My Octopony post has found new life at BlogHer now that Nadya Suleman has gone and sold nude pictures and then still gone bankrupt. I resized the pics so it's better now. Something about a stuffed animal close-up makes me laugh really hard. If you didn't see it the first time, please to enjoy Dr. Phooh's interview with the Octopony. For the whole Paging Dr. Arens series, check the link in Categories in my right sidebar.
Dude, I miss that series.
WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???
As promised, a photo gallery of the little angel's eighth birthday cake.
This was obviously not made by me.
I chopped off the top because it had her name on there and I'm still not into sharing that online. I'm bad with photos, but not that bad.
The number was made from white chocolate, I think.
Mr. Octopus sits on a bed of brown sugar sand. The entire cake was edible except for the toothpicks holding in the treasure chest. Note the suckers on the underside of his legs.
Coral and shells
The treasure chest was made from cocoa Rice Crispie treats.
Nemo. I know -- when she brought it over I just sat and stared at it for twenty minutes, asking her how she made all the parts.
Absolute best part: how much she loved it. Happy birthday to my sweet girl.
I'm still feeling pretty gross, so this is all I've got today. If you're a Kansas City local and are interested in contact info for my amazing baker friend, email me at ritajarens(at)gmail(dot)com.
Over at BlogHer my interview with Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) is up -- Jenny's book comes out today, I think, and I'm so excited for her!
This weekend we had the little angel's bday party, and the neighbor made the coolest cake I've ever seen in my life. Like it belongs on Cake Boss. But last night I slept like hell, the cat has a cold and keeps sneezing in my face and I have body aches I think I caught from the little girl who got puking sick the day after my girl's bday party. So, instead, here's a link I wrote to a post on BlogHer for today on why glasses are so damn expensive. Back tomorrow!
I was at a virtual group last night and met someone I wasn't sure whether I had met before. (That sentence is going to get my writer card revoked, but you know what I mean.) The first thing I said to her was, "Have we met before? Because I have an occupational hazard in that I can never remember anyone's name."
This is not my attempt to be a douchenozzle. I would love for the world to know that. I could have a three-hour conversation with you in the back of a limousine and depending on how many other people I had talked to that day and whether or not it was super loud and maybe dark and whether or not you might not look anything like your avatar on Twitter, I may or may not recognize you when you walk up to me at 8 am under bright lights. I've had people get really upset with me to my face for this sort of thing. I'm sure people have also said things behind my back. (Some probably deserved, I mean, hey, everyone screws up sometimes.) But I hope nobody ever gets seriously mad at me because I can't remember his or her name, because that problem is mine, not anyone else's. And all this existential angst over my cognition shortfalls kicked in totally last night.
I've read a ton of tricks for memory-jogging. And I've tried, really I've tried, to associate people's faces with a fruit or a color or anything that will help, and instead of remembering the person's name, I end up wondering if the character name "Walter White" on Breaking Bad is ironic or not, because he's a jerk.
Here's the thing: Remembering names and faces is an innate skill, kind of like being a fast runner. Some people are super fast without even trying, and others might train for years and still get their ass kicked by a fat dog. But nobody, NOBODY ever accuses the slow runner of being a snob for being a slow runner. So why do we do that with people who can't remember names?
I should say that nobody called me a snob recently or last night -- it's just horrifyingly embarrassing to have to start conversations with bloggers in this way because I am paranoid that I actually have met this new person three or four times before or emailed with them or commented on their blog or they commented on mine and they might have a real name and a blog name and a different Twitter handle and yet still I am embarrassed if I don't have instant name recognition.
Who are all these people who say they never forget a face? And can they help me? Please?
PS: I never expect anyone to remember meeting me, seriously. For this very reason.
I'm up again to answer a BlogHer.com Life Well Lived question. This one is pretty great.
How do you put yourself first? How does taking time for yourself help make you happier?
I don't know what the outside perception of me putting myself first is, but I think I do it a lot. I didn't used to -- I used to do whatever I was asked to do, and then a bunch of stuff I thought I was supposed to do and then maybe at the end something I actually wanted to do.
About five years ago, I started really examining what I could do to better manage my anxiety. I realized that excercise really helped amp down the adrenaline I can get unexpectedly and for no good reason. Now that I work from home, it's not unusual for me to turn to the jump rope or a short workout DVD or even push-ups if I start to feel my emotions spinning and I need to focus. So after spending nearly twenty years exercising for weight management, suddenly I was exercising to access some good dopamine -- which totally changed my attitude about doing it. I stopped resenting it as something I had to do and started looking forward to the feeling I'd get after working out -- something I wanted to feel, so exericise became something I wanted to do. I now look at that time as me time and putting my good feelings first.
I put a lot of time into my writing, in all its formats. I write fiction, here, and on BlogHer.com. Part of it is my job, but there's such a fuzzy line between work and play when you have a job you really love.
I love to sleep. I sleep as long as I can, whenever I can. Other moms are shocked at how late I will sleep on weekend mornings when Beloved and the little angel let me, and they often do. I make no apologies for this sleeping. It helps me rejuvinate from throwing everything at my work week, and I'm a much more fun person when I'm not tired. We've all made peace with that.
I have one child on purpose. When we first made the decision to have a small family, a lot of people got all up in our grill about it, as though not having multiple offspring was somehow selfish or cruel to our daughter. I felt really insecure about it for a long time, but now I'm as unapologetic about having an only as I am about sleeping. Our family of three is extremely loving and extremely agile, and I relish taking off for the zoo spontaneously and without anything but a wallet. I don't like chaos, and it's easier to avoid chaos without lots of kids. There, I've said it. My daughter has voiced both her love of being an only and her regret that she doesn't have brothers or sisters. I'm sure she'll vascillate on her opinion of it from day to day for the rest of her life, but she'll always know we love her unconditionally. I can't do much more: I've tried brainwashing her that my every decision is perfect, and it's not taking very well.
I don't have a dog. The little angel desperately wants a dog. But even if my mother weren't deathly terrified of all dogs, I still would not have a dog. I don't like barking or licking. Aren't I painting an awesome picture of myself? I adore other people's dogs, but like those who don't want children, I really don't want a dog that will need to be walked and have his poop picked up by me on a daily or weekly basis. It interferes with that agility I so treasure in our little family. Thus we have Petunia the cat, who cuddles and then wanders off to reorganize the library without remark when we leave town for a weekend.
In the past, when I've thought about taking time for myself or putting myself first, I thought about things like getting a pedicure or going to the library alone. Those things are awesome, awesome, awesome, but anything can be putting yourself first if you're thinking about it that way. Every little thing you do to make your environment more comfortable for your particular needs is putting yourself first. I also think to some extent making your family more comfortable is putting yourself first, because the happier they are, probably the happier you are. Nothing makes me happier than my daughter's joy, so I really like having adventures and introducing her to new things. It might look like I'm doing something for her, but in the end, it's for me, too. I get to see the smile.
What do you do for yourself? Dr. Aymee has some tips over at Live Well Lived on BlogHer.com. Or you can skip straight to commenting to win a Kindle Fire, because I will not rest until everyone has an ereader.
The folks at Lego reached out to tell me about their new Build Together site. It has instructions for how to build different things with standard lego sets organized by how much time you have and how much skill you have. I thought that was pretty smart, so I'm sharing it with you. I wasn't compensated for that little ditty, I just like legos.
Today I wrote this post over on BlogHer:
Let's say you're walking around SXSW cursing the lack of wifi on 6th Street. And then, suddenly, salvation: You see a woman wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm Susie, a 4G hotspot. SMS HH Susie to 25827 for access wwww.homelesshotspots.org."
Susie herself is a hotspot, complete with all the necessary equipment. A walking, talking hotspot. A homeless hotspot. Hot damn, aren't you in luck!
I've been here in Austin at the first Dad 2.0 for two days now, and so far my take-away is how good my husband and I have it. Both our fathers are alive and active in our lives and our daughter's life. My husband is a world-class father and an amazing example of how to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan. He has friends who are dads and indeed capable of talking about parenting with him, if he really wants to (I suspect they talk more about work and sports, but these guys are well-rounded awesome men married to powerful, well-rounded women). I don't know how Beloved feels about his support network, but I feel really good about it. My vision of modern fathers is one of an engaged, enlightened generation of guys who come home from work and talk to their kids about their homework or get on the floor with their babies. It's easy to forget it was just a generation or so ago that wasn't necessarily the case as a cultural norm.
What I'm learning from the men here is that they're as WTF about beer commercials as I am. They are tired of being portrayed in the media as inept cavemen incapable of diapering a baby or ignoring a hot twentysomething.
They're trying to change the way they talk to their sons about being a man. Instead of squishing emotions, they are facing them and writing about them. They're -- along with moms, I believe -- open to recognizing just good parenting rather than good mothering or good fathering. Men and women do bring different elements to the table as we talk to our kids about puberty or heterosexual relationships, but the act of making dinner for your child or reading her a bedtime story or dropping her off at a friend's house -- no different. There's nothing gendered about most of parenting.
Having these conversations with fathers who are also writers has been really fun for me. Writers tend to be a different breed just in general, more likely to talk about their feelings with total strangers. I'm accustomed to having these breakthrough conversations with women having been a very active member of the BlogHer community for the past six years, but prior to this conference I've only had those conversations with men outside my family and close friend group with two or three male bloggers, one of whom was in Sleep Is for the Weak. It's not lost on me the same guy who was one of the first guys to talk to me frankly, honestly, as a friend, with no weirdness, about parenting, is the same guy who co-founded Dad 2.0.
It's been a great conference, so far, and I'm excited to meet more of these guys today and tonight. I'm here with BlogHer.com editor-in-chief Stacy Morrison, as well as Polly Pagenhart and Shannon Carroll from the BlogHer conference team, and we're having a great experience. Way to go, Doug and John, and especially you, Doug, old friend and dad blogger extraordinaire.
It's interesting -- David Wescott tweeted at me this:
@dwescott1 #dad2summit, great mombloggers are here, "rooting for" dads. would be the same if dads had a 5yr headstart?
I didn't say anything much on Twitter, but when I ran into David yesterday I said, "Well, look at Congress." And we stared at each other for a second, both sort of dismayed about that. I wasn't blaming him and he wasn't pitying me, we were both just sort of WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY is more than half the population so underrepresented in power positions in America? And WHY WHY WHY are we still acting like a penis disqualifies a man from being able to make a dentist appointment for his son?
I hope women and men as we go forward can look at parenting just as parenting and look at working just as working and recognize that all people bring something valuable to the table based on personality, not on gender. The world is changing, and I want to see it move toward true partnership between men and women instead of one-upsmanship and competition. Who's with me?
As the Corolla sits stinking up my garage, Beloved is back in the Ozarks. And it's occuring to me I don't actually even know where. Have I learned nothing? I mean, I talked to him last night and this morning, and I forgot to ask both times. He was somewhere last night and he'll probably be somewhere different tonight, and after ten or twelve different times of him road warrioring his way across Missouri every week, I've grown more accustomed to this new life of ours. The only problem is my absent-mindedness. I have my head in my novel, and that means I forget to do stuff like turn on the coffee pot and ask my husband where he's sleeping.
There. I just texted him.
And printed my boarding pass for my flight tomorrow to Dad 2.0.
My parents will be here soon to be here for the little angel when she gets home from school because Beloved will get in late on Thursday.
I worry about my parents driving down here. I worry about Beloved driving around Missouri. I worry about me flying to Austin. But that's what people do. They move freely about, even though it's a dangerous world out there. It does no good to sit in your house and hide from that world.
When the worry comes, I try to imagine a big windshield wiper sweeping across my thoughts and pushing them away. Sometimes it helps.
Sometimes I just crawl back into the novel in my head, where I control whether or not there are tornadoes.
So last week, Beloved lived through a tornado. Our Corolla, unfortunately, did not. It's totalled, according to the insurance company. Still, we had plans to go to Iowa on Friday for a reunion with three of my four college roommates (the fourth lives in DC and has a new bebe), so ONWARD! we went.
Now I'm sitting here looking at a full to-do list, a wrecked and increasingly stinky car and an upcoming business trip to Dad 2.0 on Thursday. My parents are coming down Wednesday because Beloved's job keeps him from being anywhere near our front door when the little angel gets home on the bus, and I'll be gone through Sunday. They'll leave on Saturday when Beloved can fully take over again.
Last night the little angel had a fever, which appears to be gone now, so she went to school, and I have I hope a babysitter coming at 4:30 because I have a board meeting across town tonight.
This is working parenthood. This is life.
Hi! I stink!
Deep breaths. Deep breaths.
