Another pointless list post -- now with gifs!

(reposted from Jen Unexpected)

It’s 9:50 pm on a Wednesday night. I’m sitting in a Denny’s with a Coke and a plate that held apple pie 10 minutes ago listening to the elderly couple behind me bicker good-naturedly about whether or not their pancake puppies contain white chocolate chips. I left my house so that I could write this article about the current state of same-sex marriage in this country without distractions. Hah.

Instead I am scrolling through my tumblr dash looking for paralympics gifs and posts, flipping over to Ctwitter every four minutes, and coming up with stuff I want to do instead of what I am doing about every seconds. 

What I NEED to be doing:

Things I want to do instead of write this article, in no particular order, for my own reference next time I am sitting around wasting time on the internet and should be doing something freaking productive already:

• Make a post compiling the best tweets of the past week or two from my twitter stream, because my twitter friends are hella funny. 
• Similarly compile and post the hysterical things my children have said lately, because they are also very very funny. 
• Work on the landing page for my new website. 
• Make some new CABD posts. 
• Work on any of the photobooks for the past several years that I am half-assedly trying to put together before my Picaboo groupon expires (I’ve got like four more months, but still).
• Fume about the RNC, the GOP, and the blatant use of transparent falsehoods in the presidential campaign.
• Watch the Paralympics opening ceremony. 
• Go home and settle in to crochet some more geeky amigurumi to sell at Kerrytown Bookfest on September 9. 
• Sleep. 

This will be me tomorrow at work:

a little blatant self-promotion

I'm doing some hack writing for a couple of internet sites, including eHow and Naked Law. I love doing this sort of writing. Random topics, internet research, down-to-earth writing, and getting paid for it. I am quite geeked about the whole thing, to be honest. I'd do this all day every day instead of my actual official job, if I could. Not practical, unfortunately. But for the moment it helps fulfill the creative urges and also helps pay the bills, so it's all good.

I also get to find out about things I would never have otherwise known. Granted, perch fishing isn't a subject I am dying to know more about, but I did find out some interesting stuff about the history of not-well-known area of my state. I also have discovered:

• The word "avocado" comes from the Aztcean word ahuacatl meaning "testicle." Think about THAT next time you're craving guacamole.
• Men's shirts during the early 19th century had super long shirttails because underwear wasn't really commonplace yet. So they wrapped the tails around their legs to keep their bits from pants-related abrasion.
• Saffron costs like fifty bucks an ounce because someone has to strip out the stigma of a crocus by hand and it takes 75,000 of the damn crocuses to make one pound of the stuff. So seriously, people, show some love to the saffron-pickers. 
• The official protocol of the Olympic opening ceremonies calls for a symbolic release of pigeons (why not doves, I have no idea). The pigeon-release used to come directly before the lighting of the Olympic cauldron until 1988 when, and I quote, "following the unfortunate demise of several pigeons sitting on the edge of the Olympic cauldron at the Opening Ceremony of the Games in Seoul, this part of the protocol was moved, but not eliminated." So now, the pigeons are released AFTER the cauldron is lit. Good call.

See? Isn't your life more complete for knowing these things? I thought so.

life is messy

It has been a super-annoying week.

Mimi and Boo have both had difficult days, although they at least had the grace to alternate; Wednesday Mimi raged and screamed from the time I got home from work right straight through until bedtime; tonight Boo started whining at me the minute I walked in the door, everything from "I want milk!" to "That's BOOOOOORING" to "my thumb tastes nasty." I am thinking about ripping my ears off.

I made my kid cry by threatening to trash her play-doh.

My kids keep substituting the word "poop" into random song lyrics.

The house is a wreck and I'm having family and friends over tomorrow for Boo's birthday so I have a ton of clean-up to do. Plus presents, decorating, wrapping, etc.

I got called judgmental on twitter, in the process of asking people not to judge others, in regards to the whole Similac formula recall. Some people can't successfully nurse their babies. Some people choose not to. Can we all stop being MEAN about it, please?

I posted a link to a blog post about taxation an the middle classes on facebook, and started a whole thing without intending to, and called someone an asshole, and somehow got insulted for being short. I just thought it was an interesting blog post. I should really know better by now.

I have crochet orders backed up the wazoo and barely any time to work on them. I strained a tendon in my hand a few weeks ago and couldn't crochet at all for a couple of weeks, which didn't help.And I was recently reminded about some stuff I still owe people from the summer. And it practically takes an act of God to get me to the post office, I don't know why.

I got accepted as a hack writer for a content provider which is wonderful because I desperately need even the pittance that might bring in, but I have not been able to get my brain functional enough to write a 500-word article about perch fishing in Michigan. Seriously.

The cat keeps eating the dog food. The dog keeps eating the cat food.

And this is not even counting the normal, everyday woes like not having a functioning washing machine, the laundry piled everywhere, my broken tooth, the house falling apart around me, my negative checking account balance, Mimi's psychological issues, childcare scheduling difficulties, and my tendency to start crying at the stupidest things these days.

This is my life. It's insane. I wish certain things were very different. I would like to be able to pay my bills and own a house and sent my kids to gymnastics class and buy pretty things for myself.
No time, no time, no money, no time.

Really, the reason I started this post was to say, gah, I have had a crap week so here's some cute stuff to look at. But instead I made a wish list at etsy to cheer myself up. Someday when I have discretionary income again, I am going to buy myself some cute stuff and not feel guilty about being good to myself and everybody else can just bite me.

I'm here. I'm alive, and I'm grateful for that. Life is messy. The alternative is worse. I beat myself up for lots of reasons, most of them related to things listed above that aren't really even in my control. I am not the best mom in the world. Or the nicest person. But I'm the best me there is and that's what you're all going to get.

This post was inspired by this one. Please read it. It's important.

so now what?

So I haven't been writing much lately. At least not much longer than 144 characters; if you follow me on Twitter, you've no doubt found that I am quite prolific over there. I do think that as I became more active on Facebook and Twitter my need to blog about my life shrank to almost nothing; cute stories about the kids which I used to blog now go on Facebook; pithy quotes (again from the kids, for the most part) go on Twitter. Random updates about myself and my life can be found both places. And then divorce process finished killing what had been already dying slowly; there was so much I couldn't talk about no matter how desperately I wanted or needed to.

I tried focused blogging, for a bit, experimenting with a crochet blog, a tango blog, even a "look at this ridiculous shit"-type blog that people keep getting book deals for. I'm no Cake Wrecks or Regretsy, however (although I AM in the Regretsy book, so booyah) and no book deals fell out of the sky for me. I also had difficulty keeping on topic, since I'm a bit "ooh shiny!" when it comes to my writing style. So I established this site without really knowing what I'd do with it, since I can't just, you know, NOT have a web presence or a place to write things down when the mood does strike, which is still does once in a while, but I'm still trying to figure out how that presence will manifest itself. I have a few ideas, which I am presenting for your consideration. If anyone is actually reading.

1) Twitter, but more so
I've thought about taking me tweets and expanding on the more interesting/funny/popular ones. The main idea is already there and written, so it's a bit of a time-saver. This seems a little self-indulgent, however.

2) Single-parent blogging.
There are a lot of "mommy" blogs out there. Mine was one of them, for a long time. I don't know if there are a a lot of single-mom blogs. My guess is most single moms, including myself, are too freaking busy and tired to write about how freaking busy and tired we are. We also face a lot of challenges 2-parent families don't have to deal with, and considering how many single-parent families there are out there, I do think we are rather underrepresented in the blogosphere.

3) Dating, with children
An offshoot of the single-parent thing is trying to restore some sort of social life to one's schedule after a divorce. We're still human beings with the need for adult interaction, adult beverages, and adult activities, and this can be quite difficult to manage, as I am discovering. It can also be fun. And heartbreaking and frustrating and all the things regular dating (pre-children) was, but more so.

4) Crochet, with patterns
I'm not sure about this. I love to make stuff. I love that people are starting to actually buy stuff I make. I don't know about pattern-writing, which is harder than it seems, I've discovered; I don't know if anyone would pay me for my patterns.

5) Contract blogging
There are a few aggregate sites which hire bloggers for specific gigs, or for certain topics. I've thought about chucking my own site altogether and trying for a gig like that. However, I don't know how to write a pitch and I have no idea how to go about getting it together for something like that. It would be nice to get even nominal pay for this stuff, though, I mean really.

And again, I just don't know if I can stick with a focused format, or if I'll eventually do what I always do and either wander off, or go back to writing about whatever pops into my head.