Well, that’s done.

I can’t say that I loved participating in NaBloPoMo this year. Up until the last few days, I was really struggling, feeling like I had to come here and write something, anything, so as not to welch on my bet to myself. I discovered that I don’t like having that kind of pressure – writing because I feel I have to instead of because I want to. So, on the one hand, I’m glad it’s over.

On the other hand, writing every day helped me to get into a groove toward the end and I’m hoping I can keep up the momentum. The old saying, “use it or lose it” is true. The longer I go between blog posts, the harder of a time I have thinking of what to write. So, while I won’t put the “you must post every day” restriction on myself, I will try to strike a happy medium. Because now that the inspiration to write is back, I don’t want to lose it.

One thing I’ve gotten out of this past month? Lots and lots of spam. Crazy amounts of spam. Not a whole lot of extra legitimate comments, but holy spam, Batman. My spam catcher has been working overtime lately. So, yeah. In the future, my goal is to have my writing reach actual real people. It’s good to have dreams.

Ciao, NaBloPoMo. It’s been a slice.

Filed under: Me by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

My husband and I have recently gotten into watching Heroes. I know what you’re thinking – took us long enough, didn’t it? Well, better late than never. We’ve been watching it on those rare evenings when neither of us is working and have managed to make it partway into season three already. We hope to catch up completely by the end of the season so we can start watching it on TV like everyone else in the free world next year.

Tonight, we watched the episode where Mohinder injects himself with his fancy superpower serum, thinking it will give him his own set of powers and got to thinking about what type of superpower we would like to have.

I’m not interested in anything destructive, like zapping people with electricity or sucking all the oxygen out of a room. I mean, I’m not looking to become a super villian or anything. Although, it might be cool to be able to nuke my own food, like if my coffee went cold on me and I didn’t feel like walking down to the microwave to heat it up. And the oxygen thing would have it’s upside.  I could be a famous firefighter or something. But still, as far as superpowers go, they’re pretty low on my list…

At first, I thought telekinesis would be pretty awesome. I mean, who wouldn’t want to be able to move something with their mind? But then I thought that telekinesis would just enable me to be even lazier than I am already. I could clean my entire house without getting off the couch. I’d probably stop moving entirely and end up being one of those immobile jelly bean people in Wall-E. Besides, I already have my kids trained to find the remote and bring it to me when necessary.

So, telekinesis is out.

Maybe self-healing? It would certainly stop me from worrying about randomly falling down the stairs and accidentally poking my eye out with sharp objects. But, then, I wouldn’t have a fancy Hyundai symbol scar on my left hand (and, yes, it’s still there, clear as day, three months later.)

Besides, I wouldn’t want to live forever. How many times can you watch all of your friends and family grow old and die without you before it becomes a major buzzkill?

So self-healing is out.

I think, for me, it would come down to flying or manipulating time. While I think flying would be pretty awesome for obvious reasons, I’d probably go with manipulating time. Just imagine everything you could get done in a day. Stop time for awhile and clean the house. Or exercise. Heck, take a nap! Oh, the naps. I’d be napping all the time…

Yes, definitely time manipulation. I could definitely use a few more hours in every day.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?

Filed under: Me, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

Article #2 over at Blissfully Domestic is now up! It’s a fun way to manipulate your pics in Photoshop. Go check it out and let me know what you think, s’il vous plait!

My second Photo Bliss article!

Filed under: Happy Happy, Me by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

Ever have one of those moments where a random, private thought slips from your brain to your mouth and gets vomited out into the air before you can do anything to stop it? And then you go, “oh crap!” except that you’re only thinking it and don’t actually say those words because when your brain censor starts working, it does it at totally the wrong time?

Yeah, that was me today at my son’s Celebration of Learning at school. I totally alienated another mom. ‘Cause I like to be a good example for the kids like that.

This particular mom always looks like she’s got a pole shoved, well, somewhere, and never, ever looks happy. (Just so you can see in advance that even though I was clearly rude, she must have had it coming somehow. Or something.)

But I digress…

I was navigating my way through the crowded classroom, trying to keep track of my four year old daughter (aka – The Trouble Finder) and follow my son (who was far too over-stimulated to properly perform his hosting duties, which is, of course, a story for another time) around to various places. It was crowded which, for me, equals stressful. Truth be told, I really just wanted to get the crap out of there. So, as I’m heading toward the math centre, cranky mom steps in front of me and stops. I say, brightly and politely, “excuse me, please!” as I am trapped in a maze of desks and have nowhere to turn. Cranky mom turns to me and simultaneously manage to roll her eyes and look down her nose at me (must be some sort of voodoo – I don’t know how she managed that one) before turning back around and planting her feet squarely apart in one of those “I’ll move when I’m damn good and ready” manoevres.

This is the part where my brain completely cramped up on me and I stage-whispered, “or not.”

Weeellll. I’m pretty sure cranky mom’s head turned completely around as she huffed off to the side with a much-exaggerated, “ooh, well, excuse me!” That was the part where I decided it would be best not to acknowledge her at all because, well, having a cat fight in the middle of a grade one classroom filled with children would probably be frowned upon. While it may be kind of funny to have my kid say, “My mom can beat up your mom,” and mean it, I really don’t want to build that type of reputation for myself, especially considering that 99.9% of the time, I am the anti-conflict. Truly. I hate rocking the boat. Unless, of course, my brain takes a vacation while my mouth is still moving.

There I go with the digression again…

Of course, now, I feel guilty. The words just slipped out of my mouth and for all that I wished I could, I couldn’t reach out and snatch them back. Oops. I’m tempted to brush it off by saying that if she had just moved out of the freaking way, everything would be fine! Still. I was rude and I know it. I don’t know her name. I don’t know whose mom she is. I rarely see her. But, unless she comes at me with fists flying, I will likely apologize for my mini passive-aggressive tantrum.

And now, I will attempt to move on and stop repeatedly dissecting every little wrong move I make until I’m so sick of watching it play over and over again in my mind that I’m tempted to do something else wrong just so I can have a new flashback to set on repeat. It’s a sickness.

Filed under: Confessions, Keepin' it Real, Me by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

Filed under: Random by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

I’ve been a part of a book study for the past couple of months. The book we discussed was called Boundaries. At first, I didn’t think that I would like it, or that it applied to me whatsoever. But, after several a-ha moments, I realized that one of my biggest faults is my lack of personal, emotional boundaries. I take on other people’s issues as my own. I over-analyze everything and wonder if it was caused by something I said or did. Or something I didn’t say or do. Basically, it’s all about me, all the time. The book is helping me to discover, slowly, that I have to deal with my own problems and not spend so much time taking on everyone else’s.

The other day, I came face-to-face with an example of how I internalize trivial things and turn them into a big self-blame party because obviously I’m not good enough, or smart enough, or popular enough.

I was checking out Twitter the other day, and noticed that one of my followers had dropped me. Because I don’t spend much time on there (or very much time schmoozing on the internet in general), it took me a long time to figure out just who exactly had decided I wasn’t cool enough to pay attention to anymore. (Which, really, is pretty telling, isn’t it?) It wasn’t until my former follower posted a little blurb that I realized who it was. And, being that it was someone whose blog I really enjoyed, it felt like a sucker punch. Rejected! By one of the first bloggers I’d ever read! Tragedy of epic proportions!

If I were a normal, regular person, something like this probably wouldn’t have bothered me. I didn’t even know what the heck Twitter was a couple of months ago. I post a little snippet once every couple of days if I’m lucky. It’s not like it, or he, is a big part of my life. So, instead of letting my hurt feelings fester inside of me, I decided to take a closer look and figure out what was really going on.

At times, blogging reminds me of junior high. When I started grade seven, I felt like a guppy who had been thrown in a tank with a bunch of circling, hungry sharks. I can say without hesitation that that year was the single worst year of not only my entire school career but also my entire life. I hated every second of it – moving to a new school, trying to fit in with new people, dealing with being the tallest, skinniest kid there, not to mention the addition of an extremely unfortunate haircut near the beginning of the year. It was awful.

Looking back, I can see that most of my troubles lay within myself. I was horribly insecure and felt awkward in my own body, from the training bra I didn’t technically need to wear but did anyway because my mom made me all the other girls did I was teetering on the edge of adolescence, to the layered I’m-trying-too-hard slouch socks on my feet. While I still maintain that a few of those kids were just genuinely mean little bastards, I can now objectively see that I was the one standing in my own way. I couldn’t be truly happy because I wouldn’t let myself. I second-guessed everything. I trusted no one. I slouched through the year trying to blend into the background and ending up sticking out like a sore thumb because of it.

I’m not sure what happened to me for that one hellacious year. I was fine the year before and fine again the year after. Thankfully, it was an isolated event, because I don’t think anyone could live life long-term feeling the way I did for those several months.

When I first started blogging, I did so because I had words in my heart and in my head that needed to be released. I had read mr nice guy (he doesn’t touch his blog any longer, a fact which makes me infinitely sad – wherefore art thou, mr nice guy?) and through a casual link, I found my unrequited blog obsession in Dad Gone Mad. It was his comment list and blogroll that opened up an entirely new world to me. The blogosphere. It’s huge. It’s cliquey. It’s intimidating. In a word (well, two) it’s junior high.

Correction: it’s my junior high. Mentally. As in, in my mind. Because I’m all about taking something innocuous and turning it into a huge competition between me and my self-esteem.

I’ve found lots of wonderful people through blogging. But, given my past history, you can understand how I would feel, once again, like a guppy in a shark tank. For awhile, I let myself get caught up in trying to feel popular, or like one of the cool kids. I don’t even know why, to be honest. When I’m not behind my computer screen, my life is great. I’ve got lots of wonderful friends, a fantastic husband, unbelievably awesome and incredible kids. I am secure, confident and happy. Put me in the world of blogging, though, and I’m twelve again, squirming uncomfortably against my itchy training bra because seriously, who invented these things ohmygawdIcan’tbreathe!

Sorry. Flashback.

So, upon seeing that the one person who had opened my eyes to the world of internet blogging, the guy who wrote such hysterically funny stories that I made sure to go pee before sitting down to read them, the guy who seemed to have it all together, had decided that I wasn’t worth paying attention to anymore, all those feelings of insecurity just came bubbling right back up to the surface.

I’m over it now.

Really. After laying it all out, I was reminded that my blog is just that – my blog. I write what I want, when I want. I love to have people read it, but if it doesn’t float someone’s boat, it doesn’t need to bother me. Because that’s not the point. It’s not why I write. Other people don’t define who I am. Only I can do that. And, though it took me awhile, I made it to a place inside where I can say that I like who I am. Regardless of what anyone else thinks. I left that emotional shark tank years ago and I have no intention of diving back in.

It’s all about boundaries. I’m learning how to set mine and it feels good. My blog is only a small part of me. What I write, or how I conduct myself on the internet is only a glimpse into the person that I am. If someone just isn’t that into me, I am okay with that. Because, just like my man Stuart Smalley - I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggone it, that needs to be enough for me already! Really. Sheesh.

Filed under: Confessions, Keepin' it Real, Me by WWS (Lynn) - 2 Comments →

Ordinarily, I’m not what you’d call a Weird Al fan, but holy crap is this song ever funny. I laughed until I cried. No joke. It’s 11 minutes long and worth. every. second. Trust me on this.

Filed under: Random by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →

The Girl has been afflicted with a double eye infection and a cold requiring antibiotics. She’s tired and cranky. I’m tired and cranky, but relieved that I’ve been blessed with a little girl who tolerates things like eye drops, medicine and nose blowing like a champ. Everyone is tucked in soundly for the night and I’m taking my cue from them and going to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for everyone.

Filed under: Phoning it in by WWS (Lynn) - No Comments →

My daughter has caught my cold and for the past two days, she has been feeling terrible. Crying at the drop of a hat, laying around and generally feeling miserable. She woke up this morning with a goopy eye so I have spent the day wetting baby washcloths with warm water and holding them to her eye to clear it away. I’ll be taking her to the doctor tomorrow if it hasn’t improved by then.

After I finished tending to her eye this afternoon, I held my wrist to her forehead, feeling for a fever, brushed her hair off her forehead and gave her a kiss.

“How are you feeling, sweetie?” I asked.

“Not very okay,” she answered.

“Let’s go sit on the couch and cuddle for awhile,” I suggested.

“Okay, Mommy,” she said as she looked lovingly at me with her big brown eyes. She reached up and gently stroked my cheek with her fingers. “Mommy?” said softly.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“You have big bags under your eyes.”

Filed under: Keepin' it Real, Me, Offspring by WWS (Lynn) - 3 Comments →

I was out at a scrapbooking get-together today (or a “crop” for those who scrapbook!). I managed to get a lot done, despite feeling guilty about leaving my sick little girl at home without me. So, yay me! I’m only 4 months behind now, which is pretty darn good.

I’m on my way to bed but I thought I’d leave you with a pet peeve of mine. It really (and I mean really) irks me when American TV and movies have scenes where the characters are in Canada but when they list the character’s location, they mention only the city and country. What about the province/territory, Americans? “Montreal, Canada” doesn’t quite cut it, you guys! If you’re in San Francisco, do you say, “I’m in San Francisco, USA”. Not likely. Just as the US has states in which to house their cities, Canada has provinces and territories. I don’t know why I’m so indignant about it but I am. It’s like telling someone your phone number and leaving out a bunch of digits in the middle. Why do the people who make American TV and movies consistantly forget to add the province? Why?

Filed under: Phoning it in, Random by WWS (Lynn) - 1 Comment →