Hilary Moon Murphy

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Hilary

January 10, 2001

Okay folks, I'm a hypocrite. I admit it.

Let's start with the basics, shall we? When Cassie started her new daycare, I agonized over it. We had been lucky enough to have one of my best friends as my daycare provider for the whole first year. Then my friend had a family crisis that called her out of state, and I had to go searching for a daycare provider again, this time a stranger.

We settled on Geri, who works out of her home. Her place was spotless, and the other kids that she had in her daycare had been with her for over three years apiece. In the daycare business, that is rare. She does lots of activities with them during the day, limits television viewing to when she has to prepare meals, and interacts with the children in her care in a respectful and caring manner.

And still, I fretted. How would Cassie feel being surrounded by older children? Would she be able to handle the change? Was I an evil bad mommy for leaving her with a stranger?

Well, Cassie has been there a week and she is flourishing. She laughs like a maniac when she sees the other kids, all of whom lavish tons of attention on her. Today, when I went to pick her up, she didn't want to come home with me because she wanted to keep playing at Geri's.

I should be satisfied, right? I have everything that I want: a quality daycare that we can afford where my kid is happy. But I have to admit that I feel a bit disgruntled to have had Cassie adjust so quickly to her new daycare. Couldn't she miss me a bit more? Am I no longer her number one Mom?

M&Ms just cascaded all over my office floor. I look up to see Ganpati-Baba, bag in hand, studying the pattern of the colored candies like an oracle reading Book of Changes. He sees me looking and hides the incriminating bag behind him. "Have you ever noticed," he says casually, "that people tend to complain more about their lives when times are good?"

"Are you going to clean up your mess?"

"What mess?"

I point to the floor.

He looks down, as if considering it for the first time. "Oh, that. It looks better this way, don't you think? The beige color of your tiles was so boring by itself."

I sigh and begin to pick up the M&Ms.

"Don't you have a journal entry to write?" he says. There is a smirk on my muse's elephantine face. "Something about hypocrisy?"

I look up, irritated. "Well, if I don't clean this up, who will?"

"You have no sense of humor." He sighs. "Look down."

I do so. The M&Ms have all disappeared. When I look up again, Ganpati has gone too.

The bag is still empty.

So now I have to write about hypocrisy, and without the benefit of my M&Ms. Oh well. Best get to it.

Ganpati is right that I have not touched on the full depths of my hypocrisy in this journal. I will do so now.

Some of you may notice a little addition to the column on the left of this page. Yes, I have a new Lame-O-Meter. After ranting at length about the Cutthroat World of Clix, I have now registered my journal there. Why?

Well, part of it is an experiment. I'm kind of curious to see how my journal would do in such a silly competition. And part of it is that I am a hit slut. I write for an audience, and I wouldn't mind it if that audience expanded a bit. It would be kind of neat for someone who did not know me to find this journal and decide that they dug what I have to say.

Is this realistic? I have no idea. First of all, I'm not sure that Clix is all that great a promotion vehicle. The first time I discovered it via Melanie Fletcher's site, I poked around through the listings, checked out the banners and even clicked on a bunch of them to see how they looked. Did I read any of them at first? No. I was just checking out the competition, so to speak.

It wasn't until much later that I actually read some entries from journals in the top and bottom of the rankings to see if I could discern a difference between the two. And there was a bit of a difference. The top sites were a bit more raw, and a lot more personal. Looking at this journal, I don't think it has the same kind of "tell-all" feel to it. A good thing in my book, but real readers might feel differently.

And then there is the question of how many of the hits generated on Clix are from real readers and how many are from the journal writers themselves, clicking on their own sites in some computer lab somewhere. One can never know.

If you came to this journal via Clix and are reading it now, could you let me know? Sign my guestbook or send me an e-mail or something. I'm really curious whether this experiment is actually working.

And if you read my site regularly and are into watching me humiliate myself, hey, go ahead and click that Clix icon on the left side regularly. I will not object.

The January Web Rat Name Your Own Dare! (700 Words a Day on Fire of Genius) Pre-Dare Dare Total Yesterday 14,498 4319 500 Other Dare Participants: Anne | Jennifer | Jim | Karina | Marti | Rob | Sam | Trey

It's time for me to get back to the subject of Dares and such. I did 500 words yesterday. Bad ones, but hey I'm making slow progress. And it is time to also profile a fellow Darer. My choice for today is Samantha Ling (also known as Ling the Merciless.)

Sam has been a bit hard on herself of late. Yesterday she wrote to me and said:

Dood Hilary, you're right on top of this writing dare aren't you? I'm still slacking … I am the Slackinator. I can outslack anybody.

So I'm here to say, "Keep going, Sam! You can do it!" Write to her. Encourage her. Let her know you care.

I also want to point out that there is one area where no one can call her a slacker, and that is in the area of web design. Check out her web page. Isn't that one of the coolest designs you have seen lately? Then check out the page where she lists her 2000 archives. Wow. She keeps doing cool new design after cool new design.

I also want to take a moment and point out that Sam is my chief enabler for joining the cutthroat world of Clix. If you click on the Clix icon and find me in the rankings, you will see the really cool advertising banner that Sam designed for me. The woman is a Photoshop goddess and I am in her Karmic debt.

I also want to state that the results of my most recent poll revealed the depth of my readers' apathy. Most of you could not care less what this journal is called, although I got a few impassioned e-mails begging me to stay with my old name. So this will remain "Adventures with an Elephant-Headed Muse" for the time being.

Guess that's about it. I will write more when I can find some more M&Ms. Assuming my muse doesn't eat them all first.

Hmm