Life Doesn’t Fit in a File Folder

You’re suddenly made the absolute ruler of your country. What is the first change you make?

No more Speedo bathing suits for men. I’m sorry, but they are just not for the general public. In my whole life of observing men in Speedos, I’ve come to realize there was only one person who could wear that thing. And he was a 17-year old boy. Miklos, wherever you are now, good for you. You had it going on. That garment was made for you. Every other man on the planet, throw them into the fire.

Interested? Good.

Because I was interviewed by The Byronic Man and the rest of my answers are at his place.

Also my title of this post? I stole borrowed it from the tagline from his blog.

See? You like him already. I can tell.

I do, too.

So follow me to The Byronic Man today.

While you are there, poke around and check out some of his stuff.

He loves when people rifle through his drawers.

He told me it’s fine.

Seriously.

(Just don’t touch his hair product.)

It’s Hump Day.

So I need to hump thank you.

Because of your votes, I won the brand new, but much coveted Peg-o-Clio Award after submitting a piece of fiction to try to come up with a use for and then “sell” a product that Peg had at her blog.

To read my winning entry, click HERE. (Note: It’s short!)

Check out my awesome cyber-trophy. Those red shoes are smokin’. I wanna get me some of those. Perhaps I should forget this whole author thing and just go into advertising. Obviously, I possess the ability to turn chicken shit into Chicken Cordon Bleu. The book thing is taking a lot longer than I ever expected.

Thanks also to all of you who voted in RobShep.com’s 2^nd Annual All Star Blogging Contest. When I sent out the call to my friends on Facebook and Twitter, you came through at the polls. At one point, the two teams were in a dead heat for hours. I am confident that it is because of my followers that Team Ricky was able to close the deal. So thank you for utilizing every device you had in your houses. And offices. Seriously, y’all are the best. Be sure to check out the great blogs from BOTH teams. Because, honestly, these people are wonderful writers.

I know these little contests might seem silly to some of you, but for some of us, they are fun and they offer our writing community the opportunity to offer a little recognition to some of the stellar writers here in the blogosphere. I’m hoping to one day read a book by The Good Greatsby and I can’t wait for Tamara Lunardo‘s anthology of essays What A Woman Is Worth to hit the shelves!

Last, I wanted to remind you that if you haven’t yet asked TechSupport a question for his birthday, you still have a chance to do that HERE by 8/12. All questions must be on the blog. On August 13, 2012, TechSupport will be made to sit in a chair and write responses. I will not correct his grammar. (Who am I kidding? Yes I will. I am going to try to get him to remember when to use capital letters and commas and how to identify run-on sentences. And fragments.)

NOTE: Be sure to read the questions that people have already posted so you aren’t asking the same question that has already been asked already so you aren’t asking it again which would be repetitive and redundant.

Do you see what I did there?

If you ask a question that has already been asked, Tech might ignore you. I would hate for that to happen!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

What good things have been happening to you? Who do you need to hump thank?

Tweet This Twit @rasjacobson

I am a finalist in Pegoleg’s Peg-o-Clio Award. Seriously, I entered a short piece of fiction inspired by a picture that she posted, and I made it to the finals. I would love it if you would check out the entries and then VOTE FOR ME. Or just scroll right to the bottom and VOTE FOR ME on an act of faith. I seem to always bump up against Darla from She’s a Maineiac and K8edid, and those ladies are the bombiest! So check it out, and did I mention VOTE FOR ME! From every device in your house. Seriously. I’m going down and dirty with this one. 😉 Mainly because I’m getting killed.

I landed in the blogosphere at the right time. I met a group of writers who told me about this chick Kristen Lamb, and how all the cool kids were reading her blog.

Kristen talked about this thing called MyWANA which stands for We Are Not Alone, the title of her #1 best-selling social media book.

I read Kristen’s archives. I taught myself how to use Twitter so I could use #MyWANA in my tweets.

I was amazed how adding that one simple hashtag often doubled the traffic to my blog.

This Little Lamb is pretty smart, I thought to myself.

I stuck to her like a chigger and started commenting on her posts regularly.

There was no way she was going to shake me.

The more I read from Kristen, the more I realized I wanted to be her when I grew up.

(Except I am older than she is. Whatever.)

In the meantime, I started to look for other WANA writers, and I quickly discovered that the type of writing produced by a WANA writer was of a different caliber. These people dared to call themselves writers. They dared to declare putting the pen to the paper was their profession and that it needed to be taken seriously. And they made time to do it everyday – groceries be damned.

I joined Kristen’s Warrior Writers Boot Camp where aspiring writers have the opportunity to experience Kristen’s process. I got to learn a secret handshake and abbreviations like EVOS and BBTs other things that normal people wouldn’t care about.

One afternoon my phone rang. It was Kristen. We over-talked each other for an hour. (Girl might be from Texas, but her mother was from New York.) She told me all the places where my story was solid and the many more places where it had holes so big there was water pouring out of the bottom of the bucket.

She made me whine and stomp my foot.

But she also made me believe that my book had potential.

So I had to go and fix. And keep writing.

Meanwhile, I kept visiting WANA blogs and networking with many fabulous people. None of this connection would have been possible without WANA but especially Kristen, the beautiful, brainy girl with the big ideas. Kristen makes people feel like our dreams really can come true if we just work, if we don’t fear failure, and if we keep trying.

WANA has always featured creative professionals dedicated to serving and supporting one another. WANA understands that life as an artist is hard, and is often lacking support from family and friends. WANA is about serving others first and trusting that good always comes from love.

By now, many of you have seen Kristen’s post on how she plans to take over the digital world with WANA International.

Just kidding.

No, seriously.

She is.

We are.

As Kristen says:

“These days, creative professionals all need more training than ever before. Writers are not the only creatives who must learn to use social media in order to stand apart from the competition and to help lay the foundation for a career.”

So what’s new? WANA is branching out. WANA International is ready to teach creative professionals how to marry technology with humanity to build effective online platforms. There is instruction about craft, business, social media, and more.

I hope those of you you are interested in learning more about what WANA has to offer will click HERE.

***As a longtime English educator, I am looking forward to teaching a few courses later this year.***

If you are a wanna-be author who needs help with creating a blog to showcase your talent or a self-published author who needs to know more about all this confangled social media, or whether you seek information about how to design a book cover or need to figure out if you need an agent… be grateful that you are here now.

Because everyone who knows everything is gathered in one place.

And remember – as Kristen says: We Are Not Alone!

Tweet This Twit @rasjacobson

Whew! It’s been one heckuva month!

There are now 21 days until my son’s bar mitzvah.

Can you hear me sing, “Awwwww. Freak out?”

Anyway, thank you all for playing with me in May and allowing me to give back some of the good stuff that you give me!

What?

You just want me to tell you the winners?

Okay.

The winner of The Write-Brain Book is: Cupcake @VivaAmaRisastall

The winner of Kasey Mathews‘ Preemie is: BaseKamp

The winner of Elena Aitken’s Sugar Crash is: Annie from Six Ring Circus

The winner of Tyler Tarver’s Letters To Famous People is: Brown Road Chronicles

The winner of HotDog Yoga’s Rollpack is: JM Randolph

The winner of Tingo & Other Extraordinary Words is: Astrea Baldwin

The winners of handwritten cards from me are: Julie Davidoski, Kimberly Moore & Amber West.

I need your addresses. Please send them to me here.

Congratulations to all the winners.

{But, of course, you are all winners in my book.}

{But then again, I haven’t finished writing my book, so what does that really mean?}

Seriously though, winners should contact me via email, so I can collect the information necessary to stalk you forever deliver these goods to you.

*collapses on the floor*

And now, back to your regularly scheduled program.

It is impossible for me to close my blogoversary month without celebrating my dear old friend’s Kasey Mathews‘ brand new book Preemie: Lessons in Love, Life & Motherhood, which is being put out on the shelves today at a bookstore near you! I’ve known Kasey since 6th grade. We were in House 3 together. We even went to Senior Ball together with our most excellent dates. (Hi Lenny & JMo!)

Anyway, Kasey’s book has been born! The premise? I’m lifting it from the back cover of her book:

In her early thirties, Kasey Mathews had it all: a loving husband, a beautiful two-year old son, and a second baby on the way. But what seemed a perfect life was shattered when she went into labor four months early and delivered her one-pound, eleven ounce daughter, Andie.

One pound and eleven ounces, people!

A can of Progresso soup weighs one pound and three ounces.

Here is my interview with Kasey. Subscribe to her blog, follow her @kaseymathews or via Facebook.

• • •

rasj: Kase, you are brutally honest in your memoir, especially about how you did not want to touch Andie when she was so tiny. You call her a “half-done baby” and admit that – initially — you didn’t even want to see her. I imagine in anticipation of this book coming out, you discussed these feelings with her. How did you explain things so that she could understand?

Kasey: When I began writing this book, I had to put aside my worries of “what will people think,” and that meant Andie, too. I just never could have opened up as much as I did, and I think the story would have suffered.  Of course that doesn’t mean I didn’t worry once it was all written down. But I decided it worth the risk of judgment to give voice to the thoughts and feelings I believe so many mothers have (not just preemie moms) but are too afraid and ashamed to say out loud.

As far as Andie is concerned, she’s such an old soul and just seems to “get” things on a different level. I haven’t read her the book yet (although I’ve recently decided to) but conversations around her birth and my reaction have been ongoing.  I remember a time when we were curled up in bed together looking at the photo album of her first year. I had pointed to a photo of her just after her birth and told her how afraid I was of her.  She had replied in a teasing voice,  “Well, that’s really nice, Mom. What kind of parent would think that?” To which I replied, “Well, me, I guess,” and we had both laughed. But when we got serious, and I explained to her that my fear of losing her was so great and so overwhelming, and that I ultimately had to learn to choose love over fear, the look in her eyes told me that she understood.

rasj:  You mention that a dog attacked you when you were 5-years old, resulting in 49 stitches and scars. You said that your father offered you plastic surgery to “fix” the scars, but you refused. Looking back now, what do your scars mean to you? And do you think you gained something from that terrible accident that actually helped you on your journey with Andie? 

Kasey: Some of us have scars on the outside, but we all have them on the inside. I believe our scars tell our stories. They make us who we are. Andie’s birth was such a traumatic event, and I think I referred back to my dog bite as a frame of reference, because it was the only other traumatic episode I’d ever known.  What I gained was the perspective of looking through my parent’s eyes and for the first time truly understanding how they felt not knowing what was going to happen to their child.  Although the circumstances were different, that perspective gave me the strength to know that they’d walked the path before me, and that I could do it as well.

rasj: During the darkest times, you found strength in homeopathic medicines. Can you explain how non-Western therapies (like energy work, Reiki and yoga) have helped you and your family?

Kasey: Until Andie’s birth, I hadn’t known about Holistic medicine and discovered that it was truly an “alternative” way of looking at a medical situation. It differs from traditional western medicine in that it approaches the body as a whole interrelated system, such as the lungs, gut and skin are all tied together within the human body.  These alternative therapies made so much sense to me, but I want to stress that we used them in conjunction with traditional medicine, and I truly believe that pursuing these parallel paths account for Andie’s tremendous success.

rasj. Did you ever contact the pediatrician who predicted Andie would always be small and that she would have learning disabilities? If you could talk to him now, what would you want to say to him? 

Kasey: For years I wanted to, but felt it wasn’t worth the stress it would cause me. Recently, however, after Andie’s 11-year-old check up where her growth was nearly off the charts, I used the device of writing a letter to release those pent-up feelings. The letter was never sent but the writing of it allowed me to tell him just how wrong he was about everything. And in that same letter, I also thanked him; because what I came to understand was that as difficult as he was to deal with, his doubt was ultimately a gift. He fueled our belief and conviction that Andie would prove him so wrong and show him, and so many others, that she would not be what they wanted her to be, but what she wanted to be.

rasj: I adore the way you show Tucker and Andie interacting with each other, how he becomes an unofficial part of her physical therapy. But it isn’t always perfect, right? They fight, too, right?

Kasey: Fight? Andie and Tucker?  No! Never! *laughs * Their bickering was so awful one day that I screamed at them to stop fighting and threw the apple I had in my hand straight across the kitchen. Fortunately, it missed both their heads, but… not the window! How’s that for perfect?

rasj: That’s awesome! Obviously, you have a great arm! Now tell us something wonderful that has happened to Andie since you finished writing the book.

Kasey: I think Andie would tell you the most wonderful event in her life as of late, was getting contact lenses.  She’d worn glasses since she was two and started asking about contacts when she was nine.  Her eye doctor (Dr. V. from the book) confirmed that she was a candidate for contacts, but needed to be at an age when she was responsible enough to care for them.  The contacts were her eleventh birthday gift.

rasj: Looking back, is there information you wish you had that you would want to share with parents of preemies?

Kasey: There are three vital pieces of information I want to share with parents of preemies. First, while in the NICU, cover your baby’s isolet with a dark, heavy blanket to keep him/her in as womb-like an environment as long as possible. Secondly, allow yourself to see a vision of your child in the future and hold on to that vision. And lastly — and this is for anyone who’s experienced any sort of event trauma  – remember you are not alone.  Know that most likely whatever you’re thinking and feeling, someone else already has thought those same thoughts and felt those same feelings and walked that same path.

• • •

Because Kasey is awesome-sauce, she is offering a copy of her book to one lucky winner.

For a chance to win:

Leave a comment about something regarding child-rearing that has been challenging for you.

Tweet us @rasjacobson & @kaseymathews

• • •

Other blogoversary giveaways you can enter to win:

The Write-Brain Book

Elena Aitken’s ebook Sugar Crash

A handwritten card from me

Tyler Tarver’s ebook Letters To Famous People

A hard copy of Tingo & Other Extraordinary Words

All blogoversary winners will be announced on June 2nd — at which point I will collapse in exhaustion.

I used to practice yoga, but when I started teaching again — I stopped.

I was too busy. I had papers to grade. I had lessons to plan.

Blah blah blah.

Recently, I found my yoga mat and attended an outdoor yoga session.

It felt good for a hundred reasons.

But especially because I did feel a mind-body connection that I haven’t felt in a long time.

I’ve been running on auto-pilot for a while now, planning my son’s bar mitzvah, schlepping to and from fencing lessons, to and from religious school, to and from meetings about things that feel important but really aren’t.

Going through the poses made me slow down and focus on my hands, my hips, my breath.

At one point, I started weeping and I curled up in a ball and just let it come out.

I didn’t even know I had all that sadness trapped inside.

The instructor encouraged me to just be with it, so I allowed myself to cry. In public. I wasn’t exactly quiet. But I wasn’t embarrassed either.

Later, I felt lighter. Ad I decided I’m going to try to continue my yoga – even if it means practicing alone at home to a DVD.

Tweet this twit @rasjacobson

For all of you who are like: Whaaat? She never writes on Saturdays.

You. Are. So Right.

But my buddy Clay Morgan has killed his blog, EduClaytion.

Which is sad because so many of us just love him.

Anyway, he made me a wee video to celebrate my blogoversary before he up and went.

This just shows the kind of person (I mean zombie) I mean person Clay is.

And you wanna know who else is hot like a freshly tarred driveway?

Tyler Tarver.

Yup.

Because he is offering up a free download of his e-book Letters to Famous People.

If you don’t know Tyler, you need to know Tyler:

If you’d like a copy of Tyler’s book…

Tell me what famous person you’d like to write a letter to. What would be your opening line?

Other blogoversary giveaways you can enter to win:

The Write-Brain Book

Elena Aitken’s ebook Sugar Crash

A handwritten card from me

 All blogoversary winners will be revealed on June 2nd – once I figure everything out.

Today I am offering a highly personalized, handwritten card from me to THREE lucky winners!

Whaaaat?

It’s not like I over-ordered my 2012 New Year’s cards or anything.

Probably.

Seriously, y’all! This is a good prize! Three people are going to get to see what my whole family looks like… including the elusive Tech Support!

As always, there are strings attached.

Look at the picture below.

Your challenge –should you choose to accept it — is to:

Tell me in 50 words or less — What Happened to This Binder?

Leave a fabulous comment in 50 words or less for a chance to win.

This one will NOT be determined by Random Number Generator. I will pick my THREE favorites, so write me a cool story. All blogoversary winners will be posted on June 2nd.

Time for me to sit back and relax and read your words!

Tweet This Tweet @rasjacobson

Were my life a roller coaster ride, I’ve got to tell you, this week has been positively loopy.

And it’s only Thursday.

On Monday, I showed up at my local grocery store, all showered and dressed at 8 am, to discuss catering for my son’s bar mitzvah with a woman named Karen.

Only to learn that my appointment is actually next week at 8 am.

As I stood there, dejected, I received a text from someone telling me that she couldn’t make a coffee date we’d been strenuously trying to set-up.

For months.

Last night, Hubby told me that we cannot have the Friday night dinner before our son’s bar mitzvah at the location we had previously selected.

I cannot even discuss this right now without feeling nauseated.

Because, seriously, where are we going with under 6 weeks left?

Yesterday, I wrote a guest post of which I was particularly proud. Very few people left comments. And that’s okay, except it left me feeling embarrassed and confused. I don’t understand why that content didn’t speak to people. I re-posted it HERE and, for those who may have missed it, I would still be interested in hearing your comments.

Anyway, I was feeling kind of low.

Then I learned it was National Teacher’s Appreciation Week. I had no idea.

One of my former students sent me this comment on my Facebook wall.

So that made me feel better. I mean, I figure if I’m losing my writing mojo, at least my students appreciate me, right?

And speaking of my students, this morning I tried to log onto my email account at Monroe Community College.

But I was locked out.

Because every six months we have to reset our passwords. Pain in the booty.

I’m currently working through Super Heroes combined with a series of uppercase letters and those annoying keys required for extra security. You know: !@#$%^&*()_+.

Those.

So I had to change my password which took four attempts plus a call to the Technology Services Help Desk.

Because I’d forgotten I’d already been W0nderw0man08! and Aquaman09% and Superman10# P0isonIvy11? And the computer won’t let you repeat any part of any identity you’ve ever been before.

By the time I made it in, I was a little cranky.

But then, lo and behold.

I saw this piece of loveliness. (You may have to click on it to appreciate the font more fully.)

You guys, I was instantly pumped up like Arnold Schwarzenegger used to be when he was on steroids.

• And I would like to take this opportunity to thank every English teacher that I have ever had. I’m just positively overwhelmed. And…wow…I’m just so unprepared for a moment like this…
• I would like to thank Laura Ingalls Wilder and Judy Blume. I’d like to thank William Faulkner and and Harper Lee and Kate Chopin and F. Scott Fitzgerald…Omigosh, y’all. You know who you are.
• I’d also like to thank the unattractive green swivel chair in my parents’ house for letting me sit there for hours, escaping to different lands.
• And thanks to all my former students who hit LIKE when I update my status on Facebook, even if my status isn’t interesting or funny. I’m just happy you let me know you are still out there and you haven’t minimized me. Yet.

So once again the universe teaches this twit a lesson.

Life will always be filled with bumps in the road.

But.

Somehow, some truck eventually comes along and some hot dude steps out and takes his shirt off and patches the hole with gravel.

It always works out, y’all.

(Except when it doesn’t.)

Anyway, it’s extra nice to have this happen during my blogoversary month.

And don’t forget, it’s not too late to register for a chance to win Elena Aitken’s SUGAR CRASH.

xoxoRASJ

Tweet This Twit @rasjacobson