Let's Party Like it's Geocities 1999

Why? Because this strange child is my heart.

 I'm just a writer.

I'm not doing this to create a brand for myself, not that there's anything wrong with that. I named my blog Cincy Sarah because it's just kind of catchy and is pretty on-the-nose. I'm Sarah and I'm from Cincinnati. No-brainer.

But every now and then, I get weird pressure from people I know in the blogging community, as it were, to monetize my blog or finish up designing my own site (turns out I really and truly detest that kind of thing), or to organize blog posts into an ebook that I would then sell on my blog that already contains all those posts... and I'm just not into it. I kind of envy the very talented people who have managed to create gorgeous, information-packed websites that draw visitors from all over the world. I'm just downright jealous when they amass enough readers to get free shit from companies just for mentioning them "casually" here and there. That's pretty sweet! I love that entrepreneurial spirit.

However.

That's just not me. I thought it might be, but it's just not. I don't have a particular agenda to promote, though I don't mind holding you hostage now and again to rant about something important (THINK BEFORE YOU PINK, PEOPLE). I like to write things that I hope people can relate to. I try to strike a chord now and again. I'm ever aware that I'm just another anonymous voice on the internet and it's totally understandable that you, the average internet person, doesn't necessarily care about me, in particular. I'm comfortable with that and the feeling is probably mutual. We both know what this is.

I'm also not interested in joining one of these massive rings where everybody blindly clicks on everyone else's blogs and leaves meaningless comments so that everybody gets lots of hits in some kind of modern day chain letter, Google-tricking waste of time.  That feels icky to me.

So I'm just going to continue writing whatever the hell I feel like writing here. And someday, I hope I can relate some exciting news about how someone is paying me actual money for writing things I love to write about. But it won't be Google Adsense. When I point you to Amazon and ask you to pretty please buy my book, I hope you'll want to do that because it sounds interesting and you'd like to support me because you're cool like that.

Now, how about you? What are you up to? I'd love to use my small internet voice to help get the word out about cool things you're doing, too. My next post will be pure promotion of some internet up-and-comers I'm excited about. If you're doing something from the heart and you'd like me to help spread the word, I'm happy to do that. No link exchanging required.

Let's just be real together, like it's Geocities 1999.

Emotional mountain climbing

 (Subtitle: Where you don't even get to burn calories but you still might pull a hamstring)

The peaks and valleys of Glen Nevis. Bods/Creative Commons

"Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could."
– Louis Erdrich, The Painted Drum

I came across this today on a beautiful blog post about a woman in New Zealand who just passed away from breast cancer, and the sentiment could not have come at a more poignant time for me. 

Call this irony, or hypocritical, or yet another example of the failure of modern sensibility thanks to the Internet, but I woke up sure that I needed to share on my blog, with strangers from around the world (all 113 of you), that I have been feeling withdrawn. I'm too exhausted from psychoanalyzing myself to decide whether this is an idea I should feel ashamed about, leaving me in the all-too-familiar position of being completely past the point of possessing even one singular shit to give. I am quite simply overflowing with stress, angst, worry, and guilt.

It's what we do. People, I mean. I could probably make a solid argument that it's more a symptom of my X chromosome, but I personally think we are just more chatty. Both sexes tend to take on a heavy burden when we come out of hiding and participate in the world. My participation lately has led me to a place of utter sadness, in so many ways. It doesn't matter how many times I assure myself there's little point in fretting about things I cannot fix, or even improve. My heart is heavy, and it has led me to near total withdrawal. I'm not reaching out to people I love who may need it, because I feel so overwhelmed, and the fact that I'm not reaching out only makes things worse. It's a bad cycle.

Are you still with me? Has my cryptic, angsty vent triggered your involuntary eye roll? I get it. I have a good life, a privileged life versus a full 2/3 of the world's population and most of the population in this country. Things could be a whole hell of a lot worse. I guess this is the guilt portion of our show. I have it good, but I'm so preoccupied with worry about so many people in my life, including myself, that I'm not even enjoying the gifts I've been given (or have earned by way of elbow grease, belt-tightening, and lifting up my mythical bootstraps, depending on your ideological perspective). Any way you slice it, I'm feeling pretty guilty about feeling angsty, and what the hell is that about? I suspect it's my unproven theory that the people around me will be better off if I appear to be keeping it all together.

Somewhere around age 9, I concluded that it was somehow wrong to ever feel anger, sadness, self-worth, or to express any emotion that wasn't 100% positive, or at least carefully measured. Why that is, I don't know. I blame hormones, or possibly Madonna's seminal Live a Virgin LP. I'm sure a shrink would pinpoint some noteworthy experience like getting boobs too early, or a stressed home life, or my dog dying at Christmas when I was 6, or that one time I sipped from a glass of water and discovered it was Sprite. That will leave a scar. The fact is, I don't know and I'm not sure it matters. I only know that it sucks and as I veer dangerously close to 40, I'm pretty weary of feeling that way.

I used to have a big problem with people who make it a point to live their lives in vibrant color, throwing caution to the wind, making an ass out of themselves in the loudest, most public ways they can muster, calling people out on inauthentic BS, all in the name of honoring themselves above all else, at least some of the time. These days, I envy them for holding a spark of something I seem to have lost along the way. I get why the "old people" seem so embarrassing to younger generations. It can be off-putting to share time with someone who has looked at all the social conventions for several decades and concluded too many of those conventions were utter conformist bullshit.

I'm not sure where that leaves me. This isn't Dead Poet's Society up in here. This is my blessedly ordinary life, in which I'm blessed with beautiful children and a doting, brilliant husband. What talents I have, I'm squandering. I'm harder on myself than anyone else ever could be, and that's not a badge I wear with pride. I prize kindness above all other human traits, but I can't seem to muster any for me. I'm pretty sure I deserve a little kindness. I made eye contact with a homeless man the other day when I gave him the 38 cents I had in my pocket, so...

Maybe what I really need is a vacation/whisky bender. Who's in? I'm sure I'd be a wonderful travel companion, what with my penchant for bursting into tears over magazine ads for wholesome snacks your family deserves and my well-honed ability to quietly avoid anything smacking of honest emotion. Road trip!

In truth, I'm probably coming down the other side of my latest exercise in emotional mountain climbing. I'm pretty sure the peak was the day I spent rewriting humorous essays into dark parables about "the collective hopelessness." I suppose it's time to take another stab at the world of antidepressants, but the thought alone exhausts me. I may actually prefer the peaks and valleys to the flat line of meh. I prefer the occasional Earth-rocking thunderstorm to month after month of fog. That said, I'm bone-weary from all the mountain climbing, too. I'd greatly appreciate any insight, dear readers. The options in my comments section will always include Anonymous. So, really, feel free to vent about your own struggle with the mountain, or tell me to suck it up, or tell me how you found balance. I'm listening.

How not to wake up on a Monday morning

This cloud understands my pain. On etsy.

Despite a fitful night, I wake up refreshed and ready to face the world anyway this fine Monday morning. Birds are chirping, two happy children are frolicking about, a small house cat is sunning itself on the floor where the morning sunshine spills in from my bright yard. We all smile knowingly at each other. "Spring. Lovely, lovely Springtime," we say without having to speak, the wordless acknowledgement of a world where everything is fresh and new again passing through our bright, eager eyes.

Or not.

It may have looked more like this:

After a fitful night, in which I thrashed around angrily most of the time, kicking off covers and stomping out to the thermostat repeatedly to try to find some kind of temperature that would magically allow me to finally fall asleep, I wake up when the dump truck apparently rolls off, leaving me behind in throbbing pain from tip to toe, and with an unidentifiable shrieking sound pounding insistently into the core of my being like a hammer with a hit list (get it? HIT list? it's a hammer, which hits things, and it's also trying to kill me, theoretically, in this extended metaphor, like a hired killer might be wont to do).

Against my better judgment, I pry open one eye halfway and peer around the still slightly dark room. What freaking time is it? Are you serious? I have been asleep for 2 hours. The 3-year-old creature spots the white of my eye instantly.

"Mommymommymommymommymommymommymommy!!!!!!!" it shrieks.

Why is this happening? Why does everything hurt so much? Where is my servant with the tea? I don't want to be an adult today. OK, ever. Whose idea was it to have these children?

"MOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooomEEEE!" It is only getting louder. 

I take one of those deep, cleansing breaths that allow you to better communicate with another human being who is apparently trying to pierce your eardrum, and who really has very little concern for the fact that your brain is pulsing against your skull in rhythm with your pounding heart.

"What. is. it. David?" I manage to get out, realizing with gleeful surprise, as I voice my first words of this fresh new day, that my throat has undergone some kind of L.A.-style chemical peel in the night.

"I need you to carry me."

"No."

"Mom.ME. I need you to CARRY me."

"No. You are a big boy."

Much shrieking ensues and I finally drag myself out of the bed, disturbing Sniff the Cat, who glares at me and rolls over toward the wall. Yeah, screw you, too, cat. At least you get to stay in bed. Damn. I am in a foul mood this morning. Fear me, mortals.

"OK. What is it, David? Why do you want me to carry you?"

"I want you to carry me to the potty while you pee!"

"What?"

"While you PEE!"

"Are you serious right now?"

"WHILE YOU PEE!!!" Shrieking. Sobbing.

For whatever reason, this last bit is my fury trigger. It is all I can do to not instantly sprout arm muscles the size of VW Vanagons and bust through my pajamas and then rage around the house breaking shit indiscriminately.

I don't handle things well when I'm sick.

Wordlessly, I pick him up and haul him to the bathroom because I do have to pee now, and after birthing two children, now means now. I'm way too fresh off a terrible night's sleep to contemplate fighting it at this point. Why he needs to accompany me, I have no idea. Has he been trained like the dog and realized I was still in bed instead of making him eggs at exactly 8:13 a.m.?

He sits on the side of the tub and watches me pee, shaking with leftover sobs, staring up at me woefully, utterly crushed by my cruel, unsympathetic nature.

"Where is your brother, anyway?" I ask.

"Anda is throw up in his potty."

"David! That is important information! You need to tell mommy stuff like that."

More sobbing. "I want to have WATER! Make some water in the kitchen!"

I rush across the house to poor Anderson, who has fashioned himself a makeshift bed in front of his toilet on top of three beach towels, his stuffed bobcat playing the role of misshapen pillow.

"Oh, hi, mommy," he says cheerfully, leaning up on one arm and then collapsing again.

"Um, hi, buddy. Are you ok?"

"Oh, yes. I threw up SIX times! Well, seven minus 2 times. FIVE times!"

David continues sobbing. Now it's something about how he wanted the red cup of water and I gave him the wrong cup and now he will never grow up to be a fashion designer or even a surgeon, and he hopes I remember this moment because it's going to come out when he writes his first tell-all about his terrible childhood of neglect.

Anderson dry heaves in response.

I close my eyes and rub my temples, mentally calculating how many Advil it's going to take to allow me to continue living past 10 a.m.*

And thus begins our week. Tune in later to see what happens next!

Will mommy wind up in a)a mental institution, b)jail, or c)bed, ever again?

*The answer is 4. 4 Advil and three large cups of tea.