Category Archives: blogging

editing…

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Truth be told, I suck at editing. Read pretty much any post here and you will agree. I madly string along a few words here and there, throwing in a picture or more and then with scarcely a second look I hit publish.

Really that is not how one should write.

But I do. Then I take a first look at the published piece and I see all the typos…so many typos and everything else that is awkward and cluttered about what I just published and I have to fix it…and fix it again…and maybe fix it more the next day.

This is absolutely how no one should ever write. My apologies to Mrs. Miller who tried to teach me the importance of rough drafts and editing when I was in high school. Major fail, I know.

Days, weeks and even months later, I have to force myself NOT to go back and edit what is clearly an awkwardly written post. I even have to stop myself from doing just that when the piece I submitted to audition for Listen To Your Mother Sacramento is accepted and I am asked to come and read the piece to audition in front of the directors.

True story.

Yes. Last week I was notified that the blog post I submitted was accepted for the next round of auditions for Listen To Your Mother Sacramento.

Squeee!!!

As excitied as I am and as stressed as I am about what am I going to wear and nervous as I am about reading my piece in front of the directors, I find that I must forcibly restrain myself from editing the piece because as awkward as I see it to be now, especially with the f-bombs, that is what the directors accepted when I submitted and what they expect to hear when I read it next week.

So I instead distract myself by editing other things in my life. Like the, no kidding, nearly two feet  tall stack of mail piled on my desk, or my closets. Three trash bags of shredded mail and documents for recycling and three bags of clothes for charity later I feel a little bit better. Just a little bit better.

Looking around I see so much more clutter here under the Big Top. Time to edit some more.

Oh, and to run through my reading more than just a few times before the audition.

packing up and sending off one of my babies

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Well I did it!

With a big gulp and a little tear, I bravely packed up and sent off one of my babies. It was hard, so very hard. Letting go a part of you from a special place in your heart is so very hard! Other people will see her, hear her, perhaps judge her…not too harshly please.

This morning I submitted one of my blog posts to audition for Listen To Your Mother Sacramento.

Oh the stress and agony of it all! To choose just one and then sharing it. I know I lay it all out bare naked here but this was hard to do. Still I knew I must be brave and just do it. After seeing and falling in love with the LTYM Open Mic Salon at BlogHer11 in San Diego, I knew that some day I wanted to audition for this production.  Directed and produced by stay-at-home humorist Ann Imig, LTYM is a “national series of live readings by local writers giving Mother’s Day a microphone.” With this circus act of mine I have so many stories to share…too many stories to share…like any other mother or grandmother or daughter or son out there. And so, with a little…okay, a lot of encouragement I chose a story to share.

Do you have a story to share? I bet you do. “Remember, regular everyday people with a story to tell make up the heart of LTYM. You don’t need to call yourself a writer. You don’t need any performing experience. You just need to share the story in your heart or on your mind.” Submissions for LTYM Sacramento are being accepted now until February 13. If you are a Sacramento or Central Valley area blogger, writer, mother, grandmother, daughter or son with a story to tell please consider sharing it and submitting it to LTYM Sacramento.

 

 

the top 12 of 2012

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At the start of this year I was determined that it would be a better year than 2011, 2010, 2009 and even 2008. And so I made my own luck. Over all, I have to say that it was a better year. It wasn’t a GREAT year; but it was a good year, a better year and for that I am thankful.

I have been blogging here for (oh dear lord) EIGHT YEARS! Over three thousand two hundred sixteen posts later I sure have had a lot to say. Perhaps too much sometimes. But I said it all….pretty much all the time. To celebrate I decided to share my personal top 12 posts of 2012…because there are twelve months in a year and everyone does a top ten.

How DOES one get a newborn, or, better yet a volleyball to sleep?

Think Respect. Don’t say it.

Dating tips.

My old lady hands

That one time where I spelled my kid’s name wrong.

Everyone’s a critic and this critic knows great singing when he hears it.

We support the freedom to marry for all.

Who doesn’t talk about politics and vaginas over dinner?

All you really need to know you will learn from Hazel.

You don’t have to disrespect and insult others simply to hold your own ground. If you do, that shows how shaky your own position is…word!

Our year with the laundry and the baby.

We are blessed. Don’t ever doubt it.

this is mine

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Years ago a family member declared that I was a Golden Retriever. I was insulted and hurt because a Golden Retriever is a dog and having been called a dog to my face by classmates through junior high school and high school the last thing I ever expected was a family member would, you know, call me a dog. But then it was further explained that it was my personality that was like that of a Golden Retriever based on one of way too many pop-psychology personality inventory exercises that were all the rage in the late 80′s and 90′s. Truth be told, I am, for the most part, a loyal, non-demanding, accommodating, adaptable, sympathetic, co-dependent, peace-maker kind of person who does hate confrontation and change. I am also desperately afraid of heights, an overly cautious driver, bad tempered, depressed subjected to almost paralyzing anxiety attacks (especially when someone else is driving) and not always such a good parent. All of that…and a lot more…is me. I admit it. I own it. I have never tried to hide who I am. Thankfully people who know me best, people who love me best accept me for me…and choose to focus on all the stuff that makes me amazingly awesome.

The co-dependent-y, Golden Retriever in me is the person I have been since I was a very small child. It was who I had to be. I was the nurturer. I was the care-giver. I was hurt…hurt a lot…hurt way too much by people I should have been receiving nurturing and unconditional love from. I survived the only way that I could denying my own feelings, my own frustrations, my own fears, my own anger, my own opinions, my own accomplishments, my own self. And like a Golden Retriever, I remained loyal, reliable and trustworthy and kind hoping…hoping for just a little love, a little patience, a little praise would come my way. What Golden Retriever doesn’t want that?

But the years have passed and I have changed a little…for the better…for me. I am still a nurturer…hello…wife, mommy, Mi-ma, nurse! I still am sensitive. I still hate change. I still want everyone to just get along and like me. But I am not so much the doormat that I was as a child and a young adult. I no longer wait desperately for the approval from the adults of my childhood and young adulthood. I don’t have time because I am too busy juggling this circus life of mine. Well, except for when I re-arrange schedules, cancel a much needed medical procedure, turn down extra work, cancel 16th birthday dinner party plans and anniversary plans, miss my child’s Tae Kwon Do belt testing and basically drop everything because I want people whom I love to be happy and to love me…just like the loyal dog that I am. Here you can’t help but recall that old saying about teaching old dogs. I know that I can’t.

Almost eight years ago I began this blog for a number of reasons that boil down to one basic cause…I did this for me. I don’t write to share my family life in pictures and words with family. I don’t write to make money to support my Starbucks habit. I don’t write for free stuff. I don’t write under the pretense that I am a great writer…or even a good writer. What goes into this blog is simply for me. I write what I want to write about. I share what I want to share. Yet, surprisingly, I have an audience. A pretty awesome audience that literally spans the globe, many who have been here since the very beginning. And surprisingly most of you aren’t even related to me.

Still, this, this blog, is mine.  It is my perception of the life happening around me, the life I am living. It is my thoughts and my thoughts alone…except for the couple of times that I have allowed someone else to write their thoughts and their perceptions. This is mine. The adventures described are how I see them through my eyes. Another person living the same event at the same time most definitely will see it differently but here in this blog what they see or feel or hear or understand is not a part of what I am writing about. I’m writing about my own reality here…even if one might perceive it to be melodrama…

Sidebar:
Melodrama?! Seriously? This is melodrama? This life I am living now? Honey my life was a fucking melodrama when I was younger than my grandchildren…you know, when a child’s parents should be making it all about the innocent child and not their crazy, fucked up-ness. I look at my grandbabies and I shake my head over the fucked up-ness that is the adults I was wholly dependent upon then. There are no excuses…none…seriously don’t even try…not when you are talking about the life of an innocent, wholly dependent child fucked up by the adults she depends upon to meet her most basic needs. What I write about now is boring, stupid, vapid shit in comparison to say my life as a three year old…no, this now is not melodrama.
Not.
At.
All.

You don’t like it? Well, there is so much more out there on the Web that I’m sure one can spend their time on. But this microscopic slice of the interwebs is my reality and is mine. I thank you for reading it. I thank you for commenting on it. I thank you for respecting it and respecting me and my reality here on my blog.