From the monthly archives:

June 2009

You get what you put in

by selfmademom on June 29, 2009 · 11 comments

This is the time of year that I typically start to get insecure and freak out about my blog, blog status and all things bloggy. That’s because BlogHer, the world’s biggest gathering of the awesomest female bloggers is only a month away. BlogHer, of course is the chance to meet your most favorite bloggers, get some awesome swag and attend many parties.

I attended BlogHer two years ago when it was last in Chicago, had a good time, and moved right along. I decided to attend this year, because it’s local again, and well, I love the chance to meet people I know online in real life.

But as I look back on my last two years of blogging, I can’t help but think about how I have not moved my blog needle at all since I started. In fact, if anything, I’ve pulled back my connections and commitments in the blog world. It was all by my own choice. I like to quit blogging every now and again. And I’m not writing this post to be all whiny about my blogging insecurities. I just feel like ranting about it. Because, you know, I need to hone in on what I’m going to tell everyone what the heck it is I do when I see or meet them in a few weeks.

This time of year always makes me reflect on why I started blogging, and what’s happened to all the bloggers I’ve gotten to know a little along the way. I never intended this blog to be anything more than my place to vent, and it’s been so much more than that. But I am also lazy and nonchalant about my relationships online. I’m a terrible linker. I’m not obsessed with Twitter. I never enter contests, rarely review products, always seem to miss cool blogger get-togethers because I have other commitments, and well, sign off from the computer most evenings pretty darn early just when things get going. I don’t have clients, I only have one other lame blog that I just started up again. What I do online is mainly for myself (and to make my mother laugh occasionally.) And I like that.

However, when I’m about to get all IRL in the blog world, I always feel like I should be pushing myself to be bigger and better. (The only thing that seems to be getting bigger and better around here is my belly). To be expanding my writing, cultivating and making relationships, seizing opportunity.

Instead, I think I’d rather go take a nap.

See what I mean? See you at BlogHer. (I hope.)

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Small

by selfmademom on June 21, 2009 · 11 comments

I’m just starting to appreciate the joys of being pregnant again. I’m halfway through now, the heartburn is a’ ragin, and the comments are a’ comin.

You know, the, “oh you look so cute,” “are you excited?” “what are you having?” kind.

And then, the one that irks me the most.

“You look really small.”

Normally, a pregnant lady would be happy to be called small. I gained 40 pounds with my son and although I am tall, I still looked akin to a person who swallowed three giant watermelons. So no one was saying I looked small the first time around.

But this time, for some odd reason, I’ve gained less weight and have worked out more and am feeling better and, well, I guess I’m smaller. But it’s bugging me.

I know in 4 months I’ll wish I looked this big.

With everything that went wrong with my last pregnancy, the last thing I need is feeling anymore insecure. And when people tell you something that’s not typical about your pregnancy size, it can make an agitated and neurotic pregnant lady (hello, me!) a little more nervous. And, as some of us know, pregnancy brings out the worst commenters in all of us.

On that note, we didn’t find out what we were having gender-wise. We like the element of surprise (although I like the element of planning as well, but I gave up that fight.) But you can’t imagine the annoying conversations I’ve had to endure about the gender of my unborn.

I guess this is the dirty secret of pregnancy. When you have a boy first, everyone assumes that you want a girl second. It’s like if you are only going to have two kids, (hello, me again!) you must have one of each to have the ”perfect” family. One mom last week, when I told her everything was okay and healthy with the baby (which to some of us IS the ONLY thing that matters), told me “I’ll pray for a girl for you.” Huh?

Since when did gender and the apparent disappointment that comes with it become such an issue? My OB even shared a story with me about a patient he has who is pregnant with her third boy and became hysterical at the news. Really? Hysterical?

Maybe I’m jaded because of my previous loss, but there will be no crying here whatsoever the gender of my unborn may be. Only tears of joy. And the occasional hormonal crying outburst that has been happening from laughing too hard at old episodes of How I Met Your Mother. (Which, by the way, if you’re not watching yet, you are TOTALLY missing out.)

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For those of you following the renewed mommy wars debate…

by selfmademom on June 18, 2009 · 2 comments

Two prominent bloggers have attacked the issue I wrote about last week again this week. I think we’re all saying the same thing although since I don’t consider myself a WAHM because I don’t feel my pithy freelancing really counts as that, I can’t vouch for all the attacks on the WOHM vs. WAHM. I still think it it’s all silly and hope one day we can just put the freaking labels away and stop writing about this and share a laugh about how hard it is to be a mom in general over a cocktail. I’ll take a momtini extra dry.

The end.

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Show me the money, not a new job

by selfmademom on June 17, 2009 · 1 comment

I think I forgot to mention in my last post that, uhm, last week I was offered a full-time job. That’s right. A chance to strip off the lululemon, a reason to dry my hair every day (although that is debatable) and most importantly make me some money.

Of course I turned it down instantly.

I’m sure admitting that has got to be every career coach’s worst nightmare. The job was interesting, it actually paid me money, and would have been a good fit. A good fit, had I not been five months pregnant and in no mental condition to take on a full-time job. Seriously, the next time someone asks me for career advice I’m just going to laugh in their face. Apparently the only thing I’m good at these days is avoiding any type of work commitment.

That being said, sometimes I do have a regret about my decision. But only when I think about the potential money I could have been making. One thing I miss about not working is not having my “own” money. The kind where a certain someone doesn’t care if I come home with that new pair of lululemon pants. Of course when I worked all of my “own” money was sort of fake because I enevitably had to have my husband bail me out at tax time due to a lack of me understanding anything about that “withholding” column, or whatever. But it was easier to get away with it.

Or maybe it was because the economy was better.

Whatever the case, the money would never be worth me leaving my envious and rather comfortable position of staying at home, but it did make me pause.

For about half a second. My old lululemon pants are just as cute as the new ones I’ve seen.

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And the mommy wars debate carries on…

by selfmademom on June 13, 2009 · 14 comments

Just when I think the mommy wars debate has died down, a popular, and somewhat controversial site has to go and dredge it all up again. In a recent Momversation webisode, some of the most formidable bloggers tackle the (why won’t it ever die?) headline “Are You a Stressed Working Mom?”

I rarely watch this type of online chattering, but when Y tweeted about the resurrection of a common mommy wars debate I had to tune in.

I’d say the episode doesn’t really deal with the stresses of working motherhood so much as it becomes a platform for the women to talk about why they work, how they can’t be SAHM (uhm, because apparently in the video all we do is play with trains for five hours a day), and the ins and outs of freelancing/ working from home. Included in the discussion is everyone’s favorite former work/ life balance guru Lisa Belkin of the New York Times who now authors the parenting blog, Motherlode, for the paper. There’s some discussion of the “freelance” career path and not becoming the next CEO, but overall, the conversation never reaches into those deep, dark depths of working motherhood like tearing yourself away from your kids to go to work when they are screaming, and guilt we all feel when we have to choose work over our children.

And this is where the debate began to rage.

Temporarily Me and Miss Zoot reacted strongly about the video. You can read the posts for yourselves, but at the core of the argument is that even if moms work, there are discernable differences between all the types of working moms and those who work outside of their house in an office have it harder (edited to add: Miss Zoot did not intend her post to read that way, and I totally see her point, now). (To the Momversation episode’s credit, Daphne, of Cool Mom is actually honest about what the internet’s version of working motherhood is: freelancing and blogging from home is not really all that stressful of an occupation.)

I’ve talked about all this before. Are you listening, internet? The mommy wars is old news.

Too bad it never dies. That’s because the choices we make as mothers are bound to conflict not only each other, but ourselves. It could be working or not, breastfeeding or not, feeding your kids organic foods or not- just about everything we do as mothers includes a choice we have to make that is inevitably going to piss someone off.

Unfortunately, though, many moms and dads don’t have a choice about whether or not they have to work. Those who don’t have a choice cannot help but feel anger towards moms who work at home living out their dream of writing, designing web sites, whatever. Likewise, the moms who work at home at “real” jobs, or doing these freelancing jobs think their situation is tough and that they have the stresses of all working moms as well.

Those of us like me who are just SAHM, well, we just suck all over the internet, don’t we. Because we just sit on our asses and eat bon bons all day long.

I’ve been around all the blocks possible with regards to working. I’ve worked at an office. I’ve worked at home. I’ve worked out of state. I’ve “freelanced.” I’ve not worked at all.

And guess what? None of it is easy and all of it is, well, gasp. WORK.

So I understand all sides of the debate. I understand those moms who are stressed out because they have to go to the office, but their kids have the flu and day care won’t take them so they are scrambling for child care. I get that. I get those moms who slow down their career path to keep themselves in the mix because they can’t stay home all day. I get those moms who work a ton even though they work from a virtual office at their house. I also get those moms who don’t want to work at all, but who freak out because their kids cry all day and they didn’t make it to the dry cleaners on time.

But what I don’t get? I don’t get why time after time, year after year, this “us” vs. “them” debate in the working mom world rears its ugly head. Yeah, the Momversation episode was totally slanted to a certain working mom demographic. But maybe that was its point. To show a sample of what’s out there. Because we all know “real” working moms just don’t have the time to film a five-minute internet show. (Just kidding, but you don’t, right?)

I know that no matter what anyone labels me, thinks, sneers at or is jealous of, that I’m glad I had the ability to make the career decisions I did. I don’t care if the WAHM or WOHM next door thinks I’m crazy because I enjoy playing with pretend airplanes ad nauseum. Because I made a choice, and it was my choice, and I’ll be damned if anyone is going to make me feel bad about it.

Tagged as: Momversation

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19 weeks and counting…

by selfmademom on June 10, 2009 · 14 comments

Yes, I’ve been hiding it. For quite awhile now.

I’m pregnant. Again.

With the misery of a failed pregnancy behind me, I left the doctor today with a “A+ your fetus looks great” rating and awash in happiness and relief like I’ve never felt.

I’m going to have a baby in November, come hell or highwater, swollen ankles, possible posterior placenta previa, facial acne, heartburn and nausea.

And it’ll be perfect this time around.

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Back in Action

June 4, 2009

I have made it back from vacation, tropical-depression free. I suppose the only depression I’m feeling now is the one that knows I have 8 loads of laundry to do and a stack of mail to go through. So while I go tend to my life again, why don’t you read what I’ve been up [...]

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