Just Plain Old Good Looking

Do you know what good looking is?

The visceral kind of hotness where a married woman asks herself if merely looking at pictures of Mr. Good Looking is cheating.

Or the kind of smokin' where every theater seat in the house should come equipped with an oxygen mask that drops down like the ones in airplanes because whenever Mr. Good Looking pops up on screen you gasp uncontrollably and scream at the same time?

Come to Sprocket Ink and see what the best looking man who ever lived is up to. (How is that even knowable? -- who cares)

One Of The First

2008 was a mentally challenging, tough year for me. So many times during that year I felt alone in my situation, and most of my concerns kept me feeling isolated and on the fringe from those around me, those without the issues I was facing.

When I first found out about blogs four years ago, I stayed up weeks straight, skipping around, following those home from other blogs, based on a certain kindness or gentleness I felt they had to their words. I've always been drawn to the ones who respond to others with tenderness and empathy.

In my initial posts last week, I traced back how I came across the blogs I followed for the two years before I began my own site. I met a wonderful lover of life blogger, Ellen Seidman, of Love That Max, through a Top Mommy Blogs voting contest. These lists compiled of bloggers to vote for is a great way to find blogs outside of the ones you read; like the Top Mommy voting with Babble and Circle of Moms -- you can find them grouped according to your likes and click in and out or stay and stay.

I found Ellen through TheBump, where she was eventually awarded the Best Special Needs Blog Award. She is currently a finalist for Best Parenting Blog at Nickelodeon Parents Connect.

With Ellen's blog, I had found another place where I could sit and rest and breathe deep. Ellen writes of her life with Max, her beautiful son, who had a stroke at birth. She doesn't paint a rosy picture, the colors she sometimes uses are the grey and the dark blue of the moods a parent feels when they know their child, and parenting a child with special needs, will not be like the world of the rest of your mommy friends.

Her posts have a way of making you want to pack up your house and move half way across the country to be closer to her. She has that tone, of hugging you with the most basic emotion we crave: belonging.

I emailed Ellen to let her know how her writing was keeping me going through a very dark winter. She emailed back and as sincere as her public writings were, her private communication went beyond any kindness I had come across during that time in my life.

Her son, Max, had some crazy love for the color purple. Not an ordinary preference for the color purple, Max took it to the limit. Ellen would buy him purple shoes, purple cupcake frosting, purple sugar sprinkles. He loved it all.

While reading her posts one morning, my kids and I had the greatest idea: we knew an author in town, Barb Joose, who wrote a book, "The Color Purple." We asked Barb Joose if she would sign a copy for Max, the purple loving boy. She generously did, and we wrapped the book -- in purple paper -- and mailed it off to Max. We expected nothing more than to make a little boy smile. What Ellen gave us back made our spirits soar.

She made a post out of our gift.

I wish Ellen could have seen the faces we had that morning when we clicked on to her site and saw our gift wrapped package, with her photos of Max each step of the way unwrapping his gift from us. I get a lump in my throat when I think of how she snapped photos of Max tearing into the paper and posting them up for all to see.

This is the kind of woman Ellen is. I did finally get to meet her at BlogHer and I wanted to pick her up and swing her around; for her kindness and because she is so tiny and adorable in person. But I've learned that I can scare people who don't know me very well. But I know she saw my beaming face.

I say tongue in cheek that my only regret in knowing Ellen is is that she encouraged me to start a blog, and then my visits to her site slipped in their pole position when I became too busy working on my own posts. But she did, she encouraged me to start a blog, and I did, and it changed my life.

Ellen, I love you, and I thank you for the way you fostered the connections you did with me, and for so many others, at a time when we need someone like you so very much in our lives.

Please click over and meet Ellen's son, Max. His fantastic smile lights up her site banner. He is an amazing little boy. 

**This blogger was one of the handful so implicit in my making it through the winters and the seasonal depression they bring, before I began my own blog in 2010 and became a part of this incredible online community. During this month, I'll be highlighting the bloggers I call "The Great Depression Slayers of 2010." To the crucial ones I clung to before I began blogging, the ones that pulled me through, I thank you.
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Found: Rihanna's Hopeless Place

I think I found it.

I pieced together the clues hidden in Rihanna's megahit and know where her hopeless place is.

I reveal it today, at the always awesome AimingLow.

Have a wonderful weekend!
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The Year Was 2010 B.B. (Before Blogging)

I've been posting this month about the value and the anchor that blogging is in my life. If you've ever clicked over to my About Page, I tell you about four or five times how blogging saved my life. This isn't hyberbole. I feel so very fortunate to have a computer, to have google searched the Top Bloggers of 2008 that were featured in a Time magazine I picked up four years ago, and to be writing this post today because of blogging.

With that first click onto a Top Blogger Blog in 2008, I stepped through a portal that took me into a level of friendship, companionship, support, and was three fourths of the reason I was able to make it through what would happen to me two years later, what I have come to call The Great Depression of 2010.

I had read blogs for about two years before I decided to begin my own in 2010. In those two years of visiting the few blogs I came to depend on, I had no idea how many thousands more existed. My online world then was limited to a few emails for school and work purposes, and my handful of blogs that really became my contact with someone I felt a connection with.

Details aren't important, but there were many stressors in my life in 2008. I know I was able to survive the depression that grew out of the anxiety and panic that had been showing their punky faces on a daily basis because of the early blogs I had found. No one person should be expected to carry the burden of another, and with that same reasoning, no one blog/blogger should be all things I needed. I had the humor bloggers I followed that kept me from forgetting how to laugh, and there were the important balancing ones for me: the blogs that understood the overwhelming emotions I was enduring at the time. They were in the same space as I was then, and were working their way through and lighting the path ahead for me. They let me believe light existed on the road ahead. They took me along as they searched for happiness, new states of mind, survival. These bloggers became the Never Surrender! heroes of mine.

From one of the humor blogger sites I followed in these Pre Blogging Days, I found a blogger that became my solid wall to lean on with the road we shared. I followed a blogger home, Britt Reints, because of the comments she'd leave there; she spoke with truth, as well as with grace.

One post of hers (read it, it's fabulous) in particular, had me visiting her words again and again over the long winter. It was about how very difficult, exhausting, all encompassing it was to learn to survive with depression...but, still, even with all that energy expended, she would never quit. She'd keep on going, no matter how empty her tank felt.

I found my strength on her site, which is now called In Pursuit of Happiness, because there is something about not being judged, not being told to just take a happy pill, not being reminded how people have it worse than you, that makes you decide to take up your own shield and spear and blow your conch, charging into battle.

Britt, for all that you've done for me and so many others, over the years, I thank you.

You are one of my Great Depression Slayers of 2010.

 Thank you, Britt. I love you.

Big P.S.: please read Britt's About Page. You'll be blown away by her sincerity and determination.

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**This blogger was one of the handful so implicit in my making it through the winters and the seasonal depression they bring, before I began my own blog in 2010 and became a part of this incredible online community. During this month, I'll be highlighting the bloggers I call "The Great Depression Slayers of 2010." To the crucial ones I clung to before I began blogging, the ones that pulled me through, I thank you.

The Ruins of Us

I used to sit at my Colombian grandmother's knee when I was little, while she combed my hair. She would dip her small grey comb into a glass of warm water, and then run it through my dark curls. As she smoothed my hair, she'd tell me stories. I would run to her as soon as I saw her reach for the blue glass to fill with water. In her soft voice, she'd tell me about her childhood, the small village where she came from, what life was like in South America so very long ago. Good stories about being four years old when she saw the brilliant fireworks in the night sky celebrating the turn of the century as gold coins were tossed out to the people at midnight by her small village's mayor. I could hear the clink of the coins hitting the ground as she spoke.

I'm still the same way. As much time as I spend online, I still read, every night, before I go to sleep. I escape into good stories. Good stories are my time away in another place, where I always come back changed.

I have found just such a Good Story, and I'm giving away not just a copy, but a signed copy by the author.

Keija Parssinen is the author of The Ruins of Us, a book riveting enough to keep me awake two nights to finish it; trying to fall asleep in the middle of it was useless. This is Keija's first novel, and I can barely believe it's a debut. The Ruins of Us is a story set in Saudi Arabia with characters so rich they become flesh and blood real.

This is a GOOD story. A story about an American woman, married and living the isolated life that can come from living in another country, who's had to learn to live with things; which doesn't mean they've become easier to live with. It's a story about excuses being given as reasons. A tale of a marriage, children, her children; and powerlessly watching them learn everything they know and believe come from their father's culture.

It's a story about a woman who one day looks at the last thing she has left in her life, her children, and the pain of seeing them as if they're someone else's; scarcely able to recognize a shred of herself in them anymore.

I was swept away in hand over mouth emotion as I read these pages.

Keija masterfully balances subtlety with aching transparency in her characters, making this book an important and powerful read that will leave you changed, as I was. I came away with a new understanding of something I once quickly judged.

Keija romantically spent the first twelve years of her life in Saudi Arabia, an experience that no doubt resulted in the beauty of this book. Her website will tell you everything you need to know about this woman who writes like a dream. You can follow her on twitter @KeijaParssinen and like her on FaceBook Keija Parssinen.

I will be using random.org to pick a winner for a signed copy of The Ruins of Us. *Just leave a comment to enter. *Tweets would be appreciated*

Congratulations, Keija, your book is an exquisite delight for a lover of good story tellers. I felt like I was back at my grandmother's knee. Thank you.

*I received no compensation for this post. Keija is The Flying Chalupa/Tarja's sister and Tarja had asked me to review her sister's debut novel. I did, and when I finished it, I was so sad that it was over.