Below you can listen to the songs on the new album, Do Fun Stuff Volume 1. One hundred percent of profits from this volume and all future volumes (as this will be an annual album release) will go to a charity that will fund case studies so that families that have been affected by SMS can somehow get some answers. And some peace.

Show your support by buying the album on iTunes. Made for kids, but isn’t the kind of kids music that will make adults cringe. I plan on buying a copy of the album and I don’t have any kids. In fact, Morton the Caterpillar is one of the best songs I’ve heard in a while. Preview the songs below and then head over to iTunes and buy it. You’d be helping more than you could know. Reading about this family – their struggles, the kindness they show this little boy, the love they all have for each other, it melts my heart. It’s truly, truly moving. I read about how Cole is teaching her son hundreds of signs to open the doors of communication between them. Really beautiful.

So check out the album. Buy it on iTunes. Pass it along to your friends. Encourage them to pass it along to their friends. Show some love. Be part of something special.

P.S. Thanks to my readers for being patient in my absence. I know it’s been a while since my last post. Much love.

P.P.S Thanks to the Marshall family for helping me realize how insignificant some of my worries are and for showing me that happiness really is everywhere. I’m a new kind of hopeful because of you.

You were a good mug, I thought, as though my collecting each ceramic piece one by one was in a way a funeral of sorts. thinking about how I’d only gotten to use it a few times since I’d bought it on clearance at Pier 1 just days before I watched it shatter and felt my heart do the same. Rest in peace, you fragile, fragile mug, I thought. Oh, and also, no fair.

As I often do, I left my desk at the end of the day with my tea-filled mug in hand. Because, hello, why waste a perfectly full cup of kava tea? I placed it in the cup holder, the way I’d done so many other times with various mugs, where it safely rode during the car trip home. It wasn’t until I was getting out that it slipped, nay, FLUNG out of my hand in slow motion and did several balletic flips – soaking my body in tea before smashing to bits. And my whole world felt as cold as that concrete floor.

I called every Pier 1 in central Florida to track down a replacement to no avail. I resorted to pouting. I had the best mug in the world and I broke it. Seriously, depressing. There’s just something so awful about losing something that means more to you than people think it should. I know, it’s JUST a mug, I GET IT. I know. But I enjoy having an eclectic blend of mugs in my apartment and cubicle, and it was the second one that we’d managed to break in two days (see: that time Patrick loaded the dishwasher with his eyes closed) and I was feeling pretty lousy about it. I admit that I tend to overreact when I break my things, but my kava tea addiction is the only addiction I’ve ever had to support, and I assume that all junkies feel emotionally attached to their favorite pieces of paraphernalia. No? They don’t? Not even at all? They’ll gladly share needles with bums? Whatever. How would I know that? Like I said, this is the only addiction I’ve ever had. Unless you count my addictions to acupuncture or chocolate or chap stick or scarves or hand washing, which are totally not the same.

(This is me fast-forwarding three weeks. Berrrrrrrrrrrrrrruuuuip! Don’t judge. What kind of sound does your fast forwarder make? THAT’S WHAT I THOUGHT.)

Last night Patrick came home from a week-long trip to Alabama. And while he was only gone a week this time, it felt like much longer. Maybe because a lot went wrong this time and it makes me realize how much I need to just fall into his arms sometimes.

I took my friend’s engagement photos and they turned out horrible, but not for my friend’s and her fiance’s lack of being good-looking, I assure you. They got all gussied up so that I could capture them in dark, grainy, unprintable photos that were nothing but a giant waste of everyone’s time. I tried to cheer myself up by eating week-old pie. I was desperate. It was the only dessert item in my house. And then when I pulled a plate out of the cabinet, this happened.

And I sent Patrick a text message that said, “My night just got a lot fucking worse.” And it was absolutely true. These were our new wedding dishes, gifts that someone had bought us. This one dish is going to cost us the total balance left on our only remaining gift card to Bed Bath & Beyond. So much for getting that pepper mill. And I didn’t even attempt to eat the pie. Not that anyone should ever attempt to eat week-old pie.

Patrick arrived home late last night. Kya was curled up in her dungeon and I was several episodes deep in various crime drama reruns feeling especially self-loathing on the couch in my underwear. Clutching onto a pillow. Sobbing. Ok, not really sobbing. BUT I TOTALLY COULD HAVE BEEN BECAUSE ALL MY EFFING SHIT IS BREAKING.

“I got you some presents,” he said, which is the best thing you can say to a middle child. And about the only thing that could bring me out of the state I was in. And among said presents, behold:

Oh yes he did.

He went looking for it while he was on his golf trip, and by George, he found it. And sometimes this is how one picks up the pieces and fixes what’s broken. And that’s when Patrick metaphorically picked up the bits and pieces of the last few weeks the way I’d picked up the remains of my shattered mug.

I know, I know, he’s perfect.

I scanned the crowd and realized that in my haste to make it home from work (which I left at 4:30) and out the door in record time I forgot to slather myself with body piercings, nail polish and body paint. And I’m pretty sure I wash my hair far too often to blend in at Warped Tour. Regardless, I had a lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that we decided to catch another of Andrew’s Florida shows.

“I’m going to watch from the crowd this time,” Patrick said to me and then winced a little as though bracing himself for me to attack him. For someone who just told me he was going to voluntarily place himself in the middle of a drunken mosh pit, he seemed unreasonably afraid of a girl. I shrugged, decided to join him and we made our way toward the front of the stage.

The first few songs I held my own. I wasn’t groped or punched or kicked or trampled, and I did a pretty good job of dealing with the fact that some of the people weren’t wearing shoes. They were walking barefoot. On the ground. Without shoes. And maybe later going to bed without scrubbing the soles of their feet with an industrial solvent. And I usually don’t do well in situations where I have to think about dirty feet in the sheets, because it’s NEVER okay. PERIOD.

It wasn’t until “Party Hard” that I got what I’d been expecting the whole time. You see, years and years ago I went to a Tool concert with a boyfriend who told me that a mosh pit “wasn’t a big deal” and I’d “probably be perfectly fine.” One bloody nose and a few bruised ribs later, I’ve changed my mind entirely on the “safety” of dancing around crazily in close quarters of people’s spastic jabbing elbows and other body parts capable of busting out my teeth. So when I heard the intro to “Party Hard” my heart started racing for reasons other than the entire bag of ice that was forcefully poured down my back.

Patrick tried his best to cradle me amidst the frenzy, but there were fist fights, there were crowd surfers, and there were sneakers that, with great force, made contact with my face. Yes, people, I GOT KICKED IN THE EYE AT WARPED TOUR.

The residual bruising wasn’t bad. Certainly enough for my boss to notice at our team meeting the next day, but certainly not bad enough that she’d feel compelled to call the authorities. Like last time. At first I thought my contact was kicked out of my eye. But then I checked, it was in there, but just lost way over to one side. Because someone’s shoe touched it. Someone’s dirty, germy shoe WAS IN MY EYE. I have reflexes that are swift enough to catch my falling sunglasses in the middle of a mosh pit with both eyes closed relying ONLY on my ninja senses, but when the task at hand is as simply as, oh, CLOSING MY EYE! I fail miserably.

But looking on the bright side, I went to Warped Tour and only got kicked in the eye once. Cheer!

I used to think to myself that my keyboard had magical keys every time I sat down to write. I’d place my hands on the keyboard and suddenly words would start appearing. Magical keys. Words I wouldn’t realize I was forming into sentences would string together into paragraphs that months later I’d laugh out loud reading. Words that I don’t remember writing.

To continue with yet another pointless tangent and further postpone getting to the point of all this, I’m feeling something pushing me to move on from my job. I love my job so much that I’ve promised myself I won’t blog about it. But having a full-time job means not being a full-time writer. And because my job provides me with the means to feed myself, my husband and my dog, I’ve become good at it and worked hard to get satisfaction out of it. I’m proud of who I am at work. But I’m even prouder of how satisfying it is to write something beautiful. It’s therapeutic for me to let my fingers waltz across the magic keys and suddenly forget why I was feeling sad. Or alone. Or bullied to the point of quitting my job. And if writing does that for me, why shouldn’t I pursue it? Why shouldn’t I write the book I’ve wanted to write for so many years? And get it published. And empty my cubicle into a box or seven and leave behind a life of having to wake up before my body says it’s time. And why shouldn’t I get satisfaction out of picturing aforementioned bully coming up to me and asking me to sign her copy of my book? And why shouldn’t I snicker and inscribe it with, “Go to hell. P.S. Chapter six is about you.”

The truth is I don’t have the nerve to quit my job and let my inkling intuition guide me like a compass protruding from my gut. Because when I try to write for money, I just can’t. I write for soul. I get paid in warm fuzzy emotion and blogosphere street cred, and anything more is, I guess, too much pressure. I started writing my book in the late fall of 2008. And even though I didn’t put a lot (ok, even when it’s italicized it’s still a stretch) into it, it still felt like a lot to lose when our hard drive crashed the following Halloween. I lost everything. Well, except for MY ENTIRE PHOTO LIBRARY which Patrick had miraculously thought to back up two days earlier. So now I won’t have to rely on my memory to remember how much That Baby resembled a crinkly old man when she was a newborn because there’s plenty of naked photographic evidence. Evidence I plan on whipping out in front of all her teeny bopper friends when they’re all piled into one bathroom getting ready for some teeny bopper concert. It’s an act that will likely drive a knife into our relationship but will be totally worth it when I’m all, “And this is the photo I took right before she peed all over her mother’s back!” What were we talking about again? Oh, yes, right. That bully is a total bitch. Oh, and I’m back to square one on that book.

Patrick’s traveling this week, so I’ve used the time to concentrate on writing. And the keys aren’t magical at all. They’re heavy bricks that have to be forcefully pounded and jammed with every letter of every word. Reading back over each passage has become a chore, because somehow I’ve failed at pouring life into the pages. Instead it reads like this: “And then this happened, and then that happened. And then this happened. And then that and this and that.” And lets face it, if I wanted to spend my time trying to get through paragraph after paragraph of that garbage, I’d just reread The Lovely Bones.

I’ve fallen into a pattern. I like what comes out of my hands when I write for my blog. But when I turn my passion into a moneymaking venture, it feels different. One minute I’m in one place, the next I’m lost, as if I was sucked into one of those delivery tubes at the bank, only instead of the teller’s counter, I was picked up and dropped off in the reference section of a library inside a nursing home. All of this is to say that when I try to write for money, I just can’t write. Unless, of course, you enjoyed reading The Lovely Bones. Because in that case, I’ve got a riveting snooze-fest manuscript I’d like you to take a look at.

The first time I saw the shoes was during a quick trip to the mall with Patrick. Not sure what we were there buying considering both of us were broke, but we were there nonetheless. They glowed from the store window – brown cloth Sketchers with patches of different cloth patterns and colors sewn on. They looked like slippers with a rubber sole and an elastic strap across the top to keep them from slipping off. I stared at them, stopping in the middle of mall traffic, Patrick’s hand in mine. He stopped and looked back. He used to hate holding hands in the mall.

“I want these so bad.”

“I know you do. One day you can come to the mall and buy everything you want. We’re just not there yet. We’ll be rich one day. Just be patient.

“But I reeeeaaallllyy want them.”

“I know, baby. It’s hard to want things.”

Head down, deep sigh. I was defeated. The money in my bank account that I’d gotten for graduation had shrunk down to nearly nothing. I couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes.

That marked the official start of my job search. I was done taking time off. I was done enjoying the summer. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore anyway. Because we are living in a material world, and I am a material girl.

Patrick left for another trip at the end of that weekend. I used the last of my money to put gas in my car – just a quarter of a tank – and to buy resume paper and envelopes. My phone rang as I was walking out of Office Depot. Mommy.

“Hi Whits!”

“Hi Mom. How are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“I’m good,” I lied. “Doing really well.”

“That’s good. How’s Patrick?”

“He left for another trip. He’ll be gone two weeks.”

“Awww, you per thing,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok, Mom, I’m fine.”

“Do you need anything? Do you need money?”

I did.

“No. I’m fine.”

“I can put it in your account.”

“It’s ok, Mom, I’ll be fine.”

I wouldn’t be. I ate popcorn and toast for next three days.

“Ok, sweetie, I’m at the barn now, so I’m gonna go. I love you.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

“Bye.”

“By-”

She hung up before I even finished. I missed my mom. I climbed into my car and collapsed onto the steering wheel, crying.

…

I sat on the floor of my living room watching reruns of “Friends” on one of the only two channels we had. The living room was also the dining room, office and storage closet of our 550-square-foot apartment. With my laptop on my lap and the printer just beside me, one by one I addressed the labels for prospective employers, filling each envelope with a resume, cover letter and a link to my janky website that I have since taken down. Side note – I took it down about a year ago when my boss said, “dude, you work online. With websites. And you actually put your name on this piece of crap. Take it down. Immediately. For the love of all things SEO.” I might be exaggerating.

There was something so cathartic about going to the post office and letting the envelopes drop one by one into the bin of outgoing mail the next morning. Signed, sealed, delivered. It was out of my hands now. I’d hire me, I thought.

I took Kya for a long walk, thinking about how despite everything, I really loved my life. I liked living in Florida. I didn’t need friends, or money, or cable TV, or even to see my mom every day. I wanted to live with Patrick more than any of those things. And I wanted those shoes. Kya and I rounded a corner and passed another dog, Elvis, and his owner – a goofy, middle-aged man wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt and a bucket hat. I greeted them, continued on my walk and my train of thought: it’s GOOD to want, I thought. This is the kind of character-building experience that makes me grateful.

And you can imagine what I bought when I got my job and started getting paychecks.

That was almost three years ago, and they’re still one of my favorite pairs. I wore my Sketchers to work today. I like wearing them because it reminds me of a time when I knew what I wanted, and that made it easy even through the hard parts. I wore my Sketchers today because I woke up this morning and didn’t know what my name was. Because I still don’t. Because I get mail addressed to two different names and I don’t know what that means. Because I don’t know which one feels more right and that makes me feel lost. Because Patrick was wrong when he said it was hard to want things. Because wanting is easy. You find something you want, you work for it, you get it. Or sometimes you don’t. But at least there’s a process. When you aren’t sure what you want, well, that’s hard. Yesterday I wanted to be Hoyt. Today I want to be Wilkes-Krier. And who knows what I’ll want to be tomorrow. Wanting things is easy. It’s not knowing what to want that’s hard. Feeling unsure. Being lost. That’s hard. So today I wore my Sketchers, because sometimes it better to just focus on what’s easy.

I don’t know why I feel a bit as if losing my name means losing a piece of myself. When I look at “Hoyt” without “Wilkes-Krier,” I’m sad at the thought of not taking Patrick’s name. I’m not frustrated because of the pressure to go one way or another, in fact, I think I’m frustrated by the lack of pressure. No one is telling me to change my name, no one is telling me not to. What it comes down to is I have an extremely difficult time picking out clothes in the morning. Wait, what were we talking about? Oh, right. I am not sure I’m physically capable of choosing one outfit to wear for the rest of my life.

I’ve taken it upon myself to coax people into making the decision for me by asking them why they chose to or chose not to change their names. And while I think that yes, in the case of a divorce it will be easier if I don’t have to worry about changing my name back, I’m not actually planning on getting a divorce, but thanks anyway. Also, I’m not worried about not having the same last name as my kids because I have no kids. And my dog has no last name. (No last name… this might be the best idea yet. Thanks, Kya No Last Name).

I’ve taken votes, polls, tabs, advice, suggestions and I can’t seem to come to a result that feels right. And when people ask, “Well, what does Patrick think?” The answer is NOTHING. I wish he felt strongly one way or another. I WISH it would hurt his feelings if I kept my own name. Because then at least I could drag my feet but feel as though he’s MAKING me. Like, “Yeah, I didn’t WANT to change my name, but my evil controlling husband absolutely MADE me. GARSH.”

My sister Ashley would say, “Make a list.” Because that’s what we do. Time to pack? Make a list. Doing chores? Make a list. Not sure whether you think someone is ugly or pretty because that outfit could go either way? Make a list. And in this case, Ashley would say, “For the side in favor of ‘Wilkes-Krier,’ add ‘Because having a different name than your husband is silly.’” And then I add “Because she thinks having a different name than my husband is silly” to the List of Reasons Why Ashley is Strange. Other items on the list include: “Hands are always exceedingly dry AND exceedingly clammy” and “Snorts when she laughs and sometimes when she’s not laughing.”

Ok, Ashley, let’s make a list. If I keep Hoyt, I get to keep my passport. The one that has my Costa Rica stamp. The one that has the ONLY stamp I’ve ever gotten. The one that is the ONLY passport I’ve ever owned. I also get to keep my social security card. The one that used to live in my mom’s filing cabinet in a file labeled “Whitney” where she also kept savings bonds that I got to deposit when I turned 21. On the other hand, I’ve already registered whitneywk@gmail.com, I like my “Whitney WK” signature better and so I sign it dozens of times every day for fun. Though this list really should be more like a Venn diagram because an argument in favor of “Hoyt Wilkes-Krier” would be that I’ve already ordered business cards that say “Whitney Hoyt Wilkes-Krier” and I’ll tell you, it might be a mouthful but that shit looks good on a business card.

So you see why I’m troubled? Because none of my arguments even matter. Because all of the reasons I can come up with are as lame as having three last names.

Internet, please make my decision for me. Thank you.