I haven't been here because I've been at BlogHer writing a ton lately about ... so many things. If you're so inclined ...

• How Jill Nystul's 'One Good Thing' Blog Became Her 'One Good Life' Memoir -- Jill talks about one good thing every day to a crazy-huge audience. She's just released a memoir to tell the world why.

• How to Sound Like an Authority Figure -- It's an art and a science, right?

• Marriage Contracts: Should We Have Marital Term Limits? -- I wrote this post a few years ago, but I recently read THE NEW I DO and revisited my post to start the conversation over.

• What More Can We Say About Baltimore and Freddie Gray? -- This was the hardest post to write, very late at night and vetted by trusted women of color.

• How to Measure Your Blogging Success Without Using Metrics -- There's more than one way to determine your ROI.

• SheWrites Publisher Kamy Wicoff on Her First Novel, 'Wishful Thinking' -- I identify with Kamy in so many ways, and coming to novel-writing later in life is one of them.

Last week, BlogHer Co-founder Lisa Stone talked to President Obama about women, wages & the future. Here are the highlights, along with commentary from members of the blogging community. Pretty cool, eh?

What girls had to say about people who insult them ... and then pretend they didn't really.

We need to let kids know it's okay to be upset. I'm going to show this to my daughter right now.

This week, BlogHer's parent company, SheKnows Media, partnered with Public Radio International on the #womenslives media initiative. Basically, we want people talking about women.

We need to do this because only about 24% of all news subjects talk about women in any way, and only six percent of news stories highlight gender in/equality.

So, basically, we're ignoring half the population of the earth. Daily.

You can take a step toward changing that. We're going to talk about gender and womanhood and equality and inequality and stigma and women's health using the #womenslives hashtag.

Did you know JLaw got the paycheck shaft on American Hustle compared to her male co-stars?

Did you know heart disease is the number one killer of women and the symptoms can be different for women?

Did you know young women are harassed online three times as much as young men?

Did you know that people used to believe only boys were dyslexic because only boys were studied?

Would you stay in an abusive relationship? Why this blogger did.

That there are so many posts about surviving and witnessing domestic violence is heartbreaking, such as this one from Beauty School Scarlet, this one from Brown Girl From Boston, this one from Living Off Love and Coffee, this one from Loving Ryan (her mother's boyfriend starting their acquaintance by killing her kitten), this one from Heart of Michelle, this one from Not a Stepford Life, and this one from Transparency.

That Super Bowl domestic violence ad was a real 911 call.

I'm a feminist, and I catch myself accepting inequality all the time because it's always been that way. The whole women's paycheck thing hasn't changed, it hasn't changed! Women get charged more for everything from hair products to shoes even though that paycheck thing exists. We still don't have a female president. Women hold 4.6% of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies despite the fact more women than men graduate from college.

Change takes more than just conversation, but it gets harder to ignore or cover up things people are talking about. If you're the Facebook type, please join our Facebook group, where we'll be sharing information and talking about #womenslives every week.  Because all you need to do is believe in yourself. Like a girl.

No, like a woman.

Y'all, I am so tired. I got home around seven last night, dumped my stuff out of my suitcase and handed it to my husband, who left for his third week-long business trip of the month this morning. But I had a great time moderating the Getting Your (First) Great Book Deal panel and the leading the Grammar Clinic with the amazing Arnebya. 

Why didn't I get her looking at the camera? Or better yet, with me? I don't know, either.

I ran into my friends Maria Niles and Katherine Stone.

Celeste Lindell, my real-life Kansas City friend of 15 years, and me.

My co-workers/friends, Diane Lang (left) and Julie Ross Godar.

Backstage at VOTY, a sweet baby was attached to Janelle.

I took this right before Multi-Culti shut down for the night.

Arianna Huffington and Guy Kawasaki. Check out BlogHer's new initiative with HuffPo and the Center for American Progress, Make Life Work!

Great keynote on intersectionality in blogging could've gone on for hours.

I got photobombed by the author Margaret Dilloway. She had to leave early, so she asked me to keep her updated on the rumored appearance of Khloe Kardashian. 

Also 15-year-real-life-KC-friend Kelly Oliver George and I missed Khloe Kardashian at the Hairfinity booth. We were krushed.

But all was right in the world after I got a big smile and hug from my friend Luvvie.

Almost a month ago, all my stat counters started telling me there were zero pageviews at this blog. Zero. Typepad finally blamed it on Goodreads and their widget code (you'll notice I temporarily removed all my Goodreads widgets) spitting out faulty HTML or something like that. Both Typepad and Goodreads responded very nicely as they are good people, and I'm sure I'll have my widgets back soon, but it sure was weird during the very month I'm celebrating my ten-year anniversary of blogging here that ALL THE TRAFFIC DIED. It was like someone just came along and flipped a switch.

Goodbye, Surrender, Dorothy. Thanks for the memories.

I spent one evening contemplating if I should just shutter the blog. I figured there was something legitimately wrong and not just that everyone had disappeared, but it crossed my mind that the people who told me they had totally been here in the past month were lying to protect my ego. (It's not necessary. I am not kidding when I say I have no ego left over this blog. I have it for my books, but not my blog.) I wondered if I should keep writing even if no one was reading. 

It's a good question, isn't it? 

Ultimately, though, even before I removed the Goodreads widget and the statcounters started ticking again, I decided I would keep writing ... even if nobody read it. I don't write here as much as I did before I started working for BlogHer and writing novels, but this is where I come when I have that thought while staring off into space at the school pick-up line. Surrender, Dorothy is the junk drawer of my mind. It has a copy of my resume, sure, and links to my books and some posts I liked highlighted in a list that needs a massive update (although that wouldn't matter if no one was reading, see how we create this unnecessary busyness for ourselves?), but it also has a series of pictures I thought were funny when my daughter was four and some missives about politics and current events that didn't end up changing any policies but made me feel better in the moment. I like going through junk drawers, and I like having this blog. 

Someday life will slow down enough for me to poke through my own archives and look at all my junk, and here it will all be. And won't that be amazing?

Y'all, I'm having a blogiversary this year, the big ten. I even started this blog in May 2004. I got all sappy and made a big slideshow of ten years of my daughter and me and this blog over on BlogHer today. Please check it out!

If you'll be at BlogHer '14 in San Jose, please come visit the Writing Lab. On Friday, July 24 from 2:30-4 pm, you'll find the following people there:

Writing Lab | Be Your Own Editor

Writing is hard. This lab will help make it a little easier for you by making those rough drafts a little smoother, that copy a bit tighter, and those headlines a little more zingy. Like any good cook will tell you, it's much easier at the end if you clean as you go. Tidy up your work as you write it with these tips for catchy and inspiring headlines, insights into how an *editor* approaches a writer's first draft differently than the *writer* does, and the grammar refreshers we all know we can use, even if we don't want to admit it! 

Instructors:

• Arnebya Herdon and Rita Arens (grammar clinic)
• Julie Ross Godar (headline bootcamp)
• Meiko Patton and Susan Goldberg (what to do with your first draft)

I like nothing better than to sit around geeking out over "that" versus "which," so it's a guaranteed good time! In all seriousness, understanding the rules of grammar and punctuation give you confidence -- and that confidence translates not only into better writing but also into the promotion of said writing. No one wants to be the guy on ESPN whose tweet gets picked up saying "your the best!" (seen recently, no lie)

NO ONE WANTS TO BE THAT GUY.

If you want a badge of your own (even if you're not speaking, you totally don't have to be, that's just what MY badge says), go here for badge code.

Also -- if you have any grammar quandaries you'd like us to address, leave them here in the comments!

Y'all, I totally didn't watch the VMAs. a) I didn't realize they were on b) I have really never cared about music videos, even when MTV first came out -- I think it was the newness. I can't remember the last time I wanted my MTV. c) I hate awards shows, too.

So it wasn't until Monday morning that I realized Miley Cyrus had quite the bizarre performance. Such a performance that we actually created a series on BlogHer to house all the reactions. Now it's Friday, and I think it's taken me an entire week to absorb the stupidity of just all of it and the danger of at least one part of it.

I didn't even watch the whole video at first. After Miley-I-knew-that-girl-was-trouble-and-didn't-let-my-daughter-watch-Hannah-Montana walked out of a giant teddy bear and started yelling, I figured I was pretty sure how it was all going to go down. I didn't get to the full video watching until today, after I'd had time to read the responses and also pour bleach into my eyeballs. I've read a LOT of response posts to Miley -- people mad at people for judging her as a woman, people who are pissed about her gold grill, people who say as a society we've lost it.

Yeah, I thought she was pretty gross. Just as I really hated Madonna on a cross and Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction and any reference to bitches and hos no matter what color your skin. I hate all of it.

Was Miley's foam-fingered teddy bear worse or better? I don't know. But I really did think we'd come farther than this.

Get More:2013 VMA, Artists.MTV, Music, Miley Cyrus

Everybody in this medley had back-up dancers. The same red-pants-wearing black female back-up dancers appeared wearing teddy bears and not wearing teddy bears for Miley and for other singers, and they seemed to be doing fairly normal background dancer stuff. What I just couldn't figure out was this:

This woman in the tights was mostly shown ass-out to the crowd. You never really saw her face. Then Miley smacked that ass. Now. There are a variety of things going on here. While the robot teddy bears and the tongue wagging and the foam finger and the bikini are all annoying and just weird, the using a black woman as a prop and accentuating her ass in this way, THEN SMACKING IT just, no, Miley. And really, not just Miley, because who the hell produces this show? Where was the adult in the room to go OMG YOU HAVE NOW TRANSCENDED BAD TASTE AND MOVED INTO THE CULTURAL FUCK-UP ZONE?

You know, I never thought Miley was all that impressive as an artist, and that's fine. I don't have to like everyone. And I don't even watch this show, so it would be no worries to me except for that image above. That one is a little more powerful, and not at all in a good way.