tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-176260322024-03-18T11:27:25.814-07:00SnickolletMourning and MotheringSnickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.comBlogger1029125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-72749322298581378872019-12-09T09:20:00.001-08:002019-12-09T15:32:16.689-08:00National NewsFor the past few months—several months, quite a while—I've been involved in a thing, a thing that I could not talk about to people outside my day-to-day life. But that thing is now out in the world, like really out in the world, and I'm so excited to share it.
I don't have adequate words to describe the powerful experience of working with Caitlin Gibson as she crafted this incredible piece. Go Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-43849983438709193262019-08-14T18:22:00.003-07:002019-08-15T12:47:06.459-07:00Hot August NightsFifteen years ago, on a hot, August evening, John and I got married.
You can see us sweating! It was seriously hot.
Three weeks later, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
Days after John got his diagnosis, being comforted by The Best Cat in the World, Dinner.
About 18 months later, Maddie and Riley were born.
Mads on the left, Riley on the right.
Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-15235952778323637192014-05-09T19:36:00.001-07:002014-05-09T19:36:23.549-07:00I used to yell a lot.
For one thing, I used to be more angry.
Then there was the toddler factor. Those tiny people don't listen to reason! Sometimes I just couldn't take it anymore and I resorted to my own primitive form of communication.
These days, I'm more even-tempered, and my tiny people are mid-sized and capable of logic, at least some of the time.
But the one thing that will push me Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-16196780729354540392014-04-28T14:27:00.004-07:002014-04-28T14:27:50.766-07:00Seven years and changeI don't post here anymore, not because I don't have anything to say, but it's like I've forgotten how to say it. That, and some of it I say in other places now, like Facebook. And then there's some of it that I only say to the people who are involved, in person, in real conversations. Then, sometimes I'm tired, although I'm never tired like I was back in the early days of all of this, so that Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-76037374716283415242013-04-25T15:51:00.001-07:002013-04-25T21:23:56.312-07:00AmbitionI've been thinking about ambition lately, both in a general way and also as it relates to the workplace.
I've not read Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, but I did read Anne-Marie Slaughter's piece in the Atlantic earlier this year about parenting and working, and I just read in the Washington Post this article by Elsa Walsh about a "good enough" life. While I take issue with Walsh's framing of theSnickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-81851006881326099282013-04-11T10:11:00.002-07:002013-04-11T11:55:24.244-07:00Six YearsA couple of days ago, Maddie asked me if she had seen her daddy die, and I told her no, that she had been asleep. She took that news with no visible emotion.
John died exactly six years ago today. I'm sure I've written about this day before, more than once, but this is how I remember it now, six years out.
I didn't tell Mads that the door to the twins' room had been open, the distance between Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-49657948528662938262013-01-22T19:59:00.001-08:002013-01-22T19:59:11.746-08:00Kids (Don't) Say the Darndest ThingsWhat Riley said: "I love the fish gun in that game!"
What I heard: "I love the fisting in that game!"
Not the same thing. Not the same thing AT ALL.
That said, fish gun? I never did quite figure out what a fish gun is or why it is so great. Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-20035104379538765612013-01-08T16:17:00.001-08:002013-01-09T09:43:05.660-08:00Connectedness.I have my blog to thank for many of the things I love most about my life in the here and now. Job? Check. A reader sent me the link to the online posting. Boyfriend? Check. I met him through a reader who has become a close friend in real life. Speaking of which, social life? Check. A fair number of the people with whom I regularly socialize are readers who have become flesh-and-blood friends. Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-17641249504026409542013-01-04T16:20:00.001-08:002013-01-04T22:55:41.083-08:00Hello, 41. Nice to meet you.Maddie woke up cranky. There are plenty of reasons for this (including the child's least favorite reason: tiredness), but I knew what the reasons were and was mentally prepared for the crabbiness and was able to deal with it in a calm and reasonable manner. By the time I left for work, she was clearly still not her usual ray-of-sunshine self, but there were hugs and kisses and respectful, kind Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-18746904088861585882012-12-26T16:17:00.003-08:002012-12-26T16:22:29.856-08:00Newtown and Bad AttitudesNewtown really messed me up. I am not alone in this, of course. Only those with cold, hard hearts of stone could remain unaffected by Newtown. In the days following the shooting, I felt like I should post something, that I should have something meaningful or significant to say, but no, nothing. And now, nearly two weeks later, till nothing, no. I have plenty of emotions and feelings, but they Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-29823094953861419902012-12-06T14:28:00.000-08:002012-12-07T13:13:58.576-08:00OMG, duh.Tomorrow is John's birthday. Forty years ago tomorrow, his mom, as he would say, "dropped the bomb." (Get it? Pearl Harbor day? Get it? That joke got me every time.)
As my sporadic postings here document, I've been overwhelmed and overwraught these past few weeks. An email today reminded me of tomorrow's significance, and suddenly, things came into focus. John's birthday has always been a big Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-79851047369447797372012-12-03T20:16:00.002-08:002012-12-03T20:16:45.874-08:00Back.I have spent three of the past sixteen days at home in Oregon. The twins and I went away for the weekend before Thanksgiving (Friday evening to Sunday evening), then left for Michigan early on Monday morning. We returned on Friday afternoon, then I left on Tuesday morning on a trip for work. I returned home yesterday, Sunday evening.
All the travel was good. The Thanksgiving trip, for all the Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-88698762625799561302012-11-15T13:23:00.000-08:002012-11-15T13:23:02.582-08:00Dribs. Drabs.I wrote a long post yesterday. It started out like this:
I am anxious.
The post was largely about the upcoming Thanksgiving trip the twins and I are taking to see John's parents, brother, and sister in Michigan. These trips always make me anxious, but it's difficult for me to write about my complicated feelings around John's family and our interactions in a way that is honest but also honors Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-15766271262807005772012-11-09T22:25:00.003-08:002012-11-09T22:25:26.164-08:00Doing something every day is hard.Thanks for the great book suggestions. As much as I've loved reading Harry Potter with Maddie and Riley, I have to confess that I'm pretty excited about being done with that series and moving on to something else, so much so that I'm loathe to dive into another series of books, even though the Benedict Society series in particular holds much appeal for me. We still have 40 pages in HP book 6 and Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-39883049059083969152012-11-07T16:52:00.000-08:002012-11-07T16:52:04.409-08:00ReadingI miss reading books. I used to read so many books. I read all the time. When I was in the Peace Corps, I frequently had days that looked like this:
wake up
read
breakfast
read
lunch
read
dinner
read
sleep
Those were great days.
What I fear is that even if I had a day like that now—I day I consciously devoted to setting aside other things in favor of doing nothing but reading—I don't think I Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-7819548546454410352012-11-05T16:44:00.002-08:002012-11-05T16:44:30.769-08:00On Running, Extroversion, and Addiction[Aside: I just had to correct a there/their typo in my last post. Seriously embarrassing, that.]
I have been running quite a bit. I've blogged about running before, although I'm too lazy to look back and see when I last wrote about my experiences with running. I've been running off and on now for about seven years, but these past three years have been the most consistently on of that time span, Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-50492480888884587042012-11-04T20:40:00.000-08:002012-11-05T16:21:24.350-08:00The Warehouse SaleI went to a warehouse sale on Friday afternoon for an athletic clothing company I like quite a bit, Title Nine. In true warehouse sale fashion, the dressing room is one big open pipe-and-draped space with some folding mirrors propped on chairs and empty boxes in the middle for rejected items.
The items on sale include swimwear and bras, so women in the crowded dressing room—it's really a Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-33478871457862319362012-11-02T14:35:00.001-07:002012-11-02T14:35:26.523-07:00Halloween with Maddie and RileyOn the subject of things in which I am quite invested: Maddie and Riley. Here are some pictures of them from Halloween. They went as Harry Potter and Hermione Grainger (complete with Crookshanks!). We've been reading the HP books together and are about to finish book 6. We've been at it for about a year, and it's been a real joy to share that whole series with them and see them be engaged by a Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-71127677813763552642012-11-01T20:51:00.002-07:002012-11-02T10:56:56.567-07:00FedExedI thought about building it up, explaining how it was raining and how this particular stretch of highway often gets backed up in a way that seems to catch people unawares. Really, though, none of that is important to the story. What gets the story started is that I had to come to a pretty sudden stop at the interchange between the two biggest highways in Oregon during the morning rush hour. I Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-81177482008891444442012-10-30T16:41:00.000-07:002012-10-30T16:41:17.641-07:00You can't be good at it if you never do it.Imagine my shock and surprise to log on to Blogger today and discover that I have not written a blog post in over three months.
Shock.
Surprise.
Both.
Yesterday, I interviewed a candidate for a position here where I work. It's a writing job. We talked a lot about the writing process and his approach to that process. The notion of the importance of a daily writing practice came up multiple Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-47969016366819649982012-07-25T22:03:00.000-07:002012-07-25T22:03:26.836-07:00We have a winner!OK, folks, we have a winner!
I chose the winner first thing this morning with some help from the number sequence generator at random.org, but I am not able to log into Blogger at work, so have been unable to make the public announcement until now.
Drumroll please . . .
The winner is . . .
Priscilla! I can't link to her blog as if she has one, she doesn't have a profile that links to it. I Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-15058409256987563022012-07-20T18:45:00.003-07:002012-07-20T18:45:41.656-07:00UPDATED: Win free registration at Camp Widow! Entry deadline extended!I'm so happy that there is so much interest in getting a free registration to Camp Widow! At the request of the good folks at Soaring Spirits Loss, I'm extending the deadline to enter my giveaway to Tuesday, July 24. I will choose a winner at random first thing on Wednesday morning, July 25.
Please see details and instructions in the post below.Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-12993903517564862652012-07-16T20:49:00.000-07:002012-07-20T18:42:41.580-07:00Are you a widow(er)? Wanna go to camp, for free?I'm here to give something away.
Sure, I could write about what's going on in my life, and there's a lot to say about that, and it's mostly good (although the six-year-olds [SIX!] are driving me NUTS right now), but I'm not going to take the time to say it because right now is the time for FREE STUFF.
OK, one free thing.
And you can only have it if you are a widow or widower. Sorry to all you Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-83587638565412749002012-05-17T15:12:00.002-07:002012-05-17T15:12:26.257-07:00So Many Friends, So Little TimeThere's a lot of press being given right now to what it means to be an introvert and what it means to be an extrovert. The currently accepted bottom line seems to be that if you gain energy by being around people, you're an extrovert and if being around people sucks the energy out of you, you're an introvert.
By that definition, I'm an extrovert. No, make that a capital-e Extrovert. Or even an Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17626032.post-47783020493322328962012-05-13T20:57:00.000-07:002012-05-13T21:55:45.889-07:00On Mother's DayI was more ambivalent about Mother's Day this year than I usually am. I am a reluctant participant in most holidays, and Mother's Day and Father's Day strike me as the most made-up of the made-up Hallmark tomfoolery, plus both are additionally fraught with not-so-tacit insult to nontraditional families, those who choose not to have children, those who can't have children, etc. etc. etc. Ugh. A Snickollethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14123630374052898460noreply@blogger.com8