Twitter: From There to Here

Twitter started as a place to connect. “Real-time information network powered by people that lets you share and discovering WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW?” (And as the seconds go by … now … no, now …) Originally piggybacking on Facebook’s explosively successful Status Updates, Twitter has become entangled into our cultural and pop lexicon.

Characters on TV shows are tweeting; talk-show hosts are tweeting; music stars are rockin’-tweeting. The President of the United States tweets (and Thank God for that, right?) Groups use Twitter to rally support for one set of causes or to rally for opposition to another set of opposing cause. Companies use Twitter as marketing machines and for free consumer research. Celebrities use it as a one-wheeled public relations engine.

It was probably the explosion of reality TV that somehow impressed upon us that transparency into our private lives provides the most glorious, engaging and titillating of entertainment. Somehow the imaginative minds of our society’s creative genius now had to compete with public displays of our eating, shitting and attention-seeking lives.

This public “diary” of collective reflection is at its very nature an oxymoron and appeals to the exhibitionist or peeping Tom inside of all of us. We all want a glance at the otherwise forbidden lives of celebrities and such.

So now Twitter has evolved into a colossal program with a glossary of Tweet Jargon. You can link your Twitter to your Facebook and you can tweet directly from your cell phone. Now Verizon’s Fios allows you to Tweet directly from your TV so we never have to get off our fat asses to give our opinion. It’s like an open mic night all the time.

It’s Twitt-versation and we all have it documented at our Twitter slash name. Like a digital ticker tape from a court stenographer, you too can review your Tweets all in one spot. It’s an online record of your random 140-character proclamations to the universe. Your Tweets, that should you ever drop dead unexpectedly, would be considered your last words. These verbal spasms that you tweet into the Twitterverse.

But do most of us really have something of importance to say or have we become so accustomed to having to announce our every movement, thought, or opinion?

Are we really quelling our innate social desire to connect with others or are we further isolating ourselves to communication through clicks only? We throw out bait – showing a vulnerable piece of ourselves and hoping someone bites and takes interest?

If at first people would reserve only the really Tweet-worthy for an update, now it’s gone a bit too far. At first it was just big news, an announcement, an epic proclamation, insightful questions, or instigations for interesting (or controversial) dialog.

But the inch wasn’t enough so we took the yard – and started announcing too much and too often. “I took a shit. My kids took a shit. I’m cleaning up the dog’s shit.” Countless people walk around with blank expressions on their faces, empty thought bubbles over their heads, thumbs clicking on their devices. What am I doing now and how do I make it sound fancy, funny or engaging? How do I validate my action as tweet-worthy? We are real-life comic strip characters starring in our own ridiculous microcosm.


It’s no wonder we have such a yearning for social inter-connection; our generation has successfully isolated ourselves to devices and boxes and only communicate if we have to push buttons for it.

But as is the case of human nature – it’s not enough to give us a soapbox to stand upon – we also need an audience. Welcome to the world of Followers. Everyone competes for Followers … we all want a bigger audience. More applause, more money, more love. We want to sell ourselves, our ideas, our products to the world.

But if our intentions are just to promote, sell, get something out of it for ourselves – how much lasting power will Twitter really have? Advertising is already omnipresent. Originally we just wanted to see what Ashton Kutcher was eating for dinner. Now we indirectly sign up to receive consistent 140-character sales pitches on a daily basis. Even snail mail originally existed without junk mail. But sadly, we have left the era of non-junk Tweets long behind.

But is this new Tweetin’ world actually detrimental to our sociological communication? How many of us are actually suckered into a false sense of connection?

An acquaintance recently joined Twitter and started following Adam Lambert. I looked through her feed to see countless tweets addressing @adamlambert. She asked him how he was feeling; wished him a happy Passover; told him she was enjoying NYC’s Central Park on a spring day. Adam Lambert has over 700,000 followers. Is he really seeing her outcries of daily minutia? And how long before she feels rejected by his lack of response? When his concert sold out minutes after it went on sale, her Tweet friend did nothing to help her.


But alas I, too, have worn the Tweet Whore hat at times. (Especially when stuck in the cubicle confines of the 9-5 office drudgery.) For me, Twitter allows me to maintain a thought journal; a lazy alternative to writing a full blog posting. As a retrospective, it provides snapshots of your life’s memories in 140-character bits. (If only showing you what you were feeling for the time it took you to type up the 140-characters.)

Last August I went on a 10-day road trip where I randomly tweeted from various stops. (Tweeting from my phone didn’t require an Internet connection.) After the trip, I looked back at my tweets and was surprisingly amused and grateful for the updates. However incomplete, they served as a reflective map on the days that were. For that, I’m glad for Twitter.

So I walk through the bookstore and gasp at how many authors have already capitalized on penning books on this still-mysterious-to-some Twitter. Really? Whole books to guide people through the mystery of how to type 140-characters about what you’re doing right now?


Heartseverywher: Just wrote a cynical, oxymoronic article questioning Twitter – where it came from and where it arrived. Ironically tweeting it now.




Click here to enjoy more funny Twitter comics.

Me as the Crimson Dynamo

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The last thing you’re feeling when you’re 35 weeks pregnant is sexy or cool. However, my good friend David, comic writer extraordinaire, made me feel a little better about myself late last year when he named a character after me in his latest Marvel comic, HULK: WINTER GUARD.

In this story, Crimson Dynamo, aka the Russian Iron Man, unveiled his mask to reveal that SHE is really Galina Nemirovsky. Oh – and she’s hot. (So thank you David for being inspired by my name and thank you Steve for drawing me.)

The Crimson Dynamo is an armor wore by many in the service of the Russian (formally USSR) government, some good, some evil. Galina Nemirovsky is the current wearer of the armor and is a member of the Winter Guard. Crimson Dynamo is often described as an Evil Version of Iron Man. He is a Russian man with a Suit of Armour similar to Iron Man's.

Cool, right? A whole new slew of sites now come up when you google my name. Here's one way I never thought I'd get on wikipedia.

So THANK YOU to David Gallaher for naming a cool character after me and special thanks to Steve Ellis for drawing me to look like I did when I dressed up as Wonder Woman. David and Steve are responsible for the award-winning comic, High Moon.

Scenes of me (well not really me) in the comics:








The cover of Hulk: Winter Guard from Marvel, January 2010

The members of The Winter Guard, a fictional team of Russian superheroes in the Marvel Comics universe.

My Second Child

“I worry if I will have enough love in my heart for two,” a friend of mine recently admitted when I asked her if she ever wanted a second child. For those who have had the luxury of more than one child, it must seem like a ridiculous statement – but for those that have been the mommy of one (for 8 + years), it seems completely valid.

In about 5 weeks, I will become a mother of two – and the very thought is terrifying. For many reasons; some of which include:

• My first one is a genius. What are the odds of birthing two geniuses?
• My first one isn’t a crier. My nerves would never have been able to withstand a crier. In fact while my future baby daddy has the skill of ‘blocking out the crying,’ my ears are sensitive enough to hear the crying from down the block. So much so that every hair on my body stands on alert, begging for Xanax (or earplugs).
• I’ve been a co-parent (Read: part-time parent) for the last 5 1/2 years. How will I adapt to full-time parental duty?
• I love my 8-year-old more than I could ever understand. In my life he was the answer to the question I never formulated. Upon him I have bestowed immeasurable power on my heart. How could anyone ever compete with this kind of deity?

My father used to always tell me “you don’t even know what you have” (said in sarcastic Russian accident, with the stress on ‘know’), in reference to how good a child my son was. This mantra echoes in my head whenever I visualize who this new life will be and impact it will have on my life.

No point in worrying about what might or might not be; I understand all that and try to have faith in the biology of motherhood. I’ve learned that the worst things in life are the ones you can’t prepare for and that worrying about them neither fixes them or prevents them from happening.

One of the first scenes I imagined when I thought about introducing my first baby to my second – was the moment where he walked into the hospital room and saw the new baby for the first time. I play the unwritten scene over and over again in my what-if mind. What kind of look would I be giving to my first baby – to the first soul I birthed into this world? And what will his heart feel like when he learns that his mommy isn’t only his anymore? This is so much bigger than sharing your toys.

Recently my son said he didn’t even want to come to the hospital. Then he corrected himself by saying, “Well it depends on what day of the week it is and if it’s on your day.” While the comment stung like a wet slap in the face, I somehow felt I deserved it. I’ll always be the divorced mother that agreed to joint-custody, a thought that somehow reinvents itself as the idea that I’m a mother that abandoned her son.

“When you have a second baby, your heart doubles rather than halves,” I told my son soon after I told him I was pregnant. The words, as they left my lips, and entered the ether between us, seemed both hopeful and Hallmark.

For now I wait for the life that will prove it all true.

To Breastfeed or not to Breastfeed – That is the Question

I Hated Breastfeeding.

There I said it. Go ahead and judge me, critique me, criticize me. It won’t be anything I haven’t already berated myself about – over and over again for almost 8 years.

Before my son was born just over 8 years ago I had no question about whether or not I would breastfeed. I wasn’t Earth Mother Extraordinaire nor some would-be Granola Chick du Jour. It just seemed like the world’s most obvious no-brainer. With all of the questions looming with new motherhood, this just wasn’t one of them for me. It was the most natural option; it was the cheapest option; it was (“in theory”) the easiest option with no bottles to clean and no formula to mix. It was supposed to always be available; ready to feed my baby on-demand. How dare I deny my baby what they were calling liquid gold.

On top of that, womenshealth.gov, our Federal Government’s source for women’s health information, recommends breastfeeding exclusively for the first 6 months of your baby’s life. They say that breast milk has disease-fighting cells that help protect infants from germs, illness and SIDS. They say that infant formula cannot match the exact chemical makeup of human milk – especially the antibodies that fight disease.

They say that breastfeeding is linked to a lower risk of: ear infections, stomach viruses, diarrhea, respiratory infections, atopic dermatitis, asthma, obesity, diabetes, childhood leukemia, SIDS, and necrotizing enterocolitis.

Then for the moms, They say it’s supposed to lower the risk of Type 2 diabetes, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and postpartum depression.

How was I, a healthy, educated woman going to read all that and decide not to do it?

How was I to deny my newborn all that? What kind of parent would I be where the first decision I was making on behalf of my child’s life – would be to NOT give them the lowest risk of being an obese diabetic who has infections in his ears, lungs and skin? And that’s if I can keep my newborn from SIDS and childhood leukemia. I worked so hard to grow him healthily in my womb and then bring him into the world. How could I deny him this elixir of my soul?

No, before my son was born 8 years ago, I had no doubt about whether or not I would be breastfeeding.

These claims from the "Theys" implanted themselves deep into the back of my subconscious, where they lurked and popped up at a moment’s notice whenever a morsel of doubt entered my cranium. These claims successfully tormented into the guiltiest zone on earth reserved specifically for new mothers.

My body handled the pregnancy on autopilot. Then the birth, (with doctor’s help) followed the set program. But the breastfeeding – oh no – something that was supposed to come completely naturally wasn’t natural at all. My body had a glitch in the breastfeeding program. Fail on Boob Feeding 101.

But it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. It was an unrelenting battlefield featuring Me versus Boob. I started with the extreme feeding: exclusively and on-demand, just like They said. My baby wanted to nurse all the time. At least every hour, for an hour. If I took him off the boob, he cried. I put him back on – he stopped. And so the cycle continued for the first week. I didn’t sleep or eat much. I just carried my butt pillow around, and cried instead of my newborn, as he sucked inefficiently, from my aching boobs.

But there wasn’t enough milk. Ever. He kept sucking but there was never enough; he was never satiated. When my mother-in-law came over on the first few days and said “Maybe you don’t have enough milk,” I started sobbing and locked myself in the bathroom for over an hour.

On day 5 I took my newborn to a La Leche meeting. There I watched moms with children of all ages nurse with delight, engaged in a boob-milking orgy. One mom whose face I’ll never remember, but whose boob I will never forget, was sitting and eating Indian food out of a styrofoam container when her 3-year-old came walking over and asked for a bite. She fed him off a plastic fork for a few bites and then he asked for a drink. So she lifted up her loose shirt to reveal a droopy, bra-less boob and he helped himself to a mouthful of milk.

The La Leche mantra was to nurse the baby for as long as they want, as often as they want – and no pumping or supplementing with formula. It was baby on boob on demand – or bust! End of story; stick your fingers in your ears and chant La, La, La.

After the meeting, I went home crying and continuing my sleepless cycle of baby on round-the-clock boob. At our first pediatrician’s visit, I told her my woes. Her suggestion: pump after feeding to “drain the breast” AND then supplement with formula until he was full.

So this became the new pattern.

My son would cry for food and I would feed him on each breast for about 20 minutes, then I would hook myself up to the electric milker and would pump out whatever 1/2 ounce would drip out of my deflated and sore boobs. Finally I would have to give him a bottle of formula to supplement. It was the Triumvirate feeding system: nursing, pumping, bottle feeding.

As soon as I was done with one feeding, it felt like I was starting the cycle all over again.

The milk supply department of my boobs also didn’t seem to respond to the memo that my growing baby’s milk demand would increase. Like failed economics, slowly I had to supplement more and more with formula because my milk production just didn’t increase no matter what I did, how much I pumped or what weird potions I drank.

I kept this up for 6 months before I decided that I just couldn’t go on. My marathon reached it’s ending.

The whole experience left a very sour taste in my life. I was miserable for my son's first 6 months. I remember very few happy moments for me personally; it was always so difficult and exhausting. I adored my baby and cherished every moment with him, but I was constantly in pain, doubting everything and feeling completely isolated from the rest of the world. Everything revolved around these crazy feedings. I was prisoner to my under-performing boobs and at a certain point I needed to regain my life and my sanity.

But I felt guilty about it from the first bottle I gave him. I remember feeling like I was pouring poison into his mouth. He looked up at me, so thankful for the food and I was thinking that I somehow wasn’t good enough to give him the liquid gold. And eventually I gave up trying.

But my baby was healthy as can be. He didn’t get his first cold until he was 8 months old. He never got an ear infection. He slept through the night at less than 3 months. He was the best sleeper I knew and the smartest baby I ever met. All this and he lived mostly on formula for his first year.

But it was hard on my morale and my conscious. I wondered how important the mother’s mental health was in those first few months of baby’s life? What value was I bestowing upon my sanity?


Fast forward to present day -- 5 weeks before I give birth to my second baby. From the day I saw the positive on the peed-on stick, I thought, how am I going to do the breastfeeding thing again?

Although I’m older, educated, and more experienced, I still find myself dreading the moment when I have to feed this newborn baby for the first time. Formula feeding seems so easy on paper. You can share the task with your partner. You aren’t exclusively tied to your baby for the first few months of life. You know that when they’re crying, they’re not hungry because you know exactly how much they’ve consumed. You can actually go 3 hours in between feedings. You can have your boobs back sooner. (I know – how selfish of me to think of such things after I’ve donated my body to incubation for the last 40 weeks that I would want some part of it back to myself.)

So I continue to sit with the Theys chanting at the back of my subconscious dreading the day I have to decide: to breastfeed or not to breastfeed?

Kids Allergies Suck

Every year my poor 8-year-old suffers terribly from seasonal allergies. It started when he was about 2 with a dry cough that never resolved itself. Original allergy testing showed he was allergic to dogs so he took Singulair every day for the next 5 years. Then last year we went to an awesome allergist who did a full range of tests and showed that he's "only" allergic to trees (and accessories), grass (and accessories) and cats.

This year, with the pollen count at its all-time high, my son's nose was officially "not working." Oh yeah and he gets the itchies. So bad that I have lube him up head to toe with Aquaphor every night before bed so he doesn't scratch himself to blood by morning.

His daily allergy regimen consists of:

• Saltaire (to clean out the pollen every day)
• Nasonex (cortisone nasal spray)
  
• Pataday (for his eyes because otherwise they turn blood red)
• Claritin or Zyrtec every 24 hours before bed

This Google Search video is for him:

Google Search Stories: Life Entertains

This is so cool and so 2010. I have been the go-to Google Gal for a long time so clearly Google Search Stories excited me. I wasted no time ... and this is far from the last search story by yours truly.

Check out my 30-second creation about the year that was:



I've always had plenty to talk and write about when it comes to the drama that seems to find me. From 2008 up until now I haven't really had a break (well actually a knee break), but life has gotten me to a very lucky and beautiful place. So I'm taking a deep breath and slowly trying to move forward. Life has put me on a path and I have made some turns toward the light so click, clack moo-ving forward.

And just for 'shits and giggles' - here (in bullets, not video) is the prequel to the above video (now if Google allowed for more than 7 searches in Google Search Stories):

• Vacation in St. Martin
• What is a partial thyroidectomy?
• Best thyroid surgeon in New York City
• Best orthopedist in Manhattan
• Fractured knee
• How to use crutches for 6 weeks
• Dealing with difficult clients in advertising
  
• How to handle a tax audit
• How to file for unemployment
• How to handle a pregnancy scare
• Boston for July 4th
• Driving through Maine
• Family vacation in San Diego
• How to prepare for 12-hours of interviewing @ a company you worked for before
• Going back to work for an old boss
• In-grown toe nail surgery
  
• Flights to Kansas City for New Year's
• Working for an abusive boss
• Vacation in St. Martin (again)
  
• Getting fired (again) ... and this is where above video starts

Reflections on 32 Weeks

In the grand scheme of life, and with all the hormones that course through my veins, it won’t surprise me if, in retrospect, my 40-weeks of incubator duty won’t seem as awful as they did while I was living them. But my first 24 weeks of pregnancy were a hard, lonely and guilty stretch of life.

My kryptonite is nausea … and for almost 6 months, some higher power had a voodoo doll of me, put me into a tortured box and granted me a sentence of 24-hour nausea. At first it was nausea and lethargy and a general sense of malaise. Then after about 16 weeks, I seemed to gather more strength (or resilience) and it was just the nausea. It still amazes me how humans can adapt to pain and suffering and carry on.

I read somewhere that one theory for nausea (I refuse to call it “morning sickness”) in pregnant women was that ‘back in the day’ before food was pasteurized and healthy, we ate a lot of raw and bad-for-us foods that would often threaten the life of the baby. So our bodies evolved into machines that would rather make us expel the food than process dangerous foods. That’s why it’s supposed to end after 12 weeks – that’s when most of the baby’s organs have formed and it is less sensitive to the dangers of potentially harmful foods.

Apparently my body didn’t get the evolution memo. Either that, or it was, like everything else in my life – doing everything with an exclamation point. (For where else would my stories come from?)

I was growing a life within me and wanted desperately to feel happy, to feel the euphoria that everyone else seemed to shed from their skin as they announced their pregnancies. But I barely had the energy to form a smile on my face, let alone fake an emotion that was clearly buried deep within me, under layers of growing organs, bones, skin and hair.

I had to get up each morning and take care of my 7-year-old and, in reflection, I have no idea where I mustered the strength or the energy. I felt guilty of my exhaustion and sluggishness the whole time. I felt guilty that I wasn’t happier, that I wasn’t doing more, that I wasn’t a better friend, mother, daughter, sister, girlfriend.

I felt guiltiest complaining when I knew there were people who had it so much worse. Always the plight of the over thinker and the over-feeler. We are feeling bad about feeling bad. I should have been thankful to even get pregnant. I should have been more grateful that I didn’t have to go to a 9-5 job. I should have, I should have … but I didn’t.

Every evening I would crawl into bed and hope to fall asleep and gather a few hours of peaceful slumber before my nausea alarm. Some days I woke up in the middle of the night from being nausea – other days I made it through the night. I never looked forward to waking up – and that made me feel the guiltiest yet. I wasn’t suicidal, per say, but I certainly wasn’t living my life with pom-poms waving in the air. Not even a little bit.

I had my daily mantra of ‘this too shall pass’ and right about after the second trimester, it did. The nausea was replaced with heartburn and I couldn’t have been happier. At least medicine worked somewhat on the heartburn. First Tums, then Pepcid, and then Zantac! The all-natural papaya enzyme was just a foul-tasting placebo in my opinion, although all my healthy friends swore by it.

When people find out about the impending bundle of joy, they instinctually say “Congratulations!” I often wonder why? Congratulations on conceiving? Congratulations on being a successful incubator up until this point?

Now I’ve got about 7 weeks to go and I look back. Maybe at this point, I’ve earned a little congratulation. Almost like running a marathon, but only I’m at the 20-mile mark. Good job for making it this far and not collapsing. Here are some cute baby clothes as a dangling carrot to inspire you to make it the last 6.2 miles.

Aside from feeling bad about feeling bad, the hardest part was not being able to write. I wanted this time of my life to be focused on moving my writing career forward – and instead – it felt like it went directly into the toilet. It felt like I took one tiny step forward and a whole mile backwards. Now I felt like I had to start over, and felt more discouraged than ever.

A few weeks into the dreaded nausea my sister told me to write because it will take my mind off the nausea. “Just write anything,” she said. So I wrote about being nauseas. Day after day I would open up my computer journal and write about my body’s reaction to this pregnancy. After about 60 pages, I ruled myself pathetic. I spent so much time crafting words that would never see the light of day. Sentences and paragraphs that would only propelled my career into the same direction as my morning puke.

But these pages are there. They exist to remind me of the marathon I’ve run so far. There to remind me of the strength I never thought. There to reflect upon and be reassured that everything eventually does pass. Mostly I think the words will be serving as the greatest future birth control I could use.

Of course as I sit on the roof deck on this gorgeous spring day, feeling sunshine and warm wind tickle my arms, I smile and think that in a few weeks I will birth a child into this world – and it will completely revolutionize my life. Biology’s anesthesia hormones will flow through my body and will possibly alter anything I am thinking and feeling right now.

Ain’t the circle of life grand?

Dreaming like Daddy

I’ve been a daddy’s girl for as long as I can remember. I called for papa while I was still in the crib and he would try to appease me; somehow mama never had the same calming power. Even then my dad understood me better. She would offer me a doll and I would shake it away - he came up with the idea of giving me an empty matchbox. Now that entertained me! Of course this was Russia over 30 years ago where no one judged parents for using matchboxes to soothe whiny kids in a crib.

Yes my dad and I have formed a unique bond over the course of three and a half decades. We've both lived several lives laden with self-satisfying needs that others have misjudged as mistakes in the process. My dad and I like to think of them as life lessons.

When I was six years old, I remember taking a walk from Alexander’s in Forest Hills, Queens with my dad. Somewhere in the middle of the 20-minute walk, I asked my dad to be carried. It was in this conversation that he told me that I was getting too old to be carried. That I was a big girl now at 5 - and from that time on, I hardly doubted it. I felt empowered to have a (loud) voice and express my opinion vocally. He instilled in me the expectation that my voice was worthy of being heard. We were in America now ... live free and talk loudly.

It was also on this memorable walk that I demanded my dad cease the cigarette smoking. He stopped smoking the next day never to pick up a cancer stick again. In the newly stop-smoking campaigns targeting my young receptacles, I didn't want him to die. So he started the habit of singing, ‘Fame’ to me, focusing only on the "I’m gonna live forever part." He has never wanted me to worry that he would leave me.

I’m not sure if I ever truly believed him, but in that moment, he became a bit immortal to me. The daddy superhero that Sigmund Freud would psychoanalyze inappropriately. He was always a strong man – opinionated, manly, handy. He was the epitome of a man, of a father - albeit not the world’s most perfect husband.

Somehow for each of our faults, we understood each other for who we were and accepted one another. Stubborn, determined, perfectionists – both short and loud – people either hated us or loved us. We both did OK attracting the opposite sex. Annoying to me, he was charming to women. I’m not sure he ever wanted to see me with men.

Lately I’ve been relating to my father in a different way. We’re both light sleepers and we both only dream in nightmares. Ironically – or not so much – my nightmares often involve my father and something catastrophic happening to him. Cancer, a horrific car accident, his eyes needing to be cut out.

And it’s not because I’m obsessed with death and disease – although I have always had a familiarity with both. From the time I was in fourth grade and watched the Lifetime movie with Susan Dey having breast cancer, I would go to bed at night and hope that I would wake up in the morning. We still lived in Forest Hills and I had been sharing a room with my new sister at the time. She slept in a crib in the corner; I slept on two pieces of a sectional sofa.

Maybe that’s when I stopped dreaming. Maybe the dreams were always too heavy, a cry from my subconscious to stop creating scenarios. But lately – now that I’m pregnant, I’ve been having vivid dreams and nightmares.

At the beginning of my pregnancy, it was like a sleeping revolution. I realized I was dreaming and on some sort of an adventure. I was seeing Amsterdam in the 1800s or enjoying some wonderful dinner. Even sex dreams were more graphic and more pleasurable. I finally understood why my boyfriend preferredtarget="_blank" his dream world to his real world so much. Stephanie Meyer must have dreamed up Twilight when she was pregnant (actually I think it was right after the baby was born; I remember her saying she was typing with a newborn on her lap.)

Something about this influx of hormones must make us tap into our innermost subconscious.

But recently, I have been plagued by these nightmares that won’t let me sleep. I roll over just to change the station on my eyelids and see another graphic horror movie. A few nights ago it was snakes. Snakes that apparently would climb into the human body through a slice on the leg and tangle up all our organs. What? I’ve never been a fan of horror movies or scary movies. Where did my mind concoct that mess? Then daddy’s cutting out of the eyes? I could only blame that on last year’s Slumdog Millionaire – but did I really hold onto that for a year only to spring up in my slumber at 3am?

When I roll over I don’t want to fall asleep. My body is shaking, I am crying. It is my reality even in my dreams. Even though it’s not real – I have experienced it and it has effected me and left me scarred. I carry that dream around with me for days. Like I was physically wounded, I have to let the bruise slowly heal.

So, daddy ... how do I learn to dream pretty?

Back to the Blog

I started this blog after I lost my advertising job in 2008. The pent-up writer in me found an expression for her pseudo-voice and a place to foster my insanity. By the end of the year, I got a rebound job that quickly spiraled out of control, just like any rebound relationship would. I thought when I got fired the second time, I would dive back into the blog with invigorated spirit, creating a new writing career.

I didn’t.

Instead I reinvented my life – without documenting it on the technological spectrum. I felt very disconnected - sometimes lonely, sometimes confused. Mostly I continued in the tracks of a grown up while still feeling like a 19-year-old. My theory is, for those of us who ‘grew up too fast,’ we spend the rest of our lives owing it to ourselves to live out our childhoods. (I don’t mean Michael Jackson extremes). For example, as opposed to most NYC Type-A women, I don’t think about 401(k)’s or buying a house. My mantra is that I’ll deal with the future when I get to it.

What I’ve realized over the last two years is that LIFE isn’t what you thought it would be – or what you dream it will become. Life is right now.

Life is unexpected and surprising. It is ugly and beautiful and can bring you extreme pleasure or extreme pain. How do you value water without extreme thirst? How do you value true love without painful heartbreak? I would never have appreciated a week on St. Martin’s gorgeous beaches without a New York winter to kick my freezing butt.

Back to the blog.

Like all life lessons – this one has taught me to let go of perfection. A burden that not only I inflict upon myself - but one that I alone must carry. No one else expects it of me, nor do they penalize me for not being perfect. (The days of me bringing home a test where I scored a 93 and my parents said ‘what happened to the other 7 points?’ are gone.)

I stopped posting to the blog because I was always working on something better, bigger, more complete. But the point of the blog was just that – snippets, snapshots, memories, life at a glance – documented. The only person I let down was myself.

Then it got so long that I hadn’t posted anything that it became overwhelming. What will the first entry back be? Nothing would seem worthy enough for being gone for so long.

So I ignored the blog, an unorganized closet whose door never opened. I deleted it from my signature. I kept a folder on my desktop called “Writings in Process.” It was all a process and I never moved it byond that.

But life went on.

I moved in with my boyfriend of four years. I wrote about it – but never posted it. Then we went through a series of fun life experiences. Blending lives, households, and incorporating a 7-year-old into it all.

We went on a road-trip through 10 states in 10 days. I took thousands of photos and tweeted my way through it. But I never blogged it.

Then I got pregnant.

Then our apartment got bed bugs. So we had a treatment that involved a bed-bug dog, a 4-men extermination team (all complete with creepy tattoos and big stretch earrings), and a bed-bug dog. We also had to wash every single item in our apartment.

Then we had a colony of rats that moved into the area above our drop ceiling. So while we never truly made eye contact with the creatures, we had the pleasure of a soundtrack that involved hundreds of them mating, rummaging and nesting above our heads 24 hours a day.

My rodent phobia, which normally would have me screaming and crying with my head in my hands for hours – had taken a back seat to the puking. The daily grind involved a 5am wake-up call and an appointment with the porcelain god. It was the world’s worst hangover that recurred every day. I was living Groundhog’s Day and couldn’t figure out the lesson to learn to make it be the next day. This pregnancy put my life, my dreams, and especially the long-forgotten blog, on hold.

But I wrote about the puking – 60-pages worth of writing that would never make it out of the ‘works in progress’ folder.

But I missed the blog. I missed airing my voice. I missed the comments and the technical interaction with the people that validated that my voice was worthy of being heard. Mostly I let go of the dream every time I flushed the toilet.

Then we moved again. This time into a pimp apartment on Wall Street, a neighborhood where the most colorful things on the block were the Pink and Tiffany flags. Here we were – a clown and a pregnant writer-to-be moving in with our 7-year-old, one block from the Stock Exchange. Talk about a fish out of water.

So now we’ve moved again – for the second time in six months. We tripled our square footage and our bathrooms. We got a new computer to join the other 3 and I still existed in a guilty state about ignoring the blog and my writing. I felt blocked, not just creatively but also functionally. It took all my energy to make it through a day of nausea.

But the guilt, the doubt, the perfection ... all limitations I inflicted upon myself that were doing nothing but whacking me like I was a mole in a game. I held the mallet and kept hitting my head back in the hole. My life was happening and my story transcription was halted. The moments that floated like clouds away from me, changing shapes so I couldn’t recall them in all their glory.

I had enough. It was time to grow up, take accountability and tackle the challenge of commitment.

I took a break. Now I’m back. Can’t promise that I’ll be better than ever. Can’t even promise that I’ll be great. But I do commit to being back more consistently.

Me - Preggers McGreggers

From www.hammermania.com

I haven't posted anything in over 5 months. I've even written posts about not posting and haven't posted them. I have plenty written - all in back posts but never posted.

Here's why.

Step 1: I got knocked up.

Step 2: I had over 6 months of gruesome, disgusting, debilitating nausea that lasted most of the day and had me barfing every day.

Step 3: Now I'm feeling better ...

Step 4: My awesome photographer baby daddy-to-be finally got me to do a Preggers McGreggers photo shoot.

I think he's amazing. Voila!

From www.hammermania.com

From www.hammermania.com

From www.hammermania.com

From www.hammermania.com

All photos by his awesomeness hammermania.com