Maybelle’s surgery went fine, in that the actual procedure was quick and uneventful and her tonsils are now floating in a jar somewhere at DeVos Children’s Hospital.  Things kind of went downhill from there. She had a very difficult time coming out of the anesthesia, was sick all weekend and is in a lot of pain.  Oh, and since she had strep the day of the surgery, is quarantined at home until this Friday.

And now, I am completely thrown off because I expected her to bounce back quickly and not to need to be out of school for a whole week.  I am supposed to be Handling Things and Emailing People and Going To Meetings this week, but it’s not going to happen.  The good thing about slowing down a little is that you realize some things.  The bad thing about slowing down a little is… that you realize some things.

I started thinking about my my kids, and what my usual whirlwind teaches them.  I want them to have peaceful lives or more accurately, deal with what their lives bring them in a peaceful way.  I have not been setting a good example. I started looking at their schedules with even more scrutiny than I did previously.

I was not happy with what I found.  I am not setting them on the right course, and it’s all school’s fault.  Well, not all of it, but more of it than I realized.

• School aged kids need 10-12 hours of sleep.We leave for school at 7:30 to get them there and in their class by 8.  That means waking up at 6:45.  They go to bed at 7:30, so we’re good there, but that is without any after school activities.  How long can we sustain that? Is it fair to them?

• Kids, like adults, need to exercise for an hour every day. Gym class is 45 minutes every third day, so some weeks they have gym once and some weeks twice.  Regardless, that is only two days at the most the hour of exercise is met at school so four days during the week the kids need to supplement with another 30 minutes.  Our school isn’t unique, in fact this is about average.  As did 75% of my peers, I walked to school every day.  Of my children’s peers, only 25% walk to school every day, eliminating an important source of exercise for many children {including mine}. In the 1970′s five percent of kids were obese.  That number has more than quadrupled.

• Kids need about 25 minutes for lunch.  At most jobs, if you work for 6 hours you get a 30 minute lunch break.  My kids get 20 minutes for lunch.  They are in school for seven hours a day {which is about half an hour longer than average.} Can that be good for them?
• Fundraising is out of control. Elementary school aged kids having jobs kind of went out of style after the Industrial Revolution, but budget shortfalls and decreased funding has, apparently, driven us back to the 18th century. At our school my children have the opportunity to hone their sales skills no less than thirty times this year.  The sales managers school administrators sure know how to motivate their team; “If you give us five addresses of relatives or friends who might want to buy magazines, we will give you candy! The class that brings in the most money for this fundraiser gets a pizza party! The class that brings in the most money for that fundraiser gets ice cream!”
• Longer school days are not about learning.  For kids who have good parental support, and had positive educational experiences {either at home or in preschool} prior to beginning school, extra hours are absolutely unnecessary.  I appreciate that kids without these advantages have the opportunity to somewhat make up for lost time or have somewhere to be for more hours during the day; however, that means kids who did have those benefits are in school far too long each day for no reason.  There should be more options.
• Large classes are stressful for kids. Despite excessive fundraising efforts, after a decade of reductions in class sizes they are, unfortunately, back on the rise.  This is overwhelming to some kids.  I happen to have one of those kids.  He will sit through his CCD class on Wednesday nights and more impressively, retain two hours of Catholic Doctrine after an entire day of school because the class only has 12 kids in it.  But, he is struggling by 9:00 AM in second grade because there are 27 other little bodies in his classroom. Towing the No Child Left Behind line, Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan said that he would prefer to put his own school-age children in a classroom with 28 students led by a “fantastic teacher” than in one with 23 and a “mediocre” teacher.  Personally I think fantastic divided by 28 more or less equals mediocre divided by 23.

My kids get home from school at 3:45 and have a snack since they haven’t eaten since 11:45.  They do homework at 4:00, then have around an hour to play before dinner if we don’t have anywhere errands to run or places to go.  They can catch maybe one TV show or read a little then it’s time for a bath, to brush teeth,  and get ready for bed.

So how do we fit in organized sports? Swimming? Gymnastics? Ballet? Piano lessons?Trips to the library? Scouts? Relaxing? Playing with friends? Spending quality parent/child time together? Putting LEGOs together? Picking up your room? Playing games? Playing outside?

School’s presence in, and demands on, our everyday lives has grown by at least an hour during the day and added almost an hour of homework at night since most of us were in school.  At the same time, it has decreased time to play and exercise; and to learn music and art and eat lunch.  No Child Left Behind mandated 100 minutes of PE a week, but with the other demands of the law that requirement was all but ignored. The amount of free time for children has decreased sixteen percent since 1981.

What kind of childhood is this?

My friend Jill at The Diaper Diaries appears on FOX 17 with her husband as marriage experts.  I joked with her that my husband and I were going to make special guest appearances and talk about “What Not To Do”. Because we would know.

I was thrilled when she asked me to guest post for part of her “Marriage, Unwrapped” series with how my marriage survived unemployment… twice.  I’ll give you a hint:  yelling and screaming were not effective.  You’ll have to go read the post to find out the rest.

Four years is a mighty long time.

Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Klout, Google +, Compete: most of these didn’t exist back then and if they did, I didn’t know about them.

Heck, I didn’t know what a threaded comment was. Or a plugin. Or HTML.

I didn’t know anything when I started blogging.

And really, no one knew anything. We all just wrote, sometimes quite clunkily, whatever crossed our minds. We read each other’s blogs, and left comments.

Last week my hard drive crashed. Six months ago, I would have to be receiving Xanax intravenously to cope with this tragedy.

I just gulped, hard, and realized it was part of a bigger picture that has been coming into focus for me.

I want to blog it old school. I want to go back to reading and writing. All of my notes and plans and media kits and pitch letters are gone. I am OK with that. If someone stumbles upon {oh, StumbleUpon, that’s another one} my blog and would like to work with me on a campaign, that is fabulous.

But I’m tired of the chase. The race. Bloggers huff and pout when we aren’t referred to as writers, but when our blogs get big writing becomes an afterthought.

Readers cease to be people and start to be “numbers”, or “reach”, or “influence.” I still think of my readers as a few moms in Grand Rapids, my cousin, my sister, my Dad, and a handful of blogger friends I have picked up along the way.

I know that’s not true, because I have seen my “numbers”. I know my “reach”. I am aware of my “influence”. But I would barf every time I sat down to write if I thought about that. Too much pressure to perform and impress.

I have slowed down my writing schedule, because I’d rather write three good posts a week than seven mediocre ones.

I’m heading to a conference this weekend, and I’m looking forward to it. There are some superstars attending. There are big brands attending. If we have an authentic, real connection I will be thrilled. If we don’t, that’s OK too, because I have some reading, and writing, and commenting to do. Just like the olden days.

I looked at my calendar yesterday, and counted nine more weeks of summer.  I was very encouraged.  Once the Fourth of July comes and goes everyone immediately starts talking about how “summer is half over”.

It’s not.  Not quite…  And I don’t want to see any of those Back to School ads yet either, but I know they’re coming soon.

Its hard for me to believe thisk but I started Big Binder exactly four years ago.  Four years!! My kids were 1 and 3.  Our friends had just moved to St Louis and broken our hearts.  We had just come home from visiting my husband’s family in Florida, because when you live in Michigan, why wouldn’t you go to the hottest place in the country in July?

My husband has this week off, as he did then.  This time we are going to Las Vegas.  I was pretty underwhelmed about the whole thing for a while (again with the hottest places?) but then I realized there are a lot of good restaurants in Vegas and I have adjusted my attitude.  And purchased some elastic waist pants.  In a place as tacky as Vegas the chances that I will be the worst dressed person there is exactly the same as the chance that I will win big:  zero.

So you won’t be hearing much from me for the rest of this week.  In related news, my hard drive; which started feeling crashy on the first day of a blogging conference {of course} in May; has finally died.  RIP, hard drive.  You were a good and faithful servant, until you started to be a really big pain in the butt. 

I am working on my husband’s laptop, which has the brain a size of a pea and is so tiny I feel like I am using one of my kids’ pretend laptops.  Actually I think they are a little bigger than this.  Plus, there are craft beer stickers all over the back of it and I feel like a complete dork.  Elastic pants, I can pull off.  Pee wee laptops, I cannot.

So enjoy your week.  I will return with a shiny new hard drive and a detailed report of Vegas, baby!

Thanks to Trop50 for sponsoring my writing about fabulous bloggers. This year Trop50 is granting 50 Fabulous Wishes. Click here to enter for a chance to win $1,000 to celebrate a friend with a refreshing attitude about looking and feeling fabulous!

This should be easy. I’ve been blogging for FOUR YEARS – surely I can come up with Five Fabulous Bloggers without much effort, right?

No, that is not right. I deliberated. Maybe I should be like John Cusack in High Fidelity and pick a specific category?

• Top 5 Super Cute Themes?
• Top 5 Bloggers I Have Met In Real Life And Not Chickened Out Saying Hello To?
• To Five Craft Bloggers That Make Me Jealous With Their Mad Skillz?

I analyzed.  Maybe I should see who I linked to the most? Who I have subscribed to for the longest time?

Oh ENOUGH. One of the best things about being a blogger is reading other people’s blogs.  Choosing a handful that I enjoy should not be painful.

These are the Top Five Blogs I Love To Read (a list subject to change daily, if not hourly.) (In no particular order.) (Will somebody please take these parenthesis away from me?)

1. Blogging With Amy – I would imagine Amy’s blog is in a lot of top 5 lists.  The information she provides about all things blogging is AMAZING, and she breaks it down into nice, manageable bites with her guides and tutorials.  Plus, in her videos she just seems straight up nice.  I have learned more about how to find my way around the innards of my blog from her than anyone else.  And yes, as a matter of fact that is a compliment.
2. Autumn At Oak Hollow – Blogging is just a medium.  It’s like saying that, because you use paper, you’re a paper-er.  Not everyone who has a blog is necessarily a writer. Heather is a writer. An incredible, talented, writer.
3. She Sparkles – I have never come away from Cindy’s blog without being inspired to do something.  Not in a hyper, make a list with 100 things on it way – but to be a better person.  And when you think about it; that’s really something.
4. The Velveteen Mind – Megan will be on a lot of top 5 lists too, I reckon. I love her blog for a few reasons.  First, because her writing is knock-you-down good.  Second, because she has a sincere drive to use her talent for good and pulls off some pretty amazing benefit campaigns, and third, because she is the one who taught me that knowing what opportunities to say “No” to defines you as a blogger.  Once I understood that, it cleared the way for me to blaze my own trails.
5. The Diaper Diaries – Well, duh.  This one is just a given. I like to impress people by telling them that Jill and I were “friends even before we were bloggers“.  She’s the one who got me into this whole blogging business in the first place and while my husband is still trying to find forgiveness in his heart, I love her for it. I also love that her fantastic sense of humor comes through on her blog.  Yes; she’s like that in real life.

Don’t forget to enter the 50 Fabulous Wishes contest for a chance to win $1,000 to celebrate a friend with a refreshing attitude about looking and feeling fabulous. I was selected for this Tropicana Trop50 sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do. I received compensation to use and facilitate my post.

My mom died when I was 16. I wrote about it last year, but this year I want to write about being a mom instead.

I have always felt that people don’t know how unqualified I was to do jobs I have been hired for. If they only knew how scared I was; how much I didn’t understand. But I always pulled it off and later realized that they were right. I was very qualified; I just didn’t know it.

Motherhood is the one job I feel qualified to do. I accept my mistakes, I take good advice and easily ignore bad, and truly do not care what people who do not share the responsibility of parenting my kids and therefore by definition are uninformed (at best and judgemental at worst) think of my parenting ability. It’s a blessing, really. It keeps me from having to judge other moms in an attempt to measure my own skills and assuage my own insecurities.

I am, of course, strongly influenced by my Mom. But I do some things differently. I live in a different time, and have different kids.

I let my son take Sunny D and Fruit Roll Ups when it was his day to bring a snack at soccer practice. Because I think this nourishes the kids? Of course not. Because it was just hanging around in our cupboards and we had extra. Ha! Because I see other parents let their kids do it? Nope. It’s because it means something to him to bring a cool snack. And it’s not about me.

It’s why my five year old daughter wears tinted lip gloss and has pierced ears. And is one of the brightest kid in her class – and has no idea.

I’ll help them figure out good nutrition and the importance of intelligence over appearance in good time. Sunny D and pierced ears aren’t moral deal-breakers.

My daughter left me a note on my pillow that said, “Mommy Mom. You are the best Mom. You make me feel like a heart and a star”.

My son woke me up this morning at 6:20 not because he was hungry, or wanted me to turn the TV on for him; but because there was “just a little bit of pink left above the orange in the sky” and he didn’t want me to miss it.

Today, I unapologetically celebrate being a good mom; uniquely qualified to encourage with tremendous love, and to share a sunrise and with the only two children who were meant to be mine.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Soooo…. I went to BlissDom.  It was my first time. I was so excited, I could hardly stand it. I had an amazing sponsor. For bloggers, this is one of the conferences to attend. It’s A Big Deal.

I’d only been to one blog conference before. Gleek Retreat was a small, new, local conference.  And I loved it SO MUCH.

BlissDom was in Nashville, is several years old, and had about 600 attendees. And I loved it MAYBE NOT SO MUCH.

Let me back up. What I did love was meeting the people in real life I had worked on campaigns with and previously only known on-line. I loved talking to new people about being able to make some money blogging with Collective Bias.  The sessions were great, the speakers were inspiring, and the ridiculous amounts of swag caused me to have a 30 pound carry-on by the time I got my suitcase down to a reasonable weight.

My shoulder hurt, but I was not paying an extra $20.00 to check a bunch of stuff I got for free.

I loved meeting the PR people and brand representatives.  Some had community giving initiatives that could really make a difference to people in Grand Rapids.  I did my best to charm them.

I loved talking about you guys – I told everyone that Big Binder readers are amazing people.

So what was my problem? Blog conferences are supposed to be all about community, but I didn’t feel it.  At all.

I didn’t feel left out, exactly, but I expected to feel all warm and fuzzy; surrounded by my social media peers.  People doing the same thing I’m doing.  People who got me.

No warm. No fuzzy. Did it bother me? Yes; but only until I figured out why.

I learned a lot at BlissDom about blogging, but the most important thing I learned was about, well, me. I already have a community, and it is YOU. Leave me a comment? You’ve made my day. Send me an email? You’ve made my week. I walk on a cloud when I meet someone who says, “Oh, YOU write Big Binder?!” I love it when people get excited about winning a contest I have run, or tell me about the fun they had an event I made them aware of. I have a sense that although I haven’t talked with all of you in person, you are good people.

You are my community. It’s good to be home.