Dec

4

Sidestepped

Filed Under Uncategorized | 90 Comments

When Dylan started being able to do more than lie helplessly on his back waving his appendages in the air like a grumpy, overturned crab, we pulled his crib away from the wall and away from the wooden blinds that cover the window. I remember doing the same thing with Riley — specifically, I remember the moment when I read a local news story about the death of a baby at a home daycare, a strangling accident involving window blinds, and I remember putting down the newspaper and pulling the crib even further towards the middle of the room, shuddering.

Yesterday morning I heard Dylan grousing around in his bed and since he didn’t sound frantic I took my time going in there, stopping to make coffee first and let the dog out. When I opened his door he did his usual joyous routine of grinning hugely and clapping his hands, but I didn’t even see his happy face: I was too distracted by the electrical cord wrapped around his entire torso.

He’d reached through his crib bars and somehow managed to snag the thin white cord that runs down the wall from the small camera mounted above the window — the video monitor camera that points at his mattress, which we keep on at night until we go to bed. He was hopelessly tangled in the cord, it ran under his arms and around his chest and looped over one curling toe, and he sat there making his weird little R2-D2 bloops and bleeps at me, like, a little help over here?

My imagination needs no encouragement to go skittering down some pretty dark alleyways and I could envision with perfect clarity the horrific alternate outcome of this situation. The blue-faced, silent baby. The cord pulled tight around his neck. His body, twisted with its efforts to get free; the inevitable surrender.

Yes. Well. So. The crib is now in the middle of the damn room, practically. The cord has been secured out of anyone’s reach, even my own. We have all moved on to cheerier topics, except for the part where I keep seeing it, over and over. The cord. The baby. The unspeakable, unlivable possibility of what might have been.

Dec

2

Bodies in Motivation

Filed Under Uncategorized | 79 Comments

When I went to BlogHer last July, I spent a long bus ride jabbering in Kristin’s ear about my half-formed ideas involving a fitness website created for actual human beings. Instead of being designed to feed into insecurities or sell magazine subscriptions, it would be a place for people to share their stories and encourage each other. Instead of blathering endlessly about how to Get Bikini-Ready In Six Weeks!, it would offer individually written accounts of successes, struggles, how-to tips, workout reviews, recipes, and more.

The best thing about this website, I thought, is that the stories would be personal and real, and it would feel less like a marketing-driven LOSE WEIGHT NOW! self-esteem-suckfest, and more like a conversation among friends. It would be a motivating place to visit. Ideally, it would be enjoyable to read even if you didn’t give a shit about fitness.

Well, it’s taken a long time and there’s more work yet to do, but I am thrilled to show you Bodies in Motivation. Some amazing people have already contributed to this, and I am kind of insanely proud to share their stories with you.

I’ll be updating Bodies in Motivation as often as I can, publishing articles from folks and writing my own posts. I really hope you like it.

(Thanks to Kristin for encouraging me to go forward with this, and my friend Jon Bell for all the awesome web design work.)

← Previous Page