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Jett Superior laid this on you on || January 23, 2012 || 1:45 am

I want a cigarette. I want to connect my mouth to it and drag deeply from it in a way that could only be described as ‘ridiculously porny’. Of course that’s stupid, especially given these circumstances.

There are guns (‘weapons’, natch)  all over this house: Three down in the shop, five in the office, one (maybe two?) in my father’s room. This doesn’t bother me. I was raised around them; my father took me shooting for the first time when I was five, took me hunting with him as early as my mother would allow it. I loved it. I loved wearing dresses and I loved shooting guns. To me they were equally enticing and I felt just as powerful doing the one as I did doing the other.

Kyle and I are sharing a room, a bed. It’s strange: We didn’t share a room growing up. Hell, we didn’t even share our father’s house at the same time for very long at a stretch. Now everything is halved in equal shares: The bed, the dresser, the closet, the time spent alone in there striving for emotional equilibrium. We have a writing desk and an oldskoo tape player and the window is always open because our father keeps it so godforfuckingsaken hot up in this joint. His basal temperature runs on the low end normally.

Coincidentally, so does Kyle’s and also mine. The things we are learning about one another, the three of us, would stagger lesser mortals. Maybe soon it will crack each of us down our respective middles, who knows? Right now we laugh a lot when the three of us are together.

Kyle and I both have his eyes, his thick and wavy hair, his savvy, his stubborn streak. We put our heads together conspiratorially when he is out of the room, when he is out for a walk, when he is napping (which is frequent now). We compare and contrast what he is telling us individually. We catalog our observations, ticking them off to one another. We review facts, we review feelings, we wish we could rely on our gut instincts because each of us typically boast a strong internal compass. Everything is muddied in this place, though; time stretches out and vibrates with intensity and then accordions back, leaving us running from one appointment to the other, long drives and labs and chemo and shots and scans and then back to the stretched-out quiet of this big house again.

There is some sort of field here that makes our compasses obsolete but offers the respite of long and thorough naps in place of intrinsic knowledge. So odd that I have never slept so well and so deeply as I have here, in the middle of trepidation, during three-hour naps. Trading knowing for rest isn’t as easy as all that, though….I have a lifetime of Just Knowing and Not Sleeping to get around, see? I’m having to do an awful lot of adjusting and feel as if I’m seated just exactly four inches to the left of myself. Anything I might perceive as True North is a complete lie, and I’m fully aware of this, thankfully.

Kyle has dreamed him shooting himself in the head more than once now. The other day I went in to vacuum his room and noticed his nine mil on the lip of his platform bed, right up there by his head, not down further where his hand would fall instinctively if he was sharply woken. I looked at it dumbly, thinking of her dreams, but not appalled or filled with dread. I don’t have it in me to think he will do such a thing, I guess. Also I guess that it is probably not much of my business if he chooses to. He has a softball in his chest, for Chrissakes. How do I know that I wouldn’t entertain a much more drastic, sudden completion to that softball, as well?

I don’t think he means himself ill and I tell her this. Kyle reminds me that he waited a year to even get diagnosed, waited almost three more months before seeking conventional treatment(s). She has had the dreams. In them we run innocuous errands, we buy milkshakes, we come back and our father has removed himself from this, all of it, the tedium and the lethargy and the pain. Thus, she listens carefully to the things he says to us before we climb into the car, watches well his demeanor.

Yesterday he hesitated, he didn’t know if he could finish this. Today he ate cookies all day and laughed. I think there may be more cookies and more laughing.  I know there will be more days where he doubts his ability to follow through, too. I’m not keeping count of either one, because something inside me says that is the way to madness.

We are here, our hands are knit together, we look one another in the eyes when we speak. I want to be more present than I’ve ever been in my life. The outcome is just an aside.

I don’t expect anyone outside the Cancer Bubble to understand.

 

Jett Superior laid this on you on || January 6, 2012 || 2:22 am

“You aren’t so strong, you know.”

My head dipped; I was grinning and I didn’t want him to see. Sometimes my amusement was just for me and to explain it was worse than trying to justify it and God knew I hadn’t needed justification for a fucking thing since about the age of three.

I crossed my ankles primly; I waited for the grin to dissipate because I didn’t want him to hear it in my voice when I told him what I needed to tell him. He was a white boy –technically a muddy blend of Irish-Italian, like me– but the local Kings had taken to him when he was small, at a time when hearing himself referred to as cholito swelled his bony chest with pride. His coloring and build let him pass as Rican, but his swagger was all Guappo and of course, I loved it….until it was aimed at me.

“You don’t get to tell me who I am, Tony. Not ever.”

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

The first time he saw me I had bows on the backs of my socks. It was at my cousin Nita’s birthday party and he told my cousin Jonno that I would love him one day. I was visiting Chicago, being made over by the extended family because I was full of yes sirs and no ma’ams and drawl-tinged smarts. I was leggy and blonde with peach-bronze skin, completely unaware of the males that would have eagerly dipped into me if I had only given them the merest indication of want.

There was a wall of fully street Italian cousins between me and any summer romances, with me suspecting as much; it was the same with my towheaded Delta cousins, so I knew the routine. Some of the Chicago boys’ friends had started sniffing around me that visit and been promised beatings if so much as an “I think you’re pretty” tumbled off their tongues. Anthony had not been warned because he was accepted as family, and as such was an acknowledged part of the Wall of Cockblock. Jonno had laughed when Tony predicted I’d love him.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

The first time he slid into me some five years later, he whispered into my ear his early want of me, his dreams over the years where I would sit in a dim room unmoving and say just one word –his name– while my eyes, big in their sockets, stayed fixed on his.

Frustrated, he knew I’d be back.

“Anthony,” I said in return, and my whole body exhaled into him, grasping, trying to push us further into one another, “yours.” It was all I had and all Tony needed. He put his hands flat on my ribcage and rocked the cries out of me, murmuring the whole time, the murmurs words of devotion because we were young and that’s all we knew. When you’re young you have not learned the power of filth yet so desire alone is potent and overcoming enough.

He wasn’t my first, but his was the first lover’s shirt I’d slipped across my back and stirred awake wearing, alone in the bed and drunk on the chafing of my vulva and the bitten spots on the inside of my lip. I delighted the first time I found the bruises that the dig of his hipbones had left on the meat of my inner thighs. I wanted his signature all over me in any fashion I could garner it. That he would never be so reckless as to mark me intentionally made those painful purple blooms prized possessions.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

“I’m staying.”

“What?”

“I’m staying. Nita is joining the Corps and I can have her room; I just have to convince my Mother that it’s a good idea. That shouldn’t be so hard; my aunt and uncle love having me here and they’ll help.”

“No fucking way.”

“Yes!” Now I smiled.

“No,” he winced, “no, what I mean is that there is no fucking way you stay here when you can go back down South and be safe.”

“What?”

“Jett. If you stay here then it will eventually get around that you’re my girl. If it gets around that you’re my girl then there are a lot of things that can and will happen, fuck! You have to go home. I’ll come see you.”

That would never happen. Everything in me told me it would never happen. You didn’t run with the people that Tony ran with and just pop in and out of town on a whim. You held down your x amount of square blocks and only ran across town or across country at the express direction of key individuals.

“Leave them, Tony. Leave  them so you can be with me.”

“I will. It takes time, but I will, I swear.”

He was dead before my Christmas break that year. I still have the taste of him on my tongue if I think about him at long enough a stretch, all these years and all these loves later.

 

Jett Superior laid this on you on || January 3, 2012 || 12:46 am

Instead of doing something that makes sense for a person of a writerly  persuasion and, oh, writing a bunch of things about the massive changes in my life over the last four months, I’m gonna catch you up to right now (because, oh trust me, right now is a Pretty Big Fucking Deal overall) with a timeline done in an annoying ‘100 things about me’ style.

Here we go!

1) My estranged father called me from Nashville in mid-July telling me he’d be there the next day.

2) I spent the whole of that day Losing My Shit before deciding, all zen-like, that I’m happy with who I am and screw anybody who didn’t think I was enough, even if they were the lender of half my genetic material.

3) That visit went well. Remarkably well.

4) In August, through twisty-turny strangeness, my job came to an end.

5) Both my boss and I cried, admitted we didn’t understand why this was  happening, but that it was supposed to happen.

6) He made the transition from paycheck every week to no paycheck every week pretty comfortable for me, all in all.

7) That first day I was out of work, Maxim texted me one word: “FREEDOM!!!”

8 ) I began to set my sights on writing and making art as a means to, you know, feed the people that live in my house.

9) I just so happened to win a full pass to the Summit of Awesome put on yearly by Hello Craft.

10) It was held in Baltimore.

11) I had about twenty-five bucks in my checking account when I won the pass.

12) My father was diagnosed with an aggressive, inoperable lung cancer.

13) I knew the whole ‘reunited comfortably’ thing would have a catch.

14) Oh Universe, you’re sofa king cute.

15) Through a timely combination of some small miracles and some people’s generosity, I got to go to Maryland.

16) I got to sit down with a couple of really savvy, really influential people and pick their brains.

15) I came back motivated as fuck.

16) So far,  so good, but I’m not where I need to be by a long shot.

17) I’m getting my ducks in a row and hanging out my ‘official’ shingle soon.

18) Until then, I’d like to announce that I am your girl if you need a writer or editor. Plus some other things. I’m good at lots of things, I swear. Just ask me.

19) OH MY GOD, HIRE ME.

20) My father decided that chemo was a no-go for him and that he’d like to try the homeopathic/naturopathic route toward ridding himself of cancer.

21) His oncologist pissed him off by pushing-pushing-pushing him to start chemo yesterday.

22) He told his oncologist to never contact him again.

23) My sisters immediately called me to shriek and to rally me toward Bossing my father.

24) I opted to tell them to mind their own business and to support the man’s right to live OR die how he saw fit.

25) I’m not The Boss of that man. Nobody is, really.

26) Everyone decided to make nice and let our father go about this cancer business in his own way.

27) Fancypants herbs and complex teas, it is!

28) Life rocked on for a minute or two.

29) I worked on BlogWorld Expo’s Virtual Ticket in the fall. It was a cool gig.

30) In case you do indeed want to HIRE ME, HIRE ME NOW, I have swell references from that whole deal.

31) My Etsy businesses, Pretty Gritty Things and 256 Eclectica, started gaining steam.

32) Commission work! Steady sales! I may not have to panic about money after all, right?

33) My father came down and brought a trailer full of tools and materials.

34) We collected even MORE materials, salvaged from various sources.

35) We went down to Butch Anthony’s farm on Poorhouse Road to build a shack for the 2012 Doo-Nanny.

36) It’s most of the way finished. I still have to put some siding boards on, but I can’t wait for you to see it.

37) I have an art shack at the Doo! It’s gonna be called Story House. I have some ideas on how to finish it out.

38) Scout had her gall bladder out. Goodbye, carefully-saved Christmas funds. Hello, Scout’s comfort.

39) Life is never dull. NEVER dull.

40) There was some peace. There was a little bit of quiet.

41) My father wanted all us girls to go to Missouri for Thanksgiving.

42) Most of us did.

43) I spent the first Thanksgiving ever since we were married away from Maxim.

44) I did not like it, but it was a necessary evil.

45) He got all sorts of cool stuff done around the house in my and the children’s absences.

46) Hmmmm, I may have to consider this leaving-on-Thanksgiving thing again.

47) The visit was AMAZING.

48) I learned that I have two cousins that are published authors and one great-grandaddy who was a bootlegger.

49) (I fucking well KNEW we had one of those in the family somewhere!)

50) Missouri roads are swoopy and well-maintained and just basically fun to drive.

51) I got a ticket on the way home.

52) I won a scratch-off for one-quarter of the ticket’s value on a bathroom stop shortly thereafter, so there’s that.

53) I unpacked, slept a couple of nights and then re-packed.

54) I went with three really amazing writerly people to my Delta homeland.

55) As I predicted to myself, there were ghosts waiting for me there.

56) ….but there were stirrings, too.

57) And laughter. Holy Ghost and the Father also, what laughter.

58) My soul got shook. I won’t speak for anyone else’s.

59) (but theirs did too, der)

60) My brain was set to ‘fog’ for a week upon my return….but not in a necessarily bad way, see?

61) I decorated the Christmas tree.

62) My father called.

63) He talked of going out west for a few weeks.

64) Two weeks prior he’d said firmly, “No more road trips for me. I smoke more and I don’t stay as rigidly to my program when I’m away from home.”

65) I understood.

66) ….so when he talked of going to Nevada for a month or so, something started to not feel right.

67) Other things he said also tripped wires on my insides.

68) I asked pointed questions back to back.

69) He had no time to dance around them nor wriggle out from under them.

70) “Do what you want,” I said, “but I’m going to respectfully insist that you get the second scan you promised us girls before you get on the road.”

71) He was going to drive out there, you see; never mind his waning health or the potential for things to take a turn for the sudden worse.

72) He got the scan.

73) I saw it.

74) It is the sort of thing that makes you go, ‘Fuuuuuuuhhhhhhck.’

75) Impressive yet terrifying, I guess is the apt decscriptor?

76) He told me not to come.

77) “Not time,” he said, promising to tell me when it was indeed ‘time’.

78) Psh. Yeah, right.

79) Likewise, he told my sisters not to come.

80) Fuck what that fool says: I’m grown and I do what I want.

81) My whole family came in for Christmas.

82) It was a grand time, what with my parents and all the kids there.

83) For the first time in twenty-five years, I didn’t bake a single Christmas cookie.

84) My heart was seized.

85) I tried and tried and tried to bootstrap some Christmas spirit.

86) Didn’t happen.

87) No, you don’t understand the profundity of this: I am an ay-number-one Christmas dork.

88) Christmas Day was beautiful and peaceful and rich.

89) My aunt called, Don’t wait to come. Come now.

90) I met my baby sister in St. Louis a week ago.

91) We went out and got shitfaced.

92) Dear Tony the Hotel Shuttle Driver, Thanks so much for your patience and understanding and also stopping at Schnuck’s so that two drunk girls could shop for breakfasty foodstuffs. Love, Jett

93) The next day my Uncle Ron fetched us from the big city.

94) My father cried upon seeing us.

95) That was only the third time I’ve ever seen him cry in my whole life.

96) He patted me for the first half-hour we were here.

97) He started chemo.

98) We are caring for him in whatever manner we can, in any which way he will allow .

99) He’s starting to feel terrible physically.

100) We are in this Cancer Bubble, my father, my sister, and me.

And that’s the last four months in as brief a fashion as I know how to convey them. Now you’re up to speed. Now I can start writing here about all these things. Lord knows I’ve been writing everydamnwhere else about them.

 

Jett Superior laid this on you on || December 13, 2011 || 9:54 pm

It comes on so fast, and I am beaten before the gun even goes off; there is no readied startle, no uncoiling, no explosive start.

I am having coffee. Coffee is not my focus, not ever. It is always an aside to whatever else I’m doing, gentle punctuation on a task, a sitting with someone, a get-up-and-let’s-go. Sometimes I drink it not because I want it, but because it makes me feel secure and capable and adult. Professionals drink coffee, don’t they? People who know what the fuck they are doing drink coffee.

I am having coffee and the sun is streaming in the windows. I was so proud to have these windows when they were first given to me, to have the ample natural light and the gaze of nature on my bent head as I sanded and hammered and painted and set my mouth just so as I was coaxing something into existence from a pile of throwaway things. I have a broad expanse of white workspace secured to the wall below the windows and I can look up as I bite my lip, as I focus and hum something old and familiar that pulls at me deeply, to see the tops of the trees I am floating amongst. I can survey the kingdom all the way to the street. It is a terrific view. I’m still proud of these windows.

I am having coffee and the sun is streaming in the windows and my work table is piled over with things crying out to be other things. Perched on the edge of my chair, I’m securing one something to another something, pausing to look with a stranger’s eyes, pushing, adjusting, clamping the things together because they’ll live this way from now on. (Although. Sometimes it occurs to me, you know? It occurs to me that one day this thing might be just another throwaway thing and then maybe the things I put together will fly apart and parts will be discarded while other parts give rise to something else.) I tilt my head, set the new thing down. It’s a process and I can only do so many things at once: There are constraints to alchemy. I begin something else and my chest explodes.

I am having coffee. The sun is streaming in the windows. The work table is ample with materials. They want to be other things, things other than what they are. My chest explodes. Who the fuck am I and how is it that I have a right to be here? It would be better without me, it would be easier to be gone, I am blindsided with worthlessness and anxiousness and why did this start, when did this start, I used to have the answers, oh no.

Oh no, oh no.

What then, when your whole life is scripted as apology? I’m sorry I’m here. I’m sorry I did it wrong. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m tired of misunderstanding. How is it that I am so often misunderstood when I put everything I have into being absolutely plainspoken? How do I stop being hostage to the hearts of others? My own heart is far afield. It’s rebellious as fuck and will not come to me when I call it back. My chest has exploded and my heart is running away from me and I curse the day that I ever thought that to let it be seen was a wise thing.

It comes on so fast. I am crumpled at the gate. It opens. It opens and I am never ready.

 

Jett Superior laid this on you on || December 4, 2011 || 12:27 pm

Doyle,
It is eleven-thirty on a Sunday morning and I am sitting on the most comfortable plaid couch my ass has ever had the pleasure of attaching itself to; this couch is perpendicular to a bank of industrial windows in an old sharecropper’s house. (contextual photo here)  The house is surrounded by shotgun shacks all around and I was supposed to have my ass attached to a couch in one of those, but fate intervened so now I have an eighteen-foot corrugated ceiling where my ideas can waft up to and bob around, teasing me and waiting for me to play.

But one of the shacks would have served just as well. Ideas lurk in the corners of those. The ceilings hold dreams waiting to be plucked.

It’s raining. My traveling companions (picked up willy-nilly along the way) are all still tucked in rooms, presumably rain-soothed, hopefully warm and delighted. That’s my wish for them, anyway. The rain started easy this morning and so did I, washing some dishes, making some coffee, thinking my thinks. While I’ve been sitting here taking in words, percolating my own, the rain has ramped up the show a good bit but hasn’t exactly decided that it wants to stick with that plan of action; it keeps waxing and waning, a comforting striptease of intensity that is yanking at my middle where all the words and all the emotions settle themselves so as to let me function in the day to day.

Last night I had one dream: In it  I was a picture in a frame and I burned up. The frame itself was left pristine;  florid and beautiful, it was open and ready for a new picture of me. The fire was sudden and startling and at first I grieved because I didn’t realize for a few seconds what that empty frame floating in front of me truly meant. Then it dawned on me, though, that this space –this beautiful golden delineation of matter– was just an invitation to Other, which is something people pine for the whole of their lives.

So now: “Pick what goes in that frame, girl. And you don’t even have to pick especially carefully. Fire will come and take it away if it’s the not-right (not-right isn’t the same as wrong, see?) option  and you can pick again. Fire is your friend. Fire laughs and licks and pirouettes in a jagged-fluid line. Smile into the fire.”

I spent probably the first thirty-two years of my life pretending I wasn’t this broken thing. Then I sat perplexed at the notion that something about me just wasn’t right and I probably better fix some shit. My life reverberated with ‘huh’ –not a question, a statement: “Huh.”– for a year or two and then I resolved to get my hands dirty with the clearing away of messy and misappropriated insides.

Scut work. Sweating and swiping the backs of your filthy hands across your dripping forehead work. Finally, finally the breaking done, the clearing-away, the standing and the surveying, the terror and excitement of bare ground and the notion of what goes there now. Finally those things, Seanie. Finally.

Regrowing yourself is overwhelming in a way I’d have never imagined. See also: I am a complete fucking badass.

It’s all culminating now. I think I have all the seeds loose and ready in my hands. It’s just a matter of configuration now, of deciding if there are rows and how I want them laid out or if I fling them to the wind and laugh and wait for the return. Probably, as is my nature, it will be some of both. I’m broken clean down and ready to see what comes of it. You know. You know.

Send me that Wiki link that I lost. I was drunk and howling that night and I need to read that shit again. I have different eyes now. In exchange, here’s a present for you.

I hope your Sunday morning coming down is as peaceful and as loaded as mine.

Your loving friend,
Jett

First of all, TACKY PACK™! It’s been a while, so I’m giving away a TACKY PACK™!! Let’s talk about something else for a minute, first.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

I was twelve, the same age my own son is now. That would have made my mother thirty-four.

I was across the hall in my bedroom when I heard a cry. The tiny half-bath off my mother’s bedroom backed up against the wall of my room and that was where the sound of  distress had come from. I quickly abandoned what I was doing and shot across the hall into Mom’s room, calling to her.

“Mom? Momma? Are you okay?” She rounded the doorway, palm outstretched, crying hard, so hard, her face a contorted thing I’d never seen before. I had rarely seen her cry before then; I had never seen her upset in this fashion. Disappointment and rage and despair collided in her face and I asked,  ”What’s wrong?” in alarm.

She pulled her lips back in an illustrative grimace. I hadn’t noticed that in her outstretched palm lie large chunks of teeth….two, to be exact. “What happened?” Most of a front tooth and one incisor were broken off sharply. I had never seen anyone’s teeth in such a state before.

“I was brushing my teeth,” she began falling apart in earnest then,”I was just brushing them and they broke.” Anger and anguish and now her fist was clenched around them and I remember thinking that she looked so pretty in that blouse, the one with the wide white bow at the neck. And then I took note of her arms. I hadn’t noticed until then how thin they’d grown.

We had no money and she was working nineteen-hour days and giving all of what precious little food there was in the house to us girls.

Beautiful Gwendolyn, thirty-four years of age, woke up one morning after four or five hours of sleep to get ready for work and her teeth broke off because she was malnourished.

We lived in a middle-class neighborhood in a town where most everyone was comfortable financially, smack dab in the middle of America. My sister and I were hungry every day. My mother was literally starving. Had it not been for the one square, hot meal that we got each day at school through a rural subsidy program, my sister and I would have been as well.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

The other day I was on Twitter, and I happened to catch a few tweets that Megan was throwing out there. She’d run across some information on Feeding America in Real Simple magazine (yay! one of my personal favorites) and was blown away by some of the numbers. She was tweeting in earnest on behalf of Feeding America, and there was real spirit in what she was saying, so I sent her a message privately.

See, I’ve worked with hunger-related causes for a while; in fact, I supported Feeding America back when they were still known as Second Harvest. I remember the bite of hunger. I don’t want a kid –my kid, your kid, ANY kid– to feel the way I felt, to have to ration a half-loaf of bread over the span of a week, to worry if there will be more bread once that bit of it is gone.

Now that I’m a mother, I am horrified by the choices my mother had to make and the toll that they took on her emotional and physical health. I know that I would likely make those same choices: “My kids get what we have. If there is provision for me after, fine.” NO parent should have to make those choices, most especially not in this country, where there is such wealth and privilege and abundance, where we have the luxury of so much food that it goes to waste in a myriad of ways.

And so, back to Megan, who was just so lit completely up at  the fact that one American dollar can buy eight American meals for a family. Or one meal for eight families. You get the picture. Then Megan got excited, thinking about possibilities:

could you imagine?

…and then we put our noggins together and decided that we would like to partner up and donate five dollars each. So each of us did. Then we decided we’d challenge you,  our readers and followers, to step up and match us from Thanksgiving Day, when we are all so festive and full, through this Sunday:  Take an eensy five of your dollars and make provision for FORTY meals across the U.S. alongside the two of us.

THEN! Then, because we are excitable, bribey things, we decided that if you were to do something so great as to make provision for forty meals across the U.S. with your five dollars, then we would each host a giveaway on our sites where you could tell us you gave up your five or fifty or five-hundred of dollars and we would give you a chance at prizes. Hell, we’ve even asked a few of our nears and dears to do the same. In short: IT IS THANKSGIVING WEEKEND AND THERE ARE PRIZES. Just pretend the Universe is rewarding you for not smarting up that one know-it-all Uncle for once in your impatient life.

Cue the trumpets, because here is where I tell you that each five dollar donation you make to Feeding America today through Sunday makes you eligible for a drawing. “The prize, Our Most Esteemed and Beloved Jett, what might it be?” you ask. Well. Please roll some drums and blat some airhorns, because I know what a fondness all of you oldskoo Muffinasses have for that holy grail of Cyberia, the TACKY PACK™. If you are somewhat newskoo and don’t know what the heydiddlydoodah a TACKY PACK™ is, then I will quote myownself from an eensy giveaway of one or two I did last year:

The TACKY PACK™ is essentially a melange of great goodness and übercool radness. I don’t have to suck any corporate dick to bring it to you, and there is no ulterior motive save for the fact that I’m getting my jollies by giving a (many-partsed, multi-faceted) gift to somebody. There used to be a page devoted to telling you how great the TACKY PACK™ is in all its random iterations, but it’s long gone. You’re just gonna have to take my word for it and know that present-giving is one of my strengths. I think it’s the one meant to balance my propensity toward addictive behaviors, but I can’t say that with complete surety.

The retail value isn’t really any of your business, but I’ll tell it to you anyway, just so you know that I’m not a cheapskatey so-and-so: Low end it usually runs fifty bucks. High end it usually runs about a hundred. There might be any number of limited edition somethings, alcohol somethings, odd food somethings, stupidly cool somethings stuffed into a supafly apparatus  of Holding Awesome Shit In A Cohesive Bundle (this one will have a robot on it, because robots are very Thanksgiving-y). I quit sending pharmaceuticals in 2002, so don’t even ask, you big silly.

File this under Things I Shouldn’t Have To Say But Am Going To Anyway: Now, don’t be all cheaty and go using one donation on more than one site. Each five dollars earns a name in the hat, okay? We’re going to take you at your word: Make your donation to Feeding America, drop me a comment telling me how many entries I owe you, and I’ll announce a winner next Wednesday, 30 November. My own personal caveat is that I cannot ship outside of the U.S. I’m sorry, guys, it’s just too cost-prohibitive for me just now.

::: :: ::: :: ::: :: :::

In closing, here are the ways you can help, if you’re so inclined:
+ If you want to also blog about Feeding America and how people can donate, awesome.
+ If you want to do a giveaway on your blog to encourage people to donate, rad. Megan has a widget on her own giveaway post so that you can join our links list and help people find your post.
+ If you want to follow along on Teh Twitters, #giveameal is @FeedingAmerica’s hashtag, and the one we plan to use. If you’re inclined to tweet about what we’re doing (or retweet our Twitter content through Sunday), we would appreciate it.
* If you want to donate and enter our giveaways, by all means do so. More! Merrier!
* If you know of others who might want to also participate on their own blogs, please pass this on.

I’m gonna be around on Twitter today (my whole-fambly festivities are tomorrow!) dropping some links to other posts, some facts on hunger, and trying to raise some awareness on behalf of Feeding America. Megan will be doing the same. When you get sick of your extended family, drop in and give a shout. We both have ridiculously low inhibitions and lots of wine. Holla!

!UPDATE!: I just found out that all donations made today, Thanksgiving Day, will be matched dollar for dang dollar. GO TEAM!

 

Jett Superior laid this on you on || November 21, 2011 || 12:07 pm

ornexch

Just in case you don’t remember how it goes:

1) You leave a comment to the effect of “Oooh, me! Me, me, me, pick me!”
2) I add you to the swap list.
3) I e-mail everybody on the swap list.
4) I pair up everybody on the swap list and e-mail you your partner’s info.
5) You send your ornament ON TIME (you know who you are!), by the date I specify.
6) Commence Christmas Cheer!!1!

I’ll be looking for ideas on how to do a charity tie-in for next year’s swap, too. If anything dings you on your pretty noggin, please do let me know. The list closes Friday the 25th and I’ll pair you up the Sunday or Monday following.

Whoop-whoop!

pee ess….I’ve been really hot for bullet lists lately. I have no idea.