It feels weird not to be at BlogHer. It has started to seem like “Bloggers go to BlogHer.” Like, if we’re bloggers, why aren’t we there? What are we missing? Are we making a mistake? Too late now.

I don’t know if this comes through in Teh Writing, but I am a socially fearful person. I’m SCARED to meet you. I would need to DRINK or MEDICATE, and afterward I would fret about every single thing I said or didn’t say, and my face would be burning with embarrassment, and I would be thinking I should never go out in public again. And I do realize that it’s pretty common to declare nervousness and/or awkness about social stuff, and so not particularly interesting. But here we are at BlogHer time, and it’s on my mind.

The fashion element of BlogHer makes me nervous. All the talk of mani/pedis, diets, new clothes, new shoes, worrying about what to wear, getting new highlights, debuting cute new outfits. I’d been thinking I’d wear what I wear every day, which is Lands’ End jeans and an Old Navy t-shirt and, like, sandals, and I’d put my hair back in a clip as usual. But I don’t think that would work, not without making a Big Counter-Culture Deal about it.

I worry because people talk about how cliquey it is, and how “the cool bloggers” don’t spend enough time talking to everyone else, and it sounds like a minefield of misunderstandings and hurt feelings and unintentional snubs and mental rankings and assorted celebrity issues, and I hate the whole “cool kids’ lunch table” concept that gets so overused.

I worry because in person I’m different than I am in writing. In writing, I’m not scared, and I’m social. In person, I hide and cringe. In college I took a one-weekend job where I had to talk to the general public as they entered the store, and I ended up hiding in the bathroom and I am not kidding. Hiding in the bathroom at BlogHer seems like a big waste of money.

And everybody has roommates, right? So I wouldn’t be able to hide in my room, and it would be people people people every minute. And how do people split bills and choose a lights-out time and figure out who gets to use the shower first OMG?

Well. I do want to go. I do. Do you? I do want to meet you. I do want to look cute. I don’t want BlogHer to be different than it is, even though that’s the way I think of it when I’m thinking of why I’m too scared to go. But I’m stuck. I’m too scared to go.

Why aren’t you there?

Well. It looks like we are going to get a dishwasher. We had one in our first apartment together, but not since then—so, not for nearly 10 years. It’s going to be odd changing our whole dish system, which took us…well, nearly 10 years to work out.

What I was wondering is if you’d be willing to offer wise counsel. What have you liked about your dishwasher? What do you wish you could change?

This weekend Paul went to a flea market, and he came home with this basket (hello, ’80s Dusty Rose!) of postcards for me, for my own collection and to fuel my Postcrossing hobby. I’ve been looking through them, and I have NEVER SEEN so many vintage Holiday Inn postcards in my LIFE.

I think Lounge-Chair Girl is going steady with Standing Guy and wondering why he is talking to Leg-Flirting Girl. That’s a pretty dramatic side-part you’ve got going on there, Standing Guy.

Look, the Holiday Inn is fun for THE WHOLE FAMILY!

Many of the postcards are NON-motel-based, and so far the earliest one is postmarked 1903. NINETEEN OH THREE! It traveled through the postal system for 1 cent, and now here I am holding it 106 years later, while the original sender and recipient are probably—well, “no longer collecting postcards,” how’s that for tactful?

I’ve been poring over all the written-on ones, which so far include the early 1900s and also the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (perhaps it would have been easier to say what I HAVEN’T found yet, which is 1920s and 1930s), and I have learned something important about human beings through the ages: we wrote JUST as boring postcards back then as we do now.

In 1913, Pinky wrote to Margaret on a postcard of a hospital: “Not quite like Burbank — but then you can never tell from the outside.”

In 1948, Sis wrote to Sis on a postcard from Hawaii: “Such a beautiful island wish I might stop over longer. Met Grady’s brother wife and baby who live here. Had a nice visit etc with them. Will write later. Was about all in by the time we landed here last night.”

In 1954, Louise writes to Angie on a postcard from California: “We are having a swell time. This is where we go swimming. The weather has been swell so far.”

In 1966, Elsie wrote to Frank on a postcard from Florida: “We are just beginning to get some good weather, now it is time to go home. But have had a nice time & found plenty to do.”

In 1967, Clara wrote to Mrs. Bruce on a postcard of The Golden Gate Hotel: “Arrived here March 3rd in same building as previous years. Weather is just perfect here. 400 apts in this motel, picture is of the hotel on east side.”

In 1976, Helen and Sam wrote to Nellie on a postcard from El Paso, Texas: “Have had a good trip & nice visits all the way since we left on the 12th. We’ll be leaving here for Phoenix tomorrow and will keep in touch.”

Not exactly the peek into the past I was hoping for.

They’re not entirely without interest. For example, isn’t it weird thinking about Grady’s brother’s child, who was a baby in 1948 when that postcard was written, and is now at least 60 years old? Freaky. And I do wonder how a “visit etc” differs from a regular visit. But in general the postcards might as well say “I need to fill up this little square so I can send this.”

Okay, this one is pretty good. In 1990, Linda & Matt wrote to Mom & Dad on a postcard from Aruba: “Hello. Having a wonderful time. We’re going on a quest. Snorkeling. Cave hunting. Shell hunting. May give the Tattoo Party a shot. Explain later.”

Whimsy’s Blogdrought Remedy for this week is choosing three of YOUR OWN posts for people to read. If you want to participate, leave a comment on Whimsy’s post and she’ll put you in the list.

Okay, so here are mine. I went back to fall of 2006, which is when I first sat at my computer thinking, “Swis…ter? Swis…tmas? Swis…ten? Swis…R Us? Swis…tergate?”

Earned Praise; Also, More Bitching About Dishes is, um, certainly NOT a post I’ve written many, many times with only slight variations to include different chores.

Barely Holding it Together is ALSO not a post I’ve written many, many times, with only slight variations to include different children and clutter.

Smelly is a post from shortly after I found out I was expecting Henry.

For those of you who like posts about deals, I just posted a deals post over at Milk and Cookies.

Yesterday I took all five children to the pool, and I will just pause here a moment to receive my medal. No—TWO medals. AND we had a picnic, so that would be another medal please.

When we got home, I’d expected them to be tired out from swimming and also mentally stunned from chlorine fumes, and I’d thought that in ANY case my awesome few hours of medal-winning parenthood would buy me a few hours of peace and consideration. I guess I was imagining the children saying to each other, “Mother was so kind to us this morning and gave us such a lovely treat! Now let’s give HER a lovely treat and entertain ourselves quietly!”

Instead, I ended up LAUGHING because their questions and requests and needs were SO! INCREDIBLY! CONSTANT! Seriously, if I made a little timeline and charted the children’s needs, the timeline would be three layers deep to include all the overlap. One child would say, “Can we go to the park?” and I would say, “Are you effing kidding me? No, not today, honey,” and another child would say, “Can I have a drink?” while the first child said, “Well, can we go to Target?” and I’d say “Sure, go get it” to the second child and “NO, honey, we’re home for the day,” to the first child, and then a third and fourth child would start fighting and get to the point where I could no longer pretend they could work it out themselves, and then the first child would say, “Do you want to hear a great joke?” and the fourth child would say, “I NEED TO GO POTTY!!” and I would say “Oh, no thank you, honey, not right now” to the first child and “Ooooo-kay, go ahead then” to the fourth child, and then the fifth child would open the baby gate and the third child would shriek “HENRY IS OPENING THE GATE!! HENRY IS OPENING THE GATE!!” and the second child would say, “Can you get it for me?” and and I would say, “Okay, I’ll be right there!” to the third child and “No, no, honey, leave the gate closed” to the fifth child and “NO I THINK YOU CAN DO THIS YOURSELF” to the second child, and the third child would say, “Henry sure is a naughty baby, isn’t he!” and the first child would launch into a long description of a comic strip he read once, and then the second child would call from the kitchen, “I spilled!” and the fourth child would say “I NEED HELP WITH MY BUTTON” and the fifth child would fall and hurt himself and start crying.

So by the time Paul got home, you can imagine what a frazzled wreck I was. Here is what I self-prescribed: LEAVING EVERYONE IN A CLOUD OF DUST. We put the kids to bed at 7:00, and I was out the door before their bedroom doors had clicked shut. I drove the minivan with ONLY ME in it. I listened to music without input or interruption. I stopped furtively at a den of iniquity and got a fish sandwich, french fries, and diet Coke, and I ate while driving to Target.

At Target I got a cart and I put my PURSE in the baby seat. I browsed without having my concentration constantly interrupted. The only question I answered the entire time I was there was “Can I help you find anything?” I easily stayed out of the way of other customers, without having to hiss “SINGLE FILE you oblivious dimheads!” to children spreading aimlessly across the entire aisle. I spent, like, ten minutes just looking at make-up, and didn’t have to park the cart in the center of the aisle to keep grabby/throwy fingers away from the merchandise.

Then I drove home, listening to music and not talking. Very, very pleasant. I was still fretful and frazzled when I got home. But! I was better than before. One cannot expect a full recovery from a single dose of medication.

I’ve been looking up Top 40 lists from my formative years and then looking up the songs on YouTube. Fun! And weird! I started with the 1990 Top 40, and then I just kept changing the year in the URL.

Here are the things that stand out to me, as I revisit these old videos:

1. The hair.

2. The guitar solos in the middle of the songs.

3. The way music videos used to be pretty much just the band performing the song on a stage.

One thing that has been surprising me is THE HAIR. And it should NOT be a surprise, considering that the bands of my formative years are called “hair bands.” And I was THERE, and I was doing things like that to my OWN hair, so I’d expect all these things together to lead to a pretty firm memory of The Hair. Still: surprising.

Check out Vixen. ZOMG HAIR. “Edge of a Broken Heart” is in the “songs I still like” category, rather than the “oh dear, how embarrassing” category.

Please pardon the weird, wrong-lyrics version of this Skid Row video and just check out how YUMMY Sebastian Bach is. But do you find yourself wondering what he would look like with a haircut?

Ditto for Nelson. Boys, boys. I wanted your hair for myself SO BADLY. But on you? Well. I’m untressing you with my eyes.

Another one that still sounds good to me is Poco’s “Call it Love”. But what a sad, cynical attitude, Poco!

We Built This City is the song I used to play again and again on the jukebox (you’re welcome, other patrons!), and in fact Starship is the first album I ever bought. And do you know what? It was a record. A record, an actual RECORD! My dad put it on our record player and recorded a cassette version for me. And my mother was very upset at what a dangerous Acid Rock album it was, and fretted that I shouldn’t be allowed to have it.

How many times did I replay Roxette’s “Church of Your Heart”? Let’s not investigate.

Anyway, this is the list I’ve been going through. Feel free to add to it.

We Built This City — Starship
No One is to Blame — Howard Jones
Say You, Say Me — Lionel Richie
Catch Me (I’m Falling) — Pretty Poison
Stranded — Heart
Edge of a Broken Heart — Vixen
Mad About You — Belinda Carlisle
Don’t Worry Be Happy — Bobby McFerrin
Kiss Him Goodbye — The Nylons
Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You — Glenn Medeiros
Make Me Lose Control — Eric Carmen
Do You Believe in Love — Huey Lewis and the News
Jump for My Love — Whitney Houston
Eternal Flame — Bangles
I Drove All Night — Cyndi Lauper
Call It Love — Poco
The Last Worthless Evening — Don Henley
Because of You — The Cover Girls
A Little Respect — Erasure
(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection — Nelson
When I See You Smile — Bad English
Time for Me to Fly — REO Speedwagon
Personal Jesus — Depeche Mode
A Groovy Kind of Love — Phil Collins
Little Liar — Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
Church of Your Heart — Roxette
Right Here Waiting — Richard Marx
Release Me — Wilson Phillips
I Remember You — Skid Row
I Want You — Shana
Hooked on You — Sweet Sensation
King of Wishful Thinking — Go West
Close My Eyes Forever — Lita Ford and Ozzy Osbourne
Cold Hearted — Paula Abdul
Your Baby Never Looked Good in Blue — Exposé
In Your Eyes — Peter Gabriel
You’re the Inspiration — Chicago

(This is for Whimsy’s Blogdrought Remedy.)

1. Notthedaddy’s minister daddy would like to hide his porn collection at her house.

2. Identifying and Avoiding Autism Cults was thought-provoking and seemed like it could be applied to all kinds of cults. And that’s what I look for in a post: wide cult application.

3. Clueless but Hopeful Mama captures what it’s like to bring the second child home. We’ve got kind of a Clueless but Hopeful Mama THEME going on today, Whimsy and me. Also a THEME theme.

I was BOWLED OVER by Kira‘s comment on the Crisco post. Here’s an excerpt:

I think a majority of the reaction to it is because food is the new morality. Trans fats aren’t just sort of unhealthy, they are BAD and WRONG. Sugar isn’t just simple carbs, it’s OMG SUGAR DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE EATING THINK OF TEH CHILDREN. Whatever. I’m a rebel. I think food is food and morals are something different altogether.

Me: *stunned by revelation* As soon as I read this, I could FEEL my brain recalibrating. Files were getting moved around, and some unfiled paperwork was finally getting into the right folders.

FOOD IS THE NEW MORALITY. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I think she should write a book. I would buy ten copies.

My mom and I were talking about it yesterday, and she mentioned denominations: Church of Atkins, Reformed Church of Atkins, Church of Raw Food, Our Holy Mother Jenny Craig, etc.

Because of the spiritual importance of food, people feel a DRIVE to save others via evangelism and condemnation. IT IS FOR THEIR OWN GOOD, is the feeling. SOULS MUST BE SAVED.

There are traveling preachers who come to us with messages of what foods are Good and what foods are Bad, recording their wisdom in books and expensive food systems. Salvation can be yours. Give all you have: your money, your time.

Thinness is the new righteousness. Exercise is the new church attendance. Recent converts test the love and patience of all around them.

Obesity is the new depravity. People must be saved from themselves. They wear their sins like a cloak, and their sins bring them terrible consequences: all bad things are linked to excessive/wrong foods.

REPENT! REPENT AND BE SAVED!

I just placed a super-fun order. I’d written over at Milk and Cookies about two-piece swimming suits for little girls, and the heartache of that post was that I’d found the PERFECT suit (two-piece for easy peeing, but almost as much coverage as a one-piece, and also very pretty) but it wasn’t in Elizabeth’s size: she’s a 4T and the biggest size was 3T.

Encouraged by a comment from Heather about L.L. Bean sizes running large, I considered ordering the 3T and hoping for the best—especially because Elizabeth is long-torsoed and needs a 4T mostly for the LENGTH, which wouldn’t be an issue with a two-piece. So I went back to look at it and consider, and they HAD THE 4T IN STOCK. At $8.99 down from $24.50! So I bought that right the heck up.

Well, but I had a coupon for $10 off any order of $10 or more, and $8.99 is not $10 (see? math medal). So I did a little browsing just to see if there might be anything else I’d like to have. And I found this adorable fox sweater, $10.99 down from $26.50. That’s still a little high for a sweater, since it’s common to find sweaters post-season for under $5, but we have an interesting-to-us-but-boring-to-everyone-else fox appreciation that makes anything with a fox on it highly desirable.

And while I was browsing, I found these great tights, $6.99 for 2 pairs, down from $14.50. I can’t tell from the photo, and the different color names probably mean NO, but it LOOKS like the coral tights might go perfectly with the sweater.

So I feel a little less irritable than yesterday. Now I’m going to write a bunch of postcards for Postcrossing, which always cheers me up too. I haven’t yet had a repeat of my Postcrossing fantasy, but it could happen ANY DAY!