I Want Talk You **Updated

Fall seven times, stand up eight.

- Japanese proverb


Warning: This post is rated PG-17 for language. I tried to edit out the profanity, just to be more agreeable to a wider audience. But it didn't work. Fuck.

Two is sleeping in this morning. Think I can write a post before he wakes up? I guess we'll find out ....

I seem to have 500% more in my draft folder this month than actual posts. Something is holding me back from publishing lately. In an attempt to get some traction, I shall resort to ... Bullets: The blogging equivalent of attempting to cough up a hairball.

I know. Such a pretty picture. You're welcome.

You're still reading? Oh yeah, you're a keeper. (Pats seat) Come sit by me.

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I've added a ton of new blogs to my reader recently. I went on a real spree. Did you link to someone recently? I added them. It seems I can read 'em so much faster than you can write 'em (go figure). So I've concluded that it's okay to be promiscuous about "following." I call it, "Casting a wide net." Unfortunately this means I will have go and weed the reader at some point very soon. Whenever a post pops onto my dashboard now ... as often as not ... instead of thinking, "Goody!" ... I think, "Who the hell is that?"

How many blogs do you follow? Are you selective about it? Do you wish for more good blogs to read? Or do you find that you can't keep up with the ones you have now?

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Mel wrote a post recently about being unfollowed and whether or not a blogger might take it personally. She asked us if we'd want to know why we were unfollowed. And whether we follow anyone that we don't think we would like in real life. Great questions, as usual, from The Stirrup Queen.

Rejection goes with the territory of blogging, doesn't it? You can't please everyone and that seems to be doubly true of me and my blog. I am matter-of-fact about that on good days. But rejection still sucks. Prick me, I bleed.

I go through this tail-chasing cycle with my blogging:

1. I blog because it's a healthy outlet for me, I write for myself! I think therefore I write! And sometimes, I publish.

2. (This is where I go wrong) Maybe someone will like me! Maybe they will "get me." Maybe I will write something helpful. Maybe someone will laugh. That would be nice. Company! Like minds! I know for a fact there are none of those at my children's bus stop/Helicopter Zombie Coffee Klatch, for example (You think that giant chip on my shoulder might be holding me back with the other mommies?). Perhaps I might find a few like minds on the web instead!

3. Sincere compositions followed by hope and the thrill of anticipation (Yes, I see you making the "L" sign on your forehead there. I forgive you.)

4. The clicking of "Publish."

5. The roar of the crickets. Usually a soothing sound that reminds me of summer nights. Of happy, childhood summer nights when life was blessedly simple (sort of). Blog crickets? Poisonous mutants. The stuff of science fiction + highly enriched Uranium.

6. The sting of rejection. Followed by bad thoughts about myself. Followed by anger (my standard, second-base position for anything emotionally difficult or unpleasant) and then the childish impulse to take my ball and go home. (Step six may be significantly enhanced depending on biochemical variables.)

7. Reason returns. Don't be ridiculous. I blog for myself, first and foremost. Rejection? Whatever. It's not about being popular. It has never been about being popular. For bleep's sake, George W. Bush and Karl Rove were popular. And look where that got me and my friends.

8. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The other day, I popped onto sitemeter and I saw that someone had come to my blog via the search terms "Navel Gazing Buddhism Memoir." Hopefully I was just a dolphin caught in google's indiscriminate tuna net. Hopefully they weren't looking for ~me~ and those are just random keywords you'll find in one of my posts somewhere. Hopefully. Or maybe I should just change my tagline and go with it?

I almost shut the blog down right there. Seriously. I jabbed myself in both eyeballs with a white flag. Repeatedly. Isn't blogging fun?

Of course, that's what I get for playing "Mirror-Mirror" with sitemeter. And of course, I AM a navel gazer. By my own admission. But still.

"Fuckers," I thought. Fuck the 'net. It doesn't love me back. Time to boil some rabbits.

But then later I also thought, Fuck my own insecurity. Insecurity: Blah, Blah, Blah.* I'll just have to keep working.

I have two personalities. One takes herself too seriously. The other is tough as nails. It's exhausting. Maybe for you, too. ... Okay, quick, which one am I now?

******

I bet you have some great blogger keyword stories yourself?

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I interrupt myself here to say, Yes. You are right. I suck at bullets. I can see that now. I should go look it up in Strunk & White. I will. I swear. Frequently.

******

As a point of interest, does foul language bother you? What ~is~ the conventional wisdom on blogs and cursing?

******

So would I want to know why someone "unfollowed" me?

Only if the information would be constructive for me. There is a big difference between constructive criticism and pointless negativity. One helps you grow and the other one makes you die a little bit inside. If it would be useful creatively, yes. Hard to hear? Okay. I'm a big girl, I can take it. But only if it makes me a better blogger in the end. Like most people, I just don't need more reasons to feel badly about myself.

Do I follow people that I think I wouldn't like in real life?

This question made me recoil a bit at first ... Nice thought that people might be following me purely for snark value. I know. Let your paranoia snack on that. You were blogging away happily and now everytime you see those followers who never comment feasting on your words, you're going to wonder if they click over to make fun of you and feel superior. You're welcome.

(If the snarky follower description applies to you here, by the way, I salute you with my middle fingers.)

The short answer is, Hmmmm ... Yes, I follow people that I think I might not like in real life. Not too many. And not for snarky, trollish reasons. I certainly didn't ~start out~ following anyone because I thought I wouldn't like them. I definitely follow a few people who probably would not like ME in real life.

I read a lot of blogs in the ALI community. So many great bloggers there. But it's the nature of ALI that many would not, could not return my interest in their stories because we are in very different places.

Other than that, I follow at least one person who rubs me the wrong way regularly. Especially since she responded condescendingly to one of my comments. Punchy, much? I can't help it. That put a new spin on her "quirky," self confident disposition for me. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and it pisses me off when they don't reciprocate. It also cured me of commenting there and it cured my otherwise abundant sympathy for her. Not that she asked for my sympathy. Oh wait. Yes she did. She was blogging about her problems. Silly me. Fortunately, I am a quick learner. Alright then. No sympathy for you, Brat.

But you don't always throw the blogger out with the bath water. At least not this one.

If I follow someone, bottom line, I am sympathetic to them or at least I respect them (even if it's not mutual). I respond to their writing and/or their story ... or some aspects of their story, in one way or another (though not necessarily in the exact way that they might expect to be heard). I am interested and not in a destructive way. I may disagree with their POV or their philosophy occasionally ... or they may be suspicious of me or put off by me because of who I am or how I look. But I am not so black-and-white when it comes to people myself. My experience has been that sometimes the most difficult people you meet end up surprising you. I like it when that happens. I like a little complexity and contradiction.

Do you follow bloggers you don't like? Why?

Have you ever met someone who made a terrible first impression on you, but then turned out to be the best person ever once you got to know them better?

******

Why might I unfollow someone?

When there is no connection. There is a mountain of better, more polished writing to be found almost anywhere else (not saying all blogs are poorly written, quite the contrary), so blogs have to be about connecting. No sparks? No connection? No fascination? No laughs? No follow.

But if that's the case ... as they say ... it's not you. It's me. I know. So cliche. But true.

******

Have you heard about this? "Tweeting Your Miscarriage?" If you want to hurt your head about the nature of blogging and other social media, this one's for you:

A career woman named Penelope Trunk posted this on Twitter:

"I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there's a f***-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin."

The author of the article linked above summarized the reaction of one feminist blog:

"[D]o you want to hear about your male co-worker's hemorrhoids in the workplace? Or the details of his wife's miscarriage? And, unfortunately for everyone, now that this has gone national, the context and way in which Trunk framed this confirms the worst and most fantastical ideas of the anti-choice movement: that women (especially career women!) who have abortions all do so casually and callously on their lunch breaks, the way one might get a manicure.''

All I will say about this is ... are we sure Trunk ISN'T anti-choice? Are we sure we know which team she is really playing for? Any more sure than we are about Jon Gosselin being suddenly, genuinely concerned about the impact of reality TV on his children now that he's been cut from the show?

Just askin'.

Updated to add:

You can see an interview with Penelope here, posted on her blog, The Brazen Careerist. The secretly-batting-for-the-other-team theory is out. But still, with advocates like that ... who needs enemies? Even if she has her valid points, that wasn't the way to make them. JMO.

In a bizarre twist, apparently she is (self?) diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. Which sheds new light on the whole thing. Her blog and her writing are excellent, btw. As usual, there is much more to her story than meets the media's eye, including the fact that she is already raising two children with disabilities/medical issues.

******

Now for something completely different:

The chronic fluid in Two's ears has finally resolved, and just like Seven before him, he's had a language explosion. The kind of leap forward that ends all speculation about his speech development.

I can't tell you what a relief it is to hear him stringing the words together, because after that wretched preschool teacher had her way with me (the one who implied, in her UNexpert opinion, that Seven might be on the autistic spectrum because he couldn't sit still all the time, required a lot of redirection, had poor handwriting and took many months to connect with the boys in her class), I became a jittery mess of milestone mania. Me! The dogmatically non-competitive parent who was so quietly confident before ... I've been holding my breath over Himself for two years and now I can finally exhale. The world will not end today. At least not this way.

Now he's bossing the big kids around in complete sentences that sound eerily like my own. He's mastered so many turns of phrase. I asked him if he was ready to go the other day and he replied, "Lets rock-n-roll!" I almost fell down the stairs.

DH has been working crazy hours and late the other night I was hand-stitching my fingers bloody trying to hem some pants before Seven's picture day (not my favorite chore ... it's like digging a ditch with a spoon -- the story of my life lately). Two was chattering away loudly, threatening to wake Seven. And then I fouled up a row of stitches and I lost my patience because I was tired and I couldn't hear myself think. I told Two to be quiet. To which he replied indignantly, "BUT MOM! I WANT TALK YOU!!"

Like, How can you tell me to be quiet?! I have so much to tell you!

Holy shit. I know how he feels. How can I argue with that?

*DH has a brilliantly passive aggressive way of diffusing unwelcome comments and advances. It's such a good trick that we are trying it to teach the kids, because it's remarkably effective for dealing with bullies. (He perfected it while dealing with his own mother.) Unfortunately, it will also work on the parents of teenagers and you know it will come back to haunt us later on.

Me: Stinging, long-winded criticism. Stinging because I've reached the very end of my rope and the vultures are gathering in my tight, little head. I'm beside myself and desperate to be heard.

DH: What?

Me: Repeats stinging, long-winded criticism. Maybe with a dash of bait-as-warning-shot. The flames singe DH's eyebrows. My eyeballs are hairy.

DH: What?

Me: Frustrated and angrier than ever. You could smelt lead with my aura.

DH: (smiling now) What?

It's check and checkmate. A playful-yet-infuriating and effective defense. You may be a bitch, but I'm not listening. If a bitch screams at me in the forest and I ignore her with a smile, are we fighting?

This I-Can't-Hear-You method also works on the negative tapes in your own head. On a good day, I can manage to click away from the bad place. Bad thoughts? Sorry, our connection is bad. I think I'm losing you ...

In Tae Kwon Do, Seven is learning the RAD principle: Recognize, Avoid, Defend. It occurs to me that sometimes you have to defend yourself from yourself.

How's that for navel gazing?

Talk About Finding Your Voice

I stumbled over this little gem last night when we returned from curriculum night at Our Elementary (for Seven's grade, next week comes a redux for Nine) and it pulled so many amazing ideas together in one place, that I just have to tell you about it (bear with me and lend me some rope).

I plopped down at my laptop, screaming tired, intending to just put some dates in the calendar and then flee to my bed. The radio had been left on ... NPR. And here was a program that I'd never heard of called, Moth Radio Hour. The program is self-described as follows:

"True Stories For Grown-Ups ...

Moth Radio Hour mixes humorous, heartbreaking, and poignant tales that captivate audiences with their honesty and bravery.

The new radio series captures the energy and authenticity of an evening of live at The Moth woven into a compelling hour of radio."

Intriguing, no?

At some point, in the midst of my pointing and clicking and clacking, the thoughtful, clear, steady, New-York-City-accented voice of a male narrator seeped into my consciousness. And suddenly one sentence drew me to the next. The next thing I knew I was sitting rapt ... and then gesturing wildly at DH to be quiet when he appeared in the dooway.*

This is the episode description:

"In this hour, a severely stuttering child years later becomes the world's premier jaguar expert. Plus, a Texas tale of moon pies and bedazzlers; the surprising story of a Harlem man who ends up at a rodeo in Oregon; and one father's way of coping with a son who loves the color pink."

It was the story of the (once) severely stuttering jaguar expert, Alan Rabinowitz, that reeled me in. The very premise of his story -- that he could not speak for the first twenty years of his life due to a severe stuttering disability -- rivets you, hooks you, while you are simultaneously wrapping your head around the facts of his childhood inability to speak and yet hearing him tell his remarkable tale in front of an audience, so very articulately and seemingly without effort.

The speaker explains:

"Everything about my childhood ... was characterized by the inability to speak. From the earliest time that I tried to speak, I was handicapped with a severe, severe stutter. Not the 'normal' kind of repetitious, buh-buh-buh kind of stutter that many stutters have or that many children go through, but the complete blockage of air flow, where if I would try to push words out, my head would spasm and my body would spasm. Nobody knew what to do with me ...."

There is something so vivid about the idea of being physically struck dumb that resonates for me as a metaphor of the human condition into which all of us are born -- the inability to speak and to express what is inside, of having to struggle to learn how to bring out into the world what is in us... not only literal words and wants and needs and social niceties, but also (as Sagan observed) "the star stuff" of which we are made ... and how, just like Rabinowitz, we are thwarted on some deeply personal, deeply threatening level until we figure out how to free ourselves from ourselves.

As a child, Alan learned that stutterers can often sing without stuttering, but he wasn't a singer. The only other thing that he could do without stuttering was to talk to animals. His monologue begins:

"I was five years old, standing in the old, great Cat House at the Bronx Zoo, staring into the face of an old female jaguar. I remember looking at the bare walls and the bare ceiling, wondering what the animal had done to get itself there. I leaned in a little towards the cage, and started whispering something to the jaguar ..."

One wonders if the jaguar wasn't thinking the exact same thing about poor Alan.

Alan's empathy for animals not only went on to define his life's work, but it is also where some powerful connections about empathy creep into this story, for those with ears to hear.

Because so little was understood about stuttering disorders at that time and because information was not readily available as it is in this age, the public schools insisted, over Alan's parents objections, that he be put into a class with severely mentally disabled children. "Retarded class." And Alan poignantly explains that as a result, "... I spent my youth wondering why adults couldn't see into me. Why they couldn't see I was normal and all the words were inside of me, but they just wouldn't come out."

How many of us feel this way sometimes now, in spite of having no obvious difficulties? I cannot imagine this sensation also happening on a physical level. How crushing must that be?

This bit about adults not having any insight into him, about how to help him, takes my breath away. It reminds me of the sublime responsiblity that parents have to really see their kids and help smooth their way while they are young and vulnerable in order for them to have a chance to become the person they are truly meant to be.

It also reminds me of how very isolating psychological suffering can be. In Alan's case, the physical and the mental were a double-whammy of isolation. Put that in in your pipe. Gah.

As you continue to follow this man, the metaphorical connections start firing almost faster than you can register them -- I think the hallmark of a really good story is one that registers on both literal and personal levels. One that illuminates things that otherwise remain the the dark corners of your semi-consciousness and only come to light in maddening little flashes of insight that might or might not be useful artifacts of your own strange brain. Until, like found treasure, like a message in a bottle on the beach, you trip over them on the radio one night before bed. What a gift we can be to each other when we make the effort communicate.

I found myself thinking about connections to prejudice, to the "outsider experience." The following passage takes on the quality of a fable, a parable, of the mythologies in children's books. It would almost be trite if it were not true. And if the listener wasn't able to transcend the very uncommon, very challenging details of Alan Rabinowitz's literal experience and grip so well the universal truth underneath them.

"So every day I would come home from the 'special' class which all the other kids would call "the retarded class" ... and I'd go to a closet in my room ... and I'd close the door and I'd bring my pets, New York style pets -- hamster, gerbil, a green turtle, a chameleon, occasionally a garter snake -- and I would talk to them. I would talk ~fluently~ to them.

I would tell them my hopes and my dreams. I would tell them how people were stupid because they thought I was stupid. And the animals listened. They felt it. And I realized very early that they felt it because they were like me. The animals, they had feelings too. The animals they were trying to transmit things also, but they had no human voice. So people ignored them. Or they misunderstood them. Or they hurt them. Sometimes they killed them.

I swore to the animals when I was young, that if I could ever find my voice, I would try to be their voice. But I didn't know if that would happen, because I realized that I lived in two worlds: One world was the world where I was 'normal' with animals. I could speak. And the other world of human beings. Where I couldn't."

The part about the animals and the ignoring and the hurting and the misunderstanding and the killing is a brutal metaphor for what we do to eachother, what society can do to us, when it doesn't listen, when it cannot hear. Which is worse, do you think? Being deaf or dumb (not literally, of course)? ... And the part about two worlds reminds me of how people who have been through any version of the proverbial "fire" often feel as if they have one foot in each of two worlds ... and that they are never quite whole in either place.

Later, when Alan was finally free of his ailment, what he observed stuck a big chord with what I know about being a survivor. What he describes about his realizations of being free-but-still-not-free-at-last speaks to how (after trauma, illness, loss, infertility, being outcast, beating addictions, fill in the blank yourself), we may overcome outrageous obstacles and some of our dreams may come true, but in many ways "we can never go home again."

"... I was a stutterer and I was always going to be a stutterer. There was no magic pill. And I was not going to wake up one morning, as I had always dreamt, and be a fluent speaker. But the OTHER thing it taught me, the most important thing, was that if I did what they were teaching me at this clinic ... if I worked hard ... I could be a completely fluent stutterer. ... For twenty years, I had never been able to voice everything that was inside of me ... now I could. Life would be different now."

When Alan returned to his life after learning to speak at last, he was full of hopes for the happiness that had always eluded him along with his physical voice. But he found that:

"Things were different -- on the outside. I could speak! But nothing had changed on the inside; too much had happened for that. I was still the stuttering, broken child inside."

That made me think of all the people that I know who have who grown up and finally learned to accept themselves and/or what happened to them on the way. And maybe they even forgave themselves and maybe everyone else, too. But they are permanently not the same. And how they feel not the same as everyone else so very accutely at times.

You should go and listen to Alan for yourself. The conclusion of his story is just as remarkable as the beginning and the entirety of it does not disappoint. The ending is particularly amazing, as he confronts a jaguar once again ... this time in the wild with no bars between them ... in the sanctuary that he alone helped to create to save them, making good on his boyhood promise to speak on their behalf. And both he and the animal are transformed (restored?) into their true, powerful selves.

Alan's conclusion reminded me of the concept of a Totem Animal ... in particular a Shadow Totems -- a symbol/character that represents whatever it is that we fear wildly ... lessons we would never choose to learn but that come to us anyway, sometimes violently. A shadow totem is fate. It can test us. It might destroy us, or save us, or both. It marks us with defining scars that everyone can see, but not everyone can understand.

You can listen to Alan Rabinowitz speak here. You have to register (it's free), but I promise if these themes ring a bell with you, it's worth the minute that it takes in order to listen to the program for yourself.

You can read about the jaguar totem here. Click on the alphabetical section that contains the letter "j" and scroll down to "jaguar" once the page has loaded.


*DH has a terrible, terrible habit of walking into programs at the worst moment and ploughing, with his booming voice, over whatever critical, fleeting bit you are trying to capture -- even when you beg him to be silent and wait his turn (the very act of having to beg him is enough to make you lose the thread and my composure usually unravels from there). It's like it amuses him to tease you, but he lacks judgement about it being the wrong time. It's the weirdest quirk because DH is usually so easy going and kind. It must be some kind of trigger with him, some childhood thing? Whatever.

My BFF in college once witnessed this behavior -- we were engrossed in a chick flick and DH refused to be quiet. Like an attention starved little brother, he took some perverse pleasure in ignoring our increasing frustration; he was the only one laughing. BFF was appalled with him. And that was a first, because she always had an otherwise high opinion of DH. BFF was the most wickedly smart -- and ~people~ smart -- person I have ever known. Her reaction made a big impression on me. Somehow it was a revelation. A validation. Has this ever happened to you? It's kind of nuts sometimes how we respect other people's opinions more than our own ....

Anyway, ever since then, ever since I realized that my frustration over this "wasn't just me" ... this is talking-over-the-radio-or-tv even when you attempt to put him on hold ... is a sure-fire trigger for fireworks in our house; neither one of us is willing to concede the point. I guess I got lucky last night, because to my relief, he let me go on listening undisturbed.

This tangent strikes me as a little ironic, now that I have written it. Considering the subject of the radio program featured in this post is partly about frustrations with not being heard.

QOTD: Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy II

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

-Emerson

I am behind on comments and responding to comments (xxoo, btw).

Last week, I gave myself the excuse of getting readjusted to the school routine and recovering from our trip. I was too sedentary when I wasn't running around like a nut. Catching up on blogs and getting my online calendar in order (because that was one chore that I could face that made me less anxious and less overwhelmed). But now I have to really focus for a bit on getting our environment back into something approaching order.

As always in the early weeks of a new school year, I also have Mommy Homework (UG). Seriously? Do we have to do the "five things in a paper bag that represent ME" exercise AGAIN? She's been in school with these kids for four years now. I know, I always make that one harder than it has to be. I also agonize too much over the "Tell me about your child" requests. You'd think I'd be over it all by now.

Also Nine has decided that she wants to try out for the latest play at the little, local theater where she did a two week camp this summer. The auditions are at 6pm tonight. I think she's getting cold feet though, because she just informed me that she's a little hoarse and maybe she shouldn't go. So it's one of those times where you have to figure out how much (or how little) "parenting" to do.

I'll be back as soon as the chores start to get on my nerves and I need a break. Ha. I'll let you all take bets on when that will be.

XXOO

QOTD:Deep Thoughts By Jack Handy I

For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin -- real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time to still be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one.

Happiness is a journey, not a destination.

-Souza

Still thinking about this one.

C'est La Guerre

I am overwhelmed (more than usual? I don't know, it's a way of life these days) with To Do's, with posts I'd love to write, with projects, with letters I want to send. Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera. Even to my own ears, it sounds like I'm winding up here to complain about being busy. Quite the contrary ... I enjoy a lot of it. I just seem to be sorely missing a sense of ... mastery. I used to have that once, more often than not. Lately I wonder if I will ever feel it again. I don't know if this is just the nature of parenting, of getting older ... I don't know. Not bunged, just observing.

Our vacation was a ton of work. Have I mentioned that I'm not so good at packing? And what a packing challenge ... to go that far for that long with this many kids. For the first week, my butt barely hit the seats. But it was a bleepload of fun and it was worth all the effort, on so many levels.

I wrote gobs of posts in my head while I was away. Such a shame ... all that good (?) material like a drifting smoke in my head. I'm afraid if I try to grab it and pull it onto the page, it will all just dissolve beyond recognition. Or else I'll spend all day writing when I should be doing so many other things.

... Posts about my family.

My parents came with us to the beach this year and it was mostly a successful experiment, though I'm damned if I know how we pulled that off. As usual whenever they are around, there was lots of food for thought about family relationships and the genetic and environmental origins of my neuroses. Food deep fried in smack and served on a stick. And since I am a natural born over thinker, that is probably not a good thing. ;)

... Posts about friendships.

My mother's best friend joined us for a few days ... and her oldest friend stopped briefly by. And my parents took time to visit with some relatives that lived in the area.

My oldest friend, DD's godfather and a groomsman at my wedding ... my 'brother by another mother' ... flew in with his partner to spend the first week with us (or so I thought). We'd fallen mostly out of regular communication in the last few years and the friendship was in real danger from neglect. I was blown away that he made the effort to come along. But then, once there on the ground, we got a real, Don't-Stand-Too-Close-To-Me sensation from the pair. So odd ... to come all that way and then send off these weird vibes -- and I'm quite certain it was nothing we did, because it began almost immediately (honestly it's been going on since they moved in together many years ago and his partner has barely spent enough time with us to remember our names, let alone have any real reason to object to us). Hey, if they wanted space, they could have vacationed anywhere -- alone. Why invade our space (physical and mental) and then show us the hand (not that I wanted to be tied at the hip, it was my vacation, too)? How awkward. Against my own better judgement, NTM DH's advice, I let myself be annoyed by the awkwardness at times.

It felt like The Godfather was literally juggling his mate and us, as though he were trying to please opposite poles. He jogged back and forth between condo units. I hated to see him going through it; not on my account! I didn't have a lot of expectations about how the time together would go and I am not a clingy type of friend. I was just relieved that he wasn't going to fade into my past as so many others before him. Best case (and as a rule, I never expect the best case) we might have re-forged something of our once great, humor and empathy-filled connection and made a new memory like the times when we were younger and we all traveled together -- those adventures that helped to bind us together in the first place. In the end, the visit just left me wondering uneasily about whether the friendship has been seriously and permanently downgraded, although I do feel more reassured that we will at least keep in touch.

So that all brought the makings of couple of posts ... about what having kids/not having kids does to some relationships ... and how people change over time and wax and wane in and out of your life and whether that's a shame or whether it just is. And also about how, as the cliche goes, our best friends are the ones who really see us for who we are, not what we do or what we look like, and they like us anyway. And better yet ... our best allies are the ones let us like ourselves, for a blessed change.

Can the same person fill that role for a lifetime?

Is there something wrong with me if I've changed so much that the people I loved back when can no longer relate to me?

How drastically have I changed, anyway?

Do I let people go too easily?

And there is also a post about relationships that wilt and then wither when someone's partner doesn't jive with the 'old crowd' (something that has happened to us sadly more than once)?

Oh. And the pictures. I got a new camera. So there is a post about that. I hope my chops will live up to it one day -- it's more camera than I know how to use yet. I have a lot of reading to do. Which sort of bums me out ... only because of my perpetual shortage of time -- not because I'm against learning new tricks. I'd just rather be making pictures than studying technical manuals. I haven't uploaded the pics that I took yet. I took a LOT of crap shots ... it's going to require a lot of editing before it's worth sharing.

Oh ... and there is a post brewing about books. I read a great book which I should write about here ... I thought of so many of you as I read it. And then on the way home, I started yet a new page turner. Just what I need. Another thing to tempt me away from the glamour of unpacking and the fierce load of dishes in my kitchen sink, among ten thousand other things.

I have a pace problem. I resist the pace of the demands in my life (not so much the demands themselves, but the frenzy that they inspire). On the one hand, that is a good thing. Ideally, we should never be wholly owned by our lists. But on the other hand, the To Do's will squash you like a bug on a windshield if you neglect them, attempting to live peacefully in your head too much.

Today was a real doosie.

You know that quote? "Some days you are the bear and other days the bear gets you?" Well. Today was not my turn to be the bear.

It started out innocently enough, but within an hour of waking, it began to swirl into a ridiculous logistical sand storm whipped up courtesy of Murphy's Law. Slipped lithely out of control as fast as the oysters were sliding down my throat last week at the beach. I won't bore you with the details; suffice it to say that it was a royal, first-day-back-to-school comedy of errors. And every time I thought I'd tied a bow on it, it surprised me by unraveling some more. I floated above the action in my head and ... wow. I don't like feeling hapless, but that is what I was today. The only thing that I did not do was slip on a banana peel.

I'm afraid the neighbors, if they were outside at the time, could have heard me (yet again) losing it on the phone to DH this morning through our closed garage door while I searched frantically for my misplaced car keys and the start time for the first day of school came and went (long story). I haven't needed the damn keys for two weeks (how wonderful) and I wasn't supposed to need them this morning ... but then: Change of plans, Dingbat. Cue the Keystone Cops soundtrack.

Finding the keys was a real Chinese fire drill/needle/haystack/cold case mystery among the wreckage of our unpacking (just got back last night at 6 and the contents of our van is lying in all it's exploded glory all over the first floor of the house).

Another potential post: Damn if my neighbors ever seem to catch me at anything but my very, very worst, out-of-context, foul-mouthed moments. Leaving the house is high risk time for chaos around here and chaos doesn't always bring out The Pale & Serene Madonna in me. And unfortunately the exit zones are not sound proof.

Oh hi, Dave.

The cherry on top today was when Seven projectile vomited on me this evening while I was helping him out of the car. Nope. I did not see that one coming. At. All. Dave was just retrieving his mail then, too.

Um. How was bible camp in your back yard this summer, Dude? Oh, don't mind him; the little guy just hasn't learned to hold his liquor yet ...

Neighbors. Can't live with 'em. Can't live with 'em.

I mostly manage keep my sense of humor about these kinds of days. Hey, what's a little more puke at this point? And you know, the neighbors opinion of me was doomed anyway in a a toe-may-toe / tah-mah-toe / latte swilling, arugula chewing liberal / homeschooling, missionary religious conservative / Capulet / Montague sort of way. (And these are the good neighbors.)

Facades are always easy come, easy go, no? C'est la guerre. It's more honest this way?

This post is such a mess. I'll stop now. But I'll put it up anyway. Because I never intended to go on a summer blogging hiatus. Somehow, it just happened. Posting must be better than not posting, right?

PS. What's up with the French National Anthem? "Perfidious"? Seriously?

QOTD: Just A Suggestion

Don’t let go of the vine.
- Johnny Weissmuller, film's Tarzan






My blogging mojo is on the fritz again (it's touchier than our digital TV signal, which tends to black out at the drop of a hat for weeks on end). Sorry to be such a delicate, little hot house blogger. I think I tend to blog when I feel like I have some perspective. And right now, I guess I'm more in the "working on it" mode.

Anyway, this quote just struck me the right way. It made me smirk. Smirking beats frowning, yeah?

Speaking of smirking ....

Damn. This Is Good.

Bottled water may be under fire, but Evian's ad agency hit a (viral!) home run with this one. Ironic (?) that this landed in my email box this morning, the same day that bottled water was in the (unflattering) news. That's either a very handy coincidence, or someone is really doing a very good job in PR over at Evian.

PS. Can you say baby-crazed, youth obsessed culture? Even though I myself am not in the minority row on this one (for once), it's very easy to have sympathy for people who are under emotional seige from the breeder nation and also those who are put out with it.