Life Goes On

This morning I went for a run. The thing about running is you can pretty much tell in the first five minutes how it's going to go. On a good day, like one of those great, cool autumn days, I'm as light as a feather. Other days, it's like running in quicksand. My side starts hurting or my knee is giving too much. There is however a third option that I was thinking about this morning. Sometimes, if I just keep running I can move past the aches and pains and get into the zone.

I had a rocky start today. Not just on my run. I popped into the grocery to pick up a couple of things and the only other person there was a mom with a baby. This baby looked just like my son only she was a little girl. Same wild hair, same chubby legs, same pout. I started to well up, fighting back tears. When I was pregnant I didn't want to be and now that I'm not, I'm sentimental. I think this is the fundamental problem we face as human beings - how to be happy with what we have and where we are and not regret what's past or what we can't change.

When I checked email this morning, I had lots of Facebook messages from my ongoing thread. The six of us have been at it now for months. There will be a flurry of activity, then silence, then someone finds a picture from 1982 and we're back at it. As I've said before I really love my thread. I'm getting to know people as adults that I didn't know all that well as kids for the most part. They're all really stellar human beings.

This has been a tough year. Friends have lost jobs and worse. This one woman Shannon is such a hot shit. She's an artist and a golfer, mom to four and recently divorced--just battling back from the depths and still funny as hell.

Today Shannon sent this message to the group:

I have no idea why, but "Bungle in the Jungle" is playing in my head. This morning was my last time in the car pool line after almost 20 years of doing it. Bittersweet. I can't tell you how many times I've sat idling in the high school parking lot picking up or dropping off and have seen all of us in flashbacks. There's always the kid that starts the school year looking like he's ready to join the ROTC and ends the year looking like a rock star. I just have a hard time believing it's been so many years since we were all there.

For Shannon, her kids are moving on. For me, my pregnant days are over. For some of the threaders, it's losing a job and becoming Mr. Mom. But life keeps moving and we'd best do the same.

When I run with my son, he hates it because he hasn't quite made it to that place where you feel like you're flying. To him every step is taking away from something else he'd rather do. To me, I'm grateful to still be taking the steps at all. Just keep running I tell him. It will get easier. He's young. He'll learn.

I saw Dave Matthews interviewed on Sunday Morning. It was a fairly somber piece about the near break-up of the band and the sudden death of their saxophonist. Dave said to the interviewer, "The fact that we're going to die is a pretty good reason to stop complaining."

To watch them grow. To stop complaining. To just keep running. Life goes on.

I Am a Shit

My husband didn't get home until 9:15 last night - Friday night. He was just, I don't even know the word, maybe wrecked, defeated? He was texting me from the train like he always does about what's for dinner and the answer was nothing. I left a cupcake for him that my neighbor gave us. My intent was to split it with him but he looked so friggin' bummed out, I told him to eat the whole thing.

I told him I had a good day. I had three unsolicited positive remarks on my blog. One from my stepsister even, who read Adventures in Babysitting and somehow didn't want to kill me for that story about taking care of her son.

He couldn't be consoled my husband. He wanted to talk about what a shitty day he had. I should've just sat there quietly and listened. Instead I laid into him about what the hell are we doing if he hates this job.

I thought he was enjoying it. He seemed cheery enough. Maybe it was just an exquisitely bad day. Seriously though, what are we doing? Will and I never see him during the week. He leaves at 8am and the earliest he'll be back is 9pm. That's everyday, Monday through Friday. And he's working on the weekend. Baseball is starting soon and I can't help Will. I used to have an arm but now I throw like a girl. And no way I can catch Will now, he's throwing way too hard.

So I'm up now at 4am. blogging about this mess. Writing, writing, just keep writing. For what? The only money I make writing has absolutely nothing to do with this blog, which is unfortunately the only writing I really enjoy.

Yesterday on the thread (yes, the same thread, world's longest, will soon have a spot next to world's largest ball of twine), yesterday Jack took a "hafe" day as he put it. Jack is in the process of losing his job as a well-paid lawyer. In light of that situation, he decided to say f - it and he took off to watch his little girl swim.

I keep telling my husband you have more power than you think. Don't let them mess with you because you think you have no power. And in most years, that would be true. But this year, with the way things are going, there could definitely be another 100 guys in line to take his shitty ass job. We won't even have paid health benefits until April so if he quits now, we are screwed

Here's what Jack said on the thread:

Since these f-ers have turned me loose in the worst possible f-ing time, I said f-them today and left at 1:30 - watched my daughter Sarah's swimming lesson at 2:00, then went to the gym, then hung out with my kids (Sam too) and that's how I spent my hafe day, the other hafe.

Things are bleak. Things are grim. There's a feeling out there that the worst could happen at any point. I should've listened to my husband who has apparently been telling me for several weeks now that he's unhappy, but I missed the signs. Now he's downstairs sleeping with Will because he never gets to see him. And I'm up here, blogging in obscurity.

I have to write this thing. I have to keep putting it out there even if no one reads it and nothing ever comes of it. It's like the thread. My blog sustains me during tough times and we are in tough times. My husband is proof of that. I'll tell you one thing, that biatch at work who's giving him so much trouble, better back off. I will come after her. I will write about her and make her life a living hell, if only in my own mind and on this here blog.

Only in Moderation

My friend Christina told me I need to update my blog. Since she is one of 4.5 followers I have, I shall gladly comply.

What to write, what to write. I'm still on my Facebook thread. We're balancing bad joke telling with mocking distant family members. Also our friend from Costa Rica sent some pics from a local surfing competition and once again I'm wondering why I live here in Connecticut.

I had coffee last week with my friend Steven and we were talking about misperceptions surrounding women and technology, namely that we don't get it when in fact, women are on the web, women make most of the household purchasing decisions and women are speaking out about everything from annoying commercials to products we love. Women have had strong opinions all along - now we have a big ass megaphone for airing them.

This morning I've been researching women bloggers. I saw a segment on the Today Show at the gym about Digital Moms. I looked up some of their experts from Heather Armstrong who writes Dooce to Cafe Mom and Blogher. It's so funny to me that I've been plugging away thinking I was the worst mom of all time but well hidden here in the burbs. Then I read Dooce and Baby on Bored and truemomconfessions and am just so grateful there are others like me out there.

My hero for the day is Romi Lassally who actually wrote on Huffpoo about becoming the oldest intern of all time at 43 to get back in the workforce. It's the exact same thing I've been thinking--how to pull out of self-employed world and back into some level of social interaction. She also told a story about one of her kids throwing up in the middle of the night and she left it for the dog to eat. Yes! That's what I'm talking about.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Never trust a perfect mother because it's just not possible. Somewhere there is a chink in the armor. As my friend Kristen says, "I love the chinks." This was right after she invited me to a Pilates class that will "work your ass off" while holding her 4 year-old. Hey I taught my son his first curse word. "Goddammit," I said when I guy cut me off and in almost a whisper from his car seat behind me I heard Will repeat, "Goddammit."

Or as Mrs. Mulderrig said about her pregnancies, all nine of them, "I always had two scotches a night. That was it." Hey at least she quit smoking.

http://dooce.com/
http://babyonbored.blogspot.com/
http://www.truuconfessions.com/channels/Mom

Adventures in Facebook

About a year ago, I joined Facebook. A friend of mine who is a supreme networker convinced me to climb on board. At first I did the minimum, posting a picture and setting up my profile. I was bashful about inviting friends because I really have this deep seated fear that I've been invisible most of my life. We moved frequently when I was a kid and I had this feeling people forgot me after having known me only a short period of time. To my surprise people remembered me. People from 3rd grade remembered me.

I've become a more advanced user lately, again mostly due to this Facebook master friend that I have. She invited me to join a thread with about 5 other people, all from high school. One of the guys is in Costa Rica so I've been asking him about surf schools. I think we're all around the same age give or take.

This thread has been going on for about two weeks now. Someone will post a photo or make a comment and others respond. When I stopped responding for a few days my friends threatened to bounce me. So I had to jump back in. I'm finding I can't keep up. They've all kept their wits about them and mine are in the garage I think.

The thread is hard to describe. We've gone from the profane to the profound. One guy is forbidden to access the thread at work. One of the women got the boot from Facebook. Apparently Facebook, like Google and the FBI and cell phone makers, is watching us. Without giving it all away--because I think there is a code of honor or cone of silence connected to the thread--we've mocked people from their high school yearbook photo, slandered former teachers, tapped into other friends' photo albums to slake them and outed a few people who are not currently out.

Some of the better comments include:

• I think he's featured on the NAMBLA website
• I don't own any applebottom jeans and boots with the fur
• I once called shotgun on a motorcyle but my legs got tired before we crashed

But the thing that's struck me and the reason I'm writing this blog, is that at some point I realized the difference for us forty-somethings on Facebook versus those kids I hear use it. At some point, real life intervenes.

Two of the threaders are brother and sister. The brother sent his kids up to visit his sister. When they went back home, she wrote, "I think they each left with a third of my heart."

Yesterday we had this comment from one of the men working in Hilton Head. "Sorry kids, I can't play today. I have to go lay off a couple of really nice guys. Draconian projections for the resort."

Last night we got another Facebook warning, something about contains content that was removed by Facebook. No doubt we'll go back to obscene photographs, mocking yearbook inscriptions and making fun of old boyfriends and girlfriends. Just like the youngsters on Facebook. But from time to time we're faced with real life, being forty and all that entails.

Drunken Facebook is the New Drunk Dialing

I think that says it all. Just another keen insight from me.