New Blog for a New Year

I’ve decided to archive Blue Streak and start a new blog (a. whole. new. blog.) at WordPress. 

You can find me here – http://neargh.wordpress.com/ - while I figure things out. 

Blue Streak will be archived at http://bluebelle.wordpress.com/, just ’cause I couldn’t get my head around the idea of losing almost 5 years’ worth of something I spent my limited creativity on, and took the trouble to move to three different platforms in that time.

My solution to the Blahs – start a new blog. 

Please update your blogrolls if I’m on ‘em – once I contact TypePad, they’ll delete this entire thing.  I’ll be doing that after the New Year. 

Thanks for your kind attention and support, and Happy Holidays!

Day Thirty: Whew

Well, I actually did it.  I blogged every day.  I don’t know that it’s been fun – or particularly entertaining for anyone else – but it’s done.

I’m still thinking of letting this go.  I’ll give it a few days more thought and see how I feel.  It’s nice to have my own little corner of the web to whine from – a room of my own – but if it isn’t fun, there’s no point.  So let me see if I can find the fun.  It was fun intermittently this month, just not the daily grind part of it.

Thank you for visiting me during this experiment – it felt good to know there were readers stopping by, however briefly.

I’ll be the internet a dollar that every single NaBloPoMo post everywhere is metablogging about the last day of NaBloPoMo!  Even Mrs. K done it.   I’m such a joiner. 

Peace, y’all.

Day Twenty Nine: Al Gore

Finally saw An Inconvenient Truth.  Fascinating and disturbing.  Learned a few things I didn’t know before (like the actual ginormous sizes of the Antarctic ice shelves that have melted in the last few years, for example).

Gore was funny, quick, & highly entertaining.  Where was this guy 6 years ago??  I was reminded (for the millionth time) how differently things might have turned out had he spent these past few years in the White House. 

Someone wrote recently about the Mean Girls Syndrome and its relationship to why Bush got enough votes to (seemingly) win two elections – the tendency to hate geeks and nerds having been part of why neither Gore nor Kerry were unable to gain enough votes to reach an ass-kicking level of majority rule.  Reminded me of something from The West Wing:  no one likes the smartest kid in class. 

That’s not entirely true, though – some of us like the smart kids.

Day Twenty-Eight: Best Xmas Song Eva

A couple of years ago, Hubby found a CD set of ‘jazzy’ Christmas songs.  I haven’t been able to find another example anywhere online, but if you happen to EVER come across a collection with J. B. Summer’s "I Want A Present For Christmas" – get it.  You will thank me.  How can you not love a Christmas song where the singer exhorts Santa to visit and "bring a fine brown baby to me"?  Best. Christmas. Song. Ever.

Day Twenty-Seven: Like hash marks on a prison wall

I really feel like I’m slogging through this.  Where’s the energy?  Where’s the Joie de Blog?  Bad attitude, Devra.  Bad attitude.

EDIT:  I removed most of my post.  It revealed too much about family dysfunction and real life *stuff*.  You didn’t miss anything good.

Day Twenty-Six: Countdown

Only a few days left in November.  This has been an interesting experiment for me.  This daily blogging commitment has reconfirmed something for me:  I don’t enjoy blogging as much as I did a couple of years ago.  Which isn’t really a surprise – if I really enjoyed it, I’d find it much easier to make the time & I’d be excitedly popping on with tidbits to share.  I had hoped that by committing to do this daily, I’d rediscover something to make it fun again.  Not that it’s a massive drag or anything, but I’m just one more voice on the net with nothing particularly interesting to say, and no real enthusiasm for it.  When I was between jobs, I blogged everyday (give or take), had all day to read other blogs & check the news, and basically used this as one of my lifelines to the world.  With work & personal life changing & filling up more of my time, a blog is just one more thing to spend time on … and if I don’t have the time, that’s the way it is, and so what?  I spend FAR more of my online time reading what other people  have to say and researching things that interest me than composing little comments about my day or the world I live in, and I’m okay with that – but I don’t think it’s worth keeping a blog just to make rare & random comments.  I am feeling, at this moment and after experiencing 26 days of repetition & mediocrity – and a few moments of blinding clarity -  that this blog should shut down sometime shortly after this November commitment ends. 

Day Twenty-Five: more

When did folks decide this was a Christmas Song?  People, check the lyrics.  Not a Christmas Song – a Heartache Song, a Regret Song, a Lost My Baby song, a ‘misery hates company and I want desperately to get away from all this goddamned holiday joy’ song, but definitely NOT a Christmas Song.  Please stop playing it during Special Christmas Episodes and including it on the easy listening radio station Holiday Music Playlist.  Thank you.

Its coming on christmas
Theyre cutting down trees
Theyre putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
But it dont snow here
It stays pretty green
Im going to make a lot of money
Then Im going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I made my baby cry

He tried hard to help me
You know, he put me at ease
And he loved me so naughty
Made me weak in the knees
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Im so hard to handle
Im selfish and Im sad
Now Ive gone and lost the best baby
That I ever had
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
Oh I wish I had a river
I made my baby say goodbye

Its coming on christmas
Theyre cutting down trees
Theyre putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on

Day Twenty-Five: She will have her way

I don’t go music shopping very often.  It’s just too tempting.  There is so much music I don’t have (or used to have) & want, so music shopping for myself usually only happens when I’m music shopping for someone else.  That’s a self-imposed limitation – otherwise I’d be liable to send us to the poorhouse with uncontrolled spending.  Well, it’s Xmas shopping time and sure enough:  yeehaw!  My niece has a Beatles CD for her birthday (Help!), Hubby has a few jazz CD’s stashed away (ssshhhh!  secret!), and I have a nice used copy of Seven Worlds Collide for myself.  It’s a shame Neil Finn gets such short shrift here in the States – his two solo albums* are the only two CDs of ‘new’ music I’ve fully enjoyed in the last ten years. 

* Try Whistling This (1998) & One All  (2002)

Day Twenty-Four: That’s MS. Devra to you, pal

I don’t like it when someone calls me MRS.  It’s somehow automatically offensive to me.  My marital status doesn’t need to be advertised (yet I wear my wedding band gladly).  I don’t care to have anyone identify me solely as The Wife Of, rather than simply Me.  And that is what the tag MRS. means to me.  I am happy to be married, and I chose to take my husband’s name for an uncomplicated reason:  I liked the sound of my first name with his last name better than what I already had.  If I hadn’t liked his last name, I would’ve kept my ‘maiden’ name without a second thought.  I remember when I was a kid, in the 70’s, the idea of using ‘Ms.’ was still quite new – and often was treated as a joke (as much of the Women’s Movement was and still is by certain portions of the population).  I thought, "Cool – good idea!" 

Like what has often been termed Political Correctness, it seems to me that to identify a person as he or she WANTS to be identified is simple politeness.  My marital status is thoroughly irrelevent at my place of work, for one – but it’s also irrelevent almost anywhere else I go.  When someone calls me MRS. <—–> – I correct him without a second  thought:  "MS. <—–> – Mrs. <—–> is my mother-in-law."  That throws people off, for some reason.  I don’t mean to surprise people – it seems odd to ME that anyone would assume I identify myself as the wife of my husband rather than as my individual self. 

It’s become standard practice in business communication to use ‘Ms.’, but for some reason that hasn’t carried over into regular, everyday, at-the-grocery-store-and-in-the-park communication.  Perhaps we have focused so much of the fight on getting further in the work world that we’ve left the private person-to-person world to stew about somewhere in the late seventies.  Sometimes it’s the strangest thing – I check out at the grocery store (I’m alone), and the clerk sees my name on the receipt (some stores have those club card things, y’know), and says, "You saved X dollars, Mrs.<—–>!"  How does she know I’m married?  Where does that come from?  Freaks me out a little.  Do I *look* married?  Is there a certain aspect of my dress that gives it away?  No, I think it’s the assumption that a woman buying groceries who appears to be older than 21 MUST be married.  And a married woman MUST be MRS.  Because no woman over A Certain Age should be single – and no married woman would keep her maiden name.  Just assumption, assumption.  And that’s what gets me riled.  Assume that you know me, how I identify myself, what kind of homelife I have, what my goals and ambitions are … and you will piss me off.  My life is my own business.  For me, that’s what feminism is about – getting other people’s assumptions out of my space, freeing me to live by my own standards rather than those of others.  Developing into a fully-realized person without giving regard to someone else’s idea of what & who I should be (or appear to be).

I don’t know why this was on my mind this evening, but it was.  I really enjoy reading quote Feminist Blogs unquote – I don’t claim to be a well-read feminist scholar, but I always enjoy the conversations and discussions at blogs like the ones on my sidebar that would probably identify as such.  I usually don’t talk specifically about big-F Feminism, because (one) I’m not well-versed enough in the academic end of things and (two) I don’t have grand insights into gender relations and society – but I do know feminism enters into almost everything we do.  It’s in what we think about stereotypes and who should make dinner.  It’s in why a young woman knows better than to say Thank You when a male coworker compliments her figure.  It’s in boring-ass details like why I prefer ‘Ms.’ to ‘Mrs.’ and why I think it’s sad that women working at my agency have to deal with different behavior from clients than the men do.  I guess I just don’t see as many writers as I’d like talking about the daily dull realities of gender inequality.  We should all write about this stuff.  It’s just part of our lives – it’s not exotic stuff, so let’s talk about what’s right there everyday, before we get to thinking it doesn’t matter.

Day Twenty-Three: A welcoming table

There is no longer a question about where we go for Thanksgiving Dinner.  At one point, we tried to alternated between HIS folks and MY folks, then I relied upon the First To Ask method (whoever asks first, we go to), now we automatically go to HIS folks.  We are vegetarians, and my mother-in-law takes great pains to NOT rely upon Turkey as The Whole Meal.  She tries new recipes for pasta dishes, and veggie casseroles – she’s always trying a new experimental vegetarian dish for us.  She enjoys offering something for everyone.  My mother, I’m sorry to say, takes a different approach:  she serves what she serves, and it’s the same things she’s always served, and if you can’t get by on mashed potatoes, boiled carrots, and a roll, that’s YOUR problem.  So we don’t do Thanksgiving at my folks’ anymore.  I have come to the conclusion – despite her complaints that we aren’t interested in spending Thanksgiving with them – that if we were truly welcome at the table, they would include us in the meal. 

Also, I’m 37 years old – I think I’m old enough to eat at the Adults Table.  I really think it’s a bit much to expect a grown woman and her HUSBAND to eat at a card table in another room with the kids.

Admittedly, the conversation with the kids is better.

Anyway, Thanksgiving Dinner this year was very nice!  It also was a belated birthday party for Yours Truly.  You wish you had a birthday that lasted all holiday season, too, don’t you?