Making a difference, every single day

This post was inspired by Corina, over at Down to Earth Mama who had the HP Magic Giveaway going, which is absolutely fantastic! Corina was generous enough to give her readers a way to enter and then even have a bonus entry. She says: "Write on a message board or your blog a post about how you have or plan to make the world a bit better. Have you volunteered? Are you planning to? The goal is to inspire those reading it to action." I know it's too late for me to enter but I think the idea of volunteering and doing good things for others is wonderful and I'm happy to have written this. Thanks Corina!

I like to think that I make a difference every day. I know that sounds less than modest, but please hear me out. I am talking about the choices I have made in my adult life in terms of how to pay the bills while staying somewhat sane. While in college in Chile, my first job was with EarthAction (the lady at the bottom is my mom!) in 1993. I translated and did the layout for their Action Alerts. Since the whole Latin-American office was just three of us, I also copied, folded and stuffed them into envelopes. It was good work. Here in San Francisco my first job was with the Rainforest Action Network (are you starting to see a theme here?); then with San Francisco School Volunteers for four years and now I work at a non-profit law firm specializing in employment law, coordinating direct free legal services to the public. The way I see it, it doesn't matter if you're answering phones, making copies, translating, training volunteers or coordinating schedules, it is all just as important in achieving a selfless goal: helping others.


Before you start thinking that I am implying that your job in a bank, at a magazine, or the post office is not as lofty or worthy, let me assure you that is not at all what I am saying. What I am saying is that I choose to work for non-profit organizations even though it pays very little money and that suits me just fine. True, I am always poor and scrambling to make ends meet, but I love what I do, I really do. I used to be a crisis phone counselor for San Francisco Women Against Rape but that was very difficult to keep up, when you signed up for a shift you had to be up at night to take phone calls, which was hard to do because we lived in a studio apartment at the time and we both worked regular hours. So I choose to work at places where we are all working for a cause bigger than ourselves. The attorneys I work with all make much less than what a first year associate makes at a big firm, and it's because of their personal beliefs, nothing more, nothing less. They all come from amazing law schools (Harvard, Boalt, Hastings, Stanford, etc.) and could work anywhere else they wanted to, and yet they stay here fighting the good fight for workers everywhere.


All non-profits rely on volunteers to do a slew of tasks that are just overwhelming when you have limited staff. Many people wrinkle their noses when you tell them all you have for them to do is filing, copying, or stuffing envelopes, as if it were beneath them. They don't realize how much they could really help by doing those tasks. Of course there are other things you can do to help, like teaching an adult how to read (usually through your local public library), translate outreach materials into another language if you are bilingual, or spending time with a youth or elderly person. The important thing to remember is that ALL OF IT HELPS, nothing is less important than anything else. Really. So, if you have time and are looking to help, choose a local not-for-profit organization and give them your time and skills. It will do a world of good!

THANK YOU ICLW!!!

I really should have been better prepared to welcome those of you coming to visit from ICLW. Also, I should have been leaving comments. I am so sorry! It just has been a very hard week at the House of Mofo and I truly couldn't find the peace of mind to do either. I have from today until Monday to make up for my lame assedness. But all of you who came and commented and told me to hang in there and that everything would get better, THANK YOU SO MUCH! It's amazing how the kindness of strangers (who will hopefully become cyber-friends) can do so much to boost one's spirits! And your own personal stories are just incredibly inspiring, full of courage and generosity. One of the best things about ICLW is to get to read blogs that are different from mine and those I usually read, to get perspective on the things in life that are keeping me down. So I wanted to give you all a little shout out here:

LisaS from Letters in My Soup, who has a fuzzy finned betta.

Star who didn't leave a way to get in touch with her.

Kate from Kicking You From the Inside who really, really loves baseball.

Shawna from His Eyes and My Nose, who is worrying very much right now and can use some encouraging words :)

Kymberli from I'm A Smart One who is not only smart, she's beautifull inside and out.

Michelle from Mommy Confessions who has the best tag line EVER!

Suzanne from That Cool Broad a truly cool, and very sweet, broad.

The lovely woman behind Stop the train, I Wanna Get Off whose starts have aligned.

Katie, the British lady at The View Fron the Hill, up which she often climbs.

Michelle, the coffee drinking mom at Gotcha, Baby!

And Carrie at Letting It Out! who is carrying twins due in just two months!!! **Now with correct link**

To all of you a huge THANKS for coming and don't be strangers please, I promise to be a better host! And if you haven't signed up for International Comment Leaving Week, do so for next month here.

Jen Lemen in Rwanda

If you need to put things in perspective, please visit http://jenlemen.com/blog/

ETA: I forgot to mention that I found this site through Schmutzie, one of the bestest bloggers out there :)

My "Come as you are" picture for Sweetney

TeeHee! This is probably the end of my non-existent career in politics!

My mosaic, thanks to Schmutzie!

I have been reading a lot of Schmutzie lately. She just posted this really fun thing to do with flickr pictures. I really like mine a ton. I've added credits below so you can visit each photographer individually if you like what you see. Enjoy!

1. Florencia, 2. coffee and chocolate mousse cake, 3. white peacock, 4. yawn, 5. Lago Pehoe Panorama, 6. When life gives you lemmons..., 7. Mallorca 2007 -- Waiting for summer to come, 8. mar de azúcar 51/365venezuela, 9. i surrender!, 10. Eva, 11. O Beija-flor Tesoura (Eupetomena macroura) e as Tulipas Africanas - The Swallow-tailed Hummingbird and the African tuliptrees 31 057 - 9, 12. TV CASUALTY my latest fanzine!13. Not available14. Not available15. Not available

High school all over again...

For about a month now I have been reading a few blogs daily and following the same bloggers on twitter, when the damn thing is not down. So far what I have learned is that there are cliques. There are the popular girls, the less popular but more intelligent girls, the fuck the world girls, and so on and so forth. Even on twitter they talk to each other but completely ignore anyone else... and it is not that I want "in." I just hate the hypocrisy of it all. The internet is supposed to be this endlessly open and democratic space that welcomes us all. Bullshit. If people gang up on someone or decide to collectively ignore someone there is nothing you can do about it. And I am not saying that this is happening to me or anything like that. I don't think I am on anyone's radar yet. It is just what I have observed in the very short time that I have been blogging and generally paying attention to it all. It's sad. I had hoped for something else but I am not sure that it is out there. I will keep writing because I love it but I won't do it in the hopes of making friends or getting to know interesting people. I will do it for me.

Down and Dooce

What's up MoFos! I am not feeling well. I am worried about money and I have my period. I ripped my pants at work today. My "fat" pants. Not good for the soul I tell ya. I am working on a long post about my weight/health. Something interesting is that I am having trouble finding pictures of me for it because I've been avoiding being in them (say that 10 times fast!) It's sad when I think that I won't have enough pictures of me and my daughter together during her first years of life.

On a completely different note, I watched the Today Show segment about "mommy bloggers" (can't find the link now for some reason, but I'm sure Heather and Jon Armstrong will post it themselves.) I wanted to hear Heather Armstrong talk about the process of transforming her passion for writing into a weblog then into a way to make a living. Instead, Kathy Lee Gifford made idiotic comments about herself not knowing enough about "computers", and Heather had zero chance to talk in depth about anything. She was very gracious (she is a Southern lady after all), but many bloggers were left feeling frustrated and mad that neither Kathy Lee or Hoda Kotb (who is a real journalist, by the way) were remotely interested in having a real conversation. How typical to knock what you don't understand. As I said, I am sure the Armstrongs will write about this and we'll get their insiders' view of things. In the meantime, let's all hold each other and weep at the prospect of Kathy Lee being back on television. Oh, the humanity!

Obsessed with Dooce.com

I have been reading this blog non-stop for a week, I have gone through the archives for 3 years in just 5 days. I think it is safe to say that if Heather Armstrong is "that girl that got fired because of her website", if my employer found out what I've been doing at work all week [nothing but reading Heather's blog] I'd become known as "that girl that got fired for being addicted to dooce.com"

Go visit when you have a minute or two, or 120, she'll make you laugh, think, agree, disagree, even cry. I almost pre-ordered her book on Amazon but since my balance is "zero dollars and zero cents" I am going to have to wait. Poop.

I hope one day I'll have enough time and/or money to be able to write and write and play with my daughter and my non-existent dog, then write some more and make a living that way.

I hope.