I'm alive!

I know because ...

Not today's real weather map, but I love all the swirly colors.

It's freezing cold.

I wouldn't mind some warm and spicy daal right about now.

I think I'd like to get back to blogging.

A blogging tear

I seem to be on a blogging tear here...:-)  Did you notice? ;-)

I'm just so happy to have a normal weekend.  Five of the last six weekends have been taken up by travel for work and for play - to Philadelphia, Guatemala, Disney World, Philadelphia (2), and Portland.  I forget what kind of toll that takes, until I'm finally sitting down again on a lazy Saturday at home.  Laundry, blogging, cleaning, cooking, a walk and cultural fair with Dear Daughter, seeing friends, and a swim.  And my mind is quiet and happy, my thoughts take a leisurely stroll around my head.  Time to relax, time to reflect.  And a little blogging.  Oh, little blog, how I've missed you.  xo.

The Sartorialist. Like.

I'm a big fan of The Sartorialist blog by Scot Schuman.  This photographic blog is focused almost entirely on street style - pictures of people on the streets of New York, Paris, Milan, London, Seoul - who just look good.  Sometimes it's about the fashion, but more often it's their straight-up personal style.  The people are regular people - ok, beautiful regular people - just walking around the city minding their own business without a hair stylist, a make-up artist, or a studio, and The Sartorialist just captures their individual essence expressed just so in what they wear.

I'm especially drawn to the way he captures street style on the fly like this beautiful woman with her bike in Milan or this smiling woman with her checked coat walking across a square in Florence.  I'm completely enamored with these funky, casual threads in the NY winter chill.  And the shades of blue with Dansko clogs and warm woolen socks in Soho.  I love this older man whose individualistic style just seeps from his pores  - or is it eccentricity?  Either way, he totally owns it.  I also like this young scruffy handsome with his portrait collar.

Blog Stats for La Nouvelle Observatrice (and random things we can glean from all that)

Blogger provides real-time stats on page views, referring sources, and audience.  The stats tracking has only been available since July, but it has provided me with endless fascination, inspiration, and imagination on my readership out there on the World Wide Web!  I have turned off tracking of my own page views from my home and work computers, so all current stats only reflect my 5 or so known readers, and the other random people who stumble across the writings of La Nouvelle Observatrice.  There are lots of things I don't know from the stats tracking, like unique users/viewers, and those of you who visit time and time again. Welcome one and all, please browse around, and feel free to follow or comment.  And don't worry, I have no idea who you are.

With one week still left in October, I had already surpassed my all time high of monthly page views - though I'm still just a blip out there in cyberspace. And that exciting milestone - spurred by my love of both metrics and blogging - inspired this post.

Click through to see some other interesting facts on my reader stats:

Top 10 Reasons I Haven't Blogged Lately...

1. I've been busy writing strategy memos for work - about 1-2 per week - and it's sucking up all my writing bandwidth.
2. I'm tired in the evening, making me incoherent and inarticulate.
3. I'm not particularly inspired these days.
4. When I am inspired, it's at the wrong time, and I lose the occasion to blog.
5. I'm confused - not all in a bad way - and so my thoughts are coming out all jumbled. 
6. My blog has lost some of its anonymity, so to protect the innocent....
7. My own version of ADD is acting up...I am easily distracted these days.
8. I'm busy -  booked with some obligation or other from 6:45 in the morning to 9:00 in the evening.
9. The few waking hours not booked, are reserved for chilling and doing nothing, so my poor brain can get a break.
10. I'm not really sure where this blog is going.

Sigh...oh well...in general, this is an immensely therapeutic and creative outlet for me, so hope to get back soon!

August in Paris

Apparently, I'm trying to emulate the French by taking off the month of August.  Dog Days of August as we say here.  In any case, I'm not writing much lately.  Be back soon!

A few of my favorite things...Now, found together!

I love metrics.  I love blogging.  Now Blogger.com is letting me have the two together!  Blogger has now provided a "Stats" tab on my "Dashboard" to see my "views" and "hits" metrics.  I have resisted the temptation to install third party software on my blog to see what kind of traffic I have (if any - I *never* assume).  Now, I can get a little insight on my stats by day, week, month, and alltime...and it's really cool!

While there is lots I don't know from these stats (don't worry lurkers and followers, I can't see you), here are some of the things I do know....

No subject

We're sorry.  La Nouvelle Observatrice is too hot, tired, uninspired, lazy, overextended, and overwhelmed (and underwhelmed, for that matter) to be her usual witty, brilliant, amazing, cool, fascinating self.  Please try again later.

What's left unsaid.

Louise filled the coffee pot with water, and measured out the coffee. One...two...three...she wasn't really counting; she stopped when it looked like enough. The empty wine bottle was on the counter from the night before. Recycle. There, the testament to the night was gone from their vision. "It's going to be a hot one. Ninety-five degrees." She turned toward the fridge, opened it up, and stared inside. "Do you want jam on your toast? I have blackberry." She closed the fridge again. Louise turned back toward the sink. She busied herself washing out the pan - running the water, watching the suds bubble over the rim, scrubbing the tiny black fleck of cooked-on dirt barely the size of her pinky nail with a green scouring pad. He looked on. "He must think I'm really diligent about pot-washing," she thought. She looked up at him, smiled, and looked away. "Do you know this song?  My sister loves it."  \She tried looking up again, and this time held his gaze for a moment longer. "I might go get a new filter for my a/c today.  \I don't know when the last time I replaced it was," she said, as if this were actually an interesting prospect for the day. "Coffee's ready. Do you take milk?," she said busying herself once again with two mugs, and two spoons, and the re-arranging of the fridge shelf to reach the milk. Her fingers touched his when she handed him the warm mug. They both lingered for a second, and then moved on.

The music on the stereo turned to something uptempo, a little too much for a lazy, unscripted morning.   She winced to herself.   She hadn't liked the silence either; she felt like she had to fill it.  But the music felt off, too - the wrong mood.  She wondered what the right mood music would be for the morning after.   Louise's thoughts resounded through her head like in a vast echo chamber. They were small, random, and probably inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but they took up a lot of space, and they were hard to dodge.  Like a hundred superballs in a racquetball court.  They were loud and active - searching for an escape route.  But she had sealed off all openings, and held them in check.  Her thoughts clashed anyway, each one in direct conflict to the other.  They ricocheted off the walls in her head - and collided with each other with bounces and rebounds.  What was the point of letting any one of them out if the next one would contradict it anyway?

Can't blog...

I've been a little quiet in my blogging lately.  I have a few half-started entries on things that I find notable:

- The enormous sinkhole in Guatemala, and other natural disasters - can you imagine your house being swallowed up by the Earth one day?;
- Al and Tipper Gore splitting up - makes me sad and disillusioned. Not that I actually know them or anything, let alone know their marriage (other people's marriages are always an enigma);
- Another Match.com absurd email (because they're entertaining, and keep my perspective)
- And Women on the Verge - the end of nervous breakdowns, bring on the new diagnoses of vital exhaustion and burn-out syndrome

But I'm tired these days, and can't seem to put together a coherent sentence, and I have all these thoughts jumbled in with a bunch of mental junk - to be sorted, but later.

So I'll just say, I'm still here...if you're out there...and I'm waiting for some return of inspiration

I [HEART] blogging

So, I was thinking the other day how much I personally enjoy blogging.  Whether I have any readers, or not; whether they agree with what I have to say, or not; whether I have anything interesting to say (to others besides myself), or not.

Perhaps it is a narcissistic exercise.  Perhaps it is a lot of hot air.

However, what I enjoy is the creative outlet it provides me to write.  I do love to write (whether I'm any good, or not), and I love words.  I have sought such an outlet for many years, something that would get me out of the scope of strategy memos for work and emotional purges in a journal.  I've considered taking a creative writing class many times - but can't commit the time, let alone take the pressure to produce on deadline or for scrutiny.  This blogging outlet allows me to write short, polished, published pieces about things I care about and ponder over with absolutely no pressure to produce.

It has been therapeutic (like my swimming regimen) to have this creative outlet away from my real life and responsibilities (though it does reflect those real life responsibilities). It allows me to consider my life and my world (and aren't we all the center of our own universe?) with some distance, perspective, and sometime humor (or not) as an "observer" - maybe even a clearer sense of self.  I enjoy writing from this Nouvelle Observatrice "alter ego" - who I would be and who I am, if I did not have real life responsibilities, obligations, and stress - a  traveler, a lover, a foodie, an amateur connoisseur of art, design, politics, people and culture). Admittedly, I enjoy reading my own blog sometimes, and remembering the experiences and seeing from whence I've come.

I choose to keep this blog publicly un-linked to my real name because I do have real life obligations, responsibilities, and a "public" work life - and I wish to keep them separate from this.   I have shared my blog with people who are not within that sphere.  And if a reader should stumble here, I would be easily recognized by someone with whom I'm acquainted (something for which I suppose I should be prepared if it were to happen at the wrong time or in the wrong way).  Then again, should that happen, I would not hide from who I am or what I've said.

All that said, when I re-read my blog, it seems like I'm a lot more "balanced" than I actually am, more "balanced" than I actually feel.  I certainly have fucked up my life as much (and as little) as anybody.  I have some regrets; and I have some points of pride.  I am not all that I can and could be. These days I'm working on being my true self (warts and all)  and acceptance - of me, of others - on all the rest, which just might be a taller order than all that striving for perfection/self-flagellation shit I'm used to.

Étude: Le Tour Eiffel

Eat Pray Love

Mommy Wars

This is an interesting NYTimes blog, "Room for Debate"  that teases out the impossibility of being a good mom, and the divisiveness it creates.  Of the blogs, I found Ayelet Waldman's and Judith Warner's words particularly resonant.


From Ayelet Waldman.... 

The vast majority of mothers find themselves forced to make professional sacrifices. Even if they work full time, their careers are often on trajectories very different from what they’d imagined. And if one is forced by circumstance to sacrifice an ambition that one has nurtured, if one is forced to see oneself in a completely different way, then by God it had all better be worth it. 

This means that our children have not only to be happy, but to do well, to be successful, to reflect the value of our sacrifice. That also means that our decisions about our children take on fraught meaning.

Someone else’s choice becomes, at times, not just another way to do things, but an attack on us, on our choices. We can’t disagree, because disagreement means that our choices are not merely different, but wrong. And we have far too much at stake to allow that possibility. So we go on the attack, we paint one another as bad mothers, when what we are really afraid of is that we might be one ourselves. 

 And from Judith Warner...

It seems to me that this posture comes out of insecurity and an over-investment in the choices we make as mothers. It’s as though, in making decisions about vaccinations, or preschools, or the permissibility of dessert, our identities are on the line each time.

Are our identities this unstable? Perhaps this isn’t surprising at a time when many of the old certainties are gone.We’ve been liberated from the narrow life paths that mothers were expected to assume in generations past. But we don’t particularly embrace this liberation. Unlike the baby boomers before us, we don’t revel in the new possibilities of motherhood today, largely because the promises of feminism have time and again come up against a wall of political impossibility.

Our much-vaunted “choices,” in an absence of family-friendly social policies, have largely proven hollow. For most mothers, the real freedom to choose how they live their lives remains a distant dream. Many blame themselves for falling short and then buttress themselves against self-criticism by critiquing other mothers’ so-called choices. 

There would be great relief - and much greater solidarity - for mothers in realizing that just about everyone, in one way or another, is struggling to keep her head above water.

Provenance de La Nouvelle Observatrice

Le Nouvel Observateur is a weekly French newsmagazine.  Here's a little wiki about it's editorial direction:

The magazine's new charter, adopted June 2004 (on the 40th anniversary of its founding), described the paper's principles:

...The Nouvel Observateur is a cultural and political weekly whose orientation belongs within the general social-democratic movement. A tradition ever concerned with combining respect for freedom and the quest for social justice.

Since 1964, it has covered political, business and economic news. It features extensive coverage of European, Middle Eastern and African political, commercial and cultural issues. Its strongest areas are political and literary matters and is noted for its in-depth treatment of the main issues of the day.

Blogging while intoxicated

The clucks have all left.  Dinner was delish.  I enjoyed cooking and hosting it, a moment when I'm happiest.   The carrot soup with orange essence and tarragon was quite scrumptious; the rest I would happily twiddle with.

Someone said I set the bar high when I brought out the Veuve Cliquot at dessert.  Not really, it felt good...and this bottle brought to me by Nan and Megan on my 39th b-day was especially good.  "I'll drink this, " I said, "for something to celebrate  in the next year."  [If you remember, dear reader (see year in review 2009), I was still crying a river of tears at that time, including at my b-day party surrounded by good friends, good people, good things, good food, when I briefly broke down for all that I faced and lived on that day.]  And while I have celebrated several good times and events since then, I chose to open the VC now, to celebrate with my good and lasting 12 cluck friends, for no and every reason, in particular:

- To good friends, laughter, cooking,
- To dedicating time to happiness,
- To the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 - where I wonder and marvel at what awaits, at what I do not yet know
-To finding a spiritual home, I didn't even know I was lacking,  at All Souls Church
- To the benefits and after effects of swimming - its peace, sanity and health
- To embracing my lusciousness, at long wonderful last
- To turning 40 in 2010, and while my life is not as glossy as at 30, it has, right now, a remarkable embrace that comes from being happy here and now, and to realizing that even my bittersweet happiness is somehow more fulfilling and meaningful having overcome so many trials, as when it was wide open and limitless
-To sex in all its marvelousness
- To having,  holding, giving, and getting love for however long it lasts

Cycle Chic

Cycle Chic is a blog I found about cycling and style in Copenhagen. I've mentioned my love of industrial design, I also love great urban planning and infrastructure that builds community. Here is a great film clip from that blog on cycling infrastructure in Copenhagen.  I really must visit Helle.

I've been blogged!

The Hiking Viking has blogged about me. It seems I am referred to as the Globetrotter. Nice. :-)