TheMommyBlog

Wednesday, November 07, 2007 Me, Me, Me, Other people who write, Web/Tech

Sort of a “Life” theme here, no? We’ll get over it soon. We’re just jealous of those who have one. *cymbals*

Well, later this morning I’ll be shipping Miss Scarlet Fever and Master Fever Blister off to Daddy’s so I can take off my hazmat suit, have a decontaminating shower, and head up to Sausalito to hang out with Doug McConnell of Bay Area Backroads and OpenRoad.tv to talk about what we Interwebnetizens do “outside the box.” That’s a very nice way of saying, “when off our asses.” (Manners count.)

The first to be interviewed in the series, and a tough act to follow, is David Pescovitz of BoingBoing.com. Carl Bidleman, a crew member of Life Outside the Box, introduces the series in today’s OpenRoad.tv blog post:

Doug and I are TV guys who started working in this web world over two years ago and I’m amazed at how much of my life I now spend in front of a computer.  10-11 hours a day, six days a week.  It seems way out of whack and I got to wondering how others who make their living in the virtual world get reconnected to the real one.  So today we’re launching a new video blog series we call Life Outside the Box.  In the coming days and weeks we’ll post conversations with Rhett Butler of Mongabay.com, David Allen Ibsen of 5 Blogs Before Lunch, Mindy Roberts of The Mommy Blog, Scott Beale of Laughing Squid and Natalie Zee Drieu of craftzine.com about places where they love to spend their precious time.  But we’re very pleased to inaugurate the series with a guy we’ve come to like very much, David Pescovitz.  David is an editor of Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs on the internet that bills itself as “a directory of wonderful things.” The editors report on internet esoterica, anomalies, and curiosities across an insanely wide range of topics, from innovative technology and contemporary art to culture and weird science.  The only filter is “interestingness.” And interestingness is exactly what David shared with Doug at one of his favorite off-line places, the Musee Mecanique on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, home of the legendary Laughing Sal.  Have a look.

I’m sure glad they got Ole Laughing Sal over with, so I don’t have the only room-clearing laugh in the series. I really don’t know what we’ll focus on, but we’ll start with coffee and chat near the water, so I pretty much don’t care. I’ll be miles and miles away from Sick Bay. For the moment.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007 Me, Me, Me

Yes, thank you. I have been enjoying the soundtrack from Dan in Real Life, how did you guess? And so much of it is mirrored in my life at the moment.

“The Fever?” Yeah, we got the fever. Scarlet fever. Thank you. Daphne came home scratching her thigh and complaining about not feeling well. Lovely little rash, about eight inches by three, tiny raised dots, red, red, red, consistent with the Strep exposure at school last week.

When you put your arms around me
You give me fever that’s so hard to bear
Fever when you kiss me
Fever when you hold me tight
Fever in the morning
Fever all through the night

“Ruthie Pigface Draper?” Yeah, that’s about how I feel, knowing that I will be filming a couple of segments with Bay Area Backroad’s Doug McConnell tomorrow afternoon. And? I was planning to shop a bit to find something that helped me feel confident and less like a 39 year old saggy, baggy, mom of three, but the children with highly infections diseases sort of nixed that for me.

Ruthie Pigface Draper
Ruthie Pigface Draper
Ruthie Pigface Draper
She’s iving in a house of bricks
Not straw or sticks
I’ll be your big bad wolf
I love your cute curly tail

“Hell No?” Um, okay, I’ve been saying that lately. A little. And some other stuff.

“I didn’t to plan to go beserk”
“Baby you were such a jerk”
“But just hear me out”
‘I can’t believe the things I said”
“I know”
“I obviously was removed from my senses”

“My Hands Are Shaking?” Oh, this is an old standby. Can be fixed by taking meds as scheduled. Um, I read that somewhere. Or a friend did.

My head is where it’s always been
If only I knew where
My feet can’t stand the ground no more
It seems that I don’t care
My love is so articulate
But I am such a mess

“I’ll Be Okay?” I’m just going to keep humming this one.

I’ll be okay
I’ll be okay
I’ll be okay
I’ll be okay

Monday, October 29, 2007 Me, Me, Me

After a long season of un- and under-employment, not only am I now a director-title-bearing bona fide worker bee, I’m getting involved in several very cool enterprises around the Interwebnet. Thank goodness for DSL, because there is no WAY I could commute to all these gigs.

First there was the JC Penny Fall Shopping Guide. I’ve just written my last piece for them, and am a little sad to see it go. I mean, honestly, I had a few reservations about how writing for a department store could be pulled off with pizazz, but by gum, they did it. I hardly expected it to be so much fun, let alone funny. (Where else can you post about redecorating an old ranch guest house and get 583 comments? Pioneer Woman is a force of nature, people.)

Now there is Gather, Inc. “Gather is a place for you to connect with people who share your passions. It’s a place where you can contribute thought, art, commentary, or inspiration. We’ll reward you for all the great things you share with others in your communities of interest. And together, we’ll continue to build a pretty special place to hang out online.”

Gather, Inc. has a serious pedigree, and is jammed with content.  I know I’ve been introduced to it by a sponsor, but I am seriously thinking about making it my home page, and I have grown particularly immune to the charms of “your personalized home page in a box” sites, so that’s saying something. I am honored to be asked to write there occasionally, and I’ll let you know when I do.

By the way, I did, today!

There’s yet another in the works, and I don’t want so say much because I have no idea when and if it will run, but for now I’ll just say, Bay, Area, Backroads, crush, interview, kids, excursions. That shouldn’t give anything away.

PLUS, I can’t even TALK about the biggest one yet… I signed promises and everything. Soon, my pretties, soooon.

Well, miles to go before I sleep and all that…

Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Me, Me, Me, Other people who write

I felt like Steve Martin in The Jerk today when the UPS guy swung by my house with The IT’s Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie.

Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!
Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.
Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 - Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

The IT’s Girl’s Guide is written by Joelle Reeder and Kathy Scoleri of Moxie Design Studios, my longtime fave design destination. I love them so much, I decided to do a video review of the book. Only I didn’t get all fixed up first. Wet hair, no makeup, old, gray maternity hoodie jacket. Mindy in her natural habitat. You’re welcome.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007 Me, Me, Me

Dietrich over at MothersClick wrote to congratulate me on my frazillionth post and challenged me to do a word count. Now, every count is an estimate, since I have a number of unpublished (read: thought better of it later) posts, archived posts, and posts that still had links to my TypePad account which is long dead but still insists I login to see those posts but I can’t because it’s LONG DEAD and I DON’T HAVE AN ACCOUNT there anymore. It’s so annoying—it just keeps asking and asking and no matter how fast I am with that mouse, I can never click out of there before it asks again in a frenetic, insistent flurry of pop up forms for my LOGIN and PASSWORD, which I don’t have anymore, and I can’t even find that stuff on the Internet Archive, so would you please stop asking me? I have to force quit Firebox every bleeping time I forget NOT TO GO THERE. So last night I junked over 150 posts so I wouldn’t hurl my printer out the window. (Notice I said printer; I love my cinema-screen monitor too much to ever do it harm. *kiss*)

Where was I? Oh. How many words. Heh. That’s eight right there we all could have done without.

So, to the best of my ability, according to an export of the discoverable posts, there are (approximately) 1,918 pages; 636,756 words; 3,029,165 characters (no spaces); 4,381,749 characters (with spaces); 73,077 paragraphs, and 88,202 lines when placed into an 8.5 by 11 inch Word document with one-inch margins, Times New Roman 12.

In a word, I am chatty.

Also? No one should really be claiming that I didn’t try hard enough to get my book below 500 pages.

So there you go, Dietrich. Can I have my spider roll now? Am I going to have to come up to SF to get it?

Sunday, October 14, 2007 Me, Me, Me

Well, I’m not going to sit around any longer, waiting for inspiration for some philosophical milestone appreciation bull honky, so I will dash off my 2,500th post with something that is, ironically, quite appropriate.

My fifth post is up at the Federated Media Fall Shopping Guide, wherein I demonstrate my inability to complete a simple project using my hands and a needle. Picture me hunched over the needlework frame, tongue sticking out, squinting first at the fabric, then at the grid printout, the the fabric again before completing an elaborate lowercase “a” and then ripping out all the stitches because they look like two hedgehogs wrestling in a bowl of licorice jelly beans. And losing.

So over there, I show you what my project would have looked like in the hands of a professional. The one I have is a bit beaten, a bit stretched out from the undoing, and totally off-center. The message, however, is intact:

“Thanks for sharing.”

Note: About the Fall Shopping Guide
The Federated Media Fall Shopping Guide, brought to you by JCPenney and the new Chris Madden Collection, is debuting for the 2007 season, bringing together the most influential voices in the parenting, women’s lifestyle, travel & leisure communities.The Fall Shopping Guide features authors of the best and most influential independent parenting, cooking & home accessories web sites that exist today, including: Dooce, Celebrity Baby Blog, Amalah Craftzine, Paper Napkin, Sweetney, The Mommy Blog, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and Parent Hacks.

Friday, October 12, 2007 Me, Me, Me, Other people who write

Whoa.
Whoa, twice.

I was stunned to see that I was in the top 100 prolific blogs, and checked my database to see if it was possible! I’m so.... embarrassed? chatty? At least I’ve gotten two books out of it. : )

Oh, God, I just looked. The next entry will be number two thousand, five hundred. Now I’m all nervous.

Friday, October 05, 2007 Me, Me, Me, Fun Finds

I was totally stuck for ideas for today’s JC Penny post… until about 7:45 this morning, that is.

Note: About the Fall Shopping Guide
The Federated Media Fall Shopping Guide, brought to you by JCPenney and the new Chris Madden Collection, is debuting for the 2007 season, bringing together the most influential voices in the parenting, women’s lifestyle, travel & leisure communities.The Fall Shopping Guide features authors of the best and most influential independent parenting, cooking & home accessories web sites that exist today, including: Dooce, Celebrity Baby Blog, Amalah Craftzine, Paper Napkin, Sweetney, The Mommy Blog, Confessions of a Pioneer Woman and The Pioneer Woman Cooks, and Parent Hacks.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007 Me, Me, Me, Newsbits

ABC News: The View from the Bay, aired on Monday, October 1, 2007

Have you ever dreamed of publishing your favorite family recipes or write your own novel? See how easy it is and how you can make a profit off of your creative writing from your own home!
View the ABC Segment

Archive clips expire after 90 days.I received an email from Lulu.com today letting me know that my book was featured on a six and a half minute clip on ABC’s The View from the Bay! Eeeeee! So excited!! Of alllll the books published on Lulu.com, they chose MINE to be one of the five or so they brought to feature!

I watched breathlessly through the first five or so minutes, loving how they showed each book and told a little story or painted some background, especially about the one written by a five year old with her dad. I was so touched. I watched as they slowly made their way to my book, the thickest one there. It was five minutes, fifteen seconds into the segment. On ABC! I was breathless. Mine was next. I leaned closer. They picked up my book and then proceeded to talk about all the help you can get from folks in the Lulu.com community in cover design and layout. You know, if you need help making a really great cover. There I was, mouth hanging open like Mike Wazowski in Monsters, Inc. when he sees himself on a TV commercial and the logo is right over his face.

Anchor: “How do you come up with a cover?”

Beg pardon?

Anchor: “Is that something you come up with on your own?”

I was all, “What?”

Lulu Representative: “You can either design on your own, or we have a marketplace on our website—” Cut to full shot of my book. “where there are graphic designers you can hire—”

“Noooooooooo&mdash”

And then, “We help you market it, we have marketing services, we can teach you how to make a press release.”

“Noooooooooo—”

And finally, “That was Mommy Confidential—what a great title—and we’ve got one more. This is my favorite title, it was my favorite title of all the ones here...”

“That’s it? Aaaaaahhhhhh!” Five minutes, thirty seconds.

I worked for weeks getting that cover just right. There were several brilliant generations of that cover that had to be discarded because of copyright permissions, logistical errors, finally admitting that there were too many inside jokes in the design, and other quirky lessons learned along the way. But it’s a damn good cover, so good that I made covers for other aspiring authors, and started dabbling in graphic design for print and web. I cannot tell you how many great designs I have sitting around my hard drive with no place to go. I have more ideas than practical applications, but boy, is it fun watching something develop into something I’d want my own name on.

I’m of course very excited to have it featured - after all, there are thousands of titles published through Lulu.com, but isn’t that just the way?

[Mike and Sulley watch a commercial featuring them, but Mike is covered over by the Monsters Inc. logo]
Mike: I can’t believe it…
Sulley: Oh, Mike…
Mike: I was on TV. Ha. Did you see me? I’m a natural.

Purchase now on Amazon!

A new book by Melinda Roberts:

Take a woman fresh out of college, plop her down in Silicon Valley, saddle her with a mortgage, let her ride the tech boom, give her three babies in four years, slap her with the tech bust, watch vicariously as her marriage disintegrates, end her career, and hand her a computer. What do you get? Mommy Confidential: Adventures from the Wonderbelly of Motherhood, a memoir in real time adapted from the wildly popular weblog, The Mommy Blog.

“This is like a circus train wreck. It’s horrifying but I can’t seem to avert my eyes and keep from laughing.” – Lee Walinchus

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 Me, Me, Me, Familybits

Forty-one boxes of crap in the car
Forty-one boxes of crap
Take one out
Throw your back out
Forty more boxes of crap in the car

Today, I helped my mother moved all of the records for the nonprofit organization she directs. They were in an office roughly an hour away, past San Francisco, through rush hour traffic. There had been no administrative staff for a couple of years, so all the files, books, floppy discs—and I mean the FIVE INCH ones—slide carousels, and a kitchen sink or two, oh, and a computer, a monitor (circa 1988), CPU, and laser printer were in an office waiting to be adopted, sorted, filed, archived, and digitized.

Thank God I have a hand truck and a car
Big enough to carry all this
But just in case
We get to this place
And find more, we have mom’s SUV to help out

So there I was, with mom (who is kicking my ass fitness-wise, incidentally) and her colleagues, sorting through nearly fifty boxes that hadn’t been disturbed in a couple of years. All we knew is that we needed the information inside of them. Well, maybe just what’s inside the ones from the last couple of years. That would be determined by careful dissection later, probably in her living room or garden shed.

Remember to bend at the knees, not the waist
Try not to damage the goods
You’ve got a family of four
You have to care for
You’re not quite out of the woods so make haste

At one point, the hand-truck with four boxes of art books stacked on it fell over sideways and landed on my big toe. Miraculously, my new Birkenstocks saved me from what would definitely have been a much bloodier episode. Must remember to bring steel-toed boots next time.

Now that you’ve driven them to the South Bay
Now that they’re all safe and sound
Take them out
Throw your back out
And stack them all safely away from wet ground

I have never crated, stacked, and hoisted so many flippin’ banker’s boxes in my life. Not even when a former employer moved my office four times. (I never bothered to unpack that last time. I just flicked the motivational rubber duckys out of the blinds and never looked back.)

Forty-one boxes we loaded up north
Forty-one had to go south
Back right in
Watching the trim
Truck each one back into stacks on the porch

I worked at a foundation for twelve years, and though I had an intellectual appreciation for the hardships and scarce resources of the organizations we funded, I was still staggered what all of this material meant for my mom: hours and days and perhaps weeks of sorting, saving, tossing, and organizing, all in her living and dining rooms, mind you, before making sense of it all and organizing it into a proper enterprise.

I think I’ll help her apply for a grant. Call it organizational effectiveness and capacity building.

Monday, September 24, 2007 Me, Me, Me

Today is a very, very good day, as my COBRA papers arrived in the mail over the weekend. Hallelujah and all that. There was much rejoicing.

Happily, my Dad sent this to me just in time for me to be able to laugh at it....

Medical Insurance Explained

Q. What does HMO stand for?
A. This is actually a variation of the phrase , “HEY MOE.” Its roots go back to a concept pioneered by Moe of the Three Stooges, who discovered that a patient could be made to forget the pain in his foot if he was poked hard enough in the eye.

Q. I just joined an HMO How difficult will it be to choose the doctor I want?
A. Just slightly more difficult than choosing your parents. Your insurer will provide you with a book listing all the doctors in the plan.  The doctors basically fall into two categories: those who are no longer accepting new patients, and those who will see you but are no longer participating in the plan.  But don’t worry, the remaining doctor who is still in the plan and accepting new patients has an office just a half-day’s drive away and a diploma from a third world country and the third grade.

Sunday, August 26, 2007 Me, Me, Me

Mr. X is going into work today to get his classroom ready for school on Monday. “Last year, I didn’t do a thing to change the classroom around, but this year I put up a few pictures that were just sitting in the closet.” Then he groaned as he realized that his first class of typing students will be taking it for the first time. “Ugh, it will be nothing but practicing the keyboard.”

“I’ll make you some posters on Despair.com. ’Ten Fingers.. Think if You Only Had Five.‘“

“And this would be the year that I have a student with only five fingers. ‘Mr. X, I find that very offensive.’”

“‘I’d deck you but I have to protect what little I have.’”

“‘I have just one finger for you, though.’”

“‘I’d watch your mouth; I have fifteen toes.’”

This is why we can never work together. I can’t even print the exchange we had about using the student restrooms versus the faculty one.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 Me, Me, Me

For the last few days, I have been struggling. Not the way Logan struggles in a chair and then lands on the restaurant floor three feet away (true story), but with words.

I don’t have them. Or at least, I don’t have many of the right ones. It seems that the only time I have the right ones is when I’m with my children, even when they are driving me off a cliff, and especially when they sneak into bed with me in the wee hours.

And, speaking of my traffic stats and ad revenue, I fully realize that it may not be as interesting as it has been in the past to visit here, but then again I’m not sorry to be living a “less interesting” life, in the proverbial sense. Money was never an object here, however gratefully I accepted what was offered. But I am not savvy enough to leverage it to be enough.

Still, the struggle. With finances, sure. But I know that I have a safety net no matter how much it shames me to use it. With work, yes, because what I love doesn’t much pay and what does is just beyond my reach and the view is a bit hazy. With love, because I have it and give it and cherish it, and try so hard to let it be enough. With depression, because this is my lot. If I haven’t succeeded in pulling out of it with the efforts I’ve made and the resources at my disposal, I don’t know what sort of karmic winch has to be called in next. Watching Seven Years In Tibet tonight didn’t help much, though I suspect that it might have helped someone more open to the Universe:

Dalai Lama: We have a saying in Tibet: If a problem can be solved there is no use worrying about it. If it can’t be solved, worrying will do no good.

Um. Okay.

I have no answer for that. I did like the way Brad Pitt’s character described what he loved about climbing mountains, though. It’s very similar to what I love about being a parent, about writing, about taking care of my family:

The absolute simplicity. That’s what I love. When you’re climbing your mind is clear and free from all confusions. You have focus. And suddenly the light becomes sharper, the sounds are richer and you’re filled with the deep, powerful presence of life.

Mind you, that only really happens when I’m concentrating so hard that I barely have the wit to learn from it.

What clears your mind? Please don’t say yoga. That seems too catalog-simple. What do you think would clear mine, aside from a windfall equal to my outstanding mortgage?

The Buddha said ‘Salvation doesn’t come from the sight of me. It demands strenuous effort and practice. So work hard and seek your own salvation constantly.’

I’m seeking. I’m seeking. Oy, how I’m seeking.

Monday, August 20, 2007 Me, Me, Me

Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks: A geek has a very focused knowledge of a subject (that guy that memorized the language of myst), a nerd is a master at many subjects (that girl you go to when you need homework help), and a dork is just plain socially inept (Napoleon Dynamite).

Whew—I’d been looking for clarification for some time now.

And don’t mess it up for me by adding corollaries!

Wednesday, August 15, 2007 Me, Me, Me

Well, the good news is that they have scheduled another screening of The Nanny Diaries that I CAN attend next Tuesday. The not so good news is that I have spent today first assessing Logan’s groin injury from baseball camp, watching him run laps with the EMT to see if he was ok, come home to discover that my bank account is five hundred dollars in the red and that there have been eight—count ‘em—EIGHT overdraft charges assessed this week alone. That’s such a bizarre thing for me that I never even thought to look.

I guess it could be explained by my not having an unemployment check to deposit in a while, due to the audit, and then the last check being for the wrong amount because I actually WORKED one week last month, having to void that one and return it, and then having to call the EDD to find out why my claim was terminated (it was just last year’s claim running out) and filing a new claim (yay for another 26 weeks of benefits) that I hope like the dickens starts paying out soon because I HATE being broke.

Oh, and there was that unpleasant little interlude with the credit card company who wrote today to say they had closed my account because of multiple returned checks when I have had numerous conversations with at least four different representatives who each acknowledged that it was their error, not mine, that caused them to be returned. So, I get charged thirty-nine dollars for each payment that gets returned via Citibank error, and twenty-seven dollars for each overdraft my bank processes, so that adds up to… carry the one… one very fucking pissed off, unemployed, broke mom of three.

So. I think that’s been handled, and now all I have to do is show up at the DMV at dawn to wait in line to have my drivers license renewed so I don’t miss any of those exciting camp runs.

Oh, and get three kids ready for school. And maybe after school care, but only on the days Daddy has them because I can’t afford it. And look for a job. And try to get sponsors for PearSoup.com (because I can’t afford to take out ads promoting it), and set up partnerships for things like identikits, safety campaigns, missing children alerts, etc. I need to figure out how to donate a portion of proceeds from sales of tees and other swag from the site to one or more of those organizations, otherwise it’s just me amusing myself with the funny quotes moms are sending in every day. I made a bunch of them into shirts and totes, so, if you want to send your little ones off to school in an adorable little PearSoup shirt, head on over to The Soup Kitchen.

Oh, crap. I just realized how that sounds. How appropriate. Gaaaarrrgh. I have less than seven hours left of being thirty-eight. There. That ought to put the sprinkles on things.