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BlogHer 09 is in Chicago!


I have been watching the BlogHer site for news on the annual conference. Last year they were in San Francisco, as you may remember because I was dithering with the idea of attending. It just wasn’t feasible for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is my aversion for sleeping sans husband. 

This coming summer however is a must go and it’s Chicago locale couldn’t be more perfect. It’s just hours away from my mom who loves nothing better than having her granddaughter stay over. While Rob and I marvel at the fact that other people find BabyD sweet and a joy to look after, we don’t look these gift horses in the mouths but take them at the words coming out of said mouths. 

So it looks as though I will be able to fly into the hometown with BabyD, stay a few days and take off for the convention on my own. I asked Rob to come along but the estrogen fest nature left him feeling he could sacrifice our blissful bedding for a week or so of renovation and manly tools. My being out of the house will allow him to kick up dust – literally – that he can’t when I am around due to my allergies. I also have this habit of checking on him at too close intervals because I am sure that long silences mean he has a) fallen off something and is dead, b) sliced off a body part and is dying or c) both. It’s nothing really. Post loss syndrome. I still check on both he and BabyD in the night to make sure they are breathing. I hope to get over that someday.

BlogHer will be under one – expensive – roof, but no schlepping from here to another here. I haven’t been to a convention of any sort since my former school district gave up on the idea of once a year spring conventions. They used to drag us all downtown to the convention center on what nearly always turned out to be a cold, drizzily March day to listen to speakers and wander around peering at education wares which none of us aside from special ed people had budgets or authority to purchase. I think they were hoping we’d just dig deep and buy text books ourselves. My strategy involved attending one speaker session where I would be seen by an administrator or one of their minions among the staff and making sure that I strolled the exhibits until I ran into at least four co-workers who could vouch for my presence, and then I went to the mall and met up with other shirkers like me for lunch. I was the type who gave teaching a bad name. 

I am looking forward to meeting people I blog with however and others whose blogs I admire and/or comment on. By then perhaps I will have my memoir done and can network a bit to find out how to publish the darn thing. Actually I might have met a publisher yesterday at a workshop my writing group sponsored who might be an inroad, but I have to finish writing before I approach her with my questions.

Anyone else up for Chicago at the end of July? Yeah, not it’s most appealing season, but I am going this coming year.

Sex in Aisle Five


Do you remember the first time your mother made you buy the Kotex? Slinking through the drugstore with that big box of pads all the while hoping you didn’t run into any boys you knew? Or when you bought a package of condoms for the first time? Or just started buying them again after finding yourself out in the dating world after a relationship of years was over? Slipping the box onto the conveyor at the checkout strategically placed among a dozen other items because you were too old to be embarrassed, right? That box of Trojans propped up between the Diet Coke and the toilet bowl cleaner was a sign of how comfortable you were with your mature woman’s sexuality – until the teenage cashier turned out to be the student in your homeroom whose name and face you never could remember but were unlikely to forget again? Read Full Article

Great American Smokeout is the Monday Meme


This Thursday, November 20th, is the American Cancer Society’s annual “smokeout” with the stated goal being to encourage all people who smoke to quit for their own health as well as those they love.

As my father has only just recently passed away after a month long battle with stage four lung cancer, I am feeling particularly vehement that anyone I know should make this the year they quit smoking for good. And not just for their own sakes, but to protect their families and friends.

Having been at my dad’s bedside those last hours, I can assure you that dying from lung cancer is not pretty. His lungs were choked with fluid that by the last day oozed in a continuous steam from his mouth having gurgled up his bronchial tubes and throat. The light brown mucus was flecked with dried blood and small chunks of a darker brown matter. When in the grips of a coughing spell, the phelgm would foam out of his nose and he would turn dark red with the futile effort of trying to clear his lungs. 

I can’t imagine dying as he did. But I should try because between him and other family members I have spent good chunks of my life inhaling their cast off smoke. My lungs have been bathed in the same carcinogens and I could just as easily be a victim of lung cancer as my Dad was.

And it’s not just in the air. Smoke clings to clothing and hair and furnishings. It seeps into walls and permeates carpeting. It finds its way into air ducts or filters through open windows. It hangs in the air, wafting its way into the breathing space of anyone who happens by whether they are indoors or out.

I am not mollified by those who “only smoke outdoors” or sit in the increasingly rare smoking areas. Air has no boundaries. 

The meme for today is to send this, or some other word, of the Great American Smokeout to someone you know who smokes. Thank you.