Rachel's practice exercises for new parents are dead on. Especially this quote, "What? I said I'd get the baby."
And this description: "Every day, when you get into your car to go somewhere (anywhere), toss approximately 2 cups worth of crumbs over your shoulder and into the backseat."
What's training exercises would you offer for new parents? Add them to the comments on Rachel's post: Practice, practice, practice!.
"I want to order a drink from the well. I want to sit on naugahyde. I want someone to smoke. I don't want to smoke. I want people to make music right there in front of me. I want everybody to know the words."
Go read the rest at Sippican Cottage: I Want.
Read this post and wish all these things for yourself.
One day my friend Rachel sends me a note saying, "Wha? Ha? What's this FaceBook thing and how do I make it work?" Next thing I know she has more FaceBook friends than I do AND she has a blog.
What can I tell you about Rachel? Sophomore year at OU we shared a "common area" in O'Bleness hall, plus a slew of common friends. We also shared clothes and beers and I don't know ... other things ... like homework. Yeah, homework.
Rachel was the fellow party-goer I wrote about here. That was sophomore year. The next year, I took a year off from school. The year after that, I came back and she was taking a year off. Then during what should have been our senior year but turned out to be our junior year (you following me here?), we ended up working together at the same Sports Tavern. The story about how that came to be is a funny one too. I'll tell you.
I'd been bartending for a few years at that point, and my boss Shawn was always looking for decent waitresses. I said, "My friend Rachel's been waiting tables full time for the past year. She just moved back to Athens. You should interview her." He said, "Okay. Call her." And this is how the interview went. I stood behind the bar while Shawn and Rachel sat at the bar, and we all settled on a fair way to determine whether or not she should work with us: If Rachel could match Shawn beer-for-beer all night long, Shawn would hire her on the spot.
Back then (long before these past seven years of me being pregnant, trying to get pregnant or nursing), I could hold my beer. Still, on a good night, I'd maybe match Shawn one beer for every two of his.
So, this is the point in the story where you realize exactly why I haven't mentioned the name of the bar. Just in case there's an equal opportunity fundamentalist reading this blog. After all, there could have been a lightweight drinker or even (gasp) a non-drinker out there who may have wanted the job. Such an interview process would not have been fair to them. It was hardly fair to Rachel - but she held her own during my entire shift. Then we closed down the bar and walked to a few others where she continued to match Shawn one bottled Busch beer after the next.
I think she started working with us two days later (she needed at least one day to recover).
Of course, Rachel and I both eventually graduated, quit the service industry, moved on and lost touch. Until one day I was talking to our mutual friend Amy from my home in Princeton, North Carolina, and I asked about Rachel. Amy said, "Let me check my address book. I know she just moved. I think she's someplace in North Carolina too ... Okay, here it is: She's in Clayton, North Carolina."
Wouldn't you know it? Clayton was 15 minutes down the road, and right on my way to work in Cary. So I called her, and we got together, hung out, and eventually bartered lawn mowers for canoes. What? Isn't that what all good friends do?
Now she's in Charlotte and I'm in Ohio, and we both have two boys and mommyblogs. Boy, how life changes.
You might remember how excited I was when Sarah started blogging. Well, I'm still no good at predicting who will get the blogging bug next - but I'm thrilled to introduce you to another friend who's unexpectedly caught it. Go check out Rachel's new blog & leave a comment. Tell her Ali sent ya.
If you've taken the time to check out my updated blogroll over there on the right, you may have come across my new, corporate blog. So I've joined the ranks of oh, just about everyone else in the blogosphere and become a multi-blogger. You know, like multi-tasker. Another crazy fool who posts at more than one blog.
How do you do it?
Not only do I have two blogs but I have two technorati profiles, two profiles at social media sites (myspace and linkedin), two separate feed-reader accounts (bloglines and google reader) and two separate blog rolls. I feel like I have a split personality. I need a techno-therapist to integrate my multiple online selves.
How do you know what to blog where, which URL to use when you comment on other blogs, and when to cross-post or mention one blog on the other blog? How do you not just go insane or close down one blog altogether?
It shouldn't be that hard. No one's even reading my other blog. It hasn't been promoted. And the topics there most clearly do not overlap with the topics here. But still. I'm feeling so splintered.
Can anyone relate? How do you get past it?
[Gidge tagged me for this. Sick is boring this time of year, I know. But we're all still getting over the grunge so it's still top of mind with me. Plus, I had already written a few e-mails to friends and co-workers about this, so it was an easy post to throw together.]
I like to think I'm too tough to get sick, too dedicated to call off work, and too strong to need extra sleep during the day. But the truth is real moms get sick too.
Twice when Robey was a baby I was sick enough that I couldn't do it alone, that I was grateful for a support system that allowed me to spend a day in bed when I needed it. This time when I got sick, Moe was sick too and he needed me, and I had to be there for him in a way that nobody else could.
After three days of nursing a baby and ignoring my own health, I was so sick and so tired and so deluded with fever that I was ready to check myself into a mental institution if the emergency room wouldn't take me. Of course, I did neither. Instead, I got myself up and showered and on the phone to three different doctors on Monday morning, called off work, then loaded myself and Monroe into the car and on the road to the doc appointments after a night of shaking in bed with the chills and the night sweats and the feverish delusions of a sick, bone-tired, life-giving, nursing mother to an around-the-clock screaming baby.
When I finally showed up for my own doctor's appointment at 11am Monday morning, he listened to my lungs, said they were really full of fluid - and then said, "It's probably bronchitis, though, not pneumonia. You'd be a lot sicker if it were pneumonia."
I must really know how to mask sick, I thought, because I don't get any sicker than this.
See? Still acting though. Still not admitting to the doctor that I felt worse than I looked. So I ran to the pharmacy and the grocery store, came home and answered a few e-mails for work, swallowed an antibiotic and kept up the act a little bit longer. Then I finally crashed. I cried and called my mom and asked her to come take care of us all. I took Monroe to bed with me in the middle of the afternoon and slept for two solid hours - and it was the best sleep I'd had in weeks.
At least half of the blogs on my blogroll have been retired, renamed or redirected. And half the blogs that I read everyday aren't even on this list. The only way I'm ever going to make myself update the dang thing is if I take it down altogether and start over.
So here's the original AliBlog blogroll. Look for the new version in the sidebar soon. Er, eventually. Okay. I promise to get to it before this post drops off the page. Deal?
Does anyone even care?
(For the Queen of Spain. Actual body organs not required, so you can play along at home.)
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