LizaWasHere

2010 Is About Love

Every year since 2004, we've created a "possibility for the year" rather than more traditional New Year's Resolutions. I always start thinking about it all around my birthday.

2009 was the possibility of thriving -- it didn't go so well. We had so much chaos and change and living apart, we probably should be congratulating ourselves on everyone still being alive and together as a family.

2008 was the possibility of "Unprecedented Results: Mach II." I will be more specific in the future -- 2008 was certainly unprecedented! I wanted to move back to Milwaukee and to have a healthy baby, but I certainly didn't want to be laid off while 7.5 months pregnant!

I won't detail all of the possibilities, but the point is that when we stayed mindful about the possibility over the course of the year, we produced results. And as an exercise, I like it.

So: 2010 is all about love.

Remembering our love for one another, loving our children, creating a life we love, causing the other to love her life, loving our work, families, and friends. Love.

In order to stay present to love, I'm going to revive my practice of twittering things that I am grateful to every day -- if you want to read them, follow me on Twitter! 

And in other news...

Over on the review site, I have a more detailed THANK YOU to PBS Sprout for the bag of Band of Bloggers goodies -- including a Flip video recorder!

What a Month

This has been a crazy month, one of the most chaotic and exciting I can remember. In no particular order:

• Josie was sick with an evil, nasty coughing whiny illness. Home from day care for days and days. Clingy like you would not believe.
• In the middle of all that, she started taking independent steps. I don't know that you can really all it "walking" but she can definitely manage 2 steps in her intended direction before falling on her behind. And the expression on her face when she manages to stand up all by herself without holding anything? PRIDE!!!
• I had a surprise visitor -- a dear friend whom I haven't seen in roughly 10 years. Kathy is the mom of my childhood best friend, Katie, and although her visit to the midwest was too short, it was amazing to catch up, to hear how Katie spent her Major Birthday earlier this year, and just to see Kathy.
• I was interviewed by the amazing women of Blog Talk Radio's The Publishing Insiders, on the subject of the new FTC Guides for bloggers and the advertisers and companies who work with them -- specifically, we talked about book bloggers and the book publishing/marketing industry. You can listen to the podcast. I was also interviewed by the ABA Journal for a forthcoming article that I will tell you all about when it gets published.
• Jill found out she's getting a nice raise. Which is always appreciated, and in my humble and unbiased opinion, more than deserved!
• Noah and Josie were totally overwhelmed and delighted by seeing The Wiggles live -- and in great seats. Thank you, PBS Sprout! A review will be forthcoming.
• I did a speed visit to Madison to purchase a ton of children's books for our school library. It was amazing! This week, our school is holding their book fair, so I've been drowning in children's books. This makes me very happy.
• Noah and I checked out a new church, which was waaaaaay too small for us. But the people were nice, and I have to admit, I enjoyed spending a nice long Lutheran service with Noah in my lap, being sweet and affectionate. (Even if he did refuse to look at The Little Golden Book About God, because it looked like "a girl book.")
• I made delicious and super-easy beer bread. But the first try was sort of a disaster. By which I mean that burning butter lead to clouds of horrible smoke emitting from the stove leads to the fire department showing up at the house. I cut down on the butter when I tried again.

Hey! I'm Speaking at BlogHer 2009

I'm speaking at BlogHer! I'm going to be on a Room of Your Own panel, Friday 10:30-11:45am. Here's the description of the panel:

Room of Your Own 2: Blogqueers - LGBTQ BloggersQueer bloggers are in every corner of the blogosphere. Sometimes, but not always, their identities bring many issues to their blogging because they write and live through the lens of being queer. Their community is made up of mommybloggers, lifebloggers, craft bloggers, garden bloggers, foodies, business and marketing SMS pros, political pundits, infertility bloggers, literary bloggers, special topic bloggers and bloggers who feel that they don't fit into any niche.

So let's discuss some of the things that come up when blogging, such as: What is the state of the LBGTQ community? Does it meet your needs? Do you feel accepted by straight bloggers in your niche? Do you feel safe enough to blog out of the closet? Have you experienced backlash, and if so what has helped you respond to it? How have you dealt with your partners' and friends' thirst for privacy? And perhaps most importantly, what support do you need to continue blogging with your fullest passion and truest voice? Join Kathryn Martini, Stacy Jill Jacobs and Liza Barry-Kessler as they discuss with you the answers to these questions.

Unfortunately, that's the same time slot as the "MommyBlogging: Have you found your tribe?" session, which includes my friend Bri. But since Kathryn, Stacy, and I are all moms, perhaps our "tribe" will be having a similar discussion as we talk about being out, or not, in your blog. [Ed: Stacy is not a mom. Yet. Whew. I was afraid our panel might be a tad homogeneous. Heh. Pun intended.] And opposite the awesome Paula, who will be talking about bloggers in a post-employee world. Plus, everyone should do as much of The Op-Ed Project with Katie Orenstein track as humanly possible. The Op-Ed Project is great for your writing, your confidence, and all of us collectively changing the world.

Um. Yeah. This conference is going to be amazing! I just wish I could go to all of the sessions. That's all 6 at a time for 2 days. Last time I went, I had a spreadsheet with my top 2 choices for each time slot...and I suspect it's going to be even harder this time.

I Won Something!

The advantage of the fact that I've been pretty much unemployed for the last 6 months -- and am only partially employed even now -- is that SOMETIMES I can answer email really fast.

Other times, I go days without being able to pick up the computer.

Now that I mention it, maybe there is no advantage.

There was one day when there was an advantage to being unemployed, and I was online when an email arrived: the April 22, 2009 "BlogHer Conference News" message.

It contained a contest:

Guess the Keynote Speaker!

In addition to the Community Keynote on Friday night, BlogHer '09 will feature a panel of media gurus on Saturday the 25th. We haven't announced them yet, pending a public press release, but we thought it would be fun to have a little contest to Guess the Keynoter. Whoever guesses correctly first gets an extra drink ticket for Saturday night's cocktail party!  Read on for your hints...

 
Keynoter #1:

Keynoter #1 is the creator behind a very popular cable series that just had its last season. She'll be talking about how she plans to continue to feed her hungry audience the kind of programming they rarely get to see, and how going online may be just the way to do it.

Well, I was the fastest lesbian reading her email at the time. I know this, because I can pretty much guarantee that 98% of US blogging lesbians knew the answer instantly: Ilene Chaiken, creator of The L Word and OurChart.com.

I won! I responded in 3 minutes, including checking the spelling on Ms. Chaiken's name.

Of course, I am the world drinking lightweight, so an extra drink ticket is the last thing I need. Maybe I'll have a contest giveaway for it here. What kind of contest should I have?

All of the keynotes were FINALLY announced, and while they look like a fantastic group, I am secretly just as excited that of the 5 "regular program" bloggers also in the big press announcement, one is my friend and a speaker I recommended to BlogHer, Anne Collier. Anne is the longtime editor of NetFamilyNews, and the newly appointed co-chair of the Obama administration's Online Safety & Technology Working Group. (Among her many other impressive accomplishments.)

Another advantage to less than FT employment: sick child care is easy. Noah seems to have some sort of little viral thing that gave time a spiking temp and intermittent listlessness today. School sent him home just before lunch, poor little guy. We spent the afternoon watching Cars and playing racecars. Fortunately, Josie doesn't seem to have caught it, knock on wood.

Ugly Broken Blog

My blog has been ugly and broken for 3 weeks or so now. I don't know why. I still haven't found a nice quiet span of 2 or 3 hours where I can try to fix it on the phone with tech support. I think I'm not technological enough to be a Wordpress separately hosted blogger. My setup assumes a greater level of technological skill than I have. I picked it because it was cheap, flexible, and seemed cool. But the challenges are significant. I'm thinking of going back to Typepad. They'd be a more expensive option, but I think I could get a tolerable plug-n-play option that would still let me keep my vanity domain. If I stay with Wordpress, I need someone who can help me upgrade to a new template that looks a zillion times better than this, and hopefully at least fresher and newer than the template that mysteriously disappeared. This one, BTW, is the default template that I made minor customizations to when I first moved the blog over here almost 3 years ago. I don't know how it reverted. I might want a new hosting service too. I suspect that something happened on BlueHost's end that made my blog spontaneously revert to super ugly. I am looking for recommendations/opinions/advice. Priorities are:

• Easy to use
• Attractive end result
• Cheap
• Customizable

Also great would be someone who can read my mind and just make everything work and look nice and not make my head explode. Speaking of which, time to go pick up the kids.

The 2008 Weblog Awards

Guess what! Three of my favorite bloggers are finalists for the 2008 Weblog Awards! Please go vote for them. You can vote once/day until January 13.

• Mel from Stirrup Queens is a finalist in the Best Medical/Health Issues category. Stirrup Queens & Sperm Palace Jesters is a kind, comprehensive, welcoming, and informative blog/community for infertility blogs and bloggers -- and for my now-local readers, author Mel is also a Badger alum!
• Dana from Mombian is a finalist in the Best Large Blog category. First, I think it's so cool that Mombian is big enough to make it into that category. But more importantly, Dana is quick with all the global GLBT news, consumer issues, and insanely creative real life projects.
• In the Parenting category, hilarious GLBT ally and notorious poop-blogger, Looky Daddy is a finalist. If you have preschool children or twins of any age, and you aren't already reading Looky Daddy, I feel badly that I haven't annoyed with my fangirl geekiness already.

Go vote for them. Today, tomorrow, and every day until 1/13. They're awesome bloggers and they totally deserve to win.

Apparently, I Kick Ass. I'm Not Alone.

According to the incredibly awesome Mrs. Stacy Squirrel, I am a kick ass blogger, deserving of an award:

I think that's pretty cool! Especially since today didn't really feel like a kick ass day. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that it felt like a day that kicked my ass. I didn't manage to fall asleep until about 2 am. Noah woke up at 5, but mercifully went back to sleep. Unfortunately, I didn't. Then one of the people at Starbucks gave me a hard time about my caffeinated beverage. Um? And your medical degree is in what exactly? And I hired you to be what kind of health care provider for my pregnancy? Is this cuppa covered by my insurance? (Honestly, for that one I blame his manager, who gave me an even harder time once when I was about this pregnant with Noah. Jackass.) On the elevator up to my office, someone asked me if I was having twins.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Never, EVER, EVER ask a pregnant woman if she is having twins. If she is and she cares one iota what you think, she will tell you. If she is not, and she probably is not, you have just called her a fat cow. I am pretty sure there is not a woman in the United States who appreciates that.

If you mistakenly ask, do not follow up the negative answer with any variation of "Are you sure?"

My back is killing me. Jill is in a move panic nesting frenzy and has given away half the crap in our garage. This is +90% good, but for some reason we can't seem to get her signed up for Freecycle, which means that my personal email has been peppered with inquiries about foam pads, guitars, vases, etc. For some reason, though, the thing that most made today feel like it kicked my ass is that I found out my favorite pump, the one I recommend to everyone, has gotten a "POOR" rating from the Z Report on BPA in Children's Feeding Products . And the one I don't like, that's twice as expensive, got a top rating. (I was stalking web sale sites to follow prices, with the optimistic hope that I'll be returning to work while still nursing Esmerelda Freugenspeigel when I thought to check.) Naturally that was the day AFTER my recommendation was included as part of my Deep South Moms blog post, so I had to beg someone to edit the post to mention it. After a day like that, it's really nice to hear that someone thinks I'm kicking ass. And just to add to the love, one of the rules of this Kick Ass Blogger award is that I'm supposed to award this 5 other people. Although I have no small golden statuette to hand off, I say the awards go to: LesbianDad, for her always thought-provoking posts on parenthood, gender, family, and community, and her amazing photography skills. And for single-handedly keeping LesbianFamily.org alive. Looky, Daddy!, for writing more humorous posts about poop than any one parent should be able to write, and for being a witty advocate for marriage equality. Would that more married, heterosexual Dads be so sensible. Hola, Isabel, for her compassionate and honest posts about family and faith, and for her hilarious pictures with everyone else's eyes blacked out. Jen and Cait at Addition Problems, for consistently sharing their knowledge, ideas, frustrations, successes, creativity, and breakdowns in the wild world of infertility, pregnancy loss, and parenthood. Mel of Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters, the exciting new site Bridges, and innumerable other cool internet projects. Building supportive connections around emotionally charged issues seems to be a calling for her. And she has as much energy and drive as approximately any 4 other bloggers I know. Blogger friends, all of you Kick Ass. Thank you and keep up the good work.

Oh Where, Oh Where, Did My Little Blog Go?

My blog was temporarily eaten by evil blog fairies. Or maybe something happened in a terrible fit of blogtaneous blogbustion. Email from my host provider also apparently looks like spam. In any event, 2 phone calls to tech support, several comments from you my readers, and somewhere between 24 and 48 hours later, I'm back, hopefully safe and sound. I am happy to report that significant progress happened this weekend. From the must do list, I cleaned out space for the bassinet, found and cleaned the bassinet, and put it together where it belongs until Esmerelda Freugenspeigel outgrows it. I also found the abdominal band support doohickey and washed it. From the need to do list, I packed 6 boxes of books we're keeping but that I can live without for at least 6 months, and 4 smaller boxes of books to donate. One went to the book drive at the Dream game yesterday, one will be going to Jen, and two are getting posted to freecycle. It occurs to me, beloved readers, that while a lot of you who know us in real life know why book packing is on the need to do list, most of you probably don't think of that as a critical pre-baby activity. We've decided to move. Moving closer to family has been on our list of things we'd like to do for awhile now. It zipped up the list in the first few months after Noah was born, and we had some vague intentions around getting serious about it during 2009. And then the layoff happened. As I contemplated looking for a new job here, two things became even more clear to me. First, the idea of committing myself to living and working here for a minimum of 2-3 more years gave me an upset stomach. And second, I'd need to get another really good job here for us to afford our mortgage. Certainly there are people and things we will miss very much. But the idea of being close to Grandma and Grandpa and some of the extended family holds a lot of appeal. Many of the friends I have in Milwaukee have been friends for 20 years or more. Even for Jill, starting over there isn't quite as awful as the idea of starting over somewhere else, although the idea of starting over at all is seriously stressful to her. So the plan is this: * Work on getting the house ready to go on the market * Have Esmerelda Freugenspeigel * Jill adopts Esmerelda Freugenspeigel * Sell house * Semi-simultaneously, look for work in Milwaukee/see if Jill's job will transfer * Move to Milwaukee Ideally, all of this happens in 2008, before my severance package runs out. But I was talking about this weekend. Saturday, both of us worked like crazy. Unfortunately, the main areas where we worked now have that horrible look where you're packing and you know you've made huge progress, but right now it looks more chaotic and disorganized than ever. Sunday, Jill took Noah to the playground to wear him out in the morning, while I cleaned and tidied. In the afternoon, Noah and I napped while Jill went to the Dream game on time. When Noah and I woke up, we joined Jill for the last quarter of the game, and the ice cream social & autograph session for season ticketholders after the game. Many entertaining pictures (and 2 video clips) are up on Flickr. These are my favorites: At 4 am, Jill woke up violently ill. Ironically, it was the weekend when I was 34 weeks pregnant with Noah that Jill spent the night at the Duke University Hospital ER. Guess how many weeks pregnant I will be tomorrow? We are both hoping that this was a stress induced reaction. Last time they were not able to make a positive diagnosis, only that she was not having a heart attack after all. At 6 am, Mr Loves Buttons on Electronic Devices' alarm clock went off, loudly in between radio stations. Fortunately I talked him into going back to sleep. But it's now 6:52 am and time for me to get dressed and go to work.

I'm a Poet and You Didn't Even Know It

Last year, I didn't enter Looky, Daddy's Haiku contest, but the finalists made me laugh hard enough to snarf coffee. This year, I got inspired to join the party -- and my entry was selected by an actual published poet, Claudia Carlson, bribed by Looky, Daddy to be the judge, as one of the 10 finalists. So, wouldja go vote for me? Here's my 2 stanza haiku:

Approaching Two Do you want some cheese? No! Some apple juice instead? No! No! No! No! No! Cheese? Cheese? Cheese? Door? Cheese? Can you say please? Peez. Tanku. Mommy! Mommy! Kiss!

And when you're done, go vote in the 2007 Weblog Awards! Voting ends around 5 pm today (east coast time), if I remember correctly. Looky, Daddy, is a finalist in the Parenting category. He's got some stiff competition. In fact, I love many of the blogs he's up against, but ever since Looky, Daddy published his hilarious essay on why he he is afraid of his three preschool daughters growing up to be lesbians, he's had my loyalty. (Yes, you read that right. Trust me. And trust LesbianDad.) Other blogs I love that are up for awards include Mombian in the LGBT category, Stirrup Queen in the medical category, BlogHer in the community category, Bitch PhD in the Top 250 category, and Konagod in the category I won last year, The Best of the Rest. Vote for them, too! (Those are links to the voting -- links to the blogs are below.)

• Mombian
• Stirrup Queen
• BlogHer
• Bitch Ph.D.
• Konagod

Funniest Search Results Leading You Here

I don't spend much time looking at my blog statistics, but once in awhile, I get curious and go digging around. Here are my favorites from the last ~6 weeks: aleck johnson lesbian -- This is my favorite search EVER! Aleck, is there something you neglected to tell me? breastfeeding balloons -- Stick to breastfeeding babies. The balloons are not so hungry. fuzzi bunz costco & fuzzi bunz sams -- I doubt it. But cheap ones are available online. I recommend Fuzzi Bunz Factory Seconds, or looking for sales here. Yesterday someone told me about a site called Diaper Trader, but I wasn't able to find it. usb sim card reader meritline -- I don't speak this language. But welcome to my blog. lion holding a flag tattoo -- I am the last person who could possibly help you. I have a needle phobia. shai david calculus teacher -- I never took calc, and I don't know Shai David. At least not as far as I know. scalinis didnt work -- for me either! infected breast implants -- YUCK, and I have no helpful information, and I hope NEVER to have any. is jill pregnant -- No. In fact, that's not the plan any more. But I am in the top 10 search results for that -- long after the many announcements of Jill Hennessy's pregnancy. Congratulations, Jill! Incidentally, she and I share a birthday, although a year apart. animatronic breasts -- I think I know what's going to appear in my nightmare this evening! our first threesome -- is so unlikely to ever take place that the idea of it being a blog search leading here makes me laugh. bring me some water -- Still or Sparkling? I'm all about the customer service. how to tie dye tee shirts with mickey mouse -- I'm sorry, how did you come to find this blog??? is tuesdays with morrie abstract or concrete -- I don't know, I haven't read it. I think you should read it and form an opinion. Frankly that would probably be just as fast as looking on the Internet. my period came and gone and came back. could i be pregnant -- Probably not. But if you're worried, I would take a pregnancy test, not try to figure it out on the Internet. liza kidnapped -- I hope not! wedding crossdress aunt -- My aunts looked lovely at my wedding! And also at my sister's wedding. None of them was crossdressed. when on a maturnity leave can i skip my car bill -- No. You also have to pay your mortgage or rent, your credit card bills, your phone bill, your student loans (er, maybe that's not an issue for you) etc. lord peter wimsey quiz -- Do I have one of those? I don't think so. I'd love to do one. I Heart LPW. But I don't think I have one, and frankly, google failed me when I looked. The only ones were boring and unblogworthy. As always, there were MANY many many many variations on "atlanta eggplant scalinis labor restaurant induce," "tallest baby in the world," "lesbian pregnancy" and "pumping breastfeeding review." Incidentally? While he is tall, Noah isn't and wasn't actually the tallest baby in the world. That honor appears to belong to a baby in China. But Noah is the #1 search result on google for that inquiry. The others, as you might imagine, produce a lot of "adult" results before you ever get to my blog.