blogging

It is a very great lot of pressure to write the first post on the new system. I've been thinking hard since last Friday about what I should write. I wanted it to be brilliant, just in case there were new people coming to this space for the first time.

I don't have time for brilliant.

Guessing from the incredibly slow turnover in my Google reader, I'm guessing that I am not the only one navigating those particular waters.

Maybe it's the spring busy time. After such a long arduous winter, the past couple of weeks have been insanely busy and/or stressful for almost everyone I know. Has been for me, what with the housebuying and dating and website fiddling. The only thing I have not tried to change is my job, and even that is only because I decided not to apply for the perfect job.

And I'm off to Stouffville tomorrow, to visit my sick Granny. Though accurately, she's no longer sick. She's over the infection that put her in the hospital, but the turmoil of it has made everyone realize that she's no longer safe living alone. Including her, though she is not happy about that realization.

It's good that she's healthier, it's good that she'll be out of the hospital once my dad and uncle have found her a space. And I worked as a housekeeper in an old age home from 15 to 18, so I can tell you that at least one of them was a pretty clean place.* The people who worked there were mostly nice, there were activities.

But they're all institutional. That can't be helped: the horrible greens and pinks, the disinfected smell, the terrible food from powders, the unrelenting sameness. The most I can hope is that she'll have a room to herself and we'll be able to move her favourite things over. Her white lamps with the blue flowers on them. Her two frames of decorative plates, the ones the same powdery soft blue as her eyes. The Robert Bateman print of a cardinal between them.

Come to think of it, that'll fit right in.

I'm more sad about this than I've been letting on, even to myself. I don't want her to move.

First, because she doesn't want to.

Second, selfishly, because she's the first of my elderly female relatives to have to leave her home. That's how I've seen the end of my life - a heart attack at home, maybe a few days in the hospital after, and then done.

Third, because I can put myself in her place and I can feel how lost and frustrated I would feel at my body betraying me so badly I had no choice but to leave the space that had made me feel safe.

Generally, I don't love going home. It's a lot of visiting, it's very tiring. Very little alone time. Most visits, I don't look forward to going, and I only go for a few days. This visit, I'm trying to rush the time before Amy arrives and we head out, until I can see Gran and hold her hand, try not to cry for her that everything changed.

*Provided I wasn't too hung over.

Okay, you know what? This is my third attempt at a post. Apparently, my writing bits are broken, because the others are dull dull dull. Let's hope this turns out to be at worst only one dull.

Maybe it was the massage last night? ("What's been going on?" "Huh. I dunno. Oh, I fell last night and twisted my back a bit." "Oh." Pause of several minutes. "Anything else?" "Hm. The past couple weeks have been a little stressful at work." "Ah yes, that's what your back is saying: year end.") I've been a little headachy today.

Maybe it was the therapy? ("Do you think you could try having that conversation with your father?" "Uh." Tears.) I've been a little worn out since.

Maybe it's trying to buy a house? ("There's only an inch of water in the basement because it's spring. Oh, and there's a crack in the foundation of the addition." "Oh, that's okay, it's a beautiful house." It's a beautiful house.) I've been a little on tenterhooks since seeing the place this afternoon.

This last thing, this is a thing I'm genuinely excited about. Though pretty stressed about as well. And there is a boring, poorly written, no-flow half post waiting to get re-written into something glorious when I've recovered from the first two things that are not exciting at all.

Before he had either, David Scrimshaw once said that his policy was to never blog anything that might hurt his chances at getting either a job or a date.

Here's an apt equation for you: dating + blogging = funny tricky thing.

Especially the kind of blogging I do, which leans more towards let-it-all-hang-out than circumspection. Not everyone likes that so much.

So I'm not going to dish the details I might have on the music-date with the Smokin Hot Girl or the date-date with the other Smokin Hot Girl, except to say I am lucky. And then mum's the word on dating till further notice.

What a treat, to be fed and watered by a good portion of the ESI crew at the Usual Spot last night. I've been reading their blog for quite some time now, and have met many of them a few times each, but to sit down with the group of them, and have them all there and talking, well, not exactly at the same time, but not in discrete bits of a few hundred words either? Quite a treat. They are as entertaining in person as in blog.

For those who are slightly confused about the whole ESI phenomenon, they started as a blog about another blog - The Fifth Muse. It's a long story, but she stopped blogging, and now they're not quite sure what to do. I found them after the Muse was gone, and I have to admit, it did take me a while to pick up on the thread of the ESI blog. Once I did, though, I was totally hooked.

They are all solid writers with interesting things to say. They have heart. Like they're writing splinter factions of whatever beings they may or may not be offline. What they write has a core of real, no matter what fantastical or ironically distanced wrappings surround that core.

This is my complaint with the new group blog, the Bank Street Irrelevants. I don't get the same feeling of heart when I read it. Maybe that'll change. It can take a while to figure out where a blog is going. But they do seem to be enjoying themselves, and really what else is a blog for.

I certainly don't think Ottawa is too small for two group blogs. Not at all, and if the ESIs are looking for a little somethin somethin to spice up their personal slice of the blogosphere, a little Sharks vs the Jets snap-happy tension might do the trick. As long as I get to be there for the dance off.

The highlight for the 4th Dwarf, I think, was getting checked by another blogger. We were all chatting away, when the young man next to us leaned over and said "Are you the Elgin Street Irregulars?" Seems we'd gotten a little rowdy and he'd overheard our names.

"And I recognize her," he said, pointing at me.

"Eee, maybe it was a mistake to invite me," I said quietly. "I blew your cover."

"Ha! No!" 4D said, conspiratorially. "I feel like a celebrity."

It was lovely to feel free to chat almost exclusively about blogging. The pros and cons of being anonymous vs. open, updates on the bloggers they've followed over the years, when we started, why. They had many complimentary things to say about my blog and my writing. They were so nice they made me blush, deep red, from my collarbones over my scalp.

Surprising thing? There are a lot of them. 4D, The Chair, Coyote, Pandora, Agatha, Woodsy were there the whole time. Conch Shell was just leaving as I showed up, and the Independent Observer couldn't make it. Nor Audrey, who was on her way to the Italian consulate. But only a few of them post regularly. I can tell you that they're all interesting enough to post regularly, should they so choose.

I won't go into the details, because I'm sure that 4D will do a bang up job in the real minutes. My summary?

Q: What should the ESIs do?
A: What they're already doing, just more often and by more of them.

Well, this is that. The last post of NaBloPoMo.

I know Andrea had a good experience with it, as did Jo. And I certainly enjoyed that they were both blogging every day.

For myself, though, overall, I'd say I'm fairly neutral. It was interesting to push myself, and occasionally when I didn't think I had stuff going on in my noggin, turned out I did. But I didn't love the pressure to just put something, anything, up. I may post a bit more regularly from now on, but probably not every day.

It's good timing, this end of NaBloPoMo, because at 4 pm I'm off to Montreal to visit Shelley for a couple days and then bring her back to Ottawa where she belongs. Not permanently, sadly for us Ottawegians, but I'll take what I can get. I packed my laptop, because what would I be without my laptop, but in truth, I'm not likely to open it, and less likely to blog.

I am more likely to be eating fancy food, shopping, visiting my sister, getting my queer on at Meow Mix, schlepping, or some combination thereof.

This trip away also marks the first time I've let someone take care of Freya since she became diabetic. I know very many kind, competent people who have offered to be on the cat care team, but I'm a little neurotic about it. It feels like a lot to ask of someone. But this time, ask I did.

Eric is going to feed her and shoot her up, and has been very kind about my needless mother-henning around how to do it: "Hmm, you know, *I* hold the needle like this. And I crouch, on her left side. And then yep, little tent, poke your finger in there, don't poke your finger, ha ha. I find it easier if I hold the needle like this." He has also been very patient with the two or three "Are you sure it's not too much/too early/too late?" emails. He's a good egg, that one.

I don't know about this every day writing business. In some ways, I see the value. It makes me stretch some. But I think it's lead to some uninspired posts. Yeah yeah, blogs are all about random and often mundane personal details, but how many people really cared that I did three loads of laundry yesterday?*

Fuck me, I mean, I don't care.

And tonight, you know, I don't so much feel like blogging. I've done a bunch of stuff today, and see how I could maybe spin a story about the new yoga classes I've been to. But I've got the fourth season of the Wire, generously burned for me by my lovely paramour, and a new knitting project that I'm finding a pleasurable challenge.

So I don't know. Sure, I'm writing more often, but I don't think you're getting my best.

Eric suggested something a couple weeks ago, an idea he stole from a photographer. For the next three days, I'm going to take a typewriter to bed with me.** The first thing I'm going to do after taking my temperature is write for five minutes.

Then, I'm going to take it to work, scan it, and post it.

I have no idea what might happen with that, but it's got to be more interesting than my laundry.

*Speaking of, I love my new shoelaces. Love. Them.
**That's my own twist. The photographer didn't do that. I don't think. Though I didn't see the exhibit, so maybe he was that smart too.

This is a crazy thing, but right now, you are reading the four-hundreth post to this blog.

A lot has happened over the past two and some years. A couple of jobs, a couple of apartments. Some downs, many ups.

It took a long time for people to start commenting, but today, when I had only approved a couple of comments over the past week, I realized that a lot of people respond to what I write here. That's nice, I like it.

I find the blog occasionally worrisome, like who the fuck cares about my family's socks, really. Why does it matter that I write any of this?

On our trip, Amy asked me if I ever had problems finding something to blog about. I laughed. There are days that I don't feel like blogging, yes. This week has been a surprising and sad week for me and I have felt more like either throwing a tantrum or curling up inside myself and hibernating till after the end times than writing.

But most days, I spend my time chunking off little bits of action into stories I think would be fun for you to read. Hardly any of them get written. Half the time I sit down in front of the computer and something entirely else comes out. It has changed my writing skills significantly and made me look at the world differently than I ever would have otherwise.

Why does blogging matter? I'm not sure that it does, in the end. If I stopped blogging today, there are a few people around who would miss the daily/weekly/occasional check-in and then after a while would forget I ever wrote anything down.

I think I would miss it, though, and terribly. Putting your happy times and shitty days out there and having a mostly silent audience hold you up out of it? I've come to enjoy that, very much.

Thank you, mostly silent audience.

Say that you're pretty happy with how your blog looks, except for one minor thing in the sidebar.

Say you go to Library Thing, choose a new widget, copy the new code and go to your Blogger template.

Say you highlight the code you want to replace. On your new laptop, with a touchpad you're not quite used to, so sometimes you jam the cursor and it highlights stuff but you don't realize a whole bunch of non-widget related code is highlighted.

Say, instead of clicking preview, and thus seeing that you're JUST ABOUT TO DELETE EVERYTHING BUT THREE WIDGETS IN THE SIDEBAR, you think, bah, what do I need to preview for? and click save.

And then lose your noodle when you see you've fucked up your entire blog template and have to start from scratch.

You'll notice some changes around here. I'm trying to fix them, so please, bear with me.

While I'm typing about this, I still haven't decided about the WordPress thing. The reason I'm thinking about changing is to make more of a website out of this. I've got a few other blogger pages, but I find it awkward and it would be nice to have something more organic. Seems like wordpress can do this with "pages."

Not that I don't like blogger. I do. Just not when I fuck it up and have to dig through code to try and figure out how to make a margin between the sidebar and the posts.

Sigh.

Yesterday, I got into the biggest crank I have been in for a long time.

Losing my computer and starting over has certainly put me far behind where I wanted to be on a bunch of stuff. Mostly blogging and getting my damn self ready for the reading I've got on Wednesday. Many moons ago, I blogged about this story idea that was burbling, and I'd like to get something done on that, but jesus. It's hard to write fiction. I thought I was maybe ready to make the leap from blogging to fiction, because really blogging is a kind of fiction.

Not to say that I lie here, because I'm quite careful to get the facts as right as I can remember them. But writing a blog post certainly requires re-ordering life. So I figured, how hard can fiction be? I've got a clear idea of the characters and a decent outline, which is often more than life gives you.

But I am finding it very hard. I am getting up from my computer a lot. Washing a lot of dishes. Organizing things that yes, do need to be organized, but not, perhaps, right at the moment.

So a layer of stress has been burbling under most of my daily activities.

The weather isn't helping. Yesterday morning I met up with Kate and Aaron to go over some photos AMF took of us a couple weeks ago. They turned out really well, though Kate and I took turns at being a little horrified by how little clothing we were wearing.

So that was very good and productive and fun. But I had to go grocery shopping after, and I bought too much heavy stuff and I was already sore from two back to back yoga classes last week and from some sexing after that. And it's a weird time of year. I left the house wearing a sweater and a jacket because there was quite a chill in the air, but then by the time I had walked around a bit with the full spring sun out I had warmed up some. By the time I was in line at Hartman's and the woman in front of me was counting out every fucking penny, and I had possibly the stupidest and slowest cashier in the world, I was sweating but trying to manage too many bags to get my coat off and besides I was just about to go back outside so I should just hang on even though I wanted to yell at the cashier (PEARS! BOSC PEARS! FOR FUCK'S SAKE!), I was fit to be tied.

I left the store and headed west, into the wind. I got mad at the wind. Things were bad.

And what was waiting for me at home? A new computer full of promotional crap and with no software on it and no internet. I then had to spend a while futzing with it. It went okay, but there's always mysterious stuff.

Over the years, I have had a lot of problems with, euphemistically, inward-directed anger. To deal with this, I have had to take very careful stock of what sets that off. Two of the biggest triggers are having things I feel I should be good at (like, say, dealing with my computer) not go well and getting overheated. Two for two yesterday afternoon.

I was supremely glad that no one was around, because I was a very unpleasant person, and I do like to think of myself as a pleasant person. I was particularly glad that Eric was not around, because he has yet to see me in that kind of mood and lord knows, it's not flattering.

In the middle of this, Jennifer - and the loveliness of her having moved in next door is one of the things I have wanted to blog but haven't fit in yet - came over to borrow some Allan keys. It was good that she did. Though I felt a bit bad about being so ruffled at first, a good chat certainly loosened me up. Enough to call Shelley back and not be an unpleasant phone caller. That helped too.

Third aid: going for a run, though I felt a bit weird about taking an hour to run (when you include warm-up and cool down and stretching) when I still don't have anything new for Wednesday and thus nothing new to practice for Westfest.

But today I'm feeling much better. I have a bunch of hours until my friend Chris gets here, and I am *very* excited about her getting here, since she lives in Winnipeg and I don't get to see her very often. And I have a very cute boy currently asleep in my bed as I sit here tapping away. The only thing wrong with that is that it is taking a certain amount of discipline to keep myself from slipping into bed and waking him up with a well-placed hand.

There are certainly worse problems to have.

Quickie, and not very interesting. I'm thinking about switching over to WordPress.com for my blog.

Anyone out there have any experience with it? Know of any pros or cons?

Have two cents you've been uselessly rubbing together? Now's the time to get rid of them.