This week, the ChickieNob and I finished the final Ramona Quimby book.  I got choked up reading the final pages of Ramona’s World, which came out long after I had finished with the Ramona books.  It felt a little bit like the cat ears Ramona puts on her Qs, a little extra since the series originally ended for me with Ramona Forever.

That morning, before we read the final two chapters of Ramona, we placed three books on the floor. (We originally had Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg in the running too, but we decided to read that with our book club along with the From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler so we could do a author comparison.  So… er… if your kid is in my book club… that’s probably what we’re reading this year… surprise!)

It was time to read Judy Blume.

Sure, we had read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing with the Wolvog and Super Fudge.  But when I say Judy Blume, I’m talking… Judy Blume.  Like read-with-your-mother Judy Blume.

She chose to start with Are You There G-d, It’s Me Margaret.  The Wolvog was getting together with a friend, so we swung by the organic market and bought Vietnamese summer rolls and popcorn.  I told the cashier that we were on our way to read our first Judy Blume.  She leaned over the counter and peered down at the ChickieNob, giving her that “you’re a woman now and will one day need to buy tampons because of it” smile as she invited her into the sorority.  “Aaah, starting with Margaret.  A good choice, a good choice.”

We then settled ourselves at Starbucks.  As the barista made our drinks, I told her that we were right on the cusp of reading Judy Blume.  As in, it was going to happen in her store and it was going to happen in the next ten minutes.  “Oh my G-d!” she shrieked, adding extra whipped cream to the ChickieNob’s chocolate frappuccino.  “Enjoy it, honey.  Those books will teach you everything.”

And then we said goodbye to Ramona after those last two chapters, kissed the cover of that book, and slipped it back into my bag.  “We’ll visit you,” the ChickieNob promised, her eyes already focused on Margaret.

You know how people talk about losing themselves in a good book?  We lost ourselves in that book.  Nine chapters later, we emerged, the ChickieNob finally understanding the chant, “I must I must I must increase my bust.”  (Plus, she got a whole run down of how bra sizing works as well as my first bra story).  We talked about periods and religion and friendships and girl drama and crushes and peer pressure.  We ate an entire bag of popcorn.  Like one of those bags that is meant to last you a few days?  We ate it in one sitting while we read.  Or, more accurately, we tried to eat it, except the ChickieNob was so engrossed in the story that she kept missing her mouth.  So we had to pause to clean up the floor.

I’ll read Then Again, Maybe I Won’t with the Wolvog one day, and Iggie’s House with both of them.  But right now, it’s just me and the girlie, talking about boobs and life.

The ChickieNob is very lucky to be growing up with a lot of Aunties, some actual family and others fictive kin.  Some have daughters, but most of them don’t.  All are women and are willing to have frank conversations with her, answering any questions that pop up.  I like that there is a sorority of women who step in and out of her life, influencing it, cheering her on.  I think it goes a long way to mold the woman I want her to become; the sort who will turn around and do the same for the next generation.

So thank you, to all the women who help shape the ChickieNob (including all of you) and to Judy Blume who kicks off a good conversation.

And your favourite Judy Blume book is…?

(And feel free to suggest a non-Judy Blume book you think the ChickieNob must read in order to understand Life… with a capital L.)

A few years ago, we were coaching the ChickieNob through a social situation, and we suggested that we role play.  First we had to explain what role playing was, and then we told the ChickieNob that I would pretend to be her and she would be the other friend so she could see how the conversation could go.  But she was more mesmerized by this idea of pretending to be someone else for a moment and asked if we could sidetrack.  She told me that she was going to pretend to be Josh, and she started miming him answering emails on a phone.

I snickered until she mimicked me.  She started darting around the kitchen, muttering to herself.  “I am so stressed, so stressed.  Did you empty out your lunch box because I’m washing dishes in a second.  And then I’ll make dinner.  And then I’ll help you with homework.  Crap, I have an article due.  I am so stressed.”

That is sort of not how I hoped I appeared in my daughter’s eyes.

Not that I wanted her to believe that everything was so easy because that just sets up unrealistic expectations for her future.  But who the hell wants to be known by the words, “I am so stressed”?  I wanted to at least appear to be in control.

A friend told me about a book she saw on Galleycat by Katrina Alcorn that is about the concept of Lean In.  It’s sort of the anti-Lean In, which is farther than I’m willing to go since I think Sheryl Sandburg makes a lot of valid points.  We do need to be more assertive within reason.  But Alcorn asks the question whether we’re leaning in so far that we’re falling.  Because that scenario doesn’t really help anyone either.

Sometimes I think we’re just collecting it all: we’re collecting the degrees and jobs and board positions and awards.  We’re collecting the friends and family members and partners and kids.  We’re collecting the vacations and events and parties.  We’re just collecting it, checking it off, recording it.

And that is very different from having it all, from possessing it all, from living it all, from being it all.  From really experiencing and enjoying those experiences, not just getting through them.

I know I’m guilty of it: Of working through the vacation.  Of racing from Point A to Point B to Point C, and thinking ahead to the next place while I’m still in the last one.  Of constantly worrying about the next day while I’m still in the present; or even worse, worrying about the distant future before I truly have to worry about it.

It’s hard to be in the present, to remain in the present.  It’s hard to sit with an accomplishment and say, “that’s enough for now.  I’ll try for something again later after I’ve enjoyed this for a while.”  Perhaps it’s because we don’t know if there will be a later and we’re constantly also reminded to carpe diem.  If you really seize the day and suck all the marrow out of life, taking up every opportunity that comes your way and actively seeking more than that, you’ll be exhausted, you’ll be drained, you’ll be… stressed.

But how can you keep up with the Joneses if you’re not constantly moving?  And not just moving; moving at warp speed so you too can look like a superwoman from the outside.  The answer is to get off the merry-go-round as John Lennon suggested, but not all of us are comfortable with the concept of living our lives at that speed.

I guess somewhere between leaning in and leaning out and falling over is this wish that I could stop collecting and simply appreciate and sit with what I have for longer before I move on to the next big thing.  But I guess I could only do that if I knew for certain that if I waited, if I paused, if I leaned in and leaned out in order to create that balance, that those next big things would still be guaranteed to be down the road for me.

I was reading People magazine cover-to-cover as I always do (how else to stay current on Miley Cyrus’s life?) when I came across a great quote by Cyndi Lauper.

[Can I just pause before telling you her words to talk about how much I wanted to be like Cyndi Lauper when I was little?  I would push one side of my hair over my head and wish I could get that side crop that she had in the 80s.  Plus, I wanted my hair to be orange since that’s my favourite colour.  And I wanted to wear Betsey Johnson dresses.  Oooh, and I wanted to hang out with Boy George.  I don’t know if Cyndi actually ever hung out with Culture Club, but in my imagination, they were best friends who got burritos together and laughed and laughed.]

Cyndi commented that despite all she has already accomplished, she continues to work in order to have her ass covered before she has to depart this earth.  She says,

I always want to try to do something that will live beyond us.  If I’m going to leave something behind, might as well make sure it’s good.

I don’t know why it struck me enough to drag the magazine around with me for several days, moving it from room to room as I thought about it.  I mean, isn’t that all any of us are trying to do?  Make our mark?

And then I wondered how many times I’ve actually truly looked at the quality of all the creations I’m leaving behind.  Start small: this blog.  Not every post is quality.  Some of it is just incoherent ramblings about Candy Crush usually written after playing too much Candy Crush.  And I’m sending that out into the universe; this drivel about an iPhone game.  THAT is going to be what lives on after I’m gone?

Then the books.  They’re not exactly Harper Lee quality.  They’re not making profound statements or changing the fabric of a nation.  Is it good enough to send fun into the universe?  And does fun stick to the ribs long enough to stand in place for me after I’m gone?

Not to get all morbid on you.

[Though Justine and Kathy will vouch that I’m really dialing down the morbidity for you.]

Then the twins.  I’m making them, even though their free will certainly undoes some of my hard work, such as teaching them the best of musical theater.  But I am fairly proud of the work I’m doing there.  They may just be good enough to feel like I left the world better than I found it, though I’m not sure how much credit I can actually take for that fact.  A lot of people have influenced who they’ve become.

There are my words and my actions and my cooking (I really do hope that I’ll be remembered for my chocolate chip cookies; that recipe took so many years to create).  There are the times I’ve paused for another person.  The times I didn’t even realize that I had affected someone’s day.  It works both ways — I’m sure I’ve negatively affected people as much as I’ve positively affected people.  But the subject of this post is the good things we leave behind.

From my point-of-view, I look at all that Cyndi has accomplished and think, “you could rest, you know, if you wanted.”  If she never wrote another song, if she never wrote another score, she would still leave the world with her mark firmly in place.  With something really good left behind.  But it really is in the eye of the beholder.  She still is continuing to create because there is no “done,” no end point to look at and say, “that’s it; the best I can do.”

You just keep working hard, trying to leave something great.

What are you going to leave behind today to mark your spot in this world?

I still remember the first band I found, entirely on my own.  It was the Violent Femmes, and the girl who was too advanced at Hebrew school (didn’t every Hebrew school have a girl who knew just a tad too much for our age?) gave me a cassette tape in 1983.  My parents called it noise.  I loved it.

I also liked their music: Queen and the Beatles and Men at Work.

But I loved my music.  I loved my punk bands.  I loved going to Yesterday and Today and getting 7 inches.  I loved going to live shows and shoving people in the mosh pit.  Ooooh, I just loved my noise, the harder the better.  Though I’ve always held a soft spot for alternative rock bands like the Femmes since they were my first.

I told the Wolvog that I wanted to have him listen to Billy Joel.  We had been in Allentown, and the kids didn’t erupt into “Allentown,” which creeped us out.  This was a huge gap in their musical education.  We had to remedy it.  The Wolvog sort of shrugged when I told him about Billy Joel, and he told me that he had found a different band he liked on Pandora.

“What’s it called?” I asked.

“Blackmill.”

So I went to tell Josh and before we looked it up, Josh said, “watch it be Christian rock.”  Suddenly, it hit me that our kid may not like our taste in music.  I mean, sure he might listen to it and like it enough, but he may find another type of music that he likes more.  More than punk rock.  I started deep breathing when the Internet started spitting back at me song titles such as “Spirit of Life.”  There were YouTube videos showing us nature scenes.

And then we hit play.

And discovered that BLACKMILL WAS DUBSTEP.

It was so much worse than we feared.

What next?  Would he ask us to take him to clubs?  Talk about wobble bass?  Have us call him DJ Wol?  Start wearing big headphones?

Even worse, when we tried to talk about it with our friends the next day, Josh called them “Blackwater” and I corrected him, saying, “he likes the music from Blackhill.”

To which the Wolvog called out, “it’s BlackMILL.”  And then he proceeded to have to correct me on three different occasions when I continued to call the band Blackhill, like an out-of-touch adult.

What was the first band you found separate from your parents?

We actually think it’s pretty cool that he found his own music.

The Wolvog has started his own game of Candy Crush.  Early one morning, he waited until I was half awake and then whispered, “I need help passing a level.”  So I crawled into his bed and coached him, explaining why I was moving each candy.  It took us two tries, but then we passed.  And I climbed back into my bed and went back to sleep.

I have to help him; I know how it feels to struggle with a board.  Oh yes, I know how it feels.

*******

I went on holiday with my siblings and our parents, and we ended up at an arcade one night.  There are two things I rarely do in front of other people: play piano and play pinball.  I don’t really know why; they’re just both things I like to do without an audience.  A few years ago, I picked up the kids from school and took them to an arcade so they could see me rock the pinball machine, but since then, I haven’t played in front of anyone.

But there was a Sopranos pinball machine at the arcade, and in honour of James Gandolfini, I dropped my two quarters into the machine.

And yes, I am bragging: I got over 16 million as my score the first time playing it.  And 5 extra balls during the game.  And yes, I did take a photo of the machine afterward because I am a freakin’ pinball wizard.

There are a few things I’m really proud of: my chocolate chip cookies, my parenting skills, and my pinball wizardry.  I have no clue how I got those crazy flipper fingers.

*******

Amazon chose Measure of Love to feature as one of the books of the month for the entirety of August.  Which is all kinds of cool, and they’re offering it as a $1.99 deal on Kindle.  I’d still love any help in getting word out there about the promotion.  And a massive thank you to everyone who has already Facebooked and tweeted.

*******

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:

• “Leaving” (And Then There Were Two)
• “Coexisting” (MissConception)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Res Cogitatae has a post about an amazing moment when her toddler was able to explain himself to her for the first time.  When he stops wanting to take a path to the playground, it puzzles her until she has a conversation with her son and connects all the pieces.  I love this post because I can still remember my moment like this with the Wolvog when I realized he had just explained himself.  It’s a really magical moment to capture, and she does such a great job of following those complex thoughts to their conclusion for her child.

The Noona Musings has a post about having that need to write and nothing to say.  She states: “Some times I feel like I have nothing interesting to say, but the urge to say it is still there. I try and pick out the things that run through my mind, the things I find interesting and relevant, but it never seems to come out nearly as fascinating as I imagine.”  It’s ultimately a post about feeling good about just being yourself.

Lastly, Lavender Luz has a post about listening to your gut.  It’s an idea she stumbled across while following the lawsuit between the Honest Toddler and the Honest Company.  Her post is about the difference between what you feel and feelings; being nice vs. being kind (I especially loved this distinction).  As someone who has been known to not listen to her gut at times (and then feel anxiety gastrointestinally in the aftermath), this post serves as a good reminder.

The roundup to the Roundup: I brought the Wolvog into the world of Candy Crush.  I have mad pinball skillz.  Measure of Love is on sale (and I’d love your help continuing to get word out).  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 2nd and 9th) 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.