Good night, good people

Posted on September 23, 2013 by Mrs Odie

I want my daughters to be good people.

I want them to be smart, successful, pretty, funny, and all of that, but I hope I will also help to make them good.

Tonight, Odie and I had dinner and margaritas to celebrate ten years together. Our anniversary coincides with the autumn equinox. The weather today was so delightfully cool, but I know my So Cal weather too well to believe that we’re done with heat waves this year.

Over tequila and chips, we talked about our girls. It’s so important to get a babysitter and have some time alone together as a couple. We don’t do it enough. Ironically, we end up talking about our children, sometimes even looking at videos and pictures of them on our phones.

I had a brochure from a place called “The Little Gym.” We attended a birthday party at one last week, so I picked up some literature. It was a good thing I had a cocktail to numb the pain of realizing what it would cost to send my daughter there for lessons. Boy, howdy! With our limited resources, we have to make careful choices about what extracurricular activities our girls will participate in. How will these activities suit their personal strengths, help buttress their weaknesses, and develop their character?

Pringles, two, is a people person. She says “Hi” to everyone she sees. She starts the day by jumping on my head and shouting “Hellooooo, Mommy! Get up, Mommyyyyyyy!” It may sound annoying, but I can’t help but smile. She’s such a charmer. How will that natural tendency for joy and human connection best be served? Theater? Dance? Odie and I believe that the girls should each participate in two types of lessons: one physical and the other creative. I find myself secretly hoping that neither one wants to pursue musical theater or softball. I am going to have to sit through all of the practices, performances, and games. Guitar and volleyball are also glorious pursuits.

Viva is effusive, serious, and bossy. Maybe I should say “she has leadership qualities” but she herself will tell you “I don’t want to play the way you want to play, I want to play the way I want to play,” and “You’re not the boss of me.” She takes everything her little sister says to her very hard. “Mommy, Pringles said that I have to go to bed. But I don’t WANT to go to bed! I HATE to go to bed!” We have to keep reminding her that Pringles loves to get a rise out of her, and not to take the ramblings of a two year-old to heart. But, she does anyway. Whatever lessons we enroll her in, I’d like to see her learn to work as a team member. To cooperate with other children and have a coach or teacher who knows how to give her corrective feedback without breaking her sensitive spirit. If we’re not careful, Viva will happily learn how to play chess and write poetry, thus permanently locking herself into a personality that is adversarial and isolating.

It’s a balance, I think, between encouraging what comes to them naturally and challenging them to stretch themselves outside of those comfort zones.

As a high school teacher, I meet a lot of kids. Some of them are amazing kids with qualities I’d love to see in my own children. Many of them are shy or quiet and I finish the school year feeling like I never really knew them. A small minority remind me that parenting is an essential job and a hard job. You can’t give up, not even when the finish line is in sight.

And honestly, is the finish line ever in sight? As Jason Robards’ character tells Steve Martin’s in the 1989 film Parenthood, “It never ends. You never spike the ball and do your touchdown dance.”

I love being with my husband and my children. I look forward to seeing them after work every day. They’re hilarious, kind, and fun to be with. I hope they never turn into the kind of girls or women who would delight in the pain or failure of others. Who will forget their privilege and neglect to empathize with others. Who are so self-involved, damaged, or narcissistic they think their worth is a jeans size or the number of likes on an Instagram photo. If they see their classmates bullying a teacher or another student, I’d want them to stand up for the victim, or at the very least refuse to participate. And I want them to enjoy hanging out with Mom and Dad, even if it is just brunch on Sunday or a movie now and then.

I’m off to bed now. I still have about seven months of sleep deprivation stored up, and I’m chipping away at it little by little. The workload that I’ve taken on going from an 80% to a 100% assignment has stunned me, especially since I have five composition classes this year. Last year, I had four grammar classes. The amount of grading I have to do takes my breath away, and I’m terribly behind. I feel guilty taking the time to do my own writing, but it’s essential to me.

Goodnight and good luck.

 

Posted in I forgot to call this something | 3 Comments

I haven’t been neglecting my blog. I’m just playing hard to get.

The world of blogging can be bizarre at times. The competition is stiff, so writers have to be more than just wordsmiths. We have to be our own editors, agents, and publishers. We do our own P.R. A blogger can hit it big by posting something that “goes viral,” whether that be on the blog or on another site. Kelle Hampton ended up on “Today” with Hoda and Kathie Lee, while Kelly Oxford got Matt Lauer. Based on this anecdotal evidence I have a feeling Mr. Lauer’s other head makes the decisions about which Mommy bloggers he deigns to interview.

I hate when I’m writing late at night like this and it isn’t going how I want. I call it having a T.S. Eliot moment. “That is not it at all./That is not what I meant at all./….It is impossible to say just what I mean!” The failure of language to really convey experience.

Or maybe I’m just not in the groove. The problem is, if I wait around for the muse, nothing will ever get written. Writing means nothing if it doesn’t mean putting down the words when you’re uninspired, when it’s drudgery.

I’m a terrible gossip. Actually, I’m a wonderful gossip. I excel at it. It delights me. I know, I know. It’s a terrible sin. But not all gossip is shit talking. Sometimes, it’s just talking. I love it when people who annoy me get raked over the internet coals. It tickles me pink. Who annoys me? Fakes. Phonies.

I don’t mean “sell outs.” To me, it’s okay to make money off of your art. Even lots and lots of money. If it’s good and you’re lucky, people are going to like it. I would love to make a bunch of money from my writing. But would it change me? Would the quality suffer? Do writers have to be unsuccessful to be good?

GOMI is a website (Get Off My Internets). I’ve mentioned it before. It’s a blog, but the articles published by Alice “Party Pants” are not the attraction, funny though she is. It’s a place for commenters. Commenters rule GOMI. There is a hierarchy, naturally, because humans are hierarchical. GOMI has plenty of Queen Bees and Wannabes. I definitely fall into the latter category. I’m starting to get pretty cozy as a wannabe. It’s a lifelong pattern and now that I’m 40, my skin is starting to feel oh-so-comfy.

There is the main page, and then there are the forums. I’ve been participating in forum discussions on the internet for decades. All the way back to “AOL chat rooms.” Facebook is just an evolution of those interactions. For busy people and awkward, socially phobic people, it’s a way to still have friends and talk to people about stuff.

And yes, people are mean. Some of them are just horrible. Or they seem horrible to me when I disagree with them. For example, I like something, and a GOMI-er hates it. Let’s call her Bacon Doorknob McPlexter. I pulled that out of nowhere, so if there is really a GOMI handle of this name, I didn’t mean you. I looked around my living room, and then added “Mc” and bacon.

Bacon Doorknob McPlexter can’t just say, “different strokes for different folks.” It has to be “How can you LIKE that? You must be a total fucking idiot. People like you shouldn’t be allowed to have children. I hope you get cancer.”

Or similar words.

I feel all bent out of shape for a while, but I get over it. In fact, I will probably see a comment written by Bacon Doorknob McPlexter that I completely agree with or that makes me laugh. Next thing I know: bygones. I’m thinking, “I like that Bacon Doorknob bitch. She’s a bit of alright.”

A while back, Alice Wright posted an article asking why blogs start sucking. The community had answers. I read them with great interest. I’ve seen in happen. I follow a blog because I enjoy the writing and something goes terribly wrong. This happened with me and Dooce. Well, I think it happened with Dooce and everyone, including her husband.

GOMI commenters seem to agree that a little taste of the fame sours the blog. Bloggers get narcissistic and their feces loses its odor. A few million page views and readers can’t identify with them. It goes to the heart of why we like bloggers in the first place. We feel like they’re our friends. I feel like I know Alice, and not just because Party Pants drunk dialed me once.

When you’re a “blogger,” you sometimes get to this place where you “know” other bloggers. I have internet relationships with several other bloggers, some well-known, others less so. We’ve had email exchanges and private messaged each other on GOMI and Twitter. If you’re “friends” (or God forbid “fwiends”) with the Big Bloggers, you may post pictures of you all hanging out together. Maybe your readers feel like you’ve ditched us for the popular crowd.

There’s one blogger I think you’d be VERY surprised to know made me promise to email her from the hospital as soon as Pringles was born (no, it’s NOT Kelle Hampton). Another one nearly gave me a heart attack when she emailed me.

Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. More than likely, you’d say, “I have no idea who that is.” Because “fame” in this world is so unlike real fame that it shouldn’t even be called fame. Maybe Glennon Melton can make a mash-up word for it. Nobodyoriety.

I’m Nobodyorious, but this person is even more Nobodyorious than I. Her Nobodyoriety precedes her.

And here I am, closing in on another one of my 900 word posts and I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. This is a perfect metaphor for my life right now. I’m still sort of wired from Back to School Night. I have nearly two hundred essays to read. Four periods of tests to grade. Notebook checks are tomorrow. I have no idea how I’ll manage that. A substitute accidentally ruined a piece of classroom equipment I use every day. Will Viva even be able to go to school tomorrow? Stupid viruses. Am I the only one who follows the school’s sick kid rules?!

But before I go to bed, even though it’s late, I’m going to check in on my favorite blogs and read some forum gossip. I heard from a DM on Twitter that some phony just pulled a dipshit move on IG.

Now she’s going to be even more nobodyorious.

Posted on September 12, 2013 by Mrs Odie | 30 Comments