Almostgotit.com

After my recent rush of blogging fame, that sweet tang of success, that glorious affirmation that the world was FINALLY listening to all that I had to say (when not getting sodas for everyone), I now have returned to my ordinary life.  And it’s not bad here, I have to say.

Re yesterday’s link problem: although I should have known better than to email those people, duly warned by my brilliant brother that I might thereafter be spammed eternally by republican terrorists, I ended up connecting with a professional  blogger who also knows the author of our “Career Encouragement” feed (see right).   It was a very nice exchange, and the leak seems to be fixed.  So all’s well that ends well, etc., and I’ll just have to ignore that lonely little spike in my daily stats graph until it gradually fades away.

Meanwhile, though,  I really do appreciate the remaining folks who are still reading my blog. (Hi to BOTH of you guys!)

For better or for worse, I hang around with a lot of very successful people, and it is awfully hard not to feel like a failure when I start focusing on their many successes. And let’s not mince words here:  failure sucks.   But as I’m currently watching the suffering of someone I love, I’m realizing that success pretty much sucks, too.  Whenever we tie ourselves to any kind of measuring stick, that damn thing is going to fail us. 

I believe we were all made to labor at something, and that there are few things so good as having meaningful work for our hands and minds to do.  But it is very dangerous to give into the seductive (and commonplace) poison of defining ourselves by our occupations.  Nor should a career ever come at the cost of all the other things that we need just as much or more. 

Winston Churchill’s greatest nemesis arrived at our house over the weekend in a way that has taken us all by surprise.  We are taking Very Big Steps to remove the beast from our lives – some of them, by necessity, fairly public.  And I suppose that by refusing to wallow helplessly in emotional ruination, our future political careers are ruined now, instead.  Darn.

That link, by the way,  for any delving paparazzi looking to expose us:  http://almostgotit.com/  TELL ALL YOUR FRIENDS! 

So, are there still laughing babies, and whiskey barrels newly seeded? Yes. (Here’s four babies laughing at once, as a matter of fact.)

Are we comforting ourselves with Easter chocolate?  Some…  but even now, we’re sticking to our guns on the slave chocolate issue– my kids even more than I!  Several people tried giving my daughter various chocolate gee-gaws, the kind mass-produced somewhere overseas, of equal parts chocolate and plasticine, but *very* festively wrapped.  She decided to accept them, but did so with such a funny expression on her face that it made me want to giggle and cry at the same time.  I’m sure it confused the heck out of her benefactors.  Fortunately, I’d planned ahead so we had generous reserves of non-slave-chocolate “Green & Blacks” bars (the best!!!)  and lots of other candy as well.  So really, it was no great loss. 

A good friend who lives too far away just emailed me a casserole.  Just the thing. (Thanks!)

Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse is a children’s novel entirely written in blank verse. 

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who sometimes just writes that way.  I may have been an English major in college but I’d even forgotten that this sort of writing had a name.  I’d certainly forgotten (or else, I’d certainly all-but-decided to forget) that this sort of writing had any sort of legitimacy.  I’ve been doing it anyway. (Ashes to ashes, and Hesse won a Newberry:  Dust to dust, and I win writing while I do the laundry.) 

In some ways,  the story is so unremittingly tragic that it should be wildly inappropriate for children; the blank verse is so strange, meanwhile,  that it should be wildly inappropriate for a legitimate author to be using it. 

It works, though.  The author’s theme is forgiveness, even though the only theme some of our children could see was dust. 

Ah, well!