So it just so happens that BlogHer 13 is this weekend and guess who's going? That's right, me. I know, it makes perfect sense doesn't it? A prolific blogger like me going to BlogHer?

What's that you say? Eight blog posts in the last 12 months does not count as prolific? Whatever. I'm just going for the wine. What? What? I have wine at home? And it's way cheaper than going to BlogHer? OK, shutup. I'm still going. You're not talking me out of it.

But here's a token blog post, just so that I can say my last post was this week. ;)

How Wrong I Was

I am writing this post from my iPhone. This is not the easiest way to write a blog post, but I am doing so because I am trapped under my sleeping 6 year old. Trapped in his bedroom, lying on his bed, with his little body planted squarely on top of me, his arms extending on either side of him and wrapped loosely around me. I was lying next to him at bedtime and mentioned that I would be leaving soon. He then crawled on top of me to prevent my departure and fell asleep about three minutes later. I can extract myself, and will... shortly. For now, I am lying here, soaking in the moment, and contemplating how very differently my pre-mom self would have viewed my current predicament.

We all change when we have kids. We all think we know exactly what kind of parent we'll be. In many ways, I actually am that parent my pre-child self envisioned. But in many other ways, I am not. Pre-child me would probably have seen this, my being trapped under my sleeping child, as a sign that I had caved, given in to the pressures of parenting and a failure to live up to my own standards. Not entirely inaccurate, but there's more to it.

I remember when pre-child me was talking to a mother about her young child's bedtime routine. The parents had moved a twin bed into the child's room because they inevitably ended up lying with the child in his room until he fell asleep. The twin bed was just for the parents. This, swore pre-child me, would NEVER be me. A child is capable of falling asleep on their own and it is a disservice to the child to not teach him to do so. Also, what are the implications to your child's view of the world when you move furniture and modify your own evening schedule to accommodate their wishes. 

This is the ideal of parenting I held when my first child was born. Thus, he was able to sleep through the night at 8 months. We put him in his crib, he cried briefly, then fell asleep. He was a great sleeper and a very happy baby. When he eventually learned to get out of his bed on his own, he quickly learned that he was to stay in his own bedroom until we came in to get him at 7. By the time he was 3, I was sure I had the child sleeping thing nailed.

And then I had my second child and things changed. No, it was not the added draw of my time, juggling two children, or the plain old exhaustion that changed me. It was seeing that tiny baby and realizing that my nearly four year had grown so very much and so quickly. It made me realize with starker focus, that time wasn't just flying by, it was racing. And suddenly my view of parenting changed dramatically. 

My 4 year old would wake in the middle of the night and want to sleep in our bed, and instead of thinking "it's really best for him if he sleeps in his own bed," I instead could only see my sweet child and the fact that I really only had a few more years left when he'd even WANT to sleep with me. My child was asking to lie next to me in bed, put his arms around me, and feel safe and comfortable and loved. How had I ever viewed this as unhealthy for him? I'm a grown up and I'm much more comfortable sleeping next to my husband than sleeping all alone. Of course my child feels the same way! So now I not only "let" him join us in bed, I embrace the occasions. For this time will be so brief, I intend to take every opportunity I can to ensure that my sons feel all the love I can give them.

Go ahead, pre-child me, roll your eyes. I've "given in" to the idea of a "family bed." But I'll take an occasional night of less than restful sleep (as I'm kicked and slept on), because every time he wakes me up, I use it as an extra opportunity to wrap my arms around him savor these moments. Because eventually he will become.... a teenager.

The Bittersweet Take on a Rubyspikes Vacation

As you may know, I was on vacation last week. It was fabulous and relaxing and blah blah blah...

Sorry, folks, but even the best of vacations aren't quite perfect. And that, my friends, is my great talent in life. I don't see it as complaining, I'm pointing out opportunities for improvement! At this, I excel.

Now before you go on thinking how miserable and ungrateful I am, know that my first post-vacay post was all, "this is so awesome." So at least I'm not always miserable. I've got that going for me. Anyway...

Here are the top five things that annoyed the crap out of me on my nearly perfect vacation.

5. Poorly executed commercials. While wasting time channel surfing, I saw a commercial for farmersonly.com. It's a dating site for farmers and other rural folks. In it, some talking cows are discussing a poor, single girl who's taking a walk through the cornfield alone again. (Hey, cows. You should stop feeling bad for the single girl. I've got a feeling her future is brighter than yours.) Meanwhile, the screen shows a girl walking through what I'm pretty sure is a wheat field. I don't know for sure, I don't walk through many wheat fields. But I am from Illinois, so I do know a cornfield when I see one. And that was no cornfield. I felt bad for the rural Americans looking for love. If the farmersonly.com folks can't even identify the type of grain the girl is walkin through, I don't have high hopes for their ability to make a rural love connection.

4. App designers not usability testing their work. I had some issues with the Twitter app this past week. You may have heard about that one already though.

3. Noise. You see, when you're trying to unplug and relax, you realize just how damn noisy people can be. Lawnmowers, hammers, garbage trucks, screaming children, iPhones left in neighboring hotel rooms with alarms going off that NEVER TURN OFF for HOURS! Seriously, people, I'm trying to take a 3 pm nap over here. Next vacation I'm heading to Montana. I hear it's quiet there.

2. People who don't realize the difference between being polite and folksy and being rude and condescending. Case in point, when the 50-something TSA agent calls the 80-something woman he's screening "young lady." Dude! Knock that shit off. 80-something is not young unless she's a Redwood, so you're not being cute, you're being patronizing. Cut it out. If you pull that crap with me when I'm 80, I'm going to smack you upside the head with my cane.

1. The baggage claim area. God how I hate the baggage claim area. It could work so nicely. But NOOOOO. Some of you jerks need to stand as close to the belt as is physically possible. Can't stand 2 feet back so that everyone else can see their bags as well. Nope, YOU need to stake out your own personal section of the belt. YOU need to make sure that when your bag arrives, not a second of your precious time is lost due to things like "common courtesy" and "human decency." And once one person steps up, everyone else has to step up, too. Partly because you can no longer see the bags coming because of the jerk standing right next to the belt blocking your view, but also because now everyone is standing next to the belt so if you don't get up there, too, there won't be space for you. And then when you see your bag and try to politely say, "excuse me," people look at you like, "you can't fit in here! Go find your own section of the belt!" I'm here to tell you, you're all freakin' idiots. Back the frock up. If y'all would each take two steps back, there'd be room for everyone and everyone would be able to see all the bags. On this trip, not only did a jerk decide to park himself directly in front me (like literally stood with his back 8 inches in from my nose when there was about 5 feet of open space just 3 feet to my right), he decided to build a 9 suitcase wall in between me and the belt. He's damn lucky my suitcase didn't come before his wife came and whisked their suitcases away or I would have climbed over his suitcase mountain to get through to get my bag. Jerk.

But like I said... Other than that, it was perfect.

(God, aren't you glad you're not my husband.)

Relaxation Vacation

This past week I have been on vacation. My husband was invited to a work event that took place at the Ritz Carlton in Orange County, California. By attending, his airfare, rental car, and lodging would be covered, hence if I could find some decent airfare and someone to watch our kids, it would essentially be a free vacation for me. I, of course, took the opportunity.

On my first day in paradise, I struggled with what my plans for the week were going to be. I knew that I was going to need to do SOME work over the course of the week. But I didn't want to spend so much time working that I felt like I was "wasting" my vacation. However, I'm a little too Type A for my own good and I knew that if I just layed around by the pool I would feel like I was "wasting" my time when I could be DOING something. Ugh. Two things are clear at this point. 1) I need to learn how to relax. REALLY relax. And 2) my constant struggle to find balance has followed me on vacation.

The good news is, this week at least, I found it. I worked a couple hours each morning, but did it primarily from my super-comfy bed with a beautiful breeze coming though the French doors to the balcony and the sound of the ocean waves crashing in the distance. Not bad. I also did my very best to delegate tasks that needed to be accomplished instead of feeling like I had to step in to make sure everything got done. (And of course, the team back home managed just fine without my constant presence.)

But not only did I find the right work balance, this week I also broke free from relaxation guilt. I decided to not feel guilty about relaxing the way that I really wanted to relax. This was harder than it sounds.

We arrived at the resort on Monday, so Tuesday was my first full day to relax. Tuesday morning, after a couple hours of work, I decided to grab my iPad and head down to the pool so I could sit in the shade on a chaise lounge chair and read some new as-yet-undownloaded eBook. Tuesday afternoon I hung out with my husband for a couple hours before we both headed to a work-sponsored dinner. Not a bad day.

Wednesday morning though, was when I made my big decision. I thought about going to the spa or back to the pool or down to the beach. But you know what, those pool chairs weren't nearly as comfy as my bed. And the beach chairs would be the same. I didn't really feel like swimming, and the spa SEEMED good, but I just wasn't really in the mood. (And you don't pay $100+ for a massage unless you actually want one.) The bed I was in was comfy. Like SUPER comfy. And with the doors to the balcony open, there was a beautiful breeze and the constant sound of the ocean, which was awesome. And I finally realized that the spa and the pool and the beach SOUNDED very relaxing, but what I REALLY wanted to do was not have to take a shower, lay in bed, and read. Now normally, this is when a little voice in my head would pester me with thoughts like, "Wow, great use of the resort, with its with great food, a beautiful beach on the Pacific Ocean, a great pool, beautiful views, a spa, great little shops nearby, and so much more, you're going to spend the day doing something you could do at home." But this time, I ignored that voice and, as a result, had a wonderfully relaxing vacation. I did almost nothing the entire time. Slept. Read. OCCASIONALLY showered. Slept and read some more.

Plus, it turns out, that little voice is feakin' stupid. When can I ever spend 5 consecutive days at home just sleeping and reading whenever I feel like it??? (Skipping an occasional daily shower though, that might not be so rare.)

How Twitter Mobile is Making Me CRAZY!

I'm on vacation at the moment. It's a kid-free, do absolutely nothing kind of vacaton. I'm really enjoying it. I've pretty much been laying in bed, in a beach chair, or by the pool with my iPad and reading. I've been reading a book that's been on my list for a while. I've been reading blogs that I haven't visited in AGES. I've been checking in on the folks on Twitter and Facebook. It's been great. Until today when Twitter has made me NUTS!

I don't have a million followers on Twitter. I don't even have a thousand. And I follow only about 500 (at the moment). But still, 500, at least for me, is to many to straight up follow without some sort of a system. My system: lists. I just have bunches of lists and I read different ones depending on what I'm in the mood for.

A while back, a new version of the official Twitter app for the iPhone eliminated the ability to update lists, including updating list membership. This blows. I do most of my tweeting from my phone, so eliminating a key piece of my functionality sort of sucks. Especially when the previous version of the app HAD the functionality. So sometimes I follow new peeps, but if they're not in a list, I really won't ever see their tweets. So then I have to remember to periodically login to my computer and put all the new peeps into lists. A major pain in the ass.

Today, I figured that I would outsmart the damn Twitter app and use the browser on my iPad. The iPad has a big enough screen to not be really annoying using the full version of most websites.

I pull out my iPad and go to twitter.com. My first thought: Why does it look just like the app??? Oh! I'm on the mobile site. Ok, where's the link to the full site? I look and look, no link. Anywhere. I type in "www.twitter.com" again like I'm a website idiot (I'm not) just hoping it will take me to the full site, fully knowing it won't. It didn't. I Google it. There's really no way to bypass it without downloading weird apps and other solutions that require WAY too much work. Fine. F*** it. I won't clean up my Twitter lists today, I'll just go back to reading blogs.

I read a few posts and then remember that I follow some folks on Twitter whose blogs I wanted to add to my Reader. Quick stop back at Twitter to get the blog URL's. Not.

First, another damn list problem. I know the three people I want to get URL's from are all in the same list, but there's no way to view list membership from the mobile site. All I can see is their tweets, IF they've tweeted recently. I scroll. And scroll. And scroll. Apparently they're on vacation, too, 'cause no recent tweets.

Fine, I think. I'll just search for them manually. (I know. My life is so hard, but really, this should SO not be necessary.) I can't remember the handle of one person. I know her real name (which is VERY common) and her avi. Neither of those are going to help me. Oh well. Scratch that one. I type in the handle of tweep #2. She comes up. I tap on the little link to "view full profile." No link to her blog! No, not because she didn't list it, it's just not showing! I confirm this by opening my own profile page. No blog link. Oh for the love of God!

I pull out my iPhone, search for the same someone, and go to her profile page. Voila! There it is. So I'm sitting there with my iPhone and my iPad together, searching for tweeps on my phone, and then typing their blog URL's into my iPad.

Seriously, Twitter. I love you, but THIS you've got to fix!

I Need a Book

It has been forever since I read a really good fiction book. I love non-fiction and read a lot of it. What's more, my usual subjects are probably what most would consider atypical. I love A.J. Jacobs, Michael Pollan, Bart Ehrman, Steven Levitt, Michael Lewis, and Dan Airley. If you haven't heard of any of these people, I'm not surprised. They're not really household names.

But I've been reading Harry Potter to my son at bedtime and boy has it made me miss a good page-turner. We don't get very far each night, so I always find myself wanting to keep going, even though it is clearly time for him to sleep. I do my Mommy-duty and put the book down, but now I need to find another decent fiction book.

But what??? I have not read either of the two most recent sensations: The Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey. I'm just not enthused about kids killing each other. And I'm just passing of 50 Shades. The last good fiction I read was The Help. It was pretty good. And The Kite Runner. Also good. Before that, Angels and Demons and DaVinci Code, but whatever that third one was was not great. Oh, and there was The Red Tent and Replay and Time and Again were good.

Maybe I should just read one of the classics that I never got around to.

Oh I don't know. Come on people. Give me some recommendations.

Benign

Shortest blog post ever. Update from the last blog post. Both biopsies came back benign.

Carry on.