Today I spent some time at Johnson County Community College talking to ninth graders from the Olathe school district about being a writer.

One of the first kids who came up to me asked me if spelling was important. I considered it for a while, then said YES, BY GOD, IT IS. Then he asked if I write things out longhand, and I said, "No," then heard myself uttering, "Although I did when I was your age. We didn't really use computers then."

This kid looked at me as though I were fossilizing before his very eyes.

A series of flat-ironed blond girls streamed past. "What's the demand for your field?" one asked, popping her gum.

"Well," I said, "By the time you're out of college, I think we'll have that all figured out. Right now, it's pretty bad, actually." I paused. "But writing will never be outsourced to another country. Think about that. And corporations aren't really as evil as you'd think." Gah gah gah gah gah

At this point, I looked at the arborist sitting next to me with a giant chainsaw and asked for some of his Purell. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears.

DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE. DON'T TOUCH YOUR FACE.

As I waited for more kids to approach, I heard one large boy ask the arborist, "Why would you need a chainsaw that big?"

An alert-looking girl ambled over. She skipped the questions on the preprepared form and went straight for the blogging. "How do you build your following?" she asked. "How long did it take to get one?"

I thought back to 2004, when I had a good day with 30 hits. "It took a long time," I said.

"I have a huge following on DNL," she said. I think that's what she said. I have no idea what DNL is. It must be something the kids are doing these days.

"I push a lot from Twitter," I replied. One of the other girls flipped her hair.

"I don't know how to make Twitter work," said the other girl.

You and most of America.

A teenaged boy came up. "I'm sorry," he said, before he'd said anything. Then he looked nervously at my sign, which said "writer."

"I like to write," he said, "but I don't think I'm very good at it."

"You know what? Nobody's very good at it in ninth grade. If you like it, you're probably better at it than you think. Keep going."

I got into a conversation about Ray Bradbury with an earnest-looking wanna-be reporter. Most of the kids looked through me at the window beyond.

The organizer kept getting on the loudspeaker.

THERE'S NO WAITING AT GARMIN!

The crowd began to rustle.

THERE'S NO WAITING AT THE EDUCATION BOOTH!

No shit. They're in ninth grade. Educators are still "other."

I sat back and listened to my thoughts:

• I had those same elf boots when I was in ninth grade.
• These girls are so lucky they won't regret their high school hair later in life, unlike us unlucky schmucks who came of age in the eighties.
• DON'T TOUCH FACE! DON'T TOUCH FACE!
• Why is your field not in demand? Why don't more people pay you to write?
• Their feet look so BIG.
• Why are these girls so good at liquid eyeliner? Could I learn?

Another girl approached my table. "So, um, how many things have you written?" she asked, looking bored. She scanned my portfolio, flipping the tear sheets and the Sleep Is for the Weak coverage.

My computer hard drive flashed before my eyes -- thousands of individual pieces. How many posts are in this blog? 1,296. I just checked.

How can I tell her the volume of words it takes to get better?

It's overwhelming how much work it takes to get good at something. What should I say?

So I said nothing. I smiled and signed her Career Fair form.

"Hey," I called as she walked away. "Go to school for what you want. There are a lot of great-paying jobs that'll kill your soul."

She smiled, flipped her hair. "Thanks," she said.

And then I flipped back through my portfolio, remembering every single piece.

Today was my team's weekly trek to Chipotle. I can't begin to describe where the conversation started, but it moved into our collective chagrin over professional landscapers ripping out still-blooming annuals to make way for the next season's goods.

I couldn't let it go, even when I saw my friends' eyes beginning to glaze as they did when I tried to discuss Andrew Sullivan's brilliant call in The Atlantic for Bush to take accountability for Gitmo Bay. (Direct quote: "Rita, I just felt my brain shut down.")

I started thinking about all the places the used annuals could go. Inner-city daycare centers! Rest homes! Hospitals! Some of those mums ARE STILL BLOOMING, DAMMIT!

What would we call such a thing?

The Foliage Relocation Organization.

You have some pansies you need to replace with Christmas cheer? Rip 'em out, dump 'em in a plastic pot, and call the FRO. They'll be there within 24 hours to rid you of your foliage and distribute good cheer throughout the metro area. If you pay extra, the FRO will e-mail you digital photos of octogenarians weeping with joy at the site of a sweet pea vine of their very own.

Think about it. It's an AWESOME IDEA.

I've had my work computer reimaged four or five times in the past three years. Every time I try to back everything up properly, but it appears this time I backed up everything but the five or six most important e-mail personal folders.  You know, the ones where I keep everything related to my day-to-day life, the people I manage, etc.

Yesterday when I got my computer back, I spent hours reinstalling important software, renewing cookies that had been lost and searching network drives for those goddamn personal folders. It was like looking for your keys when you're tired. Are they in the refrigerator? No. Are they in the bed? No. Are they on the big hook that says "keys"?  NO NO NO NO NO

Fuck.

Then I got distracted by a fire to fight and an angel to bathe and work that took me until midnight to finish. This morning, when I got in, I looked at the gaping maw where my personal folders totally should have been, and I gave up.  Anything people said to me before today? Dead to me. We'll just have to start over. I made up some new folders and filed them somewhere and thought really? If Hoarders ever does a show on digital packrats, they sure as hell are not going to star me. This happens to me at least once a year.

So there's that.

My friend @StacyGratz is leaving us Kansas Citians and setting off for New York City. She lived there for many years and in some ways, it will be going home.

I wish her the best.

She's kickass at social media, and I will not be the only one sad to see her go, but as I sat there at her farewell happy hour, I couldn't help but be terribly excited for her.

I don't want to move to New York City, as much as I love Stacy and Alice and Liz and Isabel. I am rather content curled up in my corner of the Midwest watching winter approach surrounded by friends and family and Beloved and the little angel and Petunia Cookie Dough.

But I can imagine the excitement of a brand new beginning.

I tend to the melancholy, and I have to prop myself up each day by reframing my life in the positive. I struggle when I anticipate problems, because the anticipation is always, always worse than the problem at hand. When I enter the problem, or the adventure, I am taken over by adrenaline and a strange I-can-do-this that isn't present when I'm anticipating the adventure. In the throes of something new, I am finally living.

So I raised my glass tonight, and I toasted Stacy's new beginning. I am so excited for her and her adventures in the Big Apple.

When I got home from the happy hour, I plopped my girl in her bathtub, and we attempted to coax the remaining dangling tube from her ear and made cupcakes out of bubbles.

Me: "My friend Stacy is moving to New York City."

Her: "Brooklyn?" (She really said that. My book tour had a stop in Brooklyn.)

Me: "No, Manhattan."

Her: "All New York City bubbles have to go to Bubble City."

Me: "Do they have to take the subway?"

She's never been on a subway, though she's been on the El, but only above ground, so I rather think that doesn't count. Anyway, she had no idea what I was talking about.

Her: "Yes."

That's one of the myriad things I like about my girl. She's already learned to fake it until you make it. Because that, my friends, in New York City? Is the right answer.

Good luck, Stacy. Fake it until you make it, my friend. We'll miss you.

So today I *tried* to work from home, but apparently some patch or something that was installed on my computer last week flipped my computer all the hell out. Now it won't boot in less than three hours, and I couldn't get it started at all.  It was incredibly frustrating, to the point where I seriously had to take deep breaths and leave the room to keep myself from smashing it to bits.  After an hour with the help desk and two hours trying to get it to boot, I rode my bike to the gym in an attempt to exhaust myself.  It felt a little like the first two weeks of motherhood: out of control, exhausting, frustrating when nothing works. 

ARGH.

I'll be meeting with the help desk tomorrow morning.

So anyway, tonight I'm trying to excise that frustration from my life by concentrating on the positive.  I did wipe Bella's ass with a wet towel, cleaning her thoroughly. I've never had a long-haired indoor cat before, and let me just tell you, they need regular shaving, which we have not been good about.  Otherwise, nastiness ensues. Also, in the second month of my attempt to lose the five stubborn pounds that have been hanging around my hips for a quarter (I know, right? It's not that much, but seriously, makes the clothes look BAD), I have a) added ten minutes to each workout b) started biking to the gym and c) reduced my intake of fries and nachos to nothing.  Today I tried a little reduced-carb-intake, as well, to see if that would work. I am really tired of this five pounds.  It hasn't been this hard to get five off in a while.  I think I might be almost 35.  Lord, help me. But the positive part is that I. Am. Trying.

Finally, Beloved cleaned the ceiling fan in our bedroom. The ceiling fan I have been staring at every night, thinking how disgusting it is and how I should clean it, only I am too lazy at that point in the evening.

So that's good.

Sometimes it's the little things. 

I hate my work computer. So much.

-----------------------------------------------------------

But I've done some reviews!  Get free Off! products and read about cheating wives at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

This weekend we "vacationed" (by this I mean: we drove to see family and went to the zoo) in fabulous downtown Des Moines, Iowa.  I didn't see any flood waters, but I heard from my Cedar Rapids-based brother-in-law that a) flood "water" is a term that should be used loosely, as there is a lot in the water besides water and b) flood water is powerful enough to move just about anything in its way.  It was depressing to hear of how much had been lost in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, cities I've lived and worked in. 

On the upside, my in-laws are safe and still in their house, which is more than a lot of folks up there can say. (And in Iowa, they are "folks," trust me.)  Also, we had a wonderful time.  We stayed in a hotel, which made the little angel delirious with happiness, we went to the zoo, we grilled out and the little angel and her five-year-old cousin A. immersed themselves in their cousin M's American Girl collection, which I have to say is very impressive.  Those dolls had crutches, roller skates, and tap shoes with real taps on them. It was all I could do to keep from seizing them myself.  I got to see three of my nine in-law families, including my MIL and FIL.  We had to skip traveling to see them at Thanksgiving last year due to finances, so it was really important we get to see them this weekend.

This morning, of course, the little angel woke up, realized it was a school day, and started having a fit.  I told her we were running late (as usual) but today, I just really didn't care.  She randomly changed her tune.

"You'd better hurry, Mommy," she said.  "Otherwise your work teacher will be mad at you."

GOOD POINT.

---------------
Talking about how to spot stroke and heart attack today at BlogHer.

This week I had a meeting with a woman who left the workforce when her second son was born and the first stopped sleeping.  She had a great career, an enviable career, but one day, she'd just had it and realized she wanted to be home for her kids.  She said they were poor for a while. We talked about how some of her friends and family reacted to her decision, how some called it "giving in," how she'd built a successful consulting career in the 15 or so years since she made that decision.

I ate my bagel and wanted to cry.  If I quit my job, we wouldn't be just poor. We'd be out on our asses.

I've been having a hard working mommy week.  The little angel has been really fighting daycare. I don't know what's different - she was doing fine for months - maybe it's that she senses in me a wistfulness when I drive her there.  A realization, for me, that any chance I would have to be home with her before she starts real school is running through the hourglass at breakneck speed, and there is nothing I can do to reverse time.

I've worked full-time since she was three months old. I've had to. We are a solidly dual-income family - we need both salaries. I've gone around and around the mulberry bush for four years, trying to figure out how I could possibly spend more time with my daughter, and the answers have always been disappointing.  I don't regret my "decision" to work, per se, because it doesn't feel like a decision when it's a necessary evil.  I'm very happy I've been able to move my career in a direction that makes me happier - I love writing and editing - but I'd love to do it fewer hours a week, at least now, before my daughter completely grows up on me.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I feel like I've been over this ground so many times I've worn ruts with my pacing, and the answers never change.  But this morning when my daughter clung to me, crying, I think if I'd been able to make a decision like the woman with whom I had coffee, I would've done it right then.

But I can't.

Damn it.

The little angel has three dinosaurs named Star, Roar and Bob.  They play with her in the bathtub. Star is a stegasaurus, and Roar is a T-Rex, and Bob is a little T-Rex, their only child.

Today I worked from home because the little angel still had the vomiting and the high fever and all that.  I HAD to work, because hello?  I've been flitting around Breckenridge for a week with no work and no little angel.  However, my daughter is never sick the way some children are sick, what with the convenient lethargy and constant television-watching.  My daughter swings wildly from briefly napping to LOOK AT ME, MOMMY, I'M WEARING YOUR LIPSTICK! 

So tonight, in the bathtub, I decided to let her play extra-long since I'd had so many of those nasty conference calls during the day.  We got out Star and Roar and Bob. Star started dancing with Roar, and then she asked Bob if he wanted to dance.

Me (as Star):  "Will you dance with me, Bob?  The Backyardigans are totally jammin'."

Little Angel (as Bob):  "No, you can't dance with me."

Me:  "Why not?  I like to dance."

Little Angel:  "You can't dance because you have to go work on the computer."

All the world is not your blog.

I've been learning that one the hard way, again. 

When I was in my first two jobs in the world of public relations, I was often coached to keep my extroverted mouth shut.  My second boss, in fact, gave me a wicked review in which my work was praised but my personality was not.  I was deemed a tad too "exuberant" for the firm.  I left a few months later to no one's surprise.

As I started progressing through various different jobs, though, I began to be rewarded for my outspoken ways and hyper-vigilant observations.  I notice obscure details, something that often surprises my friends and family.  I notice details of people's appearance, and this often freaks them out if I mention it.  I don't usually judge most of the things I notice, but I can't help but note them.  This technique was emphasized in my graduate writing program, as my teachers deigned it highly important to note every specific detail about a person or place before the writer was allowed to pick up a pencil.  My fiction professor told me if I didn't know what a character had for breakfast that morning, he or she wasn't ready to make it into the story.  My magazine writing professor told me if I didn't know the color of the house in which the story's subject lived, I couldn't begin.

The fact that I notice this stuff and consequently analyze it has brought about anxiety in my life.  It's made me hypercritical of myself as a mother, because I notice so many details about other mothers and their children, things I am not doing.  It's made me better as a manager, because I do tend to pick up on nonverbal cues and tacit messages and then can address them in what I hope is a helpful way.  It's probably also made me more difficult to deal with as a co-worker, though, because when I notice something that seems to be making other people uncomfortable, I point it out.

This past week I learned that while my blog is a great place for observation and discussion, sometimes work is not.  Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut, particularly when your observations may bother other people.  The blog forum may have freed me to the point that I forgot this basic rule of coworkerdom.  Just because something is not going as I see best does not mean I need to note that verbally, a painful rule for me to accept, though a pretty normal one for civilized society, all the same. I don't think anything I said was harmful, per se, but perhaps unnecessary to my particular role in the company.  I said what I said in the spirit of improvement, but again, not in an area that was my job to improve.

Self-censorship.  God, I hate it.

When I told my beloved what happened, he said, "I know this is going to be hard for you, because you like to participate, but you should probably just be quiet."  An interesting point,that I like to participate.  I do.  I was that annoying kid in class that couldn't shut up during class discussion. I remember making rules for myself in college, that I would only speak three times in class. I didn't want the other kids to think I was a dork (which they probably did anyway).  Some writers are very quiet in person.  Not me.  My shut-off valve for observation doesn't seem to work very well, and I'm like a slow-draining bathtub in that once I see something, it's hard for me to just let it be sucked down the tubes.

Blogging has made me a better writer, but also probably a more difficult person.  The forum has released me to be honest about a lot of things I used to keep inside or only discuss with my closest friends and family members. In that way, I HAVE been able to let a lot of insecurities and drivel just slide away down the tubes.  It's been a wonderful release.  Unfortunately, though, the side effect is that I want that release in my offline world, and sometimes it's just not appropriate.  All the world is not a blog.