Life in the Slow Lane

This is the post I almost didn't write. And before I can actually write it, let me put in a few disclaimers: This is the life I know. This is not intended as a statement about the lives of others or of how lives should be or even of how my life will be tomorrow. This is right now, in my little house. I sit long-ways on our rocking couch, the laptop topping my lap, my legs resting on the pile of yet-to-be-answered letters I dreamed would be considerably smaller by now, my feet hanging off the armrest on one side and my shoulders hanging over the other side. The toy box is tipped on its side spilling out a conglomeration of toys, baby books, wooden spoons and other miscellaneous kitchen items that worked particularly well as distractions at some point during the last few days. There is a basket of laundry that includes a load of clean, dry towels and clean, wet diapers. The sink is full of dirty dishes, the drying rack is full of clean dishes, and the table is full of everything tha...

Very faithful, very loyal readers of my blog may have noticed a sharp decrease in the number of posts in the last year. This results primarily from the cloud of thank you notes awaiting attention for approximately the same amount of time. Every time I felt an inclination to write on my blog, I redirected myself as the simple equation this year has needed to be "writing = thank you notes". But dear friends, my magic year given to me by all manner of manners experts comes to a close in two days, and I still have a pile (smaller, yes, but still a pile) of notes to write. And all impending deadlines of doom must be met with procrastination of the highest order: blogging. I attended a writers conference earlier this week. One of the workshops was for bloggers, and the leader shared all sorts of helpful information. The most encouraging thing, perhaps, was his retelling of the confession of one of the best bloggers of our time saying that he hadn't written a single good blog p...

Cyclone Nargis. Remember that? R___ does. He's writing from Myanmar, sharing about how the cyclone destroyed fresh water reserves and now disease is rampant. His one joy in the four pages of email is of a woman who let him know that she receives hope and comfort from hearing "sweaty Christian songs". He probably meant sweet, but then again, everything in Myanmar is sweaty. C___ just needs adult diapers so she can wheel herself around her village with no fear of shame. The chances she'll get them? With embargoes and poverty? Slim to none. And K___ over in India can't "pasteurize the thought" of people dying without a savior. I can't make sense of that, but there's a lot I can't make sense of. A nation visitors have called "hell -- on a good day" shakes violently, a marriage of 30 years flickers and dies. A grown son commits suicide. 7.0 on the Richter scale. In thousands of places, millions of lives. There are no easy answers....

Please do allow us to the outset of this letter, our most sincerely apology for the quite unforgivable presumption of writing to in this manner. However, we do hope that our letter is not too disruptive on your busy schedule of numerous commitment and obligation or worse an effrontery on good sense. These words were penned by two people imprisoned for espionage in a far away country. Maybe I just bumped into a novel in the making.

Yesterday I received an email with an attached document and the request that I translate it and return it. From the start, I could tell there was some weird vocabulary going on, especially as it dealt with a religious order founded during the Crusades. I hop-skipped-and-jumped my way through the text, translating what I could and trusting that what I could get was sufficient information for their purposes. And then I gave up and went to Google. I thought surely I could get some information somewhere that would help fill in my knowledge enough to make sense of what I was translating, and I did. Wikipedia had a lengthy entry on the subject and I began to read through it until it sounded eerily familiar. On a hunch, I visited the Spanish version of Wikipedia and found almost word-for-word the document I was translating. I work with someone who has become well-known for her answer "Let me tell you about this new thing on the web... it is called Google. Everything is google-able....

I am not a fan of floating words. Hope Family Blessings Love Laughter I've seen all of these floating in decorator space, and it seems almost painful. Perhaps it has to do with a Compulsive Reading Disorder which causes me to read and re-read a word no matter how many times I see it and have read it. For instance, you don't want to know how many times I've read the same cereal box or the really lame comic posted next to the computer I sometimes borrow. (The irony is that the lame comic is this guy at a race track and every time the race car flies past he says, "Woah. déjà vu .") But Compulsive Reading Disorder aside, I think it has more to do with a sense that you have lost everything but one magnet from the set of magnetic poetry on your fridge. Or maybe it is because it is like one solitary little wisp of a cloud on a day that was meant for a soul-stirring sunset. Floating words are like a single note confidently played and then left hanging, naked of the co...

Earlier this week I went looking for a small bit of information I wrote down nearly ten years ago. I knew I had recorded it sometime in my journal, but now that I have been journaling for fifteen years, I wasn't quite sure where I might find it. As I skimmed through my drawer full of journals, it seemed strange that there were so many events I did not even vaguely recognize. If it were not for the fact that the incidence was sandwiched between events I did remember, and summarized in my less than model handwriting, I might have thought some other person's journal had gotten mixed in with mine. I always suspected that when I chronicled an event it was so a future me would be able to remember the details where only a shadow of a memory existed. Of course, for a time I thought I journaled so one hundred years later a distant relation would know what it had been like to be me, but that was before I realized that even a distant relation might be too close. But now, ten years later...

I'm supposed to be writing. I have a ten page paper due next week, a thirty page paper the week after that, and somehow, I was supposed to have managed ten minutes of journal writing every day for the last month and a half. The problem of ten minutes of journal writing every day is that frequently in ten minutes of journal writing my greatest efforts net me "Friday, May 16, 2008." Of course, in the following ten minutes I may just be able to pull off two or three pages, but those first ten minutes usually leave very little to show. So yes, I have quite a bit of writing to do. And that isn't even taking into account the letters sitting on my desk at work. This week was not nearly as productive as some weeks, I think I only managed maybe 25 letters. And all week long, as I peaked into my file drawers to take stock of the piles tucked away or I made up another reason as to why I should go check the level of paper in the printer, I heard the sound of many excuses march...

School is in session and that means that the post graveyard is getting larger and larger. For those of you who don't know, the post graveyard is the place that half-finished and barely-started posts go to die. There they linger in drafts, perhaps funny at one point, perhaps of some interest once upon a time, but now they wilt. But do not mourn too deeply, Dear Readers, I have a sinking suspicion that come time for me to work on my two final papers, those posts will walk like the zombie of that bad movie I never watched. And they may fall just as flat.

The exclamation point and I have had a tumultuous relationship. When I was young, it seemed that this particular punctuation mark spoke of immaturity and " i's " dotted with little hearts. So I never used them. Never. And when I read something that contained this avoided object, it would mess up the sound of the sentence because the whole point of the exclamation point is to emphasize the last word beyond all normal speech pattern. And then I started making my living by writing letters. And I built my letters on the bones of other letters that had exclamation point after exclamation point. I struggled so hard to leave those exclamation points without touching them. Time after time, I would try to reword the sentence so that I could get rid of the little mark above the period and just leave the much more demure looking period. But personal growth is a goal of mine, and I thought, after a time, that perhaps my revulsion of the exclamation point was overstated. And so I...

I think my blog is on the verge of an identity crisis. The most consistent reason new readers visit here is for the song lyrics I posted to annoying children's songs more than two years ago. And how can I, in good consciousness, continue to post on a blog titled "Life in the Slow Lane" when I've said I would do what promotes the very antithesis? (work overtime) But if I stop posting about the things of the Slow Lane, who will carry on? Who will confess to a board member stopping to comment on how she owns nail color the exact shade as I am wearing on my toes, but she only bought it because she knew she would never wear it so it could be seen? Who will instruct on the proper way to wash a car (leave it in the rain) or what to say when an eleven year old calls you to share what he is eating for dinner? Indeed, I would be tempted to stop posting altogether if it weren't for the fact that this blog is contributing to the sanity of at least one person in this great ...

Out on the Mommy-blogs, I occasionally hear mention of a baby-sitting co-op, wherein Mommies exchange babysitting through a system of points, and everyone gets to benefit from the skilled childcare provider that is also called Mom. I think in the work-a-day world (as opposed to the Stay at Home Mom world, which is the work-night-and-day world) someone needs to begin the proof-reading co-op. Really, I'm not sure how much more explanation I can come up for it, because it seems like such an obvious need that I can't figure out why it isn't already in place. Although, maybe I can. Because come to think of it, a great percentage of what I proof-read leads me to believe that in an exchange I would come out poorly. And I'm one who misspelled "grammar" until I was in college. But seriously, something has got to be done. If for nothing else than greater peace of mind when something I write gets mass-produced and sent around the world.

Sometimes I am almost positive that I overhear the narrator of the great screen play that is my life. I was on the phone, trying to not dash the hopes of a caller about an incredible new idea he wanted to market (which has already been done a million times over) and I gently chided him saying, "Well, you know what they say... there's nothing new under the sun." And then the narrator said "She gently chided." Really, if someone is going to narrate my life, can't they at least stay away from cliches and tired sayings? I mean, really. "Gently Chided"? But on the other hand, maybe the narrator had to pop in at that point because the audience was having some trouble believing that I was actually chiding gently. Because that is how it is, a lot of times, the narrator has to stick her head in to help the audience know what is going on. For in this instance, the audience probably fully expected me to respond "Where on earth have you been hiding that ...

On occasion (so maybe like twice), in my writing life, I will come upon the perfect set of words. I will be happy they arrived, and continue on with life. But then, sometimes, the perfect set of words will be seen by others, and as they hold them up to be examined, I think that maybe the words are too perfect, and maybe I have actually heard them before and that is why they came so easily. And the fear that I am unknowingly stealing someone else 's words and claiming them as my own, sends me into a panic, and makes me think that perhaps it would be better if I never brought my words out in public. Or maybe the solution is just to wear them for all to see, hoping that someone will recognize them and so have the words returned to their rightful owner.

For those of you who are blissfully unaware, Christmas is less than two months away. I've already participated in sending Christmas greetings to 30 people. I probably have another 20 or so, and then I get to move on to people I know. Which of course is another dilemma. This year is perhaps the first year when it makes sense for me to send out the traditional holiday greeting. Of course every year it is wonderful to get excited at the Christmas season and do your very best to express in words, that cannot possibly suffice, the incredible truth of Christmas, but usually the traditional holiday greeting serves an entirely different purpose. It says, in varying degrees of transparency, "Here I am. I'm still alive. And I want you to know that I'm still alive. And I want you to remember me. And I'd like to know you're still alive, too." I find this particularly necessary this year because after moving to a corner of the world that I didn't even know existed ...

This week was National Letter Writing Week. I know what you're thinking... "What?!? You waited until Friday to tell us that this was National Letter Writing Week?" Yes, dear readers, I did. But don't worry, I probably wrote enough letters to make up for all of you. Actually I just did some more research and discovered that National Letter Writing Week was the first week of October. I don't suppose it changes anything, though. The entire point behind bringing up the themed week was to point out that you probably did not write any letters and I did. So Ha! I feel special. I think I'll go write myself a letter now.

Today the staff of Life in the Slow Lane bestows upon Me of the One Name, the Bronze Pen in recognition of her 500th letter written in the line of duty. *Much Applause and Acclaim* [Begin Acceptance Speech] Thank you, thank you. I couldn't have done it without the loving support of all of you here in the Slow Lane. When I try to figure out what to write to someone who closes their letter with "RESPONSE NOW" or "P.S. Send money." or "I'm up for parole in 2007" it is a great inspiration to know that all of you are here to cheer me on. To know that I have now written more letters in the last four months than many people do in their entire lives... Wow, what can I say? But thank you, it is an honor to be recognized with the Bronze Pen. [End Acceptance Speech] *Please Note: The Bronze Pen does not really exist. However, the 500 letters really do.

That is what you get when you take the create out of the creative. You wind up with something sick, something maintaining life in some unnatural way. Yet for some reason, "creative" means that you can talk about the perverse and about honorable things without a trace of reverence. You can laugh about child abuse and infidelity. You can stir the muck of your mind, throw it on paper, and call it good. Repulsive. How can I learn to write well when the teacher wallows in filth and then admires how he looks? How can I bring an objection when it has already been established that everyone who objects is equal to Hitler and Stalin? If the pen is mightier than the sword, wish me good aim.

I received my second letter of rejection yesterday. Instead of writing a drinking song like I did for my first rejection, I spent some time with a certain three year old who easily made me forget all of my previous problems. And then I went and sat in a court room for a few minutes. That made me forget even the three year old. But instead of spending the entire day moving from uncomfortable to worse, I ended the day by playing the coolest keyboard I have ever had the priviledge to play and eating some blackberry vanilla cheesecake. When the next rejection letter arrives, maybe I will go straight to the piano and cheesecake.

The writer's life always sounds very noble and romantic. But it occured to me that maybe the reason behind this was due to the fact that it is writers who write about it. Now you may think this is rather self-explanatory, but imagine what an engineer might have to say about how the writer lives. Even if he thought writers were cool, if it all relied on him to propagate the occupation, it would live a miserable existence. I think that this is for the same reason you have a large field of historians who study the history of history. It is good and right that the people involved in a particular field should enjoy that field and study all of its avenues, but writers and historians have an extra dimension to the scope of their field. I mean, can you imagine the study of the mathematicalness of math? or the orthodontics of orthodonture? or the science of science? Sure, there may be a handful of people who take an interest in what might be construed as such, but mostly they...