The Good Die Young

There are so many things that suck about getting divorced that it's hard to start a post with "One of the worst things about getting divorced is..." Still, some things qualify as really bad. Like when you like your ex's friends or family, and you suddenly don't see or talk to them anymore. It's not like you stop caring about them. You do, but you can't just call somebody up and be all, "hey, remember when we used to be related? Fun!"

My former brother-in-law died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. He was 50 years old and leaves behind a wife and two young children, along with his mother and three siblings, including my ex-husband. I am finding it hard to put into words how sad this makes me feel.

I hadn't spoken to him in about four years, around the time that my marriage was disintegrating. I met F and his wife when I was 23 and they were in their late thirties. At the time, I thought I was so old and mature. Now I realize that I didn't know jack shit, but the family was never condescending and they welcomed me and hung around with my just-graduated-from-college friends and invited me to lots of things at their house. It was my first foray into the world of the suburban family with kids (other than my family of origin) and good practice -- I had fun helping with puppet and magic shows for the kids, hanging out in the backyard barbequing and playing volleyball. F was pretty hilarious and had a wicked sense of humor, and he and my ex played off each other really well. His whole family adored him -- sometimes jealous, sometimes irritated, but they knew he was a good guy. Even though things eventually went to hell, I give F and his wife lots of props for at least trying to understand, or at least ask me questions about how bad things were for me back then. There is a lot more I can say about him, but I know that this information is semi-public and it's not my story to tell -- it just seems unfair to lose someone who battled through so much shit and so many other terrible things throughout the course of his life.

I was there when their father died. I was there when F had a relapse of cancer. I was there when F and his wife adopted their second child. I think the last time I saw him was at his daughter's Communion. I'm not there now, nor would it be appropriate for me to be. But I am thinking of the family and those kids and just wishing, vibing, whatever, HOPING that they have the strength to make it through this.

Because You Care What I Think About Healthcare

So the bill is signed, and Armageddon has not yet arrived. I straddle two very, very different worlds in that I have worked for big, white corporations for over a decade now with lots of big-business types, but I live in The People's Republic of Cambridge and seem to be the centrist one among my hippie, trippy, lefty pinko friends. When that gavel hit, Facebook exploded and depending on what friend was posting, I could assume that either Fidel Castro was going to become the next President or all the world's ills would soon be solved by the new Virgin Mother, Nancy Pelosi.

So I give my friend, Steve, credit for posting the following:

"Raise your hand if you fully understand the supposedly "historic" health care bill and the ramifications it's going to have on our country. Putting Facebook, Twitter, New York Times, Wall Street Journal editorial/opinion pieces aside--and even your own political opinions/agendas--do you truly understand? If I only had a dollar for everyone who could explain the overhaul in 100 words or less."

The posts that followed were actually civil, and wide-ranging. Imagine that. I checked out the various "What Healthcare Reform Means For You" graphics on the New York Times and Washington Post, but I suspect that my feelings about this bill being passed would not be that different even if those graphics told me, "hey, take a good look, whitey, you're going to have to pay a shit ton more taxes now."

Do I want to pay more taxes? No. Do I believe in big government? No. Am I happy about all the back-door deals and strong arming that went on to pass this? No. Do I think that the bill is seriously flawed? Yes.

Still, I am extremely happy that it passed. To me, this is a moral issue more than anything else. How can the richest country in the world justify not taking care of its sick? How can we seriously believe that if you lose your job and get sick that you somehow deserve to bankrupt yourself and your family to get better? It doesn't jive with all those American values that we think are cheesy when used in statements about VALUES but secretly believe strongly in. It doesn't work. You take care of the sick. That's...just what you do. Right?

I could make more arguments about how we'll save money in the long run (preventative care, blah blah), but I really don't give a shit about those arguments. You take care of sick people because it's the right thing to do. It's not socialism.

The church I go to had a lot of good stuff to say about healthcare, and through them I found Faithful Reform. I really liked what their vision statement (bolds are mine). The language is a bit 'o divine merciful blessings on this beautiful godly day' for my tastes, but the message resonated strongly.

Vision ~ Inclusive: Health care is a shared responsibility that is grounded in our common humanity. In the bonds of our human family, we are created to be equal. We are guided by a divine will to treat each person with dignity and to live together as an inclusive community. Affirming our commitment to the common good, we acknowledge our enduring responsibility to care for one another. As we recognize that society is whole only when we care for the most vulnerable among us, we are led to discern the human right to health care and wholeness. Therefore, we are called to act with compassion by sharing our abundant health care resources with everyone.

Vision ~ Affordable: Health care must contribute to the common good by being affordable for individuals, families and society as a whole. We believe that in the sacred act of creation we are endowed with the talents, wisdom and abundant resources necessary to meet the needs of one another, including the health care needs of all. Therefore, in our calling to be faithful stewards, we understand our responsibility to use our health care resources effectively, to administer them efficiently, and to distribute them with equity.

Vision ~ Accessible: All persons should have access to health services that provide necessary care and contribute to wellness. We believe humanity is sacred and that all persons should benefit from those actions which contribute to our health and wholeness. Therefore, we are called to act with justice and love, to ensure that all of us have access to the health care we need in order to live out the fullness of our potential both as individuals and as contributing members of our society. We must work together to identify and overcome all barriers to and disparities in such care.

Vision ~ Accountable: Our health care system must be accountable, offering a quality, equitable and sustainable means of keeping us healthy as individuals and as a community. We believe that as spiritual and sacred vessels, we are responsible for the care of our bodies to the best of our ability and for the care of one another regardless of individual circumstances. Therefore, individuals, families, governments, businesses, and the faith community are called to work in partnership for a system that ensures fully-informed, timely, quality and safe care that treats body, mind and spirit.

I can't raise my hand and say that I know what the bill means for me, but I can say that I'm happy about it, and that whatever price I have to pay, I do think it's worth it.

Thanks Steve for the topic! :-)

I Need A Motherfucking Project

Because otherwise, I am not going to write. Seriously, this is just not going to happen for me if I don't have a deadline, so comments/suggestions/etc are welcome. I did great in writing class because there was a due date, and I do well if I commit to these "one entry a day, week, whatever" things. On my own, though? Not so much. My brain is just one long run on sentence.

What have I been up to?

* First there was the lead up to San Francisco. Long work hours, work drama, wanting to spend any minute left with Zygote and YG.

* And then there was San Francisco. I practically had a stroke leading up to this trip. I couldn't imagine being away from Zygote that long, and I was panicking about her starving to death and/or loathing me when I got back. Or worse, forgetting me. I also over-planned a bit, trying to imagine what it was going to be like dealing with the TSA and a cooler full of breastmilk.

As usual, my imagination was far, far worse than reality. It was fine. The TSA gave me no problems at all. The pumping sucked, but I expected that, and I can now cross "pump at 35,000 feet" off my life's to-do list. Sadly, I will probably never be a member of the mile-high club, but pumping? Aw, yeah. Rock!

I suffered from WILD mood swings the entire time I was gone. I could go from "woo hoo, I can do whatever I want. Let's go get fucked up!" to "I am going to steal your baby and suckle it" in a matter of seconds. And then I got a sinus infection and spent a day in bed. And then some bitch told me that I didn't know how to do my job, and I actually called YG and cried and said "I want to come home" like a kid calling his mom from summer camp. And then one of my work BFFs got some shit news. And then I ate nothing but cookies and bacon and alcohol for four days. And then I got ripped a new asshole by someone super senior. And....EXHAUSTING.

And, oh yeah, and then I took a red eye home, managed to get a cab from the only white, English-speaking cabbie around who also happened to be a talker and Glen Beck hater and 'the world is ending' kind of dude, and at 7:30 a.m. , opened the door to my wide-awake baby, overtired husband, and my parents, sleeping on an air mattress in the living room of our very-small apartment.

* For the past few weeks, I have just been digging out, and getting into near fist fights at Shaws. I'm still training for that half marathon, and the runs are getting longer and more intense, and the rest of my time is spent with Zygote.

So, yeah, I need a motherfucking project.

Happy Birthday, YG!

Happy birthday to the bestest of the best people I have ever known.
San Fran is not quite the same without you.

Animal Planet

This Is What A Relationship Looks Like: Black Ops Edition

Sometimes you end up having conversations about things you really never imagined you would have conversations about. Like, you know, what you would name your own butthole.

To set some context, I bought YG the first two seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for Valentine's Day. We were discussing our favorite episodes, and I mentioned that my all time favorite episode is the one where Dee wants to have a Sex&The City girls night out, and they are all drinking cosmos and Artemis shouts out, "I have a bleached asshole!" Hilarity ensues.

Multiple tangents later, we get to this conversation:

Me: Ha, ha, ha. "I have a bleached asshole!"

YG: Your asshole is named Blanche.
Me: Blanche, the bleached asshole.
[editorial note: I still do not quite get the whole bleached asshole thing. If you don't either, I suggest you resist the urge to
Google Image Search]

Me: What should we call your asshole?

(YG ponders)

YG: Black Ops.

Me: Black Ops?

YG: Yeah, Black Ops. Beyond top secret military missions.

Me: Ok.

YG: In the defense budget, there's a whole line item for Black Ops, but nobody really knows what it is.

Me: Okay, so your asshole is Black Ops.

YG: Get it? Double entendre.

Me: Yeah, got it.

YG: You are not sufficiently laughing.

Me: Funny.

YG: Black Ops IS funny.

Me: I GET YOUR DOUBLE ENTENDRE.

YG: But you are not laughing hard enough.

YG: I turn a deaf ear to you now. Literally.

Me: Now THAT's funny.

The Universe Conspires

Against my blogging. I had this wonderful post in my head last night about how things have been going pretty good here for a while, or not going well, but I am pretty mellow, thus the appearance of things going well. And then Zygote woke me up at 5 this morning, and it was snowing and cold and this fucking conference and business travel and school vacation blows when you're working and blah, blah, blah. Woe is me.

So no long post on how mellow and Simply Abundant I am. Just more lists:

Recently read: Everything Is Illuminated -- Again, about five years after everyone else did, but lovely and heartbreaking and funny.

Reading: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins -- Fast, interesting read. At some points not believable, and at others, grotesquely so. Also, horray, I am not in the most soul sucking profession. It could be worse.

Listening: The Away We Go soundtrack -- I liked the movie. I really like the soundtrack. Such a good hipster. Plus, now I can stop saying that I discovered Alexi Murdoch from a Zach Braff movie.

Watching: LOST. I'm not salivating with excitement, but I do end most episodes thinking 'what the fuck just happened?' and that is why I love me some LOST. Diva recaps so that I don't have to.

Watching: Big Love. Mormons are fucked up, yo. I loved the gay Albee story line, and feminist Margene. Could do without the campaign.

Watched: Julie and Julia. I was meh about the book, but it was the first thing I read post-Zygote, so I found it entertaining. Meryl Streep was fabulous, but I could have done without so much of Julie's twentysomething angst. Even more irritating is the fact that my mother saw this movie, loved it, and told me that the Julie character reminded her SO MUCH of me. Please refute. Thank you.

Enjoying: The Best Life Ever. Have I linked to these folks before? I found them through some link love, and have read them weekly ever since. They make me happy when I am feeling grumptastic like the morning I described above. And then manage to write about being happy in a way that is not all barfy, simple abundance style.

Upcoming: San Francisco. Five nights away from Zygote. I can count on my hands the number of times I have not put her to bed since she's been born. I anticipate this being tough. I also anticipate finding my strength in good food and mixed drinks (aw yeah, pump and dump).

Little Artiste

JD's Dead

J.D. Salinger died last week. I still remember reading Catcher in the Rye for the first time out in Long Island. The copy was my dad's and it's still out there -- maroon covered and yellow paged. I was in middle school, and I thought I had stumbled across me in print. My high school quote was from Catcher, and I just assumed that I was the ONLY ONE that really got Holden. We were both sooooo misunderstood.

And then I found out that every frat turd in the world also thinks he is Holden Caufield, and I had a glimpse of my future corporate life. Sigh.

Erin Shea wrote a really lovely post about Salinger's death that you should go check out. Especially poignant is this bit:

"It’s funny to me now that I requested such a non-conformist book for such conformist reasons. I cut myself a modicum of slack, obviously, since I was all of 12, and when you’re 12 you desperately try to locate that secret space in the world where you’re unconditionally accepted by everyone for being staunchly, fiercely not like any of them at all. That place doesn’t exist, of course, but it takes years, many regrettable decisions concerning your hair, both its length and color, and the sheer exhaustion that comes from trying to fit in before you stop caring as much.

I wanted to read Catcher in the Rye because that’s what someone like the person I thought I wanted to be would read. It’s that simple. And I read it. And it changed everything.

Hyperbole aside, books like these for kids who lean towards awkwardness, like me, are game changers. This is how it happens for us. We know we’re supposed to like what everyone else likes, and for the most part we really do, but something else in the universe is calling us, moving us toward it, moment by moment, until we’re almost there. Books like Catcher land in our laps and it’s the first of many of those moments. Without it, we’re not ready for the next one when it comes along. We needed the first to unlock the rest."

I was so desperate to escape my middle-class suburban life and my perfect classmates and my parents that didn't understand.
And I escaped reading my DAD's old book.

Sometimes Our Coworkers Are Funny (Even Funnier Than Me)

I told my coworker that I was planning to just put "Fuck You" on my email signature at work and out-of-office autoreply. His funnier out-of-office autoreply is as follows:

Thank you for your email.

As there is a 98% chance your question or request is stupid or fucking annoying, please do not expect a reply.
It is also quite likely that I won’t answer your phone call or return your messages.

You can especially fuck yourself raw if your note is:
- Just a “thanks” or “heads up”
- If you are reminding me to buy tickets to your event. Your event SUCKS, and I hate you.
- Has ANYTHING to do with [insert name of trade show that drives us batshit every year].

Don’t bother calling another member of the snot-nosed, uncooperative PR team.
We all hate you.

All media inquiries may go to [insert PR agency name].

I hate you.
[Insert name]

THAT is a thing of beauty.

Good Reads: The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women

I'm keeping with my tradition of reading controversial books about five years people have stopped talking about them. I just finished The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women, and while it's a few years old, I still found it relevant.

Or maybe these perfect mommy/insane momism/superwoman books are appealing to me right now because they meet me where I am. Very much in the middle of trying to make sense out of this whole parenting, career, want-more-now thing.

"The new momism is not about subservience to men. It is about subservience to children. And there's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."

What Was Awesome

* The look at how government has played a role in creating the conundrum that almost all women find themselves in is fascinating. I learned way more than I ever knew about the history of the childcare debates, the original hearings on FMLA and just how shitty the Reagan Administration really was.

* Similarly, the chapter on welfare mothers was also fascinating. Just a few quotes

"Through , conservatives kept the coals of misogyny warm without offending the politically prized 'soccer mom.' And they succeeded. The poor mother no longer represented the failings of American society to take care of its own. She represented the failure of individual women to take their maternal responsibilities as seriously as possible."

"One of the most important trends that we found during this period was that the attacks on the maternal qualifications of welfare mothers increased, over the years, in direct relationship to the increased emphasis on the new momism. There is little doubt that for working mothers, espeically white working mothers, these highly negative portrayals of welfare mothers enhanced our own self-esteem at a time when we, too, were very much under attack...In other words, the stereotype of the lazy, irresponsible, neglectful, and promisicous welfare mother became so important in the 1980s and beyond because however insecure we felt in our identities as 'mothers,' we suddenly (if briefly) felt very confident and virtuous when juxtaposed to this other, bad mother."

* The chapter on marketing to children is chilling, especially when I look back on my own childhood and remember the toys that I begged my parents for. My childhood was when target marketing was really taking off, and it's frightening to see how I, and all of my friends, fell and continue to fall for it.

* Given that I was pregnant not that long ago, the chapter on parenting trends and the commercialization of pregnancy are riddled with underlines. I LOVE that they describe that fuck Dr. Sears as the Dr. Laura for the high-achieving, educated set (fell for that shit too), and describe how different parenting "fads" have changed in just the last decade.

What Was Sort of Meh About It:

* The book is billed as a pop-culture critique of new momism in the media, but I found the chapters on media fairly boring and lackluster. This may have more to do with the time lapse (does anyone even remember thirtysomething?), but the television and advertising critiques weren't in depth and the authors didn't really explore WHY women are so susceptible to these images.

* Very long and dense. I started this on Thanksgiving weekend, and just finished. It's not exactly a page turner.

* The tone is pretty snotty and arrogant. It sounds like me, and not in a good way.

* Like most critique books, the "so what do we do about it" question remains largely unanswered. There's a rah rah ending about confronting the new momism when you see it, but given all the interesting information on how our government plays such a HUGE role in devalueing women and children, I would have liked to see more about how to get involved.

Writing Fridays

I spent most of my morning avoiding writing like the Plague, lingering at the babysitter's house, grocery shopping (a task I normally loathe) and even venturing into someplace named "The Creativity Craft Store." Clear avoidance. But then I broke out my exercise book and spent a few hours writing, and it feels awesome -- with a minor stopover in Guilt land because everybody else at work is so busy.

And then I remembered: I DO NOT GET PAID TO WORK ON FRIDAYS.

Anyway, I loved this:

So we're all floating around in a state of confusion and insecurity, looking for publication as our only real measure of success and validation. And because so few people get published, and even fewer then go on to making any real money, are we all failures? Are none us writers? Are we all wanna-bes?

Tricky question. I have long defined myself as a writer, before I got anything published, before I got an agent, before I made a dime. I have known I was a writer since I was twelve, maybe even before that. And how? Because I didn't want to do anything else but write. All I wanted to do was write, ever, always, and amen.

I guess that we are writers if we write, if we write all the time, if we improve, and if we want to do it more than anything else. I'm not absolutely positive, but I believe that I am a writer. And today, if you are writing and not looking back over your shoulder too often, you can be one, too. -- Caroline Sharp

Well, then.

Grateful

For these mornings.

Stories I Like

Our pastor friend, Dan, told this story in a sermon on Sunday. He was having food and drinks with Peter Gomes, and he asked Gomes what he thought the key message of the Gospel was. Without missing a beat, Gomes said, "you do not have to be as you are."

Regardless of your faith or nonfaith traditions, there's got to be something comforting about not always having to be "as you are," no? That you can be who you were intended to be.

I like this very much this week. I've got a bunch of work piling up and I am trying very hard to not be me, and to spend my time not there very much here with this cool kid I've got.

Plagiocephaly -- Zygote's Flat Head

Supposedly one of the benefits of having a c-section is that your baby ends up with a perfectly round, cherub's head. Well, our little cherub has inherited YG's big noggin and has developed a flat spot. We had her scanned at Children's Hospital this morning for a helmet (I KNOW), and she took it remarkably well.



We pick up her skull & crossbones helmet in two weeks. On the good side, bad parents that we are, I guess we don't have to worry so much about her banging her head now.

In My Language -- David Foster Wallace On Getting By

I'm nearing the end of Lit. I totally forgot that Mary Karr dated David Foster Wallace, and reading the brief part about their relationship made me go digging up that commencement speech he gave -- the one everyone was reminiscing about when he unfortunately died.

About as far away from the language of Simple Abundance as you can get. My favorite parts:

"And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let’s get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what day in day out really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to have a nice day in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way?"

Followed by some more DFW stuff, and then this gem:

"It just depends what you what to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. "

And then he ends with:

"It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime.

And it commences: now. "

Brilliant. Tangent: I also somehow blocked out that DFW wrote most of Infinite Jest when he lived in Syracuse.

By way of contrast, the commencement speaker at my graduation was Robert Fulghum, who gave a totally charming speech, but still, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?

This Is What A Relationship Looks Like: Night time Edition

SG: Can you stop snoring?
YG: You need to stop moving the blankets around. You're letting the cold air in.
SG: I can't sleep. Because of all the snoring.
YG: I'm not snoring.
SG: You are snoring.

(pause)

YG: Will you please stop bumping into me?
SG: I'm not bumping into you.
YG: Shut up, or I'll stick my big dick in you to shut you up.
SG: Are you going to stick in my ear? Because that would keep the snoring out.
YG: Bitch.

End scene.

Choking Down Some Simple Abundance, Hoping Not to Barf It Back Up

I'm going through a lot of old books, trying to find one that might help me with my get-out-of-high-tech-find-something-else-to-do plan. If you read this, I'm assuming you know me and will reassure me that people do not think ill of me for owning the following titles among many of the same ilk: Learned Optimism, Zen and the Art of Making a Living, What Color Is Your Parachute, The Artist's Way at Work. Really.

This doesn't include the small books, those tiny books like Women Who Do Too Much that I guess you're supposed to carry around in your bag and read when you're having a bad day instead of threatening to stab your cab driver. I have an entire drawer of these, either bought during some apparent time of wanting to turn over a new leaf or given to me by well-meaning friends and back in the day, fellow 12 steppers, that thought I was an angry bitch. I read them sometimes.

Digging through the pile, I found Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. You just threw up in your mouth. It was given to me by Abby, this seriously cool woman with a great job and charming husband and nice clothes. She had a lot of cats, but there was nothing about her screaming RUN or Howling Wolf t-shirt! She said it was helpful, and I believed her.

My first reaction, upon reading the first few entries, was that it was quite possibly the gayest shit I have ever read. Tea! Flower sachets! Dream journals! OMFG, SLEEPLESS IN SEATLE! I imagined the Delicious Dish ladies sitting around discussing the book and how their "authentic selves" had baked gingerbread cookies and had cocoa on a snowy winter's day. Barf. Plus, the suggestions were so mundane and almost insulting to women -- everything involved cooking or cleaning (discover the real you by reorganizing the spice rack!), setting the angry feminist radar on high alert. There's even a website that greets you with some breathy music chanting, I shit you not, "the gift of love." Not for me.

Or so I thought.

I picked up the book the other night, and after getting through all the new age hippie crap, I found myself almost liking the central premise: that you have everything you need to be happy, you just need to find it. I believe she says, "discover it," but...ew. Maybe it's the baby. Maybe it's the meds. Or maybe I've tried to think of everything that will help me figure out how to change careers, and I've hit such a wall that a glittery dream notebook and a pink pen seem like plausible ways to do this.

So, I'll be reading one of these meditations (even the word makes me cringe) each morning and attempting to follow through, blogging about my..choke...journey to peace and plenty when I can. Humorous, probably. Enlightening, maybe.

You now have my permission to laugh out loud.

Exit Strategies or Quotable Quotes

"Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive... then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

Howard Thurman

New Year 2010 Procrastination Stream of Consciousness

I have been dying for some uninterrupted time to do some writing for weeks now, but when it comes to me by way of a sleeping baby and a husband watching the Hitler channel (Military Channel, I believe, for those not into weaponry television), I pretty much do everything in my power to dick around and not get down to it. And then I complain about not having enough time for myself. Yep.

And now the baby is crying so I could conveniently forget about this if I really felt like it. I forgot to give her vitamins today, so I could go and do that. Note: I forget vitamins a lot, but only when the administration of the vitamins will get me out of something do vitamins truly become important. Or I could return to my obsessive compulsive project of cataloging and hanging all of her new clothes in appropriately-labeled bins in the closet. See Exhibit A: Attack of the Aunts and Grandmas.



Or I could get another beer. Or go back to reading my book. But it was reading the book that got me to thinking about projects for 2010 and what to do with my writing Fridays, so I might as well just suck it up.

2009 was momentous for a number of reasons (do I really need to tell you about Zygote? The smartest, coolest kid in the world?), but one of the cooler things was having the opportunity to read the right books at just the right time. I don't really understand people that don't read. I'm sure they have their reasons or their other ways of engaging with the world, but is there anything better than reading something and obsessively underlining because 'OMG, THIS IS SO MY LIFE RIGHT NOW'?"

Anyway...I'm reading this book. I was obsessed with Liar's Club when it came out, and read it twice. I liked Cherry well enough, but I LOVE this one. Because of the earlier books, I obviously knew a little about Mary Karr's life, but I literally dropped the book when I read that she had been toiling away in FUCKING TELECOM before the first books of poem was published. Telecom! I am the only person in high tech who dreams of being a writer. Obviously. Eye roll.

This, of course, got the brain spiral going and I wondered why the fuck I didn't take a class with Mary Karr when I was at Syracuse? Why didn't I take a class with Tobias Wolff? Or Junot Diaz? I read (past and present) pretty much everything these people write, and they were right there -- right within my grasp. Shit, I even served these people at Bruegger's, but I never spoke to them and I didn't dare try to register for a creative writing class. At the time, I'm sure I had legitimate reasons for doing so like a double major and a job and whatever else I was "soooo stressed out" about when you live with your friends and drink on the couch watching 90210 every night. But in retrospect, this seems really stupid. Actually, totally fucking retarded. I'm sure I didn't take those classes because I didn't want to actually TRY writing or get critiqued or face the possibility that the pseudo image that I created for myself (misanthropic writer chick with appropriate hairstyle and glasses to match) was way off base. Dumb.

And now we're 12.5 years from college, and I have been toiling away at this bizarre career, dreaming of my other career, but always putting it off. And now I have the time. I have the husband who thinks this is important and has helped us finagle our finances so that I have one day a week to face the page, and I have a bunch of friends encouraging me and the validation of my recent teachers that I'm pretty good and funny for more than my allotted 15 minutes a day. The only thing getting in my way is me.

So I don't have a lot of resolutions for 2010 other than the usual crap about losing weight and saving money and finding a good red lipstick. But I do want to try and stay out of my own way and out of my own head and see where this writing thing takes me. I don't know how I'll define success, but I'm going to try. Trying to control every facet of my life has obviously not worked out well in all areas, so I will attempt to follow all of these cheesy sayings: go with the flow, let go/let God, blah blah blah.

And please dear god, if 2010 isn't my last year in high tech, please let me have an exit strategy.