Entries in Blogging (21)
Not much to see here today. As if my every day life isn’t Cah-razy enough, I have 5 softball games this week within 6 days. I’m on the run all week. It’s only Monday and I’m already exhausted, *sigh*.
SO...
thought I’d leave you a list of a few of my favorite bloggers and their recent posts:
Heather at Confessions of a Coal Miner’s Granddaughter, or CMGD for those of you in the know, has up a hysterical video clip spoofing Pimp My Ride…they do it Mommy Style. I nearly pee’d my pants.
Another Heather, The Queen of Shake-Shake, wrote a very poignant post about marriage. She nailed what a lot of us moms are feeling. I literally said AMEN out loud. Not a common word in my vocabulary.
Lotus, aka Sarcastic Mom, could use some support. She just experienced a miscarriage and is brave enough to post about it. Stop by and leave her a hug.
On a lighter note, Latte Mommy gets my prize for the best title for a post: When Tighty Whities Go Bad. The post itself is funny, but the title made me laugh out loud.
Busy Dad and Secret Agent Mama did a simul-post a few weeks back. Their kids faced off in kitchen battle that would rival Iron Chef. It was really funny.
Joeprah just put up an Independence Day Contest. Check it out. You can win $25. With the price of gas these days, who couldn’t use an extra $25?!
That should keep you busy and buy me some time to put together a few real posts, phew. Happy Reading :)
Leave a Comment
Every now and again I check my stats. OK, I check them daily. Well, unless I am in Aruba. We don't have a connection yet at the house *gasp* and have to seek out free wifi spots, which cuts into serious beach and pool time.
Anyhow. Just wondering, who's the sicko who came here on a search for cotton balls stuck in ass hair????
Seriously? I'm a bit of a free spirit. I have a quirky sense of humor. I cannot for the life of me figure out which post may have led down that path.
And WOW, that seems like a dilemma. My thoughts: What are you using cotton balls for near your ass? And ass hair, ewww. Are you looking for a solution or to commiserate?
Fellow bloggers, want to share any weird keyword searches you've experienced on your blog? I'm feeling a bit tired and sad today. Could use the laugh. Check out the pictures in my last post. Going from THAT to snow last night in New Hampshire SUCKS.
THE Mommy
OH...OK, well maybe, kind of, soft of I deserved the search.
I forgot about my Hair Across Ass Haiku. Yes, I know. Early Alzheimer's hits again.
For the record, I am now the #1 search result on google for cotton balls stuck in ass hair. It's a proud, proud day.
When people come across jobs advertising “work at home”, they can’t help but think is this a scam? I know. Also, it can be difficult to get your foot in the door at a company willing to let you work from home.
If you’re looking for a work from home opportunity, check out this job listing on craigslist.com for a part-time Internet Researcher / Blogger.
I can attest that this is a real job listing at a real company. How am I so sure? I work for them already. In fact, I previously worked for my boss in an office setting, so I know for a fact that he is a decent, hardworking and trustworthy person. I now solely work from home (or Aruba!). Anywhere I have a computer with an internet connection. He gives me projects, I submit the hours that I work and, voila, I get paid. It’s a good gig. He’s now looking for 2 more of me.
Warning. This job is NOT for you if you are not good at having to honestly account for your time. He already knows approximately how much time most projects will take because I have been doing research for him for about a year and half now. He lives by “trust, but verify”. He will trust you not to pad your hours, but you will need to be accountable at first and/or if he feels as if you are taking advantage of him. As long as you are an honest, hardworking person, this shouldn’t be an issue.
Also, if you are not able to handle constructive criticism, this is NOT a job for you. He is very good at keeping it constructive. He is a very fair person. BUT not everyone can handle their work being picked apart.
I’m not going to lie, sometimes the research part can be a bit tedious.
In case you’re wondering, nope, he doesn’t pay me for the time I put into MommyCosm. This is my personal blog. All expenses are on moi.
If you have any questions about the company or the position, feel free to email me (themommy at mommycosm dot com) before sending him your resume. OH, and if you do send your resume…please follow his directions, or I promise you, he won’t even look at it. Attention to detail is important and your resume is test #1.
THE Mommy
My disclaimer: Since I'm not in an office with my boss, I have no idea where he is in the hiring process. He mentioned that he received many good resumes. I have no say whatsoever who gets hired. SO, that being said, good luck to everyone who applied:)
Regular readers know that I started working from Aruba after my husband went back to NH on Jan 7th. I was pretty lax during the first three weeks down here. With the exception of checking email every now and then, neither of us actually did much in the way of working. For me, that equaled next to zero blogging. As it should be…we were here on a much needed vacation.
I checked my blog stats yesterday and noticed that I had an extra 600 hits on Monday. Cool, right?
Not so much. I usually hang out at about 100 hits a day, so I was curious to see what was going on. Certainly, my Natalee Holloway post couldn’t have generated this much traffic?
Nope.
In a span of about 2 ½ hours, someone in Slovakia hit my site about 600 times. In my less-than-expert opinion, it didn’t look like a web crawler. They went onto individual posts occasionally, but the majority of the hits were on my login page…WTF?!
I’m not sure what gives, but it didn’t sit well with me. So I blocked the IP address.
I was pleasantly surprised at how easy this was to manage on Squarespace. Also noticed how to disregard my IP address so that my hits don’t count towards my stats. Pretty cool.
Have any of you had this happen on your blogs? Please share any insight and/or advice.
I have been busy trying to figure out how to stay in Aruba for the month of January. It has all fallen into place.
Changing our flights on Jet Blue was a piece of cake. I even got back a $60 credit because our new flight was less than our original flight.
BamBam’s school has agreed to not charge me for the month of January. His teacher will even be able to take him back into her room when we get back.
I was worried about Princess missing school. Her principal emailed back and didn’t sound too annoyed that she would be gone so long. Kindergarten isn’t required in NH and we pay for her to go to private school. She is way ahead for her age, so I wasn’t too worried. They said that we could see where she stands at the parent/teacher conference the first week of February.
My husband is flying home on Monday, but will be back the end of the month. Our Aruban friends have asked him to be their baby’s Godfather and he needs to be here for the christening. Very cool.
I will be going back to work from here on Tuesday. I plan to plop myself outside with a laptop for 2-3 hours a day while my in-laws hang with the kids by the pool. I’m looking forward to getting some work accomplished…and having a little alone time to get back to my blog.
On another note, holy crap! Did you see that Marshall Goldsmith left a comment on my post about his book?!?!? How cool is that!
I’ll be back to blogging on Tuesday. Looking forward to catching up with reading your blogs.
MommyCosm started as an experiment for me. When I first created this site I stuck with a very basic design and logo. Now that I've gotten the hang of this whole blogging thing, I am finding that I have serious design envy. Visually, MommyCosm is *yawn* boring. I want some blog bling for Christmas.
I'm reaching out to my regular readers and you lurkers...yes, you...do you have any recommendations for where to go for a custom designed header?
I also have the MommyCosm username over at WorldPress and am seriously considering moving on over there. Reason number one would be the rent...it's um, free. SquareSpace is easy to use and I really haven't had any issues, except that I pay a monthly fee. I wasn't sure at first if I was going to try to monetize the blog, so I didn't mind shelling out a bit to easily get things started. Now that I kind of know what I'm doing, I don't want the pressure of feeling like I should use ads or other money-making things...I may decide to some day, but it's not a priority. I've really met a lot of great people and enjoy the social aspect of blogging.
SO, any WordPress users want to put in their .02? Has your experience with WordPress been positive? Advice?
In celebration of my 100th post, here are 100 things about THE Mommy. Hopefully you will learn something new.
I’m not sure when I became a morning person. Possibly it was right around the same time I started drinking coffee. Even through my late 20’s I remember sleeping in…until 10 or 11am or so. Nowadays, I’m up by 6:30am. Everyday. Even the weekends. Even when I’m staying in a hotel, hungover and someone else is taking the kids to school. I’m still not one of those way too perky for morning people, but I think I’ve accepted the fact that I wake up early. I no longer try to force myself back to sleep. In fact, I’ve been enjoying the past few mornings…a gift of a sleeping husband and children…a space of uninterrupted time…which I get to spend reading my favorite blogs.
This morning, I came across an interesting link within the comments of one of my favorite dad blogs, Joeprah. Yes, I even had time to read the comments. A sleeping house is a lovely thing. Bernard left a comment about a rating system for your website. You can check any site and it will give a rating, like at the movies. Great tool for parents anyone with kids. Even greater entertainment for anyone who blogs. You can find it here.
MommyCosm was rated PG. I can live with that. Although, I’m sure that I’ve ranted about something at some point that should have earned me a rating of at least PG-13. I do have a potty mouth. Reading further it says:
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
Kill (2x) and Pain (1x)
OK, now that’s funny. I didn’t dig way, way back...but I know that I’ve done better than that! For example, my last post was bitching about my sister at Thanksgiving. I called her a “douche” and said that she “sucks”. Also once had a post titled 1st Day of School Sucks. A long time ago here, I called Ann Coulter a “bitch”.
So, apparently, parents are cautioned against the use of the words kill and pain, however, bitch, suck and douche are OK? Interesting.
As an experiment, I typed in the url for Wiping Up Snot. Recently, she was a little pissed off at her husband and used the eff word A LOT. She was rated NC-17 for the following words: fucking (21x), fuck (2x), fuckity (1x). *tee, hee…LOL!*
Oh, another of my favorite reads, The Queen of Shake Shake , she was also rated NC-17 for using: poop (8x), hell (5x), ass (3x), crack (2x), turd (1x).
WAIT a minute here! I used the word Crap at least once . So, crap is OK, but not poop or turd?! Also, accused Starbucks of putting crack in their latte in this post . Perhaps the word “crack” is OK as long as it doesn’t follow “ass”?
OH, damn it! Bloody ass crack hell, the little fuckers are waking up. Let’s see what that does to my ratings 
Would love to hear what the site rated the rest of you! Leave me a comment.
THE Mommy
LOL!!!!!
That didn't take much...MommyCosm's rating is now NC-17.
This is the final post about my trip to Blog World Expo in Las Vegas last week. It's a long one. In case you haven’t been following along, you might want to read here, Part 1 and Part 2.
4:45pm
OK, so we finished with two very looooong days schmoozing our way around Blog World. We pack up in record time and my boss drives away in his rental car. He had to find a FedEx to ship parts of the booth home and I had until 6pm to check out of my hotel…which I could see off in the distance. Shouldn’t be a problem…I’m feeling pretty good and my brain starts shifting to thoughts of going home to my little ones. I suddenly miss them. I get into the taxi line at the convention center. We wait. And wait. And wait.
5:15pm
I’m finally the first in line with about 20 people behind me. We wait. And wait. And wait. No taxis. My room key only works until 6pm. I paid $30 extra to be able to go back for a quick shower before my red-eye flight. I team up with a couple of strangers also staying at my hotel. We calculate that it would take about 45 minutes to walk back to the hotel…too late now…and our feet really, really hurt from being on them all day for the last two days. We walk to the closest hotel, about 100 yards or so away and begged a limo to drive us. For $20 each. I would’ve paid $50 at that point.
6pm+
The front desk let me into my room even after my key expired. They were very nice about it. I threw my stuff together and took a quick shower.
6:45pm
Finally checked out of my room. Grabbed a quick dinner at a Mexican restaurant called “El Nopal”. I remember thinking it’s going to be a long night, hope this doesn’t make me sick…if it does it’ll make a good blog post…El Nopal was No Pal of mine…tee hee.
7:15pm
I decided not to mess around before my 10:40pm flight back to Boston. I quickly grabbed a taxi back to the airport. When I got up to the Jet Blue check-in booth she asked for my name.
We don’t have anyone flying to Boston tonight with your name. Are you sure your flight is today?
Does that really happen? I wonder what idiot would get the wrong date on their reservations. I hand her my receipt.
Mrs. Xx, you’re flight isn’t until tomorrow night.
I think the weight of my exhaustion and the stress built up over the last couple of days finally hit me. Like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stop the tears from welling up in my eyes. And, damn it, I hate to cry. Not gonna do it. I had all I could do to say but I promised my 5 year old I’d be there when she gets up in the morning!
Apparently, the flight was pretty full. My ticket wouldn’t allow me to fly standby?! WTF?!
She looks at me and says please, don’t cry. Give me a minute…I’ll be right back.
Well, I don’t know what secret stash of tickets she accessed, but after a 2 minute phone conversation, she comes back and says
This is your lucky day. You found a fellow mom (and she shows me a picture of her 3 kids she’s wearing on a badge around her neck). I have been in your shoes and I hate to be away from my kids. We can’t have a disappointed little girl wake up without Mommy, can we? I’m going to put you in seat 1C, on the aisle, so that you can get out quickly tomorrow morning. And I’m only going to charge you the $25 change fee.
I had to force myself to remember to breathe. In. and. Out. First fighting the tears because I wasn’t going to get home…then I had to push them back again because she was being way too kind. I’m an ass. It was totally my fault. I booked the damn flight. I was the one who grabbed the chance to fly away from my kids for 2 days…lured by the opportunity of an entire bed to myself and adult conversation…I was too busy doing a happy dance to properly check the date on the damn tickets. I didn’t deserve her kindness…but I so very appreciated it.
I thanked her again and again and once more…and then went through security and to the gate. I think trying so hard to hold back the tears made my brain swell. I could feel a migraine coming on. I don’t get them often…but when I do, ouch. The lights. The sounds. The pain. The nausea. If you’ve ever experienced them, you know just what I’m talking about.
8:15ish
I got to the gate and looked up at the board. The flight will be a couple of hours late. I had almost four hours to kill. I tried not to curse the airline…after all, I’m pretty damn lucky to be going home on this flight. I grabbed a seat and start reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
9:30ish
My migraine progresses. My neck and shoulders are all achy. I can barely see straight and want to throw up. I pay way too much for Tylenol and a Starbucks Hot Cocoa. I down 4 Tylenol with the cocoa.
Past Midnight
We finally board the plane. I’m exhausted, but feeling little better. I’ve read ¾ of the book. It’s an easy read, but very interesting to see into the mind of an autistic child. My migraine can officially be downgraded to a headache.
I sink into my seat and allow myself to sleep for a bit. I’m awoken to the sound of…someone throwing up. Yuck. There were a few people in the back of the plane that either had food poisoning or a virus. I vowed NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING. I didn’t get up and sat with my arms crossed for the remaining 3 hours of the flight.
8:20am
We land and after running immediately to a puke-free bathroom, I grab my luggage. I find my way outside to where the limos pick up. I have a driver that we’ve used in the past and he was available last minute. He drives a town car…and it’s usually cheaper than gas, tolls and parking at the airport. I wait. In the freezing cold. I still have sandals on. I think my feet might just get frost bitten. I wait some more…and then seek shelter in a little hut near the limo pick up area.
An aside, damn 9/11…when I used to travel all the time for work, the limo drivers could just live park and would be standing inside the warm airport with a sign. I always loved seeing my name. Now you actually have to haul your own stuff outside because they can’t leave their cars. No, I’m not spoiled. OK, well, maybe a little.
I gave up waiting and called my husband. Instead of being greeting with a cheery good morning, he got the honor of dealing with my psycho-hugely-pissed-off-alter-ego. He doesn’t have to deal with her often so he snapped to. He called the limo company. Apparently, they FORGOT to pick me up. No, this had nothing to do with the wrong flight being booked. I spoke with them directly. They apparently forgot to put me on the books. And he was in Dover, NH. That’s over an hour away from Boston. I was livid…and exhausted…and cold…and very, very hungry.
10:00am
The limo driver finally arrives and apologizes repeatedly. I’m too tired to be angry anymore. I just wanted to go home…and that’s where we went.
--
All in all, I’m glad that I went to Vegas. Blog World was very interesting. It was fun to be back in the world of trade shows. The one good night sleep I got was fab-u-lous, even if it was in a smoking room.
This was the perfect lifestyle for me…when I was in my 20’s…and not married…and not a Mommy. The bottom line, the grass may seem greener on the other side of the fence at times, but I wouldn’t trade my life right now for anything. I’m glad I had the opportunity to prove that to myself by spending a couple of days on the other side.
Since becoming a parent, have you been given the opportunity to do something from your pre-parent days? If so, please share. If not, where would you like to go if you could...and what would you do there? Leave a comment.
