Nom de Plume

Just got home from a meeting, and found this:

• @ma_may Thanks! in reply to ma_may #
• @ma_may Only if you’re a pedophile. in reply to ma_may #
• @leifpettersen Didn’t email you, but if you feel lonely, I can … in reply to leifpettersen #

The methotextrate didn’t work. When I went into the ultrasound yesterday, the heart was still beating, and it was bigger. So I had the surgery. It all went well; I don’t know precise details, but the dr is going to show me pictures in my post-op appointment. From what I do understand, they removed the last inch and a half of the fallopian tube with the ectopic in it, it was a nice clean cut, and it should have no effect on future fertility.

In other words, all is good.

Also, I have a huge bottle of Percocet and Steve, who is graciously letting me milk this for all its worth.

Steve would kill me if he knew I was blogging this. He says I blog too much personal information. Which I probably do, so let’s just not tell him, shall we?

So, this is what’s going on: I was pregnant again. My doctor (Eva Miller from Seattle Healing arts for a shameless plug for her–she’s wonderful) had insisted that I go in for an ultrasound on Monday because of some spotting over the weekend and (again) low progesterone. Thank God she did. It was an ectopic pregnancy. With a live heartbeat and everything. The next three hours were a whirl; I was basically frogmarched into the ER at Swedish, put in a hospital gown, and hooked up to machines I had only ever seen in movies and on TV.

Ultimately, the OBGYN (Dr. Philip Welch, if you’re looking for one; another shameless plug because he was also wonderful) ran through my options, either a laparascomy or a single dose of methotrexate. I wanted the latter, but because there was a live heartbeat, he wanted to do a little more research and consult with some colleagues. I wasn’t feeling any pain, so he sent me home with strict instructions on signs to watch for. Yesterday morning, Steve drove me to his office and we went ahead with the methotextrate. I go in tomorrow to check hcg levels, and again on Friday for another ultrasound.

The whole thing has not been fun, to say the least. But there are some things for which to be grateful. First, there was nothing to indicate that this was an ectopic, and this could have been so, so much worse if it had ruptured. Which it would have. Second, it was a viable pregancy, except for its location, which is a good sign. So that’s where we are. I’m fine and definitely thanking my lucky stars.

And really, don’t tell Steve.

Mira Serafino seemingly lives a perfect life on the Oregon coast–until that is, she discovers another woman’s phone number on her husband’s cell phone bill, at which she has a meltdown and then packs up and heads to Seattle, where she takes a job as a barista in Fremont. I have to be honest: The only reason I read this was because it was set in two places that I’m familiar with. It was fine; it was frothy chick lit, but it wasn’t anything that memorable.

Ahh kiddie lit. We at Nom de Plume do like well-written kiddie lit. And we certainly like Theodosia, who spends most of her time at the Museum of Legends and Antiquities in turn-of-the-19th century London. Her parents are obsessed with Egyptian antiquities. Theodosia is obsessed with removing the curses no one else can see from them. When her mother returns from Egypt with a famous amulet, Theodosia is kept busy making sure no one gets hurt. Delightful.

I’m a freelance writer and it is a truth generally accepted that writers must, as part of the writing process, procrastinate. I have lots of procrastinatory techniques. There’s wordtwist.org-ying. There’s the Soapdish Forum. There’s Google news and there’s Youtube. There’s Twitter. There’s blogging, which of course leads to checking stats. There’s reading blogs. And then there’s the strangely seductive world of Christian stay-at-home/work-at home/homeschooling/farmsteading mom blogs.

I am not a Christian in any sense of the word, though of course my mother dragged me to Episcopal (or Anglican if we were overseas) church every Sunday until I was 12, at which point she let me sink unabetted into heathendom, where I’ve happily lived ever since. But there’s just something about all these blogs of all these conservative women that is fascinating.

A lot of it is that I don’t know any conservative Christian women. The conservatives I know aren’t terribly religious. The Christians are usually pretty liberal; they’re Espiscopalian or Presbyterians. Every now and then there’s a mild Methodist or two, or maybe a Catholic who’s left behind the religion but kept the guilt. But the two together–now that’s something else. I feel like a voyeur poking into these lives that are so different from mine, a world where people really do use wallpaper borders as a decorative feature in dining rooms, and grocery shopping is considered the highlight of the day.

Oh wait. Grocery shopping is usually the highlight of my day too.

Don’t misunderstand me. I am not putting these blogs down. At the end of the post, all personal blogs are really nothing more than an exercise in self-validation–and by all means, I include myself in this category. Then of course, you have all sorts of blog genres: House blogs, lit blogs, craft blogs. If there’s a word for it, there’s a blog for it. And each one has its own angle, its own way to thrust its content out into the ether, its own method behind its madness.

Except for the Christina SAHM blog. There are hundreds and hundreds of them and for the most part, they’re pretty much interchangeable. Truth to tell, I don’t do more than skim a couple of posts here. The content is usually not terribly interesting. What is interesting is the form:

1. The About Me talks about their wonderful husbands, their children, and their love of Jesus Christ.
2. There’s usually some sort of soundtrack.
3. They sign off every post with a jpeg of their name in a funky font.
4. The header has a large bucolic image / a quote from the Bible / their goals as a Christian woman.

And last, but certainly not least:

5. The content is about how this person is an ordinary person, no different from anyone else.

And this is what I love about them. There’s something so refreshing about people NOT trying to be different, about being just one of many. It’s not about foisting one’s opinion on the world; it’s not about being different. It’s not about being edgier, or more literate. It’s not about drumming up business. (Which, frankly, I have never seen a blog successfully do, but I guess Web 2.0 in the business world is a whole ‘nother post and really, what do I know anyway?) No–it’s about staking out a corner of the Web to be the same as the others in your circle.

And really, sometimes there’s something just a little comforting about that.

Esperanza Gorst is sent by her guardian to be a servant to the Baroness Tansor for a reason that I never learned because I lost all patience with the book and gave up. This was one of those books that I thought I would love–dark, gothic historical teeming with mystery–but alas. Abandoned.

14-year old Candace Ong wants to be something other than the “Eggroll Girl” in her parents’ San Francisco Chinese Restaurant. She wants her parents to speak better English. She wants to have the freedom of her brother Kenny, who by dint of being male is allowed to wander through his life chore-free. She wants to live somewhere other than the small apartment over the restaurant. But more than anything, she wants to be pretty and popular like her friend Ruby.

Never mind the fact that Ruby is a budding Lolita who seems to have a taste for pedophiles. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that pedophiles seem to have a taste for her. Nonetheless, Candace models herself after Ruby, and starts getting herself into mishap after mishap.

In one way, this was a fairly typical coming-of-age story of the child of an immigrant family, and it is also the story of a girl in a particular time. Set in 1983, Candace has a freedom that it doesn’t seem like the typical teenager has today. I can certainly remember that heady freedom of going off and doing what you wanted, when you wanted it. (It also brought back the memory of jelly shoes. Remember those? I had a pair when I was 11; they were translucent pink, and the only time I felt more hip was when I clattered around in my red Dr. Scholls when I was six.)

But on the other hand, there is something dark about I Want Candy that is at odds with the cheerful title and innocence of the moniker eggroll girl. Despite feeling trapped by her life, the freedom–arguably from parental neglect–that Candace does have is frightening and what she does with it even more so.

*Spoiler alert*

When Ruby dies in a freak accident, her ghost comes back to Candace along with the ghosts of other women from Chinatown. Candace sees them all. And this, to me, was one of the most amazing things about this novel. My first encounter with Chinese-American literature was through Maxine Hong Kingston, and the idea of the supernatural made a huge impression on me when I first read it. I Want Candy incorporates the same idea, but there’s a difference: Ruby’s ghost is always prosaic. But there is something about that very matter-of-factness that makes the whole idea even more creepy.

• Finally succumbed to Steve’s hacking flu after two weeks of successfully fending it off. This stinks. #
• @leifpettersen It was such a bad movie. But the scenery …. in reply to leifpettersen #
• @leifpettersen I looked, including in some fairly obscure dictionaries. Nothing. Let me know if you find out! in reply to leifpettersen #
• @worldgirl Is this a *gasp* REAL job??? in reply to worldgirl #
• Apparently I can’t type. Apostrophes scattered like grass seed. #
• struggling with someone’s else’s copy that needs to be fixed. #
• I really don’t understand the fascination with the Oscars. #