You guys, I'm featured in Stacey from One Funny Motha's excellent series Better Know a Blogger. Every week she asks a blogger a bunch of questions, and posts their answers. (Spoiler: I got the one about grandpets wrong, even though I felt like my essay response was pretty strong. Oh well, can't win 'em all!).
Jump over and check it out! You won't be sorry. Stacey asks some really great questions. You can check back every Wednesday to see other great bloggers featured as well (or check her archives, because she's been doing this for several weeks now!)
Showing posts with label other lovely bloggers you should check out ASAP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label other lovely bloggers you should check out ASAP. Show all posts
Part of a Day in the Life
I see it’s 11 a.m. and I’m at work reflecting back on what I’ve
done today. You know, reviewing my to do list, checking off my accomplishments…yeah,
that’s what I’m doing. Here’s what I’ve done so far today:
Emptied half the
dishwasher
The bottom half. I was running late out of the shower and
only had time to do the plates and silverware.
Checked my horoscope,
reviewed “The Daily Chanel,” and got an ear worm
Every day I commute with the same people, and we collaborate
on the New York Times crossword puzzle. The people who create the New York
Times crossword puzzle are sadistic bastards--every day there’s at least one clue
that references a song, which inevitably gets stuck in my head. Today’s offering
is “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5 (you’re welcome).
The horoscopes give the day a
number that indicates how challenging it will be. I presume this is to give me
a head’s up in case the odds are high that I might need a bail bondsman or a
lawyer. Or both. We mostly just read the numbers, because like all horoscopes,
the actual predictions are pretty vague and interchangeable. Today is a 9 for
me, which means “easy,” which makes me wonder why I’m wasting a 9 at the office.
It appears Chanel has bought the
upper left corner of page A2 of the New York Times for 344 consecutive weeks or
something. Every day it is, of course, an item that is both practical and
economical. A shearling clutch. A platinum and ruby wristwatch. Calfskin and patent
leather sneaker boots (seriously—the bottom part is a sneaker, but they come to
mid-calf and have laces all the way up). Often the price is printed, and
naturally nothing is ever under a thousand dollars. Sometimes the price isn’t printed,
which translates to, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” We check the
Daily Chanel regularly. I’m always looking for good gift ideas, after all.
Dealt with a dozen volunteer-related issues
I’m in charge of coordinating the
after school programs at my kids’ school, and they start this week, so I’ve
been dealing with little Tommy wants this but it’s full so can he have something
else. Plus we had a bunch of late registrations I had to record.
Had an email debate with a friend about the virtues of Cool Whip versus
Redi Whip
Seriously? Cool Whip is chemical
sludge and leaves a slick in my mouth. It’s Redi Whip all the way for me.
Read a couple of blog posts, posted on Facebook, commented on Facebook
posts and a couple of blog posts
Including the link to one of
them here, because Leslie Marinelli of In the Powder Room is SO right on about
the internet mommy trolls.
And let’s include this
one, because the Oxford comma is correct, useful, and necessary. Lola
Lolita of Sammiches & Psych meds will educate you, should you currently be
in the Wrong Thinkers camp.
Read the “Quotes” from the movie “Pretty in Pink” on IMDB
Actually not my favorite John
Hughes movie (that would have to be either “Sixteen Candles” or “The Breakfast
Club”) because while I love Andrew McCarthy, I, along with the rest of Generation X, felt like Andi should have ended up with Duckie. I read the
reason John Hughes even made “Some Kind of Wonderful” is because he wanted Andi
to end up with Duckie too, but the studio forced him to change the ending so
she ended up with Blane. "Some Kind of Wonderful" ended the way he wanted "Pretty in Pink" to end. There, don’t say you never learned anything from me.
Went to the drug store, ostensibly for itch cream, but really for Halloween candy
I still have the remnants of this rash, but I was also out of miniature candy bars so I had to go get some. I hate Halloween. I have zero self-control and I love candy. Basically Halloween sucks for me. So I came back with itch cream, miniature Take Five bars, and miniature Heath bars. AND DON’T YOU JUDGE ME. (Also, may I ask just what is wrong with our society that miniature Heath bars are only available at Halloween? That’s effed up, y’all).
I also bought a small bag of Sour
Cream & Onion potato chips. Because nutrition.
Cursed GEICO for sending new insurance cards every other week
Why do they DO this? It’s not
like our coverage changes. It’s not like our policy number changes. And yet,
every other month or so, there’s another envelope from Geico with new cards for
us to distribute amongst ourselves. Naturally I never actually have one of
those little buggers when I need it, which I did today. So I cursed at them.
Not in any way they’ll ever know about—just under my breath while sitting at my
desk, but it was cathartic for me. And it’s all about me, after all.
Found out my favorite soup is on the soup menu at my usual lunch spot.
And that was pretty much the
highlight of my goddamned day so far.
What you’ll notice is
conspicuously absent from this list is any form of actual work. Yeah. Don’t
tell my boss, OK? I’m off to get my soup now.
Blog Hop!
First I want to thank Stacey
for choosing me to participate in this tour. I’m flattered, because I’m in some
amazing company with some very talented and very
funny bloggers, many of whom I admire a lot (but not in a weird, stalker-y
way, just in a wow you guys are amazing and
I’m totally not creepy I swear
way). I hope you’ll make yourself at home and take a look around while you’re
here (you can even go ahead and take a peek in the medicine cabinet—we’re all
friends). Thanks for stopping by!
What Am I Working On?
Right now I’m focused on this blog, so I have probably ten or twenty posts in various stages of development. I have a thumb drive that has them all on it, along with tons of notes and fragments of ideas. If I were to lose it, I’d probably just shrivel up and blow away. My husband keeps asking me why I leave the house every morning clutching this thing in my fist. Because it’s my brain, that’s why. My life is sort of ruled by my D: drive these days. I hit “save” a lot.
How Does Your Work Differ From Others of Its Genre?
Not to oversimplify it, but because it’s mine.
I think the things that set every writer apart are their viewpoint and their voice. Just like if you ask five people to describe an accident they witnessed you’re going to get five different stories, so it is with asking five different writers to describe their experience as a parent, or their vacation, or a trip to the grocery store. You’re going to get five different points of view, with emphasis on what each person regards as important or noteworthy. I like to point out the amusing, the ridiculous, the obnoxious, the aggravating (and, more often than not, make fun of it). But what sets it apart is that it’s also colored by my experiences, which are threaded through my narrative (and which, hello, are riveting, of course).
And with five writers, they’re going to tell you about their experience in their language, with their metaphors and cultural references. It means that every single person blogging about the insanity we’ve undertaken in becoming parents, and the roller coaster that has become our lives (I think mine most closely resembles Space Mountain—I feel a little dated, the noise is deafening, and I have no fucking idea what I’m doing or where I’m going because I’m totally in the dark) is completely unique and therefore has intrinsic value. Yet we’re all able to relate to each other, and I love reading someone else’s blog and thinking, “YES! ME TOO! You totally nailed how I feel!” I hope I connect with people the same way. And if they get a laugh out of it at the same time, that’s even better.
This has been especially true for me finding so many parents with kids who are ADHD or have other behavioral or neurological conditions that often prove challenging to parents. I have one with ADHD, one with ADD and, as I discovered through my readings when they were diagnosed, I am ADD. In 1983 we didn’t have ADD. We had “kids who don’t pay attention,” or “kids who won’t apply themselves” (guess what I heard for the 3,249 years it took me to get through elementary, middle, and high school?). To find so many other parents who think, “Dear god why is this child such a nightmare to parent?” and be completely honest about their emotions and thoughts about it has been a huge help. I feel like I found a community of people who get me, and whom I get. And it’s always great when you feel gotten.
Why Do I Write/Create What I Do?
When I was about three, I wrote this: “Wunc ther was a grl who had oranj eys. She was a very werd grl” (“Once there was a girl who had orange eyes. She was a very weird girl.”) The scrap of paper with that plus the picture I drew of the girl on it is floating around my house somewhere. I should probably frame it. That’s my first known output as a writer. As a kid I read (I learned to read very young) and wrote all the time. I wrote mostly stories, both for school and for fun, and at one point I remember writing a screen play for an adaptation of Beverly Cleary’s “Fifteen” (and yes, it’s still under copyright, so it’s a violation, but only if I try to do anything with it; if it just sits in the box in my attic, it’s not hurting anyone).
Combine with this a childhood spent on the fringes, and battling depression. I was never particularly “popular” (whatever that means), and in fact went through periods where many of my classmates actively disliked me (I don’t know why—maybe it was just my perception. I like to think I wasn’t a complete asshole as a child, but maybe I was. Maybe I still am. Maybe my classmates were). As a result, I’m sort of needy and crave validation, but I’m usually too shy to ask for it for fear of rejection. I already had a sense of humor that I used as a weapon in my fight against depression, but I learned to employ sarcasm (and profanity) as well, which protected me from the assholes. I didn’t learn not to care what people think until I was quite a bit older (like, about two years ago), but I could act like I didn’t, and that got me to adulthood.
Once I had kids, and realized they were going to drive me to drink (more) if I didn’t have some outlet for my feelings about my inadequate parenting skills, I started posting on Facebook about it, sharing my frustrations with the world, but with humor to try to make myself seem less pathetic (not sure it always works). I would run into people I’m friends with on Facebook and they would say, “You’re the funniest person in my Facebook feed.” I was always genuinely flattered (and deeply grateful for the validation), and decided to take it to the next level and elaborate on my inadequate parenting experiences.
How Does Your Writing/Creating Process Work?
Many of my blog posts grow out of Facebook statuses. Sometimes a single status will have enough “backstory” for a post (“Wallowing in Their Own Filth” started as a status about my kids’ refusal to change their underwear, and they’re sufficiently slovenly in their personal habits that it was easy to expand on that topic). Other times I’ll find four or five statuses with a similar theme, and weave them into a post. Sometimes I’m inspired by something someone else writes—as Stacey said, my school carnival post grew out of something I read on her blog. I also carry two or three notebooks that I scribble things down in—overheard conversations, random amusing thoughts that are totally out of context but for which I might find a context, silly words and phrases.
Once I have an idea, I panic. Just kidding. I get something, anything down “on paper” (because of course it’s not paper, it’s Word). I’m to the point where I have to “compose” on the computer. I can use paper for notes, but it’s all in a Word doc from there. I’ll bounce around from one topic to another over the course of several days to several weeks, working on the one(s) I have ideas for, adding a couple of paragraphs, hitting save, and moving on to another one, depending on my mood. I do most of this on the ferry on my way home from work. I have a half hour ferry ride, and in the afternoon I’m on an earlier ferry than the ones my friends are on, so I have a chunk of uninterrupted time to work. Sometimes I try to get some work done on the weekends, but we all know how that goes (“Mommy, can I have a computer turn?” “Mommy, when we go to the store today, can we get…” “Mommy, can you get me down a bowl?” “Hey Mommy…hey Mommy…hey Mommy…”).
When a post is “complete” it will sit on my thumb drive for anywhere from a couple of days to a week or so. I’ll go back and read it and reread it, constantly tweaking it, both the content and the syntax. I have a bad habit of using the word “that” when it could just as easily be removed, so lots of times I’m deleting errant instances of “that.” I’ll find typos (places where my brain hustled my fingers on to the point that I dropped a word or words), and occasionally delete sections, or rewrite parts (for instance, this post will be “finished” probably three to five days before I post it, but I’ll edit it twenty times before that).
Then I hit publish. Then I hit “refresh” a lot to see if you lovely people are stopping by to say hi. Like I said, I’m kind of pathetic and needy that way.
OK, so that's me! Now, to introduce the next three bloggers who will tell you about how their writing process works, allow me to introduce Jeannette from Mommy Needs a Martini, Kelley from Kelley's Break Room, and Cassandra and Momus from the team-written blog, The Next Delusion. Each of these lovely folks sent me a bio, their social media links, and links to two posts so you can get to know them. Here, in their own words, is a little about them:
Facebok: http://www.facebook.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/
The Day I Met Jacob: http://www.
Fairies in a Jar...?: http://www.
The Next Delusion
You can follow Cassandra on Twitter at @TheNextDelusion
Kelley's Break Room
My links:
What Am I Working On?
Right now I’m focused on this blog, so I have probably ten or twenty posts in various stages of development. I have a thumb drive that has them all on it, along with tons of notes and fragments of ideas. If I were to lose it, I’d probably just shrivel up and blow away. My husband keeps asking me why I leave the house every morning clutching this thing in my fist. Because it’s my brain, that’s why. My life is sort of ruled by my D: drive these days. I hit “save” a lot.
How Does Your Work Differ From Others of Its Genre?
Not to oversimplify it, but because it’s mine.
I think the things that set every writer apart are their viewpoint and their voice. Just like if you ask five people to describe an accident they witnessed you’re going to get five different stories, so it is with asking five different writers to describe their experience as a parent, or their vacation, or a trip to the grocery store. You’re going to get five different points of view, with emphasis on what each person regards as important or noteworthy. I like to point out the amusing, the ridiculous, the obnoxious, the aggravating (and, more often than not, make fun of it). But what sets it apart is that it’s also colored by my experiences, which are threaded through my narrative (and which, hello, are riveting, of course).
And with five writers, they’re going to tell you about their experience in their language, with their metaphors and cultural references. It means that every single person blogging about the insanity we’ve undertaken in becoming parents, and the roller coaster that has become our lives (I think mine most closely resembles Space Mountain—I feel a little dated, the noise is deafening, and I have no fucking idea what I’m doing or where I’m going because I’m totally in the dark) is completely unique and therefore has intrinsic value. Yet we’re all able to relate to each other, and I love reading someone else’s blog and thinking, “YES! ME TOO! You totally nailed how I feel!” I hope I connect with people the same way. And if they get a laugh out of it at the same time, that’s even better.
This has been especially true for me finding so many parents with kids who are ADHD or have other behavioral or neurological conditions that often prove challenging to parents. I have one with ADHD, one with ADD and, as I discovered through my readings when they were diagnosed, I am ADD. In 1983 we didn’t have ADD. We had “kids who don’t pay attention,” or “kids who won’t apply themselves” (guess what I heard for the 3,249 years it took me to get through elementary, middle, and high school?). To find so many other parents who think, “Dear god why is this child such a nightmare to parent?” and be completely honest about their emotions and thoughts about it has been a huge help. I feel like I found a community of people who get me, and whom I get. And it’s always great when you feel gotten.
Why Do I Write/Create What I Do?
When I was about three, I wrote this: “Wunc ther was a grl who had oranj eys. She was a very werd grl” (“Once there was a girl who had orange eyes. She was a very weird girl.”) The scrap of paper with that plus the picture I drew of the girl on it is floating around my house somewhere. I should probably frame it. That’s my first known output as a writer. As a kid I read (I learned to read very young) and wrote all the time. I wrote mostly stories, both for school and for fun, and at one point I remember writing a screen play for an adaptation of Beverly Cleary’s “Fifteen” (and yes, it’s still under copyright, so it’s a violation, but only if I try to do anything with it; if it just sits in the box in my attic, it’s not hurting anyone).
Combine with this a childhood spent on the fringes, and battling depression. I was never particularly “popular” (whatever that means), and in fact went through periods where many of my classmates actively disliked me (I don’t know why—maybe it was just my perception. I like to think I wasn’t a complete asshole as a child, but maybe I was. Maybe I still am. Maybe my classmates were). As a result, I’m sort of needy and crave validation, but I’m usually too shy to ask for it for fear of rejection. I already had a sense of humor that I used as a weapon in my fight against depression, but I learned to employ sarcasm (and profanity) as well, which protected me from the assholes. I didn’t learn not to care what people think until I was quite a bit older (like, about two years ago), but I could act like I didn’t, and that got me to adulthood.
Once I had kids, and realized they were going to drive me to drink (more) if I didn’t have some outlet for my feelings about my inadequate parenting skills, I started posting on Facebook about it, sharing my frustrations with the world, but with humor to try to make myself seem less pathetic (not sure it always works). I would run into people I’m friends with on Facebook and they would say, “You’re the funniest person in my Facebook feed.” I was always genuinely flattered (and deeply grateful for the validation), and decided to take it to the next level and elaborate on my inadequate parenting experiences.
How Does Your Writing/Creating Process Work?
Many of my blog posts grow out of Facebook statuses. Sometimes a single status will have enough “backstory” for a post (“Wallowing in Their Own Filth” started as a status about my kids’ refusal to change their underwear, and they’re sufficiently slovenly in their personal habits that it was easy to expand on that topic). Other times I’ll find four or five statuses with a similar theme, and weave them into a post. Sometimes I’m inspired by something someone else writes—as Stacey said, my school carnival post grew out of something I read on her blog. I also carry two or three notebooks that I scribble things down in—overheard conversations, random amusing thoughts that are totally out of context but for which I might find a context, silly words and phrases.
Once I have an idea, I panic. Just kidding. I get something, anything down “on paper” (because of course it’s not paper, it’s Word). I’m to the point where I have to “compose” on the computer. I can use paper for notes, but it’s all in a Word doc from there. I’ll bounce around from one topic to another over the course of several days to several weeks, working on the one(s) I have ideas for, adding a couple of paragraphs, hitting save, and moving on to another one, depending on my mood. I do most of this on the ferry on my way home from work. I have a half hour ferry ride, and in the afternoon I’m on an earlier ferry than the ones my friends are on, so I have a chunk of uninterrupted time to work. Sometimes I try to get some work done on the weekends, but we all know how that goes (“Mommy, can I have a computer turn?” “Mommy, when we go to the store today, can we get…” “Mommy, can you get me down a bowl?” “Hey Mommy…hey Mommy…hey Mommy…”).
When a post is “complete” it will sit on my thumb drive for anywhere from a couple of days to a week or so. I’ll go back and read it and reread it, constantly tweaking it, both the content and the syntax. I have a bad habit of using the word “that” when it could just as easily be removed, so lots of times I’m deleting errant instances of “that.” I’ll find typos (places where my brain hustled my fingers on to the point that I dropped a word or words), and occasionally delete sections, or rewrite parts (for instance, this post will be “finished” probably three to five days before I post it, but I’ll edit it twenty times before that).
Then I hit publish. Then I hit “refresh” a lot to see if you lovely people are stopping by to say hi. Like I said, I’m kind of pathetic and needy that way.
OK, so that's me! Now, to introduce the next three bloggers who will tell you about how their writing process works, allow me to introduce Jeannette from Mommy Needs a Martini, Kelley from Kelley's Break Room, and Cassandra and Momus from the team-written blog, The Next Delusion. Each of these lovely folks sent me a bio, their social media links, and links to two posts so you can get to know them. Here, in their own words, is a little about them:
Jeannette Bellesfield is a married, full-time working Mommy to two girls (born '10 & '12) whose life consists of work, diapers, bottles, stories, naps, craft fails, power struggles and, of course, martinis over at Mommy Needs A Martini.
Social Media Links:Facebok: http://www.facebook.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/
The Day I Met Jacob: http://www.
Fairies in a Jar...?: http://www.
The Next Delusion
Cassandra: I am
in my mid-forties with a daughter in college and a 10 year old son. Somehow
I find myself working as a data analyst despite my love of words and deep
mistrust of all things numeric. Over the years I have engaged in a variety
of delusional behaviors to enable me to pretend that someday my life will
involve more than statistics and PowerPoint. I blog about my life, my
delusions, and all of the things that either irritate me or make me anxious. My
goal when I sit down to write a post is generally to make Momus laugh.
Momus: I am slightly later into my forties than
Cassandra, which is a fact she reminds me of on a weekly basis. I have two
daughters, aged 14 and 11 who are so much smarter than I ever was (or will ever
be). Like Cassandra, I have followed a wayward career path, with training
in psychology which somehow morphed into data analysis. I blog about my endless
missteps in life, my character flaws (I field nominations for those), and a
variety of skewed perspectives. My goal in
writing a blog post is for Cassandra to still be speaking to me after she reads
it. Anything else is a bonus.
Apologies to My Mother: http://www.
Two Nuns and a Giraffe Walk Into a CVS: http://www.You can follow Cassandra on Twitter at @TheNextDelusion
Kelley's Break Room
Kelley's Break Room is a humor blog meant for everyone: mothers, fathers, single women, single men, teenagers, the elderly with good eyesight, highly developed infants and your neighbor on the left. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post and she has been a contributor to NickMom since 2011. She is a co-author on the popular book, I Just Want To Pee Alone. She was named in Mashable's 2013 "17 Funny Moms on Twitter" list and has appeared in the Huffington Post's "Best Parenting Tweets" list several times. One of her tweets was also read on The Steve Harvey Show in May 2014 by Steve Harvey himself! She has appeared on Great Day Houston, Houston's Fox 26 Morning Show and on the NickMom TV show Parental Discretion with Stephanie Wilder-Taylor. In her a professional life, she is a speech-language pathologist in a hospital and a public school. She's been married since 1999 and has two sons born in 2004 and 2008. They can all sort of make her crazy.
My links:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/
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