NaBloPoMo? No! No!

I'm not doing NaBloPoMo this year. I simply haven't the lust for whatever NaBloPoMo is supposed to give me. Certainly not the prizes because I never win anything--and I didn't in the past two years. I suppose I have gotten some traffic from it, but these days I'm all "Traffic? Meh!" I may be one of the few nonBloPoMos this year because I've gotten some group grope emails from Eden Kennedy in which she talks of Ning being overwhelmed, as is she, with the response. So go elsewhere to read the daily posts of my fellow bloggers. Here you will only find the daily posts of those of us still doing Blog365...well, almost daily.

In which I am called...

The siren call of Blog 365 is whining in my ear. Do it. Do it. Blog every day for a year, no matter what.

The hell you say, I say to the siren. Don't you remember NaBloPoMo of '07? You never made it past day six.

But the siren will not be silenced. Your motives in NaBloPoMo ’07 were impure; that is why you failed.

The siren, albeit he/she/it sounds an awful lot like Yoda is right. I did NaBloPoMo ‘07 not because I wanted to see if I could blog every day for a month—I’d already done that in ’06—but because (a) everyone else was doing it; (b) I wanted to be part of everyone else; (c) I had some idea it might improve my stats and thereby and fore my income (not to mention my ego), or (d) all of the above.

So what’s different now, Big Guy, I ask the siren. Who answers thusly:

I am not a guy, you silly twit. I am you, your inner voice, and if you are female, then so, thusly, am I.

And I sayeth: What’s different with Blog 365 is that it scares the shit out of you. To do something every day for a year—

Oh, no, I can’t I can’t. I can’t manage that kind of consistency. You know I can’t. I’ll fall down on the job. I’ll fuck up. I’ll get blocked and depressed and pissed off with the world.

Probably. But you know and I know that if you don’t work through this now, you never will. And at your age, my dear, how many chances will you have left. Not to mention that at your age, my dear, who the hell cares.

So now the siren is doing Rhett Butler, but frankly, he-she-it is right. I have a don’t-know-where-it-comes-from sense that this is a challenge I have to take on . I don’t know how I’m going to do it. I don’t know how bloodied and bowed—or triumphant—I’ll be at the end, but I’m signing on the dotted line, as it were. You’ll see something (or other) from me every day for the next year, this I swear.

News of the Day...

...whatever. I just wanted a subject line that was remotely...I dunno, remote? I have started writing a/this/any blog post three or four times over the past couple of days. I get a couple of words, maybe a couple of lines in and then I totally lose interest. Or I start doing weird, obfuscating stuff like remotely/remote. Obfuscating, I say, because I think my mind is turning and twisting because it doesn't want to run in a linear manner. Which might--oh, horrors!--reveal a thing or two. I know this; you know this; and we're all just gonna have to wait it out.

In the meantime....I retired, as you realize, from NaBloPoMo the other day. The sheer and utter tedium of coming up with blog posts that weren't pathtetically tedious was too much for me. And besides, I never win anything. And besides, my stats were/are down and I can blame that on NaBloPoMo, which has moved from a cool, cute, sorta in-thing to do to a huge Ning event enlisting thousands of people.

Too, all the time I was spending on fripperies for my blog to entertain all three of you who are out there (and thank you so much for your comments, you three) is time that I am not spending on my own writing. My own writing: is the blog not my own writing? Well, yes, but to what end? It has lately seemed the equivalent of tossing down yogurt-covered peanuts: yeah, there's protein there; yeah, it's yogurt and not chocolate; but when all is said and done, has it really been worth the peristaltic action entailed? Nah....

Wild Card - Day 9

NaBloPoMo

So--how closely are you reading me, class? Not close enough, it seems. Did no one realize that I had two Gs? G for gratitude and G for garden. I wonder what other sneaky little errors I'm deliberately planting this month. I wonder....do you?????

G is for Gratitude...

...as in, thank you for whatever shit you're giving me.

Gratitude is a culturally-specific expression. Here in America, we used to say "you're welcome," in response to someone's thanks. I'm not sure what that means, the etymology as it were. It just is. Or was.

Now, when someone says 'thank you', people say 'no problem.' Huh?

Thanks for the memories. No problem.
Thanks for nuthin'. No problem.
Thanks a bunch. No problem.

Unless you're affected with Spanglish, in which case you would say, "no problemo."

In Britain, they don't say you're welcome or no problem. They say, 'thank you' back again. Sometimes this results in a kind of parody.
Brit 1: Ta ever so for that whatever it was.
Brit 2: Thank you.
Brit 1: Thank you.
Brit 2: No, thank you.
Yank: No problem.

I can see using No Problem if someone is thanking you for bringing in the mail. Or taking out the garbage. Then you really do mean "it was no problem for me to do this small (or large) act of kindness for you." But when the guy on NPR is thanking the Minister of Diddlysquat for appearing on the show, especially at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m., the correct response is not No Problem.

No problem is not a gracious way of acknowledging that a fellow human has marked some action of yours as positive. No problem is just another way of saying, what the fuck, and as we learned from yesterday's post, dropping the F bomb ain't cool.

F is for the F-bomb...

Did you think I was going to put That Word in my title? The Word I consider such an integral part of my vocabulary. Although I'm beginning to wonder if I'm too old to use it. As in, too old to have long hair. Too old to wear today's fashions. Too old to have a life.

But fuck, no. I'm not too old to use it. It is a wonderfully eloquent word, sometimes the only one that will actually do the job. But one must use it wisely and well. Some people overuse it. One fellow I used to know used it as an all-purpose adjective, adverb, and gerund. He talked something like this: "Hey, whassup, motherfucker? How the fuck are you? And what the fuck's with those fucking 49-ers. Can they not fucking throw a fucking ball, or what. Hey, how about another fucking cocktail to wash down those fucking peanuts you've been fucking eating...." etc etc etc

His use of the word was too, too much. It lost it's meaning. People with small children avoided him. I've lost touch with him, told him, basically, to fuck off.

The judicious use of the word fuck, on the other hand, can rouse a crowd. Or convince someone that you really, really mean something. Or be exactly the right turn-on-one's-heel mutter.

Some people are very much against the use of fuck and other such words in blogs and other public places. I think I read the other day a post and many comments on just such a topic. I think I read it because I can't really remember because I was skimming posts and--what the fuck!--if one is writing that using the f-bomb is not good, right, or just then obviously one is not writing to me. Fuck no.

E is for--hope I know by the time this post is finished

Every day when I face the letter of the day, I draw a blank. A--can't think of anything, and we know what a problem I had with B, and then C, what a lame post that was, and D, does anyone need to know the state and fate of my floors? And everyday when I face the letter of the day, all I can think of are wonderful topics for the day before. But then, of course, it's too late.

All I can think of today that begins with an E is--Ego. As in, mine is wanting lots of readers with lots of comments. But that means Effort. So E is for effort. I can toss these puppies off in a very short time (oh, you can tell?), but the really good posts, they take a while to write. At least for me. Of course I'm sure that everyone else whose writing I admire just tosses their puppies off, which is why I try to do it too, because--hey, hey, hey, we're back to E for Ego.

I just leaned over my desk and saw this written on a piece of paper: Eco Arts and Crafts. Oh, yeah, that. How did I not think of that as an E? This topic that has been of such great interest to me in the past month? I could answer that question, but E for Ego won't allow me to.

It's amazing what a stern fellow E for Ego is. He runs a tight ship, he does, allowing only certain minuscule pieces of himself to slip out and by and into the public domain. At least he thinks that only minuscule pieces slip out, but maybe whole chunks of him are obvious from even five miles away. You might wonder why, considering that I'm female, he's not. I dunno. Interesting, that. Is this a gender issue, I wonder? Was I too much my father's son, and not enough Daddy's little girl? Maybe.

It is true that I have what is considered a masculine approach to a lot of things in life. That is, I hone right in on the problem, analyze it, and come up with viable solutions. This is not exactly what you want in a touchyfeely therapist, is it? Here's your problem, here's how to solve it, go home and don't come back until you've done it.

So E is for Ego, and Effort, and Eco-Art. And for the last, look at this:




This is a real working radio. You can find it and buy it here. That's the site for African Wire Arts; check it out.

D is for Dirt

...as in, my house is getting away from me. As in, how the hell do people keep up with all this cleaning that needs to be done?

When the house was really dirty, my mother used to say, "The Board of Health is going to come over." I think this was not merely metaphoric for her, as she grew up on the Lower East Side where dirt and vermin and the Board of Health were probably a real part of people's lives. Not that my Grandmother's house was dirty. Not that my Grandmother had a house, actually. My mother, her parents and her six siblings all lived in an apartment, a flat I supposed you'd call it, although why is not really clear to me. It was on Houston Street, which is pronounced House-ton, as any decent New Yorker knows. I don't remember much about my Grandparents flat, but I'm sure it was very clean. Even though the one time I went into the bathroom that I can recall, there was schmutz in the tub. I was probably six at the time and I can still see that schmutz. And I'm still shocked.

Today I looked at my own house and immediately thought, "The Board of Health is going to come over." So I washed the floor. Or at least, part of it.

Here's the thing about my floors: they are a tile that is meant to replicate stone. Here, have a look:

Now the nice thing about these floors is that they don't show dirt. Mainly because they are already the color of dirt, in all its various shades. But the not nice thing is that they have nooks and crannies, and somehow I don't feel as if I'm able to really get them clean. The other not nice thing about these floors is that they are a two-step job to "do". First, one must somehow remove all extraneous debris and then one must apply the washing stuff to the floors. This is exhausting. When D was still an active member of this household, he would vacuum the floors from time to time. Which was about as often as I was prepared to mop them. But now I must do both steps myself and--I'm tired...my back hurts...I don't wanna.

I was reading some blogs the other day and the writers were bragging about how they got down on their hands and knees to scrub their floors. But then they said, oh so modestly, but my kitchen is just a little bitty postage stamp, so it's not a hardship. Well, my kitchen is not a postage stamp. My house is over 2000 square feet and of that, only the three bedrooms are carpeted. That's a shit load of tile to take care of and frankly, my dear, I often don't give a damn.

C is for Clients

...and yes, that's what we actually call them. Or you, as the case may be. Unless we have the magic Doctor in front of our name when we might also call them (or you) patients. Often we just refer to them by time, as in "My ten o'clock." But never by diagnosis, since that is verboten, not to mention forbidden, by the rules of the various boards that license us.

...and yes, I'm seeing them again.

...and yes, I'm questioning myself again.

The clients that I thought I wanted to treat when I was in school--the poor, the needy, the really fucked-up--well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe when I insisted that the one kind of client I never wanted was the Middle Class Woman Who Whined, maybe anyone with an ounce of understanding about things psychodynamic could see that this was a huge case of countertransference. Which none of my instructors thought to mention to me.

Basically what it means is that I didn't want to treat myself. Or people like me. Who I seem to think are weak, sniveling people with weak, sniveling issues to deal with. Like wobbly self-esteem and shitty mates and tedious workplace traumas. No, I wanted the real thing: Bring me your psychotic, your medicated, your traumatized, personality-disordered huddled masses--and I will wave my torch of empathy and grant them instant calm, if not bliss.

Well, ha! And ha! again. The huddled masses--they are so incredibly complicated, not to mention relatively hopeless, and sometimes scarey. They live in neighborhoods that are alien, in houses that are so tiny and ramshackle as to be barely there. If they live in houses at all, because remember, my very first client was a schizophrenic homeless woman.

I loved her. Not literally, but all the parts of her that were middle class, and dealing with a overbearing mother. But not so much when she started getting into the groups of martyred soldiers who were following her down the street, beckoning to her from doorways, trying to entice her into a life of sin. I knew delusions when I heard them. But from a middle class woman? Was it possible--? Nah, it was just me, middle class me, having a major countertransference issue.

Countertransference is a good thing and a bad thing. It's part of what enables psychotherapy at all, but damn, I'd rather not have my shit forced in my face where I can't ignore it. But my choices, it seems, are either to face it--or find an excellent excuse when I don't want to be a therapist after all.

B is for...

...what? what is B for? I can't believe I'm stymied already! !!!!

B is for -- Bacon. Should a Jew eat bacon? No, tis an absolute prohibition against eating the meat of things whose hoofs aren't cloved...or is it those that are? Whatever, bacon is from the pig and the pig is the animal that, according to the Torah, has the wrong kind of hoofs...or is it hooves? Thus, Jews are forbidden to have any meat that was at one time a part of a pig. That means bacon. And ham. And pork chops. And pork roast. And also, I think, head cheese.

Now, let me tell you a little secret about Jews and pigs. We love 'em. Particularly bacon. And ham. Perhaps we don't consider that once the meat is cured, that is salted and brined and whatever, it is still of a pig. Pork itself? Not so much. I must confess that my stomach does a mini-heave at pork. Like my grandfather is maybe playing with my kishkes. But that's just me.

Pork is a big deal, I hear, in Israel, where they call it White Steak. As in (and this was told to me as a truly true fact), the bar mitzvah boy wanted only white steak at his reception. Pork is also a big deal at Chinese restaurants, which are the restaurants of choice for Jews looking for a night away from the kitchen. Look at Jerry Seinfeld, how often you saw him picking and poking with chopsticks. And the Rosses across the street when I was growing up: Thursday night was the cook's night off, and they had Chinese. Sweet 'n Sour Pork. Yum. In a gelatinous sauce that is comprised mostly of cornstarch and red dye #2. You don't even have to be particularly adept with chopsticks to jam one into a piece of fried pork and bring it successfully to your mouth.

But this isn't about P for pork; it's a treatise on B for bacon. Which only happens tangentially to be a function of the pig animal. Those of you who are not British or Canadian, you will be surprised to learn that the Brits have a panoply of bacon cuts. Bacon is a really big deal to them. And they don't cook it very well. In fact, they barely cook it at all, so what you get most often is a hunk of ham with some fat attached to it. Not bacon at all, as in American bacon, which is crisp, the fat being cooked away to perfection. I would say that this is just another thing that we do better than they (and, hey, I just said it), but then my friends who are British will come back at me with a harsh comment or two. And they are a snarky lot...

So forget I cast any aspersions on our friends across the pond...can't we all just get along??????????

NaBloPoMo - Day One - The Alphabet

I know you've been staring at that badge on the right ever since I put it up there last week. The marker that I too, along with some 3,000 other bloggers, have vowed to post once a day for the month of November. NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month. Or is it, November Blog Posting Month? I dunno; you'll have to ask Fussy, whose brainchild this is. Whatever, I've committed myself to dribbling on this page daily. And to make it more challenging, I've decided to play a little game with myself. I'm going to follow the alphabet (which I keep typing as alphabetH, as if some superior person named Beth). That is, each day's post will be brought to you by another letter of the alphabet.

When I was a kid, we played a game called, "A My Name is Alice...." Sometimes it was jumping a rope, sometimes bouncing a ball--but the object was to make your way through the alphabet singing the following ditty:

"A my name is Alice
And my husband's name is Albert.
We come from Atlanta,
Where we sell Apples."

It got really hard when you got to X: X my name is Xena and my husband's name is Xerxes....except as young as we were, I don't think our vocabulary ran to Xena's and Xerxes'. More likely we collapsed in a giggling heap at some made-up quasi-syllabic name, like Xerpituitous.

Now I know that you're wondering how this is going to work, considering that there are 30 days in November and 26 letters in the alphabet. My studied solution: there will be four Wild Card days. They will come somewhere along the way, at my discretion and my disposal.

So--what's in it for you? Other than the sheer pleasure, nay, joy of knowing you will have a fresh ByJane to read every single day. I've been thinking about some sort of contest, but I'm not sure what it would be.

Hey! The contest is: you come up with the contest. I give the prizes. This can be a really interactive event, with extremely cooooooool, desirable prizes (not your usual shit). The competition begins now! On your marks.......GO!

Oh, and by the way -- A is, today, for Alphabet...of course.

Last Post for NaBloPoMo...

...but, like the Mississippi and that Titanic song, I shall go on. I feel a quiet pride, a small satisfaction, a WAHOO! that I posted every day this month. I hope I win a prize, I hope I do, I hope I do, I hope I do.....


But I probably won't, since I'm notoriously bad at winning contests. Even when I enter, I have no faith that I'll win, which is probably not the message to be sending into the universe, I know. I try to think positively. When I'm hitting the send button on my phone Messaging to pick a suitcase on Deal or No Deal, I try my hardest to channel warm and fuzzy thoughts to...to...where? That's the problem. Should I be imaging some NBC minion pulling my name out of a hat? Or should I push my positive energy down the phone lines? Or just cut to the chase and focus on the call to tell me I've won? I can never decide and generally the contest is over before I've gotten my psychic powers in order.

So my reward for NaBloPoMo will have to be small, silent and personal. I can live with that. I've loved this month of posting. I haven't found it tiresome, tedious, tendentious (?) or tricky. As I said at the beginning, I am never at a loss of something to say. So I shall continue posting regularly. I may miss a day here or there, but I'm making December my own BloPoMo. No badges, no prizes, just ByJane every day.

The 28th Day of NaBloPoMo and My True Love Gave to Me....

...one drive back from LLLLLL-A.

T'was a good trip. I am well and truly a city girl, and LA is my city. However, when I walked into my house here in Sacramento, the familiar smell was so sweet. I love my house. I am absolutely content in my house.

I'm just not content that my house is not in LA.

I am working on this conundrum.

Stay tuned.

Santa Flying Through the Night Sky at The Grove, Los Angeles

Santa Flying Through the Night Sky at The Grove
Originally uploaded by By Jane.

The Grove is my spiritual home in LA. I was there the first day it opened back in the spring of 2002. Then I had my aneurysm and spent the rest of the summer in intensive care at Cedars Sinai. If I looked real hard and imagined real well, I could see The Grove from my hospital bed. When I was finally unhooked from all the machines, they put me in rehab. I remember the physical therapist who came to do my first interview.

"What are your goals?" she asked. "What is it that will motivate you to work hard and get out of here? Your family? Friends? Your work?"

"The Grove," I answered immediately. I could see I had thrown her a curve ball, and I needed to explain. "My goal is to go shopping at The Grove."

The look on her face was of utter dismay: such an unworthy goal. But I never wavered and I persevered and several months later, there I was, shopping at The Grove.

If I lie on their clothes, then maybe they won't leave me

Molly took up this position and stayed in it through thick and thin. She would NOT be left behind again (once, just once, Molly).

What I Like About Blogging

I just was roaming 'round the Internet and thinking how cool it is that I get to play on it. There are so many places it takes me; so many 'me's' that get spoken to.

I read Avocado8's latest post on dealing with her son's willfulness and I got to think about developmental psychology and how kids' need for autonomy conflicts with parents' need for control. When they're born, we vow to do everything we can to nurture their self-esteem. But then they actually have some sense of self and that's fine, as long as it rears its willful little head only when we want it to. It's so hard to balance that line between necessary boundaries and squelching the kid.

And then I was flipping through Flickr and pulled up Dooce's latest photos and thought how her post about going to her mother's cabin for Thanksgiving made me so envious. And I realized that it provoked the same feelings I used to have when I watched Thirtysomething: I want that life. In my eternal quest to deconstruct blog popularity, I'm now thinking, maybe Dooce is the new Thirtysomething. The attractive family with flaws exposed, yet dealing with life and having fun--goddamit--a beacon for all of us who do not feel attractive or whose flaws seem too raw for exposing or who don't have families or who don't have the talent to write as well as Dooce does.

Then I looked at Andrew Sullivan's blog, Daily Dish and he has posted photos of Mormon undergarments. I was fascinated. I remember seeing someone, I think at BlogHer'06, wearing a little white shirt under her sun dress. As a fashion statement, I thought it missed. Now I think it was her undergarment.

I live on a silent street in a suburb. Sometimes the Internet offers the only life around.

Day 24--A time of corrections and other stuff

First, I have not just celebrated my 19th wedding anniversary. It was my 18th. I figured that out several days after. See how time passes when you're having fun.....

Second, please remind me that I don't like turkey. Rather, I like turkey, but only the dark meat. So the idea of cooking a breast for leftovers was a generous act for D who loves turkey of all stripes.

Third, my NaNoWriMo project is coming along nicely, thank you very much. It will be ready for publication sometime in 2008.

Fourth, we're going to Los Angeles on Sunday. I am so missing living there. I feel, I must say, like a fish out of water here in Sacramento.

Fifth, can you tell that I'm babbling?

Thanksgiving 2006

Me!!!!!
Originally uploaded by By Jane.

Me!!!!! Full of food. On the way home from our Thanksgiving meal with the Bs. We had grand plans this summer, W and I, to rent a cottage at the beach and all the families would come. But my family couldn't come and her family couldn't come, so we ended up Thanksgiving dinner for four at the Club they belong to. Actually, make that three, as W is sick. So D, J, and I had a nice meal and a nice glass of wine, and I didn't have to cook.

But I did...couldn't not, so I bought a turkey breast and cranberries and now we have stuff for leftovers. Should either of us ever want to eat again.

Did I Miss The Book of Rules?

I've been visiting various blogs, thanks to the NaBloPoMo Randomizer, as well as Commenters on blogs I normally go to, and it seems to me that I've missed some rules about what a blog post should be. A number of people have apologized for their less-than-legitimate posts. Is there a gold standard? Or a minimum lineage? Fussy got tons of comments today from people talking about how hard it is to do this post-a-day thing. It is? Am I not doing it correctly, then?

You can see how my insecurities rear their nasty little heads at every opportunity (if I get a whiff of bad car smell when I'm driving, I assume it's my vehicle--how sick is that). I would like to be the kind of person who has the confidence of the gods, who says what she thinks, does what she does and be-damned to those who object. I'd like to have Rosie O'Donnell's balls (although not her mentality). I wish I was fearless about putting myself forward.

The funny thing is, as I'm writing this, I'm aware of a lot of people who would read this and say, what the hell is she talking about. They see me as someone who doesn't know how or when to take a back seat and shut up. They object to my predilection for saying what's on my mind, even when it's not the popular, read polite, thing to do. They should only know how often I squeeze my throat closed, squelch the comment, bury the opinion, repress the anger/annoyance/whatever. I've learned over time to say to myself, "this person doesn't need to know that you're sure they would be better off doing it another way."

I think the difference is (for I can see I'm positing a kind of schizophrenia here) that I can put myself forward in small groups (which, funnily enough, can be large audiences), but I'm timid when it comes to really, really big crowds. Like the world. I'm aware of that in posting on By Jane. I hold back because I fear the wrath of the internet. My Sally Fields mentality definitely kicks in here.

Hunched over in a corner

groaning in pain. I ate something. Or somethings. I haven't felt like this since I did the prep for the colonoscopy. O woe...