Alecto's Ophelia

On being kickass

Spartacus says I'm a kickass blogger. See?

And I'm going to post it on my sidebar just as soon as I can locate those specific brain cells that allow for content adjustments. Also, I received this award yesterday and I've been blushing furiously ever since (and I don't blush easy). So here are the rules associated with this particular award:

1. Select five Kick Ass Bloggers.
2. Leave a comment on the kick ass blogs so that they know they have an award.
3. Link back to the person who gave the award (in this case that's me) but also to MammaDawg.
4. Visit Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky and leave a comment (and if anyone can tell me where and how to leave a comment at the Mr. Linky site that would really help because I've failed miserably).

And there they are (drum rolls please)....

1. The Contrary Goddess - Life on the Farm - This is CG and she is my hero. This is a site worth mining for days. As a matter of fact I'd suggest starting at the beginning and working your way forward just to pick up the flavor and texture of the lifeline. This is an incredibly inspirational and educational diary of the ethics of living on this planet and the how and why we might want to  reconnect with the world we live in. You can learn everything from how to properly kill, clean and store a chicken to what it really means to live a free and unencumbered life.
2. Deliverance - This is Lewis. Lewis has a lot to say on many subjects ranging from our collective deep seated political beliefs to how dumbed down is America anyway. What I really love about Lewis is his unflappable ability to communicate directly and with a great deal of grace. I can be direct but it's not often that I can be direct about sensitive subjects and do it gracefully. Plus he's a Southern Gentleman and I do so have a thing for Southern Gentlemen...
3. Suburban Homestead - This is Wendy. Wendy is documenting her life on a quarter acre homestead. There are a lot of quarter acre homestead sites out there and they all seem to link to the bigger homestead sites, you know, the ones that seem to almost go commercial (I link to them too) but in that largeness that often occurs with these would be forerunners of the green movement (however you care to define that) the individuality is lost. Wendy documents her life with a level of frankness that leaves me feeling as if I'm sitting in her kitchen with my elbows on her table drinking in every word she's got to say - because it's so very real.
4. Fast Grow the Weeds - This is El. For me El is pure magic. I want to be El when I grow up but I suspect I'll just have to get used to being me (I still fantasize about a specific level or organization and order in my life). El speaks (I know, it's 'writes' but El speaks) of her relationship with the garden, herself and the world around her as if she and it exist in a state of grace. She once remarked in response to a question about complaining why she doesn't appear to complain and her answer was something along the lines of, 'if you choose this life then you don't have much to complain about do you?' And while I'm certain that El does not live a trouble free existence I am just as certain that she lives smack dab in the middle of her own self made poetry.
5. I Agree With Me - That ought to about sum it up, don't you think? This is Amy. Amy is just cool as hell and she's one of the nicest people I know. She's kind of the female version of Lewis even though culturally and geographically they are worlds apart. Amy documents a life so unlike my own I often read it like a novel and then I find myself recognizing the sameness in all of us and our ability to find a common ground where communication can occur. 'Listening' to Amy taught me a lot about getting over myself and just letting go.

Food Blogs and Blog Update

Along the lines of not quite getting it about the blog world I've discovered multiple categories of blogs. I've known about tech blogs for years; somehow I just never made the mental leap toward, erm, other possibilities. There are home schooling, unschooling, radical unschooling, home steading, home farming and home keeping blogs. There are mommy blogs in abundance. There are blogs that poke fun at other blogs, there are blogs that report on the state of the universe and there are blogs about life in general, like this blog. And then there are food blogs.

Today's blog entry is about food blogs (four of them specifically) but I also want to note that I've updated my type list so that my more current obsessions are out there for all to see and love too. For example, I swear I practically live at Wendy and Madeline's sites but they haven't been listed. Ever. That's cause I'm lazy. Then there's the O'Melay blog; what a combination of home steading, home schooling (if it's unschooling, I apologize), gardening and cooking. They're awesome people, have a look. And Kmoo does not mean Kill Monster Over and Over again. He posts infrequently and tends to live in the comment sections but what he does post is wonderful. He reminds me a bit of John Prine in his writing and observations, except maybe a bit more introspective. Russ, over at Radhole has a wicked imagination and often very dry sense of humor. Also, apparently he loves a bunch of people. It's nice. Beth Cherry does not archive, what you see is what you get. Some days, like the six weeks she spent in India, she'll update daily, other times you might have to wait weeks. She's worth the wait. Aristaeus over at The Sacred Journey also posts infrequently but if you go back to the beginning and read the posts about his journey on the road, from one coast to the other, you won't be disappointed. Do it in order. Last, but not least are three blogs that might not seem to have much in common. The first is Dooce, you all know Dooce, right? The queen of the mommy bloggers. I love her, I think she's amazing, she garners a lot of attention, much of it not very nice. She's a great site if you want to know more about living with depression. Then there's Finslippy. Finslippy (Alice) and Dooce are good friends. I think of Alice as the portal to all the other Mommy bloggers, and sometimes I do want to read the mommy blogs. Alice is, for me, most real and accessible. The last is Violent Acres. She pulls no punches. And the fact that I've got these three ladies listed together just tickles me for reasons you'll just have to work out on your own (or not). That's all I'm sayin'.

That said, now the food blogs. I was surprised that I only had four sites in my favorites. I know there are more I frequent often. I think I just get there by accident sometimes. In the order that they appear:

The Kittalog - Kitt is brilliant. Kitt's blog is also about dogs, life, and a rather lovely Victorian house. Kitt is master of the no knead bread method. Kitt has an ability to transcend normal instruction and present information in such a way that it is instantly accessible and inviting. I don't know that Kitt even meant to be a food blog, but she is. Kitt's photography is also quite wonderful. I think that Kitt is even a knitting blog based on her side bar links but my most recent experience has been all about food.

Food on the Food - This lady is hands down, one of the funniest writers I've run across. I don't know if I go there more for the food and photographs or for the humor. She's also, in a very quiet way, documenting local food consumption. You should read the stories about her obsession with the local farmer and what she's managed to do with all these pounds and pounds of vegetables. In the process of documenting her cooking she is also documenting her family history which allows a very intimate glimpse into very real lives. See Beenie Weenies for a good look at her dad. My favorite post to date though, is the hangover post where she instructs us all TO NOT WASTE CHEESE. I made the cheese concoction today even if I don't have a hangover. It's in the freezer waiting for the unexpected company I wouldn't let in the door anyway. Unless it's my brother, or a neighbor, or somebody I like or even a perfect stranger. I'll shut up now.

Aroma Cucina - oh yum. I don't know what else to say. I've been lurking there for months and finally got up the guts to comment because I just got a scale and have just now started weighing instead of measuring ingredients and hers was the first pizza dough recipe with weights that made sense. She is also extremely accessible but expects basic kitchen skills to exist (that's OK, I'm catching up where I'm lagging). She is also extremely willing to experiment in the kitchen and document that process. I appreciate that as it makes me more comfortable with failure and learning from it. I will note that it's somewhat difficult to comment if you do not already have a TypeKey account. I am a typepad user but had to set up the TypeKey account to communicate. She's quite responsive. The photographs are worth the visit alone.

Amuse Bouche - I love that expression, amusement for the mouth. I first came across this expression at the Three Mountain Inn in Vermont and was delighted to be presented with something small and savory marking the beginning of the meal. Most of what I love about this site is the juxtaposition of different foods and the photography. She's also got a bit of a cook book obsession and I can appreciate that. Four more books on bread just arrived at my doorstep compliments of my mother who can't get enough of the stuff.

The Blog Year in Review

One year on Typepad and I haven't jumped ship. I started a blog at the beginning of March, 2006 on one of those, erm, sites that shall remained unmentioned (msn, cough) at the prompting of RW who said he wanted to read what I wrote, and so I did and I made it very, very public. You know, with my whole name and everything. And then last December I googled my name and came up with a video of Jeffrey and I singing the Lumberjack song and decided I needed to get a grip. And I came here.

Until I came here I did not belong to a blog community. I didn't even know what a blog community was. I've learned a lot in the last twelve months. I don't much care to hide my identity (not that I go to great lengths) but I do understand it. I learned what it means to be 'dooced' this year, to lose one's job over one's blog. I don't have any intention of losing my job over my blog but that's a good part of the reason for making sure a google search doesn't turn up much. I also learned that a lot of moms put a lot of pictures of their kids on the internet with a lot of information and that this is a scary thing for me. I don't have an opinion on what others do, I just know I fall somewhere in the middle of the road and that I don't ever post anything about Cletus without letting her know I did it. Little Girl doesn't quite get it yet, but she will and at some point she might object and then I'm going to have to quit it.

I like it though, a lot.

I don't make friends easily. Mostly I like to say I don't like people but that's not true at all, I actually love and adore most people; other people scare the crap out of me and there are very, very few people I actively dislike. What I don't like is the messiness and complication of relationship. That's just because I don't have any skin and well, that's my problem. I find it easier to be with people here. I find it easier the same way I love to chat with my mom via email during the day. It's easier for me to step back and think and nobody can see me scrunching up my face and trying not to show the world every bleeding feeling and thought I've got. I don't like that so much. Some mornings I dread looking at what I posted the night before but pretty much, it's been all right.

In any event, I like it here a lot.  I like my blog community and I really like that I have this space.

One other thought for the night. I started a new career entirely by accident within weeks of starting my first blog. I started on this path because my good friend Jeffrey dragged me in by the ear and said, "it's time to go back to work, Heather."  I did not want to go. I wanted to take a whole bunch of time off, write a book, be with my kids, think about my life and work out what's next. Instead I went into this company to work what I thought might be four to five days per month and would give me darn near close to what I was making in salary at the last start up and well, I stayed.

I stayed because I was deeply intrigued by this particular corporate culture and attracted to databases like some junkie cat strung out on dried up catnip from a dwindling stash. I stayed sometimes because I wanted to leave so badly I just would not let myself quit. I stayed because each time I took stock I found I was changing, even if it meant just relearning some lost humility. And today I got something back I haven't had since 1998 at the Software factory at my first review after I'd spent a year turning myself inside out to be the best darn trainer/writer they'd ever seen.

Today I got a 6% raise. In some worlds that is completely meaningless. In my world, in my past, it might have been marginally meaningless. In this world of reinvention and belt tightening it means two things:

1. I did a bang up job in a field where I went back to just about square one and completely reinvented myself.
2. I have inherent value in a place where nothing is given for anything less than, well, a really bang up job.

I got to go back to the beginning. I didn't even really know it when I started. I got a second chance at that feeling I had, and maybe a good many of us have had, when we are new and young and green and there is nowhere to go but up.

God, it was a good year. Thanks for being here. 

Alecto's Excutive Summary - For Russ

"Let's face it, I'm tired!"

NaNo finished last night. I even managed to, um, wrap it up, more or less. It ends with Kate driving back into the driveway at the end of a twelve year day only the car doesn't smell like feet anymore and she stands in the driveway looking into the forest... and you'll just have to wait until I publish the book(bwahahahha) Book? What book? There's no book.  I'll go back and look in a week.

My friend Russ over at R a d h o l e did what I would call an executive summary on himself. Russ is pretty cool and I love going to his site, he often makes my day. So Russ was asking who and where I was and I realized that while I'd been introduced to Russ through Amy's NaBloWriMo site in October he might not actually have a clue who I was so instead of answering in email I'll put it here:

Alecto's Executive Summary (hold the snarkiness until it's over)

I am a forty-three year old professional mother of three. That sounds ludicrous, doesn't it? That's because I have a very schizophrenic relationship with my self the creative programming junkie and myself the mother. Myself the creative programming junkie is very important to me. Myself the mother is a given. Sorry, ladies, but that's a fact. I've had to work harder to be taken seriously in the work environment than I have in motherhood. Sad, but true. And whether you share my values or not, understand that to me, the me that is outside of mother is just as important as the me who delivered those squishy bundles 21, 16 and 7 years ago. Yeah, I have a 21 year old son. How cool is that? I also have a 16 year old daughter and that's cool too right up until it's not. The 7 year old saves my sanity.

In writing the story of Kate during November I had to come nose to nose with some very painful pieces of my past. So here it is. I am a corporate fast track executive washout. I made it seven years in a technology corporation on the fast track to SVP of a major profit center and then who knows what else when I fell so hard from grace that I could not bear to go back in for another round. It's not that I did bad, it's that I lost my stomach for it. That embarrasses me more than I can tell you. If I was a man I would be shamed into oblivion for not picking up and going on. As a woman I have been given a buy and this is what shames me more than anything. I hang my head but know the truth.

So where was I? 43 year old mother of three, divorced twice, married three times, I might be the bravest person I know. Or most stupid, jury's still out. I receive no alimony and no child support from the father of my first two. The father of my third is a bit better and I got smarter. I am hard core mother, that's a fact. I am an application programmer and business analyst. I look at numbers and tell you, more from my gut than not, what a particular market is doing. For me it's in paper and printing at the moment but I'm pretty good at it. I work with databases and system architecture. I am the person you call when it all goes to hell. I don't have the answers but I'm the one who will work it out because I believe the buck stops in my lap, even when it doesn't. This is a not an attribute.

I care more about the food my children eat than the state of my databases. This causes daily angst as I try to wrap up in time to get home and feed them something organic and appropriate before they need to go to bed. The S on my chest is for Sucker and I'm finally OK with that.

I like to write, a lot. I recently wrote a 50,000 word book in 27 days. I am nuts.

I paint, mostly in watercolors but when I was younger in acrylics all over my bedroom walls. My mother was very good to me. I grew up with horses, sort of. From the time I was twelve years old I leased a pony or a horse so I could ride. I did the family laundry and a whole lot of other things to support this habit. It was never for free. I was very good, good enough to do things but I didn't care, so I hacked instead and was happier that way. I had a farm with horses during my first marriage. The horses have all gone back to my mother in Ohio, I'm OK with that.

I would like to have chickens in my backyard again. I might just do that. Even though it's going to piss off my neighbors so bad I won't be able to stand it.

I read a lot, almost anything except chick lit and romance, can't stomach the stuff. I like Mark Helprin and Stephen King. My favorite book is Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. It's about magic, and cloudbanks the structural integrity of bridges and New York City before and after the turn of the century.

I live in a part of the country that is unbelievably privileged. I worked very fucking hard to get here. I am a high school drop out. I was raped on the floor of my living room at 17. The evidence of my case was hosed by the over zealous detectives, he is still out there. My parents emotionally abandoned me at 17 and then completely at 18. I cleaned houses to put myself through college. It was not so easy. I had a baby and a husband too, that part was OK. I am privileged but I have a really, really hard time acknowledging that. I am angry and that embarrasses me. 

I love music. I don't listen to nearly enough since I split with husband number two, who has a real knack for picking up the esoteric and eclectic. Lately I listen to almost nothing but what's over on Madeline's site or what's on WFUV, which is basically public radio.

OK, that's not exactly an executive summary, is it? I'm babbling. But there you go, that's me, precariously balanced and doing my damn best to have it all.

(p.s. I'm also a happy person. Because I want to be and that is all.)

(p.p.s. I just wrote 1,100 words like it was nothing. Damn. Look what happened? Maybe I can do this after all)

Samhain Snapshots

I have a story to tell, one more, before the big one.  The one that has me shaking in my space boots, whatever it is because I do things in chunks, I run relay with myself, but I used to run cross country.  Maybe I can remember how again.

I listen to Fordham University's public radio in the morning and on the way home.  They play great stuff, I give them money. I am so old they are my only new source of music, except for Cletus and thank God she's over Britney. Today, in honor of Samhain (OK, they said Halloween but I know what I know) they were unmasking instead of masking.  They were playing 'Guilty Pleasures', music you only play in the privacy of your own home or car and never admit to listening. So I will remove another mask as well.

Just before I got off my exit, the morning DJ played a Kenny Loggins piece from the early nineties.  A time when Mr. Loggins was going through some significant personal change. This song is a trigger for me, it was meant to be a trigger, and all these years later immediately removes six layers of psychic skin. The song is called Conviction of the Heart and when I hear it I am rendered vulnerable and naked.  I am laid bare.  I am also infused with a sense of power and conviction, which was the point of the trigger.

When I was nineteen years old, I attended a workshop called The Basic.  The Basic was the preface to The Advanced which came before LP - Leadership Program. It's transformational education at it's best, invented in a garage that produced Lifespring and EST and a whole host of others but in the seventies and early eighties it was rampant. It was also a lot like a pyramid scheme in that enrollment, revenues, what have you, were entirely generated by the graduate base.  It made for some pretty intense conversations. In the early eighties it was so intense I ran away after The Basic and didn't come back for eleven years. 

When I was thirty years old and leaving my first husband and my two children I dialed a NYC number that I'd had stashed away for all those years and a woman named Robin Lynn answered the phone. And she did enroll me in the second to next Advanced course because I was still too reasonable to change my work schedule and get in the next one and she was smart enough to hear the fear.  I went there because my marriage was over and I heard that in the Advanced course they'd strip you bare and you'd have to look at exactly who you were and face it. That's all I knew but I was in enough pain that I was willing to walk through any kind of fire at all just to find some solid ground on which to rest my spinning head.

Well.  Let me tell you, I willingly participated in having ALL of my skin removed. And some flesh too.  I know I've written about this in the past but it does bear repeating - I am an ice queen. I am a bitch.  I am a shut down barbie doll. I drive my body as hard as I drive my car (it was an '83 RX-7 at the time). I report things like my rape like I'm reading the weather. I use sex for power and avoid intimacy. My feelings are so shut down I would sell my own mother.

In an exercise called Lifeboat, I saved a stick for myself. I know, makes no sense but I suspect at a gut level you know exactly what I'm talking about.  I saved a stick for myself, which was a first, and I didn't save one for my buddy, which was not a first. I stayed up all night crying and the next day I had an opportunity, in the nakedness of my own bare flesh, to reinvent myself.

People don't change but people can change how they choose and from where they choose and People, Transformation will  NOT tolerate mediocrity.

I staffed five Basics, five Advanced courses, and seniored three leadership programs to completion.  I bailed on the fourth half way through. I think it was the right thing to do but I'll never really know. I have served on at least a dozen service teams (cook, clean and look after 30 strangers in the middle of nowhere with limited supplies and make sure they have the best weekend of their lives - I specialize in cooking wholesome food for large groups of emotionally raw people with little or no notice but am also a knock out whiz on Music, which is an integral and constant part of any training).

And the song Conviction of the Heart played a pivotal part in all of this.

We are standing, a group of people, who would never have spent ninety days together, much less five minutes under any other circumstances, in the archway by the fountain in Central Park.  It is 5:45 AM on a weekday morning. I am wearing my underware on my head (OK, listen, we were ALL wearing my underwear on my head - I believe in equal opportunity weirdness and it was CLEAN). It's what I do, the outrageous and unexpected. It gets your attention whether you want it to or not. I am holding Nina's hand and there are fifteen or so other people and we have made a circle.  The cheap boom box is in the center and we are cold and damp.  We are unprepared, Nina and I, as usual. We have spent the last ninety days, as a group and by ourselves, accomplishing the impossible.  Each of us has written and completed a Letter of Accomplishment touching seven major areas of our lives.  Each of us has acted outside ourselves and part of a larger and selfless whole to effect mass change in our environments (our legacy project included collecting funds for a playground in the Bronx and a steady supply of free food to two homeless shelters as well as a legacy of 'drive by food and coatings' that is still practiced in NYC today).

Our legacy has included a serious amount of personal pain and struggle and the loss of 40% of our starting team.

I know what to say.  I always know what to say whether I or Nina like it or are comfortable with it or not.

I talk about the last ninety days.  I talk about our differences and what we have accomplished and not accomplished individually and as a group. I talk mostly about the members who are not standing here with us, who did not make the ninety days, who bailed or were tossed. I talk about taking what we've learned into the world and applying these concepts of leadership and risk to our lives outside the structure of daily coaching calls and weekend meetings and insane 6 AM meetings in Central Park.

And then I bend down and reach forward and pull the trigger, one of many, resuscitated by me from the past and played by many.  I hit play and the first notes of Conviction of the Heart echo off the walls of the archway, building into the crescendo of passion, faith and desire for connection and truth and the need to matter in the world that Mr. Loggins clung to, like many of us, in the darkest hour of dark.  And this public urinal that has been the witness to a multitude of murders, rapes, and other assorted assaults too numerous to catalog is transformed into a momentary epiphany about the human condition and our not so singular place in it.

We are team. This is our torch run.  We, the graduating leadership program will light and carry an olympic torch around the fountain and hand it off to the LP just behind us. This is a Thursday, we will receive our third weekend instructions to begin on Friday and we will complete on Sunday.

I led three groups of people plus myself through this process. I was laid bare each and every time. My life altered considerably with every passing of the torch. I can still smell and taste the dampness of that tunnel and the smoke from the fire. I have run that circle four times.

I could be hit by a bus tomorrow. Jeffrey is going to die in six to twelve months (horribly, I suspect). There is a community of bloggers that come off and on this site and others that have almost nothing in common and yet connect and find the truth of their own humanity. I would not trade if for anything.

Someday is not a day of the week. And Transformation does NOT tolerate mediocrity.

I am going to write a book starting tomorrow.  It might suck dead monkey pud and it might be the greatest thing since wet dreams and sliced bread or it might fall somewhere in between.  But I've wanted to do it almost my entire life and wanting, well, wanting, is just not good enough. 

And so ends the month of NaBloWriMo and begins NaNoWriMo.  I will see you on the other side and post whatever I post (I'll be interested in the results of that!)

Ode to Erma

I'm gearing up for NaNoWriMo.  Really.  I am.  If you go over to Sudie's place you can find out about NaBloWriMo, which, by the way, I cannot say with a straight face. NaBloWriMo sounds damn reasonable too (unless you have a look in my head and then it's just plain dirty).  In any event, I told two people about this today.  Telling people is like when you quit smoking.  The more people you tell the more pressure. This can be good or bad.  In my case it's motivation.  It makes it more real for me.

I told my boss and my brother. Similar responses.

J - (that's my boss) after he stopped laughing he reminded me that the only way I stay on topic at work is because I have deadlines (check) and him (not so check unless he's going to read each draft every night otherwise I'm going to get off topic and stay that way).

Jack - (that's my brother) after he stopped laughing reminded me that linearity is a frame of mind and I'm more than capable. That's not the POINT Jack!  I like being non-linear. Or do we call that ADD?  Whatever.

Neither of these lovely gentlemen were laughing about me doing this, by the way, they were both all over it.  They were laughing about the fact that so far I'm going in without a plan other then to sit down, start typing and beg the muse to stay on some kind of topic.

J - wants me to give up my dreams about writing about women in the workplace (and how we're catty, mean and untrustworthy - hey, it's my experience, let it be) and write about nannies and parenting instead.  He likes to hear the nanny stories. His jaw sits on his desk over what little I disclose about my home life (he's genuinely interested, it's hard to remain isolated). He's pretty sure we're all going to implode one of these days but that's just not true. Explode maybe. We might be serving as birth control, or a horrible lesson.  Who knows.  He even likes to hear the canning stories about pressure cooking the chicken soup to the point of near death such that my entire home smelled like a Purdue processing plant.

The problem is that everything I write is anecdotal and that's not fiction, now is it? What if I made up a story about the perfect nanny?  Well how boring would that be?  I mean, come on, do you want to read about Mary Poppins (AGAIN) or do you want something infinitely more entertaining?  I want the entertaining. Life is entertaining; deeply, entirely and completely entertaining.  You cannot make this shit up.

I think I may have turned into Erma Bombeck.  There are worse fates, I really liked Erma. She had one hell of an impact.