Sassafrass

I'm calling it NoBlownPoMo

For three years, I've participated in NoBloPoMo and I didn't anticipate this year would be any different. To the best of my ability and maybe with an eensy bit of back-blogging, I've spent the last few Novembers posting as many every days as I possibly could. I blogged during the days I filed for divorce and in my early days of blogging, and so I was pretty sure I could muster the energy and inspiration now that I am in a much, much better place.

And I did for a week. Or rather, a work week. Then the weekend arrived and I waited for the late-night panic to set in that I hadn't yet posted. DURING NOBLOPOMO! I waited for the push to put up something -- anything -- after I'd had a few glasses of wine (sorry we all missed out on the brilliance that could have been). And you know what? Nothing came. The only thing that was there was a desire to have a real weekend. A real weekend off. You know, the kind where you magically get a break from working.

So I decided to say screw it to this idea of posting daily and do something a little more manageable for me. I'm going to spend the month posting on the weekdays and practicing logging off on the weekends. Those are definitely equal challenges for me. I guess that means I am still participating, just to a degree. I'm doing this, but with boundaries that don't carry the stress and backpedaling and worries of doing something every damn day. More than belonging to some blogging challenge, I need that. I choose that sigh of relief.

Just in case this thing is being graded, I just wanted you to know that I've officially changed the assignment. I've got gold star stickers to give out to the rest of you and I think I'm going to be fine without sticking one on my screen.

Speeding the pace

Years ago, I participated in what was then the Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. The challenge was to team up with several of my grrrlfriends and walk 60 miles over three days.

Since it was long before the economic dive in this country and because I am fortunate to have many loved ones who care about this cause the way I do and were able to make donations of all amounts, the fundraising was easier than I imagined it would be.

The training was harder. But I treated it like an A-student doing a social studies project. I walked and I walked and I walked. I walked miles and miles to Wrigley Field and back in a thunderstorm. I walked up and down side streets in neighborhood after neighborhood. I walked on treadmills next to the old men in tube socks and slippers who live at the Y. I walked on forest preserve trails and on the sculpture walk to the 'burbs and around and around and around my block, until I was confidently and completely prepared for the event.

It's about time for a new challenge. It's not like I need another thing on my list. But when Foodmomiac asked me to join a team of mom bloggers in training for a relay next summer, I said yes without thinking twice. We won't know for a few weeks if we'll actually get to run in that relay. But if we do, each member of the team will run three legs of four to six miles. It seems like a long time away, but friends, I have a lot of work to do.

The difference between this challenge and all the walking I did years ago is that running scares the hell out of me. I've tried many times to force myself into loving it but have never committed to it long enough to let that feeling grow from the the place where the sheer disdain for it lived. Still, I've had many opportunities to bow out of this commitment already and I am still in. I am still signed up. I am still doing it.

I don't know why, but I have an idea I need something big, powerful and hard to work toward that is not about my job, Lil E, or anything or anyone else. I think I need to prove to myself -- once again -- that I can do this. I've hidden in the safety and serenity of yoga and walking, and that has been necessary and wonderful in slowing myself and my life down to manageable gait. But sSomething is pulling me, step by step and breath by breath, out of that.

The training schedule officially starts December 8th. But after reading this ass-moving brilliance over at All & Sundry and hearing how inspired Foodmomiac is about adding a half-marathon to her own training schedule, I decided to start early.

I won't be fundraising for this event. But I certainly can use your support. If you see me lapping the park near my house, feel free to fall in line with me. If you have words of playlists, advice or your own inspiration to share, please do. If you want to join me in running toward a new and big challenge, I'd love it.

For now, I'm taking this as I am trying to take everything else right now -- one time at a time until it really does feel good and I can honestly say I am just as confident, prepared and anticipatory as I was all those years ago.

Analyze my dreams, please. Leave out any references to my inability to commit and dead dogs from my childhood, but do analyze my dreams.

I am committed to NaBloPoMoing my ass off this month, but I am also working a lot, exhausted and in need of a long shower, a cup of tea and a good night's sleep. So I will leave you with this to ponder, analyze and then make appropriate therapeutic recommendations based on your own experiences, that Dream Analysis for Dummies book on your desk you've been meaning to read since 1997, many conversations you had with your social worker grad student roommate or whatever it is that you personally base your words of wisdom on in situations like these.

Ever since I got this pillow and perhaps since I've been sleeping more, I have been sleeping much deeper. In fact, I've gone back to the crazy dreaming patterns that have ruled my REM through most of my life. Well, except when I am not sleeping enough to get to the place where characters are developed enough to hide out in my room until I wake up (usually rather naked) to throw me a surprise baby shower or the other wackadoodle shit they do in my dreams. 

Over the last week or so, my dreams have amped up and I've woken up to my alarm groggy and still confused.  As much as I hoped my dreaming life would become a complicated web of nonviolent ass kicking with me as the breastplate-wearing, sword-yielding samurai of sassiness and savagery, no such luck. I am lost. So please, help me out.

Why in the name of sleep deprivation did I dream I shoplifted from WalMart? And after I was caught and sitting in the security office waiting for the police to haul me out of that palace of low-prices and big hair wasn't I more upset that I lifted clothes when I was so willing to pay for all the other items in my bag? And why is the only thing I remember going through my mind in the dream -- no, it wasn't to run like hell past the old man security guard or some ethical justification for thievery -- complete confusion wrapped in one more little question, "What in the hell am I doing in WalMart?"

Before you go off on the virtues of stupendously cheaper diapers or Cheetohs or reinforced toe pantyhose, let's move on to the second dream that left me shaking my head.

Why did I dream I was in a cottage at a camp where the Almost Ex and I were splitting up a week with Lil E? And why in that dream did the Almost Ex ask me to hold his cell phone for him and then forget that it was in my pocket, where I found it later and immediately hacked my way in to purely for snooping purposes? And how was he savvy enough in that dream to snap photos of uploaded screen shots of all the posts I've ever written about getting divorced and save them in a mobile file with his attorney's name on it? And why, in the shock and horror of finding this technical wizardry that is laughable to imagine the Almost Ex even thinking of doing in waking life, did I choose not to delete the files? Why did I instead just squint soooooo hard to read those teeny tiny posts on the itsy bitsy cell screen that I woke up with my whole face scrunched up in worried concentration?

OK, go! Get to it! Tear apart those muthahs until you have my pysche nailed down. Please. And don't hold back. I am completely open here to any symbolism or subtext you uncover. In the meantime, I will be settling in for more subconconscious fucked upedness that will keep you busy for a good seven minutes tomorrow morning.

NaBloPoMoNooooooooooooooooooooooo

Let me say this: It has been a hella long week. So long that last week feels like the mid-90s and I'm left with a laundry basket full of Girbauds and a jewelry box full of earrings made out of cascading plastic neon triangles.

Yesterday, when I anticipated feeling the sinking and settling calm of being home (or as much as my parents' house is home to us for this month...or more) from our Thanksgiving road trip to Indiana, I did not. Instead, I put aside the calm I probably really needed by skipping yoga to run errands, cook dinner, unpack suitcases, scrub out gnarly sippy cups and shop for new tall boots. My quiet moment of the day came in ten minutes to quickly post for the day before I was off to the dry cleaner.

I rattled out the most hilarious-yet-poignant of my life (I kid you not), hit publish and then...nothing...nothing...more nothing. I took a breath, hit it again and then...complete lock-up. I couldn't click the bad grrrl closed, I couldn't even power down. Not even a fancy little technological dream move like CTRL+ALT+DELETE would do it. It was a full on battery removal moment and with that, every window disappeared, every halfway-checked site was swept away and of course, my paused and ready to publish post was lost. AH! By the time, the screensaver once again revealed my boy's face smiling innocently up at me like a virtual apology oozing from my laptop, it was time for me to head out again.

Without much effort, I was caught up in laundry and picking up Lil E from Daddy Time and the inevitable time-out frenzy and toysplosion that follow.  The post that now needed to be re-written out of a tangle of thoughts on fast-forward, fell out of my brain. Noooooo! Say it isn't so.

It wasn't until the first sip of a beer in a bar hours and hours later that it occurred to me that my NaBloPoMo streak was stalled. Stalled by a frozen computer, fast-forwarded brain and an energy and attention span that sometimes can't seem to hold one more thing in.

So I'm settling for an A- this November. It's not like me to let that go, but today, on my way to another and needed even more yoga class, I'm going to have to let that skipped post just be.

NaBloPoMo Post #21

...and I still have not figured out how to attach the freaking badge to my blog. Can someone please open up the secret hatch on my cracktop screen and let the graphics fairies in to do their busy work so I can just be done with the little line in my sidebar where the funny badge should be?

And then can you ask them to leave me a kindly-worded letter explaining how the hell a woman with a hard-earned master's degree can be a kindergartner when it comes to this stuff? Seriously, write it up with jumbo crayons like I'm looping bunny ears through each other to make a pretty bow. Then we can all sit in a circle with our hands on our hearts with courtesy smiles and lips sticky with apple juice and say, "Oooh, she IS smart!"

Linkety Dinkety Doo: Holiday hors d'oeuvres

I am sequestering myself today with CDs playing the old-fashioned way (in the laptop) to help myself ease into some last-minute deadlines (and what deadlines aren't?) so I can travel guilt-free tomorrow to Indiana for the holiday. We will be crammed into the car (again) with my parents, my grandmother and a giant bag of snacks and sippy cups and lots more methamphetimines Dramamine and extra large Dunkin' Donuts coffee for the road, but dammit, I will be done with this deadline.

While mama's working, just turn on an hour or four of SuperWhy, dig into a bag of Doritos laced with high fructose corn syrup and orange fucking powder that will never ever come out of that thirty dollar toddler onesie and hush  take a peek at a little of the buzz we at Strollerderby have planted in the blogo this week. And yes, this totally counts as a NaBloPoMo post, albeit lazy. And by lazy I mean, centering on my priorities and whip-crackin' productive, people.

For all you suckahfools flying today.

For all you who courageously hold on to the notion that there are innovations in potty training.

For those of you who take the whole crunchy granola thing just a tad too far.

Linkety Dinkety Doo: Taking care of bidniss

I am taking care of all kinds of business today -- shuttling Lil E to and from co-op, where it seems the swift and icky stomach flu bug has finally dissipated, handling scads of financial headaches and making a plan for myself for the next few weeks. A good friend told me that when life becomes intensely emotional, it is good and healthy and productive to eliminate the feelings from certain aspects of each day, to designate what is just plain business. She also suggested I make a business plan for my life, which feels a bit daunting but is actually a sanctuary to emotional roller coaster of these last months. Numbers on a page and meetings in a calendar are tangible and real and unbiased. That's comforting.

That also means I am working more and reading more. While I hurry off to arrange an interview while I eat lunch and check in on a few blogs I've greatly missed, there's a bit of business for you to sink into with me. Join me over at Strollerderby, where we're in the conference room eating microwave popcorn, drinking Shasta and talking about:

The Seven REAL Signs Your Kid Loves You (and this isn't any warm-fuzzy flower-from-the-garden bullhockey, my friends).

Mario Lopez's ass. Yes, he is an ass, but also, we're ruminating on his booty. Oh, and Britney. Because all celeb stories eventually circle 'round to Brit Brit.

George Clooney's commitment. Not an ass, but again, having one.

The at-home dad convention. Also known as another attempt for the papas to be as BlogHer as possible. I'm kidding. I'm sure it is a lovely affair with spectacular crudites.

The kids of Hollywood power players. Also known as what happens when the characters from The OC grow up and have babies. Ewwww.

On births and deaths, pumpkins and puke

It was a beautiful October in Chicago, with lots of that low sun that makes people's eyes and hair shine through shadows and enough chill that the leaves cover nearly all of the sidewalk in front of our apartment. It has been a cold and difficult winter within my marriage and so I've needed all of the amazement of the external world.  And now, here we are in November.

It is Dia de los Muertes, Day of the Dead, when people are invited to mourn and call upon the spirits of the loved ones they've lost. We buried Bruce's uncle and our family dog this year, and yet, the deepest loss is embodied in a relationship rather than tucked into the calm safety of the ground. The thing is, Day of the Dead is also a celebration. It is a renewal and communion, it is an honoring of the end of one part of life and the continuation of another. Maybe it is most important in times like these to mourn and hope simultaneously. That's what I am doing.

It is also the beginning of NaBloPoMo and I am ready for the challenge to post here everyday. I am looking forward to seeing where that commitment leads me.

And it is the end of a long and happy Halloween celebration with Lil E.  That end abruptly arrived at 3:30 am when the nasty little stomach bug that invaded his co-op spewed all over both of us for two hours straight. But before that, there was this hyped anticipation and glorious trick-or-treating and delight in a full pumpkin bucket of candy that had me smiling all day long.  Hopefully, we can set aside the barfing boy images and hold on to some of these of Lil E and his buddy Sammy going door to door, screaming happily, "TRICK OR TREAT!" with plenty of pleases and thank yous to match the fun-sized candies and spooky decorations. They are a great pair. And their connection is only more poignant because today we celebrate Sammy's birthday on this, Day of the Dead, time of birth.

[Photo Credits: Jessica Ashley]