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To Ann on her fourth blogiversary…

     

    cropped E's room

    Friday, October 10, 2008

    Anyone Out There?

    Welcome to my blog. My ovaries keep demanding I conceive something, so I thought my brain might distract them a bit if I got creative enough. Only time will tell.

    Dear Ann of blog ‘08,

    I have good news and I have great news and I have confusing news—which is to say four years later you still type on this blog.

    Good news: Your brain won—you now conceive only brain babies, not of the human persuasion. A visit to your house no longer requires dry-cleaning compensation for your guests. The once-pervasive camp bathroom smell has mostly abated.

    Great news: You now have a second bathroom in good repair (read: no longer covered in black mold) that you can refer guests to whose nostrils have not developed immunity to camp bathroom smell. You now have school-aged children.

    Confusing news: Henry died. You do not miss the cat messes on your pillow, nor the 3 am cat rendition of Whitney Houston’s I will always love you. More confusing news: Whitney Houston died. I know, I know, shhhh… Henry’s brother The Fur Bastard lives on, allowing you to fall in love again as you both age and paunch.  Same with you and your Husband.

    ***

    Ann, a couple weeks ago as a result of a new career this blog shenanigans helped build, you got to go on a retreat with creative women. You traveled alone, no human carry-ons.

    Then a 77-year-old named Sheila made you cry.

    Don’t worry, she didn’t kick you or make fun of your thumbs. Sure she has a better butt than you, can do 50 pushups in a row without missing a beat in her presentation, and still figure skates but that only put the lump in your throat. Sheila is a fitness guru. Sheila is a hugely successful serial entrepreneur and philanthropist. Sheila endured incredible hardship—including the loss of a child, a horrible accident that injured her husband, and a very ill grandchild—and keeps reinventing herself. Sheila excites you about your life and your future and makes you realize how much you bought into the American cultural devaluation of aging.

    Your weeping came from the realization that you’ve been living with a scarcity-mentality. You’ve found such contentment in this phase of your life four years later, that even though you no longer have to wear 30 pounds of kids on your person at all times, you went and replaced it with a boulder named All Down Hill From Here. Sheila made you realize you’re more than one big idea and listening to her flipped on your DREAM BIG switch again. You couldn’t find it under the All Down Hill From Here boulder. (Rest assured, Ann, you still mix metaphors!)

    After thanking Sheila and trying not to get your catharsis all over her warm-up suit, you got to sit down one-on-one and create a custom scent with The Mobile Mixtress. Together you invented a smell worthy of the word aroma, with notes of mud, black tea, grapefruit…I think she even put a little Mark Ruffalo in there. You got to name it yourself, and the first word that came into that hefty noggin of yours?

    Potential.

    Happy 4th Blogiversary, Ann. Keep at it. Remember that whatever “it” is, it takes time. Put down your boulder. Actually, sit on it and dream a while.

    From, Ann of Blog ‘12

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    photo by Amy Sleep-Kelly

    Not enough thanks to Andrea and Leane for Creative Alliance 12, and especially to whomever still reads this.

    0 thoughts on “To Ann on her fourth blogiversary…”

    1. Yuliya

      Starting reading this many many moons ago and will never quit as long as you don’t quit.
      Happy blogaversary.
      Will the blog be getting some tonight?

    2. Lee

      Oh Ann. This made me teary eyed and it made me laugh too. I’m kinda glad I got some insight into your AHA moment with Sheila. I mean seeing you cry like that got me all shocked and amazed and now I kinda understand why. 🙂 Not about me being shocked and amazed but about you and your AHA moment. I understand it now. And I love your All Down Hill from Here boulder. Cracks me up…but yes there is so much more to do and greater things and more fulfilling things and well, it’s what keeps me going too. So thanks for putting into words what I didn’t quite understand for you OR for me. But now I do.

      Does any of this make sense?? It does to me. 🙂

      I love you sister.

      xx
      Lee

    3. Lee

      AND YES!! Happy Anniversary!!! I kinda forgot about that part! FOUR YEARS!! Mine is like at the end of this month!! We are so close! Our blogs have grown up together! This makes me wanna go write on mine. 🙂 Poor neglected brain baby. 🙂

      xx

    4. Susan

      I’m a big believer in DREAM BIG. I bought myself a hand-hammered silver necklace that says “Dare to Dream” and I wear it whenever I’m anxious about goals or waiting for news.

      Also, I want to meet Sheila.

    6. Shannon

      Dear Ann of Blog ’12,
      Happy Blogiversary! The boulder metaphor gets to me, no matter what it is mixed with.
      I am pleased there is someone else who thinks that Mark Ruffalo is aroma worthy. Having never smelled the man, I make that assumption based on, well, you know.
      From what I have read, Creative Alliance sounds life changing. I hope to get there someday.

    8. Audra Flammang

      I say this every time, but I really, really mean it this time: this is my favorite post ever! I adore this post like I adore Mark Ruffalo.

      I had some similar realizations upon turning 40 last year. If I’m lucky, I may get another 40! so much time for so many things. Life suddenly gets fantastic when you start thinking this way, yes?

      It’s like Anthony Hopkins said in the Dracula movie I’ve watch 100 times, “There is dark in this world, and then there are the lights.” Happy Blogiversary to one of the lights.

    9. mosey (kim)

      I’ve been carrying that same boulder around for a while now. Time to set it down, I think. So glad you had such an amazing experience! (and happy blogiversary)

    11. Suzy

      There was a comedian I knew years ago. His name escapes me but he wrote a one person show about Frank Sinatra. In it, he played the Sinatra part. He peddled it around Hollywood for a long time and each time was told the same thing, “Love the show, need to cast someone known in the lead.” So he turned down all the offers. He left Hollywood, moved to Florida, I have no idea what he’s doing now. When he first told me how he’d turned down so many offers of production, I told him he was nuts. Take a deal! Get your foot in the door! And he said, “I can’t; it’s the only idea I have.”

      Happy blogaversary. I just had my sixth. Holy crap.

    13. Margaret Andrews

      LOVE Amy’s photo. And you picked a much nicer name for your scent than I. And my goodness how far we’ve come from four years ago. Also? I love how you say you got your catharsis all over Sheila’s warm-up suit and what’s wrong with your thumbs?

    14. Jack

      Happy Blogiversary. Won’t be long before you are sending out invitations to your blog’s Bat Mitzvah. Better start working on the speech now, it is a killer.

    15. Nina B

      I still read this! It’s been incredible watching the LTYM show take off! I’m so hoping that it comes to Minneapolis so I can (maybe) audition.

      I totally understand the boulder and the all down hill from here. We all do, I think.

    20. Karen Strickholm

      Hi Ann, I’ve been enjoying reading your blog over the past few weeks since I discovered it. This post means so much to me. I recently became handicapped. I’m 54, and had to close my successful business and am now on SS Disability. I replaced my vision of my life from active, successful business women with OLD BEFORE HER TIME. You have bitch-slapped me right out of that consciousness, and made me realize — this is a great time to re-invent myself. It’s a wide-open field and I can DREAM BIG and create a whole new life for myself.

      Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! Karen

      (soon to be found at karenstrickholm dot com)

    23. Wendi

      Wow, four years. It feels like we’ve known each other for at least 20, doesn’t it? Happy anniversary to one of the funniest, kindest people in my life. I’m a lucky person to know you.

    25. Laurie

      I’m climbing out of that scarcity business myself.

      You’re still in the growth of that one big thing, and that usually means there will only be more. Happy blogiversary, Ann 2012.

    28. lostandforgotten

      Oh I love this. I do. I feel perpetually in a land of “all downhill from here” and sometimes I think you just need to sit on that damn boulder (or maybe just chuck it as far as you can.)

      Happy anniversary, I hope there’s so many more. What would we possibly do without your mixed metaphors?

    30. The Empress

      Don’t know what I’m happier about:

      That your kids are school age or

      That it’s your 4th blogoversary or

      That you changed my life and I can’t go back to the way I was.

      I’m going with #3.

      I love you, Ann Imig.

      Happy Blogoversary.

    34. Anne Flournoy

      Oh my gosh Ann, though you’re, as always, incredibly funny, this post has me in tears. I so hear you! and especially about the “All Down Hill From Here”.

      I once read that though men ‘peak’ in their mid 20’s, women have a lot more stuff to assimilate and it takes them til they’re 40. Well, I blew past 40 twenty long years ago- and I thought I had it pretty well together back then. But let me tell you, after Creative Alliance, it’s coming clear that, for me, life is beginning at 60. And I’ve never felt younger, stronger or freer. Sheila Cluff is holding the torch and leading the way and I’m so happy to be on her path and with a girl like you.

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