I blog, therefore I am

I guess Dooce’s post was more inspirational than I thought…this post has been brewing for a little while now, it’s about time I got it up here. 

When IT Boy was born, I started a blog.  Not this one, but one for family only, to view pictures of him and sister, and to hear about what was going on in our lives.  Amusingly, the family I created it for spent a huge amount of time questioning why I was doing this blog.  You might even use the word “scorn”.   I enjoyed blogging, but wasn’t getting a lot of support on the home front and figured I would eventually let the blog go the way of all flesh.  During that time, I was conversing with a co-worker and sent him the link to view the blog.  He sent me back a note, which included the following sentence:

Amazed good that you have found the time and energy to create something that your family will value greatly in future years.

I was stunned to get that note.  It encapsulated exactly what I was trying to do and gave me support at a time I needed it.  To create a legacy for our family.  How could someone who didn’t even know my family see the value of this when my own could not?  I may not have been able to fill out the baby books, or mark where and when every photo was taken, but I could tell the story of our lives in a blog.  When they were grown, I wanted the kids to see it and know exactly what we were going through, and how terribly much those moments as a family meant to me.   Even if no one around me got it in the present, maybe someone would, someday. 

I kept up that blog, and started this one.  And I ignored what people around me said, until I saw Dooce’s post.  It made me remember what this co-worker had said - I had even saved the email, it meant so much to me.  I was so happy that someone else put into writing what I have been thinking. 

The very night I read Dooce’s post, Little IT had dinner with a friend and her family.  When they brought her back, the dad saw my “Confessions of An IT Girl” business cards, and asked what they were.  Mr. IT jumped right in and starting telling him about my blog.  But it wasn’t in the tone I would have hoped for.  Suffice it to say, he was more poking fun at this endeavor than acting like a spouse that was supportive of my efforts. 

The dad (who I should add was not mocking, but was curious in a nice way) asked why I blogged.  I wanted to burst out and say much fun blogging is.  That it’s connected me with people in ways I never thought possible.  I wanted to tell him that I was asked to blog for a new site that another company had just started up.  How I had just completed my first blog interview for that site.  How my blog got Little IT and me on a national TV show.  How I was going to be quoted in a news article a few days.  I wanted to talk about the emails that I have gotten from parents of kids going through early intervention, and how they’ve said how much my blog, *my* little blog, has meant to them.  That somehow, in this crazy experiment, I’ve managed to make a difference.

But I didn’t get to talk about any of that, because the discussion had turned into a monologue on how blogging is ego run amok, and aren’t I crazy to get caught up in all of this.   At that point, I just wanted to get off the topic and said that I blogged for work.  Genuinely curious, the dad asked more, and I answered more, but my heart wasn’t really in it. 

You see, if you asked me that question tonight, I would have told you of all the joyous highs, and a few lows that have come with the territory here.  Sure, people can say what they want, but I have a thick skin.  I get what I am doing, and I am proud of it. 

Mostly, though, I would tell you that I’m doing this to make a difference somewhere.  Be it with my job, my friends, my kids or my world, if I can have an impact or at least try, I’m happy.  Sure, there’s ego here, but I hope people see a lot more than that.  Yes, I do dream of a day when my son and daughter will come here to learn a bit more about their crazy mom.  When they do, I hope they see how very much I love them and their father, and that my legacy may not be a journal, diary or painting, but it’s crafted with as much love and is every bit as meaningful. 

In short, I blog because I want to, and I can.  I thank all of you for coming on this adverture with me.  I promise you, the best is yet to come.

Le Freak by Chic

Yesterday, I had my first, but probably not last freak out of this “week before sales meeting.”  I was trying to do something with a piece of clip art.  Seriously, it was something I’ve done before, but in my panicked haze, I couldn’t make it work.  A visit to Twitter had some people trying to talk me through the procedure, but it wasn’t until my friend Steve IMed me and held my hands through the procedure that I allowed myself to be talked off the ledge.  Thanks be to Twitter, because that did provide me with the solution.  But the freakout…no one can really help me with those.

It’s not like I haven’t been to a sales conference before.  We have 3 major ones a year, although this is the only one we travel for.   It just happens to come at the end of our fiscal year, when we have about 1,001 end of year deadlines.  So, in addition to working on powerpoints for presentions, AND coming up with agendas for sessions with channel managers, AND setting up meetings with my international counterparts, I’ve got to get performance appraisals and year end objectives done for myself and my team. 

It’s my job, so I’m not whining.  I just thought it would be helpful for anyone crossing my path to understand why my hair is standing on end, and why by Thursday I’ll be sitting at work in my comfy pants. 

That’s enough blogging.  Back to the grindstone!

 

Anyone else ever have this problem?

Recently, I was talking to someone trying to schedule a meeting with me.  She complained that “I’m (me, Ellen) in meetings all the time, I have no free time.”  While that is a lovely sentiment, it’s really not completely true.  Some days are meeting heavy, some are not.  I wasn’t sure why she said this, so she elaborated.  “I’m looking in Lotus Notes for free meeting times, and you have every day from 8-6 blocked off.”

Seriously?

I investigated further.  Oh, here’s where it gets good.  Seems that Lotus Notes has a setting where you can list what times you are generically “available.”  My times for availability are 11:00 PM - 02:00 AM, 03:00 AM - 07:00 AM.   Because, apparently, I work on Pitcairn Island and keep 9-5 kind of hours. 

Since I never set that, I tried to reset it and the system would not accept any changes to the time.  I am destined to head to the South Pacific, apparently.  I figured it wasn’t worth torturing the rest of the company to struggle for meeting times with me in the middle of the night, so I called the help desk to fix the problem.  I got an email confirmation that a support ticket was generated, and the problem was described as so:

Incident Description: Can’t change anything in Prefs. Her calendar shows her as being busy always

Sigh.  The help desk understands me.

Had to do it

Those who know me are well aware that I have the soul of a 15 year old boy in me.  On that note, I have to submit to my inner juvenile and give a quick shout-out to all my high school friends and say…

Happy Leap Day!

<tee hee>

I feel better now.

Cablevision doesn’t suck as much these days

IT Boy has a strange fascination with this commercial.  When it comes on, he runs to the TV and starts going, “Oh!  Oh!”  In fact, when looking for this video on YouTube, I found videos of babies dancing to the song from the commercial.  Who knew?  I think Cablevision is onto something, building brand loyalty from infancy on. 

 

An ode to Super Fans

I could use this moment to be gleeful about the Giants victory - and boy was I gleeful last night.  But instead I’d like to offer a tribute to the Boston sports fan.  And not just because I am married to one.

You see, you can say what you want about the Boston sports fan, and boy do we in NY, but the one thing you have to admit is that they are loyal to their teams.  Maybe it’s because they have one baseball team and one football team, not to mention one hockey and basketball team.  Unlike NY where we have 2, 2, 3 and 2, respectively.  And that’s not counting the Buffalo Bills, who are technically the only team that actually plays in NY, but let’s not get into that right now.)  Boston fans don’t have to split their loyalties, and it’s hard to find someone from the area who doesn’t support those teams.  I know of NYers who have moved to Boston and converted their loyalties as soon as they’ve changed their drivers licenses.  It’s hard not to fall into step. 

Boston fans are faithful to a fault.  They’ve been through enough losing years to appreciate victory.  You can say they’ve gotten to expect it over the years, first with the Celtics run, to the Patriots 3 championships, and then those dreaded Red Sox.  You have to respect that.  As a NY sports fan (except for the Celtics, who I’ve been a fan of since High School) I respect those fans more than most.  They’d never face a situation like in Seattle where games weren’t televised because they couldn’t sell out the puny Huskie Stadium, only to be in the Super Bowl a few years later and have all those Johnny-come-latelies jump on the Seahawk’s bandwagon.  No, NY and Boston fans don’t understand league television rules that prevent games from being televised if games are X% sold out.  Because our fans are true.  I don’t mind when a Boston fan like my brother-in-law razzes me because I know he’s been through the lean years.  My sister-in-law on the other hand, has never been there and barely understands sport, so that doesn’t count. 

So, to the Patriots fans who are slumping their way into Dunkin’ Donuts for your coffee this morning, I salute you.  I am thankful that our teams have these rivalries, because we’ve had some great runs over my lifetime.  I look forward to many more in the future.  Some we’ll win, some you’ll win, but I guarantee they won’t be boring. 

Oh, and one more thing…pitchers and catchers report in 10 days. GAME ON!

In the news

Friday is a work at home day, so I get to watch national morning news before shoving Little IT on the school bus and depositing IT Boy with the sitter.  It was a busy morning…

The Iowa Caucus has finally come and gone.  I’m not very politically outspoken.  Being the product of a liberal NY mother and a raging conservative Texan father there is no middle ground and it’s best not to bring stuff up.  But I do have some opinions that I am going to share here, with the caveat that I am not nor will I ever be a political blogger.  I’m happy that Hillary had a poor finish - I don’t want to see her as the nominee.  Obama had a great speech last night, but I’m still not sure he would get my vote.  He did give a wonderful speech last night - v. impressive and dare I say, Presidential!  Pity about Edwards, since we hung with his wife at BlogHer and all, but New Hampshire could still change things.  Huckabee scares me, because he puts his faith out there as if to say, I believe in Jesus, so you must vote for me.  Either way, we have 9 more months of this, so strap on kids, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. 

Now here’s a true confession for you - I’m a registered Republican.  I don’t believe 100% in the tennents of the party, for instance I believe in the right to choose, and have great misgivings about our foreign policy.  But being registered in the party gives me the right to vote in the primaries, where I feel like my vote does make a difference.  I can weed out the bad and vote for the Republican who best fits my beliefs.

Whoo…too much politicizing…let’s talk about Hannah some more (don’t remind me that I am breaking my no-Hannah blogging pledge).  The wack job mom who entered her daughter in an essay contest to win Hannah Montana tickets was on “Today” with, get this, her lawyer AND psychologist.  For those who missed the story, Club Libby Lu had an essay contest to win tickets.  I’m not sure about the rule of the contest, but I am pretty sure that making up a story about having a daddy who died in Iraq was not sanctioned under them.  Anyhow, the bitch got caught and backtracked saying she thought she was writing a story about the “spirit” of Christmas and didn’t think it had to be true.  Uh huh.  While I am tempted to compare her judgement in writing to her judgement in eyebrow styling, I shall refrain.  Totally totally disgusting - what kind of mother puts her kid in a situation like this?  She had to know that the lying could be discovered, and then what?  Your kid gets told she has tickets and then she doesn’t?  How does THAT make her feel?

Speaking of mother of the year candidates, apparently Britney had another meltdown.  When does it end, dear readers, when are we free of her nonsense?

I think I’m giving up on morning news.  Someone has to have Buffy or ST:TNG reruns on…

We survived Hannah!

Could it be that the time has come to STOP writing posts about Hannah Montana?  Since our concert date was last week, that time may be upon us, dear readers.  Although I have been told about soon-to-be rapid sell outs of movie tickets for the upcoming concert movie….

Anyhow, here’s how it played out.  We left 2 hours early for the 50 minute drive and needed every second of that.  I have to remember that in Long Island, if an electronic sign tells you to go a different way than every fiber of your being is telling you to go, do it.  Sorta like the highway signs in LA Story, they were right, I was wrong, and had to sit 20 minutes in traffic off the Meadowbrook waiting for two lanes to become one and to merge into the road in front of the Coliseum. 

Anyhow, we got there and parked right near the exit, a move honed from years of attending Islander games that would save us substantial time later on.  We decided to get our souvenirs first thing, because they had sold out of a lot of shirts and other goodies.  This was the second night at Nassau, plus they opened the arena up the day before the first show to sell souvenirs to those who didn’t have tickets to the show.  An interesting marketing idea, and I cannot decide whether it was generous or greedy.

After purchasing a poster set and a t-shirt (total cost = $45, so I got off easy), we found our seats, which turned out to be four rows from the floor at center ice (I have to use a hockey analogy here because “mid court” doesn’t cut it when you don’t have a basketball team that plays in the arena).  We could see Cassie and her mom and cousin right below us on the floor.  Her cousin had a sign saying “My name is Hannah and it’s my birthday today,” both true sentiments.  

It seemed like minutes before the Jonas Brothers came one.  Actually, it was minutes, five tops.  I haven’t heard that many screaming girls since, well, ever.  I never got taken to cool things like this as a kid, a fact that Little IT was reminded of many, many times.  Thankfully, I had several pairs of earplugs for Little IT, because she has very sensitive hearing and had to leave the American Idol concert at the midpoint due to a raging headache. 

So, Jonas Brothers played, sang, and shook much booty.  There was an intermission between them and Hannah, which we used for a bathroom break.  I was much amused to see the security guards yelling at the moms on the Men’s room line (we were early enough to enter the line to the Women’s room when it was non-existent).  So then it was Hannah, more Jonas, and then the transition into Miley.  The show was pretty decent, if an old person may say so.  Some of the Jonus Brother’s and a few of Miley’s songs had some good rock beats to them, and I enjoyed hearing htem.  But the night wasn’t about me. 

When Hannah came out, it was all Little IT dreamed it would be.  Which meant it was all I dreamed it would be, because seeing her that happy was a splendid thing indeed.  I’m truly sorry for all the other moms who couldn’t get tickets for their girls.  As you can see, the look on Little IT’s face was the best Christmas gift I could have asked for. 

Taking Up Space

Twitter is good for something.  It alerted me to a fun article on the BBC news web site called 100 things we didn’t know last year.   Many of these were new to me, such as that adding milk to tea negates some of the healthy benefits of the tea.  I thought the milk negated some of the stomach-altering effects of the tea.  Maybe both things happen, and the effects just cancel each other out.  Who knows.

One thing on the list that I did hear about which totally dismayed me was this gem, brought to light in the astronaut-stalker story earlier in the year:

11. Astronauts wear nappies during launch and re-entry because they can’t stop what they’re doing should they need to urinate.

This isn’t disturbing just because it’s, well,  disturbing.  No, it’s disturbing because it reveals a gaping hole in my college education.

You see, like many other college students, I had to take a number of “general education” courses.  Some requirements, like English, History, and Computer Science were easily completed.  I took a lot of English courses, and I enjoyed computer languages.  I was a history major, so those requirements were covered.  Others like sciences and foreign language were a little more problematic.  Taking a foreign language would have gone against all my values at the time, meaning I would have had to apply myself, study and work hard.  So I took “Who Are The Soviets?” a course that doesn’t exactly have a lot of applicability today, but it was 3 credits, dammit, so it counted in a big way.

For science, I thought Nutrition would be great, until I heard it wasn’t a gut course and it required a fair amount of coursework.  Wrong!  Try again!  Biology was a weed-out course for pre-med students, and that ruled out my coasting through it.  I was having enough trouble with all the b-school courses that prospective majors had to ace before applying to be a business major.  Scanning through the course catalog, I found what seemed to be the perfect solution.  Physics 103, aka Exploration of Space. 

This course was intended to fulfill the science general education requirement without taxing the brain too hard.  That’s the ticket, I thought, and I enrolled.

My plan had two fatal flaws.  One, there was no textbook for the course.  You had to actually attend, listen and take notes.  Which brought me to fatal flaw #2.  The whole course was taught via slides, charts and pictures.  For which they had to turn down the lights so the entire lecture center could view them properly.  Which turned Exploration of Space into Exploration of Sleep.  I napped through ever single one of those lectures.  I ended up borrowing Dave Wetzel’s notes to study from, and I probably got at least a C as a final grade.  You could some up my university career as “at least a C” but that’s for another blog entry.

We did learn a lot of interesting things in there.  Such as if astronauts are ever to have sex in space, it will require bungee cords.  You see, if you push against something in zero gravity, it moves away.  For anyone to do the deed, you have to be connected.  I remember a few other things, but that certainly stands out.  It continues to be great cocktail party conversation, and what more can you ask for than that?

But never, NEVER did the profs mention the whole diaper thing.  I know if I had heard that, I would have remembered that.  I now doubt the completeness and accuracy of the course and feel that I should suggest a partial refund of tuition from the university, or at least see if they would raise my grade to an A or B. 

I see Albany is still giving the course,and they still don’t have a text.  There was one, written by the original profs, but the new prof says it’s out of date and out of print.  It probably also doesn’t mention astro-diapers, so how much use can it be?  I certainly hope that “Eric Woods” and ”Adom Giffin” have corrected previous omissions and are all over the nappy thing. 

Another thing about Phys 103 - my neighbor and friend Rina took the course during her time at Albany.  Her dad was horrified to see the course name turn up on her transcript.  “Space?  I’m paying good money for you to take up Space?”  Yes, but it was 3 credits, and credits are credits, right?

Mixed Messages

As we proceed into a world of 3 therapists giving IT Boy a total of 6 sessions a week, I’ve decided that the purpose of therapy is to teach him the things we will later scream at him for doing.  For instance…

1. Socks - one of the first things his OT taught him was to take off his socks.  Good use of the pincher grip, and builds strength as it takes you off balance.  Yea, cheer, good boy when he does it in a therapy session.  “Nooooo!” when he does it as we’re rushing to get him dressed in the morning.

2. Up the stairs - PT feels that going up the stairs is great to build upper and lower body strength.  So we do it in session.  When Boy gets to the middle landing on our steps, he turns, sits and grins his widest and proudest grin, waiting for the wave of applause to wash over him.  At least in a session.  When he does that while I’m in the kitchen and the rest of the family members are not paying attention, it’s not exactly an “attaboy” moment.

3. Cruising - IT Boy is now strong enough to pull himself up and grab for things.  Unfortunately, his favorite target is the TV console which is loaded up with remotes.  Remotes are a great motivator in therapy, but out of therapy they make Mr. IT rashy when they’re not in his control.  Bad enough Little IT or I have them, but the drooly, slobbery Boy?  No go.

I could go on but you get the picture.  It’s making me wonder what other kinds of therapy he’s going to need later on if we keep messing with his head like this.