The sound of one hand clapping

Ayla just gave me a hard time about blogging, because I quite obviously don't have a gazillion followers. And, from her perspective (and I know she's not alone) -- what's the POINT, then? If you're writing stuff and publishing it, but you're not focused on building your list of followers, what's the POINT? Why bother?

We had a team meeting the other day. The two guys in the group, who've embraced FAcebook and Twitter, were comparing the length... of their follower lists. Boys will be boys, and it will always be about size with them. Poor fellows. I could care less if I "build up my followers/readers" -- I KNOW that probably 95% of what I post is totally mundane... but I think Erma Bombeck felt the same way.

Honestly, I'm not writing anything for Followers. I'm simply putting fingers to keyboard because I have to, I'm compelled to. Since I was able to write, I have loved to write -- that is my truth, and no matter how busy I've been, no matter where I've been in life, I've ALWAYS written. I have a huge box of journals, and I don't usually do boring "Dear Diary" entries (Note I did say "usually").

Words are my friend, and I love to be in their spell. At some point, I will have a life where I feel OK to dedicate myself to words. I may be old and grey by then, but I don't care -- I KNOW that's where my life is heading.

Innisfree.

Twitter, dammit, twit

Two screens -- one on the laptop, beside it the flatscreen. Typing this entry on the laptop screen, while watching a "how to use Twitter" YouTube video on the other.

I admit it -- I'm just not "there" yet on Twitter. I haven't gotten the hang of it yet, haven't "cracked the code". PJ has, though. He's got nearly 1000 followers, and is following over 1000 now.

I just can't fathom that. I did a post a couple days ago just listing "people I care about" that I could think of in a couple moments. Maybe 3 dozen or so, starting, of course, with the fam, and then just hitting a bunch of random people -- some work, some not -- and I stopped when it felt boring.

How do you follow 1000 people? Who's so interesting that you'd want to follow them?

I wanna drink the Kool-Aid! www.twittinsecrets.com seems like a good place to start... according to this YouTube video.

I love technology. But it was even cooler back when I still felt like I was living and working on the bleeding edge -- now I know I'm just over the Chasm, not even close to a trailblazer. Those were the days!

People I am thankful for

I just need to make this list of all the people I am truly and deeply thankful to have in my life. This is in no particular order, though I'll of course start with the family, because it's a short list:

Marty
Brenna
Ayla
Sandra
Jason
Peter
Mary Anne
Nicole
Keisha
Kelly
Andrea
Dean
LeeAnn
Peggy
John
Brian
Andreas
Nina
Dorothy
Phillip
Nancy
Susan
Adrienne
Liz
Skip
Martha
Jay
Barbara
Renee
Patsy
Matt
Ed
Luke
Doug
Ann
Deb
Peggy
Tina
Kat
Holly
Juli
Wendy
Bart
Becky
Meghan

OK, there's a lot, lot more, but it would be boring to read. But it's cool to realize that, right off the top, I can whip out a pretty long list of people that I like, admire, and enjoy spending time with. That's a good thing!

A bunch of totally random stuff

Thoughts that have crossed my mind this week:

Shoe polish is so easy and so important: I have all these black shoes and boots, and I finally ran out of the hard-to-use, messy, not-all-that-effective black shoe polish I had on hand. Finally broke down and on a whim bought one of those little squeeze bottles of Kiwi Instant Shoe Polish ("With Wax Shine") for about $3.75 at Nordstrom Rack.

Damn!

This is probably the easiest to use, shiniest, coolest thing I've ever found for shoes. And cheap! I have now "rehabilitated" pairs of shoes and boots that basically I thought were beyond work-grade polish, and now they look spiffy.

Amazing when tools work -- I guess I'm so jaded that I usually expect new "tools" of any sort to (a) not work, (b) maybe work, but be really expensive, or (c) not work, but be too cheap to complain about, so I just throw it away, and then feel pissed that I was duped into throwing away my money on something that doesn't work and isn't worth taking the time to try to get my money back.

Weird -- shoe polish made me happy this week.

What else?

eBay.

I spent $12 to buy a 1960-vintage original poster print by Robert Wood, a landscape artist who was "Sears & Roebuck popular" several decades ago. Don't know why I'm so hooked on his work, but I am. I've actually started COLLECTING Robert Wood prints, after I found the first one, of a so Cal beach, at Goodwill for about $8, and then one that I was surprised to recognize as being a print that my mom had hanging in our entryway when I was a kid, on eBay for about the same price (plus shipping, of course). Then I started looking at eBay every now and then for his stuff, because i knew it was popular.

Then I found "October Morn" which now hangs in my bedroom and I just LOVE. And a few weeks ago, I found a huge, sofa-sized print of another scene that I ordered on eBay, received in a tube, wrapped in copies of an Arizona newspaper, just a couple of days ago. Now I'm trying to decide if I actually need to go to the expense of getting it framed, or if I can just go with the tacks on the wall. Marty HATES things that aren't framed (like my Peasant Wedding, Wedding Dance Brueghel right over my desk) -- but I don't care.

I just like the notion of losing myself in a lovely landscape.



I put the question, "What are you happy about?" on my office whiteboard last week. Very interesting to note who walks into my office and sees it AND comments on it. Usually it's the upbeat, positive people. But, it's a great question -- what ARE you happy about today? What matters?

I will be leaving in a couple of hours to head to the airport and pick up Ayla, who's been having a grand time in Las Vegas with her friend Ashley. 17, blonde, in Vegas. What's not to have fun? I wish her flight wasn't in at midnight -- I'm old! I'm old! That's past my bedtime! -- but it will be so good to see her again. It has been a very quiet week without her.

I tidied her room and changed her sheets, made her bed. Made it very comfy and welcoming for her. I miss having both my girls around. Brenna calls me very often, though, which is great, and Ayla is still nice to me.

I never got to have the "mom relationship" as the daughter when I was their age -- they've outlived my daughter-experience, since my mom died when I hit 15. That's getting to be a bigger and bigger deal to me, as they get older: I just don't have a frame of reference on "how to be a good mom" to them as they grow toward adulthood.

When I see Brenna, I always want to just TOUCH her, hug her, or stroke her hair, or just put my hand on her arm. And she hates it. She always hates it, and yet I always seem to deeply crave that contact with her. I remember when she was so little and would fall asleep in my lap, or snuggled against me, usually while I was reading to her... and it still feels like a missing piece, having no closeness to Brenna. I mean, she was never a really cuddly kid (Ayla was, though) -- but when I get to see Brenna, I'm always SO happy to see her face, and to give her a hug. And I want to just inhale her (and THAT makes her FURIOUS but I can't seem to hold my breath when I hug her). This probably reads as psycho-clingy, but honestly it's not that, never has been. When you have a baby, you learn that there's just no smell on earth like the smell of your own baby's head. That's just reality. Your own baby's head exudes the scent of heaven, of life, of love. And as a mom you never really lose that connection. Scent is an ancient and deep sense for humans, who are still animals, after all...

And Ayla has gone back to being a blonde with long extensions, that at one time must have grown off some 3rd world peasant who was shorn to sell to Sally's Beauty after being bleached to a fare-thee-well. FAKE! But she looks so cute, but just not like AYLA. I miss her shining, glorious red mane. She had her hair lovely natural red for almost a year, but then she needed a change.

Hair. I've stopped dying my hair after many years of "Copper Penny" and "Strawberry Blonde" and other bottle colors. It has amazed me to see the Bonnie Raitt-like streak of grey bloom from my left temple in a quarter-sized swath of bright silver, surrounded by red. At least I still have the red, though! Even with the streak of silver, it's still recognizably me.

Getting the chunk of grey has finally, finally started getting through to me -- I'm not 27 any more. In my head, I'm still years away from 30, still a greenhorn, still in need of mentoring and guidance, still NEW. But, in reality, I'm now the mentor. I'm the one that others look to for the decision, the advice. And I am not fully there yet. Even though, objectively, I look at what I DO -- what I've been doing for years, and I see someone who's decisive, who's got the experience and the confidence to know what's the right decision, and what's not... still, in my own private head, I'm still so young.

Maybe that helps me be good at what I do. I don't presume to guess.

One thing that's great about this blogging adventure, and pushing myself to write, is that -- even though I KNOW I'm not always interesting, not always clear... I have really started to like the act of writing.

I'm listening to Stephen King's On Writing on my Zen. I've read that book and listened to that book since maybe 2000 (I think that's when it came out) and I have always loved the man's work. I find his writing style utterly captivating, in a way that all other pop writers just never hit. (For ezample, I cannot stand Danielle Steel and people of her ilk, they just make me want to hurl).

King's book On Writing makes me start thinking again of what it would take to actually write one of the books that has gone through my head over the years, but that for one reason or another I have not tackled.

WHY NOT?

Why not go ahead and do it? How much writing, every day, for a chunk of time, would it really take?

The idea still sits, vivit and clear, in my mind. I KNOW what I want to write -- and amazingly enough, I even think the topic would be sellable. But getting to that point?

Maslow's Pyramid. Food, shelter, etc... I've fought against that for ages, and only now am I finally starting to feel that safety is at hand. As long as I continue to deliver at work, and they value my work, work is there. That's something to keep in mind. And with that as my base, and my kids nearly out on their own... I may have a future, a plan, a path...

I do love to write. I have since I was a very little girl. I've always wanted to write, to be acknowledged for being a GOOD writer, and to tell a good tale.

Maybe I'm approaching the right time. It's okay to be a late bloomer, some of my favorite flowers are.

My Mom

When I was maybe in first or second grade, my very intelligent mother signed me up for some sort of kids' Book of the Month Club. She was a smart and sneaky woman, much smarter than I've managed to be with my own kids.

Every month, I got something new in the mail -- The Crows of Pearblossom is one I will always remember -- that snake swallowing the clay egg and writing in pain! What smart crows!

Betty June of Lincoln, Nebraska, fled the Midwest at barely 17, maybe 16. She fell in love with Bud O'Hanlon, a "merchant seaman" (that's what I remember her calling him, when I finally pressed her). She ended up giving birth to my half-brother, David O'Hanlon, who I have not seen or heard from since maybe the mid-90's. (There is a story there, an unfortunately white-collar sordid type of story, but I won't relate it here.) Bud apparently liked to smack his woman around -- which she for some unfathonable reason tolerated, until Bud decided the kid might be an easier punching bag. Then Betty left him. Moved to Monterey, CA, worked for the US Army there, got pregnant by "an Army Major" (that's what I was told much later, after she had died) and gave the baby girl, my half-sister, up for adoption. I met her not long after my mom died, and she looked just like my mom.

Mom was Betty, not Elizabeth-nicknamed-Betty. I never met her mother, my grandmother. By the time I was born, her mother (I THINK her name was Dorothy) was long dead, replaced by a new stepmom named Ann. And, I think, Ann was actually married to my mother's step-dad -- so it was step-upon-step.

Ray and Ann lived in a tidy little ranch in Paradise, California. Yes, there is such a place -- though the name always puzzled me when we would go to visit. I grew up in San Francisco -- I thought THAT was paradise. This podunk little town in the Sierra mountains? The dirt was bright, volcanic red. Manzanita trees everywhere -- which my mom would routinely chop down and stick in the trunk, to turn into art projects for her friends -- gluing fake flowers to the ends of the elegant, dark-brown twigs, standing the branch upright in a nice urn filled with Plaster of Paris (THAT I remember -- it was always "Plaster OF PARIS" just like her favorite San Francisco store was "City OF PARIS". My mother never made it to see the actual Paris, though. Her exotic journey was to California, not Europe.

She made it as far as England -- and that's where she died. On my 15th birthday, on the trip that was my birthday present, because I was a budding teen Anglophile with A Thing for Sherlock Holmes.

(Tomorrow morning, I have to go play Sherlock Holmes for my boss's boss -- trying to find background info on a very old contract... she has NO idea what a trigger-phrase "Sherlock Holmes" is. My random but intense interest in the famed detective is part of what killed my mother, that's been stuck in my head since 15 and shaking it isn't something easily done.)

My mom was great. She left Bud, raised David mostly on her own, finally fell in love with my dad, a big, bear-hearted guy who in his early 30's still lived at home with his mom, married him and started a new life.

I was a total surprise to this late-blooming couple. My brother David was nearly 18 when I was born -- and he was my guardian after she died. We had a hard relationship when he ended up stuck with me... a three-year-old kid of his own, a spoiled and finicky Castillian-by-way-of-SnFrancisco wife who was sick of him and planning to leave, and he ended up dumped with a mourning, troubled teenage girl to finish raising. Which he didn't do.

I ended up living with my Grandma, who was born the exact same day as me, but in 1896.

How I Can Tell Evil Husband is Finally Mending (April Fool's)

So, this, to me, is a crystal-clear sign that hubby is finally on the mend after all his befuddling and painful medical issues of the past several months.

This morning, he awakened me with a cup of coffee, saying "President O has been shot in London, wake up!" -- and as my groggy eyes snapped open, he said,

"April Fools."

Yeah. Thanks, honey.

That's how I can tell his twisted black humor is coming back to life.

(Secret Service, if you ever scan this like you would an Al-Queda blog, IT WAS A JOKE. APRIL FOOLS, OK???)

Not a FUNNY joke, to be sure -- but I will never understand how that man's mind works. Never in a million years.

Brenna shows me crazy stuff

Today's little entry from my drive-by daughter was http://whythefuckdoyouhaveakid.com.

Nothing like having your 20-year-old daughter swing by with her live-in boyfriend to (a) pick up cash and a check -- thanks, Mom! -- and (b) show you Web sites about misbegotten spawn of teens. Arrrrrrrgh.

She's a great, steady, smart, hard-working kid, and so's her BF. He's been growing on me, like fungus, I guess. It drove me insane when she hooked up with this guy so young, so young, so young... but that's reality.

I work with a woman I adore who got married to her high school sweetheart, had several kids, and now, maybe 25 years later, is still happy and still married.

So I guess these teen fling things CAN work out.

I just don't want to be a gramma yet.

(At least I can always count on the calendar to bring a visit from my daughter -- she knows exactly when I get paid. And I see her quite promptly.)

And, my little sweet Ayla has once again forsaken her glorious mane of beautiful copper red, and gone for platinum blonde and bleached Asian or Russian extensions. Who do they GET that "real human hair" from? Insane asylums? I never know, and don't wanna know. Global commerce at it's finest.

And today, our President and his wife gave the Queen of England a flippin'iPod. Speechless, am I. At least she had the good grace to give him her standard "I don't give a flip" portrait of herself and her Consort.

Another day goes by, and we had lovely spring snow. That's a very good thing. And always will be.

I love my daughters, and I love my husband, and my cats and the dogglets are the best. What more could a person want?