Educate Me

Would someone please explain to me what is so great about Google Analytics? I tried to sign up for it, but it appeared to be telling me that on every single post, I have to plunk in a mile of code. Am I not reading the instructions correctly? Because if they really want me to plunk their special code into every single post I am not sure I can be their friend.

Also: whether this is true or not (and I'd like to know) is the information provided by Google Analytics worth all the (apparent) trouble???

One of y'all must know. Someone warm and toasty like Jane, or perhaps Adam.

Help. Please.

Oh My Heck

So much has happened.

And yet nothing has really changed. I am the same underemployed college adjunct as I was and I have gathered no steam on the Phd front. I have only the most filmy vision of the future.

What's interesting is my total conviction that although things are not so great financially right now, they will get better. The getting better might be greatly facilitated by my getting off my ass and finding an additional job - but something (probably irresponsibility) is preventing me from taking that course. Something else seems... pending. I have started writing again suddenly, and it is not just a meandering trickle of over emotionalized clap trap about my hurt feelings or my wounded sense of entitlement. It is ever so much better than that - but I am not ready to share it yet. Soon.

I have missed you all. What happened? Well. What happened is that for a long, long time, this blog was fueled by a narrative. A story. A bad and terrible story, yes, but people want to know how it ended. Now that it has ended, good heavens what is left for us all to say to each other.

I really like to think that there is more to say. There must be more to say, because I think about you all so very much. Sizzle. LizB, KateP, LAS. All of you. But no one more than Adam Avitable. Adam, honey, I am trying to get my shit together and be a good friend. I am narcissistic and complicated and downright fearful that if you really knew me, you'd pass. But these are no excuse for my rudeness, and regardless of all other considerations, I adore you and your blog. And did I mention you?

The end.

Dig if you will...

OK.

It's a drawing.




This is where I am moving on Saturday. It has been a long time coming. (Don't be sad if you can't quite understand the floor plan. It confuses me too.

Since you are here, go give a big kiss to Adam, who recently moved also. Times are a' changin' for him, too.

Love,

Nina

Nina is naked

Ok, not really.

But take a look anyway:



I left here some number of months because I feared I could not speak the truth about the day to day everything going on in my life without injuring others and bringing Nina (who is, after all, me) into personal relationships with readers - and finding myself by way of such conduct - unable to live up to whatever it was I thought Nina was. I felt unequal to the challenges I saw looming ahead if I continued to write here.

That feeling of inadequacy, more rightly called ineptitude, was easy to spot (and easy to despise) when I held my own blog up against those of people who did not work so desperately hard to maintain anonymity or privacy - in other words, people grown up enough to lay it all out there and say "take it or leave it." I love their blogs and I admire their transparency. In no particular order:

Neil Kramer, famed author and standard bearer for our beloved Citizen of the Month. Neil is,first and foremost, a wonderful writer. To prevent myself from rambling further, let me say that Neilochka is what we who despair of ever finding such call a good man. Go instantly and give Neilochka the worship that is his due.

What can I say of Avitable? I have knitted the gentleman one sock - and declared it not nearly pretty enough for his excellent left (or right) foot. So I still owe Adam a pair of handmade socks. I have committed other crimes against Adam that I will not describe here. What I love most about Avitable (aside from his extremely forgiving nature) is his openness. Those of you familiar with avitable know that what you see if what you get when you read Adam's blog. He writes about any and everything and somehow manages to protect his marriage and his business from the becoming involved in the blog. I resoundingly failed at doing what he seems to do effortlessly.

Everything I just said about Adam, I want to say about Lisa. If you have followed her story, you know she is fighting cancer for the third time, and doing so in a heartbreakingly public way. And yet she, like Adam and like Neil, has managed to share her life with other people while still protecting her privacy and that of her family. Lisa's time left is limited, but she has Karl (also an excellent blogger) updating her blog. Go see these excellent folks and appreciate their greatness.

I thought I would never return here, but I do so now. Naked. (Sort of). Why? Mostly because it is time for me to grow up and take responsibility for what I have to say online. If people get pissed or run screaming away from my internet diary... *yawn. * It can't be nearly as tragic as I previously imagined. In any case, if my cover gets blown or someone figures out where I work or where I live, hell with it. I ain't Princess Diana. It's simply not that important. The blog is mine and I belong to the blog and I'll take whatever consequences arise, whatever they turn out to be.

Summary: I am back. Long time no see. I have missed you. How have you been?

Love,
Nina

What day is this?

Dear Friends who live in my computer,

It is not because I am so busy that my hair is falling out (it is). It is not because I don't care anymore (I totally do). It is not because I don't have anything to say (oh, you better believe I do). It is not because I have stopped loving you (you are about all I have left). "It" is because I am not like Avitable or Lisa or even Julie.

You see, Nina lives out there in space and her words bounce off technology of some kind (Nina is no scientist) and then her words land in your Google Reader. This is how Nina has always interfaced with you. If you've been paying close (... really close, eyeball toasting close) attention, Nina's anonymity is eroding as a direct result of Nina's words not bouncing off the technology thingy. (This might be a good time to stop talking about myself in the third person).

Lately, my words have been bouncing off the faces of real people, and some of my in real life friends and a few family members have stumbled into this internet diary. Everything I might say I can no longer say because Nina (I) has wandered too close to the atmosphere of earth and she (I) is getting all burned up and dead upon entry. I can't talk like this. I need to be anonymous, and I am not anymore.

I would not have survived (truth, not hyperbole) this year without your support and encouragement, and I am kicking myself square in my virtual ass (which one can only do when one is two people and one of them is imaginary) for letting things get of hand. It was probably inevitable, but it hurts like hell. I will really miss you (us).*

Love,

Nina

* After I have imaginarily slept with like 9 other figments of my imagination, who knows? Maybe I will come crawling back here and beg you to take me back. I hear that's what most people do when they break up with their computers. Let's both just assume you'll still have me if I get good and cleaned up and do my best beg and grovel.

Whatever, already

After hauling boxes and enduring the sneers of the entire staff of my building, I decided that I am going to take another week to move my remaining possessions over to the new house. I have to work and it's unavoidable, as is the chagrin of my building's entire staff if I don't sneak my remaining possessions out in back packs and duffle bags. I can only do so much in a day, and after the unbelievable stress of the last two weeks, I just can't deal with any more - any more sneers, any more boxes, any more nasty cab drivers and certainly not any more work terrorism.

I don't know what has happened to me - I used to be able to just roll with whatever came my way. The person I have become has a brain like a chicken wing and the nervous system of a rabid monkey. I have to slow down, or I will be left with nothing but the paper slippers at Belleview and a handful of medicine that no longer works unless I take three times the maximum daily dose.

Having said all that, let me apologize to all the people I have let down in the last few weeks. My blog has not been fun to read and I owe other obligations to people I shall not name - you know who you are... and I have no excuse for myself except the above chicken-wing-monkey situation. I'll be my old self again someday. Try November, maybe.

Love,
Nina

Different

Today, I am taking my laptop up the Yonkers to watch the races. I have never done this before, but I hear it's fun. And it has been a long time since i have been anywhere involving animals. If I were really on my game, I'd go to the Bronx Zoo, but I think I'd get more work done watching the races. I hope the horses enjoy it because it seems like a lot of pressure to put on the feet and ankles and psychiatric outfits of those animals.

Because I am too busy trying to decide what to wear and I haven't had my coffee yet, I will respond to a few comments:

Avitable, Lord, yes, lots of anti-sad meds. They are working. Not all the way, but enough for me to brush and floss.

Rick(y), you know I had to dust the tops of my doors after you said that. Gracias. I had no idea the dust I would find.

Cath, Annie, Jane, Finn, why are you so good to me?


Everyone else, love to you too. I'll be fun again soon and shoot - maybe later I'll come home and post pictures of four legged creatures running around in circles.

Whee!

Love,
Nina

Yesterday

I swore I'd be a better blog friend to you yesterday. You know now that I did not succeed.

Let me tell you what I succeeded in doing yesterday:

a) sleeping
b) eating a pint of ice cream and an order of french fries
c)) talking to my uncle about how "super" we are - now worries here! Really!
d) smoking a cigarette
e) falling asleep in a pile of laundry on the floor - not to awaken for 9 hours

Not to alarm you, but I guess it's time to let the bravado go and face facts: this sucks. Am I am okay? Sure I am. What choice do I have? But if you someone gave me that game to play right now - the one where you can trade problems with someone else? The one where everyone (supposedly) owns up to really liking his or her problems more than anyone else's in the whole world?

Not me. I'd trade any of you. (Except maybe Adam, who will never believe me when I say that i have been working on it (really!) despite no evidence to the contrary.

See you all tomorrow.

List progress

Of yesterday's list, I accomplished 1, 4, and 5. I suppose I could get off my butt and return those pants that don't even fit me, but it has been a crazy, uh, day so far. More family drama, of the unanticipated sort. I am not going to blog about it because every time I do describe the FUBARness associated with my dad's illness and death, I always regret it later. Suffice it to say we just got smacked upside the wallet again. Life... it just isn't kind to my people. At all.

But day isn't over yet. I could return those ugly pants that don't even fit me, but instead I am doing the good thing I should have done days ago, which is laundry and working on a project for excellent blogger and good guy Avitable. I also have important work to do by request from P.

Note to anyone who wants to join me: when writing a haiku for the children of Afghanistan, note that the word itself takes up a lot of haiku space. Four syllables. Note also that if you abbreviate to "Afghan," your readers might interpret your poem to be a call to compassion for your basic polyester couch blankee - you know, the ones your grandmother made for you to snuggle under while you were watching Wizard of Oz. This haiku writing... it's a tricky business, and I want to do mine right.

I'll post that as soon as I can solve my syllable problems.

Wednesday, to you, is hump day (at least some of you call it that). To me, it's just a day, but congratulations to you if you feel like your work week is now all downhill from here.

(Still appreciating you. More than ever).

Thank you

The last thing my dad did before he died was build a bench on the lower deck and rock wall that he built during the last year of his life - a year during which he was definitely not supposed to be among us at all. And yet inexplicably was.



As you may or may not be able to see, he got out his soldering iron? Is that the implement? Anyway he inscribed the bench with the words "Rest ye and thankful be."

A day or two after he finished that bench and ran electricity down there to light the place at night, he went to the hospital, and the rest is history (June and July archives).

Thank you to everyone who donated yesterday:

Avitable
Martin
Daisy
LAS
Coal Miner's Granddaughter
Maggie
Matt
Woodrow
Five Husbands
Julie
Annie
One Pink Geek (are you blogless? I'd like to link to you).
Dagny
Nicoleantoinette
Maryse (are you blogless? I'd like to link to you).
Rich
Mr. Bingley
P

If I missed you, shame on me. Comment and I'll fix it.

Since I am on the subject of shame, I should keep talking about it. I felt itchy and uncomfortable all day yesterday and every time I got another donation I felt a little itchier. The reason is that I suffer from one fault or another in regard to that there paypal button. It's either pride - being too pigheaded to accept help when I need it - or shame, ie feeling the wrongness of getting into other people's pockets over my problems. I am also a little (a lot) ashamed of smearing all the family business all over the internet - even though my blog is anonymous. Who needs to hear this? And who, exactly, should feel sorry for me? I don't cancer for the third time and little kids to look after. I don't have wonky kidneys and, uh, limited time. Nor am I living with the heartbreak of infertility and its unfun treatments and anxiety and hopes raised only to be dashed again for no apparent reason. I could list others who have it worse than I do. I am sure you could, too.

Which is why I now say this to you: In a few months, after I move out of here and into a my friend's parents' place, my stuff will start working out fine again, and when it does, you'll get the money you sent me back. I know a bunch of you will say "Pshaw! I don't want it back! Just write more hateful sarcasm to entertain me and we'll call it even." Well... I can see why you might say that and I can see myself saying the same thing in your situation, but, well.

What I am asking is for you to help me twice by being cool about it when I paypal you back. I won't feel right unless I do, and even if you all hadn't saved my ass yesterday, I would still have, on the credit side, a great dad and great friends, too, both real and in the computer. And am I thankful for that? Hell, yes.


Fo those of you who have never seen pictures of he lower deck, rock wall and pergola my dad built in the last miracle year of his life - well, these are the most recent I can find. I am sure there are better, as all the finish work was done before he ever built the bench.





Have a good Sunday.

And it gets worse

Advised by excellent blogger and good guy Avitable, I have added a donation button. It turns out I can't make rent this month - my brother can afford to give me some, but not enough. I am kind of, how they call it, screwed?

The history: my dad got leukemia, and at the time, I had no debt and $20,000 saved. Two years later, after last minute plane tickets and rental cars, hotel rooms and phone bills, I am not only out of that money, but up to my ears in debt, too. This last week - $1000 in plane tickets for a funeral after which I was run out of the house after, I find out that my dad disinherited all his kids. Let me be clear: my dad's illness bankrupted us, or near it, and we inherited nothing of his - not kidding - many millions. My step mother got it all and she is not speaking to us. Meanwhile, I can't even make rent this month because even though my brother can lend me some money, it won't be enough to cover it. So I am looking at bouncing a rent check and not being able to make the minimum payments on the debt I incurred, all because I was trying to see my dad while he was in and out of ICUs and CCUs and having surgeries and what all else. Check the archive. It's all there.

I am screwed and all pride must now be squelched in the face of pure desperation.

Give me $5 if you can.

I love you either way.

Just a note

A post-it note from Avitable.