Six Words Can Say It All

My blog is back for now.

I'm inspired by things I've read. Few words can say a lot. Six words can say it all.

On relationships:
You love and then you change.

On parenting teens:
And now you break my heart.

On writing:
It's much harder than you think.

On the world:
It's hard to hope these days.

On health and fitness:
But where's the fun in this?

On fun:
The stuff that makes you smile.

On spirituality:
Done right, it builds you up.

On getting older:
Can wisdom really trump good looks?

On rivers:
You float, you work, you see.

On cats:
Bundles of fur, creatures of mystery.

On dogs:
They love you no matter what.

Now tell me what you think. What six words work for you?

I Know Why the Caged Blog Pings

A new blog is like a new, fuzzy pet. Fun to play with, cool to show your friends, like the kitten that psycho-scrambles through your house or the hamster that runs into perpetuity. You get a really good feeling from taking care of the new little thing, and you secretly relish that ego-stroking sense of power, knowing that it is 100%, completely, dependent upon you. You don't even mind at the beginning, too terribly much, when it ignores you. The kitten slinks off to the corner and refuses to sit on your lap. The hamster is more interested in the inanimate leaf of lettuce than your smiling face. Nobody posts a comment on your blog. It's okay, though. You can deal with this.



But then life rings your doorbell and you veer off into other directions. The kids are swallowed up by soccer schedules, the school has an irritating habit of requiring homework, and your son's teenage romance begins to invade your time and emotional energy. Your ailing parent ails some more. And then you open your mail to discover that your money has gone AWOL, and it's a lot worse than when your keys are missing, because you can't so easily retrace your investment steps or pull the extra set of mutual funds out of your junk drawer. You are treading water in major grown-up issues and don't have time for that new little pet.



And what happens when you don't feed the kitten or hamster? The same is true with the blog. I returned from a couple of weeks of Life to find my blog gasping for breath, shriveled from dehydration. There was a part of me that thought about just turning and walking away. I know, that's lame; it shows my weaker shadow. But I confess it's true. I knew, however, that I simply couldn't do that. I couldn't create something and then just abandon it, like those nasty people in Nebraska do with their unwanted children.



And so I write again. And it feels good. The blog is fattening up and purring and beginning to yawn and stretch. We are a pair again, like Timmy and Lassie, or Charlie and Snoopy. We are here for each other. And that's why the caged blog pings. It needs me.



PS: Maya, if you read this, thank you for letting me play with your title. You have inspired me in so many, often unpredictable, ways.

Trio of stories

Last night I went to a reading at Camalli's Book Store in Bend. I listened to a story about a tiny man named Ron, a story about death and deer, and a toddler-in-charge story. It was a strange mixture of images for one evening, and I wonder what might happen if that tiny man were to picnic with the toddler on the lawn where the deer grazes. The more I think about it, the more it gives me the creeps. Still, it's that type of experience that sometimes leads to awesome story ideas, and I think I will ponder that some more.

What's in a name?

Every once in a while I get a little crazy and decide to take another step into the abyss of technology. This week I took another step, an unsettling step for someone my age.

I opened a new email account, on gmail. No big deal, you might think. Right?

Let me tell you how wrong you are. Because deciding on one's identity is no small feat. Anyone who has set up a gmail account knows that you can't use the name you want to use. You can't be the person you want to be.

And I for one don't think it has anything to do with the fact that somebody else has your exact name and idea. I'm quite sure it's actually a Googleconspiracy.

I wanted an easy, snappy name, one that didn't require a lot of spelling. What about gailmail@gmail? Sounds pretty good, yes? But no, it's "not available". It's taken? I tried the old first and middle name thing: gailelizabeth@gmail. Nope. Already taken, too. And on it went. I could have used something like gailelizabethinbend2495@gmail . Obviously there are already 2,494 people named Gail Elizabeth living in Bend, a town of only 70,000. It makes me wonder where all those women are. I have never ever met a single Gail Elizabeth in my many years of living, but there sure are a lot of them out there in Googleland.

For a moment I thought it would be easier to go down to the courthouse, or wherever you go, to change my name. But I refused to let Google determine my identity. I've spent years (decades actually) working on this, trying to figure out what type of person I wanted to be. What style clothes to wear. What music to groove to. What to be when I grew up. And you know what? This is a free country, and I am not going to let some ginormous (spelled according to my thirteen year old son) company decide my identity!

So, I kept plugging, and typing, and clicking away, and finally came upon an email that uses my first and middle names and the initial of my last name. And in the end this all makes sense. My first name is of course how most people know me, but my husband usually only uses that name if he's keeping emotional distance for some reason. My middle name, or a nickname derived from my middle name, has become his pet name for me, so on good days I can be that person. And then, to others, I have been known by my last name, so the first initial of that last name makes sense too, if you're one of those few people and if you are even planning to send me an email via gmail, which is highly unlikely.

Of course, it's still all too long and complicated, and I have far more important things to think about at this stage of life, and the more I think about this email problem, the more I don't like it, so I think maybe I will go down to the courthouse and get a new name.

But first I'll check with gmail.