As you may have noticed in my last post, I’m on a bit of a spiritual kick. And, I know, that doesn’t explain a thing about WHAT THE HELL that post was, but that’s the point (or the non-point). Maybe “spiritual” isn’t the right word. And hopefully this isn’t a “kick.” Because, as I said in that last post, I’m happy — happy not trying to be happy. Because trying to be happy presupposes that I’m not happy. And if I step outside my bumbling brain for a bit and look at things as they are, I’m damn happy. Yeeaahh.

“Spiritual” is definitely not the right word either. I’ve sort of been-there-done-that, and it didn’t stick. It was definitely a “kick.” I don’t even really care if the psychic across the road from the big bookstore I frequent is really psychic or not, or even if I have a “spirit guide,” and what his name is, or if my dead cat is communicating with me when I’m sleeping. Because, at least for me, it doesn’t matter. Matter.

Regular yoga practice is teaching me this. How good practicing yoga makes me feel doesn’t matter. Matter. What matters is what’s here, what’s clear. My cat sitting on my lap, purring, now turning to me with stinky wet kisses, the click-clicking of the keys under my fingertips, my daughter upstairs serenading her dad: “it’s not my fault, the police gave me a ticket once because it’s not catching up to you, na-na-na-na-na” (#wtf?). Time passes quickly, and I’m done squandering my life.

So there are things to let go of. Me, the clinger. Addictions, fears, desires, anxieties. This doesn’t mean I plan on repressing or transcending these things, or never-ever-having-a-Starbucks-soy-no-water-tazo-chai-ever-again-EVER. It just means watching, noticing, observing the patterns, the wanting, the cravings — human stuff that we all get sucked into, stuck in. Not caring where it all comes from or why.

This is all a little something I’m learning from him (ignore the old caption — try)…

…and through him (who happens to have been my best friend when I was around 4-6 years old — so, kind of kismet)…

One day, I’ll have the guts to go to Michael Stone’s studio, maybe take a class, maybe let him know the impact he’s had on my life and, so, the lives around me….

Don’t worry, I’m still loving The Real Housewives. Just dancing more to the beat of my own drummer. And maybe even to a little Alicia Keys, because…

…because that’s what my girls are playing because we’re going to NYC — Blogher ‘10 — this summer with a whole bunch of other fabulous people whom I genuinely love. Come with us!? God help me, my family’s coming, too! But they’ll be staying with Josh’s sister and husband in Brooklyn. Yes, it will be quite the roadtrip. And I expect to overhear many a backseat conversation, such as this little nugget from today:

TANGENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

All that matters: my amazing family, good friends, authenticity (but not the cliche kind), the world, this earth, “this ground.” What doesn’t matter: “big bloggers,” stats, twitter followers, fame, what-if’s, what so-and-so thinks of how my kid behaved in the restaurant, or what so-and-so thinks of what I’m wearing (again)…. None of it matters. Too much squandering. Squandering.

So, basically, while I’m not going to give up squandering altogether (you’d have to PAY me to give up Housewives right now, and, hmmm, twitter), I’m a little more focused on what matters, on what’s real, here, and now, on this earth.

One more tweet for the road – because it came out of nowhere last week and is, dare I say, très apropos….

It’s about being here and now and balanced within an extremely unbalanced society, ecology, economy, etc., etc….

Kind of like this wonderful boy, my blog friend (and fellow T-Dot book clubber) Sandra Diaz’s eight-year-old son Zachary, raising thousands of dollars for assaulted women, and volunteering any way he can for other important charities. He was honoured at Disney on Ice the other night. That’s yoga — as opposed to “blissing out” in hot pink lululemons. I got to take a picture….

Though it’s a fabulous workout and great for the nervous system, the heart of yoga is in the here and now. In not escaping but being present and active anywhere that you’re needed. Most people don’t realize it. Most people don’t realize how enlightening it is to really be in the here and now — through yoga, meditation, and even just reading (maybe even a blog post?) about it.

Bottom line in 140 characters or less? I don’t care about small stuff anymore. Dunzo. (Okay more than 140 characters.) I will continue to wear my flaws on my sleeve. But I’ll let them be. I’ll go with the flow and focus on what matters. Really matters.

It’s a work in progress…, of course.

People ask me about yoga and yoga books/dvds all the time. So, basically: Michael’s books (he has three of them now) — Cheaty RECOMMENDS.

Love!

xo Haley-O

“Oh, I’m sorry! My name’s Nick. I’m a reporter out here in Santa Monica, and I just finished up an interview with Julia [Child] for our paper out here.”

I was really going to have to get my phone number unlisted.

“I’d like to get your thoughts on some things. Because I asked her about you, and frankly, she was kind of a pill about it. Is this a bad time?”

“Oh. No. It’s fine.”

When I hung up the phone five minutes later, I felt numb.

…I sat on the couch beside Eric…. “That was a reporter from California. He just interviewed Julia. He asked her about me. She hates me.” I giggled, like I do in these breathless situations. ”She thinks I’m not respectful or not serious or something.”

…Eric put his arm over my shoulder. “What is she, ninety?”

“Ninety-One,” I sniffled.

“See? She probably doesn’t have the first idea what a blog is.“

…”I don’t know. Maybe she thinks I’m taking advantage or I’m — I’m not –” I was taken surprise by a sudden rush of tears. “I thought I was — I’m sorry if I –”

And then abruptly I was wailing….

–Julie Powell, Julie and Julia, pp. 333-334

So there was a Simon Fraser University Masters thesis written extensively about me and seven other “mommybloggers” (grrr…). I heard about it yesterday, of all places, when I was sitting at Podcamp TO, listening to a panel discussion, of all things, about what happens when social media goes wrong. My heart started pounding when I heard — my face turned beat red, palms sweating, hands shaking.

I’m used to people responding to my individual posts in the comments, on twitter, even on email. I’m definitely not used to someone reading my blog from start to finish, making gross assumptions based on posts here and there, and then publishing these gross assumptions and frustrating misreadings in a thesis — both offline and on — and not telling me about it, even after the fact.

At first I was furious. And I definitely (over)reacted on twitter:

I got really upset that The Thesis wasn’t in fact about the “works” themselves or the genre of blogging, as indicated in The Thesis’ abstract, and that, rather, it was about our lives, our income, whether or not we love that our children are away (for 2.5 hours, hello) at preschool, and so on. When Danigirl sent me the abstract (which was all I could see for hours until I got home to open the pdf file that contained The Thesis), I was a little flattered and excited. To be studied in the context of Bakhtin’s Dialogic, for example, and to be categorized as “Canadian Women’s Literature,” was so cool. Bring it on!

But, when I opened the document and searched my name…, I was floored. All those assumptions about all sorts of irrelevant stuff. It hurt. Bad.

I think the thing that bothered me most was when The Thesis writer suggested that I may have contrived how I started blogging in the first place. I told the world that Ali Martell introduced me to blogging when the Monkey was 8 months old, and that’s the truth — no questions asked. But, according to The Thesis writer, I “contrived” this bit in order to appear flippy and erratic or whatever. In another post, she ingeniously discovers, I mention that Jennifer Lawrence, who happens to be the author of the blog MUBAR (which no longer exists), helped me out when I was clinically depressed while pregnant with the Monkey. (And, by the way, an article was written about my prenatal depression and published in some major psychiatry journal — APA? — and, you betcha, the author asked my permission even though they used an alias and I’d never find it in a million years!). Yes, Jen Lawrence helped me, but it was OVER THE PHONE. I didn’t know she had a blog, or what a blog was.

Why does this bother me? Because it’s an insult to my integrity as a blogger. SURE, I might exaggerate things — for entertainment’s sake — here and there, and less so these days. But I would never flat-out lie. I would never “contrive” something. To me, that’s the ultimate insult to a blogger.

Somewhere, way out yonder in the internet ether, there’s a great old email conversation in which Ali reveals to me, “I HAVE A BLOG,” and to which I reply, “WHAT’S A BLOG???”

Anyway.

Whatever. I’m really okay now. I’m flattered that I’m in an MA thesis, even though the reading of “me” is false and unflattering for the most part. As you can see on twitter, I felt beyond violated and uncomfortable when I first read the thesis. But, I haven’t looked at it since, and I’ll never look at it again — and I feel better. And I can laugh at the broad assumptions, as I’ve also done on twitter:

And, this one….

Oops, how’d that tweet get there? (Disclosure: CONTRIVED.)

Here, see I can make light of The Thesis writer’s totally unfounded statement that I am the most “affluent” of all the bloggers (if she only knew!?):

Should the student have contacted me? It would have been the nice and, I think, scholarly thing to do.

Do I blame the student? Do I “hate” her SORT OF like Julia Child hated Julia Powell? No. I’ve done a Master’s Thesis, and I know how difficult that can be on several levels. This writer wrote the thesis in 2008. She’s obviously young, likely not a mother. There I go assuming, though….

As with all controversies surrounding “mommyblogging,”  people are now taking the opportunity to troll thoughtful posts on the subject and preach about the ethics of “mommyblogging.” We’re putting ourselves and our kids out there for scrutiny and misinterpretation, so apparently we should just suck it up, not react, and just plain expect this. But, surely we’re allowed to “giggle” or “wail.” On twitter?

Know what happened to me today? I went to Starbucks (shut it — I’m not affluent — I got a card for Valentine’s Day). Rascal and I sat beside a woman who was typing on her mini laptop. When she got up to leave, she said:

You know, I’ve been watching you, and you’re a wonderful mother. I see the way you talk to him and look at him, the way he looks at you. And I don’t see that all the time, unfortunately. It’s amazing to watch you. And I’m a therapist….

That compliment, that observation of ME, was so beautiful and so welcomed given my current frustration. And, so often, my readers and fellow bloggers, whether in comments, twitter, or email, make me feel THAT good with their genuine, caring feedback and friendship.

You can’t read a blog and claim to know the writer. As I stated several days ago on twitter,

You can’t judge a blogger by his or her blog. It’s not a novel. It’s its own genre. One absolutely worth exploring at an academic level.

If you’d like to see a copy of The Thesis, just contact me — which is easy to do for the record….

Love!

xo Haley-O

It’s hard to write a blog post with a cat on your lap. I think that’s one of the reason’s I blog less often than I used to. That, and twitter, and my seasonal anti-socialness. Yes, beloved Macbook, I know “socialness” is not a word but, according to you, either is “macbook.” There’s such a thing as poetic license, you know. And thank you for helping me spell “license.” It’s one of those words I never know how to spell. That, and “exercise” and “occasion,” and “judgment.” Reminds me of how it took me the longest time to notice the spelling of “schedule” — why not “schedual”?

I so think I’m Aristotle right now — ruminating on the little particulars in life and in the mind…. Because I just read this FABO (I know, not officially a word but whatevs) novel all about Aristotle and his student Alexander the Great….

Yes, I read Annabel Lyon’s The Golden Mean. It was my T-Dot blogger bookclub choice. Aside from the animal experimentation and dead-soldier dissection — Alexander the Great was a wee bit CRAZY (crazy but HOT, apparently) — this was the most relaxing, enjoyable book I’ve read in a long time.

If you loved The Tudors and Rome TV series (LOVE LOVE LOVE), you’ll love this book. Lyon takes you RIGHT out of the 20th century, and into Aristotle’s mind — an insatiably curious, innocent, self-questioning, seeking and apparently bi-polar mind.

If you love ancient philosophy, you’ll love this book. Lyon’s (historical-fictional) contextualization of Aristotle’s works makes his theories so much more accessible than your philosophy professor ever could. If only this book were around when I was taking philosophy exams. I had so many “AHA!” moments — or, should I say, “EUREKA” moments!

If you love ancient history, you might, as the author puts it in her acknowledgments, “turn purple” when you read this book. But I was okay with that.

If you love a little erotica in your reading, you’ll love this book. I’m not sure I ever needed to imagine Aristotle’s sex life. But, it was cool to learn how his second wife taught him that there is, indeed, such a thing as a female orgasm. EUREKA!

At Book Club last night, we didn’t talk much about the book. Probably because we all had different levels of interest in Aristotle and his philosophy. I wanted to talk about the significance and treatment of TRAGEDY and CATHARSIS in the book — but I was once a post-graduate philosophy major. AND WE WERE TIRED. AND WE WANTED TO CUPCAKES…. Check ‘em out!

I set them up in my fancy cake plate. Ooo, did I mention I entertained? I ENTERTAINED. I never entertain at my house. EVER. I chose the book; I hosted the SOIREE. But, I think I did ok! What do you think? Check out the table….

Fresh veggies and hummus….

Chips and dips, and fancy NUTS — total HIT — from my fave food store, Organic Abundance — presented in a GORJ clay bowl handmade by BFF Jenifer-Lyn Terner….

And various grains and bean dishes, etc., etc….

And I dressed up my 5-pound LIGHTER bod….

Getting there…! (I’m getting my haircut TOMORROW, woohoo!). And I wore my fancy slippers….

And I had a great time with my bloggy buddies — like the fabulous and brillers KAREN….

…and SANDRA MAMALOOPER….

Lovelies KITTENPIE and BLITHELY BABBLING don’t show their faces online. But I managed to get a picture of Kittenpie’s lap….

And, of course, the “unwonted guest”…. The Monkey LOVES Mamalooper…. Here she is trudge-trudge-trudging BACK upstairs for the fifth time (I saved her a cupcake, of course)….

It was a FAB party, if I do say so myself. Several peeps in the club couldn’t make it, so it was low key. We drank mint green tea, instead of wine. I turned on the fireplace and gave Mamalooper a blanket to cozy up in. They left after 11pm. I went to bed happy.

Then, today, the Monkey barged in on me when I was in the shower, yelling, “THAT’S MY MAMA!” Let’s just say her playdate, Jill, got an eye full….

THIS MONTH’S BOOK: Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants.

Thinking about the people in Haiti today. A great place to donate is here –  http://freethechildren.com/.

LOVE….

xo Haley-O

I didn’t get to take a picture with her at blogHer ‘09. I had asked her to take a picture with me — because LOVE — and then someone interrupted us. She is so freaking LOVELY that she waited for me to finish the conversation. And, then, what do you know, my camera broke. I’d dropped it. I fixed it eventually, but I never got that picture.

But, I did get that beautiful smile of hers, plastered in my mind.

Anissa suffered a stroke yesterday. Her family and the entire internet world have been praying for her and her family.

I will be praying. I will be donating.

The one thing that stands out for me about Anissa is that she SOUNDS exactly the same as she tweets and blogs. She is THE REAL THING. She’s been through enough already. She didn’t need this; her family doesn’t need this. And I’m praying hard. And my heart is pretty sunk right now.

Click here for information on how you can help Anissa and her family, now with updated P.O. Box information.

Click here for updates on how she’s doing.

Click here to go to Anissa’s Caring Bridge page.

I was the only person in my entire book club of 12 Toronto bloggers who liked, nay LOVED, Australian author Christos Tsiolkas’ latest tome The Slap.

Maybe it was the exhilaration of it all — the exhilaration I felt when I flipped the final 483rd page of the book exactly one hour before I had to drive 45 minutes to Denguy’s house for the monthly meeting last night. Maybe it was the 483ish times the author used the c-word (or not, since I don’t think I’ve uttered the word in my entire life). Maybe it was the sexy-hot Hector, the icy cool Aisha, the sweet sympathetic Richie. Maybe it was that tiny detail, when teen-aged Connie gave her friend the stink eye for throwing a cigarette butt in the bushes: “It would end up in the sea. [Connie] got up from the bench, picked up the butt and put it in the side pocket of her backpack.”

Or maybe I’m just a dark and twisted horndog.

But the book won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. Are the Australian literati, then, also dark and twisted horndogs?

I don’t know. Why don’t you read it, and let me know what you think. THEY hated it. I loved it.

And yet I wonder if I would love ANY book right now. Because reading is such a LUXURY for me these days.

So, I suppose if there’s any time to read the new Tori Spelling book, NOW would be the time?

Yes, I’m so grateful just to be READING again — to relax and escape for a while, even into Tsiolkas’ dark and twisted world of horndogs, a world totally removed from my own. Maybe that’s why I loved it.

It was a good escape. And a good accomplishment. 483 pages. Unlike changing diapers and waking up in the middle of the night to get the monkey WATER, I didn’t HAVE to read it. But I did. And it felt GOOD.

On to our next book club book, The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher — chosen by Ms. Mamalooper, who has returned to blogging after, ohhh, 6 months’ hiatus. But, FIRST, a book of my own choosing (for, yes, my goal is to read TWO books this month). It’s a book by one of my favourite authors, highly recommended by my mother….

I can assure you there won’t be a single c-word in this one, and I will still love it.

And I can’t wait to get lost in it. Tonight. I hope. After I put the kids to bed, and wash the dishes, and write tomorrow’s bTrendie email alert, and write three articles, and answer 483 emails.