PooBou.com

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
Bought a house. (Technically, our house in Washington, Dave already owned when we met. So this was our first house purchase together.) Flew to the UK.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I try not to make New Year’s Resolutions as a rule.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes! My cousin Cat had baby Austin.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My aunt – technically she’s my dad’s first cousin, but she was like an aunt to me. I wouldn’t say we were super-close, but she was a very sweet lady, an all-around good person, and she’ll be greatly missed.

5. What countries did you visit?
England & Scotland.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Financial stability.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
January 20th – Obama was inaugurated, and we got our first snow day since we moved to North Carolina. That was a great day.
January 27th – my baby girl turned 2 years old.
April 7th – the world lost Maddie Spohr.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I decided to start a freelance writing business, and I actually made a little bit of money doing so.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Not losing weight. I tried a few different diets and seemed to go off the rails with each one. Going to be working on that again in 2010.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing major. A few bad colds. We’ve been lucky this year.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
This house. My Canon Rebel XSi DSLR camera.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
There are seriously no less than 20 names that immediately popped into my head when I read this question. So I’ll just say: you. All of you. And yes, you too.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Sigh. I can think of a couple of people in my real life that I could list here, but I don’t really want to name names.
So how about I remove my personal life from the equation and say Glenn Beck. Does that work?

14. Where did most of your money go?
This house.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
BlogHer! And Type-A Mom Conference! And getting to meet so! many! awesome! people! whose work I’ve read and adored for ages. And of course I was really excited to watch my baby girl grow up this year, and also about buying a house.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
Um, this song. (Can’t stand the guy, but I like the song. Can’t help it.) And oddly, “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music, because of this video.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? About the same, I think.
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter. Sigh. Working on that.
c) richer or poorer? Poorer (see: house purchase).

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing. Working out. Being a more actively engaged mother/wife. The usual.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying. Moping. Goofing off. Eating junk food.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
At my mother-in-law’s house in Carlisle, England. It was lovely.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
With a house, yes.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
LOST. Big Love. Project Runway. Um… trying to think if I watch anything else. The Daily Show?

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I try not to waste my energy on hating people. There are people I cared about who I no longer care about, we could put it that way. But overall, I’m ending the year with far more friends than I started with, so I think we can call that a win.

24. What was the best book you read?
I haven’t finished it yet, I’m in the last few chapters, but I’m going to say “The Help” by Kathryn Stockett.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I don’t think I really discovered anything this year. I’ve developed a little bit of an obsession with both Keane and Muse. Neither of those are exactly “new,” though.

26. What did you want and get by year’s end?
A home.

27. What did you want and not get by year’s end?
Well, I’m not pregnant yet, but I’m also not entirely sure that I want to be. (I keep wavering on that one, it kind of depends on the day of the week.) Hmm. You know what would’ve been nice that I didn’t get? If this house had a hidden secret passageway that was filled with unmarked $100 bills. That would be awesome. Sigh. Oh well.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Since I rarely get to see any movies that aren’t animated, I’ll go for the best of that bunch and say “Up.”

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 33. It was pretty low-key. My brother & his then-girlfriend drove over from Charlotte for the weekend. And Dave bought me a Wii, which was awesome.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Huh. Oddly, I can’t really think of anything.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Jeans and sneakers. Lazy suburban mom chic.

32. What kept you sane?
My family. And Diet Coke.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
George Clooney, always. Josh Holloway on “Lost.”

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Probably healthcare reform.

35. Who did you miss?
It’s odd, I found myself missing my grandmother a few times this year, even though she passed away in 1996. There were several occasions that I found myself thinking of her, wishing she was there. She was such a baby nut, I know she would’ve adored Catie. I’m sad that they’ll never get a chance to meet.

I also miss a lot of my friends back in Seattle. I miss Patsy, our previous baby-sitter.

And of course, I miss all of the fantastic ladies that I had a chance to spend time with at BlogHer and Type-A Mom. I wish I lived closer to them so I could see them all the time.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
I cannot possibly pick one.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
The same rules you use for online dating also apply to Twitter and blogs: don’t invite people from the Internet to your house. Meet them in public first to decide if they’re crazy. THEN, you can decide whether or not you want to invite them over to spend the night.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
“There is no home like the one you’ve got,
Cuz that home belongs to you.”
– Jenny Lewis, “Barking at the Moon”

Yes, that song is from “Bolt.” I’m sorry. It’s all I’ve got.

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The lovely and amazing Mrs. Flinger has issued a challenge for some of us bloggers to try to write better, and since I lurves me some Mrs. Flinger, I figured what the hell, I’m in.

First assigned topic? My most embarrassing moment.

I’ve been pondering on this one for a couple of days, because there are so many to choose from. Horror stories involving your first period? Been there. Pooping during childbirth? Done that too. And since I didn’t meet my husband until the ripe old age of 28, I have plenty of embarrassing dating mishap stories too. (One of my personal favorites? The time I was making out with a boy and I got a nosebleed. Neither of us noticed until I had bled all over both of our faces. We looked like a couple of extras from a bad zombie movie. Traumatic, to say the least.)

Then I realized that my most truly embarrassing moments involve alcohol, and the over-consumption of it. (I promise, I’m not an alcoholic. I hardly ever drink now. I just flirted dangerously close to being one when I was in my 20’s.) But there’s a lot of good fodder there. Puking in public? Yep. Being so lovey-dovey from the booze that I’ve made out with total strangers, even those of my own gender? Um, yeah, that too.

But there’s one that keeps standing out in my mind: Halloween 2004.

What’s funny is that I just checked my blog archives (which go back to August 2003, when I started this little site) and I noticed that I never mentioned anything about it, because I was so horrified at my own behavior.

Dave and I had been dating for about five months. One of my girlfriends invited us to a Halloween party, and we decided to go, even though my friend was the only person there that we knew. I dressed as a Catholic school girl, Dave was a priest. (Note: neither of us is Catholic.) Dave also wore a Bill Clinton wig and black lipstick, but I don’t remember why. We just thought it was funny at the time.

So we get there, and there were significantly more men than women, and I didn’t really know any of them, and I felt a little bit slutty and uncomfortable in my costume, so I did the most natural thing I could do, and got completely drunk.

I don’t remember much of the evening, honestly. There are pictures, and they make me cringe every time I see them. I’ve never posted a single photo from that night, but since I’m opening up and sharing my embarrassment now, here you go.

This is seriously the least embarrassing photo of me from the entire damn night.

Oh hi there, Cindy DrunkFace!

So, yeah. I was drunk and made a general idiot of myself. No big shock there. And really, it wouldn’t have been a big deal because I didn’t know any of those people and I would never see them again, so what do I care?

But then, somehow I ended up in the bathroom with the guy who was hosting the party. I’m not even sure why, I think it was because my bracelet broke and he was getting me a safety pin to fix it? And the dude was kind of sleazy, and Dave insisted that he was hitting on me (maybe he was, I was too drunk to notice), but while we were in the bathroom, I started telling him about Dave and how in loooove I was with him, but we hadn’t officially said “I love you” to each other yet, and I was so crazy about him, and I was so tortured about it because what if he isn’t in love with me like I’m in love with him, and blah-blah-drunken-rambling-blah.

Then, someone comments to Dave, “Hey, where’s your girlfriend?” And Dave realizes that I’m… uh… in the bathroom. With another guy. With the door closed. So he comes to get me, and in my drunken-rambling state, I slammed the door on him when he tried to open it. Let me repeat that in case you missed it: I slammed the door on my boyfriend so I could stay in the bathroom with another dude. And of course, all I was doing in the bathroom was talking about Dave, but how in the hell was Dave supposed to know that? So he was pissed. As anyone would be in that situation, really.

When I came out of the bathroom, Dave said it was time to go, and as soon as we got in the car, he told me how pissed he was. I sobered up enough to suddenly realize that holy crap, he’s about to break up with me right here because of how freaking stupid I am. So I burst into tears, and I told him I loved him.

And that was the first time we said our “I love you”s.

Three months later, we got engaged.

This past Halloween, I reminded him that it had been five years since the first time we said “I love you” to each other. He said, “Oh yeah, the night I almost dumped your ass.” I pointed out how happy he should be that he didn’t dump me then. It’s funny, though, that even though everything worked out ok in that situation (exceptional, even), I still cringe whenever I think about that night.

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Want more embarrassing moments? Here are the other people in the (W)rite of Passage challenge.

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If you don’t know Anissa Mayhew, you should.

I first met Anissa at BlogHer this past summer. I immediately liked her, but we didn’t get to spend very much time together. Just long enough for her to steal my vodka.

(I’m totally kidding. The cap was on. She was actually on her way back to her room to go to bed when this picture was taken. I just think it’s hilarious. And seriously, I don’t let anybody bogart my vodka like that.)

Then, this past September, at the Type-A Mom conference, I saw her again. The first morning of the conference, I walked into the main meeting hall room where everyone was having breakfast. I got there late, and most of the tables were already full. I was trying to scan the room for faces that I recognized, and desperately trying not to feel like the totally awkward girl in high school who doesn’t know where to sit in the cafeteria. Mercifully, Heather spotted me and waved me over to her table. I ended up sitting in between Heather and Anissa, at a table with several other Aiming Low writers.

And you know, it was before 9 a.m., and I felt like I was barely awake, so I just sat there and quietly sipped my Diet Coke (which I had the foresight to bring with me, because I remembered from BlogHer how impossible it is to get a soda in the morning; not all of us are coffee drinkers, y’all). And I listened. And I was amazed that despite how early it was, those girls were tossing around zingers like it was last call at the bar, and they had me almost falling out of my chair laughing in no time.

(Of course, maybe they were all more well-rested than I was, because none of them had to drive six hours the day before with a toddler, and then share a bed with Little Miss Kicks-You-In-the-Ribs-at-3-a.m. I’m guessing.)

Oh, and Anissa was wearing a black cocktail dress, which I thought was kind of amazingly awesome for first thing in the morning. I found out later that her dress was for a fashion show at the conference, but I had no idea of that at the time.

We hung out a little more over the weekend, and then I had breakfast with Anissa, Heather, and the Aiming Low ladies on Sunday, before we all headed home. Another early morning where they had me crying my mascara off from laughing so hard.

At the end of the meal, Anissa said to me, “You know, you talk to people online and you aren’t sure if you’d really click with them in real life. But you are awesome.” That made me smile for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, my friend Anissa – 35 years old, wife, mother of 3 children – had a stroke. As I write this, she’s in the ICU, and we don’t know her status. I am so worried for my friend, and praying as hard as I can.

Heck, I’m even throwing prayers up to my relatives who’ve passed away. I’m hoping one of them might hear me, jot down my message on a Post-It, and slip it into the Big Guy’s inbox for me.

She has to be ok. Too many people here need her.

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To help Anissa and her family, especially if you are in the Atlanta area, please go here. You can also share your own favorite moment with Anissa (or general support) on the Mr. Linky on that same AimingLow.com post.

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Forgive the quick entry, I only have a few minutes to type this up.

1. My in-laws are coming today! Catie is super-excited and keeps saying, “Grandma and Grandpa Roger are coming to see ME!” With her hand pressed to her chest for extra “ME!” emphasis. Yes, sweetie, they are. And now excuse Mommy while she panics and tries to clean the whole house from top to bottom.

2. I’m not doing NaBloPoMo this year. I thought it was fun in previous years, but with the visit from my in-laws and my entire family coming for Thanksgiving, there’s just no way on earth that I’m going to have time.

3. Halloween was so much fun! We went over to Cat & Tony’s neighborhood so the kids could trick-or-treat together. Catie had so much fun getting to hang out with her cousins, I think she’ll be talking about it until next Halloween.

And since I have to get to my last-minute frantic clean-up-a-thon, here are some of my favorite pictures from Halloween. The whole set is here.

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Fair warning: prepare to be outraged.

I don’t know how many of y’all who use Flickr have had this problem, but here’s the thing. Occasionally I get people who add me as their contact who speak very little English, and who have no pictures available in their photostream. If I ignore it, a couple of days later, I’ll get a Flickr message like this (honest to God, I’m copying & pasting one of the emails I’ve gotten):

Catie I found very beautiful, and I can use the photos of her. Please think well. The Catie is the most perfect little girl that I ever knew, I am photographer.
I found this very beautiful little girl, and in my opinion should be a model. She is simply nice, beautiful, sweet … I would like to know her better, and thus allowing me to use the photos of his daughter.
Many people use the photos of her daughter in ORKUT, if you want I can help it.
Kisses, good week and good night.
-name removed-

The first time I got one of these, I wondered what the hell Orkut was, so I did some investigating. Turns out, it’s a social networking site, sort of like Facebook or MySpace, but the users are predominantly in Brazil and India. It’s run by Google, and appears to be a legitimate website from what I can tell.

So, whenever this comes up, I always respond that NO, you may NOT use the photos of my daughter, and then I block them so they can’t see my Flickr pictures anymore. Lately, I’ve been even more proactive: if someone adds me as a contact and they have a vaguely foreign-sounding name and nothing in their photostream? I block them. No questions asked, they’re just gone.

Then, the other day I got an email from someone on Flickr with a link to a profile on Orkut. I followed the link and found this.

(Click to enlarge.)

Somebody set up an account, claiming that they’re me, using my daughter’s picture as their profile pic, and acting all outraged that people are using Catie’s pictures on Orkut. And they add that “Bianca and Daph” (who??) are the only people authorized to use Catie’s pictures. What the ever-loving eff?!?!!

First, I reported this person to Orkut for identity theft. Then I started doing some investigating. Orkut is sort of like Facebook in that you can post a message called a “scrap” (sort of like writing on someone’s wall in FB). I left a message that was borderline hysterical, sort of “who the hell is this? You’re using my daughter’s picture and acting as though you’re me online? TAKE THIS PICTURE DOWN IMMEDIATELY OR I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN AND ARRRRGGGGHHH HULK SMASH!!!” Or, you know, something to that effect. I’m pretty sure I dropped an f-bomb. (Which probably has less effect on someone who speaks poor English.)

This is the response I got.

No I have not got it very badly and I really apologize, is that I see many people using photos of her daughter Catie and I decided to do this to stop using his daughter, if you are aware already found 5 girls who wore the daughter and she stopped using because I asked, even though I did wrong I have done something right, sorry about that

So… you’re just pretending to be me in order to protect my kid? Um, sorry, but NO. If you think someone is doing something unseemly with pictures of a stranger’s child, wouldn’t you, I don’t know, try to CONTACT the parent of the child whose pictures are being used illicitly? Maybe?

I took this screenshot & posted it on Flickr, and the person immediately contacted me and asked me to remove it. HELL NO, jackass. I responded and said that I would not be removing it because I wanted to warn the other parents I know to be on the lookout for this. Meanwhile, the profile appears to have been removed, so yay for that, I guess.

So, now I’m left with questions:
1. Why on earth would anyone have any interest in these pictures? It’s not as though they’re naked pictures of her that could be construed as p0rnographic. I don’t post anything like that. What’s the motivation for this? A quick search on Flickr shows that I am definitely not the only one having this problem. But why? What’s the purpose? Do I need to be worried that some Brazilian child sex ring is going to come to North Carolina looking for my daughter? (That’s what my mom thinks. She advised me to shut down my Flickr account AND my blog when she heard about this. And Mom, I love you, but no.)

2. What do I do now? I don’t want to set my Flickr account private, because then I won’t be able to use the pictures on my blog. How do I keep this from happening in the future? Do I stick a watermark on my photos? Would that even help? I mean, if they’re going to steal so blatantly, I doubt a watermark would be much of a deterrent.

3. How do I use my tiny little space on the Internet to try to make this stop? I doubt I can make huge websites like Flickr or Google listen to me. I’d love it if Flickr had some sort of option to block incoming links, so I could have an option that blocks anybody who’s clicking over from Orkut. But I doubt they’re going to make a major site design overhaul based on the complaints of a few people. So, what to do? I know some of y’all are way more clever than I am with this type of thing. If you have any ideas, please share them.

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I’m going to be doing a little tweaking on the ol’ blog here over the next few weeks. Nothing major, just changing up some of my sidebar stuff. Ads will be different – Google ads are gone because they’re useless, and I might try out some different ads instead. Hopefully it won’t be anything too annoying or intrusive, but I trust that y’all will let me know if it is.

Oh, and I’ve dropped my blogroll from my sidebar because I have about 100 or so blogs in my RSS reader, and just highlighting about 1/4 of them over there seemed sort of pointless and unfair. Also, now trolls can no longer use my blog as the launching point to go attack on someone else’s site. Which has happened a few times. But no more. Suck it, trolls.

And while I’m talking about bloggy/techie stuff, I do have a couple of questions for you lovely people:

1) Do any of you know anything about RSS feeds? Because my feed went from partial, to full, and back to partial again and I never did anything to change any of it. I can’t figure it out. I’m using WordPress, I’ve upgraded to the latest version, and on the Settings > Reading screen, I have it selected to show full text. Why is it still showing up as partial? Any ideas? Help?

2) After seeing some of the gorgeous photos that were taken at Type-A Mom last weekend, and after suffering from camera-envy for a while, I’ve decided it’s time for an upgrade. My little point-and-shoot (it’s an Olympus Stylus 790 SW) is an ok camera, but I end up with an awful lot of blurry pictures, or pictures that are too washed out and grainy. Also, the delay on the shutter speed is so slow – and toddlers are so fast – that I miss an awful lot of really great shots.

So, as soon as I can figure out how to afford it, I want to upgrade to a DSLR. I’ve heard good things about the Canon Rebel, but I know Nikon makes some really great cameras too. Any of you photography pros have advice for a beginner who’s never used a DSLR before? I’ll take whatever tips I can get.

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We got home from the Type-A Mom Conference yesterday afternoon. This was only my second blogging conference; BlogHer was my first. It feels odd, to go to two in one year, when I’ve been blogging since 2003. I’m not sure how it worked out like that, but there you go.

I think that overall, the Type-A Mom Conference was a lot more enjoyable for me than BlogHer. At BlogHer, it was like Overstimulation Central. The schedule is packed, there are tons of people there, the marketers and their swag are all over the place, everything is rush-rush-rush, and while I certainly got to meet a lot of the bloggers I adore, I didn’t really get a chance to spend a lot of time with any of them. And that’s not really a criticism of BlogHer, honestly, I think it’s just the nature of the beast. By the time it was over, I was so glad to be home again.

By comparison, Type-A Mom was totally different. For one, just the fact that you’re at a resort in a smallish mountain town instead of being in a hotel smack in the middle of downtown Chicago gives it a different vibe. And the fact that it’s a smaller conference means that instead of rushing around trying to meet everyone, I had the chance to actually spend time with people; to have a real conversation and form an actual connection with them, not just a “hi! OMG you’re here! So great to meet you! Ok bye!” Which is sort of what BlogHer felt like to me.

Also, for me personally, Type-A Mom was different because Dave and Catie came along with me. In some ways that was harder (no “I’ll take a nap whenever I damn well please” policy like I had at BlogHer), but it was also great because then I didn’t have that urge to rush home to them – they were already there. Saturday morning, I totally skipped out on the morning sessions, which ok yes, maybe I would’ve learned something if I’d gone. But I spent the morning lying in bed with my family watching cartoons, and I can honestly say that there was nowhere else I wanted to be at that moment.

Oh, for the record? Catie freaking loved Kid Con, which I wasn’t expecting at all. She cried the first time Dave dropped her off there, and we tried to stagger her time there to keep her from getting too overwhelmed. But seriously, after that first time? Every time we took her back to “daycare school” (her term), she’d run into the room with an “Ok, Mommy, bye! You go now!” She was glad to see us when we’d come back for her, of course, but she clearly had a fantastic time there. That was an amazing program that they set up for the kids, all blogging conferences should follow that example.

So, yes. It was great. At BlogHer, I was so exhausted and couldn’t wait to get home by the end of the weekend. With Type-A Mom, I just felt sad and melancholy the whole drive home because I had so much fun, and I wish that all of those fabulous women lived in my neighborhood so I could see them all the time. Sigh.

Oh, and Catie’s take on the conference?
During:

After:

I know how she feels.

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