Almostgotit.com

Asphalt parking lots so hot they melt the soles of your shoes. Summer evenings filled with the rattle and chirp of a thousand crickets. Cookouts and sweating, ice-cold pitchers of lemonade.

What does this all mean in our town? Time to go back to school!

That’s right. No more waiting until after Labor Day, these parts. Kids start back today, which is just so wrong! It’s hardly even August, for heaven’s sake. They should be swimming, not studying! Probably, as parents, we should organize some sort of deputation to the school board on the part of the children, because…

(just a minute while I close the door to my office.)

… I am SO GLAD!!! No more kicking the kids off of my computer! No more running them around to all their friends’ houses! No more chasing them around all day about their mud, and their stuff, and the doors they’ve left open, and all the cartons of food they’ve emptied and then shoved back into the refrigerator!

Being a mom is truly a freelance job, and therefore is always a balancing act. Flexibility is key, but it’s so nice when you can be a little organized, too. Forget January 1st – the first day of school is the real beginning of the year, and I’m SO looking forward to it!

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Coming Saturday: What “Back to school” resolutions are you making this year? Stop by to leave your comment, or drop me a line anytime.

Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
– Faith Whittlesey

Many thanks to WorkingGirl for the heads up after my previous post; I found the NPR link in which Robert Olen Butler talks about his now-infamous e-mail. Wow.

Butler insists that his initial email about the break-up, as well as all of his subsequent public blather, is meant to prevent people from saying terrible things about his wife — things which he details, of course. Butler also claims to be deeply grieved that Dewberry, “like many women,” (all we inept little wives, in other words) “had trouble living in the shadow of a stronger man.”

What a liar. The truth is that he’s mad as hell at her. He’s also overwhelmed with embarrassment. Ego-man Butler publically lost his trophy wife to a much-more-famous man. Moreover, she was a wife who had been a trial and a challenge to him since day #1, not because of her inadequacies but because of her irrepressible accomplishments: her very competency. By getting away from him in the end, she finally proved to be a challenge he could neither master nor meet. Pathetically, he is now trying to snatch the attention and victory back for himself by attempting to make Elizabeth Dewberry look like a freak; alas, he only succeeds in making himself look like one.

A feed reader (or aggregator) is a way for you to build a customized web “newspaper” for yourself.  You can then track updates from your favorite blogs and news sources, all on one page. 

Here’s how to create a Google Feed reader for yourself. I use Google because it is free and easy to use, and no Google is not paying for the endorsement!

1. Click here to open Google Reader.  (You now have two windows open, so you can still read this.)
2. Sign in if you already have a Google account (or use gmail)… otherwise, click “create an account now” and follow instructions to create your account.
3. Choose your headlines (= “subscriptions”).  There are three ways to add new blogs or news (e.g., CNN) to your reader.
   –  (easiest): click “browse” to see Google’s suggestions to get you started.  Click the ones you want to add. —-OR —-
   –  click “browse” and type in the title of the blog or news site you want to add (e.g. “How to (almost) get the job,”) then select  the one you want to add it. —- OR —-
   –  click “add subscription” if you already know the feed URL, which you can find on many blogs by clicking on this icon: 

   

4. A list of your subscriptions appears at left, and any with new content will be highlighted (everything will be highlighted when you start!).  Click highlighted headlines to see new content.  New content will be “marked as read” as you read it.  If you don’t want to read it, click “mark as read” to de-activate the “newness” of the uninteresting content.
5. To save (or “clip”) interesting articles, click the star icon by that article.  Starred articles will be filed under “Starred items,”  top left, for you to read later.
6. Click “manage subscriptions” now or later to get rid of any that you don’t want.

Plea to readers:

Have a comment, correction, or tip on this subject? What feed reader(s) do you use?  What are your favorite subscriptions?  Do you use your feeder professionally, and if so, how? 
 

Creative Commons photo by Sister 72

Author Elizabeth Dewberry has just left her husband for Ted Turner. Dr. Dewberry’s husband is some guy named Robert Olen Butler, and I’m delighted to say I’ve never heard of him.

Apparently Butler is both a professor and a Pulitzer-prize winning author himself. I didn’t know this. What I did know was that his now-estranged wife is no slouch. She’s served as a Playwright-in-Residence, has written plays, articles and at least four novels, one of which is called His Lovely Wife, which I quoted in an earlier post because its description of what it can be like, being married to a professor, was so spot on. I didn’t realize it was quite so autobiographical! Apparently, Dewberry — who is quite lovely — often found herself being introduced just like that, as in, “And here is Pulitzer-Prize-Winning Author, Robert Olen Butler!!” pause. “..and his lovely wife, Elizabeth Dewberry.”

Butler is currently in a lather because of an email about the affair which he sent around to a few of his students, which “somehow” was released to Gawker. I have no idea what Dewberry thinks of her husband’s revelations about her own life history, but Butler clearly believes himself to be quite the unappreciated hero.

In truth, he sounds like a patronizing, class “A” jerk. Not all that different from the other men he describes as Dewberry’s abusers.

Butler (whom, I’m pleased to repeat, I’d never heard of) bemoans the fact that his pretty little wife could never get out of his mighty, Pulitzer-winning shadow, despite his best efforts to pat her on the head as often as he could. This from a man who, rumors have it, once told someone wanting to introduce him at a conference that “When you have won the Pulitzer, you no longer require an introduction.”

Nice. And a great guy to be married to, I’m sure. I wonder what Mr. Marilee Jones is like?

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Related Posts:

The Devil in Ms. Jones: His Lovely Wife
How to (almost) get Marilee

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

As it appears I will either be freelancing (or panhandling) for some time yet, I’ve got some more homework to do. The Anti 9-5 Guide answered my questions in a recent post, which also sources a good freelance rate calculator to get folks like me started.