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You Won’t Believe What Happened To Me On Facebook Last Weekend

April 29, 2013 · by · 9 Comments
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This past Saturday, at 1:56 a.m., I posted a Facebook update letting my friends know that I had cross-published my response to Katherine Rosman’s article in the WSJ on my BlogHer.com page, with this caption:
I published my blog post on BlogHer.com. If you haven’t had a chance to comment yet, I’d love you to share your thoughts either on my post or on BlogHer.com. I found my cause, people. This is what I’m passionate about, this is what gets my heart beating faster – the business of blogging!

Writing that post really fired me up, people. I barely consider anything I posted last year to be a worthy blog post, and trust me, I’m not proud of that. When this year started, I gave myself a pass and started really thinking a lot about why I started blogging in the first place, what I wanted people to know about me when they come here, and what I want to remember about blogging when I’m too old to do it.

My reaction to Rosman’s article surprised even me, because I hadn’t felt a fire in my belly like that in, well, ever. I don’t really have a “cause” like a lot of people do, but I knew as soon as I read the article that I had to respond. NO ONE was going to disparage my blogging community and get away with it, because I truly, deeply care about bloggers. Really, I do. If someone tells me they’re a blogger, I feel an instant connection, the way I imagine musicians and actors and dancers and athletes feel when they meet someone who does what they do.

So, imagine my surprise when I got my first comment on that status update, from a fellow mom blogger who wanted me to know that she thought the WSJ article was accurate, that mommy bloggers can’t be taken seriously when “all they do” at conferences is drink, and that we aren’t in college so we should act like adults. And then she ended with this:

I literally log off the internet for the few weeks breceding (sic)  blogher and the weeks afterwards. It’s my way of not exploding over the embarassment (sic) I feel for all you silly mommies.

Oh. Oh lady, you don’t get to post that on my wall and walk away. edited to add: I’m not going to name the person here because I don’t want her coming here to attack me. If you go to my Facebook page and scroll back to Saturday, it should be easy to figure out who it was.

My reply was that her comment wasn’t fair, that I am NOT a “silly mommy”. I’m a hard working woman who happens to have children. I go to BlogHer to network and reconnect with my longtime friends, and make new ones. Then after thinking for a minute, I decided to let her have it, which is totally not like me at all, but dammit, I’m not going to have someone assume that the only reason to go to BlogHer was to squee and drink, when I know that I personally work 14 hour days for four days in a row on little sleep, and if I want a drink after that, so what? This was my reply:

And to suggest that cutting loose with friends equals being in college, well, that’s just plain ridiculous. I get a few days a year when I can say “sure, I’ll have a cocktail, thanks” and not worry that one of my kids will wake up puking or something. I might be 46, but I feel 26 inside, so if that means that after a few cocktails, I pose for a photo with my arms flung around the women that mean almost as much to me as my actual family? SO THE FUCK WHAT. I didn’t realize that adults aren’t allowed to make their own choices. I never said in my post that the article is wrong about what goes on there, I just said that there was a much better story that the Wall Street Journal, a BUSINESS paper, could have focused on. I never honestly thought I’d have to explain this to other women, either.

Her follow-up comment then took a weird turn, as she then went on to tell me that BlogHer “doesn’t welcome handicapped women” (which is just plain NOT TRUE AT ALL), and that since she went to lots of professional conferences that don’t involve parties, drinking, and free swag, that she’s a much better person than any women who go to BlogHer.  She then went on to say nothing she had said was untrue, I just didn’t want to admit “the truth”.

So I posted a new update that said I was surprised to have just learned that BlogHer doesn’t welcome handicapped women according to what this commenter had “heard”, that my head was about to explode. And she came to that thread with another comment, so I posted a third update, and she came there too. It was surreal.

By the time she called me a hypocrite and asked if I was TOO CHICKEN to face the “truth” about BlogHer conferences, my head was spinning.

And then came the cavalry. I had three DM windows open with friends wanting to know what the hell was going on, I had friends jumping on the threads to defend me, people saying really sweet things about me. A friend who has dealt with this woman personally even jumped in and told her it was time to go away and leave me alone.

The lesson I’ve taken away from all of this is that taking the time for personal interaction on Facebook is absolutely worth it. It’s a lot easier to just run through your news feed “liking” things, but taking the time to comment lets people know that you think of them as someone you’d like to talk to, even if it’s just through their Facebook updates. What starts out as “your kids are so cute!” and “love that dress on you” can lead to “can I ask for your opinion on this?” and “do you have a problem with this too?”, and then you aren’t just “Facebook friends”, you become friend friends.

Which could come in handy when a woman well known for attacking people online decides to come after you. As for the friends who came to my aid, THANK YOU. It meant more to me than I can say to realize that other bloggers were going to stand behind me.  I still mean what I said in that original blog post, but now I’m telling everyone – if you think BlogHer is only about parties and drinking and swag, come to a conference with me and see that it’s about so much more than that.

Sure, there are parties and drinking and swag, but there are also friendships. There are people I see for literally one or two minutes every year, some I only see every few years, but they feel just as much like friends as anyone. Bloggers have a bond, and spending four days commiserating over swollen feet and excitedly sharing new information and everything else we do just seals that bond tighter.

If you have my back, I have yours. Plain and simple.

Devra and me

 

 

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The Incredibly True Story of How Bloggers I Barely Knew Got Me To BlogHer 2006 – And Then My Whole Life Changed

February 14, 2013 · by · 42 Comments
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ariana huffington elizabeth edwards table for five

The story begins on May 17, 2006, with a post I published at 12:05 a.m.:

There’s this woman, Sue, who writes a blog called Red Stapler. She had a contest to give away free registration to BlogHer. The winner was Izzy, from http://izzymom.com. Congratulations!, right? Except Izzy had already gone ahead and paid for her registration.

So that left Izzy with a BlogHer registration she didn’t need. It was okay with Sue if she passed the registration on to someone else. Are you with me so far? Good.

Ladies, I don’t know how else to say this so I’m just going to say it, please forgive me for shouting:

ME SHE PICKED ME I AM GOING TO BLOGHER HOLY CRAP I AM GOING TO BLOGHER

Are exclamation points even necessary?

That email from Izzy asking if I wanted the ticket was the email that started the process in motion that changed my entire life. Seriously. Because by 1:27 p.m. that afternoon, all of THIS had happened (excerpt from It’s gonna take a VILLAGE, but I’ll get there):

  • I received an email and then a phone call from another blogger I had known just a few months, a regular commenter with whom I felt instantly close, offering to use Delta Sky Miles to cover the entire cost of the roundtrip plane ticket. I KNOW. When I told my husband, he looked at me and said “seriously. Someone you’ve never met wants to buy you a roundtrip plane ticket. Oka-a-ay.”   This was before I had any idea about the generosity of bloggers, but she even put her husband on the other line to talk to me (he was buying the ticket and needed some info) and I got no crazy vibe from either of them. (Still love you, Nancy!)
  • Sue from Red Stapler emailed me to congratulate me on getting the free ticket from Izzy, and said “by the way, if you don’t have a roommate, you can stay with me, don’t worry about paying me back.”  I was floored. I had never been part of any group as an adult where people just gave things to each other like that.  She offered me her room on Thursday and Friday nights, but she was leaving after the Saturday session, and I flew home Sunday. So I just needed a place to bunk Saturday night.
  • Another blogger put a PayPal donation button on her sidebar, and that was back when putting any kind of ad or button like that was a big deal. She asked her readers to help send me to BlogHer. Amazing.
  • And then the icing on the whole cake – yet another blogger I’d known maybe a month or two emailed me and said hey, you can come stay the night at my house and then I’ll drive you to the airport on Sunday. At that point my heart might have exploded a little.  Never in my life had a stranger offered me a place to stay like that. Chris really was nervous about that though, he said “how do you know you’ll go to her house? How do you know she won’t actually drive you to some, I don’t know, sex slave ring or something?”   Well first of all because the blogger in question just didn’t give off that murdery-stabby vibe, and because I was already taking a giant leap of faith here. Why not go all the way?

And then we finally get to the conference, which was at the Hyatt San Jose. Sitting there reflected by the pool lights were the actual bloggers, they really existed, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I posted the next day during lunch, my table companions are a veritable Who’s Who of Women Who Blog. And they read my blog and commented on it and answered my dumb questions about coding and made me feel worthy.

My companions here at lunch are: Tammie from Soul Gardening, Catherine from Her Bad Mother, Kristen from Motherhood Uncensored, Liz from Mom101, Asha from Parenthacks, Julie from MotherGooseMouse, Cathy from Mayberry Mom, Izzy from Izzymom, Dawn from Baleful Regards, Roo from Roo the Day, and Kari from Karianna/ClubMom.

And ME. Talk about feeling out of place! But these women swept me right into the circle and gave me a feeling of belonging that I honestly hadn’t had since high school.

The closing keynote was a discussion with four powerhouse women including Arianna Huffington. Huffington Post was about a year old and she was planning to expand into non-political topics, and she had just released a new book titled On Becoming Fearless … in Love, Work and Life.  I wrote down what happened in a post titled I AM A BLOGGER. What happened, quite plainly, is that my life completely changed after that keynote.

The closing session on Saturday afternoon featured four amazing women who have done great things both with their professional lives, and with blogs. I sat there listening to them speak, and I had what I guess you could call a revelation. I grabbed one of my business cards (because my laptop STILL wasn’t working), and on the back I wrote this:

1. Find your voice.
2. Stop apologizing. Be proud of who you are and what you do.
3.Stop hesitating. Move yourself forward.
4. You ARE worthy.

My friends, you are ALL worthy. Whether you have just started blogging or have been at it for a while, you are part of a mighty force in this world. Somewhere out there is someone who wants to know what you think, how you cope, who you are. Be a blogger, and be proud.

There’s a lot you can take away from a conference, but I don’t know if there’s anything better than that. From an email offering me a free ticket, to a community I didn’t even know I belonged to providing everything else I needed just so that I could go to a conference and learn to be a better blogger, to getting there and realizing that blogging wasn’t just some weird thing that only I did, it was a way to have a voice in the world.

The day after I got back, I bought table4five.net and moved to WordPress,  bought a Flickr Pro account, and my entire attitude about blogging changed. Every time I published a post, I thought about who was going to read it, whether it contributed something to the greater blogging community. I became conscious of a responsibility, both to all those women who moved heaven and earth to get me to BlogHer, and to women bloggers as a whole. I never wanted to do anything to harm the reputation of bloggers.

It wasn’t just about me anymore, it was about me as a part of a group. I can only hope that some day I can pay it forward, help someone who isn’t sure what blogging really means yet go to a conference and realize their potential. To all those women I mentioned in this post, again I thank you from the bottom of my heart for everything you did.

 

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Not a Mommy Blogger – Guest Post

July 28, 2012 · by · 4 Comments
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Mom-with-baby (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m a new mom. I’m also a blogger.

But I’m not a “mommy blogger. ” I don’t dislike mommy blogs – they tell some of the funniest and
most human stories out there. I just didn’t feel I had anything to say that wasn’t already said. I also
wanted to maintain my other interests; writing about health, history and science helps me do that.

Blogging with a four-month-old is challenging, but makes for great fodder. Even though I don’t often
write about her, my daughter inspires posts on a regular basis.

Managing these roles is an adventure, and I wish those in the same boat inspiration, success and eight
hours of unbroken sleep.

This guest post is written by Katherine E. Reilly Mitchell, an outreach assistant for a single parents blog that provides resources, advice, and grants for single mothers.

 

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Just Plain Stuck

July 3, 2012 · by · 13 Comments
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The reason I haven’t been posting is because I’m stuck.

I want to just WRITE. I don’t know how it is that in seven years of keeping a blog, I still have so many stories I haven’t written down, but I do. I haven’t written about my dolls with the yellow pajamas, or my high school trip to Venezuela, or my five weeks in London, or my five MONTHS in Philadelphia. I haven’t written about my amazing years in my high school’s band, choir, and theater programs. Or how I spent 3 summers at Blue Lake Fine Arts and 2 summers at Interlochen Arts Camp.

I also haven’t written about the things that weigh on my mind on an almost daily basis. The things that happened in my life that I somehow cannot put in the past, no matter how hard I try. Even when I tell myself “you can let it go”, they are just meaningless words. I don’t know if writing it down will help or not, but I can’t seem to figure out how to get started and just WRITE.

The thing is, I just feel stuck. I don’t know what order to write things in. I don’t know how to introduce sensitive topics. I can’t figure out a schedule. Menu Monday? Sure, if I’ve planned a menu and remember to blog about it, but obviously I’m not doing that every week. Friday Fives? My own meme? It’s pretty sad when a person can’t even keep up with their OWN MEME.

I’m trying to get unstuck. And yet all I could think of to blog about today is how I am stuck.

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Maximum Holiday Stress Has Been Reached

December 14, 2011 · by · 31 Comments
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The holidays stress me out. They have for as long as I’ve been a Mom.  This year has been even more stressful than usual, I think because I’m creating a lot of stress for myself due to my complete lack of ability to organize. Organize what?, you ask? EVERYTHING. I am the most unorganized person in my entire family.  Which is probably why no one EVER says “let’s get together at Elizabeth’s house”.

When I say that my New Year’s Resolution is to get organized, I MEAN IT. I can’t go on living this way. My family can’t go on with me living this way.  I have no system in place for organizing my blogging, my household responsibilities, my emails, my life in general!  And now it’s the holidays, Christmas is in 11 days, I haven’t even ordered Christmas cards let alone started gathering the addresses, I haven’t wrapped a single present, it’s just all a big mess.

 

In fact, Chris and the kids decorated the tree, a job I usually love, while I sat on the couch deleting emails. There’s a tub sitting here in the living room full of my snowman collection that I haven’t even unpacked.  Kaitlyn needs a book for her class gift exchange tomorrow that I haven’t even bought, and Nathan has a band concert tonight.

I know what tools I could use to accomplish all of this. I have paper calendars, online calendars, a huge dry erase board in the kitchen. I have a family willing to help me with anything I ask, which makes me so grateful. But they can only help me if I know WHAT I need help with, you know?

Also? It’s been 6 1/2 years that I’ve been writing this blog, and I think it’s time for me to make a change. I started out writing about everything that was happening to us on pretty much a daily basis, and then it became more professional, and now I think it’s time to get it back to being personal.

I guess I’ve been worried that if I was “real”, I would lose the advertisers and the brand campaigns and what have you. But the thing is, I want people who read this blog to know who I really am, faults and all. The truth is, I’m foul-mouthed and snarky and critical.  I care about politics and education and gay marriage and drug laws. I’ve been reading Entertainment Weekly for 20 years and know a ridiculous amount of trivia about TV shows and movie stars. But I don’t write about any of that!

So, that’s my real New Year’s Resolution – get organized and get systems in place so that this time next year I’m ENJOYING the holidays instead of stressing out about them. Can you relate? Are you feeling it too? Tell me in a comment that it’s not just me!

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What Would Elizabeth Do? This.

May 22, 2011 · by · 7 Comments
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PhotobucketSo. You are probably wondering just what the heck is going on here. If you are one of my fabulous regular readers, you’ve seen a couple of posts in the last few days that might have you scratching your head wondering what I am up to. Posts that aren’t what you are used to seeing here on Table for Five.

I’m going to explain why.

Chris gets paid every other Wednesday, and his last check hit our account on the 18th. I dropped Kaitlyn off at preschool that morning, then went to the credit union, withdrew the money for the mortgage and the car payment, then hit BOA for the one and CASE Credit Union for the other.

That evening after dinner he and I collected all the bills and sat down to start paying them. Chris logged into online banking to see if there were any withdrawals we had missed, and got a surprise.

We had $400 in our checking account.

We had been NEGATIVE when his check hit, then I took out the mortgage and car payment, and whammo, we were down to $400. For two weeks. For five people to live on. Including buying gas for our van which is our only running vehicle, which Chris drives all the way to Jackson and back on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and which I use on Mon-Wed-Fri to drive him to carpool and then to drive K to preschool and back plus any errands I need to run. It’s about $80 for a full tank each week.

So. I had already bought my ticket for Gleek Retreat, told Deb I would pick her up and drive her there and back, and that I would pay her for my half of the room charge. And, I really really wanted to go, and Chris really wanted me to go.

I did the only thing I could think of to make fast money legally. No, not that. Or that either.

I searched my inbox for any emails requesting to have guest articles including links placed here on Table for Five. I offer that service on my Advertise page, and I was just hoping someone had made a request.

And that is how a post about the the German site for Groupon, a post about the symptoms of Dengue Fever and the importance of killing mosquitos, and a post about a safe way to trap mice came to be on this blog.

Normally, I would have replied back and politely declined because those topics don’t relate to parenting, but in this case, I just plain needed the money. It’s that simple. And yes, it made me feel kind of weird, but I did what I had to do so I wasn’t taking any money away from the little we have to live on.

I’m telling you this because I want readers to know that sometimes, blogging is about making tough decisions. Every blogger I know has had to do it at some point. Whether it’s deciding to post something controversial, or delete a comment, or accept a job for the money, it’s something every blogger could eventually face.

The other reason I’m telling you this is because while I’m sure it was clear from the title “Guest post” and the words “sponsored by” in those posts, I wanted to be completely transparent and explain why I chose to post something that must have seemed so completely random. I fully believe in the opening words of the Blog with Integrity pledge – By displaying the Blog with Integrity badge or signing the pledge, I assert that the trust of my readers and the blogging community is important to me.

BlogWithIntegrity.com

So, if you ever are facing a tough decision like that, just ask yourself, What Would Elizabeth Do? If you’re still not sure, email me. I’ll talk you through it :)

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I Really Need to Un-Complicate My Online Life

May 16, 2011 · by · 1 Comment
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Webtreats 3d Glossy Blue Orbs Social Media Icons

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My online life is just way too complicated, people.  I don’t know what made me think I could handle three blogs, three Facebook accounts, four Twitter streams, three email addresses. At first I thought I was “organizing” the information, but man, is it hard to keep with all of them!

The thing about social media for me is that it feels so…important. Meaning, I feel like if I delete a Twitter account, the 37 people who added me to a Twitter list will see that my account is gone and, I don’t know, dislike me?  Obviously I understand the overall importance of social media, but I also am thinking that over-saturation is much less effective.

Is it really necessary, for example, to have four Twitter accounts?  I started with one, @Table4Five, then decided MomReviews needed it’s own Twitter stream for tweets and retweets about reviews and giveaways.  And then I decided that MomCooks needed IT’S own Twitter stream for tweets about the reviews and giveaways I was doing there.

Ask me how well I’m managing to keep those four Twitter streams up to date. I’ll give you a hint – I’m NOT.  Besides the huge headache I gave myself last year just before BlogHer when I suddenly decided my old Twitter for Table4Five was too crowded and I needed a SECOND Table4Five twitter account where I could have more personal conversations. Now I have @Table4Five, the newly renamed @ElizabethT45 (used to be called @Table4Five2, and trust me, it confuses me too), @MomReviews and @mom_cooks. GAH.

Facebook is actually not that unmanageable. I have my main account for myself, then I have fan pages for Table for Five and MomReviews. MomCooks doesn’t have it’s own fan page, which is fine by me.  I have RSS for each blog going to it’s respective fan page, and every once in a while I check in to see if there are messages or friend requests. Facebook is the least stressful of my online identities really.

A brand consultant I “met” through LinkedIn gave me a very interesting piece of advice, based only on looking at my three blogs. She said that what I should do is rename MomReviews to Table for Five Reviews and Giveaways (anyone see why that’s a problem?) and MomCooks to Table for Five Cooks. But here’s the thing – can a four year old blog really be renamed?  What happens to all of the posts?

The problem is that the title of a blog is in the permalink to every one of it’s posts, categories, tags, and archives. Like this: http://momcooks.net/2011/04/25/ham-pasta-skillet-recipe/.  If I changed the name of MomCooks to something like Table for Five Cooks,  and someone copy/pasted an old momcooks link into Google, it would give them a 404 “page doesn’t exist” error.  MomCooks has 467 published posts, so that’s a whole lot of errors.

And of course the problem with the suggestion for MomReviews is that there is already a blog titled Table for Five Reviews and Giveaways, as I discovered last year.

I love Table for Five, and I love MomReviews.   I can’t see a logical way to combine them. MomCooks I really just use for a place to copy/paste recipes I find online rather than printing them out on paper, and the advertising pays for the annual domain name registration, so it’s not costing me anything out of pocket to keep it.

So what’s the solution? Do I keep everything I have and just try to update it the best I can, when I can? How are you handling multiple online accounts?

 

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Table for Five Readers, Tell Me What To Do

May 4, 2011 · by · 12 Comments
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I’m starting to think that there’s something else going on with me that is making me constantly change the theme on this blog. Almost every day I come across a Mom blog with a great design and think oh, I could change my theme to look like that one.

In the last three months I’ve gone through three – or is it four? – theme changes.  I’ve tried Thesis, Genesis plus Lifestyle, Genesis plus Pixel Happy, and then for some reason, last night while watching TV and goofing around, it suddenly occurred to me to see if I could get my old IZEA custom design running.

It’s got to be Blogging 101 that when readers go to a blog, they want to see a consistent design. You don’t see Huffington Post or CNN.com changing their themes every month. They picked one, they stick with it.

The truth is, I don’t really know why I keep changing the themes. What I do know is that I want to STOP changing the themes.  I want Table for Five to have a recognizable design that I’m happy with.

I realize that it’s asking a lot, but if you have an opinion one way or another, would you please leave a comment? The question is this:

WHICH THEME SAYS “I’M READING TABLE FOR FIVE”?

1. The one I’m looking at now, the IZEA custom theme.

2. The theme I was looking at YESTERDAY, the one with the header that looks like this:

3. Some other theme altogether (feel free to leave a link)

**************************************************************************************************

Seriously, any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

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Blogging. I Still Feel Like I’m Doing It Wrong.

January 19, 2011 · by · 36 Comments
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I have published 1,696 posts since September 2005.  I’ve written personal posts, sponsored posts, meme posts, question and answer posts, and one post where I was a little drunk.  I’ve blogged about myself, my husband, my kids, my parents, my in-laws, celebrities, politicians, and other bloggers.  Because of this blog, I’ve had opportunities I could not have dreamed of before I started.

Blog Header

But here’s the thing.  Almost every day, I feel like I’m not blogging the right way. Or rather, that my blog has gotten away from me and I don’t know how to get it back.

Every day that I spend online, I find other blogs that look to be way better than this one.  I am constantly questioning whether I’m using the right theme, whether my banner needs updating, and that’s just what’s on the surface.  I feel hopelessly inadequate about my writing all the time.  When I read an outstanding blog post on another blog, I feel like everyone else is just straight up more talented, more funny, more snarky, more insightful, more thought-provoking, and I’m just a monkey banging on a laptop keyboard.

Okay, fine. I don’t really think I’m a monkey. Most of the time.

When I started Table for Five, I blogged about my kids, TV shows, books I was reading, stuff happening in the news. I wasn’t a “brand”, I was just a new blogger trying to figure out how the whole blogging thing worked. The longer my posts got, the more my creative writing training from college kicked in and the more formal my writing got. It was never on purpose, but slowly over the years, I feel like I morphed from “Elizabeth Edwards, Midwestern housewife with three kids battling depression and obesity who can also sometimes be snarky and funny” into “Elizabeth Edwards, owner of a blog that makes her money but causes her stress”.

You wanna know something funny? When I went to the Kraft Foods Delicious Byte Bloggers event in Chicago a few months ago, we were sitting at a table with a marketing lady and she asked us to go around the table and each say something that our readers did not know about us. When it was my turn, I said that very few of my readers knew that in real life, I have one of the foulest mouths imaginable, that I swear like a sailor. Several people at the table reacted in disbelief.

After the round table discussion, Vera Sweeney caught up to me and said “Elizabeth, I just don’t believe it. I do not believe that you swear. Whisper a swear word in my ear.”  So I looked at her and said “goddammit Vera, I swear, okay? I fucking swear.”

See?  My point is that maybe the reason I feel like I’m doing a crappy job is because I’m not writing the way I would speak if I told you the story in person instead of writing it down. Just buy me a drink at BlogHer sometime and ask me to tell you a story and you’ll see what I mean.

I took a break after that last sentence and while checking email, found a new post from Sheena at Sophistishe called Decluttering The Physical And Virtual. I could have written this part of her post myself:

I’m just tired of the seesaw effect I have with this blog. I haven’t posted anything personal, but I have this campaign due. My blog is full of sponsors. Ah who cares business comes first. Business supports family. I’m not trying to be the “perfect” blogger. I don’t want to post this until I give some kind of a life update. Oh forget it, I’ll blog later. Hiding out is much better. Here comes a follow up and another. Ugh, I better get to my obligations. Maybe I’ll have time to write a personal post. I start it… I don’t finish. It sits in drafts. I fail. Repeat.

That is exactly how I feel, almost all the time. It’s so flattering that companies want to work with me, that PR firms have Table for Five on their lists of bloggers they want to work with, it really is. But I feel like I only have so much time and energy to give, and by the time I write the required stuff, I’ve used up all the words that I could have used for a personal post. If that makes sense.

I really have no idea what to do.  Yes, I can work on improving my writing, on remembering to stop and write down my thoughts on stuff,  to save some energy for funny and snarky and oh yes, AMERICAN IDOL RECAPS.  But what I can’t do is change the fact that there will ALWAYS be better blogs than mine. And I may never find that perfect balance between “being real” and well, to be honest, “getting paid”.

If you made it all the way to here, thanks for reading this rather long and rambling post.  Heck, thanks for READING.  It means more than you know that I still have readers after all these years.

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My Favorite Posts of 2010

January 5, 2011 · by · 4 Comments
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These are my favorite posts from each month of 2010.  Man, that was a long year, wasn’t it?

January – Getting Back to Basics posted 1/15/10. I did do what I said I would do in that post, bring back my blogroll. But did I really use it as a tool for reconnecting with my readers? No, not really. Bummer. The thing is, it doesn’t seem like ANYONE uses a blogroll anymore. There’s Google Friend Connect and the Facebook Like Box and BlogFrog, there’s MomLogic and Circle of Moms and Mom Bloggers Club. I have profiles on all of those! How the heck is anyone supposed to CONNECT with people these days? Arrrgh!

February – I like feeling validated about my choices posted 2/16/10.  I wrote about not sending Kaitlyn to preschool last year, and how I was doubting that decision until she and I met some little girls who were just her size – and were a year younger.  Seeing how well Kaitlyn is doing in preschool this year shows me that I should trust my instincts – they are usually right :)

March – I can’t sleep. What’s up with that? posted 3/30/10. I wrote about insomnia. It’s been better lately, although I still have trouble sometimes getting to sleep before 2:00 a.m., even if I haven’t had a nap. My body clock is not synched up with my life it would seem :P

April – If this post helps one person avoid a bad haircut, I’ll have done my job posted 4/9/10.  I lamented a snap decision I made to get my hair cut at BoRics, and compared myself to both Dudley Moore and Kristen Stewart in “The Runaways”. I’m happy to report that my hair is looking much better these days :)

May – Dad plus daughter plus public restroom equals chat with police posted 5/21/10.  My husband took Kaitlyn to the park and when she needed to go to the bathroom, waited outside for her and then went in to help her wash her hands. Someone called the police. Like one of my commenters pointed out, it was definitely a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” kind of situation, but the way it was handled still bugged me.

June – Are These Eardrops Made of Unicorn Tears? posted 6/2/10.   I was prescribed eardrops for a not even infected ear that cost me $110 out of pocket. And, get this – a week later, my ear still hurt, so I called my doctor’s office back and said I needed an appointment no matter what, got in to see her, and learned that my ear was badly infected and the eardrops hadn’t done any good at all.  Nice, huh?

July – This Is Where I Belong posted 7/25/10.  I wrote about why I was meant to be a blogger and how much it means to me to be a part of the blogging community. After five and a half years, it’s still the best thing I can imagine doing with my life and it’s still where I belong :)

August - A Promise I Am Making – As Blog Is My Witness posted 8/11/10.  After experiencing excruciating foot pain while at BlogHer, I gave myself an ultimatum – lose weight or no BlogHer in 2011.  I had a life-changing moment right there in my New York hotel room.  For the first time in a long time, I decided to put my needs ahead of others, and do what I needed to do to change. And I am.  You WILL see me at BlogHer 2011!

September – Conversations with Kaitlyn posted 9/7/10.  I’m so glad I have a blog where I can write down the funny conversations Kaitlyn and I have. Some day I’ll be glad I can look back and read them!  This post also has a bunch of adorable pictures of her if you want to see :)

October – Single Moms and Dads, I Salute You posted 10/19/10. Chris was out of town on business and I was feeling overwhelmed by having to do everything by myself.  But it wasn’t until my oldest son confessed to feeling stressed out himself that I realized I was letting things get out of hand.  And I realized that single parents had to do what I did for a week, every single day. Hence, the saluting of them.

November – Dona Nobis Pacem – BlogBlast for Peace 2010 posted 11/04/10.  My third annual post for the BlogBlast for Peace, which has grown to include bloggers from all over the world, all posting a peace badge and writing about peace on the same day.  My 2008 badge said “Let there be peace on Earth, and in the blogosphere too”.  A motto to live by, I say.

December – Just the usual Holiday Stress around here posted 12/21/10.  A short post about the combination of holiday stress and blogging stress. Great comments with tips on dealing with both!

So, those were my favorite posts of 2010.  Why not look back through your archives and write your own post linking to your favorites posts from last year? If you do, come back here and leave a link to your post in a comment!

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