Ten Minute Missive

Do you ever look around and wonder just how you got where you are?  Was there a navigator or even a map involved?  Just what turn of events was pivotal, or is it even possible to pin it all on one key moment?  This is how I ponder when I’m flipping pancakes or having other quiet moments.  And since my daughter requested pancakes this morning, I had some ponder time.  Just how the hell did I turn into a nearly 42-year old mother of 3, flipping pancakes while checking Twitter, Facebook, email and the weather forecast on my iPhone while successfully managing to answer my land-line?

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Confession: I’m a big fan of Twitter.  And I figured that I would hate it.  I’m mean, 140 characters?  There is no way that is ever going to work for this girl.  But along the Twitter-way, I have to say I have fallen in love.  With a whole lotta good folks I would never have “met” if it weren’t for Twitter.  Because Twitter is my “water cooler.”   I mean, if you are a SAHM, comic, and YA writer, how the heck do you meet folks who have things other than kids in common with you?  When I “do coffee” with other parents and figure out a way to slip “so do you ever spend 4 or 5 hours writing riveting plot?” I usually only get “um, no” from the poor unsuspecting coffee lover.  Joining Twitter has allowed me to find folks who probably would have sat with me during lunch in middle school, appreciated my puns in algebra, and provided the punchlines for my jokes.

I have my sister, Wendy, to thank for my personal Twitter revolution.  She told me it was a good idea to use in building my platform (yeah, I know:  jargon) and she was right.  But she forgot to mention how I would find people I think are awesome along the way to my platform.

Last week I got to hang out with a writer friend of mine, Debbie, as well as her agent and two editors (one of whom has a fab novel coming out soon – I will announce that big news when able).  Even if the wine and food hadn’t been wonderful at The Farm in PDX, it would have been great to meet people with whom I could laugh so easily.  (Read more here.)  Then, Debbie and I hooked up with another Twitter friend, Tawna, and more laughter ensued. (Read more here.)  It is so amazing to have “pen-pals” in this electronic age!

Another bit of wonderment that Twitter has allowed me is the ability to find more and more blogs to read.  I’ve been adding folks to my blog roll who typically make me smile or happy with their offerings to the world via their blogs.  So when one of my Twitter folk posted this blog about vasectomies, I rushed to read it.  And then promptly thought, “oh, I have to add to the snippets about Snips.”

I think I can safely offer up the tidbit that my husband has had a vasectomy without sacrificing any of his manliness.  As he says, he feels a kindred spirit with all the navel oranges out there.  And as I say, so he should.

You see, we had a plan.  It was a very good plan.  And it got shot to, well, not quite hell, but you know what I mean.  The plan went like this:

Baby One:  I obsessively read several books cover to cover, especially Taking Charge of Your Fertility and then tracked my ovulatory cycle for a month.  During second month, we decide to attempt Operation Impregnation.  41.5 weeks later Oldest arrived after 47 very hellish hours.

Baby Two:  Same process minus the reading because I have great retention of water and information.  39.5 weeks later, Middlest arrives after 3.5 very rapid hours.  With no epidural or anything that went according to the birth plan.  A birth plan which included the words “tubal ligation if c-section is necessary.”  Hence, we went home with a beautiful little girl and all our reproductive systems still “Go.”

Baby Three:  Yep, those systems went “go” all right.  Between Middlest and Littlest, my dear husband travelled for work and the funny thing is, urologists don’t work on the weekends.  Well, I suppose if Lorena Bobbitt had a second act on a Saturday, a urologist would come to the ER.  But if you just want to schedule a vasectomy, you can wait until a more civilized weekday appointment, thank you very much.  So guess who took 2 pregnancy tests and then demanded a blood test?  Yep.  And then scheduled my husband’s vasectomy.

Which by the way, didn’t seem too traumatic to me.  After all, my first delivery netted me a 3 inch transverse episiotomy scar that has made me a minor celebrity at all the ob-gyn offices I’ve since visited.  Nope, I took him in, read 3 magazines in the waiting room and then took him home, tucked him in bed with an ice pack and some Advil and all was well.

Of course, he figured I could “take one for the team” as well.  So I got to take all his little samples in.  Oh joy.

Remember, I scheduled his appointment because I was pregnant and soon buying a mini-van.  I think you might need a visual for this one.  (Okay, not really.)  I’m 5’2.”  There isn’t much clearance on someone who is 5’2″ so I get about 2 months away from peeing on the dang stick and I look like I’m due any day.  And it just gets worse from there.  Seriously.  I look like a puffer fish but not quite as cute.  I was probably about 5 months along the first time I waddled in with a nice little “sample” in a Starbucks bag.  Let me tell you, seeing me generated some horrified looks coming from a few of the gents waiting there, looking all petrified and pasty-faced, protectively groping their privates.

I am a rather sympathetic soul, so I would often attempt a conversation with the gents who would take the l-o-n-g elevator ride up to the urologist-extraordinaire who was waiting to permanently affect their fertility.  These conversations would go like this:

“So, heading to see Dr. ‘X’?  You’ll like him.  He did a great job for my husband.  We totally recommend Dr ‘X’ to all our fertile friends.”

At this point, the gent would usually attempt to NOT look at my ever-expanding pregnant self and would choke out some kind of non-answer.

Another thing I noticed on my three post-snip visits to the land-o-vasectomy is that men who didn’t have pregnant wives to deliver their sperm samples came (giggle) in two varieties:

1) The “Oh My God!” I am so embarrassed to have to come here with a little sterile sample cup in this bag, that I am just hoping the floor will open up and swallow me whole if anyone tries to talk to me in the elevator! and

2) The “Hey Dude! Look what I did!” I am so freaking proud of myself for being able to provide a sample in this little sterile cup in this bag that I want to brag to anyone who happens to be in the elevator with me.

So there you go.  Another installment of just how my wacky brain can connect two previously unrelated items into one little snippet, er, Missive.

Two comments made in my world this week have brought my mind to rest upon the role of the technological age in my life.  First, a man near and dear to my heart stated: “Some people’s parents shouldn’t be allowed on Facebook” and then a woman I know via preschool stated that “Facebook is my water cooler.” (Apologies to Jak and Katie if I’ve misquoted you.)  My reaction?  Holey moley, how our world has changed!

See if you can remember the precise moment when the following imprecise list of words had meaning for you:  WYSIWYG, personal computer, internet, email, Google, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, DM, IM, chat, blog, Skype, jpeg, 3G, html, Hulu, Netflix, BlueRay, cell phone, Blackberry, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Pandora, OLPC…. I could go on and on.  But let’s start first with this Mile Marker:  The Information Superhighway.

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Lots of blogging and Tweeting traffic of late on the use of blogs by authors – which, of course, causes me to ponder:  Why do I blog?  What is my goal? Who do I write for and why? Am I evolving into a writer or was I created as a writer?  Perhaps the truth is part evolution and part creation.  My writing identity was created by many forces, but I believe I am evolving into a writer as well.

And now the backstory.  Within a short time of attending my first college class, I began to think of myself in terms of “analytical writer” only.  This mindset was solidified by the B+ I earned in Creative Writing.  To receive anything but an “A” in my major…well, I hung my head in shame and then decided my professor must be right; I just wasn’t the kind of writer folks wanted to read for pleasure.  (Amazing how the memory still hurts all these years later.)  So I meandered through life and lots of undergrad and graduate classes fairly content with my “role” as the class clown whose writing strength was the analytical essay.

But in my heart, I loved being a storyteller.  As a high school English teacher, I abused this love more than once as I just had fun in class, telling stories until I heard the call of the lesson plan.  On more than one occasion, students told me to actualize my dream of trying stand-up comedy “just once.”  But I’d just smile and turn on the overhead projector or some such diversionary tactic.  The risk of being officially creative was more than I could envision.

And then I chose to leave the classroom.  Ten years and bazillions of papers later, I stepped away from the chalkboard for the last time.  I like to say I am a retired English teacher because being a stay-at-home-mom makes me way more tired than teaching did, but the truth looks more like a “leave of absence” turned into “resignation.”  I was just too exhausted trying to be all things to all people and so I foolishly thought I’d stay at home and have a stress-free life parenting.

It didn’t take long for me to absolutely need an intellectual and creative outlet.  A girl like me is excited to make pancakes in the shape of critters for only so long.  So I started writing about my life on Myspace.  Only my siblings typically read me, but they would laugh and remark back, and a new passion was born. What started on a social media site morphed into first one blog and now this one.

And like Pandora’s Box, the unleashed hopeful voice grew.  First I was trying to make my brother and sisters laugh, then I was hoping for the stray comment from a random reader – cheering as my page views increased.   I began writing not for me, but for my readers.  I started mining my daily experiences for things that would make others laugh.    And in the process, I found being a creative writer is just as much a part of who I am as that whiz-bang at analysis.

Today I blog frequently, perform stand-up comedy regularly, and write slowly my first YA novel.  (Poor sentence structure, I know.  But my youngest is yelling for something…parenting calls.)

Was I created as a writer?  Maybe just a bit; after all, my father is quite the storyteller and all 3 of my siblings write in one form or another.  But I believe I have definitely evolved as a writer – mostly because I started to see myself as a writer. I found joy in the writing so I kept at it.  Perhaps my writing is a version of therapy in order to keep sane.

The more my writing changes, the more I change – I am evolving into the writer I want to be and not just the one I was pigeon-holed as so many years ago.

How about you?  Do you write and if so, who do you hope reads that writing?  If you’ve never tried writing, I say this:  we all have at least one story within us, the trick is giving it a voice.  Oh, and writing should be a process, not an event.

ps.  I have 2 funny blogs in the works – come visit again and hopefully find a giggle or two.