​Like many of my peers in Atlanta, I just dodged a little bit of a weather bullet. Our pal, Hurricane Irma – conveniently scheduled for September 11 in order to maximize my low-grade, lingering disaster anxiety – came to town, bringing heavy rain, winds, and lots and lots of power outages. I was very fortunate that I was not affected one iota as dramatically as many of the victims who bore the brunt of the storm, but hanging out in a house with two small children and listening to the news tell you how scary everything is outside your window does count as a certain level of “impacted.” After three days of no school, constant news monitoring, and carrying a flashlight with me to pee in case the power went out, I decided that the scary part was over, and we just needed to get out of the house. Out to lunch. Out to somewhere. Out. So, like any proper suburbanite, I got the in car and rolled out to the nearest fast food joint with a decent indoor playground.
 
We dodged a few downed limbs getting there, but when we rolled in to the much-revered house of chicken nugget purveyance, it actually looked a lot like the typical weekday lunch rush. Three polo-shirt-clad business men shared a booth, each on the phone with other people. A set of parents with small children cut up chicken nuggets with the side of plastic fork. Two women chatted with one another, keeping one eye on their kids in the glassed-in playground, and offered an occasional head shake either across the table or to their children when they were climbing something they shouldn’t be. As we sat down at our table with our food, I overhead a man obliviously talking at top volume on his phone. “LOT OF LIMBS DOWN!,” he said, “BETTER CALL THE INSURANCE COMPANY!” Then he ended with something that struck me: “If you just need to get out of the house, you should come down here.”
 
Although I was in what some people might think of as suburban hell, filled with screaming children, potentially obnoxious phone conversations, and artery-clogging fast foods, this man was suggesting that this was a good place to be. He was inviting people to join him.
 
And I agreed.
 
Sitting there, I personally felt more relieved than I had in the three days since the news reports started. What I really needed to comfort me after the bustle and jostle of the storm was the bustle and jostle of other people. I didn’t just need to get out of the house, I needed to go sit and be part of a community. Kids seem to inherently understand this. You “need” to get them out of the house because they not only want new surroundings, they need the stimulus of other people. Adults sometimes don’t acknowledge it as readily, but we need it, too. I needed to be out, elbow deep in ketchup smears with screaming babies in my ears. I needed the village.  
 
Clean up from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is going to be long, painful, and expensive, and I encourage you to support those efforts however you can. (I personally sent money to a charity exclusively devoted to buying people clean underpants. True story.) However, there is one special wish I am sending out to the humans who need it most after these storms: May you find yourself smack dab in the middle of a community. May it make you feel much, much better during everything you’re going through. And, may it be filled with crying babies and ketchup smears and everything else you need for it to feel like home. 

HOLYCRAPTHATWASTHEMOSTAMAZINGTHINGI'VEEVERSEEN.
LITERALLY.  Not figuratively.  LITERALLY.

Regards, 
Amanda

​On the floor of my bedroom, for the last month or so, there has been a pink unicorn neck pillow with its stuffing coming out. I kick it out of the way every once in a while when I need to get in a drawer, or I pick it up and then put it back on the floor when I can’t find a better surface to pile it on. I’ve been meaning to fix it, but, you know … I move it around ceremonially instead. It sheds little blobs of white polyester stuffing that I occasionally find stuck to my pajamas or wedged in my shoe. It is there so I remember to sew it up, and it’s there to remind me I haven’t sewn it up yet.
 
Ever have one of those? That niggling little thing that sits there and bugs you when you notice it, but mostly you just move it around and make a mental note to put it on the long, long “one of these freaking days” to-do list?
 
MAN, those suck.
 
I was having a day yesterday when almost every single thing in my mental load was of the cement-truck-sized variety. The kids went back to school. They went to an after-school-care program for the first time since the big one was a toddler. I met with one of our financial helpers to talk about the money I am making … and not making. The fridge isn’t working right. I needed to spend time on the book I am writing and send out an invoice for something else, but I needed to be there for my hubby and myself and my friends and also worry about the kiddos and their mental health, and diet, and success in school, and friend group, and screen time. I needed to get groceries. I needed to do my taxes.
 
Every single damn thing was overwhelming and ridiculous and fraught with emotional and financial peril. And I took care of a whole lot of them (maybe not the taxes), but at the end of the day, all I could think about was all the shit that still hadn’t gotten done. The boulder that hadn’t been moved yet. The clothes that didn’t get folded.
 
At 11pm, I sat down in bed and stared into space for sec, and I noticed the little pink shedding unicorn. The head was ripped off in a way that made it look like its throat had been cut. It was dying—bleeding out right there on the floor. I sighed, then got up, dug out my makeshift sewing kit (that I bought at the grocery store, and, thank god, had pink thread), and started to sew the thing back together. It was a Frankenstein job to be sure—almost literally in this case, since I was sewing its flopping head to its neck—but I pulled the stiches tight, and it looked reasonably reassembled. And I relaxed for a minute. And I felt a little wiggly moment of joy.
 
I am not a seamstress, to be sure. I am not an expert at piecing together the pretty little edges and knowing what stitch is the best. But, I reached in the drawer, fished out the tools I had, and I fixed that mother f’er. It wasn’t perfect, but it was DONE.
 
I am a creative human, trying to balance my sweetie, my family, my work, and myself, and, like most people, I often deal with cement-truck sized things to worry about. And, like most people, I feel confident that if I only had the time, I could sew up everything just perfectly. I wouldn’t be leaving my little blobs of stuffing around to stick to someone’s pajamas or shoes. I wouldn’t look like I was bleeding out on the bedroom floor. I’d have my head much more firmly secured.
 
But sometimes, just putting a thing together with sloppy stitches and pink thread from the grocery store is okay. In fact, it’s great. Sew that thing up using whatever you got, and then take a minute to appreciate your handiwork. Breathe, relax, and feel the joy. 
 
 I am here to tell you, at 11pm, I fixed the hell outta that unicorn.
​And I feel better … in more ways than one.

​I was hanging out with a buddy of mine via Skype recently, solving the world’s problems (and our own) and talking about commas.
 
I was telling her how I was feeling a little conflicted about work and really, about my professional persona. Do I want to reign in my fun and silliness and exuberance and swearing and go after more of a corporate job or corporate clients? Or do I want the freedom of being much more myself, when it seems not to pay as well (or sometimes not at all)? 
 
She said something along the lines of "You know, some CEOs would love to work with a person who was fun and silly and exuberant. That would be really valuable to them." And I totally stopped. And I start laughing. It never occurred to me that all the stuff I thought was kind of a liability in the work world was actually an upgrade. AN UPGRADE. That what I have is what they WANT. Not something to temper, but the reason I am awesome. That felt pretty frickin’ revolutionary. 
 
So, as a fellow human who sometimes doubts her sh*t, I wanted to pay it forward. You? You aren't something that needs to be tempered. Someone would love to work with you because you are you. You are awesome. You are an UPGRADE. And so am I. 

I was sitting at a light, on the way to some suburban endeavor this morning, when I noticed a tow-truck idling next to me in traffic. Normally, I wouldn’t look twice, but I happened to notice that on the long, thin, metal edge of the bed, there was a pattern. The truck itself was red, but the pattern consisted of festive little yellow asterisks and triple swipes of powder blue, over and over again on the red metal. I studied it, and decided it was definitely hand-painted.
 
A thought occurred to me at that moment: Who the hell hand-paints a tow truck? Isn’t that the most utilitarian thing there is? It’s not cute and fun, like a taxi cab. In fact, it evokes times of great pain in the ass – rumbling up to take you away from the scene of your accident or yanking you from the parking space you thought was perfectly legal. So help me, though, this tow truck had the equivalent of a filigreed edge along its side. Hand painted. With happy little colors like a nursery.
 
Did the driver do it? Did it come that way? Is that a factory setting, or some happy wife proud of the first truck her husband owned? I picture some delightful codger, touching up the hand-painting his equally codgerly truck. She’s named Marlene, and she takes a minute to get going in the morning, but so does he. She will be parked proudly in his driveway, and eventually, in a happier, more Shire-like world, if her axle gives out, her motor will power some alternate contraption of his own making, like a pulley clothesline that automatically rotates his laundry so he can stand in one place and hang it. There she’ll be, with headlight eyes and a rusty, happy smile, puttering and sputtering, but still being useful well beyond her years. Sure, the kids’ll sell her when the codger passes away, but she smile just as much she become the belle of the junkyard, housing a raccoon that has babies in her vinyl front seat.
 
For a minute, I wondered if all tow trucks were painted that way and I never bothered to notice. Then, I decided I didn’t want to know. This tow truck brought me a big smile in Saturday morning traffic, and that was all that she needed to do, she and whoever decided to paint her. So, thanks, Marlene, and it nice to meet you. Please give the raccoons all my best.  

I am delighted to have spent the last few months doing some work with Postfilm Design Co., an excellent branding and web design house here in Atlanta. The team there is creative and passionate about what they do, and as a result, they have been building, changing, and growing -- and that's the very best thing for a business. It's also the most stressful, because you often have to change not just the words you use about your business, but what your business really wants to say. It's not an easy process, but is worth it, and I am very proud to have been invited to the table to help them craft some new ways to talk about their world. 

Please take a moment to check out their new website at postfilmdesign.com, and hear about their journey (and see a shout out to yours truly) in their latest blog post here. 

Meanwhile, I am raising a glass (or a red pen?) to all of the Postfilm team -- including the cats!

Writing is all about storytelling, and one of the wonderful gifts I got from the universe is a dad that tells great stories. Often repeatedly. Often to polite, knowing smiles and no small amounts of chagrin from those around him. In honor of the wonderful and lovable trait, I give you this: my favorite dad joke, as told by my dad during a recording of the two of us at the Atlanta StoryCorps booth earlier this year.

Happy Father's Day, padre. I believe that my family may already be numbering MY jokes accordingly. 

For years, I took dance class. Pretty much involuntarily. I was the short, lumpy girl in the back line who was forced to be there to get some exercise. Ironically, I often opted to skip class and wander across the parking lot to the drugstore, where I would browse the notebooks and buy a Snickers instead. I did not love dance, but as the parent of two girls, the lure of seeing a recital featuring my little darlings in sparkling tutus wandering about the stage was too much to resist. So, when they were old enough, I dutifully signed each of them up for lessons.
 
My older daughter never really took to it. "I just want to be in the recital because I like the attention," she admitted to me after I signed her up for another year. Clearly, she’s a budding psychologist, if not a dancer. With my little one, however, it's a different story. I march her off to class a bit sluggishly on Saturday mornings, me with no makeup and a big coffee, her changing straight from pajamas into her leotard. I send her pony-tailed head into the dance studio, and promptly spend the rest of the hour chatting with my friends and ignoring the hallway’s broad “peeking” window covered with cheap and barely open blinds. Other, more eager parents gaze through the slats like paparazzi, and hover and fuss about whether their kids are going to get it together for the recital. They lament about why the teacher hasn't taken the time to put a video of the dance on YouTube so they can make their children practice it at home. They look at me strangely when I suggest that the best part of the recital is watching a kid who wants nothing to do with the dancing part stand on stage and wave to their mother. Me? I sit with my back toward the window and make jokes with my friends about the People of Walmart.
 
This week, though, my usual conversation buddies were out of town, and I took a few minutes to linger at the window and watch my daughter during class. She was standing directly next to the teacher, invariably attentive. Her hands were on her hips. Her kicked-back foot was balanced on the tip of her tap shoes. She was holding her position, gracefully, as she waited for the music. She wasn't suffering through the class with a forced shuffle-step march like I had. She was confident, and when the music started, she shook her diminutive hips right on tempo. She’s a dancer. I recognize it now, because I used to look in wonder at the slim, muscular girls in the front row of my dance class who knew all the steps. They would come directly after school and stay for hours at the dance studio, changing from one leotard to another and complaining about when they were going to do their homework as they squeezed into their toe shoes. They WANTED to be there. They LIKED it. They were dancers. In the recital, they were posed and smiling airily into the spotlight. I was in the back, frantically trying to keep my substantial beige bra tucked under my costume’s pencil thin spaghetti straps.
 
Don’t mistake this for a speech on low self-confidence, mind you, I was talented in plenty of other ways, but as I watched my daughter, I finally understood the joy she gets from an hour at dance. I think this is what runners must feel – the pleasure of controlling your body, of moving it and using it, of being intentional and beautiful with your muscles. This is what people talk about when they refer to the flow and endorphins of exercise. I’m not much of a running person, so I faintly recognize that feeling, mostly from spending a day at the beach or walking to lunch or eating two hot Krispy Kreme doughnuts in a row. Out of my pale and writerly loins has sprung a dancer. She’s very happy to be in class, always knows her cue, and may one day complain about her homework as she weaves the ribbon of her toe shoes around her calf. Meanwhile, I will still be the one ducking out to go to drug store, browsing the notebooks, and buying a Snickers. There’s something, though, that I can finally say that I really enjoy about dance class. When the recital comes, that beautiful pony-tailed dancer in the front row? The one who knows all the steps? She’s going to raise her face to the spotlight, smile airily, and then wave to me. 

I am slightly late in sharing this for Breast Cancer Awareness month, but since breast cancer is something that more than one of the people I love has had to deal with, I don't feel the least bit bad posting this puppy right now. A month or two ago, I wrote a story about a breast cancer survivor named Makeda McLune for the American Cancer Society. In addition to being published on their website, cancer.org (you can read it here), I am excited to report that the story was picked up and published in a special breast cancer section of the Dallas Morning News.

That means this little ol' writer got to be on the Sunday breakfast tables of many people in Dallas with a story that I hope made them smile. Pretty cool!

Hi all,

I am excited to share my latest piece for the American Cancer Society -- a story about a lovely human who survived childhood cancer and is now helping others find the help they need to navigate treatment. A happy read for your Monday!  

Childhood Cancer Survivor Lends a Voice -- and a Hand -- To Others