I'm so excited

Tomorrow I get to meet face to face with a long time internet friend and someone who has been quite helpful and supportive during this past Year of Suck: Gena Ram.

Gena, having had breast cancer herself several years ago, just stepped right up to the plate and provided an awful lot of support to me, especially in the early days when it was just all so horrible. I'm not sure what I would have done without her.

She also organized a huge Posse of caring people, probably including many of you reading this, to provide support in both concrete ways (financial) and emotional.

And tomorrow, I get to meet her and spend a weekend with her at a yoga retreat for breast cancer survivors.

As I've said elsewhere today, I rarely get school-girl giddy, but I really am giddy with excitement about meeting Gena and this weekend. However, moreso about meeting Gena.

I know many of you were helpful in making this happen, and I'm so very grateful. Thank you very much.

Guess Who

Out of all the games we've owned and own, one of the most loved is the game Guess Who. I understand why young children might like it. I don't understand the attraction teens have to it. But I still find it out sometimes when only teens have been in the house. One time we hosted a 4-H game night, and out of all the games available, only Guess Who had a wait list.

So, those of you with young children, may I suggest Guess Who as your next game purchase? Personally, I prefer the traditional game. We also own the Marvel version of that game. I'm not so good at that. It's hard to ask good questions when I don't know the difference between a costume (or do super heroes wear uniforms?) and their skin. Is that a mask or is that her natural appearance? I have no clue.

Overall, though, the game is easy to play, promotes critical thinking, and for some reason, is attractive to kids of all ages. Best of all, once the game is assembled, there aren't a lot of little pieces to keep track of, just a stack of cards. Even my family has managed to only lose one card in the 7 years we've owned the game.

But this post isn't about the game Guess Who, at all. It's about all the various people who read my blog and how I know them. Some of us go back to high school, some to undergrad days, some to the early days of virtual community, some to my days as a LLL member. Some know me from the homeschooling community. Some were classmates of mine. Some were students of mine. Some are colleagues. Some are an odd combination of a lot of these categories. Some I haven't seen or spoken to in 20 years or more. Some, I feel like I know so well, yet we've never met face to face or spoken.





I first got online in 1995, when Aidan was a baby. And I immediately joined an email list devoted to parenting. It's there that I learned a lot about virtual friendships. That list spun off into other lists, and 14 years later, I'm still in nearly daily communication with some of those people. Some of us have gone out of our way to meet in real life. Some of us don't even consider that there is a difference between face to face friends and virtual friends. For those of us involved in the early internet email lists, the success of Myspace and Facebook isn't surprising at all. Furthermore, we understand that true friendship can exist even if you never see each other face to face.



And then there are the local people who I knew, sort of in passing, prior to facebook. Since facebook, some of us have become closer friends.

Of course, since I'm no longer homeschooling, my circle of friends is sort of shifting, perhaps shrinking. I just don't see those friends much any more because we don't show up at homeschooling activities. My kids friends really aren't the homeschoolers any more, except for Tynan who still has one or two (of course, making friends in school has been a bust for that poor kid).

However, the tentacles of friendship in the community have been made quite clear to me as I've been sick. The people who have offered to help, who have made meals, who have cleaned our house, who have offered words of support. It's amazing.

I think Bowling Green is an awesome community. In many ways, it's very similar to some of the wonderful virtual communities I belong to. One person who has been helpful, for instance, was my hall director my freshman year of college. Then I had her son as a student. After I bought his outgrown clothes as a preschooler at a garage sale. and then she ended up being my son's first college advisor. Follow that? Other people were people I was in LLL with all those years ago. I have a great silk scarf made by the LLLL who helped me nurse after my c/sec with Nathan when I was sure my guts were going to spill out of me and it would always hurt to hold my baby. Others, I helped with nursing problems. Some go back to the days of playgroups. Others are people I've only recently met, whose oldest children are the age of my youngest. Some have NO "mothering" relationship to me, they are colleagues. It's amazing.

So, really, who are all of you out there reading this?