In which I introduce you to lesser known BlogHers and lesser known fruits.

Kristen and I take in the sights of Chicago courtesy of Safety First and 360 PR. No really! We were like, totally out on the town and there just happened to be a giant logo floating in the sky. And um...a curtain. Behind it all. And some strings.

One of the great things about BlogHer is the chance to connect with incredible women I might otherwise never meet. So I thought (somewhat inspired by David Wescott's new series of posts about online female role models) it would be fun to introduce you to some of the women who I don't think I've really talked about on Mom-101.

And also introduce you to some great fruits.


Carol from NYCityMama is one of the sweetest, most authentic people you could ever ask to meet. I get to see her a lot at press events in New York City because in a total bizarre concidence, she does in fact live in New York City. Which is so weird because it's in her blog name and all. Seriously, randomness like that happens all the time and if you read the Celestine Prophesy and got through more than the first three pages after about 16 attempts like I did, you would know just what I mean.
[photo credit]


The starfruit is native to Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India, although I ate it in the Dominican Republic last year. It doesn't actually look like a star because stars are generally spherical.


MomtrolFreak, aka Laura, asked one of the first questions in my panel about brands and blogs that was so awesome, I should have jumped right off the stage and handed my microphone to her. Here she is (at left) with Shelly who I don't know but I'm sure is also lovely. She may not in fact be lesser-known since she won a Social Luxe Lounge award for guilty pleasure blog, but for some reason @momtrolfreak doesn't yet have 4 million twitter followers, which is beyond me.
[photo credit]

This is a prickly pear which actually tastes more like watermelon than cactus or pear and looks like it would be a bitch to get out of my kids' clothes.
(photo credit)

Alma calls herself MarketingMommy and I'm only bummed I didn't get to hang out with her more - although we did get our fill of togetherness around the pathetic $5 blackjack table when we spoke at a conference in Vegas earlier this year. She is both an insightful blogger, and a great friend because she doesn't rat you out when you order blue cheese dressing with your french fries.
[photo credit]


This is a Quince which is particularly good as a paste served with manchego cheese, when you're entertaining pretentious foodie friends and want to impress them. If you are entertaining botanist friends and want to impress them, call it a Cydonia Oblonga--and then just serve chips or something.

Here's Sam, aka Tempting Mama, doubling-fisting cocktails at the wonderful Nikon sponsored party while having her hair made all the more tempting. (She could also use some love and support on her blog right now so...)I would have joined her in the chairbut I'll be honest, I saw the curling iron and ran away. Also, I had to go take blurry pictures of Carson Kressley, which are blurry in part because I don't own a Nikon.

Nikon, if you don't give me a free camera right now I'm going to tell the whole world about my crappy photography skills. That'll show you!

This is a citrangequat which actually, until now, I thought was a part of the female anatomy. Turns out this is not at all the case as you can see from the leaves. It's part orange, part kumquat, part citronella candle or something like that.

In yet another terrible photo, this is Josette from Halushki, one of my beloved roommates (the other being Christina of Fairly Oddmother), who is here wielding two free kiwis, thus covering both blogger and fruit all in one photo.

And they said it couldn't be done.

The Year that Shame Died

Last week, the brilliant Busy Mom tweeted that 2009 is the year that shame died. I jokingly responded that no, I think that was back in 1983 when Madonna introduced lingerie as outerwear. But her quip has stayed with me ever since.

The BlogHer conference, as always, was phenomenal in so many ways. A chance to be in a room with 1400 other people who don't need me to explain exactly what it is that I do? Awesome. Having attended now for four years, I've seen it grow and change in fascinating ways.

I will be honest, I was concerned going this year that the marketer infiltration of the event was going to be problematic. But the reality is, I couldn't have been more impressed with how the marketers interracted with the attendees. They were respectful, they were enthusiastic, they were so engaged that they attended panels. It was a tribute to the efforts of Jory and the rest of BlogHer, who clearly worked tirelessly to make sure brands Got It Right.

And by God they did.

After three years of working to convince marketers that bloggers are an important force, conference sponsors like Pepsi, Suave, Nikon, GM, Clorox Greenworks, Tide, Ann Taylor and especially smaller brands like Blue Avocado were stellar evidence of the fact that indeed, women bloggers are an important force. (Yes we are!) I walked up and down the expo floor and thanked each of them for attending, and for making it possible for so many women to attend a $299 conference instead of a $2299 conference. And here I want to thank J&J and the most excellent (and hello? Eco-friendly) OB Tampons for covering my own expenses with a scholarship, as a beautiful and much-appreciated show of support for what it is we do here.

Much to my surprise however, what turned out to be the problem at BlogHer was not how the marketers acted, but how so many bloggers acted. Without pulling punches, I will say it was shameful.

Think:

The countless bloggers who combed the expo floor with the purpose of asking marketers for expensive free items (and of course, an identical one to giveaway to a reader).

The shameless swag frenzies at parties that led to a blogger with an arm so bruised she looked like a heroin addict, and a baby in a carrier who endured his first ever sharp elbow to the head. (Really hope those free PBS Sprout stickers were worth it.)

The blogging consultant who crashed two invitation-only sponsored networking lunches to pitch her own business, taking away time from those of us there to learn about the gracious sponsors who paid for the lunch in the first place.

The "sponsored" bloggers who were so inept and amateur with their outreach, they simply shoved products into your hands, however irrelevant, or interrupted conversations and interviews to tell you about their sponsor's VERY VALUABLE GIVEAWAY.

The sponsored bloggers who took the money and ran, all but ignoring their obligations to their benefactors over the course of the weekend.

The empty cardboard boxes that unapologetically polluted the halls outside rooms of bloggers there to hand out swag as the Sheraton's overtaxed janitorial staff struggled to keep up with it.

(Edited to add) The blogger who literally threatened to blog about a sponsor's competitor if he didn't give her free product.

A simple misunderstanding at an off-site cocktail party that led to an egregious misuse of Twitter, ostensibly to assert the power of mombloggers. F*ck with us, we'll bring you down. Oh, and by the way...can I have a free camera and maybe an identical one to give away to a reader?

And, once again, the whispering by the other bloggers at the conference that ugh, there go those mommybloggers again.

I think that hurts me most of all.

I often felt, throughout the weekend, like the Indian crying over a once beautiful landscape.

I'm not the only one. I'm already seeing similar sentiments from bloggers like Kristen Chase, Christine Koh, Chris Jordan and Steph, who beautifully expressed that the hugs she received "were much more valuable to me than the samples of laundry detergent."

At the panel I spoke on about brands and blogs, there was the beginings of an excellent discussion about relationships, and how to build and maintain them. It was pointed out that bloggers like Jaden of Steamy Kitchen (a brilliant woman and also my fellow panelist) and Cool Mom Picks are successful because of the focus of the blogs and the relationships that they build with marketers that transcend giveaways and freebies.

Bloggers can continue blogging about their passions--be they the products they use or otherwise--or they can use a blog as a tool to get free stuff. I have to (have to!) believe the latter group will sort itself out soon enough, when there is no audience for that sort of drivel, and no more marketers left to engage with them.

In fact, I would challenge marketers to start thinking good and hard about who they work with and the return they'll actually get on their investment.

That said, none of this not the fault of the marketers. Or the marketing. Or the giveaway blogs. It's the fault of blog posts that offer up ten tips on becoming an A-list blogger while defining A-list as someone who gets free stuff. People are starting to blog with entirely the wrong motives, then wondering why they're disgruntled and burnt out and shaking their fists at public relations. Or why everyone is pissed at them when they elbow a baby in the head to snatch a free tote bag with a corporate logo on it.

Let me just say there's a reason A-list celebrities aren't the ones lining up for free swag at the Golden Globes Boom Boom Room every year. It's not Angelina Jolie, it's Mrs. Scott Baio.

(Edited to add: I want to clarify this is not a class judgment. I am in no way saying that popular bloggers don't like free stuff or that you should be ashamed for wanting some free dish soap. I publish a site that gives away products daily and I love how happy it makes people. What I'm saying that blogging "success" shouldn't be defined by the amount of stuff you get. It's about what you put out, not what you take in.)

The wonderful thing I did see this weekend, at least at my panel, is that the majority of bloggers seem to want to get it right. They want to learn better ways to engage with PR and marketing, and do it in a way that benefits their readership. They want to blog with integrity. They want to wake up excited by what we all do here, and they too were horrified by some of the behavior on display this weekend.

In fact, one of my favorite conversations of the weekend was with a blogger I'd never met before, Jill of Charming & Delightful, who told me that she didn't understand the need for the Blog with Integrity pledge last week, but now she did. In fact, she reiterated our discussion on Kristen's post in comments.

My thoughts here are not in any way a condemnation of the conference or its organizers, and man, I'll be bummed if the comments here end up taking the tone of "Glad I wasn't there." I was glad I was there. More than glad, I was overjoyed. I can't even wait until next year when the conference will be held in New York (whoo!) because the connections I make, the friendships I solidify, and the things that I learn at BlogHer are always invaluable.

Even if what I learned, once again, is that our words have power, and our actions--for better or for worse--do reflect on the entire community.

Blog with Integrity - we're taking our community back

2009, sadly, has so far been the year that parenting bloggers were--often unfairly--vilified in the media. With talk of "blogola," pay for play, shady review blogs, PR blackouts, and the grossly false assertion by the WSJ blog that the FTC is "considering new rules for parent bloggers," you'd think that we were all a bunch of hustlers, whores, and naive housewives who left our professional skills, advanced degrees, and ethical backbones at the hospital with our placentas.

It's just not true.

The vast, vast majority in this community (including plenty who've been mentioned in the press, by the way) have steel-strong ethics, unwavering integrity, and a continued commitment to the authenticity that is one of the original hallmarks of blogging.

So we're taking our community back.



Over email and twitter over the past several months, I've been having the most spectacular conversations with Susan Getgood, Kristen Chase, and Julie Marsh. We all write very different kinds of personal blogs, and we all have a toe (or several) in marketing. But one of the things that we agree on is that we are, by and large, proud of how the parenting blogger community - and the blogging community in general - conducts itself.

And so we've put together Blog with Integrity, a voluntary pledge, complete with blog badge, for any and all bloggers (not just parents) who want a way to show their readers, marketers, the PR community, and certainly the press, that we are committed to integrity, responsibility and disclosure, and that a few bad apples do not speak for all of us. Not even close.

We may not have editors that we're accountable to, but we do have each other.

I really hope you'll sign.

It's true, California. The gays are coming for your children.

And suddenly I have YMCA stuck on a continuous loop in my head.

What unites us

Sunday morning, after a jovial night in Denver of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, fantastic conversation, and Rock Band for the Wii (turns out I'm a drummer at heart), I awoke in my friend Julie's comfy, cushy guest bed surrounded on three walls by photos of her wedding.

Also her past military service.

While Nate was raised an army brat, I've never had friends who had anything to do with weaponry (D&D doesn't count) and shiny-buttoned uniforms and a resume with the word Pentagon on it. Military people are just not who you encounter living in white collar New York City, unless you're unfortunate enough to find yourself in Times Square during Fleet week.

I always considered myself--as New Yorkers generally do---worldly and broad-minded simply because we live in a city with a decent Picasso collection, an Uzbeki cusine category in the Zagat guide, and a general populace who can use the word schlep in conversation without air quotes.

And yet ironically, it wasn't living in the greatest city in the planet that lead me to the most mind-expanding social experience of my life, but turning on the AirPort on day in early 2006, logging onto blogspot.com, and saying why yes, I would like to create my free blog today!

Since starting Mom-101 three plus years ago, I am honored to have several friends besides Julie who've called military bases home. I can also now count among my friends women who actually come from Kansas (you mean people really live there?) women who are bona fide silicon valley techies, women who adopt special needs children and women who are scared to spend more than $4 on an article of clothing. I've got friends with 7 children and friends with cute southern accents and friends who say "eh," just like everybody says the Canadians do. And yes, they really do. I've even got a friend who knows a thing or two about trailers and that's not something you see in New York a whole lot.

Real friends make you homemade carmelized banana ice cream

How lucky we are.

How lucky we are to get the chance to know one another, and learn from people whose backgrounds are different than our own. How lucky we are to have a venue to bring us together over the values that unite us, the community we care about, the passions that fuel us regardless of where we live or what college we went to.

And how lucky we are to have the opportunity to hug one another in person at least once a year.

For all you people out there who hear about "online friends" and "blog friends" and internet friends" and think we're all complete and total dorks?

Well, okay. We are.

But we're happy dorks.

My 2 cents (ie about a million words) on the PR Blackout

A whoooole lotta people have been asking me my take about this week's call for a PR blackout, a whole week in August in which bloggers are supposed to turn a cold shoulder to the PR industry. (And conveniently, the very same week that no major blogger junkets had been planned! What are the chances?)

My thoughts up are up at Blogher - The PR Blackout - The good, the bad, and the puzzling.

Would love to hear your thoughts over there. I know you have them.

Bloggers v Popular People: A Pre-BlogHer Field Guide

You can tell we are getting close to the annual blogger conference, because of the marked increase of posts displaying arguably insane levels of social anxiety.

What if I don't make friends?

What if no one talks to me for the entire three days?

What if I don't get invited to parties?

What if I only get invited to the party that 1360 people were invited to and not the one that 40 people were invited to?

What if people think I'm a loser because I have a sponsor?

What if people think I'm a loser because I don't have a sponsor?

What if the popular kids hack into my Twitter account, change my photo to Rush Limbaugh and start writing crazy #tcot posts directed to Ashton Kutcher?

And here I feel the need to point out that BlogHer is not a sorority social. It's an industry networking conference. For the most part people will be pleasant and professional. The vast majority will be downright friendly. Amalah will hug you. Kristen will let you hold her baby. Tanis might even tongue kiss you.

Last year I put together a handy BlogHer Conference FAQ that seemed to be helpful for oh, 2 or 3 of you, to help you deal with these very fears. But this year I want to focus on one important fact:

Bloggers are not The Popular People.

In fact, real live actual Popular People do not want anything to do with bloggers. We frighten them, the way underwear frightens Paris Hilton.

I would think this would be fairly self-evident, but in case there is any confusion, I created a simple chart you can cut out and keep with you. A cheat sheet, if you will; so that should you accidentally mistake a blogger for A Popular Person at any point during the weekend--or beyond--your perceptions can be quickly and easily corrected.

(Of course the one exception to the body type rule is Audrey, whose triceps are as unfair as anything I've ever known in this world.)

See you at BlogHer. I'll be the one with the chewing with my mouth open and accidentally flashing my underwear because I can never keep my feet on the ground when I'm sitting down. And probably hugging you.

So long, farewell, don't let the door hit you on the way out you little plastic tools of evil

Saturday night I decided it was time. I told Sage that it was the right moment to give her binkies up for some babies who need them. She wasn't biting.

That is, until I said that we could send them to Margot.


Margot, whom Sage adored when she came to visit last month. Margot, who "sleeps in my crib sometimes." Margot, who needs those binkies right now this very minute!

(Ignore the fact that Margot has never actually taken a binky. Eh, details.)

And so as we did with Thalia two years ago, we put those well-used pacifiers in an envelope to "mail them to Atlanta." I asked Sage what she wanted to say to Margot and I would write it on the envelope for her.

Thank you!
You're welcome!

I guess I was feeling daring because we decided to ditch the bottles the very same night. And considering we've now made it a full 48 hours including last night's extended PukeFest 09 double feature, I think I can safely say we're done. No bottles, no binkies, no frantic late-night searches for either.

Am I supposed to be sentimental about this? Because I'm not. Not even one bit.

The name's dotcom. Mom-101 dotcom.

So it's official: Mom-101 is now Mom-101.com.

Frankly, I was tired of writing .blogspot.com on nametags, in the URL bar, and on the boobs of passed-out drunk women on barroom floors when I'm self-promoting in subversive ways.

Huge thanks to Cynical Dad for again getting me through big scary tech stuff and not even making me cry once. Now maybe one day I'll actually change my banner too, which I haven't changed since I first put it up about three years ago.

Hm...should I change my low-tech, off -enter, totally ridiculous handmade clip art banner? Or does it somehow work for me? I've always wondered...

----
(Totally coincidentally my banner is missing right now. I think that could be a sign.)

Paying it forward with tampons and booze

I got home last night to a most happy of all possible happy emails, explaining that I had somehow, through the miracle of good karma (I held the elevator door open a lot for old ladies this week)--or more likely, random number generators--won one of several scholarships to cover BlogHer expenses courtesy of Johnson & Johnson.

Whoo!

(Did I mention...Whoo!)

Now it just so happens that J&J are the makers of my favorite tampons, brand loyalty that was probably established back when my mom handed OBs out at my birthday party to all of my third grade friends who dunked them in water to watch them expand, laughed until they cried and then plotted my rapid social demise. To this day, some of those girls (hi Tamar) still say, Hey remember that time when your mom gave us all OB tampons at your birthday party?

Good times.

The whole scholarship thing is particularly sweet, what with the sigOth earning zero dollars an hour these days, and two growing children who occasionally need to be fed and watered. But still, I'm all about sharing the love and paying it forward.

I would like to buy five BlogHer attendees a drink and a box of OB tampons.

To enter, leave a comment here and tell me your funniest or most embarrassing grade school story. If you're too embarrassed, tell me the funniest or most embarrassing grade school story that "happened to someone else." You know...that other person. Yeah, her.

For an extra entry, tweet that you love @Mom101 more than bacon.

For fourteen extra entries, write Mom101 is my hero on a public bathroom wall, photograph it and upload it to a flick'r page

For six extra entries write a letter of recommendation about Mom101's hilarious writing and send it to McSweeney's and the publisher of Chronicle books, then post it on stumble upon, and then for an extra two entries explain to me how to navigate stumble upon so I can actually find it.

For 92 extra entries, post a badge on your blog with a picture of my head photoshopped onto Salma Hayak's body.

For 147,005 extra entries and free OBs for life, fly to Alaska, play ding dong ditch at the Palin residence wearing a Mom-101 t-shirt, videotape it and upload it to YouTube.

For one hundred million extra entries, admit that you hate giveaways that demand that you jump through hoops for some $4.99 drugstore item and we'll toast to it together at Blogher.

***
Seriously I will totally buy five random people a drink at BlogHer. Tampons optional. Tell me an embarrassing grade school story and I'll pick five people at random. Contest ends whenever I feel like it. It will be your job to track me down at the conference though. The party schedule is intense.

But the truth is we'll all have plenty of free drink tickets and like Anissa Mayhew suggested on Twitter, you can always make friends with a Mormon and nab hers.

And hey, thanks J&J. You guys are swell for supporting women bloggers like this. Fist to the chest.

Now I hope I haven't made you totally regret your decision.

Suburban envy? (WTF?)

Recently I've found myself with a raging case of suburb envy, the affliction New Yorkers are most hard-pressed to confess to.

(It's closely followed by dislike of the Angelika theater and a secret crush on the fajitas at Chili's.)

It started at my brother's house recently; I watched the kids through the window as they played out back with their cousins. They swung as long as they wanted without a single nanny staring them down. They tackled the slide without worrying about a bigger kid racing up from the bottom. I didn't need to chase them with hand sanitizer afterward. They seemed safe.

They seemed happy.

At my mom's house the girls pick fat peas from the garden and study the birds and Thalia tells me just how to put your finger in the tomato plants to see if they need water. They can worship at the garden hose on hot afternoons and run through the sprinkler, the greatest free activity in the history of summer activities. They can run around in bare feet or strip right down to to nothing.

Not a whole lot of naked sprinkler jumpers in Brooklyn these days.

At my uncle's beach house this past weekend, Sage and Thalia watched, mouths agape, every time a big kid scooted by on a Big Wheel or Razor, as if a celebrity had passed. They forged weekend friendships with the children two doors down, bonding over sidewalk chalk and neighborhood dog petting. Sage tore up her feet navigating deep steps from the porch to the sidewalk by herself and still refused to stop. Thalia learned she really could play hopscotch. It felt in many ways felt like the best of my own suburban childhood where summer days meant ice cream trucks and summer nights meant flashlight tag and fireflies in jars.

I love everything about living in the City (except, of course, for the things that I don't). I'm not sure that I'd trade it today. I'm not sure I'd trade it tomorrow.

But man, a backyard we don't have to share with the entire tourist population of Western Europe would be dandy.

Our backyard. More or less.

let's just keep this between us, okay? If anyone in NYC finds out about my suburban envy, I could be totally stripped of my hard-won (917) area code, and forced to eat things like blueberry bagels.

Four. Wow. How did that happen?

"You know," I said to Thalia, as I cuddled her in my lap last night, "this time four years ago you were still in my belly juuuust about ready to come out. I didn't know you yet and I was so excited to meet you, especially because I wasn't a mommy yet. And that's partly why July 6 is so special to me - because I wasn't a mommy yet until that day."

"Right. You were just a womens."

"I was just a womens."


Happy birthday my beautiful girl. And thank you for transforming me from just a womens into something that's pretty darn nice.

Where is the Etiquette Bitch when you need her?

It's one of those mornings where I'm struggling to be a weekday mother and simultaneously struggling with being an urban dog owner.

You suburban people, with your ground level homes and fancy yards and ability to leave your kids in front of the TV for a minute while you pop out for a pee run, you don't know how lucky you are. Me, I have to hustle both kids along with the dog (who'd be just as happy never walking anywhere) out the door, down the elevator, down a flight of stairs, to the corner, and back again. Only this time I decide I'll grab a bag of groceries and an iced coffee while we're out. Brilliant.

My multi-tasking plan nearly works until about 100 yards from our apartment when Sage decides this would be a perfect opportunity to start shrieking CARRYY MEEEEE!, a near physical impossibility. The shriek turns into a full-fledge meltdown and my only consolation is that it's nearly 10 and I'm she's not waking the whole neighborhood up.

I look around for a sympathetic neighbor who might take mercy and grab the dog's leash for me or simply smile that kind "hang in there" smile that we parents have come to live for. Instead I pass a woman about my mother's age, aerobicized, vaguely stylish, with spiky silver hair and IKEA tote in tow. Forget sympathy, she refuses to even make eye contact.

Thalia, Sage, Emily, Mr Iced Coffee and I somehow (God knows how) manage to make it back to the elevator where IKEA lady is also waiting. Sage whimpers, "pick me up"and before she can threaten to cry more loudly in the small elevator, I manage to hoist her up on one of those wide hips that come in handy these situations, if not in 5th Avenue dressing rooms.

I smile at the woman. "I guess this is one of those times a third arm would come in handy."

No response.

We exit at our floor.

"Or one less child," she sneered.

I wished I could have channeled the Etiquette Bitch. But instead, the door just closed and I stood there speechless.


[Junk Food Mr. Rude tee via 80stees.com]