While Hawaii may be beautiful, it does have bugs.

I remember when she was born and I know I’m not the only one.

Heather says it all so perfectly, so I won’t even try.

But I wanted to write this to help me remember that every time I fight with jonah to get in the damn car already, that one day he will get in the car and drive himself away. And I will be lucky to get regular phone calls, because he could go and do what I’ve done and move to an entirely different country. So when he wakes up and forgets to pee in the toilet, is it really that big of a deal? Maybe if he cleaned it up himself…

1. Am entertaining the idea of going underground again. My writing has gotten stale since the whole “using my real name” thing happened.

2. Do the rest of my points matter now that I’ve said that? What do I do with this place? Yes as I sit here, thinking aloud to the keys, I do have to keep this site open because it is the gateway drug to news about the baby who is giant and is technically no longer a baby, but who I will continue to call a baby until I damn well please.

3. Okay since I brought up The Crazy, here it is: I mentioned the whole Elastic Waist thing last week. Since then I’ve been savoring “Anne’s” posts, reading them one by one, loving most of them in that way that I felt when I saw “The Business of Being Born,” because these tangible things, words (from jenfoo) and a movie (tbobb), made concrete the feelings that I’ve had and have never been able to either fully form or fully communicate. It’s a soothing release to be able to label your feelings with the appropriate emotions and file them away.

Sometimes, though, I’m afraid of labels. Like when jonah learns his colors. He could learn the word purple to describe something that is purple in color, but that has the potential to limit his thinking. Once he arrives at that word, purple, he could stop trying to think of other, possibly more appropriate labels. (Maybe now you can extrapolate what I’m talking about – colors, simple – to something more complex, like, say feelings.) Should we label our feelings? Does that limit our emotions? Or does being able to concisely describe our experience help us to file it away and move forward?

Apologies, back to not being crazy.

I’ve been reading a few entries every day, like the way I eat a couple of squares of nice chocolate every day. The bar stays tucked inside my desk drawer and I slip it out at afternoon tea time, break off a couple of squares, and slide it back in the drawer, where the rules are that the bar should not reappear until the following day’s tea time. But then I ran out of chocolate. And now all I have in my desk drawer are paper clips, pens, post-its and staples. Actual work things. No chocolate. Similarly, I sat down at my home computer last night, excited to unwrap new entries from Anne/jenfoo, when BAM… Page Load Error.

I have run out of chocolate.

So, not really related, but along the same lines as reminiscing, we arrive at my “whatever happened to whats-his/her-name-that-online-journaller-that-I-used-to-read-all-the-time?”

And the updates that I have found via google/my brain.

Miranda.  Or maybe her name was Medellia…  I can’t keep it straight, because we all had the real name/fake name thing back then.  Miranda had a way with words.  One Christmas she sent me a card, except it was 2001, and she sent it with no return address.  And so for a few minutes I was afraid to open that envelope, because of the anthrax.  Because I’m just as important as Dan Rather.  Miranda got married and sent a wonderful CD.  But then she was un-married.  And now she lives somewhere quietly.  She has not told me what she’s up to, and if she’s writing online I’m not cool enough to know about it.  According to her website, she’s in MD.  Or at least, that’s where she receives mail.

And then there was Kara-Leah, whose website I really truly cannot find.  She used to work for a major computer retailer that was based in TX and I remember seeing that major computer retailer’s info in my website stats, so maybe she doesn’t work there anymore.  She was going to get married last time I read her.  And becoming Catholic.  And oh!  I remember more!  She was marrying someone named Hugo, from Canada.  She seems to have fallen off the face of the blogosphere now.

Pamie.  Who doesn’t read her?  Pamie went from online journalling hero to famous published author with her first book, “Why Girls are Weird.”  She also pasted pieces of emails that I had written her in which I spelled “deodorant” as “deoderant.”  Repeatedly.  She didn’t use my name so no one knows I’m a moron.  I did learn my lesson, though, and I never, ever misspell deodorant.  Pamie is now on strike.

I’d go on, but I think it’s bedtime…

In any case, I’d love to get my hands on a copy of this and Steph from adventures in babywearing, which I only recently started to read, but am really enjoying, is giving one away!

She was my favorite, you know. I don’t like having a favorite because that just means that I like someone more than I like myself. But I do, and she was it, and now she’s gone. Did I mention that she’s gone?

I hate to go internet stalker girl on you, but I really did love her writing. Her entries were always good, even when they weren’t. I mean it’s not like we all turn out fabulous entries all the time. Except, of course, Pamie. But really, she’s the exception. Jen-fu. I cried when she moved to San Francisco. When it was time to say goodbye to her boy. When it didn’t really seem like the relationship was ready to end, but it did, all poetic-like, the way you really want them to play out in movies and books. Even if she did make things sound better in text than they really were, I don’t blame her a bit.

When I first started online journalling, jen-fu and I used the same crappy free hosting thing. We started around the same time as each other. For these reasons, despite the fact that she clearly knew what she was doing far more than I did/do/will (does anyone think that last thingy kind of looks like “dildo/will”?) I have always felt a silly kind of kinship with her.

And now, tragically she has gone. Wah. One of the great online journals is no more. A moment of silence, please.