It ain’t just a generic soda anymore.

We’re in good spirits. Last night was nice, mom and dad came over and we cooked a bunch of food, did a puzzle, drank some wine…at the consult they decided they the cancer possibility is 50-50, but nobody seems too worried about it. The surgery is set for September 14th, and the procedure is “definitive” – meaning that’s all they’ll do about it, the surgery will end things. Unless it’s more advanced, which nobody is expecting anyway.

Mom and dad also fessed up last night about some additional worries, like a bunch of “spots” on mom’s liver she had a separate ultrasound for on Monday. Turns out they’re nothing. I’m surprised they kept it from me and I can’t imagine what they’ve been through together this week.

This is not a very good blog entry. I just wanted to update the situation.

Oh, and one more thing. Mom said Pam spent a bunch of time on her liver. She said it was “hot”.

Off to drag my kids along to my hair appointment….Real Life (*SIGH*). Emma’s finally potty training – have I mentioned that? Hopefully regular entries resume soon.

Tired.

I remember a time when none of it mattered — the traffic, the audience, the ABCs of SEO (and OMG, WTF.) I remember a time, at least, when it didn’t matter to me. When I burst out of the gates like a young racehorse, stupid and happy and bred just for this. When I was beyond thrilled simply to have an outlet for my writing. When I couldn’t wait to tell you everything there was to know about my kids, my life, my struggles. When I was home all day with young children and I just wanted to be heard, to be known for more than my deft ability to change a diaper or grind homemade baby food. I still remember how scared I was when I first saw my blog listed in another’s blogroll and thought I was being stalked.

As more people started reading, though, I was thrilled. I subscribed to the blog of every single commenter and did my best to visit their blogs each day. It worked for a while. It filled a space in me I didn’t even know was there. Having this window, this kind of 24-hour access into your lives, was addictive. An audience for my words was heady stuff. I reveled in all of it. And before long, I was in over my head.

Having all of these people take the time to read my words and leave thoughtful comments made me feel like a bad person. I couldn’t possibly reciprocate, couldn’t read all of their posts and comment as I wanted to, and I became obsessed with my failure and how poorly you must all think of me, what you might be saying behind my back. I panicked. I became exhausted. I shut down.

For about a week, maybe two, I felt a great relief. Then I missed the community. [Insert whispering: I still miss some of my early readers. I often wonder if they hate me for abandoning them.]

I came back a month after I quit and it was like I’d been rebuilt — no longer Maggie, but MaggieDammit 2.0; stronger, faster, streamlined. Better equipped to handle attacks, more adept at not taking every damn thing so personally. Aware that I could not do it all and unwilling to hurt myself trying. I retrained myself to think of my blog as a place to exercise my craft, as an extended umbrella to my freelance career (hence, the ads.) I donned new, impenetrable armor with privacy features, stronger safeguards in place to protect my interests, my loved ones, my delicate inner wires. I reentered the community and relished it, but did not let it define me. I tried to comment only when I had something to say, not when I felt obligated. I implemented the same practice with my posts, even if it meant they were spread a week or two apart. Now, I feel like I have a huge, generous support network — even though I have purposely kept large parts of myself hidden. I feel like I give when and where it is needed, and I admire more than ever the community I see before me. I’m in awe of the way we come together in times of pain. The myriad ways you support your fellow bloggers. I embraced it — but I decided whenever it felt too emotional, whenever I felt too exposed, I would back off. It’s been working for me for about a year.

Suddenly, now, I find myself at a brand new crossroads. Violence UnSilenced has changed everything. It crept up on me from behind, pounced, and felled me easily. It’s like I’m back at the beginning again, obsessing over who is reading and who is not, carefully combing through the comments for signs of dissent or judgment, making sure we’re listed in every directory, tweeting my little heart out. Right now we’re in the middle of this Internet contest and I’m making myself crazy over it, peddling for votes and emailing my posse and taking it personally when things don’t go our way — like last night, when for whatever unknown reason they deleted 3,000 votes from VU and put us neck-and-neck with the second runner-up (a blog that one month ago had 4,000 of its own votes deleted without explanation, alongside another 2,000 of ours.) I was very, very angry this morning over the way this contest has been run. I got incredibly worked up over what felt like a last-minute sniper shot.

Then I reminded myself: it’s just a contest. The top five finalists will go onto a panel of “VIP” bloggers who will arbitrarily decide the winner, regardless of the number of votes. Listen, I am grateful VU was nominated and I’m in awe of all of you who have worked so hard to promote the award process… I know I’ve worked hard myself. But I’d be lying if I said the entire thing, this experience of “competing” with my fellow bloggers, hasn’t left a terrible taste in my mouth.

A few minutes ago I took a look at the top five finalists in the “most inspiring” category. Each have endured great personal trauma, including those documented on VU. One recently lost a precious child whose face I still catch myself thinking about from time to time. Two are nursing sick children. One was involved in a fiery plane crash. A woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country. These are the things that matter. These and only these things. Not a contest that seems to be dividing a strong, loving community for the sake of Swiffer Sweeper. (Yeah, I said it. And if, by that one statement I just completely ruined our chances of “winning?” I think I’m okay with that.)

Bravado and contests aside, I’m so emotionally attached to the Violence UnSilenced site it’s scary. I’m inspired by the candor of my contributors and in many ways it makes me feel like a fake, like a pimp, someone who is asking others to bare everything, all the while hiding further and further behind my gun. In one space my heart is completely open. In the other it is so closely guarded.

I want to talk about my kids, but I don’t like invading their privacy. I want to talk about my struggles, but I feel like it makes people uncomfortable, people I run into every day, at the grocery store, at the bank, at my kids’ school functions. I want to share more, but I feel like that would diminish the gifts of my real-life friendships. I want, I want, I want.

I feel a change in the air, though, like the two sites each are pulling me in different directions and I need to slip free lest I’m drawn-and-quartered. I just don’t know which way is better. I don’t know which way to go.

The usual solution when I’m feeling this way (this obsessive, this neurotic, this angry, this long-winded, this needy and unappealing) is to unplug. To go outside, to stare at my garden, to jump on the trampoline with my children, to call my best friend. This is what I always do, in fact, right before I delete posts like this.

But see, this is what makes me feel like change is in the air: I’m leaving this post up.

In 1997, while waiting to board a plane to our honeymoon destination, Dave and I bought a pair of matching sunglasses at an airport kiosk. Ignoring my new husband’s eye-rolling, I christened them Marital Sunglasses, a solid representation of the ethereal bliss that was the start of our new life together.

We found our gate, and I tore myself away from him to hit the bathroom one last time before the flight. Upon finishing a piss to which I’m sure I attached some sort of matrimonial import, I wiped, stood up, turned around, looked down to flush, and watched my new sunglasses fall from their perch atop my head into the uber-vacuum vortex of the airport commode.

And I instantly burst into tears. In my mind, I had just flushed my fledgling marriage down the toilet. Obviously.

Thing is, I have always put too much import on inanimate objects, on innocent events. I have always over-analyzed the simplest of things.

A month or so ago, one of my favorite bloggers gave me this E is for Excellent award. The deal is you acknowledge it, thank your God and your country, and then pass it on to a few of your own favorite bloggers. Simple, right?

Well, not when your name is Maggie, dammit.

I have obsessed over this, you have no idea. I don’t want to leave anyone out, but I don’t want to create a big huge list of links that no one will read, either. It is the God’s honest truth that I have so many blogs I love. I adore my real-life blogging friends, of course – their blogs are good but I’m also extra-invested in them, because I know these guys. They have my heart.

And of course I read lots of people I don’t know, people I’ll never meet. Yet I’m totally caught up in their lives. Some of them give me easily digestible bits of humor and fun, and others make me think for days. Some of them are as hard on themselves as I, and I couldn’t love them more for it. I know you know some of them, but not all of them. I read a lot of undiscovered greats, in my humble opinion, and I’m learning about new ones every day.

This is getting obnoxious. And I’m still leaving people out. See why I hate this?

So here is what I decided. I am going to single out one blogger, and I’m going to put her over there in my sidebar next to the superslick E is for Excellent badge, under “Current Blog Crush”. As I feel like it, I’ll update this box – so if you see your blog over there please grab the badge and pass the honor along. Just don’t spend a month obsessing over it like your neurotic hostess.

Officially, I’m passing this award on to Karey of Mackin Ink. Karey is a midwestern mom of three daughters now living in the middle east. Her writing is easy reading, and just unique enough that I’m always left feeling like I just finished some sort of profound fairy tale. There’s a lovely mix of deep and light, of rich fudge and pink sprinkles, and when she really decides to grab you by the lapels and tell you something important? The results are astounding. Not only that, she’s a generous soul. Trust me on that one.

So there you have it.

I think I’ll go dust off my old wedding album, or maybe obsess over how many bloggers I likely just alienated with this post. Or maybe I’ll try to figure out just what it all means.

Maybe I’ll just go sunglasses shopping.

To all of you, whether I linked you before my head exploded or not, thank you for reading, and thank you for writing. I love the idea that there are all these words floating around out there in the universe for anyone who cares enough to catch. Every day I need a bigger net, but I’m grateful.

In the last post I said of Dave,

” Funny thing is, despite his puppy-like devotion, he remained incredibly cocky. He literally swaggered. He was quite possibly the most self-assured person I’d ever met.”

I feel compelled to tell you what he said upon reading that post (and leaving an actual comment, be still my shell-shocked heart).

Without a hint of humor, I swear, he said, and I quote (hence the quotation marks), “I predict that entry will get you more comments than anything you’ve ever written before.”

TOLD YA.

Oh, and on a completely unrelated note: Just in case you think we don’t know how to get down out here in BFE *, here’s some photographic evidence for you on this fine, frigid Sunday morning. You’ll have to pipe in Snoop Dogg’s “Drop it like it’s hawt” in your imagination, but I think you get the idea. Peace out.

* Dad: BFE, like BFH, is another one of those popular idioms favored by the Crazy Kids These Days. It’s similar to “Big Fucking Hammer”, but has more to do with living in the boonies, and a country in northeast Africa. Call me if you still don’t get it, I know how important these things are to you.

*** That yummy creature watching Emma is my BFF’s kiddo. To protect her anonymity I would not have said anything at all, except I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to say BFH, BFE, and BFF all in one post. You understand.

Last night I had a dream about a good friend. I woke up thick with her, and for a good 20 minutes I lay there unable to think of anyone or anything else. And that’s when it hit me.

I forgot her birthday.

I didn’t just miss it, I blew past it without so much as a second glance, back in November. A mere four days after I wrote a sappy ode to another friend! Seriously, could anything be worse?

I didn’t technically forget it, actually. I thought of it dozens of times over the last two months. So, thinking I might be losing my mind, hoping in fact I’d forgotten that I hadn’t forgotten, I frantically searched my email for the missing greeting. (Though we only live 45 minutes apart, email has become our lifeline. I hate the telephone, and she accepts this about me. Every once in a while I get it together enough to send a card, but I know I didn’t this year.)

There was no email sent on the 22nd. Ironically, on the 21st, I asked her if she had any big plans for her birthday. But nothing on the day itself, and nothing – NOTHING AT ALL – in the 17 days since.

What the hell? It’s like a cog slipped. I don’t understand it at all. All I can think is I’ve been completely self-absorbed in my own muck, sunk heavy beneath my own weighty days of late.

I know she won’t be mad. I know she won’t hold a grudge. She’s not that kind of person. She may even laugh.

But I bet she’s thought about it, and I bet she felt a little hurt over it. And that’s something I’ll never, ever be able to erase.

I know she reads this blog. I’m taking this opportunity to apologize, both publicly and and privately, in a way, as if I were speaking these words directly to her. I want her to understand their importance.

How many years have I loved you now? Enough for you to know me so well, enough for you to believe what I have said here and smile about it. Remember I even sent you a card last year? (Or was it the year before?) Perhaps that near-miracle threw the Universe off kilter, causing a direct and opposite reaction. Perhaps I’m just a schmuck. It’s funny, because I’ve thought of you more lately than I have in so many years, and I know you know why. Maybe my brain, more often on auto-pilot these days than not, thought it had taken care of your birthday wishes and relaxed. I don’t know what happened. It doesn’t matter anyway. There is no excuse for not telling you how much I love you every single day, let alone on the most important day of all.

I’m sorry, R.

I sure am sorry. You are SO getting an over-the-top Christmas present this year.

And a phone call in a few minutes….