Quickie update
We went to the zoo on Friday and it was really fun. Noah mostly could only see animals that were really close, and the little kids’ mini zoo wasn’t open yet, but there was still lots for him to experience. We had two hillarious moments: when Noah saw the orangutang baby nurse, he whipped around to check that my boobs were still there, and the giraffe -cracked- him up. As well as me and system children of all descriptions. There is something fundamentally silly about giraffes.
We got a membership, so we can go any time and not feel the pressure to See Everything. I know it’s a bit silly at Noah’s age, but it’s sort of habit forming for me and us - to go see good things - art and animals and festivals and parks - and not fall into wandering stores or malls so much, for our “out” time. The zoo’s barely 15 minutes from my house - door to door, by car - and it’s such a nice space - trees all over, pavillions with plants and animals combined, and not very many bars. It’s a good zoo, as such things go.
And it is nice to go out, where there aren’t floors to be washed, etc. It’s nice to show Noah the world. And see other mums etc. etc.
The weather continued glorious yesterday, so we were outside a good part of the day, walking around and down to the plaza, and then hung out in the sun in the living room. My MIL is down this weekend and she’s soaking Noah up.
Today’s more business of that sort, and then Monday is Mother Goose, a trip to Ikea with my MIL, and then dinner at friends. Busy busy - but gooooood busy.
Sexual politics strike
Why is it that when I read a story about a lawsuit against a school (in the US) and the book in question is described like this:
“King & King” tells the story of a crown prince who rejects a bevy of beautiful princesses, rebuffing each suitor until falling in love with a prince. The two marry, sealing the union with a kiss, and live happily ever after.
I immediately want to rush out and buy it for Noah? (It’s $23.95 + S&H. Maybe not that much. Tricycle Press though, if you’re looking for it.)
I truly do not care whether Noah ends up straight, gay, bi; poly, mono, whatever, as long as he’s healthy and whatever turns him on is not my fault. So why would I be more into getting him that book and not other ones? Maybe it’s the novelty factor for me. I dunno.
P.S. Though the ‘bevy of beautiful princesses’ made me laugh.
Letter meme
I like this one. :)
Comment on this entry and I will give you a letter. Write ten words beginning with that letter in your journal, including an explanation what the word means to you and why, and then pass out letters to those who want to play along.
O. (it was locked or I’d link!) gave me the letter T.
Tell: a loaded word. Telling a story is when I feel the most like I am doing what I’m meant to do (I mean like storytelling sort of telling, not gossip). Not telling things soaked up most of my energy for close to 20 years of my life. For all that I like the first, I still find telling about hard stuff - hard.
Twinkies: don’t eat them, man. For me they represent the worst in modern society: we take nutritious wheat and turn it into garbage, and then sell it to children.
True: if there’s one collective motto in the system it would be good ol’ Bill’s And this above all: to thine ownself be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. Unfortunately we often forget the first part of dear Polonius’s advice. :-)
Testosterone: yes I know we all have some, but I particularly like it in the men in my life.
Tent: When I was a teenager, and indeed when I (Shandra) was first around in the system, I spent 7 summers in all at camp: 3 as a camper, one a CIT, and 3 as a counsellor. I credit those 7 summers with giving me in particular and all of us a sense of strength and a base of security. Most summers we slept in cabins but the second summer we slept in a tent, a large airy canvas tent with a wooden platform. I don’t think it’s coincidence that my personal home as a warrior queen in our inner world is an ornate command-post… in a tent.
Toothbrush: Don’t leave home without one. I shared one once and it was kind of cosy in a very icky way.
Touch: not just one of my favourite senses, but what we hope to achieve in our writing - touching other people. It makes me sad that a few pedophiles have made our society touch phobic when it comes to children.
T.S. Eliot: One of my favourite poets. A timely quote: April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.
Telepathy: I never really have believed in this sense/power in my life, but the last few years may have changed my opinion. And of course, there’s always the question of how people within a system talk to each other.
Tears for Fears: Still have very fond feelings for, even if never got to sleep with. :-)
Boy
I was nursing Noah and thinking about this whole thing and why it has my attention. There’s a certain trainwreck quality to it, for sure, and it drags up a lot of the bad feelings from a couple of years ago.
But my feelings are also tied into my recent decision not to open my life to professional parenting blogging, and about a story that ties into my grief around Emily being out to another market. These are decisions I made with care, one in one direction and one in the other. If I publish something about grief and reviewers and readers shit on it (I should be so lucky to get the attention), I need to not go ballistic about it. And conversely, I think I’m right on my decision about blogging, but it means money my family won’t have.
So that’s why someone who’s known for at least two months that their blog was searchable going obsessive-bugfuck about it - someone who’s been on the ‘net for ages and really should know better - is really irritating me. But of course that’s not Terra’s stuff, it’s mine.
Today though it ties also into the big-word thing. Terra’s comparing people reading - reading! not commenting! - her blog to her feelings about being raped; to harassment and stalking. It’s so crazy. And she’s trying to make the facts fit, as if people spent a gazillion hours tracking her down. When in fact, for us, and I’m pretty damn sure for other people, we messed about on Google and found her journal - read a bit - stopped, remembered about it one day while breastfeeding, typed more terms in to find it again - clicked on it. Read some more. Rinse and repeat.
And Terra /knew/ this because she was told, by Jensco.
So why the drama? What the fuck?
And I want to say that it’s not understandable to me at all.
But sadly, it is: when our system was coming apart and we were just crazed inside that at any moment the world would end - a feeling that could be applied to almost any situation on the outside but really was just an internal free floating feeling - we said similar, crazy stuff. It makes me sad, for us and our past. It sort of makes me sad for Terra, because she’s still living in that headspace from what I can tell. (And I can’t tell much. But the way this exploded makes me suspect.)
It’s hard to describe: it’s like your brain is patterned for life-threatening fear, and if things aren’t going well in your life, the anxiety level rises and rises until something tips it and then wham! All the words and thoughts you couldn’t have growing up - that someone was actually raping and abusing you - seem to fit. In therapy we call it shadow-boxing, as in Jung’s thing about projecting the hidden shadow on other people.
And that is where as an adult you destroy and lay waste to things in your life. And those are the regrets you carry forward… if you can look at them. Some people can’t; they just continue to go on with a good year, and then a space where everything falls apart, and they need to move on, move on continually.
With everything we’re carrying now - fears about parenting, about career and money decisions, recent trauma around losing Emily, family stresses and concerns, plus the ups and downs of every day life - it would be easy to slip back into something like that. I recommit my energy to not doing that. Not just for me and us and Carl and Idaho and our friends and family, but especially for Noah. I so hope he does not ever have a reason to understand how crazy things can get, when pain and trauma are suppressed, and then haunt one’s life.
And I blog it here to remind me and everyone else.
I am so blessed with people in my life who say - okay, sure, but what’s the real problem? Including me I guess. But I have been shown the way. Thank you guys - I think you know who you are.
Solved!
By the way -
don’t put the quotes around Shandra Magdalynn on technorati
Now see, I could say Terra lied. But I presume she just left the quotes in.
Real information
Ok, I was a bit snippy about multiples yesterday. Sorry all you good guys. :) It’s just that “unleashing of the using words like harassment, stalking, etc. to justify that I feel stupid” bit that gets me right now. But it’s true, parenting blogs and geek blogs and blogs blogs blogs have drama. So, mea culpa.
I really don’t want to respond to Terra’s half-truths, “proofs” etc. etc. She’s gone off her rocker again - accusing her friends of caring too little, her “enemies” of caring too much, and some weird shit about Morne and Magdalynn - and we walked away from that a long time ago. But the way she uses information bothers me. [Edited to add: because that's what she does to people - yells so long and so hard that others start to believe it.] So here’s some for you; you decide, if you are in that select group that reads both blogs. Naw, I won’t link, but we all know a search engine works. :-)
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been around on the ‘net a long time - I remember them from the days I was on Usenet. These guys are pretty much the good guys: they watch legal cases and get involved where law’s being made around Internet issues - both privacy and freedom of speech. They believe strongly in the rights of individuals.
They even have a whole section on how to blog without getting fired, that is, anonymously.
Here’s a piece of press release from their site. The rest is here.
EFF Defends Right to Read Public Web Pages Without Getting Sued
Brief Supports Past Court Opponent DirecTVSan Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a brief this week in support of one of its previous court opponents, DirecTV, arguing that a federal appeals court should throw out a lawsuit against the company for accessing a public website.
DirecTV is being sued by Michael Snow, the publisher of an anti-DirecTV website that contained warnings to DirecTV employees that they were not authorized to enter. In its friend-of-the-court brief to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, EFF argues that the federal Stored Communications Act, on which Snow’s suit relies, only protects websites that are configured to be private.
“If you want to keep your website private, then you should protect it with a password,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “The law doesn’t allow web publishers to sue when people they don’t like visit their site. Otherwise, any company could publish terms of service forbidding competitors, consumer watchdogs, journalists, or even government officials from scrutinizing a public website.”
Because, you see, a website is not a private space. Unless you lock it. It’s sort of like - publishing! Yes, that’s why the little wordpress button says “publish.” No, really!
What is, of course, a very big legal issue with blogs is what you publish *about* people. Now I am not going to be so nuts as to say that Wes and Terra using words like “stalker” or whatever is anything really libellous. That was be silly drama.
But they may want to consider the question. A good look at the actual law on what you publish publically about people might be an eye opener.
Addition: Oh yes, the technorati question.
I believe a search *right now* on technorati still shows Terra’s old posts with “Shandra Magdalynn” in them. (Google updates faster.)
But just in case that goes away I pulled a screenshot. Click away. :)
Your friendly web editor.
Real stuff!
I deleted a post since the person in question had the courtesy to unmoderate my side of things.
This whole thing is silly and reminds me why the decision to put time and energy away from multiple/trauma lists was such a good one. Although drama, as we have seen in mumgroup, happens. But in regular life I seem to skirt it much, much better. Probably because the etiquette for bringing cookies and juice is much clearer than the etiquette for “found my name all over your journal; kept reading.” :-)
Today has been a hard day in a lot of ways. It started last night with more teething.
But I think I was suffering under the multiple roles I have right now: Noah’s mother, editor/writer freelancing for my work and trying to get a query together for another market, writer, wife, hostess, sexy thing, daughter, Emily’s mother, abuse survivor, sister, warrior queen, and cook. To name just a few off the top of my head. Yesterday I got some work done, but today Noah was clingy (the two may or may not relate). I’m trying to sort out my feelings and budget around getting a sitter in (where I can hear him/her) to distract Noah for a bit on a regular basis so I can get some work done, because Carl’s work is just not allowing for that, which makes me stressed. And Sass and I were talking about Stuff and it got all blocked up on my side, where I’m distant for a bit and then blurt out a million things at once.
You’d never know communicating in text is my life calling, today.
I also have been mulling an opportunity over: someone emailed me with a feeler (very preliminary) about writing a professional mom blog. (Not based on this blog, no. Being an official crazy person is not really good for the resume. :)) And I’ve decided no, thanks. I will consider writing some parenting related stuff, and clearly, I blog. But I don’t want to write about Noah 5x a week for money. It’s sooo tempting; it would fit so well in my life. We’re not talking big money here but it’s still money. But - no. I think it is really, really important to consider one’s kid as a child first and material for writing waaay down the priority list and this would cross it over way too far out of my comfort zone. Still, it pains me to give up anything that would put my name in lights and bring me a paycheque.
But, there were some rescues. People have been patient with me. I put Noah in the stroller and had a good hour’s walk in the gorgeous spring weather. Dinner tonight, which was supposed to be having someone over, was moved and I was kind of grateful for the breather. I left a message for someone else to set up dinner with them. And someone asked a parenting question on a mailing list that I’d wanted to ask, and now I can read the answers and not have stretched my neck out that far.
I didn’t, however, get my bigger article finished and my. brain. is. fried. I bet you can tell. :-)
Yegads
Stalking: parking your car across the street from someone’s house to watch them come and go.
Not stalking: parking at the grocery store to get your groceries
Stalking: breaking into someone’s house, stealing their personal letters, and photocopying them
Not stalking: reading your ex’s letter to the editor in the local community paper
Stalking: getting someone to hack into someone else’s email
Not stalking: reading an unlocked publically viewable website which comes up when searching on your own name (your being the reader), or indeed, any phrase typed into a search engine
Moral of the story? If you want something to be private, don’t publish it on the intarweb. *
For other areas:
Good etiquette: don’t read your ex’s webjournal without asking; alternatively, read and leave nice comments or send email inviting your ex for coffee (hi exes, you get points for goodness! Except D for not emailing me back the last time :))
neutral: read, but don’t say anything to anyone
bad etiquette: read your ex’s webjournal and leave snippy comments trying to perpetuate bad feelings from years ago
Good etiquette: post only what you want others to read
neutral: be human and post things without thinking it all through; when people read them, take measures to lock further thoughts -or- be brave and juicy and keep posting anyway. They’re only people
bad etiquette: go bugfuck that people dare read/be curious/etc. (Welcome to the curiosity of the human race.)
Good etiquette: stay out of these discussions entirely
neutral: clarify where it might be helpful
Just plain silly: this post!
Hope this clarification helps.
[* Of course most of us journal whores do this regardless. This is where the cunning use of initials or pseudonyms can cut down a bit on the searchability of one's journal. And remember boys and girls: you can always get Dooced! But you may get a book deal out of it. Well no, probably not: that's so... 1999.]
Dinner party parenting
So I read an anecdote lately that went something like “I was at a dinner party of 18 people and none of them like their mother.”
This has been percolating in my brain, and I have been taking a little informal poll since then, working into any conversation possible “so, do you like your mother?”
I’d say about ten percent of people I’ve asked will admt to liking their mothers. Now, this is entirely not statistically accurate, because I know a lot of people who grew up in harsh circumstances, and I’ve also mostly asked women.
But it has been thought provoking. I think any parent who takes the time to really think about it knows that the end goal is not to have your kids like you. I’m a big believer in the “your kids will have many friends but only x parents (where x is usally 2)” school of thought. Even so I harbour some of the fond fantasies that nuture us in moments like the one at 4 am when, after 45 minutes of nursing resulting in one almost asleep Noah, the damn cat jumps up to share the lap and startles the babe into instant high-play alertness. You know the ones - that we will have long mother-son hikes in the woods all his life, and then when he has won the Nobel Peace Prize he will attribute his love for all things nuturing to his parents, especially his mum and those hikes.
And I carry the fears that if we don’t go to mother goose (but we did) and pay for baby signs and go to that (but we are) and attend playgroup (may skip today to work) and go swimming (friday) that he will end up culturally deprived and feel isolated and misunderstood and have a series of bad mysogynistic marriages and an addiction problem and end up in a gutter muttering “selfish bitch!” over and over - meaning, me.
But now I have developed a more realistic yardstick and I offer it to you all. It’s called dinner party parenting. And it goes like this:
No matter how hard I try, the chances are good that at some dinner party in the future, my son will amuse his compatriots with tales of the horrible ways I embarassed him, or failed to understand him, or the ways in which I still drive him up the wall.
As long as these tales are told in a comfortable home, with good friends and good food at the table, and there is laughter about it and not a stunned horrified silence, my job will have pretty much been done.
Quiz time
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You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational.
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What is Your World View? (updated)
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