Earlier this year, I read an article about technology that would allow us to record and store every moment of our lives. Imagine: our whole lives stored in a single searchable archive. We could settle those arguments with the boss by replaying what was actually said. ("See, you did tell me you wanted this by Thursday, not Tuesday!") We could go back to that first kiss over and over again. In fact, if I were recording my whole life, I'd even be able to figure out where the heck I read this elusive article (The New York Times, maybe?) and link to it.

Maybe it's the year (and the first decade of the 21st century) drawing to a close, but the idea of a life archive was on my mind the other night.  My memory is flawed — as memories are —and ever since I was a child, I have wanted the ability to go back and reconstruct the past if I need to.  It's one of the reasons I write so much: not just here on my blog, which is a relatively recent occurrence, but in the thirty plus years of journals I have stacked up in my closet and in the copies of letters I have in file drawers (yes, years ago, back in the days when people did things like write letters on paper and send them to people in the mail, I started fastidiously making and keeping copies of my outgoing correspondence) and in the e-mail archive I have dating all the way back to the early 90's.  And I'm not just an obsessive chronicler, as Mark can attest from the paper laden state of our bedroom/office, I keep nearly every scrap of information that passes through my hands: from calendars to holiday letters to post-it notes.  And it's still never been enough.

My craving for a complete record of every moment of my life reached a height when I discovered Mark's sex addiction.  I went back over what I had and found it scandalously lacking.  How could I not have written anything at all on what turned out to be several major dates of acting out?  How could I not have a copy of some of those suspicious receipts that caused me so much angst?  And how could Mark have deleted all the e-mail in the secret accounts he used for contacting other women, so that, when at last I discovered them, I would have no way to verify dates and times?

I wanted to weigh every word he had written to someone else.  I wanted to compare each date and time to other events in our lives so I could thoroughly revise our history together based on what I now knew to be the truth.  I wanted to go back to each instance of his acting out and see what I had missed.  Did he look different when he came home after having sex with someone else?  Was there some way I could have known?  Now that I had all the information about what was happening at the time, would our lives together look different to me?  I wanted to go back to those sections and play them over and over again, like a detective in a crime drama, ready to pause it and say, "There!  See that!  The way he raises his eyebrow right there.  That's the tell."

I believed that somewhere out there was some objective reality that I'd failed to completely capture, and if I just knew how to access that, if had a more complete picture, if had more information, everything would be different; I'd be safe.  I would have something to point to in my self doubt and say, "I'm not crazy!  There was something there, something wrong, I just didn't know how to look for it."  I believed the whole truth was knowable by me if I just tried hard enough, if I had all the pieces to the puzzle.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the information alone was not enough.  The security of some objective truth is an illusion.  I still need the ability to interpret what I know and the confidence to believe in my own interpretation, my own truth, in the face, not of contradictory facts, but of contradictory interpretations.  There were times I did have evidence of my husband's addictive behavior, but I didn't have the ability to understand it or the confidence to hold to my feelings in the face of contradictory spin from Mark.  If I could play back the movie of my life, it wouldn't appear the same to me now as it did then or as it will in ten years or twenty years, not because of new information, but because of new experiences.

Still, I'm pretty sure that, given the chance, I'd totally buy something that would record my life.  After all, the fact that I still don't know where I read about all this in the first place is going to bug me for at least the rest of this year.  And wouldn't it be nice to just look that up rather than do all this tiresome letting go?  Maybe if I check my e-mail...

I am getting better at saying no, when I mean no, but it's still an area where I have a lot of work to do. Saying "yes" to requests is like a reflex to me. Tap my knee and my foot bounces up, ask me for help and I say, "Yes." Oops. Wait. Let me think about that. The "yes" is so deeply ingrained that I don't always see it...

I learned early on that "no" was not an acceptable answer, at least not if people pleasing me wanted to continue to please people. The folks in my life would give lip service to saying no — "You should get your priorities straight and learn how to say no" — but the message that rubbed itself into me was: "You should learn how to say no to other people, but not me" or maybe "You should learn how to handle saying yes to everyone else and no to yourself." This meant "I can do anything if I want to" warped itself years ago into "I should be able to do everything if I just try hard enough." And with that came an endless string of yeses.

In my senior year of high school, I was taking a full load of courses, most of them for college credit. I was applying to colleges. I was studying for SAT exams. I was participating in extracurricular activities and doing part-time and volunteer work. I was trying to enjoy the last little bit of time left I had with the friends who were like a second family to me. And through it all I was getting straight A's, right at the top of my class. If someone gave me an assignment or asked me to do something, like a good young codependent/workaholic, I did what it took (at whatever hidden cost to my physical, emotional and mental health) to get the job done.

One of the classes on my schedule that year was Advanced European History, a class I'd been looking forward to taking (yes, I was a nerdy child) after enjoying the introductory level of same subject a few years earlier with a different teacher. But it wasn't long before I found I hated both the class and the teacher. (Hated isn't too strong a word here either; over twenty years later, I ended up having to put that teacher on my resentment list when I was working on my Fourth Step.) The cost of being in the class — the drain on my time, energy, resources and emotions — just wasn't worth it to me. Recognizing my limits (in a surprisingly good and healthy way), I decided to drop the class.

The teacher kept me after class and said (in what was supposed to be a motivating way) that he knew I could handle the work, and dropping the class was just an indication that I was lazy. The criticism stung, as only criticisms that strike a nice, rich vein of insecurity can. Here I was, by all external measures an excellent student and citizen, working each day from dawn to dusk, and I really, deep down did feel like it would be lazy to take care of myself by dropping this one class. I hated that teacher because I thought he saw right through to the idle, worthless core of my being. And I can hear that voice whispering even today whenever I sit down, whenever I stop, whenever I say no: "Work harder, do better. You're just not trying hard enough. If you tried harder, if you were better, you wouldn't need to stop, to rest or to say no."

So, learning how to say "no" doesn't mean learning to form the word and let it float off my lips; it means learning to cope with people pushing back on my boundaries. It means learning to withstand the firestorm of criticism that can follow. It means learning to be completely free from the need for external validation. It means learning to be enough for myself no matter what anyone thinks of what I do. It means being ok with the possibility (or reality) of losing awards and accolades and jobs and promotions, with losing social standing and the respect of my peer group, with losing friends and family members. It means being ok with "losing." It means finding my truth and knowing how to live in it.

My blogroll was long overdue for a makeover. As you all know, the rules are: comment regularly and ye shall be put on the blogroll. But oh, what a headache to keep track of all that myself! Enter a neat little piece of code that keeps track of that for me. You comment, and it automatically adds a nice little linky to you over on my sidebar. Yay!

The only problem is that I want to break my own rules. Ok, actually, I did break my own rules a little, because the Junky's Wife has been my blogging BFF since I started blogging almost two years ago, so she will always get a link even if she's too pretty to comment anymore. And also Bev, because I said way back that I'd link to her even if she didn't comment. See! I've broken the rule twice already. And I really want to break it some more times. Because some of the very wonderful relationships I've built -- and some of the blogs I stalk most relentlessly -- are not on there. And I know some people lost track of me when I moved to the new URL.

On the other hand, I don't at all want to break my own rules. I hate playing favorites. And I like having a way to reward the wonderful community of folks who write on my virtual bathroom wall, as well as a snappy response to those creepy spammers who beg me to link to them, like I'm some kind of cheap blogging one night stand. (Don't try to win my heart by commenting either, people with the virtual marketing-hair. You go straight to my spam folder.)

In the end, I've decided to let the rules stand for the time being -- no matter how hot or hilarious or real life friend (sh! don't tell) a blogger you are. Thank you all so much for being here. Enjoy the new (automated!) blogroll. I know I will!

1. If you could be famous, what would choose as your profession?

The Maven threw me a big, slow, hanging pitch here. It's interview batting practice so I can warm up for the tough ones ahead. The answer is (drum roll, please): writer. And not just because it's the one thing I passionately love doing. I have to admit that, sadly, sitting on my butt and stringing words together is about the only thing I'm good at. And being a famous writer would be a lot easier to deal with than being a famous politician or actor or musician. Few people know what writers look like, allowing me to blend into crowds and maintain the invisibility that I love.

2. What is the most important thing your son has taught you about life?

He's taught me that everyone learns and interacts with the world and processes information differently. I knew that to some degree, but he's made me feel it viscerally. There are things that are intuitive to me that he just can't grasp and vice versa. I can see how hard his brain has to work to figure people out or to tell his body what to do in order to get his clothes on. Yet I look at a math problem and see a jumble of numbers, and I can see that even at eight, he looks at the same problem and hears a symphony and sees the hand of God. He's made me much more accepting of where other people are, more appreciative of their triumphs and more comfortable with my own shortcomings in relation to other people.

3. What were you like in high school?

I was a nerd. I was at the top of the class -- the kid who had the best grades and won all the prizes -- and I felt conflicted about that: both proud to the point of arrogance and ashamed for not fitting in. I was shy and scared of people. I was a perfectionist, but spent a lot of time trying to look like I had thrown my work together at the last minute because I didn't want to seem uptight and I wanted people to like me. I spent a lot of time reading and writing (bad) poetry and angsty journal entries. Um, so pretty much the same as I am now, only with a hotter body.

4. If you could have dinner with any three people, who would they be and why?

Hillary Clinton, William Shatner and Anne Lamott. Hillary Clinton and Anne Lamott are both women I deeply respect for their accomplishments and the way they've worked through their personal pain. William Shatner not only appeals to my Star Trek nerdiness, but he's a codie. And I think each of them, in their own way, would be quite a lot of fun.

5. And now for the most important question: If you were on The Bachelorette: Sesame Street edition, who would be your final pick and why?

This is an excellent question, because I do like to think about which character I would date on every show I watch.* I hope this counts, since he's more often associated with his own spinoff hit franchise, but my pick is Kermit the Frog. He's gentle and intelligent, and there's something a little sad and broken about him that makes you want to hug him and take care of him, which is totally appealing to me in a man (or a frog). But he's not so broken that he winds up living in a trash can or binging on cookies or fastidiously trying to control his environment and his roommate. And he doesn't have Elmo's annoyingly cheery voice or Ernie's boundless optimism, both of which would need me to be cranky to counteract them. If I had to pick a runner up, it would be Grover, because he's goofy, a little insecure and very much lives in a fantasy world, which are also traits I find hot in men (or monster puppets).

* For those of you interested, the answers for dating preferences in my current top three favorite shows are:
Lost: Desmond. A crazy guy with a lovely Scottish accent who spends years on an island thinking of nothing but his tragic romance and Charles Dickens? Hot!
House: Um, House, of course. Sure, he seems like an asshole, but underneath he's a sensitive guy and I'm pretty sure I could fix him.
Heroes: Sylar. He's crazy, dangerous and nerdy, which all equal sexy in my book. And in the alternate future where he overcomes that addiction to killing people by psychically cutting their heads open, he's a sensitive guy and totally awesome dad.

And now...
Here are the rules if you want to participate in 5 Questions:

1. Send me an email saying: ”Interview Me” to mamampj@gmail.com
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You can then answer the questions on your blog.
4. You should also post these rules along with an offer to interview anyone else who emails you wanting to be interviewed.
5. Anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog. It would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger.

Many years ago, I had an argument with my ex-boyfriend about grammar.

"You know, between you and I..." he said.

"You and me," I corrected.

He refused to believe me. So, we bandied about words like "preposition," "subject," and "object" before consulting Strunk and White. In the end, I was right (of course).

"Fine. Well, it just sounds better the way I say it," he said.

"It never sounds better to use improper grammar," I replied, which was an even more awful and snotty thing to say than it had been to correct him in the first place. And it's not even strictly true. English grammar is incredibly complicated and often arcane; it's all too easy to make mistakes, whether from confusion or ignorance or carelessness or just the need to pass for someone who is not an uptight grammar snob. And of course the English language isn't static, but alive and evolving; the rules change to keep pace with it, resulting in a constant tension between grammar conservatives and grammar progressives.

That complexity is the very reason that any professionally run organization or business will employ people to write and proofread their communications. The back of your cereal box alone has passed before the eyes of more people than most folks would ever imagine before it is ever printed.

In recent years, I've consciously loosened up on my grammar and stopped correcting other people (unless I'm paid to do it). For one thing, I've met people who are bigger grammar nerds than I am, who've corrected the minutiae of my speech and writing, and (between you and me) they're just unbearable to be around.* And then, about ten years ago, I was called out by another writer for being too uptight about prepositional phrases. She called me (I believe) "a fussy old man" and pulled out The Chicago Manual of Style to back her up. Slam!

However, I realized just yesterday, as I was checking my e-mail, how important grammar is for things other than making people feel bad and giving grammar nerds something to argue about. (See, how casual I was there about ending my sentence with a preposition? I'm totally over that fussy old man love affair with the prepositional phrase. Totally.) As elitist or boring or just plain snotty sounding as grammar may seem, it is still the key to the castle. A key that scam artists don't hold, but I do.

Yesterday, I received a message (supposedly from Google) stating that my Gmail account would be deleted unless I supplied them with certain personal information, such as my password and birth date. The message might have been alarming if it hadn't contained so many grammatical errors (in addition to its blatant request for information that Google shouldn't need to keep my account open). The errors showed me that the e-mail was not coming from a major US corporation, with their teams of professional writers; it was coming from one or two individuals with poor grammar and no proofreading help.

So, to all you kids out there, if you are considering a career as a professional con artist, remember to stay in school and pay attention in English class. One misplaced comma could mean the difference between buying your own private island and winding up on Riker's Island. And if you are aspiring to be an honest, hardworking citizen whose life savings will contribute to your own comfortable retirement, rather than that of a seasoned scam artist, please study your grammar. After all, even if it doesn't ever help you uncover a scam, it can still help you win arguments with your significant other, although you may sound a little unbearable doing it.

Image credit: Photo by Jim Linwood on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

As you may have gathered based on my last post, I am playing with some techie type stuff behind the scenes. I'm going to continue futzing with things over the course of the next few days. If anything weird pops up or the site or feed goes down temporarily, please remain calm and leave the panicking to me. I promise to fix anything I break. (Eventually!)

Then the real kids actually showed up. And not only are my kids not like the kids you see on TV, they're not like the clearly distorted memories I have of myself as a child. (I'm pretty sure I used to be a dream to play with.)

My children and I don't play well together. I've been banned from playing Star Wars with Janie because I "don't do the voices right." I can't play dinosaurs because I am not allowed to roar, and I get bored making the T-Rex play "Duck, Duck, Goose" without eating anyone. I'm not allowed to win at board games, if I get close, Austen changes the rules or reshuffles the cards or rolls the dice until they come up right. I'm regarded as nothing more than slave labor when it comes to Legos; I'm just a pair of dexterous hands that can carry out building plans. My creativity is frowned upon in all arenas. I strongly suspect that my children would prefer some animatronic likeness of me: a mom-like robot who would sit and watch them endlessly until called upon to make funny noises or dance or build Lego structures or lose a game in exact accordance with their instructions.

But even beyond my inability to play well, I find that I'm not as fond of toys and games as I used to be. The insteps of my feet bear the scars of run-ins with Legos, Playmobile people, Perfection pieces, Battleship pegs and any of the other hundreds of tiny pieces of plastic that litter the floor at any given moment. Toys have become the enemies of my serenity. And it seems the very items I most want to abandon in front of Goodwill (or regift to some parent I'm less fond of) are the very toys my kids can not get enough of.

Early on in my parenting excitement, I bought my children some of the things I wished I had as a child, like the game Mousetrap. Oh, how I coveted that game as a child, with its cool gears and cleverly cascading series of actions. My parents never bought it for me! Can you believe the injustice? I couldn't. So I bought it for my kids. And I found that it is an awful, awful game. There is really no point to it except the cool contraption, so it's really more a toy than a game. And it is a toy with a thousand parts, many of them painfully pointy and easily breakable should you step on them. A year ago enough of the parts were broken beyond repair that I threw the game out. I even threw out the plastic mice, which the kids liked to play with independently, so that no memory of that horror would ever remain.

My kids seemed to forget it for a time: that is, until my son received a computer version of several board games (including Mousetrap) as a gift. Mousetrap on the computer is a mixed blessing: on the one hand, you are assaulted with an endless musical accompaniment and you don't actually get to build the cool contraption, but on the other, there are no plastic parts to lose or step on. Of course, playing the computer game led Austen to start angling for a replacement version of the board game, and this weekend someone (Not me. Oh, believe me, not me.) got it for him.

This afternoon, the kids played with it for an hour, trapping mice with musical accompaniment by Austen, who happily hummed the endless tune from the computer version. They giggled and shrieked and built away, pausing just once to get my assistance to rescue one of the balls that rolled under the sofa. Then Janie took the mice off on an adventure around the house, and it's uncertain whether they'll ever return to the box again. Apparently, I'm too old to play anymore, but fortunately, there are two people in the house who are just the right age and have each other.

And (based on this highly accurate and scientific measure) I am Galadriel. Yep, this quiz (and who am I to dispute the wisdom of Internet oracles like these?) says (well, in essence, I'm interpreting a little here) that I'm a white light recovery queen. (Those of you familiar with Elvish -- which I spent a little too much of my time in childhood studying -- will recognize that "galad" means "light.") As Galadriel, I choose to relinquish the One Ring and my will to control with it, then sail off (very spiritually) into the West. (This blog is my big swan boat, so you all get to come with me.)

But somehow I'm still actually a little envious that Mim got to be Picard.

1.
I rarely wear socks.
The seams are uncomfortable,
my feet get too hot.

2.
Fluorescent lights hurt.
Sometimes you'll see me wearing
sunglasses indoors.

3.
I'll eat the same thing
every day for days on end
for breakfast and lunch.

4.
Sometimes I worry
my laptop video cam
lets people see me.

5.
It doesn't help that
I take my laptop with me
into the bathroom.

6.
Sometimes I cover
the eye of the camera up
with toilet paper!