LaurieWrites

Go easy now.

When she called me from the car she started crying almost immediately, and I cried too, for what it occurs to me now, occurred to me then, probably, were entirely different reasons. 

I saw her shutting the door a ridiculous final time, twisting the key under the single bare bulb -- the impossibility of managing it on the first try, twisting her toe into the irresistible seam of the porch floor boards.

How could she never open that door again? How could she have ever? 

I saw a fractured reel in my mind, images and feelings and days spent because that was really all anyone knew how to do, the only way they were known to be able to be spent. I saw rust and peeling paint, a back room finally empty of bottles, a painting of a broken lamp in greens and bronze, cracks in the ceiling I will never be able to forget. 

I told her I was sorry that I couldn't help. I felt her fragility on the line, took it into my bones through the crackle of the mobile phone's almost-disconnect. I felt mine more acutely. I internalized the weakness, the things I couldn't do, the ways I hadn't helped. 

I felt like hell, knew she felt worse. We were silent together on the line in a way that we never are, a crucial, unspoken few minutes that as it droned on seemed to acknowledge what we'd been through the past four decades. Most importantly the silence said that I, who had dealt with so much less, still knew what she'd been through, what she'd done. 

It's overwhelming, the sense of absolute not-rightness that pervades this -- the powerlessness over a train that left the station decades ago. You can't dress some things up. Some things, for some reason, just aren't okay, and in some ways I'm not sure how you ever piece it together in your mind so you can carry it, or let it go. 

"I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you," I said, again. I was. I am.

My kinder, needier heart wants so badly to hold onto the pretty parts, the sunlight through a window or the feel of a scraggly dog's warm breath at my side on a couch. I want to call up the hems of skirts, an ironing board with the eternal outline of an iron burnt into the cover, terrible off-brand ice cream and Christmas stockings with our names in glitter. I want to hear the slamming of a door, feel the embrace of someone who sang to me off-key but nonetheless made me feel safe for a time. I want to see Dagwood movies on channel five and the way a ceiling fan whirred against those cracks I can't unsee in the hottest days of summer.

I  want to keep my soul memory of the inside of the freezer, the way the coffee table doors squeaked when I scrounged inside the stack of photo albums to see the newest images pasted inside.

I can see the soup splatters on the back of the stove. I can call to mind a certain, essential kind of belonging, before it got twisted. 

I know it in my bones, all of it, and I can feel it now, my smallish body thrashing against thin sheets in one of only three beds I'd ever known then, my grandmother's overly-solid body beside me, reading a trashy book over her glasses, saying settle down, it's hot, I know, go to sleep. 

I hear snores from the other room. I hear a man talking to a dog. I see fireflies out my window. 

I feel a time when things weren't broken down on the surface, although those fissures even then were clear in retrospect, foreshadowing. I am envious of myself then, almost, a person who knew little of what surrounded me, whose largest concern was that room and the heat and noise. 

****************************

I couldn't finish the task, however I defined it in my mind along the way. My mind aged. My spirit weakened, maybe? The scales fell off my eyes and I lost...something. I don't know what. Not compassion, because I can't seem to extricate that, can't set that on fire and leave it by the road like I'd like sometimes. In some ways it's like that -- that sick empathy for even that which hurts me -- turned inward.

And it's not that I can't handle shitty situations. I can. I learned a certain resilience somewhere, in the gravel and the dirt, searching through the grass and weeds for violets, avoiding my suburban minefields. I've crawled out through overgrown grass and crushed shrubs to sit with an elderly stranger who had just fallen out a fourth story window, talked to her and held her hand as she died, learned her name as quickly as I could, just in time to bark it at the paramedics as she apologized to me over and over for being bad, for going where she ought not to have gone. 

"Mildred! Call her Mildred, not ma'am. She is 92. She's badly hurt. Please say her name."

I've sat next to both of my dead grandmothers in hospital beds, watched one die, alone, and watched my beloved grandfather, who was effectively my father for the bulk of my first twenty years, expire, jaundiced from organ failure and a rapidly destructive cancer.

I can watch people in pain. I've walked with the people I love until the end. I have sucked up tears in rooms and cried them in hallways. I've walked through frigid air behind bodies I loved, covered in a sheet. 

What I cannot, could not, do, was dismantle this one particular structure. I could not. It beat me. 

And now, after tomorrow, in all physical ways that are relevant to me, it will be gone. 

I can't say I'm sorry, but I can say that I'm sad, for all of it, for all of us. 

****************************

Go easy now 
Go easy now 
Later on the road I'm gonna lay my body down 
We'll meet along the way I know 

Grow straight and true 
Grow straight and true 
Later on the road is gonna break your world in two 
We'll meet along the way I know 
We'll meet along the way I know 

September

It's harder to talk here when I've been away. I feel like we should have a gathering-in of some sort, me and the strangers and small cadre of friends who drop by. It feels a little forced to pick back up again, because I've never been one of those vignette sort of bloggers. Not the "Hey, so this one time, when I was doing this thing? And that funny thing happened?" Not me. I sometimes wish I were, sure -- that I had a handy toddler sidekick to provide me with material. A goddamned dog, even. But nope. Just me. And I also don't feel so touchy feely lately, nor into the creative writing and the developing of a construct or a flowery means by which to impart a central truth. 

I am beat down tired. I am exhausted and dehydrated. If I were Brittney in the dark days I'd have shaved my head and beat the crap out of a paparazzi SUV with an umbrella last week. 

It's a good thing I'm not her. 

I've been thinking about this blogging thing more because I happened upon a comment recently from someone very popular in a particular social media SPACE. She said that she was so glad her awesome life happened in the awesome place where said life currently happens, because if she'd stayed in the shitty environment where she lived before all of the CRAZY SUPER AWESOME, all by herself, ostensibly, she wouldn't have had anything to blog about, not ever. 

Her shitty environment resembled mine in some ways. 

I wasn't sure what to do with that information. Maybe blow my brains out? Maybe just stop living my entirely boring, unbloggable, less madcap than the average person like that person kind of life? Maybe apologize for inflicting all of my nothing on the world for years, all my pointless, useless, not-even-Seinfeldian not awesome? Because whoa. I know it's one person's point of view, but a lot of people happen to co-sign this person's words. And if she said it? Well yeah, here's my nothing. Eat it up. 

I am, as they say, winning with this train of thought. 

Anyway, I have always been really irritated with discussions of "the writing life", of what it means to be a writer and where people write and how they write and what provokes them to write and what they eat when they write. It's like losing weight, kind of. You eat less and you exercise. There's no magic answer and billions of people spend years trying to conjure it up. In this case, you just have to write. 

And a lot of times, I don't want to, although it is, sadly, one of maybe three basic strong skills that I possess (the others are guessing with freakish accuracy how much grocery store salads will cost before they're weighed, and also I make a perfect grilled cheese. So basically, science.) To avoid writing, I tell myself that I can't. I tell myself that I'm blocked. I do every which thing to work around it except the thing itself, because I have some kind of stupid gold standard for what people will find, here, on a blog I've had since aught-six, on which I write for entirely free, which very few people read. 

I'm not sure what I'm after anymore. I started with minutiae and terrible fonts. I started with the desire to write about anything but the devastating, disgusting heartbreak I was going through at the time, and in some ways I succeeded. I wrote my way into a minor part-time career as a writer on the internet. I got a journalism degree. I met my best friends. 

This blog has been crazy good to me. Incredible things have happened. I have opened up so many doors. I've gotten better at some things. I've stayed the same at some things. 

I'm not entirely sure that I'm a better person. I'm thinking a lot about that lately. 

But the deal is that I still come here. I log in and there's still this blinky white box that I am supposed to fill with something. And I feel the need to do that still and I feel weighted by the knowledge that I have no idea what to say right now or where to go or what to do. I see so many people doing things and grabbing things and being things and calling themselves things and the options and the intersections and the noise make me a little bit crazier, I think.

And I know in my heart AND mind that these are some of the most annoying posts I have ever read on other blogs and it kind of makes my mind hurt to be responsible for one. But it's just true that I process by dumping words, whether spoken or written, and if I don't do it right now, I don't know what else to do. So here you have it. So just for kicks, here are some segments of posts that I have in draft that I can't finish:

*We had an earthquake and the aftermath of a hurricane here, which meant that it poured rain for days on end. It was like the whole world went dark. It was weird.

I wrote this in draft and never hit publish. 

Thus it happened that I was napping yesterday at a completely inappropriate time for a grown person. I was racked out so hard, I was dreaming about Kate Winslet saving that person from the fire and Ryan Gosling breaking up the street fight and at some point I was back on a boat in California too. This nap was kind of like that freaky Wonka boat ride.

Then my bed started moving.

I have a big bed. I have what I consider the best bed in the world, and this sucker just, well, this is not to say that it has never moved with assistance (shut up) but it has never just spontaneously moved itself. 

"Ryan? Kate?" my dream self said. "California? Lunch? Oompa Loompa?"

And then I woke up. And yes, not only was my bed itself moving back and forth like I really was, finally, in Oz, but, oh hey look, my building was moving too. 

I didn't understand it, because I am rather dim when fully conscious and I was just waking up. And also, as it turns out, I am fairly calm when I assume that my 12-floor high-rise big ass apartment building is going to fall down into the courtyard whose renovation over the past eight months has been the stuff of my jackhammered nightmares. I love a screw-up like that. Whoops. 

For some reason the bed moving and the swaying of the whole structure fit together. It wasn't until the interior walls of, well, my whole PLACE started shaking and threatening to cave in that I assumed the obvious: 

My across the hall neighbor was knocking out a wall. Everything is construction around here, all the time. 

See? Dim.

My litany went like so: 

"The building is going to fall down. The fucking building is going to fall down. The neighbor is knocking out a wall, and the guys downstairs probably finally hit the essential parking garage column that was holding the whole shebang together. Isn't it funny how that happened at the same time? That is really crazy. Whoa, moving. Still moving a little.I'm probably going to die in this building. Hmmm. Wow. I hear sirens."

Not once did an earthquake occur to me.

Dim. Dim dim dim. And also I live in such a general state of enslavement to construction at every turn that I just assumed that that was it. 

*Whoops. That was long. Sorry. 

Then I tried to write about yoga:

I was standing in the yoga studio hallway last night, outside the class that I had given the task of making or breaking my shitty day. 

No really, it was a shitty day, a shittier day than average in what has seemed to be a string of more of them than usual since the spring. But as has been my habit since January, I pulled myself out of my force field of anxiety, self-flagellation and unfinished tasks and dragged myself to the yoga studio that I haven't really been to enough since my car blew up last month. 

I was a few minutes early. This is the only place to which I am early on a regular basis, because I like to nest in my corner of the room. A very nice woman I've spoken to before was standing next to me. She said hello, and then she asked me if I would be willing to let her observe me in class and offer me hands-on adjustments throughout the hour and a half. She is in the teacher training program, and she had one more in-class private session to go for her certification. 

"Sure," I said, to her smiling, serene face and calmly modulated tone of voice. And then my brain kicked in. 

"Sure! Sure I'll let you touch me during the whole class, and move my legs around and press on my shoulders and oh yes, you're holding a strap, too! Oh my God. What did I just do? Are these leggings clean? This is a hot class, right? I hope you like sweat, yoga teacher lady. A lot."

She looked  so grateful that I could almost ignore my lunatic brain. I've been in that kind of a jam, where I need to cross something off of my list that requires another person, and it's a pain in the ass to ask, because no one really wants to be jarred out of their semi-comatose routine to do anything out of the ordinary, they just want to go in there and down dog their crappy work day away. 

Especially people like me, who don't really like to be touched by strangers, and who are jumpy enough that the prospect of a person, however nice, watching me go through an entire yoga class and moving my limbs around randomly when I screw up is enough to cause a mild sociopathic break. 

But I said yes. And then I babbled some more things, including a stellar moment when I told her I was okay with this as long as she didn't get too "handsy," like she was a guy at a bar with dollar bills and not a nice middle-aged lady in an unassuming yoga class outfit. The only handsy out of line she'd probably get would be to bust out some Reiki moves when I wasn't looking.

Handsy. Really, Laurie. HANDSY. 

Anyway, she said "handsy" back at me, and nodded solemnly and said she would not be it. I yapped something about my neck hurting and gestured oddly to a part of my neck that didn't really hurt. I also wondered again why I leave the house so frequently.

I tried to write something coherent about depression during suicide prevention week. That didn't get very far:

Someone fairly prominent in the social media world killed himself last week. I didn't know this guy, and I'm not linking him up here, because there's really no point, and I'm guessing it was peace that he was after. But I did go to his Facebook page from the link provided on Twitter , and there weren't that many messages yet. I guess people had just found out, although 2011 provides degrees of hearse-chasing like no other year, basically. 

The top message that I read was typed by a woman who, oh, I don't know where she was sitting? On her fucking lanai? In her goddamned bed? At her shabby chic kitchen table sucking down coffee? And she was all, oh, I'm so sorry for your friends and FAMILY, so and so, but you know, life is a choice, and you made the wrong one. I'm sorry you felt like you had to do that.

Maybe she tacked on an "xoxo", I don't remember. 

Really, social media lady? That's big talk, calling out a newly dead social media guru on his Facebook page. Let's have our last interaction with a guy who was miserable enough to end his life be a mild beratement. That's productive. Because he was apparently not excited enough about the stuff that amps up your stupid ass to keep this train going for one more day? Good for you.

And also he is dead so he can't flame you back. He can't even unfriend you.

No, really. Good for you. 

I tried to go to her profile. I'm not proud of it, but I did. I don't know what I thought I was going to do there, maybe sneer at her pictures of her Maui vacation or what, or of her living, berater-of-dead-people self. I couldn't see anything, though, and it was just as well. People like that woman suck. There are a lot of them, these people who think they have it all down, especially when it comes to the life-ending choices of others. They suck when they invoke the Bible as a reason why it's a sin to take one's life, and they suck when they use guilt and no knowledge whatsoever of what it's like to be in those sad, sad shoes as an excuse to feel superior over a dead person.

I would say that of all the bullshit ways to use Facebook? A crappy comment to a dead person about the way they died clinches the top loser prize.

And there you have it, the random detritus out of the way.

I'm going to start fresh tomorrow.

Credible Threat

There is a credible threat to our safety in the DC area this weekend -- as well as in New York, of course. It is specific and measurable, the news says, but no one knows what it is. 

It was weird and jarring news, as usual, but I felt more silly that I hadn't really tied the date to what was surely going to be a warning like this. 

Credible. Documented or just believable? Where is it? Don't know. Who is producing it? No idea. What to do about it? Meh. Will I die on the Metro if I take it into the city to meet my friends for brunch? Will a stadium or a museum blow up? Car bombs? More mass vehicular murder? Who knows? 

********************

It's different to live here now, sure. The craziness started the day that Peter Jennings -- the person who I bizarrely came to look to over a period of years to narrate every event of note in my life, who is now, also, sadly, dead -- talked us through. We woke up early or were awoken with crazy news. We were there in that day and then it ended and nothing was ever the same.

The year after, we had weeks where we had to point out white trucks driven by killers, picking off our fellow citizens, one by one. We zig-zagged to the gas pumps and into grocery stores. 

We learned over and over what we should already know, I guess -- that life is precarious, that every minute you're alive and not dead is a miracle, really. That you never know. That you should hug your loved ones and tell them, for sure, that you love them, so much that it makes them sick.

Because what if it's them in that building or on that Metro train or walking down that street when the bomb goes off or the plane crashes or the gas asphyxiates? Did you say it enough? Can you say it enough without driving people crazy? (I say no. I say that what we know is enough, that it's part of us. That if it's shown? You don't so much need to go on and on and on. That it just is. People have told me they loved me and bailed. That's all. It isn't always what it seems, or sounds like.)  

The signs on the highway say "See something, say something." They tell me to report suspicious behavior. What in the hell am I looking for that's out of the ordinary on a suburban DC highway? A car afire? A person acting crazy? 

That's normal, here. That's normal pretty much anywhere. I'm 99.5 percent sure that I will never call that number. 

********************

I wonder how many of us in this notoriously transient area have been here for more than a decade. I wonder where our roots are. I wonder what we saw on tv, who we knew, where we were, if we could see the smoke, what we did, if we learned to navigate the orange barriers then or more recently. 

I don't know what matters in this context. 

********************

I knelt down in yoga after a week break last night. I let the feeling wash over me, the things that happened, my unwillingness to think about them, my sense of having no claim to grief, and yet a stark memory of blowing off a new job a decade ago after I woke up to screams that THE PENTAGON WAS ON FIRE AND SO WAS NEW YORK to sit on my parents' couch and watch planes fly into buildings over and over again, like a movie that wasn't a movie. 

I listened to commentators' voices break. I decided that the job I had signed up for wasn't for me, that if a plane flew into that building I would have definitely been in the wrong place. I went back to my bookstore. I missed the boy I loved who was gone who came back a few months later and then left again. I felt a teeny, tiny fraction of all that it was. I still know it was tiny, and yet it felt (still feels) like a lot.

********************

The only comfort I ever found in George W. Bush came in the days after 9/11. The only sense I had of him as a leader was at that time, and the phrase I crazily clung to was to "go about my business." I did it. I spent my paltry dollars and walked the streets. But then again, what was the alternative? My city, in spite of the damage done to a critical spot where people gave their lives for all of us, essentially, was intact. Roads weren't closed. We weren't, probably thanks to Todd Beamer and the Let's Roll Crew, bless their souls, gutted on our edge or in our center, like New York. Thousands weren't lost, their papers and limbs and auras floating over the landscape. 

Not directly, anyway. It's not like we didn't feel them from a distance. 

The percentages and numbers suck. Incalculable, all of it. 

Everyone went about his or her business. There was no new normal. There was just new, and recycled, and the best anybody could do.

The people who died and who have died since deserved better. They deserve the best we can do. 

********************

Tomorrow I have good things, in a previously attacked city. I have many friends to see, some of my favorite people in the world, and a drink or two waiting. I hear I'll see the sun shine. 

I hope that nothing bad happens to anyone in New York or D.C. or in any place around our country. I hope it's a day of reverence for everyone -- EVERYONE -- who has lost his or her life  for absolutely no reason. 

And although this is probably selfish, I really hope that no one condescends to tell me never to forget, because how could I? 

********************

I think of our troops, dead and alive, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in New York, and at the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, every day. I also think of every innocent civilian caught in the crossfire of these wars, thousands of miles away. None of it makes any sense to me, still, or at all. 

BlogHer -- the Final

Yes, BlogHer 2011 was a month ago. But August is the worst month of my life in terms of commitments I can't control (well, maybe besides December into January, but that's another story.) So I haven't really had the time to catch up with anything the way I wanted to. 

This year was especially and differently wonderful for a variety of reasons, and I thought I would share them in a list format, just to keep me on task. 

Especially and Differently Wonderful Things About BlogHer 2011. 

1. Sarah made me get up early and fly to California.

This is not something I'd expect to think was a positive, and at the time I was forcing myself off the couch at 5ish a.m. I wasn't happy at all. But she planned the flights, which is always a huge bonus for me (thank you, I never thank you appropriately for taking care of that stuff, and of me.) (Also I owe you money. Be very pleased that the house sold.) But more than that, she also made the entire trip worthwhile before we even left the airport by making me laugh from the time we got there until we were in the air. This is so useful for a bad flier who usually flies alone and is therefore solitary with my own thoughts about mortality and mechanical failure from the time I leave my house for the airport until I land wherever I'm going.

I don't even think she did it on purpose this time. Suffice to say that she hallucinated a Thanksgiving-table-ready turkey on the security conveyor belt and had her Dick knife confiscated by a TSA agent who I'm convinced was thisclose to letting her keep it because he seemed torn between laughing his ass off at a grown woman genuinely bereft at the loss of her Dick knife and sorry for her because he was afraid a grown woman was going to cry because she was genuinely bereft at the loss of her Dick knife. 

It's complicated. (And anyway she has a new one now.) 

Add to this a double shot of "hosers" and a Cash Cab story that made us both cry-laugh and I'm fairly certain I didn't even need the Bloody Mary or two I had on the way, although I had it anyway. So that was good. 

2. Coronado and the ocean, basically. 

I loved Coronado and I loved just...getting on a boat and going there as soon as we got to town. I am a water person and a beach bum at heart, and something about being able to be near it and in it whenever I really want is so freeing to me. It was a good thing. I loved the location this year. It was good for my soul and I loved being with my friends in that gorgeous -- and fairly chill- -environment. The pool alone? I could be sitting in that place right now and be perfectly happy. Who's in? 

3. My roommate

Jenny Mae is a brilliant, funny, kind soul and I loved getting to meet her and know her a little bit. I was working a lot this conference so it was even harder than it usually is for me to light anywhere (and it is always hard.) But we seemed to run into each other at the most opportune times and co-existed quite well when we were in the same space. This is something I value so much, as a person who lives alone and tends towards the super nervous about my own effect on others in my space. (I was an only child for the first ten years of my life. I always had my own room. I never lived in a dorm. I live alone. I'm basically a sociopath. Also, I snore. If you can hang with that and not make me feel like an asshole? I could probably live with you.)

She also is remarkably crafty, inventive and creative, not to mention giving, because she brought me this and I love it. 

Front. 

Back. 

(That is my pillow. I hope there is no visible drool.) 

Sweet, right? 

I like her. And not just because she brought me a present. That was just extra like. She's @ohjennymae. She's really fucking cool. Avail yourself, although she may cut a bitch from her trapeze of awesome. Sometimes it just goes down like that. 

4. The weather. 

Oh my God. The weather. I've been to San Diego thrice before and never was it this perfect. If I'm ever independently wealthy, please know that I will be Augusting there. Maybe if I'm not even wealthy, but just become a drifter? I will August there that way. 

5. Another Present! 

I met Janet at Mom2.0 in New Orleans in May. She walked up to me the first day and told me that she, too, had brought me a present. (I support the bringing of surprise presents to me. Maybe we can make this a more widespread thing this year?) 

And then she gave me this. 

It was no big deal, it was $5.50 at Claire's or something, she said, but it reminded her of me. 

I wore it all weekend, and I got more compliments than I have gotten on any piece of jewelry that I can remember, even stuff I bought from friends that they made with their own hands. I love it. When it falls apart, as pieces of jewelry like this tend to and also because I break things with alarming frequency, I will keep all of the pieces, because I am a sentimental idiot and also because I want to know how to remake this necklace because I think it could make a killing on Etsy. 

Also it may be the case that Janet and I have discussed other, er, cottage industries involving this particular piece. Or not. 

6. My people. (and a little bit of reading of blog posts, as it turns out.) 

Glennia was there. Just thinking about Glennia being alive in the world makes me happy. 

Deb on the Rocks. That is all. 

ClumberKim and her merry band of Clumber People! 

Sassymonkey and FireMom, which now that you mention it makes for a rocking band name. 

Mr. Lady, y'all. Also Redneck Mommy. One of these things is not like the other. 

Also MotherBumper stalked me a little bit, and that was delightful. 

Jen B., who it's just nice to see wherever I go. 

Shannon, who I just love so much. (Looking at this list, I don't understand all over again why I haven't been to Canada.) 

And so many more, I can't even begin to list. I haven't even talked about the Voices of the Year/Community Keynote, and getting to hear Bon Stewart read live, which to me was (and I mean this, no matter how corny it sounds) a gift. I love her words and it was so great to hear her speak them aloud. I also just love Kristen Chase, I do. Have since I got off a train in New York a couple years ago and met up with her on the way to a blogging event, having never met her before, and it was like I'd always known her. That is my favorite kind of person. I thought she did the most fantastic job reading. Every year is great, but I had a soft spot for this one. I thought it was beyond great, maybe almost as good as the first year, which will forever rank as the top spot on my very short list of reading honors, so it always has to be my favorite. 

Also I loved watching Sarah and Suebob read at the fabulous Ann (of Ann's Rants) Listen to Your Mother Salon. Suebob was a keynoter with me, and it was time for Sarah to do this. It made me very happy. I'm also grateful to call Ann a good friend, and I love what she's doing with this project. She's unstoppable, y'all. Watch out.

7. Baseball with TwoBusy (hey man, that could be a thing.) 

Sarah and I, along with the Kotecki-Vests, were lucky enough to attend a San Diego Padres game with this guy. I could tell you about him but then the Internet would explode and I'd be sentenced to watching all of the remaining bajillion Red Sox games that will be fielded in my lifetime, and we can't have that. So here is his sandwich. It is from the Food Network, ostensibly. It cost $13. The potato sticks were like the ones that come out of the Heinz can or whatever brand, and they were just as disgusting and delicious as they were when I was a child. 

His gifts are unceasing. 

It was the best time I've ever had at a baseball game. It was fun to go with someone who really loved the game and could point out things that were going on that I wouldn't normally notice, and also it was a rather exciting game. 

Yes, I acknowledge the excitement in a baseball game. 

He's one of the best people I know, and I'm very lucky that he is my friend. Just saying. 

8. Shooting the Bob Harper/@mytrainerbob workout. 

What? Yes. 

I got out of bed at 6:45 after a night of parties to go downstairs to do this particular thing. 

Well, I didn't kick my leg up like so, but I did lurk around the Bob Harper workout and take pictures. I recapped Biggest Loser for many, many hours and weeks last year, and I was determined that I was going to see this. 

And I saw it. I even popped into his oatmeal breakfast after, after I did a flow yoga class (because I'd totally taken leave of my senses)

but I got a little shy and plus, I needed a shower. My favorite part of the morning, however, was SueBob tweeting out smack talk when Bob's "LET'S GO LADIES!" yells into his microphone apparently woke up the higher floors of the hotel. Oops. 

9. Working with Snapfish. 

I had a wonderful experience shooting the conference for Snapfish/HP. I am very grateful to them for the opportunity. I also had the most wonderful time doing the panel on ways to actually get your photos OFF of the hard drive and maybe into frames or books or onto coffee mugs or whatever suits your fancy. I did the panel with Amanda of Parenting By Dummies and Samantha from Snapfish, and I thought it went quite well. I am normally at least a little bit nervous during panels and workshops, and this time I wasn't at all. It was a topic I felt very comfortable with and that I feel fits so well with the BlogHer crew, and I love talking about pictures and how to make them better. Win. 

I felt truly lucky to be a part of it, and to shoot head shots for so many lovely women afterwards. 

10. Sunday

My BlogHer Sundays are my own tradition.  I usually stay over in whatever city I'm in for a day, and leave on Monday. Genie and I kept them up when we were roommates, and had great days in San Francisco and Chicago. Last year, Sarah and Kim and I hung around for the day and a Yankees/Sox game that is one of my favorite memories. It's partially to see where I am a little more, partially to take my time saying goodbye to so many people who I may only see on Twitter and their blogs until next year, and partially (and mostly, I think) to help me transition back home, which is really, really hard for me every year. 

This year Sarah and I ended up at the Clever Girls Tech Brunch at Hotel Solamar, which was wonderful.  (When I go back to San Diego, I want to stay there. So cool.) The brunch was hosted by Beth Blecherman of TechMamas, Kris Cain of Little Tech Girl, Heidi Leder of Coast to Coast Mom and Leticia Barr of Tech Savvy Mama. The mimosa bar was inspired, the food was delicious, and there are a lot of things that are way worse than sitting on a gorgeous California hotel rooftop and talking about geeky things with cool women. It was sponsored by Podotree, Logitech, Popcap (I'm a Bejeweled freak so I love my spiffy coffee mug), Etymotic and iLove Robots. I got a mouse and earbuds, and since I'm prone to breaking things I can always use the help staying stocked.

I've love being involved with the Clever Girls Collective, most of all the professional and personal inspiration of watching the founders/partners -- Stefania, Cat, Sheila and Kristy -- work so well together to provide such cool opportunities for bloggers. I also appreciate that so many of their opportunities are not just open to moms, because as has been mentioned here a few times, that is not what I am. But I still blog, and I still love gadgets, and I still like to talk about things I (genuinely) use and enjoy. Thanks, ladies. Your hospitality and openness to all of us you work with is one of my favorite things about my online life. 

Then, as I said before, Heather was there, and she went out to the beach with us, for just the most wonderful day.

(One for luck.)

11.  It was a wonderful year.

Thank you to the BlogHer founders for making this event possible seven (seven!) years ago. This year I appreciated in particular Erin Groh and Lori Luna of the BlogHer events crew for looking out for me and helping me be better at the things I try to do, among the many other jillion things on their to-do lists. Also? Denise and TW get props for always being there to yell at me in the best and most loving possible way.

Thanks and mad respect most of all to my friend and mentor Elisa Camahort-Page, who never, ever settles for a lower bar or the status quo. You change lives, never doubt it. 

See y'all in New York. In what may count as the first advice dispensed for BlogHer 2012? Get in line for the halal meat cart at 7 a.m., and save me some. I hear it's worth it. Also? If you go to the Carnegie Deli? Split a sandwich. 

747

I dreamt about a plane crash last night. 

I'm a terrible flier, but this time I was on the ground. I stood in a field -- expansive, familiar -- like my uncle's old back pasture combined with a farm we used to visit every summer. 

I never remember my dreams, and I'm terrible about remembering my dream people, also. They're like stick figures, usually various people I know meshed together, so I can't really tell who's doing or saying what. In this case I knew it was my closest faces surrounding me, this one and that one, standing around in the grass, who knows why. 

I looked up at the sky, and saw the wide underbelly of a noiseless jumbo jet, strangely covered with dials and gauges, like the cockpit control panel turned inside out on the bottom of the plane. I jolted in my sleep as the dream plane flipped upside down, crashing nose-first into the trees, crushing a plat of houses that went up in flames. 

My dream friends screamed. The grass caught fire, flames speeding toward us. I felt us collectively unsure of which way to go. Moving backwards seemed a good idea, but no one is really fast enough to outrun that kind of firepower.

I woke up, then, as always happens just before the outcome of a disaster comes clear. Curling into myself, I knew I didn't need an interpreter to tell me that this was not a good sign of what was going on in there.  That plane is the most terrifying image I have ever seen in my mind.  It's been with me all week.  Over and over it crashes, and the flames go up. I never have figured out why we were standing there, just passing time.

This is why it's better that I usually never remember my dreams.

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I've been surrounded by construction since the spring. The racket of jackhammers and the smell of burning tar are a constant. No matter where it seems I walk, there are orange cones and caution tape, back hoes and guys in hard hats, and in one memorable case, a crane directly over the building where I work.

Every morning, the sounds drill through my brain. I've worked very hard and failed to force my brain to convert them into white noise. I've gone into the bathroom and shut the door, climbing in the tub with a comforter and a pillow. I've buried my head under more and more layers of covers, pointlessly. The doors and walls aren't thick enough, the constant sound too loud, Gaslight-crazy-making via jackhammered cement.

The courtyard looks better. The lighting is nice and the trees and flowers are fancy. There is, disappointingly, no water feature. I cruise through the Pier One site, looking for the chaise lounge on clearance at a store near me. It may actually be nice to sit on the balcony in the fall, if the noise ever stops.

I'm not sure they'll ever be finished.

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Last week there was an earthquake and the remnants of a hurricane here. The East Coast seemed to go under water. The sky looked and the air felt strange.  So many voices said it wasn't a big deal, as people drowned and lost their homes and worried about what might be, days before it was clear what was really going to happen after all.

It's easy to tell a person standing on a pier looking at the wreckage of their house that it's not so bad, when you can't see them, when your home a thousand miles away or maybe even next door is not submerged. It's easy to say that they shouldn't need government assistance. It's easy to make it about you.

This week answered back with a certain amount of sun. Life and brains rearranged around the sensory knowledge that what feels like walls caving in is something that comes up from the core, no warning. There's no way to predict it, and once it starts, you hold on to whatever's close and wait for it to pass.

Apt, that's all.