Category Archives: Weblogs

Writing

Posted on by
3

So thanks to my BFF Becky, I am writing a novel this month. Yes, in addition to hosting my in-laws for Thanksgiving (no problem), hoping the new room will be DONE before Thanksgiving, knowing that Dr. Jay has to run off to DC for a day trip, going to Bethesda for a Bar Mitzvah and trying not to drop dead from anaphylaxis, I am writing a novel.

Am I an idiot or what?

Of course, I will probably never let anyone read it (except Becky. Because she is making me write this, then she has to read the crap I come up with). I tried this last year and totally failed. I got to 15,000 words and stopped. Sigh. This time, it is completely different. I haven’t found a struggle with my character yet. She is doing great and surprizing me when I get to certain situations. I have set up a) a character and b) a starting point for the plot. That’s it. From here, I will see what my character tells me to do.

I also decided to write in first person because that is so much easier for me. I hope I can pull this off, I doubt it, but hey, I am putting this out there!

Anyone else doing this? Buehler?

Buy Buy Buy!

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t normally plug for things here. I don’t have THAT many readers and I certainly am not a great consumer in our world of buy, buy, buy!

However, you will see a new image on my sidebar. Clicking on that will take you to the Lauren’s Hope website. I recently bought my medical alert bracelet there. It was easy, quick and I now have my name, allergies and an ICE number with me.

I really don’t advertise much, but I have to say, this was worth it.

More to write!

Posted on by
2

I’ve been accepted as an editor over at Type-A-Mom for the working mothers community. How exciting! I hope this helps me verbalize my own issues with work, the conflicts of being a parent and an employee. I want to understand (for myself) when those roles are not mutually exclusive and when they are to be separated.

I have been wanting to work on my writing for a while, but this gets difficult. I can’t find time at nights, I have little time during the days and I can’t seem to find a time that is neither night nor day. I will try to find a fine line and write something up at home tonight. Or not!! I have a ton of clean up to do, laundry to get reset and Girl Scout patches to sew onto two uniforms! 

I wonder how many moms do get caught in our current culture clash. How do you be a productive worker and a caring and present mother? Can you do both? What happens when your job is like mine, 9-5 doesn’t exist. When the spacecraft calls, we jump! When a far away galaxy has a sudden gamma ray burst and an astronomer requests that we move our telescope to observe it, we have to respond, sometimes within 24 hours or less to change the plans to deal with this. I am on call 7 days out of 3 to 4 weeks. The lead of our group drops out of the rotation every few times, so I can be on call with only 14 days off in between.

How do I parent when these situations arise? I remember in January, I was on the couch, telephone on my side, computer on my lap and Soleil woke up and wandered out to the couch. I was dealing with a situation where our instrument had rebooted and we didn’t understand why. It was 6 am. I let her curl up with me and I explained what I was looking at, how I knew there was a problem, and then explained that Mom might have to be pretty busy that day. Turns out I didn’t, but my multiple roles clashed there.

Oh, I am getting excited! This is going to be a trip!

Soft, light and classic

Posted on by
Reply

This weekend, I was in the car, ALONE for 4 hours (technically 8 including the return trip, but I was listening to football games then). I got to choose the music in the car. I could listen to Lady Gaga or NOT. If Taylor Swift came on, I could change the channel if I wanted. I was going through several different broadcast areas, so I learned a great deal of what radio stations are like in 2010:

  • Classic Rock: this now consists a combination of "Metal" and what I call "Classic" which involves guitars, drums and few synthesizers. Some samplings? "Iron Man", "Don’t Fear the Reaper", and a song from The Scorpions that I can not remember the title of for my life.
  • Light Rock: Pop. As in 80s Pop. As in Bananarama, Early Madonna, some Billy Joel,  The stuff I grew up to. Sad…
  • Soft Rock: The crap that those people 5-10 years older than me grew up to…includes folk stuff and Dillion. Beatles. Ick
  • Today’s Hit Music: Lady Gaga, Black-eyed Peas, my kids dance to this music.
  • Country: They still play the two kinds of music: Country AND Western (good for when I need a dose of Honky Tonk) (shuttup!)
  • Stations between 92-97: Can be anything from God love fests to Latino, to alternative rock
  • Stations between 88.1-92: Usually jazz or NPR

No wonder I like my music player

 

Dance like the world can see you:

This weekend, I traveled to New Jersey to see the Fabulous Mrs. Figby, Mr Figby and others. I got to meet some bloggers I have read for YEARS and others that I never had met before and clicked like bic lighter!  It was wonderful. I always worry if I stand out in a crowd. I am short and without style, I have the social skills of a flatulent warthog and I dance like a pregnant yak. However, I had lots of fun. I got along with Jenny, a blogger I had never met before, enjoyed shots and great discussion with Mrs. C, who is TOTALLY awesome, Danced like a fool and drank just a tad too much. Eh…

Unfortunately, I did get what I call a "flash migraine" at the dance club. Yes, I will admit I was drunk. BUT not that drunk. The flashing lights (in time with the music of course) got my nauseated and sharp pains between my eyes. When I get migraines, my auras are in my speech centers, not my visual. One great guy tried to get me to the bathroom to vomit, but I couldn’t explain to him what was going on, that I just needed to get out of the flashing lights. Mr Figby got me outside and within 2 minutes of leaning against a cold metal pole, I was FINE. Seriously. The flashing lights killed me.

On Sunday, we slept in. Mrs Figby’s daughter was finally warmed up enough to me to talk and on the way to spend her money for her birthday, we talked about Star Wars. Awesome! I REALLY enjoyed myself and once again wished I had more friends closer to me… I have a few female friends here, but the ones I need are far away. And I wish I had that many diners within walking distance of my house. Oh the diners!

:

The books forgot to mention this…

Posted on by
3

Being astronomers, our life is full of electronics. Both Jay and a I are fluent in calculator, I am fluent in several programming languages (but not python or LOLcode) and we have abandoned the home office for an entirely wireless setup including having our iTunes connect with a served disk in one room and with airports that are directly connected to our stereo receivers.

We are the geeks. The kids are way into imaginative play. They like to use their blackberries (ie- the blackberry pearl phones that Jay and I no longer use because they both died) to facebook and play games. Yes, they make up video games to play and facebook each other on their (non functioning) blackberries, only once in a while being interrupted by phone calls.

Why do the parenting books not explain that you can snort you brains out when your kids do things like this?

Last night, I needed to go out. Jay has the kids alone most of the weekend as I am attending a birthday party for Mrs. Figby, a former blogger. I was making myself a beautiful satin dress, but the pattern was too small for the measurements it claimed. I am so angry about that. I let out all of the seams, but it is still too small. Damn. I can’t get the zipper on the side up the last 2 inches. So I decided to punt and I went to Talbot’s Outlet last night and picked up a very nice LBD on a major sale ($36 for a dress that was originally $174). I decided to take the girls with me. I realized that I had never really taken the girls clothes shopping. Luna corrected me and said that she picked out the fabric for most of the dresses I make her, which is correct, but still, I don’t actually take them when I shop (because I do most on-line!)

After buying the dress and explaining why I have a nice little roll of fat on my belly (it’s from YOU TWO! YOU DID THIS TO ME), I took them to the discount shoe haven warehouse. Luna nearly fell over seeing the rows and rows of designer boots! Soleil immediately asked where the kid section was. I had to explain that there wasn’t one here and didn’t I just buy her new sneakers in October? Hello?? She said "But MOM, You don’t get my STYLE" (said with all of the drama of a 14 year old). So I took them to Payless Shoes around the corner.

 

Is there anything cooler than shoe shopping with your girls?

Luna picked out THESE:                                                While Soleil picked out THESE:

 

Since I needed something that was more adult I got these little flats

Update on my friend…

Posted on by
2

Thank you all for the great words and thoughts. My friend, K, is back home. She ended up losing a great deal of blood in the hospital (she needed 6 units) and her poor husband was terrified. However, she is doing great now and resting at home. Her mom is there to help with the kids and she can now get to healing.

Life comes quick. Remember to tell those you love that you do love them. I learned from Mrs. Figby to hug my kids everyday. Because you just don’t know.

Thanks again. 

Send some healing thoughts?

Posted on by
9

A friend of mine is overly generous. She has triplets. She has also done two surrogate pregnancies for a couple who could not carry their own child.

Last week, my friend was in a car accident at 36weeks with the second surrogate pregnancy. She started to bleed. They confirmed yesterday that the baby could be delivered (his lungs were matured). They did the C-section.

During the C-section, they discovered she had Placenta Percreta,  the placenta had grown through her uterine wall and was attaching itself to her bladder. They had to perform a hysterectomy and at one point, she went into cardiac arrest and needed CPR.

She is resting now and the mother of the little boy is with her. They are both enjoying the baby.

But I am requesting some healing thoughts. She is exhausted and needs to heal. This was a pretty bad situation and she went through this to allow another person to have a child. What an amazing person.

Thanks in advance!

Banned

Posted on by
5

I just banned someone from reading. If he figures out how to get back here, I’ll ban him again. Oh yes, this time my favorite stalker is hiding behind a male name. But again from a free account at a large IP. So sorry. Not allowed in.

 

This is MY BLOG. MY Space. You want to email me on how sibling abuse is because the parents suck? Fuck off.

Don’t bother to email me, I have already blocked your email addy. And your IP (which you use to check here) is DENIED ACCESS. Because WordPress allows me to do that, not like typepad.

Bye bye crazy. I am stressed enough without your bullshit. Don’t want it, don’t need it. not taking delivery. 

ETA: Okay NOW my crazy is banned. Until she finds another proxy site. She was using olympicproxy.com to pretend to be someone else.

 

 

Hungry Soul

Posted on by
2

Julie Pippert of  "Using my Words" has asked "what do you do to feed your soul? What renews you? How does that fit in with the cultural protocol?"

I would step into my trusty 1990 Ford Escort. Sticking with my need to have alliteration, I named her Emma. She and I went everywhere. Even though it was dark and almost 12:30am, I knew where I was going. With the radio blasting, I would turn out of the SUNY Stony Brook parking and ease onto Nichols Road. Sure, it had a route number, but I called it Nichols Road. Making my way to 25A, I would stumble through the rocky coastline of Eastern Long Island. Little towns with bungalows and illegal in-laws and student apartments dotted the way. Eventually, I would live in one of these summer cottages, surviving the spiders that loved the moist sea air.

I drove with the turns of the road. By Wading River, past the William Floyd Parkway (AKA the Pink Floyd parkway) 25A merged with 25,  Along the fences for Grumman, "no photos allowed". The landscape flattened out a bit, eventually leading towards  the city of Riverhead.  Then I turned towards the North Fork of Long Island.

The radio, or a tape would be blaring. I would sing along, pretending to be someone I was not. On the road there was no one to hear me sing. In the night, few people were out here to be bothered with. I continued on through small towns. Mattituck, Cutchogue, Southhold, Greenport. I was nearing my destination. A small land bridge told me  I was almost there. When I reached Orient Point, I would park the car and smell the sea air. On the other side of the land was Long Island Sound, but in front of me was Pecconic Bay. I loved to listen to Billy Joel on these trips. He was Long Island. A different part of Long Island than the hair and cars….

After enjoying the end of the world, I would drive back to my sheltered College life. But for a few hours, I could feed my hungry soul