Category — BlogHer Diaries

I have to give you my notes from Katie Orenstein’s absolutely brilliant Op-Ed panel and the pictures from the blogger lunch, but first, I wanted to upload these pics from Briar’s panel. I went to the first panel called MommyBlogging: Have You Found Your MommyBlogging Tribe. Which is sort of funny to have an IF blogger in there, but she is a mommy nonetheless.

The other bloggers on the panel were Megan Jordan (Velveteen Mind), Kelby Carr (Type A Mom), Renee Ross (Cutie Booty Cakes), and Briar Sauro (Unwellness).

I ended up having to leave midway due to a broken necklace incident (the twins had kissed it before I left and I was absolutely nut-job about having it around my neck), but I wrote down some really interesting thoughts:

• Because IF is so emotional, we blog every moment of it to process it. But what happens afterwards, when you don’t need to talk as much. It’s hard to move from IF blogger to mommyblogger.
• When a blogger gets under stress, that’s when people blog more. Connect more.
• Jump into what you want to do. Never be afraid to comment. You do not need an invitation to connect with another person.
• Meeting people face-to-face is like “live commenting.”

For me, this panel brought it back to the importance of the comment. How that is where community is built. If not, you’re just sitting alone with your words. Hence why we should all do IComLeavWe. Just saying…the next list opens at the end of the month.

The CEOs of BlogHer at the opening discussion (Elisa, Jory, and Lisa)

Just to give you a sense of the scope of the room.

Badgermama, Everyday Goddess, Zandria

The day kicked off with a discussion on blogging with Elisa, Jory, and Lisa, the CEOs of BlogHer. They are such great speakers and they set a wonderful tone to the conference–balancing fun with information. They announced at BlogHer ’10 will be in New York. I would like to set up a dinner/social event for ALI bloggers either the night before or the night after–something that doesn’t compete with the established conference events, but that allows those going to the conference to mix with those in the area. So…set out Sunday, August 6th on your calendar right now and we’ll have a lunch or an afternoon activity or a dinner. Yes, we are finally going to have our own ALI event and tack it on so people can travel once and see a lot of people.

Coming up next time I post…the ALI lunch, the brilliant Op-Ed session, and my community keynote props (I hope someone tapes it!).

You can read all my BlogHer posts from this link.

Thursday night kicked off with a bunch of parties. The first one was a small one for BlogHer CEs and speakers. I got to hang out a lot with Briar from Unwellness. I met Kate from Sweet/Salty when I asked her to take my picture with Briar and then in figuring out that we knew each other, both shrieked. I know that last sentence didn’t make sense grammatically, but I’m really tired. TW and Denise won a blackberry at the party and they gave it to me, which has earned them my eternal love as well as that of the Wolvog. I sent him an email tonight to let him know that electronics are on their way.

Sassymonkey, LaurieWrites, and Zandria

Deb, Zandria, and Denise

TW and Denise and I with the blackberry. I love you, Denise and TW. I love you Sprint!

Kate from Sweet/Salty and me

Me and Briar from Unwellness

Briar and Kate

The purple drink the bartender convinced me to try. I almost ended up drinking the sample copy, much to my chagrin.

Sassymonkey, Laurie, and Sarah and the Goon Squad

Suzanne and Pam

At the People’s Party, I met Magpie from Magpie Musings and Aurelia from No Matter How Small (though she is not pictured). And I met up with Alexa. And Cecily and Sarah again. And really cool people like Red Headed Lefty. Magpie and I have Nora’s head on a stick, so we brought her to the party.

Side notes: Bl
ogHer ’10 will be in New York! They announced it today. Also, there is obviously not going to be a Roundup today because I overshot how much time I would have to write thoughtful posts. But stay tuned because we are having an ALI meetup at lunch, I’m about to blog Briar’s panel, and I will be uploading pictures and posting news throughout the day.

I am here, but before I arrived her at BlogHer, I had to allow myself to be a bleeding mess. A weepy, Ativan-saturated mess with second thoughts and a close call of no socks for the second trip in a row.

Yesterday was a family holiday known as Wolvog Day. It floats along the family calendar and pops up once a year (there is also a ChickieNob Day). The way one knows that it is Wolvog Day is that you go down to your chair in the kitchen and it is completely decorated in all the things you love. So we had stacked up toys and candy and pictures of cars and iPhones. On Wolvog Day, the Wolvog gets to choose all the activities and meals so he kicked off the day with a bagel, led us to a car dealership where he pretended to drive a $104,000 Jaguar, lunch at Whole Foods, and then the Verizon store. We came home, made dough for homemade pizzas, and then went to see a local swim meet after dinner. All in all, the perfect day.

And it was so perfect that I couldn’t pack. It was 11 p.m. and I still hadn’t packed because I was miserable over the idea of leaving. I don’t like to be away from home and I especially don’t like to be away from the twins. They gave me long cuddles and told me to bring them home bags of swag. Finally, at 11:30, with the Colbert Show starting, I dragged out my suitcase and started to unroll a new pair of pants I ordered from J Jill. Except they were the wrong pants. They sent me the wrong pants. I own no pants.

Which is why I’m wearing my old jeans to BlogHer. Sorry Tim Gunn.

Then I needed my garters. I wear garters because I am so damn short that traditional stockings end up somewhere around my bra’s underwire. They are also a prop for the Community Keynote so we had a take-apart the whole house moment where we finally found them at the bottom of a bag that once contained boots. How did they get there? I don’t know.

Then I closed the suitcase and realized I forgot to pack socks. Again. Because I seriously cannot handle placing items inside suitcases.

And then I got into bed around 1 a.m. And I felt this overwhelming roll of sadness that started behind my eyes and moved down over my heart. Stilling me. I wanted to go and I didn’t want to go. I woke up several more times in the night, each time untangling my brain by reminding myself that I would be leaving in 6 hours. I would be leaving in 3 1/2 hours. I would be leaving in 2 hours.

The twins had a hard time separating this morning and I had a hard time separating this morning and I went to the plane feeling like I should be in two places at once. And then I took Ativan so I could board the flight without flipping out and then the Ativan kicked in somewhere over Ohio and I felt calm with the idea that I was thousands of feet above the earth and again, this overwhelming sadness to be away from the twins that felt like it was crumpling up my inner layers. As if the inner layers had pulled away, lost their adhesion to the outer wall of the body, and now were crumpling and twisting and crunching themselves down.

I sound like a flaming nut-job.

I am writing this still under an Ativan film.

I shared a taxi with a lovely woman named Tanya who is also from Maryland. She is going to BlogHer, representing an organization called CurrentMom. We got to the hotel and I immediately saw Cecily and Sarah in the lobby, waiting for their room.

Cecily from Uppercase Woman

Sarah from Sad and Beautiful

I went out to get lunch, and now, instead of the sadness about the twins, adding to that was a feeling that I can only liken to New Years Eve 1999. A little before New Years Eve, I broke up with my boyfriend. I wouldn’t meet Josh for a few more weeks. And I needed something incredible to do. It was the turning of a new millenium, every computer in the city was going to break, the world was going to go into mayhem, and my future children were going to want to know what I was doing when the world imploded.

A friend told me to come with her a party, and I was happy to have something to do, but it didn’t feel like it was enough. This was New Years–it only comes once a year and this special New Years was only going to come once in our life times at that. I mentioned this to a friend at the party and he promised to find me at midnight and kiss me. I spent the whole evening anxious that he’d forget and the moment would be ruined, but he found me at 11:58, held my shoulders while we counted down, and then gave me this incredible kiss. He topped himself by leading me up to the roof of the building so we could over look Adams Morgan and see the fire works and kiss some more. And after a few moments, he pulled back and looked at me seriously and said, “did I do well? Did I give you your moment?”

And that’s sort of the thing about BlogHer. You feel like you can’t take it in. It only happens once a year, so you want to do it well, but doing it “well” sometimes means going against true impulses and trying activities just for the sake of feeling like you sucked the marrow out of the event. I skipped all the parties last year and people kept telling me that I had done things wrong. So I decided to swing by two parties or so this year, but people are telling me that I’m still doing it wrong. And I am–I’m doing it wrong by their standards and as someone who is so not a party person, I’m doing it wrong by my standards.

The place I am excited to be is in the panels. And the ALI bloggers lunch tomorrow. And live blogging from the discussions. And the community keynote. And just meeting so many new people that I would have never had the chance to find if I had been left to my own small corner of the blogosphere. Many more updates will follow between now and Sunday.

Which means that this blog may become a little busy for a bit, and feel free to skip around and only read entries that interest you. Though two things:

We’re still under 100 posts on the DIY Roundup Extravaganza and they’re due tomorrow–Friday. You read stuff every day. You love stuff every day. Now tell us what you love. Don’t get thrown off by the coding thing. Just cut-and-paste the url; we’ll figure it out. One day, people, one day. For the love, at le
ast we can hit 100 posts.

And the Show and Tell is still open and kicking. Come show the class something from your world this week.

Updated at the bottom

And by everyone, I mean a few people. And by a few people, I mean that I’ve seen it about three times today. But regardless. A what-to-expect-when-you’re-meeting-me post which is a bit silly in my case because I’ve posted my picture and video here many times before. But in case you are meeting me for the first time at BlogHer this week…

I am nervous too. I know, it’s sort of crazy to admit that because I have (1) been to two BlogHer conferences by now and (2) know about twenty people or so who are going semi-well. But I am pretty shy in large crowds or small so I will be the one nervously drawing boxes on the hotel supplied notepads.

I do very very poorly with airplanes. As in I need a sedative to get on-board so if you see me Thursday, I may look a little glazed over.

I am shorter than you think. Even people who have seen me in pictures next to other people always seem a little surprised by my height and the length of my hair. It grows at an alarming speed, so it isn’t as short as you’re thinking it would be from someone who donated her hair a few months ago.

Though I photoshop it out before posting pictures of me on my blog, I have an eye patch and a parrot surgically implanted onto my shoulder (actually, his feet are implanted into my shoulder and the rest of his body hovers slightly above me). It’s my right shoulder, which is why I lean heavily to the left.

When I am nervous, I write things like that because I can’t think of another way to describe myself.

I will try to hug you. I may even try to kiss you. I will most likely cry. If any of these things make you uncomfortable and you still want to talk to me, you may want to approach me with hands raised. This is a good indicator to me that you do not like to be hugged, smooched, or cried upon.

I will be wearing the Hilde boots. As in the donation room boots. Though the rest of the outfit is buried in the back of a drawer and will not be accompanying me on this trip.

I’m a very picky eater…a terrible eater at that. I will shock you with how little I like to eat. Things everyone likes. For instance, pizza. Or cheese. Or even pie. All things I don’t like to eat.

I don’t use the kids names. I call them the ChickieNob and Wolvog at BlogHer too. I will miss them a lot and will probably cry if you ask me about them. But I will tell you that the ChickieNob informed me today that I “shouldn’t concern myself with things that are not my business because if her daddy wants to let her wear high heels and walk across the kitchen floor holding her hand, I should let him do this and not concern myself. Because it’s not my business.”

I’ve always wanted a tattoo, but have never gotten one. If you have one and doesn’t involve too much disrobing, show it to me so I can think about what I’m missing. I may ask you if I can photograph it for my photo essay: Tattoos I Saw at BlogHer [Josh just called out that this would be cool so I am going to do it. I’m declaring this now. I’m taking photos of tattoos I saw at BlogHer. It’s good for me to have a project. I am very project-driven. It also gives me a reason to talk to strangers].

I love meeting people there, but more so, I love keeping in touch afterwards. So please give me your card. Or follow me on Twitter. Or let me know that you subscribed to the blog’s rss feed so I can return the favour. And, as I’ve already said, I’m very project-driven and lots of good ideas including the tweaking of the LFCA, group Kirtsying, and the now defunct Bridges all grew out of BlogHer last year. I have a new idea brewing and if you like to be involved in projects too, find me and talk to me because a lot of ideas are bounced around in those panel rooms.

Update:

The Tattoo Project (which will reveal its real name once it begins) can be played from home too. When you see the tattoo post, upload a picture of your own on your blog and leave a comment with a link to the post. So it’s more blogger tattoos than BlogHer tattoos. But…you know…at BlogHer, you’re around 2000 bloggers so it seems like a good place to start.

Welcome back to Show and Tell. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. In fact, we hope you do go back to your blog and post your own Show and Tell item and then return with the link to your post. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

If I had enough battery power to download new photos, you would have a picture of my new sassy haircut (hint: higher than my shoulders). But until I replace the batteries this weekend, a picture from BlogHer DC will have to suffice.

It’s almost as if the Twitter gods had read my messages about wanting candy and swept into the lobby to lay out a feast while I listened to a panel on blogging basics. When I went to sit down for the keynote speakers, I was faced with a long banquet table covered with chocolate-covered fruit, gummy worms, malt balls, and several kinds of popcorn. I grabbed the first bag by myself and even went back for a second candy run. But I begged Cecily to do my hording from that point on because I was too embarrassed to go back for thirds. Thirds! No wonder I couldn’t eat at the dinner that followed the keynote. How was I to know?

All in all, BlogHer DC was fantastic. I went to two of the blogging basics panels–sort of for confirmation that I knew how to use software correctly and also to see if I had missed anything along the way (I had). I learned NOT to talk about my cervical mucous online (too late) because it may come back to bite me in the ass later on (the information; not the cervical mucous which has no teeth). I learned that I should provide an “about” page, which I do. I also spoke at my own panel on blogging for a cause.

And as a secondary Show and Tell, what do you think of the finishing touches Cali put on the header–do you like the new site bar up at the top?

What are you showing today?

Want to bring something to Show and Tell?

• If you would like to join circle time and show something to the class, simply post each Sunday (or earlier in the weekend or on Monday if you can’t do Sunday), hopefully including a picture if possible, and telling us about your item. It can be anything–a photo from a trip, a picture of the dress you bought this week, a random image from an old yearbook showing a person you miss. It doesn’t need to contain a picture if you can’t get a picture–you can simply tell a story about a single item.
• Label your post “Show and Tell” each week and then come back here and add the permalink in the comments section below (make sure you don’t just comment that you participated: add a link to your blog in your comment so people can click over). I post a new Show and Tell post every Saturday night or Sunday. I usually move people up into the body of the post every few hours.
• Oh, and then the point is that you click through all of your classmates and see what they are showing this week.
• If you want it…
  I’ve now placed a Show and Tell archive on the sidebar that will be updated each week in case you miss it. And click here for the icon code if you wish to have it for your blog. It links to
  the archives.