Lucy's Spleen

I know I don't exactly live here anymore, but this emergency in the life of someone dear merits a check-in and so much more.

 

Squid said it best, so let's hear it from her:

Gwendomama is one of my favorite people and bloggers. She is a loud-mouthed, small-business-owning, straight-shooting, food-loving, empathetic woman and dedicated mom. She is a wonderful friend to folks both inside and outside of the computer, to parents who advocate for special needs kids, and especially to parents who -- like her -- have faced the unimaginable in losing a child.

The unimaginable happened to her again. Last month, she became a victim, and to literally add insult to injury, she has found herself in a financial hole. Please, please help us help our hardworking friend gather funds for her and her children's immediate needs: food, rent, utility bills.

We are bloggers. Our superpower is connectivity, and when we use that power for good, we can save and change the world. Please forward, blog, connect, and -- especially -- donate. The campaign will end next Friday, 5/22. No amount is too small, and the sky's the limit. Thank you.

Really. Thank you.

Things Worth Doing

Maggie started this and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. So, without further ado, here are some of the scenes I hope to relive as my life flashes before my eyes:

1. Camping in Southern Utah with friends and the dogs; no one else around for miles.

2. She-crab soup in Charleston, S.C.

3. Sunset on the beach on Hawaii, staring as I hard as I can at the horizon to try to catch the green flash.

4. Dancing as if my life depended on it.

5. Any of various caffeine rituals I have had over the years.

6. Watching the path of moonlight across my bed under the skylight; not being able to sleep because the light was so bright, but not minding because the full moon was so stunning.

7. Racing wagons fast down the steep hill of the sidewalk on our street.

8. That party we threw was a terrific success.

9. Riding bikes to the Saturday morning farmer's market, the breeze in my skirt.

10. Taking a standing-room-only train to Karlsruhe, Germany to sit on the ground outside the town zoo with hundreds of multinational strangers staring at the sky and sporting funny sunglasses. Feeling awed as the clouds parted just in time to reveal the total solar eclipse.

11. Making out with a stranger.

12. Dogs, mountains, me. 

13. Phoning my singingest friend from La Scala opera house.

14. Turning twenty-something (24, maybe?). First/only real birthday party I ever threw myself. Friends and family, little kids and pets and everybody all gathered in my own backyard. They like me, they really like me!

15. When I wake in the morning next to my new forever lover he opens his eyes, sees me, and sighs, "Yay!"

16. Christmastime evenings when the only light in the room comes from the tiny colordy ones on the tree.

17.  Walking Prancing out front door and down the steps of my high school right in the middle of 5th period while the rest of the class was in chemistry to be picked up by my older boyfriend in his car so we could go make out at his apartment.

18. Turning twenty-one in Paris on Bastille Day.

19. Bedecking the Girls' Hideout at the cabin with a literal carpet of moss.

20. Returning to The Hideout the next day to discover that deer had been by in the night to appreciate our decorating scheme- by sleeping in it.

21. My very own puppy!

22. Walking at sunrise over prairie hills; a tiny plane flies low overhead- it's a friend of ours! We can't see him in the tiny yellow plane in the giant outrageous pink-orange sky, but I know he sees us and is waving down hello.

23. Sunday afternoon naps.

24. Paddling across the lake, the water under the canoe is so blue that, peering over the side I can see clearly every fish, every stone in the white sand.

25. Sipping a cocktail in my pajamas on the balcony of my apartment downtown, recalling that as a kid I had a fantasy of what "adulthood" would be like and this is exactly it.

Dear Internet,

It's not you, it's me.  I'm just not feeling it right now. I couldn't really pinpoint when our priorities first diverged, but it seems like we've just been into different things these days.  It's not that I'm breaking up with you, I just think we should cool out for a while. Okay?  Let's take a little break.  It will be good for both of us.

Love always,

Em

Czech it out, I'm a banner-haver now.

I'm exited about it because I never did huv one a' them before. Used to be that I was too tech-tarded to figure out how to make one. Since then a combination of my not having the right image and my just plain laziness has kept me from joining ranks. But a timely trip to Brooklyn presented me with the spleen graffiti which I took as a message from the universe that this was meant to be. I can get a bit of the mystic going on from time to time, you betcha.

Hello you.
I've missed you over the past couple of days.
My but you're looking good to me right now.
Indeed, you're smashing!
I've really been enjoying our time together you know.
I'd like to keep seeing you- to see more of you, even.
I guess what I'm trying to say is
I think we should take it to the next level.
I'm going to try to keep blogging at a
higher rate of production than I was before the BloMe challenge.
I know it's going to be rough sometimes,
but I will do this, knowing that
for Us
it will all be worth it.
That's how much you've grown to mean to me.
So I want to thank you, honey.
Shit yeah.

Probably about 1.73 times each week I sit down here at the computer in my kitchen and start writing a post. Each of those 1.73 times I begin the same way, I write that, "I am sitting at the computer in my kitchen eating [breakfast- usually eggs involved with toast in some manner], drinking coffee with Irish cream (the way I always take it*), and watching the birds at the feeder outside our window." Then I realize I have run out of time and need to get in the car and go pick up children for work so I abandon my post, forget what I was going to write about and never manage to get back to it again to follow through and publish. (Blame the birds, maybe I could concentrate a little harder if they would not persist in being quite so thrilling). This morning I figure I will spare myself the agony of a beginning without end and write only as much as I know that I can in this sitting. Here's my post:

I am sitting at the computer in my kitchen eating french toast (I have a Depression-era farmer's daughter's love of all ways of reviving stale bread), drinking coffee with Irish cream (the way I always take it*), and watching the birds at the feeder outside our window. We have two new species coming by regularly now; I am rapt with amazement.

Well. There you have it.

*For I am my mother's dottir, o!

Good morning. What are you doing? I'm drinking Lady Grey tea and eating Eggs Athwart Toast in the kitchen of our beautiful house while watching birds visit the feeder right outside the window (amateur birding being my new consuming passion with which I am boring everyone I know nearly half to death). The other thing I am doing, with deep and abiding pleasure, is typing here at my computer which (after many woes involving bad service and being in an unincorporated area and much other stupidity) is FINALLY, gladly, set up and running and connected to this new-fangled technology I hear they're calling "Internet." This brings us out of the stone ages and back into the world of modern conveniences  such as Listening to Music and Being in Touch with People. It's very novel and already I find myself wondering, "Whatever did we do before music and people became a part of our lives?* Good question.

This final convenience means all is just about perfect in my world, then. This, and the fact that tonight after work the two of us are hopping on a red-eye because Stan is taking me on my first ever trip to NYC. We're taking a quick weekend to explore the phylogenetic organization** of the top floor of the Natural History museum, eat, wander and spend a little time with a couple of very good friends who we don't see often enough. Most of all I am looking forward to being on vacation with my own loving cup.

Like this (only without the dog and in a major hugeantic urban metropolis rather than remote barren wilderness):

Hwre!

* Before= prior to yesterday

** Stan's current consuming passion with which he is politely NOT boring anyone nearly half to death

Well maybe I'm lamer than everybody else but I just can't seem to make a way to do this NaBloPoMo thing. I simply lack the resources. Our internet situation is not at all squared away at the new house yet, I don't have time to blog at work (except this time which is unequivocally stolen) and I work ALL THE TIME right now and when I'm not working there's this little issue of wanting to have a life, so- what can I say? I'm trying to keep writing, but my new goal (instead of posting every day like clockwork) is to post at least as many times this November as the number of times I don't post, and by times I mean days. If I'm feeling nifty and post twice in one day then each post counts for a day because in this plan days = times and vice versa. Does that make sense? My secondary goal is to go back through the archives some and post a few things I began a long time ago but never completed and published at the time of their actual writing (Grace, Stan and my mother all know I am guilty of doing that very frequently), including what I wrote about voting last week but didn't finish or publish due to the catastrophic laptop crash I mentioned.

Anyway as of now I think I'm seven for seventeen, but hey look- this is counts as one, right? I'm almost winning already!

P.S. Hi, Mary! Good luck with NaNoWriMo!

Candid-acy

My Own Darling Mammy commented that my Lollin' an' a' Musin' pics seem, "a little contrived," inquiring, "couldn't you take some candid shots of yourself?" To which I answer- No! I really can't! I've tried a lot, but I usually do my self-"photography" without a flash and it's really hard to hold the camera still, so I typically try to hold really still myself. Also it is true that I did select some of the pose-ier photos for the post in order to more effectively illustrate the aforementioned, "depth of my lolling, yea the very essence of my musing." Handily, some of the terrific women bloggers I know were snapping pics most candid in nature all day at the WoolfCamplet/te, so I ganked a couple of them from our Flickr photo page.

Here's a shot of Badger sporting her array of post-it tags after the tagging exercise. Isn't she jolly? But look! Over there on your left- it's me! Observe my candid laughing, my scratching frank and forthright!

Here I am liveblogging, concentrating so hard I don't even know the picture is being taken, yet I manage to look posed anyway. Now that's candid!

For something truly aboveboard, here is a picture of me fresh out of the shower, wall-eyed behind my glasses and mid-process in the lightening of my moustache upper lip hairs with an application of Jolen Creme Hair Bleach:

Believe it or not, I actually took this picture with the intention of blogging it as a chunk of preserved truth. Being freshly inspired post-WoolfCamplet/te and jazzed on tech/termi-nology, I wrote Mine Own Darlink Mammy all about blog identity and the way we self-categorize, explaining that I supposed this here online journal would be most aptly described as one'a them "Identity Blogs," even though it felt kind of goofy and confining to refer to myself that way. Then I decided I preferred the term "Memoire Blogger," which is better, but reminded me of a Mormon children's hymn about doing genealogy and I was not that into it when I kept finding myself singing, "I will keep a [BLOG] of Re-mem-ber-ance, I'll write my hi-sto-reee..." And then that brilliant (but alas non-blogging) Mother of Mine went and coined what will live to be only my Favorite Blogging Term Ever, solving my self-categorizing issues and possibly those of all personal blogdom. Now, henceforth and forever, I am, most candidly, an AutobiBlographer!   

Thanks, Mom.

Wut the aitch, Em? Where are you all up at?

Hey- sorry! No posts for now! I've been trying to buckle the fuck down in the Job-Search-Related Activities department and, when not banging my head against that wall I've been: trying to be more fit; embarking on an Alias-watching marathon with  Eazy; and doing lots and lots of reading of blogs and thinking about blogs and talking about blogs to any/the one who will listen (hi Mom! thanks for listening!) since I went to this, which Mary described very aptly here, and which is still being discussed very intelligently here, and has been thoroughly photographically documented here, and (in case you don't want to follow the links) was where I got to get both snugly and intellectual with a bunch of other fabu bloggy folk for some amazing sessions that touched on meaning, intent, style, ethics, expectations and reputations in blogging (I picked up a couple of techie tips, as well). I was privileged to participate with the same insightful women in multiple workshops, which prompted a sense of carrying on a single cohesive discussion addressing the question I found myself asking again and again all weekend, Why are we doing this?

I haven't fully answered this question for myself yet, and I certainly won't be getting to it this week! I have to go home and get the apartment ready for my FIRST VISITOR FROM HOME (HI NINA I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOU TOMORROW!) and then this weekend Eazy and I will be taking a quick trip to SoCal (yeah, they rilly call it that) to connect with his mother, who I'll be meeting for the first time (!). So, I hope to stop by here in between sometime if I can. In the meantime, please enjoy some reading from the new "Hey! I Know Her!" column over there on the right. Enjoy!