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Blather

Marie Kondo-ing My Life

Life changes can be positive

I did something bold last week: I quit the marketing job I’d been toiling at for the last five years.

I’m lying about being bold. The situation there had not been great for a while, and they had recently cut my hours so deeply that I was pretty sure they were going to let me go.

This way, I got to walk out on my own steam, with my dignity intact.

I have no hard feelings. That job came along as my daughter was finishing high school. It was a time in my life when I really needed to do SOMETHING – especially something that provided some extra income while we were paying for college.

I was an independent contractor, so I got to continue working at home and set my own hours. It was the right thing at the right time, and for a few years, it was good for me.

But life has a habit of changing on you. The kid finished college two years ago. I started resenting the time the job was filling, and the stress of trying to please a client that was increasingly less happy with my performance.

And as I stare in the face of my Social Security years, that job was interfering with the things I WANTED to do, which included (in no particular order):

  • Working on my health by going to the gym
  • Pursuing creative endeavors, like this dormant blog
  • Catching up with friends
  • Becoming more politically active
  • Cleaning my house (OK, I’m just joking about WANTING to do that. But I would like a cleaner house, and no one is going to do that around here but me).

So I decided to Marie Kondo my life, by getting rid of the activities that don’t bring me joy. And writing emails and landing pages to sell IT products was an activity that had to go.

My last day on the job was one week ago. I haven’t done any of those things.

I made several reservations with a personal trainer… that I ended up cancelling.

I met a couple of friends for dinner one night last week. And I’ll be seeing some more this weekend. But that’s not really a step-up of my social activities.

I’ve toyed with volunteering for a political campaign. But with so many good 2020 presidential candidates, I can’t commit to just one yet. I’m spending a lot of time on Twitter. I’m spending too much time on Twitter. I really should just avoid Twitter.

I vacuumed yesterday and dusted today, so that’s a start. The end of my job coincided with the start of a long-awaited bathroom renovation, so there’s only so much I can do while the crew is here working.

(Heh. I have a lot of nerve invoking the woman behind KonMari. I’m nothing if not ironic.)

That’s the same excuse I’ve been using for skipping out on the gym. I mean, they need me here to make decisions on how the tile should be arranged and stuff, you know?

So that leaves the creative stuff.

I know a number of OG bloggers who have gingerly brushed off their old sites and are posting again. I don’t know if it’s rekindled the old joy of blogging in the days when you didn’t need to worry about finding the perfect featured photo that would look good on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

In those days, we just wrote what we were feeling and somehow, we found one another, and left supportive comments, and built a community.

Those days are over.

And yet, I wonder — why not do it anyway?

I own three different websites, all of which were neglected while I was more or less gainfully employed. I have spent a lot of time over the last week diving down a rabbit hole of webmastering stuff: Updating WordPress, and plugins, and trying to understand the Divi theme, and throwing my hands up at writing the way Yoast tells me to write.

I will never succeed at the SEO challenge.

But that’s OK. I’m writing this for ME.

And right now, that’s enough.

Categories
Blather

BlogHer 16: Diamonds and Rust

BlogHer 16
The general session room before the opening of BlogHer 16.

BlogHer 16
The general session room before the opening of BlogHer 16.

Greetings from #BlogHer 16, in beautiful downtown Los Angeles!

Eleven years ago, I attended the first, tiny BlogHer conference in Santa Clara, California. At that time, I had been blogging for about 18 months – and the professional knowledge and tools that were presented at that conference opened my eyes to a cornucopia of new possibilities.

I also got to meet dozens of fabulous, brilliant, delightful women – many of whom are still my friends today.

It was exciting. It was inspirational. And as I attended most of the subsequent conferences, I watched with pride as the three dynamic women who put that first conference together grew BlogHer into a powerhouse media company.

But this year, I almost didn’t make it.

I’ve lost my way.

I don’t blog much any more. I don’t have a lot of faith in myself as a writer any longer.

I’m rusty.

In 2005, I really lived my identity as SoCal Mom: My days were rigidly divided between my daughter’s elementary school, afternoon gymnastics and home life, and this not only gave me topics to write about but large blocks of quiet alone time in which to do it. But now that my kid is an adult, I do very little “mom-ming,” so that identity is gone (although I hold on to this domain and my valuable @socalmom Twitter handle).

I have yet to figure out who I really am now.

Nearly three years ago, I went back to work as a marketer for a local IT company and that job is so demanding that I have little left for any of my outside interests, including the MOMocrats, which I still participate in on the Facebook page and podcast, but little on the blog – which is crazy, because this is an election year and THAT’s crazy. I’ve lost friends over this election and am afraid I will lose more of them and I’ve barely taken the time to think about what that means to me. (If you want to know: I’m not happy).

It took me 20 hours yesterday to get to the JW Marriott in Los Angeles, because I spent the last two weeks with my family in the UK. In the old days (five or six years ago), I would have written extensively about my travels over there. In fact, I started this blog in 2003 to document another such visit.

This time around, I simply didn’t have the energy to try. What does that say about me?

My sister and I have put together a few half-hearted little blogs that have mostly fizzled – mainly because I haven’t had the creative energy to contribute to them with any kind of consistency. The only one that has managed to last is called Two Drinks Away, where we are attempting to hold an online conversation about where we are now at mid-life. This year, we’ve written a little bit about the emotional aftermath of losing our mom last December. You would think that event would generate quite a bit of soul searching and reflection – and it has, just not material either of us has had the inclination to write about publicly. It’s complicated.

So that blog is there. But we both recognize we need more direction. I’m wondering if lighting can strike again.

I’m going in to the sessions here like a blog newbie. As happy as I am to see old friends, I’m determined to make new ones. I am psyching myself up for the conference’s annual Voices of the Year session, where bloggers read their most inspirational posts (as determined by votes from the entire community). Usually, this session gets me all fired up again. But sometimes, it just reminds me of my inadequacies as a writer, and has the opposite effect.

I am going to do all I can to resist my inner critic and stay positive. All posts are diamonds in the rough – it’s just a matter of putting on the polish.

I’m ready.

 

 

 

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Life Goes On

Sideswiped!

sideswiped

Our drive up to Sacramento for my sister’s annual family New Year’s Eve gathering was uneventful…

…until we got sideswiped by a big semi truck, which decided to change lanes right into us.

No one was hurt. The driver moved back into his lane as soon as he made contact with us, and we both pulled over and exchanged information. The truck ripped out our passenger side mirror and the passenger door now makes an ominous creaking noise whenever it is opened or closed.

But the bottom line is that we made it to our destination – safe, if a little bit shaken.

And as I was contemplating the beginning of a new year, I realized that our little highway incident was a metaphor for the year that just passed. Overall, 2015 was a pretty good year that ended shockingly with my mother dying from a sudden illness, just a couple of weeks after we spent Thanksgiving together. Unbeknownst to the rest of the family, we made plans to fly our daughter home from Chicago, and kept it a secret until we walked in the door with her. My mom deemed it our “best Thanksgiving ever,” and two weeks later, I was still basking in that while getting ready for Megan to come home again for winter break.

I was out shopping when my sister called to tell me that our mom was in the hospital with a respiratory infection.

At the time, she didn’t think there was any reason for me to fly up there. That changed the following morning, and so I booked the first flight I could reasonably catch and spent the next two nights in the ICU with the family, watching over my mom. As she appeared to be responding well to treatment, I flew back to Los Angeles so I could be home when my daughter arrived.

Two days later, we got another phone call and this time all three of us were booked on another last minute flight to Sacramento. My mom passed away at 2 AM with both her daughters, our husbands, and all our kids around her.

We were all sideswiped.

That was nearly two weeks ago, but it feels like it’s been longer. Since then, we celebrated a rather subdued Christmas at home, and returned to Sacramento for a quieter-than-usual New Year, and tomorrow I will try to resume my responsibilities at work.

But today I want to acknowledge all of the things I am grateful for as I begin this strange, new, motherless chapter of my life:

I am grateful for my family, who love me no matter what. I don’t think I’ve ever understood exactly how much I need them.

I am grateful that my sister and I threw my parents a special 60th anniversary dinner in August. And I am grateful that her beloved cousins from Miami happened to be in town that weekend. My mother enjoyed that weekend immensely and I am grateful that I was there.

I am grateful that my sister and brother-in-law talked us into visiting Italy with them in October – and that we were able to talk them into beginning that vacation in the UK. I’m grateful that my family and my husband’s family got to hang out together for the first time since our wedding, over 20 years ago.

I am grateful that my husband fits right in with the rest of the crazy Schwartzes. And vice versa.

I am grateful for my nieces and nephews and of course, for my wonderful daughter. They have all grown up to be interesting people who are fun to be around. I’m proud of them, too.

I am grateful that my mother gave me one of her beautiful rings for my birthday this year, and that she was happy to see me wearing it before she died.

I am grateful to have found a job in late middle age, after spending 15 years as a stay-at-home mom.

I am grateful that when we were hit by a truck in California’s Central Valley that we were able to continue on and laugh about it later.

And I hope to do the same the next time I’m sideswiped.

 

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Blather Food and Drink Health and Fitness

ShiftCon: Small Steps to Better Health

Halloween Candy from UnReal: No artificial colors or preservatives - and I think their version of M&Ms tastes better than the real thing.

No GMO Labeling
Regardless of the science, I see no harm in labeling foods containing GMOs, so we can decide for ourselves whether or not we want to buy.

Leah Segedie is a force of nature. After helping hundreds of women lose weight through her Mamavation website and programs, she decided to tackle the larger problem of toxins and other substances in our industrialized food chain. The result was the creation of the ShiftCon conference, which held its second annual gathering this past weekend in Manhattan Beach, California. And Leah was kind enough to invite me to take part with a complimentary blogger’s registration.

I don’t get out much any longer to events like this. My day job marketing for a local IT company has left me with very little creative energy to keep my multiple blogs going — and lately, every time I attempt to get my blog freak back on, I fizzle out before I get to the second paragraph.

But I believe in what Leah is doing. We’ve interviewed her on our MOMocrats  podcast when GMO labeling measures have been on state ballots, and I predict we’ll be revisiting that issue again. More importantly: I continue to search for ways to live a healthier lifestyle and want to know what’s in the food I’m buying for my family.

No confusion here over what organic means.
No confusion here over what organic means.

So Thursday afternoon, I broke away from work to see what Leah had put together at ShiftCon. Unfortunately, I am swamped at work right now, producing several events of my own — so I was unable to come back over the next couple of days to catch panels on topics like “How One Nutrient Can Change Your Life” and “Creating a Toxic Free Future.” I didn’t get to hear the keynote from Stonyfield Chairman Gary Hirshberg or the panel on “Shifting Perspectives in Food, Words & Commerce.”

I will have to search out the recaps for these online.

But at least, I was able to check out ShiftCon’s Expo, showcasing some of the many healthful products available now. And it blew me away – beginning with registration, when along with my badge I was handed a fresh loaf of multi-grain, organic “killer” bread. And then THREE swag bags, filled with all kinds of yummy samples.

There were a dizzying array of natural foods and products on display for the ShiftCon attendees: The expected grocery stores, snack foods, organic farmers collectives, all kinds of dietary supplements and aromatherapy products were all on display. But there were also folks touting natural cleaning products, pest control, and initiatives to rid the environment of glyphosates.

Lundberg Rice and Grains
I am already a regular user of rice and grains from Lundberg Farms.

Expo Highlights

I was delighted to talk to representatives of products I already buy on a regular basis, like Lundberg Farms (delicious whole rice and grains), Barbara’s, (cereals and snacks), Food for Life ((maker of Ezekiel sprouted grain and gluten-free breads), Numi (organic teas), and Nature’s Path.

But it took a visit to ShiftCon to learn that a company like Nutiva sells a lot more than just coconut oil: Their exhibit included hemp oil, red palm oil and a second brand of coconut oil with the coconut flavor removed (so all you get is the goodness of the oil). They’ve also got chia seeds, hemp protein shakes, and a vegan buttery spread. They also gave me a coconut-oil based lip balm that’s the best I’ve ever tried.

But the real revelation were the products that were new to me: Such as Leaf & Love Organic/Sugar-Free juice boxes. With a kid in college, I may be out of the juice box years – but the sugar-free lemonade I sampled is a drink I may buy for myself.

Uncle Matt's Orange Juice
Uncle Matt’s sells an orange juice variety that is not just organic, but lower in sugar and carbs.

I love orange juice but rarely drink it any longer. So I was delighted with the taste of Uncle Matt’s Orange Juice – organic, lower in sugar and carbs, and delicious.

While at ShiftCon, I discovered new sources for fresh eggs, raw cheese, and grass-fed beef.

I’ve been dabbling in veganism again, so I had an interest inprotein drinks and almond milk from Orgain – and was surprised that they did not taste bitter, like the brands I have been buying.

Whole Foods Market was there to promote their Whole Kids Foundation, which helps fund gardens and salad bars in schools, as well as nutrition education for teachers.

FarmBoxLA was also there. They’re another one of those farmers’ collectives that delivers fresh, organic food you order to your home on a regular basis. I love this concept in theory – but when I’ve tried similar services, I’ve found that I could not get through everything in the box while it was all still fresh. Now that there’s just two of us at home, I usually shop for food on a daily basis. It’s a pain in the butt – but there’s less wastage.

Halloween Candy from UnReal: No artificial colors or preservatives - and I think their version of M&Ms tastes better than the real thing.
Halloween Candy from UnReal: No artificial colors or preservatives – and I think their version of M&Ms tastes better than the real thing.

I am, however, intrigued by Thrive Market, which is kind of an Amazon.com for organic and natural food – and promises prices that are 30-50% lower than supermarkets. Thrive Market is a membership site (similar to Amazon Prime Fresh) but is socially responsible: The annual membership fee is just $60 (compared to $299 for Amazon Prime Fresh) – and for every paid membership, Thrive Market donates a free annual membership to a low-income American family, so they can also have healthy, organic products delivered straight to their homes.

There was a lot more to look at and sample at the ShiftCon Expo: Natural skin care, hair care, health care… Pet foods… Pest Control.

I wish I could have carved out more time to talk to more of the companies and stay for the sessions. But I have a feeling that in my current (over-worked and over-stressed) state, I would have ended up too overwhelmed to put together a write-up.

So I will leave this as it is. If you are at all intrigued, check out ShiftCon on Facebook. That’s a great place to get the news on the next ShiftCon.

 

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Blather

When the Cat’s Away…

Cat at Work

Cat at Work

I’m self-employed.

After 16 years of being a stay-at-home, work-at-home mom, I like it that way. I don’t have to face a long commute to an office, wear appropriate business attire, uncomfortable ladies’ shoes or makeup (except on those days when I do have to show my face in public) — and have complete autonomy on the time of day I do my work.

At least, that’s the way it appears on paper.

In reality: The client that underwrites the bulk of this great lifestyle of mine expects me to be available at all times during business hours. To be fair, that’s a reasonable expectation, and I’m the one who feels I need to jump every time they call – and I think that’s one of the reasons our business relationship has lasted for nearly two years now.

I’m really happy to have the work. And they’re really nice people, which makes it so much easier. But I sometimes chafe at the demands on my time.

I know: That’s the eternal dilemma of the work-life balance, and I should be grateful that after years of earning peanuts, I’m finally bringing in a decent income. And I am very grateful.

But does that mean I can’t ever whine about what feels more like a job than independence? Or the fact that work now takes up such a big chunk of my time? A perfect job would be earning more money while putting in fewer hours. I think no matter how good life gets, I’ll always find something to complain about. Is that really a bad thing?

However, that’s not the purpose of this post.

I’m writing this post because I’m HAPPY – because today, I had the time to write this short little post.

You see: This week, my client is on vacation. And I don’t anticipate that I’ll be getting a lot of phone calls with a lot of great new projects that I need to work on in addition to the ones we discussed at our meeting on Friday. That means I can actually meet a friend for lunch today, take my car in to be serviced tomorrow, make it to my dentist appointment on Wednesday – and still meet all my deadlines, as planned.

I may even be able to carve out some time to go back to the gym. Or catch a matinee Friday afternoon with my daughter.

Next week, things will be back to normal and after seven days of rest, the demands will likely double to make up for lost time. That’s too bad, because I really would like to be able to schedule all these fun things back into my usual schedule.

And the work-life dilemma continues. I’ll let you know if I ever get that balance right.

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Blather

Stop Telling Me What to Do!

Stop Being So Judge-y

So many posts these days play on people’s fears of doing the wrong thing. Maybe we should stop worrying about what others think.

Stop Being So Judge-yIt’s been a long time since I’ve used this space to write. We visited the UK, returned, sent my daughter back to her second semester of college, and just last week brought her back home from Chicago. I enjoyed Passover with my family in Sacramento, and spent another four weeks housebound because I broke another toe on my driving foot. I’ve been working my butt off at my marketing job. And I’m dealing with the shame of gaining back all the weight I lost eight years ago — and then some.

I turned 59 last week and am starting to feel really, really OLD.

And I never had the urge to write about any of it. 

That’s not exactly true. I’ve had fleeting thoughts of “I should blog this.” But none of it stuck. And now it’s Memorial Day weekend and this is the first entry I’ve made here all year.

I hate to think that after more than a decade, I’m over blogging as a creative endeavor. I don’t think so. I think I’ve just been too busy to sit back and reflect upon my thoughts and feelings, which is what I need to be able to work up something to say.

So what made me decide to fire up the old blog again? THIS headline, which caught my eye on BlogHer:

Let’s Stop Using ‘Just’ to Justify Ourselves

The post, from a blog called Literally Darling, is a perfectly reasoned argument for ending one’s reliance on filler words, like “just” (uh, and I suppose “like,” for that matter). There’s nothing wrong with it. It makes a good point.

And it irked me…

…because it seems as if sites are increasingly publishing whiny posts designed to make the reader feel bad about something perfectly harmless:

Why You Should Never, Ever Use Two Spaces After a Period
There’s a whole lot of articles on this, and I have to say: What’s it to you? Really, what difference does it make if someone who learned to typing on an IBM Selectric doesn’t choose to change that habit after four or five decades of extra-spacing? It’s not as if we’re killing digital trees to make reams of digital paper here. Leave us poor senior citizens alone! (For the record, I figured out that I didn’t need the extra space years ago and broke the habit without being chided by the Internet punctuation police — but I wouldn’t dream of trying to force others to follow suit. It simply isn’t that important.)

Seven Obnoxious Things Women Need to Stop Doing on Facebook
There are tons of articles out there like this, trying to police our behavior on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Most of these are by people who have used social media for fewer years than I have. This post is pretty typical, and the suggestions make sense. But if I were to follow the advice of every single arbiter of what’s good and proper to post, I’d have nothing left to contribute.

The thing about social media, and Facebook in particular is it’s just like high school: You’re not going to be friends with EVERYONE, and that’s OK. (Actually, that’s more than OK, because no one can reasonably have a meaningful relationship with thousands of people at once). The only rule I want to subscribe to here is Be Yourself. The folks who love you will put up with a steady stream of photos from your vacation, political links and pictures of that new baby. The ones who don’t can unfriend you. You don’t want them in your stream, anyway. It’s a win-win.

One writer even put up an entire Stop Doing List. I’ve read it, and don’t have any argument with the content — just the tone — because really, all I want to say is:

STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO DO, and I promise I won’t get in your face and try to make you conform to MY ideas of proper behavior, either.

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Blather

The Year-End Post

2014

Every January 1, I start the year with so much hope.

Every December 31, I cannot wait for the new year to start.

2014 was a difficult 12 months for me. But it was never going to be anything else. The year was dominated by the fact that my baby girl was turning 18, graduating high school and starting college. I would not have had it any other way, but that doesn’t mean that letting go wasn’t hard.

This was also the year when I had to face the fact that my good health wasn’t a given. I have been very fortunate that I’ve made it to my age without any huge health issues, but I think that made the hysterectomy I endured in September all the more frightening. I don’t like doctors, I don’t like hospitals, I don’t like feeling dependent on others. I mean, who does? I spent a lot of time this year in denial that the surgery was going to happen, and then when I finally accepted it, I used up a lot of energy dreading what was to come.

On the bright side, with the timing right after Megan left for college, my surgery distracted me from realizing how much I missed her.

I was surprised at how quickly I was able to get back on my feet after the surgery. I’ve also been surprised by the lingering after-effects. It took eight weeks for the incision to heal… but I’m still feeling pain in my belly and am not sure when I’ll be back to 100%. This is annoying, except when I can use it to get out of unpleasant tasks like cleaning the cat box. I predict that I will be back to performing that chore early in 2015 – just not this week.

As last year ended, I acquired a client that has kept me working for them almost exclusively. This has also been a boon to my adjustment to my new post-mom life. But the time I’ve devoted to work has left little for blogging, and I miss having this outlet for self-expression. I hope to rectify that over the next few days, as I revisit the original purpose of this blog and post several observations from our recent visit to the UK (just concluded on Monday). It kind of harks back to the cyclical nature of the New Year: My very first posts — 11 years ago — were about such a visit. I never expected my blog to last beyond that vacation.

I’ll see you next year.

 

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Blather Getting Old Sucks House and Home NaBloPoMo

They Came in Through the Bathroom Window

Last week, my husband and I became victims of a crime. As such, he has some thoughts of his own and asked for co-writing privileges. His contributions are indicated in green.

I hit a milestone last week: I managed back-to-back marketing events with nary any pain. I was patting myself on the back Thursday morning for bouncing back from the first one well enough to make the two-and-a-half hour drive to the second one in Santa Ana, when my husband called. As my friends all know, this is not an unusual occurrence: He calls me, often when he’s stuck in traffic somewhere, feeling bored. He usually forgets when I have an appointment somewhere and I have to remind him.

“Hey, I can’t talk right now, I’m doing my event.”

But this wasn’t one of those “I’m bored” calls:

“We’ve been burgled,” he said.

He remembered I was going to be out of the house all day and came home for lunch to check on the dog. What he found was a dog who was soaked amid a puddle of water in the living room. The bedrooms and home office had been ransacked. In the master bathroom, the window screen was mangled and on the floor. It must have been left open, because if it had been closed, the only way someone could enter would be to break it (we know! We locked ourselves out once!) — and it was intact.

“They took my camera and all my equipment,” he said. And as my friends and family all know, to my husband, that was tantamount to a stab in the heart kick in the nuts.

My jewelry box was open. I don’t wear a lot of jewelry (I leave that to my husband) and don’t own much that’s good (and most of what I do have came from my mother and grandmother, so has more sentimental value than anything else).

There was an empty ring box strewn on the bed. It had held an emerald ring I purchased for myself about ten years ago because it was relatively inexpensive and emerald is my birthstone and I always wanted one. I stopped wearing the ring because it gave me a rash on my finger (like I said: it didn’t cost much!). I don’t feel too bad about losing that. But I started thinking about what else might be missing and began a little inventory over the phone. Most of my stuff was safe. I don’t think the culprit(s) knew how to tell the difference between what was real and what was costume.

I ended up leaving my event early: There were plenty of other staffers there to cover for me, and I was unable to focus. My husband took the rest of the afternoon off to wait for the police to come so he could make a report. This time, I was the one calling from the car. All I could think about was how violated we both felt and that I wanted to be home.

Seeing it in person was creepy: Everything from my drawers was spilled out on the floor. My lingerie. My bags and purses. Worse, they rummaged through my daughter’s room and broke a little wicker box that held only a doll and toy tea set. They took her old laptop off a shelf and left it on her bed (obviously after examining it and realizing a 5-year-old Dell wasn’t worth much now).

All in all, we were lucky: Aside from the camera bag and the ring, all they took was one gold earring. I can’t imagine why they took one and not the pair, but the police speculated that my husband may have interrupted them when he entered our home through the garage. We also know that our dog probably saved us from losing anything from the main part of the house: It was obvious that they were dousing him with water from the cats’ dish in an attempt to get past the barrier we use to separate our canine and felines. No animals were harmed in this burglary. No real damage was done to our property. The camera and equipment can be replaced. It’s a financial hit we don’t need, but fixing that is relatively easy.

What’s harder to replace is our sense of safety and security. My first thought was to blame myself: For two months, I’ve been home nearly 24/7, recovering from abdominal surgery, with my car parked in our driveway… and almost the minute I was out of the house for longer than an hour, this happened. We spent the weekend looking at options to make our home more secure, and we will.

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to become that little old lady with bars on the windows, who is afraid to leave the house. I want to be able to come and go as I please. I want us to feel comfortable taking a vacation once in a while. I have always imagined our golden years traveling the world and I refuse to allow that world to shrink to the confines of our home. But right now, we’re going to give ourselves permission to feel a little bit paranoid.

“Are you leaving the house today?” my husband asked this morning.

Yes. I have some errands to run, including taking the dog in for a booster shot. YES, THE HOUSE WILL BE DOG-FREE FOR ABOUT AN HOUR.

My husband went to work as usual – but took some of our stuff with him. Just in case. As he left, his parting words to the robbers were: “I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.” He has a way with words.

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Blather NaBloPoMo

NaBloPoMo LOL: Exercise for Unused Muscles

nablopomo_novemberI knew it was going to be ridiculously tough for me to post daily this month – but hope springs eternal, so I signed up for NaBloPoMo anyway. I started out strong and petered out before the first week was up.

But instead of declaring, “I failed, I can’t do this, I quit” — I’m forging ahead. I may not complete November with 30 daily posts… but I’m going to contribute what I can and feel good about getting back into the habit again.

Blogging after taking such a long time off is a lot like physical exercise: It’s hard to get back in the habit, and even harder to do it well at first.

It’s kind of like what I’m experiencing with my body, post-surgery.

I know you’re probably tired of hearing about this. Believe me, I’m tired of experiencing it — but right now, recovering from this thing is about all I can think about. I knew it would kick my ass — I just didn’t know it would kick my ass THIS MUCH or for THIS LONG. Before I went in, they estimated a six week recovery. I’m two weeks past that, and while I’m probably up to 80% back now… getting to 100 is a lot harder than I expected.

And getting to a point where I feel fit is something that will take a very long time (since I was far from that point when this whole ordeal started).

I’m still in pain. It’s not unbearable — just enough to remind me that things aren’t back to normal yet.

I started driving again last week – just short jaunts to the post office and the supermarket. You know, I thought it was kind of silly to be banned from getting behind the wheel for such a long time (especially when there were no limits on being a passenger), but driving is shockingly painful right now.

On Saturday, I decided it was time to start getting some exercise. I walked the dog with my husband, and later in the day we met friends for a stroll through historic Centinela Park. About halfway through, my sides began to hurt. By the time we got back in the car, FitBit reported that I’d walked a whopping 8,000 steps that day (not even close to the minimal pre-surgery goal of 10,000 a day).

I overdid it. My friends who are more experienced with surgery warned me that would happen; that it’s hard to tell where to cross the line of over-exertion until it’s already been crossed — especially when the mark is so low.

I was wiped. And it was so bad that I spent most of Sunday resting up from it.

This is not good. We are planning to visit family over the holidays, and I need to be able to handle a lot more than this without winding up in bed for the following day. I mean, right now, I don’t think I could get through an airport terminal without feeling fatigued. This cannot be.

I figure I have a month to get myself strong again. I see a parallel with NaBloPoMo — I’m just going to consolidate the whole thing and call what I’m doing NaBloPoWaExMo (National Blog Posting/Walking/Exercising Month, a regimen for body and mind).

And so yesterday, after putting in nearly a full day of work at home, I tried again – just on a smaller scale, with a walk around the block: 3,868 steps. And this morning, I drove myself to a nearby park and walked a mile loop (4,052 steps).

I hurt again. I guess this is something I’m just going to have to push through and live with for a while.

 

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Blather NaBloPoMo

Politics

The Capitol

nablopomo_novemberI do a political podcast on Wednesdays, and told the people I work for about it — but for some reason, they always try to get hold of me while I’m “on the air.”

Maybe it’s because once I told them about it I stayed very, very quiet. It’s not smart to bring politics into business… and I’m a liberal Democrat performing services for a group of Fox News-watching conservatives.

My colleagues are lovely, nice people and everybody gets along. Why muddy the relationship by telling them they’re all wrong about Obamacare?

I save that for my family and friends… and the small audience that listens to the weekly MOMocrats MOMochat podcast.

As you can expect, this week’s show was not too jolly. We conducted a post-mortem on Tuesday’s election, and even though none of us were actually expecting it to go well, we had hoped for a few more bright spots than we got.

I am a lifelong news junkie: I grew up in interesting times (the 1960’s) and from the time I was in 5th grade until very recently, I read a newspaper every single day. The Watergate hearings took place the summer before I started college and like many others of my generation, I was inspired enough by Woodward and Bernstein to study journalism. I care what’s happening in the world around me…

…but in the last few years, that world has often become all too depressing and I need to take a break.

And that’s what I did on Tuesday night, while the sad election returns kept coming in.

My husband took me out to dinner.

I ordered a stiff drink.

And when I returned home, instead of watching news updates, I fired up Netflix for reruns of 30 Rock — because Liz Lemon’s world is so much nicer than mine. I mean, it’s funny.

While I’m not about to hide from all the news of the world, I think I will continue to step back a little bit for a while.

I’m not so upset that the GOP won elections in a bunch of red states  — but that people like Mitch McConnell — who is responsible for a Congress that has been gridlocked for six years — gets rewarded for bad behavior. It offends me, not so much as a citizen, but as a mother. I’m upset that a few billionaires get to set the political agenda, instead of the American people — and that they’re willing to spend billions of dollars to buy politicians but balk at any suggestion that they pitch in a fraction of that expenditure in taxes to pay for roads and bridges and teachers and food for starving children.

I’m upset that the Senate will now be a mirror image of the House, where the Science committee is headed by people who think the world is just 6,000 years old.

I’m upset that the slow progress we’ve made towards universal healthcare will be chipped away by the new Congress. This comes on top of six years of fear and misinformation spread by the very people who devised the “free market solution” we ended up adopting.

There is so much wrong with our politics right now, is it any wonder I’m mainlining old sitcoms? Pass the remote… I think Friends is on.