last note on blogher'09 and I PROMISE I AM DONE

Stephanie asked me to go a bit deeper into the whole BlogHer thing, so I will. Kinda. (Just for you Stephanie!)

To be fair, I did not have a full BlogHer ticket. I had something called LobbyCon. I bought it at the last minute from someone who was selling it. I paid $60 but they were selling them first-hand for $100. I joked to Meagan when we were signing in that we had been lobby-conned, because really? We got like one of those bracelets you get when you go to a waterpark and a sticker-nametag from Staples. This waterpark bracelet got me into almost nothing. I think it got me into the Expo Hall and that may be it. It honestly would have been difficult to attend sessions with Alice anyway, so I suppose it was for the best. I was just a bit surprised at how afterthought the Lobby Con thing seemed. There wasn't even an organized way for the Lobby Con people to hang out with the other Lobby Con people, which is lame.

Anyway.

My biggest complaint? It was hard to see everyone.

I wanted there to be a big party or something right off the bat that included nametags that said @soandso in big letters and a computerized list of who all was in attendance. Maybe even with links to our blog and twitter pages! It could be interactive! And on a big touch screen! With profile pictures and bios! Also, I'm not sure this system is invented yet outside of NASA or Gattaca or maybe Steve Job's basement. So, uh, anyway.

ANYWAY!

The events that I did attend were lovely. I personally blog because I think it's fun to write stuff down and because I really love getting to know other people that like to write stuff down.

And from that perspective it was pretty wonderful. I got meet many of those and they were fabulous. And for that reason, I would go back. With or without my Alice-girl.

(A quick note on that...)

I am kind of surprised at the negative backlash against the moms taking their babies out and about because I was stopped every three feet by someone gushing over my daughter's sweet face. When I wasn't talking to someone about my baby I was smiling back at the crowd of people all smiling over at her. It was kind of like wearing a little tiny celebrity on my chest. The fact that I was often with Steph & Ivy and Meagan & Clara and Sarah & Asher-- all also wearing their babies-- elevated us from "mom wearing cute well-named baby" to "POSSEE OF MOMS WEARING ADORABLE WELL-NAMED BABIES" and quite honestly I think people were intimidated by all the cute.

Wouldn't you be?




PS. Sparklecorn people, I snuck into your party. I snuck into your party while there was a huge line outside and ate your hot salty chips and guacamole and delicious vegetables with ranch dip and got a free stick of deodorant. And I'm not sorry at all.

oh gosh

I have a million things to blog about. My computer is totally broken and I am crying angry tears and I kind of want to call Dell and complain but I know I'll just end up on the phone with some Indian guy named "Frank" who will put me on hold for 56 minutes and use up all of my cell phone plan time. I am borrowing Luke's work laptop but seriously? His keyboard? It's the worst keyboard I've ever used. Am currently SLAMMING my fingers into the keys and only every other letter shows up. How does he use this every day? Anyway.

So.

I went to BlogHer.

I got very little swag (seriously WHO CARES?) and totally took my baby to cocktail parties and listened to someone sing "You Oughta Know" karaoke style and hung out with some very lovely cool people and had a good time.

I am so so thankful to my roommate Steph and friend Beth for their genorosity and encouragement. I never would have gone to Blogher without them. And I mean it. The whole thing was planned and executed at the eleventh hour.

I am not going to analyze the event as that has already been done TO DEATH.

I will say that I was very intimidated and homesick at first. And that I have had a bit of a knot in my stomach ever since arriving home, worrying that I made a bad impression. I have a knack for talking way way way too much when I feel like I don't know people well enough. I think I might have done that.

I will also say that in my experience, what you see online? It's very accurate. The people I liked online I liked in real life. I was not disappointed. I spent a LOT of time with Meagan Francis who I will from now on think of as the big sister I never had because she shares many hilarious and random quirks with me. And nearly the same color of hair. And she starred as Kim MaCafee in her high school's production of Bye Bye Birdie and I'm not even making that up.

I also got to hang out with Beth and Steph and Sarah and Heather and I met and saw almost everyone I wanted to (though many in this "met and saw" column would have ideally been in the "hung out with" column) and that and that alone was worth the drive to Chicago.

One thing I did learn? My blog name is ridiculous and way too hard to repeat out loud. Watch for a move to a .com name that will knock your socks off. And I only say that because Luke came up with it and I love it and it's perfect and I will be excited to tell people I blog at ________.com.

So anyway.

It was something.

An experience for me and my baby and I'm glad it happened. Now I need to catch up on laundry.

I will leave you with the only shots I took of Alice and Ivy, if you can even believe it. They were so incredibly cute together. They followed each other around the hotel room and had little baby clapping parties where one would start clapping and then the other would clap too and then they would sit there all cute and girly-like, clapping together and looking at each other. I have a feeling they are going to be friends.

you capture: black and white

Make new friends but keep the old right?

A week ago right now, I was hanging out with an old friend. A very old friend.

Marie and sweet baby Coral came to spend a little time with me. Marie and I have been friends since I was 19. We are a college potluck roommate success story. Being with her was magical and normal and lovely. It's so nice to know be known. You don't have to prove or explain or feel insecure. You just laugh and eat and laugh some more. (When you are with Marie you laugh A LOT, by the way. Like your face hurts from laughing so much.)



In a few hours I will set off for Chicago, to be part of the BlogHer09 experience. My roommate (and a big part of why I am able to attend this year, thanks to her offer to share her room with me) is none other than...

BETH. You know, BETH? I Should Be Folding Laundry? The nice funny adorable one that everyone loves? Yes. Her. I'm so looking forward to this. And sort of scared out of my mind.

I don't even want to get started listing the other girls I will spend time with, but tonight I will be having dinner with Steph and Sarah and Beth and Heather and MORE.

One is silver and the other's gold, right?

Go check out the rest of the captures at I Should Be Folding Laundry.

(she never mentions the weird child labor in the picture, what's up with that?)

I've been in a bad mood. I'm not entirely sure why, but part of it has to do with the fact that we don't have a couch. Let me back up-- we got rid of our couch.



One day our remote control fell into the middle hollow center of the sofa (this sofa I speak of was not of the highest quality, obviously, what with its hollow center and all) and when I reached in to get it out, I came back with a swelling itchy face and unstoppable sneezing. We had been having allergy symptoms for a couple months and had not been able to pinpoint where they were coming from. The whole inside of the couch was... I don't know. I don't know exactly what. But it made my eyes swell up. So we got rid of it.

I can't control very much in life, but gosh darn it-- I can usually control my living room. It's the room that is almost always clean and my brain just works best in a clean room.

Without that couch I am feeling incomplete! Lost! Disorganized!

Also, it hurts to watch movies when you have to sit on the floor.

We have a budget of $0 and the sofa I want is a floor model regularly priced $2200 and on clearance for $1500... $1500! A steal! Totally worth wasting my time thinking about!

Praying my trusty Salvation Army Super Family Center Deluxe will turn up something cheap and clean and cute enough to get us through for awhile.

And I'm taking any other suggestions. Or free sofas.

Birth. Days.

My days have been full. Over full even. Dropping off to sleep late and getting up early and working and playing and crying and driving and feeding and cleaning and eventually dropping back off to sleep, late again.

I haven't even been able to process everything in my head, much less get it down on my blog. Or even open my computer.

Saturday was my grandma's birthday.

She is very special.




Saturday morning, Erin had a baby boy. He is very special too and his birth was nothing short of amazing.

I'd told her several times that I thought she would have her baby on my grandma's birthday, and you know what? He waited until 12:02AM to fly on out. 12:02 on my grandma's birthday. This made me smile in the midst of a crazy and bittersweet weekend.

While I was typing this I thought Clark was in his room, but I see now that he was actually eating an enormous piece of leftover birthday cake that he took out of our fridge.

mama stayed up too late last night

I just lied to Clark. A little.

Me: Beeba (this is what he calls my mom) wants to take you somewhere really fun this afternoon but you can only go if you take your nap NOW!

Clark: But I don't like naps. I'm not sleepy.

Me: Yes you are, I can tell. You're not doing very well this morning. You're acting like a boy who is extra tired and needs to take his nap early.

Clark: writhingwhiningnoooihateNAPSwrithingshriekshriek

Me: Okay, you don't have to nap. Just close your eyes for just a second and rest your head and here, why don't you go ahead and wear these really soft pajama pants and why don't we shut the blinds AND the curtains and would you like to listen to your ocean sounds while you rest your head for a minute? And I think a super fluffy blanket would be nice for you. While you rest. Not nap. Just take a short rest. Then you can do the fun thing with Beeba! See?

Then he fell asleep. Because really, could he help it? It was pitch black and he was surrounded by fluffiness and white noise.

And then I ate left over drunken noodles and tom ka (bringing the total of calories consumed in the last 24 hours to about 6,000) and read blogs and stared into space listening to the silence and it was a little like being on vacation and.... now he is awake and singing in his bed and oh crap. I better call my mom and see if she wants to maybe do something with Clark this afternoon.

(PS. Before you think I'm an alltheway bad mom, Beeba is generally willing to hang out with Clark at any time. And a "fun thing" in his mind is just like, playing in her backyard.)

a little saturday sample

I have blogged this before, but no one read my blog way back then. For some reason I started thinking about Tortongo today and thought I should post this again.

.
.
.

A small sample of my husband's high school creative writing assignments. He wrote them his junior year. This was the year we started dating. He was 17. And I thought he was a hoot.

They never ever get old.

Essay 43
Are glasses better than contacts? Looking at my fellow students I began to ask myself this question. I came up with this answer. I believe glasses are better than contacts. Assume for one moment that the earth loses its gravity. Contacts are too light; glasses would help to weigh you down. This means glasses are better because they help to save your life.

Essay 3
Ice cream
All I want is white
vanilla white ice cream
cone cone cone
woo hoo!!!
I WANT SPRINKLES TOO!!!!

This song is really about crack.
REPLACE ICE CREAM WITH CRACK
HA HA. CONE = PIPE

Essay 56
Someone should write a story where one of the main characters is in fact a bat. Think about this. When was the last time you read a book with a bat in it. It's been a long long time hasn't it? I think there was a Hardy Boys book about some vampire bats, but that doesn't really count. My bat's name will be something devastatingly cool... like Tortongo the Batty Bat! Tortongo. That is such a beautiful name. That is definitely what my son's name will be. Maybe not, then all the kids at his school would make fun of him. They would say, Ha! Ha! Look at Tortongo! He has the same name as the bat in his Father's book!

.
.
.

By the way, he did not actually have anything to do with crack or drugs or anything like that. He was a National Merit Semi-Finalist. He just liked making his teachers uncomfortable.

The "A" is for absolutely amazing. The "plus" is for all the weight I've gained.

Clark has started telling Alice to stop looking at him.

"NOOOOOO ALICE! DON'T LOOK AT ME AND MY WAFFLES!" etc.

He loves her a lot, but sometimes he and his waffles and fork need privacy.

Lately I've been hiding from everyone, including Luke. Practicing being an introvert. Forcing myself to do stuff that would normally be fun for me but not really enjoying it, because it takes me away from... (shudder) housework.

I don't know why I sometimes go crazy and get hyper-focused on cleaning my house and stuff, but it has been that way. Clean clean clean. Huff huff huff. It's good and bad. My house is really picked up and my floors are shiny but I'm still unsatisfied. (Sorry, in my brain that song plays every time I say that word.)

I guess my house and vacuum and I need privacy?

I took a quiz on Facebook last week that told me I am Type A. (Where would we be without Dr. Facebook to scientifically analyze our lives via quizzes full of misspelled words that produce truths we did not know. Facebook is 2o09's therapist, yes?) I don't know if it's accurate or not. I am sort of kind of Type A. In my imagination, if I could make everything just the way I want it to be, I would be Type A. But I am also kind of ADD. And have been just slightly messy and klutzy my whole life. I spill stuff on my shirt and let my kids make messes and try really really hard but somehow read the directions wrong and end up with a very well executed but slightly off finished product.

Oh my my, the amazing things I turned in in High School and College and recieved Bs on, just because my brain didn't register that the project was specifically about authors from the 20th century or was supposed to be in blue ink and stapled exactly eleven times or whatever.

When I look at the faces of my kids, I know I was not the sole creator. I was not the Creator. I was just the vessel. They are perfect. There isn't a thing off. If someone was grading me, for the very first time in my life I think I would get an A+.

It blows my mind. I didn't read the directions wrong and somehow give birth to very technically beautiful paper dolls.

Thank you Lord.

You Capture: ??

The theme this week is photographer's choice.

My sister-in-law gave birth to a sweet new baby boy on Saturday. She sent her older daughter, Bridget, to Indianapolis with my mother-in-law for the week. Bridget is Clark's age and they get along oh-so-well. We've been doing lots of fun-kiddie-cousin stuff together.

(Also, this-just-in-I-overuse-dashes.)

Here's a peek at our visit to one of Clark's very favorite places, Monkey Joe's.






.
.
.

And this is what happens when grandma tries to share her soda with a two year old boy.

Phase one-- We are sharing! What a nice sip! This tastes good and bubbly!




Phase two-- This is mine now, yes? I own this bubbly delicious pop and will sit on this animal chair and relax and imbibe.




Phase three-- Uh, mom? Gaga totally just took my pop and acted like it was hers!



I can't wait to go check out what everyone else chose this week over at I Should Be Folding Laundry.