Definition

I've decided not to do an entire BlogHer wrap up. I don't have the time and I'm not sure anyone really cares. If you are dying to know the details, email me and I'll fill you in.

Parker and I are off to visit Amy and her fabulous family for a couple days. Then I swear I am not leaving the house for an entire month. It feels like I've been on the go for the last month and I am tired.

So while I'm gone, ponder this, pretty please. How do you define yourself as a blogger? I think our culture has this obsessive need to label everyone, to find the perfect box to check that describes us. While I am not a fan of this mentality, it's there just the same. According to the Gods of BlogHer, I believe I am a "Mommy Blogger". I have problems with this for a number of reasons. First of all, I believe the term "Mommy Blogger" is most often said with an implied sneer, like it's a derogatory term. Secondly, though I am a mom and that is perhaps the largest aspect of my life at this moment, being a mom is not all that I am. For me, the term mommy bloggers applies to those who do more of a family scrapbook (thanks, Whimsy!) or parenting blog, rather than someone like me, who has a kid, but whose blog does not center around her child.

After much debate, we never came up with a term we liked. One panelist suggested we "take back" the term Mommy Blogger and make it positive again by embracing it. Maybe. Some other terms we came up with were "Personal Blogger" and "Life Blogger", but I find neither very satisfying.

Talk amongst yourselves until I get back next week.

Wow.

I had the most amazing time at BlogHer. Perhaps one of the best weekends of my entire life. Yes, it was that good.

I am seriously troubled by the amount of hate I've seen floating around about BlogHer and its attendees. Particularly because as far as I can tell, most of the venom being spewed comes from people who have never attended.

Let me make this clear: I don't have a lot of readers. I don't blog to make money. I don't spend hundreds of dollars on outfits. I don't even get pedicures (have issues with some stranger touching my feet). I shop at Old Navy and Target. I would have rather had a pap smear every month than join a sorority while I was in college. I wear flip flops and shave my legs as seldom as possible.

In short? I am just like you.

Donna sort of talked me into going to BlogHer. I thought I wasn't big time enough/pretty enough/funny enough/fabulous enough to be there, but decided that I would go to expand my horizons. I would go in order to meet many of the bloggers I've read and admired for years. I would go because it would be something brave for me to do.

I owe Donna a big one for talking me into it. Seriously. I left Chicago awed and inspired by the awesomeness of the women (and men!) I met. I made new friends, laughed my ass off, cried tears of sorrow, and got Super Silly Drunk. Yes, there were cliquey girls/fashionistas/assholes, but in a room of 1500 people, that's statistically inevitable. BlogHer was fabulous because that is what we made it.

I'm already registered for BlogHer 2010 in NYC. If you read Donna's post, she's got some great advice about how to go about it if you're even slightly inclined to go. If you do, I promise you at least one person (me!) will talk to you and you will not suffer a weekend alone.


Me, Erica, Becky, Donna

Pre-BlogHer

Lest you think I'm all mature after my reunion recap post, I have to tell you what I did. Most of my class is on FB and I'm friends with nearly everyone who has requested it. Mostly I've done it because I'm a total Kravitz and want to look at people's pics and find out what they are doing now. After I got home from the reunion, I went through and got rid of all the people I really didn't give a shit about or those who irritated me at the reunion. I went from 202 friends to 150 and I could probably do more. HA! It felt good, too.

Another reason I'm so excited for BlogHer? I get to see my cousin, T, whom I have not seen in years. We went to London and Paris together in 1999 and he was with me when I took my last puff of cigarette our last night in London. He lives in downtown Chicago and has agreed to hang out with Donna and I Saturday night. I am getting so excited I'll never be able to sleep tonight.

I really should be getting ready instead of hanging out online. I'm procrastinating because I am becoming less certain I will be able to eke by with just my carryon and will have to bite the bullet and pay to check luggage. Paying to check luggage really chaps my ass, but then again I don't want to be left without options during the weekend. Le sigh. I am surprisingly not nervous about the trip, but maybe that will change once I land tomorrow.

See you all next week. MWAH!

Reunion Recap

In my hometown, there were 4 elementary schools. Three of those schools were K-4, then those kids went to Middle School for 5-6. The other elementary school (mine) was K-6. There was one junior high where everyone converged, grades 7-9, and one high school, grades 10-12. This means for the most part, I've either known my classmates since I was 5 or since I was 12. My husband, the Air Force Brat, thinks this is weird, but I rather like it. Except it means that I look at a 39 year old classmate and remember him as the one who used to eat paste, the one who used to wear Hee Haw overalls or the one who wet his pants in the second grade.

I was nervous going to the reunion, I admit it. It sort of felt like the first day of junior high all over again. Was I going to fit in? Was I going to get lost? Was I going to spill all over myself? The first event was Friday night at a local bar. I arranged to go with a friend so at least I didn't have to walk in alone. First order of business was to order a pizza because I knew I needed food to soak up the cocktails I was about to slug down. I took it as a good sign when I walked in to see a sign announcing the bar just started selling my favorite Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka. Being in a small town is good for the wallet - a "tall" double shot vodka+lemonade was only $4.50.

After the first 30 seconds, I immediately was at ease. Though I once greatly cared what these people thought of me, I have grown up enough to be at the point where I sincerely don't give a shit. You either like me or you don't, I am who I am. This attitude gave me the ability to enjoy the entire weekend in ways other classmates didn't. Of the larger group of friends I hung out with in high school, there are only 3 of us who no longer live in the area. Most of the others married people from the area and have never ventured further than perhaps a county away. Most of them are still in touch and see one another often. I'm not saying this is bad, just that they haven't explored much outside their comfort zone. For example, there was a program our senior year where you could go to school for half day and work the other half. One friend did that program and has worked at the doctor's office ever since. She's had the same job for 20+ years and isn't even 40 yet! She also has a 3 year old grandchild, but I won't go into that now.

I found it strange that for most of the evening, my old crowd of friends mostly stayed to themselves. These are people that already see each other regularly, yet they socialized little with people they haven't seen in many years. As it turned out, I was the opposite. I spent little time with my high school crowd and ended up speaking mostly to people I was friendly, but not friends, with in high school. I tried to speak to most everyone that came, whether I liked them in school or not. It was such fun, I feel sort of bad for my "friends" who missed out. One guy in particular was very nice in high school, not ugly but definitely not hot, pretty nerdy and his locker was by mine. Now he's a good looking, hot shot Navy jet fighter with a pretty and hilarious wife. I was so proud of him you would have thought he was my brother or something. It was fun to see who was gay, who was in jail, who got ugly, who of the elite clearly peaked in their teen years.

One thing I didn't expect was that I was one of the very few who is a SAHM. The SAHM world is my universe now and most of the people I encounter daily are just like me. I got some weird looks for answering the "what do you do?" question with "I stay home with my two year old." The looks were on both sides, but more often it seemed the women were wondering why I didn't work and the men thought it was great. Very interesting!!

I stayed out too late (for me), drank too much, and ended up screaming the last 3 hours of the night because the bar was so damn loud. I guzzled water like a camel to soothe my burning throat and it seemed like I would never be rehydrated again. About 4 AM I fumbled my way around my dark hotel room to find my travel bottle of Motrin, poured some into my palm and gulped them down with my remaining water. Thankfully they did the trick because I had to be at the high school by 9 AM Saturday. Many of our former teachers came for juice/fruit/donuts and a chance to see us all again. I had hoped to see three different teachers and though only one was there, it was worth it. We also got a tour of the high school which was so small and so un-intimidating, it was comical. Though I have to admit that walking down the halls again sort of gave me the willies.

Saturday afternoon I spent with the one girlfriend I keep in contact with but who was not interested in attending any reunion activities. That night was a catered dinner at a local winery. It was better than the night at the bar because at least you didn't have to shout to be heard. We had a class picture taken, which was a real trip. The obnoxious high school boys proved to still be the same obnoxious, drunk beasts, just older, fatter and with less hair. By the end of the evening I was over them and just wanted to go home. I felt a bit alone at times, sort of like an outsider, but then I'd end up in great conversation with a guy I barely knew from AP History and it was all okay again. I'm glad R didn't come with me because I think he would have been bored off his ass and I would have spent the evenings worrying about how he was holding up.

It felt like a rite of passage that I went on my own to the reunion and survived just fine. It felt very grown up, like I was showing the town I'd so hated growing up in that it couldn't torture me anymore. After the breakfast on Saturday I drove around for awhile, looking at all the old sites. I got a bit nostalgic for the great childhood I was able to have there. We really were so lucky. We spent summers riding all over town on our bikes. We rode all over the local college campus, which seemed huge at the time. We rode uptown to buy penny candy or special presents for our mothers. When we were old enough to cross the highway, we got to go to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. We had such freedom, yet were very safe and sheltered. As I sat on a bench in the flower garden at the college lamenting that Parker will never be able to experience that same sort of idyllic childhood, I realized I'd just made peace with the town I grew up in.

BlogHer Anyone?

I'm recuperating from the reunion weekend. Details to come soon if I can ever stay awake long enough to type more than a few sentences at a time.

Next up - BlogHer. I've been waiting for it for so long, I can't believe it's finally here. If you're going, please email me and we'll figure out a way to meet up. I've never been before, but I assume it's a madhouse trying to find a stranger in a crowd of strangers. At the very least let's exchange mobile numbers so if you're stranded in a room full of hostiles and need rescuing, I'll be at your service.

Weekend Alone #1

I'm off to my 20th reunion. I'm having a hard time believing it's really going to happen. I don't feel old enough for it to have been twenty years since high school. I hardly think 37 is old and yet, damn! I spent the day with a bunch of tweens and that didn't really help either.

I decided on the hotel room solo. I don't know what I was thinking to even consider the other. I found out a couple other things about the circumstances and it made my decision for me. So I will be more sober than I wanted because I have to drive myself all over the place, but it's a small price to pay for 36 hours in a hotel room ALL BY MYSELF. Okay, not like I'll really be in the room for much of the time, but whatever.

I wonder if I have room in my carryon to bring my Aqua Net, fluorescent sweatshirt, blue eye shadow, shaker sweater, Reebok hightops, and parachute pants?

See you next week!

20 Years

My 20 year high school reunion is this weekend. I am certainly not one of those people who think the best years of their life took place in the late 80s. I hated high school, though for me junior high was worse. I grew up in a small, Iowa town where everyone knew your business before it actually happened and if there was nothing exciting to say about you, someone made it up. I couldn't wait to move out of there and it still gives me the willies every time I drive into town. Something about crossing the old familiar landmarks makes me feel like a teenager again, and I don't mean that in a good way. But now that most of my classmates are on FB and we've begun to reacquaint ourselves, I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Twenty years is enough time to get over yourself and whatever pre-conceived notions the town had about you, and find the real you. I've been to one reunion so far, our tenth, and I enjoyed it, but I wasn't that different then from what I was like in high school.

I had hoped to bring R and Parker with me to the reunion, but after a date change and expensive flight fares, it just isn't possible. Both have been to my hometown* before to visit my great-grandmother, but I really wanted them to go because Saturday morning we're having a breakfast at the high school. Many of our former teachers are supposed to be there, which sort of blows me away because why would they want to waste some of their weekend on those of us who lived to torment them? Actually I'm pretty excited to see a few teachers, so I'm interested to see who will show. I wonder how small the high school will seem when it used to be the gigantic center of my universe.

I've been so intent on actually getting to go to the reunion that I've distracted myself from the reality of seeing all these people I haven't seen in at least ten years. I really only still have regular contact with one classmate that I've known since elementary school, and we weren't even friends anymore during high school. I'm planning to go to all events alone, so it isn't like the Buddy System is even in place. The reunion comes at a time when my face is breaking out like crazy (bad) and my ass seems to be expanding by the hour (bad!!). Initially I was going to stay at the condo of a friend but I'm having reservations about it now. We ran around in the same circles and were friends, but not friend friends. We frequented the same parties, but we were never at each other's houses is what I'm trying to say. What would you do, if you were me? Here are the pros and cons:

PROS: Saving money, being closer to town (my hotel reservation is in a nearby large city), it's only two short nights how bad can it be?
CONS: Staying with a "stranger" could be weird, my friend smokes, what if she wants to stay up and party when it's all I can do to stay up past 11? Plus, the idea of having a hotel room all to myself, with nothing but peace and quiet and no one to care for but myself is wildly appealing.

The other good thing about having my reunion this weekend is that it's going to be a dress rehearsal for BlogHer the following weekend. Most of my wardrobe will be making appearances at both weekend getaways, so I'll know what works and what I need further work on. Can you believe this? I'm leaving my husband and child TWO weekends in a row! There goes that Mother/Wife of the Year title!!!


*Hometown - as I typed this, the word hometown never entered my brain. To me it is "the town I grew up in" rather than "hometown" because it doesn't feel like home to me. Is that weird? What exactly makes a hometown? Hmmmm, that's an entry for another time, I think.

Success!

My kid is such a rock star. I could not be more proud of her. I fully anticipated Potty Training to be the most frustrating, dirty and painful of our experiences together yet. Since birth most everything has been a battle with this child. She is willful, stubborn and not easily prone to do what you want her to do unless it is also her idea and you have orchestrated it to seem like she thought of it in the first place. Yet, I would say in just a few days, this kid is fully potty trained. I hesitated to say more at first for fear of jinxing it, but I'm going out on a limb here.

I no longer put a diaper on her at Quiet Time. That lasted just a few days. If she has to go, she'll take herself into her bathroom and do her business by herself. This includes pooping. She tells me when she has to pee (though I still ask her 1,000 times a day) and also when she has to poop. She's become quite fond of pooping on the potty (no mess with the potty chair!!) and there is no fear. I'm still putting a diaper on her at night, but it's really just for show because she never uses it. I figure I'll do this until I run out then I'll stop, but it seems silly to be throwing away a crumpled, but unused diaper every morning.

I never anticipated this. Never. On one hand it makes me so happy and so proud, but on the other it makes me wonder what I'll be up against in the future as payback. Is she setting me up here or what??

Mouse in the House

One morning last week, I went about the usual task of feeding the herd. When I bent down to get the cat food dishes, I noted the surprising discovery that the dishes were nearly empty. I've blathered on here before about how my cats would rather go hungry than eat the little crunchy bits left at the bottom of their food bowls. But this day, one bowl had only about 4 pieces of kibble left and about 12 pieces in the other. I thought to myself, "Wow, Piggy must have been really hungry last night."

The cat food dishes are kept in the laundry room, dog dishes are right outside the laundry room door. I store both foods in big plastic bins with rollers on the bottom in the laundry room closet. After grabbing the nearly empty cat food dishes, I took them to the closet where I fill them each morning. Immediately upon opening the closet door I saw little piles of pet food kibble all over the back of the closet. I may miss a kernel or two every now and then, but I do not leave mounds of food just laying about on the floor. As I stood there staring, wondering how on earth this could have happened, I saw a small dark circle to one side of the closet. Something in my brain just clicked and I said "OH!" and closed the door as fast as I could. Thankfully R was home so I called him in to investigate.

Amazingly, even though it was very early in the morning, my brain was functioning correctly. We had a mouse. R managed to catch it and toss it into the woods behind our house. Frankly I'm surprised we haven't had one before with the woods as close as they are, nevermind the fact that we have two ferocious attack cats. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! We think it crawled in through the dryer vent outside, then chewed a hole in the tubing that connects the dryer to the vent in the wall. The more I thought about the mouse, the funnier it got.

Picture this: Mouse decides to take bold adventure move and see what is up this funny looking tunnel. When he gets out the other end, he scurries around tall mountain (washing machine/dryer) only to find Mecca. Two towering bowls filled to the brim with bits of kibble, all his for the taking. He discovers the closet as the perfect place to store his booty and spends all night going back and forth, back and forth, between the food bowls and his ever growing stash. His eyes are big and nearly glazed over at the fortuitousness of his discovery - he'll never go hungry again!!!

Still makes me chuckle.

MIA

If you haven't seen me around lately, it's because I am obsessed with watching Saving Grace. Why didn't I listen to my mom when she told me to watch this show long ago? She bought me Season One last year when we were in corporate housing to give me something to do, but it wasn't until her visit a couple weeks ago when she made me start watching that I even opened the DVD. I'm on Season Two and have watched 8 episodes in just over 24 hours. I am totally addicted. Have you seen it?

Pooping and Speeding

I decided at the last minute to celebrate Independence Day literally and it became Day 1 of Potty Training Boot Camp. I have thought Parker was ready for awhile now, but with all the traveling we've done, I wanted the convenience of a diaper. She has to be potty trained to attend her pre-school this fall and while I know I have a couple months left, I had a great fear of waiting too long and not giving her enough time to fully adjust.

Though I hate to jinx myself (furiously knocking wood), so far this has been a breeze, which just tells me she was more than ready. She has a little potty in her bathroom as well as a seat/ring on the big potty in there. We also have a seat/ring in the bathroom on the other floors of the house so we're never far from a potty. She prefers her little potty but is doing okay with the seat/ring. The only accident she's had was on Day 1 and it's been fine ever since. I'm still putting a diaper on her at naptime and at night, but I don't mind that. The biggest hurtle for us was poop. She's always been terrified of pooping on the potty. The first time she pooped in her diaper at naptime, which I expected. By yesterday she hadn't pooped in two days, mostly because she didn't want to do it on the potty. I knew she had to go so she sat on the seat/ring and then cried because she didn't want to go. At that point it was ready to come out. I mean, really ready. So we ran upstairs, she pooped on her little potty and was THRILLED. (Sidenote: I had no idea toddler poop was adult size. OMG!!!) We went downstairs to do a "Pooped on the Potty Dance" with Daddy and mid dance she grabbed her butt and said she had to go back upstairs. Apparently she got up sooner than she should have. I'd already talked up about how since it wasn't scary, maybe she should try the big potty this time and she did. I'm trying to convince her the seat/ring is much cooler so I have less mess. I don't mind dumping pee out of the potty but yuk to the other! So not only did she poop on the potty for the first time yesterday, she did it twice and on both of her potties. That's my girl!!!

I cannot believe how big she is getting. She's such a little girl these days, not even a toddler so much and she isn't even 3 yet. She has grown at least 2 shoe sizes, maybe 3, in the last few months, and she grew just over an inch in 6 weeks. On one hand I'm insanely proud and on the other hand I'm a little sentimental for my baby.


Monday was not the day to drive if you were an Overlook. On our way down the highway to lunch, R was driving about 80 in a 65 and a cop pulled off the median onto the highway behind us. He followed us off our exit, but never did pull us over. Fast forward 3 hours when I threw the dogs in the car for a quick trip to the post office with me. I was intently searching for something to listen to other than Cinderella in the DVD and was honestly not paying attention. Next thing I know, I heard the "WHOOP" of a quick police siren and I got pulled over. Turns out I was going 37 in a 25. It's a street that goes from 45 to 25 quickly, but I should have been paying more attention. After waiting in the car for at least 10 minutes, the officer came back, said they were having computer trouble and he didn't want to make my dogs wait in the hot car any longer than he had to, so he just gave me a warning. HELPFUL HINT: Apparently once you get old enough and have boobs too saggy to flash your way out of a ticket, dogs are your next best option!!! R swears the warning says I was going 57 in a 25, but there is no way that could be true. The writing on the bleedthrough of the warning is just hard to read. Plus, I hardly think the cop would have let me go if that were the case. Needless to say, neither of us drove for the rest of the day.

We bought lottery tickets the next day, though. I should go check them to see if we used all our luck up for the week.

Scaredy Dog

I loathe this time of year. When we lived in FL, people all around us lit off firecrackers for the least little reason. Flag Day - FIREWORKS for 3 hours. Columbus Day - Fireworks for 1.5 hours. Martha Stewart's Birthday - Fireworks for 4 hours. Our last 4th of July there, I believe the fireworks lasted a good 6 hours.

I am not a big fan of the fireworks. I am in the "you've seen some, you've seen them all" camp. That isn't the reason I hate this time of year. This is:



Fireworks turn this boy into a 90 pound pile of Jello riding on the back of a horse drawn cart going down a cobblestone street. There were a few times in Jacksonville I really thought he might have a heart attack, it was that bad. If he was smart enough, he could go hide in our closet, which has no windows and he'd be sheltered from at least seeing the displays, but Baxter prefers to face his imminent death while at our side. This will be the first time in years we will be able to face the 4th with a basement. Having a basement means we go downstairs, close the curtains and watch a movie at top volume to try to disguise the sounds of war outside. One year in KS we were completely successful in sheltering Baxter with this method. We don't have a door at the top of our basement stairs here, but if we did, I'd say we could be successful again this year. We'll just have to hope for the best and that we don't accidentally wake the Toddler in the process.

Enjoy your long weekend. Have safe travels. Eat lots. Drink responsibly. Be safe. Don't ignite any of your extremeties.


Why you wanna hurt me so bad???

Views Around the Backyard

By the time we moved into our house last August, most of the lovely flowering plants were spent. It's been fun this spring to see what pretties have been lurking this whole time.


This is the most gorgeous rose of sharon plant I have ever seen. It was here when we arrived, but I could not have picked a more perfect plant for myself. In total coincidence, I painted my toes this exact color right before the blooms appeared.


Same rose of sharon, close up


Yaris - this variety was called strawberry, I believe



Gerbera daisy - Parker picked it out. I've never had good luck with them but this one is really flourishing for some unknown reason



Another rose of sharon - we have two of this variety. It's lovely but I wish all three were the lovely lavender




Bee balm - my first attempt and I love how weird it looks. My dogs keep running through the flower bed knocking the plants over, which is why there is a stake in the middle of this plant