Category Archives: BlogHer

Hey there. It’s me.

“I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I’ve written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part.”  ~Shirley MacLaine

This is me. I’m tall-ish and chubby-ish. I am also full of anxiety and hugs and will never turn down a glass of wine. Years ago during a BlogHer conference I spent an evening in my room crying. It was the same year that someone asked why I was even there for I was only another blogger’s babysitter. Then there was the year where once again someone made a comment about my being someone’s babysitter which was the same year that someone was terrified of saying hello to me and then wrote about it later and then I got upset and it did not go well. I am no longer anyone’s babysitter.

I wear a lot of dresses and I have giant hair. And I am such a dork that even my own brothers don’t want to be seen out in public with me. In fact I am currently trying to bribe my youngest brother into going to the movies. Let’s see…what else? I am terrified of crowds but since I make a living from being in public and talking to people, I can’t go around looking petrified. Thank God there are drugs to help with that one. I like cupcakes and one-on-one conversation. Don’t mention congress or else I’ll go into a very long diatribe about cloture votes. I think I’m pretty awesome.

And did I mention the wine?

If you see me next week please say hi. Try to ignore my ‘deer caught in the headlights’ look.

Also posted in Socially Awkward Barbie™ | 14 Comments

Airport-Convenient Footwear and Other Things to Wear When You Travel

From BlogHer

If there is one thing that I find completely maddening it is when people take forever to go through security at the airport. I’m that antsy person behind you. I’m the one tapping my foot and glaring at you and audibly huffing and puffing and telling you to remove the change from your pockets (asshole). And I will apologize for being that person but dude…DUDE! Streamline. For me and you and everyone else in line behind you. Don’t be THAT person.

Belts. Oh my lands. BELTS. Leave them at home. Because it’s practically inevitable that you are that person who forgets that you’re even wearing a belt, which requires you to pass through the metal detector like four times. Also, once you get through, you end up having to hoist your pants with one hand, boarding pass between your teeth, while shoving your liquids and gels back into your bag. And EVERYONE will get a nice view of your butt crack.

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Cure your winter doldrums

“It doesn’t hurt to be optimistic.  You can always cry later.”  ~Lucimar Santos de Lima

Yesterday I posted this over at BlogHer. I claimed that cream blush could clear you of your winter doldrums because it made you all glowy. Fuck that noise. It’s been ‘winter’ for five minutes and I’m already MEHHHHH about the whole thing. My only cure is the promise of vitamin D within the next few weeks. Santa Fe (do you know the way?) followed by Atlanta. And then it’s Christmas which does not produce vitamin D but does produce a stocking full of gummie bears. I think I can handle this.

Also posted in If I'm not here..., NaBloPoMo | Comments closed

Vesuvius

“Life is a series of collisions with the future.”  ~José Ortega y Gasset

Sometimes I think I have more in me than I really do. Like I am equipped with an infinite amount of stamina and I can do it all. I can run, jump, swim and even fly! Everything looks good on paper. Communism looked good on paper and in theory and it might have been doable. But the execution is always where plans fall through. The minutia filters between the cracks of what was once thought to be a solid foundation.

On paper it looked like San Diego, DC, Philly, Chicago, return home to move. In reality it looked like a strep throat/flu monster hybrid was eating me from the inside out meanwhile Mother Nature was all, “I’ll show you wrath!” and lo the skies opened up while filling my car full of my earthly possessions. Like my Grateful Dead teddy bear and a Michael Kors skirt with the tags still on it. So there I was panting and lifting and moving and coughing and wishing death would just come take me away.

I felt like I was living a Shakespearean drama (“Brutus was an honorable man…”) that is if in Shakespeare, Julius was worried about how to move his pissed off cat five blocks without getting bite marks as opposed to his traitor of a friend.

Alana called during the move because she knew that I was sick and that ‘drought’ is an unfamiliar word in these parts. I sat and talked with her for 20 whole minutes because I knew and I think she knew that that was the only thing that would keep me from flinging a laundry basket full of J. Crew off the fucking balcony.

It’s been one of those weeks.

During BlogHer – of course I still have stories but in due time, my friends, in due time – I was interviewed for BlogTalkRadio and PepsiCo. The request for the interview mentioned ‘leading thinkers of the blogosphere’ and I wanted to write back, ‘You didn’t mean Heather B. you are actually looking for Heather B. Armstrong‘ But no. They meant me.

Here’s the description that they held before me as I sat down for my interview:

“Heather graduated four years ago from American University in DC and began her blog shortly thereafter. She is now living in upstate New York and does not want kids or a husband, though she is perfectly happy that way.”

Apparently PepsiCo knows more about me than I do. They’re in my head. Making me drink the Pepsi One. In reality I do want children. My want for children is a complicated want and after years of realizing that even their slightest imperfections, those times where poop ends up on your freshly dry cleaned clothes and they vomit all over you and the floor and the vomit keeps coming out like Mount Vesuvius; despite all of that they are this wonderful, complex, little people. If I can still be badly in love with the number of children who have gone all Vesuvius on me – those who I did not give birth to – then I really do think that at some point in the future (emphasis on FUTURE) I would want one of my own.

But it goes far deeper than that to the complexities of a mother/daughter relationship and how I was raised and things that would be better left for a novella than in the next paragraph. Regardless, I was taken aback by that description of my site. For have I really come across as some woman who is against marriage and children? Probably so. Back in the early days of this site.

My only response is that I started this site when I was 21 going on 22. I am now 25 going on 26. The chasm between what is only four short years is huge. I’m a different person than I was four years ago. And that is why I love No Pasa Nada. I love it because those differences for so many often go by in a blur until one day you’re 35 telling the 25 year old how much your twenties sucked. But you don’t know why. I know why. You’re twenties suck for the dumbest reasons but they are your reasons. It’s all relative of course but what pains the 20 year old is what the 30 year old will look back on and scoff at but for now and for me I like having this space to go back to and show my FUTURE children. I was never perfect, I will never claim to be and here, my dears, is the proof. Then I’ll show them this site and then they’ll find all the many uses of the word ‘fuck’. I’ll be so proud.

Anyway, here is my interview with BlogTalkRadio. Enjoy.

Also posted in Lessons Learned | 6 Comments

The Sweetness

“Know what your problem is, Shapiro? It’s that you just have this really shitty way of looking at things, ya know? I don’t have that problem. I just look at the dopeness. But you, it’s like you just look at the wackness, ya know?” – Stephanie Squires

Immediately after our Room of Your Own session on Saturday, I walked up to the Shutter Suite and flopped down on the couch. I did that thing I do when I’m hypomanic which is to talk and keep talking and gesticulate wildly and smile and feel my heart going at a speed that is more conducive to sprinting through the Adirondacks than having an actual conversation. A conversation where one person talks and then the other but I was too busy talking for everyone. Tracey asked me how it went. How was I doing?

“I’m really, really happy”.

The smile on my face as contagious and she smiled just as widely back at me, “How did the session go?”

“It was perfect. Everything was so, so perfect. I feel great right now. I’m so happy”

“That’s how you should feel”

***

There’s hyperbole above. The double ‘really’, the double ‘so’. But I was I was genuinely happy on Saturday. I was genuinely happy everyday.

***

Alexa and I were talking over sidecars and grey goose about our lack of friends at home. I am rather friendless. I mean, I have them but it’s not the same. At home there’s this pressure on my back and I walk around waiting for the next insult, for the next shot at me. I walk around aloof and with armor out of this incessant fear – and here I go again with the hyperbole – that everyone hates me. It’s a long but not that complicated but I still go around waiting for another something from someone that feels like a smack across the face.

So from Thursday to Sunday? When I could walk into a ballroom or to a floor or just to the side of the room and see people who genuinely loved and cared about me? That smile? It wasn’t bullshit or for show. Or because I was worried about what others might say, it was because usually it takes 17 seconds to walk through a hotel lobby. But I liked that it took an hour. Because I had to stop and see my friends.

***

I didn’t sob when I left Chris and Susan on Saturday. It wasn’t like last year when I walked around with wine in a Starbucks cup and tweeted my every tear drop and got all emo and shit while wearing a flannel shirt and listening to Dashboard Confessional. I teared up exactly once, back at the Shutter Suite. When Karen was telling us about her book. I looked at it and she kept repeating, “Is it good? Is it good?” and I couldn’t answer. When I did it was a very serious, “I’m so proud of you”.

Kelly cried. Liz cried. Lucrecer made fun of Kelly’s use of ‘tits’ during our panel and then we laughed hard over wine.

***

I’d be remiss not to mention that Lisa – God, how I love her right now, in ways that few understand – brought Ilene Chaiken and Donna Byrd to our session. And they sat there on the edge of their seats – well let’s imagine that there was actually room to sit because um, there wasn’t – and then they chatted with us and I asked Ilene about crazy Jenny Schecter and Donna asked if I had worked at the DNC and how she knew that I will never know and it was all so absurd and surreal that that is probably why I was talking in hyperbole. Because I don’t know about you but this group of women kicked ass and made me think that I should be more spontaneous. And thankful. Very thankful.

***

Before going to Chicago, Susan and I discussed how we wanted for BlogHer to go. I wanted to go and get inspired to actually finish my book proposal. To think of new projects. To talk with this group of fucking brilliant women with whom I had some bond. I just sat and talked. There was no running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I didn’t feel some pressure to be where everyone else was. I did what I wanted to do and removed myself from the crowds and the din as I saw fit.

I’ve heard it before; that you get out of BlogHer what you put into it. So I did and I got and it was good.

***

Flickr set lives here

Also posted in Blogology | 14 Comments