Posts from — September 2011

The air is getting cooler, the leaves will soon be crunching underfoot, and it is time to start organizing the sixth Creme de la Creme.  Every year, the list gets longer and longer and I need to start working on it earlier.  I’m not complaining — I’m just stating a fact: it’s a lot of work.  Last year, we had 364 submissions.  This year, I’d like to have over 400.  So things will need to kick off soon — namely, October 20th.

Here’s what you need to know before the list opens.  This post is long, but I sprinkle a lot of good information in here so you’re going to want to read until the end.  Lots of changes afoot — some boring but some, I hope, are a bit fun.

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Because it’s a lot of work, I’m changing one aspect of it this year (beyond opening the list on October 20): the list will only be open for new submissions until January 5th.  In the past, I’ve updated it well into the spring, but the list is just too enormous to do that now.  I need to contain the bulk of the work  to these fall/winter months and then put it to bed.  So the last submissions will be taken on January 5th at 11 pm EST and then the list will close for the year.

Which means, you may want to take the next few weeks to peek through your archives and find which post you want to highlight.

As always, there will be two deadlines: the first will be December 15th.  Any submission that comes in between October 20th and December 15th will be on the Creme de la Creme when it goes up — as always — on New Years Day.  The second deadline will be the hard deadline of January 5th.  Any submission that comes in from December 16th to January 5th will go on the list after its initial posting (in other words, I’ll get it on there some time after January 1st).  Any submission that comes in after January 5th will not be included.

There is plenty of time to get on the list, but I know some people like to know when the list will open so they can submit as soon as the list opens so they’re high up on the list.  Also, I ask as a favour that you spread word about the list between now and December in order to get as many people on there as possible before the list goes up on January 1st.  Tweet it, Facebook it, Stumble it, blog about it, email about it, call your mother about it — help me get word out so no one gets to mid-January and feels left out.

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When the call for submissions goes up on October 20th and the list opens, please take the time to read the full post.  I know it’s long, but I write it for a reason.  It is to make things easier for me and easier for you.  I can’t tell you how many people don’t bother to read the post and it shows when the submission comes in wrong, for instance, a post from 2009 for the 2010 list.  So I’m begging you, if you want the Creme to run smoothly, please read the post.

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The part that I really, really, really need help with is the Blogs that Closed section.  I am looking for the names of blogs that closed in 2011.  This means that they have at least one post in 2011 and then they formally stated that they are going to stop blogging OR they have not had a new post since January 2011.  If you are a former blog writer who closed his/her blog in 2011 OR a blog you read in 2011 closed, please email me the name so I can keep track.

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Speaking of being high up on the list (I was speaking about that in the first point in case your eyes are currently glazing over), I am holding the second slot on the list for the winner of a commenting contest I’m going to hold in the next few weeks.  You know how I love for people to comment everywhere, so in order to encourage people to comment more, I’m going to be offering up the second slot on the list as a prize.  Yes, those higher up on the list have given feedback that they get more hits.  More news coming soon.

I will probably hold a second slot somewhere high on the list for an IComLeavWe’er to grab in a comment raffle.

Just trying to keep it fun.

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Lastly, the Creme de la Creme was created as the anti-award list in response to all of the “best of” voting contests that spring up each winter.  It’s all well and good to honour one person, but I’d much rather everyone have a post honoured — we all do great work.

That said, I think it would be fun to have prizes this year BUT they would not be merit based.  No blog post would be deemed “better” than someone else’s (how do you truly judge something like that?)  Instead, they would be by random chance based on where you are on the list.

Because this is the 6th year, I’d like to honour the 6th, the 36th, and the 216th participant (or something to that effect — I picked the number 6 and then squared and cubed it, but it will all depend on how many prizes we have to work with).  And I’d like the prizes to come… from you.

The prizes should be handmade, based on a specific skill you possess, or something you wish to giveaway (such as a giftcard).  You have etsy shops, you have online stores, you have crafty side projects, you can pull together a fun basket of American candy that would be appealing to someone overseas.  Anyone who would like to submit one of their pieces as a prize will have their online space listed and linked to as a thank you.  So it becomes a give-and-take: you contribute the prize, but in return, you get free publicity right before the holidays so people can support you (by perhaps doing some of their holiday shopping at your online site) OR support your blog.  See, it’s like a big community group-hug.

Anything works, though it obviously needs to be mail-able or transferred electronically:

• Do you do website design?  Offer up a free blog makeover.
• Do you make jewelry?  Offer up a bracelet.
• Great at using photo software?  Offer to touch up someone’s pictures for them or teach them how to use photoshop.
• Do you knit?  Contribute a hat or scarf.
• Do you have a gift card to a business you’re not using?  Someone else might want it.
• Anyone who crafts or creates music or has a technical skill they can pass along — send it all up as a prize.

If you would like to contribute a prize, please write the following information in a comment below:

• What the prize will be
• A link to your online site (or your blog if you don’t have an online site but can make something crafty to serve as a prize or have a skill to pass along)

By doing so, you’re making a commitment to deliver the prize — t0 mail it to the recipient or connect with them over email if you’re passing along a skill.

The prizes will all be randomly assigned based on where you fall on the list.  The first person who has a “lucky spot” on the list will get to choose from all the prizes offered.  Then the second lucky spot will get to pick, so on and so on until the final lucky spot gets the final remaining prize.  If you do not wish to keep your prize, you can pass it along to the next person on the list.  All prize submissions need to come in by October 19th at 11 pm EST to be included.

Got that?  So leave a comment below if you have something to contribute.

Wheeew, and those are the five announcements.  Look for the submission list opening on October 20th.

WAIT!

Jen asks a good question in the comment section below.

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Are people interested in doing the Grateful Said again, the comment equivalent to the Creme de la Creme list?  I loved it and would pull it together again if people are interested.  Let me know in a comment below if you’d participate.  Trying to gauge interest.

I am chalking it up to exhaustion.

At my last guitar lesson, my teacher opened the book to a new page and asked me to sight read the new piece.  A pretty common occurrence with guitar class and one that doesn’t usually phase me.  I don’t think reading sheet music is one of my strengths — I tend to play by ear — but I can certainly do it.  The week before, he had similarly turned the page and asked me to sight read a new piece and I had breezed through it.

But at my last lesson, I just stared at the notes, suddenly unable to read… any of them.  It was like looking at Japanese: you know it’s a language, but you can’t actually discern what it says (unless you are my cousin and read Japanese).  I not only couldn’t tell which was a “G” and which was a “C,” but I suddenly didn’t know any of the string names or which fret created which note on the guitar.

So I started to laugh.  For the duration of this incident, I kept emitting this nervous, embarrassed laugh.  I tried to explain that I literally couldn’t process any of it.  I don’t think he understood what I meant or took me seriously (maybe because I was laughing?) because he gave me a strange look and suggested that I start with the top note (I was playing triads).  But that was the thing — I could identify that the dot on the top was what he meant by “the first note” and knew from placement that it would be found on one of the higher strings, but I couldn’t identify the string or fret, nor was it any better when he said, “play B.”

I struggled for a few minutes with it, thinking that this was a passing brain cloud — a spot of grey in the sky and it would soon float past — but when my thoughts still remained grey and murky, and when my teacher was thoroughly confused by my inexplicable inability to do a task that I have literally performed several dozen times since last winter, he moved into a completely different exercise, one using tablature instead of sheet music.

I went home and told Josh about it who responded with, “that’s strange.”  And that was the end of it.

Until I couldn’t remember what year it was.

I was looking at an expiration date, wondering if it was coming up this November or if it had already passed last November.  I literally didn’t know if it was 2011 or 2012.  I had at least narrowed it down to one of those two years.  Josh gave me the same look that my guitar teacher gave me, one a mixture of disbelief and wonder if this was the set up to a joke.  Except it wasn’t a joke.  I didn’t know the year.

So we went to bed early that night.

At this point, I am chalking up my forgetfulness to lack of sleep.  But it was strange and upsetting, an anxiety-laugh-inducing situation to not be able to recall information that I know that I know.  It was different from forgetting a person’s name or where I put the keys.  Those are moments of forgetfulness that happen to everyone.  We all forget temporary things: where we parked or information we just heard.

It is different to forget something that you know so deeply that it is part of your very being.   I have been reading sheet music since I was five years old.  It is ingrained in my brain by this point in the same way that reading words doesn’t require much of a mental strain.  While time is fleeting, the year is a constant that repeats as a part of the date daily.  It too becomes ingrained a few weeks into each year.  Forgetting the year in January is understandable.  Forgetting it in September is less so.

I was bothered by the movie, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, when I first saw it.  It’s about a couple who pay to have the relationship erased from their brains.  The title comes from an Alexander Pope poem about vestal virgins — they shut out the world and in turn are forgotten by the world.  And they just sit there daily, without experiences tarnishing their memories and weighing them down — their sole focus is to pray.  They have nothing to remember, and therefore, nothing to forget.

Having nothing to remember doesn’t sound at all pleasant to me.  In fact, it sounds like an extremely painful way to live.  I love experiencing things.  Of course, I prefer the good experiences to the bad ones, but that is life — you can’t really pick and choose what you get.  But having is all sounds better to me than having nothing at all.

In that poem, forgetting is presented as preferable to being in emotional pain, but forgetting wouldn’t bring me comfort AT ALL.  In fact, it would probably disturb me more than the bad memory itself. (Of course, this scenario counts on the person being dimly aware that a thought is missing vs. being completely oblivious to the fact that they have forgotten something.)

There are plenty of events or people I’ve encountered in my life that continue to bring me emotional (albeit dulled) pain.  But even in the throes of that pain, I wouldn’t have requested to forget those events or people.  I wouldn’t even forget my drive or goals — even if they’re thwarted by my own ill-functioning ovaries — in order to live in peaceful bliss, unaware that I even want to build my family.  I think — though I can’t know for certain being that I’ve never been in this situation — if I had been to war and had PTSD, I would still find it preferable to suffer than to forget.

Forgetting is one of my biggest fears.

Would you do the procedure, erase bad memories, people you don’t want to remember, or your desires so you could be released from them?  Or is that emotional pain preferable to the idea of forgetting?

The strange coincidence that precedes the story I am about to tell you is important.  As we pulled up to the soccer field, the ChickieNob asked if all the other parents knew about my fear of crickets.  I told her that the ones who know me well already know that I’m a freak, and the ones who do not know me well yet don’t need to know what I freak I am so I’d appreciate her keeping my fear of crickets to herself.

So.

We are watching a soccer game, cheering on the kids, relaxing in the last strains of sunlight.  When I got to the field, I was wearing sunglasses.  Midway through the game, I switched to regular glasses.  By the time we left the field, we were in the gloaming, hurrying through the dim light to our car.

I let the kids into the backseat, congratulating myself for everything going smoothly with the evening.  Then I opened the driver’s door and that is when it happened.

A CRICKET JUMPED INTO MY CAR.

A quarter-sized brown cricket (which looked more like Hummer-sized cricket if you looked at it from the right angle) hopped onto my seat and began jumping around the inside of the car, disappearing from my view.  I internally flipped out, my Plan A being to ditch the car and kids entirely and run home screaming.  Then I realized that if I ran, I would be outside — WITH CRICKETS — so I went with my Plan B, which was to flag down another parent in the parking lot and beg them to rummage through my car until they caught it and killed it.

But in the three minutes since Cricketaggedon began, the lot had cleared out and it had gotten suddenly dark so that I couldn’t really make out if I knew any of the other people.  The only person I recognized at all was a new woman I met that very evening, whose name escaped my mind as I tried to remind myself that Plan A was not a feasible option.  So I did what any deranged, cricket-fearing woman would do.  I called out to her across the parking lot: “Jason’s* Mommy?  Can you come over here and kill a cricket for me?”

Mind you, she has just met me.

And bless her soul, she came over and bit her lip and said she’d have a go at it.  When I opened the door again, the light went on and she could clearly see it against the passenger seat (thank you, black seats).  She smashed it for me and removed it from the car.  And while she may have gotten into her vehicle and explained to her son that some women really are that pathetic and consider ditching a perfectly good car just because it contains a cricket, she — at least — did not laugh at me to my face and reassured me that asking someone to kill a cricket is perfectly normal.

I got in the car after pledging my eternal loyalty and gratitude toward her and then quietly told the ChickieNob, “I just wanted to ensure that everyone knows what I freak I am.”

And to her credit, she only said, “I guess she knows that you’re scared of crickets now.”

Yes, I believe everyone knows.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent.

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I love the open notes to your old toys.  I’m alternating between cracking up and getting teary.

Toy I most regret not owning still: I had the knight set for Playmobil — the OLD knight set — and mine came with one of those elusive pure white horses with a matte finish.  I loved that horse so much that I would wash my hands before touching it because I was so afraid that I’d transfer dirt to it.  Goodbye, dear Playmobil knight set, I loved you so.

What toy do you miss?

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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:

• “Why I Learned to Dance” (Mrs. Spit)
• “That Facebook Thing” (Here We Go Again)
• “The First Year in Our House” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “So What’s a Fertile to Do?” (Yolk)
• “I Never Thought” (The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow)
• “The Unhealthy Truth” (Write Mind, Open Heart)

Still Kicking Your Collective Ass: We did so well two weeks ago with 11.  This week, you could only find six?  There is a whole world of blog posts out there worthy of a little extra attention.

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Infertile Bird has a post about those of us inside the computer.  When things became strained with her face-to-face friends, when no one around her understood, she turned to the Internet and found exactly what she needed: friendship, understanding, support.  She admits: “many of them I know only by their usernames, but their friendship is as real and sustaining to me as any other.”  It’s a beautiful post celebrating friendship.

Dreaming of Quiet Places has a post about hope and whether you’d banish it if you could.  As she says, “Hope gives us reason to get up in the morning, but it is also that Terrible Gray, that not-black-not-white space that won’t allow you to let go of the dream.”  Go join in the conversation happening in the comment section.

Thalia’s Infertility Journey has a tiny, bittersweet post about the grip infertility has on the heart.  It is the vague last line with the “it” undefined — is “it” infertility? hope? longing? — that twists the heart.

Lastly, Uppercase Woman got to meet Tertia from So Close and she has a great post walking down memory lane; the early days of the ALI blogosphere.  It was just fun to read and remember.

The roundup to the Roundup: A cricket pretty much tried to kill me — death by fear.  I love the open notes to toys, and what toy is missing from your life that you wish you could have back?  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 9th and September 16th) 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.

Dear Finger Cuffs:

Now that I am grown up, I have dropped the term “Chinese” from your name simply because I have no idea how it got there and the Google machine is not providing me with the answer.  I am simply calling you Finger Cuffs, even though that term has taken on a slightly different meaning over time.

Every so often, when I start doubting myself or my place in life, I have the tendency to tug and tug and tug.  I intuitively know that this isn’t the way to accomplish anything: I am well aware that my own instinct is to shut out people who are tugging on me too hard.  And yet I do it myself: badgering, checking, obsessing, tugging (and not “tugging” in the other meaning of finger cuff sense.  A completely non-pleasureable tugging which is just me trying to drag life or a relationship around by brute force).

The lesson I learned from you is that if I relax, if I can let things go, people and opportunities usually come to me.  Perhaps they were coming to me all along, but I didn’t notice because I was so busy forcing things.

So, thank you, finger cuffs.  I know that I shredded you at the time and called you “stupid,” but you taught me much more than my Rubix Cube.

Love,
Me

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Dear Chinese Jax:

You also seem to be Chinese in origin, and according to the packaging, your name is spelled with an “x” instead of the “ck” spelling I used in my Ramona Quimby diary.  I am too scared to Google you and find out that the youth of America have also turned you into a dirty sex term.  I’m not even sure what debase act could be named “Chinese Jax,” but I have full faith that those crazy kids have thought up something filthy to tarnish your name.

I used to love to play with you at recess.  I had dozens of jax made out of the tiny circles of plastic, but my favourite was an opaque black and white one that my sister made for me.  Most jax were translucent, but she had gotten a set that were opaque, which made my jax stand out when I pulled out my set at recess.

That made me feel special.

I have a few circles from it in a box in the basement.

But that isn’t the point, Chinese Jax.  The life lesson I learned from you is that everyone wants to be included.  I would bring you to school, fidget with you inside the plastic bag in my pocket.  I brought you because I wanted to be occupied during recess, which was too amorphous and unstructured a time for a girl like me.  I liked to be confined within clear boundaries.  I liked being told what to do in math class and art class and spelling.  I was very good with tasks and not quite so good at navigating unstructured time.

It is easier to do this as a child; to carry a tangible object that will help you define your time, that will give the half hour meaning.  Generally speaking, if you sit down on the ground with your jax, you will either spend the half hour doing an enjoyable activity alone, or you will spend the half hour joined by others who want to engage in this enjoyable activity with you, but at the very least, it is time better spent than lounging against the wall of the school, your stomach in knots as you try to think of a way to not look like a loser while everyone else plays.

It is much harder as an adult to figure out a way to connect with the other free-floating adults around you.  But the life lesson I learned from you, Chinese Jax, is that it is entirely possible and so I try to jump into that unstructured socializing time feet first, imaginary jax in my pocket.

I also marvel that the plural of jax is jax, which is not quite a life lesson but is a great language quirk.

Love,
Me

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Dear Hungry, Hungry Hippos:

I pretty much learned from you that people are greedy and that it is a bitch to clean up marbles once they roll under someone’s bed.

Love,
Me

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Name your favourite childhood toy and what you learned from them.

Words.

We say them without thinking, throwing them out from the bottom of our hearts as if they were gum wrappers wadded up for the garbage can.  We clean out our bodies and minds minute by minute, the debris emerging as letter after letter, forming sentences; soliloquies.

We write them, setting them adrift in the great Internet ocean, tiny wobbling boats that we hope will reach a friendly shore.  We have no idea where they go once we release them.  All we know is that we once owned them and now they are out of sight, affecting the people who swim past them.  All we can do is wait to hear back from a tiny voice in the distance telling us that they heard us.  They understand.

I spent my morning telling a person how her words changed my life.

I can’t think of a better way to spend my writing time.