A Modern Day Parable of Optimism

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Sunday was a weird day for my husband. He turned 30 amidst speculation that his blogging platform – Tumblr – would be sold to Yahoo!. Don’t for a second think that the irony is lost on either of us. Peace out, twenties.

Here’s how he felt about it:

pretty woman

By Monday afternoon, the deal was done. Tumblr was sold to Yahoo! for $1.1 billion.

Here’s how the Internet felt about it:
fellow kidsI could throw us all a big pity party. I could weep and sigh and gnash my teeth with my husband and hipsters and the Internet in general. But I’m not going to.

You see, this world where Tumblr mates with Yahoo! is also a world that brought Arrested Development back from the dead. Netflix (which is no gem itself but I am willing to forgive it for all its tomfoolery last year) will be airing new episodes on Sunday. This has been a long time coming. Only a few more short days until we can all put our denim cutoffs back on!

So take heart. This world is not all evil. Things find a way of balancing themselves out.

adhappy

♥♥♥

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Bathtime

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Tonight I am inspired by my daughter’s little shoulderblades.

B and I have been spelling out B-A-T-H so much that soon it will be a code for nothing and just another way to tell her that it’s Time. We tell her it’s time for a bath and she runs straight to the tub. Even though she doesn’t need to, she bathes every day because why not? Babies know simple pleasures better than anyone else.

I count 1-2-3-4-5 when she stands up in the tub. She’s usually down by 3. It shouldn’t surprise me anymore when she follows my rules, but I’m still awestruck when she does what she’s supposed to do. Watching her learn and retain is miraculous. Once she didn’t even exist. Then she did. Then she was born. Then she started understanding us. Then she started minding us.

Sitting alongside the tub, I like to get right up in her face and examine her profile. With her pacifier out, I can see her lips and appreciate her jaw when it’s not tightened by the constant sucking. She usually splashes me away because I get too close. Sometimes she smiles under the paci and her eyes beam.

She stretches to get to the rubber duck. Her tiny shoulderblades flex back and forth, a motion that illustrates her body working in harmony. I remind myself to change the lightbulb in the bathroom so I can have more light to see her move.

It is her custom to call out DA-DA when she’s done with her bath. He comes in and dries her while I get her toothbrush ready. She sucks out all the toothpaste before any serious brushing occurs. I act annoyed but knowing that those teeth are connected to those shoulderblades diffuses me. She runs buck naked back to her room. She just learned to run so we let her.

The running, the shoulderblades, the beaming eyes: they are all my C.

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Diapering Memorandum

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Dear Ms. Baby,

We regret to inform you that when you opted in to the Eating and Drinking Program (EDP), you also opted in to the Diaper Changing Program (DCP). For each meal/snack you consume, you will have to report to the changing table roughly two times. As long as your parent/guardian continues to feed and clothe diaper you, these numbers are expected to rise. The anger you have been expressing recently on the changing table may worsen.   However, we understand your frustrations and are here to offer some constructive pointers on improving your situation.

Perhaps you would like to persuade your parents to start using disposable diapers more frequently so as to cut back on potential trips to the changing table. While your mother and father are ever so smug about the environmental and financial savings they incur when they wrap your lower torso in reusable garments, they are knowingly creating more work for themselves and for you. Each time they haul you off to the changing table to change your soiled prefold diapers, they are tearing you away from the pressing matter of removing every single item from every single drawer in the home. Please notify them that by switching to disposables, they will not have to change you nearly as often.

Frequent diaper rashes may be the source of your frustrations when your parents insist on laying you upon the slab. If this is the case, we suggest you procure yourself a tube of diaper cream and have your guardian apply it liberally to your underside. Note: we advise against you performing diaper cream maintenance on yourself. The urge to eat Desitin is just too great and poses many threats to your still-developing innards.

As you know, the time you spend on the changing table can be tedious. If the doldrums persist, consider bringing something to entertain yourself with while you’re lying on your back. Entertaining items include but are not limited to:

• Your mother’s filthy set of keys

• An abridged copy of War and Peace

• Plush bunny

• At least four (4) pacifiers

Should you find that having your diaper changed is too unbearable, you may be a prime candidate for transfer to our Early Toilet Training Program (ETTP). Using a potty is indeed a sign that you are a VBG (Very Big Girl). If your expansive vocabulary of da-da, bye-bye, ma-ma, and mooooooooo does not sufficiently convey to your parents your desire to transition to the toilet, we recommend that you simply drop trow in the middle of the living room and go for it. Your parents will likely get the hint.

Yours,

The Management

"Yeah, so, no. I'm not going to lie down."

“Yeah, no. I’m not going to lie down.”

Writing Through It

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At some point, my daily well-being got tied up in writing. I have learned through this weekly exercise of keeping a blog that I feel a lot better when I’m making words. The last time I wrote nearly as much was when I was in school. As a liberal arts student, I wrote papers about literature, literary theory, philosophy, and psychology. Getting some of those papers out – namely the ones about The Pearl, which I only vaguely understood – felt like passing a very large, hard turd (sorry Mom, I know you don’t like me saying that kind of thing). At the end of each week I felt like I had accomplished something, though, even if those papers had no original or succinct thought behind them. I had basically eaten ideas and then let them pass through me. I had nothing new to say about them. Some of my papers were the equivalent of Ex-Lax.

I have had kind of a hard week. I haven’t really wanted to write anything because I’ve been overly-critical of the words I might form even before I said them. While I was out walking with C today, I thought about writing about all the stupid t-shirts I got in Korea. Then my self-loathing kicked in right on cue and I hated myself for even considering the idea of polluting the hallowed ground that is my personal blog with such idiocy. I don’t know who I’m trying to perform for; my scarily serious grad school professors are now putting the fear of Derrida into kids nine years younger than me and I have no reason to try to impress them anymore. I’m now nursing a bit of a headache that may or may not be exacerbated by the ammonia fumes I inhaled when I performed an angry floor mopping after dinner. Don’t mop the floor when you’re already feeling dopey. Do something easier like light dusting. Or eat pita chips and York Pieces.

I am pretty much addicted to this things. Photo credit

I am pretty much addicted to these things. Photo credit

HOWEVER, I’m writing through my malaise. That last sentence? Part of the write-through-it. It’s the roughage. I don’t want to write, but I’m going to and I need to. I’m giving myself a pass on editing my words and judging them too much. Sometimes late at night when I can’t sleep I look at old things I wrote a long time ago. I totally do. Brad Pitt may not watch his own movies but I read my old blog posts because that’s just me. Sometimes I cringe at the things I wrote and I’m not kind to the Emily who wrote them. I’m done with that for today. I’m not here to impress anyone, namely myself. I am just writing because it gives me some leverage on my sanity.

That said, stay tuned for some funny shirts from Korea. They are totally coming.

Mothers Day is great and sad. Twosies.

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Even though Sunday was my second officially-sanctioned Mothers Day as a mom, it was effectively my first one. Last year, C was only about five weeks old on Mothers Day and I had no energy or desire to celebrate. No one was sleeping, no one was eating well, no one felt like a human. I was paying my dues in the New Baby Club and stocking up on the experiences that would make me truly relish the return of sleep. If this was motherhood, I’d take a pass on celebrating it.

I had something to toast to this year. I celebrated my survival by sipping my coffee and eating pancakes B prepared for me. I sneaked a Dove chocolate between them. It was melty and perfect. I celebrated while lounging on the sofa and watching C and B screen an episode of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood on YouTube. I celebrated by fighting the urge to call and apologize for my tardiness when I ran long at my solo date to the coffee shop. I celebrated by showing B how to make fish tacos for us all for dinner. He only cut his finger once when he sliced the avocados.

We put C in her crib at 6:45. She woke up around 9:15, crying from a bad dream. She rarely wakes in the middle of the night anymore so I jumped at the chance to see her and be there with her. B and I had been discussing only a couple days ago how nowadays, we simply put her away at 6:45. We go about our after-hours routines and have to remind ourselves that she is indeed in the other room sleeping and living. By the time we turn our own lights out at 11, we have almost forgotten we’re parents.

She cried out and I held her. She nestled into my chest and I smelled her head. She’s a lanky baby but she is still so slight in my arms. Mere months before, it would have taken hours to pull her together and meet her needs. On Sunday night, it took no more than ten minutes. By 9:25, she was back in her crib.

I felt sad. At some point, this all got kind of easy. It made me pine for the days where I was regularly put through the fire and earning my keep as the parent of an infant. It made me sad for my own parents that they know exactly what it’s like to be needed intensely and then, in the blink of an eye, just standing by in the other room waiting for me to cry out. All we want is to be needed longer.

Parenthood is heartbreaking.

Let’s drink mimosas.

I miss this.

I miss this.

Beyond Self-Promotion: Some Whys and Hows of Guest Blogging

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Last week, I bought a book. It is the book adaptation of one of my favorite blogs, Lame Adventures. Yours truly – Madame Tightwad – couldn’t buy this book fast enough and would have forked over a bit more of my money had V asked me to, but she’s a good person and has priced her book very fairly. She lovingly referred to Lame Adventures: Unglamorous Tales From Manhattan as the “Manhattan Project” while it was in the works, and it details her exploits in the Big Apple.

I likely would not have purchased her book if it weren’t for a little thing called guest blogging. I first learned of V’s existence in October 2012 because she wrote a guest post on A Clown on Fire. I clicked over and have been hooked ever since. If we simplify the equation, her guest post equaled a new follower which equaled a book sale. Literal dollars. But big heart symbols too.

It got me thinking about the way effective guest blogging works. We may not all be selling something or even really care about hitting some set of arbitrary pageview goals, but as writers and bloggers, I think we can all agree that getting more return readers is something that we are interested in doing. Guest blogging is a potential way to do it and meet new friends, but so often I glaze over the instant someone puts up a post on their blogs written by someone else. There are two reasons for my indifference.

First, the host blogger often admits in a forward to the guest post that s/he is bogged down with life and that’s why s/he invited someone else to post that particular day. Basically, the guest blogger is a babysitter. Who respects the babysitter? Not me. That’s not to say you shouldn’t invite someone to guest post when you don’t have time to post yourself; just don’t advertise your absenteeism. Frame the guest blogger as someone to look forward to, not just an afterthought to your weeklong red wine binge.

Two, the guest post is often so self-promoting that it’s basically a commercial. Great, so Stanley Steamer is babysitting me. Good times in the blogosphere.

What makes a guest post work? I have a few ideas.

DSC08780 - Copy

A good guest post seamlessly merges the style and content of the host blogger with the style and content of the guest blogger/writer. Readers are savvy and they can detect awkward from a mile away. If you ask someone to guest post on your blog, make sure it’s a logical pairing. Even though it was hilarious and awesome when Snoop Dogg made a guest appearance on the Martha Stewart show, the same cannot be said of blogging. If the pairing is too random, your readers and theirs likely won’t hang around until the end of the post. You shouldn’t be carbon copies of each other, but seek out someone whose experience and style fills in the gaps of your own writing.

A good guest post has been given some thought by the host blog. If you invite someone to a potluck, you usually provide general guidelines on what they should bring so you don’t end up with only 9,000 paper plates, 30 pounds of ice, and one dish of potato salad. So it is with guest blogging. When you invite someone to guest post, consider giving them a bit of a prompt if they’re having trouble coming up with something on their own. This is what makes Le Clown’s guest series “A Canadian Clown in Gunland” work. In each post, bloggers lead Le Clown on a tour of their city. This framework is specific yet general enough for the guest blogger to show off their skills to an audience that may not know them. The guest blogger’s style and personality shines through the prompt.

A good guest post is shiny and sparkly and represents the best work a blogger has to offer. I look back at some of the guest posts I’ve written in the past and I cringe because I clearly did not give them as much attention or time as I give to posts for The Waiting. Not only is this insulting to the host blogger who basically invited me into his or her own house, but I also wasn’t doing myself any favors by showing up with less than my A game. Each guest post you write has the potential to bring new followers in, not to mention strengthen your versatility as a writer. Get dressed up and shampoo your hair for once. You will likely want to promote your piece among your own readers. If they click over to your guest post, don’t serve them up some watered-down version of yourself.

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Sound good? Want to write a guest post? Want to host a guest post? You know I have some opinions on going about doing that, too. Hang on as the insufferable know-it-allity continues.

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Read some solid multi-author blogs and figure out why exactly they are working. Sometimes I hate it when I am looking for a set of instructions to do XYZ and that list includes something as boring and passive as reading. Gaaaaaah. But it’s true that by taking a step back and looking objectively at blogs that aren’t authored by one specific blogger (Kidz Showz and The Official How-To Blog, I’m looking in your direction), aspiring guest bloggers and host blogs can learn a lot about writing in a place that isn’t necessarily their own cozy corner of the Intertron. Multi-author blogs thrive on collaboration and the strength of their many moving parts. They have to have a strong sense of purpose and a clear objective to have any kind of resonance among the blogging community. Figure out what’s working for them and adapt it to your own situation. Even consider contributing to them if you think your work fits in.

Make sure you know the host blogger before you solicit a guest post to them. My friend Jells of I’ll Sleep When They’re Grown recently posted about random companies contacting her to guest post on her family blog. Anyone who is familiar with Jells knows that her writing is fantastic because it is almost exclusively about the everyday occurrences of her and her kids. Her writing breathes because she cares. Her distinctive style is what keeps me coming back. Why would she ever be in need of someone to write filler copy?

Although I know none of you would get all spammy like that (right? Riiiiiiight?), there’s still something to learn: be sure when you pitch an idea for a guest post to a blogger that it fits within the milieu of what they’re doing. Do a quick search to see if they have even run guest spots before. If they haven’t, think long and hard about asking them to host you. Sometimes it does hurt to ask.

Even if you write/host an outstanding piece, don’t expect to get a plethora of new active followers or sell eleventy billion copies of your book. If I have learned anything from the featured post circuit (coughcough humblebrag), it’s that one great blog post will not endear me to the hearts of all readers and writers the world over. The amount of blogs and bloggers is mind-numbing and even though you may get some new followers after hosting or writing a guest post, it is not likely that you will hear from all of them again. But that’s OK. Don’t discredit the subconscious: once someone sees your name and tucks it in the recesses of their mind, they are far more likely to remember you when they see the name of your blog floating around elsewhere. They may click over to you and get to know you better when they see you commenting elsewhere or when someone retweets you.

So, that’s what I think I know about guest blogging. What do you know? Please tell me in the comments.

Listen To Your Ashley

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Meet Ashley. You may know her already. Still, say hi.

Hiiiiiiiiii, Ashley.

Ashley is pretty much the best. She writes a blog called Zebra Garden.

ashley1

I had been blogging for two months when I found Ashley. Scrolling through the parenting boards on WordPress, I clicked on a link to a post by a full-term preggo who was singing the praises of her husband. It was her. We would get along.

Ashley has become my Internet bestie, the person I go to when I need moral support not only on all things blogging, but mundane, everyday stuff too. She’s my grown-up pen pal and I love so, so many things about her. One day we’re going to meet in real life and the entire world is going to break out in Handel’s Messiah. Puppies and rainbows will fall from the sky. It will be scary but fun.

Here is a short list of why I love her:

1. She constantly helps me in my writerly endeavors. It is really, really easy to get competitive when you’re trying to make a name for yourself. But Ashley still forwards great opportunities to me – ones that she is also vying for. Her selflessness is admirable. And she looks awesome in a cheerleading uniform. She’s been blogging waaaaaaaay longer than me too and gives me invaluable advice on making sure I turn off the caps lock before I start typing.

2. She takes everything into consideration. Ashley was my right hand woman during Festivus. When Sandy Hook happened right in the middle of Festivus, it made me sick to have ever thought of my silly blogging game. However, Ashley knocked it out of the park with her Festivus wrap-up post. It gave me chills. It still does. Ashley’s tact and awareness shine. She is an incredible member of our blogging community.

3. She makes me giggle snort. She has the bravery to take Peeps down a few pegs. These words just needed to be said. Brave. Simply brave.

4. Her words are mountainous. There are very few things Ashley writes that don’t get me fired up or move me. She gets those words in the right order every single time. Her thoughts on the important things – the really important things – ring true. She will make you care if you don’t already.

5. Her vulnerability gives her strength. Rather than wallow in the not-so-fun things that happens to her, she learns from them. She regularly serves up pwnage of Pinterest and puts it in its place. She lives life proactively and relishes all the fast balls that the world throws her way. She is making a beautiful life for herself and her family.

Tomorrow, Ashley will be taking the stage as part of the Kansas City cast of Listen To Your Mother. I am endlessly proud of her for this and all she does.

Break a leg, Ashley! We love you!

Dining With C

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This will be what I call a Grandmother Post, as in you may have to be C’s grandmother to be interested. We are going to talk about her diet.

In detail.

Fair warning.

I am the proud owner of a terrific eater. And yes, I own my child. I lug that incredibly leggy toddler around like an expensive purse. Only I don’t put my tube of lipstick in her mouth like it’s the little zipper pouch inside the bag.

What.

C eats really well. She has yet to go on a macaroni and cheese hunger strike, which is good because my husband has some strange aversion to the boxed variety and starts retching whenever he sees an ad for it on TV. I don’t even know. I ceased making separate meals for her once she turned one and now she eats little bitty portions of whatever we’re having. This is a win-win situation because I don’t have to work at making an extra set of kid food, and I’m more motivated to make something halfway healthy, ie. no mayonnaise sandwiches. Not that I ever ate mayo sandwiches to begin with, but you know. Small victories and all. I also never murdered anyone.

*Pats self on back.*

Most mornings, she has yogurt with fruit and cereal. For awhile, I was buying her little readimade fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt cups because one of those super couponing people gave me a TON of coupons while I was staring at the massive yogurt selection at the grocery store. Seriously. She was one of those people who carries around massive file binders full of coupons at the store and buys like 74 rolls of Bounty and 38 boxes of frozen garlic bread and ends up paying $2.75 for her entire purchase. But who am I to judge because she gave me a fat stack of coupons for a brand I occasionally buy, claiming that she only buys the kind with M&Ms. Can’t judge her for that. Anyway, we finally ran out of coupons, and since I’m not going to clip them myself because I’m too busy thinking about blog posts I could write about Bob the Builder and how one of the little songs on that show reminds me of “Like a Virgin”, we are back to good ol’ plain yogurt mixed with Cherrios and blueberries I’ve cooked down a little into a thick, syrupy consistency. She likes it.

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Post-breakfast pic. Also, who is the mom who just now updated her little one-ply infant spittup bibs to proper scoopy toddler bibs? It’s me, it’s me.

Lunch and dinner menus are pretty interchangeable. She usually has something proteiny like peanut butter, beans, or a little pork or beef if we have it around. She likes whole wheat bread, pasta, cucumber, tomatoes, strawberries, chickpeas, and cheese. AND BANANAS. Oh Lordy, does she like bananas! She really likes pesto, so sometimes I spread some on a piece of toast and put some sundried tomatoes on it and melt a little cheese. Yum. I may or may not totally bogart her meals those days.

The best thing about eating the same thing as her is that it gives me the excuse to buy really good, high-quality, grass-fed, free-range, ubiquitously-hyphenated meats. I’m pretty sure I’ve told you before about how we live literally 45 minutes from the largest pork packing plant in the world. And I’m not exaggerating. The entire world. So suffice it to say, there is a ton of scary cheap genetically-modified pork in these parts. We instead pay a bit more for the good stuff at the farmer’s market because you can’t put a price tag on unknowingly eating pig snouts. We talk to the guy who raises it and feel good knowing that we’re supporting him and not putting nasty hormoney animals that lead miserable existences in our bodies.

Salads have made a major resurgence in our lives as of late. B dislikes many salads so I imagine salads and macaroni got together and bullied him when he was a teen. What an after-school special that would have made. C likes salads, though, and she often joins us when we eat baby spinach sprinkled with goat cheese, cranberries, and walnuts. I put a little vinaigrette on it and she om-noms it. She also likes spinach sauteed in a little olive oil and garlic, since she’s a gourmet and all. Or a freak of nature? Let’s stick with gourmet.

Snacks are where this child really shines. Sometimes I fear that her tongue isn’t working properly because some of the things she really shouldn’t like are her faves. B and I are obsessed with wasabi peas because we like to pretend we’re exotic and fancy when we eat them. We usually class-up our feeding frenzy by dropping most of them on the floor. C inevitably gets them and goes.to.town. She licks them and swirls them around in her mouth. She is also a big fan of limes and lemons. The tarter, the better. She sucks on them and then usually comes to ask for more once she’s efficiently removed a couple layers of enamel off her seven baby teeth.

C's first round with Korean food was a big success. Truth: her diaper was a little rough the next day, though.

C’s first round with Korean food was a big success. Truth: her diaper was a little rough the next day.

B and I don’t pretend to have anything to do with C’s very open palate. We are both equally amazed at mealtimes when she actually eats most of what is put in front of her. It will definitely be a confusing and sad day for us when she learns that Dora the Explorer yogurt exists and refuses to eat anything else.

What else should I offer to her? What are some strange foods your kids like? 

That Time I Got Acupuncture in Korea

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We had three months left in our contract in Korea when I checked out. An end in sight to our two year stint gave me acute senioritis, hating everything distinct to the culture but also all the things that really weren’t. Kimchi and sidewalks both had to go. My body got into the spirit of ire, and one morning I woke up, walked to our bathroom which didn’t even have a shower curtain for God’s sake, and my back gave out. Fuuuuuuuuh.

As B and I walked the four blocks to work that morning, I crumpled in tears every 15 steps or so. I hated that country for not believing in the concept of a sick day except for when you were literally on your death bed. B had had one day of work where he threw up three times, and he still wasn’t given leave, so I knew my inability to stand up straight without crying wouldn’t get me off.

I freaked out my boss Ashley, though, when I hobbled into our office and started spewing breathy, sloppy tears all over her desk and begging her to just help me. Help. Unless you buckle and give me a reprieve, no kindergartener will learn anything from me today except how ugly foreigners look when they cry. Out of sheer mortification of my showiness, she made me an appointment at the acupuncture clinic two floors down in the highrise our school was located in.

“When will it be?”

“Now. Let’s go.”

Fatty.

“Fatty.”

We rode the elevator down together and entered the office, which smelled of ginseng, Bengay, and waygooken fear. Ashley accompanied me into the practitioner’s office to act as a translator during the consultation. It was decided that my back had given out because I was far too fat to carry my girth without inflicting damage to my frame. This was highly interesting to me because my back problems had started when I was 10 years younger and 30 pounds lighter.

They could have said I was in pain because I was whoring myself out on the weekends to Japanese businessmen and I would not have cared. I just wanted to get my holistic therapy on.

I was brought into a small curtained-off booth in the back of the clinic where I was instructed to lie down on my stomach. A web of heated suction cups were fastened to my back as I lay in agony. Soon enough, the humming sound of their massage made me doze off with images of my seven-year-olds two floors above doing phonics with their Korean teacher. Then came the needles. Prick prick prick. I waited for them to kick in because I’m a good foreigner who respects all traditions that will help me go a day without barfing in front of small children.

Before I knew it, the session was over. Ashley had gone, but the receptionist at the front knew enough English and I knew enough Korea to understand that I would be coming back during my unpaid lunch hour everyday for the next week. I went diligently back to work still in blistering pain but at least not crying.

Weeks later, we met up with friends to go singing at the noraebang, the Korean version of karaoke. I was mostly healed but still incredibly sore from accommodating my fat back. B’s cousin Chad who was also an English teacher commented on my rendition of “Sloop John B.”

“When you sang ‘I wanna go home’, it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s because it’s true.”

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Humor me for a sec.

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I just have one little question for you. It’s this:

That was easy, no?

I have never done a poll on the blog before. I evidently thought about doing one, though, because when I went to make the one above I found this one in my poll queue. It was from before C (AKA Bebe) was born. You are more than welcome to answer it, although at this point if you get the answer wrong I will have to give you an F- for the reading comprehension portion of your grade. That will inevitably bring down your score for the entire semester, thus affecting your GPA adversely, and then you can kiss your chances of getting into a fully-accredited university goodbye. I may also cut you. Chose wisely.

Now here’s this. My husband spends a lot of time on Tumblr and he found it and made me happy:

funny-gif-llama-gayThat llama is my spirit animal. So fab.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!