stay afloat. Not exactly living the dream just trying to make rent and be together.

Every job felt like a lifeline. So when Monroe came up (long days inspecting abandoned houses in swampland) nobody else wanted it. So we took it... we needed the money. And I’d spent many summers in Lake Charles with my dad. The eerie beauty of the swamps felt familiar like home. So we packed up and headed to Monroe for a few weeks.

We were barely sleeping. Barely making it. Definitely not praying together... not yet.

Our faith hadn’t left us, but we hadn’t exactly welcomed it into the room either.

⸻

Somewhere in that haze of highway miles and hotel beds, we stopped at a gas station.

A weird little moment just a pit stop, but it stuck.

Inside, there was a group of people... guys with beards, girls in camo, something familiar in the air we couldn’t quite place. A few looks exchanged. Not rude. Maybe a kind of warmth passed in silence through a smile. We left with snacks and got back on the road.

The next day, I stayed behind at the hotel with the dogs while Jamie kept working. I flipped on the TV (more for background noise than anything) and then it hit me!

That riff. That song. That voice.

“Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man…”

I froze. Not because of ZZ Top—but because of what came next.

There he was.

Willie Robertson.

Long hair. Big beard. And the exact same American flag bandana my dad used to hang around his rearview mirror.

Like an echo from my own childhood suddenly alive on screen.

I couldn’t look away. Something in me just clicked.

⸻

It was a Duck Dynasty marathon. We were in Monroe.

And I realized we’d literally seen some of these people the day before. We just didn’t know who they were yet.

A few days earlier, we’d even driven past the Duck Commander / Buck Commander building while out doing inspections—

pointed it out, snapped a picture, and kept moving.

At the time, it was just another local landmark.

But now, it was lighting up with meaning.

Now it almost felt like a breadcrumb...

one of those signs you only understand after the story starts to unfold.

But the real hook wasn’t the beards or the banter.

It was the faith.

At the end of every episode, the whole family gathered at the table and prayed.

Unapologetically.

Gratefully.

Like it was the most normal, beautiful thing in the world.

And something inside me felt like it cracked open.

By the time Jamie came back to the hotel, I was still watching. He sat beside me, and before long, we were in it together. Episode after episode. Prayer after prayer.

We didn’t talk about it at first. We didn’t have to.

Something was happening.

⸻

Not long after we came home from that trip, Jamie and I knelt down together—hands clasped, scared and tired and finally ready to say something out loud.

Our first genuine prayer out loud together as husband and wife wasn’t poetic. It wasn’t planned.

It was real.

And it changed everything.

We started praying together. Talking about God. Turning our faces toward the light.

And life little by little started to shift.

⸻

Duck Dynasty might’ve just been a reality show.

But for us, it was a wild and weird turning point.

A strange and holy spark.

A doorway into something deeper.

A duck call summoning us back to our faith.

⸻

As I write this, I want to pause and give thanks to Phil Robertson, the family’s patriarch, who passed away recently.

A man whose faith was unshakeable.

Whose convictions stood tall in a world that often bows.

His light touched millions, and I count myself among them.

The way he spoke about God, led his family with strength, preached with love and stood on truth without apology—was rare and radiant.

He wasn’t perfect. But he was faithful.

He left a lineage of light. In the strength of his sons, in his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, in Sadie’s fire for faith and truth, and in the lives he touched, the souls he helped steady.

Phil Robertson built a family who carries the torch with courage and grace the kind of light that doesn’t flicker when the world gets dark.

I have so much gratitude for him. For Miss Kay. For the whole wild and fun, God loving crew.

Because in a dark and uncertain time, they helped us find our way back to the light.

⸻

I don’t know if it was the beards,

or the music,

or the prayer at the end of every episode.

Maybe it was all of it.

Maybe it was something deeper.

But something about that trip pulled us closer to each other— nd to God.

And I’ve never forgotten it.

We never expected our faith to take root in a hotel room in Monroe, Louisiana after watching a bunch of God-loving, duck hunting Louisiana boys on TV.

We were just trying to get by.

But that’s how grace works, sometimes.

It shows up in the quiet.

And when it does you listen.

I don't think I’ll ever hear that riff without the feeling of it all rushing back.

Obsession in the air.

A bandana on the mirror.

And a father who taught me without trying...

that sometimes being a sharp dressed man

starts with standing on something solid.

And now I see it more clearly than ever:

the best dressed men I’ve ever known wore beards, bandanas, and unwavering faith.

They showed up for their families.

They stood tall in what they believed.

And they taught me that true swagger

the kind that lingers

comes from living with love, conviction, and light.

TITLE

Old 8x10: The Sound of Something That Stays

Mon, 30 Jun 2025 21:01:22 GMT

Randy Travis : Old 8x10

We didn’t plan on finding our forever song that day.

We were just newlyweds in Bryan, Texas shopping the used vinyl bin at Half Price Books. I think we picked up Phil Collins, The Cure, a John Travolta disco record just for fun… and Randy Travis.

That album Old 8x10 wasn’t trendy.

But it felt like home.

We brought it back to our little place, slipped it onto our modern meets vintage record player (one of those all-in-one models with a CD slot and built-in speakers) and let it spin.

Deeper Than the Holler came on, and we danced in the kitchen for the first of what would be many times. It wasn’t a flashy song. It was steady. Rooted. Honest. The kind of song that holds you still and tells you: this is what love sounds like when it’s real.

We weren’t necessarily big country fans. But we were Texas kids. And Randy had that voice...low, true, like the hum of something built to last.

We moved. First to Hot Springs, Texas again, then California, and back to Hot Springs. Each place had a new kitchen. But the same song.

We danced to it barefoot, in pajamas, in the quiet of late nights and the golden light of slow Saturdays. We kept that record with us every step of the way. We didn’t have much, but we had music, and a sky full of stars to dance under.

When our son Jaxon was born, Jamie sang him to sleep with it. Sometimes in the rocking chair, sometimes squatting on the Total Gym like a multitasking dad-hero. He memorized every word—looked them up just to get it right, even though he already knew them by heart.

That voice I fell in love with now singing to the tiny person we made together. And I’d just stand there, holding my breath, watching the two people I loved most move in rhythm with a song that had raised us.

There’s something sacred about the songs you carry through time. Something about vinyl how it crackles, how it waits for you to flip it. Like a love that asks you to stay, and stay again.

And Deeper Than the Holler?

It’s not just our song. It’s the thread that’s tied every kitchen, every slow dance, every season of us. A love that’s stayed steady through moves, babies, memories, and quiet moments that mattered more than we knew at the time. We still have the record. We still play it. And every time it spins, it sounds like home.

Jamie’s voice in the dark, rocking a baby to sleep. Our kitchen in Bryan. Our life in California. Our heart in Hot Springs. It’s not just a song it’s the soundtrack to everything good we built, and everything we’re still holding close.

TITLE

The Help: Light on the Other Side of the Tracks

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 05:26:43 GMT

Bob Dylan : Don't Think Twice, It's Alright
Film: The Help

The first time I saw The Help, I wasn’t expecting to cry.

But somewhere between the gospel hum of the soundtrack and the image of Skeeter with her notebook clenched like a lifeline, I felt something rise up in my chest...familiar and tender. Not just because the story was powerful. Not just because it was true. But because I’d lived inside it. Because I’d known that kind of woman.

Because I was raised by her.

My mom wasn’t born in Jackson, Mississippi but she could’ve walked onto that set and nobody would’ve batted an eye. She had the same blonde hair, the same stubborn fire. A little awkward, a little too outspoken for her time. But kind, and quick witted, and dangerous in the best way.

She never once tolerated racism. Not from strangers. Not from family. Not from anyone. And when people said things they shouldn’t, her face would shift in this very specific way eyes wide, jaw clenched, fists curling like thunderclouds in her lap. You could feel the air change around her. She didn’t need to scream. She didn’t need a podium. She just had to look at you.

And you knew.

⸻

My mom’s name is Liz. And long before I was born, she made a best friend named Beverly.

They met as girls in Hilltop Lakes, Texas a little place tucked between trees and cattle fields, where the roads curve like whispers and secrets. Liz was visiting her aunt Opie, who had a well kept house and a woman who worked for her named Mabel Young. Everyone called her Shanny.

Shanny didn’t just work for the family she was family. Revered, respected, radiant in every room she entered. And one summer, she brought her niece Beverly with her. Just two girls on a porch, drawn together by timing and sweetness. That’s how it started.

Liz and Beverly. A white girl from Houston. A Black girl from the flats. Girls who became sisters before the world had a chance to tell them they couldn’t be.

⸻

They grew up together Liz and Beverly. From summer visits to school days, from learning to dance in living rooms to running drills on the same basketball team. What started as a summertime bond turned into a lifelong sisterhood. And when they grew up, had children of their own… the story circled back.

Because Beverly had a daughter named Chloe.

And my mom had me.

We were born just months apart. Raised like cousins, like sisters. Like we had always belonged to each other. Chloe was my first best friend, the kind of friend who exists in your memory before memory even begins. We played, we laughed, we ran through the flats like the world belonged to us. My mom used to call us the Giggly Goo Girls because we couldn’t stop laughing when we were together late nights, sleepovers, kickball in the heat, storytelling until the stars blinked on.

We didn’t know, then, what it meant to be divided by tracks. We didn’t see “town” and “flats.” We saw each other. That was the gift our mothers gave us.

But the world still whispered. And sometimes, it said things it shouldn’t.

⸻

My mom remembers it clear as day standing in the living room, all arms and nerves, while Shanny and Beverly tried to teach her how to dance.

She doesn’t remember which song was playing. Maybe something on the radio, maybe a record. But she remembers the rhythm of the room. The sound of their laughter. The warmth in their voices as they tried to get her to loosen up, to feel the beat instead of overthinking it.

Shanny, with that patient grace. Beverly, with a grin that could light up every corner of a house. And my mom this young, white girl in a small Texas town just wanting to get it right. Wanting to show them how much she valued this. How much she valued them.

She didn’t grow up in a racist home. That much she made sure I understood. But it was moments like that standing barefoot in front of women she respected where the real learning happened. Where connection moved past theory and into motion. Into memory. Into something that still lives in her body when she talks about it today.

⸻

At one point in Chloe’s childhood, Shanny lived just down the street from her.

She was Chloe’s great-aunt, and one of the wisest, kindest, most graceful women I’ve ever known. She had long white braids and this powerful quiet about her like she was carrying history in her spine and peace in her hands.

She sold things to the neighborhood kids. Pickles. Popsicles. Sodas. It wasn’t a big operation, but it meant something. It gave us a place to go, a reason to knock on her door. She called it teaching us responsibility. Looking back, I think she was also teaching us respect, presence, and how to hold space for one another.

She was beautiful. Truly beautiful. And I remember thinking even as a kid—that if I could grow up to be like anyone, I wanted to grow up to be like her.

⸻

There’s something my mom told me not long ago... something we still don’t fully understand. And it stopped me cold.

Mabel’s last name was Young. And so was my great-grandfather’s.

It’s possible, maybe even likely that once upon a time... those names came from the same place.

And if that’s true, then somewhere down the line, someone in my family may have owned someone in hers. And I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know how to hold it except with both hands and trembling grace. Because if that’s true…

Then one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever known might’ve come into my life because of something cruel.

But what she gave me was anything but cruel.

What she gave me was light.

⸻

There’s a kind of ache that grows louder with age the kind that shows up when you start looking back at the people who raised you, the places that shaped you, and the names that echo through your bones.

I hear it sometimes in the songs I grew up on. The ones my mom loved. The ones Beverly played. The ones that somehow stitched themselves into the air of Hilltop Lakes and Normangee and all the backroads in between.

And then there’s Dylan.

Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right never played during any of this, not out loud. But somehow, it plays underneath it all. That gentle ache in his voice, that slow resignation, that worn-out grace it carries the same weight I’ve felt when reckoning with history, with family, with the brokenness we inherit and the light we choose to pass on anyway.

That song sounds like the moment after a hard truth, when you exhale and move forward with love anyway.

⸻

I still carry the image of Shanny in my heart... those long white braids, that knowing smile, the way she gave to the neighborhood without ever raising her voice. She was grace in motion.

And I still want to be like her.

Not just in looks. In presence. In purpose. In how I pass down love. In how I teach my own kids what respect really means. In how I hold space for stories that came before me, even the hard ones. Especially the hard ones.

If I’m lucky, if I live long and right maybe I’ll be the old woman with long white braids someday.

And maybe some kid will ride their bike up my driveway, ask for a popsicle, and feel what I once felt.

Seen.

Safe.

Loved.

TITLE

1997: Searching for Stars in the Darkness

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 04:09:03 GMT

Brandon Hart : 1997

I heard 1997 by Brandon Hart for the first time with my husband just a few years back. I hadn’t expected it to hit me the way it did. This song wasn’t part of my current soundtrack. It wasn’t a song that had shaped my life or carried me through the years. It was a fresh discovery, yet it transported me back in time, back to the ache and confusion of 1997.

The song swept me back to my youth, back to a time of extreme change and heartbreak. It’s a song of raw, aching nostalgia, but also one of quiet healing. It floods me with heavy memories, but also seems to carry the light that came after.

In 1997, the world felt like it was unraveling at the seams. My family had just gone through the intense trauma of my parents divorce. My brother and I, barely old enough to grasp the depth of what was happening, were caught in the whirlwind of it all. We were pulled from Texas to North Carolina, from the familiar to the foreign, from stability to uncertainty.

I still remember, in the midst of all the madness, the peace I found in music. It became my companion, my escape, and in the middle of a time of heaviness that felt endless, music became my light in the darkness.

We lived with my grandmother, Nanny. She was such a bright star in my world, the one person who made everything feel okay, even when life didn’t make any sense. She was magic so full of grace, warmth, and beauty. I loved her deeply—she was more than family. She was my safe place, my friend, and when she passed away in 1997 everything shattered in ways I couldn’t yet understand.

I found her early in the morning, her body wracked with spasms, her eyes rolling back in her head in a way that made her look almost unrecognizable like something out of The Exorcist. (Massive stroke and heart attack) I rushed to wake my brother, and we stood together terrified and shaking as he called 911, but the hospital couldn’t save her. She was gone. That moment, that loss, became a defining point in my life. I was so small, yet the weight of that moment made me feel like the world was crumbling.

The grief that followed was suffocating. The world we had built in North Carolina was already starting to fall apart. My brother and I were separated of and on again after her death. He went to stay with friends or Dad, and my mother and I stayed with others. It was as if everything that had kept us together was suddenly ripped apart, and I found myself lost in the silence, disconnected it seemed from everything I had ever known.

As soon as I fall into this song I am thrown back into my past...the confusion, the tragedy, the pain. The song takes hold of me like a vortex of memories, back to my youth, where every day felt uncertain and unstable. Leaving me in the wake of how blessed I am to have my husband and best friend by my side. I didn’t even realize how much I needed to hear these lyrics until they burned deep beyond my ears.

The music it’s like a portal— It’s like the past and present collide, I don’t just feel the echoes of my past I hear the promise of my future. The weight of the years mixing with the hope of what’s to come. It’s a living part of my ongoing story. Each note a thread that ties together the pain of my youth with the love I’ve found in my husband.

“I don't care where we're goin'

As long as you're with me

I'll never feel like I'm all alone

Don't care where we're movin'

If we're together

It'll always feel like we're at home”

And as it plays, through the pain I feel the warmth of the light at the end of the tunnel, the comfort of knowing that, no matter what we face, we’ll always have each other and not all days are dark days. Jamie you are my brightness… I love you so!

TITLE

People Are Strange: Santa Cruz, Vampires, Street Fighters, and The Lost Girl

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 03:52:58 GMT

Echo & The Bunnymen : People Are Strange (Cover of The Doors)
Film: The Lost Boys

OPENING SCENE – “WIDE SHOT”

Cue the boardwalk lights. Cue the distant scream from a ride.

Cue the sound of leather boots on wet wood, and a synth beat pulsing under sea fog.

But this isn’t Santa Cruz. Not yet.

This is Houston, Texas 1990 something.

A couch. A Coke. My dad. Me, eleven years old and wide eyed.

The movie flickered on "The Lost Boys" and the world shifted.

It didn’t feel like we were watching a film. It felt like the film was watching me.

“You ever seen this one?” he asked.

I hadn’t.

But I didn’t need a plot summary.

The soundtrack landed. The camera soared over the ocean. The boardwalk glowed like something out of a fever dream.

And just like that, I was gone.

⸻

Track One: Cry Little Sister

“Thou shalt not fall / Thou shalt not die…”

The song wasn’t background music.

It was prophecy.

It sounded like something ancient whispered through a TV speaker...

a lullaby for the strange ones.

Even now, I can hear it.

That sacred pulse under the opening scene,

it told me I was stepping into something beyond.

Not just vampires. Not just fog and blood.

And my dad (Chief Mojo Rising) was right there beside me.

Named not literally, but spiritually, after Jim Morrison’s shadow.

He had that same quiet chaos in him. That poetic, cracked open cool.

That wild spark you couldn’t fake.

We passed the Coke back and forth like communion.

He let the film speak for itself. Let it wrap around us both.

He wasn’t just showing me a movie. He was welcoming me in.

By the time it ended, I wasn’t the same girl who’d changed it to that channel and became entranced by the intro.

I was cooler. Braver. Stranger.

I wasn’t afraid of the dark.

I belonged to it now.

Track Two: People Are Strange

“People are strange when you’re a stranger…”

I recognized the song immediately.

The melody hit first slinky, sideways, sad.

A song that knew something about you without asking.

But the voice was wrong.

It wasn’t Jim Morrison.

I turned to the screen, then to my dad. I didn’t say anything... I just knew.

He’d taught me The Doors young. “People Are Strange” was one of our sacred songs.

And this version?

It felt haunted. Slowed down. Echoed through a filter of fog and neon.

But it worked.

It more than worked.

It belonged to the film in the same way the boardwalk did

familiar, but one step removed.

A version of reality slightly off axis.

Just like me.

I waited for the credits.

Even at eleven, I needed to know who sang it.

Echo & the Bunnymen.

Of course.

There’s something about hearing a song you love dressed in new clothes.

It’s like meeting an old friend in a dream, same soul, different voice.

That was this moment. That was this movie.

⸻

I didn’t know then that I’d spend the next decade drifting between groups, always a little offbeat, always almost fitting.

But something in this song told me I wasn’t alone in that.

It gave language to the feeling I couldn’t name yet,

that sense of living just outside the glass.

Observing. Listening. Waiting for a signal.

And there it was.

In a vampire movie.

On a couch.

Next to my dad.

A strange song, for a strange girl, in a strange world that was suddenly starting to make a little more sense (or at least feel a lot more rad).

Track Three: I Still Believe

“I still believe / I still believe…”

Sixteen years.

That’s how long it had been since our wedding road trip.

Roswell. The Grand Canyon. Vegas. California.

We were just married, just beginning, just wild enough to believe that love could outrun the world.

Now we’re back.

Similar route. Same coast.

But this time… it’s heavier.

This time, we brought the kids.

And the ashes.

Jamie’s mom asked to be scattered near Monterey a year after she passed.

So we came.

To honor her. To relive something. To feel it all again, but different.

More memory. More grief. More joy.

Everything turned up. Everything threaded through something else.

⸻

We hadn’t even made it to the boardwalk yet when things started echoing.

The Airbnb smelled like my grandmother’s house (my dad’s mom).

Old wood. A soft sweetness. Comfort tucked into corners.

Jamie said it reminded him of my dad’s house too.

I didn’t even know I’d been waiting for that scent until it found me.

It wrapped around me like a blanket stitched with ghosts.

Not sad. Just present.

Like they were saying,

“We’re still here.”

⸻

And then came Santa Cruz.

The boardwalk stretched in front of us like a memory unfolding.

We made it there early. The rides were shut down.

No music blasting, no crowd noise just the ocean behind us and the quiet creak of the place breathing.

It felt… still.

Like the movie had wrapped but the set was still standing.

Like we got there before something happened or maybe after.

We didn’t rush anything.

We spent most of the morning walking the beach, collecting shells with the kids.

Tiny treasures in sandy hands, Maggie squealing every time she found one that sparkled.

Jaxon walking ahead, in his own little rhythm. Gracie laughing like she was made of seafoam.

We wandered into the arcade like it was second nature.

No lines, no chaos. Just quarters on preloaded cards, buttons, and that warm hum of old machines still doing their job.

We spotted Street Fighter II and Jamie smiled, not at me, not at the kids, just this quiet little grin, like something clicked into place.

Jaxon stepped up next to him like he was always meant to.

They played.

Same game Jamie played when he was a kid.

Same stance, same focus.

Jaxon held his own.

I didn’t say anything. Just stood there, watching them. Taking photos quietly.

Not just as a mom. Not just as a wife.

But as someone fully there: present, grounded, grateful.

The ocean. The arcade. My family.

Santa Cruz.

Not how I imagined it.

Better.

I still believe.

In movies.

In music.

In bloodlines and memory and Street Fighter tournaments under arcade lights.

In the kind of love that keeps circling back, asking you to remember and choose it again.

Track Four: Lost in the Shadows

“Say hello to the night…”

This trip wasn’t just a vacation.

It was a soul mission.

We weren’t just here for fun.

We were here because of death, and love, and promises made.

To scatter ashes.

To retrace steps.

To feel the weight of everything we’ve lived through since the last time we stood on this road.

Roswell.

Flagstaff.

Vegas.

California.

Same places mostly. Different people.

Back then, it was just Jamie and I, young and electric and unstoppable.

Now? It’s deeper. Heavier. Bittersweet.

We’ve said goodbye to parents.

We’ve brought children into the world.

We’ve learned how to keep loving each other when the road is long and the night is thick with silence.

⸻

Driving through Arizona, the sky was big and soft and gold —

and I felt my dad there,

somewhere between the desert and the distant mountains.

It was his kind of landscape.

Reservation land.

Navajo country.

Spirit territory.

Jamie felt him too.

Just a flicker.

But enough to say:

“He’s with us.”

And in California, in Monterey, in the wind over the ocean

we felt his mother, Margie

like the sea had been calling her home this whole time.

⸻

We carried them both.

In the way we looked at the sky.

In the way we let the kids run free.

In the way we didn’t rush through the heavy moments.

This trip was full of shadows.

But we weren’t lost in them.

We were walking through them with purpose.

With memory.

With love.

Track Five: Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me

“Although I search myself, it’s always someone else I see…”

We found it by accident.

Or maybe not.

The Lost Boys house, tucked behind the trees, almost hidden, like it didn’t want to be seen by just anyone.

Like it was waiting for someone who’d know what it meant.

I didn’t walk up.

Didn’t knock.

Didn’t take a hundred photos.

I just sat there,

watching from behind the fence,

like I was looking through a screen again

but this time, it was real.

This time, I was in the frame.

And something about that moment felt holy.

Like I was standing in a place where all my timelines had curled together.

Eleven-year-old me.

Thirty-something me.

Mom me.

Daughter me.

All of us standing there in the silence,

watching the house through the branches,

and whispering the same thing:

“We made it.”

⸻

I didn’t need to go inside.

Just to see it was enough.

To know that something I had carried in my heart for so long

a scene, a song, a strange and beautiful film

wasn’t just a dream or a flicker of nostalgia.

It was real.

And it had waited for me. (Or at least it felt that way within that golden moment).

⸻

We left not long after.

The sun was starting to dip.

The kids were getting tired.

But I felt full — like I’d found a thread I didn’t even realize had been loose all this time.

Some movies change your life.

Some songs become mirrors.

Some places (even the ones you’ve never been)

are part of your story long before you arrive.

⸻

I was never a Lost Boy.

I was always the Lost Girl.

The one watching from the outside,

singing along in the dark,

waiting for the lights to flicker back on.

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Starlight in Her Paws: A Letter of Light for Steffany Hope Bowling

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 03:12:56 GMT

Dear Steffany ,

I think about you more often than you’d expect, and always with the kind of warmth reserved for someone who once changed my life with a puppy. We haven’t seen each other in years, but your light has never dimmed in my memory. I still remember Tuesday Morning those days of post high-school chaos and low-wage camaraderie mostly because of how bright you made them. You were the fun one. The outgoing one. A newlywed, a new mama beaming with pride over your baby boy Josh. You had this spark that made people feel lucky to be near it. I don’t think I ever told you just how much that meant to me.

We bonded over music, over laughter, and especially over animals. You had your sweet miniature dachshunds Lilo & Stitch and I had Atticus. We talked about our dogs like they were family because, well, they were. You knew how much Atticus meant to me, and that I hoped to raise his bloodline alongside mine.

What you did next was one of the kindest, most generous surprises of my life.

Right around my 21st birthday, you and Jamie cooked up a plan. I thought I was getting fish for my birthday,literally. A fish tank! We were at Petco, and I was fully expecting goldfish or guppies or something simple and sweet. But then we turned the corner… and there you were. Holding the most beautiful little dapple dachshund I’d ever seen. Matilda.

My jaw dropped. My heart burst. You smiled that big, excited smile like you knew exactly what you were giving me not just a puppy, but something much, much deeper.

Matilda was everything. She was pure joy, wild energy, and perfect sweetness all rolled into one tiny creature. She was deeply loved every single day of her life. Her time with us was too short cut short by illness but she lived fully, fearlessly, and with so much love surrounding her. She had three beautiful sons: Frankenstein (Frankie), Bruce Wayne, and Charlie. Frankie and Bruce Wayne stayed with us Frankie lived to be almost 13, and Bruce made it to 15 and a half. Eventually, Frankie had a daughter: Penny. A beautiful dapple just like her grandmother.

Penny still lives with us today. She’s grown up alongside our kids. She’s part of the family, just like Matilda was. And often when I look at her, I think of you. Of Lilo and Stitch. Of how much light you shared by trusting me with that little soul.

That legacy still runs through our house on tiny paws and wagging tails and it all traces back to you.

I found you on Facebook years later, and I’ve followed along ever since watching you go viral with your incredible cake creations, laughing at your hilarious TikToks, and feeling constant admiration for the strength, creativity, and joy you radiate. Even while facing health challenges, you’ve remained fierce, fun, and inspiring as hell. You’ve always had that spark. I don’t think it ever went out it just got stronger.

So, Steffany , thank you. Thank you for being the light in a random retail job that turned out to be anything but ordinary. Thank you for Matilda, for the surprise, for the love, and for trusting me with a piece of your heart. Thank you for being the kind of person who stays with someone long after the shift ends.

You are amazing. You always have been. And I’m lucky to have known you.

With so much love,

Lauren

Starlight in Her Paws
A Letter of Light for Steffany Hope Bowling

Thank You: Steffany Hope Bowling

Strawberry Fields Forever

Thu, 26 Jun 2025 02:48:02 GMT

The Beatles : Strawberry Fields Forever

The soil is cool between my fingers, damp from the early morning dew. The scent of earth rises in the air, mixing with the faint sweetness of ripening strawberries. A warm breeze rustles through the garden, carrying the quiet hum of spring. I don’t know why I look up just then, but I do...two redbirds perched on the fence, watching. Their feathers catch the sunlight, burning bright against the pale sky. They don’t move, don’t startle. They just sit. And something in me stills.

The song is suddenly there, playing in the back of my mind. Strawberry Fields Forever.

I hear your voice, Dad.

That’s where you’ll find me. Strawberry Fields, Strawberry Fields Forever.

I never really understood what you meant. Maybe I do now.

Strawberries have been somewhat of a quiet thread through my life. My favorite fruit. Jaxon’s too (the only food he’ll ever declare his love for). A few years ago, he wanted to plant them in our garden. The first year, they struggled, beaten down by the Texas heat. We thought they were gone. But then, the next spring, they came back on their own, stronger, sweeter. And now, once again, here they are, growing without effort, like they belong here. Like they were always meant to return.

You would have loved that, Dad!

My dad always had a way with growing things. Mom could make flowers bloom, but he could take a bare patch of dirt and turn it into something that fed people. His garden wasn’t just plants—it was proof of patience, of care. Of knowing when to let nature take its course.

Jamie and I lived in California for a brief period, and even though it wasn’t long, it left its mark on me. There was something dreamlike about it;how the mist rolled over the hills in the early morning, how the sky turned gold in the evenings. We’d take long drives just to soak it all in, past endless stretches of strawberry fields, their rows of red and green blurring together in the afternoon light. Stopping at roadside stands to buy baskets of fruit still warm from the earth. We had a burned mix CD we played in the car, and Strawberry Fields Forever was on it. We listened as we watched the fields blur by, the song drifting through open windows. The air smelled sweet, heavy with the scent of earth and fruit, and sometimes it felt like we had stepped outside of time. We’d dance to old records in the kitchen with the windows open, have fishing adventures in the cool air of the Pacific, and wake up to slow, quiet cool mornings wrapped in the kind of peace that only exists when you know you’re living inside a moment you’ll look back on forever.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons the song stayed with me... not just because of my dad, but because it was woven into so many different corners of my life. The song, the fields, the feeling of things quietly growing all around me. It’s funny how we don’t always recognize the things that will follow us, the ones that will take root in our memories and return when we need them most.

John Lennon wasn’t just a musician to my dad he was a great thinker and writer, someone who peeled back the layers of the world and put them into words. He used to quote Watching the Wheels, “No longer riding on the merry-go-round I just had to let it go”, like he saw something of himself in it. He thought Lennon was brilliant, deep, someone who didn’t just make music but left something behind in it.

I’ve always felt that, too. He was my favorite Beatle his music, his words, the way he seemed to search for something bigger. Some of his solo work moves me even more than what he did with The Beatles, maybe because it feels rawer, more exposed. His bed-in movement, the way he and Yoko turned protest into art, into something so simple yet so bold. I’ve always been deeply impacted by that! There was something about the way he lived, the way he created, that makes me keep looking for meaning, for connection, for stars in the dark.

John Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever about a real place, a children’s home near where he grew up. But it wasn’t really about a place at all it was about memory, about perception, about how reality blurs when you look back at it. The song doesn’t just sound psychedelic it is psychedelic. The way the instruments bend and shift, the way Lennon’s voice sways between clarity and distortion. It’s a trip through nostalgia that isn’t comforting so much as it is unsettling memories that don’t sit still, always changing shape the more you examine them.

Maybe that’s why you connected with it so much, Dad. Because your childhood wasn’t just a straight line of memories it was a mosaic of feelings, of moments, of time spent in the dirt beside Dora.

Some of your best childhood memories were in the garden with Dora. You told me once that was where you felt happiest digging in the dirt, planting, pulling weeds, playing ball in the yard. That was your sanctuary. The smell of earth, the rhythm of planting, the satisfaction of watching something grow.

And then you grew up. Life got harder. But maybe when you heard Strawberry Fields Forever, it took you back there. Maybe that song, like the dirt under your nails, like the leaves between your fingers, reminded you of something pure.

Eleanor was another reminder of how things grow under the right hands. We picked out the aloe vera cactus together, Dad, Jaxon, and I, walking through the Walmart garden center, scanning the rows of cacti. Dad chose one, took it home, and turned it into something enormous. It even bloomed once, the way only the most cared for things do. He built a cart for her, wheeled her inside when it got too cold. He broke off her babies, handing them to us like heirlooms.

Jaxon named his Planty, deep in his Pee-Wee’s Playhouse phase. Dad thought it was just too perfect. And just like Dora had taught him to nurture life he set out to do the same with his own grandson.

Maybe that’s why, when you told me that’s where I would find you, I should have believed you.

Dad, I think about what you said all the time. About how I’d find you here.

I’m starting to believe you were right.

Strawberries keep coming back. Even when they shouldn’t, even when I think they’re gone, they find their way home.

And you do too, in ways I never fully understood before.

I hear you in the music, in the rustling of leaves, in the lessons you left behind. I see you in the redbirds, watching over me, over Jaxon and the girls, over the garden we’re growing together.

And I know now. This is what you meant.

Strawberry Fields Forever.

And just like John Lennon left behind a piece of himself in the song, you left a piece of yourself here, too. In the dirt. In the music. In us.

And we will keep searching for you in the places you loved, in the things you taught us to cherish. In the stars. In the fields. In the quiet moments where love remains long after we think it’s gone.

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Video Killed the Radio Star: Be Kind, Rewind

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 20:23:22 GMT

Presidents of The United States Of America : Video Killed The Radio Star
Film: The Wedding Singer

Be Kind, Rewind

If you were a kid in the ‘90s, you knew two things for sure: you had to rewind the VHS before returning it to Blockbuster, and music always changing, always rearranging was life.

By the time The Wedding Singer hit theaters in 1998, “Video Killed the Radio Star” had already lived two full lives; first as a song by The Buggles in 1979, then reborn as a cover by The Presidents of the United States of America nearly two decades later.

That’s the thing about music (and movies, and technology, and just about everything). It never really dies it just gets a new lead singer, remixed, re-released, and repackaged for the next generation.

The ‘90s and early 2000s were an entire era of reinvention burning CDs from Napster, downloading ringtones that made our phones sound like futuristic jukeboxes, discovering chat rooms, Google, eBay and PayPal like online voyagers exploring a virtual new world. Oh and let us not forget flipping through late-night infomercials for Magic Bullets , compilation albums…

And of course The Total Gym.

Couldn’t get enough of it.

Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley had me fully convinced that fitness had peaked.

Was I a child? Yes.

Did I believe I needed one? Absolutely.

Do I, as a full-grown adult, now own a Total Gym and still believe Chuck Norris was onto something?

A big yes.

Video Didn’t Kill the Radio Star—It Just Gave Them a New Gig

If The Wedding Singer taught me anything, it’s that nostalgia never really goes out of style.

By the early 2000s, vinyl and cassette had given way to burned CDs, MP3 players, and early iPods.

Technology was changing fast, but music? Music was just adapting.

And that’s exactly what “Video Killed the Radio Star” was doing in 1998: not replacing the past, but keeping it going.

The Soundtrack to a Shifting Era

By the late ‘90s, music wasn’t just on the radio it was everywhere. On MTV , in the background of every movie, and on CD players and Discmans so bulky they could double as self-defense weapons.

If you were making a mix CD, it was a science. The opening track had to grab attention, the middle had to tell a story, and the last song had to feel like it was filled with bits of your soul.
If you were watching music videos, you had to catch them live—or you sat there with a VHS tape, trying to record your favorite song while avoiding commercials.

There was no rewind button for real life. No instant access, no playlists on demand.

You either caught the moment or you didn’t.

Press Play, Repeat

Hearing this version of ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ so upbeat, so fun—feels like evidence. Evidence that music transcends time, connecting generations through the magic of lyric and sound.

Nothing golden ever really fades. It just rewinds, fast-forwards, and plays again in a different format.

A song, a movie, a mixtape, a VHS copy of The Wedding Singer gathering dust on a shelf they’re never really too far out of reach.

They just wait for the right moment to resurface, like an old favorite playing on the radio when you least expect it.

Because nostalgia isn’t about what’s been replaced.

It’s about what we keep pressing play on again and again.

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Hurricane: Storm Chasing Through Time

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 05:29:47 GMT

Something Corporate : Hurricane

Some songs collide into you, electric and unstoppable, like a storm ripping through the quiet. Hurricane by Something Corporate has always felt that way to me—a surge of sound and feeling, a force too strong to ignore inspiring my body to be healed by the movement of dance. So I danced through youth, through heartbreak, through the kind of nights that made me feel infinite. And then life shifted, like storms do. The winds changed. The hurricane carried me somewhere new.

Stand up, don’t make a sound. Your ears might bleed.

That’s how it felt back then standing on the edge of something too big to name, the weight of youth pressing against my ribs, the pulse of the music keeping time with my heart. There were sweet fluorescent enemies that lived inside of me, restless thoughts that only seemed to quiet when I let the music drown them out. And Hurricane? It wasn’t just a song. It was permission to scream, to move, to let it all go.

The world moves faster than I knew…

This song has followed me through the years, shifting shape but never losing its urgency. It’s been a battle cry, a soundtrack to my youth, a reminder that movement is survival. And somehow, it became part of a new rhythm...the background melody of my son’s childhood.

Not fast enough to not creep up on you…

He began to play it often and on repeat at around four years old, humming along to lyrics he didn’t yet understand but somehow felt. Maybe that’s the magic of music the way it lingers, threading itself into our stories, carrying echoes of who we were while keeping us tethered to who we’ve become.

And the space we put between…

That space is vast, stretching across years, across lifetimes. But some songs collapse time, pulling past and present together until it’s all one infinite, spinning moment. Hurricane is that song for me. No matter how far I go, how much life changes, when it plays, I am caught in the current again singing, dancing, and feeling alive.

Because some storms never pass. They just find new ways to move through you.

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Tool: Poetry in Motion

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 00:03:07 GMT

Tool : Stinkfist & Lateralus

The first time I heard Tool, I stopped breathing. I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean my body locked up, my pulse stuttered, my brain scrambled to process the sound pouring from the television speakers. The screen flickered shadowy figures, distorted faces, wires twisting, skin peeling. It wasn’t just a song. It was something else. Something primal. Something I wasn’t ready for but couldn’t look away from.

I was just a kid. Time blurred around me in that way it does when you’re young and restless and unsure of anything except the fact that something is missing. I had never heard music like this before,had never felt sound crawl under my skin like an electric current, making my stomach drop, making me uneasy in a way I couldn’t name but didn’t want to end. I stood there, frozen, caught between fear and fascination.

“I can’t tell if I love this or if it terrifies me.”

Maybe both.

I didn’t know then what this moment would mean. That years later, Tool would resurface, not just as a sound but as a signpost. That a single question (Do you know who Tool is?) would shift the trajectory of my life. That the same overwhelming force that held me still in front of that television screen would be the same force that would pull me toward Jamie.

The video ended, but the feeling didn’t. That unsettled, electric hum still clung to my skin, vibrating just beneath the surface. I had never experienced a song that made me feel like that before like my mind was short circuiting, like something inside me was waking up and unraveling at the same time. I didn’t understand why it hit me so hard. I just knew that it did.

And maybe that’s the thing about anxiety and overstimulation. You don’t even realize it’s happening until suddenly, everything is too much the noise, the light, the pressure, the ache of growing up too fast and not fast enough at the same time. I was already restless, already searching for something, already feeling the weight of emotions I didn’t know how to name yet. And then Tool arrived, crashing through my senses like a warning, like a prophecy, like a question I didn’t even know I was asking

“Where do we go from here?”

I don’t know how long I stood there after the video ended. Seconds, minutes time didn’t feel real in that moment. The apartment around me was silent, but my head was ringing. My body still buzzing from whatever had just happened.

Nothing had ever stopped me in my tracks like that. But there it was sound, movement, distortion, emotion, something pulsing beneath it all that felt bigger than just music. Bigger than me. And I didn’t even understand why. Not yet.

I think I was waiting. For something. For someone. For the moment when my life would split open and become something else. But waiting for what? I didn’t know.

I didn’t know it then, but I would chase that feeling for years. The hunger, the need for something bigger, the restless search for meaning in a world that felt just out of reach. Music became my language for it. My map. My proof that I wasn’t alone in it.

I think about that girl sometimes, the one standing frozen in front of the television screen, her mind unraveling to a song she barely understood. I think about how she didn’t know what was coming next. How she didn’t know that one day, a single question "Do you know who Tool is?" would reroute her entire life. How she didn’t know that someone was waiting on the other side of that question. Someone who spoke in depth and rhythm, in philosophies and sound waves, someone whose words would captivate and intimidate her in the same breath. She didn’t know that the search for more the ache that had buried itself inside her was already pulling her toward him.

But that moment hadn’t happened yet. Not yet. First, there was just the song. The video. The realization that something had cracked open inside her. The quiet hum of something beginning. The first pulse of movement in the spiral.

It’s funny how things play out. I met this guy named Will at Subway, thought he was cute, gave him my number. When he called, one of the first things he asked me was if I liked Tool. I said yes. That answer led to a date. That date and that night led me to… Jamie.

It would be easy to say it was fate. That I knew, the moment he walked in, that something had shifted in the universe, that I had just met someone who would change the course of my life. But that’s not how it happened. Not exactly.

The first time I saw Jamie, I wasn’t even sure what I thought of him. He was late—coming home from work, the low buzz of conversation already filling the room. I was sitting on the floor in a circle of people, some faces familiar, some not, and then there he was introducing himself, shaking off the weight of the day. There was nothing particularly dramatic about the moment, nothing cinematic except maybe the way time felt like it stalled for half a second before moving forward again. And maybe that was enough.

I remember the way he spoke. Not just what he said, but the way he said it. The way his words carried weight, the way his thoughts unraveled like poetry, calculated but effortless. He talked about music, about Tool, about things I didn’t fully understand but wanted to. He was smart. Too smart. Or maybe just so sure in what he knew that it threw me off balance. I didn’t know if I liked him or if he intimidated the hell out of me. Maybe both.

But I know this—I listened.

Maybe it started that night. Maybe it started long before that. I don’t know. I just know that, somewhere between the weight of Stinkfist pressing into my chest and the sound of Jamie’s voice cutting through the room, something shifted.

I wouldn’t have called it fate. Not then. I didn’t believe in things like that. I believed in music, in movement, in the strange electricity that hummed beneath my skin when something mattered even if I didn’t know why. I didn’t know that Jamie would be important yet. I didn’t know that Tool would become something more than a band I admired. But I knew that, for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t just standing still anymore. Something in me had started moving.

Not running. Not escaping. Just… moving.

“Overthinking, overanalyzing separates the body from the mind.”

I didn’t know why that lyric latched onto me like a lifeline. But it did. And maybe it was because I had spent so much of my life doing just that trapped inside my own head, spiraling inward instead of outward. But this was different. This was something else. This wasn’t the restless, gnawing hunger of Stinkfist. This wasn’t suffocation disguised as longing. This was something wider, deeper. Something that didn’t demand to be figured out right away. Just felt.

I had spent so much of my life searching. Restless. Overstimulated. Caught somewhere between wanting to feel everything and feeling nothing at all. Always bracing myself for the next letdown, the next moment that wouldn’t live up to the expectation, the next thing that would leave me hollow and hungry for more.

But then Jamie kissed me.

And everything stopped.

No, not stopped. Collapsed. Crashed in on itself. Rearranged. All of a sudden I felt like I recognized him from a dream. It was powerful and terrifying and nothing like I had ever felt before. It knocked the breath out of me, not because it was soft or sweet, but because it was too much,too real, too raw, too big for me to wrap my mind around. For a second, I wanted to run. But I didn’t. Because I knew. I knew in a way I had never known anything before. I knew that nothing was the same anymore. That I had stepped into something larger than myself, something already moving, something I could either fight against or surrender to.

I didn’t sleep that night. Or maybe I did, but it didn’t feel like it. Everything in my head was too loud, too sharp, too alive to shut off. I kept replaying it the weight of the moment, the way it didn’t feel like just a kiss but a door slamming open inside me. I didn’t know what came next, but I knew I wasn’t the same anymore.

“We’ll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one’s been.”

I heard it differently now. Felt it differently. It wasn’t just a lyric anymore it was something I could almost see. A motion, a pull, a path unfurling in front of me. And for the first time, I wasn’t scared of it. I wasn’t trying to slow it down or make sense of it. I was just moving with it. Letting it take me where it wanted me to go.

Something in me had unlocked. And once it was open, there was no going back.

I was stepping forward into the unknown and trusting that there was something waiting on the other side.

There’s something almost supernatural about Lateralus. The way the time signatures shift in Fibonacci sequences, the way the rhythm itself spirals outward like an equation unfolding in sound. It’s math and music in perfect symmetry—numbers turning into something infinite, something alive. It’s a formula, a pattern, a pulse. And somehow, it still feels human. Still feels like something reaching for more.

It’s not just a song. It’s a reminder. To move. To grow. To stop trying to control the outcome and just step into whatever comes next. To let go of overthinking and ride the spiral wherever it leads.

I didn’t know where I was going yet. But for the first time in my life, I was okay with that. Because I was moving. And that was enough.

The thing about spirals is that they don’t end. They keep moving outward, expanding into something bigger than what came before. And I think about that now—how the girl frozen in front of the TV, overwhelmed by Stinkfist, could never have imagined where the spiral would take her. That one day, the same band that left her breathless with fear would become the soundtrack to her expansion. That one day, a single song would stop being just music and start being a way forward.

I used to think life moved in straight lines. That once you figured things out, once you found the right pieces, everything would fall into place. But I don’t believe that anymore. Life doesn’t work like that. It moves in spirals expanding, unfolding, pulling you forward even when you don’t realize it.

Somewhere along the way, Lateralus stopped being just a song and became something else. A shift. A movement. A reminder that I don’t have to have everything figured out... just trust the movement.

And maybe Jamie was part of that, too. Maybe he always was. The moment I didn’t see coming. The shift I wasn’t prepared for. The person who walked in and unknowingly reintroduced me to the very thing that had once stopped me in my tracks. Maybe Tool wasn’t just leading me back to the music. Maybe it was leading me toward him all along.

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The Ocean: Memory Row, Lost and Found in the Fog

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 09:02:04 GMT

John Steinbeck : Cannery Row
Led Zepplin : The Ocean

It hit me all at once.

The salt in the air. The soft hush of fog curling around old rooftops. Sea lions barking like ghosts from the other side of a memory I hadn’t lived but somehow still knew. Monterey didn’t feel like the first time. It felt like walking into a dream someone else had held for me, carefully folded and saved, like a story pressed between the pages of an old book.

And that someone was Jamie.

He had talked about Cannery Row for years. About the ocean, the aquarium, the fog, the street. He told me I’d love it not in the way people say that about places you might visit someday, but in the way someone says, “I’ve been saving this for you.”

The smell alone nearly broke me. That mix of seaweed and memory. Childhood and rust. We hadn’t even made it past the first corner before my eyes welled up and my chest cracked open just a little. Jamie squeezed my hand, already smiling like he’d known. Of course he had. He always does.

This wasn’t just a stop on a map.

This was Cannery Row.

And we had finally made it.

[Then: Mrs. Wells & the Spark of Literature]

I was sixteen the first time I read Of Mice and Men.

Small town Texas high school, junior year English. The kind of classroom where the windows sometimes stuck and the lights hummed overhead. But none of that mattered, because Mrs. Wells was the kind of teacher who lit the whole room from the inside out.

She was young, brilliant, passionate the kind of woman who made you want to understand. She didn’t just teach literature. She embodied it. Arms moving with each sentence, voice full of heat and heartbreak, pacing around the room like she was leading us somewhere ancient and holy. And somehow, she was.

She didn’t just show us Steinbeck she translated him.

She taught us how to read for the ache, how to listen between the words. How to see ourselves inside the loneliness, the longing, the little human kindnesses that lived between Lennie’s hands and George’s sighs. I still remember her voice as she read the ending. The room had gone quiet. Not because we were afraid of the silence, but because we felt it. Together. And that was her gift.

She broke me open and gave me language for what I already carried inside.

Not just about the books but about how to write.

How to look deeper.

How to feel on purpose.

How to make sense of the chaos by putting it into story.

I wrote some of my favorite high school pieces in her class—paragraphs and pages I can still feel in my bones. And though I never got to thank her the way I wanted to, I carry her with me still. Every time I return to a book. Every time I open a memory like a map.

Every time I remember that stories aren’t just things we read.

They’re things we become.

[Then: Jamie, The Odyssey, and Mr. Ramsey]

Long before he was mine, Jamie was once a boy in Monterey.

He still talks about it with that light in his voice that good childhood glow. The kind of happiness that settles deep and stays with you, even as the years shift and scatter. He remembers the ocean air. The way the town felt both peaceful and alive. When he speaks of it, it’s not in detail so much as energy... a kind of golden warmth he carries in his chest.

And then there’s Mr. Ramsey.

His favorite teacher. Ever.

He said it the same way every time with a kind of reverence that didn’t need to be explained. Mr. Ramsey had this calm, poetic way about him. The kind of man who made you feel smarter just for being in the room. Who made the Odyssey feel less like a dusty assignment and more like a map of the soul.

Jamie still remembers reading it for the first time in that classroom, and thinking: this is what stories are supposed to feel like.

It wasn’t about ancient gods or wooden horses. It was about finding your way back to something you lost. About getting bruised along the way, but coming home anyway. That story burrowed into him, settled somewhere deep and never left.

Sometimes I think Mr. Ramsey and Mrs. Wells were working together before we ever met. Like they knew we’d need this someday.

A girl raised on Steinbeck’s aching beauty.

A boy raised on Homer’s long return.

And now here we were.

Walking the same streets Jamie once walked as a child.

Both of us carrying the people who taught us to love words.

Both of us writing a story that had been waiting for us.

[Now: The Aquarium, Doc’s Ghost, and the Quiet Sacred]

The Monterey Bay Aquarium wasn’t just beautiful.

It was sacred.

Jamie had come here as a kid. That fact alone was enough to split me open. Watching him walk through the same space again but this time with our children, with me was almost too much beauty to hold. There was something circular about it. Something beyond words. Like the ocean itself had waited, patient and wide, for this moment to arrive.

It felt like stepping into a Steinbeck story.

Into Doc’s lab, refracted through glass and wonder.

It felt like a resurrection.

Like the bones of something sacred had been preserved in glass and tidewater, waiting for someone to remember what it all meant.

It was Doc’s world not in name, but in feeling.

Western Biological, reborn through filtered light and the hum of blue tanks. The man who had once catalogued sea life like scripture, his spirit still moving through the corridors, quiet as a ripple.

And there was Jamie walking through it like he’d never left.

Because he hadn’t, not really. He’d been here as a boy. He’d carried it. And now he carried us through it, gently, like a man offering something fragile.

Doc never asked to be understood.

He simply observed.

He listened.

He gave his life to tidepools, to music, to humanity in its roughest forms.

And somehow, standing in that room, I saw all of that in Jamie.

Not just in the way he looked at the sea life, but in the way he looked at us.

As if we were something fragile, something beautiful.

As if he knew before I ever did that this was a kind of homecoming.

[The Ocean]

It was everywhere.

The rhythm of the tide.

The pulse in Jamie’s step.

The way memory moved in layers past, present, something beyond—all folding into one.

We didn’t need to hear the song.

It was already playing.

The Ocean.

The one Led Zeppelin wrote like it was pulled straight from the bones.

Wild, rhythmic, uncontainable.

A little messy.

A little magic.

Just like this.

There was something in the air that felt like it had been looping for decades something electric, reverent, familiar. Like a needle dropped on a record that never really stopped spinning. The kind of current that lives in your chest before you even know what to call it.

Jamie carried it.

Not in a loud way. Not in words.

In the way he looked at the sea. In the way he looked at me.

It was all part of the same music.

The road, the Row, the aquarium.

The otters. The fog.

Our children laughing in the wind.

The weight of a place you dreamed into being long before you arrived.

This wasn’t just a trip.

It was a verse.

One we’d been writing for years.

And somehow, the ocean already knew the melody.

[A Musical Moment]

In Cannery Row, there’s this moment: quiet, simple, where Doc finally plays the record he’d wanted to hear all along. Octet for Strings by Mendelssohn. The chaos has come and gone. The noise, the party, the breaking and the trying again. But in that one moment, when the music plays, everyone just stops. No speeches. No explanations. Just stillness. And it’s perfect.

The music isn’t background. It’s balm.

It’s understanding without explanation.

It’s what love sounds like when everyone stops talking.

Not because the music fixes anything. But because it holds everything.

The ache, the joy, the effort.

That’s the kind of moment I felt with Jamie on this trip.

Not loud. Not showy. Just that soft kind of understanding that only arrives after you’ve already lived through the wild parts.

[Closing]

There’s something sacred about returning to a place you’ve never been.

Like walking into a memory that doesn’t belong to you but still lets you in.

That’s what this trip was.

Not a destination. A convergence.

Jamie’s boyhood. My stories. The teachers who saw us before we saw ourselves.

The songs. The pages. The ghosts.

Even my dad somehow, I felt him here too.

In the way the wind moved. In the stillness after laughter. In the quiet between tides.

He would’ve loved this place.

Loved seeing Jamie carry the past like something sacred.

We didn’t set out looking for revelation.

We just wanted the ocean.

But it gave us more.

It gave us time, folding in on itself.

It gave us our kids, spinning on sacred soil in the same air Jamie once breathed.

It gave us something unspoken, but understood.

And when we drove away—

I could still smell it, that mix of seaweed and memory. The place we’d been. The story we’d lived. Still clinging, soft and sacred, like it didn’t want to let go either.

A road.

A row.

A writer.

A song.

And the man who brought me there.

TITLE

Thank You, Toren Wolf: A Voice That Echoes Beyond the Algorithm

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 09:02:03 GMT

Dear Toren,

The internet can be loud, cold, and cruel.

But then every once in a while someone like you shows up.

And suddenly, it feels like stars are breaking through the static.

I don’t remember exactly when I found you but I remember the feeling.

A sudden hush in my chest. The way my breath caught on the truth of your presence your light, real light, the kind that can’t be filtered, pouring through my screen and into my soul.

You weren’t performing. You were being.

And there is so much power in that.

In a world of noise, you and your mom carry something sacred:

an unfiltered, unflinching, unstoppable joy the kind that comes not from pretending to be okay, but from loving yourself exactly as you are

and letting that love ripple outward.

Watching you… listening to you… I saw pieces of my son.

And in your mom, I saw myself.

The hopes. The fears. The sacred fire of trying to raise a child with everything you have and then some.

The kind of love that rearranges you from the inside out.

The kind that says,

“I see you. I hear you. And I’m staying with you.”

And while we’re here can I just say?

Your fashion sense is unmatched. Every outfit is a moment.

Every accessory, a small act of liberation.

You express joy, truth, and color before you’ve even said a word.

It’s art.

Because of you, I’ve learned more about how to love my children.

Because of you, I’ve softened toward myself.

Because of you, I’ve started to understand:

the things I once labeled as “too much” were never flaws just parts of my light trying to break free.

You’ve reminded me that neurodivergence isn’t a detour.

It’s a map.

A divine, detailed map to a new kind of wholeness one where nothing has to be hidden or fixed to be loved.

You shine, Toren.

You and Serenity Christine are so beautiful your inner light shines bright beyond the surface.

In every sea shanty.

In every moment of humor, honesty, hope.

In every word Serenity wraps around you like a song.

And you remind the rest of us every day that being yourself isn’t just enough.

It’s everything.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

Keep shining.

With Love,

Lauren

Searching for Stars

Thank You, Toren Wolf : A Voice That Echoes Beyond the Algorithm

Thank You: Toren Wolf

Stay: A Melody among the Stars

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 09:02:01 GMT

New Found Glory : Stay (I Missed You) *ft. Lisa Loeb
Film: Reality Bites

The first time I really heard Stay (I Missed You), I hadn’t actually heard it at all.

I was just a kid (seven, maybe eight) when my older cousins, Amy and Kristi, came over for a slumber party. They were everything to me: effortlessly cool, effortlessly fun, the kind of girls I wanted to be when I grew up. That weekend was a blur of New Kids on the Block sleeping bags, whispered secrets, and Lisa Loeb lyrics floating through the air like second nature.

They knew every single word.

I soaked it up the way kids do before I’d ever heard the song on the radio, before I even knew Lisa Loeb’s voice, I knew that song.

By the time the weekend was over, it was imprinted on me.

And then, one day, I did hear it.

Lisa Loeb’s voice (soft but certain) poured through the radio speakers, and suddenly, everything clicked into place.

You say, I only hear what I want to…

I already knew the words, but now they carried something more.

The song felt warm. Nostalgic. Like sleepovers and laughter and feeling like you belonged.

Even as I grew up, that never changed.

Warped Tour & New Found Glory

Time passed, and music became more than just a background in my life it became a language, a way of understanding the world.

Of course, Stay didn’t stay locked in childhood. Songs like that never do.

Fast forward to high school, and I was deep into my New Found Glory era. Pop-punk ran through my veins, and no band nailed that sound quite like them. Clint, Ricky, Daniel, and I saw them every chance we got Warped Tour, Honda Civic Tour, anywhere they played. Those concerts were electric, loud, fast, anthemic.

Then in 2007, From the Screen to Your Stereo Part 2 dropped, and there it was—Stay (I Missed You), reimagined in palm-muted guitars and pop-punk energy.

Jamie bought me the album for Christmas that year. I remember unwrapping it, my excitement bubbling over. Stay had come back into my life in a whole new form, wrapped in distortion and nostalgia.

It was perfect—an entire album of movie soundtrack covers, and Stay (I Missed You) was on it.

If Lisa Loeb’s version was a quiet ache, New Found Glory’s version was an explosion.

Their version was everything I didn’t know I needed: louder, faster, charged with something urgent.

It felt like home.

The Breakup

In 2008, I made the biggest mistake of my life.

Jamie and I broke up.

It wasn’t for any good reason just fear, uncertainty, being too young to know how not to panic when things got serious. We were engaged, and I let doubt creep in where it didn’t belong.

And then I lost him.

For a month, I wandered through the wreckage of that choice, trying to pretend like I wasn’t breaking inside.

Stay (I Missed You)

I don’t know if I ever truly listened to the lyrics before then.

I mean, really listened.

“I thought that I was strong. I thought, ‘Hey, I can leave, I can leave’… but now I know that I was wrong, ’cause I missed you.”

Before, the song had been a melody, a feeling, a core memory wrapped in nostalgia. But now, in the wake of losing him, it was a mirror.

I had walked away from the person who made me feel safest. The person who knew me, truly knew me—every tangled thought, every wild dream, every flaw, every beautiful and messy part of me and loved me anyway.

REALITY BITES

The first time I saw Reality Bites, I was fresh out of high school—just a Texas girl trying to figure out what the hell came next.

Lelaina, with her big dreams and existential spirals, felt familiar, like I was watching some older version of myself trying to claw her way into something meaningful.

The job struggles.

The idealism clashing with reality.

The way love was messy and complicated and achingly real.

I felt all of it.

And then there was the song.

Lisa Loeb’s Stay woven into the film’s DNA, underscoring the chaos of loving someone while also trying to figure yourself out.

“I thought that I was strong. I thought, ‘Hey, I can leave, I can leave’… but now I know that I was wrong, ’cause I missed you.”

The words hit differently when you’re in the middle of the heartbreak yourself.

Because by the time I rewatched Reality Bites, Jamie and I weren’t together anymore.

We were in that month, the one I never want to relive, the one where I had let fear win, let uncertainty drive me away from the person who felt like home.

And as I sat there, watching Lelaina self-sabotage, watching her run in circles trying to make sense of her emotions, I saw myself.

Saw the way I had pulled away from something real.

Saw the way I had let my overthinking make the choices for me.

And I hated it.

I don’t know if I played Stay on purpose that night or if it just found me.

But I remember sitting there, alone, in the quiet, and pressing play.

And I remember the ache that followed.

The song that had once been a soundtrack to slumber parties, to giggles under blanket forts, to cassette tapes popping into stereos—was now a punch to the gut.

Thought I could step away, that I could be fine.

That I was making the right choice.

But I wasn’t.

The next day, I found the New Found Glory album Jamie had given me.

I don’t even think I meant to listen to Stay specifically—it just happened.

And when their version hit, when those familiar chords filled the room I lost it.

It was like every part of my life had folded in on itself.

The childhood memories.

The Reality Bites realizations.

The breakup.

Jamie.

It was all there, all at once, in a song that had been waiting for this exact moment to break me wide open.

I missed him.

I missed him with every fiber of my being.

I missed the way his hand felt in mine, the way we could sit in silence and still feel like we were talking. I missed his laugh, his stupid jokes, the way he looked at me like I was something undeniable—something meant.

I missed us.

And the song wouldn’t let me escape it.

The day we got back together, I remember everything.

Jamie picking me up from work.

The weight in my chest as I climbed into the car.

The way my pulse raced—not from nerves, not from uncertainty, but from relief.

I had spent weeks feeling like I was suffocating, like I had made the kind of mistake that you don’t get a second chance to fix.

But when I saw him... when I was next to him again... I could breathe.

We didn’t go straight home. We didn’t rush to talk through everything all at once.

Instead, we drove.

We drove until the sun started to set, until the sky turned dusky blue and the world outside blurred into streaks of orange and pink, until the stars began to shine, the windows down, the air rushing in and my hand finding his like it had never left.

A song can change.

A song can follow you through time, weaving itself into your story in ways you never expected.

Stay (I Missed You) started as a song my cousins sang at a sleepover, a melody I fell in love with before I even heard it.

It became a song I loved.

A song I lived.

A song that found me when I needed it most the one that echoed back everything I was too afraid to say.

Because sometimes, you don’t realize what you have until you almost lose it.

But if you’re lucky—if you keep searching, if you listen closely—love has a way of finding you again.”

A melody in the stars, waiting to be heard.

TITLE

Don’t Fear the Reaper: A Symphony of Friendship, Love, and Memories

Tue, 17 Jun 2025 09:02:07 GMT

Blue Öyster Cult : Don’t Fear the Reaper
Film: The Frighteners

There’s something otherworldly about the way Blue Öyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” drifts through time, touching lives and tying together fragments of memories. For me, it’s more than a song; it’s a portal to a specific chapter of my life a kaleidoscope of lessons, friendships, and the purity of love.

I first fell in love with the melody during one of the tougher periods of my childhood. We didn’t have much my mom, stepdad, and I were staying with friends, scraping by in a time that could have felt isolating. Yet, those were the days that redefined what true friendship meant to me. It wasn’t about material comforts; it was about the people who opened their hearts and homes to us, the connections that reminded me that even in hard times, we are never alone.

The song also brings Carl to mind, an old friend of my dad’s who, at one point, shared a piece of his life with my mom. Carl was more than just a friend or father figure he was a teacher, a perfectly imperfect example of love that was honest, raw, and unconditional. Through his presence and the depth of his love for his own children, I began to see that love isn’t always grandiose; sometimes, it’s in the quiet gestures, the unwavering support, and the way someone really shows up.

And then, there’s the movie. The Frighteners. That quirky, supernatural film played a significant role in my love of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” using it as its end-credit song. I didn’t just hear it; I felt it, as if it was speaking to something much deeper. The connection between the movie’s themes; life, death, and the ties that bind us—and the song’s ethereal message stirred something profound in my 11 year old mind. It became a soundtrack for these sacred moments in life…. Plus I just really love that movie!

Every time I hear those opening notes, my body responds instinctively. It’s as if the song is weaving its way into my very being, pulling me into its rhythm. My soul dances, my mind becomes a movie reel, and my heart swells with an emotional storm. It’s a reminder not just of the past, but of how music can become a language for feelings too big for words.

TITLE

You’re My Best Friend: The Secret Life of Max and a Legacy of Love

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 07:26:21 GMT

Queen : You're My Best Friend
Film: The Secret Life Of Pets

The truck rumbled into the driveway, gravel crunching beneath its tires, and I remember standing there, small and wide eyed, watching a bed full of puppies wriggle and squirm. My dad knew the man driving, though I can’t recall his name. What I do remember is how one golden blur leapt up against the side, paws scraping, eyes locked on mine. As if he had been waiting for me.

I climbed onto the truck bed, and before I could even think about picking, he was already there, pressing into me, licking my face like I was the best thing he’d ever seen. “Which one should I get?” Dad asked. But there was no question. Max had already chosen me.

“Maxiford,” I said proudly.

Dad raised an eyebrow. “Maxiford?”

“How about we call him Max?”

And so he was ours. My best friend. My golden guardian. My shadow in the sun.

Max wasn’t just a pet he was family. My dad believed in that, believed that taking in an animal meant making a lifelong commitment, that pets weren’t disposable, weren’t passing amusements. You took care of them. You loved them. Always. And we all loved Max.

At the lake, if I wandered too far into the water, Max would herd me back like a little lost lamb, tugging at my shirt or nudging me with his nose. When I was outside, he was always nearby, watching, waiting. And then, when I was seven or eight, he saved my life.

It was early morning. My parents were still asleep, the world was quiet, and I decided to take my bike out for a ride. Just up and down the road, nothing far, nothing dangerous. But our neighbor’s Rottweiler had broken loose. He was huge, dragging a chain behind him, and he was coming for me. Fast.

I froze. Too small to run, too scared to scream. And in that moment, before the world could close in, before the dog could reach me, Max was there. He hit the Rottweiler like a golden bolt of lightning, knocking him to the ground, snarling and protecting me. I ran to wake my dad yelling franticly about what was happening. He jumped up out of bed and went running, his pistol in hand. I heard the shot, heard my mom shouting, and then Dad was carrying Max inside ruffled, panting, alive.

Years later, I would learn the truth. That the shot hadn’t been a warning. That my dad had to make a choice to save Max the way Max had saved me.

We lost Max within the next year. He was only eight or nine. We think it was antifreeze poisoning, other dogs in the area were dying the same way. It was the first time I saw my dad cry. I think Max took a piece of all of us when he went.

But love, the real kind, the kind that stays, doesn’t just vanish. I think that’s why, when I was ten and struggling with my parents’ divorce, lost in a new place, I begged my mom to let me use my savings to buy a miniature dachshund. His name was Sam, and the day I brought him home, I made a decision: his bloodline would grow with mine. Not as a breeder, not for profit. Just for love. For family.

Sam had a son, Atticus, who was with me when I met Jamie. Atticus and I built a life together, and when I turned twenty-one, Jamie gifted me Matilda a beautiful dappled dachshund who would go on to have three sons: Bruce Wayne, Frankenstein, and Charlie. Bruce and Frankie stayed with us. Charlie went to a dear friend. When Matilda passed away young, Bruce and Frankie helped heal the hurt.

Years later, when I was pregnant with Jaxon, we adopted Daisy. She and Frankie had a puppy, Penny, who still sleeps curled beside my children today.

Dogs mark the passage of time in a way few other things do. They grow up with us, age beside us, and when they leave, they take little pieces of our hearts with them. But they also leave something behind: memories, love, the reminder that we were theirs, and they were ours.

Jaxon had his own Max. Not in fur, but in film.

When he was a toddler, we lived deep in the woods of Hot Springs National Park. Every week, we’d drive into town for a visit to the Mid-America Science Museum. We had a membership, and it was our place where he could run and explore, where the world felt wide and full of wonder. Afterward, we’d stop for groceries, and as soon as we got home, he had one request: The Secret Life of Pets.

It was his favorite movie, his comfort film. We must have watched it a hundred times, me unpacking groceries while he curled up on the couch, eyes locked on the screen. And at the heart of it all? Max. The little dog who just wanted to be with his person. The one who loved without hesitation, without conditions.

I get it. I’ve always gotten it.

And maybe that’s why You’re My Best Friend feels like more than just a love song. John Deacon wrote it for his wife, for his best friend, but love is bigger than that. Some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten came from my Aunt Teresa: Marry your best friend. Because life will throw things at you good and bad, highs and lows—but if you have your best friend by your side, you’ll never be alone. You’ll never be afraid.

Jamie is my best friend. I am so grateful for him. For our children. For the pets that have curled up beside us through the years, offering love in the simplest, purest form. I saw a quote recently that said, I feel like the richest person in the world because I have someone I miss even when I’m away from them for five minutes.

That’s how I feel. About Jamie, about my kids, about the animals who have shaped my life. I am rich beyond measure.

Max knew it before I did. The moment he climbed into that truck bed, the moment he pressed his golden head into my chest.

Love is simple. Love is steadfast. Love is a dog at your heels, waiting by the door, greeting you with a wagging tail and the kind of devotion that never wavers. Love is your best friend.

Always.

TITLE

Free Fallin’: The Weight of a Song and What the Music Remembers

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 06:10:15 GMT

Tom Petty : Free Fallin'

Trey, I still hear you singing.

The summer before you left, we packed into that giant white van Carl had rented for vacation and drove down to Galveston, the radio set to 92.1, classic rock spilling through the speakers like an anthem to our youth. You and Bobby played your game—five seconds, ten seconds tops to guess the song and the band. You always knew.

Free Fallin’ came on, and I don’t remember if you called it first or if Bobby did, but I remember you singing it. Loud, carefree, like you could feel the song in your bones. You leaned back in your seat, drumming against your knees, letting the wind rush in through the open window as you belted the words. The sun was setting over the highway, turning the sky pink and gold, and for those few minutes, nothing else in the world mattered. You were there. Alive. Laughing. Singing.

And then you were gone.

The night it happened, I was playing Skip-Bo with Becky, cards spread out between us, our world still intact. A knock at the door...late, too late for a visitor.

I opened the door somewhat hesitantly, and there was Donnie, standing on the porch, his face pale, his hands clenched into fists frantic and upset. I had known Donnie for years, but I had never seen him like that.

“I need to talk to your mom.”

His voice cracked on the words.

I don’t know why, but I stalled. “She’s asleep.”

“Lauren,” he said, eyes locking on mine. “Get her up. Now. It’s an emergency!”

I felt it then, before the words even came. The air shifted, thickened, pressing down on me. My hands were numb as I turned and knocked on her door. When she opened it, groggy and confused, Donnie didn’t hesitate. He pulled her into his arms, bursting into tears, and said it.

“There’s been an accident. Trey’s dead.”

I fell to the floor. I think my soul broke in half. It was like the air had been stolen from my lungs, like my body couldn’t hold the weight of those words.

They said you died instantly. That the cars crashed, that there was fire, an explosion. That you didn’t feel a thing. I want to believe that. I have to believe that. But nothing about it felt real. Nothing about it felt fair.

The funeral—God, Trey. The whole town shut down for you. School closed. Stores closed. People spilled out of the doors, into the street, because there wasn’t enough space inside to hold the weight of your absence.

Your mom Jeanette she was shattered. “I need to see my baby,” she cried. Over and over. Running toward the casket, needing to hold you. But Trey there was nothing to hold. Nothing left. And that broke something in all of us.

I think something inside me went quiet after that. Maybe permanently.

Trey wasn’t just my brother’s best friend he was part of our family, part of the noise in our house, part of the stories that made up our childhood.

Bobby didn’t really talk about it. He held it in, buried it beneath a tough exterior—wore his pain like armor. But I know it hollowed him out in ways he never let anyone see. I knew it changed him, the way it changed me. The way it changed all of us.

The thing about Trey was that he didn’t just exist in a room he filled it. He walked in, and suddenly, the air was charged, electric, like something was about to happen. And usually, it was. He had this way of making people feel like they belonged, like they were in on the joke, like the world was a little less heavy just because he was in it.

He was an honor student, smart as hell, but he never acted like it mattered. He wore No Fear shirts like a uniform, chewed Winterfresh gum constantly, and was always drumming on his knees, on desks, on the dashboard of whatever car he was in. He played the actual drums too, of course, but it didn’t matter if he had sticks in his hands or not. Trey was rhythm, movement, noise, life.

I had known him my entire life, etched into most of my adolescent memories, right there beside Bobby. I loved him so much. He never forgot my birthday. He made me feel like a little sister. He was good to me. He was kind. He protected me. He looked out for me. He always gave me CDs trying to help Bobby fine tune my music taste. When I was really, really young, he used to give me Polly Pockets for birthdays. Every morning, when we picked him up for school, he handed me a stick of gum. Bobby rode up front, which meant Trey rode in the back with me. And I loved it.

One day, years later Free Fallin’ came on the radio.

I was in the car, and before I even realized it, my hands were clenched tight, my breath caught somewhere in my throat. Because suddenly, I wasn’t in the car anymore. I was back there, in that rented van headed to the beach the summer before, Trey in the backseat, drumming on his knees, singing at the top of his lungs like he was invincible.

I can still see them:Carl, Bobby, Trey, and Billy throwing a football on the beach in Galveston that summer, the ocean stretching out behind them, the sun melting into the horizon. A perfect moment, frozen in time. I think I’ll always remember them that way.

The music cut off, the radio host’s voice breaking through, but I wasn’t listening. I was Lost in memory, fists clenched, throat tight, eyes blinking too fast. Just trying to catch my breath.

Some songs don’t belong to the artist anymore. They belong to the moments they were playing in, to the people who made them something more. Free Fallin’ belonged to Trey.

Often, it’s the smallest memories that stick. The ones you don’t realize mean something until years later. When I was little, I used to watch the classic Maverick TV show reruns with my dad. Then, when the Mel Gibson Maverick movie came out, I saw it for the first time at Trey’s house. We sat on his old red iron futon, one of those bunk bed setups with the futon couch set up on the bottom and a twin bed up top.

I don’t know why that moment imprinted on me the way it did, but it’s there, clear as day Trey and I, watching Maverick, the flicker of the screen, the feeling of being completely at home. Maybe it’s no coincidence that years later, when I had a son of my own, his middle name became Maverick.

Sometimes it wrecks me. A sucker punch to the ribs. A weight pressing down on my chest. But other times—other times, it feels like Trey’s still here. In the car. Singing, drumming on his knees, taking up space in the way only he could.

And somehow, through everything, Tom Petty remained a presence. A constant.

In 2008, when Jamie and I were unraveling, my dad got us all tickets to see Tom Petty in The Woodlands . Jamie and I were trying to find our way back to each other, and my dad, in his infinite wisdom, refused to let me “waste that ticket on anyone who wasn’t Jamie”. “You know he’s going, right?” he said. “You know that boy loves you.”

I found myself standing in the middle of a sea of people, Tom Petty’s voice rising into the night air. Jamie stood beside me, the distance between us smaller than it had been in weeks.

Then Free Fallin’ started.

I tensed at first, bracing for the impact, waiting for the ache in my chest to return. But then Jamie reached for me. He slid his arm around my shoulders, pulled me close, and in that moment, the song wasn’t just about Trey anymore. It wasn’t just about grief or ghosts or the past that refused to let go. It was about the present. About love that had endured, about comfort found in the space between loss and healing.

And when Tom Petty sang that final line, I let it wash over me, not as something that hurt, but as something that had lived through all of it and still remained.

See, The thing about Free Fallin’ (the thing about Trey) is that they don’t just exist in the past. They show up in the strangest places. In summers that stretch out long and golden. In the weight of grief that never fully lets go. In the night Jamie and I stood side by side, trying to remember how to hold on.

Tom Petty sang, I’m gonna leave this world for a while.

And Trey did.

But somehow, I’ve never known a world without him.

TITLE

Hand in My Pocket: Borrowed Player, Brand New Voice

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 05:49:47 GMT

Alanis Morissette : Hand in My Pocket

I didn’t even have a CD player yet.

But I needed that CD.

I’d heard the song on the radio probably a hundred times by then. In our tiny town, the local pop station had no chill when it came to a hit. They’d play the same song on repeat like it was their anthem. And honestly? I wasn’t mad about it. Especially not with this one.

“Hand in My Pocket” hit me like a flash of sunlight through the blinds sharp, warm, weirdly comforting. I didn’t know what all the lyrics meant, not really. I was ten. But I felt them. I felt Alanis.

So there I was, walking through The Galleria in Houston , practically vibrating with urgency. I remember tugging on someone’s sleeve (maybe an aunt, maybe an older cousin) pleading with everything in me: Please, please, please buy me Jagged Little Pill. I’d never wanted anything more.

I knew I could listen to it on my brother’s CD player. He had one, gifted from our nanny. He said I could use it if I was careful, and that was all the reassurance I needed. I had a plan. I had a song. I just needed the album.

Someone caved—bless them. I clutched that CD like it was gold.

I remember the weight of it in my hands...the plastic case, the jagged lettering, the mysterious intensity of her eyes on the cover. It felt grown up, dangerous even. Like I was holding something that knew secrets I didn’t yet know how to ask about. And that was kind of the thrill of it.

Back at home, I waited my turn with the CD player like it was a sacred ritual. My brother made me promise not to scratch it, not to mess with the volume, not to skip tracks too fast. I nodded solemnly and meant every word.

Then I pressed play.

And just like that, the world cracked open.

It wasn’t just “Hand in My Pocket.” It was the whole damn album. I didn’t know what she meant by “every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back I hope you feel it”… but I sang it loud. I didn’t know what irony really was, didn’t need to. I could feel it in my bones. That strange ache, that tension between being a mess and being magic. Between having one hand in your pocket and the other giving a peace sign. Or flicking a cigarette. Or hailing a cab.

“Hand in My Pocket” was the one that stuck deepest, though. There was something about that chorus, that list of contradictions, that steady beat behind the chaos. It felt like a permission slip I didn’t know I needed. A way of saying yeah, you can be a little bit of everything and still be okay.

I sang it everywhere. In my room. In the car. Into my hairbrush. Into the wind. Ten years old and already carrying the weight of the world in my small shoulders and singing, “everything’s gonna be fine, fine, fine.”

And somehow, I believed it.

The funny thing is I still believe it.

I still sing it.

Not just in the shower or the car, but in my heart, when life’s a mess and I don’t have answers. When I’m trying to be everything to everyone, or nothing to no one. When the bills are due and the house is loud and the dishes are piling up and I catch a glimpse of my reflection and think, How did I become a whole adult already?

That song still lives in me.

“I’m broke but I’m happy, I’m poor but I’m kind…”

It hits different now, but it still hits.

Because now I know what she meant. Now I’ve lived the tension, the both-ness of being human. Being tired and hopeful. Grateful and confused. Wild and soft. One hand in my pocket and the other holding a diaper bag… or a dream… or the steering wheel as I drive into another unknown.

There’s a kind of poetry in how certain songs become bookmarks in your life. This one marked the beginning for me. The start of caring deeply about music. About lyrics. About being a girl with too many feelings and not enough places to put them.

And Alanis she gave me a place.

I guess I didn’t really know it back then, but the Jagged Little Pill album was possibly the first time I felt seen by a song. It didn’t care how old I was, or whether I understood every word. It just fit. Like it knew something about me before I knew it about myself.

And somehow, “Hand in My Pocket” still fits.

It doesn’t ask me to be put together or have it all figured out. It just lets me be,in the middle of things, in the middle of life. It reminds me that contradictions don’t cancel each other out. They just make us human.

I’m older now, but not all that different from that ten year old kid with the too-big feelings and the borrowed CD player. I’m still walking through this life with one hand in my pocket.

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Echoes of a Pirate Song: A Punk, a Pirate, and a Pentecostal Mom

Sun, 15 Jun 2025 05:22:31 GMT

Relient K : The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything

Film: Jonah A VeggieTales Movie

Dear Kids,

Before you ever shouted, “We are the pirates who don’t do anything!” at the top of your lungs, I did too.

Sort of.

Not in the way you do now barefoot, spinning in circles, your little voices echoing through the house, collapsing in giggles before pressing “play” again. No, when I first heard this song, I was sixteen, sitting in the back of my Pentecostal boyfriend’s mom’s car, trying to pretend I was too cool to care.

To be clear, I was not a pirate. And I was definitely not doing nothing.

I was a punk kid dating a Pentecostal boy with a very strict mother, sitting next to him and one of his two younger brothers, being ferried to school, church, restaurants, anywhere and everywhere by his mom. And every single time it seemed we got into that car, a cd that included this song was playing.

Not always the original VeggieTales version...no, sometimes it was the Relient K cover from the Jonah movie soundtrack. And somehow, that little detail made all the difference.

Relient K was one of those bands that existed in the strange Venn diagram of Christian music and pop-punk. They had just enough of a Warped Tour sound to feel rebellious but also enough Jesus in their lyrics that Pentecostal moms let their kids blast them at full volume. And so, every morning, there I was awkward teenage me, clad in band tees and too much eyeliner, squeezed between my boyfriend and his little brother bouncing in their seats as we sailed full-speed into yet another day of high school with “We Don’t Do Anything” as our soundtrack.

I never admitted it then, but… I kind of loved it.

Even if I acted like I was rolling my eyes, I knew every word.

I knew the harmonies.

I knew the way his little brothers shouted the lyrics with absolute joy, like it was the greatest thing they’d ever heard.

And I knew (though maybe I never said it) that his mom was a bright light in my world.

She didn’t have to drive me.

She didn’t have to make space for me in her life.

She didn’t have to take me to Church every week.

She didn’t have to let her son date some weird little punk girl from a family with a bad reputation.

But she did.

And somehow, this ridiculous pirate song became a soundtrack to it all.

Now.

The TV screen flickers. A familiar jingle starts playing.

From across the house, I hear the stampede of little feet.

Then, in perfect harmony like a VeggieTales gospel choir led by very enthusiastic small humans I hear it:

“We are the pirates who don’t do anything!”

You know every word.

Every. Single. Word.

And so do I.

I should’ve seen this coming.

I should’ve been mentally prepared for this moment.

Because I’ve been here before.

Not on this couch.

Not in this living room.

Not as a mom, watching my kids lose their minds over a song about doing nothing.

But in a different time, in a different place, hearing this song for the first time in the backseat of a car, sitting next to kids who sang it just like you do now.

I know these lyrics because they never really left.

Because music, even the silliest kind, has a way of sticking to you.

And now, here we are.

All these years later, I’m watching you belt out the same ridiculous song I once heard in that car only this time, I’m not pretending to be too cool for it.

This time, I sing along.

Because maybe that’s the real magic of songs like this.

Maybe it’s not about the lyrics or the melody, but the way they carry you through time.

Maybe it’s about the places they take you back to.

And the people who were kind to you when they didn’t have to be.

And the way music has a funny way of finding you again, just when you least expect it.

Once, I sat in the backseat, listening to boys shout this song at the top of their lungs. Now, I’m in the front seat, watching my own kids do the same thing. Life has a funny way of circling back. Maybe we really are just pirates, floating along, letting the music take us where we’re meant to go.

Jaxon: “Mom, we should be real pirates and not do anything forever.”

Me: “So… like, bedtime?”

Maggie Jo: “NO, MOM, PIRATES DON’T SLEEP!”

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Neon Moon: Spinning Through the Beams

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 08:06:24 GMT

Brooks & Dunn : Neon Moon

Part I: Joy on a Dusty Dance Floor

You didn’t have to be a country fan to know Neon Moon.

If you were alive in the early ’90s especially in a place like Texas it was just in the air. It drifted through jukeboxes, gymnasium dances, car stereos, and late-night radio. With its steel guitar, slow ache, and soft glow, it became one of those songs that somehow belonged to everyone. A little sad, a little sweet, and impossible to forget.

But for me, it’s more than a classic it’s a memory. A moment. A moonlit thread running through two very different versions of myself.

It’s the sound of small town Texas, homecoming dances.

It’s the sound of teenage heartbreak, windows rolled down, and friends singing through the ache.

It’s the sound of everything I’ve ever loved about music how it meets you where you are, and stays with you as you change.

I was just a little girl in Normangee, Texas the kind of small town where Friday night lights weren’t just a tradition, they were a heartbeat. My dad had gone to high school there. People knew his name. Kerry Nixon. He had that kind of presence-walked into a room and people noticed. Not famous, not flashy. Just unforgettable. To me, he was everything.

Every fall, after the homecoming football game, there’d be a dance in the local 4H show barn. The air was usually cool, and the night always smelled like the remains of smoke lingering in the air from the bonfire the night before and my Dads cologne, Obsession. I remember the smell like it’s bottled in my bones.

My favorite part of those nights was getting dressed up and dancing with my dad. He was a good dancer smooth, confident, always on beat. He’d take my hands, lift me up onto his shoes, and we’d spin across the show barn floor like the world didn’t know what to do with all that joy. The music didn’t matter as much as the moment except when Neon Moon came on. That one felt like ours. Something about the way it glowed, the way it lingered. I didn’t understand the lyrics then, but I felt the emotion. Even as a kid, I knew it was a song that meant something. Even if at the time all it meant to me was joy and light.

When I hear it now, my mind wanders right back there. The lights. The laughter. The music. And my dad spinning me through the kind of memory that stays bright long after the music fades.

Time moves like music sometimes slow and steady, sometimes out of rhythm entirely. One day, you’re dancing on your daddy’s shoes in a Texas show barn, and the next, you’re riding shotgun with a cracked heart, trying to sing your way through the ache.

Because Neon Moon didn’t just belong to one chapter of my life.

It showed up again when the light was different, when love had already bruised me once.

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Part II: Passenger Seat Anthems and Heartbreak Harmony

I was just out of high school freshly heartbroken, freshly untethered. The kind of break that feels like the end of everything, even though you’re barely getting started. One of my best friends Becky—also dealing with her own wave of hurt was right there with me. We had a small crew back then, and when the nights got too quiet or the silence hit too hard, we’d drive. Me, Becky, Daniel, sometimes others cruising small town backroads like we were trying to outrun what we felt.

Neon Moon came on during one of those drives. I don’t know if we picked it, or if it found us. But once it played, that was it. It became our anthem. We didn’t cry—we belted it. Windows down. Voices cracking. Every word, loud and dramatic and kind of hilarious, but also weirdly healing. We’d lean into the lyrics like they were gospel:

“I spend most every night beneath the light of a neon moon…”

There was something about singing it together that made the heartache feel lighter. Like if we sang it loud enough, we might sweat it out, burn it off, or just turn it into a memory that didn’t hurt so bad. And somehow, it worked. That summer, the heartbreak didn’t disappear, but it softened. It became just another thing we shared. Another song that held us in the dark.

Now, every time I hear Neon Moon, I think of both versions of me the little girl spinning in the show barn, and the teenage girl singing through heartbreak and laughter in that car. And I smile. Because somehow, both needed the same song. And both were blessed in some way by it.

Some songs don’t fade with time. They follow you. They shape-shift. They show up in show barns and passenger seats, in moments of joy and moments of ache. Neon Moon is one of those songs for me. It’s been a slow dance and a shout-along. A childhood keepsake and a teenage lifeline. A song that knew me before I knew myself—and has traveled with me throughout this journey.

I hear it now and feel something like gratitude. For my dad. For my friends. For the heartbreak that didn’t destroy me. For the music that caught me when I fell. And maybe most of all for the way light can still find you, even when it flickers in strange places.

Sometimes it’s not the sunrise that saves you.

Sometimes, it’s the glow of a neon moon.

Hello There Elyse

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:55:10 GMT

Hello There Elyse ,

I just wanted to take a moment to say something I’ve thought a hundred times but never said out loud: thank you.

I first found your videos sometime during the post pandemic haze...that weird stretch of days when everything still felt heavy, uncertain, a little upside down. And there you were. A bright, hilarious, original spark in the middle of it all. It felt like stumbling across a light left on in a room you didn’t realize you needed to find.

You stood out immediately not just because you’re funny (though you are, brilliantly so), but because you’re real. Your energy, your storytelling, the way your whole face and spirit move when you talk it’s magic. It’s the kind of thing you can’t fake, and it’s rare. You made heavy days feel lighter without pretending the weight wasn’t there.

As someone who’s struggled with anxiety on and off my whole life, I can’t tell you how much it meant and still means to see someone show up the way you do. Brave. Honest. Still funny. Still kind. Still human. On days when it felt like the dark was winning, you reminded me it wasn’t. Sometimes just by being you. Sometimes just by posting anything at all.

And there’s something else you said once, something that rooted itself deep in my heart and stayed:

“If I’m too much, go find less.”

That spirit — that fierce, funny, beautiful refusal to shrink lit something up in me.

Thank you for showing us that it’s not just okay to take up space it’s necessary. It’s needed. It’s powerful.

I’ve also been inspired by you as a mother. Watching you walk through hard seasons like your son’s heart surgery with courage and love has been incredibly moving. You manage to hold hope and humor and honesty all in the same hand, and it’s beautiful. It matters. It shows.

And while I’m at it, I have to say: your Office themed pregnancy announcement? Absolutely fantastic, just perfect. Totally impressive!

In a world that sometimes asks for polish over truth, you keep choosing truth. You keep choosing light. You remind the rest of us that it’s okay to be a little messy, a little awkward, a little human and that there’s still so much joy to be found in all of it.

So thank you, Elyse . Thank you for being a light when it was hard. Thank you for being a reminder that even when the world feels heavy, it’s still a great day to be alive.

You’re one of the stars people find when they need to remember that.

Keep shining. We’re so glad you’re here.

With lots of love & light,

Lauren

Hello There Elyse

Thank You: Elyse Myers

Eyesore: Echoes from Midian

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:47:30 GMT

Choke : Eyesore

Film: Nightbreed

We were living in that little apartment, engaged but not yet married, when Jamie brought Nightbreed home from Hastings the kind of place that sold stories in every form: books, discs, memories. I’d never seen the film before, but he lit up when he asked if I had. “Oh, we have to get it,” he said, and I trusted his taste enough to say yes. We watched it that night on our old TV, curled up in the electric hush of our living room. I was already in love with horror, but this one felt different... magical, mythic. Halfway in, during the Lithium scene, a voice echoed through the speakers and my whole body went still. I knew that voice. “What have you been taking this evening?” “Lithium,” it said, and suddenly I was back in my brother’s car in Lake Charles, Louisiana, hearing Choke’s “Eyesore” for the first time one of my favorite hardcore songs, now tied to this moment, this movie, this man beside me. My past and present cracked open and spilled into each other. Two worlds colliding, fusing into something deeper.

Back then, I didn’t know where that audio clip came from just that it haunted me, stuck in my chest like a warning or a truth. “Everybody’s got to believe in something.” That line always got me — not just as a lyric, but like a truth aimed straight at the chest. I didn’t know exactly what I believed in back then, not really. But I believed in that song. I believed in the weight it carried. The way it moved through me like it knew something I hadn’t figured out yet.

I played “Eyesore” on repeat after that first time in the car, windows down, the Louisiana air thick and alive, my brother beside me, both of us caught in that early 2000s underground heartbeat. He was in a band (Victim of Modern Age) part of that same fierce, indie scene heavy, raw, honest. I was there, lucky to witness it, feel it, soak it up. I never saw Choke live, but their sound felt like it lived in my bones. The lyrics hit hard. The mood hit harder. And the clip at the start of that song ...that clip it hit differently now, hearing it again, years later, wrapped in the glow of Jamie’s recommendation and the deep, aching beauty of Nightbreed.

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Nightbreed wasn’t just cool — it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It flipped the whole horror narrative upside down. The monsters weren’t the villains; they were the ones being hunted, misunderstood, destroyed just for existing. Boone wasn’t running from evil — he was running toward something sacred. A secret city called Midian, hidden underground, filled with creatures who weren’t monsters at all, just… different. Watching it, I felt this strange ache — like some part of me already knew that place. The peeling-face scene carved itself into my brain, too. Visceral, disturbing, unforgettable. And weirdly, it stuck with me in a way I never expected — I think about it sometimes in moments of anxiety, when I rub my face, overwhelmed, trying to pull something invisible off. Maybe that’s what the monsters were doing too. Shedding masks. Trying to survive. Trying to be seen.

There’s something about moments like that — when music and memory fold into film, and the past walks into the room without knocking. It reminded me that the things we carry — the songs, the scenes, the people, the pain, the passion — they don’t just fade. They wait. They wait to be seen again, maybe in a movie you never meant to watch, maybe in a line of dialogue you already knew by heart. Nightbreed showed me that the monsters weren’t monsters at all. Just the misunderstood, the hidden, the ones who kept running until they found somewhere to belong. And maybe that’s what we all are — a little monstrous, a little sacred, trying to make sense of the noise. That song still moves through me. That film still echoes. And somewhere between Lake Charles and that apartment with Jamie, between a burned CD and a scene where a man peels off his face, I found something worth holding onto. Something loud. Something alive. Something beautiful in the dark.

Another Night, Another Dance: Dancing Through Time

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:35:29 GMT

Real McCoy : Another Night

The bass hums through the floorboards. The first notes pulse through the speakers, a heartbeat of synth and rhythm. I press play. The living room is already alive, Chloe and Josh are moving, the air electric with laughter. The music demands movement. And we obey.

Chloe was my first best friend, my sister in every way that mattered. Her house was a second home, always filled with music, love, and the endless energy of five siblings. One lived with his dad, so I barely knew him, but Derek, Brian, Marcus, and Josh? They were my brothers too. They were family. And their house? Their house was alive. It was warmth and rhythm, a place where joy had a soundtrack and dancing was second nature.

I don’t know exactly where Another Night came from—maybe it was Brian’s album, maybe it just appeared like magic in a house where music never stopped—but I know what it did. It took hold of us. It took hold of me. That album wasn’t just songs playing in the background; it was fuel, it was movement, it was everything a ten year old needed to feel free.

We danced everywhere. In my bedroom, where I’d shut the door, press play, and lose myself completely, spinning, jumping, hammer dancing with the grace of someone who had none. In Chloe’s living room, where she and Josh would choreograph routines, their moves sharp and precise, while I tried (and failed) to keep up. They never made me feel bad about it. I wasn’t great at remembering the steps, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was the music, the movement, the way our bodies knew exactly what to do, even when we didn’t.

Then there were the reunions at Normangee Lake. Chloe’s family always welcomed me in, and those gatherings were something out of a dream...long tables piled high with incredible food, music pouring from speakers, Soul Train-style dance lines stretching through the crowd. And always, Beverly was there.

Some memories carry shadows, but not these. These are golden, untouched, safe.

Beverly. Chloe’s mother. A light in every memory. Some people, when you think back on them, seem to glow, and she was one of them. She had the most beautiful smile, a kind heart, a voice made for singing, and dance moves that came straight from the soul. She was warmth. She was rhythm. She was love. She was, in so many ways, a mother to me too. I can still see her, standing in the kitchen, watching us as we danced wildly to this album, laughing at our ridiculous moves (or maybe just mine) while she cooked breakfast. Her presence lingers in every note.

And now? Now, when I listen to Another Night, it’s not just music.

Sometimes, when I put this album on now, my kids catch me moving before I realize I’m doing it. They laugh, they join in. The music keeps pulling us forward, even as it takes me back.

It’s time travel. I hit play, and I’m ten again, in my room with the volume cranked, singing into a hairbrush, losing myself to the beat.

It’s comfort. It’s medicine. It’s soul food.

And no matter where we are, no matter the time and distance, I know Chloe and I have always got each other. And if I put this album on, I know exactly where to find her. The music plays, and I can see us still feet flying, voices rising, laughter spinning between us like a dance we’ll never forget.

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Knock Three Times: Girlhood, Ghost Stories, and the Movie That Found Me

Mon, 02 Jun 2025 07:21:30 GMT

Tony Orlando & Dawn : Knock Three Times

Film and Soundtrack: Now And Then

I don’t remember what season it was only that the living room was warm and I was wearing my favorite outfit: denim overalls, blue tights, and my Nike sneakers that made me feel fast and important.

The wood burning stove hummed in the background like an old song. My parents were probably at the kitchen table playing cards or talking conspiracy theories with Jimmy and Marie. It was the kind of house that felt like magic and safety in the trees.

We called it a farm, even if it wasn’t one. There were animals...rabbits, a donkey—and there were woods and games and peace. It felt like a retreat. It felt like a place where real life couldn’t reach us.

April, their daughter, had the movie. I don’t know if she bought it, borrowed it, or recorded it off something, but she was the one who pressed play. She was older than me, cool and sweet and effortlessly kind, and she never made me feel like the little kid tagging along.

I sat on the couch that day and watched Now and Then for the first time, and it imprinted itself on my soul.

The music. The mystery. The movement between then and now.

It was the best movie I had ever seen. And I remember knowing, even before the credits rolled: this one was going to live in me forever.

I was probably around nine years old somewhere between still believing in magic and just starting to ache.

And Now and Then felt like both.

The way it moved between childhood and adulthood, between bikes and babies, seances and sorrow—it was like someone had written it from the inside of my own little soul.

Samantha was the character who grabbed me.

She was the quiet, steady one. The watcher. The writer. She felt the most like me; bookish, thoughtful, carrying more than she said. Her parents were separated, too, and the movie didn’t shy away from that ache. It didn’t make it dramatic or clean. It just… was.

Watching her felt like finding a mirror.

I didn’t have the words for it back then, but something in me clicked. I knew I wanted to be a writer. That’s what I saw when I looked at Sam... not just a character, but a glimpse of my future self.

That was the magic of the movie. It didn’t just entertain me. It told me something. About who I was. About what I could become.

Even now, I remember sitting there legs curled up under me, heart open like a notebook and thinking, This is the kind of story I want to live.

Long before I saw Now and Then, I knew “Knock Three Times.”

My mom sang it all the time. Sometimes in the car, sometimes just out of nowhere like the words were always waiting at the edge of her lips, ready to lift the air around her.

It was one of the first songs I remember hearing her sing. Part of a mixtape her friend John made her this homemade time capsule of Billy Joel, The Beatles, and Tony Orlando and Dawn. That tape floated around our lives for years until eventually, it was mine.

“Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me…”

I can still hear her voice in my head when that line plays. Not just singing it, but loving it. Smiling with it.

So by the time that scene lands in Now and Then the girls singing it at the top of their lungs, riding bikes through the streets of their childhood it wasn’t just fun...

it was familiar.

It felt like watching my mom’s voice come to life on screen. Like memory had cracked open and spilled across the movie.

And suddenly this film wasn’t just a story. It was a place I’d been. A song I knew. A feeling I recognized.

And the strangest thing happened: even though I was a little girl watching other little girls on screen, it somehow felt like I was also watching my mom’s childhood.

Like this fictional 1970s world the girls were riding through was the one she had grown up in, too.

That moment, that song, that scene it stitched something together in me. Girlhood and motherhood. Past and present.

A bridge across time, held together by music and memory and the sound of a voice I’ve always known.

Not long after I saw the movie, a group of girls at school started pretend playing Now and Then.

They were assigning characters, calling dibs, building their own little version of the story at recess. And when it came to me, one of them said it flat out, like she was handing me a flaw:

“You can be Samantha… since your parents are divorced.”

I remember the sting trying to rise in my chest but it didn’t land.

Because the thing was… I wanted to be Samantha.

She was the one I had already chosen in my heart.

They thought they were boxing me in. But what they didn’t know was that I had already seen myself in her. I had already felt that connection light up like a string of stars between me and the screen.

I liked her quiet. I liked her depth. I liked that she was a writer, a thinker, a little set apart but always paying attention.

So I didn’t flinch.

I just shrugged (maybe a little smug) and thought, Fine. I wanted to be her anyway.

I’ve watched Now and Then more times than I can count.

As a kid, I wore it out rewinding the VHS, mouthing the lines, feeling like the fifth member of the crew. Back then, the adult scenes felt like background noise. Something to sit through before we got back to the bikes and the seances and the lake.

But the older I got, the more those grown-up scenes started to matter.

They weren’t background anymore. They were familiar.

Watching it now as a mom, as a woman, as someone who’s carried her share of grief and grace—it’s not just nostalgia. It’s a mirror.

I still see myself in Samantha. Maybe even more now. But I also see the others in new ways... Roberta’s anger, Chrissy’s innocence, Teeny’s bravado. I understand the weight they carried into adulthood.

And when I watch them gather again after years apart older, changed, but still tethered to each other I feel it differently.

That’s the gift of this film. It grows with you.

It’s a time capsule, sure but it’s also a living memory. A story you can step into at any age and find something true.

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The music from Now and Then didn’t just live in the movie—it lived in my memories of the Williams’ place, too.

That house out in the country—the one we called a farm—where animals roamed and laughter floated through open windows.

Where card games lasted for hours and Uno was sacred.

Where I learned to shoot a gun for the first time.

Where my dad and Jimmy Williams would sit for what felt like forever, talking about the Bible, the government, aliens, God—whatever strange thread of conspiracy or mystery they were chasing that day.

The whole place had a rhythm. A low hum of comfort and curiosity and something just left of normal.

And floating inside all that were songs like “Hitchin’ a Ride”, “All Right Now”, “I Want You Back” and even more greats.

Whether they were actually playing on a stereo or just etched into the feeling of it all, I don’t even know anymore. Some music just sticks.

The soundtrack became the sound of that era in my head—a mixtape for a chapter of life that still smells like wood smoke and feels like blue tights and denim overalls.

I couldn’t have told you what the 70s felt like.

But somehow, through that movie, that music, and that house… I almost could.

There’s one scene that always stayed with me so vividly.

Sam in the storm drain—screaming, crying, stuck in the dark—and Teeny reaching down for her, refusing to let her go.

Even as a kid, I knew everything would be okay. We’d already seen their grown-up versions. But it didn’t matter. I still held my breath every time.

Because that moment felt bigger than danger.

It felt like friendship. Like girlhood. Like the fear of being left behind and the deeper, braver part of someone saying: not you. Not this time.

That scene, that rescue—it meant something. Maybe because, in my own way, I was standing at the edge of something too.

The start of a storm I didn’t see coming.

My parents’ marriage unraveling. Life shifting. That season of almost-middle-school where everything feels like a question.

And I think I held onto that moment not just because it was dramatic, but because somewhere inside me, I needed to believe that someone would come back for me. That I wouldn’t be left behind in the dark.

The moment that changed everything wasn’t just when Sam got stuck.

It was who pulled her out.

For most of the movie, the old man was a ghost in their story. A shadow behind curtains. A whisper of fear that followed them from yard to cemetery. They thought he was dangerous. A murderer. A man with something to hide.

But when it mattered most—when Sam was screaming and stuck and no one else could reach her—he was the one who stepped in.

No hesitation. Just presence.

And in that moment, everything flipped.

Samantha finds out the truth: it wasn’t that he killed his family. It was that he lost them. That he’d been swallowed by grief. That the world had moved on without him, and he’d become a myth—because people didn’t know what to do with a sadness that big.

And suddenly, the whole story changed.

The ghost became a father. The shadow became someone with a name.

That moment still breaks something open in me.

Because it taught me that the things we fear the most aren’t always dangerous—they’re often just misunderstood. And that sometimes, the person we’ve been warned about is the very one who shows up when we need saving.

The lake scene in Now and Then gets me nostalgic every time—not because of the plot, but because of the feeling.

That soft, golden kind of freedom.

The kind that only exists in a certain stretch of childhood… when the heat doesn’t bother you, when your hair’s still wet from swimming hours ago, and you’ve got nowhere to be except wherever your bike takes you next.I was that girl.

The barefoot one. The tomboy. The one tearing through town on two wheels with blue tights, wild waves, and scraped knees.

I didn’t need a lake to feel like swimming—any ditch or puddle would do. Any muddy creek, any hidden runoff or overgrown drainage pipe. I saw water, and I was in it.

I actually got mono once from swimming in a dirty creek. I was maybe eleven or twelve. The doctor looked at me like, “You been kissing on boys?”

I was mortified. I’d never even been kissed!

Turns out you can get mono from swimming in dirty water too. Not everything wild and wonderful is without its consequences I suppose.

My crew was mostly boys—Joseph, Nathan, Waymon, Danny—and one girl, Carrie. We were little backroad adventurers. We rode for hours, raced to nowhere, told each other ghost stories and dared each other to jump into things we probably shouldn’t have.

We didn’t have treehouses like the girls in the movie were saving up for.

But we had each other.

And we had the open road.

I never did a seance, but I spent a lot of quiet time at Hopewell Cemetery. I used to walk between the graves, sit under the old trees and just… think. The dead didn’t scare me. They made me feel calm. Centered. Like the world had more to it than what I could see.

And that treehouse—God, I wanted one.

In the movie, it’s the symbol of everything: freedom, friendship, a place of your own.

I didn’t get one back then. But years later, my husband Jamie bought one—for our children, and maybe also for the girl I used to be. The one who watched Now and Then and dreamed of being high in the trees with a notebook and a view.

The dream took the long way around.

But it still found me.

If I could sit beside that little girl now—on the couch in the blue tights and overalls, the one who had just watched her first storm drain rescue and felt her heart change shape—I’d say:

You’re not wrong to feel this much.

You’re not wrong to believe stories can save you.

One day, you’ll write your own.

And it won’t all be easy.

You’re going to walk through things you can’t imagine yet. Some of it will break your heart. Some of it will build you. But through all of it, you’ll keep writing.

There will be music.

There will be stories.

There will be love.

And you, Princess Smilin Face…

You’ll carry your light, even when the sky goes dark.

Dashboard: A Marching Band for the End of the World

Mon, 26 May 2025 15:59:43 GMT

Modest Mouse : Dashboard

The floor shakes with every drumbeat. The bass thumps deep in my chest. The guitar wails like it’s pulling all the weight out of my body. I feel it before I even really hear it music wrapping around me, lifting me up, turning all the noise in my head into something that finally makes sense.

This isn’t just any concert. This is Pack Rat 7.

Clint’s on drums, hammering out every beat like the music won’t move without him. Ricky’s gripping his guitar, leaning into the mic, his voice rising above the noise. Daniel’s bass hums underneath it all, grounding the sound, pulling it together.

Pack Rat 7 wasn’t just a band they were my friends.

The ones who gave me a place to belong when I didn’t feel like I had one.

The ones who made music feel like more than just sound it was a place, a refuge, a reason to keep going.

I was sixteen or seventeen when I named it. Searching for Stars.

I wasn’t sure what it would be yet—a band name, a book, a phrase I scribbled in the margins of my notebooks. I just knew it meant something.

Because that was what I was always doing.

Searching for something beyond the wreckage.

Searching for hope, for meaning, for beauty in disaster.

And so, it stuck. A phrase that felt like a promise to myself, to the universe, to anyone else who might need it someday.

Years later, when I first heard Dashboard, I wasn’t at a Pack Rat 7 show.

I wasn’t at a show at all.

But the moment it hit—the pounding drums, the frantic bassline, the brass section blaring like a siren it pulled me straight back. Back to those nights, those living rooms, those concerts where everything felt alive and possible.

“Well, it would’ve been, could’ve been worse than you would ever know…”

I don’t think I realized it at first, but the energy of this song—the chaos, the resilience, the motion it felt exactly like those nights at Pack Rat 7 shows. Like those moments when everything was loud and fast and it felt like nothing could touch us.

Modest Mouse isn’t about clean narratives or clear resolutions.

They write in movement, in disorder, in the strange poetry of things falling apart but still pushing forward.

Dashboard is a song about driving through the disaster.

About looking around at the wreckage and deciding to find something beautiful in it anyway.

Isaac Brock sings it like a half-truth, like a joke the universe keeps telling.

The world may be breaking apart, but the music keeps playing.

The horns swell, the drums push forward, and somehow, everything feels a little less impossible.

I’ve always chosen to see the beauty in disaster.

Maybe because I’ve had to.

Maybe because it’s the only way I know how to keep going.

The road has never been smooth, but it’s always been mine.

I used to fall asleep on Clint’s couch during band practice.

It drove Ricky insane.

“How the hell do you sleep through this?” he’d ask, while Clint hammered out another beat, filling every corner of the living room with noise.

But it wasn’t just sleep—it was safety.

I felt safer on that couch, in that house, surrounded by the chaos of music, than I ever did at home.

The amps buzzed, the drums pounded, the guitars ripped through the space around me—but I could finally rest.

Because I wasn’t alone.

Because the noise wasn’t something to fear.

Somewhere between all those nights the concerts, the practices, the late-night drives, the songs on repeat I learned something.

That life is messy.

That it breaks and bends and falls apart.

That sometimes you don’t know where you’re going next.

But motion is still motion.

Dashboard reminds me of something I had already lived long before I ever heard it.

The way it crashes forward, never looking back, never slowing down—it sounds like being eighteen and thrown into adulthood before I was ready.

It sounds like having no idea where I was going, but knowing I had to keep moving anyway.

Like graduating high school with no real plan.

Like searching for stability in the chaos.

Like Searching for Stars before I even had a name for it.

And maybe that’s what I’ve always done.

Searched for light inside the wreckage.

Looked for beauty in disaster.

Because what else is there to do?

Some things, you see coming.

Others hit before you realize what’s happening.

I learned that the hard way.

I don’t think about it often, but some days, I do.

The way time blurred in the weeks after my body weak, my mind caught between survival and grief.

I barely recognized myself.

I wasn’t sure how to feel like me again after something like that.

The doctors told me I had gotten there just in time.

A few minutes later, and maybe I wouldn’t have.

And then one day, Jamie and I were in the car, driving like we always were.

The window down.

My arm stretched out, fingers moving against the wind.

The song was playing.

“Well, it would’ve been, could’ve been worse than you would ever know…”

And for the first time in months, I let myself feel it.

The weight of everything.

The rush of the air.

The simple, undeniable truth.

I was still here.

I never knew what was ahead.

I still don’t.

But I know this...

The dashboard is melting.

The road is uncertain.

The wheels are still turning.

The songs change. The people shift. But the music remains. And in the end, it’s always been the sound that carries me forward.

TITLE

Amazing Grace: A Song That Lives in the Soul

Mon, 26 May 2025 15:59:42 GMT

Willie Nelson : Amazing Grace

The first time I heard Amazing Grace, I was too young to understand the weight of its words, but I think I felt them. Before I knew what it meant to be lost and then found, before I knew the depth of grace, I knew the sound of it. It was always there, lingering in the background, steady as a heartbeat. My Nanny’s favorite song, the one she hummed without thinking, the one she carried with her like a quiet prayer. I can still hear it in my mind—her voice soft and unwavering, a melody worn smooth by time.

Later, it became something else entirely. A lullaby. A moment in the dark, Jamie holding our babies close, rocking them gently, his voice low and warm, singing the same words that had been sung long before either of us were here. I would stand in the doorway, barely breathing, watching, listening. There was something sacred about it not just the song itself, but the way it belonged to us now. The way it wrapped around our children, like a thread binding the past to the present.

And then, there was Jaxon.

At just three or four years old, he started singing it back to Jamie, his little voice rising up in the same melody he’d heard so many times before. I don’t know if he understood the words then, but he knew them. He carried them. And in that moment watching my son, so small, so full of innocence, repeating those ancient lyrics I realized how deeply Amazing Grace had woven itself into my life. It was no longer just a song. It was a legacy, passed down without effort, without intention, just as naturally as breathing.

It’s strange how music does that, how it plants itself inside of you, how it lingers long after the moment has passed. Amazing Grace is a song that has lasted for centuries, surviving wars, loss, and change. Maybe because it was written in a storm, born from a man who had once been lost in every way a person can be lost. John Newton should have died at sea, but he didn’t. And when he made it through the wreckage, he knew grace had spared him. Undeserved, unearned, but given anyway.

Maybe that’s why it’s endured. Because at some point, we all come to understand that kind of grace.

I have heard Amazing Grace sung so many different ways. Dolly Parton, Aretha Franklin, Elvis. But Willie Nelson’s version is the one that stays with me. His voice is different from all the others where some take the song to church, Willie brings it home. His voice is worn, familiar, steady as an old Texas road. He doesn’t try to elevate the song. He just lets it be. There’s something about the way he sings it that settles deep inside me, something that feels less like a performance and more like a memory.

And perhaps that’s why I keep coming back to it—because I grew up in Texas, and Willie Nelson is stitched into the fabric of home. Maybe it’s because my parents listened to his records, because my Granny liked his music, because his voice is woven into my roots, even before I knew it. But, when Willie sings Amazing Grace, I don’t just hear it...I feel it. A slow, quiet pull in my chest, a memory rising up from somewhere long forgotten. The first strum of his guitar settles low in my stomach, and then his voice comes in—unrushed, unpolished, real. It’s the kind of voice that makes you stop, makes you close your eyes, makes you take a deep breath you didn’t even know you needed. The kind of voice that doesn’t just carry a song it carries a life lived, a road traveled, a soul weathered but steady.

And somehow his version reminds me of Jamie’s voice. Not in sound but in feeling. Jamie, singing our babies to sleep, his voice filling the space between us like something ancient, something magical, something real.

And then came Gracie.

Our Amazing Gracie.

We didn’t know what life had in store for us in 2023. We didn’t know that in the middle of grief, change, and uncertainty, we would find out that we were being given a new light. A baby. A daughter. A piece of grace in human form.

Because that’s what she was. That’s what she is. A light. A reminder. The kind of grace that finds you when you need it most, even if you don’t realize it at the time.

When Jamie held her for the first time, I knew Amazing Grace would be the first song she ever heard him sing.

Her presence mended the unseen fractures within us, stitching together the fabric of our hearts with threads of newfound joy. She taught us to find wonder in the mundane, to cherish the present, and to see the world through unclouded eyes. Gracie didn’t just enter our lives; she transformed them, reminding us of the boundless grace we hadn’t realized we were yearning for.

It’s strange how something as simple as a song can become part of the foundation of a family, how it can weave itself into the quietest moments, the most unexpected places. It was there when my Nanny hummed it in the kitchen. It was there when Jamie rocked our babies in the dark. It was there when Jaxon, barely old enough to understand what he was singing, lifted his tiny voice and filled the air with it. And it was there in Gracie’s name, in the miracle of her presence, in the way she became the light we didn’t know we needed.

Amazing Grace has lasted through the centuries because grace is never really one moment. It is always unfolding, always moving, always finding a way back into our lives.

It was there in my Nanny’s voice, humming in the background of my childhood.

It was there in Jamie’s lullabies, sung to all three of our babies.

It was there in Jaxon’s tiny voice, repeating the words before he even knew what they meant.

And it was there in Gracie, in the way she arrived at exactly the right time.

Amazing Grace isn’t just a song to me.

It’s our song. It’s a story. A prayer. A thread through time.

TITLE

Dream Weaver: Where I Began, Woven in Dreamlight

Mon, 26 May 2025 15:59:41 GMT

Gary Wright : Dreamweaver

Film: Wayne's World FilmFil

Apparently, I was conceived to Dream Weaver by Gary Wright.

That’s a sentence I probably shouldn’t know.

And definitely shouldn’t be starting a story with.

But here we are.

I didn’t find out in a heartfelt, candlelit, parent-to-child moment of family origin stories. No. I found out the way most weird truths seem to land—in the middle of a movie I wasn’t supposed to be watching, with my mom sitting beside me on the couch, momentarily forgetting I was there.

The movie was Wayne’s World , and the scene (if you know, you know) is iconic! Wayne sees Cassandra for the first time. Time slows. Lights glow. The music fades from chaotic, glorious Ballroom Blitz to the twinkling, spacey opening of Dream Weaver. He’s stunned. Love struck. Tongue tied. And right as Gary Wright’s voice starts floating through the screen like a cosmic lullaby, my mom out loud goes:

“Oh! Lauren was conceived to this song at Camp Creek …”

Her eyes widened in horror.

Mine did, too—just for very different reasons.

Oh my god.

“Ew, Mom. Why would you tell me that?!”

I was like 8 maybe. Still just a kid. A very long way from understanding the beauty of that memory…and suddenly I had this weird, glittery song stapled to my conception story like a sticker I couldn’t peel off.

It stuck with me, though. That moment. That song.

At the time, it was just embarrassment.

But as I got older, Dream Weaver started showing up again—quietly, like background static. On the radio, in passing, in conversations. And always, always in that Wayne’s World scene, still one of my all-time favorites.

It never stopped being funny.

But it also stopped being just funny.

Because something strange happens when you grow up. The things that once embarrassed you if they’re real enough, meaningful enough they start to change shape. They soften. They shimmer. They start to feel like… part of you. Like home. Like truth.

And that’s what Dream Weaver became for me: this oddly perfect little metaphor for my beginning. For who I am. For how I see the world.

I mean what better song to kick off a life like mine than a trippy, glitter drenched synth ballad about love and soul travel?

It’s not just a slow jam. It’s a portal.

And maybe that’s the point.

Camp Creek.

That was the place.

The lake house. The night. The song.

According to my mom, it was John’s place, her friend with a cabin out by the water. Peaceful, private, stars overhead. She doesn’t talk about it in too much detail (thankfully), but I know enough to imagine the rest.

There was love. There was music. There was Dream Weaver. And out of that strange, ethereal mix—there was me.

I used to think it was weird. Now I think it’s kind of… beautiful.

Because what is love, really, if not a kind of dreamweaving? What is birth if not a bridge between realms? Two people, once strangers, collide in the wildness of this world—and from that collision, a whole universe forms. A tiny galaxy with eyes and bones and breath.

Me.

I didn’t understand the song when I was little.

It felt slow, sparkly, almost too floaty to hold onto.

But as I got older... especially after becoming a mother myself, I started to feel it.

Really feel it.

That kind of music doesn’t hit you all at once. It grows with you. It wraps around you like mist. It lingers. And then one day, you hear it—not with your ears, but with your whole body. Your whole being.

And that’s what it’s like now.

When I hear Dream Weaver, I don’t feel embarrassed anymore.

I feel grateful.

I feel… woven.

There’s a certain kind of softness in that realization. A reverence.

I think that’s what hits me most now—how rare and special it is to know the exact song playing when your life first sparked into motion. How rare it is to want to hold onto it.

My dad really liked Gary Wright’s The Dream Weaver album. I didn’t know that until later, but it feels right. It makes sense in a way I can’t fully explain. Maybe it was part of the soundtrack to who he was. Maybe it helped shape his quiet, poetic side. Maybe, in some strange way, it helped call me in.

There’s something cosmic about that.

Like my very first lullaby came wrapped in synth and stardust.

Now, when I hear Dream Weaver, I don’t roll my eyes.

I close them.

And I say thank you.

Because I’m here.

Because they loved each other.

Because they laughed and danced and made mistakes and made me.

Because somehow, that song is tied to my first flicker of existence.

And that’s not really gross, it’s kinda sacred.

And maybe that’s the real thread tying this all together...

this project, this song, this story, this life.

Because in so many ways, Searching for Stars is my version of Dream Weaver.

It’s my way of honoring the light that brought me here.

It’s the stories I’ve lived and the stories I carry.

It’s me weaving dreams of my own thread by thread, star by star.

Maybe it started with that night at Camp Creek.

Maybe it started with that first synth chord floating through the cabin.

But it hasn’t stopped.

I’ve been dream-weaving ever since.

With my children.

With my memories.

With these words.

With love.

I used to flinch when that song came on.

Now, I let it play.

I let it wash over me like moonlight on water.

And when Gary Wright sings “Fly me high through the starry skies, maybe to an astral plane”

I think,

Yeah. That tracks.

Dream Weaver.

Apparently, that’s where I began.

Honestly? I get it now.

And I’m thankful. So, so thankful .

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Stars: Lost in the Orbit of Sound

maverickdigitalsolutions@gmail.com (Lauren Nixon-Matney) — Sun, 04 May 2025 09:38:28 GMT

Hum : Stars

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The first time I heard Stars by Hum, I was sitting in my brother’s car outside our dad’s house in Lake Charles. It was just after Christmas, and he was about to drive me home to Texas, back to whatever version of reality waited for me there. But for a moment, we were just sitting—him in the driver’s seat, me in the passenger’s—while the thick, hazy distortion of the opening chords filled the car.

I remember feeling the weight of it immediately. The guitars weren’t just loud they were consuming, like standing too close to something massive, feeling its pull. And yet, floating somewhere above all that heaviness was the voice distant, detached, almost weightless. It wasn’t like anything I had heard before. It didn’t try to pull me in; it just existed, vast and cosmic, waiting for me to find my own way through it.

Then came the words:

She thinks she missed the train to Mars, she’s out back counting stars.

Something about that line felt like it had been written just for me. I didn’t know why. I was 14, and I didn’t have the life experience yet to understand what it meant to miss something you never really had, but I felt it all the same.

Music, Memory, and the Weight of Sound

Hum’s You’d Prefer an Astronaut had come out years before this moment back in 1995, when the alternative rock scene was in flux, shifting between the last gasps of grunge and the rise of something more sprawling and atmospheric. They weren’t exactly shoegaze, but they weren’t quite grunge either. Their massive, layered guitars and existential lyrics leaned into space rock territory, creating something heavier, more immersive. Hum was one of those genre defying bands existing in the space between a band that built soundscapes as much as songs, layering crushing guitars over melodies that always seemed to be reaching for something just out of grasp.

Stars was their closest thing to a hit, but it never really broke into the mainstream. Instead, it became something better—a song that lived in the margins, passed between people like a secret, like something only those who truly listened could understand.

That’s how I heard it, my brother was the one who opened this world to me, who made sure I wasn’t just consuming whatever played on the radio. He was in a band. He had the kind of taste in music that made everything seem more important. And as I sat there in the car, hearing Stars for the first time, I felt like I had been let in on something bigger than myself.

I wanted to live in the sound of that song. I wanted to understand why it made me feel like I was floating and sinking at the same time.

Distance, Longing, and the Meaning of “Stars”

The lyrics to Stars feel like a dream half remembered. They don’t tell a straightforward story, but instead, they paint a picture of longing, admiration, and cosmic detachment.

She thinks she missed the train to Mars, she’s out back counting stars.

It sounds like someone watching another person slip away not in a dramatic way, but in the kind of quiet, inevitable drift that happens without either person realizing it. There’s something beautifully tragic about that image standing outside, staring at the sky, believing you’ve missed something monumental, but being too lost in thought to move.

At 14, I couldn’t quite explain why that line stuck with me, but I felt it. Looking back, I think I was already beginning to understand what it meant to stand on the outside, watching life shift and slip away. My brother and I had been through so much by then. The first half of our childhood felt steady, familiar...but after our parents’ divorce, everything splintered. Loss became something we recognized too well. Travis. Tommy. Nanny. Trey. Names that once filled our world, now just echoes. We learned young that people don’t always stay, that life has a way of changing without asking permission.

Maybe that’s why Stars felt so big to me. It wasn’t just the sound—it was the feeling of standing in the middle of something massive, trying to make sense of where you belonged inside it.

Built to Spill, Burned CDs, and the Language of Music

Before he left to drive back to Lake Charles, he handed me a stack of burned CDs— Hum , Built to Spill , Cursive , a few others scribbled in Sharpie across the discs. ‘You’ll love these,’ he told me. And he was right.”

If Hum felt like weightlessness inside a crushing atmosphere, Built to Spill felt like motion loose, sprawling, unpredictable. Where Hum sounded like watching something from a distance, Built to Spill sounded like running straight into it, arms open.

There’s Nothing Wrong with Love became one of my favorite albums of all time, but at 14, I didn’t know that yet. I just knew that this CD in my hands was important. That my brother had given it to me. That this music was going to mean something.

The Gift of Music and the Ones Who Carry It

My brother has always had an ear for music not just listening to it, but playing it, absorbing it, understanding it in a way most people don’t.

When he was 14, we were at our cousin’s wedding, and a woman was playing the piano. He sat next to her, watched her hands move across the keys, and when she got up, he slid into her seat and played exactly what she had played.

She turned back, surprised. “I thought you said you’ve never played piano?”

“I haven’t,” he said. “I just watched you.”

Some people don’t just play music they breathe it in, let it live inside them. My brother is one of those people.

Bobby gave me my first guitar. I toyed with the idea of being in a band in high school—picked up a few chords, even convinced myself I might have potential. (Spoiler: I did not.) Some people are born to make music, and some of us are just really good at making mix CDs and overanalyzing lyrics.

The Circling Course of Stars

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard Stars since that first listen in my brother’s car. Maybe hundreds. Maybe more.

When I was 14, Stars made me feel like I was floating through something bigger than myself. Now, even as time passes, the lyrics and the sound still move through me. It’s a quiet kind of peace standing outside, looking up, knowing the stars are still there.

Music is strange like that. Some songs stay with you, orbiting your life, waiting for the right moment to pull you back in. They become part of your DNA, tangled in the places you’ve been, the people you’ve loved, the memories that never really fade. And when they resurface sometimes when you least expect it they remind you of who you are, who you were, and who you’re still becoming.

Stars: Lost in the Orbit of Sound

Solid Ground: Dancing Through the Storm

maverickdigitalsolutions@gmail.com (Lauren Nixon-Matney) — Sun, 04 May 2025 06:53:16 GMT

PNAU : Solid Ground

Motherhood hits like a tidal wave. It crashes over you, leaving you breathless, navigating a new world of love, exhaustion, and uncharted emotions. Some days, the tide is gentle, rocking you in its rhythm. Other days, it pulls hard, threatening to drag you under. But in my living room, with my son nestled in his baby carrier, the beat of Solid Ground became one of my anchors.

“There’s too much worth living for, too much worth living for, baby.

I’ll show you.”

So I did.

I danced. I swayed. I let the music shake off the weight of exhaustion, filling the space with movement, laughter, and love. My son, wrapped against me, always responded with instant calm his tiny body absorbing the rhythm, the melody, the joy. Even now, ten years later, he still sings along, his voice a little louder, his feet moving to the same beat that once held us both steady in those early days.

“Looks like I got my feet back on solid ground. My head’s been stuck in a storm so long.”

Postpartum can feel like a storm: isolating, overwhelming, a swirl of emotions that’s hard to explain. But this song pulled me through it. Reminded me of who I was. Gave me back my light.

And through it all, I fell deeper in love not just with my son, but with my husband. Parenthood doesn’t just add to love; it transforms it, deepens it, makes it something even more powerful. Seeing him as a father, watching the life we created together it made me love him in ways I never expected.

When the first notes of Solid Ground hit, they ignite something deep inside me as my body almost involuntarily begins to move and I don’t just hear a song. I hear the laughter of my baby boy, I feel the steady presence of my husband, the echo of our love dancing through the years. A time capsule of memories… and I remember: we built something beautiful, powerful, meaningful, something worth living for and in that we found our solid ground.

Solid Ground: Dancing Through the Storm

Landslide: Constellations of Change

maverickdigitalsolutions@gmail.com (Lauren Nixon-Matney) — Sun, 04 May 2025 06:29:21 GMT

Fleetwood Mac : Landslide

My Dad was my best friend - a brilliant Shaman with a beautiful soul, and a great dad who lived a life marked by pain and resilience. He passed away in 2021, and not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.

Many years ago, he played Landslide for me at a pivotal moment in both our lives. It was the live version where Stevie Nicks dedicated the song to her father, saying, “This is for you, Daddy.” Hearing those words felt like the song was speaking directly to my soul, as I watched my Dad grapple with pain, loss and his new reality rediscovering himself in sobriety.

We were sitting at the Hobbit Hole, an extended after-care housing unit, a name that made it sound more magical than it was. My Dad had been fighting his demons and finding his way back to the best version of himself. This was also the place and time in my story where I took my now-husband to meet my Dad for the first time a moment that added layers of meaning to the song, one of loss, love, recovery and growth.

Landslide became more than a song. It was a mirror of our lives, the cracks we were trying to piece back together, and the hope that carried us forward. My Dad played it with a depth that only he could, his voice raw and trembling, filled with both sorrow and pride. He wasn’t just playing for me; he was playing for us,for our story, for his redemption, for the chance to be the father he wanted to be and, in so many ways, already was.

Landslide was our anthem of survival a way of reminding both of us that even when the ground gives way beneath you, there’s something bigger above. His strength wasn’t just in enduring the pain, but in teaching me how to see the beauty in disaster, how to keep searching for stars even when the night feels endless.

Landslide: Constellations of Change

Still Running the Bases Somewhere in the Light

Sun, 04 May 2025 05:14:28 GMT

The Drifters : There Goes My Baby

Ray Charles : America The Beautiful

Film: The Sandlot

Still Running the Bases Somewhere in the Light

We must’ve watched The Sandlot a hundred times that summer. Maybe more.

The first time, though (the one I always go back to) it was me, Billy, Tommy, Bobby, and Trey, packed into the living room, somewhere between their house and ours. I want to say it was Margaret’s copy, a well-worn VHS with that kind of magic where the tracking lines just became part of the story.

We watched it on a soft afternoon that turned gold as it went on, the way only childhood days can.

James Earl Jones shows up near the end...that deep voice, that presence like something sacred. It felt a little different once I realized he was the same man from Field of Dreams. That was the movie that made me want to be a writer. I saw it before The Sandlot, and when he said, “People will come, Ray,” I believed it—not just about baseball, but about words. That stories could bring people together, could hold whole lives inside them. So when he appeared again in The Sandlot, it felt like a kind of full circle moment. Like he was somehow the guardian of baseball dreams.

We were all baseball kids. Not all just organized league kids, but real baseball kids scraped-up and sunburned, eating freeze pops and sharing gloves, playing until our parents called us in or the sky turned lavender.

My mom used to gather us up when we got bored, walking the neighborhood, calling out, “Hey, y’all wanna come play ball?” Somehow, it always worked.

Billy and Tommy were there from the beginning of my life. Margaret’s twins. Identical, so much so that most people couldn’t tell them apart.

But we could.

Tommy had this softness in his eyes, a gentle kindness. Billy had a spark the kind that made you smile just by being near him.

They were like brothers to me.

There were others too...Chris, David, Brian, Trey, and often more. I was the tag-along little girl, always on the edge of the huddle… and somehow never really on the outside.

So many of our memories live at the baseball field.

The low hum of summer, dust in our lungs, grass stains on our knees, time moving in long loops.

Back then, it felt like it would never end.

But of course, it did.

I can’t remember the first time I had a s’more.

But after The Sandlot, it felt like they were always part of summer! Sticky fingers, smoky firelight, marshmallows puffed just past perfect.

That scene didn’t teach us how to make one. It just reminded us how good it was to be a kid when everything simple felt sacred.

Billy had heart surgery when we were younger (holes in his heart).

I don’t exactly remember the year but I remember my mom, Bobby, and I going to Houston with them, staying with my aunt while Billy was in the children’s hospital.

It’s strange what sticks. The worry in the grownups’ voices. The way the hospital lobby smelled.

But mostly I remember Tommy sitting quiet beside me, like we both knew the world wasn’t always going to be kind, even if we didn’t have the words yet.

He was gentle like that.

Not soft in the way people mean when they’re trying to say someone was weak—no. Tommy had a quiet strength.

He was the kind of kid who’d notice if you were left out. The kind who wouldn’t make a big show of helping you—just… be there.

He was fourteen when he died.

It was the night before Mother’s Day. Margaret was about six months pregnant with her fourth child (a beautiful baby girl). Billy had gone to live in Hilltop with his dad by then, and Tommy was staying in town with Margaret and her new husband Bob.

That night, he was out walking with a friend when a drunk driver speeding, reckless, blind to the world—crashed into him.

Just didn’t see him.

And just like that, he was gone.

I remember the knock at the door like it happened this morning.

It was midnight.

My Dad answered the door. Mrs. Traylor stood on our porch frantic, breathless.

She had taught both my mom and dad in high school. A constant in our lives long before my brother or I ever sat in her classroom.

“Liz, you’ve got to get yourself together,” she said. “Margaret needs you. There’s been an accident. They think Billy’s dead.”

It felt like the world cracked in two.

We were all screaming, crying—panicked in that way where your body knows more than your mind.

We’d already lost Travis to cancer. But this was different. This was sudden. Brutal. No time to brace.

And then came the truth, in the slow, cruel way it always does.

It wasn’t Billy.

It was Tommy.

It didn’t bring relief.

It didn’t ease the panic or soften the grief.

It wasn’t relief it was a different kind of devastation, no lighter, no easier to carry.

Because when you love them both...when they’re both yours...there’s no “better” version of the news.

It was devastating.

And none of us were ever the same.

Sometimes I think about those long afternoons at the park.

That 4th of July scene the fireworks, the boys playing under light and stars while Ray Charles sang felt like a memory even the first time I saw it.

We had nights like that too. Maybe not as perfect. Most often the fireworks were over Mirror Lake in Hilltop. But close enough to feel like magic.

The baseball field was just a part of our neighborhood; open space and the sound of baseballs cracking off bats.

Grass under our bare feet. Dirt under our fingernails. Moms gathered nearby, lawn chairs spread out, music pouring from the stereo of someone’s car.

Margaret...kind, fun, always a steady example of love.

Becky, bringing some kind of magic wherever she went. Homemade peanut butter fudge at Christmas, Mickey Mouse pancakes on sleepy mornings, wrapping paper made from comics.

She was like a real-life Pinterest board before Pinterest ever existed.

And the boys; Billy, Bobby, Trey, Chris, David, Brian.

And Tommy.

We were all out there, some version of The Sandlot crew, just living it.

And even though I was the little one, the tag-along, they made space for me.

Not because they had to—because they wanted to.

(Or at least, that’s what I like to believe.)

We didn’t know we were making memories we’d carry for the rest of our lives.

We just thought we were playing.

When I think of Tommy now, I don’t usually think of the accident.

I think mostly of him skipping rocks in Hilltop, at Lake Tonkawa—his eyes soft with that quiet kindness he always carried.

I think of him sitting next to me on the floor the first time we watched The Sandlot, the glow of the TV lighting up a room full of kids who didn’t yet know how fragile life could be.

“There goes my baby…”

Not just a love song.

A memory song.

A goodbye song.

It rises like a summer night breeze, full of everything we felt and everything we lost.

It’s what I hear when I remember the way time moved back then slow and sweet, until suddenly it wasn’t.

The Drifters had this way of making a song feel like a memory. Like something your mom might’ve slow-danced to as a teen, or something you’d hear playing faintly from the kitchen radio while she made dinner.

When “There Goes My Baby” plays now, it’s about all the days we didn’t know we were living in gold.

Tommy was one of the best parts of those days.

And he always will be.

Sometimes I wonder if people really understand what it means to grow up with a whole crew like that a tangle of boys and moms and park days and late-night movies.

We didn’t just know each other; we belonged to each other.

And when someone like Tommy is taken, it doesn’t end there.

You carry them.

Not just in grief, but in the way you remember, in the way you tell stories, in the way you show up for the people you love.

He’s still with me.

In every summer dusk that feels just a little too quiet.

In every memory that smells like sunscreen and hot Texas heat.

In the twins I see now and still do a double take.

In every time The Sandlot plays and I swear I can hear us laughing in the background.

It’s funny when you’re a kid, you think the people you grow up with are going to be there forever.

And in some ways… they are.

Tommy’s part of the field.

Part of the lake.

Part of the song that plays in my head when I remember some of the best days I ever had.

“There goes my baby…”

It’s not the end of the story.

Just the echo of a boy we loved, still running the bases somewhere in the light.

Sometimes, when The Sandlot comes on, I have to stop what I’m doing.

Just sit. Just watch.

It’s more than a movie to me it’s a time capsule.

A story stitched with all the little pieces of my own.

Billy and Tommy. Bobby and Trey. Chris, David, Brian. Becky and Margaret. My mom. All of us.

It plays, and suddenly I’m back on that old park field—music drifting from a car stereo (probably Foreigner), summer spilling over everything.

And for a little while, we’re all still there laughing, running, living like it would never end.

And yet it does.

There’s this strange, beautiful thing about time: Babe Ruth floats through The Sandlot like a ghost. Stories about him... dreams of becoming like him. I used to think of him as a faraway legend, all black-and-white photos and myth. But years later, we ended up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the same town where Babe Ruth once trained.

We lived there for about ten years. Two of our babies (Jaxon and Maggie) were born there. We used to take them to Majestic Park, this field where Babe Ruth himself once played. That’s where Bobby plays now, part of a group of grown-ups who just love the game and still get out there. Not professionals. Just people who understand that something magic happens when you step onto a baseball field. Because the game never really left us.

Maybe that’s how we hold on.

You see, the thing is...just like in that movie, just like in our lives, the boys don’t stay boys forever.

But the summer does.

That’s how stories live on... not necessarily in stadiums or statues, but in summer dust and backyard games, beautiful memories and quiet boys who never made it home.

We look up, and maybe we don’t always see the stars at first.

But they’re there, always returning to light the field for another game.

TITLE

The Woods: Between the Flames and the Stars

maverickdigitalsolutions@gmail.com (Lauren Nixon-Matney) — Sun, 04 May 2025 04:34:48 GMT

Hollow Coves : The Woods

The fire crackles, embers floating into the night like fireflies. The air is thick with woodsmoke, warmth radiating from the flames. Somewhere deep in the trees, the wind hums through the branches, and for a moment—just a flicker—time bends.

The way this song moves my soul—it carries me through time, through embers and echoes of what once was. I am a child again, in a tiny Texas town where bonfires mark the seasons, where homecoming means flames licking at the sky and the whole town gathered around. The heat of the fire against cool night air. The feeling of something unshakably familiar. Belonging. Safety. Warmth.

The Woods: Between the Flames and the Stars

I see my dad, standing by the fireplace in our childhood home, the glow of the flames flickering across his face. He loved the fire. Not just for its heat, but for what it meant. Stillness. Togetherness. A moment that needed nothing more than itself. He would back up to the flames, hands in his pockets, letting the warmth soak into him like it was part of some ritual. I can still hear his laugh. I can still see him there.

It is New Year’s Eve, 1999. The whole world waits to see if the clocks will glitch, if Y2K will swallow everything we know. My mother is with Carl then. Carl, who is steady and kind and feels like something solid. His kids are there too, laughing, running through the cold, their faces glowing in the firelight. The bonfire is enormous, flames leaping into the sky, heat rolling across our faces. Sparks spiral upward, vanishing into the night like tiny shooting stars. I don’t know what the future will hold, but in this moment, I am warm. I am safe. I am here.

The fire shifts, the scene flickers.

Time moves like a slow-burning ember, stretching between what once was and what comes next. I am older now. My mother is with my stepdad, a drunk but a nice enough man. However, the people who linger around the fire at night—they are not safe. I remember lying awake in my bedroom knife under my pillow just in case I needed the protection, the flicker of flames through the window, the shadows shifting on the walls. Bonfires that once meant community and comfort now feel different. The flicker of flames through my window is no longer inviting, but haunting. A gathering of drunks and addicts right outside. Shadows shifting, voices slurred, laughter that doesn’t sound quite right. Something I do not trust. Something unsettling. Unsafe.

The fire flickers again, and time shifts once more.

I am in California. The mornings are crisp and cold, and my husband and I wake early, flipping on the fireplace before anything else. The warmth spills into the room, chasing the chill away. He feels like home, like something I can hold onto. We sit close, wrapped in blankets, watching the flames dance and listening to old records.

Another flicker.

Later—pregnant with our sweet Maverick, back in my dad’s house, watching him do what he always did. Backing up to the fire, warming himself like it was the most important task in the world. He was always doing that. I never thought about how much I’d miss it.

The embers glow, and another memory rises.

Hot Springs, Arkansas. The woods, but this time, they are ours. The National Forest stretches beyond our backyard, wild and endless. The trees whisper, and for the first time in a long time, the woods feel like magic again. Like home.

My son is small and some of our best moments are spent by the fireplace—reading, lying together, warmth wrapping around us like something holy. The crackling of the flames, the weight of him in my arms. I will hold onto this forever.

The fire flickers, reshaping time once more.

New Year’s Eve, 2025 in Texas. The fire burns high, casting long shadows. But this time, it is not my childhood. It is my children’s. I watch them sitting there, faces flickering in the firelight, laughter rising into the night air. Carl’s kids are here too, their own children sitting beside mine. The people I love surround me, old and new, bonded by something deeper than blood.

I sit there, watching the flames, feeling time fold in on itself.

I think of my dad, of the way the fire always pulled him close.

I think of all the warmth that has held me, all the places the fire has burned.

And I know—woven between the flames and the stars where fire meets sky, where embers become stardust—something greater lingers.

Co-Pilot: Detours and Destinies

maverickdigitalsolutions@gmail.com (Lauren Nixon-Matney) — Sun, 04 May 2025 04:16:12 GMT

Letters To Cleo : Co-Pilot

When we first got together, people warned me.

“He’s no good. He’ll break your heart.”

Funny, considering that’s exactly how this song starts.

And they were right...just not in the way they meant.

We’ve hurt each other. We’ve broken each other’s hearts.

But love isn’t about avoiding the cracks.

It’s about whether you can piece them back together,

whether you’re still standing next to each other when the dust settles.

You drive, I navigate.

That’s the setup, but in reality, we’re both just making it up as we go, following the curves, trusting the road, finding our way in the spaces between.

Somewhere between the streetlights and the stardust, we found our rhythm.

Not in the grand moments, but in the in-betweens

in the way your hand finds mine without looking,

in the way we miss the right turn but never lose our way.

We dance in kitchens like the floor is a map,

like we are tracing every road we’ve taken to get here.

Your hand in mine, spinning, spinning,

two bodies in motion, caught in their own gravity.

We get lost on backroads with the windows down,

your voice rising over the static of old songs on the radio,

and somehow, we always end up right where we’re meant to be.

Life speeds by, a blur of neon signs and headlights.

We are co-pilots in a world that never slows down,

navigating with nothing but instinct,

spinning worlds like roulette wheels,

chasing sunrises, chasing each other,

never needing a destination only the ride.

And I know there will be rough roads,

days when the car breaks down, when the gas runs low,

when the rain makes it impossible to see what’s ahead.

But I also know you’ll be there, one hand on the wheel,

one hand reaching for mine,

telling me, like you always do,

“We’ve been through worse. We’ll figure it out.”

So, maybe you did break my heart.

And I broke yours.

But we never let it be the end of the story.

We kept driving, kept choosing, kept moving forward

Some loves are soft like slow-dancing,

but ours is wild wind in our hair,

barefoot on the dashboard,

laughing too hard to breathe.

A love built on running toward something unseen,

on never needing to know where the road ends,

only that we’re taking it together.

We move like constellations

orbiting, spinning, drawn back to each other.

Some loves are made for whispered words and stillness.

But ours is movement, momentum, a streak of light across the sky

impossible to hold, impossible to stop.

Maybe love isn’t about where you’re going,

but who’s in the passenger seat when you get there.

Co-Pilot: Detours and Destinies

Three Is a Magic Number

Sun, 04 May 2025 03:07:50 GMT

Blind Melon : 3 Is a Magic Number (School House Rock)

Film: Never Been Kissed

Dear Kids,

My beautiful darlings before you ever heard this song, I did.

And while I don’t know when exactly I heard Three Is a Magic Number first…

I remember I was a kid myself, sitting at the Shannons house.

The Shannons.

Somewhere between the sound of laughter in a house that wasn’t mine, but felt like home.

Between the flicker of a well-loved VHS, rewound until the tape ran soft.

Between the slow, golden stretch of afternoons where time moved like honey—thick, warm, endless.

Where the air smelled like old books and something sweet.

Where a song like this could slip into the background,

catching in the walls, in the corners, in me before I even knew to hold onto it.

Back then, it was just a song.

A simple tune, a lesson set to melody.

But the thing about music, about places that shape you, is that they don’t really leave.

And years later, when I heard it again, I realized it had never left at all.

Carl’s House.

A video rental from Blockbuster .

A bowl of popcorn between us, Jessie and I stretched across the floor, pressing play on Never Been Kissed.

I loved movies.

I liked getting lost in stories, in characters, in soundtracks that felt like they carried pieces of something bigger.

I don’t remember the exact moment it happened, but somewhere between Drew Barrymore ’s awkward charm and the soft glow of the TV screen,

a song I knew by heart came floating through the speakers.

Three Is a Magic Number.

Only it wasn’t the version I grew up with.

It wasn’t a cartoon bouncing across a classroom monitor or childhood friends T.V.

It was Blind Melon.

It stopped me in my tracks, even as I lay there on the floor,

even as the movie kept playing.

It was like someone had taken my childhood, stretched it out, pulled it through the radio, spun it into something new not erased, not replaced, but grown.

At twelve, maybe thirteen, I was right at the threshold.

Old enough to start curating my own taste, young enough for nostalgia to still hit like a wave.

I was just starting to understand music not as background noise,

but as something personal, something alive.

I was shifting from Disney soundtracks and pop radio to a world that felt bigger; alternative, grunge, indie, songs with layers, meaning, emotion.

And then, here was this song.

This simple, familiar melody, a bridge between the past and the future, between childhood and whatever came next.

Blind Melon was cool.

Schoolhouse Rock was my childhood.

Hearing them together felt like a secret handshake, like proof that my past and present weren’t separate things, but part of the same orbit.

I burned it onto a mix CD soon after!

Not just because I liked it, but because it had grown with me.

And maybe that’s what music does.

It lingers, it evolves, it shifts its shape to fit the moment.

It becomes part of you, waiting in the background, until suddenly, it steps forward and says: I’ve been here all along.

Pregnant with You.

By then, music wasn’t just something I loved.

It was something I trusted.

Something I leaned on.

So when I found out I was pregnant, I did what felt natural...

I played music for you.

Headphones pressed against my belly, a quiet world waiting to hear its first song.

I liked to imagine the sound waves floating through, wrapping around you like a melody before you even had a name.

I played you Bill Nye the Science Guy episodes and so much Schoolhouse Rock, the same songs that had once filled my childhood.

The same songs that had lived inside the hum of a VHS player, in the laughter of afternoons at the Shannons’ house, in the flicker of a rented movie at Carl’s.

And when I played Three Is a Magic Number, I played both versions.

The one I had grown up with, and the one that had grown with me.

Maybe you heard it.

Maybe you felt it.

Maybe, even then, the music started shaping you, the way it had shaped me.

Now.

Now, there are three of you.

Three little voices filling the house.

Three sets of feet stomping across the floor.

Three pairs of hands clapping, dancing, reaching for the sky.

You don’t just listen to Three Is a Magic Number.

You live it.

You love it.

You sing it at the top of your lungs, jumping, laughing in the glow of the TV screen.

The old Schoolhouse Rock songs I played for you in the womb they’re still here.

Only now, they echo through the living room, through the halls, through the walls.

Our old DVDs, scratched from love, get pulled out over and over again.

Yesterday, I stood in the doorway, watching the three of you,

singing a song I once sang.

And in that moment, I saw it all.

The Shannons’ living room.

The VHS tapes.

Carl’s house. Jessie and me on the floor.

A mix CD, burned in a teenage bedroom.

Headphones on my belly.

A family of two, becoming three.

And now...three becoming everything!

Three was always a magic number.

But I never knew just how much

until now.

Love,

Mom

TITLE

Wheel in the Sky: Where the Road Meets the Stars

Sun, 04 May 2025 03:06:03 GMT

Journey : Wheel in the Sky

Some people exist in snapshots. Margaret was one of them.

The hum of tires on the road, the shimmer of heat rising off the pavement. Journey playing loud enough to shake the windows. The lake is still miles ahead, but we can already feel it the promise of cool water, the weight of the sun, the way summer in a small Texas town never feels like it’s moving too fast, until one day you realize it’s already gone.

Margaret is driving. One hand resting on the wheel, the other tapping the door in rhythm with the music. Sunglasses on top of her head, golden hair catching the wind. She sings with her whole body, like the song is pulling her forward, like she was meant to be part of it. My mom is beside her, harmonizing without effort, their voices blending into something so familiar, so natural, it’s impossible to imagine one without the other.

“Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin’…”

I am in the middle seat, the same place I always am. Small, safe, pressed between them, feeling the music as much as hearing it. The kind of moment you don’t realize is golden until time makes it untouchable.

Behind us, in the back of the truck, Bobby, Tommy, Billy, and Trey lean against the metal, their arms stretched out, the wind rushing past them like they could catch it in their hands. Laughing, yelling things that don’t need to be heard, because the music is already carrying everything that matters. Their hair whips in every direction, their voices swallowed by the road, but they don’t care. None of us do.

The air is thick with heat, dust, and lake water in the distance. The sun hangs high above us, casting everything in that endless, golden light. I don’t remember what Margaret smelled like, but I remember what it felt like to be around her.

She was effortlessly cool, but not in the way people try to be in the way people just are. Beautiful, kind, full of light. She loved animals. She loved music. She loved capturing the moments that mattered, always behind the camera, making sure no one forgot how it felt to be here, right now, in the thick of it. But she wasn’t just recording life she was living it.

Some songs aren’t just songs. They are people, they are places, they are moments frozen in time. They are the heat of the road beneath you, the sound of wind rushing past an open window, the way your mother and her best friend sing like they are part of the band, like they belong to the music just as much as it belongs to them.

Some songs aren’t just songs. They are time machines.

And when Journey plays, I am back here again.

The truck. The music. The heat of the summer stretching out before us, endless, until one day it wasn’t.

Some people don’t fade, they just move farther away like stars, still burning, still there, even when you can’t see them.

“I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow…”

I didn’t know either. But I didn’t care.

Because back then, it always felt like summer would last forever.

And in some ways, it still does.

The wheel in the sky keeps turning spinning somewhere ahead, where the road meets the sky.

Wheel in the Sky: Where the Road Meets the Sky

Finding Light, Finding Joy: A Letter of Light for Joy Prouty

Sun, 04 May 2025 03:05:44 GMT

Dear Joy ,

Some people move through this world leaving quiet trails of light, never knowing just how far their glow will reach. You are one of them.

I found your Instagram around 2012, at a time when I was trying to find my way back to myself. Life had left me shaken, grief had settled in places I didn’t know it could reach, and I was rebuilding, piece by piece. In that season of searching, I stumbled across your world the way you wrote, the way you saw beauty in the imperfect, the way you carried light even in the hardest moments. And somehow, through the small miracle of timing, it reached me when I needed it most.

I remember watching as you and your family traveled, in that adorable camper with the painted flowers, moving from place to place, gathering moments like keepsakes. Your words weren’t just captions beneath images; they were soft lanterns, reminders to be present, to see the story unfolding in the life I was already living. At the time, my husband and I were passing through Texas and Arkansas, and I remember you pausing in Hope, finding hope in Hope. And I felt connected to that as if we were both moving through similar landscapes, both looking for something unseen but deeply felt.

Over the years, I have watched your journey, and in turn, you have shaped my own. You have inspired me as a mother... to embrace imperfection, to let love and presence be enough. You have reminded me that beauty is not in the flawless moments but in the honest ones. Your photography, your storytelling, the way you have carried on through hardship...it has been a quiet encouragement, a permission slip to create, to feel, to keep moving forward.

I don’t know if you realize how much light you have given. But I want you to know this: You have been a light to me. You have made me a better human. And for that, I am endlessly grateful.

May you always find stars in the darkest skies and feel the same warmth you so freely share.

With love and light,

-Lauren

Finding Light, Finding Joy:

A Letter of Light for Joy Prouty

Thank You: Joy Prouty

Just Dropped In: A Strike Across Stars

Sun, 04 May 2025 03:05:20 GMT

Kenny Rogers : Just Dropped In

Film: The Big Lebowski

Some songs are just effortlessly cool.

You don’t question it you just feel it.

The moment it starts, the whole world shifts. Everything slows down just a little. The air feels heavier, like it’s carrying something with it. The sound wraps around you, smooth and hypnotic, like it’s always been playing somewhere in the background you just hadn’t noticed until now.

Kenny Rogers didn’t just sing “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” he slid into it like a silk suit and a slow-burning cigarette. The groove, the sitar, the way his voice moves through the haze of the song like he’s just woken up in the middle of a dream he’s not sure he wants to leave.

It’s a song that doesn’t ask for attention it just takes it.

And if there was ever a movie cool enough to match it, it’s The Big Lebowski.

A Movie That’s More Than a Movie:

I first saw The Big Lebowski in high school. Clint worked at the video store across the street from where I lived, and in the summer, I’d wander in, looking for something new to watch. He handed me the DVD like it was a secret waiting to be unlocked.

“You’ve never seen this? You have to!”

I took it home, pressed play, and instantly got it.

Some movies don’t just entertain you they change you. This was one of them. The story, the soundtrack, The Dude it was all just... cool. Effortlessly cool, the same way the song was.

And then, that scene, the one where the song and the movie fuse into something unforgettable.

The Trippiest Dream Sequence in Cinema History:

The Dude gets drugged, and suddenly, we’re floating through a bowling themed fever dream. Maude is a Viking goddess, bowling shoes slide down a surreal, golden-lit lane, The Dude drifting through the cosmos.

And in the background?

“I pushed my soul in a deep dark hole and then I followed it in…”

It’s perfect,the kind of pairing that feels meant to exist. The film itself, like the song, doesn’t try to be anything. It just is. And somehow, that makes it even cooler.

The first time I watched that scene, I knew this was going to be one of those movies. The kind that sticks with you. The kind you quote. The kind you revisit, and every time, it still feels just as cool as the first time you saw it.

The Video Store Summers:

That summer, I went back to that video store again and again.

It wasn’t just about The Big Lebowski it was about the whole experience. Renting movies, talking about them with Clint, rewinding tapes, flipping through the shelves, discovering films that would stay with me forever.

And The Big Lebowski? That one stayed. It became part of the soundtrack of that time in my life. Just like this song.

The building across the street had been so many things over the years; a restaurant, a resale shop, even an actual house at one point. It never seemed to stay the same for long, like it was always waiting to become something new. But that summer, it was a video store... and somehow, that felt like fate. The store didn’t last long, maybe a couple of years at most, but for that brief window of time, it was exactly what it needed to be. A safe haven across the street, a place where I could wander in, flip through shelves of DVDs, and talk movies with Clint.

He knew his stuff, always ready with a recommendation, and when he handed me The Big Lebowski, it was like unlocking a secret. Looking back, it almost feels like something written in the stars—like for that one fleeting moment, the universe aligned just right, and a video store appeared exactly where I needed it to be.

Cool Without Trying:

Some things are cool because they chase it.

And then there are things that are cool because they don’t have to try.

This song. This movie. That summer. They all existed in their own orbit, spinning effortlessly, not asking for attention...just being.

And somehow, that’s the coolest thing of all.

TITLE

A Thank You to Chuck Norris

Sun, 04 May 2025 03:03:48 GMT

A Thank You to Chuck Norris

Chuck Norris doesn’t just inspire people he roundhouse kicks inspiration directly into their lives.

I have never met Chuck Norris. But somehow, the man has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. And honestly? I owe him a thank you.

Some people grow up with childhood heroes movie stars, athletes, cartoon characters. Me? I grew up with Walker, Texas Ranger.

It was my granny’s favorite show, and that meant it was our show. If Walker was on, the world could wait. And if Chuck Norris said something was important, you listened. Which is why one completely normal day, in the middle of my childhood, Chuck Norris unknowingly changed my life.

The Day Chuck Norris Pulled Me Out of Class

I was about 11 or 12, going through a rough patch my family was on edge due to some pretty serious circumstances, and life felt uncertain. But on this one particular day, I was sitting in school, minding my own business, when I got called to the office.

Now, let me set the scene: this had never happened before. My mind immediately jumped to panic mode. Had something happened to my dad? Was I in trouble? Was I about to be abducted by secret government agents?

Turns out, none of the above. I walked into the office, and there sat my granny, looking dead serious.

And then she said, “I was watching Walker, Texas Ranger today, and at the end of the episode, Chuck Norris said that kids should do karate.”

Now, if anyone else had said this, it might have seemed random . But this was my granny. And this was Chuck Norris.

She proceeded to tell me that she had seen a flyer for karate lessons at the Methodist Church and, since Chuck Norris personally recommended it (as far as she was concerned), she wanted to sign me up. She would pay for it, take me to my lessons, tournaments, everything.

So I did it. And you know what? It helped me so much. Karate taught me discipline, confidence, awareness, and strength. But even more than that, it gave me treasured memories with my granny. She never missed a class. She never hesitated to be there for me. And all because Chuck Norris gave her the idea.

The Total Gym Obsession (And My Baby Workout Partner)

Fast forward a few years: I’m in high school, and late-night TV is infomercial gold. And the best of the best? The Total Gym commercial.

I was obsessed. I wanted one so bad. Chuck Norris made that thing look like the ultimate workout. Forget a normal gym—I wanted the Chuck Norris way.

Years later, after I had my first baby, Jaxon, I told my husband Jamie that I deserved a present for having his child. Naturally, I asked for a Total Gym.

Jamie delivered. And so did the Total Gym.

Not only did it help me get into the best shape of my life—even better than before having a baby—but it became a special bonding time with my son. Jaxon loved it.

He hated being rocked in a chair, but if I laid back on the Total Gym, holding him in my arms while doing squats, and sang to him? He was out like a light. I literally sang my babies to sleep on a Chuck Norris workout machine.

I have photos, videos, and countless memories of this. And now? Jaxon and Maggie love using the Total Gym, too. Chuck Norris workouts have officially become a family legacy.

Post-Baby #3 & The Roundhouse Kick to My Gut Health

Now, after my third pregnancy , I was feeling the weight of time. Recovery was slower, energy was lower, and I needed something extra. Enter: Chuck Norris’ Roundhouse green juice and probiotic.

Embarrassingly enough to admit I have struggled with gut health probably my entire life. But this? Game changer.

Chuck Norris doesn’t sell health products.

He sells bottled invincibility.

Between the Total Gym, proper diet, exercise, and this probiotic, I have felt stronger, more energized, and healthier than I could have imagined. And yes, I fully believe that Chuck Norris himself has something to do with that.

The Shirt, The Legend, The Roundhouse Kick of Gratitude

Jamie once had a Chuck Norris t-shirt I gifted him that read:

“Chuck Norris doesn’t break hearts. He breaks legs.”

He loved that shirt. He wore it until it literally fell apart. And when it did? I saved it to make a t-shirt quilt.

Chuck Norris, you’ve been more than just a Texas icon—you’ve been an unexpected mentor, a source of strength, and a legend in my life.

Because of you, my granny walked into my school and signed me up for karate. Because of you, I got in the best shape of my life and somehow turned a piece of workout equipment into a lullaby for my babies. Because of you, I found strength in every season of my life before kids, after kids, and even now, as I chase them around.

I may never get the chance to meet you. But if I do, I’ll shake your hand, look you in the eye, and say thank you. And then I’ll probably embarrass myself by crying.

Chuck Norris doesn’t just inspire he leaves a roundhouse-kick sized impact on people’s lives and footprints of strength wherever he stands.

A Thank You To Chuck Norris

Thank You: Chuck Norris