Man I’ve loved spending time with you the last few months.

I feel all safe and cozy wrapped in your cushion. You protect me from the world, insulated and separate.

You make no demands on me, all you request is that I have another piece of chocolate … one more chip … one more spoon of whatever that is with butter and salt.

We’re such a good team, you and I. I love giving you what you want.

I’ve needed you, I’ve needed your warmth and your familiarity in this time when I’m finding my way.

But.

There’s always a “but” and not just our big butt.

It’s a new year, and I need to ask for your help.

My spirit inside your form is asking for something. Pushing for change. Demanding me to dream and to drag you along with me.

Beloved Fat Suit, my spirit tells me we need to change. It tells me we are the caterpillar - fuzzy and cute and content to sit and eat our food all day long.

It tells me that we need to create our cocoon - our safe haven - and become a butterfly.

cred

Change won’t be easy, we’re not accustomed to actual WORK. Perseverance we understand.

So slow and steady and sure - we can do this.

Together we can take what we have created and transform into a Suit of Strength.

BRINGIT09!

Love,

Dawn

Every time I get on an airplane, I get pissed off about the first class section. Bigger seats, better service, personal bathroom, convenient on and off the plane. The free drinks? Eh, that doesn’t phase me - I can carry on my own booze that tastes better anyway.

It irks me because it’s all about money and not about need. Pregnant and needing extra space? Too bad, sit in coach. On crutches from an injury? Too bad, hobble your ass back to coach. A case of IBS? Too bad, hope you can run down the aisle while sqeezing your buttcheeks together - and that no one is in the bathroom when you get there. Have a connection that you may miss because your flight was delayed? Suck it up and wait for the 50 people in front of you to get their oversized roller suitcase out of the overhead bin - prepare to miss your flight.

Yes, I could pay for first class and get my own warm towel - but I think there are better ways to spend my money.

Five days into this shiny new year and things are spectacular. The year still seems fresh and possibility filled.

On New Years Eve, Erin, the Queen of Spain, said she’d had such a great 2008, that she wanted to pass along some of her BlogHer love to someone else with a paid registration to BlogHer09.

I read that and it felt so right to me. A gift, a free gift, with no strings attached. I could take some of the awesome of BringIt09! and share it with someone else.

So through the wonder that is Twitter, I schemed with Erin to tag along and ALSO pass along some BlogHer love to a second person.

Erin and I both totally loved one woman’s plan for how BlogHer09 would help her. (Not that we had to agree, but man, this woman impressed us both.) Check out Queen of Spain to see who she is.

The woman I’d like to send to BlogHer09 said

“I admit, I have nothing to wear, no idea at this moment how I can afford it with all my other start-up expenses, but that free registration is the open door to my dream: to be the equivalent of the creative love child of Studs Terkel and Eve Ensler reaching out to creative people everywhere via this blog.

I’ve spent years telling the world I honestly believe you can live your dream if you’re willing to do the work necessary to get there. Talent is nice, but hard work and determination can take you to realms you always dreamed of. I’m willing to figure out my end of the budget if Erin picks me”

Mel Edwards - start figuring out your end of the budget, I’ve got yer registration right here.

Why do I believe you’ll make it work?

“AmTrak, with my AAA discount, $272…and 27 hrs each way…leaves plenty of time for blogging and meeting new creative people.”

You made that train ride sound like an adventure - I know you’ll get positive things out of BlogHer09 with that point of view. And if you wear a size 9 1/2 - 10, I have some shoes for ya.

*as I write this, I’m working on my buzz with a wine called Damifino, I am harrassing friends on Twitter, Scout is sleeping upstairs, Alex is sleeping upstairs, my mom is working crosswords across the room from me. All is well - which makes me twitch, I’m not a natural optimist - keep this in mind for the rest of the post*

Suckit08 is almost over.

It has been a shit year for me and for lots of you around me. (I’d link to you all, but see “Damifino” reference above.)

And we have all survived. (Well, that’s not true - we aren’t ALL here, that’s part of what SUCKS.)

I am deciding to believe that 2009 will be my year, our year.

Months ago, Grandy mentioned BRINGIT09. I’ve lived on this phrase since I read it and sent her the response of “fuck yeah! Bringit09!” She even has her own post about Suckit08 and Bringit09.

BRINGIT09! will be the year of excess for me.

An excess of health.

An excess of love.

An excess of joy.

Happy New Year 2009, I’m as happy to see you as Loter is to see her wine.

(it’s 12:01. I actually felt the weight pull off me. it’s a new year. Happy New Year!)

The first I saw of the Consumer Product Improvement Act (CPSIA) was through Cool Mom Picks - I gave it a skim and mentally set it aside for later (like after Christmas travel). Then I received email from Mother Nurture, then I started seeing links to it everywhere - you’d think I’d be more up on it being that Comfed Out Kaiser is my biz, but it almost fell through the cracks.

The concept is good - let’s test the stuff available for sale to our kids. However, it appears to be geared for large corporations, big box stores and mass production - with a side effect of decimating small business -

“With this act going into effect February 10 2009 so many people we love will be affected: Moms who sew beautiful handmade waldorf dolls out of home, artists who have spent decades hand-carving trucks and cars out of natural woods, that guy at the craft show who sold you the cute handmade puzzle–even larger US companies who employ local workers and have not once had any sort of safety issue will no longer be able to sell their goods.”

Cool Mom Picks

I’m all for adding my voice, but sometimes finding the words is hard - There is a form letter from the Handmade Toy Alliance that I have used as a base for my own letter (their letter has some glaring grammar errors that drive me a little nutty). The HTA link also has contact information to help you find who to send your letter to. Use their letter, use my letter (with attribution to me and the Handmade Toy Alliance if you publish it online) but please say something! You can also vote here:

From: [your name and address]

To: [your congress person or senator]

Re: Changes needed to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) to Save Handmade Toys in the USA

Dear [your congress person or senator],

The goal of this letter is to ask you to request the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make some very reasonable exclusions in their interpretation of the law as they continue their rule making process.

Like many people, I am concerned about the dangerous and poisonous toys that large toy manufacturers have been selling to our nation’s families. I am pleased that Congress acted quickly to protect America’s children by enacting the CPSIA.

However, I am very concerned that the CPSIA’s mandates for third party testing and labeling will have a dramatic and negative effect on small toy makers in the USA, Canada, and Europe, whose toy safety record has always been exemplary. It will also devastate small manufacturers of children’s clothes and other handmade goods for children.

Because of the fees charged by third party testing companies, many manufacturers, especially makers of beautiful wooden toys and unique children’s clothes across the nation will be driven out of business. Their cottage workshops simply do not make enough money to afford a potential $4,000 price tag per toy that third party testers are charging. A toy with a wholesale price of $10 would have to sell 400 units just to cover the price of testing.

In the current economic climate, I chose to spend my Christmas present budget at the smaller online stores Good for the Kids (www.goodforthekids.com) and KangarooBoo (www.kangarooboo.com). I like their products, appreciate the exemplary customer service and feel better about supporting a small business over a large corporation who would not notice my $50 purchase.

I urge you to quickly request the Consumer Product Safety Commission to make some very reasonable exclusions in their interpretation of the law as they continue their rulemaking process.

For example:

• Rational exclusions from lead testing of materials including wood, paper, cotton, and other materials known by science to not contain lead.
• The CPSC should recognize that the concept of batches does not pertain to small manufacturers or certain industries such as clothing in the same way that it does with large toy manufacturers and should provide exemptions to batch labeling based upon the production modes of each manufacturer.
• There should be mechanisms put in place to protect or provide relief for micro-businesses. The model the FDA uses (http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/sbnle.html) to exempt small producers from food labeling requirements is a model to guide this relief.

These toy makers and crafters have earned and kept the public’s trust. They provide jobs for hundreds and quality items for thousands. Their unique businesses should be protected. Please visit www.handmadetoyalliance.org to learn more about this issue and see the attached Petition to the CPSC from the National Association of Manufacturers.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

[your name]

because we all need a laugh.

It was the first Christmas Eve that Scout and I spent together. We sat round the table eating dinner, and I had just sunk my teeth into a cookie when his mother said:

“We were halfway through Iowa when we realized we left the vibrator at home!”

Now, I like a sitcom actress sat with my teeth settled in that cookie, fearing to move at all.

Turns out what she meant was that they had some sort of back rub apparatus that plugged into the wall and vibrated. But Dear God! the visual!

—

Which took my train of thought game to my second story.

We were all gathered around my grandma as she unwrapped her Christmas presents. One present was one of those massage pads that you put in a chair that is supposed to do shiatsu or some sh… anyway.

The pad was plugged in and as it roared up it’s BUUUUZZZZZZZZZZ! Each grandchild in the room started glancing nervously at another - until we started that flicker of recognition with each other and started to laugh.

Apparently, my family is big into “the toys”. Or our minds are all in the gutter. Or both.

—

My final story took place as I worked in the lingerie section of a major department store on Christmas Eve one year. (Jennifer - we’re talking Famous Barr at the mall) We had the standard bras, underwear, nightgowns and robes, but in the back was a tacky little rack filled with icky scratchy underthings that just looked so uncomfortable that OF COURSE you would immediately want them off your body to save you from the chafing.

So this rather rough, unsavory looking character comes up to the register with one of these items in his hand. I start ringing it up, one eye on the clock that was counting down the last 15 minutes of the shift when his words broke through:

“Ah thought ’bout buyin’ two o’ these.”

I really didn’t have any reply.

“This’n mahght git all tore up.”

And I REALLY didn’t have any reply!

Merry Christmas Eve - Alex is asleep, Scout is heading to bed early, I’m going to watch Love Actually while my mom works crossword puzzles, and I may just get those decorations up yet

Sometimes I hate being right. Sometimes I don’t care. Sometimes I just think it’s ironic that I knew….

A year ago today:

There’s a lot about Flutter’s life that I will never intimately understand. But this issue of fathers … I feel her heart like I’ve never understood another’s relationship with their dad before. She’s done such a remarkable job of putting these words on screen for me to read, and I feel like in some way I need to try to say my own words, because every time she says something I go, “yes yes, I know, I know”. And I think she deserves to hear me have an original thought on the subject.

Now I have to laugh, because I just said “original” and the story I’m putting here she already knows, because I’ve put it in her comments. *snort*

But this most recent post of hers on the subject compels me to share.

The story of my dad is long and twisted and studded with misunderstandings, giving ups, trying agains.

In the end, I don’t respect him because I believe, that as the father, he should be an adult. He should get over his hurt feelings and acting like a child and sack up and be the adult.

Paradoxically, I can handle our relationship better now that I am becoming the parent. Now that I am the one to utter the soothing words, to use the calm mother’s voice, to comfort his fears when he can no longer take them.

My father’s variety of health issues, currently fluid on a lung, which may keep him in the hospital until after Christmas, has made him an old man. He is now a grandfather, and he is every bit as old and frail as I remember my grandfathers being. I now watch his steps and check his balance as he walks. I keep a steadying hand nearby this man who once carried me in his strong daddy arms.

I feel a wave of sick roll through my stomach each time his name appears in my email - either as the sender, or more commonly, the subject.

He’s much too young to be this damn old.

I am careful with him. I take care to not hurt him. I am gentle with him in ways that I am gentle with no one else in this world. I don’t feel love for him, but it must be love that compels me to handle him with care, rather than disregard.

My family does not understand. I know they think I do not do enough. I know they think he is sick and because of this, I should do more to have a relationship with him. I rarely seek him out, but when I hear from him, I respond. I always respond. I try to give him his grandson. I give him pieces of Alex’s life, and I expect nothing in return. Giving without expectation? Isn’t that supposed to be unconditional love? I always thought unconditional love was supposed to be warm and fuzzy, not this practical emotion from behind the flimsy glass wall of my heart.

He sent Alex clothes, clothes that Alex has worn and I have enjoyed, but clothes that Alex is quickly growing out of, earlier than the label predicted he would.

This is my dad’s year to have us for Christmas, and five years from now, when it is his turn to have us again, I will be surprised if he is still alive to watch Alex unwrap presents in his fifth year. My dad will see Alex’s first Christmas, but it will likely be the only and the last as well.

I bought clothes for Alex today. Replicas of the outfits my dad sent, but a size larger. I will dress Alex in these clothes for my dad to see.

And in this gesture, the circle will be complete. Daughter will have become parent. I will gently play Santa Claus for my dad, I will give him a gift without strings for Christmas, I will become a gentle myth, a game, I will be the spirit of the jolly man in the beard, to the man who is my father.

If we could ever GET there.

This is our first real live vacation since June 2006. Which absolutely makes me think something apocolyptic is going to happen to just try to jack up the ante of Suckit08 a little more.

We were planning to leave the house at 8am.

I woke at 8:01am.

Whoops.

No time to look for my cell phone with the dead battery that Alex hid zeusonlyknowswhere.

We made it to the airport on time, and our flight was delayed 50 minutes.

We had a 47 minute layover scheduled in Houston.

Houston, we have a problem.

“Luckily” for us, the first 2 flights of the day were cancelled, and the 3rd flight arrived 4 hours late, and our flight is currently running 3 hours and 15 minutes late. Good times.

I have paid 22 dollars for airport food.

I have paid 795 for wireless - which is why I’m using it every second we are stuck in this hell hole.

I keep seeing women who look all hawt and put together. Meanwhile I’m just hot and sweaty and UNSHOWERED. (see wake up time above)

I have paid 21 dollars for the most hysterically appropriate tshirts for Texas Red and I - and the impetus for actually buying them and not just chuckling was “hey, I can blawg that”.

I have rolled my eyes, I have made myself on food ….

I have teared up when a middle aged white Texan man stopped and said, “Thank you for what you are doing for us. God bless you,” to the Mexican/Latino female in uniform.

I have seen an actual, honest to Krisha, Hari Krishna. In an airport.

Now I’ve blogged this adventure, can I claim this entire trip as a business expense now?

I do genealogy work. I’ve seen the phrase “died in infancy” for years.

I used to have the idea that because so little was said, that it didn’t matter as much. That parents didn’t come to love their kids until they were toddlers.

Since I assumed that the stiff upper lip of my pioneer ancestors protected them from pain, it didn’t bother me to see all the names who “died in infancy”.

Last year, when I was working on the Nano story that wouldn’t end, I took a good look at just what it might have been like for my great-great-great grandmother

“Mary was followed by Felix when I was 18 . . .  had George when I was 22, and James at 24” She nodded at Belle, “That girl came to be when I was 26 . . . Woodson joined the Union Cavalry and left for the war, I didn’t know I was pregnant when he left, Anna was born one week after he mustered out, I was 31.Thomas at 34. George died just before I had Sheridan at age 36, and he died before his first birthday. The winter was cold and he was tiny and ….” She stopped here. Waited for the lump in her throat to pass as she thought of her two boys, then gasped, “Then Mary died just 1 week before Samuel was born when I was 39. I was so upset over her dying that he wasn’t named until after the 1870 census. If you look at that record he was listed only as “No Name” and the poor boy was already a year old by that time. I had nine children over a span of 23 years. I lost three of them in a span of three years. While still birthing children, while still trying to be a mother and a wife.” She sat quietly. “I buried my husband. We were married 63 years. Imagine! 63 years with the same person . . . It was a good long life. I lived it well. It was not easy, and I won’t say that I wouldn’t have changed a thing, because it is clear that if I could have kept my children with me always, then I would have. Those are my only real regrets. The ones that still linger with me today. Never quite forgotten. No matter how I’ve ended up here in this place, I wish I would have had all of my children all of those years.”

It was Sheridan that affected me most.

I knew he died young, but I did the math - and none of this was fun anymore. Not for now. Sheridan was 7 months old when he died. Which didn’t seem like anything … I kind of already knew it … he was a baby, he died … okay … lots of babies died back then. It didn’t hit me … It wasn’t personal … I couldn’t relate …

But … now … Alex is 7 months old. I know what Alex does - I know how he crawls and laughs and smiles at me - I know what his voice sounds like - I know how he eats - How he pulls up, how he wants to see every. thing. I. am. doing. I know how he’s daily more of a little person - his own little person. And now I know that little Sheridan mattered. He wasn’t just another number - he was his own little person too - and …

I have no words. I got what I was looking for - I found the humanity - I’ll do more with the story at some point, but for now I’ve done what I set out to do, and I need to set it aside - I think I got more than I bargained for. And it kind of hurts.

Since then, when I see “died in infancy” I think of Matthew, of Bug, of Jackson, of William.

Now I know that “died in infancy” may be the only thing anyone could bear to write about them.

A great-aunt lost 3 boys in her first 10 years of marriage, and lost 4 boys total. I don’t even know how she survived. Now I’m on this mission to find these boys, to tell their story - just because it’s a short story doesn’t mean it doesn’t get an entry in the family history. This weekend, those 4 boys who “died in infancy” are getting found, and getting their names back - There’s Weston … and Dow … and the Infant now has a birthday and a resting place. I’m still searching for that last little boy - he’s out there, and I will find him, and he can be remembered - even though his life was a dream short lived, now I am here to document his coming and his going - now he won’t be forgotten.

It makes me all low IQ gurl and offering drinks to VDog.

And do crazy shit like post twice in one day.

The summer before my sophomore year of high school, things were going well. My mom had a good job, we were settled in our rental house, there was money in the house for the first time in years - she made some comment about how positive things were and then followed up with, “Knock on wood.”

And the dramatic DUN DUN DUN! should have been playing in the background.

The following things went wrong in the next 7 days.

1. Our neighbors, who we rented our house from, announced they were divorcing after 37 years of marriage. And wanted us to move out in the next 30 days so they could sell the house. (Didn’t end up having to move, but it was a tense week.)
2. Mom’s friend had to go into the hospital and we had to keep her son with us for an afternoon while waiting for his father to pick him up. This dude was going to be a freshman and was a total bull in a china cabinet. I don’t think he actually broke anything, but it was touch and go.
3. While the bull child was at our house, my mom got a call from my Grandma - Grandma was hiding in the garage to call (long distance - gasp - possibly even daytime rates!) and tell Mom that Grandpa wasn’t doing well - was depressed, etc, and that Mom needed to call at some point that day and announce we were coming for a day to visit.
4. My cat somehow had a spider bite and ended up with a HUGE abscess on her ass - looked like she had a second butthole. Off to the vet for that. I think the worst of it was that the abscess scab popped on the way to the vet and the smell was horrific.
5. My dad stopped by to see me - Mom greeted him at the door saying, “If you don’t have anything positive to tell your daughter, turn around and go home.” Damn good thing she greeted him that way - he had come by to tell me that he and my step-mom were splitting up. I found out a week later.

To this day - more or less half my life later - when someone says “Knock on Wood” I practically run for a helmet to put on to protect me from what is sure to be the sky falling.