A few reflections

I've never flown cross-country during daylight hours before, so I was surprised to see just how many farms are circular! Is it for water-saving reasons? It was so interesting to see the farmlands, which I always imaged to look like patchwork squares, polkadotted instead!

People in Chicago are really nice. Like surprisingly so. For example, one day, my mom was lost under Wacker Street (which has two levels) and couldn't figure out how to get back to the hotel. She has an excellent sense of direction, but seriously, the place is balls-out crazy in terms of layout. Anyway, a man didn't just give her directions -- he led her to an elevator, through a parking lot, through a plaza, and directly to the service elevator on the bottom floor of the Sheraton. Another day, two men saw us looking at the El tracks and immediately asked us if we needed help. One then walked us about a block and a half to the visitors' center so we could get directions. When we were on the train, yet another man overheard us discussing where to get off and called CTA for us and handed us the phone. We ended up using his phone twice! And I know it's weird to add this information, but all these people (and those in a few more stories I left out) were African-American. I rarely need help here at home (although I can remember a couple years ago when I got a flat tire and several people stopped to help), so I guess I don't know whether Sacramentans are that helpful, but I really was pleased to find my "people are basically good" theory holding up. Thanks, Chicago.

There were two big issues at BlogHer this year. One was basically marketing/money. It seems like a lot of bloggers seem to think that mommybloggers all rake in the cash and product samples, and the non-mommybloggers want a piece of the action. Here's what I think: If you want to make money, go ahead and be proactive about it. Write companies and offer to review their junk. As a reader, I don't really pay attention to product endorsements, so it doesn't affect me. On the other hand, being jealous and petty is really fucked up of you, and I don't particularly appreciate the implication on the part of non-mommybloggers that mommybloggers write about nothing but diapers (seriously, I TWICE heard a personal blogger say "just because I don't write about diapers...").

Further on that topic, I feel a little icky that so many of the companies represented had us stereotyped -- Ragu, Swiffer, Walmart, All, Bounce -- I mean, am I little more than a clean-bot looking for frugal meal ideas? I know there were some technical companies and a car company there too, but fewer, I expect, than at a non-female-oriented blog conference. Someone else said we should essentially be empowered that they see what a huge market we are and want our money. I guess I just don't see empowerment in the same way. Go to a men's conference to sell Swiffers and maybe I'll change my mind.

The other big brouhaha was over male bloggers, their presence in general, and their choice (two of them, anyway) to wear sexist "joke" shirts around the conference. First of all, I think if male bloggers want to come, they should be welcome. But the sexist shirts were a dick move, and despite the buttloads of female bloggers jumping in to say "but those guys aren't REALLY like that -- they're sweet wonderful marshmallows!", it's still a dick move and they ought to own up to it. Great, wonderful people make mistakes, too, but they usually admit it and apologize. Either that or wear your KKK shirt to the next NAACP meeting and see how fucking funny everybody thinks that is.

So... blogging. I don't know exactly why I blog. It's a combination of a few things, I guess. I've always sorted my feelings out better in writing than I do out loud. I also just like to write, even though I know I'm not a great writer. I'm a serviceable writer. I also like to be able to keep everyone in the loop as to what's going on in my life. I started blogging in about 1998, before there were really blogs. I made a web site to chronicle my concert-going, and I called it "Your Mama's Scene Zine" because I thought of it as an online zine. I quit that after a while because I was teaching and too busy to really go out much. But in 2004 I started a blog here on Blogger when my husband (then my boyfriend) had an active political blog. For five years I've been chronicling my life here, and the archives include trips to New York, the Virgin Islands, and Hawaii, as well as throughout California and Oregon. I got engaged, married, dealt with problems getting pregnant, got pregnant, had a beautiful baby in a difficult birth, lost people I loved, bought a new house, lost weight, gained weight, and did lots and lots of mundane things in between. Now I mostly write about my beautiful daughter, which makes me a mommy blogger, but I still think of myself as a life- or personal- blogger, mainly because this is still my life. It's just changed. I hope you enjoy reading about it -- even the mundane stuff. I'll keep writing it because I do like to write. I can't think of a better reason.

And finally, we went to the doctor today. Zadie is above average in height and weight. At 18 months, they are expected to know between 7 and 10 words, and Zadie probably knows hundreds now. She told the doctor we'd been in Chicago, and said money, broccoli, Hi doctor, Boone, Iowa, shoe, and many other words. The doctor told me it was obvious we had been working with her, and she was way ahead of schedule verbally. Then Zadie licked the garbage can. Three times.