Velveteen Mind

Picture Me in Spandex and Rollerskates as I Sing, "I Will Survive!"

Don't you love how I missed my very first scheduled Sunday Serendipity?  Sweet, right?  Gah.

(This post is going to be more bloggy and less writey, so here's notice to my mom who will tell me "Today's post wasn't one of my favorites."  To which I will reply, "Mom, they can't all be Victor Vito.  Besides, would you tell Steven Spielberg that "Saving Private Ryan was a'ight, but it was no The Color Purple."?  Then she would say, "You are no Steven Spielberg." and I would roll my eyes and steal one of her Diet Cokes.)

No kidding, hours after I posted my grand scheme and big fat empty promise to start a regular Sunday feature, I developed a fever.  A fever that lasted more than a week.

It spread to my two toddlers, then to my husband, then back to me just as I said aloud, "I think I'm all better now."

For Goose, my two year old son, and I, it turned into strep throat.  Holla!  Ack hack hack blargh.  Never mind, don't holla because your throat will split in two and fall out of your feet.

Soooooo I had to "invoke the Megan effect" and not even bother to turn on the computer for about a week.  The most I could muster was a blurred cursory view of my emails and a pathetic twitter or two, then I was out.

{start playing "I Will Survive" now for the full effect}

{Actually, I was thinking of the lyric "but now I'm back... from outer space" but it turned out to be "but now you're back..." which is actually more appropriate because I know some of you are sick of my disappearing and, well, yeah this song could totally be you singing.}

But now I'm back and scrambling again.  So far today, I've written a Nosh Notes for Blog Nosh Magazine, launched our new Green Living channel, introduced a new Submit form (did you know you can submit your own stuff to Blog Nosh?  you can!  and you should!), and am about to take some deep breaths as I address a handful of angry emails from eBay customers whose shipments are late.

Remind me to tell you some crazy eBay customers stories.  This holiday season brought out some real doozies and if I don't laugh about it, I'll cry.

Oh, and speaking of my parents (was I?) and posts that I keep saying I'm going to write, I do have photos of my studio, I have not forgotten about the second half of our wedding, and no, the guy I saw was not Morgan Freeman.  Obscure celebrities, people!  Obscure!  I could spot Morgan Freeman from behind with my eyes closed.  Pfft.  Amateurs.  ;)

Yeah, so, um...  this is my post for today.  They can't all be winners.

*edited to add that I've now listened to the whole song above and I'm thinking that you wouldn't say any of those nice things about missing me and crying and feeling sorry for yourself.  Did I mention I'm on alot of antibiotics and they make my brain feel like it's full of drunken cotton?

**aaaaand I just reread this post and realize that I'm channeling my friend Jenny.  Which may or may not mean that drunk cotton = The Bloggess.  In any case, I'll take it because she's frickin' awesome and painfully hilarious (not to say that this post is either).  Therefore, from now on I'm going to start popping antibiotics when I have writer's block.

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The "I'm Cheating for Wordless Wednesday and You Can't Stop Me!" Edition

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What's the Password for Sleep?

Post script but one for you to read before this craziness...  I saved this post as a draft last night in case I woke up this morning and realized I had actually just gone insane.  Although this is completely unintelligible, it makes me laugh so I'm going to post it.  Plus cheat and date it from yesterday because GoBloMeMoFo!

~~~

Sweet tea + Claritin-D + moonlight = Trucker pills. Apparently.

I say "+ moonlight" because:

Sweet tea + Claritin-D + sunlight = Sleeping Pills.  Absolutely.

It's 3 a.m. and I am still awake.  Goose received a couple of free kids' meal coupons at a local restaurant from school today and we also happened to receive some much appreciated anniversary cash in the mail, so we spent dinner out as a family this evening. 

By the time that surf-n-turf extravaganza was over, I was exhausted and ready to sleep the sleep of the dead.

That was six hours ago.

I'm one of those periodic insomniacs that insist on toughing it out, tossing and turning and refusing to get out of bed because surely I will pass out any minute now.

Instead, my mind starts this bizarre What's the Password for Sleep? game.

This usually happens when I've started a new job or project that requires learning a new coding system.  For instance, I used to work in an inpatient mental health ward and would track the patients' activities on a coded chart every 15 minutes.  Codes were recorded for what room they were in and their activity, e.g. "common room" and "claiming that fairies are eating her hair" would be coded as "CR" and "FH". 

We may not have had a code for the fairy hair bit, but you follow me.

After particularly difficult days... let's say days when a schizophrenic would threaten to lick my kneecaps off if I didn't give them an extra hour outside for smokes...  insomnia would hit.  I would find myself lying in bed for hours and just as I was about to fall asleep I would think, "What's the code for sleeping?"

But it was never so simple as just remembering the code, because most of the time it was something randomly infuriatingly dream-like, such as "What's the code for fuchsia fish?"   

Right.

Tonight?  Tonight's code quest has been the result of spending the day working on HTML code for a few website projects.

Every time I am just about to fall asleep, I think, "What's the align code for entrance to the jamba cave?" 

I don't even know what a "jamba cave" is.

Good grief, this is turning out to be a long night.

By the way, does anyone know the code for bolding carrots?

 

 

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In Denial, er, Under Construction

I'll be doing some design tweaking today, so bear with me.

This is also a massive procrastination tool because I have a really difficult post I'm trying to write and actually publish, so this makes it feel like I'm working on it...  which is clearly a lie.

So yeah, watch all of the pretty color changes and sidebar destruction today.  It's like a live-action demonstration of my coping skills. 

Facebook is Giving Me an Identity Crisis

Have you ever felt an unexpected shift in the core of who you are?  You are trucking right along and suddenly realize that something has changed?

Imperceptible shifts in your course, happening over time, until you abruptly find yourself in a different place than you planned.  You find yourself a different person than you expected.

Perhaps this is simply growth.  Perhaps this is simply growing up.  Perhaps I'm simply losing my mind.

That last one was a joke.  But I bet you smiled, because I bet you've been there.

I posted a quote from Patton Oswalt on Twitter a while back, taken from Lewis Black's The Root of All Evil on Comedy Central, in which Oswalt said regarding blogging: 

"Bloggers are the root of all evil because they have reduced us to a first draft culture."

I thought that was actually funny (come on, it is!), but let me warn you, this is a first draft and one I plan to hit publish on as soon as I finish typing.  It's one of those things that we might all feel, but rarely take the time to explore, so before I shake it off, I'm going to put it out there. 

I blame this identity crisis on Facebook. 

 

 

Yes, I say that tongue-in-cheek, but on some level it is true.  Facebook has put me back in touch with high school and college friends I haven't heard about in years, laying all of their lives out in an orderly fashion, ripe for comparison.

Half of them have families and jobs and most of the same responsibilities that keep me from going out to a club every other night.  The other half seem to be living virtually the same lives we lived in school, only with legal ID's and fewer grades.

It brings up so many personal questions that I don't generally allow myself to consider.  Questions like, "Um, was it an option to keep partying?"

That is a simplification, but still.

For now, I'm just putting this feeling in front of you.  I'll write more about it later.  Later, being after I finish the relaunch of Blog Nosh Magazine, which is certainly artificially inflating my stress level and causing me to rub my own nerves raw.

But maybe it's also an opportunity to rattle those nerves a bit and see what shakes out.  What sparks to the surface. 

Want to frazzle some nerves with me?  Ask some questions like, "Do I still want to drop it like it's hot?" or "Is it still an option to shake it like a Polaroid picture?"

Hell, let's just listen to some music:

 

(feed readers, if you can't see the music player, you are so missing out!)

...........................

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