It’s a blur of cold medication and tears.
Ren barfed in our bed after her Dad stuffed her full of treats at the Celtics game.
Archive for the 'Fancy That' Category
—–Original Message—–
From: DaMomma
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 7:10 AM
To: Miss-Hope-She’s-Smarter-Than-Ren
Subject: Ren
Dear Miss Hope–
Ren wants to have a meeting with you about the fact that she is too popular.
It’s totally my fault.
Mare had to have a meeting of that nature with her teacher. (It was actually about the fact she chats instead of works.) It generated much discussion between Mare and me and then of course Ren got upset and asked if she was too popular too, with these great big eyes and I said, yes, of course, Miss Hope would need to talk to her next.
See, see how it happens?
She has no idea what popular is, but she’s all ready for the meeting and I just thought that was an important FYI for you. 
XOXOXOX
DaMomma
—–Original Message—–
From: Miss Hope
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 3:18 PM
To: DaMomma
Subject: we’re gonna make you pop-u-lar!
She came in this morning telling me all about our meeting and although I was a little lost we went with it. We had a conversation about needing some alone time in the classroom and how to problem solve when EVERYONE wants to work with you.
Take care,
Miss Hope
I am finding it challenging to write a post on this computer.
This seems odd, because I actually started my blog on this computer. (The “b” key is missing. You’ve really been reading a long time if you understand that reference. “Let it ee … let it e!!”)
The computer is in a funny place in the family room and mostly for the children’s use these days. My laptop, however, threw up all over me last week and finally had to go in for repair. I cried, yes I did. I am over it now.
The desktop photo on this computer is of Mare and Ren, when they were the ages Ren and Eden are now. I have too many freaking children. They all look the same to me.
It’s hard to sit in one place too long and work, the kids come after me or the dryer beeps (my pennance to the Gods of luck — how about I do laundry and you give me my freaking laptop back?).
Last night we went to the circus. I can’t even tell you how awesome it was. I can’t, because the name of the circus has an astonishing number of “b’s” in it. And I can’t because the photos on my camera aren’t going to upload easily to this machine and I am all done crying and swearing at computers this week. So you’ll have to wait.
Per my code of ethics — before I proceed I have to tell you the circus gave my family free tickets and asked me to write a review. But also per my code of ethics, if I hadn’t liked it, I would have declined to write about it no matter how many tickets they gave me.
So my vote on the circus? Magical. Big eyes, bright faces, sighs and laughs and all kinds of good stuff. The word? The dumb, can’t-believe-I-am-using-it-but-at-least-it-doesn’t-contain-a-b-word?
Wholesome.
Popcorn and cotton candy and clowns and acrobats and music for two hours. No commercialism, no freaky-deaky theme songs or crazy characters for me to hate for the next few months. Just really sweet family entertainment that made my girls’ eyes shine.
Pictures when the laptop comes back. Meantime, Boston area moms — my guess is elsewhere, too — you can get tickets, 4 for $40 bucks for the weeknight shows by going to Ticketmaster.com and typing “MOM” as your coupon code. The food and treats are wicked expensive, and parking is, too. But if you take the T to North Station it’s cheaper and easy.
And really freaking wholesome-I-can’t-believe-I-used-that-word.
Blogging has always been something of an existential crisis for me.
I stumbled into it. I wanted to be a write-from-home journalist, but wasn’t having a lot of luck. A friend-of-a-friend journalist agreed to counsel me as a favor, and told me bluntly to give up: the door I was banging on belonged to a sinking ship. Rather than write for a paper, she said, I should try this new thing … blogging?
I was totally offended.
But I really do make an effort not to be a jackass, especially when very good advice has been gotten for me, free. So I fired up an online home for the op-eds I was occasionally selling to newspapers. I started a second blog, for fun, to talk about raising Mary.
Then I was pregnant again, and barfing, and managing a toddler and there was no room for anything else. I dropped my op-ed writing job, and soon after it, the blog I had hoped would launch a career.
The other blog, I kept, astonished that people were reading it, and that it was really fun to write it. About a year later it was featured on MSNBC. Someone called my cell phone to tell me and I pulled over to the side of the road to hyperventilate.
I didn’t want to be a funny housewife, known for her rip-roaring tails of mashed peas and errant vacuum cleaners. I didn’t want to be famous. I wasn’t sure how I felt about putting my children on display.
I really didn’t want to be an advertisement. I watched as bloggers around me exploded into mega-income-generating sign posts and I have to tell you – GOOD. FOR. THEM. It’s an awesome achievement, it changes everything, and I am pleased to stand on the shoulders of those mega-producers.
It just wasn’t for me. I’m no saleswoman.
However, the blog was getting increasingly expensive, and it was time to make it self-supporting.
I now rent sidebar space to BlogHer, an organization that supports women bloggers and helps to fund them through advertizing. The space on my site is theirs, and other than excluding myself from alcohol, baby food, and formula campaigns, I offer no input into their choices. I am grateful to them and their sponsors for helping me and other bloggers.
If I accept any additional advertisers, it will be companies that solicit me because they know I like their products. It will be an endorsement, or it won’t happen at all.
I will never accept money to write a review. If I accept a free gift and review it, I will state that fact in the first sentence of the post, and I will tell you the market value of the gift. I will only review things I think you need to know about.
It doesn’t happen often, and its frequency won’t increase.
I will not participate in product placement. If it’s in the body of the post it’s because I use it, and nobody paid me to say so unless I state otherwise.
In many ways, the existential crisis is over. I am now a blogger, a professional one, whatever that means. I have no aspirations to great wealth and no plans to turn this blog into a major money maker. It is now self-supporting, so I will continue writing it as long as it is rewarding to do so and not one minute past that.
I write well. People like it. Put that on my tombstone.
Lastly, your gifts to me really were generous in the extreme. If you wanted to make a difference, you did, and I thank you. You will receive a personal e-mail from me, if you haven’t already.
I made only one frivolous purchase with the proceeds, and I’m pretty sure you’d agree with my choice:
The Nie necklace by Crystal B.
I am curious — what are the best blog posts you ever read? Why were they good? What constitutes a good post or a bad one?
And I don’t mean my blog, here, I mean as a general concept.
What blog posts blew your hair back and made you never forget?
Last night Eden woke me up about a gazillion times. As she has for the last couple of weeks. Growth spurt or Princess, whatever, but the kid wants to be on top of me every single second all night long.
Anyway I was settling back after a feed when it ocurred to me — we left the garden hose on.
Not running on, but spigot open. I knew I was never going back to sleep if I thought about it so I hauled myself down the stairs and out the deck.
I was shocked at how cool it was. One of the features of our little farmhouse is that the upstairs is an oven. We run the window unit A/C all summer long or we die.
So when the raw night sent a chill along my bare arms, it was a surprise. The moon was like a flat disk of mother of pearl, so close and huge I could see the pits and swirls. I stood on the deck and looked out at the green — the trees, the brush, the gentle hum of living things uninterrupted by traffic, screaming children.
I was just one more living thing among it. Not a bill-payer, a dinner-cooker, house-cleaning nursing mother who had to turn off the garden hose.
For a few seconds, I was a wild thing. A giver and liver of life.
We baptized Eden in the old New England church with the white walls, chestnut wood and stained glass. Moonbeam and Sunbeam, Miss Ellie and Professor Veritas stood godparents.
It was a beautiful day.
