Laura never does this but she simply had to post this link to one of the most moving stories she has seen in a long time — that of a father and son who compete together in triathons all over the country. This would be interesting enough, but in the case of Richard Hoyt and his father it is especially interesting — and amazing — because Richard has cerebral palsy which means that his father completes each of the herculean efforts required in every competition with Richard in tow (using specially designed equipment for each sport). Richard can’t speak or walk but he was able to write the story about “Team Hoyt” by using a computer with special software. Here’s a brief excerpt from the article (from Men’s Health):

• What My Father Means to Me
• 
  
• My name is Richard E. Hoyt Jr., and I have cerebral palsy. I cannot speak or walk. To write this story, I’m using a computer with special software. When I move my head slightly, the cursor moves across an alphabet. When it gets to the letter I want, I press a switch at the side of my head.

• I am half of Team Hoyt. We are a father-and-son team, and we compete in marathons and triathlons around the world. Our goal is to educate people about how the disabled can lead normal lives. We started racing in 1979. My high school was having a road race to raise money for a lacrosse player who was paralyzed in an accident. I wanted to show this athlete that life can go on, so I asked my dad if he would push me. My wheelchair was not built for racing, but Dad managed to push me the entire 5 miles. We came in next to last, but in the photos of us crossing the finish line, I was smiling from ear to ear!

• When we got home, I used my computer to tell Dad, “When I’m running, I feel like my disability disappears!” So we joined a running club, had a special running chair built, and entered our first official race.

Here is the link to the piece and to the accompanying video which should not be missed. Laura advises you to be sure and have plenty of triple-ply Kleenex on hand because you will need it.

Laura ended up taking up so much time and space with her last brant about the Huffington Post that she forgot to include a few other happenings of interest.

But suddenly nothing is coming to mind. This is either because Laura is buckling under the pressure to fill up her brant with “material” or Laura has no “material” to fill up her brant with with which to fill her brant.

Thankfully, after a few minutes of eating grapes and drinking water, Laura’s brant-related material is all coming back to her….

• * School is almost out for Ben. Just two more full days and one half day and first grade is over. This makes Laura very very sad because 1) Laura Benji is getting older so fast 2) Laura Benji has never “transitioned” well and is really going to experience major separation anxiety when she he has to leave his teacher, Brett Aronne, who has been Laura’s pal his teacher for two years — last year in Kindergarten, and this year in the combined K-1 class

• * Laura just came back from a trip to NY to meet with the head of a Young Adult (YA) publishing division because Laura wants to write a YA novel.

• * Laura’s black Volvo wagon which up until recently had never given her a day of trouble is now, at the ripe old age of 7 and 89,000 miles, completely fucked up. The car has been in and out of the shop, during which time Laura and Brendan have had to rent cars and bum rides (and bum cars — thanks Wendy!) in order to get around. Right now they’re renting a Chrysler P.T. Cruiser — a silver one — which drives remarkably well considering that it’s a Chrysler* (*Laura is going to save revealing one of her greatest embarrassments of all time — her parents’ bizarre and completely uncool attraction to the Dodge Dart and The Plymouth Valiant when she was a teenager [not to mention even a “K Car” after, thank God, she went off to college] at a time in history, the 70s, when everyone’s parents drove “foreign” cars like Datsuns and Toyotas and Hondas) — but Laura still can’t get over her annoyance and discomfort with the fact that the car’s name — P.T. Cruiser — sounds like the name of a person.

• * At the end of May Laura went to New York to hang out with her good friend Amy “Ask Amy” Dickinson who was in from Chicago to meet with publishers about her book proposal for a memoir called The Mighty Queens of Freeville. Laura feels the need to correct the impression you might get from that last sentence that Amy Dickinson went to a few offices to talk to some publishing people about her proposal in a really laid back fashion. Why? Because the arrival of Amy’s fantabulous proposal which was pitch perfect and very funny and sad — like a snack that is both salty and sweet and hits both notes of craving — sent a whole bunch of major publishers into a complete and utter frenzy begging Amy to let them publish her book. Laura wishes she could reveal the details of the deal because oh my god they are so unbelievable but she won’t because she’s discreet has only this to say: The Mighty Queens of Freeville is going to be amazing.

• * Last weekend Laura and Ben went to Rhinebeck, NY, to hang out with Ben’s cousins Girl Cousin #1 and Girl Cousin #2 (Laura makes a point to try to remember not to mention other people’s children by name since some people don’t want their children’s name to appear anywhere except on their lunchbox or their underwear) because their parents (Patrick and Colleen of “The Good Stuff” radio show fame) were out of town. They had a great time because it was the first time that Laura had had the chance to hang out with her two nieces alone, without anyone else around, and she couldn’t get over what great kids they are (Laura met them when they were 3 and 1 lo so many years ago). They had lots of conversations about lots of really interesting stuff and Laura wishes she could share some of the topics but she’s discreet really enjoyed herself.

• * A few days ago, Laura was once again extremely proud to be a Massachusetts resident when state lawmakers voted decisively against sending the issue of gay marriage back to the ballot in 2008. As I’m sure everyone knows, Massachusetts is the only state in the union in which gay marriage is legal and now it can stay that way. Suburban Lesbian Mom Sara Whitman’s blog has much more about this and other topics dealing with what it’s like to be a married lesbian with three boys which Laura has been addicted to for most of this year and which made her tell the Huffington Post people about Sara’s blog. Almost every day Sara Whitman has a (terrific) post on the Huffington Post blog and Laura is thrilled that there is now a lesbian mom reporting in from the suburbs that raising boys is just as confusing terrifying freakishly bizarre challenging to lesbian moms as it is to straight moms.

Well, it’s been way too long since Laura’s last post. She can’t even remember the last time she updated her brant — and clearly she’s too lazy to check — but instead of focusing on the negative — her favorite thing to do! — she’s going to accept her failure to keep her brant current and move on.

Laura’s going to try to give a quick broad-strokes kind of update — with only the highlights. Of course, by saying she’s going to provide “only the highlights” it might lead people to assume that Laura has so many new things happening in her life that she needs to sort them into “major” and “minor” ones. This, of course, would be incorrect. There are only a few things new and Laura can easily get to them in this quick short post.

1) Laura’s first post finally appeared in the new and improved but extremely overwhelmed Huffington Post. As she’d mentioned a while ago, Laura was contacted by the HP (along with a thousand [<--exaggeration] other writers to guest blog for the HP's New and Improved website. Which is truly new and improved. They have a bunch of new sections -- Living Now, Entertainment, Media, Business — in addition to their usual fare of Politics and just plain old “news” (<--this is not what the HP calls it's main page but in essence this is what it is).

Anyway, Laura also gave the HP a whole bunch of names of other people who would be terrific guest bloggers -- somewhere around ten of her friends who are terrific writers and who always have something to say about everything -- people like her best-friend-from-junior-high-school (BFFJHS) Jennifer Loviglio, and new friends like Beth Teitell, Dani Shapiro, Brenda Scott Royce, Nicholas Weinstock, Larry Doyle, Jennifer Oko, and Sara Whitman (Laura is horribly sure she’s forgotten someone but she will add them to a follow-up-correction brant later today). What ended up happening, though actually, was something out of a Larry David “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode: all of Laura’s friends’ (terrific) posts were running, but hers weren’t.

Every day (<---Laura is SO lying here -- about 35 times a day) she checked the HP to see if one of her posts had been posted, and every day (x 35 for those who are good at math) she was disappointed to see that it wasn't. But what really started to make her paranoid was that most of Laura's friends' (terrific) posts were appearing. One after the other after the other.

Laura doesn't believe in many things, but one thing she has always believed very strongly in is the idea that just because other people are winning doesn’t mean she’s losing. That is, Gore Vidal’s sentiment — “It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.” — is a bad way to live. She has always believed that there is enough good stuff for everyone — enough success and joy and money and happiness out there for everyone to have some — which is why she is always truly happy whenever one of her friends succeeds.

But the HP situation tested Laura’s belief system and quite frankly, she occassionally sort of just a little bit 35 times a day almost failed the test. Before she knew it she was overcome by annoyance at the bitter irony of it all, causing her to have the pathetically unpleasant question — Hey! What about me? — constantly interrupt her thoughts.

Being the typically narcissistic insecure writer-type, Laura instantly worried that the reason Jessica, the extremely nice assistant editor at the HP who was coordinating all of these new bloggers, wasn’t running the posts she’d submitted two weeks earlier was because they sucked. (Not to put too fine a point on it.) She wondered if she should email the lovely and obviously overwhelmed Jessica offering to take back her shitty unpostable pieces and send new and vastly better (”non-suck-y”) posts. She also wondered if she should break character and write an unapologetically pushy Hey! What about me?! email, but before she could decide what to do, Laura’s first post on Failure was posted in the Living/Now section.