UPDATE: Congratulations to Jennifer Smith! You won the pair of LTYM tickets. I'll be emailing you shortly.

Last year, I had the huge honor of being part of the inaugural Kansas City cast of Ann Imig's national Listen to Your Mother Show. Reading my piece in front of an audience was incredible, but the life-changing part of the experience? The friendships branded the minute I met these women in Erin Margolin's basement for a read-through. 

You call me up, because you know I'll be there.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyyx9Bv2PUM] 

This year, I'm excited to sit in the audience with my girlfriends and let the experience wash over me. And I'm giving away a pair of tickets! Here are the details about the show:

 

LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER is a live show of readings by individuals that celebrate the guts and gore and glory of motherhood.

Each production is directed, produced and performed by local communities. In 2014, 32 cities will host a LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER show. The show is co-produced and co-directed by Erin Margolin, Sarah Guthrie, Leslie Kohlmeyer and Lisa Allen.

The show will be at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 3, 2014 at Unity Temple on The Plaza. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 on the day of the show. Ten percent of ticket proceeds will benefit Women’s Employment Network.

Here are the women reading this year:

Lisa Allen

Katherine Bontrager

Amy Carlson

Debra Carter

Mary Carver

Natasha Ria El-Scari

Kathleen Fisher

Sarah Guthrie

Debi Jackson

Mary Katherine Kerbs

Renee Lawrence

Stacey Lukas

Amy Zoe Schonhoff

Liz Tascio

So .. you gotta go, right? To be entered to win, comment below. You can comment as many times as you like. I'll close comments at 5 pm CT on Friday, May 2 and email the winner (so make sure when you fill out the comment thing, you include your email). Tickets will be fulfilled at the door. Your name will be on a secret list, which makes you EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Go!

YOU GUYS, I DID IT! I can hardly believe it. Click here if you want to read about it. This isn't really a running blog and I don't do timed splits or personal records or tempo run reviews. I mostly just try not to pee myself too bad while running. 

I'm not a big flag-waver. Sometimes I think it's because the flag of the United States of America has been waved from a bully pulpit so many times I've grown weary of it. Sometimes I think it's because it's so often pictured next to oh, say, a gun or a tea bag or someone shouting 'MERICA! while disagreeing with something political that I believe in, as though having an opposing opinion made me less 'MERICAN! than he or she were. 

Late last week, I skimmed an article in The Atlantic that nailed my ambivalence pretty well, and I flagged it (you know I had to go there) for further pondering:

It is one thing to believe that America's history and founding principles are exceptional, and another thing — deluded and profoundly unconservative — to believe that the U.S. is inoculated against acting badly, or is justified in doing things that Americans would condemn if anyone else did them. 

That's it, precisely. I love my country. I was born here, I grew up in its breadbasket and I was raised quite unironically. I believe in a voluntary military, in the three branches of our executive government and even in the checks and balances that have our government temporarily shut down. I believe in the need for freedom of speech even when that freedom gives a voice to someone I deem an idiot. But man. The last few presidential election cycles have been so ugly. The attack ads get worse every time. I didn't agree with the last few military maneuvers. I'm still mad about Guantanomo Bay. The older I get, the more I realize how incredibly ambivalent I am about my country. I love it, but I question its people all the time. I'm very grateful for the right to vote and freedom of speech and really all of my freedoms, and I think the framers of the Constitution were really brilliant in ways they probably didn't even realize.

There just haven't been very many times since we invaded Iraq that I felt like waving a flag. I felt like linking arms with my neighbors. I felt like praying for the health and safe return of our soldiers. I was excited when the guy I voted for got elected, but that's the guy I voted for, not the country itself. There is a difference between one man or one party or even one idea and an entire country, which is where the flag-waving confusion sets in for me. 

Still, deep inside my thirty-nine-year-old self is the six-year-old who believed that America was perfect. That little girl loved the state of Iowa and didn't realize it was considered a fly-over state by some. She earnestly waved her flag for her country and her pom poms for her town's high school and didn't realize how complex the world is. I miss her sometimes. Last Friday, I got to be her again for a few hours because of soccer.

For Beloved's 40th birthday, I got us tickets to the U.S. vs. Jamaica soccer game at Sporting Park in Kansas City, Kansas. I have nothing against Jamaica and neither did anyone there. There just weren't very many Jamaican fans in the stadium, so everyone in the crowd was kind of on the same team, just cheering and happy and ... earnestly and unironically flag-waving. 

And I loved every minute of it. It turns out the soccer was awesome (2-0, US) but the flag-waving was worth the wait. 

USA!

It's been unnaturally cool here right up until this week -- so much so that last weekend the two afternoons we spent at the pool involved a little shivering, and none of us had the gumption to try the lake. I remember visiting San Diego a few times and thinking how nice the weather always is there, day after day after day. And then Kansas City randomly had day after day after day of seventy degrees. Surely, we thought, they would stop after Memorial Day. Nope. Still seventy degrees, beautiful.

Surely, we thought, not into June? 

SEVENTY SEVENTY SEVENTY SEVENTY

I realized I am too hot-blooded for seventy degrees in summer. I adore you, seventy degrees, in any other season of the year, but I like summer weather to be eight-five or above on the weekends so I can get in the water without shivering, lie on my towel and feel the water evaporating off me in the sunshine, walk inside a movie theater and catch my breath at the temperature drop. These things mean summer to me.

I was really starting to worry until this week. My husband is out of town for work and my mom came down for a visit. She took my daughter after dinner on Tuesday and gave me a pass to go write. I took my printed-out draft and my notebook down to a local pub and sat out on the deck for two hours, and the people I saw were wearing clothes I expect to see in June: tank tops, shorts, sundresses. The air still held the days' heat even after the sun set. When I walked into my house, I felt the air conditioning hit my arms. 

Thank God it's back to normal.

The Kansas City Listen to Your Mother show is this Saturday, May 11, at 7 pm at Unity Temple on the Plaza. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 at the door. Unless you win two here.

Now that my conference is over, I'm starting to get really nervous for the show. I've heard all my castmates' performances, and they are both hilarious and heartbreaking. If you're local, I highly recommend the show, and not just because a portion of the proceeds go to the Rose Brooks Center. 

What is Listen to Your Mother, you ask? It's a group of women performing essays on motherhood, daughterhood and what it means to participate in this part of the human condition. The show will be around ninety minutes, and afterwards I promise you will leave a changed person for what you have heard.

I'll also be selling and signing my young adult novel, THE OBVIOUS GAME, and my parenting anthology, SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK, afterward. I'm reordering bookplates so hopefully they will be in by then. If you have a copy and you just want a signature, bring it on down. Some of my castmates will be selling their books, as well, so if you're interested, please bring small bills. Most of us aren't equipped with debit card thingies. 

So! If you want to win a pair of tickets, please leave a comment here. Every comment counts as one entry. I'll close entries on this Thursday, May 9 at 5 pm CT. I hope to see you at Unity Temple on Saturday! 

I'm on deadline today, so all I have to share is a giveaway for free tickets to the 2013 Kansas City Home Show and Flower, Lawn & Garden Show on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews.

Took Buttonsworth to the vet today and we upped his insulin again. More later.

This last snow was tornadic in its pattern over Kansas City -- a few inches here, a foot there. My front yard is snow up to my knees even in the areas that aren't drifted, and lanes are blocked on the road unexpectedly with piles of dirty snow. Last night, I was supposed to meet my friend for dinner a half-hour drive away. "I have to wait for Beloved to come home with the 4x4," I said, expecting the entire world to look like my street, which is plowed but peppered with snow chunks that have fallen off houses and trees.

"Well, she said, if you need a separate vehicle to traverse the city, we can always reschedule."

I started to suspect all of Kansas City did not look like my part of it.

Beloved got home, I got in the truck and took off. To completely dry highways, nary an ice patch in sight. Even the side streets in Martin City looked plowed. And, in fact, Martin City appeared to have ankle-deep snow, not knee-deep. I started to feel silly.

You see, I hadn't left my house since Sunday except on foot. As the snow continued to fall every night and every morning resulted in shoveling and snowblowing and all things involving ski pants and boots every time I left the house, I almost forgot about normal life. The little angel was out of school for four days out of five and I started to wonder if she would ever, ever go back.

The more snowed-in I felt, the more certain I became I should not leave. But the roads were completely clear.

It was all in my head.

Today I wrote about the national face of Ann Imig's amazing live performance series, Listen to Your Mother, on BlogHer. Here I thought I'd share details about the Kansas City show, which is directed by my friends Erin Margolin and Laura Seymour. Here are the details:

Be part of this national event that will be in Kansas City for the first time on May 11, 2013. We want you to join us in giving Mother’s Day a microphone!

You’re invited to join other Kansas Citians in a national series of live readings celebrated locally and shared globally via social media, blogging, and the small world of the internet. Listen To Your Mother-Kansas City is directed, produced, and performed by our local community, for our local community.

We are officially accepting submissions! Please email yours to us, ErinMargolin@gmail.com and Laura.Seymour@gmail.com. These will be accepted from now through February 15, 2013.

Commitment for cast members includes two group read-throughs in April, a pre-performance run-through at Unity Temple on the Plaza, and one 7:00 p.m. performance on May 11, 2013.

Ticket sales for this event will begin March 1, 2013. If you are interested in sponsoring or coming to our event, learn more at our website: listentoyourmothershow.com/kansascity, and please don’t hesitate to email us with any and all questions!

Proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the Rose Brooks Center. Rose Brooks Center provides emergency shelter to women and children escaping life-threatening abuse. Once they are safe, these families receive the tools and resources they need to begin rebuilding their life – a life built on respect, love and compassion. -Rose Brooks

PS: In other news, if you've ever wanted to speak at BlogHer's annual conference, you should submit a Room of Your Own idea.

Viva la voices!

I'm told I should start a Tumblr blog for these pictures. I'm too lazy to do that, so I'm creating a new category: Scenes I Walked in On. I'll try to go back and find all the others and tag them so they're in one place. I can't bear the thought of tracking more than one blog.

A few days ago, I walked into the living room after the little angel had gone to school and found this.

It reminded me of some horrible movie I saw in the eighties in which all the people were wrapped up by giant bees or spiders or something. With more than a little trepidation, I lifted the blanket.

And then I saw this.

So I did what any logical person would do. I tweeted the Nelson Atkins museum. We were just there. Looking at mummies.

Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at the @nelsonatkins last weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/

— Rita Arens (@ritaarens)

Which is funny, because I always feel so dumb at art museums. While talking to the front desk folks, I forgot the word "sarcophagus." Then I got into an extended discussion  with a docent about a pieta in which I screwed up art terminology. I thought a pieta was any piece of art depicting Mary and baby Jesus. It's so not. It's Mary and dead Jesus, which is really much sadder than Mary and baby Jesus.

But he'd never heard of it either way, so I guess there's that.

Then the little angel asked me if it was okay to think art showing Jesus was really ugly, and I told her I thought the real Jesus would not be upset if she didn't like art created before people discovered foreshortening. She was extremely relieved. I actually remember having the exact same question about her age. They should really go through these things in church.

Lo and behold, the museum tweeted me back!

sarcophagus bears? “@ritaarens: Maybe should not have taken her thru Egyptian art at @nelson_atkinslast weekend? instagr.am/p/PPakDuvm_H/”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

@nelson

Send her over to help w/ our installations :} “@ritaarens: @nelson_atkins I think so. Otherwise, the Chinese bed with the drapes. #art”

— NelsonAtkinsMuseum (@nelson_atkins) September 6, 2012

So then, just as I'm securing funding to send my little art genius off on her future career, I learned the truth. When she got home from school, I asked the little angel what up with the bears.

"Oh," she said. "They're sleeping. The light hurts their eyes."

Damn.