When almost anyone asks me what something means, I will answer with gusto. Meaning and how we create meaning is one of the major interests of my life. Semiotics is how things mean. Semantics is what things mean. The question, no matter what the “something” is, gives me a chance to ply my trade. I don’t get to do that as often as I would like.
My career and indeed my life has had many “interruptions.” Several minor surgeries in the late 90s brought back somatic memories and emotions that completely destroyed the tenuous self esteem and certitude of purpose I had managed to create for myself; In spite of surrounding myself with people who were similar to my family of origin in that they were not supportive to the extreme. I collapsed emotionally. I had to quit my job due to stress and depression so that I could use the energy I could still gather to raise my daughter. This hurt my family financially, my husband did not understand or deal well, at all, with my inability to cope with my despair.
As I once wrote in a poem, “the page will listen when my throat runs dry of scream.” So, I managed to begin writing on several topics dear to me, and this outlet allowed me enough reprieve from teetering on the abyss to do some things, the most important things for me, very well. I was a Girl Scout Leader, made amazing Halloween cakes, and was, I like to think, a fairly significant influencer in the early days of online communities. Eventually I became a peace activist between debilitating bouts of depression, When I was not in a severe depressive episode, migraines stole much of the little remaining time. I developed many physical problems. I knew I had to dig deeper and act as my own, and only, advocate.
I addressed the final piece of unresolved and unhealed emotional damage during this time and began writing about Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy child abuse that I finally understood as the underlying condition that hurt, festered, and scarred over without ever healing. Working for peace allowed me to develop strength and determination and use my writing and field skills in support of good, valuable work which others valued and expressed the value they placed on it to me. That gave me enough strength to persist with my healthcare providers until they figured out what physical problem was exacerbating the emotional struggles in which I was engaged. When I had corrective nose surgery so that I could breathe and sleep again, for the first time in decades, it allowed me to create a baseline that allowed me to buttress my own foundations and begin to build a real life of rewarding work for myself. This included finding a network of women bloggers within which I could practice the skills I had never learned or had not had the opportunity to practice.
Within the last couple of years I have noticed a trend of women close to my age, or in the same stage of life as me, regardless of age, beginning to build sub-networks within the larger blogging community. This year at the annual conference of this network of women bloggers, a critical mass of the subgroup began to, as I see it, build upon each others energies, and something amazing is coming from that collaboration.
There is something afoot. As a guerrilla anthropologist with a semiotic toolkit who read too much Alvin Toffler as a child, it seems I have been trend spotting for most of my life. Discerning patterns is what I do best and there hasn’t been a big demand for my rather esoteric skill set in the backwaters where I have lived much of my life. I have also lived in University towns where there is a glut of esoteric when I wasn’t located in the boondocks.
So while I have found my tribe in bloggy world of women of a certain age I have neither the professional work history or money behind me that most of them seem to have. I am so tired of trying to do everything by myself without a safety net or emotional support network, but I lack so much of the social skill it takes to take advantage of the opportunities that are developing as I write that I have a sick feeling I will miss out again.
I have to fight the desire to collapse, to just melt into a puddle of despair and have a little private pity party. I worked ever so diligently to create an awareness of the segmentation of the Baby Boom into several quite distinct cohorts. I was a social media influencer in this area over a decade ago. I was early in to the BlogHer sphere of political and techy bloggers. On my “it ain’t fair” days I feel as though I have helped others and not been acknowledged or reaped any rewards from these efforts. On my better days, I just say, “life isn’t fair and thank my lucky stars that I have a brilliant husband whose research will ultimately save untold people pain, suffering, and premature deaths, that we have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and kids and grandkids who are happy and healthy.
So when Chloe of The Chloe Chronicles asked a question about meaning on a closed blogging group on Facebook, it really made me think. I am absolutely certain that there is a nexus within the global information network that will exert a profound influence on and shape women’s information and history for generations to come. Women have always been keepers of family and community meaning. Local and family history and lore were oral traditions and documented in the letters of women that were saved for a few decades at best while institutionalized knowledge was most often limited to that from male spheres of influence.
No matter how troubled, unappreciated, stressed, overworked, or underpaid we women writers of a certain age may be, we are creating the structure of future with the paths we walk, the words we write, and the myths we disintegrate with our raging ray-guns powered by the energy released during hormonal fluctuations. I am still convinced that all the other women bloggers of a certain age are thinner, richer, better looking, more inspired, more talented, and better connected than I will every be, that is my problem. I am glad I am in their midst, because they help me understand that the meaning that is everywhere in their worlds is the same meaning that I find in mine. We are all so much more similar than different. That is meaningful.
Jujubee and the New Bed.
Stupid human. How am I supposed to get any decent rest without my bed properly configured? I tried sleeping on the bed this way, and it is not comfy. I am cat. I need comfort.
Now, go check my food bowl, would you? I keep telling you that I need fresh wet and dry food at all times.
I Need Sleep, a Bath, and to Go to the Bathroom by Myself
Today I was convinced I would never get to bathe again, have a lunch date with a girl friend, or go to the bathroom by myself. My work life has gone to hell. Having this new puppy is like having a toddler.
It has been over a week that I have been parenting the pup pretty much full time. The Hubby does night duty and that is good. I do not do well without sleep. Still I've been shorted a bit on sleep, too. When Hubby arrived home at 6:15 today he had carry out with him. Thank Heaven. Then, as soon as supper was over I went in and ran a hot bath and turned on the jets and luxuriated. I had not soaked in a tub in 10 days. Only quick showers.
Perhaps I should be crate training the puppy but mastiffs get so big that crates are huge and hugely expensive. Then there is the whole matter of not knowing the exact conditions from which the pup was rescued. I don't want to put him in a crate is he was taken from horrible caged conditions. So during the work day I am home, not in my office, and watching the pup pretty much constantly, so that outdoor bodily functions, non-furniture chewing and staying in the tiled part of the house become second nature to him.
I knew all about this before getting our pup. I forgot about the “falling asleep in my clothes, hitting the ground running and not getting a shower in the morning” part until this afternoon when I noticed how fragrant I was and that my clothes were from yesterday. ARRRGGGHHHHH!
Today I decided to bring a student desk in from the covered patio where it had been awaiting a garage sale, and put it in our open plan back room behind the sofa so I can bring my desktop computer out from my office and get some serious work done again while still keeping an eye on the dogs. Sigh.
I guess it wouldn't have been that bad of a day all in all, but I haven't told you the gross story as yet. This a.m. right before Hubby was getting coffee and heading off to work he noticed a huge, what I would call a meal worm, larval stage of something crawling under the dining room table. I came over and we then saw several! Ick, ick ick!!!! I ran to the pantry to see if some forgotten bit of organic pasta or something had become a home for some insect's next generation. Nothing. He checked the garbage. It took us a few minutes to find the bag of off brand dog treats that had been infested with something and was the source of the larvae. Yuck. So even though I had cleaned the room yesterday, I had to move everything and sweep up hundreds, of crawling larvae that were dispersing themselves in all directions from the dining room closet where the dog stuff is kept on the floor in a wicker basket. Gross, gross, gross!
When it rains it pours. I really, really wanted to take a shower after all that, but couldn't leave the pup unattended, and our house is divided by a baby gate into dog half of house and cat half of house, and our bath is in the cat half.
But now, I finally feel clean. What an utterly uninspiring day.
At least the puppy had a good day. He discovered a suspicious plastic lid for a jar that needed constant watching and frequently barking at. The vacuum is also really an alien invader that must have extra ferocious puppy barking to be kept in check. Also, the hall bathroom has toilet paper rolls and if you grab an end, you can run off with it and unroll a huge lengths of paper.
Halloween Themes from Martha Stewart Craft Studio
Parenting the Pup
The whole empty nest stereotype is bogus. There are as many reactions to graduating out of the daily, in-house parenting phase of life, as there are parents. People who have maintained their own identity while parenting, and most people these days do maintain a healthy identity and don’t live solely through or for their children. But there can be patterns of behavior from the parenting years that are comforting, familiar, and rewarding and that may be maintained once the kids are gone.
I didn’t know that we would fit into this pattern. But we do, I think. Our life together has been almost totally filled with parenting. We didn’t have much time together alone before our family started. And while that may be less than ideal, per what is recommended by marriage experts, that is what we have come to know and with which we are comfortable.
I think that some of this is underlying our decision to get a puppy. We can’t imagine life without a being able to care for a living, loving creature. I’m pretty sure this is one of the reasons we now have a 26 lb. puppy.
Yes, that is right, twenty-six pounds! Our Little Guy has BIG feet.
Humans have a need to parent. There are many ways this urge can be filled, satisfied, or mitigated. Having kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews, volunteering with kids, having pets, engaging in a caring profession, and so on also can take care of the innate need to parent. Also, some couples engage in lots of care-taking behavior with each other, and that fills the same care-giving niche.
But us, we parent puppies. BIG puppies.
The New Puppy!
I’m starting this post on the way to Phoenix. Ever since last weekend we have been in conversation with the Mastiff Rescue people about adopting one of the puppies we met last weekend. Because we are good puppy parents and have had three Neos in our lives, as well as a Dogue de Bordeaux puppy, and have a mixed breed rescue right now, we were hoping that we would be in serious contention for gettting a puppy. And we were. We are signing the papers, paying the adoption fee, and picking up a little male Neapolitan Mastiff today. Our nest isn’t empty any longer.
We are discussing dog names. Names discussed include: Weaver, George, Frank, Gus, Shawn, Sid, Guy, Mr. Bill, Mr. Scott (Scotty), Mr. Bruce, Jack, Mr. Bones, seven of eight, number six, Dr. Who, Rudy, Mike, Ike, Fang, Beau, Gilbert, Phx, Joseph, Bert, Earl, Seeger, Roy, Boots, Bimbo, Jabba the Mutt, Chewy, Jones, Pecos, Crosby, Parker, Cash, Pancho, CIsco, Boris, Moose, Clayton, Quinton Hairentino, Teddy, Roosevelt, Falstaff, Charles, Thurston Howl III, H.B. (short for Honey Badger), and Clifford.
We wanted to miss the slow down of the Phoenix rush hour so we actually arrived in Phoenix a bit early and went to La Tolteca on 12th & Van Buren (1205 E. Van Buren) for some good inexpensive Mexican food and a couple little treats from their delish bakery. Hubby Fang had chicken mole and I had a carne asada burrito.
I couldn’t make my mind up at first as to whether I wanted an apple or a pineapple empanada… but I finally decided on apple. I love basic Sonoran home cooking.
But now for the real reason this post:
OUR NEW PUPPY!
We are calling this little guy George for the moment. The pic above is at the foster home where he has been learning that there can be enough food for everyone and that life doesn’t have to hurt. He is a tawny Neapolitan Mastiff who is between 9 and 10 weeks old. He is a rescue, we picked him up in Phoenix late this afternoon.
He seems to be settling in exceptionally well and follows Hubby Fang around everywhere, guards him, comes when called, and loves to go outside. The water bowl is totally cool. There are chew toys everywhere and no one tries to eat his food but him. This may be puppy Valhala.
The Hubby and I may not be getting much uninterrupted sleep over the next few weeks until house-breaking is complete. We have a puppy!