It's the simple things

I am officially live blogging from my bedroom. A wireless router has been successfully installed by yours truly and my ability to roam about the house - except to the first floor (minor glitch)feels like soaring through the sky with open wings. Aahh! Freedom rings!

Just call me a Blomifer

Forget calling me a blogger. Don't call me a mom. Don't even utter the word writer. Put an end to saying the word wife.

I'm a Blomifer. You read it right.

Everywhere I turn these days, television and radio ads are combining words to create new words. I figured I'd jump in on that action before the rest of the world beats me to it.

Here are some new words related to being a Blomifer. Some have called this a mlogger, but I'm not feeling it.

1. Blogositting -- Caring for my children while composing a blog post in my head.
2. Telejumping -- Activity of letting toddlers jump on couch cushions while we watch television.
3. Phonerfending -- Preventing a toddler from pushing the buttons on a phone while she should be talking with a relative.
4. Fauxcartershopping -- Pretending to look for something very urgent in big box hardware store when really I'm just desperate to entertain two toddlers before dinner and the great big car carts seem to work wonders.
5. Yawnseytiming -- The act of yawning 100 times while drowsily reading a bedtime story. My mother was a big yawnseytimer, and now I totally understand why. God, I know why.

How about dropping some of your family's new words into the comments here? I'll edit this list later in the week to include yours.

And, the winner is ...

Today is going to be a GREAT day, and not just because all 211 of you will find out who wins the magical Faith bag, but because my 4-day long headache has finally subsided. Perhaps now some stuff will be accomplished around here.

Before I announce the winner, I want to tell you a little about Eve. I met her by phone a few months ago when I was writing stories about stay-at-home moms who have reentered the workforce. The basic storyline was that staying at home gives you more management skills than you might think. It's all in how you look at the jobs you do all day.

Enter Eve. A stay-at-home mom who started making some handbags for fun, and then realized that she had talent and a business idea. She has since been customizing these great bags from her home, all while caring for her daughter. She also has been hiring other stay-at-home moms to work as consultants and such. It's just a great story of a mom using motherhood to maximize her own potential. I, too, adore her bags. But, it's her story that I wanted to share.

Maeva Design allows you to customize the bag that you want and it will then be handmade either by Eve herself or another seamstress who most likely works from home as well.

For her to pick the Faith bag is perfect. All moms are trying to find a way to balance faith in themselves, faith in their children and faith in the world that sustains us.

For many others, it could also be faith in God. This bag will be very appropriate for our winner. Go meet her here.

As for the rest of you, please consider Maeva Design as a gift to yourselves. Eve is offering all of you 10 percent off your purchase for the next two weeks. Just e-mail her and tell her you learned about her through this site and want to save 10 percent. Go ahead, splurge. Clearly, all of you need a new handbag. Just read through the comments about why and you'll see it plain as day.

Dusty, old journals everywhere

How do I need thee?

The last two decades of my life are sitting three feet from me, in a cardboard box, among the towering piles of clutter we call storage around here.

Years of torment, self-torture, suffering as a teenager, and a single young woman lie dormant in one medium-sized box.

I pick one up, read the dates, start reading the entries. They are full of sadness, full of gloom with sparkles of the sunniest memories my mind can imagine. There is something joyful inside me whenever I think back to remarkable heartbreaks.

But, do I need to relive those memories to move forward? As I pour through book after book, I am realizing that I am forgetting things that used to haunt my life so very much. How I loved that one boy, a family friend, so much and how I never truly understood why he didn’t like me. How I always felt alone, even when I wasn’t. And, then, there were the mistakes. The dreadful, what-did-I-do, mistakes?

I could drop those journals, all of them, in the trash and be done with those memories. After all, how many memories have I forgotten because they were never written down? Perhaps the best memories, the most vivid ones, are ones that the mind will automatically remember.

Maybe I’m holding on to something by holding on to these journals, which until blogging entered my life were never really given much thought. I knew only that they were glimpses of my past, easy page-flips to take a stroll back in time, to the times of adversity and struggle that brought me to this very spot right this very moment in this old city attic.

On one hand, it’s great to be able to see clearly the road that made me who I am today. On the other, I’m already me, why do I need to know how I got here? Nothing will change by re-reading these journals, right?

Share the love

OK, so I've got another sinus infection headache ... I can't think straight about anything. Share the food love and tell me what's for dinner -- or lunch -- this weekend.

I'm thinking of making Mexican Turkey Burgers with Mexican corn -- the real kind. Something different, anyway.

Rockin' Girl Blogger Award

This blogging thing ... I could get used to it. After a world of non-descript, everything is black and white and only the disheveled white males can be our super heroes of newsrooms ... I can officially state that I could revel in the likes of bloggerville forever and be perfectly happy.

First, I won a free six-month subscription to Netflix, which has begun.

Now, I've been granted an award -- a Rockin' Girl Blogger award.

Because once a reporter, always a reporter, I Googled to find the original blogger for this Meme, but couldn't find it. I don't have enough time to wade through all of the searches that popped up. As it turns out, half or more of the Internets girl bloggers have been given this title. I'm technically not a girl, but as I searched neither are most of the women bloggers also receiving this meme.

Whatever, I'll take it happily. Anything to add a bright pink bling on my right column. Anything to get the poop story out of my head, and off my fingers. Anything that will attract more people to read this blog's first author interview and sign up for the giveaway.

Now, I have to find five lucky Rockin' Girl Bloggers who have been secretly hiding ...

Here are my picks for Rockin' Girl Bloggers:

Steph at Baby on Bored who really needs to change her blog title to Babies on Bored because SHE'S EXPECTING TWINS. She even knows she's expecting twin girls. We're on board with that, Steph. We love twin girls around here.

Jane who totally makes me laugh on her Baby Squared blog on www.babble.com.

Leah at Mama Dharma. I recently discovered her blog and think she has great vision and clarity, despite daily challenges.

I find it really hard to believe she hasn't been granted this title, but Rebecca from Girls Gone Child has to be the most rockingest bloggers out there. I find her writing style, her boy's brown eyes, and her insight into motherhood all profound and charming. She's the only A-list blogger I read daily.

Finally, I'm going to give a shout out, once again, to Shannon whose minimalist blog posting style had me at hello. She's all about writing on The Writer's Journey.

Thanks, MamaBlogga for honoring me with my first award.

Married with twins

It was a short conversation, me at the refrigerator, Da! by the stairs. The discussion of how and when and where to go for an outting was weighing on us. Time passed. The lunchtime rush had settled into the bones of the old house. Liana was throwing herself on the floor out of hunger. Jadyn, just crying, crying, crying. Ah, another meal. What's this add up to be -- 21 meals a week times 28 weeks? You do the math.

11:45 a.m.

ME: Well, we're going to have to have lunch now.

Da!: Oh, good, I'll take a shower.

ME: Fine. Go take YOUR shower.

Da!: Can I help you with something?

ME: No, I don't need any help.

Da!: What's wrong?

ME: Go ahead and take YOUR shower. I haven't had one yet today, but whatever. I'll make lunch.

Da!: But, I didn't shower yesterday.

Me: (cracks up while searching for the cheese) You win.

Tired of dropped calls?

If you've ever watched Sex and the City you know that besides her friends, Carrie's cell phone was a very important character in the movie, especially in the end. Her cell phone is the last image in the last scene of the last show of the last season.

I, being a SATC super fan, realized yesterday while in the car driving to Mama's-Day-Off destination, I hadn't written much about the show.

Besides turning our broken car air conditioner on and off, on and off, on and off hoping and praying that it would suddenly start working during the 45-minute car ride, I was also thinking about cell phones.

Like Carrie, my first one was a doozie. Big. Clunky. About the size of an old point and shoot camera. Not the digitals either. I remember distinctly why I got it. On my way back to college after the most miserable week of my life, my car not only broke down on Interstate 95 in the scorching heat, it died that day. I was alone, and midway between home and the dorms. I ended up taking a ride with a stranger who didn't end up killing or raping me like society had warned me of so many times.

I felt, after that, that a cell phone was in order.

Like others, I upgraded over the years because as I entered the workforce my job knocking on homes of people's doors, sometimes late at night, warranted it as well.

I still justify having one even though I do not work because I like to walk. And, I don't like to walk without a phone. So many what ifs come crashing in on me, like the serial killers just waiting around to pick up innocent college girls broken down on I-95 in Baltimore.

But, yesterday morning The Da! accidentally broke my phone.

It was one of those blessings in disguise because we've been wondering what else we could do besides cut off the electricity to skimp around here. We already have just basic cable (well, sort of ... but that's another post). We already cut out all the fat in our spending. The cell phones, we think, might be an area of savings.

Do I need that phone? Let's see, no one calls me on it, but maybe once or twice a month. I only use it to call a few people, mostly The Da! and that's not for any other reason than a stay-at-home mom has to say something other than, "Wow, look at that doggie, girls. Doggie. Dog. Can you say dog? Arf. Arf."

And then there is that voice in the back of my head: Stalkers, murderers, rapists, weirdos ... all waiting to grab me, my babies. What would I do without a phone? Who would help me?

Or, what if something happens like J puts her feet up on the stroller bar too high and, I don't know, gets stuck. Or, L, signs bus so hard when she sees one that she collapses from heat exhaustion. I mean, our walks are pretty intense.

And, then there is my mother. She e-mailed to ask why I wasn't going to have my cell phone anymore because she can call me for free on it. Now she can't.

In the end, is that phone really breaking us? Probably not. But, do I need it? Do I really need it?