Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

"Blogher Hand Job"

Last night Logan finished reading Alice's fabulous take on Blogher and said, "Look, how long are you going to keep this Blogher Hand Job going? Get it over with for fuck's sake."

My husband, with his delicate underwear, has a point. Only I appear to have bit off more than I can chew. Especially when my spouse doesn't appear to understand how much I'm chewing. Tonight, as I boiled pasta for dinner, stuffed envelopes, refereed arguments ('No punching below the belt Max, you cheating bastard!") and tried to come up with something for Flogging Baby....I realized that with a big salary, comes no kids to deal with and yes! I am bitter!

I hope tomorrow is a better day because right now I am feeling as if I have ADD and I am not enjoying that feeling.

More. Soon. I promise.

PS: Are there any devil worshipers who want to babysit Friday at 6:00pm? Because we are in a serious bind and will accept even mass murderers as babysitters for this event. We'll even let you emotionally scar our kids and pay you $50 to do it so long as we get to go out with our friends to see the Tigers. I can't believe we can't find a sitter, this is ludicrous.

I know I have a debt to pay to the internet. Consider this your payment.

Someone calling herself "PMS", which is totally untrue because I've been having my period all fucking weekend, in case you wanted to know, told me I have a debt to the internet. That I needed to write something "substantial" about Blogher because I was lucky enough to go and other people weren't. I was lucky...maybe that's why I cried all the fucking weekend because I couldn't believe that people like me enough to make this happen for me.

Maybe PMS who told me she has proudly earned every letter in the word Bitch because she is a Bitch, might rethink her bitchiness because maybe then someone would want to see her have this once in a lifetime chance to meet some of her favorite people in the world. Instead I have a debt.

Today I just kept writing. Writing and writing trying to say something "substantial" about Blogher and when I was nearly finished I read everyone else's take but it appears that what is true about Alice in real life is also true on the internet.

She's funnier than anyone else in the world. There I said it. She is the funniest person in the world. So even though I'd written 1000 words about this weekend: I deleted them all when I read this and you must go read it right now and release me from my debt to you internet. (I still owe you, Ms Hamster. I intend to pay you back in various way, the most logistically challenging way is nightly foot rubs since you live in New York.)

I am at a coffee shop and I often laugh in public because as everyone has pointed out: I laugh and cry a lot. It must be my medication or my family where every Christmas started with laughs and ended in tears. It's all the same! I have never come this close to rolling on the floor laughing my fucking ass off in public, while alone. Like a crazy homeless person.

Other things I need to touch on....will these be "Substantial" enough?

*My impressions of each of my blogher companions.

*What everyone has said about me, specifically Dooce because holy shit, no one has ever said anything about my smile. In fact in my entire life I've heard, "You don't smile enough." And guess what? It made me cry!

*My impressions of Koan, who has been absorbed into my psyche and doing so made me face my knee-jerk judgmentalism (I made that word up didn't I?).

*My thoughts on the marginalized mommy bloggers and the publisher woman who called us Whiny Bitches because what the hell! We were in the TIMES! Even though we were called neurotic hand wringers....whatever.

*I will also reveal what Alice said to the whole entire group in response to the woman who urged us to write something "important" and not just mommy blogs, which made me cry. (Surprise!)

*I'd also like it noted that during the day I collected, I am not kidding 8 drink tickets. My reputation is unfortunately well deserved. I gave away at least 3 of them though, one to a pregnant woman who begged at my feet for a water (a water was a full ticket?) as I debated another Sierra Nevada....but my guilt won out. (I didn't really make her beg at my feet. But I did make her beg. Dear Pregnant Lady, I'm really sorry I did that.)

This has been a great couple of weeks to be me. Thank you universe.

My Blogher Story.

Yesterday morning I was back in my life. My life which included cleaning the litter boxes because the basement stunk. How is it that my husband can't smell it. He also can't smell skunk so I'm not sure what I expect. Also, I hate repair people because they NEVER give me good news. This time the bad news is that our dishwasher is kaput. I spent almost an hour washing dishes. Damn you sippy cups! Damn you to hell!

However at noon we had a playgroup and it helped swallow up that odd feeling of let down you get after a really fun weekend. The playdate lasted from noon right through to dinner time when our husbands joined us for food and it was so nice. It was the perfect day to be surrounded by the friends I've come to love here.

I was thinking about this a lot over the weekend. Sometimes it's very hard to be yourself in Michigan. Diversity isn't exactly embraced. You can argue with me if you want but normal seems to be very important here (look how I laugh at those different than me like a close minded bitch) and it's been nice having Alice as a friend who lives in Brooklyn, where motherhood looks so different than how it looks here. And Mrs Kennedy who is older and wiser and also in California where just about anything goes. I'm lucky I've met them through the Mommy Blog phenomenon but I'm also so lucky my blob has let these women I know now in my real life in on who I am really and they like me anyway.

I've been attempting to write this all day. I didn't have time yesterday and I'm supposed to be getting back into the swing at Flogging Baby but I just can't seem to pull it together. I keep looking at Flickr and crying. Then I read others takes on the conference, and while they're all interesting, I really just came to meet Alice and Mrs Kennedy. Then JenB decided to come and Hey! There's Sweetney. And also there was Heather and it was emotional in a way I wasn't expecting to meet her. And Jesus christ, Maggie, I'd no idea what a fun person she was.

See and now my list is getting really long and I'm still missing people I met but really I wasn't there to learn about advanced tools (I have several of those in my regular life. Get it? I stole it from Sweetney). I wasn't there to find my voice in political blogging. I wasn't there to learn how to get naked, Alice taught me that in private. No no no...I already know how to be personal on my blog. In fact, my husband often wishes I would put more proverbial clothes on in this realm.

All I really wanted was to meet and spend sometime with these women I know on the internet. Spending time with those women brought up emotions in me (Read: I sobbed like a stupid crybaby) and I want to spend sometime talking about those things but I can't right now because my life is literally falling apart around me as I look at flickr photos and read and read and read.

I'm going to give you a recap of the weekend though because the next time I write this I want all of that out of my head.

Thank you so much Crouching Hamster for making this happen for me. I can not imagine how I would have survived seeing all these photos and all this fun and not being there. Soul crushing comes to mind. So, thank you again.

Too Tired

I should have podcasted my conversation with Logan, because now it's late and I have to jump back into my life tomorrow at full speed. Meeting my pals was so nice, even better than expected. Talking about certain issues was very emotional for me, I'll tell you more but it needs to be said: I seem to use tears to manipulate those around me. What an ass I am.

Before I go to sleep, on my way to California (in first class, where I sat on the flight attendants lap....just because I wanted to see if she'd do it) something horrifying happened. I sat next to a man who was traveling with his wife and daughter across the aisle from us. I was clearing out files and trashing old things when in my Suburbanbliss Design folder I saw something titled porn.jpg. I realize this was a little stupid on my part, but I wondered....did I create a new banner making fun of porn and I don't remember it? So I double clicked.

Right about that time my seat mate became intrigued with the laptop and wanted to see how it worked...and right as he began looking, there it was: A picture of women giving and receiving cunnilingus. It was a black and white shot and actually tasteful for porn. Thank God.....however.

I SHOWED A MAN A PICTURE OF WOMEN HAVING ORAL SEX WHILE ON A FIRST CLASS FLIGHT ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

Logan often changes my desktop from the very subdued pattern I have it set on to a "classy" porn shot just to annoy me. Why he stored the picture in my design folder is beyond me but holy fucking shit. I still can't believe I did that. I also can't believe how far my bloody mary went when I sprayed it all over. Jesus.

I promise more tomorrow. 8 hours of travel starting at 7am when I left Alice with really crazy hair standing straight up, has worn me out.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you for letting this happen to me. Here are my flickr shots to hold you over. I also favorited a bunch of others I found.

Leaving.

Were you aware that my 6am departure tomorrow morning is actually 3am California time.

Do you think the flight attendant in first class will spoon me if I ask?

I always love my kids so much more the night before I leave for a weekend away. How ironic.

More Black Beans!

Ha! I'm kidding. No more black beans for all of you. But in this house, we're not done yet. Black bean pasta. Mexican black beans, corn and potatoes (apparently putting cumin on anything makes it 'mexican'! Ole!).

Tonight we picked up Logan from the airport. For those of you counting, he's been gone for 9 days. Those days could have gone a hell of a lot worse but I hate when he's gone on the weekends, and two weekends alone with the kids was two too many. He was in Redondo Beach and also Manhattan Beach and he loved it. I wish he had a blog so he could tell you about it, but he doesn't, so too bad. When Logan got off the plane he was completely stifled by the suffocating heat of Michigan. It seems backwards doesn't it? That my husband comes from California, which I think of as pretty hot in July, only to say that he wishes he could go back. Further evidence that Michigan is trying to kill me.

By the time we got to the airport, my eyeball kept popping out of my skull everytime someone asked me a question. Another question. Another story. ((((POP))) I held my eyeball in my skull while watching the planes taking off realizing that in less than a week, I would be on this road, with both my eyeballs in my head, going on my own trip. Thank you Jesus (or Fairy Godmother.)

I didn't tell you this before because my life is a fairy tale right now and someone is going to shoot me because I'm so ridiculously lucky but on Friday I'll be flying first class to Blogher. I'm flying first class thanks to my Fairy Godmother and also because the only award travel left was first class. I never wanted fly first class because I didn't want to know what it was like behind that little curtain they pull closed. Do they all sit around and laugh at the steerage behind them? Do they laugh over drinks? Because I'm willing to laugh at the steerage for drinks.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to Blogher and I'm looking forward to California but honestly I have dreams of my flight from Michigan to California. In my dreams I'm wrapped in a down comforter and it's just cold enough it feels good to curl up and I snooze. This is what my dreams are, I dream of sleeping on an airplane.

This is going to be the best week of the summer by far. Because tomorrow I drop my kids off at Vacation Bible School/Satanic Day Camp for 3 hours. Yes, yes, I know. Satanic Day Camp? You're thinking, 'That just doesn't seem like a good idea.'

But no, it is. All summer I've been waiting for this and I don't care if my kids learn about Jesus or the Dark Prince. If I get four days of freedom from nine to noon, teach them whatever the hell you want. Judge if you want but I figure one week of Satanism never hurt anyone.

I'd like to tell you that yes, the content here will improve with the children away but Blogging Baby beckons me. You know how you could help me? Is there something you think is missing from Blogging Baby? Do you have a tip or a scoop or something you'd like to read there? I would absolutely love to hear about it.

Call me okay? Except I hate the phone! So just email it! melissasummers_at_wowway_dot_com

I almost forgot the most important part: What the hell do I wear to Blogher? I can't believe there hasn't been a post at the Official Site discussing clothing choices. Are we women?

I know this is so horrible to even bring up and every single person I know in this world reads this website at this point but can we all start praying my period starts early because otherwise it's starting at Blogher and I know that is the ultimate in 'femaleness' (my friend Leslie, a former teacher, remarked on how often I make up words on this website....there's another one!) but please save me from that.

Since I said that horrible thing, let's also just get this out in the open. I know I appear to be a certain way on this blob. I swear a lot and I say inappropriate things or "bordering on outrageous" (what the hell does that mean?) things. But in my regular life people generally think a few things about me.

"What a bitch. She doesn't even make eye contact with me."

or

"I guess she doesn't like me because she isn't talking to me."

or

"That whore ruined my family!"

or (on the phone)

"Wow, she must be busy with something because she barely talked to me just now."

I am feeling a lot of pressure to be witty and foul mouthed in California this weekend. I am neither particularly foul mouthed or witty in person.

Also, my Ass. He's very talkative and imposing and he may offend everyone I meet.

Now, I need to go to bed with my husband who is home after 9 days. When he left we had thoroughly masculine bedding and now, it's Candy Striper!

The Blogher Black Bean Diet

As we all know, I'm going to Blogher to deliver my patented Awkward Hugs™.

As we all also know, money is the bane of my existence. Since I am going to Blogher even though my family can barely make it through each month, I'm attempting to save our food budget this month so that I can enjoy myself in California.

The food budget is helped quite a bit by Logan's ever extending trip to California. The children barely eat anything but fresh fruit and Trader Joe's fruit leathers. I've been eating black beans. A lot of black beans. Which is our unfortunate approach to budget crisis. March of this year involved a LOT of black beans.

You're asking yourself, "How does one prepare a plethora of meals out of black beans?"

I'm answering, "Well, I'm desperate for content. Here you go!"