Someday Soon, I am Totally Going To Get My Shit in Order

Or, hey, remember me? I am that blogger that used to post semi-regularly and then fell into a month and a half of insanity on top of Christmas and holiday stuff and now is trying to find her followers again.

I thought that was too long of a title, so I decided it should be a subtitle. And that is the way it is. Because I have no editor.

As I look at the visual cacophony that is my desk (does that even make sense? Can I say that? Because otherwise, I have a hard time working the word cacophony into my conversations, and I really like that word) and glance at my watch anxiously and realize that no matter how hard I glare at it, I can not make it give me more time, my lower back aches and my mind races. How do other professional parents manage? I have committed time to Jay’s school, to volunteering in the classroom and helping to create a brand new school garden. I have committed to our own community garden to help pull together committees and plan for registration and oh, sure, I’ll take on accounting duties for the garden too, what the heck, because I. Am. A. Sucker. I am racing between phone calls and working with staff and interns and deadlines and a constantly vomiting to-do list that somehow explodes and gets messier by the hour. All compounded by the fact that I can’t take or make phone calls while I am pumping at the office, because of the constant psshh, psshh, psshh, psshh of the breast pump and the total knowingness of whoever is on the phone. Moo.

Here’s the typical day: Drop Jay at school (“Jay! Tuck and roll! Mama has to get to the office! Here, I’ll swerve over to that snow bank, it should break your fall better!). Dash to work. Phone calls, phone calls, meetings, phone calls, glance over a report I really ought to read, try to sound relatively well informed on a call with truly well informed people, pump, pump, pump, gah! It’s 1 pm already! Faster! Faster! Phone calls, writewritewrite, re-write because that sucked, pump, pump, pump, Gah! Late! Phone calls, emails, staff questions. Really late! Go home! Dinner! PTA meeting, bath, bed, honk shooooo… repeat. Criminy. How do other parents do this?

And does their back ache, too?

When I do get my shit together, I am going to call my parents. Hi mom and dad. I miss you. I am going to call my siblings, assuming they remember me. They all rock and I miss them. I am going to get a damn back massage. I am going to take a deep breath. I am going to knit. I am going to read something, like for fun. I am going to garden, instead of just sitting on five committees for it. I am going to run. I am going to sleep, without any dreams of what I didn’t get done at the office. I am going to dance. But right now? I am late. Gah!

Confessions of a Haphazard Blogger

Dear Anonymous,

Dang it. You figured me out. Yes, I do check my web statistics. Yes, I do wait until I get a critical mass of threatening email and pleading comments before posting juuuuuuust enough to appease my fan base, thereby not alienating them completely and inducing them to check back regularly with the hope that now, yes NOW, the blog will be updated regularly.

Then I sit back in my comfy chair and cackle as I drum my fingertips together and imagine the disappointment on visitors’ faces as day after day the same post pulls up on their screen. Until now this has been my primary form of entertainment. Dancing with the Stars and Kim Kardashian’s failed marriage paled in comparison. But, I guess the jig is up. Sigh.

Alternatively, I could just be crazy busy. Three kids is, like, a LOT of kids. Way more than two, and way, WAY more than one. Where was that information a year ago? Seriously.

We did have an awesome Halloween, which our friend Becca took pictures of, because I was so intent on remembering to bring all three kids AND their costumes, that things like cameras, water bottles and Halloween candy buckets? Pshhh. If it doesn’t carry the threat of inducing long term emotional scarring, it gets bumped to the bottom of the list, and chances are, I’ve forgotten it. This includes calling my mom, paying bills on time, checking email, grocery shopping and writing here.

I still do plenty of writing. To-do lists, with misplaced hopes that I will actually get to do the things on them; Grant proposals that don’t get funded, and late passes for Jay now that it is my responsibility to take him to school. He is not always late. Just on the mornings when I take him into school.

Okey dokey, I think that about gets it. I’ll try to get some pictures up soon, because that always makes it look like I am a diligent blogger and can also be done one handed. They may or not be pictures of my actual family, though...

Sure the post sucks, but look! I've got pictures!

I’ve approximately two point seven minutes to write while Jack sleeps and Chris has Jay and Ella running errands. And suddenly, my mind is blank. Despite having stored blog posts in my head for weeks (they were really, really well thought out and funny and poignant, too! Honest!) suddenly I cannot think of a single thing to write. It reminds me of a word game that my dad and I used to play when I was growing up. The game had no rules and was simply a volley of unrelated words that went back and forth until someone ran out of words, usually me. He would say something like “apple.” I would reply “porcelain” he would counter with “remarkable” I might respond with “foundation” and so on until one of us (usually sooner rather than later) would completely run out of words, our minds devoid of even a single word. Of course there were no rules to the game, so periodically and rather arbitrarily, one of us would simply declare ourselves the winner. Then we would play again.

So as I sit here with the clock ticking away, my mind is a complete blank. Jack’s birth story? Jay and Ella’s recent antics? Visits with Grandma and Grandpa? The harrowing tale of how I heroically saved us from doom and chaos when the minivan locked us all inside it’s sweltering oven-like vault on a 95 degree day, (spoiler warning) only to realize that I hadn’t taken the van out of gear when trying to park it? Eh.

Apple!

Porcelain!

Goat Cheese!

I lose.

Sometimes I try to have a subject to write about

With an actual main idea and supporting ideas that dovetail nicely through the course of brilliantly written prose. And sometimes I just start typing and find out right along with you where I end up. I stop writing when I get bored or hungry and wonder why people actually come back to read future posts. This is one of those days. You’ve had your fair warning. I do not know what this post will include, but it may or may not reference chocolate and Lady Gaga and the debate on whether private foundations are truly striving toward becoming learning organizations and embracing failure while learning from their investment strategy mistakes or whether that all sounds good in their annual reports, but really, not so much.

Let’s see what the grab bag that is my head on a Friday afternoon yields:

1) Jay, last night: “Mama, I want a hot dog. But I don’t want any sourcrotch on it. Just ketchup.”

I’ve spent the day trying to drop “sourcrotch” casually in my conversations to my staff and officemates. It’s harder than you might think.

2) Jay, a few weeks ago: “Daddy, I know that half of the baby’s genes come from you, and half of the baby’s genes come from Mama. But how do the genes GET together?”

I have become an expert in question evasion. It won’t work for long, but it worked the other day when he asked another delicate question: “Mama, why do you and Daddy share a bed?”

For that situation I employed a reasonable and responsible response. I invoked self-inflicted violence. Me: “Ouch! Oh, I just stubbed my toe. Oh, that really, really hurt.”

And done.

Isn’t there a book or something that I can give him? When does it become appropriate for me to put my hands over my ears and shout "What?! I can't hear you!”?

This is so awkward.

3) Michael Jackson totally rocks. Still. Even more than in the 80’s. Pandora. Just do it. Just beware that they’ll try to slip some Kenny G in there and you’ll have to slap that shit down quick or you’ll find yourself on a musical tangent listening to contemporary smooth jazz artists that make you think of creepy dentists.

4) Or maybe that’s just me.

5) Ella has taken a liking to wearing sunglasses. At night, to bed, in her footy pajamas. It’s pretty cute, so I don’t intervene. She may also be trying to fake out the boogey monster. Since we haven’t had a single boogey monster attack us while we sleep, I’d say her strategy is working.

6) Luther Vandross is dangerously close to Kenny G. Dislike, dislike, dislike.

7) Facebook. Time sink or not? Discuss.

8) It is sleeting outside right now. What the hell?

9) The first U.S. dog guide was a German Shepherd named “Buddy,” who was presented to Morris Frank in 1927. Check out this and other fine facts at: Mental Floss Random Fact Generator: http://www.mentalfloss.com/amazingfactgenerator/?p=827#scroll

10) Sourcrotch.

11) And I am spent...

This is what I am daydreaming about this morning

Early this year I resolved to spend just a few minutes each day collecting my thoughts. That's a really good idea. I wish I had the time for it. How does life go by so quickly? The days, filled with waking up, getting ready for work, saving the world, driving home, making dinner, cleaning up, getting kids ready for bed, collapsing into bed myself, just meld one into another. It sounds like I am complaining. I am not. I am ok with the fact that this stuff, this mundane, ordinary stuff, is what comprises most of life. I like ordinary. This is the person, after all, who could be content with oatmeal for breakfast every single day. Really. I prefer plain white t-shirts and jeans and boots to most other options. Simple. Streamlined.

But ordinary.

Which is not really a segue for anything, but since I am indulging myself in a stream of consciousness, I guess it's not necessary to move smoothly from one unrelated thought to another. I suppose my larger point is that I become so focused on the present and experiencing the realities of life that I don't often have time to sit down and let my thoughts stream out of me. And then sometimes they bubble to the surface without me being ready for them and just like so much else in life, suddenly they are real and here and I must deal with them just like I deal with an empty gas tank or a fussy toddler. With attentiveness and a sense of presence.

By my calculations my life and many others is 70 percent monotony and 30 percent other stuff: vacations, adventures, time with friends and family and fun stuff. I know that many people live for that 30 percent. I try not to. Not because I don't enjoy it, but because I don't want to miss out on what makes up the majority of my life- eating dinner together, wiping kids faces, sending emails to colleagues, pumping gas, going to the library. Sure, the fun stuff can be the most memorable, but the ordinary stuff is the most prevalent. Life is what we are experiencing right this very moment, with noisy construction equipment outside the window, and the phone ringing and a small yappy dog sleeping with his head on my lap. Sometimes it isn't all that great. But sometimes it is. And it is always right now.

But sometimes I daydream.

With chickens roaming the yard and an overflowing garden bursting with tomatoes and green beans and fresh baked bread coming out of the oven. I dream of wandering the path that leads to a thicket of wild berries and picking buckets of berries for a pie.

I dream of running long distances on winding forested trails, and of taking cross country bike trips with not much more than a sleeping bag and tent.

And this is what I am daydreaming about this morning.

Five minute post

Five minute posts are fun because they are total streams of consciousness without a thought or care for grammar or punctuation or structure or logic. The day has once again gotten the best of me, and I find myself with five minutes at the end of the day to collect my thoughts. They are pretty scattered, so this is a difficult job.

The weekend:

We went up north this weekend and spent the night at a bed and breakfast in Bayfield, Wisconsin, on Lake Superior. We went cross country skiing and snowshoeing and enjoyed the beautiful snow that covered the town.

Today:

I started today as the sole employee of the organization and it feels weird and sad. But, I continue to hold out hope that we will turn things around. I am keeping my head down and my feet moving. We’ll get there.

Tonight:

Tonight is my first community garden meeting of the year, and I will face the guilt that comes with over-committing myself and then not making good on promises. It keeps me humble.

Tomorrow:
Who can think that far ahead? Really.

The challenge of daily writing begins

Must... write… first… before opening inbox… but its power is too strong for my mere mortal mind… must check email immediately… no. No.

Shake it off. It will be there in fifteen minutes.

And so begins day four of my life as Executive Director. Had a recent graduate from the University contact me out of the blue yesterday to offer her volunteer services. She is interested in the intersection between policy and the environment and has some time on her hands while she studies for the exam to get into law school. Could she do some sort of project or just general office tasks for us while she takes the next few months to study for the exam, she wondered?

Um, yes.

That was the bright spot of the day. Not so bright spot- talking to a fundraising consultant who confirmed my fear- our fundraising options are pretty limited. Few people are really going to “get” what we do, and fewer people are going to have the capacity to fund it, especially in these tight times. Forget about sending direct mail as a revenue stream, it won’t work for us she explained. But maybe a major donor program would work, she went on to say. Great idea! Now where are those major donors?

Went to a Pilates class last night. Meh. Most likely I wasn’t doing the moves right, because I didn’t feel much except a growing anxiety that I wasn’t getting a good enough workout in my limited workout time. Went home and had chocolate covered pretzels. Now that that is written down, it seems much worse than the way it felt last night. Huh.

Alright, I am plunging into work now and I will tackle my inbox and show it who’s boss.

Onward and upward.

Fifteen minutes.

One of the things I am promising myself to do this year is to carve out fifteen minutes each day to write. I need to write, for my own sanity. Just like running and meditating, writing is one more way that I can center myself and help solve my own problems, or just allow myself to feel whatever it is I am feeling at that moment without judgment. When I get too busy to set aside time to write a blog post or make a journal entry, I find that I still write, just in less conventional forms. Long winded emails to friends, lists to myself, musings on the backs of envelopes, scrawlings on the chalkboard at home, blog posts in my mind. Even though I tell myself I don’t need to write every day, I have dozens of half-filled notebooks and scratch pads that would indicate otherwise.

So, I am aiming to carve out ten or fifteen minutes at the beginning of each day while the coffee is brewing and my email box is still unopened. My musings and half thoughts may not always make it to the blog, but at least it will give me time to collect myself for the day ahead and wrap up any stray thoughts from the day before.

On Monday I started work as the new Executive Director of my organization. The past few weeks have been incredibly busy with the transition from my boss to me and there is so much to learn and take care of. I am excited and scared out of my mind. More scared than excited, I must say. But three days into the job now, the fear is waning as I delve into the nuts and bolts of the job and let go of the abstract. It is not as scary as I thought it would be now that all the lights are on and I know what needs to be done. What was scariest was the idea of taking on the position of Executive Director and only faintly knowing what that would really entail. High: finding a subtenant for one of our offices, which will ease the rent burden we are facing. Low: the death of our only major donor, leaving our organization and the environmental community as a whole very, very sad. Also, I now have a $40,000 budget gap that I have no idea how to fix.

I wonder what day three holds in store?

O.K, stop.

Whoa, back. Settle down. Halt. As I floundered for ideas to pitch, I decided to talk a little bit more with the folks in the office down below. Which is when I found out that actually, what this office deals with is not the funny stuff at all, but the newsier local beat. Jason, the assistant editor who I spoke with last week, and who is also a really, really nice guy, let me know that he’d be happy to hear some of the funny pitches, but all that stuff comes out of New York, and unless you have an in with an editor there, it’s nearly impossible to break through [sound of me silently banging my fists against the wall and mouthing “noooooooooooooooooooooooo!”]

He was still really interested in getting some articles from me, but what they do here is the Arts and Entertainment section of the Onion (yawn), which is not mock journalism at all, but quasi-real journalism, like restaurant and movie reviews and all the stuff that I both know absolutely nothing about and find really, really boring.

I could have my pick of writing about television (hah!), video games (hah! hah!), movies (the last movie I went to was, let’s see… about four million years ago), restaurants (all the restaurants I’ve been to recently have ball pits and include a free cheapo plastic toy with your meal) or local music shows (Does Jay banging on his broken four string guitar while jumping on my bed count?). So, maybe I’ll come up with a piece that I’ll want to run by him, but I probably won’t be getting to crank out the really cool stuff any time soon.

Sigh…

At least I am feeling charged from my adventure into real writing and might channel that inertia to look into other ways to write professionally. And I bet Chris will still bring me coffee each morning when he comes in to wake me up, Jay will still give me an enormous hug when I walk in the door each day, Ella will still snuggle in to nurse. My parents will still call to see how things are going, and Rosie will still ask to borrow the car. Life goes on.

O.k, go.

We spent the weekend in the north woods of Wisconsin. Naturally, I forgot my camera, so I have no pictures to prove it, but we had a good time and the scenery was breathtaking. We picked berries, roasted marshmallows, went swimming in the cold clear lakes, kayaked and went for runs along the lake side, taking deep breaths of the cool, pine scented air and listening to the long sweet calls of loons. We watched an enormous crescent moon set over the distant pine trees flanking the lake and watched Jay quietly collect flat, smooth rocks as he stood on the edge of the water. It was perfect.

And yet I spent the entire weekend racking my brain for just the right Onion pitch. The nights were especially torturous as I shivered in the tent (it hit thirty-six degrees, when the weatherman predicted seventy). The frigid temperatures made it just hard enough to drift off while my mind worked in overdrive to come up with the best pitches. And after hours of brainstorming, I got nothing. Now that the weekend is over and I am back at my desk, staring at my computer, the urge to write is once again overwhelming. And also terrifying.

Because what if they laugh at my pitches, but like, you know, not in a good way?

And yet, I already know the answer to that question.

Chris will still bring me coffee each morning when he comes in to wake me up, Jay will still give me an enormous hug when I walk in the door each day, Ella will still snuggle in to nurse. My parents will still call to see how things are going, Rosie will still ask to borrow the car. Life goes on.

It’s time to put on my big girl pants and give it a go.

O.k., go.

I have a dream.

A secret dream, I guess. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. Which maybe isn’t so secret if you are reading my blog right now. Growing up, I actually planned on being a journalist or a novelist, or maybe a screen writer someday. I didn’t know what all that would entail, but thought it sounded romantic and really cool. Maybe I’d have a farmhouse somewhere and be really reclusive and my neighbors would all wonder who I was and how I could afford to live out in the country yet never plow a single field, or maybe I would do investigative journalism and would uncover a huge scandal and become world famous, always having to wear different disguises so people wouldn’t know it was me and blow my cover. I worked for a college newspaper, did a few interviews, wrote a few stories, got paid a lavish seven dollars an article. I liked it. Quite a lot, actually. I was on the journalism track at school, but got derailed when I realized that, as usual, I had missed the boat.

I had missed the deadline, to sign up for the test, that would qualify me to take the prerequisite, that I had to get under my belt, in order to take the real journalism classes. That was like twelve steps too many in my short-wired brain that at the time went: boyfriend-friends-boyfriend. I was a pretty inattentive college student, so even if that information had been plastered all over the halls of the school, I probably wouldn’t have noticed (remember: boyfriend-friends-boyfriend, repeat.) I got along alright in my classes, but paid attention to little else. At the beginning of each semester I did a frantic last minute scramble to figure out what classes I needed to take, and how I would get into them, seeing as though they were completely full. Most of the classes I took involved an override waiver from the professor. I was never sure how classes got so full. Weren’t other students waiting three days before the start of classes to register, too?

It took me a long time to get my shit together (some would argue that I should use a different verb tense here).

To bide my time until the next exam date, I took a few Environmental Studies classes. And then a few more. God, I loved this stuff. By the time the next test was up for my journalism track, I was completely consumed with the Clean Air Act and learning about PCBs. Finally I changed my major and found myself with a degree in Environmental Studies. I found a job, and then another, always secretly hoping that I could find a way to write, somehow marrying my love for the craft with my passion for the environment. For years I have been somewhat satiated. Grant proposals, direct mail letters, newsletters and reports have kept me going.

And now? I don’t know what.

The offices of the Onion are directly below mine. Every morning I climb the stairs and see their door, stenciled with the green Onion logo, and I feel a pang of… what? Envy? Longing? Resentment? I want to go inside, thrust out my hand and boldly say, “Hi, I’m Melissa Gavin, and I’d really like to work for you.” Or maybe something more dramatic, like, “Hi I’m Melissa Gavin and I’d give my left arm to write for you.” No, it’d have to be something funny. “Hi, I’m Melissa Gavin and…” Huh. I’ve got nothing. Which is a problem if I want to work for the funniest mock-newspaper in the country. Anyway, this soundtrack plays in my head until I reach my office. At which point I immerse myself in writing newsletter articles about new accounting standards and other things too boring to mention.

And then slowly my thoughts drift back to the Onion. They’re not hiring… are they? I don’t have the right stuff. They’d never hire me. I couldn’t be funny all the time. I like what I do… most of the time.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh. Shit. I just went to get more coffee and before I could stop myself I went downstairs, to do what I would advise any of my good friends to do. With trembling hands I opened the door to the Onion. Nobody was in the reception area. I leafed through their latest edition. I waited for a woman to get off the phone. I pretended to be really, really interested in their artwork. I felt my heart pound in my throat. I felt like a jackass. What the hell am I doing here? Will they call security? Wait this is Madison. We don't have security.

I coolly walked down to where one of the writers was typing out (no doubt hilarious) stuff on his trendy Mac in his trendy office.

And I said, “Hi, my name is Melissa Gavin, and I’ve always wanted to work for the Onion. You guys aren’t hiring are you?”

Breathe. I can’t believe I just did that. Jackass. God, I am such a jackass.

He looked surprised, and then said, “Actually, we are always looking for freelancers.” Breathe. Act natural. “You… are?” Breathe. Act… natural. Wipe sweaty palms on pants. Breathe. “Cool.” I say. Jackass. God, I am such a jackass.

We chatted a bit, he gave me his card. “Do you write for a living?” He asked. Well, no. I said. And then “Well, yeah, I guess. More serious stuff, newsletter articles and things. And I have a blog. But, I don’t know if it’s Onion caliber.” I heard myself saying. Jackass. I am such a jackass. They won’t hire me now, for sure.

Send me a few pitches, he said.

Breathe. A few pitches. I can do this. I can do this… shit. Can I do this? Maybe I’ll give it a go when my hands stop trembling.