a comment about comments...

About a month ago I changed my blogger settings to allow comments and nothing happened so I'm going to try again. At the time I was getting ready to go out of town so I couldn't trouble shoot the whole thing. I know it kind of bugged Anet when I turned comments off and it was her I was thinking of when I tried to reinstate them. Today Elizabeth sent me a note asking about them as well so I thought I'd try again. I don't know if this will work, but if it doesn't I'll keep fiddling and hopefully fix whatever the glitch is.

Anyways, while I'm at it I figured I should probably address why I took comments off in the first place. Let me preface this with the old Seinfeld line "it's not you, it's me." which is really true here. When I first started blogging I never thought about it as a social medium. It was more of an experiment and a format for personal journaling. After a while people commented and I responded and pretty soon I found myself with all of these great friends who I regard dearly. I never anticipated that. Later I started to question the authenticity of the whole thing. I know it's impossible to see ourselves clearly but somehow I felt like my online persona seemed disingenuous ( attention seeking?) which made me uncomfortable. More specifically: perkier, chattier, and and more cheerful than I really am. As if the content of what I wrote was being affected by how I wanted you to see me. And that's why I turned comments off. The real me is quiet and introverted, and it's super important for me to own that and not try to be something or someone I'm not. In the comment-less interim I feel like I have found my "blogging comfort zone" and am less vulnerable to the idea of being engaging. I know I've lost a lot of followers because of it but I guess I needed that time to find my footing.

So here's the caveat; I'm just me and I'm blogging because I love how visually tangible it is. Plus, it's the only type of journal that I can commit to without slacking off and I can actually read what I've written (my handwriting really sucks). If I get comments to work and you want to say hi, thank you in advance. I'll be interested to read your thoughts, and if I can think of anything interesting to respond with I will. Thanks to all of you who have kept stopping by to see me all of this time. I do read all of your posts with great interest even when I don't comment. I guess I'm really just a lurker at heart. :)

we have tassels!

Zoe says that we'll never get corn and she's probably right,

but I told her that we needed to plant it anyways as an act of defiance; a reminder that, in the dead of winter, we'd done it.

tape worms and wrong turns

This morning I dreamt of tape worms and wrong turns,

of giant rats with red fur, men with guns, silk ensconced imbeciles,

tape measuring crones, and attacking pink snakes.

Only the rats and imbecile let me be.

Now that I'm awake a hint of winter blankets the mountains.

I sit here wearing warm socks and a turtle neck.

The fire is lit, and there are homemade cinnamon rolls

on the stove...

stanley's idea of a good time

The Subjectivity of Heaven

I grew up in a lower middle class subarb of Detroit in a house always bustling with activity. I didn't know stillness, nor did I even imagine that that was something I wanted. Then, at the age of 21, I moved to Wyoming; mostly because of Larry. He had spent a couple of years in Colorado Springs before we had met and had always wanted to return to the mountains. These were pre-internet days so when a friend of ours was planning a honeymoon roadtrip out west, Larry asked her to bring back newspapers from the nicer towns they visited. And, whether it was fate, or luck, or whatever, we chose to head to Sheridan where I felt immediately "at home". We ended up in a cabin on the creek in nearby Story and now, 22 years later, we're still here.

When my parents visited us for the first time my Dad exclaimed "you really live in the middle of nowhere!". "Yeah", we responded, "isn't it great?!" I'm not so sure he thought so, nor do probably most of our friends and relatives who find themselves visiting us, but we do. Last week I returned to Michigan for my parents 50th Wedding Anniversary and found myself completely unprepared for the culture shock I was experiencing. Somehow 22 years of isolation has left me completely disoriented in the face of the "real" world. Don't get me wrong, I managed to navigate through the airports, shuttles, car rentals, expressways, hotels, malls, restaurants, and backroads but I felt completely misplaced in the process. I understand (and love) that we live in a vast and diverse country, and having spent a year in Arkansas during the 90's, I even know that there are subcultures within this country that I am unwilling (or unable) to live in. Yet, I was still completely unprepared for how alien I felt in the very place I grew up. Zoe, having known nothing but solitude, loved it. We spent Saturday at the Ann Arbor Art Fair which was one of her first real urban art experiences. We stopped by the mall, the Detroit Zoo, and attended family gatherings. She fished for the first time, drove a 4 wheeler for the first time, shot a pellet gun for the first time, road a subway for the first time, and had her first Dunkin Donut. The night we arrived she commented that it seemed like everyone in Michigan was on steroids because their pace was so much different than ours. But within just a few days she (unlike me) seemed to have caught up with them.

Anyways, we have a quaint little grocery store who's motto is "Heaven is Another Story, Wyoming". I imagine most of Story's 600 hermits feel wholeheartedly that that's true. But there is at least one teenager here who definitely disagrees!

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