- Drive Fan Poster Gallery (perhaps my favorite movie of 2011)

- The Talks: Francis Ford Coppola

I always associated happiness with family, liking each other, getting along. And I think that?s still happiness, to see that everyone?s healthy, little kids are having fun, no one?s mad at anybody.

- T-Rex Trying. Flat out brilliant.

- Just Like Firemen

?We don?t get a chance to be heroes in our everyday life. We?re not firemen. We don?t get to run to a burning building, and pull someone out and save their life, but these individuals who are willing to donate their stem cells for blood or marrow, are just like firemen.?

- Miss Moss, a compendium of radness.

- A story about a big squirrel and a baby squirrel. (Thanks to the community for the heads up on this one.)

- Grizzly Bear Cub & Wolf Cub Playing. Skah-wee!

- If you watch only one thing this week, let it be this.

by dooce in Daily, Links

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Stuff I found while looking around. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

There are rules in fashion, and Cami breaks them all like, oh rules. Aren't you just so cute.

Blazer, blouse, red bow, skirt: thrifted
Heels: Urban Outfitters
Pink Clutch: thrifted
Lipsitck: MAC: so chaud

(You can find Cami here. Photos by Billy Concha.)

by dooce in Daily Style

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Blazer/Bow. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

I love how Snapseed can romanticize an image, as if these two shits are this idyllic in real life.

by dooce in Daily Chuck

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Dee and Dum. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Two minutes before leaving for school Leta announces that she needs to pack both of her jump ropes but she can't find the red one. I am unaware that she owns more than one jump rope and have no idea where this phantom red one is or where to start looking. As she starts to freak out about it I have to step into another room and lean against the wall. A long breath in, my hand gripping the back of my neck.

When I emerge I tell her I'm sorry we can't find it now, but we can definitely look for it this afternoon. She frowns as I take her by the hand and head toward the door.

My hands used to be that small and jump ropes just as important.

My therapist makes me talk about my childhood and how afraid I was of my father. Very afraid, I tell her. My childhood was one long army crawl around his temper. I wasn't necessarily taught to avoid conflict, but I see a potential confrontation and hide as if it might give me a disease. Because someone might get shoved up against a wall and have a finger wagged a little too close to their face.

I don't remember him hurting my brother. I only remember the look on my mother's face.

She calls this trauma. I shrug because I don't have a horror story to tell. No sexual or physical abuse, no nights spent sleeping in the backseat of the car because my parents couldn't afford the rent. Maybe it was trauma, I guess, and then the lights on the cop car start flashing red and blue behind me. By the time I roll down the window to hand over my license I've covered my shirt in tears. He asks me if I'm okay, and I nod so that he will go back to his car and write the ticket, so that I can be alone and shake my head endlessly.

Before I get home I pull over on a quiet street and turn off the playlist that had yesterday made me happy. The silence fills every inch of the car. I want it to swallow me whole.

My ten-year-old self is a specter who hovers just above my shoulder. I don't know what the hell she wants or is waiting for.

by dooce in Daily

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Bad days. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

Sugar booger just wants some treats. I told her, of course. Right after you fix mama a hot dog.

by dooce in Daily Photo

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Beggar. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

I've currently got a chunk of panic in my throat, but I can see the end of the day over there. Listen to this with me.

by dooce in Daily

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as "It's only time, it will go by". This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

"Want you tie them round MY neck."

by dooce in Daily Chuck

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Chuck, the bad influence. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

The scenery in Salt Lake is spectacular, yes, but it's also a built in navigation system. You always know which way is north because of your position next to the mountains. If that still confuses you, I will gladly never be a passenger in your car.

by dooce in Daily Photo

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Compass. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

This may be my favorite Cami ever. Sun-drenched perfection.

Fur collar jacket: vintage (I REPEAT: VINTAGE)
Dress & boots & necklace & sunglasses: thrifted
Belt: H&M
Purse: vintage Dooney & Bourke

(You can find Cami here. Photos by Billy Concha.)

by dooce in Daily Style

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Classy. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.

"Do you see a light at the end of the tunnel?"

That's the question almost everyone keeps asking me, and so far it's the one thing that doesn't make me cringe or want to cry or run outside and punch my fist in the ground. It's an innocent, heartfelt question that doesn't make any assumptions about what happened or is happening or who is to blame.

Sometimes people send me advice and it is so colored by their own pain, pain that I honor and regard with reverence, but it wants to believe so much that isn't true about this. This thing that I'm living through. This thing that is full of details and dynamics and its own kind of pain, a kind whose shape I think I have figured out and then I turn it over and find another side.

I don't mind the advice, not at all. This experience wants to tell its story, and our common ground is the struggle. We share the simple hope that no one at the store will notice that we are wearing sunglasses indoors, sunglasses we won't take off until we've pulled into the garage and slouched over the steering wheel to resume sobbing.

And no matter who is to blame, no matter what happened or is happening we've each had those moments when the panic rises so fast in our throats that to hold it down is like swallowing the deep end of a pool. But then we make dinner, we help with homework, we somehow walk from one end of the room to the other. Like so many of you have assured me, that light at the end is around here somewhere. And sometimes just a glimpse of it is enough to get me to the end of the day.

by dooce in Daily, Hair

© Armstrong Media, LLC. All rights reserved. Originally published by Heather B. Armstrong for dooce.com as Hair, day thirty. This post cannot be republished without express written permission.