The little angel's ballet school is performing The Nutcracker next week. Twice on Thursday morning, twice on Friday morning, once on Friday night, and twice on Saturday. We have dress rehearsals this week on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. She's been going in for at least an hour, sometimes two, on Saturdays since September. I've spent hours writing e-mails and press releases, trying to drum up an audience for the kids.

And I'll be honest, I was getting a little tired of the whole thing.

Until I saw this.

She's a snow bird. And when she grows up, she wants to be a star.

------------------------------------------------------

Reviews of Time's latest coffee table book and a safe to stop your kids from stealing your Oxycontin on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

A few nights ago I fumbled around the kitchen after a workout, simultaneously trying to stop sweating, unload the dishwasher and put on vegetables to steam. I looked over at my daughter drawing cheerfully at the kitchen table. She looked up at me.

"Can I help you, Mommy?" she asked.

She does chores around the house, but rarely without being asked. This question came sincerely, without prompting.

"Yes, that would be lovely," I said.

She wiped down the table. She set the table. She opened a can of peas for herself, poured them into her bowl and some Tupperware, rinsed out the can and put it in the recycling. She poured the milk. She added cheese to the turkey burgers sizzling on the George Foreman grill without burning herself. She carried her little stool around the kitchen with a firm sense of purpose. Every time she finished a task, she looked at me expectantly. "What else can I do, Mommy?" In between tasks, she sat on her little stool, hands folded demurely in her lap.

I wasn't sure I knew this kid, but I liked her. A lot.

When Beloved walked through the door, the spell was broken. She ran to tell him about her day, and it was time to eat anyway. We sat down and watched her fall off her chair twice, back to normal. I told Beloved about that magical half hour when she morphed from a raucous and sometimes sassy five-year-old to a practical and concerned only daughter.

As I went in that night to kiss her sleeping head, I thought how she's changed lately. How she's gone from being solely someone I care for to being someone who occasionally cares for me, fetching me a soda from the fridge or holding a paper steady while I sign with one hand. Suddenly she's this kid who can go get the mail and set the table and get herself dressed in the morning.

When did that happen?

It was gorgeous today, this first day of November, when winter begins in the lower Midwest.

It is her sixth November.

 

The little angel was determined to wear her new snow boots, despite the seventy-degree temps.

She can see through my attempts to get her to smile for real.

 

She fearlessly climbed a very tall rock.

 

I was happy and sad to learn she didn't need me to hold her on the way up.

 

She became the spiderweb queen, and I retired to princess.

 

She doesn't always listen to me anymore, now that she's five.

She has her own ideas.

Sometimes, she's determined to go her own way.

 

A cautious toddler, she's become a courageous girl.

 

It's a relief she still looks back to make sure I'm behind her.

Something seemed a little off as we approached the Sprint Center last night. It was 7:15. Springsteen was supposed to go on at 7:30. But there were no people.

As we got closer, we could see people inside folding t-shirts. Beloved tried the door, but it was locked. So he tried the next door, and the next. I asked if he was sure we had the right night. We looked around for help.

Two red-coated security guards approached us. "Hey," said Beloved. "What's up?"

"The show's cancelled," said one.

"Shut up," we said.

"Okay," said the guy. "But the show's still cancelled."

We found out later Springsteen's cousin and assistant road manager had been found dead at the Intercontinental. But last night, it was just Monday night with a babysitter and no wish on either of our parts to party hearty after missing The Boss.

So we drove home and got some dinner so the little angel could play with her beloved babysitter, as going home early would've just thrown her off. It was still nice to talk to each other uninterrupted, without having to say SIT UP AND EAT even once. But a pall kind of hung over the evening.

My sympathies, Springsteen family and friends.

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?

BlogHer Day One was clouded for me by a severe champagne hangover.  I don't know what inspires me to stay up until 4 a.m. Kansas City time drinking more than Mary Kate Olson and then wake up five hours later unable to sleep, but apparently I now do that sometimes.

My first panel was the Mommyblogging as a Radical Act panel. I had, in fact, no intention of attending this panel and had planned to go to the one on politics, as I've been writing more on politics this year than ever before.  But, when the time came, I was so hungover, in fact, that I allowed the crowd to gently push me down the stairs toward the cavernous mommy arena.

There was a lot of "men are trying to keep us down" at that panel, which really kind of surprised me. Yes, mommyblogging does get belittled a lot, and that does piss me off, but I'm not sure if it's because women are doing it or because unless you're in that phase of your life, you don't really care. I personally prefer to belittle MySpace for the same reasons. Had it been around when I was 14, KATIE BAR THE DOOR. 

Do men belittle women's writing?  Some do. Some that are assholes. And in return, I continue to be amused when a grown man sheds tears over a touchdown or lets a home run make or break his entire week.  Am I belittling you grown men who cry as though your dog died over a game? Yes, yes I am.  You may now belittle my poop stories. The end.

Maybe I was just really tired.

After mommyblogging, it gets hazy. At some point, there was lunch, and I found myself staring down a lovely green wrap that perfectly matched my complexion. I was sitting next to my beloved Bossy, and I could barely even make conversation. Every time I tried to eat the wrap, my stomach heaved, and I had nothing witty to say to her. (Aside: Bossy is such a liar. Her hair is not white at all. She still looks like the elfin princess that she always resembles:  tall, thin, beautiful. So not fair.)  Every time I see Georgia I keep waiting for her to bedeck me with daisies, but usually she just takes a picture.

I think the race and gender section was after lunch. There I sat next to Mocha Momma and said some heart-pounding things about needing to be an angry white woman. You'll have to listen to the podcast for more, that's all I have to say about that. Of all the sessions, this one made me the proudest to be part of BlogHer, which in many ways feels like being in college again, what with its strength of friendships and wonder of self-discovery and personal growth, and oh, a lot of hard liquor drunk from paper cups.

After that session, I started to feel almost sick from exhaustion. I went up to our room to take a nap. I set the alarm for 20 minutes, but the bastard fuck thing didn't go off, and I missed Eden Kennedy's community keynote, a crowning achievement that I am really fucking mad I missed. I will be searching YouTube as soon as I get a free minute. (If you have the link, please spare me YouTube searching.)

I woke in time to hit the cocktail party at Ruby Skye and spent the next two hours screaming at Devra, Georgia, Tracey, Amy, and my new best friend Neal Pollack, who does not like it if you threaten him with a vasectomy and was my favorite new discovery at BlogHer this year.

After the cocktail party, the contributors to Sleep Is for the Weak, the co-founders of blogHer, and members of the old media guard (Leslie from Essence, Stacy from Redbook, Karla from iVillage) and I were treated to a celebratory dinner that blew my mind with its loveliness and unexpectedness.  During the meal, a server very sweetly offered to hold Anjali so Cagey could eat her gnocchi, and I quietly died one thousand million deaths wondering whose life I had stolen while I listened to people laugh and tell stories and drink wine in celebration of this book project o'mine as I gazed at them lovingly from across a plate of three kinds of chicken.

As Alice said, "Oh, the MEAT at this dinner!"

I meant to go to Maggie Mason's Mighty Haus party after dinner, but when I got done wheeling Anju's stroller back for Cagey, I realized I physically couldn't keep my eyes open and fell asleep trying to dial my phone.

This post should have lots of links in it, and maybe it will later, but right now I am late for the little angel's swimming lessons. Enjoy.

The posts for the next three days are in arrears and written on airplanes.  I thought those of you who didn't go might like my account.

As I took the little angel to school, I feel my chest tightening.  I learned a long time ago to keep it light when preparing to leave, because if she reads any unhappiness or uncertainty on my face, she deteriorates into a puddle of goo. 

I asked her if she wanted to wave to me through the window as I left.  We waved and blew kisses until I was out of the parking lot. 

I made it to the stoplight at the end of the street before I felt the hot tears and wanted to turn around and say fuck it.

I wanted so bad to go to BlogHer, and I wanted so bad to turn around, pick her up and spend the next three days off work just hanging out with my daughter.  Such is motherhood. Ambivalence becomes your reality, always hissing just below the surface.

When I arrived at the airport (right before boarding) (I forgot my jacket and had to go back, because I know from experience it is fucking cold in San Francisco in July), Average Jane was grinning at me and holding up her copy of Sleep Is for the Weak.  It was smaller than I thought it would be, but very beautiful.  It was the first time I'd seen it in bound form. I didn't want to fawn over it too much.  I figured I could open the 90 pounds of SIFTW in the hotel room and maybe roll around in them naked once I got there.

I leave tomorrow morning for BlogHer. I'm sharing a flight and a room with my good friend Average Jane.  I'll be spending the entire flight staring at the agenda and hoping people will buy the books that are sitting in the Westin St. Francis at this moment. 

And, I'm preparing to face the comments of people who will have read the book by then, as the preorders are shipping and people are e-mailing me to tell me they are holding a copy in their hot little hands.

Mine hasn't gotten here yet, which is a little like having a guy in high school tell you he's seen your senior pictures before you have.

<gulp>

So, I'm going to be away from Surrender, Dorothy for a few days in the estrogen hotbed that is BlogHer, hanging out with some (not all, I wish everyone could make it) of my favorite people from the Internet.  If you are going, please check out my panel, which is called "Blog to Book Redeaux," in which I'll be discussing my experience making Sleep Is for the Weak into a real, live book, along with another author, a literary agent and a publisher.  It's on Saturday afternoon.

Anyway, I wrote a normal out-of-office at work.  Here's my blog version, for the rest of the free world.

Rita Arens Is Ignoring You Right Now. Please Do Not Be Offended.

I will be out of my body from Thursday, July 17 to Sunday, July 20 at BlogHer '08. I will be pretending my real life doesn't exist and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Also, squealing a lot when I see someone I know, and trying to make eye contact with people I don't know but might like to know.  Also, handing out my new business cards that have cool swirly clouds on them because I ordered them from a weatherman business card site. 

I won't be reading blogs, reading e-mail, thinking about my job or anything but the present moment in which I am living.  I will contact you again when I return and realize the clothes are unfolded, the cat's ass still stinks, and I still have to work hard for the money.  Unless you live in my house, do not expect to hear from me until Tuesday, July 22.  Monday is reserved for a certain redheaded girl who will probably miss her mommy while I am gone. 

Sincerely,

Rita Arens

Today must be up with technology day.  I explained Twitter to one of my co-workers today (after explaining it to Steph and her husband last weekend).  My analysis:  Twitter is the virtual equivalent of passing notes in study hall. Except with adults.  And some news and commentary thrown in that I would've never wanted in study hall but that I want now. I also like vegetables now. Go figure.

Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about.  What I want to talk about is Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins being the #1 most influential women in blogging, according to NorthxEast.  Who is NorthxEast?  I'm not exactly sure (I'm never afraid to admit my naivete, power user though I am), but the effort put into this list is pretty impressive. 

Regardless. I'm very proud to know these women, who inspire me in business and in life.  Congratulations, ladies!

You may now return to wondering how to use feedblitz.

And my work computer is still not fixed.  But they are reimaging it.