VOTE FOR COURTING IN THE KOUFAK'S: BIO ALSO

Here is a link to best writing blog–scroll all the way down
I was also nominated for best blog, non professional.

I really really am thrilled; and wish I had known about the second nomination earlier. i am totally thrilled. As everybody has said tonight it really is an honor to be nominated, and I feel a bit recognized and validated. Okay, I have always been Sally Field at heart. Think most of us are. Think it’s sad that Sally Field will be known throughout history for that instead of The Flying Nun.

I was going to decline this nomination as I believe very strongly that blogging isn’t a competitive sport. I do believe that blogging is about bringing people together and forging communities. Have written often about that.

Also believe that blogging should be fun. Why else do it?

Many of the bloggers nominated for best writing write for large blogs. It’s a whole different world. While I know nominations can never be perfect, there should be some distinction. I’m one person. And I would make the worst copy editor in the world.

My blog like me is polished to a point and then….

I have never been a competitive person. I always believed in the team over the individual.

Yet I have always believed that to be a successful team each individuals contributions should be recognized.

I feel that both as an individual blogger and as a member of BIO I have made contributions to helping blogging become more a community. That’s important to my personal growth and satisfaction. When somebody asks for help and I can’t give it because of time constraints or other things I truly feel horrible for days. Not because I’m a great person, but because I like the people who ask very much.

Courting is my personal blog. I never expected it to be successful. When it was I was shocked. Really. I knew less than zilch about them; every day is a learning experience.

Courting’s not an easy blog to categorize nor is it an easy blog to comment on. I understand and appreciate that. Therefore I have never asked people to comment, and didn’t participate in de-lurkers day or whatever that was.

This nomination shouldn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t nominated for a particular post; I don’t usually write “leftist” posts in Courting though I couldn’t keep quiet the last couple of weeks. South Dakota was my personal Waterloo. Was very sad over the latest Katrina news, never knew we out sourced our own ports, the third anniversary of the war is coming up, and let me stop before I get totally depressed.

This nomination does mean a lot to me. I represent the serious writer who likes to think she’s funny at times; who doesn’t spend all her time pontificating about the state of the world. The prior paragraph was the exception

For some reason people like both my blog and me. That amazes me, and makes me happier than you could ever know. Just because I really love to write and I like people to like what I write, frankly.

I have met such wonderful people and learned so much about this country and the world. That is a big reward.

I would like to make it into the finals because I don’t have big organizational support, and even I deserve to feel good about myself sometimes. Courting is well written, and deserves to be recognized. There I said it.

This nomination means more than it should to me because somebody recognized the work that I put into Courting. It’s just a blog, I’m just a girl in a political world where no matter what people say, men still count more. No I meant “women” for the first and “boys” for the later.

I can’t be a single issue blogger. Nor can I campaign for this award. Vote for me, don’t vote for me, I really don’t care. Just read me, and let me know that you like Courting, if you do. That means a lot. I know I’m contradicting myself. I’m a contradictory person badly in need of a break from my computer.

Never has one person spent so much time looking for dirt to clean off her computer screen. Don’t get it; the windows are closed; little dust, no candles lit, no smoke–not even a burner on, on the stove. Oh gawd, I’m going to be the first person in the world to have a break down over a computer monitor

The reality is that squeegees and I don’t get along. I have probably made the screen dirtier in an attempt to clean it. I am the only person who can make a house look dirtier after cleaning it thoroughly. It’s a special skill; have it down to an art form. But this monitor is…

That’s kind of analogous to my life right now. The more I attempt to fix things the worse they become.

I wasn’t ready to write the story of why my relationship with Zachary ended. No I didn’t become bitter or cut myself off from future relationships. Actually the book is more a memoir about my father and I. A big part of it is how we forged an adult relationship because of Zachary.

Even in the years we basically spoke through my mom, my dad and I shared something unique, and not easily found. To say anything more right now would trivialize it, and I will never reduce my family to caricatures.

But the Yazherit or anniversary of my dad’s death is coming up soon. The Academy Awards were at the end of March then. When I was a kid they were a national holiday in our house. No matter how young I was, no matter what I had do in school the next day, my parents insisted that the Academy Awards take precedence. Okay, my sister and I would wear our fancy footless pajama’s but…. My dad’s poker game would be on Monday’s some years and on Thursdays some other years. When they were on Monday’s my mom would make really great food that that my dad wouldn’t eat like shrimp or lobster. He wasn’t Kosher; just had weird taste in food.

This was my last conversation with my dad:

Him:”Are you going to watch the Academy Awards?”
Me: “No, I”m tired.” I worked in Jamaica Queens; it took a long time to get home and my job was mind numbing–SSI Claims Rep–in training
Him: “You should watch it..”
Me: “I know, I know it’s history. But when your poker game was on Monday nights, you never watched it.”
Him: “We had it on; watched it in between rounds.”
Me: “You never concentrated on it.”
Him: “Of course I did.”
Me: “No daddy, you didn’t. I know because I would ask you questions that any person who had watched it could have easily answered.”
Him: “It was on.”
Me: “okay I’ll put it on, turn it on mute, and go to sleep.”

We did say that we love each other. I had amazingly banal last conversations with my parents. So let me go into my annual Academy Award, I could have let him won that one, funk. It’s truly stupid, and I understand that. Goes away as soon as the Awards are over. Then I’m fine, until 3/26 the day he had his stroke which also happened to be my parents wedding anniversary. He died five days later. But it’s last conversations that get me the most.

Know that sudden death is best, and that I had great relationships with both my parents, with nothing left unsaid. But sometimes the people who are left need to remember that one last great conversation where they got to tell say:
“sorry I was such a rotten teenager with a horrible tude who treated you like servants and scum.”

Actually I was never that horrible, and did say something like the above to my mom at one point, and she, in the revised family history, refused to admit that I was anything less than incredible. Parents are funny that way; they love you despite, and then love you because, just like they did when you were too little to be really bad. Then if you’re really lucky, and I was they become your friends.

My dad and I are a lot alike; complex, love us or hate us–no in between. I didn’t really miss him until last year. When suddenly…

Really really wish this had happened last week or next week. Debated putting this in as it’s so depressing and so personal. But hey I have shared some of the worst things that ever happened to me

My parents and the one before Zachary were three of the best things that ever happened to me.

Vote for me, don’t vote for me. But when my book comes out; buy it!

Here is a link to best community blog–Bring it on! Or as we call it BIO!