I know.

I have been MIA lately. Not sure why - just haven't felt too exciting. Haven't felt motivated to write. Whatever.

But I did write a post on Metroblogging Atlanta that caused a bit of a hullabaloo, in case you want to check it out and weigh in. It even spawned a similar post by another Metblogs writer.

I'd like to know what your thoughts are on the issue. Plus, I want to take out those peeps in Karachi who always have 50+ comments on their posts.

Resolution

I hate New Year's Resolutions. I never keep them. Ever. Okay, I did make a NY resolution to quit smoking and it stuck. Twice. The first time I quit for two years and then I decided I could have one when I was drinking and then suddenly I was smoking again. A couple of years later, though, i decided enough was enough. I quit in January of 2002, and this January makes six years I've gone without one, which is more than I can say for a certain Creeker who would have had me beat by years if he hadn't given in to drunken nostalgia one fateful night in December of 2006. That is surely bad karma catching up with him for teaching me to smoke in the first place.

Blame others. That's what my family does.

Anyway, in the spirit of New Year's Resolve, here is my plan for things I'd like to do this year.

Open-Ended Nebulous Stuff:

Watch Less TV, Write More
Be more Patient, especially with the children
Not raise my voice as much with the children
Be more consistent with children's discipline, (in particular, Timeouts.)
Go Out More
Be more positive

Measurable Goals:
Lose the stupid weight already!!!!
Run at least 1 10k
Run a Half.
Do my first tri.
Complete three short stories that I am happy with and make sure other people read them, rather than hording them and telling myself I am not good enough.

The hard one here is the tri, because of the need to have real time on the bike, and that requires TIME. Time is definitely my difficulty, management-wise. I am amazed that people with children ever become serious athletes. (Steph and Nat amaze me, pretty much daily, with their dedication and time management skills.)

Okay, the letting people read what I write part is hard, too, because I am pretty self-conscious about it, and the first go-round did not go very well. I am going to bite the bullet, though.

Anyway, that's what's up for me this year. Make sure to ask me how I'm doing, so that I am embarrassed into action every once in a while. I have a funny feeling that this is going to turn into a "Todd picking his hangnails" situation. When Todd and I first started dating, I noticed he wore band-aids on his fingers a lot. I did not like that. Band aids are gross. So, he admitted that picking at his hangnails was a bad habit he would like to quit and for me to tell him if he was doing it in front of me, because sometimes he didn't even realize he was doing it. I don't think he realized back in '99 that he would still be sitting next to me on the couch in 2008, and I would still be telling him to stop picking at his hangnails.

Peachtree Race Report

For anyone who is interested in how my first Peachtree Road Race went, I blogged all about it over at Metroblogging Atlanta. (I blog about Atlanta over there a few times a week.) You can always see my last five posts there by clicking on the links over on the bottom right. Check it out, because they have some great writers blogging about the city in interesting ways.

Our Vacay

Went to the lake for a week for Rollie's spring break. I unplugged for a week - no internet for over seven days. That was kind of strange, but much-needed.

We had a nice week, although we only had one warm day for the kids to play in the water before it turned freezing. So, to keep from getting bored and cabin feverish, we tried to stay busy. We did some "fishing" - Fishing with kids rarely means you catch anything. It just consists of sitting around talking and trying to keep the kids from throwing the rods in the water, or falling in themselves. We went to the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, the birthplace of Joel Chandler Harris. We walked around fabulous downtown Eatonton. "Sleepy" describes the area to a T. Tiller and Lisa and I checked out the flea market in downtown Milledgeville. We also ate cake and had coffee at Blackbird Coffee, which is a surprisingly nice coffee shop for middle Georgia. They even have free wi-fi; I did not partake of that.

On Saturday, we bundled up the kids and went to Andalusia, the farm that was the home of Flannery O'Connor and where she lived while writing all of her novels. I have been meaning to go there for years, but the weather never cooperated. (Read: It was always too nice, and I chose to float on an inner tube drinking cheap beer out of the can, rather than following my literary desires.) The farm is on over 500 acres, and has, in addition to the antebellum farmhouse, numerous outbuildings, a pond, and they are creating some nature trails. Did I mention they have a resident donkey pony? Flossie. She is cute.

The kids just loved running around willy-nilly on the property, and seeing Flossie. Tiller and I spoke with the old woman who feeds Flossie every day, rain or shine. She drove up in a Honda CRV-type vehicle, and when she got out, I almost laughed out loud. She was wearing a long dress coat, the kind your Grandma would wear to church on Sunday, complete with a black dress hat with big red flowers on it. She and her dog, Champ, a spastic lab mix came out and fed Flossie, and Tiller and I watched the picture of this woman, her young dog, and the donkey. The woman, with her dress clothes on, tossed out a bale of hay for Flossie, the dog frolicking around the barn, and Flossie nuzzling the woman's pockets for treats. It was perfect, just like a character out of O'Connor's novels.

It was pretty cool to see the bedroom where Flannery wrote. (She lived in a downstairs room, since she couldn't walk upstairs.) They still have the room as she kept it, with her desk and typewriter placed facing away from the front windows, so that she wouldn't be distracted by the view of the pond (the equivalent to the Internet distraction of writers today?) I tried to imagine her sitting there, typing out Wise Blood on the typewriter, but it was easier imagining her stories when you walk the grounds and see how her environment played such a huge part in the settings of her writings. Andalusia is at once beautiful, especially in early spring, with everything blooming and coming alive, and still eerie as hell, as if you can hear the echoes of her characters voices emanating from the dilapidated outbuildings. I was inspired.

Sunday was Easter. We woke up and ate a buttload of candy. Tiller accidentally ate peanut butter. I am a shitty parent. Then we dressed them in their Easter outfits (note that Tiller's included leggings, rather than tights, which is so, like, something I would wear in 1990, except that hers didn't have holes in them.) My Mom and Dad were coming up that morning. Mom made a ham and homemade potato salad, which were really good, but kind of weird because I don't think of them as a meal you eat when it is 30 degrees out. Then Dad and I bundled up and hid the Easter eggs.

We froze our asses off while the kids ran around the yard finding eggs. Then we attempted to get a few good shots of the kids all dressed up. Basically, it was one big windburned, snot-nosed mess. Then we went inside, stuffed our faces, and headed home.

Consider Yourselves Guilt-Tripped

So, I wrote here about how I was kind of scared of letting other people read stuff I've written. (By "stuff," I mean fiction. - Obviously, I am perfectly comfortable writing about my vagina, periods, mood swings, sex, drinking, desire to throw my children out of a window, etc.)

Well, I finally finished a draft of a story, and I wanted feedback, so I gave the draft to the two people I trust most in the world and asked for feedback. I received some positive verbal feedback from one of them, and requested that she maybe write some of it down on the pages and give it back to me, so that I could remember them (memory is not what it used to be) and so that I could digest them fully. I have seen nothing. This was weeks ago. The other reviewer, who shall also remain nameless, but who knows who he is, has skimmed it, felt uncomfortable that he might be the basis for a character, and told me verbally that he found parts confusing from a setting standpoint. I asked him to read it fully and write some of the contents down. I haven't seen a thing. It has been almost a month.

What the fuck, people? I put my blood and guts and heart on a piece of paper for you to mark up with a colored goddamn marker (which I would think you would do gleefully), and you don't even bother to return it to me?

I know you have shit going on. I know you are busy/tired/scared of hurting my feelings. You know what really hurts my feelings? That you must understand that this was a big step for me, and you just left me hanging. If anything says, "I don't think you are going to be much of a writer," it is not bothering to take the time to really read what I have written.

I just had to say it, because . . . well, I feel unsupported, and my feelings are hurt. Guilt trip over, but consider your asses busted out on the internet.

p.s. This doesn't get you out of reviewing the thing. I will expect the copies returned, picked apart, within the week.

Will Run More. Or At Least Blog About Running More.

So, the new year is all about resolutions and that damned sticking to them. So, one of my resolutions was to run more. Haven't been so good at that - the kids and I have been sick for over two months, off and on, and we have been busy, blahblahblah. Enough with the excuses. I am going to try and be better. One way that I find to make myself better adhere to any resolution is to tell others what I want to do. It keeps me honest if everyone knows I am Eating Less, Drinking Less, Running More, Writing More. I wrote recently about overcoming my writing fear - part of that was saying on here, to lots of people who know me (and a few who don't) that I want to write more. Scary, but effective. I will now do the same with my running. I am going to start logging my runs, and my weekly mileage. Just to try and keep myself honest.

Today: 4.7 miles. Unfortunately, that is all i have done this week. Hope to do more before the yard sale on Saturday and my trip to Orlando on Sunday. (Looking forward to getting some running in while in Florida, though.)

Okay, now you know. There. I've said it. Help hold me to it. Guilt and embarrassment works.

Fear of Finishing

I am a procrastinator. I am a failed perfectionist. I cannot finish things, because finishing them means putting them out for review, and review deals with stuff that freaks me out like approval, disapproval, praise and criticism. In addition to coming from wild women, I also come from a line of people who are nearly incapable of praise, and downright professional at criticism. Even the slightest bit of approval must come with a dab of "but you didn't." To be fair, the last generation is making a concerted effort to focus more on the positive, but it is obvious by the strained and stilted manner in which this new praise is given that this tack goes against the grain of the wood from which my family is made. We are knotty pine, not tiger maple.

All of this is my way of saying that while I do not give a shit what the public say about me as a whole, I care very much what a select few people say about what I choose to create.

I mentioned that one of my new year's resolutions was to write more, but what I didn't say was that by "writing more" I meant: Write and finish more fiction, and then let someone who isn't me read it. It is that "finishing" part that has always been tricky for me. I have countless files laying around my computer unfinished. Snippets of dialog that I overheard, ideas for stories left only as placeholders, half-stories written but never gone back to out of fear of. . . what?

That is the question: What am I scared of? That my fingers will type something on a blank page, thereby making it no longer blank, and that someone will ridicule me for that? Which is funny, because I have so much respect for those who put forth the effort in the first place to create something out of thin air.

I told Todd over beers a few weeks ago that I was actually enjoying writing again, and that I felt so much more confident because of what I had written on Dogwood Girl, and on Metblogs, and by merely clicking Publish and putting my words out into the ether for all to see. It has been freeing. Very rarely have I received a negative word about my writing and in a few instances, I have received praise that has done wonders for my confidence in my ability to string a few words together. I am eternally grateful to those who have bothered to say, "I liked that" or "well-said."

All of this has worked to give me the push I needed to start writing again, and to really try to finish things. Then what? Well, I haven't figured that part out yet, and really, I will just be happy to finish a project and let those few whose opinions I value see what I have been up to lately.

I just sent Todd a short story I have been working on the last month or so. His instructions: To print it out, without reading it, so that I can see my work in print. (We have a printer, but right now, we are too poor to buy new print cartridges for it, so we are mooching from his office. Cue King Missile's Take Stuff From Work here.) I want to do an edit, and then I am going to start having some people look at what I've written. I am a little nervous about that, in the same way that I get nervous when I get a new haircut, or wear something that I wouldn't normally wear.

I think I know what the problem with my work is, or at least what I fear the problem with my work is: I am a decent writer with nothing much interesting to say.

There. I have said it, so maybe when I hear that from others, it won't sting quite as much. Or maybe since they have read it here, they won't be scared to tell me the truth. Either way, this fear of finishing is something that I am conquering.

To do: Find new fear. I know I had one around here somewhere. What did I do with it? I just had it. . . .

Resolve is Made

To be broken. My new year's resolution was: Drink less. Eat less. Run more. Write more. I've done pretty well with the eating less, writing more. Drinking less and running more? Not so much.

I Don't Know What to Say

That's why I haven't written anything this week. See, I mostly write about what I know: The little things my kids do every day that drive me crazy, or make me laugh, or make me cry; the things that make me angry about this world; the things that scare me about the future; A book or movie I enjoyed; Fun trips and events.

All of that stuff seems unbelievably small and inconsequential in the face of the death of a child. A close friend of mine lost her nephew to bacterial meningitis this past week. A mother and father lost the center of their world. A child lost a brother he will never know, much less remember. Anything I write here, even the most irrelevant little tidbit, like what shape pasta Rollie and Tiller ate for dinner, will be something that the child's family will never be able to write about him again.

So, i have spent these last few days talking, and hugging, and kissing a little bit more than usual. I have been more forgiving, and more patient, and more lenient, and more indulgent; I have cherished.

Why don't I do this every day? I should do this every day for the rest of my life.