Posts from — September 2011

Josh and I went to the Wilco concert last night at Merriweather.  Two rows ahead of us, there was a sixty-something-year-old man rocking out on his air guitar.  If you’re familiar with Jeff Tweedy, you know that his music ranges from mellow to slightly harder indie rock.  The singer himself barely moves onstage.  But the man in front of us was dancing as hardcore as Peter Garrett of Midnight Oil, except holding an imaginary guitar instead of allowing his arms to flail in every direction. He kept it up for hours — his air guitar playing — and I was absolutely smitten with him.  I think I watched him just as much as I watched the band.

I was going to leave that as my perfect moment — watching air guitar man — but instead, I’ll choose participating in a several thousand person sing along for Jesus, Etc (one hour and three minutes into the NPR recording — can you hear my voice?).  It’s why every once in a while you need to leave your living room and listen to music in a crowd — to be part of thousands of people, all singing the same words, Josh’s hand on my hip, swaying.

Read other perfect moments right here.

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On Saturday, I drove down to Richmond because Lori was at a conference down there.  There are very few people I would brave I-95 South to see. (At one point, I had an 18-wheeler inches from my bumper and two 18-wheelers on either side of me.  It’s a good way to crap your pants.)  We got to have a night of hipster sushi and drinks and watching Lori try to get in lotus position and good cries and crashing on the hotel sofa at 1 am.  It was also quite perfect, but it was closer to a perfect 18 hours vs. a perfect moment.

It is strange to think that I would not know Lori if I hadn’t started writing this blog and she hadn’t started writing hers.  We live on opposite sides of the US; there is little chance that our paths would have crossed in another way.  My life is so much richer since meeting her, and it sometimes gives me pause to think what if I hadn’t started writing one night?  What if she had started her blog and ditched it after a few days?  There would be a Lori-sized hole in my life and I wouldn’t even know it.  Which makes me wonder what other holes exist — people I could have met but by making choices, our paths led away from one another.

And, of course, that goes for all of you.  You make my life so much richer.  I could not imagine living with an ALI blogosphere hole, even if I wasn’t cognizant that it was there.

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While I was away, the ChickieNob informed Josh that she has thought about it further, and she would be happy with a red-eared slider turtle if we can’t get her a clam.

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I am writing this post on my new computer.  I think that people thought I was exaggerating when I told them about my computer, but my father got to experience my old computer in all its glory last night while we were at the concert, and when I got home, he informed me that he was stunned by what a piece of shit my old computer was.  He was incredulous with how he had to restart it (it goes beyond just hitting the restart button on the computer).  What he doesn’t know is that he has barely scratched the surface of life with my old laptop.

It took between 35 and 45 minutes to get it working every morning.  After several restarts, it would finally creak to life.  It took about five minutes to open each program.  Sometimes, I’d get all the programs open and it would freeze, necessitating that I restart it again.  In order to complete two hours of work, I usually needed to restarted it at least two more times.  I wasted at least an hour of work time every day just dealing with the logistics of having the computer on, and tasks themselves took a long time to complete.  I’d have to ask myself whether it was worth answering emails, if I had the emotional wherewithal to deal with the frustration of dealing with the machine.  And beyond that, it only worked if you were using it continuously.  If you paused for longer than two minutes, let’s say, to answer the telephone, it would freeze.  Which meant that I couldn’t answer the phone or pee or cook dinner, OR it meant doing those things and dealing with another few restarts.

And yet I didn’t think I deserved anything else.  It could work, therefore, I felt like I should just deal with the lost work time and frustration.  I felt guilty spending money on this.

This is my first morning using it, and I am already finished checking email and writing a blog post during a time period when I would have still been going through my initial morning restarts in order to get the laptop up and functioning.  I’m going to do an hour of work and actually do an hour of work, vs. have an hour of work to do, but have it take two or more hours to do so.  It is strangely indulgent, a new computer.  Necessary but unnecessary at the same time.

But I love it.

The ChickieNob prepared a thesis statement complete with multiple supports as to why I should buy her a pet clam.  I have no idea how one goes about buying a pet clam, but she argued so passionately that I told her that if I could tape her and post it, I would look into the world of bivalve pets.

[audio:https://www.stirrup-queens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Why-I-Want-a-Clam-mp3.mp3]

Beyond going to the beach and finding one yourself, how does a person buy a live clam?  Um… and how does one know if it’s alive or dead?

By the way, about 8 minutes after this was recorded, I heard the girl muttering in the hallway to herself, “I should have asked for an oyster.”

I half-watched the roast of Charlie Sheen on Monday night.  I have to admit that I’ve never totally gotten the point of a roast.  Why is it amusing to bring someone on stage and say horrible things to their face?  Teasing, fine.  But the Comedy Central roasts are just cruel, starting with Seth MacFarlane’s joke about how he has Charlie Sheen’s obit ready: he just had to change the date and place on Amy Winehouse’s obit and he’s ready to go.

Which sort of begs the question: if all these comics are saying you need help, that you’re sick and grappling with addiction, isn’t it beyond cruel to bring you onstage and mock you publicly?  Say mean things to Larry the Cable Guy or Bob Saget if they volunteer for this.  But isn’t it irresponsible to allow Charlie Sheen to be the roastee, even if he agrees to it?

I don’t know… have I lost my sense of humour, or did the roast seem overtly cruel?

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We’re in the middle of IComLeavWe, so hello to all IComLeavWe’ers!

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Only a handful of people answered whether they wanted to do The Grateful Said this year.  Does that mean there is pretty much no interest?  Vote below or forever hold your peace…  I think we’d need 50 or so participants to make it worthwhile, and this would be in addition to the yearly Creme de la Creme.

Speaking of the Creme de la Creme, the prizes so far are fantastic.  Thank you so much for running with this, and a huge thank you to everyone who has offered up something.  We already have 12 prizes, so this is going to be fun.  You have until October 19th to submit a prize, and I’m going to approach a few places to see if they want to donate something to the mix as well.

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If I send an email from my mobile device, the signature reads: “sent from a device that makes me type a lot of things wrong” or something to that effect.  It’s one of those excuse-the-typo messages.

On Wednesday, the Wolvog sent me an email about the website we’re building together.  Last year, he was home alone with me one day while his sister was at school.  I asked him what he wanted to do and he said, “make my own website!” So I bought him a url and he has been tinkering with it.  He ran into a roadblock with something he wanted to do on the front page so I did some research and sent him an email  from my mobile device about what I found.  This was his email back asking when we could try out the software I found online.

I noticed that the signature on his email now read: “sent from a computer that makes me type a lot of things wrong.”  I burst out laughing and called him into the kitchen to ask about it.  And he just beamed: “I noticed it on your email and I thought, ‘well, that is a great excuse and people will now understand that computers and spelling can be confusing!'”

Well played, Wolvog, well played.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Finding the Place” (Bloodsigns)
• “Support” (By the Brooke)
• “Hi, My Name is Josh and I Have a Dead Baby Too” (Jack at Random)
• “A Possible Explanation” (Trying Not to Scream)
• “Seen This Look Before” (Chron.com)
• “A Little Relief” (Secondhand Happiness)
• “Pulled Together by Kindness” (Not a Fertile Myrtle)
• “The Gratuitous Post about My Cats” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “Life Lessons Peyton Taught Me” (Once a Mother)
• “Accepting that This is the Path We’re On” (Invisible Mother)
• “Just Be Enough: Someone” (Kir’s Corner)
• “The Speech” (From IF to When)
• “Over Before it Even Began” (In Due Time)
• “9/11: Remember & Carrying On” (Four of a Kind)
• “Nine Eleven, Ed McCaffrey, Stephen Covey and Me” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “9/11 Remembered Through the Lens” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “How Strangers Change Your Life for the Better” (Too Many Fish to Fry)

Still Kicking Your Collective Ass: I am so proud of you!  17 posts!  Let’s keep it up: there is a whole world of blog posts out there worthy of a little extra attention.  This week, the dates are things written between September 16th and the 23rd.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Mommy Odyssey has a post about being kicked off of emotional auto-pilot by all the loss in her life.  It’s a tiny benefit she can find in what she has struggled through in terms of infertility and pregnancy loss.  I love this sentiment: “All I know is that I’m finally building myself back up, piece by piece. I am no longer trying to put a roof on a building with no foundation. I now realize that first you need to pour the cement.”  It’s a gorgeous post about learning to feel, about inviting life close.

Embracing the Rain has a post about being lapped about a threesome at work who all got pregnant together the first time and now are all pregnant together again.  She writes, “While I am genuinely happy for them, I am also finding it to be a very difficult reality check for me.   I wish that I was in their position, but the reality is I’m no closer to having even one living child now than I was 2.5 years ago.”  It’s a quiet post that ends with tears.

Notes from the Ninth Circle has a fantastic, tiny post about what she isn’t going to do on Facebook.  Seriously, it defies description — you just need to read it.

Lastly, A Half Baked Life has a post about feeling like her life is not her own; it’s one that she has borrowed from someplace else.  I get this feeling often, so I was glad to read someone else saying it too.  This is the paragraph that made me gasp: “On the train back from New York, N. was sleeping on my chest, and I found myself looking down at her, almost afraid to breathe, afraid that somehow this moment would evaporate, and life would be ‘same as it ever was’.”  Isn’t that gorgeous?

The roundup to the Roundup: I didn’t find the Charlie Sheen roast funny, but I also fear I’m losing my sense of humour.  Hi, IComLeavWe’ers.  Vote for the Grateful Said, and an update about the upcoming Creme de la Creme.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 16th and September 23rd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

I read the recent article in the New York Times about how small towns are being torn apart by anonymous bulletin board websites that allow people to essentially post the town gossip (the more inflammatory the better!).  Think so-and-so is having an affair on his wife?  Post it online — without your name attached, of course — and see if anyone can corroborate your thoughts.  Think so-and-so is a dick?  Post it online — anonymously please! — and see if anyone else agrees.  And beyond that, make sure that you answer a person’s earnest question as nastily as possible so she is left wondering who the hell her neighbours are.

I feel for these small towns, especially ones where the population is settled rather than fluid, and people are so distrustful and hurt by their neighbours — not even certain which ones to be upset with since the board is anonymous — that their impulse is to move.  To uproot their life and take it elsewhere.

But I have to disagree somewhat with the author: this phenomenon isn’t unique to small towns.  While people may believe that just because you live in a large city that you can absorb slams to your reputation better, the reality is that most people take large entities and make them smaller, creating tiny niches.  In the city, we exist in a tiny bubble within a larger circle.  I don’t interact with many people outside my tiny bubble, and everyone new that I meet turns out to be strangely interconnected.

Therefore, when people anonymously post horrific things about people I know on our local anonymous posting bulletin board, the infamous DC Urban Moms, it affects them.  When people allow discussions to dissolve into a flame war, it affects people in their face-to-face world, especially if they suspect the author of the anonymous comment.  City people may be able to find a different bubble in the larger circle, but it means sometimes switching jobs, apartments, churches, and where they go grocery shopping in order to do so.

I started out thinking DC Urban Moms was a lifesaver.  I posted about being unable to breastfeed and WhyMommy along with others stepped forward with formula coupons.  People weighed in with their thoughts about local pediatricians.  I found answers to a lot of “where can you find…” type questions.  Drama happened, but I could tune out the flame wars by skipping over postings by certain people, knowing that they were the ones who tried to foment others on the list.

And then DC Urban Moms started their anonymous forums and I had to stop reading.  There were passionate fights on the listserv, but people had to stand behind their words which reined them in.  Amongst the real advice you can still find on DC Urban Moms, you now need to wade through discussions such as “wake up fat people” and “obnoxious things being said in DC schools.”  I have only been back on when a friend writes me and says, “holy shit, look at what someone wrote about me online!”

The Topix site mentioned in the New York Times and DC Urban Moms step over the line from a “fight site” to a cruelty zone, where people attempt to destroy each other’s reputations and livelihoods.  School teachers are bashed, neighbours are torn new assholes, and even children aren’t safe from people’s acid treatment.  People are told from complete strangers that they’re horrific parents, skanks, and selfish.  You really don’t want to go on there and see what is being written about infertile men and women. (To be fair, the horrible comments are scattered amongst some wonderful support as well.  But frankly, I can’t stay for the support when it comes with a big helping of “you obvious don’t deserve to be a parent and that’s why you can’t get pregnant” type commentary.)  And all of it is done anonymously.

It makes you wonder who these anonymous posters are.  Are they shopping at the very same P Street Whole Foods?  Are they at the next table at ACKC?  They could be a fellow shul-goer, they could be my gynecologist, they could be a friend of a friend, floating around the same little city bubble.

I left the newsletter and site — and I’d encourage all the townspeople of Mountain Grove to do the same — because I didn’t want to take part, even as just a reader.  I don’t think enough good can come from anonymous sites nor do I think that questions that need an anonymous presentation are always best suited for an online site.  I understand why people legitimately want to be anonymous to ask their question.  I understand that some questions are embarrassing in nature or people worry about information getting back to the wrong person.  But the reality is that the anonymous function is rarely used to protect the question asker from damage in their work or social world that could come from their question.  It is more often used to hurl insults.

As that article admits:

Jeff Steele, the founder of DCUM, says there aren’t many topics on the site that can’t turn into an argument. Compared to the kinder, more utilitarian parenting newsletter he and his wife also run, he says, the message board is like the Wild West.

If he knows that’s the case, I have to ask why allow anonymous posting?  Why not make people stand behind the statements they make and tame the Wild West?  Force people to rethink whether or not a discussion needs to begin online.

In fact, Steele admits in a blog post that users themselves have requested that people stand by their words by logging in:

So, to those of you who wonder whether DCUM is likely to change with Maria’s new role, here is your answer. Especially, to those who suggest — over and over again — that we require users to login, the chance of that is close to nil.

If people are asking “over and over again,” why not give it to them?  The answer — I would guess — is that DC Urban Moms would get many fewer page views if people played nicely.  Though I assume that if asked, Steele would trot out a socially-respectable answer such as the commonly used cry of free speech.

Claiming free speech in and of itself makes for a weak argument.  Free speech is a constitutional right, but it is always tempered with limitations, stating that people cannot commit libel or slander, incite violence, scream out obscenities.  Free speech is a responsibility — not something to be abused for amusement or to attract page views.  As human beings who require a certain level of decency in order to function as a society, we need some limits or guidelines on that free speech.

Limits which are sorely lacking on online anonymous posting forums.

I think there are plenty of good reasons for anonymous posting, and for me, it’s the reason behind why you are not attaching your name that makes it permissible or not.  I’m not sure how we argue the good of anonymous posting when it’s used solely to call someone else a bitch.

I feel for the small towns mentioned in the New York Times article, but I also feel for those of us in larger cities who also have to contend with vitriol on the Web.  It’s a short life.  I’m never sure why some people feel the need to make things uglier than they need to be.

Um, this post on digital hoarding resonated with me in the sense that it made me examine my own digital tendencies.  Reading about how many unread messages were in the author’s inbox made me queasy.  Reading about how many messages were being kept in her inbox at all made my heart start pounding with anxiety.  Reading about how many pictures and videos she had brought my pulse back to a normal level.  But then she talked about email again and my breath started coming out in short gasps while I involuntarily barked, drooled, and then fell on the floor twitching.

I may be exaggerating slightly.

But only slightly.

I run both ends of the spectrum.  My inbox needs to be semi-empty.  It almost never goes under 12 messages because I have 12 emails that I keep in my inbox at all times for quick access.  But it seems that my threshold for emails in the inbox is 30.  Once it goes over 30, it starts making me anxious.  When it goes over 40, I start dropping work I need to do in order to carve out time to address the 40 emails that need answering.  The only messages in my inbox are messages that need to be dealt with in some way.  Once I have emailed someone back, the email is filed under one of my 250+ labels (I am considering consolidating some of those labels).

On the other end of the spectrum is my digital hoarding of pictures and video.  My mantra seems to be: “you never know when you might want to see this again.”  Things I KNOW I will never want to see again still get filed.  I have an incredible amount of images as well as video that I carry with me daily via mobile devices.  I like having it with me, even on days when I do not turn on said mobile device.  I refer to my iPod as my security blanket — it makes me feel better just to have these pictures and videos with me, even if I don’t use it.

That said, I am terrible at checking voice messages.  On my home phone, I’ll listen at the end of the day, though I’ve also been known to suddenly remember that I need to check the machine only to discover that the messages on it are three days old.  I never check my cell phone voice mail.  When I say “never,” I don’t mean that I check it once a week or so.  I mean that I never check it, therefore, it is currently full and people apparently cannot leave any more messages.  I was kindly told this in an email by my husband.

See, emails I deal with immediately.  Voice mails, not so much.

I don’t have text on the phone, I don’t listen to voice mails, and I make this perfectly clear to people.  Can I truly be held responsible for other people’s frustrations that I won’t use their favoured form of communication?  I clean out my freakin’ email inbox like I’m Bree Van de Kamp with a bottle of Lysol.  So what if the rest of my digital world is a mess?

Stewart writes in the post:

The thing is, we live in a consumer culture. It’s all about accumulating things: Clothes, shoes, snapshots, friends, followers, likes. We’ve created a world of have and have-nots, and convinced ourselves that it’s always better to have.

Is that it?  Is that why it’s so difficult to hit delete on an email we think we might want to read again one day?  So difficult to cull our friend list on Facebook, so difficult to drop people from our Twitter feed once they’re added?

Plus, the digital world isn’t the same as physical objects in your house.  You can digitally hoard and no one knows it unless they look at your phone or email account.  My iPod feels like the junk drawer in the house — it’s full to bursting, but no one knows simply by looking at the kitchen.

For me, my digital life mirrors my offline life: I have a tendency to hold onto physical objects (you do not want to see our storage room) both for sentimental and “what if we ever need it” reasons.  But I also am hyper-organized, with folders and colour-coded filing systems and to-lists galore.  I like to be organized.  I like to have the only things in front of me things I need to deal with.  Junk mail is trashed immediately.  Other mail is dealt with as soon as possible so it doesn’t pile up.  Permission slips are signed and returned on the first day.

And yet there are a crapload of DVDs and photographs around this house.

Are you a digital hoarder?  And does your online life mirror your offline life?