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Word Press, Cell phone novels, and Me (again)


Okay, so because I haven’t joined nearly enough blog sites (MSN-Spaces, dot.mac, LiveJournal, Blogger, Blogher, NaBloMo) or have blogs enough, I went to WordPress the other day and started a whole new account and am rebuilding this site essentially at WordPress. A really neat function allowed me to transfer all the stuff at Blogger (which are the same posts as here) to WordPress. I called the site Anniegirl1138 which was my “handle” at the YWBB. In my first post there I explained the story behind the name too. While most people at the widow board tend to create monikers based on their loss, my name was all about me. What an selfish little thang I am, eh? But I saw being there as being about me anyway. Not Will. I was there to see if I was normal (found out that normal is a bit more relative than I had believed it to be) and to rant (as I had no outlet for it in my real time) and I wanted to find people who were coping, internalizing and moving on – which is what I was more than ready to do. Rob was teasing me a bit this morning about naming my site for myself as he is grappling with what to call his on site. I named this site Second Edition because it was the second blog after my Widowed:The Blog at MSN-Spaces, literal name and boring, but I like the idea of my blog being christened with my online persona.

WordPress is a bit more complicated and I am still playing with the free features before I upgrade (which I think I will have to do to get the cool stuff) but I think it will eventually be my permanent – and only – online home. I want to continue this blog there and also have a page for my writing and a page of resources for widowed people – just cause I want to help and I haven’t much of an outlet for that right now.

Cell phone novels are a big Japanese thing right now. I went to look at a couple of blog articles on them and wondered if I could do something like that myself. It made me wonder too if I could, or should, put some of my own fiction online. I used to write fanfic in the long ago. It was fun to get feedback and have an audience that was so immediate. It reminded me of when I was a sophomore in high school and I was writing a soap opera satire that all my friends (and even kids who weren’t my friends) were asking to read it. I couldn’t write fast enough. I love writing for people. How did I lose that? Why did I forget that? Oh, yeah – I was told I wasn’t quite good enough when I tried to go back and get into the Writer’s Workshop at Iowa. Now if that happened I would chalk it up to a problem with the source but then I was twenty-seven and very insecure.

Rob and I have talked more about the Texas move and my working and my writing. I am being silly to worry about what feminist society thinks about my role. Shouldn’t my role be whatever I choose for it to be? I choose to be a writer who does the stay at home stuff. Men are practically applauded for that but women are selling themselves short and up shit creek at the same time. As Rob has pointed out on many an occasion, who decided that career and all its material accouterments were the be and end all? If everyone let fear of failure or loss of status or society’s aversion to living a scaled -down material life get in the way of the pursuit of one’s true talents, interests and dreams what a real shit-hole this life would be.

Seven Months Ago


Rob and I were married seven months ago today. I find it interesting that we count the months. I was never much for month counting. Not when I was first married to Will or when I was pregnant with Katy (though the count is generally by weeks for that life event). I had to stop and count when people would enquire how old Katy was even. Consequently, I have never numbered my days as a widow. It was actually quite a relief to be beyond the first anniversary and able to just count in years. So, it’s interesting that I, Rob too, counts the months of our marriage. Perhaps it’s just that this time we are so fortunate to have seems too precious not to keep track of every minute of it. Maybe that is even part of what drives my blogging. I want this on the record, so to speak.

 

We are “celebrating” by taking our old sofa to the dump. Neither Rob nor I can bear to sit on it since the nephew and his lice lounged all over it. And, it isn’t coming with us to Texas anyway. Rob hasn’t been able to pawn it off on either of the older girls. So to the dump.

 

Then it’s on to the mall for walking shoes. I finally talked Rob into starting a walking program with me on the two nights of the week that the gym offers child-minding. In between we need to make yet another library run, returning dvd’s, cd’s and finished books. I love that we are establishing library time as a family with Katy. When I was little, I loved our trips to the library. I want Katy to see the library (and bookstores) as fun and wonderful places full of adventure and a place to exercise one’s imagination. After that it will likely be dark and time to come home.

 

It’s staying light longer now. It was after five before dusk hit in earnest yesterday, but it’s still a short day in terms of daylight and sunlight isn’t plentiful yet. I will so miss the long sun days. I loved being able to watch the sunset at 10:30 or 11PM. The day we were married my mother was amazed to see the sun only just setting when back in Iowa it would have been dark for hours already.

 

We are planning a sauna for later and perhaps a movie. A comedy. We tried comedy last night, the Aniston flick about the family who were the real Robinson’s from The Graduate. We kept our widowed character streak alive as the dad in the story was widowed in his mid-thirties.. Rob assures me that widowhood is not a theme in tonight’s pick.

 

But it’s a beautiful day. Not quite 2 C (mid-thirties for you American folk) and we are set to enjoy it as they are predicting our first brush with -30 C on Monday and Tuesday. It’s a good day to hang out and be a family and remember it’s our anniversary.

About the Name


Anniegirl 1138 is a moniker I created for myself out of desperation when trying to register as a member of a message board for young widowed people. My first choice was just Annie, but being common and simple, it was already in use.

I then fell back on Anniegirl which was the name I used years ago at BabyCenter when I was trying to get pregnant for the first time. Unsurprisingly it too was already spoken for, though in the many months I was posting at the YWBB, I never ran across the poster whose name that was.

Finally, I struck upon the idea of simply adding numbers to the end of the name I wanted to use. And I wanted to use Anniegirl. It is actually a nickname that goes back farther even then BabyCenter. It was first given to me when I was a third year teacher by a counselor I was working with in a middle school at-risk program. Her name was Karla and she was in the habit of nicknaming everyone she knew and liked. She first called me Anniegirl and we struck up a friendship that last for several years and even though we are no longer close friends – she still calls me that.

 The random number thing was a tough one however. I have a difficult time remembering my own cell phone number (okay – confession – I can’t remember my cell number at all which is why it is a good thing that my husband knows it by heart). I chose 1138 after the George Lucas film THX1138. Why I can remember George Lucas’s college phone number and not my own cell number is a mystery, but there you have it – Anniegirl1138.

Generally speaking I am as ego-centric as anyone in the blogosphere and maybe moreso. I began blogging at MSN Spaces during the summer of 2006. It was a place to put my angst and I had plenty of it at the time, and to get back into the habit of writing everyday. I eventually moved on to dotmac where I still maintain a blog and it’s doppleganger at blogger, and now I am here.

This blog will, hopefully, not be about angst. I am tired of it. Not that I don’t still have angsty critters knocking about the recesses of my being, but I am in need of …….. something different. Oh, I tried politics at the Des Moines Register blog site during the weeks leading up to the Caucases, but despite what most of the Canadians I live amongst seem to think – I don’t have a deep and abiding interest in the running of my homeland. I trust that someone will do it – badly – and that I and my descedants will bankroll this with the sweat of our brows and the ache in our backs – but for the most part, it falls somewhere inbetween amusing and scary-ass surreal.

I don’t have a hobby – aside from writing which is more of a complusion really. I don’t live in a big city, so I can’t scope out great food kiosks as I have read one guy in New York does to his greater financial good. I don’t go to the movies or concerts often enough to review them. In fact, I don’t even watch TV anymore. So, the idea of making this blog topical or cultural or helpful in any widespread way just won’t work.

My personal blog is about my widowed journey and my remarriage. Not titilating stuff for the non-widowed of the world – who in my age group vastly outnumber those of us who have lost a spouse. And though second marriage is common enough these days, I wouldn’t be much of a resource for those who are divorced. Our experiences are just not the same once you get past the superficial. And you get past that quick.

So, I imagine this blog will be as egocentric as the majority, and that might be enough reason for some of you to check it out and perhaps stick around for a while.