Daring Young Mom

If you want to read about an amazing woman, go over to Mom on a Wire and check out my guest post.

Karli, who’s all about provoking thought and inspiring action is asking for submissions about amazing women.

I’ve been planning to launch a new web ring for a while now. A few people have already joined but I’ve been waiting to announce it publicly until the BoBs were decided.

I figured that if I were in the top three, I’d get a lot of traffic the day the awards were announced and if not, I could post about the ring and it would look like a whiny loser’s angst-ridden attempt at gaining popularity and friendship, which is also very cool.

There are a lot of great web rings out there. There are several great ones for mothers, but they are open only to women with children.

I’ve seen so much motherly, nurturing advice and love from my blogging friends, many of whom have not actually given birth to children. So, I decided to start a ring for all women who see themselves as nurturers or in a motherly role. I want the ring to be full of fun, clean, and uplifting blogs by great women.

Karli, from Mom on a Wire, came up with the ring name, Cirque des Mamans.

A note on how rings work:
Joining a web ring is adding yourself to a listing of blogs, centered around a specific theme or topic.

When you join the ring, you are asked to put code on your site. Our ring code looks like this:

«»
^{Powered by RingSurf}

The “des Mamans” button takes you to the ring’s main page, which is super-duper ugly and plain at the moment, but tells you what you need to know about joining and lists the current members with links to their sites.

The arrows on either side work like the “next blog” button in Blogger. They take you to the next ring member’s blog so you can surf through the ring by clicking on the arrows on each person’s blog.

There are several blogs I read that wouldn’t fit with this group and I don’t want anyone to feel pressure to join. It’s sure fun though, if you feel like joining us.

I also wanted to let you know that DYM is currently the second hit on an MSN SEARCH for:

dog bounty hunter mullet wig

Honestly, could you BE in better company?

And it looks like I will be going to prom with my cousin Floyd again this year. (It’s okay. He likes the mullet.) I know the point of these awards is to gain exposure and new reads and readers and that has been accomplished, in a big way.

After over a month of waiting to see what would happen, I had convinced myself that I didn’t care if I won or even placed in the top three. Well, I thought wrong. It’s sort of fun to win….and sort of not as much not to. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I feel a little humdrum not to be standing on the podium today. Ah, well. There’s still a big baby in me somewhere (no I’m not pregnant!) who needs a swift kick in the pants.

It’s been a great experience though and I’m so glad Caryn found my site and liked it enough to send in a nomination. She’s long been one of my favorite reads as well.

What I’ve learned through awards processes (pronounce – ‘pro-sess-eez’) during the past 6 months:

1. I can win Christian awards.
2. I cannot hold onto Christian awards.
3. Some people will always like me.
4. There are more good people in the world than the other kind.
5. You can make it pretty far in the BoBs with a few wisecracks and a floating head.
6. You can’t make it all the way to the top with a few wisecracks and a floating head.

I’m pretty sure this is the end of the awards line for my little blog. I’m not edgy, deep, or experienced enough to be a contender in the bigger contests and that’s okay.

Now that the pressure’s off and the twinge has subsided, maybe I can get down to some serious kick-butt blogging – mommy-style.

Thanks to everybody who voted and encouraged me. It’s been a ride.

That’s one of my favorite expressions a pirate would use if he lived in my house.

Another is, of course, the old standby “in the drink.”

Laylee drops her baby in the toilet. “Arg! She fell in the drink.”

Marilla asks Cordelia Anne what happened to her amethyst broach. “Oh, that? Yeah. I dropped it in the drink.”

Magoo is ripping the tubes out of the Medela while I’m trying to pump. “Throw ‘im in the brig!”

Seriously. I finally couldn’t take it anymore so I stuck him in the pak ‘n play where he could see me…..without leaving a path of destruction. I gave him a few toys. Laylee gave him a few hundred more, several directly on the noggin and he played happily in his padded cage until I was done.

But it started to give me ideas, ideas relating to the fact that I could get a lot of things done if I weren’t constantly worrying that the flailing, spastic, melon-headed human vacuum cleaner was self-inflicting blunt head trauma whilst choking on very tiny baby dolls and very large pieces of lint.

Back in the 80’s, weren’t they called PLAY pens? Didn’t parents use something very closely related to the pak ‘n play to cage up their children for “play time”? Then I think it became somewhat taboo and somewhat associated with “doing time” so people stopped using them altogether. Now they’re coming back as a “nap time” device but….iiiiiit might not have been good for me to witness the pak ‘n play’s diverse uses.

On the one hand – development of gross motor skills. On the other – a clean house AND a son who’s still alive at the end of the process?

Yeah…..

He looked happy. Didn’t he look happy to you? I mean, he was licking the thing. That has to be some sort of a sign of affection.

~30 hours after I lent my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to my friend….um…..Beulah, she sent me this email:

Kathryn,
I just thought I would give you an update on your Harry Potter book. It is doing fine. I have removed the dust cover so that nothing would happen to it. If I take the book outside (on my way to the car) and it is raining, I put the book under my sweatshirt so that it is kept completely dry from the rain (although after doing that, I can’t guarantee that your book will come back smelling the same way as it did when you loaned it to me). I am progressing through it nicely and I anticipate that when I am done I will go through some sort of Harry Potter/ wizard/ magic withdrawal since I read all Harry Potter 1-5 in the last 2 weeks. My dreams consist of magic and Harry Potter and I think that deep down inside I am just using this fantasy world of Harry Potter to escape from the horrors of my own life. I mean, let’s be honest, my life is crap. Everybody is always looking at me funny, they think I am some sort of show off and they don’t ever believe a word I say. My parents were killed when I was 1 and the only thing I have to show for it is this lousy scar….Oh, see. I’ve done it again. Off to Never-Never-Land, I was. The lines between fantasy and reality have blurred for me now, I don’t know if I will ever be able to get a grip.
Anyways…..just wanted to let you know that I am taking real good care o’ yer book.
-Beulah
PS. Thanks for the recipes!

I liked this. It was bloggable.

Today we went grocery shopping together. Before following me in her car, she mentioned my X-man super-parking-powers and said something like, “I guess I won’t be parking near you. That’s not one of my special talents.”

I told her that it might be possible for me to extend my powers to include her….as long as I was still using them for good, not to show off or put myself in a one-up position in the hierarchy or our relationship (Sorry. I’m speed reading my book-club book right now).

When I got to the store, it was lunch time and the lot was packed. However, I drove straight to THE spot and it was once again empty. I’m starting to wonder if that spot was formerly used as a toxic waste dump or contaminated with the plague and that’s why no one else will go near it.

I took my life in my hands and parked there anyway.

I got out of the car to take a picture of the spot, since car parking is the new theme of this blog. As I was lining up the shot, the guy in the spot next to me pulled out. I started losing it. I planted my body in the middle of the spot and as cars came up and turned on their blinkers to pull in, I waved them on to the back of the lot. I HAD to get this picture great parking spot for my friend.

People (and I mean people who obviously do not read this blog and did not recognize me from my floating head which resides immortalized on the internet) WERE MAD! I got me some major stink-eyed looks. Heads were shooken and choice words were muttered. I did not personally witness any “friendly” hand gestures.

But hey, I got the spot….and the shot.

Today, I would encourage you to head over to Stephanie’s and help complete her story. Fun and games people, fun and games. What will happen? Only YOU can decide.

Have you seen THESE??!!

HAVE you seen these?

Go buy these now.

My friend Judi listened to me whining yesterday about washing the teeny tiny pump parts 8 times a day and she drove 45 minutes to a baby store and bought these for me.

You rinse the pump parts and bottle nipples, throw them in this bag with water and microwave them for 3 minutes and they’re sterile. No washing or boiling. They’re made by Medela and I am in love with them.

5 bucks for 5 bags that can each be used up to 20 times.

Judi – You, ma’am, are a scholar and a gentlewoman. Also a genius and a lifesaver.

Thanks, man!