LaurieWrites

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. 

August and some other things.

So. Things have been pretty heavy around here. So look! 

It's me! Mildly inappropriately clad in a dress I mended poorly all by my damn self in my hotel room just minutes before Robin wrote profanity on me at a party! She is balls to the wall, y'all, so it's convenient that she tells you that up front. Or, as I captioned a photo of her the other day, "Honey Robin don't give a shit." 

And I'm overtired of the honey badger business, too, but it just made sense. 

Anyway, that should lighten it up a little. If it doesn't I don't know what to tell you. It's all I got. 

Return from BlogHer 2-aught-11 has been difficult. Things were already feeling teetery before I left. Summer schedules are challenging and work is heavy. Major events happened early in the season, and I'd been spending a lot of time since then either on the yoga mat refocusing or screwing around at home, wondering what the next thing was going to be. 

Then I went to California and was surrounded for four days by so many of the best people I've ever been lucky enough to know. It is just true. There were probably 50 people there who I could call (if I liked to call people) and talk to about just about anything related to my life and my work, and they would listen and provide some kind of feedback and it would likely be very useful. This is very cool and incredibly overwhelming for my brain and my heart all at once. And nothing that is overwhelming for these two components of me is entirely good. But there's nothing I can do about it. I can't not go. That doesn't work for me. And once I'm there I'm no good at filtering or managing my time with people versus time alone. I don't have any time alone, unless you count the random walking back and forth to places, and even then? Never happens. Rarely happens. So it's a lot, but it's too much good stuff, if that makes sense. 

(I also worked very, very hard on a couple of projects during the conference this year, in addition to having bad words written on me and having some of the most fun times I've had with some people who are very important to me. I also made some good connections and got some great ideas. And also posed with Sarah and a toilet, and the worst slogan I have ever seen for any product ever. (Sorry dudes.))

(I don't know what is wrong with us, either. She doesn't know how grateful she should be that I posted none of the shots of her watching the, er, Kleenex-testing station, with the peculiar Pinocchio-ish Animatronic child blowing snot on a crappy tissue that splits right in half, and then the Best. Tissue. Ever! that wouldn't break if Voldemort snorted into it through his wand. 

"I'm a real boy! Watch me fake blow my nose! I will make you throw up, right here in this expo hall!" It was not enjoyable in any way.)  

Do you like how I'm flip-flopping here between bitching and sharing ridiculous things?

It's almost too much to go there, to have this kind of experience and feel like you're home when you're not and then come home and not feel at home. All the pieces are rearranged again and this year almost as soon as I walked in the door exhausted from the Metro I proceeded to embark on a series of poor life choices in response to this tailspin. I think I'm going to spend post-BlogHer week next year in a distant tropical location, where I give my iPhone and computer to a trusted caregiver and lie on a beach with  bottomless beers and trashy books.

I hear people bitching on the internet about this or that thing related to the experience every year, and I can't even process it. I don't even care about it, because for me it is such an intensely personal thing. I am too personally immersed to criticize the nuts and bolts of any one part of it. And maybe that makes me weird, but I don't question where anyone else finds their place and their people. I don't. (I mean, I may wonder why they like that place or those people, but it's really none of my business.) 

So yeah, I came home, and freaked out. Hard. 

My car blew up. There were other things, life things, a few scary things that I wasn't sure what to do with yet. The huddled masses came streaming back from the beach with burnt noses and a million, time-consuming questions. It turns out that returning from a few days of zero humidity and the pure streaming sunlight and blue sky of heaven to a vat of sticky air and clouds gives me a five-day not-quite-migraine. I had been away from yoga for a week and I immediately twisted something in my neck that made standing a challenge, and also sitting, which made me extra pleasant in the place where I am required to go daily. (Don't turn 40. Do some Benjamin Button thing. Start the incantations now, is all I'm saying.) Worse, I felt all of the ideas I'd had and discussions I'd felt were productive slip away in 48 hours, and everything was swirling around in my brain so much that I couldn't capture it in an appropriate to-do list.

I didn't feel like doing this, not at all: 

 That's my boyfriend Bob Harper from the Biggest Loser, or perhaps @mytrainerbob to you. I dragged myself out of bed on BlogHer Saturday at 6:50 a.m., to go downstairs and watch him lead a terrace full of women through a punishing workout. I didn't meet him because I got a little bit shy and a little bit feeling like I needed to jam from his oatmeal breakfast before it was over because I had done an hour-long flow yoga class after his workout and a shower was a priority if I was going to meet any of my other myriad obligations that day. 

So. Almost two weeks later (is it two weeks later? Lost track.) I still feel like I'm missing stuff. I missed everyone uncommonly when I came home this year -- actually reached out to talk to people on the phone when I got back, a level of missing that is strange for me. I just don't know what to do about it, this reorganization time, besides reach out more to people in my life. But I can't spend time with people every minute. I can't constantly be reattaching some virtual umbilical cord. This is the way my life is right now and I have to learn to rest in it to a point. 

I don't think I'm doing a very good job. So what I am doing is isolating more, even when I know that that is really not a good idea. I just don't like what I have to tell people, the truth of things. I hear myself rambling and it just seems better not to talk. There are things I can't even deal with myself right now, so how can I explain them to anyone else? 

I can just feel things changing, in the oddest, most unavoidable, way, some fundamental things about what I want to do and where and with whom I want to be. I'm in touch in a pretty clinical way with things I'm not happy with in myself, with the unhelpful ways I approach my daily routine, with ways I don't relate well to people and let them down (or at the very least am less to them than I could be), with goals I'm not achieving because I've not been so much lazy as I've been terrified.

Yes, I do some things right. Yes. I have skills and assets. I will still help you if I can. 

But it's a necessary time to focus on the "needs work" list. Because I think I'm coming to understand that when we or our circumstances change, our desires and deepest understanding of what moves us (which also tend to starkly and uncomfortably illuminate what doesn't, and to what we can no longer cling without great cost) do too. It's either bend with that (I'm crazily thinking "enjoy the go," and just, no no no. Also, advertising is our societal drug. This is proof.) or you don't, and eventually -- if you are anything at all like me -- you end up cracking up a little past the usual benchmark, kicking the wrong asses and taking the entirely incorrect names.

It's like my internal house is on fire and I'm constantly cataloguing what and who I'm going to grab first, and what I'm going to let incinerate. It's a disturbing, totally involuntary feeling, and I can't say it's comfortable on any level. It just is. 

(Please go and read that post when you're done with my droning here, if you're not offended by profanity like I am not. Her name is Noa. She read it at the Voices of the Year Community Keynote this year. It is perhaps the funniest goddamned thing I have ever read on the internet, second only perhaps to Hyperbole and a Half's "CLEAN ALL THE THINGS" post which has the added benefit of having added a slogan to my regular speech. Although I'm thinking "Fuck you, this is a pan," is going to go in there too.) 

I've done this before. Although it's been different, I've been uncomfortable and I've struggled. I've tried to get help with it and I've tried to listen to the discomfort for the signals of what I ought to do next, because I believe that they are always there. I'm trying to be brave when I'm really the opposite, and I'm trying to be strong although somedays that's overrated. When I have to go through the motions, I do, and when I have to be a teacher, I am. It's just putting one foot in front of the other, sometimes.

And I also can't say that all of this changing and the burning house concept is bad, entirely, because I honestly don't know yet.  There's very little I can do about it, but walk through it the best that I can. At least I feel somewhat motivated.

And I think that pretty much brings this up to date, which I feel compelled to do around here from time to time.

Going to California Pt. 1

It's Wednesday of the sunniest week of the year. I say let's get on a boat, and you say okay, and we wander and we do. The air is so much lighter here, it's possible to find the second wind. 

I see one of the places where I most like to see the ocean. It's how it should be, for a little while. I know from so many other times that you can't hold onto hours, no matter how much you want to. In fact, the more you want to, the more you can't. It's just the way, you just have to let it roll. 

Amazing cheese and margaritas hours later the texts come in and the excitement of all those faces a few miles away, waiting with the gift of who they are, the brains and hearts and general Christmas morning of themselves, because we are lucky and likeable and were somehow at a few points in the right places at the right times. It blows up from there into what it always is, the friends, the schedule alternately adhered to and ignored, the ideas of how we justify ourselves, how we make ourselves the business forces and party people, the last minute decision of this or that, the drinks and hugs and passed hors d'oeuvres, the weird statues and the new city, the beauty and the bitching, the place we all find ourselves in no matter where it is each year, thousands of us, from here or there. 

(All of these things that you can't pick up free off of a table, that would never fit into a suitcase. Baggage jokes aside, you can't stuff feelings in there, not even if you sit on it.)

It's our luck and our randomness and our -- somehow -- ultimately defined place. It goes too fast and overwhelms and sometimes it irritates me because I'm an overly sensitive soul, but I move easily within it every time. It's a gargantuan home, one of the most certain things in my 365, what I'll always do until it's over, that I discovered (thank God) out of thin air. 

On Sunday I say let's get in a cab, and two of you who have been with me for years say okay, and that's what we do. We walk and drink. I show you where I liked most (really most) to see the ocean. It's how it should be. 

I don't know how I got so lucky. I don't know how the sky and sea and people came together six years ago to say "You can have this, for a few days each year. It's yours." but they did. It does. It rolls along.

And no matter how hard it is to come back into the inadequacy of everything else (because it is very, very hard), I don't really ever lose that time, not even when the walls close in and the engines blow, because you know that just a touch away there is a nation of these people, there is that sun-soaked memory.

There is that smile and those eyes and the hand that reaches out and says "Here, you are known." 

 

The Beach Trees -- a BlogHer Book Club Review

Sometimes books surprise me. 

The Beach Trees, by Karen White, surprised me. 

I love the Gulf Coast -- New Orleans in particular -- so I was excited to read a story set there, clearly written by someone with a love for the area. What I was less sure about was taking my limited time to read a story I identified at first as "chick lit." 

I know, I know. I'm not proud. 

Did I get over it? Surprise me in a good way or bad? I guess you'll see. 

Today It's Suebob's Birthday

Once upon a time in the land of Chicago, I was on a panel of women who blogged and did not concurrently have children. Suebob Davis was on that panel with me. 

I had never met her, but I knew of her, and oddly enough, I was a little intimidated by her. I don't know why. She's not particularly menacing in person. She doesn't carry a gun or any weapon, other than her brain, and I guess the stapler could be used as a projectile. She is a peace freak of sorts, and a smiley person, too. But regardless, I was intimidated. Sometimes I'll randomly decide that a person doesn't like me for no reason at all, because I am a special sort of paranoid when I get anxious. And that BlogHer, I was anxious. After a few years of flying happily under the blogging radar, I was on that panel and I was also a community keynote reader, so I was operating at a high level of Xanax need for pretty much the whole conference.

So when the lady who was moderating, who herself did not have children, asked the final question -- "Just what was it we ladies on the panel did with our lives, as we were not busy parenting?" -- my mind started racing. 

I blog! I, uh, take pictures! I work a mind-numbing, soul-sucking job that nonetheless helps people! I take care of my grandmother sometimes! I manage my life and work out and eat and go on vacation and screw around on the internet! I see my friends and my family and listen to music and take long walks in the suburbs!

Sue, however, wasn't having any of that. She calmly stated that she didn't feel that she needed to reel off a laundry list of activities to justify her existence. She lived a life, and it was good, and that was that. 

And then she stopped talking. She wasn't going to entertain it, which was then a much more foreign concept to me than it is now, due to the example of Sue and other women in my life, who have shown my by example and a well-placed "Oh God will you please just cut that OUT" as I reached my 40th year that just because someone asks a question, it doesn't mean I have to answer it. I do not -- I DO NOT -- have to justify my existence or my choices or myself.  That panel was the first time, but not the last, that she has said something and I've thought, "Damn. I need to be more like that." 

Time and months and years went on, and that panel turned into a community keynote that turned into a Twitter relationship that turned into hanging out at BlogHers and every year. I've been pleasantly surprised that this very well-regarded, powerful source for good in my blogging world has sought me out and wanted to spend time with me. That is no kind of false modesty, either. These events are zoos, yes, but they are also populated with hundreds of people, and the basic truth is that there are a lot of people there that we all want to see. They come alive from the internet for just a few days, like toys in an animated film, and then they go back in. You have to take what you can get where you can. 

And as I get older, I realize the honor it is for any human being to want to spend their limited time with any other one. Time is all we have that makes any nevermind, and when someone I respect and admire and find interesting chooses to use it up with me? I appreciate it, and I acknowledge it as a meaningful thing. 

Since then, Sue and I have hung out in New York and Chicago again, and this year we will spend some time together in San Diego, I'm sure. We sat together in a canyon in Ojai last fall, and one of the greatest days I've had, she drove me and Deb up (down? I fail geography) the coast to her house and then on to L.A. I got to see her adorable house and eat at her tacqueria that I would transport to DC in an instant, if I could. I got to meet Goldie, and her mom. It was a great day. She came here once, too, and Sarah and I met her for brunch on our turf, which was fun. 

Virtually, we have spent hours Gchatting about jobs and family and writing and just what on earth it is we're here to do. And there is, of course, always Twitter, for good or for ill. (Just please don't say the p-word.) 

I am lucky that she is my friend. 

But beyond the micro-confines of this particular one-on-one relationship, I find Sue worth celebrating for a very simple fact that goes far beyond me. And that is that she is always the one to see the good in other people. She gets pissed off, sure, at situations, mostly, and the occasional blowhard with a vuvuzela or what have you in her neighborhood. But when it comes to people she knows and cares about? Super forgiving. Ridiculously forgiving, and, most valuable: preemptively forgiving. Even that time I broke my phone and never answered and she texted "Fuck you!" to me so that was the first thing I saw when I turned the replacement back on? I knew it was only temporary. 

I admit it, there are times when I read stuff on the Internet and I think "Holy hell, what is that person's deal. Could they shut up already? OMFG." And that is unfailingly the moment where Sue will pipe up with a tweet to that person that offers some kind of kindness, a good word or a comment or a thoughtful detail about her life that acknowledges not only their current situation but in a broader sense, what is redeeming about them. And I'll think, why didn't I notice that first? What is she, some kind of friggin' saint, showing me up, as I sit here in my living room all judgmental and dark-hearted? 

No. It has nothing to do with me. It's just her. She sees the goodness. She sees the gold, and that is a remarkable quality. I don't always understand it, and I sure as hell don't always agree, but I always admire it.

Happy birthday, Suebob. I hope you enjoy the good words of people from around the internet about you today, and know that they couldn't be offered in more friendship, appreciation, kindness and love. We owe each other a 40/50 toast in San Diego, for sure. I thank you for everything you have done and said to make my world a better place, and I love you very much. 

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Suebob's favorite charities right now are Write Girl (an amazing organization in L.A. that supports self-expression for young women, where I wish I was the director) and Planned Parenthood, which has obviously suffered major cuts in funding and support this year. I have set up a fund via my PayPal, and bloggers have already kicked in a few hundred dollars. When it is all done, I will be splitting the proceeds in half and donating equally to these organizations, taking care to make sure that the funds are diverted as closely as possible to her region.

If you would like to participate in this birthday gift for Sue, please leave a comment below, and I will send you my PayPal contact information. (I am documenting all donations, so there should be no worry about fund transfers to me for this purpose.) I'd like to finish this up by Wednesday of next week, so please get your messages to me by then. Thanks! 

Finally, Karen came up with this wonderful idea to celebrate Suebob's birthday. If you write a post too, please leave a link on her site as well. 

BlogHer Five

I know, I know, it's been a few weeks. I've been busy. At least it's still August, for a few hours anyway. This will also be the longest post I've likely written for this website. That's just how it turned out, because it's been a long time coming, I guess.

(It's not even August anymore. Oh well. The perils of working in education at the end of the summer.)

I got on a plane to San Jose, California, in July, 2006. It was my first trip to the state. I had written for  BlogHer.com for six months -- my first online writing job, and my first paid gig anywhere in awhile. I loved the concept. The people seemed great. What they were doing was very exciting, and I just felt like I wanted to be a part of it.

The truth was I hadn't felt like being a part of much of anything for a year, since the only thing I had planned on being a part of with any enthusiasm had said see ya bye and moved 1,000 miles away. Also, when I turned 35 I decided that as part of my recovery plan from this hellish breakup I would travel somewhere new every month. I'd been to Arizona and Nevada already, so California seemed reasonable. I told my family and friends that I was going to a women's writing conference, which they probably interpreted as "that terrible boy turned her lesbian and she's going to hang with the ladies," which was really fine with me. Then I booked a couple of days on the end to go to Santa Cruz, and I left.

I wasn't nervous. I don't get anxious in groups until the first time I'm standing by a bar by a pool and I'm looking at someone in a "Writing Well Is the Best Revenge" t-shirt and I feel like an inarticulate fool with nothing of any consequence to say except maybe "Hey I have that shirt in red and black too the red has the long sleeves for when it is chilly like it sort of is now isn't this California what the hell is up with that so wine now yeah?" For an extrovert I'm not really one to mosey up to strangers or invite myself to sit at tables. I like to hover on the fringes and case the joint, actually, until someone takes pity on me or a less than excruciating conversation presents itself.

I was a little concerned that I had maybe presented myself as more competent at audio recording than I really was, since I had volunteered to be on the conference podcasting team so I could score a free ticket. I think that when someone asks you if you can do something that you're fairly sure you can handle you should say yes. I'm not going to volunteer to perform surgery or solve equations because I don't want to kill people and I suck at math, but I can press buttons and understand recording equipment. I figured I could swing it and if I couldn't I deserved the embarrassment.

I ended up so grateful for this job. It made the conference smaller and more manageable for me. It gave me a task to focus on if the effort of talking to hundreds of strangers with cameras got to be too much, and it was also really fun.

These are a few of the podcasting ladies. My hair was extremely red verging on purple here, I have an ungodly number of drink tickets left and I appear to be wearing a prairie skirt. I don't understand those last two things at all. 

When I wasn't working on that or in other sessions, I did get a chance to meet people. Sitting by the pool watching mom bloggers knock things over,

Lauren gets the quote of that year for saying "This is like their Burning Man."

I met  Genie, who would become my roommate for the next three BlogHers.

Here she is on the far right with her husband in a not-great but nonetheless the only photo I have of her from that conference and a couple of other girls we hung out with that weekend. Also there is a person in the background of this picture who should have looked right instead of running her mouth. Bygones.

I met other friends, some I'm still in touch with and others I am not. There were other people in that strange little complex who are central to my life now, but if we crossed paths at that gathering I have no memory of it.

After the conference my red hair and I spent a great day in San Francisco where I immediately fell in love with the city,

then I rented a car and drove to Santa Cruz.

I saw the California version of a beach for the first time. I took a train up through a redwood forest. I bought a suitcase at a Ross on the outskirts of town so I could lug all of my extra stuff home, and then I left.

It was a good trip, and I was really glad I went. I had no expectations and a mere hope of not embarrassing myself before I went. I came home with a head full of ideas and my pride intact, so that was good.

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I have gone back to BlogHer every year since then. I've been to Chicago, to San Francisco and back to Chicago (my tie for favorite with this year.) I spoke on a panel in 2008 with Suebob and read at the first community keynote, an experience that brought so much good stuff my way that it was totally worth the raging nausea and anxiety of standing on a stage and reading a blog post about one of the most traumatic aspects of my life in front of hundreds of writers.

My blog stayed small but I didn't care. I went to regional gatherings in Boston and DC (where they also let me open my mouth again), and connected with a community here at home that although it focused mostly on mom bloggers was okay with me, because the people are nice and generous, and I've never been so hung up on who has kids and doesn't anyway.

That's my Shannon in Boston, 2008. She lives in Canada. I wish, as I say in the comments on this photo, that she lived up the street.

Some of my D.C. ladies, plus Kim visiting from Pittsburgh, Reach Out D.C., 2008.I didn't know these women when I took this picture. I talk to the three in the middle daily. I catch up with Joanne when I can. I've never seen Colleen again, but she's nice to me on Twitter.

The lines began to blur between blog and not-blog, online and real life, which makes sense when real live people are involved. My family came to understand that these were not lesbian creative writing gatherings, although it was still fine with me if that's what they thought. The older I get, the more it's fine to keep them guessing.

In the months between conferences I kept writing for BlogHer. Twitter happened. I picked up new writing jobs.

My life changed several times over. My heart healed over and broke again for other reasons.

My photos improved. My friendships with people I'd met through blogging and who I continued to connect with got deeper.

I came perilously close to a new decade. And then it was somehow 2010.

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I went to New York for BlogHer in August because there was just nowhere else I could be that week. It was a hard summer financially (haha, that is such an understatement. Haha. Har. STUPID! Almost entirely unbloggable!) but I scrounged the money to go and to stay in my own room, which was something I'd planned on since I learned that Genie and her new baby were going to stay outside of the hotel.

I had an absolutely wonderful time. It was just what I needed at just the right time. Saved my emotional ass, it did.

I spent the four days before the conference at Suzanne's place, rabbit-sitting. She was the first person I wrote with in travel on BlogHer.com back in 2005. I got to pretend I lived in a funky apartment on the Upper West Side. I walked until I wrecked my feet, ate Crumbs Squiggle cupcakes for breakfast when I felt like it, and saw Rock of Ages on Broadway, where I paid for a glass of wine and got a sippy cup to take to my seat.

That's Suzanne and me, on the Sunday after the conference. I am Sparklecorn hungover. She is just nice and funny and brilliant like usual.

True story? Suzanne is one of the most outstanding women you will ever meet. She is a powerhouse. She is but one example of the greatness this gig has brought into my life. And she lets me stay in her house, for free. She trusts me with her key and her stuff.

I got to go see American Idiot with Heather. Heather and I have some stuff in common that no one else can understand. Heather took over photo from me on BlogHer at a time when it needed to happen. Heather is fascinating and hilarious. Heather is gorgeous. Heather kicks my ass on Gchat. She said things to me at dinner after the show that I should have written down because I could probably stand to read it right now.

I got to hang out in New York. It's my happy place and I loved spending this time up there. It's never enough for me. I walked through street fairs and burned some remaining credit on a good seafood dinner. I window shopped and daydreamed. I got a precious evening with Elisa, at a vegan restaurant that could convert this carnivore. I enjoyed every last second.

Then I went home for a day (don't ask, I needed dresses, and thank God the Bolt Bus is $17) and caught the train back with some D.C. friends.

I had a kickass conference. On the very first day I met Debbie and Velma and Kelli, and remember thinking shortly after that that I could go the hell home that second and I'd already have scored.

I went on a Kodak bus and to a Nikon party. I had the most fun night of burritos and karaoke with my friends from MamaPop. I had dinner with my fellow editors from BlogHer, which is always fun. I had a photo in the Kirtsy exhibit that went with this great post by R.J. at Vampire Vocab. I had my picture taken with it like a big dork because it was the first time I'd had a photo displayed like that and it made me happy.

I spent time with Jen B., Jennie and Jonna, with Alexa and Alana and Heather. I met Genie's baby, Ian, finally, and Erin, who writes one of the very first blogs I ever read. I loved that.

I sang and danced a lot.

The first day, Friday, I stopped mid-day, and thought how amazing it was that I was in a space with 2,400 people and in every single room there was someone there who was happy to see me and who I was happy to see. I kept feeling like that, all weekend, so that by the time Sarah, Kim and I went to the Yankees game on Sunday night I was that familiar combination of exhausted yet deeply content that I am every single year when it's all over.

This conference is my favorite thing I do all year. It's been true when I've been inspired and productive and when I've been barely eking out words in this space and where I've been paid to do it. My writing has suffered in consistency and volume over the past couple of years, it's true. I wish I was more focused. I continue to struggle with where I should be in lots of ways versus where I am.

But it's just true that without BlogHer I would lack so much that matters to me. I don't know what I would have in its place but I can't help but think that it would be something so much less than what it's given me.

I have creative and professional mentors.

I have friends like Sue and Maria, who have sat up late and chatted me through crises from a continent away, and Karen and Karen who make me look at the best version of myself whether I feel like it or not.

I have a place that was willing to give me a place to share my voice and my point of view at a point in my life where I valued neither very much, or at the very least was struggling to find a place to put them.

I don't know why anyone else goes to BlogHer. I don't know what they expect from it or what they think it means for their lives online or off. I'm not a mom blogger, a coupon blogger, a marketer's dream or a person with a true agenda. I don't care about fistfuls of swag, except for my Mr. Potato Head which you'll pry out of my warm, live hands and those little slippers I got at Nikon were nice.

I go to see my friends and I go to reassure myself that no matter how small some people say it's become, that there is a group of people I came to know through their words and pictures who are still out there, no matter what they're working on now. I count myself lucky that there are people in this crowd who will get in my face in person like they can usually only do in e-mail and ask me why I'm not writing, why I'm not owning my power? (Hi, Denise. Hi, Rita. Hi, Julie.)

I can have a ridiculous sandwich episode with a friend who knows my soundtrack and my heart, who is my wide receiver, left tackle or quarterback depending on the day (I told you I was learning football) who I simply would not have were it not for this web site and this conference.

No, not THAT one.

This one. (This alone? Worth the price of every single admission. I love you the most.)

I am reminded very distinctly how I best like to see myself.

And I guess it's a place where it's okay that who that is is someone who closes the bar with a bunch of brilliant people, then sits in the sink and shoots self-indulgent semi-hoochie pictures in a mirror because the light is pretty.

And I don't really know what a gift horse is but I've never been one to look them in the mouth, so I'm not starting now.

I open my arms to these three days every year and get roses every time. I still have very few specific expectations and I pray not to embarrass myself, and it mostly works out. Sure, there are some bumps in the road, sessions that leave me cold and pr people who don't get it that I still wash my clothes even though I'm not a mom. I smack down my hindbrain when it worries a little bit that I'm not getting invited to this or that overrated party or that I'm not doing enough or that I'm doing too much. I don't get enough sleep and I miss things here and there that I really wanted to do.

But what I worry about the most is a sin of riches, really. I want to be in three sessions at once. I worry that I won't see all of the people who I have made connections with -- small and very big -- through the years. There are so many of us now and so many ways that I've been in touch with people on blogs, Twitter and in real life, that it's almost impossible to keep track. So there is a lot of frenzied hugging in hallways and plans to meet up and quick picture taking, but this year I felt like in spite of the chaos that it went as well as it possibly could in a city and a conference of this size.

Anyway, this is stupid long, but this year required it and this post is really for me and my friends to whom it is a five-year love letter. So I'll just end with this.

When I first pitched BlogHer in 2006, I hadn't been blogging very long, and I knew no one in the larger blogging world personally. I responded to a call for writers on Lisa Stone's Surfette site, convinced I'd hear nothing, which proves that sometimes when I'm wrong it's the best possible thing. Lisa shocked me by writing me back almost immediately to tell me that she'd love for me to be a part of this.

She has since developed great taste in bag hats.

Lisa -- and by association Elisa and Jory too -- helped me to change my life. She opened the door for all of these other people -- the ones who I have named and the countless ones I haven't -- to grace me with their presence as well. I just had to ask, and that simple act helped me to resurrect the writer I had always been. It gave me the confidence to go back to grad school and get a degree in journalism that I'd abandoned 20 years ago, an experience that took me to Vietnam to write a story and landed me in a stadium in Denver when a certain man who I strongly believe is changing the world in spite of great difficulty accepted the Democratic nomination for president.

It gave me the confidence to believe that I could do things that I had started to think I wasn't capable of doing.

It gave me friends who are my family and a much clearer view of who I am and what I want to do.

So.

I'll be in San Diego next year, because that's just where I'll need to be. And if you go, I really hope that you'll have a wonderful time too.

Reubens of Unusual Size

Sarah and I were hungry after the Yankees game on the Sunday night after BlogHer, screwing around in Midtown looking for someplace that was open late.

I located a few late night possibilities on Yelp, including the Carnegie Deli. We decided to go there because it was really close, supposedly an institution that I had never visited before, and hey, a deli, why not?

As soon as we sat down there were half-done pickles, which always pleases me. But when the waiter told me that the only Reuben option was $24.95, I was less pleased. I don't know what I was expecting, a Reuben Happy Meal or what, but it seemed crazy even in this neighborhood where dollar bills seem to magically fall out of your pockets into the steam grates.

So I told him I'd take the Woody Allen, a corned beef and pastrami combo that was so very much more reasonable at, oh, 18 bucks or so.

In hindsight, the menu alone caused me to lose all sense of perspective. We also missed the part that said you could share for $3.00. We are very capable of sharing food. This was an unfortunate oversight, brought on no doubt by four days of limited sleep, not so much solid food and not a little bit of wine.

Sarah ordered a roast beef sandwich. I asked him for a Coke and prayed it wasn't ten dollars. Minutes later, this arrives on the table:

I can't even explain to you what happened in my brain when this pile of meat appeared. The pictures do not show how large this thing was. I didn't know whether to name it, apologize to it or get it its own table.

Sarah looked at the sandwich and at me and I looked at her and then the sandwich and I really wish I had video of the way we looked at each other over the plates that were somehow, ridiculously, on our table.

"Dude," she said, when she had words. "Your sandwich is STUPID."

And that is when I lost my mind. I started laughing, and she started laughing. We laughed so hard and so uncontrollably that I think it warranted a clinical diagnosis. We could not stop, for minutes, until we were crying. I am not a person who normally laughs until I cry, but I was weeping. And every time I stopped, we'd look at each other, or we would look at this,

(Pickle for perspective)

(The little pieces of bread make it look like PeeWee Herman with that bellboy hat on, or a giant wearing a beret.) 

And it would start all over again.

I looked around suspiciously at other diners. There were empty plates and beer bottles, people chatting like they weren't in a wackjob land of gargantuan food. The ladies next to me had had entrees that didn't look extraordinarily large, although they probably cost $37. Probably payday.

"No one else is acting like this is weird at all. Look at them," she said. "We sound high The last time I laughed like this for this long I was in my college cafeteria at 7 a.m. and I hadn't slept in a long time."

"I feel high," I said. And I did. It was an almost out-of-body Willy Wonka kind of deal.

Lick the walls! They taste like corned beef and dusty picture frames! I swear, you'll love it! Everything's just really BIG here.

And for the most recent time, I wondered where the hidden cameras were.

The Carnegie Deli's walls are covered with 8x10 autographed photos of a variety of famous visitors who may or may not order the Woody Allen or even eat anything at all. I actually think they are all lying if they say they do. We had several photographs on the wall right next to us. Because I was concerned that the tears in Sarah's eyes were actually those of distress and not hysterical laughter, I decided to focus on what we could control.

"Hey," I said, because I am observant. "We have company. Look, you get to eat with Ryan Seacrest."

That cheered her up.

What did not cheer her up? Or me either for that matter? The fact that these insane piles of meat are held together by (in her case) a brick of cheese and those teensy beensy pieces of bread -- no vegetables, no condiments, nothing. The waiter walked by and Sarah said, "Excuse me? Could I get some...mayonnaise?"

And swear to God dude looked at us like we'd asked for fish tacos in a deli.

You know? Mayonnaise? That spoonful of saturated fat that helps one choke down a side of beef? DUDE.

Ahem. Back to the wall gallery. We had calmed down some. Sarah was pissed off at the wasteful nature of this establishment, what with the pound -- probably more, come to think of it -- of corned beef and pastrami on my plate that was so overwhelming to me (and, quite frankly, dry, minus the six bucks worth of sauerkraut, dressing and cheese that I totally would have sprung for if I had a time machine. I didn't bother to ask for mustard.) She was scowling, occasionally gnawing on her meat, and worst of all, neither of us had a beer to soften the blow. I looked to my right, at this guy.

I thought I knew who he was, but I couldn't remember his name, just that he wanted me to "Save room for the awegfaergvaergaerawgr," to which I say, "Right on."

"Who is that?" I wondered aloud.

And in a version of her voice that I wish I could share with you in an audio file, she said, and you are in no way going to think this is as funny as I do,

"Ooooooaaaaatttttteeeesssss."

As in "John." As in "Hall and."

Yeah, no. I decided to eat with this other guy anyway.

Done. Done. Absolutely done and done and done. Please keep in mind that Sarah makes me laugh harder than just about anyone I know on a regular basis so this was like that experience, except dosed and off the rails.

I started laughing again and did not stop completely until we left the building. Every time I thought this would stop being funny, something insane would happen. For instance, the jolly ladies next to me were not finished when their plates were cleared, oh no. Minutes later, pieces of pie or cheesecake arrived in front of them that were approximately a foot tall, like this:

(I found this on the Internet. It is ostensibly from the Carnegie Deli, and because it looks like the food of Gulliver on the island or an insane person in Wonderland, I can only surmise that it is, in fact, from their dessert case. If I had seen it in person, I would have laughed longer, because, pecan roll on cheesecake? Right.)

I mean, hey, eat what you want, but where do you PUT IT? I was still flailing intermittently at my meat with a fork and getting nowhere. It was like I ate it with my eyes.

Also, Ooooooaaaaatttttteeeesssss was still with me. One or the other or both of us would say it about every thirty seconds, because it turns out that once you start that shit up it's difficult to stop.

It's really, really difficult to stop, or maybe just if you are us.

I do know that there is some kind of joke inherent in leaving a place like this and being hungry and slightly nauseous because I just really couldn't eat what was put in front of me, because just how oh how do you even take that seriously? I couldn't, and when the guy asked me if I wanted it boxed to go I was very fortunate that I did not hurl on the table.

I'm sure that there are people who go there and enjoy it. I think I would have if I'd stuck with maybe six more pickles and a Coke and that's all, a blintz maybe, and giggled at the photos. I'm sure there are people who would call me an idiot -- didn't you KNOW? It's the Carnegie DELI, it's KNOWN for its enormous sandwiches, you imbecile.

But I didn't, or if I'd been told -- if it was the question to a Jeopardy answer or a passage in a travel article -- I forgot. I can only hold so many references in my head at once, or for a lifetime, you guys.

But I can tell you two things. One is that if you're going to have any kind of friend at all with whom you voluntarily spend a significant amount of time it should be the kind who can laugh with you until you cry, damn whomever's around. Because as ridiculous as this may have been and as much as that pile of meat could've fed several hungry people, I know that when I look back on my life I will remember this in technicolor, and it will never not make me smile.

And the other is that I have the tragicomic kind of life where when I opened the refrigerator at my parents' house the next day when I came home, this is what I saw.

And I made myself a Reuben of totally usual size, and it was really good.

(Frying pan and stove for totally normal perspective.)

And I texted Sarah and lost my shit laughing again, and the circle was unbroken.

The end.

Except, you know. Ooooooaaaaatttttteeeesssss.

BlogHer Voices Of the Year - Community Keynote 2010

BlogHer changed my life. The BlogHer Community Keynote changed my life some more.

In 2005, BlogHer helped me find my voice as a writer again and a place in a community of people who were doing the same thing. In 2008, this community gave me the chance to stand on a stage at a very low personal point in front of hundreds of people and read words that I had written.

This really has always been about the story and the need to tell it, for me. The other stuff came later and even though it takes awhile sometimes and I'm easily distracted it's always circled back around to the words and what they turn into in the end, like it or not.

I did everything about writing the post I was going to enter in the wrong way, as usual. I sat down on the afternoon of the submission deadline and pounded it out with the desperation only a writer who is as truly, equally inspired by and terrified of a deadline as I am knows. 

A number of weeks after I wrote and hastily submitted the post in the Letter to My Body category for the Community Keynote, I received an e-mail that I'm sure I still have somewhere saying that I had been chosen to read it at the BlogHer conference in San Francisco in July.

I managed to do it without incident, with the help of a relatively high threshold for constant anxiety and a very kind and supportive roommate. It was one of the most terrifying and important days of my life. I was certain I would not be able to do it but I did. I stood backstage with people who I knew were incredible writers, people who would be my good friends shortly thereafter, at least one person who brought out the fangirl at the time, and others who I was sure were light years ahead of me in terms of confidence and certainly popularity, whatever that means.

It didn't really matter, it turns out. It doesn't. I mean, it did matter, being backstage with those people. That was the best part of this experience, in many ways.But it didn't matter, what they were that I was not and vice versa.

I unfortunately was also not at all comfortable with my body at the time, as much as it was my face that was the focus of the letter and not the rest of me. I was at the highest weight I'd been in years. I skipped the afternoon panel in a panic to go to H&M up the street to buy a dress an hour before show time, suddenly deciding that nothing in my wardrobe was sufficient, that nothing would make me look good - which nothing really will in my eyes, when I feel like that. In the aftermath of reading, I was obsessed with obsessing about how bad I looked in the pictures. I still can't watch the video.

(That's me with Mochamomma on the left and Clair, whose link I will find and post shortly because my land I have got to post this and get out of here but I care, I really do, on the right at the MightyHaus party afterwards. I can finally post this one and not hide it on old Flickr sets. Woo! /Sarcasm.)

Hey, this is why I was in the Letter To My Body category and not humor, people.

This is the daily part of this being me business. It is never easy. But what I can say is that it turned out that getting up and reading the post I'm about to re-post below (with some pronoun edits to fix some aspects of it that have bothered me for two years.) was a very important thing to do. It is important to me to know that I can say "yes" to things that scare me to death. It is important to me to participate when I'm asked. It was an honor, really, and those don't come along every day, or sometimes even every year.

This is all to say that I am so happy to be one of the curators for the Design category of this year's 2010 Voices of the Year Community Keynote, announced today. I get to do this with Karen Walrond, who came into my life with her book and notepad and yes, of course, her camera last year as a result, she said, of hearing me read the year before. She has inspired me more than she knows, to examine my negative observations of myself and to consider how I consider myself different and whether or not I'm ready to say that that's beautiful.

She makes you work hard, that one, on important things, and I'm okay with responding honestly. And in the process she has taken my picture and become my friend.

Sometimes I can't believe how this all fits together, but when I look back over the past five years, it really has.

Anyway, this is what I stood on that stage and read:

Body: n. The entire material or physical structure of an organism, especially of a human or  animal.

I keep getting stuck on this letter, with this idea of addressing my whole body. It's overwhelming - too much, I think. There are so many things I could focus on, but I keep coming back to my face. It deserves a letter. It has physical and psychic seniority over the extra 40 pounds, the wonky ankle, the aggravating stretch marks – especially so because there aren’t even any babies to attribute them too, just cheeseburgers. All of those things, as hard as they’ve been to face, along with all of the things about this form that I celebrate…well, they’re chump change compared to my face.

So my face, it gets the letter, although just writing "Dear Face" feels too awkward, so it's more of an address in its general direction, which I hope will do. It gets it because it’s worked overtime from that random genetic moment in the womb – about four weeks in, so I understand – where it didn’t fully fuse, leaving me shooting out into the world with a split lip and palate, to its daily grind since then.  It, unlike any other part of this body, takes the really sharp turns. It reads the road signs and knows which line at the grocery store is better, right out of the gate. It picks the winners, or tries to. It finds the empty parking spaces and answers the tough questions. The arms and legs, they just fall in line.

There are no photos before the day at six weeks of age when I went into surgery for the first time, when my hippie plastic surgeon in the American flag t-shirt sewed my lip together. Hospitals didn’t take many if any photos of babies with facial differences then, although my mother said she wanted one. A nurse cried over her in her bed, for me, for my problems, giving birth to a rage in my mother that she told me she had trouble – at 20 years of age – understanding, much less responding to. This was still, she said, her baby, her baby's face. But in the days before digital cameras and immediate records, before blogs and communities where people could inevitably find someone to share their story, and more importantly, before differences were more acceptable, it was better to wait until I was – almost – whole to start snapping.

My face fends off strange looks when people notice the irregularities, the scar at the midline of the lip and nose, the asymmetry that little kids can see when they look up from beneath. It’s responsible for eye contact, important when you want people to see you for you, for the words you can say and the thoughts you think, and not focus on the scar tissue from a genetic fluke that really, when it comes down to it, is completely manageable. It doesn’t affect intellect, or humor, or skill of any sort. It just makes me snore pretty loud, which isn’t fun, and it also makes me whistle occasionally when I talk, which can be jarring, because I can't do it in tune.

It’s not easy being at the front of the pack when you look different from the average in this super looks-obsessed culture, according to the maddening scale that changes depending on location, time of day and who you’re talking to. Bars in college weren’t so fun. Just like fifth grade, remember? Except in fifth grade men weren’t yet coming up to me to ask for my best friend’s number, because surely it was my life’s dream to hook my girls up with unworthy partners.

My face still watches and hears people call it a cleft lip, call it a facial difference, praying they don’t call it a harelip, because that still sounds so ugly. It’s not politically correct – it’s just an old word, a word that doesn’t fit anymore, at least not for me. 

My face became, anyway, a big talker, a hyper-verbal life of the party. For someone who didn’t like people looking at it much, it blabbed on and on from the time I could talk, encouraged by indulgent adults to share my thoughts, which didn’t need any help coming out in the first place. And only when a keyboard got involved did the flow of words pipe down just a bit.

As much as it - as I- talked, though, it listened, paid attention, watched for the oncoming cars, for the people who didn’t know better and for the many angels who’ve helped us along the road. It holds my head up every time I’ve turned it to the ground to avoid a straightaway glance – for the times I’ve begged silently for someone to just look me in my big brown eyes, anywhere but at my mouth. It watches people – subconsciously, I’m sure – trace their fingers over their upper lip absentmindedly while they’re talking to me, something that makes me smile now after years of self-consciousness. It likes half and half and red wine and has an unhealthy preoccupation with olives and brie.

It has trouble still sometimes, after all these years, working with my brain to respond, to defend, to fight back or to clarify.

When a friend recently asked if I knew that Joaquin Phoenix was rumored to have a cleft lip and put the subject out there, I should have felt more solid than I did in saying that it was just a thing, a personal thing, and more power to him for making it in a looks-driven industry, guarding his decision to talk about it or not, even if he is famous.

When the girl I worked with in college asked me "why in the world I wasn’t going to have more work done” I  shouldn’t have felt like I needed to make an appointment with a plastic surgeon immediately. Instead, I should have told her the truth – that I was tired of being cut into and reshaped, that anesthetic terrified me, that I needed nothing more than to relax into myself and love (or at least not hate) the face I already had.

Instead, I probably went in the back and smoked a couple of cigarettes and cried in the car on the way home.  19, you know.

When the client in graduate school – schizoaffective, no social filter, but still – walked up to me and said, “You had that THING. On your FACE,” I’m sorry. I didn’t really know what to say. Schizoaffective. No social filter. I reached out to her and calmed her because I knew she didn’t understand and was actually crying for me. But still…would everyone say it, if they didn’t know it wasn’t okay?

And when Connie said on the drive to Columbus that that young nurse who took care of her husband “had that problem” I had, so she married the first guy who asked, who turned out to be an alcoholic and wasn’t that terrible, but still? She had that problem? So she’d better marry the first guy who asked? Right?

I didn’t.

And when the man who loved me and who I loved back, years later, told me that he wasn’t sure at first that he could date me because he had a thing for symmetry, and my face, it really didn’t fit that bill, I maybe shouldn’t have been so understanding. I maybe should have gotten up off the couch and left the room, left the apartment and the state. But I didn’t. I cared too much and knew he did too, that he was trying really hard to put truth out there and it was time to either grab hold of it or stay stuck. So I put it in the bag I kept such things in inside, and instead made it an important conversation that somehow built a tenuous bridge between him and me, and managed somehow not to hate what I looked like and what I had to offer - much.

These experiences and the thoughts and feelings they cause aren’t so much carry-on baggage at this point as they are cargo for my body, my face and me, are they?

Say it with me: harelip. And then throw it away, that terrible, ugly, made-up word, that label, just like we throw away the other stuff, the worries about the pounds and the knee and the ankle. Just like we embrace the fact that we can stretch to the sky, we can move ourselves wholesale out of an old house and into a new one. We can walk the beach for miles. We can travel across a country 8000 miles from home and tell stories, even though there this face is still a bit more shocking than it is at home, something we can tell by the way eyes linger longer, why questions are asked more pointedly there than they are here. We can use our ears to hear foreign languages and try to reach across cultures anyway. We can answer questions that aren’t whispered and try to help people understand what it’s like for a little girl to go under repeatedly, be wheeled into operating rooms with her mom and dad just beyond the big green doors, where even though the kind reconstructive surgeon played classical music and sang to her while she went to sleep, it was still a lot like dying every time.

We can put all this aside and still get out there every day and try, at least try, to look people in the eye. We can smile, even if it’s a little crooked. We can use the mouth that's still so big even though it's long since been sewn together to yell when things aren't right, to speak the truth, and more frequently than ever these days, to defend principles and other people along with our own fragile selves.

And if I can never embrace it fully, this blip on the genetic screen that caused this problem for me, for my body and my face, I can still hold people in my arms and in my heart like at one point I pushed them away with equal force. I can try not to be angry as a matter of course and try instead to be nice. I can thank the stars for every shallow person a facial scar sent away, and thank them for every minute in the deep end with good people who don't just see the surface. I can be a little better about knowing when to talk and when to shut up. I'm so strong now that if anybody says “that which doesn’t kill you…” it’s just sort of comical, and I can tell them that my face and I have had enough, that it had better be all sunshine and roses from now on.

And always, always, completely on purpose, I will wear fabulous lipstick. 

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

If you feel that your work fits one of this year's categories, and you are going to be at the sold-out-with-a-waitlist BlogHer in New York Fucking City in August, please submit something. Take a chance. I promise you it will be entirely, terrifyingly worth it. Everyone can't win, sure, but it's a guarantee that no one has a shot at hearing you if you don't speak up. This may be the year that 2008 was for you, the year that things were supposed to really start to change.

And I promise that I will be there to applaud you. I'm a good applauder, and I usually come with wine, or the beverage of your choice. True story.

Tell yours.

The Girl Scouts and Their Cookies Are In My Computer

Cross-posted at BlogHer. 

January started innocently enough. The eating - er, holiday - season passed and I had a vague plan to get back into last year's fairly successful effort to get myself to a more comfortable weight and back to a sanity-saving exercise routine that tanked in September. 

I don't want to talk about it. 

Anyway, just after my new year's snack of bacon with a side of black-eyed peas and greens, (that I made myself so I know just how much that ratio is true) I went back to work with my almonds and tuna, my newly re-upped membership in the water club and the spring wellness schedule bookmarked on my desktop. 

That first morning back I fired up my computer. And checked Facebook, because that is important to do before proceeding with any other important tasks. And there was my friend Karma, all up in my newsfeed. 

(These names are not real. I will not call my friends bad names. Draw your own conclusions.) 

"Hi everyone! Happy New Year! As you may know, Beautiful is a Girl Scout now and she is eager to meet your cookie needs. 

 This post included an image of a Thin Mint, and a link to a site entitled "MEET THE COOKIES" that not only included graphic depictions of each variety but also gave me a link to "FIND COOKIES NOW," which indicated that if I keyed in my zip code a nearby Girl Scout would arrive at my office door bearing Samoas and a glass of milk.

Not really, but you know, it was sort of implied. And all of a sudden the spring wellness schedule icon shriveled and died on my desktop like the Wicked Witch of the West under water. Damn. 

I mean really, this has to happen in January? Where are my gift wrap and mixed nut children? I can't eat gift wrap and I have to actually think about taking the lid off of a can of nuts. Do the chocolate bars and pre-fab pizza dough come out from their hiding places now too? 

Is anyone selling wine? 

It should be noted just for kicks that I was not a blazingly successful Girl Scout. I never went camping beyond a day trip to a nature preserve or two, and mostly stuck to badge-worthy yet reasonably sedentary activities like cooking and chess. 

 Yes they give badges for chess. Shut up. 

My final straw was the inability to evenly sew the seam on a fake suede skirt - a fuede skirt, if you will. And I honestly wasn't kicked out, it just didn't work out for me. And there may have been other reasons, other small badge infractions maybe because I've just never been much into those sorts of systems, but for me that was the deal-breaker. 

Also there may have been some crying before meetings because I wanted to stay home and watch repeats of Laverne & Shirley rather than build bird houses. That may have been the real problem, but my mother gave turning me into a responsible scouting citizen her best shot. 

Yes, my mom, the faithful team player who remembers her days in sash and uniform fondly, was still the cookie mom for one year out of the two I lasted. All I can remember is a dining room full of boxes, the neon Do-Si-Do orange and Thin Mint green, and the stress of thinking how many I had to sell to meet who knows what benchmark of cookie stardom. 

Anyway, now that that pressure is long gone, I cannot tell you in acceptable language in this forum what I can do to a box of Samoas. I mean, I can, but I have issues with sharing that kind of information publicly. I could maybe share with you how I can picture in my mind what a Trefoil looks like as it disintegrates in a glass of milk in the dim light of a kitchen at midnight, and how my hand trembles and my brain negotiates with itself while it chooses a number to write in the box next to the Do-Si-Do picture on the very colorful order form. 

"Six...NO! What is wrong with you?!? That is approximately one quatrillion peanut butter cookies that you do not need in your life! Three...Ehhh. Still no. Two. Blah, okay. Two." 

Yes. And that is not even taking into account the mental gymnastics required to calculate how many boxes of Trefoils are required for those days of simple milk-and- shortbread comfort cookie needs or the yearly limited edition with the fancy kind that you have to try although you won't like it as much as the Tagalongs so you just should have gotten another box of Tagalongs or how many Thin Mints you'll need minus that rogue box that you find in the back of the freezer on that crappy July day when you most need them because they fell behind the pile of frozen burritos. 

 What? WHAT? 

But now there is no order form needed. There is no paper trail here. There is just a link. And a wall post with a smiley face from Karma who needs, she NEEDS to sell these cookies. For Beautiful. And also, let's face it, for me, so I can guiltlessly or at the very least less guiltily avoid the table of girls and their parents who accost me at the grocery store until well past the spring thaw ("OMG, isn't cookie season over YET?" I will think to myself, as they smile at me in their sashes and threaten silently to kick me in the shins) because Beautiful, SHE has gotten my business. I know her. I have contributed to her cause - to her badge, or her trip to Juliette Lowe's birthplace or to her iPod, because they probably entice them to sell these things with digital music players now. 

Samoas. Oh, you coconut and chocolate and caramel siren cookies of my dreams. Six boxes. Six! 

Now I can tell Karma how many boxes I want at a distance, in a minute. And then they will arrive in her office, and I will write her a check or fork over at least one of my ATM twenties (only one? Cheap. Cheap cheap cheap, cookie miser) and think, that isn't a lot now, is it? That isn't so many boxes of cookies. 

Until I feel compelled to buy five more from other people. Because as it turned out, Karma was not the last, oh no. I know a lot of people, in-person people and people who are not only close enough to leave cookies on my porch but those who inhabit the vast recesses of my computer and distant lands like Indiana. The blog people. The Facebook friends of friends. And among them  are many moms and dads and grandmas and aunts and godparents. And those innocent little children who stare back at me from Flickr? Some of them are joining the nefarious ranks, memorizing the Girl Scout Law as we speak. Some of them are taking their cookie pleas to video (even if it is just, allegedly, for Grandma and Grandpa.) I remember what it was like. And while it may be taking me a few days to adjust to this new digital world cookie order, I would have YouTubed this whole enterprise too, if YouTube had been invented then.

Other voices around the Web:

Michele Cozzens would have bought more boxes from the Girl Scout on her door step but they're only taking cash this year because so many people have paid for cookies with bounced checks.

Sheryl Taylor wanted to support her friend's daughter's cookie efforts but didn't want the goods in her house. She told her, and they're donating her cookies and lots more to a local nursing home. Sheryl sounds scarily like me:

This way the Girl Scouts win, the recipients of the cookies win, and you win for not eating them while you are on your resolution. Although I must say, she is only the first of many that I know I am going to have to dodge and pass up those Thin Mints! Dang those Thin Mints! (fists in the air)

Finally, the Girl Scouts do have an Internet Safety Pledge, which says nothing about a wall post from Mom but does prohibit them from collecting money online. So at least I'll have to walk over to Karma's office to drop off my payment. That's good for at least a Trefoil, I'd say.  

Blanket and other nicknames

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

My given name is Laurie (rhymes with "sorry", technically) to most people, much to the horror of the priest who baptized me and my third grade teacher Sister Patricia because although I was not named after a Partridge Family character it's still not a saint's name so basically to them I was Laurence. It's "Yo" and "hey" and increasingly, horribly, "Ma'am" to many more. Some people in a far off land I occasionally inhabit call me "Professor," that is when they're not calling me "Yo." Go ahead. Laugh. I do.

And some people call me lauriewrites. It's like I told them to or something. 

Speaking more personally, my name was switched up to Lou Ann by my grandmother who was the only person ever allowed to call me that or who would likely have a reason to. I was called "baby" almost exclusively for years by a man I'd kind of still like to kick in the knees on the rare occasion that I wear closed toe shoes, to the point that I rarely remember him saying my name. My cousin sticks with my name but called me LaLa for years because that was all she could say when we started out talking and it still comes out sometimes as a joke or an aside. I am ever Laurie Anne to my uncles and aunts and LDub - my personal current favorite - to a few of my closest colleague friends at work, who all have shortened versions of their names from me as well.

What do the people who love you call you? What do you call the people you love, and I'm only talking about the nice things, not the mad things. 

Keep that in the back of your mind, while I spin out and remind you that Michael Jackson died this summer. And although it was and remains a weird spectacle of family strife and drugs and nannies and Jermaine hosting benefits with Shawn King, wife of Larry, I still only care because in addition to the fact that I was a 70s and 80s kid and Michael Jackson died, as in permanently, I was and remain straight up fascinated that his youngest child, Prince Michael II, is called Blanket, both allegedly within his family and in the news media. 

Blanket. Prince Michael Jackson II aka Blanket Jackson, so named because of the blanket his father used to put over his head when he had to go out in public. (And yes, weird things frequently fascinate me.) 

At first I thought Michael was turning the media idiocy on its head and making friends with the enemy, as in "Make me feel like I have to hide my kid under a blanket and I'll show you. That's what I'll call him. I'm owning this one, bitches."

But maybe not, because I read on several marginally reliable sites (WikiHow? What?) that Michael allegedly said this: "It's an expression I use with my family and my employees. I say, 'You should blanket me or you should blanket her', meaning like a blanket is a blessing. It's a way of showing love and caring."

Which is probably the truth, although I'm not sure. Doesn't that sound like it would be the truth, though? Because look who we're talking about here. And whether it's true or not, what is true is that if Blanket's family wanted to call him Blanket, that was kind of up to them.

Names are important. Names matter, and I am unusually interested in them. Your name is how the world knows you and to some extent it's how you have to know yourself so you can do important things like endorse checks and get driver's licenses and fly on planes and pick up carryout orders. (Although for that? That last thing? Making up names is a small creative exercise if you're bored.)

Nicknames are important too - terms of endearment, shortenings of given names or inclusions of middle names in the interest of familiarity, affection, or maybe just laziness if someone's name issuper long and a couple of initials will do the trick just fine. 

Although Blanket sounds as really, really random as I really believe it is, things that are not actually names do indeed become people's names. People get called HalfPint and Homeslice and Scooter and Puddin and Tootie and Pookie (Seriously. The last two have turned into everyday names for cousins of mine who were never called Mary Jo or Dorothea unless they were in some serious trouble, I'd bet.)

My grandmother's name was Marie Louise but as is often the case with siblings her brother and sister called her Sissy and she was Sis to everyone in her life for 80 years (80!) except official business types. And it was weird when she moved into long-term care facilities and the myriad nurses and social workers and aides switched her back into a Marie in her last years, when she was always a Sis. She shared her name with her mother, also a Marie Louise in an unusual female senior/junior kind of situation.

My grandmother, tall and silver-haired, no-nonsense and obsessed with yard work and taking care of children, looked like a Sis, as I often believe people turn into a reflection of their names, as they come to look like how we know them, as they come to look like themselves. Sis looked better Magic Markered on a bowling bag, or on the underside of a Tupperware container at church. It made sense. Marie was her big girl clothes, her high heels, as pretty a name as it is. Sis and still sometimes Sissy were her everyday kicks. They fit better. 

Come to think of it, my mother's mother called her Sister too, the middle girl with three brothers, although my Southern Virginia-influenced  Grandma said "Sista." I have a little sister so it's surprising that I didn't fall in the same line. 

To be clear, all of this in no way means that if your brother calls you Jackass you should embrace it. Bad, unrequested nicknames are terrible and can and should be summarily rejected. There are exceptions to every warm and fuzzy rule, because there are people who will call their brother Jackass, even without provocation, and these people ruin good times and still send e-mail chain letters too. 

Laurie is what I need to get things done and answer questions and get my paycheck, that sort of thing. But LDub makes me smile, just like Laurie Anne pulls me back to the center of gravity when I'm with my family. I couldn't have predicted this when I started out, because as planned and protracted as formal name choices are for parents, the very best nicknames are organic. We earn them. They come about in everyday back and forth with people who usually see the most of us and know us the best and who therefore see us at our best and worst.

I gave Lou Ann back earlier this year. No one will ever call me that again and really that's for the best because no one could rock that less than awkwardly except my grandma. So I put it in my archive and know that someone loved me enough to make it up while we were hanging out around the house when I was a baby. That's gold. You keep that stuff forever, and take it out when everything else feels particularly underwhelming and it should help at least a little. 

I'll stop myself from thinking that his name may be the least of his concerns and say anyway that I don't know if Blanket will stay Blanket or even Prince or go the Zowie Bowie route (also? Not a nickname. Totally on purpose.) and switch himself up to Tom or Bill or, more appropriately, Mike. His life - and the people in it - will help figure that out for him.

Nicknamey Stuff Around the Web: 

I am (now) openly blog-stalking Disnazzio who is a new find for me and conveniently happens to be writing more lately. I Just Wanted to be Sure of You, a post about her friend Bucko and why their mutual nickname has a lot to do with their relationship, made me cry tears of relatedness. It's quite beautiful. 

 Jess at Du Wax Loo Lu likes the options for nicknames in her own name and is thinking about how to handle naming her children.

If you're feeling neglected, name yourself. Shaquille O'Neal does. Shaq Fu? Shaqquie Robinson? Go for it. 

Joanna Goddard talks terms of endearment specifically on A Cup of Jo. 

Victoria at Victoria is Only a Wee Bit Crazy gives people nicknames so she'll remember who they are. No kidding.  I'm trying desperately not to wonder if anyone has ever done this to me because it's so not about me. I may be failing. 

My favorite online Half-Pint tweets Laura Ingalls Wilder-style.  

Family and Photography Contributing Editor Laurie White writes at LaurieWrites and shares this post in honor of the best kind of happy accidents.