Posts from — October 2011

Back in college, I went to see Chinua Achebe speak.  Before he took the stage, a musician came on, his purpose to get the crowd in the mood for the lecture.  A hype man of sorts.  Later that evening, I went to this coffeehouse/book store, and Chinua Achebe was at the next table along with the musician and a few other people.  I told my friend that I wanted that — someone to precede me to events and get the crowd good and ready for me.  I know I don’t actually warrant that sort of entourage, but I’d love to hear what my hype man would say about me to get people in the mood.

I was thinking about Achebe because we went to a parade last week, and we had to sit on the street curb for a good hour before it began.  They had positioned these teenage boys every few yards to entertain the crowd, pump us up, remind us as our asses became numb that it was all for a good reason — because the freakin’ parade was going to start in just 18 minutes and if we got up now to stretch we. might. miss. it.  So we watched these boys and even participated when they attempted to get the entire block of people to do the wave. (Fine, I didn’t actually stand, but I participated from a seated position.)

Which is a long way of saying that the Creme de la Creme of 2011 opens tomorrow morning at 9 am.

There are prizes, there are blurbs, there is laughter and crying and thought-provoking words.  There are posts that will blow your mind and ones that will make you sigh and quite a few that will make you smile and others that will simply feel as if you are sitting at someone’s kitchen table because they are a little slice of someone’s life.

I know the Creme post is often long — okay, I know it is extremely long and your ass will probably be numb by the time you finish sitting and reading it — but like any good hype man, I am here to cheer you along, promise you that slogging through will be worth it.  Please read the post in its entirety before submitting your post because things do change slightly every year and it helps things go smoothly.

And please help spread word tomorrow.  The list is closing early this year, so people who miss out on hearing about it now will miss out on being on the list.

So who is ready to get their Creme on?

Is it just me or does the publish button seem to hold a mysterious power?

There are plenty of posts that I write that never see the light-of-screen (which I guess is the blogging equivalent of never seeing the light-of-day).  But the hugely emotional ones?  The ones I grapple with?  The ones that take me forever to write because I am so invested in the words?  Those only feel complete once I hit the publish button.

Is it because blogging sometimes feels closely related to therapy?

Therapists often just sit there, listening, and honestly, their prompting sometimes just sounds like a polite reminder that they’re listening.  Yes, their questions can guide the conversation and their assessment can bring new light to an old problem, but a vast majority of therapy is simply talking, putting words to a situation, pondering it, crying about it.  It’s more that a person let’s go and talks most honestly with their therapist since they’re unencumbered with worrying about the listener’s feelings.  They’re not censoring themselves to spare the other person.

But in that regard, why isn’t writing in a journal or talking to the wall in your living room just as productive as therapy?  Is it really the questions or the brief assessment at the end of the session?  Or do we only really let go of unhelpful or useless thoughts and feelings when we know that someone else has collected them?

Do we need to know that someone else is sharing the burden of our thoughts?

Back to blogging, where is the line?  Do we just need to know the post is out there to get that release?  Do we need to know that people have read it?  Do we only start feeling like we can let go of those words and not let them have a hold of us once people comment (to either let us know that they heard or to let us know a “me too!”)  Or do we only get the release we feel from therapy when someone starts guiding our process by asking questions or giving advice or telling us how they hear our words?

What do you need to have happen to feel like posting it was worth it?  That posting it needed to happen so you could let go?

Or are you okay with not hitting the publish button?  Can you get the same release by leaving your words in the draft folder?

I was asked recently “how I do it.”  How I write here so frequently, read other blogs so frequently, raise the twins, work pretty much full time, cook meals, volunteer a few hours a week, and bonk my husband, all while wearing a frilly white lap apron and gaily whistling.  Come closer and I’ll tell you how.

I don’t.

I mean, yes, I do write here an awful lot and I do read a lot of other blogs, but I don’t watch television or read as much as I’d like to in exchange.  I raise the twins and parenting them is the one thing I don’t phone in.  I work pretty much full time hours shoved into part time hours, which doesn’t look pretty.  I am usually pretty stretched thin because of that, and sometimes I don’t get to sleep until very late if I’m working up against a deadline.  And by “very late,” I mean after midnight.  I do cook a lot, but I also serve a smorgasbord of Morningstar Farms products every time the twins get a large chunk of homework, which is pretty much three times a week.  I volunteer, and somehow that never seems to fall through the cracks; and I bonk my husband, though I don’t wear a frilly white apron and I am more commonly muttering obscenities under my breath than whistling.

I think we all peek at each other’s lives via blogs or social media accounts and think we know how life must look beyond the computer screen.  Or we even meet each other in the face-to-face world and spend time with one another and think the other person has their shit together.  I may look like I have my shit together on the computer screen or if you meet me face-to-face.  But I don’t have my shit together.  I am often feeling overwhelmed, pulled in too many directions, and missing out on stuff.  I am constantly worried about time.  I sometimes eat Tums for breakfast.  And there are also days when my to-do lists are all humming, and I feel like I have a hold on things.  But most of the time, I don’t.  Even if it appears like I do.

Life in this house isn’t a smooth Disney boat-ride a la It’s a Small World with colourful singing dolls all in their places.

It’s more like an IKEA product, cobbled together with a lot of cursing and missing parts and holding your breath while you say a prayer that the desk isn’t going to collapse the second you set the computer monitor atop it.  And yes, it looks pretty from far away, but you can tell that it’s laminate up close.  And I don’t mind that.  I like IKEA.  I like this messy, cobbled-together life.

Many months ago, I teasingly told Kristin that I was going to serenade her at BlogHer, though in the end, I didn’t schlep a laptop much less a guitar.  But that does not mean that I can’t mortify her AND myself by serenading her from afar.  I told her that I would do this when she least expected it…

So Kristin, pretend that we are standing in the hallway of the lovely Marriott, perhaps by that Golden Gate Bridge made out of Twizzlers, and I am on one knee, holding Bob Jackson.  I am wearing cords, my Superman t-shirt (but with a long sleeve grey t-shirt underneath because it’s cold in here!), and my chucks.  I have somehow carried not only a guitar but an amp down to the lobby.  And there you are — so I start to warble.

[audio:https://www.stirrup-queens.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/good2.mp3]

Forgive me for choosing “Good Riddance” — it was the last song I “mastered.”  I use air quotes liberally there because I think we can all see what I mean by “master” by that performance.  I also apologize for the sound quality — Josh’s computer was acting up. And I was trying not to laugh while I sang.  Just in case you were wondering, I am embarrassed about my singing voice, but I figured that you already heard it before so you can’t actually be shocked by it.  Plus, the beauty of doing this online is that I don’t actually need to see your face, to process the horror spreading over it as you listen.

I’d also like to take this moment to apologize publicly to my teacher for not practicing as much as I should.  I know it must annoy the crap out of you when I show up to the lesson and admit that I still haven’t really mastered the song we’re working on because I haven’t given it my all.  I’m saying I’m sorry, but I need to temper this with an admittance that I’ll probably do it again.  Though I hold the kids to a totally different standard when it comes to practicing for their music lessons and then tell them that I practiced at night while they were in bed.  So I guess I’d also like to apologize to the kids for fibbing because while I do that sometimes, I don’t actually do it all that often.

*******

This is the absolute last call to contribute a prize to the 2011 Creme de la Creme (scroll down to #5 on that post).  No prizes will be accepted after October 19th at 11 pm EST.  For a prize to be included, you need to add it as a comment on that post.  In doing so, you’re making the commitment to come through with that prize.  Have no idea what I’m talking about?  Click over and read that post because the Creme de la Creme list for 2011 opens on October 20th.

*******

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:

• “Goodnight, Steve Jobs: a Hero’s Goodbye” (Stirrup Queens) — thanks, Kathy!
• “Rock Your Moxie” (Aiming Low)
• “The Past I Don’t Speak About Here, and Why” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “The Silent Struggle” (Adventures of Endo in the Arctic)
• “Perspective: a Rant” (For We Are Bound By Symmetry)
• “Introverted” (Here We Go Again)
• “Falling Away” (Everyone Shut Up But Me)
• “People Plan, and G-d Laughs” (Single Infertile Female)

Okay, now my choices this week.

My Pathway to Motherhood has a post about Yom Kippur, jumping between three Yom Kippurs.  I loved meandering through these three different memories, especially since all three had a very different flavour.

I love The Road Less Travelled’s post about going online for the first time 15 years ago.  It is such a great trip down memory lane — punch cards, Intellivision, dot-matrix printers.  I remember the first time I heard about email when I was 16 — I didn’t believe the boy because it sounded too strange to be true (letters?  That could arrive moments later on someone’s computer?  Over telephone lines?).  Sort of crazy to think about today when hundreds of emails come and go from my inbox daily.

Lastly, Better Full Than Empty has a post questioning why she stepped back on the trying-to-conceive path again when she thought she had escaped it.  She explains: “I want another baby, and this renewed insurance is my chance to make that happen. I have tried all my life to live so I will have as few regrets as possible. When I was rethinking my life’s plan, back when we still didn’t want kids, I came to the conclusion that parents don’t regret having children, but that I would most certainly regret NOT having them.”  Yet trying again means putting herself emotionally back in the throes of IVF again.  She finishes the post with a question, one that many could apply to themselves and their own, personal double-edged sword.

The roundup to the Roundup: Embarrassing myself and Kristin in the process.  LAST CALL FOR CREME DE LA CREME PRIZES.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 7th and October 14th) 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.

As organized as I am in many facets of life, my work desk is somewhat of a disaster area — a sea of post-it notes and… more post-it notes and stacks of papers, unused calendars of baby zoo animals (uh, thank you, National Zoo, once again), and invitations.  Buried somewhere on the desk is the computer as well as an unbent paper clip that I often play with while thinking and the ubiquitous penny whistle that I use to annoy everyone in the house.  Next to the desk is a stack of white yaffa blocks that originally came to college with me.  There are haphazardly pushed-in drawers and stacks of books and stacks of book covers (because I don’t like to keep them on the hardback book).  The whole thing is a freakin’ mess.

And it’s the first thing you see when you walk through the front door because the opening to the living room, which is where I have my “office” (I like it in the middle of things so I can be up in everyone’s business in the house… I mean, so I can cook at the same time as working), is down the front hallway.  And my mess is directly positioned in the eye-line of the opening.

My friend and I went to IKEA to buy a new desk.  We had a set of semi-bizarre requirements (which is a whole different story in and of itself) which left us with two options.  One was fine.  One was pure love.

The Jonas is a secretary desk that closes up, locking all of my post-it note piles out of view.  For anyone walking in the house, it looks like I have my shit together.  Pair it with a aspvik file cabinet and you have a brand new home office.  Plus, a file cabinet means that I can engage in my love of colour-coded filing.  Up until this point, important papers were dumped in one of the yaffa block drawers, never to be seen again.  In cleaning up the living room and filling the file cabinet, I found the family tree I created with my grandmother many years ago (it goes back five or six generations), the words I read at her funeral, my book contracts, a short story from grad school with my reading notes included, AND a detention slip that Josh took from a fellow teacher’s desk and filled in for me (as in, I had detention).

We also decided in the same trip to replace the light fixtures in the kitchen.  I have hated our light fixtures for many years, but I’ve never found one better.  But on this trip, my eyes went to a light fixture at the very same moment as my friend pointed to the same light fixture (she knows my tastes well).  I decided immediately to get it, but the icing on the cake is the Swedish name: Fartyg.

We are now referring to all lights as “farty-gees” (as in, “can you turn off the farty-gees if you’re coming upstairs?”), which brings me endless amusement.  Sometimes no one has even said it in hours, but it passes through my mind and I burst out laughing.  Josh commented that my sense-of-humour is like being married to a 10-year-old boy.

Less IKEA-tastic is when one piece broke for the new file cabinet, and I had to drive back to IKEA and spend about two hours trying to get the part.  Which meant that three hours of my day were used up on a broken IKEA piece.  BUT the kicker was that they gave me the wrong replacement part.  So in addition to a more-organized office, I also have a broken drawer that is still waiting for a small piece of plastic.

*******

I once had a boyfriend who commented that I looked tense when I drove because my hands were at 2 o’clock and 10 o’clock on the steering wheel.  He said it in this judgmental tone, one infused with a secondary meaning that I am an uptight bitch OR that I am a terrible driver.  One or the other.  For a long time after he said it, I was self-conscious of it and placed my hands anywhere but 2 and 10.  I would drive one-handed with my fingers curled around the 6 o’clock spot.  Or I’d move them down to an uncomfortable 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock.  Or a completely insane 7 o’clock and 4 o’clock combination.

I still think about this often while I’m driving.

*******

Josh started a new Twitter account, @OldPeopleMag, based on the fact that we are notorious for having People magazines from pre-2008 lying around the house.  Which means that in our world, Brittany and Federline are together forever!  And Bennifer has a real future.  And… er… when we read People magazine, it’s digesting all the news within the frame of knowing how their relationships turned out…  Favourite recent tweets:

If you ask me there’s only one way to describe Jennifer Aniston and John Mayer: A-D-O-R-A-B-L-E! I think Jen hears wedding bells!

NBC announced it will bring it’s sexy, new drama “Playboy Club” to prime time in the fall. It’s the next Mad Men for sure!

Tony Romo and Jessica Simpson look so happy together. A great quarterback and a great entertainer together forever!

Does Bristol Palin have what it takes to win Dancing With the Stars? Will her mom run for President? #dwts

*******

Josh had an inspired parenting moment this past week.  The ChickieNob woke up around 11 pm, disoriented and upset, insisting that Josh wasn’t allowed to go to sleep and needed to check on her every minute.  He had bent down to hug her while she was crying, and she had his neck in a death grip.  We went back and forth with her for about 10 minutes, trying to tease out what was upsetting her, insisting that she needed to sleep, and that it would be unhealthy (and insane) for her father to forgo sleep so he could open her bedroom door and peek in once every 60 seconds.

He asked her to reach into her heart and hand him her worries and promised that he would keep them in his pocket so she didn’t have to have her worries in bed with her at night.  I thought that idea was fantastic, though the ChickieNob touched her chest, touched his hand, and then went back to bawling.

He was standing up to leave the room, and she had reached hysteria proportions, screaming and crying as if he had just announced that he was putting all of her stuffed animals through the shredder, when he took off his white t-shirt and handed it to her.  “Why don’t you sleep with this?”  It was still warm from his body and had his smell.  She stopped crying, curled back up in the bed, and went to sleep clutching it.

It’s what we used to do when we first separated the twins from the same crib.  She couldn’t sleep without her brother and would sob, so we started putting her to sleep with a burp cloth that he had soiled with his smelly special formula vomit and drool.  And we’d give him one of her soiled burp cloths.  And they’d both curl up with the other one’s smell (their heads also only three inches from each other since the cribs were in the same room) and go to sleep.

Sometimes we just need a reminder of the other person with us at all times.

What is your favourite smell memory?  What smell brings you comfort?