Moments (and a few links!) of Joy

Chatting at the Sky: "The Spiritual Discipline of Wearing Better Pants"

"One of the casualties of my good girl detox was shedding my misconceptions about the spiritual disciplines. I needed to give myself permission not to practice them for a while because I couldn’t figure out how to do them without thinking I was earning something. 

"The past several years have been a re-entry of sorts into the world of the spiritual disciplines. It’s different now – kinder, gentler, tender, and more free. My definitions have changed as has (I hope) my demeanor."

Writing and Mommy and Kitty Humor. And Such. Links!

Today is the anniversary of the start of the process to induce labor for Gracie's birth. Went in to the hospital for my regular non-stress test, it went fine, left. Got the call as we left the parking lot that the long-awaited test results for Cholestasis were in, and were positive, time to induce.

I have never before in all my life been so happy to receive news that a test showed a problem. I already knew I had it, pretty much, it was just a matter of proving it to the doctors. Finally!

We turned around at the first stoplight, back to the hospital around 4:00 p.m. All checked in and drugs started around 8:00 p.m. Happy upcoming birthday, Gracie!

"Still smiling!" I know. I'm not in labor yet, very aware. That's why I'm here, to induce, because not being in labor is a problem.

Now. I've been putting in extra hours at work, which always stresses me out. Not for the extra hours themselves, necessarily, but for the situations where you're backed up badly enough that extra hours are desperately needed. And... working on the snarky post is fun, but also depressing, maddening, draining, possibly soul-destroying... I haven't done much on it in a couple weeks. Not much left to do, I don't think, so I may finish it up soon, but for now, here!

Have some quick little fun links! (And a few longer ones.)

Query Quagmire:

"Very little is expected of you..."
"Query Quagmire: The Book."
"On second thought..."

Shit My Students Write:

"Trying to concept"
What the...? O_o I feel like I should put up some kind of a content warning on this one, but, um. I don't even... huh. Um... content warning for sex ed from imaginary land??

"Let them burn cake!"

Maureen Johnson:

"This makes me happier..."
Awww! So many cute things! Stealthy creation of public cute!

"JOHN GREEN FANFIC PREVIEW"
Um, wow. I must get my hands on this.

"The day John Green realized Benedict Cumberbatch was hiding in his house was the day his collection of Nicholas Sparks novels spontaneously fell off the bookcase in his office. This surprised him. What surprised him more was that there was a face, shelf high, now clearly visible in the spot where the books had been.

It was the face of Benedict Cumberbatch.

'Who are you?' Cumberbatch said, Cumberbatchly.

'I’m John Green,' said John Green.

'Clearly an alias. Let’s see who you are really.' Benedict Cumberbatch touched his hands together in prayer formation, and touched them lightly to his lips..."

It gets more awesome. Like this, for example.

"BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH IS IN YOUR HOUSE? said Hank. YOU MEAN, LIKE, SHERLOCK?

'I mean exactly that,' John said. 'And I think? He thinks? He’s Sherlock Holmes?'"

terribleminds: "Please Ban My Books"

"Buy my books. All of them.

And then ban the crap out of them.

I eagerly await you doing the right thing.

I eagerly await all the banhammers and burnination.

*stares*

*waits*

*noisily sips Earl Grey tea*"

Momastery:

"Momaquery"
Oh wow. I won't quote much from this one because it'd be most of the post. Hey, it's short, okay? But here's the question:

"Q: Dear G: How do I keep my tween from idolizing Miley Cyrus?

Kay. I actually know this one."

The answer is truly frightening and hilarious.

"I'm Not Sassy, I'm Suzanne"
This one isn't so much a quick little funny link, it is a longer funny. It's worth it.

"I know they say money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy ACTUAL SUMMER CAMP and after a week I was unable to detect any difference."

...

"And then, when the kids got home and started fighting, Craig and I would look at each other and smile and take a deep breath together and say, 'No problem. Totally not going to freak out. I am So Zen. So Zen.' This was our mantra all summer: 'Totally not freaking out. So Zen.'

One day, as summer came to a close (which it does every year because Jesus loves us), Amma threw one of her tantrums that we lovingly refer to as 'Amma-geddon.' Every once in a while, something goes terribly wrong in Amma’s life (like,Tish breathes too loudly) and Amma throws a tantrum that makes me feel like maybe a demon is actually being exorcised from her body. And when this happens, we place her in her room to go ahead and work it out. We live in Florida, but during these tantrums my parents in Virginia often call to ask how Amma’s doing. Because they can hear her. On this particular day, I let Amma yell in her room for a few minutes, and then I put on my riot gear, opened her door and said, 'Honey, as soon as you calm down, I can start your time-out timer, and you’ll be able to join us again. You just need to stop freaking out first.'

And Amma yelled back at me-  'I AM TOTALLY NOT FREAKING OUT. I AM SUZANNE!!! IIIIIII AMMMMMM SUUUUUUZAAAAAAAAAAANNNE!'

Suzanne. That’s what she thought we were saying all summer. I am Suzanne."

"6 Reasons Social Media Is Dangerous for Me"

"Since I’m a recovering bulimic, I have to keep a close eye on my relationship with food. Lately, I’ve been struggling with food a bit. More accurately, I’ve been ambushing food. Struggle suggests resistance and the problem with food is that it never puts up much of a fight. It just sits there and lets me eat it all which is quite passive aggressive of food. It’s not totally food’s fault though. Food really just gets used by me as a way to numb myself when I get anxious. When I start to overeat, I’m really looking for peace, but since I’m not sure how to get that, I’ll take second best. Second best, for me, is a carb and sugar induced coma. Comatose on the couch = not feeling much. So, mission accomplished. We overeat because it works. Not in the long run, of course. but the long run is really just for enlightened people.

My overachieving therapist insists that in fact, the long run is for EVERYONE. Since she can’t help food be more assertive (since it doesn’t have insurance), she said I should start keeping 'danger food' out of my house. In order to identify my 'danger foods,' she asked what my go-to foods are when I’m anxious or lonely or sad. Cereal, I said. Once I start with the cereal, it’s really all over. If there’s a little milk left in the bottom I can’t WASTE it because I’m really responsible so I have to keep refilling and refilling the bowl until I’m almost dead. And so my therapist said- great – let’s start by keeping cereal out of the house –especially when you’re feeling vulnerable. Okay, I said. So…always? And she said yes, we’ll start with always."

There are times when I feel like Momastery is cheesy and I start out by rolling my eyes... and then she goes and writes stuff like this. Fine, be that way, I love you and I never want you to leave and will you be my friend?

The rest of the post is good, too. And I relate to it. I have to be careful around social media as well. I have some boundaries... sort of... but I have a long ways to go. I'm not very good with this sort of thing, in general. It's like how I keep not getting enough sleep because when I'm tired I make bad decisions, like staying up late.

Cat Jump Fail

Finally, let's close with a cat video. It's a bit old now, but needs to be shared. Because this video has made my life objectively better. Because every time I hear this song on the radio now, I giggle.

Links: Opposite Day

Well, this post and its links aren't getting any younger. Better publish it!

Once again, I only made it to a few of the links I tagged last week, but this time the post is proportionately short. Crazy, huh?

As before, they aren't necessarily the best of the bunch. Meh. They are what they are. Hopefully, I'll get better at doing these, with practice.

So. A couple from Hands Free Mama and a few from Query Quagmire. The Hands Free Mama posts are all sweet and heartwarming, the QQ posts... heh. Not... exactly.

Hands Free Mama

"When You Listen to a Child"

Good post, but this is the part where it really started to resonate for me:

"My friends, perfection is not expected on this parenting journey.

You will have days when you are dealing with heavy, soul-crushing issues.

You will have days when nothing you do seems to be good enough.

You will have days when smiles don’t come easily and harsh words are spoken too quickly.

You will have days when you can only do the basics and nothing more.

On those days, I urge you not to say things like, 'I am a failure,' or 'I am a bad parent.'

Instead, I urge you to garner the strength, the patience, the resolve to do one thing … just one thing.

Listen."

"The Song That's Louder Than Regret"

I loved that in the midst of talking about enjoying the moment with your kids, she acknowledged this (not everyone does):

"We know we can’t possibly cherish every moment.

We know it’s not realistic to neglect our life responsibilities to soak up their every word and every expression.

We know that telling ourselves to savor every stage of their childhood is just setting ourselves up for failure.

So what do we do? How do we realistically live life now to avoid the pain of regret later?"

Query Quagmire

"QQ, you know my love for you is as boundless as a Kardashian's lack of shame..."

Now, a silly little one. Query Quagmire has an ongoing thing about Cheez-Its. Recently someone asked her about her favorite flavor. The above is one of my favorites in the later conversation about her reply.

"Is a book more or less likely to be picked up if it's been previously self-published?"

This one isn't as funny, at least not in the same way. It's funny in an "ah yes, I know that bitterness of which you didn't write" sort of way. And though I don't work in publishing myself, it concisely sums up a few of my feelings on self-publishing too, ftw!

"When I send my first query letter out should my novel have a title?"

Language warning, but mwahaha. Here's some of that bitterness.

"There is nothing more annoying than sitting down to respond to a query letter and having to comb through the entire submission looking for a title to include in my letter only to realize there is none. Oh wait, there is something more annoying: when the author then responds to my response to ask which book I was talking about because they submitted multiple projects to multiple publishers."

Linky Linky Link Links

Sorry I've been so quiet here. The last month or so has had lots of ups and downs, times of just getting by and making it through, lovely quiet times of vacation... no big earth-shattering events really, just... life. Lots of life.

It's also possible Gracie's been a little harder and more time-consuming recently, but I'm not quite sure. It might just be that I'm watching more TV... I don't want to watch so much, but when someone's in the living room watching Angel, how can I resist? I ask you.

You know how I was planning on regularly featuring other blogs here? And how I did one post in the "series," over a year ago?

Now that I mention it, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't know. Um.

So, as I go through the blogs in my RSS reader, I have some tags I use regularly, which include, "Could use for a blog post," "Or maybe forward or share," and "Wonderful things I want to remember (use sparingly)."

Yes, even my blog tags are exceedingly verbose. Anywho.

I'd still like to do those "featured" posts, with one blog at a time. I started on one for Patricia C. Wrede's blog. But it recently struck me that unless I just want to keep building up more and more and more links for some mythical day when I'll post about them all, I should, well, post links more often.

So I started a tag in my RSS reader for "This week's links," and I think I'll try to use it regularly, and in the weeks I skip, just untag that week's links again and start over. And I may throw in some random bookmarks from the week too, stuff I happened to see that isn't from a blog I subscribe to. But just from the last week. Keep things a little more manageable. That's the theory, anyway. I'm not making any promises.

This means, most weeks, I probably won't have much of a theme. But meh. Lots of random highlights from teh interwebz! Woo!

They won't all necessarily be brand new, either. When I read blogs, I find the oldest post (that isn't so old it's a time period I've given up on), and then I catch up within that particular blog before moving on to the next oldest post, and so on. Right now I'm about 20 days behind. Plus there will probably be some lag between my drafting a post and actually publishing it, because I'm like that. I know there's a lag this week!

So. Without any further ado, here are... some of my links. I had quite a lot, and ended up only including a few in my draft of this post. I was going to add more still, but... well, now it's this week. There are some awesome ones I didn't get to, but oh well.

CaptainAwkward: "#497: On 'keeping the peace' with an unlikeable mansplainer"

Language warning. This is, more or less, on why you shouldn't "keep the peace," especially as applied to someone who is chronically jerky towards someone else with less privilege.

("You can’t solve injustice until you admit and truthfully reckon with injustice. If we have the expectation that our institutions will always cater to the wealthy, the white, the able-bodied, the cis-gendered, the straight, and the male and treat people who point out the cracks in that system with contempt and silencing and pleas to be nicer and “keep the peace” (not to mention outright denial that there is a problem), we become the problem. We are saying that this state of affairs is “the peace” that is worth keeping, and acting like the peace isn’t broken over and over again with every instance of injustice, white supremacy, inaccessibility, ableism, transphobia, etc. The peace has already been broken.")

It's pretty awesome. Because I've gradually become much more feminist in... oh, maybe the last year or so? I feel like I should warn that if you are not sympathetic to feminism, this is not the article to convince you -- it isn't, nor is it intended to be the article that does that work. It isn't 101. There are other links for that which I might share with you sometime. But if you're already slightly sympathetic or open to such things, and you either know some of the lingo or are willing to follow the links within the article to learn the lingo, well, I think this is a good one for you.

(And yes, as in the above quote, racism and such come up too -- but because of the nature of the original letter writer's question, the focus is mostly on "mansplaining," which is why my focus here, introducing it, is mostly on feminism.)

I was going to quote a long section from towards the end, but I couldn't find a place to cut off the awesome until it was almost a 600-word quote, and that seemed a bit... excessive. Even for me. I'll just say that I especially liked the theoretical scenario with the mansplainer, and from that dialogue, especially this bit:

"‘Splainer: blah BLAH blah you just don’t want to admit that you’re WRONG and GIRLY and WRONG that’s why you won’t debate me. What about blah? What about BLAH? Behold, I am the Devil’s Advocate!"

And then from there through to the "Keep this in mind: It was always that awkward… for you." paragraph.

Side note: Yes, Biblically, we are supposed to be peacemakers. I'm not so sure this is the type of "peace" Jesus was talking about. Just because people use the word doesn't make it so.

And ah, speaking of feminism...

The Actual Pastor: "My Take on Women in the Church"

I do like this. Doesn't go into depth about the Biblical interpretation, but fits with some things I've been thinking for a while now. Especially about the consistency issue, which certainly, well, IS an issue.

Okay, now a sad one. Sorry. Bear with me here, we're almost done!

Learning to Hope: "Pandora"

This isn't the most stand-aloniest blog post ever, but I think it kind of works. Here's the blog's "About Me," for some context:

"I'm a 26 year old former Caregiver. This is my voice to talk about my life- mostly about learning to live now. My husband was diagnosed in November 2009 with Glioblastoma Multiforme- terminal brain cancer. He was only 25 and I had literally just turned 23. He fought hard for almost 3 years before he passed away September 2012, just a month after turning 28. This was my blog about our life. This is still my space to find Hope. This is now my public battle to show what life is like as a 25 year old Widow."

Why follow a blog like this? I first discovered it from this awesome post. To me, it's kind of like watching Grave of the Fireflies -- the movie may not strictly be "enjoyable," watching one of the saddest things in the history of EVAR, but it feels important. Reading this blog... it's a struggle an actual person is living through, and taking the time to listen, even virtually, seems like, well, the least we can do (rather literally). Even when it is only virtual, even when you're just a lurker, and you don't know anyone else in a similar situation... I think it's good to be aware of the pain that's out there in the world. Can make you a little more empathetic at the least, right? So. Even though this post is better in the context of the blog, it's not a bad sample, either. Read it.

(Side note: Grave of the Fireflies is not so much a story of the struggle of an actual person, but it's close enough. Though fictionalized, it's easily the sort of thing that happened to many children in that time and place. Empathy for pain in a major event from a culture's history is important for empathy to the people from that culture. And then... change more details of the story, and it's still happening around the world today.)

Alright. Enough of that. This one's just fun!

Wil Wheaton dot Net: "because it's the recliner my nephew deserves right now"

Also so cute. And short, so, yay!


Wow. I just managed to make a links post 1,397 words long. That's... special.