Blogging, Midgets, and Zombies

This is my first day in this new and lovely environment.  Excuse the formulaic page layout, but right now it will have to suffice.  It was time to move on from the limitations of Myspace.  Yes. I admit it.  I was blogging and hanging out in Myspace.  From a social standpoint, it was fun and I met some people that are now treasured real world friends, but from a blogging point of view, it wasn’t quite so good.

The format sucked.  There is no other way to put it.  It was kind of like having a bike with training wheels.  I could pedal my way around and get things done, but I was a preschooler.

So now I’m graduating to a new format and a better view of things.  Well, I hope anyway.

First, I’d like to make a comment on my topics.  I’m all over the place.  I talk family, money, books, movies, politics (rarely) and often the work place.  I’m a mom, so my focus is often going to be on my family and how life is for a mom of two, with a husband in college.

I’m also in my late 30’s and that has a lot do with my perspective on things.  I’m a grown-up.  I’m often tired… frequently cranky…. and quite certainly not a merry beam of sunshine about many things going on in the world.  That said, I’m also a pessimistic optimist and a lover of good food and good writing.  I write as I talk and it may not be correct from a grammar-standpoint.  My urge is to have my voice out here, heard, if even by only a small few readers.

I’m here to blog life from my perspective.  Maybe someday, a social historian will peruse my ramblings and gain some insight.  Maybe not.

On to the next bit:  the midgets.  My oldest eats like a bird.  My youngest eats more than my oldest.  Doesn’t this sound like the set-up for a joke?  No.  Seriously.  The baby eats an incredible amount, promptly converting it into ever-expanding child.  The older one just fights about food, all in an effort to find something in his world that he can control.  I sympathize.  I’d like to find something, anything really, that I have control over. 

I watch Brennan, my oldest son, fight to keep things the way he wants them.  It’s hard to burst a five year-old’s bubble, but life isn’t like that.  I’m trying to help him stay a kid as long as possible, but sometimes my grown-up angst threatens to take over.  I want to tell him that life isn’t fair and we don’t always get what we want.  Ok.  So maybe I do tell him that last bit.  We DON’T get what we want, frequently.  I risk him becoming a completely spoiled brat if I don’t get that message through.

But he doesn’t need to know right now that life can be crummy and unfair.  Instead, he has the magic of the tooth fairy and Santa Claus.  He’s got his imaginary friend, ET.  He’s got his huggy toys and his vivid, complex imagination, where no one has told him that aliens don’t really exist or that little boys can’t play baseball on Mars.

The truth will come up all too soon.  I just hope he keeps a bit of that magic, that storyteller spirit, alive and well.  I guess that is my assignment as General Mom, to act as protector of childhood.

My last piece of this title is Zombies.  Why?  Simple.  I just read: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, by Max Brooks.

It falls into the category of horror, but I’d be more tempted to call it sociological fiction… military fiction…. I don’t know.  It’s a mix.  Realistic, but pushing the boundaries.  Scary, but couched in terms that make it easier to accept the events as the author lays them out. 

I truly didn’t think it was a horror read.  At least, I didn’t until the inability to sleep accelerated the last two nights.  I’d love to blame it on the food I ate just before bed, but I’m more certain that it was the insidious fear that the book built up, one realistic layer at a time. 

What is it?  The book is a collection of “interviews” with people who went through a specific period of time, known as the Zombie Wars.  I don’t want to give away more than this, but the interviews are done in a convincing way, giving vivid differing perspectives on what “happened.”  I was drawn in to it.  It was worse than that…. I was pulled in and held captive.  Max Brooks maintained a consistency to his intensity that was amazing.  Military, leaders, average people…. They were all included.

Check it out.  If you’re one of my local friends, I’ve got my copy and I’m willing to loan it out.  I won’t say it’s a fast read, but it will be hard to put down. 

Just beware… I wasn’t scared reading it, but 3am, when the world is quiet and noises in the night are a bit more startling?  That’s when it creeps into your mind.  Try not to ask yourself, what would I do?  Where would I go?  How would I protect my family?

And that’s it for my first foray into the world of WordPress…

Moonfire.