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To promote and support the books, articles, appearances and other stuff of a bunch of writer mamas; featuring a group blog by Ann Douglas, Gayle Brandeis, Katie Allison Granju, Dawn Friedman, Ayun Halliday, Ericka Lutz, Lynn Siprelle and many more.
Tonight is potluckI’m the host so I ought to be sweeping instead of taking time out from work to update this but instead I’m updating this. Name, rank and serial number are all my son is going to divulge on thisMy latest Babble blog post is about how different each of my three eldest offspring are with regard to being willing to talk about their potential romantic interests with me: If I hadn’t already mothered my way through the teenage years with one kid who would clearly endure waterboarding before telling me whether he has any [...] This is what getting home from the hospital looks likeLeft to Right: Me, C, E and J – all asleep together a few hours after I got home from the hospital last evening. mamapundit You aren’t imaginging thingsI mean you might be but if you clicked in here to comment on a post that showed up your feedreader and found the post gone, you’re not imagining things because I removed the post. Immunitas AutopilotasLately, I’ve been working really hard. And I’ve had a lot of stiffness and soreness in my neck and upper shoulders that I had been attributing to working at my computer too much. I found myself clutching at my neck and shoulder muscles a lot lately, massaging them involuntarily and trying to get some relief [...] It was 18 years ago today…October 7, 1991 was the day that changed my life more radically than any day before or since; that was the day I became a mother, giving birth to a tiny, fuzzy-headed baby boy who was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen. The book that changed my life (long)When I was working at the shelter, I went through training with the Oregon State Extension Services to teach parenting classes. See, if I agreed to volunteer to teach them at rec centers then I could take the classes for free, which was a good thing because the shelter didn’t really have a budget for [...] My hospital layoverNo blogging from me in recent days – either here or over at my Babble blog – because I’ve been hospitalized (still am) with some medical condition that has yet to be determined but that could be related to my thyroid, my blood, my lymphatic system, and/or some kind of nasty virus. (Not) Creating Crisis(I’m at a meeting for work where I don’t have to be listening but I have to be here so I am cheerfully bored — thus the double updates.) Feeling feelingsMy kids have a lot of feelings about things and their feelings about things aren’t always easy. What’s more, I’ve been telling them since before they could talk that their feelings matter, that they have a right to share them and that I will (try to) listen. (Sometimes this is prevented by the need to, [...] If I were David Letterman’s publicist….I must say that I am not really getting the PR strategy behind having David Letterman announce the specific, wildly distasteful details of the whole extortion/infidelity thing DURING his show. What’s the big idea?Lately, 26 month old C has taken to exclaiming randomly, and with great gusto, “I have an idea!!!!” Social Media + Amber Alert: help find baby taken in violent kidnappingAn Amber Alert has just been issued in Tennessee and across the region after the violent kidnapping of a Nashville newborn. The details are particularly disturbing. A woman posing as an immigration official came to a Hispanic woman’s home and demanded that she hand over her baby. When the new mother refused, the kidnapper stabbed [...] Hubris gets a much-needed takedownME (rather dramatically explaining my urgent need to get better organized and improve my project planning/documentation processes in light of exploding workload from -YaY!- lots of new agency business): “If I suddenly dropped dead tomorrow, I’m afraid no one would know where to pick up my projects where I left off ,or figure what needs [...] First fall weather makes me dream of Seventeen Magazine’s 1983 Back to School IssueTonight feels like fall, and when I was a teenager – between the ages of about 13 and 17 – that first hint of fall weather meant only one thing: the arrival of the much-anticipated Seventeen Magazine Back to School Issue. The magazine, which would land in our rural Tennessee mailbox each September, was a [...] Blog Fix FinishedI hadn't realized, until today, that I needed to do a few extra things to make Google happy after I switched a few of my blogs over to one of the Typepad Advanced Templates. I noticed recently that every entry for my blog was showing up under the root URL (not too helpful if the entry in question was very old). As if anyone was going to scroll back through countless entries until they found the entry in question.... I recently followed the instructions above for One Woman. One Blog. and that took care of the problem quite nicely. (Maybe that will even solve some of the difficulties my blogs have had in showing up at Technorati.) Every once in a while I try to trouble-shoot these technical issues on my own blogs. Then I get busy again and move on. Good thing there are technical gurus who troubleshoot these issues on my blogs at ParentCentral and Yahoo Canada Lifestyle, or you'd never be able to find anything I write.... A niece! I has one!
Lookee! A baby!
My sister-in-law Katie gave birth to her this morning at 3:21 am, no weight or height released at this time.
Why you should never, ever ask us for photos
One of our relatives asked us for family photos for a class project. Ben, Ben, Ben. You should know never to ask for stuff like that: ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() <!--break-->
A Postcard from Cottage CountryToday was a frustrating day. Everything I wanted/needed to do on my computer really required a high-speed Internet connection -- and such a connection simply isn't to be had here at the cottage. My options are dial-up or an Internet stick (core network, two bars). I'm trying to keep a sense of humor about the situation by selling myself on the so-called benefits of slow-speed Internet.
Sometimes my sense of humor goes AWOL, along with my Internet connection. The chipmunk-powered connection can only handle so much. So now I'm trying a new approach. I'm reminding myself that I can "have it all" -- just not necessarily all at once. At least not in this part of Ontario quite yet. I can have gorgeous surroundings and a break from my regular routine -- or I can have a high-speed Internet connection. For now, I'm going to enjoy cottagey things. The Internet can wait. A Soulful Post About Mommybloggers and ColicWhile I was doing all kinds of searches related to mothers and blogging and mommyblogs and mommybloggers and motherhood -- and all kinds of similar word combos today* -- I stumbled across this web post from 2007 (eons ago in the life of the Internet, I'm sure you'll agree). Normally I wouldn't even bother to mention it, but I found it fascinating because it was so hostile. I'd forgotten how nasty some of the mommyblogger smackdowns from this era were. (Of course, as Mom-101's most recent posts have indicated, there are still a lot of folks who consider mommybloggers to be swagmeisters, recipe swappers, or far worse.) Anyway, in this post, the blogger has issues with mommybloggers in general as well as me in particular. (You'll find out why in a moment.) She's a mother herself -- but she's quick to point out that she'd never blog about her child. She writes:
POSTSCRIPT There's an interesting postscript to this story. Just out of curiosity, I decided to check out some more recent posts to see what the blogger was up to today. Does she have the same views about mommybloggers as she did back in 2007? Maybe, maybe not. I can't tell whether she's reading any mommybloggers, but her baby has his own blog. * I wrote four posts related to motherhood today. Two of them are live (this one and this one); and two over at Yahoo! Canada are waiting to go live. Mom 2.0: Meet the Mommyblogger: An Overview of My Essay in Mothering and Blogging: The Radical Act of the MommyBlogMy essay "Mom 2.0: Meet the Mommyblogger" appears
"Moms have always been generous about sharing their wisdom "Horizontal violence* between mothers online is the result of Perhaps the most important conclusion that web-savvy mothers must keep in mind is that horizontal violence will become less of a problem when the status of mothers and women is improved both online and in the real world. Until this happens, it's imortant for mothers to acknowledge its existence and to work towards collective solutions. In "Horizontal Violence in the Workplace," Carolyn Hastie recommends a series of strategies that appear to be just as practical and relevant to the world of mothers: recognizing and acknowledging that horizontal violence occurs between mothers and using the term 'horizontal violence' to name the problem; raising awareness of this issue and addressing teh cultural issues that allow horizontal violence to continue to be a problem between mothers and women; speaking out against instances of horizontal violence whenever they occur; addressing individual attitudes and behaviors; and practicing self-nurturing and self-care so that each woman ins able to 'do the things that help [her] to be healthy and happy in all aspects of [her] human-ness.' Once she applies that age-old common sense to dealing with a View the full Table of Contents for the book. *Note: The term horizontal violence is used when members of Related: Mom-101: The Year that Shame Died: Mom-101 writes: "Much to my surprise however, what turned out to be the problem at Mom-101: Blog With Integrity: We're Taking Our Community Back: Mom-101 writes: "We've put together Blog with Integrity, a voluntary pledge, complete with blog badge, Mom-101: Yep, I'm a Mother. Got a Problem With That?: Mom-101 Back to School Guide: A Parent's Guide to Surviving the Season of Shopping for Hot Gadgets, Cool Clothes, and School SuppliesThe back to school countdown is officially on.
Hey, moms and dads, it's back to school time again -- that crazy time of year when you might as well just camp (Forget Here are some tips on surviving back-to-school time as a family.
Get your kids back on a school-year sleeping routine before it's time to head back to school. Otherwise, your kids will end up suffering from what back-to-school Establish the shopping ground rules before you hit the mall. Your Keep your schedule as free as possible during the first week back at school. Not only will you want to leave time in your schedule to squeeze in Keep things simple on the mealtime front. You have enough other things on your plate without having to worry Take time for yourself. It's easy to spend the entire month of September running around at breakneck speed, picking up school supplies, Set some goals for yourself as a parent. While your kids are busy setting some school-year goals for Ann Douglas is the author of The Mother of All Parenting Books, The Mother of All Pregnancy Books and numerous other books about pregnancy and parenting. She is frequently featured in the print and broadcast media. Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009. Self-Improvement Blogs, Parenting Blogs, and Twitter
In other blog news, I'm blogging daily over at ParentCentral.ca this summer. I'm offering tips to help you have your best summer ever with your family. You can dive in any time and catch up on the tips that have you've missed. I'm also continuing to blog weekly over at Yahoo! Canada. You never know what I'm going to post about over there. It's as much as a surprise to me as it is to you. (I pick my topics at the last minute.) In between blog posts, you can catch up with me on Twitter: @themotherofall (parenting news), @anndouglas (misc everything), @litmags (small and literary magazines), @bookpubs (book publishers), @writers2follow (writers to follow). Photo Credit: Ann Douglas, 2009. Welcome back to The New Homemaker
One of my other projects that absorbed too much of my time is now out of the way, I've finished the upgrade on the site (almost--couple of stragglers), and it's all purty again. How you like? If you catch any bugs or problems, please let me know. In the meantime, now that this is my main blog, I hope to be spending more time with you for reals.
Louisa Is 8!
If you can believe it, my youngest girl is eight. Some of you have been following this site since before she was born, and now she's eight. Louisa is increasingly delightful. She has just admitted she can read, though she still prefers to pretend she cannot. Her smile is snaggle-toothed; she has lost many teeth, and one of her top front teeth is all the way in while the other is still working its way down. I call her Fang. She is all arms and legs, one of those skinny kids who can't hold still but who caper around the house very much like baby goats. She keeps her hair pixie-short, in what she calls a "boy cut." If it weren't for all the sparkly pink she wears, she'd be mistaken for a boy much more often than she is, even though her face is truly feminine--little pointed chin, slightly pointed ears. I'm surprised she isn't mistaken for an elf rather than a boy. The short hair emphasizes her enormous eyes, which shift between gray, green and, rarely, blue. She is truly a beautiful girl, even with the milk mustache she occasionally sports. Lou has recently discovered the joy of bad jokes that hits all of us some time between the ages of 7 and 9, and lobs them at us as often as she finds them. (Current favorite: What state has the most pencils? Pencil-vania! Get it, mom? Pencil-vania!!) She is cheerful, easily frustrated, loving, kind, impulsive and altogether a darling handful. I wouldn't trade any of the last eight years with her for anything.
What's going on with Lynn?
Hey, guys. I'm sure a few of you are wondering, what the heck's going on with Lynn? A few things. I've been working on a non-TNH project under my pen name. That's taken a lot of my time, but creatively it has been incredibly satisfying. Some time soon I hope to tell you about it in more detail. We also completed the sale of our lot, and had to clean it out and get some of our home improvement projects underway (starting with paying off all of our debt including the mortgage). I miss my chickens but other than that? No regrets. And I've recently been diagnosed with bipolar II. This is not the kind where they find you naked at midnight painting the intersection in a glorious mandala (though that does sound fun). This is the kind where you're hyper-creative or just plain hyper, followed by a bout of real depression. I've been operating under the assumption that I've been chronically depressed for 35 years off and on, but psychiatric research is showing that people with the pattern of depression I have are actually suffering from a less-dramatic form of bipolar than the classic "manic-depression" we all see on the teevee machine. What this has meant for TNH is, I've been grappling with the diagnosis, the last serious bout of depression, and now, new medication that has turned my brain to mush. They promise me that once I stabilize I'll feel a lot better than I did before I went on it, and I see flickers of that. Looking back over my life, I definitely see the hypomanic periods (the up-cycles of bipolar). This diagnosis explains a great deal of my past behavior in ways that a simple diagnosis of depression did not. I'm grateful for it. Anyway, as you've probably seen, I'm still working on putting the site back together. I'm working on about five sites whose software has been woefully let to lapse, and bringing them up to current standards has been a pain. But it's been a worthwhile pain. Three of them are client sites (the Hipmama family of sites) and two of them are mine--this one and Oregon Media Insiders. I'm not done yet, but it's coming along. Thanks for your patience, the few of you who still read this site to read me.
Use Your Super Powers: A North House Workshop for Girls Featuring Ann Douglas
You can download copies of this poster to share with a friend or to post at your workplace or local library. Please note that enrollment is limited to 24 girls and the VIFs (very influential females) in their lives, so please sign up early to avoid disappointment. Getting Started on Twitter
This mini-guide to getting started on Twitter (.pdf - single page) might help to answer some of your questions about what Twitter has to offer. If you're a parent, you may also want to read this blog post I wrote recently wrote for ParentCentral.ca which talks about how parents are using Twitter. So what's your take on Twitter? Is it overrated? Amazing? Somewhere in between? What do you use it for? It's Hip to Be EthicalBabble.com has been making a splash ever since it launched its self-described website for hipster parents. But it has attracted its fair share of controversy for veering from the ethical path in a rather nasty way, one that was disrepectful to both parents and members of the creative community. That led to a nasty backlash by members of the Babble community, proving that as much as parents want their websites to be hip, they also want them to be ethical. As Upcoming Literacy Day Presentation in Peterborough, Ontario: "Books Run in My Family"This will be a bit of a hike for anyone living beyond Peterborough or the GTA, but I wanted to extend a personal invitation nonetheless. You just never know who is going to be passing through a particular part of the province on any given weekend.)
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MamasInk are a bunch of writers who are also mamas. We quite often take motherhood as our subject matter, but not always. We're blogging as a group to support each other in our adventures in writing. |
