Now and Then

Sometime between when I turned 30 in February of 2004 and marrying for the second time in August of 2006, I:

• Got my first tattoo at Infinity Tattoo in Portland, Oregon, recommended and accompanied by my friend Lisa*. Why Oregon? Because here in South Carolina, tattooing was still illegal in 2004 (yes, seriously) and I very much felt a need to mark my 30th year in a visible and indelible way. 
• Cut off most of my waist-length hair, dying it varying shades from orange to magenta and firecracker red.
• Changed careers
• Pierced my nose
• Took up a major aquaria hobby (one 5 gallon tank with 2 fish somehow became a 60 gallon show tank)
• Got a second and third tattoo.
• Decided "I'm going to be Witty Geek Shirt Girl!" I would collect funny t-shirts! Friends would think of me as the awkward but endearingly funny gal! They could always count on to turn up wearing an amusing t-shirt! Some of my favorite shirts were a vintage Mr. Yuk, a pretty-much-only-okay-in-South-Carolina tribute to the UofSC COCKS, a Flying Spaghetti Monster logo, and the highly controversial Pirates Are Way Cooler Than Ninjas. 
• Among my favorites, this:

I really do.

I stopped wearing this particular shirt when those mysterious little washing machine holes began to turn up, and a couple years later had to take it away from my husband (who thought it perfectly fine to keep right on wearing a shirt with a big hole where the collar was ripping away in front, in public).

By the end of 2006 I realized that I was not really much of a t-shirts-all-the-time person at all, and most of them went off to live in places like husband's closet or the Goodwill. This morning, halfway through July 2014, I happened across the talk nerdy shirt while packing my yoga bag before work. I allllmost passed it by again, but then paused, thinking of how cutting out the torn crew collar and trimming down most of the sleeve length might turn this old friend into a great top to for yoga class. I did, it did, and I wore it for tonight's power hour class set to the music of Rush! RUSH!! \m/

As for the rest of it, well, by 2009 that huge aquarium was drained and moved to a storage shed, where it still sits as of this writing.** My nostril piercing has closed, but now I have (and totally love) two tragus piercings. My hair is relatively short, but what was once "holy crap red" could now rightly be called "salt & pepper". I sat for a fourth tattoo not long after the third, but since then I have felt exactly zero artistic inspiration for a new one. Next month I'll have been at my "new" career for 9 entire years, and mostly I think I do a good job at it. I am pretty sure I know who I am these days, at age 40. I'm still not much of a crewneck t-shirt person, and tin only aquariums I'm interested in are ones I pay to visit and then get to leave. I am strong(ish), capable(ish), I can do hardcore(ish) yoga (I never saw that coming), and I enjoyed the hell out of yoga class tonight, in my newly trimmed shirt. Because for all the other changes, I do indeed still love it when one talks nerdy.


* Lisa, you're a footnote! Hah! Everybody else who is not Lisa: Are you in Portlandia? Stop! Drop whatever it is you are upcycling or composting! Go directly to the Peculiarium on NW Thurmond, and tell Lisa I sent you! She will induct you into the Insectatarian Club, introduce you to Bigfoot, and even show you an extraterrestrial dissection! Act now! 

** Just wait until an 8 inch long freshwater shark leaps right out of the tank flying directly AT YOUR HEAD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT (I just wanted to go to the bathroom!) and see how much longer you want to keep fish.

About That #LiveLikeRick Tribute Video

James and George created this tribute to Rick Stilwell. James will say that he AND George made it; George will say that he just contributed a few bits but that James did all the work. He said/he said aside, this is a bittersweet video for those of us who knew Rick... It's nice to hear from him again, it's funny, he was funny, and he's just so missed.

The thing for me, though, is that this tribute video is especially important for me: It includes a bit of footage where Rick talked about me (!), suggesting that people should be following me on Twitter. Me! Of all people! I'm just some dweeb, and he was talking about ME! I seriously couldn't believe it. Rick was the coolest of the cool kids, and I was a total nobody... at least, an in-person nobody, and he was talking about me? That's why I'm here talking about him, to tell you not just about this video, but also about that day.

If memory serves, the day Rick recorded the bit about me was a blazing hot day in late August, 2011; it was the day when I finally got to meet Rick in person, on the steps of Cromer's Pnuts during Food Truck Food Court. I heard he would be there, and told The City Girl I wanted to meet THE Columbia social media guru. She made sure to find him; rolled me right up to him in the middle of his lunch, and made a proper IRL introduction (we'd known each other online for ages). That August day in 2011 was a big deal day for me in a lot of ways: It was the first time I beat back the social anxiety enough to attend any of the tweetups; the first time I met most of the "Real Twitterati". I was just standing up the social media department at work for real, and I needed to turn my virtual connections into real ones. Everybody who was anybody knew: RickCaffeinated was the guy you talked to about that in Columbia, SC.

So there I was: Sweaty, self-conscious, scared, nervous, and by the end of the day I had a raging sunburn, too. As it turned out, though, every single person I met was not only super fun and kind, but 100% welcoming and friendly, just as if we'd known each other forever... which, well, we had. Rick was so nice to me that day, answering tons of questions, inviting me to Social Media Club Columbia, and telling me he would happily tell me about how to do what he did, for his going price of a cup of coffee. :)

Anyway. I have been wondering what happened to that clip, and to find that not only did The Misters K and N locate it, but that they chose to include it in this tribute... well, that just means the world to me. In mid January 2013, the day after Rick died, I would go back to Cromer's - which now houses Jamestown Coffee Company - along with lots of the same people who were there that day in 2011. In 2013, we raised our mugs in toast to Rick, shared memories, and said our goodbyes to him.

Please take a minute to watch. Thank you.

My Girl Wants To Potty All The Time*

*With apologies to Eddie Murphy**

Dear Parents,

As we enter the second half of the school year, we find ourselves needing to adress hallway behavior at Northside. The same behavior that is expected in the classrooms is also expected in the hallways. This is necessary to ensure the safety of your child as they travel to their classes. The following is a list of hallway procedures that all Northside students are expected to follow:

• Walk on the right side of the hall (This allows for a smooth flow of traffic on both sides of the hall.)

• Use inside voices (There should be no yelling in the hallways as this is a schoolwide disruption.)

• Keep feet and hands to oneself (This allows your child to travel safely to class without fear of being injured.)

• Go straight to class (This prevents tardies and eliminates "playing" time in the hallway.)

• Use appropriate language (This is an expectation at school at all times.)

In an effort to eliminate this hallway behavior, as well as eliminate "bathroom congregating," bathroom use will not be allowed between classes. If a student is found in the bathroom (or at the water fountain) between classes without a pass from a teacher, that student will receive a disciplinary note (d-note). To compensate for this, your child will receive 5 bathroom passes per 9-weeks per class. They will also have access to the batheoom during lunch. This is a necessary step to avoid congregation in the restroom areas between classes.

Failure to follow the above procedures will result in a d-note. These hallway procedures are not new to Northside, but we find it necessary to reinforce them at this time.

We appreciate you taking the time to read and go over this letter with your child. We will be going over these expectations at school, as well as posting them in the hallways.

Thank you,

6th grade Team

Please sign and return this portion of the letter.

I, _________________________, and my child, _________________________, have read and discussed this letter and we understand hallway procedures at Northside Middle School.

Parent Signature __________________________________________________
Student Signature _________________________________________________
Date _________________________

**Not really. He owes us, the collective peoples of the world, an apology for committing this crime against music (and humanity.)

The Kitchen Sink

Or, more specifically, the faucet.

So this is my kitchen sink. It is fairly unremarkable, as sinks go. It doesn't have a garbage disposal, which makes me frowny. I would love a garbage disposal, but installing one is magical trigonometry for which I do not possess knowledge and thus it is also scary. But I digress! My kitchen sink, like most kitchen sinks, has an associated faucet:


Click to embiggen


Like many faucets, if you want water to appear, you raise the lever thingamabobber (that's a technical term). Like so, see?



Click to embiggen


That lever doohickey is the troublemaker, and the topic of this post. You guys, it falls down constantly. If you have ever used a sink or context clues, you know this means that the water shuts off.

WHICH DRIVES ME INSANE.

I can't figure out how to fix this. There are no screws or removable parts or anything which seems like it can be tightened. Google isn't helping me because my Google-fu, on this topic, is weak.

Help me, Internet Nation. You're my only hope.

I Was Wrong, or The Handbag Tortilla Test

As you may or may not be aware, I have long-held the opinion that giant purses are a signifier of The Crazy (diaper bags excepted. If you have a child small enough that you need a diaper bag you have my undying sympathy, I will gladly watch your baby if you need a nap, and btw there is a spit-soaked cheerio in your hair).

Which is not to say that carrying a giant purse automatically means that I would judge you as a Crazy Crazerson, but I would indeed assign a little check mark. In my head. Actually it is more that when a giant purse presents alongside certain other things that I will make my McJudgyface. Listen, I've turned 37 since last this blog was updated, and that means I am (a) old and (b) have lived long enough to collect some wisdom. With that wisdom comes the self-righteousness of passing judgement on teenage girls in hot pants with giant purses and roach clip feather earrings. Do your mothers know what you're wearing? I hope you grow out of this.

So anyway, you guys, I was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. I was WROOOOONG.

You see, a few years back I learned to knit, and since then it's become a thing for me, you know? I do it a lot, as anybody who reads this blog or spends any time talking to me at all would know. So I reached a point where my one teeny little do-it-all purse was still enough to be pursey, but it was not pursey enough to accommodate my knitting. This meant I never took my knitting along unless I was going someplace expressly to knit, thus I decided to suck it up and buy a Mary Poppins/kitchen sink/crazyperson purse. That was months ago. I've kept my eye out, but because I am cheap I could not abide spending $30+ on a purse. Most of the purses throughout my life have been $15 or less, because to me they are not accessories. They are just a means of transporting my stuff, I usually only have one at a time (I'll wait while someone gets the smelling salts for Erin :), and I carry it until it breaks.

Okay, so: that's the back story which brings us to last weekend, when I had to take CJ to the maul so that he could hang out with his ladyfriend. (Sidebar: I hate the mall) He ditched me immediately, like you do when you're 13 and someone you recognize might omg see you with your mama in public, and that was when Mer and I visited Claire's. I found an enormous bag of holding which met all of my criteria: huge, cheap, and able to handle my knitting.

I have been using it for 4 days now. In these 4 short days I have grown incredibly attached to this bag, and I'm about to tell you why. Ready? Tortillas. The purse is so large that I didn't even notice I have been carrying a package of tortillas around for three straight days (I'm going to make soft tacos for dinner at some point this week. That sound you hear is Tim cheering).

Click to embiggen and view with notes

So you guys, I'm here to say it. You were right, and I was wrong. Huge purses aren't the human baboon butt of crazy, oh no! In fact they are the peacock feathers of utility and function.

My future criterion for purse selection: Does it pass the tortilla test? Because the tortilla test is the purse test of AWESOME.

Pics Or It Didn't Happen: I Still Make Stuff

Wow. It's been nearly a year since my first "I Make Stuff" post. How can that be? I don't even know. But the Internet never forgets, kids, so here's what I've worked on in 2010:

In March, I made a pair of mittens for myself. I had been stalking admiring the ones made by mom blogging rock star Angela over at FluidPudding and finally worked up the courage to give them a try. They were scary because I had never made anything with terrifying words like "thumb gussets" or using the "magic loop method", which frankly all sounded like dubious sexual acts and/or contraceptive methods. I only managed to get a photo of them (the mittens, not the sex acts) while in progress, but I made another pair later in the year, so you'll get to see those later in this post. They are called "Bella's Mittens", because the pattern was inspired by mittens worn by the Bella character in the Twilight movie. Don't hate, y'all - the pattern is gorgeous.

In May, I thought I'd give felting a try, finally. I spent much time and energy trying to decide on a mix of complementary colors, and in the process learned that I am really bad at it. I did not know that about myself.

And then suddenly it was summer. If you're a parent too, you know that summertime for parents is the exact opposite of summertime for kids. This is because there are no buses or hot lunches and it's eleven million degrees outside and everybody has to be driven to seventeen different places a day, and yet I still had to go to, oh I dunno, work. It's the summer days where my office is truly a vacation, people.

But you may recall that I made a condensation sleeve for CJ to take to camp, in June.

And I vowed that 2010 would be the year that I got the jump on Christmas knitting, so naturally I started with birthday and hostess gifts instead. I ended up making two of the rainbow bags for Renee's birthday (which, TO BE FAIR: December) and the purple one for when Rachel and Thom moved to Maryland.

Also in June I got the bright idea to hand knit by hand with my own hands a set of grocery bags for everybody's favorite vegetarian bunny huggers (our dear friends Tracy and Aaron). I figured: How hard could it be? Turns out: Pretty hard. Not that the pattern itself was all that hard, it just took forever to make four of them and by the time I was done I was so very, very, done. I finished the fourth bag on October 17. You may have already calculated that the duration of time spent knitting these bags is equal to that of a metric shitload. Of time. At least they're pretty.

And then it was later in July, and whoa! Jonesy and Donna were having a baby shower in twelve days. Twelve days to knit a baby blanket? CAN DO.

Meanwhile, the grocery bags were ongoing, and I was losing my mind, so I started knitting warm washable hats for the homeless. See, my friends are really good people, and they gather up food and go feed people who need to be fed on Thanksgiving day, in a local park. We call it Thanksgiving in the Park. The hats were sent along, except climate change hates us, hates us ALL, and it was nearly 70 degrees that day. So nobody really wanted a hat. Sadface. Thom and Rachel took them back to Baltimore, though, to give away up there. I hope they are getting used. Meredith models one of the hats:

OMG, Christmas knitting! Teacher gifts! Friend gifts! Crap! Now I'm behind, but I'm still knitting grocery bags! September sidebar: The Bella Lana Reversible Cable scarf, holiday gift for Meredith's primary teacher Mrs. P. I'm told she liked it!

In October, the grocery bag project was ongoing. Still. Forever. Teacher gift #2: A set of Bella's Mittens, this time for Mer's dramatic arts teacher. Purple and dramatic are totally her. She likes them, and is thankfully not allergic to 100% wool (I was worried).

It's still October! It's still holiday knitting! I'm still knitting grocery bags because they take forever! With my hands, by hand! Also Ginny really liked the yarn color I was using for Mrs. P.'s scarf, so I bought some in worsted and made a Very Braidy Ginny Cowl for Christmas. It looks really great on her, if I do say so myself.

And then it's October 31, I'm finally done with the grocery bags (hallelujah!), and my cousin and his wife welcome a beautiful baby girl. My cousin Brent is the first baby I was really around with any regularity, when I was a kid. He holds a special place in my cold shriveled heart, and now he's someone's DAD. OMG. This blanket was pretty difficult, at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. I started it on her birthday, and finished it December 6. I think it turned out great, and just look at sweet baby Claire!

The last project of the year was a last minute, weekend-before-holiday-break scarf. Mer came home from school on a Friday and said "My teacher says you’re very talented, and could you knit a scarf for J (her 6 year old)? It should be greens and white stripes. Thanks." So that’s what I did over that weekend. Mrs. P. later clarified that she meant for Meredith to ask what I would charge in money dollars to make such a scarf. I couldn't possibly, though.

So that was the knitting in 2010. If history is any indication, I probably won't post about knitting again until 2012. If you want to follow along in real-time, you should friend me on Ravelry.

When To Put Me In A Home

Tim and I have this ongoing discussion about how doing certain things may mean that I have lost the ability to govern my mental faculties and, thus, it will be time to Put Me In A Home. A lot of times these things relate to fashion choices* or, you know, becoming a republican**.

The ever-expanding list of these things includes but is not limited to:

• Floral pantsuits
• Bolo ties
• Changing lanes in an intersection
• Embroidered cartoon characters on my clothing
  - Especially Tweety Bird and/or Taz
  - Super-especially Disney characters, specifically Pooh and/or Piglet
  - On denim? Openly mock me while putting me in the home
• Stirrup pants
• Swooping in at a gas pump someone else was very clearly waiting for patiently
• Allowing my children wear wrestling or NASCAR-themed anything
• Portrait tattoos
  - This one came up last night. I told Tim that if I ever want to or do get a portrait tattoo, he is to put me in a home immediately. Thinking about it for a moment, I qualified - put me in a home if I ever get a portrait tattoo except if it is a Patrick Swayze Centaur tribute tattoo, in which case: Awesome!! Tim says he won't have to put me in a home if I do that, however, because he will move out of ours. Knowing is half the battle!

* Do take note that these things are not representative of judgement upon your tastes should you do any of them on any sort of regular or irregular basis. These things, for me, however, would be giant flashing billboards pointing directly to the feared "changes in personality", so severely that any clinician would be most disturbed. Also the whole thing is a joke.

** See *.

Differences in the Time of Social Media

Lately I've been thinking about differences. With a big D, that is: Differences. The kinds of Differences which can ruin friendships. Specifically, I've been thinking about Differences in the time of social media.

Thinking about this makes me wear my "I'm keeping my mouth shut, behold my utter seriousity!" face, which I've helpfully demonstrated for you over there on the right.

You see, for me, for the kind of person I am and the kinds of friends that I have, it's usually been the case that once differences of opinion get addressed, that's that. To co-opt a gross cliché here, some of my best friends are Republicans! Our differences? They're okay, because we are entitled to our opinions. What I mean to say is, overall, we just don't need to constantly hash it out. We keep our mouths shut. Seriously.

Politics, religion, global warming.... heck, in the times of the Mommy Wars, it was, is, and will probably always be about how breast is best, or circumcision is genital mutilation, or my kid's carseat is safer than yours... whatever. You know how I feel, I know how you feel, and we move on.

So here's where Facebook, in specific, is causing me some discomfort, and some introspection.

Facebook groups and pages are the new Fish/Bicycle t-shirt, or "Don't blame me!" bumpersticker. Sure. I get it. What scares me about this, though, is how you can make a statement without actually making a statement, just by way of being a "joiner". You don't own that shit. You're not saying "I, Self Me, believe that the Holocaust is a lie! Wanna make something of it?"

No. You're not taking that heat.

You're saying "I passively agree with this thing someone else said, and did you happen to notice the moist and chewy pre-packaged safety in numbers deliciousness? No? Oh, well, then it's just a JOKE Holocaust denial anyway, quit being so reactionary".

It feels like receiving a "Dear Jen, learn how to park, you asshole!" note under my windshield wipers - not that I've ever received one of those, Aaron - every time I see a friend joining a group or liking a topic that I, personally, find reprehensible. No, I know it isn't about me. Yes, I am just as guilty as the next guy. Only my Passive Joiner Statements of Difference were things that I agree with. Acceptance. Equality. Understanding. Choice.

You know what They say about opinions.

So I think about the kind of person I am, and the kind of person I want to be. Do I want to be the kind of person who only surrounds herself with people of like mind? Because that sounds pretty boring. Do I want to embrace or ignore my (admittedly) knee-jerk reaction of "You know what? Friendship over." when I encounter these really grotesque statements that my friends seem to be supporting? Because if I got friend-dumped over being pro-choice, for example, I'd be pretty pissed. I'd be making noise about my right to my opinions. If I got friend-dumped for being Caucasian, well, aiiie discrimination!

It's always about rights and discrimination when it's not originating from your own self, innit?

I don't know what's right or what's wrong, here. I don't know where it starts or where it stops. What does it say about acceptance and equality if I'm going to refuse to be friends with you because you feel differently than I do?

As I said, lately I've been thinking about Differences. I don't have a clear answer, but at least I'm thinking. I hope my friends are, too.

Stayin' Alive

Hey, look! I turned 36, and I didn't explode!

Making the Most of Your Amazon Cart: Let's Save Some Money

Did you know that Amazon's prices fluctuate daily? Sometimes multiple times per day for any given item? I didn't. I kinda sorta maybe did, but I didn't realize that it occurs as often as it does, and I didn't have a good handle on how I could use that to my advantage.

So after a good number of years of watching Phillip post about price fluctuations in his cart, it dawned on me that maybe he was on to something, and maybe this information would be useful for me to share, too. So yeah, I know I'm not discovering anything groundbreaking here, and that people have been doing this forever and ever.

This practice is new to me, however, and I was quite surprised at just how much money I could save on my holiday purchases if I camped my shopping cart. So, dear reader, I offer it to you. Ready?

You should start early - I don't think it's too late to start now for this year's holiday purchases, but I like to start at least 6 weeks in advance.

It's important for me to mention that I have an Amazon Prime subscription. As I do more than 75% of my holiday shopping online, it pays for itself each year - and then birthdays and other purchases are just a bonus. If you tend to do most of your shopping offline, then a Prime Subscription is not for you.

Next, I look for the items I want to purchase on Amazon, taking care to ensure that they are Prime items, and I add them to my cart.

Here's where the magic happens: Don't proceed to check out and purchase everything in your cart. Sit on it. For WEEKS. Really!

Every day, take the time to go and view your cart at least twice a day. Amazon will notify you (at the top, in red) of any price changes which affect items in your cart. The prices don't change in just one direction - in the space of a few hours an item can price can go up or down as much as 50%. It kinda sorta smacks of playing the stock market, to me - you have to sit and watch as prices go up up up and down down down, and judge for yourself when the best time to buy might be.

When you feel like you've watched long enough and have reached the best price you're going to get, move every other item (the ones you don't intend to purchase) to your "Saved Items to Buy Later" by clicking the button. Make sure all that's left in your cart are the items which have hit your purchase point that you're ready to buy. And then, check out! Go! After you complete the purchase, go back and move the items back into your shopping cart by clicking the button.

For example, I placed an order today, for 4 items that have been in my cart for 25 days. I'm not going to tell you what the items precisely are, because hey! It's pre-Christmas! (and my husband reads this!). For purposes of this post and the sake of standardization, we'll assume each item carries an average shipping cost of $3.99. I'm not going to include the purchase price of the Prime subscription, as my subscription for 2009 had already "paid for itself" by September.

Item Price (when added to cart)	Shipping cost	Subtotal	Actual Price (at checkout)	Savings
$49.99	$3.99	$53.98	$32.99	$20.99
$29.99	$3.99	$33.98	$16.99	$16.99
$19.99	$3.99	$23.98	$8.99	$14.99
$9.99	$3.99	$13.98	$4.99	$8.99
$109.96	$15.96	$125.92	$63.96	$61.96

If I had completed my purchase at the time I added the items to my cart, I would have spent at least $109.96. I ended up spending only $63.96. That's worth spending some time loading a web page, if you ask me.

So, to sum up:

-Add items to your cart but don't complete the purchase.
-Log in to your Amazon account at least twice daily to check for price changes.
-After awhile, you'll get an idea of what the highs and lows are. Keep track.
-When you're ready to buy, move the non-intended items to "Save for later".
-Make your purchase!
-Move the remaining items back to cart.

When It's Time To Change You Got To Rearrange

Hi there.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that Leila may be right: Social media is killing our established means of communication.

In particular, Twitter and Facebook are to blame.  I'm not angrily pointing fingers, here; I love me some Twitter and Facebook.  I love them so much, in fact, that if I have something to say, most of the time, I'm going to say it on the former, which will auto-update the latter, and I can then add a comment, if necessary.  I email my friends less and less, because pretty much all of my friends are engaged in one or both of the aforementioned means of communicating with me.  I post to my lists still less, because (see previous statement).  If I care about you or you care about me, it's pretty likely that you know exactly what I'm up to at any given time.  I won't send you a Christmas newsletter, because all of you have been experiencing my life as I choose to share it as it happens, so my lazy ass isn't going to have to try to sit down and compose it all into paragraph form and print it off onto fancy poinsettia paper and lick stamps and gather your addresses and make the excruciating walk to the mailbox and lift the million pound little flag on the side of it, and then trudge back uphill barefoot in the snow to my front door.  If your address has an @ sign in it, we're good.

I'm okay with that.

Most of the time.

The thing that hangs over my head is this blog: Yes, this very blog that you're reading right now.  I almost never write for this blog these days - in fact, the last time I put anything here at all was 8 months ago, and even that was copied and pasted from Facebook.  Hand me my cane and let me whack you with it for a second: I've been blogging since before blogging was really a "thing".  Back then my blog posts were written in notepad, and uploaded via FTP. The Internet Archive's earliest record of previous iterations of this site dates November 11, 1996.  That's before my kids were born, before I got married, before I moved across the country.  I was 22 years old, then.  That's just what the Wayback Machine has on record - my first ever 'blog' was a Doom fanpage, circa 1994 or so.

Anyway, point is, this blogging thing is something I've been up to for 15  years.  That feels like a damn long time (and I guess it is).  So when I consider that maybe I should close up shop and let this go, it seems like a good idea.  But, I can't.  It's like the awful holey clothing that my husband is so totally not allowed to wear but unwilling to part with.  It's packed up and in the attic, but he's just glad to know that it still exists, even if he doesn't get to use it.  That's how this blog is, for me.  It's here if I need it.

So, maybe I'll post more often, and maybe I won't.  I'm making some changes to the way that I interact with the Internet Nation: For example, I've started a Twitter account that is open to the world (that's it over there on your right).  I've changed my email address to one that is FirstnameLastnameOtherlastname@, instead of mynxzilla@ - because I started to feel ridiculous having a screen name email address at 35 years old.  I didn't even realize that I was feeling weird about it until I found myself dreading having to give the address to teachers and school administrators for the kids, or when trying to spell it out over the phone to doctors or whomever.  I found myself explaining, and making excuses, and just generally feeling pretty dorky.

Those two changes happened last week.  I'm pretty sure they're going to be the only changes, too, but I can't say for absolute certain.  I'm going to keep my Facebook account and my primary Twitter account locked down, because I like to know for sure who has access to certain things, and who doesn't.  But as far as this blog goes, it's going to stay, I think.  Maybe you'll even hear from me, now and again.

Now get off my lawn.

If You Call a Man a Yankee, You'd Best Know What it Means

With the transition to middle school, CJ began to ride the bus to school. He meets up with his frienemy Grant, there, and they end up engaging in the occasional scuffle. Last week, CJ greeted Grant with "Whatup, my yankee?" - not really understanding that "yankee", to southerners, isn't considered the kindest term.

Sidebar: I later informed CJ that he's half yankee, anyway, on my side. :)

So words were had, threats issued (for context, each child must wear a photo ID lanyard; CJ, having made the honor roll, has a "gold card" stuck in his ID sleeve which entitles him to things like early dismissal to lunch and recess), and when all was said and done, Grant ended up suspended from the bus and from school for two days.

Upon Grant's return, CJ received a letter of apology:


Click to embiggen (flickr)

Maybe I'm amazed

Funny thing happened on my way to run errands on Sunday: I checked the mailbox. Given that I rely on snail mail for very little, in that I manage all financials online, I'm not the world's most fastidious mailbox visitor. On this day, however, after I pulled up out of my too-steep hill of a driveway, I swung the car around, stopped, and hopped out to empty the mailbox.

The one single thing that stuck out among the sixteen pieces of spam was an envelope hand-addressed to me, with a return address that I recognized as being that of a friend in the Southwestern US.

What a surprise this envelope contained. Totally unexpected, completely unwarranted, utter out of the blue-ness... and it hit me. Hard. Right upside the head. This should have been the other way around. I should have sent her a thoughtful how-do-you-do, and I was completely gobsmacked, touched, agog that she would be thinking of me and not focusing every bit of energy on taking care of herself and her boycub. She's dealing with her own life, loss, trials, tribulations... and yet she stopped to take the time to do something nice for me.

And, you know, I've been wallowing. There, I said it. I've been sniveling and snorfling and generally being a whiny little bitch, and it was high time that I grabbed hold of my proverbial bootstraps and hauled my big ass back up.

This sort of thing my mother calls a "God shot"; I've taken to calling this particular event a "Goddess shot".

Thank you, friend. I don't know if you knew what you were doing when you popped that envelope in the mail, but when it arrived, it made all the difference in the world for me and for my outlook. My children, husband, job, friends... are benefiting from my renewed focus and better mood. I'm still wallowing, but nowhere near as deeply.

Thank you. Thank you.