Chicken And Cheese » meta

Chambana AKA Blogging Capital Of The Midwest

Mrs. Chicken — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 03:47:00 +0000

I sat at our local Little Gym today, nose in my book, deliciously unfettered. The baby was home with the sitter, rare for a Thursday, but The Poo had an appointment after class and I didn’t want him to distract me from focusing on the girl.

I managed to groom myself this morning, a minor miracle considering that this is Day Two of Mr. Chicken’s out-of-town conference, rendering me a single parent from Wednesday to Saturday. I had a nice, new top, actual pants (as opposed to jeans), and my hair was dry.

(My white athletic anklets paired with black snow shoes sort of wrecked the whole thing, but I looked cute from ankle up.)

There I sat, reading and occasionally flashing a leotard-clad Poo a smile and a wave.

One of the other parents in the waiting area walked over and sat down next to me. She smiled, and leaned in a little closer.

“Are you Mrs. Chicken?” she asked.

Turns out she reads here, and has her own blog. She recognized me from the photos I occasionally post here, and “outed” herself to me as Harley Quinn.

(Hi, Amy!)

She was, as all the other local women I’ve met in this way, simply delightful. We chatted for awhile and I was happy to find out she’ll be there again next Thursday.

And as she left, I was grateful for the fact that I took the time to shower this morning.

It is so strange, the notoriety that comes with this online diary of mine. I told a friend this week that I began writing here not long after my father died, and just after becoming a mother.

It was a place, I said, to hear myself talk. Where I could unburden myself, without continuing to burden my loved ones with an outpouring of grief, anger and confusion.

Next month will make the three-year anniversary of this space. My very first post was tentative; timid, even. But as time passed I became more and more empowered, using it to flex muscles long dormant.

This space provided me with friendships that could not have been possible without it. Just tonight I shared dinner, diapers and tears with a woman who welcomed me to Chambana sight unseen, when I reached out to her through her blog just before we moved here.

The birth of this blog coincided almost exactly with our decision to move to the Midwest, to take on tremendous personal and professional risk in pursuit of the brass ring. When we got here, it shocked me to find so many local writers blogging away; surely this small, small city has the highest per-capita number of bloggers of any other locale.

This space continues to open doors for me, both professionally and personally. I’ve been missing it lately, feeling stressed out and over-committed to my paid work. I miss this space, and I know that as we move again in a few short months I will once again be relying on this community to help me make the transition.

There are days when I think blogging is over, at least for me. I feel like this is tired, and done with. I feel like it has served its purpose and that I’ve outgrown it.

That it is no longer a priority.

And then someone like Amy taps me on the shoulder in the library, in the grocery store or at the playground and says, hey, I read your blog. I really, really enjoy it. You are such a good writer.

So thank you, all of you. Thank you, Amy.

And especially you, Chambana.

The New Radicals

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:54:28 +0000

I’m as empty as the cornhusks that float into our yard in the fall months.

My words are being saved up right now, saved for the paid work that requires me to float lightly over my keyboard, engaging a sense of humor that is, for the most part, dormant at the moment.

I’ve entered the phase of pregnancy where I am going inside myself; preparing for the mental and physical work, for the work of the heart, that will be required of me in just a few more days.

I’m nesting – the nursery is furnished and the onsies and blankets are washed in Dreft. The diapers and wipes are waiting patiently in my new caddy, waiting to swaddle and clean a small bum.

My baby is forcing me to slow down. I am listening.

So I can’t express what I’d like to here, so I am sending you to visit Don Mills Diva, who so eloquently expresses what I feverently believe about the possibilities of blogging in this post about her new job.

For years I wrote in private as I do here. I kept a diary and I played with language and emotion and storytelling – and no one ever saw the blood, sweat and tears that made up the words on those pages. Blue ink, black ink, loopy cursive penmanship inside cloth-bound books that still sit in my basement.

Yes, I wrote for emotional release.

More so, I was writing for an imaginary audience, one denied me by a series of powerful and smug editors who gleefully decided what was good work and what was trash.

I often wound up in the trash.

No longer. I have found a space. I have turned on the volume. No longer silent, my voice echoes through the blogosphere. You seek me out or you don’t. But what matters is that I am heard.

By someone. By anyone.

We are the new radicals.

There has been so much talk in the ’sphere about commercializing your blog, writing for profit and for traffic and how to arrange your template just so, as to not alienate the casual surfer who might stumble upon you.

Tactics and marketing and profiteering.

I understand the urge. I do, really.

But oh! Friends. Please take a minute to recall my friend Charlie Brown’s sad Christmas tree. Quiet, small and in need of tending.

Just a modicum of love and affection turned that sad tree into a glorious symbol of love.

Uncluttered sidebars and pretty headers are all well and good. But what brings me to my knees are your voices, raised together in a beautiful, if cacophonous, symphony of ideas and beauty.

Keep writing. Write! That is why they come.

To listen.

I hear you. Do you hear me?

What Happens At Preschool Stays At Preschool – Unless You Blog

Mrs. Chicken — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:46:10 +0000

A few months ago I learned that the president of The Poo’s cooperative preschool reads my blog.

While the moment of her revelation nearly gave me a heart attack (as several preschool-related posts ran through my mind and my life flashed before my eyes), the connection has been a good one. She even started her own blog, and thanks to her I am keeping The Poo home today to avoid a stomach flu epidemic that may require CDC intervention.

Then some other mothers in The Poo’s class shyly came forward and “outed” themselves as CAC readers (hi guys!). While my reaction was slightly more sanguine the second time around, it still makes me think about just how easy it is to figure out who I am from reading this blog.

I never made a secret about where we live, and I’ve posted various pictures of myself and my daughter. I make a thinly veiled attempt to conceal Mr. C’s place of study, but anyone with half a brain could make the connection in 10 seconds.

I link to my old site, where in the beginning I used all of our real names and wrote more freely about familial and marital conflicts.

There are still some important people in my life who are either oblivious to or have agreed not to read what I write here. My husband is under a pact that rivals the Geneva Convention to avoid CAC at all costs, and my mother has absolutely no idea that I’ve been tapping out stories about our shared – and sometimes strained – grief over the death of my father.

My mother-in-law knows about CAC, thanks to my husband’s big yapper, but reluctantly agreed to let me have my privacy here. She is very nearly foaming at the mouth to be a regular reader, and while I think her motives are pure (she is a generous supporter of my talents), she would find some essays here that are not to her liking.

But how hard would it really be for them to find me?

Not hard at all.

I use a version of my real byline at GNMParents, and if you have any intimate knowledge of the details of our life you could out me with a very simple Google search.

When Karla mentioned that she is an avid blog reader and discovered me through various inter-linkings between blogs, I was at once nonplussed and terrified. If she found me, who else could?

I’ve been musing on what I should do, as CAC hits its second birthday. Hundreds of posts and thousands of words, not to mention a lifetime’s worth of emotions, reside in these virtual pages. Am I ready to let everyone in?

The answer in my heart is “no.” I don’t want everyone here. Not because I don’t love them, and not because I don’t trust them. Because I know if I was out in the open that I would lose something intangible. I would feel constrained in areas of my life that I need to talk about, need to work out using the only tool at my disposal – my words.

Is this an online diary? Is it, by its very nature, public, as my husband’s stepfather would contend?

Maybe.

But for now, it is my private space to write about my life without judgment.

At least, if I don’t write about preschool.

Quandary

Mrs. Chicken — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 20:05:51 +0000

Things have been a little slight around here lately.

I have plenty of emotional battles going on inside my heart – the strong desire to wrap my body around my daughter 24/7 in anticipation of having another small person to care for; the push-pull I’m feeling about her growing up before my eyes; and the future of my career as a writer, such as it is.

But I haven’t been writing about it.

The No. 1 reason I’m absent from this blog - and from yours – lately, save for the most cursory posts and comments, is that my baby is broken.

I have a box from Apple sitting in my dining room, waiting patiently for me to pack it up and mail it off to Cali for a repair. This will be the fourth time I’ve had to send her off. I hate to do it, but the fact that she shuts down and goes into the Sleep Of Death (pat. pending) every time I remove her from her flat-surfaced perch in the kitchen is MAKING ME CRAZY.

I can’t write – or read – for more than five minutes without having to go through a series of seriously stupid steps to revive her.

I’m also at a crossroads with this whole blogging thing, much like my friend Andi. I can say with complete assurance that my current paid gig is an outgrowth of CAC.

But that begs the question … as I am seeing significant success there, why isn’t it turning into more gigs? Did I mention the whole no-income-grad-school thing? Because folks, there will be two babies who need new pairs of shoes.

I know my work suffers when I don’t write every day. The pipes get clogged with the debris of dinnertime, laundry and other chores. It was harder this week to bang out those 800 words that bring in the money, and I know it was because I’ve been absent here.

But.

But to what end am I blogging? Should I spend more time just sitting with an open Word document, trying to craft something “big” or “real” or “significant?” Or am I really just too chicken (heh) to venture outside this small composing space and put my work in front of a person who will accept or reject it definitively?

I’m becoming obsessed with the numbers, with the reciprocity – with all the things I hear you talk about on your own blogs. Blogging without obligation – that’s where I started, two years ago.

But it’s hard. It’s hard not to get hooked on the double-digit comments and the stupid rankings, and then it’s hard not to get your feelings hurt when you are left out of the party.

I’ve renewed my commitment to write as if no one was reading a number of times, but you are reading.

And there’s the rub.

I love all of you so much, and I love being part of this weird world. But I feel it creeping ever more into my real life. And I see my future with a high-spirited preschooler and an infant, and I wonder how I will fit it all in, the words and the babies and the house and the husband.

I don’t want my self to get left behind again. I did that once, with disastrous results. I can’t let my identity get sucked away again, I can’t let myself slide because it is too hard or I am too tired or I am too busy.

I need to write. I want to write. I just need to decide how to go about it.

I’m not quitting; no, I couldn’t quit yew. But I am taking the opportunity to go back to the land, so to speak, while my baby is in Cali getting a massage and a facial. A spring break, if you will. I’ll be the mom I want to be, untethered to technology and down on the floor as often as I can stand it.

I’ll cook actual meals. I might clean the house. I will enjoy two days of delicious couple-time in Chicago. I will visit with my in-laws.

And when it’s over, I’ll come back and read this post and see if I’ve solved my quandary.

The Kindness Of Not-Quite Strangers

Mrs. Chicken — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:00:43 +0000

This has been a trying month.

The Poo turned three, and with that came a sea change in her. Her equilibrium is off, and therefore so is mine. She’s been really sick, and so have I. Christmas is stressful for us in so many ways, and I know this is also affecting her mood and behavior.

It’s a sad state of affairs when what I am looking forward to the most over the next seven days is the car ride to Ohio.

Oy.

Friday was a busy day, getting ready for an unexpected and, frankly, unwanted visit from yet another in-law. Pulling up to my front door after a morning of silly errands, I notice a large envelope at my front door.

Inside, I picked it up and looked at the address, expecting it to be another holiday package.

And it was, but it was for me.

Inside was a Starbucks gift card and a very thoughtful book and CD for The Poo. The note was extraordinarily kind. So kind, in fact, that right there in my kitchen my jaw dropped and then I actually cried.

Who was this package from?

From Amy Jo, writer of Cheese Party.

Awhile back she asked for my address and I gave it to her, expecting maybe a Christmas card. I did get one of those, brimming over with photos of her adorable family.

But imagine my surprise to see a gift, for me, from a woman whose voice I’ve never heard, except in my mind.

I was floored by the thoughtfulness.

I started this blog at a time when I felt extremely isolated. I was a new stay-at-home mother with a driven husband, few close friends and a mother who was wandering the dense thicket of new widowhood. My sister was 1,000 miles away and I was bereft over the loss of my father.

I never thought anyone but a few friends would visit here and read my words. I wrote out of desperation, out of a keen desire for kinship, out of loneliness that seemed insurmountable.

Friday morning a friend reached out to me across miles and miles of wire and cable and told me that what I write, the words that for so long fell on deaf ears, touched her.

Amy, thank you, from the bottom of my heart. I can never express how much your gesture meant to me.

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you, my dear, dear friends.

NaBloKilMeNow

Mrs. Chicken — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 05:00:23 +0000

My Google Reader tried to kill me in my sleep last night.

My eyes are blurred and my head is buzzing and Thursday I have to be the “B” parent at preschool (B stands for bathroom and people, we’re talkin’ two-year-olds here, 12 of ‘em) and I am on deadline … crap. I mean, I just can’t read all these posts!

And I’m the worst kind, the kind who exhorts you to sign up with me, write every day, too, and then whines about not having time to comment on all your posts because I’m too busy churning out my own daily drivel and waiting for you to comment on it.

I noticed the same thing least year; comments declined as the essays multiplied, and I actually produced some of the work of which I am most proud during NaBloPoMo 2006.

And NaBloPoMo 2007? There are 5,791 members, according to the official site.

Holy Jesus, that is a lot of blogs. Reminds me of my friend Andrew Keen’s pronouncements, and my own vow to write for the writing and not for your reaction.

But that is hard.

I’m not groveling for comments here, but your replies to my words are what motivate me to blog. And curiously, the stuff I dash off in a heartbeat always generates more heat than the stuff I actually work on, try to craft, and feel invested in.

Weird.

I was talking to my sister about it last night, how a popular blogger, who used to be neck-and-neck with me in all the silly ratings that we bloggers take so close to our hearts, is currently way more popular than I am.

I mean, oh my God. I’m, like, pissed off because someone I don’t know who participates in an imaginary world is possibly going to get a little piece of html code for an “award.”

Dude.

Totally messed up.

I’m sure this little phase of competiblogger stupidity will pass and I’ll once again be back on track, ready to write just for the sake of the words again.

But today I’m left scratching my head over my own warped feelings about the pull and push of this funny little world I’ve created here for myself.

NaBloPoMo, indeed.

Back To Basics

Mrs. Chicken — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 00:21:25 +0000

If you really want to put the zap on your blogging mojo, you should rush out and read The Cult Of The Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen.

I was cleaning the bathrooms and listening to our local public radio station (very, very glamorous, no?), when Keen was on air discussing how blogging is going to destroy the world.

The glut of unprofessional (his word, not mine) writing, journalism and criticism out in the blogosphere is slowly chipping away at the centralized “cultures” of the western world.

He cites very specific statistics about the number of blogs being created each minute – an impossibly large and daunting number – and how this cacophony makes it impossible for us, as cultural and media consumers, to make informed decisions about our consumption of literature, film, radio, television, news and every other aspect of the cultural spectrum.

Keen’s theory is that we are reducing the people who once were the arbiters of our cultural world to pink slips, with trained critics, authors, filmmakers and newsroom employees being laid off in droves while we “monkeys with a million typewriters” bang out a bunch of crap.

I take issue with some of what Keen theorizes, and I haven’t yet finished the book. And ironically, for someone who makes a strong case that blogging causes a cultural apocalypse, Keen seems to have no problem hyping his tome on – you guessed it – his Typepad blog.

However, in some ways, I can see his point.

It takes time, he says, to weed through the gazillion blogs out there and find the ones you want to read, the ones that are of value to you. Time is our most precious commodity, and where once we were able to find our information in specific, expected areas of media, now we are sometimes lost in the vast digital forest.

Yup.

I can buy that.

And I, my friends, am one of those trees obstructing your view.

I got this cool template and I put ads on my site and – I can admit it here, among friends – I got awfully cocky.

I started writing for you.

I began to assume what you wanted to read. How you wanted to be directed. What you wanted to think.

Shame on me.

I am trained in this profession, that is a fact, and so Keen cannot really accuse me of being an amateur.

I am a paid professional in the world of letters, and I earned that privilege through an arduous, costly education and a tremendous amount of personal effort and hard work.

But you don’t pay me.

You come here voluntarily. You are a community, not a commodity.

I apologize for mistaking the two.

Making deliberate editorial decisions about what I will or will not write about is not appropriate for this forum. You are not looking for an expert – and I think we can all agree that I offer no parenting and/or life expertise.

Traffic is nice, sure. The small profit I see from the ads in my sidebar is helpful, and does not go unnoticed in my checking account. After all, both my husband and I are, essentially, unemployed.

But that is not why I started writing Chicken And Cheese.

So I will henceforth be writing here as I used to write over here – as if no one was reading.

As if I were writing for myself.

I hope you still want to come along with me.

****

Cross-posted at BlogRhet. If you would like to comment, please do so here. Thank you!

Chicken And Cheese » meta

Chambana AKA Blogging Capital Of The Midwest

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