Let's move on, shall we?

I found these two things on the cheezburger group of websites.  Lame, probably, but I'm lazy and there's lots of stuff there in one place.  Some of it horrible, some of it frequently without source (which is super annoying), but sometimes it's great and sometimes it's correctly sourced and I need to stop trying to justify my stupid internet browsing decisions.

OK.  So two things.  I really really like this picture below, which is from an unknown source, but which was posted on the WIN! site there on the cheezburger group of sites.  I mean, I really really really like this picture.  If I could, I would print it out and frame it.  Huh.  Maybe I should do that.

In a related vein, I also love Cindy Sherman.  I'm super excited because MOMA is having a major exhibition of hers this spring.  Super excited.  The photo below (grabbed from here), of herself by herself, is from 1989.  I bought the book of this exhibition.  I was just out of high school!  Crap, I'm cultural.

I also found the cartoon below some time ago on one of the cheezburger sites.  It is sourced, which is nice.  And it illustrates some interesting conflicts for me.  Maybe the time I spend imagining who Phebe was is the source of all the fun.  Maybe, if someone down the road learns about me, instead of being riveted (as my own sense of self-importance insists they would be), they would be bored or, worse, embarrassed for me.   Again, in any case, I really liked this cartoon.

OK then.  I think I mostly write new posts to get past the last thing I wrote.  It's a theory.

Who, me? Whut?

Hello there!

So...I have a great online friendish (hopefully one day an IRL friendish - but kind of already that because we've mailed things to each other - yea) and she has a great blog.  And she got an award (the Liebster Award) on her blog which then led her to talk about five "undiscovered" (I believe that was the word) blogs out there.  And I was one!  I mean, Researching Phebe, was one!  Yay!  Thanks, primamomma!  Yer the bestest!

I have to say that I am also a big fan of Gweenbrick (one of the blogs she linked) and to be included in the same category as him is a fucking honor.  I guess as part of receiving this award I have to list five "undiscovered" blogs and, while I'm kind of thinking, "Do you even have a blog if no one reads it?  It's a diary, then, right?  I think it's a diary.  A public diary which people can read and enjoy (?) if they want but in my case it's all involved because there's MS, there's my hate for this town I live in while simultaneously, my love of its former residents (two hundred sixty years ago former residents), and there's my husband, kids and shizz about my parents."  End quote.

What was I talking about?  Oh, yea, Gweenbrick.  He's awesome.

Who else?  Well, lately I've been lovin' on Kristen Stewart Wants IT (She really really does).  That guy rules.  It's funny, though, because he is also from (and currently living in) New Jersey and I once ventured the question, "Why do New Jerseyans suck so hard?"  And his response was, "What are you talking about?  I don't understand the question."  Well, anyway, besides that and his love of boobs (which, honestly, doesn't everyone love boobs?  They're everyone's first food!  What's not to love?) and football (inexcusable, imho, but that's just me), KSWI author/creater, Jordan, is fantastic.  In no way does he need my help here, though.  I just wanted to get it out there that I really really like his website.  Oh and that I agree that she really really does want IT.

Oh!  I know!  I've written about her before, but I found a wonderful historical mystery (maybe soon to be romance?  *crossing fingers*) novelist - 18th century setting, my fave - and her name is Imogen Robertson.  She and I have similar real last names.  Well.  I don't know if that's her real last name, but if so, it's similar to mine.  (Squeee!)  So, she has a blog, and she in no way needs my help, but I really really like her website (and books) too.

There are a few humor bloggers I like who are already very popular - Steam Me Up, Kid and The Bloggess in particular.  I spent a while trying to find this "Literal Animal Captions Meme" website Steamme Upkid (as she is on facebook) made months and months ago, but google wasn't helping.

However...I did find this website, as a result - www.themonkeysyouordered.com.  It's basically literal captions for New Yorker cartoons and it's fantastic and also does not need my help.

Hmmm.  I'm flailing here.  One last website before I sign off.  My friend Paula Cohen-Martin (rl friend, at that) is a fantastic artist and art teacher and she has started her own art classes (!!!) in her basement to compensate for the lack of good art classes in her town and she's a personal hero.  I only wish I still lived close enough to make it feasible for my kids to go.  Her blog is called Picasso's Basement.  Plus she loves David Foley of the Kids in the Hall as much as I do and that, my friends, is a good person right there.

Thought of one other!  Yay!  Bangable Dudes in History, but she's on a hiatus right now (as is Steam Me Up, Kid, sadly).

Alrighty.  Kristy (aka primamomma), I love you like a sister, gurrrl, but this whole thing has made me horribly uncomfortable.  Still, loves you.

Queen of Extrapolation

So, I'm unemployed.  Well.  I'm employed in taking care of my kids, which for most of the day only means my three year old son, as my six year old daughter is being taken care of by the school.  Supposedly.  Anywhoo, my son is only in preschool for six hours a week, so by and large, it's me.

And, since it's Christmas time, I've been spending a whole lotta money getting gifts, decorating the house and whatnot.  Sure, it's fun.  I think I'll be at a loss when I have no more gifts to buy (which is soon, I think).  I'll have to wean myself off the purchasing.

These two things are related, in that, my private (or not so private) little fantasy, is that one day, I could write for a living.  Like, be paid to write.  Wouldn't that be something?

I haven't earned a paycheck in ages (almost seven years, actually) and even then I never earned a big one.  Never one that would cover much more than the childcare that I would need to do said job.  And even then, at this moment, due to my fatigue and cognitive difficulties on account of ma MS (Thanks, MS!  Fucker.), I'm not even sure I could get any job.  Or keep it.  I guess when my son's in Kindergarden full time, we'll see, but I'm not sure of anything really.

I'm extremely lucky in my patient and smart and responsible husband.  He's kind too.  And sexy.  And I love him.  And I don't want to stress him out more.  I want to help him.  And honestly, the one thing I think I could maybe do (if I ever got over my basic gut-wrenching fear of writing) is write.  Maybe.

Here's the thing, though.  Phebe lost three babies.  And I really have no no no idea what that would feel like.  Not really.  I think I'm naive enough to believe that I can extrapolate it, though.  (Quite a sentence there.)  I say that because I know how it felt to have my son spew disgusting fluids out of his mouth and anus onto me constantly for a week last spring and for him to have to be hospitalized for dehydration because of it.  But that was one week.  And, more importantly, he was fine.

I really have no idea what Phebe went through.  Or what someone who was raped went through.  Or even something milder, like being cheated on.  I think I have an idea because of small tiny little episodes in my life that somewhat relate.  Like, when I was a teenager and out at the Junior Prom with my date, who was my boyfriend, but who I wasn't attracted to at all, and how I didn't, couldn't, stop him when we parked.  I know what that felt like.  And he got to second base, tops.  But he didn't use force, just subtle pressure.  I knew I should want it, and I did, just not with him, so I went along with it.  It felt horrible and the next day I broke up with him - the next morning, actually - and then my mother overheard me and told me to call that boy back up and take it back. "He took you to prom."

I have that experience and I believe I can extrapolate it to having to go through something much much worse, but then I have this horrible fear that doing so would insult someone who went through something so horrible.  That it would belittle them.  And then I want to write nothing at all.

I also know, from having children, that some things simply must be experienced.  The feeling you get when your child issues that first cry in the delivery room...blah blah blah.  But it's true.  That feeling is corny and overworked, but I will never forget it.  That sound went straight to the goddamned core of my stupid fucking soul.  And when or if I ever thought of it before having children, I rolled my eyes.  And when people are too tired to deal with their children and younger, childless people get annoyed, I realize that that was me too, being annoyed.  Not understanding.

Oh and old people!  Now that I'm unofficially an old person (many days I feel about 70 years old), I get a lot more things than before.  But still, not really.  I don't know what it's like to have cancer, for instance.  I don't know what it's like to watch my spouse have cancer either.

Shit.  You know who's fucked me up?  Well.  Besides my mom, of course.  Christina Aguilera, is who.  Surprising, right?  She was on one of the first Behind the Music produced by VH1 or MTV (back when they concerned themselves with music) in the 90's.  She said, and it was the tagline for the series, I think, "You think you know, but you have no idea."  And this from a girl who's big hit was a thinly veiled song about clitoral stimulation.  A teenage girl.  In any case, it fucked me up, because it's true.

But I still want to write about Phebe.  And I still do want to write and get paid for it somehow.  And I do want to understand.  I hope that's enough?