Abacus and Quill

It really was the universe, but it was delivered by RSS. Read it here.

True story. Once I wrote a series of blog posts about how frustrated I was in the job market, and then I freaked out. That wasn’t who I wanted to be! Sure, it’s who I was in that particular moment, but isn’t that what blogging is all about? But I just figured that out (possibly again – sometimes I catch my self ‘figuring things out’ and then I have to figure it out again and again and again*) and unfortunately, the person I was in that particular moment deleted the posts. Can you believe the gall of me? And my counterpart on this blog was really generous about it. I only got one email which said “Um, what happened to your stuff?”

Anyhow, today I realized that I could see all those deleted posts in my newsreader. And everyone knows that stuff on the internet doesn’t ever REALLY go away. And then the UNIVERSE spoke to me and here I am. Blogging. I’m very excited.

I’ll leave you with a question: Once you have used the frozen bag of mixed peas and carrots to ice a muscle pull, is it really ok to feed it to your family? I hope this doesn’t keep me up tonight.

*I have a series of entries in my journals I will call OMG, it’s 198_/199_/20__ and I just figured out why I eat too much. Only the year keeps changing. (Apparently I was good in the ’70s.) I will be doing this once a year for the rest of my life until I actually do figure it out. And that reminds me, I saw a trashy magazine with the headline “Oprah finally puts to rest her battle with weight” (or something like that) and my first though was “Did Oprah DIE?” So, some things just take a long time.

My frustrated child sat at the table the other day and bowed her head. “I’m so stupid!”

My giggling back-up-daughter* sat next to me in the car and exclaimed, “I’m so blonde sometimes.”

I gave them both the same advice. “Be careful of the names you call yourself, especially if it’s a name you wouldn’t let anyone else call you!” The names we call ourselves create psychic grooves – ruts for your thoughts to flow. Better they should flow to more positive things, like smart, lovely, wonderful, thoughtful, strong, talented, giving… you get the idea.

Now, give them their due, the 7-year-old and the 13-year-old both offered the same basic response of the slow eye roll and the silent “whatever”.  Why should they listen to me? What could I possibly know? But it’s worth exploring. What are we calling ourselves, and what do these names say to us, about us and for us?

Abacus & Quill.

My sister chose ‘Abacus’ because it’s somehow representative of her. Our discussion about what to call the blog was quick. She knew she wanted to use Abacus and I immediately came to ‘Quill’ for myself because of how I see myself in comparison to her. As the younger sister, I’ve never NOT thought of myself in comparison to her in one way or another, and literally, I am Quill because she IS Abacus. She’s all math-y and smart, and I’m the writer – the creative, arty, frothy, flighty one. Each of us also shares the qualities of the other, but I definitely created that groove of myself as the writer long ago and have been flowing in it ever since.

All in all, it’s a good groove that has served me well. Though I wonder how much of my identity is wrapped up in “reaction to/different from”. Bears further thought. I’ll be back to this later.

*I realize not everyone has back up kids, but I do. In addition to my own two girls, for the past five years, I’ve been backup mom to my friend’s two girls and a boy, while she plays backup for my girls. Much of the time, all five kids enjoy the benefits of our sometimes communal family, and having a BUM (as the oldest calls me) and their own backup sibs. It’s a good arrangement for the mom’s and the dad’s have come to embrace it too. We figure, the more people that have your back, the better. More on this later too.

kids and backup kids @ the beach