We all work through our grief in our own way, is all I’m saying.

How come the hopeful way seems so much more noble than the rational, skeptical way?

I ask you.

How’s this for a Xanga conundrum: if everyone else in the Xanga community ponies up $48 per person and Xanga launches a new and exciting website on wordpress for paying bloggers and becomes a whole thing, like a sensation or something, like a real thing, I’m going to be so ashamed of myself for thinking the whole idea sounds nutty that I won’t be able to sign up and become a paying blogger.

Watched a weird movie last night with Matthew McConaughey where he played a dude called Killer Joe. That odd and disturbing movie will forever be linked in my mind with this Xanga debacle.

AGAIN, WITH A NEW POST.

It’s like I actually blog more now. (I know, it hardly seems possible).

These days Xanga feels like a community of believers and skeptics in a world with an absent God.

A Post comes! A Post! From the Leaders!

It’s ambiguous (The Post), it’s a little unusual in the world of business plans and customary business practices and what-have-you, but it comes with a link! And a plea! And if you Google, you find links to mysterious online journals discussing the post and the appearance of the Xanga God!

It doesn’t really even require any faith, The Post, because no credit cards will be charged unless enough people believe!

All you have to do to be a good person, a good Xangan, one of the faithful, is say that you believe, and pledge.

But if you’re a bad Xangan, a skeptical Xangan, a Xangan who is always trying to poke holes in the dreams of others or mean-spiritedly refuse to join in on oddly confusing movements with uncertain goals and questionable methods (I never did get around to joining one of those Occupy Wall Street groups), you’re selfishly sitting on your credit card number until………………something else happens.

Maybe The Post will be followed up by Another Post! Or a Sign!! A Miracle! Maybe @edlives is a prophet! (apologies to @edlives, whom I don’t know, and whose Xanga-End-Times posts have been inspiring and hopeful and generally helpful, unlike my own).

It’s just a little weird, isn’t it? I mean, to ask a community of anonymous blogging strangers for so much money and then disappear (again)? 

Am I even allowed to post this?! It seems like it might be heretical or blasphemous or something.

I’m sorry, because I love Xanga too, I love it, but not in the way I love my sister or my dog. More in the way I love my Kitchen-Aid mixer. I mean, I really love Xanga. I feel like I probably shouldn’t have to say this to you, lovely Xanga readers, but I have proof that I love Xanga: 1) I’ve blogged here nearly daily since 2004 (wow, that’s something, right?!). 2) I paid Xanga $100 to be a member of it for its lifetime (which sadly, appears to be over, worse luck for me).  3) I’ve blogged about how much I love Xanga for years. 4) I almost went to a Xanga meet-up once, before I lost my nerve. 

So, I mean, I love it, but yeah, not like that. I mean, I love it like a business. Like a really, really, really awesome business I’ve used every day for the last nine years. Like my dry cleaners. Like the mailbox store where they know my name and get my mail out of my PO box without making me remember the key. Like that.

Not really like a relative with a terrible problem who needs my help.

Maybe like a relative with a terrible problem who needs my help who hasn’t called me in fifteen years, or written me any thank-yous for the Christmas gifts I sent, or returned any of my calls.

But no, probably not even like that. 

TONIGHT.

(a dark and quiet midnight on the eve of the last day in May. A seven-year-old girl sleeps peacefully in her mother’s bed, along with a thirty-pound dog, Spongebob Squarepants, nunny the pink rattling bunny blanket, and Saige the American Girl Doll).

GIRL: Mama! I need the bathroom!

(girl pukes all over the bedroom floor, on the bed, on the carpet, on Spongebob).

MOTHER: …

(*RING RING* telephone suddenly and jarringly rings)

VOICE ON PHONE:  I’m just calling to let you know Mr. OBL’s grandfather just died.

(*clackety clack* mother turns to internet for solace)

XANGA IS DYING.

(suddenly, as if no time at all has passed, it’s 7:00 a.m.)

I thought perhaps if I gave you a dramatic reenactment you could get a better picture of the timing, because it was awesome. No, really, it was awesome. The rest of the unfortunate events (absent babysitter, fight with mother, fight with Medicare, confrontation with writing group woman, 10 hour drive back and forth to 2 hour funeral, internet, television and phone service down for 24 hours) didn’t really happen in such awesomely quick succession, so aren’t as suited for dramatic reenactment.

Not that I couldn’t do it; I could, I could, I tell you.

TODAY.

I’m sure it’s not and what-have-you and yada yada, Xanga O Xanga (hasn’t someone written an anthem by now?), I love you Xanga, I believe in you, etcetera.

Nevertheless, it’s a little weird, people asking for money in this way.

Not for nothing, let’s say I was distressed at the apparently imminent shutdown of Xanga, and I wanted to continue blogging around my anonymous community of inscrutable avatars and questionable profiles. But say I was worried, at the same time, about how weird it is for someone online to ask me to provide a credit card number just so they can maybe set up some kind of [blah blah servers outsourced unsourced code blah blah programming language platform yada yada], contingent on whether or not other people give them a combined total of SIXTY FUCKING THOUSAND DOLLARS in pre-paid memberships in a prospective company by July 15.

What’s to stop me from, oh, I don’t know, waiting to see if there actually is going to be a company and then logging onto WordPress on July 16 and becoming a new Xanga user (for $48 a year, presumably…and why 48? Why? (oops, wrong math) one dollar per week = 4 dollars per 4-week months = 48 dollars per year, I mean, it’s elegant, but a little weird, no?)?

Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t be as…I don’t know…sentimentally supportive…or loving, or something. I mean, it would probably be more optimistic and kindhearted and maybe less……..cynical……..if I just pulled out ye ol’ credit card and gave it to some guy allegedly named John who last posted on Xanga in…when was it…2007? I can’t remember. I’ve been here a long time. 

And, I mean, John seemed like a nice guy. I remember he posted really cute photos of his cute wife and cute kid and all. And because I tend to believe whatever I see on the internet, I’m pretty sure that guy with the super cute babies and the nice wife and everything is probably John, and John is probably sitting in some room in some building with a sign on the door that says Xanga, and I even know a guy in real life who lives a life kinda like that and could probably be John, in a parallel universe, so I don’t dispute that it’s possible. 

I lack enough information to form an opinion about how likely it is.

It was a little weird when it took such a long lonnnnnnnnggggg time to get a TRUE badge, when I applied after six years of daily blogging. I’m sure that doesn’t say anything about John or Xanga or the probable use of my funds, which after all, are protected by laws and banks and what-have-you, leaving me basically invulnerable to fraud, but still.

When someone starts a new business, say, a service like a gym or something, do they normally sell memberships prospectively so they can afford to buy all the gym equipment? 

I don’t know.

Wait…I know! John works for WordPress now, doesn’t he?! It’s genius!!! In a minute I’m going to come back and link you to my new blog.

TODAY

EDITED TO ADD: weird friends are fine if you’re weird in a good way.

With six weeks to go before Xanga Doomsday, it seems prudent to wait until July to make any decisions.

I can be imprudent.

Plus I’m tired because people keep throwing up in my house in the middle of the night and even though the youngest is nearly eight, none of them can seem to make it to a toilet.

It’s not that I don’t think fundraising is a perfectly legitimate activity, and it’s not even that I can’t see myself participating in fundraising efforts for good causes, and it’s definitely not that I don’t think Xanga could be a good cause, maybe.

It’s just that I don’t want to get into a whole weird credit card, personal information, pledge, WordPress thing with members of the Xanga Team who, as anonymous friends go, are even farther removed from my daily life than the newest assortment of new-to-me usernames who stop by my blog and comment on a regular basis.

Do I regret the money I paid for Premium so I could archive my posts and blog in peace during the remaining months or years I anticipated Xanga might stay alive? Not really. I have nine years and some months of posts on my laptop and I couldn’t have anticipated a free archive option. Nine years, a little money, it was worth it.

This is where I landed.

Earlier this evening I was talking on the phone to my dad who wants me to sue a giant pharmaceutical corporation for him because he is in a Medicare Circle of Hell. I’ve been on the phone for literally hours over the past few days trying to solve this insoluble problem.

I was just falling asleep at midnight when my daughter leapt out of my bed and said, “I need the bathroom,” and then threw up all over the bedroom rug.

I got her out of her clothes and into the bath (long hair) and the phone rang.

A death in the family.

Couldn’t sleep after that; had to get the carpet out from under the (heavy) king-sized bed and clean up the vomit and the kid and talk about the death in the family.

So to relax, I logged onto Xanga.

Where I found this. 

Okay.

I’m 44 years old and I just decorated my car with shoe polish…or the modern, 2013 equivalent of shoe polish (in bright, non-toxic colors!)…for the first time in my life.

Maybe by the time my daughter graduates from Podville Elementary 5th grade they’ll have a full-on Prom with gowns and up-dos and boob jobs.

What? It could happen.

It hurts, squeezing those little plastic imitation shoe polish bottles. I felt like I should rest between “6th Graders On Board” and “So Long, Podville E!” I didn’t rest, though. If I had rested, I wouldn’t have had time to dash back inside, soak up some air-conditioning and tell you all about how I’m spending my one precious adult life.

I’ve been wondering how I can play these ideas out in my next graduate school admission essay. Try, try again, they say. You didn’t think I’d given up?!

Truthfully I’m just not completely up to my usual strength after my illness last week. I was ill, people. And then my daughter, with the puking. It was like, “Bummer, Redux.” And when I say “redux,” I mean REDUX.

I’m so happy I volunteered to drive the boys TO the party so: a) I don’t have to stay; b) I don’t have to chaperone; and c) I don’t have to do anything else for the rest of the afternoon.

My husband’s 90 year old grandfather is close to passing away today. It’s a sad day. I suspect that means I’ll be traveling over the weekend, although it’s hard to say right now.

Why don’t they make those color shoe polish paint thingies in orange and purple?? What, only people who go to schools with primary color mascots use car paints? I think not. It’s not easy to mix those paints, either. I gave it the old college try, but you know, old dogs, new tricks….

We’re having leftovers tonight.

Today I struggled through a bike ride. I’m not up to my usual strength, I tell you. Then I wasted an hour at therapy. The therapist is starting to get on my nerves. Is that a normal part of therapy? Like, there’s this thing she does with her face when she’s affecting sympathy. It’s really bugging me. I want to say, “can you say that again, but with your regular face?” I don’t know. That seems mean. Maybe the sympathy isn’t affected. Maybe she genuinely feels it. If so, she should stop overdoing her facial expression.

Also, the dust-catchers sitting around in her office are beginning to lose their luster for me. They’re collecting a lot of dust. They’re tired. I’m tired of therapy. Good thing it’s summer.

After therapy I went to buy special car shoe polish paints at Michaels but they didn’t have any. She said, “we only carry those around graduation time.”

Me: “…”

I didn’t say anything mean to her. But I kinda wanted to. I went to CVS instead. No one in Podville thought of going to the CVS. It turns out later (I learned via text and FB) that CVS was one of the last remaining places near Podville where mothers of 5th graders could find special car shoe polish paints. And I got the last package.

It just goes to show, sometimes you have to think outside of the box. Or inside the Big Box. Or whatevs.

Last night I studied biology and astronomy for my (son’s) science final. Tonight I’m tackling energy and physics. Boy, I’ll be glad when I finally get out of school again, so I can concentrate on my writing and my grown up life.

But at least when I have a daughter-in-law I’ll know how to paint her car for the baby shower I’m sure I’ll be throwing for her.

I keep marveling at how stupid I was for not realizing (for so many years) that the way to become a writer was to start writing something.

Duh.

I realize many of you told me that the way to become a writer was to write some stuff. I heard you, I did, but it didn’t really sink in for some reason.

And then I figured out that if you want to become a writer you have to write some stuff and then show it to people.

In keeping with the old adage, “never post your vacation plans on the internet,” I didn’t explain that we were out of the country on a rare holiday season family vacation. So. We’re back now.

I’m still doing laundry. Today my middle kid has a birthday party with 20 boys at a go-kart place. Fun. I’ll be the only adult. Yay! No school yet. 

Hope you’re having a great new year.

I just got my book! Thanks, Jeff! (@doahsdeer). I’m very excited. Just in time for the fall. #tweetingagainonxanga