Author Archives: lynnettedobberpuhl

About lynnettedobberpuhl

I write, read, work in children and youth ministry, and try hard to be better about managing my time.

SOPA thoughts

Working Girl, Guest Post

I spoke to my younger sister, Michele, about the chore girl days, trying to refresh and confirm my memories of our splendid training for the world of work, and she shared this story that I had completely forgotten. Sometimes the two of us did the chores together, sometimes we took turns, heartlessly sacrificing our sibling to the dark so we could enjoy the comfort of a peaceful and well-lit evening indoors. I told her to write the story herself and she did:

Dog and cat chores – the last duty of the day before bed. Sounds simple enough looking back — mosey on out to the clinic and shed behind the house, make sure the two dogs and multitude of cats have food and water, pull all the doors closed and make sure all the animals are locked in. Did I HAVE to wait until after dark to do these duties? No, probably not. I’m not sure that doing them earlier occurred to me often, if ever. Summer was extra treacherous, between unwitting toads waiting on the well-worn path and junebugs springing from the lights we flipped on to say goodnight to the animals. Winter time was easier, and I remember pulling on my dad’s snowboots by the back door if the snow was deep, or sometimes borrowing his slippers (with the mashed-down heels — he never put them on all the way) for chores if there wasn’t snow at all… How far was it from the back door of our house to the lean-to? Waaay too far… Especially after a scary movie…

Apparently, on Jan. 27, 1978 (if the horror movie blog I just found can be trusted), when I would have been all of 8 years old, it was my turn to do chores that night. I couldn’t yank myself away from the tv because we were watching a scary, made-for-tv movie called “Bermuda Depths.” I don’t remember anything about it other than what must have been close to the last scene, the body of a man being dragged into the ocean by a giant sea turtle… But our animals must be fed, movie or no movie. Duty-bound, that image still haunting me, I went out into the cold dark to lock up the animals.

Now, just so there is no confusion — there is no sea anywhere close to where we lived. The largest body of water nearby was the watering tank for the horses, and in a South Dakota January, there was definitely no danger of a giant sea turtle dragging me to my death… These arguments didn’t matter at all to my freaked-out eight-year-old brain. There was definitely something in the dark that was going to come out and get me — maybe the ghost of that drowned person in the movie. So, tip-toeing through the dark, bright light at my back, my own, elongated shadow leading the way across the gigantic back yard to the shed, I was telling myself “it was only a movie” while the rest of my brain was certain I was going to die.

I made it to the corrugated steel shed with a bit of relief — so close to a light switch. I flipped back the metal hook from the eye to unlock the big sliding door, grabbed the smooth, cold handle and heaved it back. As the wall of grey steel slid past and the shed yawned open, I leaned in to flip on the light and a large translucent blue hand floated out of the dark to meet me, reaching for my face.

“Gaah!!!!” a strangled gasp escaped my lips as the hand ballooned out of the darkness. I was a goner. The hand slowly wafted down again in the yellow light from the stark incandescent bulb I’d managed to turn on. Drenched in adrenaline-induced sweat, I realized that what I was looking at was an O.B. sleeve — basically an arm-length clear plastic glove that our veterinarian father would use when examining female cattle. This one, (apparently unused) had the open end tied around the top of a CO2 cylinder for welding, leaving the hand-shaped end floating in the dark, reaching out for a short, unsuspecting victim who would free it with the movement of the door.

Giddy with relief and the afterburn of terror, I finished up the chores and returned to the house in record time, just glad to be alive.

Yep. Terrifying in many ways. Image from http://www.vetprovisions.com.

Working Girl, Prologue

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I have had the jobs. Some would curl your hair. Some might make you cry. You will be jealous, amazed and appalled.

This is a series which requires this prologue because my first “job” was unpaid, working for my family. This is true of many kids, particularly kids in the farming community, though I was not, technically, a farmer’s daughter. My dad was one of three local veterinarians in our small town. He had what is referred to as a mixed practice, treating both large and small animals. Our house (the building on the left in the photo,) was about a mile outside of town. Dad converted one of our two garages into an office (on the left side of the house, above) where he did small animal examinations and surgeries, and kept the records and pharmacy. The office always smelled of disinfectant and yellow sulfa powder, and occasionally, catbox. Shrill barking or yeowling often accompanied the day if we had tenants in the two small animal cages.

Outside, we had a front pasture, a back pasture, an alfalfa field and several outbuildings. We kept, at various times, peacocks, steers, lambs, a burro, and pigs. We always had horses, dogs and cats. We had so many cats we gave up naming them. We usually had other people’s animals around for treatment or kenneling. We also had people. We were a family of five including three daughters, of which I am “the middlest.” We usually had a secretary helping out at least part-time during office hours, and sometimes we had a trained vet assistant or new vet intern living with us in our guest room. When he didn’t have someone like that to help during busy times, Dad would hire a “hand,” usually a local high school boy, to work with him on the place and go out on calls. Dad had a fiberglass box that fit into the back of the pickup truck, with doors that opened to reveal drawers, bins for instruments and meds, and refrigerated storage for antibiotics. It smelled of gravel roads, disinfectant and dog hair. We had a two-way radio in those pre-cellphone days that helped us keep Dad rolling day and night. Dad’s appointed rounds kicked the postal service’s ass.

Mom did the books and managed the office. We girls helped, marginally, with housecleaning, and with other chores. It was always us younger girls’ job to take the dogs out to the clinic in the evening, and feed and water them and the cats, and any visiting animals. Except during the longest days of summer, this meant traversing the big, dark empty space between house and outbuilding. The light from the front door didn’t reach all the way to the clinic so we got pretty speedy, once the dogs were penned up, racing back to the house. In case there were, you know, monsters or something stalking us out there in the dark. My little sister had a fear of stepping on a toad, so she not only had to be fast, she had to step lightly. She got pretty close to high speed levitation. We’d arrive back at the front step, huffing and wild-eyed, just before getting ready for bed. Other jobs included horse chores, pig chores, yard and garden (same as anywhere,) and office and clinic help, our topic for today.

As I said, we had a secretary part-time, and Mom covered the office most of the rest of the time. Dad was often around, working on animals or projects in the clinic. But there were gaps; Mom needed to get something in town, Dad was on a call, the secretary was at lunch or getting supplies from an outbuilding, or it was her day off. From the time my older sister went off to college, when I was ten years old, we younger girls had to cover the office from time to time, dealing with the public, answering the phone calls, relaying client questions to Dad over the tw0-way radio.

This is how that worked. The office phone rang (spoken rule: answer the phone with the words “Val-Vet Clinic” no later than the third ring; implied addendum: kill yourself if you have to to get there in time.) We got the pertinent information, and then, keeping the client on the line, called Dad on the two-way.

Me: “KNGY-976, Base One to Unit One” (Note: For a long time, there was only Base One and Unit One. Then my dad opened a second office twenty miles away and hired a vet who also had a truck so then there was also Base Two and Unit Two. Not confusing at all.)

Dad: “Unit One.”

Me: “Yeah, I’ve got John Smith on the phone? He says he has a cow with a prolapsed uterus? Over.”

Dad: “Ask him how long it’s been that way. Over.” (I do.)

Me: “He says she calved last night, but was still straining when they turned in, so he guesses sometime this morning. Over.” (It’s now 5:00 pm.)

Dad: (Pause while he swears.) “Tell him I’ll be there when I finish up at the Halvorsen’s. Probably be an hour or so. (Another pause for swearing. He won’t be home until well after dinner.) Over.”

Me: “10-4. Over and out.”

YES, I got to speak radio code for REAL! It was cool, even if it made me very nervous. I remember being informed the FCC monitored our little conversations and could prosecute us if we did it wrong. I am sure now that my parents meant we shouldn’t be silly using the radio but I developed a Big Brother complex at an early age. Oh, and “prolapsed uterus?” I was proficient at saying it long before I knew what it meant. I always prayed someone would turn up to answer the phone before the dreaded third ring, but phone duty was not the biggie.

The WORST was when we heard a vehicle pull up, and some farmer, usually one we didn’t know, rang the buzzer. I remember looking at my little sister. “You go,” I told her. “No, it’s your turn,” she’d say. “Please?” I begged. She’d either roll her eyes and go or refuse and I’d descend to the office, thinking dark thoughts. I just wanted to watch Gilligan’s Island. Typically, the grizzled farmer would be standing in the reception area, in his shit-spattered working best, looking as askance at me as I was at him. “I need some penicillin,” he’d say. “How much?” I’d ask. “Better give me two bottles. Oh, and some boluses. Give me three of those.” If the client needed something more exotic than ear tags, cat or dog worm pills, syringes and needles (you heard me,) or the above mentioned goodies, I’d have to give Dad a call on the two-way to clarify. If Dad was away from the truck, say with his arm inside a cow trying to restore a prolapsed uterus, Farmer Smith and I would be on our own. “It isn’t the penicillin I want, but I don’t remember the right name.” “Tetracycline?” I’d guess. “No, that isn’t it. I think Doc keeps it in the second refrigerator.” I’d rummage and pull out a couple of bottles for him to check out. “That’s the one!” Then I’d look up the prices and write up a ticket, praying I remembered how to do it correctly, how to figure tax on the monstrous adding machine, which copy to give the client, and generally trying not to look like an imbecile. At least once I even filled in the check blank for a client who “forgot his glasses” so he could sign it. Please consider this, an eleven or twelve year old girl alone in an office full of drugs, some of which could be recreational, with a cash box, dealing with total strangers who drove in off the highway. It was a more innocent place and time. I did it all the time, and the biggest thing I worried about was screwing up. If a client didn’t get what he needed from our office, he’d go to another vet. This was unthinkable. On the other hand, there were lots of ten- and eleven-year-olds driving pickups and tractors around on their family’s farm fields, literally farming. I didn’t learn to drive until I was fourteen at the earliest, so in some ways, I was a late bloomer.

Sometimes Dad would call one of us down to give him a hand during small animal surgeries, like spays. We’d help hold the animal until it was anesthetized, then stand by while he laid it out on its back and tied its paws with gauze to rings on the sides of the stainless steel operating table, and shaved the incision area. Dad scrubbed up and we would help him into his surgical cap, mask, gown, and gloves. Dad looked just like the surgeons on TV as he made the incision, splitting open the iodine-swabbed abdomen. The inside of a living creature has a distinctive aroma that is hard to describe. It isn’t quite like meat, and if the gut is intact, there isn’t a fecal odor, either. It is a solemn, unsettling smell. There is an inescapable feeling of voyeurism, viewing the tender, pulsing organs in various shades of pink and gray. Our job was to let Dad (who was intently focused on the job at hand,) know if the animal stopped breathing. Dad worked, and I watched closely praying the whole time, afraid I’d miss the moment the short, spread out gasps stopped completely. Afraid I wouldn’t alert my dad to trouble in time. Life and death. My first job.

Two Things

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I. I am having this kind of day, for a few days now.

This is why you aren’t hearing a lot from me…I’ll be feeling a little more extroverted and generous with my words soon, I am sure.

II. This is a cool video from youtube that my younger son wanted me to see (a. my younger son and I shared a moment–yay! and b. wow, is this video ever cool!) It appears today’s post is in outline form…

Anyway, the video is the group Walk Off the Earth, covering the Gotye song “Somebody That I Used to Know,” and I think even without the extra coolness of all five of them playing one guitar simultaneously, I like their rendition better. Walk Off the Earth, Ladies and Gentlemen! (Click Play arrow below.)

Reading II

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It is textbook season again at State Services for the Blind. Today, I got to finish the college history text, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia, by Woody Holton. I got the last chapter and a half, and the Epilogue. Reading history silently tends to make me sleepy, but reading a good text out loud is, weirdly, one of my favorite things. I learn so much! Also I love reading about things from the Revolutionary War that have value today: for instance, be wary of fighting a war on unfamiliar terrain against a foe defending their homeland, and watch out for those grassroots movements during a recession. This was a very good book. Holton gives us a bit of a cynical take on our founding fathers and how things shook down back in the pre-Revolutionary day, which was just what I was in the mood for. Except for the footnotes, which were a pain in the breeches, I enjoyed reading it for three and a half hours today. I had to make a lot of corrections to my work, because I found in this text, as in many academic works, the author will zig when I was expecting a zag, tripping me up. I’ll be reading along and then a sentence or two later there I will be in my little recording booth, saying out loud, “Oh. Ohhhh! That’s what you meant.” Erase. Re-record. There are a lot of ways to err, as a reader. You can mispronounce a word, stumble or stutter within a word, change the meaning with intonation, leave too long a pause as you try to figure out if the footnote is explanatory or a citation, determining whether it needs to be read…and the list goes on. Even when I am (totally not sarcastically) having a ball reading, I’ll hit a sentence now and then that will get me swearing and threatening physical harm to the author because although lovely, it was not written with audiotext in mind. For instance, consider the following footnote from page 203:

“Lee, in fact, lost two elections in April 1776. After his defeat in Richmond County, his supporters ran him in neighboring Lancaster, where he lost again. The April 1776 voting was something of an electoral massacre for the Carter family. In addition to Rober Wormely Carter and his cousin Carter Braxton, both of whom actively opposed Independence, two other Carters–Charles of Corotoman and Charles of Ludlow were also defeated. The Carters were among the wealthiest families in Virginia, and their unprecedented repudiation at the polls seemed to reflect the ascendancy of antielitism.” (emphasis mine)

That particular finishing sentence caught me on tape in the middle saying, “You have GOT to be kidding.” Erase. Re-record. There were several easier sentences that gave me even MORE trouble, because once I screw something up, I find chances are at least 50% of the time I will screw it up multiple times in the same or different ways. Holton made it all up to me with this next little passage from page 219:

“Between 1782 and 1806, Virginia allowed slaveowners to emancipate their slaves without legislative approval, and some did so. Between 1790 and 1810, the state’s free black population more than doubled, largely as a result of emancipation. George Washington provided in his will that his slaves be freed upon the death of his widow (after he died, Martha Washington, prudently deciding not to make the slaves’ freedom contingent upon her death, freed them immediately).”

So here, I am picturing the reading of the will, and a house slave in the corner thinking, “Upon her death, huh?” and Martha thinking, “That’s terrific, George. Thank you so much…” and out loud saying, “No worries, folks! Freedom for everyone! No waiting!” I had to re-record that one because I got the giggles. Makes you wonder how often Martha had to help George out with practical thinking during the presidency. We’ll never know.

So while it isn’t parasailing, or a night at the comedy club, this volunteer gig has its moments. Besides, where else would I get to use words like “sobriquet” AND hang out with the nicest state employees in Minnesota?

Related Post: Reading, or How This All Started.

Picking a Fight

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I don’t think a lot of people who know me in the real world would describe me as timorous, but I am. Sure, I will ask just about anybody a question even if it makes me look dumb and I will brace myself and dive into uncomfortable new social situations as needed , but put me in a conflict situation and all kinds of alarm bells and whistles go off. If I am in the conflict I rush straight to the de-escalation and defusing stage; if I am only observing, I try to take it all in (how are you doing that? how do you defend yourself so handily?) Part of my problem is that the stress of the interaction shuts down my brain so I simply cannot think of any of the arguments that would back up my position. I know you are wrong, I might think, but I can’t quite work out why with you standing there grinning (or snarling) at me. Although in my head it sounds more like Aaaaaaghh! Think dammit! Aaaaaghh!

Obviously this is not how a mature adult should function, or at least not how I want to function. I thought what I needed was practice, so one evening, while having a glass of wine with friends at their home, the conversation turned (as it does,) to Guantanamo Bay and the treatment of suspected terrorists, and I thought, here we go. Why this topic, Lynnette? you might ask. Such a politically and emotionally charged issue seems like rather big potatoes, perhaps you should have started with something smaller, like whether consumers should be forced to buy fluorescent bulbs or whether wool or microfiber makes a better base layer when working out in the winter? Well, maybe. Here is what I was thinking: Guantanamo at this point was covered ground. The arguments had already been made many times in the media, and I was familiar with both sides. I also felt that both sides had valid concerns and that, to me, made it safer. A reasonable person would need to cede at least one “point” for opposing valid concern so at minimum, I’d have that, right? I am so silly sometimes. Anywho, my friend, who is conservative AND former military took the position of ” terrorists are trying to destroy us and we have to do whatever necessary to protect our country and our people,” leaving me with “if we are the bright light of civilization we had better act like it and torture puts our citizens who are outside our borders at greater risk.” Now don’t get all excited about this, I have political and philosophical leanings but for the most part I am all “jeez-o-pete there are a lot of good points here and I really don’t know what the right thing is.” This is another reason I suck at arguing, but I was TRYING. I guess I thought it would build character or something.

So instead of just letting the opinions roll over me as usual, I picked up the other end of the conversational rope and gave it a congenial tug. At this point, I am sure both Mr. Wordtabulous and my friend’s wife (who is also my friend) thought, “Oh, shit.” But I was all, this is fine, two adults respectfully sharing opposing views, we’re all friends here, cool. But one of us wasn’t cool. One of us was increasingly loud and ranty. I was increasingly uncomfortable, but after all, the purpose of this had been to push the envelope. I tried to keep things calm and conversational but that was a unilateral strategy that broke down when my friend shouted into my face, “I hope you’ll be happy the next time one of our soldiers gets killed by an IED!!” I looked at him in shock and then stormed out of their house, slamming the door behind me. He sent me an email the next day or so, saying that the episode was unfortunate and he didn’t feel arguments should get in the way of friendships. And we all picked up from where we had been BEFORE I began my little experiment.

My processing of this event has been in stages. My first stage was, “My friend is an ass.” Which isn’t true. He is a hard-working, loving husband and father who volunteers his time in the community and has genuine concern for others. So I got through that phase pretty fast. Next I thought, “I still suck at arguing, and now I’m traumatized, too. I guess I’ll never do that again.” I held onto this phase a really, really long time. But recently I was at State Services for the Blind, doing my thang of reading books into digital media and was assigned the job of finishing At the Oasis by Bill McDonald. It is a collection of essays by the Minnesota writer on a wide variety of topics. One of the essays was on his three “round tables” in which he and others engage in debate over events and ideas of the past, present and future. Tears are not welcome, he warns, but then says that all viewpoints are. The more I read, the more I believed that lively doesn’t necessarily mean combative. Maybe, I thought, I’m not the only one who could use some pointers on argumentation (looking at you, argumentative friend.) Maybe I just need to find the right folks to disagree with, and establish the goal of fleshing out and truly understanding the subject as opposed to winning or losing a match. I am not itching for a fight, per se, but am starting to think that when the next one comes my way, maybe this time I won’t avoid eye contact. What could possibly go wrong?

I only read the last few of McDonald’s essays, so I can’t give a full review, but the one he wrote on whether the citizens of the US could ever vote away their democracy as did the citizens of pre WWII Germany was both thought-provoking and moving. Check out his work on Amazon or via the link at the title above if you are interested!

Blogger Awards-Taking a Stand

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At the risk of revealing myself as a HORRIBLE person (said with a gutteral Germanic emphasis on the H and a rolling of the r’s,) and alienating everyone who has done or said anything nice to me, can I just say, “Enough with the blogger awards already?” I don’t know what’s worse, scrolling through a post to find out I didn’t win the nomination of a blogger I love or that I did. Not being nominated is like being the girl left out of the slumber party invite (why doesn’t she like me? what is wrong with me? I bet she invited that other girl because she has a pool.) Being nominated is like winning a spot in a pyramid scheme (oh boy, now I’ve got to find a bunch of blogs I haven’t already touted, make sure they meet some imaginary level of fabulosity and inflict upon them this cycle of crazy.) If it seems that I am impossible to please, let me tell you that this is to some extent true, which only makes it more difficult to find blogs I like. I am REALLY picky. And arbitrary. I reject some blogs because too many other people already like them. And, I am one of those bloggers that really reads the posts. I read them, and I think about them and I comment on a lot of them. Because I am all about the relationships. Which is TIME-CONSUMING. And probably a little compulsive. Whatever, I have no time to deal with my mental health issues because of the aforementioned blogging. Ultimately every single blogger will win an award and I say, why wait for that to happen? Can we not all agree that every one of us deserves an award for getting one of these things up and running, having the confidence to say something out into the world that anybody else (including trolls) can see and possibly harsh on, and going forth and seeking inspiration, connection and relationships in the blogosphere? Even the porn people? Thank you, those who nominate me, but if you love it, share the post. That is what I will be doing.

The Matter of a Severed Finger

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When I was a girl, about nine or ten years old, one of my favorite indoor activities was to rifle through the stash of books and other treasures tucked into a dresser and closet in our rec room. My younger sister and I spent hours sitting on the hard linoleum sifting through mom’s shelves of piano music, Reader’s Digest Condensed books, and tins, boxes and tubs of inherited and collected memorabilia. It was kind of like a cross between our own private flea market and an archaeological dig to a time before our memory. My older sister is eight years older than I, so all her outgrown stuff was fascinating to me, even if she was a little bit more into the horse stories than I was.

One afternoon I found an old paperback book of hers: “Clever Tricks to Play on Your Friends!” We lived in the country, about a mile from any friends I might have had, but my mom was upstairs and my little sister was around somewhere, probably out playing with the cats or talking to the horses. Following the book’s instructions, I found a small cardboard box with a lid and carved a hole the size of my finger in the bottom with a dull penknife. I poked my middle finger up through the hole, tucked some cotton balls around it and flexed it flat so the box nested in my palm. It really looked like a severed finger laying in the box, without the blood. Nice! I thought about finding a red magic marker to add to the illusion, but I had already been working on it five whole minutes already and had to show my mom this cool effect RIGHT AWAY. I covered the box, hustled up the stairs and found her in her bedroom. I was bursting with excitement that my trick would really work, but at the same time that I was terrified she’d see through it. My face cramped with energetic smiling, I said “Mom! Look!” and she walked over to me, probably thinking, “What now?” Watching for her reaction, I lifted the lid off the box, and was honestly surprised to see her stare blankly at my lifeless finger, then look at me with an expression I’d never seen before. I would describe it as horror-struck. She looked like a crazy person. She grabbed me by the shoulders and screamed, “WHAT DID YOU DO TO YOUR SISTER!?!?”

??? I was disappointed and confused. What did my sister have to do with anything? I looked at the box and then I realized, ohhh. If there was a part of a finger in a box, it had to have come from SOMEWHERE, thus the sister… I was exasperated; Mom was completely missing the point. I demonstrated that the finger was mine, and Mom turned an odd color and literally sagged. I guess when the crazy drains from your body that is what happens.

This is the kind of story that gets re-told at family gatherings, and I always thought it was pretty amusing, until about a year ago when, for some reason, I was able to imagine the scenario from my mom’s point of view for the first time and realized what a horrible, horrible thing I had done to her. I imagined looking from a dismembered body part to my own child’s maniacally grinning face. If one of my boys had pranked me with a severed finger, I am pretty sure my head would have exploded. There she was, out on the farm, with one daughter mutilated at best and the other a complete psychopath. So sorry, Mom! Being absolutely unable to empathize with my mother’s experience then, or for the next thirty+ years could, I guess, define me as a minor-league psychopath. Is it bad to say that this makes it even funnier to me?

My Naughty New Tweeps

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One of my new things in 2011, that didn’t quite make my list of Best New Things, was Twitter. I know I’ve said this on more than one occasion, but I am not a dunce when it comes to technology; I do the facebook thing, and text, obviously I blog and am all over my smartphone. I can figure out how to get most things done on my laptop and the computer at BRX and even on my mom’s computer which I can’t even see. So even though you still seem to be skeptical, let me assure you, I can function with the technology. I was slow in finding my way to Twitter, though. First, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted say that was worthwhile and could be expressed in 140 characters. Loquacious me. Then, I was intimidated by all the @ and # going on. It seemed important though, so I begged Kelly to help me out and she took my by the metaphorical/virtual hand and led me through the setup. Then I ignored it for a few months, because I was still intimidated. One more tutorial with Kelly and I was hooked. I was tweeting like a little bird hopped up on espresso. But no one was listening. Because it takes time (unless you are famous or super popular, alas, not me) to build a following. So following me I had only Kelly, and some people I knew through freelancing, a couple of friends and my cousin (YAY!) I was following all of them plus some famous and/or super popular people who don’t know or care who I am, but they say entertaining/interesting things once in awhile and make my world seem bigger.

I tweeted out into twitterspace, and tweeted @ people, and used the #, mostly for laughs, and to my surprise and pleasure, people started following me! It was so nice! Obviously my wit and brevity were appreciated and I was aglow. And then I started checking up on my new “tweeps.” And, ummm, most of them seem to be adult internet porn folk? Nearly ALL of them?! Their names look normal, but their websites, my WORD! Not that I went there–as I said I am not a dunce, but when a person’s website is named…let me find one that I can use without going to hell…topwhores, you can kind of infer the content. And these people don’t tweet, except for one who actually had me thinking she was for real. This particular girl/woman/businessperson had five tweets; four inspirational quotes and one funny one. Clever, clever, I expect she will get LOTS more hits on her oral sex pictorial website than the others who just randomly follow naive mom bloggers but don’t actually have any words on their twitterfeeds. So, I have had to come to the conclusion that these people do NOT think I am interesting, or want to be my friend, but are only hoping that somehow I will be persuaded to buy access to naughty pictures of them. What floors me is that this must work to some extent, or why would they bother? Not that this has been a total waste of my time. Once my delicate sensibilities shattered around me, some of the website names were kind of amusing. Still gross, but sometimes you just have to laugh.

I am not thrilled that my first post of the year is about twitterporn, but I haven’t been able to get past this topic as I sit here at the computer. And it’s been a GREAT day! Church and big dinner, and photo organizing and I am reading a new book…and this is what I bring here to share with you. I think we are both disappointed in me, and yet, in order to move on, I needed to work through this. In apology, at least let me offer you the first thing I did today; a picture I took of the first sunrise of the new year. Older, wiser, and more ready to handle the strange new world we live in, I wish you the best in the remaining days of 2012.

List of My Best New Things from 2011, and a Look Ahead to 2012

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All in all, 2011 was an amazing year. I have here a short (by no means complete) list of things that made this year special to me.

Honda CR-V: Yes, I still love my car and am SO happy I am no longer driving the truck. However, I think the better gas mileage I get is being offset by the fact that I no longer try to avoid driving, which is not very environmentally conscious of me. In 2012, I will try to respect my environment by riding my bike more for quick little trips. I will shoot for at least one trip by bike per week, beginning when the temps hit 55+ degrees again.

Manuscript Submission: As my dad was overly fond of saying about anything unpleasant (hard work, unimaginable filth to be waded through, mind-numbing tedium,) “It’s good for you! It builds character!” Submitting manuscripts has been really good for me. It turns out that rejection didn’t destroy me after all. Finding agents to submit to, and sending queries out was so stressful I literally shook. All the craziest voices in my head rose in a chorus to tell me what a disaster the whole enterprise would turn out to be. I was on the verge of a collapse, and then, guess what? I got some form letters that said “not for us” and it was no big deal. I propose that in 2012, I will shoot for three times as many rejections for Hollywood University, and maybe a bunch for Sleepers as well.

Novel Revision: Speaking of Sleepers, I am really happy that I still want to work on that manuscript. I didn’t do a lot with it in 2011, but I know now that it is standing the test of time, at least with me. I am in LOVE with most of what I do, when I am doing it, but after I’ve worked on a small piece even 12 hours of downtime between the writing and the re-reading is illuminating. Once the heat and energy dies down, I find a lot of what I’ve written to be boring and/or embarrassing. Some of it is salvageable, some is not. I still love Sleepers, although there are some kinks to work out and 2012 is the year, baby!

She Said Writer’s Retreats: So much fun! Friendship and photography and technology and old haunts and haunted houses and therapeutic conversation and giggles and shopping. And wine and food. Oh, and writing–I said that, right? More in 2012, please!

Coffee: It isn’t like I had never had coffee before, but my interest in it certainly grew this year. In 2011, coffee was demonstrated to diminish the occurrence of depression in women and prostate cancer in men. I also got a good coffeemaker. Coffee makes me feel smart and lively (and do stupid things faster with more energy!) I still love tea and will continue to drink that occasionally, but I think 2012 will see me embracing the bean buzz with both arms.

Blogging: Wordtabulous has been a superfun adventure. I’ve met people, shared some info, registered some opinions, figured out some things, had some meltdowns, and hopefully given cause for a chuckle or a “Yeah, sister!” once in awhile. I have also had a riot finding and following other blogs which have expanded my world quite a bit. Thank you wordpress, and bloggers and followers (and especially you commenters and “likers”–there is a special place in my heart for you!) I hope 2012 sees continued blogging, perhaps with more focus and punch (or not, as the shotgun approach seems to be my natural inclination.) I hope to see more of you, dear reader! Thanks for dropping in, and all the best to you and yours in the New Year!

wordtabulous

Life, writing and the pursuit of wholeness.