Ad Nauseum

Sometimes I am hesitant to write or talk about matters close to my heart.

This hesitation stems from a fear that my writing, my thoughts, my life is all one big plagiarization. It's true: subjects and issues close to my heart are very often close to the hearts of many others as well ... close to the hearts of people who started their blog a long time ago, or wrote a book, or went on TV ... or talked your freakin' ear off at last week's playgroup.

In other words, I fear I can't bring anything new or original to the table. I never took Latin but ad nauseum and nausea seem too close to be purely coincidental.
 

 Shut Your Mouth', Eda Akaltun, 2008

But lately some events have blown the lid clean off of my writer's block and rendered this fear obsolete. By drawing information and inspiration from many sources, I now see how this connects us. It allows us to share, to make the whole greater than the sum of our parts. I'm finding the highest level of learning occurs during synthesis after all. Here's what has led to this personal enlightenment:

Rock Out with your Cacophony Out

Listening to the radio while driving recently, I caught a snippet about how marketers determine a demographic's musical preference. They take their target group's age and then subtract back to the time that demographic was in the 18-22 range. So, if the radio station was wooing 50 year-olds, they just would conjure up the Billboard Top 100 list from 1978-1982-ish.

This just incensed me -- the nerve of these marketing types. Wouldn't they just love it if we were all so easy to figure out. Just put us in one of a few preset boxes, simply plug in the variables and cha-ching: it' a sale.

Well, people are just a bit more fluid and dynamic than that, I thought. DAMN THE MAN! I switched off the report, cranked up "Guns-N-Roses" and gunned my bitchin Camaro down the street (you can totally listen at that link, you're welcome).



  <<< This was my car in high school. Now imagine it loaded with four or five white, western Kansas girls singing "Nuthin' but a G Thang".

streetwalkers update 2

There are some really exciting things to put on your calendars. Okay, really exciting if the thought of walking around safely makes you as giddy as it does me. (see inception of pedestrian/Linda Hamilton mania here)

-A volunteer opportunity! Be involved in taking a count of cyclists and pedestrians. These numbers are going to be used for exciting and official  things! Here are the details:

please be nice to my friend (that's YOU!)

This is a call to action!!! The action: practicing not a random act of kindness directed at a stranger, but a purposeful act of kindness to yourself.

<< It's a mouse pad, a declaration, a belief system, and possibly an example of my bad judgment. 

In "NO shame on you!" I explored the awful and oedipal things that can happen to children when they are shamed. Immediately after that post, I had the pleasure of happening upon an interview by leading "shame researcher," Dr. Brene Brown. Her blog rocks BTW, and it is the biggest gift I can give you -- although back to the tacky boxed wine give-aways in the next post!

hey sister, can you spare some bling?

UPDATE: This event was a wonderful success. We raised $3500 due to your generous donations. There are still some pieces and checks coming, so it is not too late, if you are still interested in making a donation just email me. My friends are in actually in the process of bringing their baby home, so the timing is perfect. Again, thank you all from the warm cockles of my heart!!! Read on for the whole story....

You know how certain people in your life just warm the cockles of your heart? You're not sure what "cockles" are, but you know they exist because you feel them get warm when you think about those people?

I have the enormous blessing of being friends with just such a cockle-warming family. They have spent the first year of their daughter's life at Children's Mercy Hospital, exhibiting profound grace and forbearance throughout. Every day they demonstrate the enormous power of family. They have loved, supported, and held each other up during a very challenging year. All the while, they have afforded their daughter the routine and regular family experiences of the first year-- in an environment that naturally does not feel like a home. But they've made it unbelievably homey.

NO shame on you!

When I was a kid, certain parts of a person's anatomy (including my own) were referred to as "naughty parts." This was common practice in those strange, post-Victorian days of the 70's and 80's. But here in this new millennium and I smell the whiff of progress. Or just the whiff of some kids who need to get in the tub and wash their parts.

We are wising up: it isn't necessarily helpful or useful to shame any part of a child's body, or their thoughts and curiosities.

I'll have the #3, no wait...make it the Confit Arctic Char (part II of II)

I showed up about 3 decades late to the "thing" party. Somehow it feels important for me to figure this out. I should know how to:
a) order the oyster,
b) open the oyster.

Otherwise, I would be all, "Hey girls, the world is your oyster. I have no idea how to order it off the menu or eat it when it gets here though, so let's just safely order from a numbered fast food menu." (If you post comments I may later plagiarize them-thanks for funny fast food joke, sis.)

Hence, my recent piano lesson and goal-setting binge. I wanted to model something for my children. Something that showed them the importance of working hard, weathering the storms, perseverance, blah, blah, blah. But signing up for lessons and making proclamations was the easy part. I was unprepared for what followed.