Hello world! (now how can you beat a title like THAT?)

I just barely had poor old Mama Chronicles up and running and separate from rinzai.com, which is really and truly my husband’s site, when I just found myself dragging to write it. Part of the reason had something to do with the title — somehow it feels like there should be some soft focus pastels with my kids saying adorable things and doing the darnedest things, and, shoot that’s just not who I am. I mean, my kids say cute things and do darned things in the superlative, and sometimes I want to write about it. I’m with them all the time, and so they do get prominent real estate in my mind. But that couldn’t possibly be who I am, or even how I really want to present myself to the world. Maybe my blog title is the victim of my frustration at the conflation of being something and doing something — polite small talk with a stranger at a party “And what do you do?” “Um, I’mhomewithmyfourchildren…” “I beg your pardon?” “I said, um, ‘I stay at home with my four children’”… “Ah, well, you must have your hands full!” and then the conversation dies. It’s not unlike being in school and people would ask how long until you graduate and what will you be doing then? and, yes, the philosophy major, interesting, so, um graduate school? and the conversation trails off. Which I guess is better than being a doctor and having strangers ask you to look at this rash — “Oh, a philosophy major? Hey, I have this existential crisis, would you just take a peek at it and give me your professional opinion?” (and what would they ask a mother? “I have this really tough piece of chicken, would you cut it up for me? Or, can you name all of Thomas the Tank Engine’s friends? Explain the difference between a digger and a backhoe? Identify this dinosaur over here?”) Yeah, I know the cocktail party is like the cliche of stay-at-home mom whining, truthfully I haven’t been to an all grown-up party in…maybe 8 years? He wants me to get a babysitter for one in a couple of weeks, and maybe I will, maybe I will. But lie about what I do for a living. I just can’t say I blog because, well, were someone to actually LOOK at my blog, it just might make them giggle at my pretensions.

Anyway, identity and roles (and if I put on a mask, a secret identity? Maybe? I have buried in some journal somewhere some thesis about the differences between Batman, who puts on costume to protect his Bruce Wayne identity and Clark Kent who puts on glasses to protect his Superman identity). And while I brushed my teeth I composed an introduction to this blog entry that went more or less: I am not the sort of person who thinks that everything was better in the time of Jane Austen, but when I read an Austen novel, I love that characters at a party NEVER ask each other what they do for a living. Of course, maybe that’s because instead of being defined by what one did one was defined by what one had, which is probably ten times more atrocious (unless we ask each other what we do in a more circumspect attempt to unravel the much more complex language of having and class — and where did you go to school?). But in any case, it seems like we all ought to resist kicking and screaming the little boxes we are always being put in, except it does make it so much easier when you do, back at the proverbial cocktail party, bump into someone who says, “You know, this reminds me of this funny thing I just read…” and skips the polite, disinterested questions altogether, to recognize that rare and precious kindred spirit.

Did I not, however, title this blog “Moving blogs?” Have I gone and buried the lead? I think I was trying to move away from blogs that read like the sort of essay my 12th grade English teacher really liked, with an introductory/thesis sentence and supporting details, the formulaic outline sticking out like and anorexic’s ribs, so I am going to 1) not go any further with that metaphor however tantalizing it seems, because, dammit, I have self-control and 2) in my efforts to blog stuff I would read if I weren’t me not go revising and editing and perfecting and re-writing when all it is is just, you know, a web log, and besides, despite my best efforts, embarrassing spelling errors sneak in 3) finally get to the point… I have gone and staked out a tiny piece of cyberspace with www.oleoptene.com. Now, if you look up oleoptene on-line apparently all you will find is “see eleoptene” which is, in chemistry, “the liquid or volatile part of an oil” from the latin oleo — oil, and the Greek Ptenos — winged. But at some point I had seen it defined as “having wings” and it struck me as a cool word. And apparently only me, since it was available as a domain name, see? And I’ve used it as a screen name, and it’s NOT related to my reproductive status at all. In any case, right now it has a dorky wordpress theme and the generic first entry “Hello world” “edit or delete this entry” (but the password is no longer password, I tell you!) so maybe, since it’s late and I really want to go read The Great Influenza by John Barry which my dad left for me before I fall asleep, I shall paste these words in there and they can act simultaneously as a closing of Mama Chronicles and a starting point for oleoptene.com?