Thursday shuffle

Today, the goal is to be calmly productive, fierce in measure as I envelope myself in deadlines, interviews and personal business that needs more attention, energy and cleverness than I have -- or at least would have measured at 7:12 this morning when Lil E woke up ready to go and I was still holding out to that ridiculous parental hope that it would be the one freak of preschooler nature morning he'd sleep in until after Oprah.

I've chosen a lovely cocktail of stimulant-depressant-stimulant-depressant to pull up my skills and keep my focus steady. At other points (the old and glorious grad school finals week days, for example), that pattern may have manifested in a tequila-Big Gulp-tequila-clove cigarettes frenzy. In this life, that just means, coffee-CDs-coffee-CDs.

I grabbed a bunch of music from the apartment last week, so I'm doing my shuffle the extremely low-tech style, with a constant stream of CDs in and out and blaring from my laptop. Thankfully, I've had just enough coffee to keep that pace up while I post away.

Here's playlist just for today:

Treat Yo Mama - John Butler Trio
Climb On (A Back That's Strong) - Shawn Colvin
Maybe Katie - Barenaked Ladies
Jolene - Mindy Smith (cover of Dolly Parton)
Happy Birthday Helen - Things of Stone and Wood
No Radio - The Junction*
Fidelity - Regina Spektor
Cannonball - Damien Rice
If You Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell You Mine- Missy Higgins
You're Beautiful - James
Made of Steel - Christine Kane

Now share the love: What's coming through your speakers today, kittens?

*this band has been defunct for years but damn, they were good

Click to read more ...

It took almost as long to write this Thanksgiving recap post as it did to get prints of the three-year old birth photos

I've been sitting in my office all day, distracting myself with posting about everything else other than Thanksgiving. There have been strings of thoughts through my mind that could easily work themselves into sentences and then paragraphs and eventually fulfill my feelings that the holiday must be discussed. It has just been difficult to weave it together. More difficult than I imagined.

This makes sense, I suppose, since Thanksgiving was more difficult than I imagined. I tried very hard to convince myself that the near eight-hour road trip with my dad and grandmother sitting in happy silence in the front seats and my mom and I nestled around Lil E in the carseat in the back, would be the beginning of a get-away. I really hoped that the hotel room my boy and I shared that adjoined to my parents' room would give us a bit of a retreat from being long-term guests in their home while also having some support for the inevitable late-night wakings in a strange bed far from home. I so wanted to escape the upheaval that has become our new normal.

That's not what happened. As much as I hate to put these words to keyboard or screen or into the universe, I was - quite honestly - not feeling very grateful. And that's where it began to unravel.

Click to read more ...

By the power of the momosphere, we have the powwwwwwer!

Or so it says today in the Daily Herald. This peek inside the power of mommybloggers ranges from political to personal to product placement in our posts and in the marketplace. Lil E and I were thrilled to be a part of this article and we are in great company. See what my amazing sword-yielding CMB colleagues -- Sara, Alma, Devra, Wendy and Amy  -- and the ever-articulate Elisa Camahort from BlogHer have to say.

If you want to read it the real way, simply yell into the castle. My mom is hording every print copy inside city limits at this point.

Click to read more ...