Meta – Page 2 – My Truant Pen

Questions for a cloudy day

CNN ran a story about odd interview questions the other day. Back in the dark ages of blogging, when we were all on Livejournal, these sorts of questions were a staple of the daily conversation. They were called Memes, and were a cross between writing prompts and the kind of paper games preteen girls played at sleepovers back in the ’80s. But they were fun because they got a writer out of the “and today my Honey Nut Cheerios seemed extra soggy” tropes that writing about daily life leans towards and, when done properly, they encouraged the readers to post their own replies to the same questions. So when I saw a list of questions that looked interesting, that I hadn’t answered before, and (for a few) that I didn’t know how I would answer, I figured… why not! So in the spirit of 2005, feel free to repost this on your blog (comment with the link!), or to answer the questions for yourself in the comments!

• If you were a superhero, who would you be and why?
Here I am handicapped by a complete ignorance of super heroes. Also, the percentage of super heroes sharing my gender is small, and have a tendency to be used as an accent. I’m ruling out Spiderman as being too dark and depressing. That also rules out Batman. (He may be rich and powerful, but he does not have fun with it!) I checked out a list of female super heroes, and none of them really speaks to me (except maybe Elastigirl … but I don’t aspire to her life. With the exception of her super power, I more or less have it.)

So I’m going to cheat and say that I’d like to be Aang from the Last Airbender (the cartoons, not the movie). I mean, he’s practically a super hero, right? But he doesn’t let that get in the way of some good old fashioned fun!

• If every time you entered a room your theme song played, what would it be and why?
I’m going to pick the trumpet entry from Cappriccio Italien. I mean, trumpet = me. That piece was one of my first major performances. It’s dignified, exciting and unlikely to be missed.

• On a scale of 1-10, how weird are you? Why did you choose that number?

6 passing as 3. No one of my areas of interest is THAT WEIRD by itself. In fact, I can appear to be a model of propriety and dignity. But the combinations of my interests are unusual, and appearances can be deceptive. I think we all believe we’re more unusual than most people (because we know the most about our own quirks), which is why I don’t rate my weirdness higher. I understand that likely bias. Which is WEIRD. AmIright?

• What was your best MacGyver moment?

Fun fact! Practically 70% of my gaming characters end up either trying to have prophetic powers or MacGuyver skills. I don’t know why this is, but it must speak to some deep aspiration on my part to be so incredibly resourceful and well educated that I can make a battering ram out of a bicycle, some gum wrapped in tinfoil and a lighter. In truth, I’m an anti-MacGuyver. It’s not that I can’t or won’t improvise, but rather that my skills lean towards planning and preparation.

• If you saw someone steal a quarter, would you report it? If not, what dollar amount would you report?

I found this the most challenging of the questions. I’m quite sure I would not report someone stealing a quarter. But I don’t know what dollar amount would trip my alert-o-meter. I think part of it would be my lack of certainty that a theft had actually occurred. I mean, are we talking about someone taking something out of a wallet I know is not theirs? Stealing from me? Most circumstances of theft where I might be an observer would be less clear cut. I think my uncertainty about reporting has more to do with a general inability or unlikeliness to spot unethical or amoral activity. I consistently fail to notice or correctly ascribe malfeasance. If I was 100% sure that it was a theft, I would probably report it at about $5. I think.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/03/21/cb.odd.interview.questions/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Leave your answers or links in the comments!

2010 in review (AKA free post material!)

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 4 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 122 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 443 posts. There were 122 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 49mb. That’s about 2 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was February 3rd with 144 views. The most popular post that day was Now more heritage posts!.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, twitter.com and boston.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for today sucks, my truant pen, hagia sophia, how are you doing, and apple butter consistency.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Now more heritage posts! February 2010

10 reasons today sucks April 2009
3 comments

How Are You Doing? February 2010
6 comments

Old miscarriages, years later January 2010
6 comments

Old Stone Walls March 2010
6 comments

Busiest time of the year

This two month period is the busiest of the year for me, and the two weeks ending in next weekend are the busiest fortnight in it. I have four birthdays, Halloween and Mocksgiving, all smooshed up together. And right now I’m also super busy at work.

So that’s a nice way of saying… don’t expect much from me until the middle of the month!

A matter of comparison

When I got at my new job, I looked around for the fellow geeks. I was sitting next to the Java programming team. This seemed like a promising start. One of them mentioned that he basically ran Talk Like a Pirate Day. I thought, “Aha!” and tried to find common ground. Over the course of a five minute conversation I mentioned that I played role-playing games and board games, read XKCD religiously and dropped the acronym “NWN”.

Well, it turns out that you can be a Java programmer and celebrate “Talk Like a Pirate Day” and be significantly less of a geek than I am. Ah, the blank looks! “I play role-playing games. (Blank look) You know, like Dungeons and Dragons? (Blank look) It was like seriously demonized in the ’80s? Surely you read about that? (Blank look) So…. how about those Red Sox?”

I’m sure that all the rest of you have finished figuring out who you are. I’m still very much working on my identity. I’m a Christian, mother, programmer*, Northwesterner*, coffee-lover, board-gamer, outdoorsy-type, trumpet-player*, wife, RPGer, cook, NPR supporter, Presbyterian, reader*, road-tripper, stylish person (kind of), blogger, srs businessperson, extrovert, elder, Camel alumni, nature-lover, home-owner, New Englander (not really, but after 14 years I have some of that), tax-payer, card-maker*, woman, not-quite-middle-aged, voter, cook & hostess.

Several of these identity groups fall under the “geek” category: programmer, board-gamer, RPGer, video gamer. There’s also my deep and abiding love for Tolkein. So I think it’s fair to say that I do qualify as a geek.

The _problem_ though, is that I see myself as an amateur geek. I think I’ve made an entree into the geek world, but that when the real geeks get going I haven’t a snowball’s chance. I have good reason for thinking this. At my birthday, four folks stood in my hallways, discussing the latest deep infrastructure of some video gaming company. On late nights after social events, you can almost always find two of them on the couch discussing either comic books or 80s sci fi tv shows.

I think I’m an initiate geek because of the company I keep. It just so happens that my friends are a bad point of comparison. Four of my close friends work for video gaming companies. Almost all of them play RPGs (Role Playing Games) and board games with skill and frequency. We share a culture that assumes a familiarity with many of the tropes of geek culture. This is WHY and HOW we’re friends — in large part it’s what brought us together as friends in the first place. And in this context I am a padawan. I’m a level 2 cleric. I only do D6 damage. And that’s where I benchmark myself, as a person who plays RPGs but doesn’t read the books cover to cover.

But it turns out that even compared to a room full of Java programmers, I’m no apprentice geek. No, I have several levels on the lot of them.

It turns out that the real place to find geeks is in the design group, where they sneak German board games into the cafeteria. I’m still a senior geek in those circumstances, but at least they’ve heard of this stuff before.

What about about you? Are there things you do where you’re a Jr. partner, but in other circumstances you are the Grand Master? Do you ever get whiplash about whether you’re skilled or good at something, depending on who you compare yourselves to? And what do you think… am I a jr. or a sr. geek?

*The loss of these identities is one of the things I’m wrestling with. I am, for example, ceasing to become a programmer and haven’t lived in the Northwest in 14 year. I also don’t get a chance to play trumpet much.

Ghost stories

This last weekend we went on the last camping trip of the year. It has finally started getting easier, this camping with children thing. This resulted in me actually getting time to think, to mull, and to consider. And, of course, to read some ghost stories in front of the camp fire (on the Kindle — ah, the 21st century! How enabling you are!).

I love ghost stories. For a while in college, I extensively read “true”, first-person ghost stories. My favorite site was completely unedited, updated monthly (this was the old days folks) and had lots and lots of tales about ambiguously frightening things happening. As I was also getting my degree in English, I couldn’t help but begin to analyze the form and contemplate what was universal to the first person, claimed-to-be-true ghost story, what separated the good from the bad, what made them interesting, and what made people care about them.

After extensive (and pointless) research into the ill-defined genre, I finally figured it out. The key to a good ghost story isn’t the actual haunting or specter or experience. It’s the back story. You’d hardly ever find a ghost story posted that didn’t include the “I did some research and it turns out that on this spot XXX bad thing happened”. The very best stories are the ones with the strongest back story and the closest ties to whatever inspired the haunting.

This was on my mind in Istanbul. If ever there was a city to be haunted, it was Justinian’s Constantinople.

See this cheerful picture, with the tourist and the little kid tooling around on his bicycle?

This bucolic scene is inside where the Hippodrome stood in Constantine’s fair city. The Hippodrome. It was on this soil, fifteen hundred years ago, as Justinian made to flee and Theodora declared she’d rather die in purple than live in exile, that a mob gathered. It was here that, according to records, 30,000 of them were killed in the Nika Riots. That was a grim and gruesome tale. And it wasn’t just those riots. This same ground was a combination of Fenway and Yankee Stadium. The passions of the racers, flying in chariots behind their quadrigia, bedecked in their factions colors, was a drop compared to the fury of longing and joy and despair echoing from the stands. Emperors were one thing, but the races were the greatest thing. The best of the racers had statues raised to them, and the names of their horses were lauded in song and story. This same Hippodrome saw the height of Constantinople being truly itself. There were the royalty, the common man, the horses, the palaces and Hagia Sophia watching it all from the top of the hill. Here the Venetians came. Here the Crusaders came. Just a stone’s throw away, the Christians huddled in their sanctuary as their walls fell to Ottoman artillery.

If ever there was a place in all human history where the gathered passionate energy of an entire civilization might linger, leaving it’s ectoplasm or psychic imprint behind, surely it was on this soil. I stood there, warm sun on my heads, little kids zooming by on bikes with indulgent parents proudly watching, and waited to feel it. Surely there would be some hint on this storied ground? Surely some ghost stories lurked in the ancient stonework, or swirled above the domes of the city like roosting gulls?
The Hippodrome in Justinian's day
But no. There was nothing. I heard laughter, cell phone ringtones, low music. I saw smiles and tourists and the ever-present children. I smelled moussaka and boiled corn. There was no hint of the history (and bodies?) indubitably buried beneath my feet. There were no ghost stories I could find.

I admit that back in college, I was tempted to take the trope of the true ghost story and expand on the form. Having identified the elements, I felt, I could write some cracking good ghost stories, masquerading as real experiences. (What? It’s the internet. Don’t believe everything you read.) I thought about it this weekend, staring into red embers and listening to the loons singing my children to sleep. I thought about it, reading literary ghost stories which (honestly) don’t all have the form of the ghost story quite figured. And if I did, perhaps I would set it there, in the Hippodrome, between the palace and the church, above the sea.

My Truant Pen

I don’t think I’ve ever explained here where the name of my blog comes from. In college, I tried to memorize one scrap from every English class I was in. It was the Clerk’s Portrait from Canterbury Tales for Chaucer. For Medieval Epic and Romance, I picked my favorite sonnet by Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella.

Sonnet 1:
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;
Invention, Nature’s child, fled stepdame Study’s blows;
And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:
“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

Sir Philip Sidney 1591

Let me introduce you to my BFF…

There are all sorts of ways that the new digital paradigm is changing how we relate to each other. If you read Advice Columns, there are lots of questions about how to deal with your wife’s ex-husband on Facebook, or what to do if your boss sends you an invite to be friends. It’s all in flux, and many of the old rules of relationships need to be rewritten to deal with new venues.

The other day, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs (which I highly recommend, by the way). I had the moment of “Squee!! I know the author of that book, Ursula Vernon!” And in some ways I do. I can tell you that her cat, Ben, has had some health scares lately. I know that she has an enormous chicken statue in her garden. I know all about her divorce, how much weight she lost through the stress of it, the amount of time she spent recovering, and her apparently pretty awesome new boyfriend. I know what she’s planted in her garden, and her favorite boots to wear to a Con. So I definitely know her. The thing is, she very likely does not know me, at all. I could walk up to her and tell her all my online identities, and she’d likely get a confused but polite expression. This happens to her a lot. She’s a very popular blogger/author/painter, and there are thousands of us who read her musings. Of course she doesn’t know us all back.

Then there’s my other BFF (Best Friend Forever), Amy Storch. Her sons are the same age as my sons! She’s gone through lots of the same things, but plenty of unique challenges too. Dude, Levar Burton once replied in Tweets to her post about the traumatic experiences she suffered with Reading Rainbow! She’s the friend you go to for advice about moisturizer choices, or who you want to get a pedicure with. We totally hang out all the time! Or, well, we would. Except once again, she may not even know who I am, although she did answer one of my questions in her advice column once.

Now, I might be feeling a little “oh woe is me no one knows who I am!” but this is an experience I’m encountering from both ends. I’m a small-time blogger (even smaller since I stopped being able to update daily). I average fewer than 75 hits a day (although much better when Boston.com puts me on the front page!) I suspect that 90% of my regular readers are people I know in real life. The rest of them are looking for radish recipes or night life advice for the Indian city of Thane. (Sorry googlers!) But I have definitely encountered people who know me quite well from my writings, who don’t write themselves. While I have some vague ideas about who they are, they know everything about me. That’s what it means, when you put yourself up here on the internet, and your friends, family, enemies, acquaintances and complete strangers can all see your life, laid out plainly.

In a real conversation there’s a back and forth. You learn some things, you share some things. In this new paradigm of online conversations, it ain’t necessarily so. Some people are only consumers of other’s writings…. they listen but they never share. My husband is one of these. Others only talk and never read. Most people do a balance of both. But all throughout the world, not only are people wrestling with what to do about the knowledge they obtained due to a drunk post by their former coworker, but they are dealing with these asymmetrical relationships, when the people they know best are not ones who even know they exist.

What about your online life? Are you a balanced creator/consumer of content? Do I know you? You know me, or you can know me pretty well with a cruise through my archives. Do you like the anonymity of reading? Do you wish it was more reciprocal? Comment, and turn my monologue into a dialog!

Today is Piemas

The Saturday closest to 3/14, at 1:59 pm, is Piemas. This is a very complicated concept, but basically Piemas is a day dedicated to the eating of pie. For the purposes of Piemas, a pie is defined as a circular food object with at least one crust: so quiche, shepherd’s pie, cheesecake and tartes would all qualify. We usually have nearly equal number of savory and sweet pies. And basically we sit around all day and eat pie.

It’s a fantastic holiday. And it starts in about an hour. I made only four pies this year: lemon merangue, pecan pie (which is practically cheating it’s so easy), and two chicken pot pies which are in the ‘fridge to cook as appropriate. Everything is in readiness for a long day of dedicated pie-consumption.

Let the pie begin.

Once more, into the breach

So this Friday is my last day of the blessed interregnum. I think it’s time. Two weeks was, as it turns out, just long enough. On the one hand, I think I could handle this pretty much indefinitely if forced to… this whole not working while mostly getting paid, having benefits, and having the kids go to daycare. It’s a tough gig, I know.

But I’m really well rested. I’m the best rested I’ve been in years. In part thanks to that darn stomach bug on Monday, I’ve gotten more sleep this fortnight than I’ve gotten since… I don’t know when. Maybe since puberty. Nah, there WAS that stretch of unemployment in 2001. Still. I slept in until 10 am this morning because hey! Gather you snoozes while you may for time is still a-flying!

And then there’s my to do list. Do you remember that long list? I’ve done the taxes, done the budget (that took ALL DAY yesterday, for reals), cleaned the carpet, cleaned out our clothing for donation, gotten recycling stickers (although not put them on the cans), applied for a HELOC and was told that one needs EQUITY for a Home Equity Line of Credit. (Who knew!) I got the cat food, bleached the comforter, cleaned off the front porch, repotted my ivy, made a turkey dinner, did the old company offboarding, the new company onboarding, got sick, took care of a sick kid, and tried to make sure that our evenings and weekends were unusually chore free.

I did not order pictures or update the baby book, but the day is not yet done.

On the fun side, I read several books (not enough), watched the Olympics, beat Torchlight, got to an end point in Fable and slept in. I probably did a little too much work and a little too little goofing, but even when you’re not working, there isn’t infinite time.

This moment is a little frustrating. I look at everything undone (why does the pile seem none-diminished?) and think, “Wow, it’ll be hard getting around to that.” There are still things that I’m not willing to give up, but that I know will be a challenge to get done. I realize I’ve been thinking of starting my new job as the complete loss of all free time. While for sure I will not have as much free time as at my last month or two at my old job, or this lovely break, my life will not cease because I have a job. (If so, it’s the wrong job for me. I don’t think this will be the case.) I wish there was some way to channel the restedness of my current self to make life easier for me in the future. I suppose that’s what doing the taxes now was all about.

It actually helped TREMENDOUSLY to have that interim meeting with them. I can imagine where I’ll be sitting, what kind of work I’ll be doing at first, who my coworkers will be. Instead of a black box onto which I project my worst fears, I have a filled in outline of my opportunities. It’s a great company.

I admit that I am afraid for this blog. I’ve worked really hard at it. I know that may not always be obvious from the quality of posts: “Today’s random collection of cute kid stuff and witty complaining”. But some of the posts have been hard work, hard writing, and stuff I can be proud of. Writing a blog post is a little like buying a lotto ticket — you keep hoping that this will be the one that launches you to Internet Fame and Advertiser Fortune! But that hasn’t been the case for me. The few I thought had a chance to do that have settled down into obscurity. In fact, the one posting of my that is most hit is from a Google search of “today sucks”. (Sorry mom! You taught me to use better language!) It’s exactly the kind of whiny post I write on days when I have nothing to say. The only redeeming fact is that plenty of people click through for a link of “Gives Me Hope” that I added after noticing all the traffic.

So what does the future here hold? Gradual drying up? Guilt for not posting? New, rich posts because my brain has all this new, rich material to process? Once a week catchups? I don’t know.

I love variety. I struggle with change. I’m not nearly as confident as I appear in the movies. I just have to have faith it’ll all work out.

Oh, before I forget! I didn’t do my big “order prints for great-grandma and baby books and a non-digital future” but I DID get the latest pictures up on the web. There are three sections:

The goodbye party at Chuck E Cheese: aka why I should be nominated for sainthood

My church’s potluck. Probably not interesting to you unless you attend my church.

Family photos from February

And finally, I did something new. For Grey’s second to last day at his old preschool they were supposed to bring a picture of something they loved. I let him loose with the camera. When he was done, I made a collage on Picasa (fun and addictive!) of some of the things he loved. I made one mistake, making it too much about the things I love, but hey. We’re all human. He didn’t notice.

Put today in the loss column

I try hard to focus on the positive, the joyful and the thoughtful. I attempt to shift my mental space from the whining (which is easy and natural) to the rejoicing. I have read that rehearsing a litany of wrongs makes you an angrier person, whereas choosing not to do so and not to practice your anger makes you actually happier. I believe this to be true. I suspect, since this is the venue where I do much of my intellectual and emotional processing, that this leads to a rather Polyanna-ish blog of my life. (Although it’s worth reminding you that Polyanna’s optimism worked!)

Anyway, that’s a long and meta intro to say that today? I’m not up to it. I can’t even tell you what exactly happened to make today one to be forgotten. It started ok — I got to sleep in until a near pre-kids hour due to an amazing and loving husband. But Thane is at such a stage. He’s not bad, not at all, but he’s demanding. I probably hauled him up onto the couch 45 times today. He wants things that are beyond his capabilities. He doesn’t really believe that I mean it when I say no. He hits his head on things apparently recreationally. And when thwarted, he throws a back-bending, writhing fit. He is, in short, 15 months old. (Aside: it’s AMAZING just how much progress he’s made verbally since the ear tube surgery. It’s VASTLY different. In the what, week? I swear his vocabulary has doubled. He OBVIOUSLY wasn’t hearing well before and now he’s parroting EVERYTHING. It’s pretty awesome.)

Grey? Well, he’s his own version of demanding. He bounces back between super-capable and frankly lazy and demanding. (AKA: four years old) He and I had a little friction this morning, which I suspect was at least equally due to me being cranky for no good reason. Then, aikido. Oh, he’s been doing so WELL. He knows the names of the techniques. His focus is amazing. He’s energetic. He listens and does well. But today we had an EPIC MELTDOWN.

I’ve always read that you should be very honest and true to your word with your children, and I have tried to be. (I think integrity is important, and I think it’s learned by example.) So if, for example, I promise him he can be excused if he has three bites, he gets excused when he has three bites — not four. I’m starting to wonder if this sets up an unrealistic expectation. Today, he wasn’t doing his rolls properly, and he’s getting far enough along that he needs to learn how to do them right, not his way. The person he was working on (lucky enough to get one on one time!) asked him to do it once more. He did it. Then the person said (apparently) “Again!”. And Grey stormed off the mat in high dudgeon and did not stop crying for about 15 minutes. It took me about 2 hours to get him calm enough to tell me what went on. And what a two hours. I had to carry him out of the dojo. He hit me. He’s getting strong and big — it hurts. I still don’t know what to do when your child hits you and you have to (for example) get out of the dojo and get home. You’d be amazed at how quickly your back-brain steps in when someone, even your own beloved child, hits you in the mouth. (For the record what I did do was pin his hands to get him in the car, not give him his DS, go straight home instead of to our usual post-aikido treat, and send him to his room for the next hour and a half or so.)

We all stumbled our way, grumpy, through the remainder of the evening. We put the boys to bed about an hour and half early, based on their completely exhausted behavior. And then, Grey started throwing up. He threw up while asleep. Now he throws up all the time, but this was something special. (I think the difference is that he usually throws up because of his gag reflex, so he has plenty of time and warning. This was not so tonight. I think this was actual nausea.)

So here I am, bedraggled and patience in rags. What should’ve been a joyful family Saturday was more of an ordeal. I don’t think I was my best self. Worse, I don’t think I discovered in any of this a lesson I could learn or trick I could apply instead next time — no silver lining or lemonade here.

Just the promise that tomorrow is another day.