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The good

Getting away from my kids.

Rooming with Corrina from A Celebration Of Curves fame. Her curves should be celebrated. My boobs had serious competition. She’s a kind soul and full of interesting conversation. I credit her for helping me break my habit of saying “I have to go potty”.

Met Stephanie Klein who was like a breath of fresh air. She was kind, down to earth, unpretentious, and funny. She approached me and Corrina at the Macy’s cocktail party with a sincere “Hi”. (Some elite bloggers could take some pointers from her) Her hubby is equally adorable and was beaming with pride for his wife and sons. Her beautiful red curly hair reminded me of my red curly hair baby at home so I just had to touch it. And it didn’t scare her off! I lurve her.

Had an uplifting experience with feeding the poor.

Met and filmed a DVD with Grover from Sesame Street.

Got felt up by a hot lesbian.

Felt up the Michelin Man.

Had a lovely time with my favorite peeps.

Met new peeps that are lovely.

Found out that the best conversations happen in bathrooms.

Meeting Guy Kawasaki. So sweet, shy, and unpretentious.

The bad

Missing my kids.

Not enough time with my favorite peeps.

Not as much boob grabbing as last year. I guess my boobs are old news.

Getting on the wrong train. Twice.

Thinking I’m on the wrong train and getting off then realizing it was the right train and jumping back on. The conductor yelled at me. Everyone heard and stared.

Telling a recovering alcoholic that I had one too many martinis the night before. I’m such an ass. Sorry, Rachel. I’m proud of you.

Too many bloggers, too little time.

More later…

Read my weekly column at 5minutesforspecialneeds.com 

I’ve got a gig at the just launched 5 Minutes For Special Needs, a sister site of 5 Minutes For Mom. My first post goes live today so come over and show a girl some love!

Boy, have I missed my blog and all my blogging friends. I didn’t mean to stay away for so long. Life just became overwhelming. I had moments where I felt like I should just hit the delete key so my neglected blog wouldn’t feel like such a monkey on my back. I’m still having moments where I’m not so sure how I will ever fit blogging back in my life. I don’t know how other moms of 4+ kids (or really any mom) are finding the time but I would love to know because I just can’t find a balance so something in my life doesn’t have to suffer in order to find time to blog. My biggest issue is feeling so trapped in my life which I feel guilty about. My life is good. I have a sweet, hard working husband who has provided me with a very comfortable lifestyle. I have four great kids, several girlfriends I can really count on, and a sister who is the bestest friend I could ask for. I should feel happier but most of the time I feel overworked, unappreciated, and wishing for more hours in a day.

My little funk began when I received an invite for the infamous J&J Camp Baby. An all expense paid trip with some of my favorite blogging friends? Three days away from the demands of my hubby and kids? I was so in. Except by the time I was able to secure childcare the camp had met its guest quota. Too bad, too sad.

This is when I had my first moment of feeling trapped within the confines of family life. You know you need a mommy break when you can relate with Chelsea Handler’s character on one of the In The Motherhood webisodes where she tells a policeman that maybe she does want to go to jail just so she can be alone.

I was angry with my husband because I felt that he should have offered to stay home with our kids if I couldn’t find childcare. I so rarely ask him to take time off from work to help with the kids and I’m quickly growing resentful of the fact that in order for me to do anything I have to find childcare when he is free to make his plans knowing that I’m always here to be with the kids. It feels terribly unfair. My hubby realized how unfair this is when I made a tearful comment that I did not know I would have to give up my life in order to be a mom. He tried making it up to me by offering to fly me out to see my sister but he was missing the point. These free trips don’t come around often and I wanted to feel like he valued me and my job being a mom enough to tell me he would make sure the childcare was covered so I could get away.

So I didn’t go and my life got increasingly busier over the next few weeks and won’t slow down again until the end of school. Just keeping up with the house, laundry, homework, running errands, cooking meals, carpool, and servicing the hubby take up a full day. I sacrifice sleep to fit in the things I like to do such as reading, blogging, and playing on the computer. My oldest is a competitive dancer and spring time is when I have to shift into stage mom mode. She has two competitions and a recital every spring. This year she is in eight numbers which means eight costumes and everyone of them needed some altering or embellishing. She had her first competition this past weekend and I am sharing videos of the dress rehearsals on YouTube.

I also have several blogging projects in the works if I can ever find enough time to commit to any of them fully. The latest endeavor is The St. Louis Bloggers Guild which I can’t honestly take any credit for but I plan to take a more active role in the very near future.

I have also put my mommy guilt aside and have found an in-home daycare for Marigrace twice a week so I can free up some time for much needed “me” time. I’m going to make an effort to pamper myself more. What I have realized over the last few weeks is if I don’t value myself then neither will anyone else.

Hopefully you will see me around more often. I really have missed you and this blogging gig. Thanks to all of you who checked in on me. It’s nice to feel missed.

I’m not a writer. I just pretend to be one on this blog.

Literature was my favorite class in high school and I dreamed of writing my own novel but I had read enough novels to know I don’t quite have what it takes to be a good writer. I’m a grammar rebel and not very good at being descriptive.

I don’t write this blog to entertain. This blog is my therapy. I’m a very emotional and analytical person and have always kept journals of my thoughts and feelings. Opening myself up in this very public format has connected me with so many people who “get” me and the connections that I’ve made are cathartic. I’m also an open book and often indulge more than I should. I’m also like this in person. I seem to have a malfunctioning TMI switch. Despite being so open I am careful about where I list my blog and what audience I want to target.
So what’s my point of sharing this?

It recently has come to my attention that there is a website that is publishing my entire blog without my consent. I’m not sharing my Google juice with this site so you will have to here to find out who is scraping my stuff.

Why does this piss me off? Let me count the ways:

1. Like I explained above, I write about very personal and sensitive issues. I often write about my estranged relationship with my parents. I’m also a control freak. I am very careful about where I share my blog feed and I certainly don’t want to make it easy for my parents to find my blog. This site that has stolen my content including publishing my photos. Is it no longer rude to hotlink? That’s right people, photos of my dog, my kids, and myself are published on this site on a page for my city. Uh, hello, I might as well put an ad in the paper with my photo, blog url and hope my parents don’t happen upon it. Check it out, my peeps. Not only will you find me listed in the sidebar but you can read my entire blog. Originally clicking on my post title would take you to another page within their site but once this brouhaha began the owner, Dave Mastio fixed it so now the title will bring you back to my blog.
2. I have asked three times to be removed from the site. I finally received a reply yesterday from Dave Mastio that my blog would be removed but 24 hours later my blog is still listed. If Dave wants to make friends in the blogging community then he needs to play nice. I asked to be removed and that should be honored. I don’t care about his fair use excuse. Clipgator was aggregating my blog last year without my permission and within hours of asking to be removed I was removed. It didn’t get nasty. This is getting nasty. It is MY words, MY photos, and MY stories and any respectable site would not use them without my consent.
3. Dave Mastio is making money off my content. The site seems to serve no other purpose than publishing blogger’s feeds to support advertising and not only do I not receive any revenue from the ads but I have no say in what ads show up along with my blog. Many of the ads are flashy and in poor taste. Don’t even get me started on how much I hate pop unders.
4. I am a control freak as I have established above. I want to control where my feed is aggregated. I’ve given Maya’s Mom permission to aggregate my feed because it’s tasteful, does not publish my photos, is a community of moms and with a click of the mouse I can remove my blog. It is after all, my blog.
5. Dave Mastio did not say pretty please. Seriously, I was not given a choice to opt in or out and I am at the mercy of Dave Mastio to remove me.

I actually thought I had added some copyright protection by using the wordpress copyright plugin which adds this to the bottom of all my posts:

Copyright © 2008 slacker-moms-r-us.com. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact legal@slacker-moms-r-us.com so we can take legal action immediately.

Dave Mastio does not publish my full post so my copyright does not even show on his site. A lot of good that did me.

Bottom line is what I post here is mine and if someone is scraping my blog for no other purpose than their personal gain without my permission then my request to be removed should be respected. C’mon Dave, didn’t your mama teach you any manners?

Here are more posts on this topic:

Mamalogues
WOBL in Training
Super Fun Patrol
News-Bitch
Little Bald Doctors
STL Probloggers
State of Discontent
Prologos
The Broad Brush
A Bun’s Life

*Updated*
Wow! Within a half an hour of posting this my blog was removed from BNN. What a shame that it took a post rather than a simple email to remove my site.

I know, I’m being a bit dramatic but for about a week it certainly felt like my blog had fallen off the face of the earth.

It all started after my move from Blogger to Wordpress. The move seemed to have gone well until I realized my readers had dropped off. I didn’t notice at first because I was getting an average of 600 hits a day thanks to Ellen and all the folks searching for a Tiddy Bear. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful for the tiddy people, especially since some of them pulled up a chair and got to know me better but I’m missing my blogging buddies that I’ve grown close to over the last 18 months. I was making the rounds and visiting my friends but very few were stopping by. It didn’t take long for me to feel a bit paranoid as to why I was dumped. After a few emails inquiring as to where the hell I was I realized that I had royally screwed up my feed during the move. Somehow I managed to lose nearly 200 readers and I can’t figure out how to fix it other than to ask my blogging buddies to resubscribe.

It actually turned out to be a good timing because the weeks following my absence from the blogging radar got a bit crazy. It started with a pain in my chest. According to Dr. Google my pain was probably due to a slight case of hypochondria and costochondritis since I had the hallmark sign of pain when I pushed on the area under my breastbone. At first I blamed the pain on sitting over my ‘puter with the double D’s I had implanted last year but days later I ended up with a nasty respiratory infection that was most likely the cause of my pain or at least that’s what I prefer to believe.

I must say I have not been that sick in years and a little over two weeks later I’m still trying to kick the residual cough and runny nose. The dreary cold slit your wrist weather and one too many snow days that had me cooped up with four hyper kids and an even more hyper 70 pound puppy sent me into quite a funk. Then a friend of Isabelle’s broke her arm while in my care which pushed me into a major case of funkiness. The last thing I felt like doing was blogging to an audience who was only interested in finding out where they could buy a Tiddy Bear.

I’m in much better spirits today although our weather still really sucks. I can’t remember the last time I saw the sun for more than an hour.

What has helped bring me out of my funk is that I spent the weekend at a dance convention with Madeline, my dear friend Vickie and her daughter. It was our first dance convention and it was a blast. Vickie is so much fun to be around and with my bladder control problem that meant a lot of piss in your pants moments for me.

Our daughters also had a great time. Their teachers included Nick Bass who has danced with Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake, and Ivan Koumaev who was featured on “So you think you can dance” and has also danced in a Hanna Montana video. Needless to say they were very excited to be in the presence of such phenomenal dancers. The girls learned a lot and Madeline won a $250 dance scholarship which was an unexpected surprise.

The girls with Ivan

If you know me well then you know that hardly any event I attend escapes without me embarrassing myself and this one was no exception. My friend Vickie has a milkshake that brings all the boys to her yard so she was all for taking the parent hip hop class and talked me into joining her. Once committed to the class we find out that we would be performing our dance to J.T.’s “Bringing sexy back” on stage in front of our kids, their dance teachers, and the professional dancers/choreographers. I was scared shitless and to make matters worse I opened my big mouth that I could do cartwheels so I had to do a cartwheel across the stage along with three other big mouthed moms.

It ended up being better than I thought it would be. I didn’t mess up too bad at my sad attempt at being sexy. There was a lot of screaming for us fools which felt really great. The best part was how proud and excited Madeline was. I didn’t tell her that I would be performing so she was clueless until we were called onstage and she saw me run up. She waved her arms in the air while yelling, “That’s my mom!” That moment made making a fool of myself completely worth it. I could have bought the DVD to share with you but I don’t want to burst my bubble that maybe I looked a bit sexy and that I have some rhythm.

The cutie patootie Tre Holloway who taught our parent hip hop class

Good times.

I’m super late with sharing the blog love that has been passed to me by some of my favorite bloggers. My life is super busy with all my projects, four kids, school auction crap, and a bunch of other things that are overwhelming my life right now. Does this qualify me as a Super Mom or just a Super Dumb Mom for taking too much on? Thank God the smart discipline approach we have implemented is working out very well.

Anyhoo, here are my awards:

Mert from Almost Somewhat Positive gave me the Courageous Blogger Award. This is probably my most deserving award since I don’t mind airing my dirty laundry or writing what most people only think to themselves on my blog. I just hope it doesn’t get me into trouble some day. If I does, feel free to award me The Dumb Blogger Award.

I’m passing this award to:

Mom-O-Matic
I love how she fearlessly writes about her weight, body issues, sex, and antidepressants.

Suburban Oblivion
I love how she’s taking on Bill Maher and his stupid breastfeeding vs masturbation comment.

i obsess
My girl crush. She has such a gift of putting so much emotion behind her words. I respect and admire how she’s been sharing her feelings about her recent ADHD diagnosis.

Jenster’s Musings
Jen has been through a lot but manages to keep a positive and humorous outlook throughout.

Where’s My Cape passed me the Rockin’ Blogger Award which I’m passing on to these rockin’ bitches. I spent a lot of time with these bloggers at BlogHer so I have first hand experience on how much they rock.

Don’t Take The Repeats, Mamma Loves, Sticking To The Point, Can We Kick The Bar Here, Ellinetha, Ruthless In The Suburbs, The Blogess, and IzzyMom.

Canape from Don’t Take The Repeats thinks I’m nice. Isn’t that nice? Should I pass this back to her for being so nice?

I’m passing this on to these nice bloggers:

Momish, Ramblings Of Maggie, Those Weird Homeschoolers, A Bun’s Life, Adventures Of A Drama Queen In Denial, Crazy Bloggin’ Canuck, Midwestern Mommy, Steel Magnolias

I’m most proud of this award from Absolutely Bananas. Here are the blogs that I think kick ass:

Where’s My Cape, Queen Of The Mayhem, Lawyer Mama, Kevin Charnas, Gaining Balance, Because I Said So, Almost Somewhat Positive, Blogs Are Stupid.

Spread the love, my peeps!

Check out my contest that ends this Sunday and my fab finds over at Lipstick to Crayons. Don’t forget to sign up with Vocalpoint to get free samples.

There certainly is a lot of drama in my life right now. I’ve got my father trying to guilt his way back into my life and a troll who put me in a bad mood. Although my mood has greatly improved with the help of my sister and blogging friends.

My beloved dog, Sonny who is ten is not doing well. He has a cough and is bleeding from the nose. A constant trickle that won’t stop. I’m having all kinds of tests done and so far his doctors have found a mass in his nasal cavity. I’m taking him to a specialist who can determine if it’s a fungal infection or a tumor. I’m just sick about it. Sonny was my first baby. We got him a few months before we were married. During my first pregnancy Sonny would take naps with me on the couch with his head on my belly. He has been the best dog. I am not ready to let him go yet. My family will be crushed. Although Marigrace is only a toddler she will miss him too. She loves curling up next to him and sharing her snacks. If it is a tumor I’m being told that he would respond well to radiation and it would extend his life about another 13 months. So I’m hopeful, praying that it’s a fungal infection which would be easier to treat.

My other drama is with Madeline. We are taking the kids on a vacation and we leave tomorrow. My hubby got a two bedroom condo because he’s hoping for a sexcation. We are flying. Madeline is afraid of flying. We flew last summer and she got a little anxious. Her anxiety and tics have greatly reduced since then so we decided to fly again. She was okay with it until tonight. The excitement of our vacation is stressing her out. She currently has a coughing tic. My hubby didn’t realize it was a tic and made a comment to her about needing medicine. Drawing attention to her tics causes her to tic more. Especially under times of stress. It didn’t help that she saw the weather prediction of storms tomorrow. She flipped out, coughing uncontrollably until she threw up. She panicked, cried that she won’t get on the plane if it storms. It kills me to see her so fearful. I felt so helpless.

I gave her Benadryl and had her lie in my bed with a movie. I asked her questions about the movie to help take her mind off her fear that the plane is going to crash. She continued to cough and puke. Trying to reason with a child who is having a panic attack is not easy. She was a little comforted by squeezing my hand. I suggested that when she has these worries she can squeeze my hand and all her worries will travel to me so I can do the worrying for her. She seemed to like that idea. With the Benadryl kicking in and some deep breathing she coughed less. I acted silly and we laughed a little bit before she finally passed out. Then I went in the bathroom and cried.

It’s so sad to see her have these worries and difficulties at such a young age. Even though I have moments of not coping I firmly believe God only gives you what you can handle. I can handle this. I don’t want to have to handle it but it is what it is. All those years of providing therapy and support to my mother were preparation for this.

We are going to do our best to have a stress free morning since Madeline feeds off our stress. I’m going to give her Benadryl before the flight and pray she doesn’t have a coughing fit panic attack on the plane. I know she will feel so much better about it if the flight is smooth. I’ve noticed that her fear of things is the worst when she’s preparing to do something scary. Once she’s doing it she’s fine. It’s the damn worrying that’s getting to her. She’s done a great job of pushing through her fears. She’s afraid of elevators but will get on them. Last year she was terrified of amusement park rides and this year we can’t keep her off of them. I’m proud of her for trying the things she is afraid of. They are never as scary as she imagines them to be.

Wish us luck. Prayers are appreciated. I won’t be back blogging for a week so I hope you don’t forget me. I’m going to leave you with a funny story rather than all this drama.

This past Wednesday I went to a blogging seminar with Lisa and met all these cool people. We got a little lost on the way which made us a few minutes late. They had already started the seminar when we got there. I made Lisa walk in ahead of me because I’m a chicken. Karma bit me in the ass for it. I had one of those moments that seem to only happen to me. Like the time I wiped out in a quiet auditorium filled with a thousand people but I’ll save that story for another post.

We quietly found a seat next to Rebecca. I decided to turn off my phone because I could see my kids calling me to ask me a dumb question like what kind of chair I was sitting in. Some how I managed to put my phone on speaker as it called my voicemail. I have no idea how it happened. It’s never happened before. I was frantically trying to turn my phone off while my messages were being played for all to hear. I could feel everyone looking at me. I gave a meek “I’m sorry”. The mediator responded with a request for everyone to turn their phones off. Every one seemed to find it funny except for her. Smooth move, huh? It’s so typical of something I would do.

I’m off to bed now. It’s been an exhausting couple of days and I have a much needed vacation waiting for me.

I think a member of my hubby’s family may have found my blog. I noticed on my statcounter that someone from St. Louis emailed one of my posts that would be of interest to members of his family. I hope I’m just being paranoid and I haven’t actually been “found”. I really don’t want his family to know so much personal information about me. I’m feeling really weird about it. In fact I’ve been feeling weird about blogging. I’m not so sure anymore that using my family’s names and posting photos was such a good idea. My blog has been a great way to keep my sister and some friends current with my life but I didn’t expect USA Today to run a story on slacker moms that would send me hundreds of hits from people googling “slacker mom”. I’m also too thin skinned and have a great need for approval that causes me to get my feelings hurt easily. I’m fortunate that my blog is nearly a year old and I’ve only had a couple of trolls pay me a visit. But those few trolls were enough to make me second guess myself. I hate that. I wish I didn’t care so much what others think of me. I firmly believe in the Golden Rule of treating people how I want to be treated but so often it seems that this rule does not apply to the internet. When I come across a post or a blogger that has opinions different than mine I move on. I may roll my eyes but I definitely don’t leave a disapproving comment. I can respect another person’s opinion even if I don’t agree with it. It’s the Libra in me. I’ve tried to not be too opinionated on my blog so I don’t attract unwanted comments. I also try to not be judgemental because I despise how some moms prefer to bring other moms down rather than help raise them up. That’s why I’m so disappointed in myself about this post. I was very judgemental and it felt terrible. Who am I to judge those moms? There are moms who disapprove that I allow my daughter to wear stage make-up for dance and play with Bratz dolls. I don’t want them judging me but yet I took a stance of superiority and did exactly what I despise. Just last week a blogger that I really like wrote a post about how disappointed she was that I posted my breastfeeding photos. One of my readers left her a comment that they agreed with her. I felt like I walked in on my friends gossiping about me and it felt terrible. Especially since I really like these bloggers. Why do I let these things get to me?

I truly believe in being true to yourself yet I don’t practice what I preach. It bothered me that I disappointed someone and I wish I had a I don’t care attitude but it is what it is. I do care and I’m just rethinking what direction I want to take my blog. I’ve taken a big risk by putting my personal life out here and now I’m not so sure that I like the consequences. I really need to work on not letting things bother me so much but I really struggle with it. I think it comes from growing up with disapproving parents who made me feel like I couldn’t do anything right.

I’m more of a people pleaser than I like to admit. I’m always worrying that something I write may offend someone. I have a diverse readership which I love because I take something different from each of you. But I do feel pressure to please everyone and it’s just not possible. For example I say curse words and I try to avoid writing them if I can because I know that it will offend some. My advice to myself is to just be myself and if my readers can’t accept me for who I am then they can just move on. It makes sense to me but yet I still want their approval.

Thanks for reading my rambling thoughts. I started writing about one thing and ended up writing about another. Basically I’m feeling exposed. I’m curious to how all of you deal with these issues.

Jimmy will you please stop stalking me via email. Not only am I happily married but you’re creeping me out.

Last Friday I was feeling sorry for myself about my situation with my parents when I got an email that I’m a recipient of the Top 100 Mom Blogs Award. It was completely unexpected and came at a moment when I needed a pick-me-up. Life is funny like that. Patricia Arquette’s character on the show Medium summed it up the best on the last episode. Her explanation was that hope is the high, dread is the low and life is everything in between. I love that. It’s much better than my explanation of life when I’m in a funk which is that we are all basically unhappy and just living for the next happy moment. How’s that for some doom and gloom thinking?

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