AB Chao Design Camp DC: Hoarding, Crying & Other Assorted Awesomeness

So remind me to tell you about the time AB Chao bought me a shot of bourbon and drunk-dialed Heather Armstrong. And then promptly shoved the phone at my drunken ass while I shrieked in panic.

I JUST WANTED A PICTURE. YOU CAN'T DISAPPOINT A PICTURE.

Later, I burst into drunken tears at the table while explaining to all the other lovely DC Design Camp attendees how AB and I know each other because you guys. You guyyyyyyssss. This. This right here. This lady and you people and the Internet and blogging and the ENTIRE PATH OF MY LIFE, plus also the universe and everything.

Yes. I am very fun at parties. Always bring a towel, mostly because I will definitely spill something.

(Yesterday it was coffee. I got up mid-session to refill my coffee and unscrewed the lid on an apparently still very full to-go container and coffee just fucking erupted out of the thing, all over me and the floor and like, inside drawers and cabinets and shit. And once again, I stood there doing little else besides PANICKED SHRIEKING because I have no coping skills.)

LAY OFF ME I'M TRYING.

My point is that I had a fantastic weekend. Like, teh best. I learned so much and had even more fun. There was much laughter and champagne (sabering!) and cupcakes and really inappropriate jokes about grommet-top curtains and vagina baskets. My brain is full of so many awesome decorating ideas (I am going to rearrange the SHIT out of some furniture, people) and my phone is full of awesome new contacts/future drinking buddies who are all mysteriously flashing me metal horns and/or their cleavage. 

Plus, on the Metro ride home, I totally got hit on. Like "what kinda pics u got on dat cameraaaaa phone, hot mom lady" hit on. I have not been flirted with that hilariously (or, okay, at all) in ages. He lost my heart (and my smokin' mom ass) when he said he was only down with "ladies marryin' laaaadies, but not like, dudes, cuz gross." I was like, UR FACE IS GROSS. Also, how did we even get on this topic? Also also, I do not believe that you are a male model in from Los Angeles. I would suggest a better cover story, seeing as it clearly did not get you anywhere with the laaaaadies and you're here desperately trying to pick up a bedraggled mother of three on the Red Line at like, 7:45 pm. Hot Mom Lady, OUT. Because she's really tired, and this is her stop.

Anyway, if you're in the Chicago area I highly recommend attending the mini camp in December. Buy AB a shot of bourbon and tell her to drunk dial me. 

Every Which Way But Good

I. The Genetics of Crud-Covered Scrunchface

Me, circa the days when metal cabinets with sharp rusty edges ruled the earth.

Ike, circa last week.

It's awesome how they only look like me when they're acting like goofball weirdos. Awesome and telling.

II. No, But Seriously, He's Huge Now

And all day long he's like "Shhzz? Go? Shhzz? Go?" which roughly translates to "Put my shoes on, woman, and let's bust this joint."

One of these doors has to take me outside. Or at least protect somethng dangerous and perfectly sized for my mouth.

III. Call Me Maybe

Hello?

OMG YOU GOT TICKETS TO THE WIGGLES NO FREAKING WAY.

I'll be right there. Just gotta find my shhzz.

I posted that last photo to Instagram, and the comments immediately all focused on Ike's spiffy little underroos, which is actually a gDiaper, which I actually bartered in exchange for writing a post for the gDiapers blog. (Which I still have to, you know, actually do. Coming soon! Hold please!) 

Yes, I requested and received payment for writing in the form of cloth diapers and was thrilled out of my goddamned mind over the arrangement. Mommyblogging! What a country! Get a real job, and etc.

Anyway, several commenters requested a cloth diapering update, so I suppose I need to write THAT now too. I'm sure I can manage to devote another 2,000 words or so to the subject, if I try. And by "try" I mean "open my mouth and let the stream-of-consciousness fall out because blah blah diapers diapers blah."

IV. More Gratuitous Beefcake

Ike learned the sign for "baby." Which he now uses as a descriptor for children OTHER THAN HIMSELF, BECAUSE I'M NOT ONE ANYMORE, MOM.

Or possibly this is more of an arm-folded stance of disapproval at the toy-pile disaster going on behind him, because MY GOD.

V. And On That Note, SEGUE!

Do you guys know AB Chao? Do you guys know that, way back in a previous life, I didn't have a blog but she had an "online journal" and I read it religiously, because she was just so smart and funny and hey, I wonder how hard it would be to acquire a personal web publishing property of my very own? Hmm!

She's pretty much the reason I was inspired to start blogging, and the reason you are reading this. But please don't hold that against her. She didn't know. How COULD she know?

Anyway, she's also a kick-ass interior decorator/designer, and is coming to DC next month for one of her famous Dewit Design Camps. And I will be there, and you guys, I've never actually met her in person and I am going to hyperventilate and probably cry and be all, "did you ever know that you're my herrrrrro" COMPLETELY NON-IRONICALLY. Then I will ask her what in sam hill I should do about that mess behind the couch. 

You should totally come. Bring a camera. Instagram the fangirl meltdown. Feel the (creepy, Internet-based) love.

While You Were Sparkling

So I was going to write about Sparklecorn today and how it all went down. Picture nine straight hours of rolling anxiety attacks...several honest-to-God crying jags alongside the ladies of the CheeseburgHer party... the prospect of partying in the equivalent of a flourescent-lit produce aisle at Wal-Mart...begging for decorating help via text, email, Twitter, a bullhorn on Times Square...a cake that got stuck in traffic...missing keys to electrical boxes...getting personally singled out and screamed at by the first irate party guest who walked in the door (because we started late) and crying again because oh my God I'm all sore muscles and exposed nerve endings, stop yelling at me, YOU KNOW THE USUAL. 

But then I looked at the first batch of photos and all that bullshit up and fell right out of my brain. I can barely remember a minute of it now. You guys are just that pretty, I guess. 

***

This bullshit, on the other hand:

I don't know what this child ate while we were away, but look at him. Standing there, reorganizing the spice rack. On his LEGS. 

BOY LEGS. With kneecaps and shit, instead of gnocchi-chub-pillows. 

He's walking everywhere now, officially, picking up more and more speed by the minute. Talking too, or at least trying to. "Eat? Buh? Eh? Cat? Meh? Yite? Gog?" 

If you guess incorrectly at what he's trying to say he will give you a withering look and sigh. "Hmmphf" apparently translates to "I pity your feeble brain, but I believe I asked for some Cheerios. Chop chop."

(Though I'm getting pretty good at understanding this age: today I asked him if he was crying because he tried to taste an antibacterial wipe he found in my purse. He tried to deny it for awhile but I knew the truth.)

At least he still looks a couple years younger than Noah, right? Who is all, suddenly, six-going-on-12.

And Ezra is three-going-on-what-the-hell, weren't YOU just a baby five minutes ago?

Sigh. It's never going to stop, is it?

(I don't know who is more underwhelmed by that thought, me or Ike. MO-O-OOM!)

My Winning Formula: Talk Ramble Talkyspeak Unrelated Baby Picture

Man. Did I really only post two times this week? Did I really have that little say about the ENDLESSLY FASCINATING SUBJECT that is myself? Damn, I am losing my narcissistic grip, or something.

It's the week before BlogHer (and even more importantly, one week before SPARKLECORN 2012 OH HELL YEAH), and I'm doing my yearly routine of running around like a newly headless chicken trying to get everything done. It's REALLY HARD to get everything done when you have no head, guys. I really don't recommend it. 

I have so much to do! So many feelings about things that I feel!

Like: My Other Job is consuming my life, but in a good way. (And I'm not trying to be all secretive about it, for the record. I mean, find me on LinkedIn and it's all right there. It's more that it would probably bore y'all to tears, unless maybe you're in the IT field and super geeked about Azure and SharePoint development and hybrid cloud scenarios. Not that there's anything wrong with being geeked about those things. Those things are awesome, frankly. Fuck yeah hybrid cloud! Somebody start me a Tumblr!) So it's weird to suddenly ditch all that for a few days, to go from being some Sooper Professhunal Blog & Social Media Person to...well. That girl who climbed on a table and took bites of a giant unicorn cake's ass last year. 

Also like: I'm pretty sure the baby will wean while I'm gone and on the one hand, okay, he's gotten really extra bite-y this week and is losing interest anyway and my crap supply is crap with a side of double crap, but on the other hand, nooooooooooo. Wah. Etc. 

Anyway. He's still delicious. 

I chew on his face a lot, yes. His whole head is like a baked potato topped with downy spun sugar.

PS. Chalkboard wall protip, coming from someone who has been a chalkboard wall professional for all of five days now: You can completely and easily erase the chalk residue with Endust sprayed on a dry towel. Works like a charm, and also quickly, which is good for when you realize you left up a vaguely obscene doodle from the night before, right as your children are coming downstairs for breakfast. 

On Getting 611 Comments On The Huffington Post

A few weeks ago, the lovely and talented Lisa Belkin asked if she could republish my "20 Things Nobody Told Me About Little Boys" entry on The Huffington Post. I said sure! And damn! I probably should have spent more than 20 minutes on it. Another 10 minutes and I could have come up with at least 10 more Things Related To Pee, surely. 

Anyway. I said yes and then promptly forgot all about it. Occasionally I'd remember and go look for it, and eventually assumed it had perhaps appeared briefly and been met with a deafening army of crickets, then promptly pushed back into the morass of the HuffPo archives by the approximately 14 million things that get published there on a daily basis. 

Not so much. 

It actually didn't go live until Monday, and Lisa was kind enough to make sure it was treated nicely and highly visible. BOOM!

I checked in on my little listicle right after it went live and had a weird reaction of being completely embarrassed, like OMG DON'T LOOK AT IT, NOBODY LOOK AT IT. OR ME. I closed the browser window and basically hid from my own damn blog post all week. 

I finally felt brave enough to venture back last night, figuring that it had probably dropped off the main parenting page by then, and decided that I was also brave enough to read the three or four confused-type "WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN" comments it had probably collected. 

That's when I saw that it had over 600 comments and fell off my chair. Then I got back on my chair and rubbed my grubby little paws together, because gurrrrl, you just know this is gonna be good. A number that high was oddly liberating, proof that at some point the conversation had surely derailed away from any meaningfulo critique of my writing or how weird my hair looks rendered HuffPo-style in my headshot, but had fully entered a batshit zone of wankariffic crazy.

Indeed it had. Here are some of my favorites.

YOUR CUTESY LITTLE LISTICLE IS A SHINING EXAMPLE OF EVERYTHING THAT IS WRONG WITH AMERICA:

Cute, quaint, observant but totally irrelevant! While parents dwell on the stupid and cute the things they should know about parenting remains an unknown. Parents parent the way their parents in most cases and if the parents were bad, guess what. That's why we still see child abuse. All it takes to produce a child is to successfully screw once! If our society really cared about children they would require that every male and female who wanted to have a child take at least one year of college level courses in how to parent. They would have to take a child development course that would teach them that children learn certain things in stages. Worrying about sex or nudity, bad words at someone who hasn't reached a certain stage of development is ridiculous and a waste of time. When I took my course in child development there was a young woman who got very upset because she couldn't potty train her child. When the professor asked her how old the child was she said 10 months. The professor asked the class how many people thought that 10 months was a good time to potty train a child. Most of the class raised their hands. The physical skills needed for potty training develop in both girls and boys at between 18 to 30 months. Though both boys and girls develop the necessary skills at the same time, the average age of potty training varies between the sexes. The average age for girls to be potty trained by is 29 months, and the average age for boys is 31 months. At 36 months, 98 percent of children are potty trained, according to the University of Michigan Health System. These are the things that are not commonly known and should be. We have certainly reached an age where we should have cast aside the notion that people can only have sex for procreative reasons but child rearing is too important to leave to chance. Of people need a license for something as mundane as driving a car one would think that raising a child which is far more complicated should also require training and a license to ensure that the child is raised in a healthy and safe environment. Most of what gets said about how important and precious children are is BS. Just look at how Americans have allowed the religiously brainwashed and the owner class to deprive children all over this country to continually have their education system dumbed down, privatized, and underfunded while there is always money for wars and war machines!

THIS LISTICLE IS FULL OF DIRTY NUMBERING LIES:

There are several that are listed as separate items but are actually one thing: 14-16, 3-4, 10-11. Also, 4 items about pee? I have an 18 month old son and if I had 20 things to say about him--even if I was generalizing to all boys--none of them would be about his pee.

PERHAPS WITH INTENSE THERAPY, YES:

I can only say I hope you can get over the way urine seems to dominate your thoughts and only retain the beautiful memories of your babies childhoods.

TOO SOON, MAN:

Jerry Sandusky is writing under the pen name Amy Corbett Storch

I ATE YOUR GENDER AND IT WAS DELICIOUS:

Every time I read crap like this I want to ask women "Do you really think you ate the only gender in this world?". Women are too self absorbed to pay attention to men.

THE LOST ART OF THE PROPERLY NUMBERED LIST:

This article wasn't that good. A column with numbered items should not reference the comment before with additional information. The whole thing lacks wit and humor.

I LIKE YOU:

...but I HuffPost keeps telling me that sex is just some kind of artificial construct imposed by society on our children!

You're a beast for choosing your child's sexual identify! You clearly should treat your children as gender-neutral-beings until they are old enough to choose a sex for themselves.

MISANDRY!

Misandry beginning with boys. Let's take each item: (1) You will spend a crazy amount of time [time better spent doing what? and the inference is, it's an imposition on the mother's time] clipping their weed-like [the idea is that they are unwanted growth] fingernails, even though your own nails don't grow worth a damn.

Misandry beginning with boyhood. Item (3): Little-boy funk-smell [presumably a bad smell] kicks in sometime around age 3. Second negative.

Misandry beginning with boyhood. Item (4): 4. It [boy-funk] smells like a combination of feet and maple syrup [an unpleasant smell]. (3) and (4) belong together. Third negative.

(This guy went on like this for awhile.)

Misandry beginning in boyhood. Item (5): You will totally get peed on. In the face, directly, at least once. [Apart from the fact that urine in a healthy person is sterile and in some cultures is used to treat wounds, the negative here is that somehow this is unpleasant. Only boys' urinating comes in a stream and this is somehow not pleasant to the mother.] What is worse, if you read the literature on child psychology, you will see that many mothers punish their boys at this point. Let's not discuss child (boy) abuse here. Another negative in any case.

(Quite awhile.)

Not to belabor this, but misandry beginning in boyhood continues item by item: 6,7,8,9,10,11,12,15,16,17,18 (here men are introduced as objects of misandry). The last two items are supposed to make boys endearing in spite of all that is disgusting about them. Not that "wuv" is different from gratitude. Yes, boys are "awesome." Why not just say that and describe how?

(I THOUGHT I JUST DID, DUDE.)

Really, though, I found it all terribly entertaining and wasn't personally bothered by any of it, because: EH. They don't know me or my boys or "get" my "humor" or whatever. And the majority of the comments were positive and sane (although I admit I got bored by page 10 or so). I saw several of YOU GUYS there too, which was fun and a reminder that I am incredibly spoiled when it comes to blog comments, because YOU PEOPLE are always so kind and funny and...you know, not like that. *waves hand in vagueishly upward direction* You're the reason I can bash out a funny-ish quick list like that without feeling compelled to overthink it and anticipate the more fringe-y negative reactions it could possibly generate. Anyway, thank you for being so awesome. I'm sorry I don't say that enough.

(The ONLY COMMENT on HuffPo that actually for-real kind of bugged me and made my fingers itch to type a reply to was a one snarking that "Amy Storch needs to learn how to use word wrap in Microsoft Word" or something, like I was personally responsible for the formatting of a post that I had nothing to do with after I gave my blessing for someone else to copy-and-paste it. And like, you can't paste formatting from Word into blogging software ANYWAY because it makes everything wonky so your comment simply reveals that you don't know anything about web publishing and therefore I HEREBY WIN THIS INTERNET.

Acuse me of misandry and gender stereotyping and THE REASON WE HAVE WAR MACHINES, but don't imply that I don't know how to use word wrap, maaaan. I do. I'll word wrap your FACE.) 

 

Even Dream Jobs Get The Blues

The first thing I did after accepting my first non-mommyblogging-related job in a bajillion years was rush to Target for pens and file folders. The second thing I did was glare at my husband for laughing at me. And my pens and file folders. I did realize I would still be working on a computer, right? With a keyboard? Just like I've been doing for a bajillion years in a happy, paperless worky bubble? 

I can't really explain it. But if you get me anywhere near anything that remotely resembles Actual Office Work, I am completely seized with the need to scribble things down on Actual Paper. I require Post-Its and notepads and file tabs and a pen to write with and one to chew on. I want to print things out and stare at them and cover them in proofreading marks and bullet points and chicken-scratch notes to myself. 

I ask myself questions a lot. Category aggregation slider at top? Slideshows? Talking clients? News items round-up SUSTAINABLE? PLAGIARISM??

I stare at these half-formed questions later and am basically like, "Bitch, the hell if I know." Sometimes I answer myself with more scribbles: WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT??????

The good news is that the job is going...uh, good. Well. Excellent, even. I am getting the shit out of shit done, yo, and people seem to like me.

And none of them read my blog.

I mean, they know OF IT, and understand that I am a blogger who knows about blogs because I blog and I blog far and wide and empire-like, but I am 99% confident that nobody I interact with on a daily basis has ever read a single post about my boobs. Nobody knows about my love for personifying deodorants or the time I mistook a fruit sticker for a grave bodily injury or that I am sometimes just a giant walking sack of neuroses and fail. 

At least a couple times a week, I get emails from new or hopeful bloggers, asking for advice about ads and sponsorships and wanting to know how long it took before I started making money blogging. I try my very best to answer the majority of these (though I know I have a backlog of them in my inbox right now I AM SORRY), but I always...cringe when I write my response because I know it's probably not what anybody wants to hear.

It took years. It took a little bit of luck and a lot of good timing and many, many months of posting to the sound of crickets day after day. It took writing because I loved to write and not because I was hellbent on a book deal (HA!) or quitting my day job, because that just didn't happen back then. But it took years, not weeks or months, and it also involved a lot of side gigs -- some good, some not -- and a lot of stress and networking and adapting and people writing shit about you and a lot of lessons in self-awareness and boundaries learned the hard way.

Would I do it all over again? Abso-fucking-lutely. I mean, Jesus. I love my job, I love my life, I love you guys. All of you.

(Well, except for that one person I met in real life several years ago and thought maybe I could be friends with, and then later randomly discovered she was relaying everything I said and did and wore to a message board comprised of people who hated me, like what the fuck, I sometimes wear yoga pants and have visible roots, ZOMG IT'S ALMOST LIKE BLOGGERS ARE REGULAR PEOPLE OR SOME SHIT.)

(I should delete that. It's petty. Eh, I'll leave it for now and delete it before I publish. If I forget it's probably because I DIDN'T WRITE IT DOWN.)

(Delete?????? You over-sensitive baby?????? Brand dilution synergy????????????)

Whatever, I still can't quit you, Internet. 

But I didn't realize how badly I needed...well, not a break from blogging about myself, because look! Here I am! Still blogging about myself! But...something different. Something where my day revolves around something besides a breakneck pace of writing deadlines, where there's no pressure to be FUNNY! Something that doesn't involve me mining my life and experiences and OH MY GOD, something besides kids kids babies diapers sleep boobs kids. 

But I did. Did I ever. 

(I also didn't realize how badly I needed to bust out my super-old reading glasses that I used to wear to combat eye strain and maaaaybe also to look older and more responsible at work.)

(Needless to say, I'm no longer concerned about that second part. Yikes.) 

Babbyblogging

Aaaaaaaaand...crash.

I woke up this morning and felt it: The last of the adrenaline left my body, probably out my ears and through the spaces in between my toes. You know what I'm talking about. I'm so anti-confrontation (what if the Imaginary Authority Figures shush me for being too loud?) that this week's Unfortunate Unpleasantess kept me amped and on edge for several days and nights, until: BAM. WHOOSH. 

On the plus side, I am no longer stomping around my house, composing endless emails and blog entries in my head or engaging in imaginary arguments with the walls. (Fuck you, walls! Being beige is not an excuse!) I also lost five pounds, somehow. But on the other side, turns out the comedown is a bit of bitch. It's like a conflict hangover that sucks the fluff out of you. Oh, lawndiapers, I know just how you feel.

Also writing kind of not so much with the goodness. Or something. That like.

Which means...pictures! Again! More! Oh, whatever.

SOMEBODY has learned how to play the "SOOOOOO BIG" game.

He's really proud of me. I'm only 34, after all.

Now, here's where I get obnoxious (YOU: OH SO JUST RIGHT NOW, THEN?), but I can't help it! I'm still using this poor old blog as a baby book so I need to write this down: I've mentioned that Ike mimics things we say, and I keep trying and trying to convince myself that's all it is, because...well, come on. He's nine months old, he's not REALLY saying "yeah" when you ask him if he wants more Cheerios. That was a coincidence.

That he did three times. In a row. And then again two days later. Hmmpf. Well.

Other words he's busted out perfectly at the perfect moment, more than once: kick, dog, Dada, and hi. 

And then yesterday, Noah and Ezra were trying to get him to play the SOOOO BIG game with them at breakfast, and singsonging his name over and over again, like they do 25,000 times a day: BabyIke, BabyIke, BabyIke! 

Jason walked in and they turned their attention to him. This displeased Baby Ike. He still had both hands in the air and you simply do not leave Baby Ike hanging like that, bro.

"BABBYIKE!" he shouted, hand to God, clear as day.

I swear all four of us heard and dropped our jaws to the floor. (Well, maybe not Ezra, who doesn't really give a shit what Baby Ike does as long as he's not touching Ezra's toys or any toy Ezra may have ever touched or plans to touch again in the future.) Even Noah lost his damn mind. "Baby Ike SAID HIS NAME! He KNOWS HIS NAME! Because I TAUGHT HIM. Because I'M THE BEST!"

Yes, son, you are. And so is your brother. And your other brother. You're all just so crazy awesome I can't even believe it sometimes. Can you all just get in one big pile so I can snuggle the crap out you guys more efficiently? Thanks.

BABBY IS SO BIG BECAUSE BABBY JUST ATE TWO PANCAKES, A PEAR, SOME BUTTERNUT SQUASH, CHEERIOS AND WOULD IT KILL YOU TO TOP OFF BABBY'S COFFEE ALREADY, LADY?

To Whom It May Concern

Or, Hey Girl, I Heard You Were Blogging My Blogs On Your Blog, And Then Again On A Blog That Paid You To Blog, But You Were Blogging My Blogs And Not Your Blogs, In Other Words Stealing Stuff I Wrote Which I Am Pretty Sure Is Not Cool, Girl

Or, Choice Excerpts From The Most Fun Email I Have Ever Had The Honor Of Writing

Dear You,

Well. It's unfortunate that we had to be introduced under these circumstances. Before I go any further, allow me to tell you a little about myself. I think some of this may be relevant in a bit.

Like you, I married very young -- I was 20 years old at my wedding. Couldn't even drink the champagne! I put myself through college a course or two at a time, while working full-time, until I finally got my degree when I was 27 years old. I started my blog in 2003, when I was 26. I was hired as a columnist for AlphaMom -- my first "real" professional writing gig, when I was 28, right after having my first baby. Holy crap, was that ever a dream come true.

Like you, I have three children now: Noah, Ezra and Baby Ike, who was just born last June. When I was six months pregnant with him, my father died of cancer. I don't mention this to play the Pain Olympics or anything, but since you seem to be bringing up your pregnancy as a sympathy ploy, I do want to say that I DO sympathize with what I'm assuming is your current stress level over this mess.The universe has shitty timing sometimes, and it sucks.

The writing you stole was written about my second pregnancy. It is all very near and dear to me, and I am fiercely protective of it, as I'm sure you understand. What you did was like someone swiping your belly pics and passing them off as their own: creepy, invasive and wrong. I imagine if that happened to you, you would waste no time in leading an Internet charge against that person, no matter what excuses they offered.

So on that note, let's break yours down:

"I started writing a long time ago, when I was young and did first start under not knowing the proper rules. I have no real education in writing and never claimed I did, I just liked to share my feelings and my life with my friends and family."

You use your youth as an excuse a lot. And lack of formal education. However, plagiarism -- passing someone's work off as your own -- is something that most of us learn by the time we turn in our first book report in elementary school. My kindergartner knows that stealing is wrong and that it's important to do your own work. So...sorry. I will not accept that one.

Also, this was happening in 2009. Three years ago. While I don't know the full history of your blog, a quick glance through your pregnancy archive reveals that you were already pretty established -- established enough for your entries to garner double-digit comments and for brands to be approaching you with sponsorship deals and free nursery furniture. Free nursery furniture! That's impressive! Even I've never managed that one. Clearly, despite your youth and educational background you hit the ground running as a pretty savvy blogger who knew how to network and promote yourself.

Which is why I do not buy that you did not understand "the rules." Linking. Quotation marks. That little fancy blockquote button thingie.

And barring that, when your commenters chimed in saying stuff like "LOL YOU'RE SO FUNNY" and specifically calling out jokes and lines THAT YOU DID NOT WRITE, you could have stepped in and say, "Whoops, sorry guys! That line came from this post. I should've linked to it, because I really like it!" 

"I have been recently told that I have plagiarized your whole articles, and never intended to steal anything. I took some great lines and did not cite them, which was a big mistake. I am now just 27 and learning everyday as I grow how to avoid these mistakes in the future. I never meant to hurt anyone or steal from anyone."

Seriously? You needed to be told that you did not actually write the words you published? You did not intend to steal when you plagiarized me week after week, in a variety of different ways? You're going with "I didn't cite properly?" Sometimes you reworded my jokes. Sometimes you took just a line or two and flushed it out with your own writing. Sometimes you just copy-and-pasted the entire thing, whole paragraphs at a time. Once you found out your baby was a girl and mine was a boy, you changed the pronouns and left everything else. This is behavior you know not to do by middle school, if not earlier. The fact that it was on the Internet doesn't mean the rules were any different, and I think you knew that. I think you simply figured you weren't going to ever get caught.

And again, stop with the "I am only 27" thing. It's insulting to people younger than you who absolutely know how to not steal other people's writing.

"I have been going through my blog all day long and publishing my posts and just want to make sure I dont have any other mistakes that will come to haunt me."

I appreciate you taking my writing down. I really do. The thing that still kinda bugs me is that in the end you just took everything down because you claim that you simply can't remember what you wrote...and what I wrote. From three years ago. I am pretty sure someone could put a dozen different articles/blog posts/whatevers in front of me and I could tell you which ones were mine and which ones were not.

"I am 27 years old and have made mistakes. I now feel really bad and almost just want to give up."

Really? You are 27? Huh. Didn't know that. Why do you seem to think 27-year-old women should get a free pass through adulthood? I sense you imagine I am some ancient, over-educated old lady when I'm only a few years older than you with a freaking Bachelor's degree from an commuter/distance-ed college in Communications. At 27 I was a grown-up. And so are you. You are far, far smarter and savvier than you are letting on, or are letting yourself believe.

Read through the emails you have sent to everybody involved in this and count the number of times you bring up your age and being "young" and seriously: Figure out why you do that, and knock it off. It's. Not. An. Excuse.

"I wrote about my pregnancies and never meant to have it backfire in my face. I just wanted to share my joy and I found those lines great, just didnt quite understand the proper rules to citing."

But you didn't technically really write about your pregnancies. You wrote about MY pregnancy. MY joy.

And let's not forget when and where you were ACTUALLY caught plagiarizing: yesterday, three years later, in a paid column at Babble. (Big thanks to alert reader Catherine for the heads' up, by the way.) Presumably, by then, you DID know the rules, yet you posted my words as yours on multiple occasions.

I also write for Babble. Like AlphaMom, I have nothing but wonderful things to say about their editorial guidelines and standards, and the people I work with for who inspire me to write to the very best of my ability. And so I have read the contract you signed. It is very, very clear that you are expected to write your own words, to clearly cite and attribute and link. I'm not entirely sure why you thought it was a good idea to copy-and-paste your own archives as part of a PAYING, PROFESSIONAL JOB, but even assuming that you had cleared that with Babble ahead of time, there's still the little problem that one of the articles you posted there -- the sex & pregnancy one -- was a top to bottom copy/paste job with only a few minor word changes. And I never found that one on your personal blog, and yes, I looked very hard and very carefully. (Which is not being "obsessive-compulsive," by the way -- nice tweet! good call on deleting it, though -- it's called protecting my brand and my writing.)

That's...quite troubling, and negates a lot of your excuses and explanations that you thought you were only technically plagiarizing yourself at Babble. If I am wrong about this, I am sorry, but I still feel like we're splitting hairs here. 2009 vs. 2012. You still stole it, and I cannot honestly believe you're trying to convince me that you simply FORGOT that you didn't actually write a single word of that post.

BTW, you stole an article I wrote about my SEX LIFE. Holy SHIT.

***

Okay, since the rest of your email is pretty much a repetition of your age and how you never "meant" for this to happen, let's move on. I'd like to give you some PR crisis management advice here. From one old, ancient, decrepit blogger to a younger one. Come clean, publicly. Apologize -- to me, Isabel and the folks at Babble -- without any excuses or revisionist half-truths that are easily proven wrong/shady by five minutes in Google Cache or the Wayback Machine. Plagiarism is a big deal, yes, and it is -- often -- a career killer, even for older, educated, established writers/journalists who made one measly little mistake. It's not a question of maturity, but one of integrity.

Yes, I have a very large readership and Twitter following. I sense you didn't know that when you chose my articles to swipe, and I know that you're terrified now of this getting "out" -- I noticed your husband tweeting cryptic messages about sinister Internet stalkers keeping you down, as if he's hoping people will think that's why you were fired from Babble, and play this mess so anyone who dares to say anything is just trying to "ruin" a poor, hard-working 27-years-young (OMG STOPIT) woman. Even though, again, I sense you two would not be nearly so kind to anyone who stole as much as a recipe photo from your blog.

I am not a bully. I am not a mean girl. I have never even engaged in a single Twitter argument with anyone and seriously, Internet drama gives me hives and I avoid it at all costs. I HATE this stuff, really and truly. I have no desire to "ruin" you or send people after you with torches and pitchforks.

However, I am a professional blogger with a brand and a reputation to protect. I am also a person with feelings who writes about those feelings and any and all significant (and insignificant) events in my life on the Internet. You stole -- over and over and over -- MY words, and made money and sponsorships and connections using them. So I will be writing about this today on my blog -- I have every right to, as I'm sure you understand -- and I will NOT be naming you or linking to you or anything.

But this is by no means a get-out-of-Internet-drama-free card. Mostly, I just don't care to send you the traffic. I imagine some people will figure it out. So tread carefully. Don't give the Internet what it wants, which is a drawn-out childish temper tantrum about what counts as stealing and plagiarism and what the definition of "is" is. Own what you did: I stole. I was stupid. I'm embarrassed and I am sorry and hoo boy, I will never, ever do it again. Pledge to earn your readers' trust -- and the trust of the brands and advertisers you attracted using someone else's words -- by giving them nothing but the brutal truth now.

I accept your apology for being very sorry you got caught. I still sense I am owed one for being serially -- and very deliberately -- plagiarized.

Sincerely,

Amy

PS. In the interest of full disclosure and transparency, I should note that some lines have been changed from my original response I sent directly to her, for reasons of timeline clarity or identification purposes.

PPS. And also that my "apology" email contained the following confidentially footer, that I willfully and knowingly ignored while copying-and-pasting her words: This email is intended only for the person(s) or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is privileged, confidential, and protected. It is not to be disseminated, distributed, copied, or shared by others. On the plus side, though, I believe I clearly marked her words vs. mine with quotation marks and italics. So. There is that. 

PPPS. OMG THESE POSTSCRIPTS ARE IN ITALICS SO WHO IS TYPING THESE WORDS HOLY CRAP WORMHOLE NOOOOOOO...

This Is Some Award-Losing Nonsense, Right Here

In honor of my shiny new super-organized (for now, but check back in 30 seconds) office, I present an entry without any topic at all. But disorganized, stream-of-consciousness writing is a valid art form as long as you do it while sitting in a chair, at a desk. FACT. Are you sitting at a desk? I have just legitimized everything you do today. You are a serious professional and nothing will change that. Go on, drip yogurt on yourself. You've earned it.

Apologies to the non-desk sitters in the audience. I was you! All the way up until yesterday! And while I will never forget my roots, I have already forgotten where I was going with this sentence. I'M AT A DESK! To the next topic! Hurry!

1) MY HAIR & ASSORTED AW SHUCKSING

Thank you to everybody who complimented my hair yesterday! In the old days, people used to have to write their own daily affirmations on their mirrors in lipstick. Now we can just post flatteringly-blurry photos of ourselves online. What a glorious time to be alive.

I will add the caveat that those cell-phone-mirror-reflection shots completely hide the unfortunate Chia Bangs, which yes, are still there and are still unfortunate. At my last hair appointment they were the first thing my stylist noticed, and was like: "This is because of the BABY, you know that, right?" I answered that yes, I did, sigh, hormones be crazy, etc.

She examined them closer and added: "But wow, I don't think I've ever seen them THIS BAD before."

*shoots Internet a LOOK, like, the hell?*

However! I will own that from slightly more far away, I am having a Good Hair Phase right now. I recently switched to one of those weird shampoo bars from Lush (the one for oily hair, for my scalp could slick down an entire flock of seagulls and some baby seals in the morning, AND YES I AM JUST THAT SEXY), and I cannot believe I never tried one before. I believe the technical term is "amazeballs." 

I weigh almost the same as I did the day I gave birth to Ike (oh yes I do), my chin is melting into my neck (I now stare covetously at other women's jawlines like I used to stare at anyone who had bigger boobs than mine) (which was everybody) and I have crow's feet that are more like octopi-spider-zilla tentacles, but dammit, my hair looks nice most of the time kind of.

Christ, I felt a lot better about myself approximately four paragraphs ago. Perhaps we should change the subject.

2) IF A BLOG AWARD FALLS IN THE FOREST...

Did you know I was nominated for a Bloggie this year? Me the fuck neither. 

Last week we attended Parents' Day at Ezra's school and another mother congratulated me for it. And I stared blankly at her because I had no idea what she was talking about, plus I always get momentarily disoriented when someone in real life turns out to be a blog reader, and I freeze and mentally go through my writing because 1) oh dear God, I hope didn't say anything stupid about them, and 2) oh dear God, this person has read approximately fourteen thousand words about my boobs.

Anyway, yeah. I was nominated for Best Parenting or Family Weblog, along with the Bloggess, Aunt Becky, How To Be A Dad and Parenting, Illustrated With Crappy Pictures.

I, uh, didn't win. OBVIOUSLY.

3) LUCKILY THE CRIB RAILS ARE PRE-CHEWED FOR HIS BITE-MARK CONVENIENCE

Oh hai. I am up to NO GOOD AT ALL.

I haz a plan. A terrible one.

LOOK AT WHAT I HAVE DONE.

LOOK AT IT.

'Sup, bro?

All Blogs Are Hideous At Age Eight. It's Quite Normal.

Oh my God, you guys, this blog is eight years old today.

Eight years, I have been blabbering on about whatever it is I blabber on about. No wonder I'm running about of things to say. Can't I just tell the volcano story again? Or the oven fire or the bird or Newark and also luggage cart? Could I perhaps start a business selling ready-made birth stories for today's busy modern momblogger who is too busy writing sponsored product reviews to deal with the whole messy, overwrought emo side of the business? 

Eight years. I was in my 20s, in the city, in an office, in heels. I am currently in none of those things. Now it is: 30s, suburbs, work-from-home-bed-nest, bedroom slippers.

(Though I still own all the heels. I'm just more apt to whine about them when I wear them.)

There's also that whole THREE BOY CHILDREN plot twist that happened along the way. The me of eight years ago would NEVER have seen that coming, and probably would have been a tad horrified at the prospect, which makes me want to point and laugh at her, because man, that uppity bitch totally had this coming. 

At the risk of sounding ancient as all hell and get off my virtual lawn-ish, it's really gobsmackily crazy how different the Internet is now. It was so...small, and yet wildly exciting huge and untamed and new. I didn't even start a blog, I started an online journal. Because that meant you were more writerly, or at least longer-winded and less inclined to edit.

*puts on monocle and holds dainty teacup*

There were no ads or ad networks and the great Sell-Out debate centered around whether it was tacky to put an Amazon wishlist or PayPal button on your site. I had no idea how to handle drama or trolls or criticism or how to even be all that authentic. My early entries manage to be both embarassingly personal overshares and experiments in playing an online character. I was wildly excited to realize that people were reading and commenting and linking, and then I'd go home for the holidays and my dad would advise me to stop wasting my time entertaining my dumb friends online and get back to you know, real writing. 

Anyway, blah blah blah different time new world blogging-as-viable-career-path-cakes. Let me get back to what's really important, to what defines this blog-thing now, eight years and probably millions of run-on sentences later: GROSS STORIES ABOUT BABIES AND WHY BABIES ARE GROSS.

1) We took the boys to see The Muppets on Wednesday. Mini-review: Super-duper fun and awesome, especially for grown-ups, but perhaps about 15-20 minutes too long for little kids. That last quibble was perfectly evidenced by Ezra, who -- during the last of about three quietly emotional turning points in the movie where somebody learns something about the value of friendship -- decided to shriek I GOTTA GO POOP at the top of his lungs. 

2) Then we came home and I was playing with Ike on the couch, lifting him up in the air and making goofy faces at him, like mo-oooo-ooooom, you're so lame and embarassing, and he chose that exact moment to remind me that we are NOT fully past the days of the turbohork and yes, I am using my blog's eighth anniversary post to tell you about the time my baby barfed on my face and it got in my mouth. What of it? BEHOLD, MY LIFE'S WORK. IT IS RICH WITH MEANING AND PURPOSE BUT CLEARLY NEEDS MORE FART JOKES.

(Eight years and counting and I still haven't bothered to learn Photoshop.)

(And as God is my witness I probably most likely never will, because bleh.)