Finding my way

I write a lot here about how I feel insecure in the sometimes-incestuous little world of blogging. There are small groups of people who are very famous, very popular, very profitable and very involved in their own cliques of fabulousness. There is nothing wrong with this group, except maybe that I’m not a part of it. Then there’s the larger, more open, welcoming group of everyday Janes like me, who have made a decision to write online and struggle each day to become better at it.

My own personal struggles, which I try hard to document honestly here, are with panic and anxiety. But they are also with insecurity. I am not a mother. I don’t have children, and therefore I can’t be categorized as a mommyblogger. I can’t agree or disagree with my blogoshere peers with any authority because I actually don’t know whether Dora is better than Elmo (or can they even be compared?). I am not an expert on car seats, potty training or the amount of work that goes into raising a child in this day and time. Nor am I an expert on the joy that comes with being a parent.

What I am an expert in though is what it’s like to be surrounded by friends with children and to not have any of your own. By choice, I should add. I might not fit into the world of parenting, but by golly I know what it’s like to co-chair a household, work full time and attempt to finish graduate school, all the while fighting like hell to pay the mortgage AND the tuition. Is this my niche? I’m not sure. I’m not sure that there’s a category I fit into, or a label that can be attached to me. I am who I am, and this blog is what it is. That’s why it’s hard to reconcile myself with the fact that – as has been the case so many times in my life – I’m the odd man out.

Mommybloggers have groups and communities and sites and forums and so many arenas in which they can share their experiences, but what is there for the rest of us? Is there even a “rest of us?” Are there large groups of not-moms out there, blogging furiously, trying to make a name for themselves in this giant sea of faceless writers? If so, someone please tell me. Someone please send me an email, direct me to this place where I can go and talk to and commiserate with other women who have chosen not to be parents (yet) but who have chosen to take to the Internet and document their everyday lives.

Because I’m telling you, Internet, it’s a lonely world out here when someone starts talking about Thomas and you think they’re referring to English muffins. (Thomas is a tank engine, FYI.) It’s a lonely world when your co-workers don’t know what you do when you’re not working and you don’t know what your friends do on the weekends because you weren’t invited to their children’s birthday parties. Lest this start to sound like whining or griping, I should point out here that I made a choice. I decided a few years ago to have The Children Discussion with my husband and I made it clear to him that, for now, my education comes first. If the uterus were on the other foot, we’d have half a dozen kids by now, but luckily my husband loves me enough to support my decision and know that we’ll be parents if and when the time is ever right.

I will be 31 years old in two weeks. According to my father, I’m an old, childless woman who has selfishly not given him grandchildren. In my circle of friends, I am that curious, odd girl down the street who, sadly, will have no one to rely on when she’s old and gray. As one of them said, “A master’s degree won’t visit you at Christmas.” This is true. (But I can wrap it and put it under the tree every year, because an education KEEPS ON GIVING.)

I can’t say if Brian and I will ever have children, nor can I say that we won’t. But until that day happens, I find myself out here, outside the groups and circles and forums, looking around desperately for a familiar face to say to me, Hey, I know how you feel. I’m not a mommy, but I am a blogger. Let’s go out there and kick some ass.

All the reasons why summer should have been over, like, two months ago

Anyone who knows me knows that I can’t stand to be hot. I hate humidity, I hate heat, I hate sweating. At my hot-as-hell May wedding, two of my bridesmaids were on climate control – NO LIE. Their duties prior to the ceremony were to recon and overtake the church thermostat. This is honestly how much I hate to be hot. Therefore, it stands to reason that I also hate summer. (Actually, I would say that “hate” is a strong word here; after all, you can’t have summer without the beach really, and I do love the beach.)

1. Because it’s hot.

2. Because it’s humid.

3. Because it’s hot AND humid.

4. Because mosquitoes don’t listen when you tell them to FUCK OFF ALREADY.

5. Ditto for all the other disgusting bugs, insects and reptiles out there.

6. Ditto for the parasites that try to live on my cats until I annihilate their asses.

7. Because it shouldn’t be 80 degrees at 6:30 in the morning.

8. Because I’ve already spent too much on anti-frizz, hair-straightening products.

9. That reminds me, have I told you about the new Remington Wet2Straight?

10. I think the propane in our tank for our gas longs either evaporates or goes bad in this kind of weather.

11. My herbs are distressed.

12. I’ve worn all of my summer clothes so many times that even my husband has them memorized.

13. Because I heard that a 97-lb. Eastern diamondback rattlesnake that was 9 ft. long was caught and shot near a turkey house about an hour from here. That shit does NOT HAPPEN in winter.

14. Because no one can enjoy going to a football game when the bleachers are so hot you need an ice pack to sit down.

15. Because basketball season can’t come until football season is over.

16. Because mums will fry on my front porch in this weather.

17. Because I can’t touch the steering wheel on most days, unless I’ve been in a parking garage.

18. Because how many times can you fix chicken on the grill?

19. It’s too hot for the crock pot. I love the crock pot.

20. Because I’m too tired for self-pedicures and I’m too cheap to go buy one.

21. Because even though it rains, we’re still in a drought.

22. Because after 10 minutes outside (unless you’re some freak of nature), we all stink and we’re all eaten up by mosquitoes.

23. Did I mention it’s hot?

Healthcare Reform? How about Wallet Reform.

I started a post yesterday about the healthcare debate, and how I was so ashamed of not just my fellow Americans but my fellow North Carolinians, who have turned up on television all week long at town hall meetings, shouting obscenities at one another and at elected officials. (Okay FINE. The elected officials probably deserve it.)

My post was going to be about how we should all just CHILL THE FUCK OUT and realize that a) nothing’s going to happen overnight, and b) unless your name starts with Sen. or Rep. or POTUS, your opinion isn’t really going to count right now. But then I changed my mind.

Brian gives me an (undeserved?) hard time pretty much all day every day about the amount of MTV I watch. Specifically about how I watch “The Real World” and keep up with all the drama and the ridiculosity (YEAH, IT’S A WORD) and about how he’d love to show them the real world, the one in which you get a job and pay some bills. He has a point, I guess, but then last night’s episode was all about (okay maybe a little bit about) this charity, DIF, which is basically an orphanage. The Real World kids went out and hosted a “charity event” (they charged drunk people $5 for a strand of Mardi Gras beads) at which they raised $11,o00. Not bad for some MTV flunkies. Then they all went to Costco, bought up some bikes and trikes and see-saws and donated it to DIF. It was really sweet, I have to admit, to see these impoverished orphans so excited over some new shoes and a toy water gun. Seriously.

And this morning, I found the Global Rich List, which kind of made me feel like shit. Apparently, according to global statistics, I am in the top 3% of the richest people in the world (which isn’t saying much, I swear). All you do is enter your salary, and then this is what they tell you:

“All you have to do is make a choice.

$8 could buy you 15 organic apples OR 25 fruit trees for farmers in Honduras to grow and sell fruit at their local market.

$30 could buy you an ER DVD Boxset OR a First Aid kit for a village in Haiti.

$73 could buy you a new mobile phone OR a new mobile health clinic to care for AIDS orphans in Uganda.

$2400 could buy you a second generation High Definition TV OR schooling for an entire generation of school children in an Angolan village.”

So what is it that needs reform again? Us? I think maybe so.

Crises averted

What is it people say? “Don’t sweat the small stuff.” “Be grateful for tiny victories.” I think that I shall today. I’ve been tweeting about it all morning, but today is on-campus registration and I’m telling you, Internet, I have never in all of my life seen people show up in droves like they did today. They came with backpacks and babies, toddlers and textbooks and all I can tell them when they show up at my door is “I’m sorry, but be patient and keep waiting in line.”

I know they’re panicked. I know they are unsure and don’t know what they’re doing. The majority of students are laid-off workers coming back after years and years of line or factory work. I hate it for them, but we can’t help the economy and all we can do is accommodate as many people as we can as quickly as we can.

My tiny victory came about 10:30 am, when the line to get into financial aid wrapped itself three times around a “square” of office space. The halls were so clogged with people, already hot from the record heat outside, that even when we brought in fans to circulate the air, it was still hard to breathe. Children were crying, diapers were being changed IN LINE, cell phones were ringing incessantly (I’ve never heard so many dirty ring tones in my life) and as they stopped in front of my door, they either sat on the floor of my doorway or came right on in to deposit trash in my trash can.

And Internet, I want you to know that even when I felt trapped inside my office, even when there were bodies piled three deep outside my door, with knuckles rapping on my door handle, I didn’t panic. I DID NOT PANIC. I kept myself busy with IMing my officemates to make sure they hadn’t dug tunnels and escaped (like I wanted to) and by, you know, doing some actual work.

I’m kind of proud of myself.

Right now there’s a lull, but this will begin all over at 5pm today and again all day tomorrow, or at least until there’s no more money and classes are full. We will have the largest enrollment this year of any year, oh, EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD. I’m glad because that means we’re helping a lot of unemployed folks, but at the same time, it’s another reminder of how overcrowded and underserved we are. But I’ll continue to be patient, be glad for my own job and be proud of my ability to distract myself – at least temporarily – from my anxiety.

Pick me! Pick me!

In the blogging world, BlogHer is kind of the gold standard for women who do this, and right now THIS VERY MINUTE in Chicago, bloggers from all over the place have converged in one spot to give each other the once-over and exchange business cards and drink a lot and point out people they know from The Interwebs at BlogHer ’09.

I am not one of those people.

Instead, I’m one of the bloggers sitting at home on her ass, reading about Anna’s encounter with Nancy W. Kappes, Paralegal, Jenny’s panic attack and subsequent suitcase swimming and other various and sundry accounts of fun and/or bizarre happenings. All week long I’ve been trying to quell my jealousy by thinking that a) I’m going to the beach next week with All Those People and therefore couldn’t possibly be in Chicago if I tried, b) no one would know me there anyway and c) surely I would be arrested if I did go, because I think it’s illegal to find out people’s room numbers and wait for them there.

Also, I think that my blog experience is like one of those movies where the demented person believes she has all these friends and this life, but really she’s made it up in her head and actually none of it exists. In my mind, I like to think that there are large groups of people gathered round their Google Reader, anxiously awaiting my next post so that they can send it to someone famous who says, “That Elizabeth! She’s something! Hand her this check as an advance on her first book!”. In reality, my friends and family read this because I make them and occasionally Brian reads it so he can get mad at me for something. So far as I know, none of them possess a check large enough to advance my first book.

The point of all of this (see? it’s taken me this long to get to my point, and that’s why I’m at home on my ass instead of at BlogHer) is that I wish I were brave/successful/all-around fabulous enough to circle the networks in Chicago, but I’m not. I’m the last one left on this side of Red Rover. I’m the benchwarmer for kickball. I’m the girl you re-introduce yourself to because you can’t remember if you’ve met me before.

One of these days I’m bound and determined to wake up and change my own mind. But for now, I’m Elizabeth D. Baker, Regular Person.