“If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence”

Squirrel Queen watching the Predators lose in the playoffs.

My family puts up with a lot.

Lauren Rabaino writes this at her blog over Wired Journalists. It’s a great piece.

The deadline isn’t 11 p.m. anymore. The deadline is now. She gets the content on the Web, she writes a longer, more elaborate story for print, and continues writing updates for the Web all day. After deadline passes, she’s still not done; she writes a blog about her experience. One reporter is being stretched in different directions, acting as a print reporter, TV anchor, radio reporter and Web guru. Thus, the concept of news “convergence.”

She’s right. Things aren’t just changing, they HAVE changed.

There is always a time around Mother’s Day that Homer and I hit what I tend to call “the angries.”

It comes out of nowhere and is always a surprise. One of us, either her or myself, will recognize that we are pissed off collectively because there is no mother here.

And on another note, something you may not know, is Homer was born on Mother’s Day. This year, her birthday is Monday but youngest niece Bear’s is tomorrow.

I may be wrong but I think Mother’s Day is especially hard for Homer. More so because they had that bond of Homer being the Mother’s Day Blessing for my mother. Thinking about it makes me choke up a little bit. It was what my mother always said about my little sis and it was more than true.

We find ourselves on edge, reacting far more emotionally than we usually do. For those of you who haven’t lost your mom, it’s hard to describe how things creep up on you. Recently, I ate my Mom’s recommendation for comfort food.

I was tired, drowning under an increased workpile, feeling like I’m never going to get it all together, not enough time, trying to decide if I’m going to move forward in a blogging project I’m working on, alternating between fear and an in depth mania to sustain a schedule that I know will be difficult to keep at such a breakneck speed, and I needed to unwind and not feel anything for awhile.

I made my comfort food that she always made me when I was a kid and I was hit with a wave of grief that I cannot explain. I felt if I was drowning in my own soul missing her more than I could ever explain. There is no medication you can take for loss, no quick fix, if you will.

Ten years ago February, my mother died after a hard fight with cancer. Ten years ago Monday, Homer turned 30. Ten years ago, we could barely remember to breath. Ten years ago, we lost our best friend.

I am not alone but I find that only other people who have lost their mothers understand the black hole that we stare in during Mother’s Day. We have to find within ourselves that place where we can focus on the beauty of our relationships with our moms that molded us.

But some of us hit the angries. And when we get there, it’s always startling. It’s most surprising because we think we are over it.

You never get over it.

Never.

Damn, what I would give to see a drunk Dick Cheney with Condi doing the chicken dance – or the Macarena.

Going Like Sixty on the Jenna Bush Wedding and media blackout.

Ron Sylvester of Kansas.com has spent the week embarking on a journey I haven’t seen before. He has been twittering the jury selection in a murder trial.

This spring, as another big trial loomed, the copy desk said they couldn’t handle another round of live blogging. People are going on vacation. We’re short-staffed. There was no time to sort through my updates each hour.

The trial: Ted Burnett is accused of killing Chelsea Brooks, a 14-year-old girl who was nine months pregnant, in June 2006, during a murder-for-hire.

When jury selection began this week, I decided to start posting updates on Twitter.

Jury selection is usually the most boring part of any trial.

“This is the part they don’t show on TV, it’s so exciting,” prosecutor Kevin O’Connor tells jurors.

Most times, we don’t even cover it. But capital murder trials are different. The juries not only decide whether a defendant is guilty. If they return a conviction on capital murder, the jury also decides whether or not the defendant will receive the death penalty. With life and death at stake, I like to know who is sitting on the jury.

I’ve been watching this with a great deal of fascination. The jury selection process is usually not the most exciting thing I’ve covered in news but watching him tweet how average citizens going through the jury selection and being asked questions regarding the death penalty is revolutionary if you ask me.

Here are a couple of his tweets as he’s reporting in 140 characters.

Two more people, a man and a woman, were excused because they could not consider imposing a death sentence, under any circumstances.

Prosecutor question: “We’re not talking hyptheticals. Could you decide if this man sitting here in the white shirt, should get death?“

News is changing. It’s good to see Sylvester breaking news of a hyperlocal case of murder instantly. It’s something we should be watching

[youtube=[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZkZWlAIG0w&hl=en]

Random.