Excitement on the Side

It’s no secret that I love talking to y’all on my blog. It seems like one out of every eight posts I do is about blogging in some form, and that’s because it has become a big part of my life and something that I get a lot of gratification from. The World of Blog keeps revealing itself to me and I love it more fervently with each little thing I learn about it. I love the people, I love the writing, I love the comments, I love the reading, I love the projects. I even love the spam. O how I love the spam.

I can now add a new thing I love about blogging. Meeting the people face-to-face is wonderful. In the past several months, I have Skyped with L’Eric and Never Contrary, two of my favorite WordPressers. Both times, I put voices and faces with the words on the screen and was filled with warmth. The humans behind the blogs exceeded their online personae, and that’s saying a lot. They are real. Not only are they not scary, they are as delightful and smart and interesting as they appear in their blogging.

But there was still that screen involved. We find a lot of safety in our screens. Even when people leave nasty comments, we have the fail-safe of the delete button. We still remember that those things were said, but pressing delete is neat and tidy. The screen is good, but it’s not always as satisfying as we want it to be. Meeting a person in the reality of life gives us a sensory experience that can’t be matched.

So begins my thoughts on the time I met Kelly. Like, met-met her.

Guys, she’s as great as she seems.

I have been reading her blog since right before her Lucy was born, so when I held Lucy in my arms while Kelly unfurled a blanket for her to sit on, it was one of those Oprah-esque fully circle moments. My people met her people and it was so satisfying and fun. Her Emily climbed a tree at the co-op where we met while she, B, and I held our babies and gushed about the Internet and why we love this place. Scratch that. B didn’t gush; I don’t think he’s capable of doing so, but he had a time that leaned on the great side, so we’ll take that. As we made the longish drive home that afternoon, his approval of my online and now real friend came through loud and clear:

“You know who Kelly reminds me of?”

“No, who?”

“She reminds me of OG.” OG is one of our friends from Korea who is charismatic and exuberant. She fills the room with the bestest of energy whenever she walks in. She’s passionate and smart and she loves hard. The same can be said of Kelly.

A few minutes passed. I took a nap in the backseat of the car with C and when I woke, B had another comment.

“So, what does Kelly blog about?”

The fact that he asked this at all was a Big Deal. B likes all y’all alright because he knows I love you, but his world of the Internet is very different from my own. There’s not a lot of overlap between mom blogging on WordPress and publishing flarf poetry on Tumblr. But he asked. Kelly is apparently that bridge. She intrigued him, and that’s another not-small thing.

“She writes about being a mom and her life but her words are just delicious. She is a Mom on Fire.”

And she is. Kelly is the best of the web.

The reason I say all this is because in her specialness, Kelly is what I know you all are like. We are in good company with each other. Amidst the noise of the Internet, we have all found our ways towards each other, and that leaves me extremely grateful.