PooBou.com

With all the moving and house stuff, I sort of forgot to mention that we’re going out of town this weekend. Or rather, today. Thursday.

We’re heading over to Asheville, North Carolina, and we’ll be there until Sunday. I’m going to the Type-A Mom Conference, and since it’s only a road trip away from here and doesn’t involve airfare, we thought it’d be fun to have Dave and Catie come along. We’ve never been to Asheville, and I hear it’s beautiful there, so I’m really excited.

What’s odd about this little mini-vacation is that we each have different agendas. I’ll be at the conference, Dave wants to go hiking in the mountains, and Catie has a pass to attend “Kid Con,” which is a whole separate event for kids at the conference. I’m a little nervous about that, since Catie isn’t really used to large daycare scenarios, and I’m sort of expecting her to freak out.

But then, she may surprise me. She’s done really well at the YMCA daycare several times. And yesterday, I had a work meeting at 10:30 in the morning; Dave was at the office, and our baby-sitter is out of town this week. Since I didn’t know what else to do, I took her to a drop-in daycare facility that’s close to our new house. I’d typically be a little iffy about that kind of place, but I had heard good things about it from one of our old neighbors, and I didn’t really have any other options. Catie was very excited to go to “daycare school” (as she called it), but when it was time for me to actually leave her there, she had a full-on screaming, crying meltdown. I had to walk out the door while she cried for me, and I swear, I’ll never get used to that. Still, the daycare teachers there said that she was fine about five minutes after I left, and she had a great time playing for the next two hours. She even asked today if she could go back to daycare school. So, I’m thinking that maybe Kid Con will be fine. We’re certainly talking it up to her a lot, about how she’s going to have SO! MUCH! FUN! I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic about how she might react.

So, yes. Asheville! Road trip! Type-A Mom Conference! Getting to hang out with some of my favorite bloggers! Long weekend! Yay!

Oh, and just in case I don’t blog while we’re out of town (because I very well might not), here’s a cute video of Catie opening a present from Mimi & Pop-Pop (my parents).

The guitar (“gui-tahhg,” as she says) was really cute for the first 15 minutes. Now I’m taking bets on how long until it mysteriously “breaks” – or at least until the batteries disappear.

P.S. Happy 3rd birthday to my beautiful little cousin, Elizabeth! We love you & can’t wait to celebrate when we get back next week.

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If there’s one thing I learned at BlogHer, it’s that there are a lot of bloggers out there who have got this whole selling-your-blog thing down to an art. There are also some whose marketing skills could use, um, a little polishing. (If any of you here are the ones who interrupted private conversations to throw your business cards at people, yes, I am looking at you.)

Honestly, the idea of doing product reviews or giveaways has never appealed to me because I didn’t think it would fit in with the narrative of my blog. All I do here is write about my daily life; I think of this blog as my journal, where I tell stories about my kid and oh-hey-this-random-funny-thing-happened. I think it would come off as awkward and contrived if I suddenly threw a product review in the middle of it. There’s a really great post at Suburban Turmoil about how reviews and personal posts shouldn’t mix, and I tend to agree with her. The last thing I want is to pull people in with a long sob story about my poor toddler’s asthma and then twist it with a, “But it was all magically healed with ACME Lung Fixin’ Balm!” at the end. (Note: I know of no such balm in real life. If you came to my site searching for it, I apologize.) You know what I mean? It’s disingenuous and phony, and I don’t want any part of that.

But, at the same time, I’ve gotten a couple of offers to do some reviews, and I don’t want to turn down a potential income source for my family. So to that end, I’ve created a new site:

PooBou’s Reviews

My first product review will be coming up soon, and seriously y’all, I’m SO excited about it. I’m working with CSN Stores, which is a perfect fit for me since they have all kinds of great home decor stuff, patio furniture, kids’ toys, and basically anything you might need for your house. Since we’re moving to a new house at some point in the next month, and we need stuff for said house, this little project is going to be very near & dear to my heart.

I’m also going to do some reviews for the lovely Room 704 ladies, which should be a lot of fun, since I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to cuss in those. And since I very rarely allow myself to cuss on my own blog, I’m really looking forward to that.

So, stay tuned. Should be some fun stuff coming up on that horizon.

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BlogHer was amazing, as I expected. I know tons of people are going to write posts about it, far more eloquently than I can – although, let’s be fair, I’m at a bit of a disadvantage since I’m pounding this out on the airplane with the most epic hangover I’ve had in years. (Typing blog posts in MS Word to copy & paste later, can I get an amen?)

(Also: the last time I had to get on a plane while hungover-or-possibly-still-drunk-from-the-night-before was when my cousin Teresa passed away in 2004. And even though the circumstances around last night’s alcohol consumption were much more joyous this time [celebrating new friendships rather than mourning a horrible loss], flying with a hangover sucks exactly as much as I remember.)

(Also also: hi parentheses! Prepare to be overused. My brain is basically one giant non-sequitur today.)

So, yes. I met tons of bloggers that I adore. The few “rock star” bloggers that I got the nerve to talk to were all lovely and sweet and completely gracious. Some were a little shy and awkward (which, yeah ok, I sort of forget that we’re all basically nerds; I keep thinking that I’m the only one), and some were a lot warmer than I expected and gave me big hugs. I was surprised at how many people knew my name – or rather, my Twitter handle. (Another parenthetical aside: it was VERY weird to introduce myself as PooBou for 3 days. No one actually calls me that in real life, but after a while I just kind of got used to it.)

Then, of course, there are the bloggers who I talk online with a lot, and I was worried that our online connection wouldn’t translate to real life. And you know? It totally translated. From the second I met them in person, it felt like I was just hanging out with old friends who I’ve known for years. Like there’s already an established history, it was totally comfortable and easy. I loved that.

I didn’t attend as many sessions as I wanted. Some I intentionally skipped because they just didn’t apply to me, or because I needed a nap, or because I went wandering through downtown Chicago to go meet up with an old friend (who I’ve known literally since the day my parents brought me home from the hospital, and who I hadn’t seen in over a decade). (Hi, Dendy!) Then there were a few sessions that I really wanted to attend, but they were in tiny conference rooms that I couldn’t get into. People were lined up in the hallways trying to cram themselves in, and just couldn’t. (So, if any BlogHer people read this: bigger conference rooms for the Room of Your Own sessions next year, please!) The best part of the sessions by far was the Community Keynote speeches at the end of the first day. I’ll post a link when it’s online, but seriously, I was doing the full-on ugly cry during a few of them, and almost peeing myself laughing during the others. Anyone who says that bloggers aren’t really writers should watch those.

Of course, you can’t get 1,400 women together without some drama. There were rumors about some illicit affairs happening between bloggers (which I’m 99.9% sure were all b.s.), and there were some women there who got nicknamed “swag whores” because they were literally shoving people out of the way to grab all the free stuff they could. Fortunately for me, I didn’t witness any of that, I just heard about it from other people. I’m generally not a fan of drama, so I’m honestly relieved that I missed all of that and it didn’t put a damper on the experience for me.

Overall, it was great. The swag is nice, sure. I got some cool toys to bring home to Catie. (And some for myself – ahem *thank you room 704 ladies, mwah!* cough cough.) And I got to meet Tim Gunn and have my picture taken with him, which was awesome. (And I’m waiting for the Tide people to post the picture so I can nab it, but they haven’t yet. Argh!) I was in head-to-toe Old Navy, I felt totally unfashionable, but he was so kind and funny and wonderful that I didn’t even care. Plus I made him laugh, and I didn’t accidentally say the f-word in front of him or anything, so bonus points for me.

But the whole point of going to BlogHer for me was to learn more about great writing in this space, to meet the other bloggers that I love, to hang out, and to have fun. So really, the highlight of the weekend was just sitting around a hotel with some insanely talented, hilarious, smart and just effing fantastic people who I absolutely adore, and who I am so proud to call my friends.

So, thank you so much. To Greis, Krystle, Jen, Dawn, VDog, Mrs. Flinger, BJ, Maura, Meghan, Heather, and soooo many other people I can’t even name them all, who made this weekend so completely wonderful and fun. I love y’all, and can’t wait to see you next year!

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Or Sallyjo, or “no comment,” or whatever you’re calling yourself today.

I installed a handy little feature that gives me some pretty detailed info about the people who are visiting my site. And I’m sure that the people you work for at the H0spice of S0uthern Illin0is in Belleville probably wouldn’t be too pleased to know that you’re spending so much time reading my blog. But I have their phone number, and if you spew your shit on here again, I’m not afraid to use it. I might not know your real name, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult for their internal IT department to figure out who you are, since you’re on my site every day.

I’m just sayin’. Watch your ass.

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Testing out WordPress for the iPhone. Hmm, lets see if I can add a picture here…

Awesome.

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My blog’s gone purple for Maddie.

The Spohrs have asked that people wear purple to Maddie’s funeral service on Tuesday, as it was her favorite color (and also the color for the March of Dimes). In a show of support, a lot of Heather’s friends in the blogosphere are also turning our Internet presence purple – hence the changes to the blog, and also changing our Twitter avatars purple.

And even though we won’t be in California for the memorial service, we still intend to wear purple on Tuesday. We might even release a balloon for Maddie, if I can find a purple balloon somewhere.

Also, if you haven’t donated to the Spohrs yet, and needed a little extra motivation to do so, the beautiful and talented Yvonne at Joy Unexpected is doing a giveaway – for every $10 you give, you can enter for a chance to win a Nikon Coolpix camera. Or you can go to InstaMom, where she’s doing the same giveaway thing, but with a Nintendo DSi. Can’t hurt, right?

Hope everyone had a nice Easter. I’ll write more about ours tomorrow. In the meantime, hug your babies and eat some chocolate. Easter is the one day of the year that chocolate has no calories. (What, you didn’t know that? It’s totally true.)

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In case you missed the drama about my website last week, here’s the short version: my website went down for 3 days, and when it finally came back online, all of my data was gone. Every last entry since I started this blog 6 years ago? Gone. So I was a tiny bit distraught, as you might imagine.

While I was freaking out, I wrote about it on Twitter, and within a few minutes, I got a response from a web hosting company called PinchHost offering to help me. They’re a new company, and didn’t have much of a proven track record that I could find online, but I appreciated how fast they responded. Especially considering that the customer service at my old (then-current) web hosting company, Globat, was always somewhat lacking. It’s basically impossible to get anyone on the phone, they take an extremely long time to respond to email support tickets, and while yes, they do have support via live chat, the techs aren’t exactly helpful. Usually the only response I get is, “We’re so sorry for your inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.” Not exactly top-notch problem-solving.

But really, my main problem with Globat is the availability. They were fine when I first signed up a few years ago, but over the past year or so, my website crashed a lot, because I seemed to always be under Denial of Service attacks by spammers. So that’s my main beef with them – if you can’t keep my website running, I’ll go host it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, during that whole incident where I had no blog entries at all? I threw a temporary WordPress blog here that you might’ve seen if you happened to click over here. On it, I mentioned that my last manual backup of my website was from May 2008, hence my panic. (So all the entries about selling our house, moving to North Carolina, the holidays, Catie’s 2nd birthday? GONE.) Then the tech from PinchHost – the same guy who responded to me on Twitter – left me a comment telling me that he had gone through Google’s cache of my archives and found about 100 entries from May 2008 to now, and saved them to a zip file for me to download.

Which, DUDE. I wasn’t even a customer of his, and he did all that legwork for me? Yeah ok, they’re a new company, but with that type of customer service, I’ll take a chance on them. So I switched over yesterday, and it was basically seamless. I might be imagining it, but my website even seems to load faster now. Obviously, I am very happy with them so far.

Of course, the hard part now is cancelling my account with Globat. They’re notorious for having a crappy billing department, so I know I’m in for a fight. Example: over the past few years I’ve gotten over 100 emails from them telling me about new offers, and unless I clicked the link to opt out, they automatically charged my credit card for the upgrade, regardless of whether or not I wanted it. If I called afterward to say, “hey, you billed me for this, and I don’t want it, so give me my money back,” they’d try to hem & haw and squirm their way out of refunding me the money for a service I’m not using. So, yeah. I’ve gotta get my Don’t You Dare Try to Eff With Me, Buddy hat on and let them have it.

But the fact that I’m now basically done with them and have a cool new hosting company that actually responds to my problems promptly and seems to give a damn about my user experience? It kind of makes me feel like one of these dancers.

(If you haven’t seen that yet, you’re welcome. I’ve watched it about four times already and I smile like a moron at my computer and get all misty-eyed every time. What can I say, I’m a sucker for “The Sound of Music.”)

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