The calendar has flipped over to October… at least we still have one of those paper, flippable calendars on our wall.  It’s a freebie from a funeral home, which feels a little macabre (remember that time is passing, people!) but their squares are so big and empty.  Anyway, back to the original thought: October.

October is traditionally the kick-off for the annual Creme de la Creme list.  This will be the eighth list in existence.  (You can peruse old lists: such as 2006 or 2007 or 2008 or 2009 or 2010 or 2011, or last year’s, 2012.)  As always, I like to give people a heads up that I’m going to open the list on October 15th because I know there are those who like to get high up on the list.  The list is posted in the order in which the entries are received.  In other words, if you want your post to be the first one everyone reads, make sure you submit it right as the list opens on October 15th.

Submission collection will end again on December 15th.  Which means you have two months to choose a post.

Can I get a show of hands to gauge how many people plan to submit this year?  Want to make sure we have a critical mass before I plow ahead with plans.

In other words, now would be a good time to speak up and say hells yeah to an 8th year.  A simple “yes” or “me” is enough to let me know that you’re planning to submit.  A “reading but not submitting” is enough to let me know that there are additionally those out there who will read/support the list if I put in the work.

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Thank you to all who suggested the friendship pin as a good alternative.  Don’t get me wrong; we’re mastering that rubber band loom since I shelled out the money for it.  But I also dug out my old seed beads and some safety pins.

Want to be my friend?  I’ll trade you…

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And now the blogs…

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

• “On Scars and Healing by Kathy Benson” (Exhale Literary Magazine)
• “The Dining Room Table” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Faith and Fertility Treatments” (Genuine Greavu)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Tales of a Batty Nurse has a post about being a homebody that struck home for me (pun intended).  I could have written this line: “as much as there are places I’d like to see, I’m also very content to spend the majority of my time at home.”  I also just like being at home.  Which is a problem for someone who also likes to travel.  But there is something so nice about being in my own space.  I related to this post a lot.

The Maybe Baby (Babies) has a gorgeous post about a friend who has aged with her over the years, and they shared a “can you believe this really happened” moment bringing together their children.  Perhaps it’s knowing how long in the making this moment took.  Perhaps it was just the happiness the post contained.  It’s knowing that the next generation is finally here to carry on the troublemaking.

Lastly, From IF to When has a post about becoming unstuck.  It’s about that adult tendency to worry about change rather than embracing it.  It’s about the safety in the monotony of everyday life.  She’s pushing herself outside her comfort zone at least once per day.  Safety is in numbers, so if you want to join her in shaking things up, raise your hand in her comment section.

The roundup to the Roundup: Eighth Creme de la Creme is starting soon… right?  Bring back the friendship pin.  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 27th and October 4th) 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.

Let’s get the ChickieNob a rainbow loom.  Every freakin’ kid has one, and they all are wearing enormous quantities of rubber band bracelets made on said loom.  If she doesn’t learn how to make said bracelets, she won’t be able to reciprocate and give her friends bracelets in return.  That will upend the delicate balance in the elementary school universe.  World peace depends on the rainbow loom.

That was the thought that brought Josh and I to a craft store over the weekend to purchase said loom.  We looked at the price tag.  Are they serious?  $17 for a piece of clear plastic with spikes and what amounts to a crochet hook?  Another $4 for each set of rubber bands?  In my day, we had gum wrapper bracelets.  You know what we made them out of?  Trash.  You know how much trash costs?  Nothing.

But just as we were debating the worth of the rainbow loom, a little boy showed up at my elbow and informed me that rainbow looms are so cool and so easy to use.  Why was he telling me this?  I have no clue because never before has a random child walked up to me in a craft store and tried to convince me to make a purchase.  Which means that this child was probably employed by rainbow loom*.

But instead of realizing how odd it was that this beaming, clean-cut blond boy was telling a mother that he doesn’t know to purchase a rainbow loom, I instead chose to focus on the fact that even this random elementary-school aged child could master the loom.  If that boy could do it, my intelligent, creative, fun-loving daughter could certainly churn out dozens of knotted rubber bands.

We brought home said loom and waited a few days to give it to her.  I then slyly dropped into a conversation that I owned a rainbow loom.

“No, you don’t,” the ChickieNob scoffed.

“Yes, I do.”

“Then show it to me.”

The Wolvog followed along to see the outcome of said boasting, and the ChickieNob fell apart with happiness when I reached into my desk and pulled out her very own loom.

“Please, will you teach me how to do it tomorrow after school?”

Sure, sweetie, though the random child at the store could make them all by himself, so I’m sure you’ll be able to grasp the technique within minutes.  And then you’ll blissfully weave rubber bands together while I make dinner.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy.  In fact, I think I’ll make something really complicated with dinner such as homemade pita that requires me to time out each step perfectly.  That’s how much confidence I have in your ability to master this project.

Fast forward to the two girls, kicking back at the kitchen table, sorting the rubber bands into colours.  Just two intelligent ladies: one with a masters degree and the other in a high reading group**.  Two women who should under normal circumstances be able to follow simple directions.  Did I mention that on the other side of the kitchen, I was making pita bread?  As in, I was taking raw ingredients and churning out bread where moments earlier, there was no bread.  So I wasn’t that phased over the 16-steps that created one “easy” bracelet.

We did step one.  All was well.  We moved onto step two.  Again, everything was trucking along.  We got to the part where you have to start looping the bands with the crochet hook and all fell apart.  They would pop off the little plastic spikes.  We would try to slip them back into place.  We’d forget if they were supposed to be above or below the band next to it.  We would rip off all the bands and start over again.

We did this a few times.  We finally decided that the ChickieNob would do the first part, and I would do the second part, since she couldn’t wiggle the bands out without popping off the ones next to it.  I finally got the whole thing off the loom, and the ChickieNob slipped the enormous rubber band bracelet onto her tiny wrist.  So proud of herself that it would break your heart.  Our bread somewhat underbaked since I had to take it out early so I could get back to the freakin’ loom.

Will we get better at it?  I’m sure we will.  I’m sure I’ll be shelling out $4 for bags of colourful rubber bands for the rest of my life.  Or, at least, until this fad dies.

Did I mention, kids, that we used trash to make our friendship bracelets?  Inexpensive trash.  And we got to chew the gum to boot.

* Now upon reflection, the boy’s arm was in a sling.  This was probably an undisclosed rainbow loom injury.  Rainbow loom elbow.

** I will concede that despite the advance degree, I did once forget to pack pants.  So your experience with the loom may vary from mine.

Image: inajeep via Flickr

I read a post last week in HuffPo that the lost time capsule buried on the grounds of the Aspen Institute during the International Design Conference in 1983 had been unearthed, 13 years later than expected.  It had gotten lost in the ground when markers disappeared.  Steve Jobs — who had been at the conference — contributed a mouse from the Lisa computer.

The rest of the listed contents were all things you think of when you think 1983 (sort of): “a Rubik’s Cube, an eight-track recording of The Moody Blues, a June 1983 copy of Vogue magazine and a six-pack of Balantine beer meant for whoever dug up the capsule’s contents.”

The mouse was sort of the remarkable item in the set.

I guess the largest problem with time capsules is that you have no clue what people will be nostalgic about by the time they’re opened.  Things we take advantage of today and largely ignore could become elements that define the era.  For instance, after the zombies come and we’re all living in below-ground caves (in order to avoid the zombies roaming earth’s surface and living in our abandoned houses), we may feel nostalgic about things such as kitchen sponges.  Or paint samples.  Things we used back when we were above ground and had more light and our eyes could discern colour.  And we actually obsessed over the which shade of brown to paint our walls.

Or we could go with the items that clearly define this moment in time: an iPhone, dirt from Ground Zero, a bottle of Viagra.  But the things that have sticking power — such as the Rubik’s Cube — will most likely still be around either in use or in museums.  And the things that don’t have sticking power will become these things we sort of shake our head and laugh at, saying, “I have no clue why we thought that was important.”

I always wanted to plant a time capsule growing up, but I was really impatient AND I didn’t want to bury any cherished items in the ground.  But if I wasn’t going to bury cherished items, there didn’t seem a point.  Instead, every New Year’s Eve from age 8 until college, I copied over the same poem (one I wrote at age 8, so you can imagine…) and the alphabet, so I could see how my handwriting changed each year.  Those papers are somewhat buried at the moment in our storage room, which is sort of like having a huge time capsule in your house if you never deal with that room.  And I never deal with the storage room, hence why it’s like geek hoarders in there.

I guess I am interested in the idea of time capsules but have no desire to bury things that actually mean anything to me in this time period. (What a waste!)  And the reality is that it’s the intangible that means more to me overall.

In the interest of not actually burying anything, I propose a verbal time capsule post to be returned to in a set amount of years down the road.  In this comment section, I’d like to bury the blog posts and the header images and the site titles that mean a lot to you from the last ten years or so of the ALI community’s existence.  All you have to do is list them, though if you could provide a link, it would be even better.  Feel free to put in anything that means a lot to you; that will be something you’ll remember when you look back at the ALI community many years from now.

I’ll kick off the box with these items:

• The old sperm nudging header of A Little Pregnant
• Chez Miscarriage and Getupgrrl (as a whole)
• The very first Creme de la Creme
• Cyclesista
• The post “Returning to the Well” by Lavender Luz

What are you adding?  Since we have infinite space in which to contain them, which whole blogs, posts, headers, memes, ongoing projects, wise words, or videos from the ALI community should go in our virtual time capsule to remember the first ten years?

Writing begets writing.

Put down words on a page or screen every single day, think about future blog posts or storylines while you’re taking a shower, read a lot of other people’s words so your brain can pick up creative ways people string them, and it pretty much follows with few exceptions that the words you want — the ones that will go into your own blog posts or short story or novel or memoir or self-help book — will come to you when you need them.  It’s not that daily writers don’t get writer’s block, but when they do, it is usually tied to not knowing how to move the plot forward or structure the chapter.  Writer’s block like that is akin to staring at the chess board, trying to figure out your best move.  So I’m talking about how daily writing will stave off the sort of writer’s block where you stare at the screen, wanting or needing to write, and not knowing how to get started or get back into a long-standing project.

That’s what I mean by writing begets writing.

I approach writing in the same way breastfeeding women deal with their milk supply while on a business trip: pump and dump. (Well, I imagine since I wasn’t actually able to make breast milk.)  If they don’t pump, their boobs will hurt and their supply will go down.  But they have no place to store the milk or transport it home, so they dump the milk.  That milk is only expressed in order to get to the good breastfeeding later.  While they may have feelings of regret over the waste, they know going in that a pump and dump is what they need to do to get through the trip.

I do pump and dump writing all the time.  This post would have been pump and dump writing except that I ended up posting it.

Even when I don’t have time for it, I sit down for fifteen minutes and just write.  Whatever.  I don’t think about the quality, I don’t pluck at the words.  If I don’t know what I feel like writing, I grab ideas for posts by looking at other blogs or news sites.  And then, for a minimum of 15 minutes, I write (usually a blog post, but sometimes the beginning of a short story).  And then I dump those words.  They served their purpose: to keep the writing fluidity in my mind so I don’t get writer’s block down the road.

Pump and dump.

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How long I can go without writing and then still easily write the next time I sit down at the computer depends on how much momentum I’ve built with blog posts or the book.  I rate my writing mood on a 10-point system.  1 – 4 means I can’t write or it’s very painful to write.  I’m just sitting there, staring at the screen, feeling as if I’m wasting time.  5 – 6 mean that I maybe got a paragraph or two out of a four-hour writing session.  7 is one of those days when I stop and start a lot, but ultimately get a page or two.  An 8 is writing at a decent clip.  9 is a fantastic day when I churn out 10 pages (fine, most of it is dialogue, but it still counts) and I know I’m going to keep most of it.  10 is the best writing day ever.

I’ve never reached a 10.

I try to spend most of my time at an 8.  8 is my goal.  I find that when I push myself to have a 9-sort-of-day, I usually end up stressed out and not actually reaching a 9.  So a 9 comes about unexpectedly.  I aim for a good, solid B when it comes to writing.

If I’m consistently writing at an 8, I can take the weekend off and not stress it, and I’ll continue writing at an 8 on Monday.  If I’m writing below an 8, I need to spend some time with the project every day of the weekend to keep the momentum going.  If I don’t, that level 7 on a Friday becomes a level 5 (or lower!) on a Monday.  I would rather take a half hour on Saturday and Sunday to plug away at the scene than waste much more than an hour on Monday not getting writing work done.  It’s a trade-off.

I’ve been writing my blog for so long that I could probably take off a week without losing momentum.  More than a week without writing a post and I feel a little rusty.  Maybe it takes longer to write the next post than it should.  So I rarely take a week off.  I may not post anything that I write during that week (pump and dump), but I still tap out something in the Notes section of the iPad.

So yes, when people talk about how difficult it is to get momentum going with their blog after taking a break for a bit, I get it.  If I took time off, I could write a post here and there, but I wouldn’t be able to have control over my space, filling it somewhat daily.  I’d be at the mercy of ideas, and ideas don’t necessarily come when you want them to.  So I write daily posts even when I don’t publish daily posts just so I don’t enter that more-difficult-to-write zone.

My advice, if you want to keep a daily blog and are having trouble starting or finishing posts, or you want to write a book but are feeling stuck every time you sit down at the computer: write daily.

Put down the Candy Crush, Facebook, and Twitter and just sit there in front of the screen, even if all you do is stare at the cursor for a half hour.  Regardless of what comes out, when the half hour is done, get up from the computer and let it go.  Don’t stress about what you wrote (or didn’t write) nor feel too good about what you did write.  Good writing one day doesn’t necessarily mean good writing the next, so don’t be too proud of yourself.  And a terrible writing experience one day doesn’t necessarily mean that tomorrow will suck too.  Just treat writing as if it’s a task you must do to keep up supply: pump and dump, or pump and use.  But suck those words out of your brain so that your brain will in turn generate more words for you to use down the road.

That’s really the only way I’ve found to keep writing projects going and not have them become mentally painful down the road.  And during the times when I don’t take my own advice, I pay for it when I sit back down to write again.  Then I have to slog through levels 1 – 7 before I hit 8 again, though I know the only way to reach 8 is to put in that time, stare at the screen, pump and dump my words.

Last week, I was feeling unsure of something; that lack of ease that makes you feel as if you are skating along the bottom of the ocean floor with only a scuba tank to connect you to everything you know; the world of oxygen and light and easy movement unslowed by water.  Recognizable animals moving through a recognizable landscape.  When you’re on your belly, skirting the ocean floor, there is only this vague feeling of coldness coupled with a sensation of not knowing exactly where you are.  Your location is obviously exactly where you are, but really, where are you?  Sentences then get inverted like that, moving from statement into question.  And around the blackness, you have no clue if you’ll encounter a benign school of seahorses or a slithering pile of sea snakes.

I don’t do well here.

I sent a quick email and got back an immediate response: all is okay.

It’s such a simple thing that human beings can do for one another; send a response back and put another person at ease.  It’s amazing how quickly I was transported from the figurative ocean floor back into a familiar landscape where I felt comfortable.  Where I no longer felt as if I was struggling to breathe.

If only the universe could do that for us too.  With so many big and small things in life, I don’t need to know how everything turns out.  I don’t need to know the fine details, the where-when-who-what-why and how.  I just need to know that everything will be okay.

When things are clearly not okay, when life is unlivable in the moment, I just need the universe to throw an arm around my shoulder and say, “no spoilers but I promise, it will all be okay, Melissa.  Around the corner is just seahorses.”

Image: Alex Griffioen via Flickr