On Trying to Journal as a Regular Practice

by | Feb 14, 2023 | WTF Rants

You can’t start training for a triathlon without taking the first step. You can’t play a song on the guitar without tuning it first. Uugh. That’s a terrible way to start a post. Hackneyed expressions, right? You shouldn’t EVER write those in any respectable piece of writing.

Luckily, this is not a respectable piece of writing. Beware, reader, there be nothing of substance or quality herein. And I did train for and cross a finish line in a triathlon. And I regularly, lazily, try to pick out a song on the guitar without tuning it, and it sounds like crap. So I earned the right to hackneye the hell out of that opening.

So hooray, my first post on a new blog! I’m already killing it!

Today, this morning, faced with insomnia and a head full of despair for all the things I’m not doing well, I started a journal. Writing by hand in a notebook. The distraction that is the Internet, or even being on the computer, makes it very hard to run with a thought to its conclusion. So I partook in that ancient medieval exercise of finding a writing implement and paper, and painstakingly printed out my thoughts, word by slow word. Jesus it takes effort to print by hand when you can type 80 words a minute.

Anyway, I got a lot out of my head. And then I returned to bed, and I slept like the proverbial baby (a lie, by the way, having had babies. I slept like very drunk). Having manually downloaded the thoughts onto paper, I think I circumnavigated the traffic jam in my brain. Taking those first steps in what I really intend to be a commitment. Tuning my writerly talents before launching into the song of myself.

I figured it might be useful to also begin a new online repository for thoughts. Not in that same way a notebook performs its function in its blank boring emptiness. There are plenty of tabs always open on my computer to tempt me into wandering wild-eyed into the metropolis of online shinies. But possibly as a way to track my progress, and make myself a little bit more publicly accountable for doing the work of writing.

In other words, expect nothing amazing here for awhile. I can bang out thoughtless posts super fast with my lightning quick typing fingers, typity type typing. Give up on the expectation that you will come away from reading this blog with the wisdom of the ages. If, however, you find reading the musings of a middle-aged (wow, I guess I am now, at 50?) somewhat depressed housewife and mother of 3 interesting? Well, I’m your Huckleberry.

Thanks for reading. Now go away and do something useful today.

The Covid Journal: Day 327

by | Feb 1, 2021 | WTF Rants

327 Days of March 2020

March 12, 2020 This new Covid-thing is blowing up all over the East Coast, and a Cambridge hotel is ground zero for our region. We are a few miles, as the seagull flies, from Cambridge, and a few of our town’s residents are among those infected. My 3 kids attend 3 different schools in town. I have a graduating senior, a sophomore, and a 4th grader! “Hey, kids, you aren’t going to school tomorrow. It looks like we’ll be having a 2-week break!” Jubilation ensues. I order pizza! There is dancing. February 1, 2021 We wear masks when we go to buy more masks. Our groceries and home goods arrive in a box on the porch weekly. Every so often, we drive to pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy drive-thru, and it’s like a special road trip. There are weeks we go nowhere in our car. I keep forgetting how to adjust the windshield wipers, so there is cursing whenever it rains or snows. Grocery stores run out of our food items often, so we evolve. “Hey, kids, I bought Jeff Bezo’s chocolate-sandwich cookies because there seems to be a shortage of Oreos. Please moderate.” The last glimmer in their eyes slowly fades. We are sick of pizza. Minecraft is waiting. I haven’t written much about the last 327 days since we committed to being home to stop the spread and protect our family and the families of our community. But suffice to say — life changed. My wife and I both work from home every day. My oldest child dropped out of school in May so didn’t graduate high school. My middle child hasn’t once entered the halls of the town high school as a junior. All of his classes including P.E. are online. My youngest is now being homeschooled, because IEP services were abysmal, and depression was setting in. Most people I know personally have made similar choices to Stay the Fuck Home, especially those located near Boston or major cities.* We see one another on Facebook. We are all hug-starved and awkward. When we get together for Zooms or Google video calls, we all stumble over our words. We’ve forgotten how to people. Life right now is a ship at sea with no shore on the horizon, and no rudder. We float from distraction to distraction — digesting entire Netflix series in days, building farms in Stardew Valley, playing video games until we are sick of playing video games. No book goes unread. No new show goes un-tested. We are hungry and starving at the same time. The extroverts suffer the most, I think. When you are used to being fed on the energy of others, like a social vampire, becoming house-bound dries you up inside until you are just a cask of neuroses and need. You fill those empty spaces with Pop Tarts, video games, a new hobby, but your skin is paper-thin. Tears are about to escape at all times, so you read more Facebook or bake new foods, furiously build your Stardew Valley farm. And everyone around us is suffering, so it’s hard to complain. Unlike so many in this world, I have the privilege/luck/wherewithal to say “I’m healthy. I have a steady job. My kids are OK.” For now, this is enough. And it’s so not even close to enough.

Take Out the Trash

by | Aug 31, 2020 | WTF Rants

What does it say about me, about this time that I am writing in, that I am always on the lookout for fucked-up, dilapidated trash cans on my morning walks?

In my defense, I have always preferred to take photos that say something. I learned the elements of photography via a photojournalism class at the University of Florida, so I’m telling a story in most of the photos I like to put out into the world. OR I’m mirroring something I’m feeling inside to you. I don’t usually just go for pretty, although taking photos of flowers does lighten my soul a little.

Times like these, souls do need a little lifting. I’m gonna keep taking photos of pretty flowers. But I’m also on the lookout for images that say something deeper. We need to be reminded that right now, the US is this trash can. It’s beat up and rusted out, yet someone is still putting it out on the curb with shit in it for trash pickup on Monday morning. THIS trash can still has use. That’s a fucking metaphor, people.

Another black man has been shot by police. Protestors are being beaten, tear-gassed, and shot. White supremacists are being thanked for showing up at a protest with their guns. Meanwhile, the Republican National Circus has speakers on its platform talking about how white people are feeling fear. Fear of losing their suburbs. Their god. The resounding refrain of “WHAT THE FUCK” is ringing through the heads of all reasonable people on this planet whenever this president opens his maw.

The US is so fucked. So broken. So in need of repair, love, some body work, rustoleum, a can of silver spray paint. Let’s fix it up and TAKE OUT THE TRASH.

MotherMirth, But All Grown Up

by | Jun 8, 2020 | MotherMirth Archives, WTF Rants

 

I used to keep a blog for mommying called “MotherMirth.” I refuse to call myself a mommyblogger, though, because I was clinically inconsistent. I’ve retired the site because the porn spammers were prolific, and site management got too involved,  and also I am just plain lazy.

I started it in 2002, at the birth of my first human. That human is now old enough to vote. Most of what I wrote was in response to the myriad of parenting articles I read, in books and in forums. I found myself debating the opposite point a lot, like that “Mom Enough” trash that tried to shame the measurement of my parenting. Or responding to Tiger Mom or was it French Mom — I forget. But I remember it was like screaming into my own toilet. It was WORK to get my perspective out into the world, and I got a lot of shit for it.

I have much less investment here, on my new site — WTF. I don’t have to measure up anymore. I’ve got 3 kids, and I do still have a lot to share. But I’ve wanted to widen my scope, and MotherMirth felt very stifling. Parenting informs my world view, and the minutiae of parenting teens, ADD kids, LGBTQIA kids — it’s part and parcel of everything I write.

But sometimes I write with a FOCUS on parenting.  And I miss having that space dedicated to this crazy undertaking of parenting humans in this age. Thus, I’ll be adding my parenting two-cents from time to time. Just letting you know, so our relationship as writer/reader is one of trust. Reading about parenting stuff should be consensual, so that you are fully prepared and equipped before diving into my living room. This is your warning.