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?

"My blog is my spirit animal." OMG.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPFCtD4IO_4] 

Do you ever look at all the people making sexy fish-faces on The Facebook and wonder how we got here?

Then, in the midst of my judginess, I look at my own damn profile picture, which is one of the only pictures I've ever taken in which I'm not smiling, because I was trying to be serious and authorial and not giddy. Totally no different than The Facebook. I'm guilty.

Sometimes I get so tired of myself and trying to promote my writing and trying to be, just, well, MORE. More as a writer, more as an employee, more as a mother, better, faster, more.

I have plenty of friends who ask me why I feel compelled to write books on top of all the other things I do in my life, and I think the real answer is that I take myself too seriously. When I'm honest with myself, I know there are almost 300,000 books coming out every year and it's a bloody miracle if anyone finds mine, reads it AND likes it, so sometimes it seems very silly to keep trying. And here I am, writing another one, not knowing if this next one will be bigger, faster, more or not.

Then I think, well, if I didn't try, then what point is there in doing anything? I was commenting on a post this week about a woman who doesn't like to make her bed because she doesn't see the point, but I always make my bed and the point is to have a made bed because I take myself and my bed very, very seriously. I take everything seriously, except for The Facebook, because The Facebook depresses the shit out of me and every time I go over there I find myself feeling bad that I'm not doing everything better, faster, more, and I hate feeling like that, like just living without hurting anyone else isn't enough.

I think I might need a vacation. 

Last week while my mom was visiting, she, my girl and I went to Panera for dinner before Ma sweetly took my girl home so I could have a few hours to work on PARKER CLEAVES. As we ate, I found myself completely overtaken with the conversation of the two women behind me, who were filling out some sort of Bible-related workbooks. 

Their conversation was HILARIOUS and not intentionally at all. I sat there, nodding and smiling at my mom and daughter because they thought they were talking to me, but they were not. They were talking at me while I listened with all my might to the women as they discussed their answers to the workbook questions. 

When we were done eating, we walked out into the parking lot and I told my mom and daughter what they'd been saying. My mom laughed out loud. 

Me: "I'm totally blogging this."

My Conscience My Daughter: "Mommy, what if they saw it?"

Me: "How would they see it? They don't know me. Plus, I don't know their names." (fully aware of how completely wrong and backward this conversation is)

My Conscience My Daughter: "MOMMY."

Me: "Twitter?"

My Conscience My Daughter: "MOOOOMMMMY."

Me: "Okay, fine."

So I told the story in my editorial meeting to my co-workers, and we laughed and laughed. And see, I found a way to blog it without violating the spirit of my daughter's wise words. The best part about this story: Right before I started eavesdropping, I was telling my daughter she can't have her own blog until she's 25. 

I'll just find a way to work that conversation into dialogue in PARKER CLEAVES.

That was her question. "But who are you blogging for?"

I blinked, smiling. Those who don't blog always ask this question, as though any of us knows the answer.

"I guess whoever stops by," I said. "It's kind of like street performing, right? They're really just practicing in public."

She grinned. "I love street performers! My daughter does that in New Orleans."

A link. Understanding.

I mean, really, why the hell do we do anything?

I was at a virtual group last night and met someone I wasn't sure whether I had met before. (That sentence is going to get my writer card revoked, but you know what I mean.) The first thing I said to her was, "Have we met before? Because I have an occupational hazard in that I can never remember anyone's name."

This is not my attempt to be a douchenozzle. I would love for the world to know that. I could have a three-hour conversation with you in the back of a limousine and depending on how many other people I had talked to that day and whether or not it was super loud and maybe dark and whether or not you might not look anything like your avatar on Twitter, I may or may not recognize you when you walk up to me at 8 am under bright lights. I've had people get really upset with me to my face for this sort of thing. I'm sure people have also said things behind my back. (Some probably deserved, I mean, hey, everyone screws up sometimes.) But I hope nobody ever gets seriously mad at me because I can't remember his or her name, because that problem is mine, not anyone else's. And all this existential angst over my cognition shortfalls kicked in totally last night.

I've read a ton of tricks for memory-jogging. And I've tried, really I've tried, to associate people's faces with a fruit or a color or anything that will help, and instead of remembering the person's name, I end up wondering if the character name "Walter White" on Breaking Bad is ironic or not, because he's a jerk.

Here's the thing: Remembering names and faces is an innate skill, kind of like being a fast runner. Some people are super fast without even trying, and others might train for years and still get their ass kicked by a fat dog. But nobody, NOBODY ever accuses the slow runner of being a snob for being a slow runner. So why do we do that with people who can't remember names?

I should say that nobody called me a snob recently or last night -- it's just horrifyingly embarrassing to have to start conversations with bloggers in this way because I am paranoid that I actually have met this new person three or four times before or emailed with them or commented on their blog or they commented on mine and they might have a real name and a blog name and a different Twitter handle and yet still I am embarrassed if I don't have instant name recognition.

Who are all these people who say they never forget a face? And can they help me? Please?

PS: I never expect anyone to remember meeting me, seriously. For this very reason. 

Today the little angel and I and two of our dear friends ventured down I-70 to Heins Farms, a working dairy farm about an hour outside Kansas City. They supply Roberts. We had a grand old time, extended NY subway version to follow, but please to enjoy this cow video for now.

Here's a link to all the cow pics and videos that I took while on the Heins farm.

And!

• Why Vampires Make Bad Boyfriends -- my review of Deborah Harkness' debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, for BlogHer Book Club
• Like Jane Austen? The folks at Penguin and BlogHer are giving away five sets of two awesome books: A Jane Austen Education and Jane Austen: The Complete Novels (yes, it's all of them in one book). Comment to win!
• There's still time to sign up for my author/blogger workshop this Saturday at The Writers Place. Hope to see you there!
• Tonight Jill Miller Zimon and EM Zamotti will be live blogging the Republican debate at BlogHer. You can feed your tweetstream into the live blog or just read Jill from the left and EM from the right. Should be entertaining, to say the least!

Just before the holidays, Babble published their Top 50 Mommybloggers of 2010 list. I  perused it, saw some of my favorite bloggers and wondered briefly what the criteria were for inclusion. I finally decided it was an editor's pick sort of list and went back to packing for the holidays.

I saw a few tweets about it over the weekend, but this morning, Twitter was afire with bloggers on the list upset that a popular vote had been added. 

Voting. Ugh. 

Yes. Yes!

That is what voting does to us. It makes people (except those with lots of friends) feel like shit.

It sure made for a good conversation.

I've been upset for years that blogging seems to reward with traffic a) those who campaign for it or b) those who throw other people under the bus. I'd like to see a list rewarding good writing, as that is what blogging is: Writing.

Which is more authentic? Babble's original list or the new popular vote? Or neither? It's hard to say. The popular vote doesn't jibe with the Babble editors picks, as of 11:15 this morning. Why did Babble open it up?

The commenters on the list post were unhappy about the already-popular nature of the list:

 

They were also unhappy about the lack of diversity on the list:

But opening up the list to the popular vote may have been the straw that broke the already-so-done-with-popular-vote mommyblogging community's back.

Babble, you may have blown it this time.

What do you guys think? I'm waiting for Mom101's list instead.

You guys have totally got me about the Mominatrix t-shirt thing. I need to just suck it up and get Beloved to take the picture. I felt a little silly asking him to do it, I admit. Not because he doesn't like the shirt or doesn't like the site, but because I'm asking him to take a picture of me attempting to look halfway decent in a t-shirt on a Sunday afternoon. Sometimes I wonder what my family thinks of how into my blogerific life I actually am.

Actually, I am afraid to ask. I'm pretty sure they think I am a huge nerd, possibly trending to a narcissistic nerd. I mean, seriously? If you showed blog posts to someone in 1974, they'd be all WTFDOYOUTHINKYOUAREDOINGFOOL? Why do you have a photo of only your eyeballs on a computer? Or a cartoon version of yourself? WTFWTFWTF????????

The writing never bothers me. Promoting the writing never bothers me. Trying to take a decent photo of myself bothers me, because I either look unnaturally posed or matronly. That's why I have changed my profile picture on this blog twice since it became a photo of me and not of the little angel (back in the anonymous days of 2004 and 2005). The first one was taken by my professional photographer friend and the second was a desperate camera-phone attempt to make sure people knew I was me at BlogHer and not a bobbed, glasses-wearing, two-years-younger version of myself.

So. There you have it. I am a big wienie when it comes to having my photograph taken unless I trust the photographer has editing skillz. Which I totally do not.

But I will work on getting that t-shirt thing spelled forward. I can't believe I was so worried about getting the photo done I didn't even think about the laws of science. Kids? Are you listening?