Midlife Musings

Being the cruel and heartless mother of a sweet young drama queen, I find myself saying this quite often. Life is not about cookies, yk? I also say it online, though I usually try to be nicer about it. In fact, I have said it several times over the past 2 weeks. And yet some people just can’t seem to do that. I’m referring to a whole different category of sucking up and dealing, though. I’m a tricky bitty, and I just wanted to remind you all of what I have already said about Google. Today’s topic is actually Mike Arrington, and his arrogant refusal to do proper research before he posts more vitriol about PayPerPost on his blog.

Mike has posted again this morning, calling those PPP bloggers who are concerned about lost income “pathetic”. It’s apparent that he has never had to worry about how he was going to feed his family, or put clothes on their backs. It’s apparent that Mike Arrington is a young punk chump who could use an education in the School of Hard Knocks. It’s apparent that he also has a bunch of fawning droolers who follow him around in a pack clapping and barking as he makes fun of those who can’t afford to burn money. And it’s also apparent, if you read the comments, that he is offending his regular readers with his constant and unwarranted attacks on PayPerPost.

See, back in the day, Arrington leveled the same accusations at PPP and back in the day, as much as it pains me to say it, he was right. But PPP has changed, and those accusations are no longer true, and yet Mike is still performing the same song and dance. He’s like the organ grinder’s monkey who only knows one trick. Mike is still waltzing while savvy bloggers are now doing the cha-cha-cha.

So! Get a new act, Mike. Most of us aren’t freaking out. Most of us have long ago learned the grown up attribute of Suck Up and Deal.

I just signed up at ChatterJam.com, ya’ll. It’s a website where you can sign up to have a first look at new products, and then give feedback on them. Hahahah, I wonder if they know what they are getting into, asking for an opinion from me!

The products are Christian based, so I thought it might be something some of you might like as well. Let me know what you think! I did have a little problem figuring out which 5 of the kids to admit to, since that’s all they’d let me list. *insert chuckle* It’s not the first time I’ve had more children than places to put them.

Not only do I have a dresser, but I can mostly see the top of it now. How exciting, huh?

Also, I told you I had to make a massive to-do list, and while I have not made the big one, I did make a commitment to listen to a talk a friend gave a few days ago, and I did that this afternoon. It was…enlightening. I don’t struggle with addictions the way she has, but she is a constant inspiration to me, even when she makes me feel uncomfortable. I’d never heard her story before, and it changed a whole lot of things for me, because even though I don’t struggle with alcohol or food like she did, I do struggle with life. I let myself get overwhelmed and short tempered, and I have avoidance issues. I check out. And I use the need to “work” to do that. I use busy-ness to feel important.

I blogged just a fingernail scraping of the edge of this yesterday. Yesterday was a bad day for me, a very bad day to end a string of bad days. And I cannot tell you the difference in my house in less than 24 hours since I let go of all that needing to this, this, and this. I don’t have substantially less to do because I am still wearing 48bazilllion hats, but I no longer feel so overwhelmed. I don’t have to be going 100 miles an hour to live. Sometimes the best possible thing to be is still.

Just because they don’t have an anonymous group for it yet doesn’t mean it’s not capable of destroying your life. I’m blathering. Perhaps I need to KISS. Hi, my name is Cass and I have avoidance issues and I need to slow down.

First let me say, I enjoy Johnny Depp. I have enjoyed him since he made Edward Scissorhands, and even though I don’t usually get into pirates, excepting Pete, we are all about the POTC around here. The kids like Will, and I’m all over the Cap’n and there we are. Did I date myself when I mentioned Edward Scissorhands? Well, my tagline does say 40 something, LOL. And did you know…it’s true. I am indeed forty, and I was a fairly young adult in 1990 when Depp starred in Edward Scissorhands.

I had that movie on VHS, and we just about wore it out. It was a very rough time in my life, and I so connected with the outcast Edward, and his outward ugliness and the pain he sometimes caused those he loved combined with that inner artistic beauty. How he could create both beauty and pain with those non-hands…it makes an interesting metaphor for the power of the human tongue, doesn’t it? I should get it on DVD and share it with my kids. That whole scene in the end where he’s carving and it’s snowing, it’s magical still. And I just opened several mental worm cans that I’d rather not exam tonight, so let’s move right along to my next favorite Depp movie, which is What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

It was my oldest daughter who introduced me to this Depp film. It was released in 93, but I was totally unaware of it until she asked for it while she was here. I have not talked about her much here, and I won’t do it just now, either, but…watching this movie with her was incredibly poignant, and when Johnny Depp as Gilbert Grape walked out of his mother’s house and burned it down behind him, it was all I could do to keep from sobbing like a small and wounded child, because in the end, he loved his mother enough to burn his past, just to preserve what shred of dignity she had left. It was…it felt like…a gift, to watch this with my daughter. I guess of the two this would be my favorite scene because of the emotional associations I have with it.

So, now, Depp has a new film out, and you can visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace or you can visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site and catch the trailer. As I watched it tonight, I glimpsed Edward and Gilbert both in there, and of course, that led me down memory lane. There was also something else that I wasn’t quite able to pin down, so I am curious to see the movie. And also?? He sings in this movie. And he’s pretty good at it. Mmm-hmm. That’s hott, ya’ll.

You know, it’s just wrong to be mad all the time. It’s just not right to feel like you are living in a pressure cooker morning noon and night. Sometimes, you need to step back and look at the relative worth of your mental stability and decide that while you might indeed be ABLE to do it all, perhaps it would be best for you and everyone else you touch with your life if you didn’t. So, I am admitting I am not a superhero, and I’ll settle for being an everyday hero. I’ll walk away from some paid work, so I can do a better job at my free labor. And there will be laughter in my house once more.

Also, tomorrow I will write my to-do list.

Today, my thoughts are so very scattered that I am having a hard time stringing two words together. I do not understand why some days I can focus in spite of the noise of my family, and some days, I cannot. And it’s conversely bizarre, in that the more I want to get through writing so that I can concentrate on other things (including my family), the more distracted I am. In fact…I really think I am in a catch-22. I need to take a break from blogging for a few days so I can concentrate on some other things and wrap up some perpetual lose ends, but if I do that, then when I come back, I will have to blog twice as hard to catch back up with that. How bad is it? Well, today I finally got the first bag of swag from PostieCon out of my room and on to my desk. Mixed in among the magnets, stickers and personalized pens are just a few business cards of people I really wanted to contact.

And I still haven’t gathered all my notes from my assorted jobs/meetings/blogs and made a good to-do list. I am so afraid something is going to slip through the cracks!

Also, I have four packages here that I need to open and play with.

Also, the laundry.

Also,the toilets.

Also, the bills.

And finally, I’d really like to finish at least one cup of coffee while it’s still warm. I’ve been trying to do that all. day. long.

I detest the time change. Oh, I’ll gripe in the spring when it changes again, but I absolutely DETEST this one in the fall. Combined with the shorter days, it is dark all. the. time. It doesn’t matter what position you leave your shutters and bamboo blinds in, it’s DARK. It doesn’t matter whether you have elegant Hunter Douglas window treatments or discount stuff from the dollar store, it’s DARK. And to add to my disgruntlement, I have discovered this week that when I have one of those un-headaches, I perceive the world as several shades darker than it actually is, and LORD KNOWS, that is plenty dark enough.

If you’ve been reading very long, you may remember that back in July, I mentioned that I had been dealing with depression. Of course, that is an oxymoron, because one really doesn’t deal with depression– instead, depression deals with you. And so, here we are. I’ve been tired. I’ve been sluggish. I’ve been grumpy. I’ve even been mad, but I think mostly what I’ve been is SAD, and the thing is I recognize know that because of my realizations this summer. Unfortunately for me, realizing it does not do much to help me rectify it. It may be time to investigate some light therapy, because I really, really, really! do not want to live like this until spring. Really.

Yes, I do realize I have yet to blog about Ang. or about the fifth day of Vegas. Yes, a fifth day. With pictures. No, I am not going to do it right now, but I am working on a list of stuff I need to do, and that is on it. Right this minute, I want you to go read the post on the Google Gangbang at Odd Time Signatures. Karoli has done a great job of putting faces to some of the bloggers Google felt so threatened by, including Yours Truly.