LaurieWrites

December views from here.

Karen finds beautiful things every day, and I am not shy about telling her that through her words and images I find inspiration.

I stumbled a little post-NaBloPoMo, not sure what to do for December quite yet, and since I've been away from home for a couple of weeks I've been a little more uncentered. This is scary because I'm in a largely uncentered period to begin with. She shared Hippy Urban Girl's December Views project, and I immediately decided to join in. I have a few days to catch up on but I think I can do it. I like the idea of an image a day anyway. I've been doing pretty well with posting photos more consistently and it's more fun to do it with other people.

I'm off to Charlotte to see my other Laurie, another person whose eye I admire and from whom you see all sorts of pretty and just plain awesome things every day. I'm sure I'll share a view or two from there, too.

December 2, catching up:

Billy White, USN

He was the oldest of 18 children and one of several of the boys in his family who left their home on East Capitol Street in Washington, D.C. to serve in the United States Navy during World War II. After he came back he worked as an accountant in the Navy Department (or as my grandmother called it "down at the Navy Yard") for a few decades until a heart attack forced retirement and he spent the rest of his life doing the books for our church and in Annapolis for a state delegate.

I've been lucky to have several models for what I call integrity in my life but he was one of the first and by far one of the few most crucial. He was my father's father, and my father and one of my uncles served in the Navy in Vietnam.

He died in 1988, when I was 17, and I find myself typing this crying like it was yesterday because in a lot of ways it may as well have been.

We who were raised by people who understood how to act and especially how to treat others are lucky for what may have rubbed off.

Saturday Errata

First of all, I just realized that Top Chef premieres Wednesday and it's kind of embarrassing how much I'm looking forward to this. Some people I know and trust to have excellent taste are crazy about Mad Men and given that I've reduced my tv schedule down to approximately nothing else besides CNN, Bones (God I love that show) and The Office I'm a little afraid to watch it once because I'm sure that I'd get just as crazy. Also I have never seen True Blood. Don't talk to me about it, please. I can't add anything else to my already epic procrastination files, not a thing.

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In the "intentions for the universe" department, I went to an art show at an oppressively hot D.C. gallery on Friday night. It was mixed media but a lot of it was photography. I think I could put some of my own stuff out there, judging from what I saw. Some of it is way better than mine, some of it is just, eh, I'll admit I thought "Wow, I have some pictures that can kick that picture's ass." (I immediately feel guilty about that and want to erase it. I'm not going to. Go ahead. Judge me.) Anyway, I think I might try. If I write it down maybe I'll actually do it.

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I guest-posted on Greeblemonkey yesterday because I love Aimee and she asked and honestly I was totally flattered that she asked. I ended up rambling on about a Dave Matthews Band show I went to with her last summer when I was in Denver for the DNC, and Duran Duran discussions with Sarah and her and other matters related to music and making friends on the Internet who you totally would have been friends with if you had met them in real life first. The Internet - and the  blogging community I happen to hang out in - came in quite handy in these cases.

This is Aimee and me at that show. I love that she included this photo and thank her in advance for letting me share it here. I'm not sure why I look like I'm crying, or maybe stoned, because no, neither. At least I don't remember crying. Maybe I was overcome with Internet friendship, or altitude. I worked so hard that week and my D90 was stolen and I fell unceremoniously in a street in downtown Denver when I was hanging out with my girl Heather C. and also lost my press pass (I'm not kidding when I say I need a minder) so this night out with Aimee was pretty much the highlight, second only to being in Invesco/Mile High Stadium when President Obama accepted the nomination - a first place that she would understand better than almost anyone.)

Note: Aimee will come and pick you up on a street corner after you've met her one time and take you to dinner and to the amazing Red Rocks, if you call her and ask her and throw in a show ticket. Total score.

She also included this shot of Sarah and me that I'll put here again just because I can and I want it on my blog too, yo.

Sarah makes me look good in general. I first recall meeting her for real while attempting to slice my finger off in a door at BlogHer DC last fall. (If this was not the first time I'm sorry, it's like you've always been here dude what can I say? ;)) This didn't bode well for good pictures but we've had a run of good luck since then. I can't make her stand next to me all the time which is a shame. This photo - especially notable because it was way past wine o'clock and my eyes are still open - was taken by Laurie Smithwick, another friend who makes the best kind in real life because she makes me think better and makes me smile big. 

Oh, what the hell. It's Laurie and me. Lauries, even.

I like you guys, all y'all. I keep threatening (like, myself, in my own brain) to do a really late BlogHer post and maybe I will. This year was good.

Haha, Denise, look! I wrote "really late BlogHer post" and I actually meant the conference but that is such an honestly ambiguous statement. May this new leaf turn over with reckless abandon.

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The post I wrote for Aimee is largely about music. And somewhat related, I'm currently stalking archives because as stated above I have these friends now from the computer and I'm realizing how much of their actual blogs I've missed over my past three years of failing at reading blogs (or because I didn't really know them well yet so it wasn't technically my fault. Deflect, deflect! Also I could link like 20 more people which I probably should if I'm going to do it at all but I can't take the pressure. You know who you are.) I am forcing myself to sit still for much of today because I'm fried, and therefore just read a list of Sarah's top 100 albums that she wrote three years ago (do not go back and read it Sarah because you might start arguing with yourself. Leave it alone.)

Sarah and I have some things in common so it's not so surprising that large parts of her music category, in fact, (minus some of the kids' stuff with which I'm not familiar because I just have no reason to turn it on most of the time although I'm essentially a child, and the death metal because I just never went there in spite of my obsession with hair and harder, albeit mainstream, metal) are right out of my life. I'm kind of tempted to try my own list but the thought is so daunting that I'm trying to talk myself out of it, and I'd have to follow the honesty rule and frankly I like some really embarrassing shit. Let's just say reading this made me want to write about music more. I'll probably start with this a little later, just for grins. Maybe you should too.

I really do love archives, which I actually don't think is so weird. I read Eden Kennedy's and Wendy McClure's sometimes just because the writing is so good and it doesn't get old for me. I'll take inspiration where I can get it.

And on a few key points that I'll mention here, Sarah, so I can embarrass myself on my own blog rather than going back and obsessively commenting on three-year-old posts: You said "counterpoint structure in rock music" and I have no idea what that means so I'm glad there are people like you who do; Night Songs is the far superior record for Somebody Save Me and Nobody's Fool alone, although Coming Home is one of my favorite songs of all time and I think I might write about a recent interaction with it next; Soundgarden is one of the greatest bands ever and this is why I despise my ex-boyfriend Chris Cornell all the more for the travesty of his recent inexcusable solo material wherein he managed to remind me of Cher; I'm confused however by your omission of Temple of the Dog; none of Simon LeBon's lyrics make sense, except in Save a Prayer, marginally, and props to you for bonding with the first record because it's by far the best besides "New Religion" and "Last Chance on the Stairway" on Rio which win for (naturally) bass lines alone; I'd like a world with Cliff Burton, Shannon Hoon (my personal addition), Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley still in it. At the very least I feel confident that Cliff would have saved the world from the Napster hearings and the documentary where the band went through group therapy; more people should have always listened to the Cult because some of their stuff is genius, Fire Woman alone, good Lord, and Blood Sugar Sex Magic and Appetite = totally in my top ten, BSSM might have to be 1 or 2. Ten is in the top 15. Also Ramble On is my favorite Zeppelin song and on my top-ten favorite songs ever list as well. And I'll stop there. We are both very smart people with excellent taste, in my own mind. The end.

I could have e-mailed that but I really think my Chris Cornell rage needs to be shared with a wider audience. Bottom line? This archive-stalking really saves a lot of catch-up time.

(Also I'm using the word "stalk" facetiously here. Real, creepy stalking is not funny or appealing at all in the slightest. Don't make me tell you how in-depth my site stats are. Really, because I don't want to talk about it. Moving on. Lalala.)

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Finally, because my mother is making me leave my house to go see Julie and Julia, a book I disliked for much the same reasons that I disliked Eat, Pray, Love (I know. I'm not a real person, and also clearly not a girl either. Bring on the hate, bring it.) and a movie I'm not too excited to see either but she is and I'm curious in a voyeuristic sort of way about how blogging will be portrayed so I'm going, I want this. Badly.

I just got my time capsule e-mail from Photojojo.com, and they sell it through their site (in the "awesomeness" category in their store. I concur.) I've had a combined camerabag/purse for a number of months now because I take my SLR everywhere - hi robbers please don't follow me and steal it, I'm scrappy and hard to pin down anyway, always on the move, yes - and it's fraying on the edges and generally making me look like the crazy camera bag lady, so I needed something cute and functional and this totally scores.

You should get the Time Capsule too. Connect it to your Flickr account and twice a month they e-mail you with a bunch of images that you uploaded exactly a year ago. It's very cool. If you're a nostalgia junkie like me it fits that bill plus it reminds me of pictures I'd completely forgotten about. The only sad part is they sent me photos of my dog after he died and I was in a crappy mood and it kind of made me cry to see him pop up in my e-mail and I'm sure the same will happen with my grandma but whatever, it's still a genius idea and I support it completely. I'm sure they've been waiting for me to weigh in on it, so there it is.

He was cute though.

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I think that's more than enough from me. Make it a great day.

Purple for Maddie and Much Love for Thalon

Cross-posted at BlogHer.

"So shines a good deed in a weary world," Shakespeare wrote in The Merchant of Venice. Gene Wilder repeated it in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The line jumped out at me when I watched it for the millionth time on Sunday, reminding me of the community of parent bloggers, friends and allies who reached out this week to support two families who suffered the unthinkable loss of their babies.

The funeral of Maddie Spohr, 17-month old daughter of Heather and Mike Spohr of The Spohrs Are Multiplying and The Newborn Identity, is today in California. Thalon, the 16-month-old son of Shana of Gorillabuns, died this weekend.

I honestly do not know where to begin to sum up the online and in some cases very much in-person reaction from thousands of bloggers, because I know I can't, but I feel it bears mentioning. There is so much - SO MUCH - out there, a tremendous outpouring from people all over the Internet who care about these children and the people who have lost them that it's struck me silent. And while my heart and brain are full, I've been doing basically everything I can all of yesterday and today to avoid writing about the deaths of two small children, even though it was the only thing that seemed important enough to write about this week. I've watched post after post flow from the fingers of people all over this continent (and likely the world, if you've seen posts from beyond North American borders please link them in the comments.) And I've been reading them obsessively, amazed at people who can so readily find the words, at people who are responding to these losses with so much generosity and kindness, who are donating to the March of Dimes in Maddie's memory, who are traveling to California for her funeral to stand with and support her parents, who are turning their avatars and blogs purple in her memory. (Thanks much to Velma for helping me out with mine.)

Last night I ended up stuck on Bejeweled, a horribly addictive game that kills one lobe of your brain with stupidity while it frees the other one up to think about more important things, because I haven't been able to slow my brain down enough to knit this all together in a clean white text box. And after I couldn't do that anymore, I was ready to try to write about it, because even though I know for sure I can't do two baby lives and the immeasurable pain of two families justice, I need to talk about what happens when people all over the world come to care, consider themselves community, and have the technological means combined with the oh-so-human heart and spirit to do something about it.

I'm going to mostly let these people speak, but first of all, the facts, in case anyone reading missed them: Maddie died on April 8, 2009. Born 11 weeks premature two years ago, she had health issues throughout her life but had been doing well until the infection set in that took her life. Mom Heather and dad Mike wrote about their experiences parenting her, from the difficulties of prematurity and NICU to the everyday joys of watching her grow. Mike was a stay-at-home dad for much of Maddie's life. They are both on Twitter, Heather at @mamaspohr and Mike, @newbornidentity.

Shana's son, Thalon Bruce, died suddenly on Saturday.She shared the news yesterday.

There are countless communities on the Internet, with amorphous boundaries, knit loosely together in a global sense but with some of the tightest human relationships I've ever seen. The parent blogging community has been deconstructed in detail, but when it comes to losses like this, the rate and speed of organizing is remarkable. There's the ability of a stranger like myself, not a parent but certainly with the compassion for the inexplicable loss of a baby, to send a comment or an e-mail, to get sucked into the most beautiful pair of seventeen month-old eyes, and to cry for people I've never met because reading the accounts of their daughter's life are almost too much to bear. And if I feel this way? Who could imagine their grief.

In comments and on their own blogs, people reach out. And as usual anymore, Twitter is a communications hub, so intrinsic to online community building that I fail to engage when someone questions the value. You get it or you don't.

Still - human beings have to hit these keys and make the plans, and that is what has happened in both of these instances. Meghan at a Mom Two Boys is the kind of friend I hope I'd have on my side in a situation like this. She originally announced her loss on behalf of the family, has been instrumental in fundraising efforts, and has a For Maddie hub on her blog with links to (currently) 410 posts submitted by bloggers in her honor. March for Maddie has more, including videos and photos.

Lotus Carroll at Sarcastic Mom also has a page with every conceivable Maddie link, including the 50 teams who will be walking in her honor in the March of Dimes March for Babies in a couple of weeks. Donations to Maddie's March of Dimes page are over $25,000 so far (it's often down due to volume, so a trip to Sarcastic Mom's links are the best bet, I've found.)

The women of Room 704 (or, more recently, Seven-Oh-Spohr) are selling bracelets with the bulk of the proceeds going to the Spohr family. Yvonne of Joy Unexpected went out and bought a Nikon Coolpix camera instead of directly donating. Every ten dollars donated to the family gains donors one chance at the camera. Instamom is doing the same with a Nintendo DSi.

Bloggers including Mrs. Schmitty will be posting a photo of Madeline from this post at 2:30 p.m., PST today to coincide with her service. The For Maddie Flickr pool includes purple balloon launches and people wearing purple.

Shana's friend Sarah at Whoorl set up a Love for Thalon PayPal link, alongside her post about his loss.

Thalon passed away yesterday afternoon surrounded by his adoring family.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention wanting to punch the universe in the mouth right now. Really hard.

Heather B. met Thalon in January.

After the last two weeks I keep shaking my head because babies should never die. It’s not right and it’s the most fucked up thing I have ever heard. And yet it keeps happening and all I want to do is sit here in my pajama pants and wonder why? None of the above makes any sense. And I don’t even care. I’m just torn up on the inside and questioning how parents do it. How do you spend the rest of your life constantly worrying that in any minute your heart might break into a million pieces? None of the above makes sense because it shouldn’t. It - the death of a child - shouldn’t happen but it does.

Twitter searches for Maddie and Thalon are updated in real time.

The LA Times ran a story about the online response to Maddie's death. Heather Spohr will speak at her daughter's funeral.

The comments for both of these babies are countless, but this one from Flicka sums up what many feel:

Saying that I am so sorry seems woefully inadequate right now. My thoughts and prayers are with you and your family, now and in the days ahead. This internet stranger is hugging you from afar.

Kate from SweetSalty left one on this beautiful photo of Maddie:

Everyone's twittering and blogging and remembering and I'm just completely and totally stunned. Had to come here and see her. My god, she was some kind of imp or sprite or otherworldly girl.

I've spent almost two years reconciling the mysteries of what else is out there, having a 6-week-old premature son who is on that other side, and has all those answers. And yet I look at Maddie's gorgeous face and all over again, I can't make sense of it.

Maggie's post at Okay. Fine. Dammit is beautiful. Genius apparently causes blog crashes, because I can't get there now, but it says everything I wanted to but can't find the words.

Eight hours in the car today and I kept checking Twitter on my phone, and I swear for the first time ever I’m not annoyed by hashtags, I’m seeking them out, the #maddie’s, the #thalon’s, like beacons, and it’s so strange, isn’t it? In times of great confusion and profound tragedy we just want to be among others who are equally impacted, like after Columbine or September 11, and so this is what we do, we head to the chapels and the temples and the public parks and the malls and we shuffle together slowly, as one, taking comfort in the lull of the sound of our communal footsteps and that’s really what the blogosphere has become to me, you know? And everyone was there today, following the hashtags, each tweet and post a gonging of the bell, the Church of Twitter.

Forget about weary. The world ought to really lie down exhausted every time a baby dies, but then if it did it would never get up. It happens all the time, every day, all over the world. But every time, it seems like time ought to stop and remember.In the loss of these children, there is compassion for all children, for all families who lose them. There is not much more to say than that, except for whatever it's worth - which I'm not sure how to quantify but what do you do in situations like this other than things that seem like they might help, like they might have meaning? - I will wear purple today. And if there were a color for Thalon, if one pops up soon, I'll do that too. It's the least I can do for these kids and for their families.

Please feel free to share remembrances, updates and links to posts in the comments. I write at LaurieWrites. I will walk in the suburban Maryland March for Babies on April 25, in honor of Maddie, who joins the kids with cleft lips and palates who I will always walk for. Please visit my page if you feel so moved, and pitch in for all of these kids. Thanks. This is a particularly meaningful year.

SXSW Smiles and Photo Dreams - What's Yours?

Cross-posted at BlogHer, with a few additions here.

As a photographer and an adult with a cleft lip and palate who had a transformative experience shooting an Operation Smile dental mission in Vietnam a year ago this week, I was thrilled to see the SXSW Smiles project at the huge SXSW Interactive conference in the oh-so-awesome Austin.

Well, I didn't actually see it. I almost missed it entirely. I walked out of my last panel on the last day smack into a table that had piles of Operation Smile stickers and buttons on it (I was tired, and it turns out when you buy an iPhone you can spend a lot of stupid time looking at the ground.) It kind of hurt my knee, but it got my attention. And after a little bit of research into the project that brought a nonprofit organization like this one to a huge tech conference, I kicked myself harder than usual for not paying attention before. There's a lot to pay attention to at this conference, but this is one more thing that given my love for this organization's mission of providing surgical repair for facial differences - primarily cleft lips and/or palates - around the world, I feel like the universe should have put in my scattered, hurried path. (And the universe is like, "Hi, pay attention to the important stuff, thanks.") So I am now, and I hope you will too.

Renee Alexander Hamilton, Operation Smile's Social Media Strategist who represented the project at SXSW Interactive, tells the story on her blog, SXSW Smiles Journal.

-I told her about my new role and how now I am trying to do the same thing we do in Donor Relations online and in person at events. I explained that while in the past social networking tools like chat rooms were thought to divide people and keep them at home in a dark corner having "virtual relationships'. Now with Facebook and Twitter, these interactions are actually driving in-person meet-ups and beyond that they are inspiring ACTION.

So I guess you could say I'm in Austin for a little Smile Action!

SXSW Smiles set up shop outside the very cool Beacon Lounge for nonprofits and social change organizations in the Austin Convention Center, with the goal of enough donations for 10 new "smiles" - repair surgeries for kids with cleft lips and/or palates- each estimated at $240.

Directions were simple. First, pick up or download a "Make Me Smile" sign, and write whatever makes you smile on it. Upload a photo of yourself with the sign to Flickr with the "sxswsmiles" tag. Donate by texting "smile" to 90999, or dropping it off in the Beacon Lounge.

Check out the Operation Smile SXSW Flickr set here, hosted on Alexander aka Entropy Art's photostream. The answers are fun to read - "Bhangra," "our absurdly clingy dog", "hot salsa"- and you'll also get a peek at some of the folks roaming the halls of SXSW, if that's a draw. I would include them for you here, but "all rights reserved" is what it is.

The SXSWSmiles project is part of a larger $240 Smile Challenge March (aka Smile Month.) The cause's Facebook page says that $4203 has been donated so far and $3710 is still needed to reach their goal of providing 20 repair surgeries to children. Check it out.

While this is so much on my mind, Lenovo Microsoft is asking people to "Name Your Dream Assignment," asking "Where will your lens take you?" on a photo project for which they will give a prize of $50,000, a video camera, a blog and a computer to record it all. I haven't entered, but mine? To go on a mission - a surgical one this time, and to shoot it. I don't know when or how this will happen, but I believe that it will, and just as I felt in Vietnam, I think it'll be one of the most important things I ever witness.

And why? I'm as idealistic as I am hardcore about photography, and that's a lot. Photos can change lives, I will boldly, idealistically, perhaps overdramatically say - whether they're photos of people talking about what makes them smile or, maybe more importantly, photos taken before and after cleft lip and/or palate repair. No pictures exist of me prior to my lip repair at six weeks old. Hospitals didn't take photos of babies with facial differences then. I'm not sure what the deal was in my family, honestly - I do know my mother was never ashamed of me, in fact saw beyond my flaws as mothers most often do. Who knows what pressures existed on a 20-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man, in the days before cameras were omnipresent, everywhere, where images were immediately available.

But photos are essential and I wish there were some. I would love to see what I looked like before this repair, to see the reality of this situation that has affected my life like no other. And I like seeing the impact a simple repair surgery can make on a child who may otherwise walk around in their impoverished town or village with a gaping whole where there ought not to be one. Photos can inform and change perceptions and raise awareness just like, and sometimes even more than, words can. It can be difficult to see if you're unaccustomed, but just like with many things that present challenges that can't be easily solved, or aren't so pretty, or disturb on some level, they don't go away just because we don't pay attention.

When its in a picture in front of your face, it's hard to ignore, so may there always be pictures of important things in front of our faces.

Me, exhausted, at the end of a harrowing trip, happy nonetheless to be spending time with the very important kids at Hanoi Medical University, March, 2008. Many had just received their first dental exam. Photo kindly taken by their teacher. (The whole set is here. I love these pictures.)

And I can easily say that Operation Smile is my favorite new Twitter contact from SXSW Interactive.

Other photo dreamers for this and other causes:

Joanne Bamberger/PunditMom's dream assignment is to tell the stories of moms keeping their families afloat in tough economic times.

Katie Ring's Photography and Life blog with footage of Operation Smile patients in India and her photos of a mission there.

Audra, an American expat writing at Nicaragua: The Obandos accompanied her students from the American Nicaraguan School on an Operation Smile mission

Beth Kanter was a fixture in the Beacon Lounge and wrote prolifically about the nonprofit presence at SXSW and in social media communities. Her post on the Social Media Nonprofit ROI Poetry Slam is a good place to start, but scroll around for lots more. <

It's all around me.

Gwen Bell is inspiring. I haven't read her for some reason but I went from link to link and finally settled in to find out that I love her writing.

It is the lovely Jen Lemen's birthday today. She wrote this post about turning 40 and all she plans to do to commemorate it this year. I read it this morning and my heart sang for her and for me because I'm totally stealing this idea.

I've been sitting in the bookstore today reading and writing, trying to step outside the lines that have been drawing themselves in tighter and tighter around me. It's been a good mental and physical break from a life that's moving too fast all of a sudden and still presenting me with some challenges.Two-and-a-half months to graduation and there are so many questions I have that have no answer and yet I find myself gravitating more and more towards trust where in recent months there has been such uncertainty.

Lunch with an old friend today restored something in me that I didn't know was in need of it, really. It helped me write something I needed to get out, which was good - so often lately I've felt blocked. It helped me see my way clear to forgiveness, to putting something positive and of actual value into the universe. Actually I'm rediscovering all of these people from all along the path of my life - from high school and other times where maybe we needed a break or didn't really need one but it happened anyway. Add that to some tremendous new people who have come into my life in the past year and I feel that for all the things I'm afraid I lack, I have an embarrassment of riches in friends, which is so wonderful to know. I really can't overstate it.

My dear old friend K and I sat down over beers this weekend after three years of a fractured relationship and it's so great to know that with some people you can just pick up wherever you - for whatever reason - left off.

Then today I looked at a woman I last knew as a 16 year old girl and even though it had been 20 years there was so much that we still inherently knew about each other and there was so little back story that needed to be explained. Turns out we've lived really close to each other for years and it just needed this kind of time to reconnect, I guess. Last night someone I never thought would own anything in common with me at all set up some dinner plans and that was really nice too.

I don't know what the confluence of all of this means at this point - and I don't think I'm going to think about it too deeply for awhile. I'm just going to enjoy it since there's so much of life not to enjoy and what I'm focusing on is connection with good people.

I'll just add that it might not be useful to knock the good stuff that Facebook can do for you until you've tried it - you know, if you want to.

The fall light and colors are inside of me as they are every year. It's an amazing time to be alive - somewhere on the edge of melancholy, but not quite there. I'm not dreading winter as I usually do so much. It'll just happen and I'll move through it as usual. If I didn't have to drive in bad weather I really don't think I'll care. My mother asked if I was going anywhere for graduation and the truth is probably not but maybe I ought to. 

Now I'm listening to Hem, and to a little bit of Wilco. I'm checking the totals and hoping people donate to the Life Through a Lens project. I figure if I had kids by now I'd have hit my family up for thousands of dollars in wrapping paper and school candy bars so maybe we can just cobble together this $800 for these kids and call it even. At least I hope so.

I feel good today. I feel inspired today. I feel like maybe things can sometimes be good and I feel slightly more capable of letting go of things that weight me down than usual, which is to say that I actually do feel capable. And that does feel good, I have to say.

Covered in roses

Today started with an excellent breakfast at Dottie's Bluebird Cafe (I think?) in downtown San Francisco with my BlogHer roommate Genie and the excellent Jen Zug who was a fellow reader at the Community keynote Friday night. We spent the hour wait in the gray damp morning talking about nothing and everything in between and decided it was worth it when the food came. Wow. Best breakfast, really, that I'd wait for again, which generally speaking isn't the case.

After breakfast Genie had taken off for the airport and I stuck around in the room to check my e-mail and try to arrange transportation to San Diego from San Francisco, a task I thought would be stunningly easy. Cue the Westin kicking me off the wireless when the BlogHer "FREE" bizness stopped almost exactly at noon. Then cue me trying desperately to cram two weeks' worth of crap into two suitcases, while the "what to keep" pile of stuff I was bringing home from the conference got smaller and smaller.

Suitcases closed, I arranged my camera and purse and whatever other detritus of my life stood between me and a life beyond the Westin walls, when a wave of horrible emptiness came over me and I began to weep. I'd had a dream about my ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend (whom I do not know and will never, by the way? So, weird?) in the early morning hours. I felt suddenly, overwhelmingly sad. BlogHer was great and powerful like Oz for me this year, and it was over. I missed my family. I hadn't seen enough of the city. And most of all, I was oh so VERY all alone in this hotel room and thus it would ever be. I really really lost my shit there for a minute, and as a result had absolutely no idea what to do next.

What I did was somehow manage to pile all the junk into a set-up that I could stumble downstairs with, stopped crying after a few minutes, and went out to the elevators. And when the elevator doors opened up, there was my dear BlogHer co-editor Catherine Morgan and her mom, smiling big smiles and inviting me to run around the city with them to do some last-minute shopping and sea-lion watching and whatnot. Catherine and I connected at last year's conference and I'm in touch with a number of my BlogHer girls (as I call them in my head, where it is neither inappropriate nor reductive, by the way. ;)) every day. She stuck with me today as I realized that a $350 rental car return fee in San Diego wasn't going to cut it, and worked with my quiet hysteria while I tried to arrange alternative transportation. She and her sweet mom Frances listened to me babble on at lunch, and by the time I left them at the sea lions to go meet two other really great women who had stuck around, who I felt comfortable reaching out to for some company and support even though I didn't know them very well at all until tonight, I felt - if not completely settled with the weirdness of the day and every single conflicting emotion that seems to bookend everything for me these days - at least grateful that I'd had that time with people I liked and cared about. At least I wasn't crying anymore, In fact,  the crazy sea lion barking made me laugh out loud and that's definitely preferable to the weeping.

This kind of experience is what I really love the most about what BlogHer has brought to my life in the past three years and what makes me go all warm and fuzzy about it like I don't about many, many things, trust me. I'd call it out if it wasn't true and when parts of it don't work for me I do that too. But the stark truth is that very few things in my life have given me the chance to not only get better at the writing but also to connect with people in these really astounding ways. It's an experience that takes me up really really way high sometimes. It can have me stupid in the street at 4 a.m. with people I've just met. It makes me laugh and talk and eat and drink and think and cry when it's over.

Which it is. And I am finally getting the hell out of here.

Learning to fly

I always worry about my plane crashing. I used to be a pretty normal flyer - a few butterflies on takeoff, random worries about the things that go bump on the plane, as it were, gratitude when I was on solid ground again, annoyance that that woman with all the crap in the overhead bin just couldn't slide over just a LITTLE bit so as not to impede the progress of 100 people trying to get the hell off.

Sometime last year I became a super nervous flyer. My mind became a total jackass and turned me into that person who actually buys the little bottles of cheap red wine for MEDICINAL PURPOSES. I don't know why, but it made a (total of, with layovers) 20-hour trip to Hanoi an exercise in hell, and sets me on the edge of my seat for the bulk of every flight, unable to sleep.

My trip to San Francisco for BlogHer, I planned for this - planned ahead, that is, with a little bit of medicine for mama to take the edge off, I admit it. I wished I didn't have to, but I was not going to go through this hell again, leaving me uncoiling for the first day of an event of which I do not wish to miss a single minute. Crazy stuff: it worked. I made it everywhere in good form, arms and legs quite loose and brain not completely overwhelmed and just all warm and fuzzy and in love with the universe.

Still not a huge fan of the flying thing, but if pressed, I would say that the reason my plane didn't crash on the way here was so I could read last night in the Community Keynote.

I love this conference. It's my third year, and the haters can shut it, because not only is it not ONLY about the shoes (although, for me, it's a little bit about the wine, but that makes it no different than anywhere else in my world) it is about everything else. It is the best thing that has ever happened to me in my writing life, and it's up there in my personal life as well. I am an unashamed, unabashed supporter. And now my love is just off any chart in existence, because no other opportunity has arisen in my life - ever - to get up and read something incredibly deeply personal in front of almost 1,000 people, and - once I got out there, after much pre-reading angst - to look out and feel completely supported and at ease.

And afterwards? AFTERWARDS? I'm still amazed that several wonderful people took the time to seek me out - in the hotel lobby - on the way to the party - at the MightyHaus shindig later - to tell me how they felt about what I wrote. They told me their very personal and meaningful stories. They cried. They made me cry. They said things about me, about bravery, about...well, just a lot of things that I have trouble owning for myself a lot of the time, and have to say I don't always believe, but this has been a pretty big step in the right direction of shutting up the aforementioned jackass brain.

I'll write more about this later - my battery is dying and I have to go speak on a panel about blogging without kids (which, gotta say, after standing up alone in front of a ballroom full of people? let's just say I hope it isn't harder than I think it's going to be.) But because I know some new people are stopping by here today, thanks to the awesome Eden Kennedy, I just wanted to say that the experience was one of the best and most meaningful of my life. I'm really glad my plane didn't crash so I could do it, and I don't really know what happens next, ever, with anything, but this was pretty fucking awesome.

All-points Bulletin for the Universe:

I have had enough.

Seriously, where is the hidden camera?

I have had the worst year. THE WORST YEAR. It zigs when I zag. My words come out wrong and at inopportune times. I clasped my hands together yesterday and was horrified to realize that I lack any kind of supportive touch, for myself and for other people, that I maybe don't have the capacity for it right now.

I am in the most TERRIBLE headspace I have been in in years. I am not fun, not fun at all. I am not enjoying myself, and the effort to make the opposite be true is exhausting me. I am dredging up every possible thing I know of to make this not be true, including typing mantras on the cute little sticky note application on my macbook, and I am failing miserably.

I am, among many things, a fighter, a scrappy little girl, kind of like a chunkier Kristy Macnichol on Eight Is Enough. And what looks insane to others, i.e., the outside world, often makes perfect sense to me in my brain, such that I'm willing to go to the mat for it long past when its shelf life is expired. But right now I'm kind of slap fighting with myself and it is unattractive. It is sad and silly at the same time. I am on overdrive such that when I opened up my grades today and saw that I had earned a B for all of my troubles related to the trip to Vietnam, I couldn't even cry, although the whole experience at this point makes me want to sob, it was so awful (not the trip itself - the aftermath. Do not trust how you tell the story of your beautiful personal experiences to cold and unkind people, if you can help it.) I could not fire up an e-mail to my dean, detailing all of the ways in which I felt wronged, all of the ways in which my instructor's impressive credentials were wiped out for me on so many occasions, like when she commented on my "undies", maybe, but most of all on the last day I hopefully will ever see her, when she said, "Dental care isn't sexy. Not like facial repair surgery."

I have had both, a lot more than you ever will unless someone smart knocks your teeth out, lady. And I'm here to tell you that a doctor sewing up a tiny little face IS NOT SEXY. Especially when it's yours. Even if it's on the front page of the goddamned newspaper.

So there you have it. I am an unattractive, ravenous, morally outraged ANGRY WOMAN ON HER PERIOD. I have cramps that are currently ripping across my midsection, I am pissed off and I need a break. I need something SO GREAT to happen to me right now, and I don't think it will.

Also, I am mean and I don't want to help you (the universal you, so please whoever you are do not take this personally.)

I want the person who just found this blog by googling "if it flies, floats or fucks --- rent it, paul mccartney-heather mills divorce" to trip and fall, because you, sir or madam, are disturbed.

I want the democratic primary to end, so we can get on with the business of things and with our lives. It's proven two things: hatred of women and people of color is alive and well. And I'm afraid that the results of the general election will prove the same, with much more destructive results. May I be wrong.

I just got my financial aid refund, which means I've officially mortgaged my future, and I immediately bought a purse I've been coveting. Ergo, I have a shopping problem, and I don't care.

I do not want to meet my obligations this weekend. I want to clean my room. I want to lay in the yard, in the sun and the grass. I want to build this new site I've got on my mind and maybe even read a book that I feel like reading. I want to remember what it is that makes all of this bullshit worth it. I want to be able to talk to you if I feel like it, and not if I don't. I want a cheeseburger. I am not that hard to please, so I would like the other stuff to stop. Just to stop. I want to stop feeling disappointed and disappointing. I want to be a nice person again.

Yesterday I sent the last shred of good thoughts I had out into the universe via the United States Postal Service for someone I have cared about for a long time. Do not ask me if it was closure because if one more person asks me that I don't know what I will do but I wouldn't be the guinea pig there if I were you. I could not think it was pitiful because it was so long in coming that I had to do it, because I needed to honor something inside of me that was true and real for someone else, while I still could. I smiled a real smile after I handed the package over, because I knew it was beauty I was capable of at one point although I don't really think I ever will be again (I'll lie and tell you I do but I don't, not really, and I can't tell you the kind of fear that can instill in a full-to-bursting heart and soul.)

I had the hope of years in ink and paper in my hands and I handed it over. I gave it away to a short woman in a blue jacket, because I truly didn't want it anymore. I don't want it. I didn't care what the recipient would think of it, really, although I obviously care very much. I can't help how I feel. I did, however, want it gone, wanted it to fly away where it might finally have some positive benefit, no matter what, where it is in no way about me.

My blog friend Jen Lemen is in Rwanda right now. In an effort to neutralize this terrible, terrible feeling that I feel, what I sent to my old friend was a copy of her zine, "Let's Learn How to Help Ourselves and Others." I had read it over and over because I believe that what Jen has accomplished in a few short months is amazing, and it's the stuff like this that makes me think we can do something really great and useful with our time here. I sent it to him because he's one of the people I know who I believe to be most capable of taking creative efforts and using them to make a difference on a profound level, and I hope with all my heart that that happens. The book is meant to be passed forward, really. It's not supposed to stop with you, and I surely didn't want it to stay in these hands that are so struggling with what it is that they're meant to do, with where they're meant to go.

I do not want the lessons I've learned from what I've chosen to love and to devote my time to to stop at this bottleneck. I want the year to get better, sure, because it would make me much easier for other people to be around and make my nights a lot easier to get through, but if it can't I hope some good comes out of it. If it doesn't it makes an unsatisfying point.

Donations may be made to Jen and Odette's project at Jen's ChipIn site. Pitch in if you can, and even if you can't, certainly spread the word.
 

I am.

Have I said lately that I love Heather?

Laurie, you're a badassmotherfucka. Say it with me now, "I, Laurie White, am a BADASSMOTHAFUCKA and I will not be intimidated by little weenies with no social skills."

You totally need a friend like this, I swear.