And now, those posts are gone. Well, not gone per se but hidden. Private. They’re still stored on my blog, and I read them often, but I’ve decided to scale back on my self disclosure a bit. And it’s all my book’s fault.

When PWNED got published, I had to start working on my marketing months ahead of time. I knew my blog would be part of what publishing industry people call my “platform” and I had to give some serious thought to what was disclosed there.

If the book did well, and I was optimistic it would, my site had the potential of having hundreds of new visitors, many of whom I’d never met. I had to ask myself, how much did I want to share with total strangers?

I think this is a decision every blogger needs to make: How much to disclose, and about what. For example, I will happily share an embarrassing story about myself, but probably wouldn’t if it happened to my husband.

The funny thing is, I always knew there were people reading my blog whom I’d never met personally, but that never bothered me because I’m a tiny little blog in a vast sea of blogs and I was pretty sure no one cared all that much.

Now, though, strangers are visiting my blog (hello, there!) to find out more about me as a writer, and it’s my job to determine how much about my life they’re entitled to know.

So, I hid a lot of posts. About 200, in fact. In the grand scheme of 700 posts they probably won’t be missed. Unless you know what you’re looking for.

I just didn’t want Aidan to grow up someday resenting me for making it public knowledge that he did X, Y, or Z when he was growing up. I want him to make his own decision about how much of his life, if anything, he shares with the Internet.

So that’s why I’m a lot more reticent about my family now than I’ve made a habit of being in the past. It probably makes for less mommy-centric reading, and if that’s why you were reading this blog in the first place I apologize, but it’s what I felt was in my family’s best interest.

Now I just have to figure out what else I have that’s worth saying. How about that recent major sporting event?

Anyway, Parsing Nonsense veterans will notice that I have yet again changed the theme on my blog. Many apologies! I liked the other theme, but it didn’t have the chutzpah I needed so it had to go. I hope you like this one. It has comments on the bottom of the post again, which many of you mentioned to me was a negative with the other theme, so hopefully everyone is happy now.

Also, I just wanted to point out the link to “My Books” at the top. If you click there, you’ll go on a very speedy journey to my author website. There, you’ll find the latest info on my books, bonus materials (if I ever find time to write them), and the first two chapters of PWNED. Head on over, check it out, and feel free to come back here and let me know what you think!

So there you go.

I like it! What do you think?

Here we go, my favorite search terms of the last month:

• “Creepy stalker songs” Man, you write one post about a stalker song and suddenly your blog comes up on every search for creepy stalkers!
• “Angry hyena” In almost four years of blogging I have mentioned hyenas exactly twice. I think that’s approximately half as often as I should have been writing about hyenas.
• “Big onion” It turns out that that there’s the name of a tour company in New York, so I doubt that the person searching for this term meant to find my blog post about onions. That person stuck around for an hour, though, so maybe he/she read something they liked?
• “Cell phone deprivation symptoms” I think someone needs to write a book on this, stat. Preferably the author would be Temperance Brennan from the show “Bones” but as she’s fictional I’ll take whoever I can get.
• “Fetal alcohol syndrome nonsense” This person obviously knew what he/she was looking for there, but I know for a fact they didn’t find it on my blog.
• “Fit banshee into a minivan” This does sound like something I would do.
• “Hamster wheels for kids” I hope this person was searching for a hamster wheel for their child’s hamster, and not a child-sized hamster wheel for said child to run in.
• “One night stand fiance” I don’t know this person, but I have the feeling that if she’s doing this search she probably shouldn’t be getting married.
• “Punch in the face” I wonder what this person was looking for. A tutorial perhaps? I hope not, it’s pretty self-explanatory.
• “Why up a creek and not down a creek?” I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!?!?!

And then the big day is upon you, and you keep telling yourself to slow down and savor the moments but it’s nigh impossible and before you know it you’re getting dressed and kissing friends and family members and walking down the aisle and then it’s mazel tov and cake and riding away into the sunset?  And you’re so tired you can barely keep your eyes open?  And then you wake up the next morning feeling like a tidal wave deposited you in bed the night before?

That’s kind of how I feel about Wesley’s birthday party last weekend.  On a much smaller scale than a wedding, but it did take a lot of planning and scheming, and it feels like it was over so quickly!  For however quickly it felt like it was over, though, I know Wes had an excellent time.

There was beer (featuring custom beer labels printed by my awesome company, naturally).  All company pimp-age aside, the custom beer labels I had printed for Wes’ party were a lot of fun.  There were four labels, and each featured a Wes Fact, such as:

-Wes can kill a housefly using only a dishtowel…And his mind powers.
-Wes once faced off against Jimi Hendrix…Jimi Hendrix wept.
-Wes killed a dinosaur in hand-to-claw combat…And then carved it up for dinner.

I also had custom water bottle labels printed featuring Yoda and Malcolm Reynolds (from Firefly, for the uninitiated), and those were silly and fun.  At the very least, it gave unintroduced people at the party something to chat about!

I also made sure Wes got to pulverize a pinata with a samurai sword.  He’d heard about a party where this was done (albeit the adults were fully trashed when it happened, thereby making it awesome and life-threatening) and declared it a fantastic idea, so I knew I had to arrange for it to happen at his party.

Sure, a few people might think it’s ridiculous for a full-grown 30 year old man to beat the crap out of a pinata with a sword, but those people are obviously not the kind of people who would understand Yoda water bottles either.  Needless to say, the pinata was felled and Wes felt like quite the conquering hero.

My friend Nicole took a picture of Wes holding the decapitated head of the dragon pinata and looking completely insane, so that’ll be fun to use for blackmail later.

What was really incredible to me, though, was the way all our family and friends helped make the day happen for Wes.  Throughout the day, I looked around and constantly saw someone grilling or cleaning up or setting up, and it made me feel so humbled and grateful to have so many people in my life who are willing to work hard on a Sunday afternoon to make my husband’s birthday the best day possible.

So that’s that.  Wes is 30, he won four games of volleyball, vanquished a dragon, and ate the world’s biggest cupcake:

Game, set, match.  He’s officially been inducted into his 30′s, and who knows what could happen when the induction itself is so silly?  He met and married his wife, started and flourished at two careers, bought a home, bought three cars, and had his first child during his 20′s.  The bar’s been set pretty high, but as long as he doesn’t meet any other future wives in his 30′s I reckon they’ll be just as if not more awesome.

Just go to that page, look toward the very bottom (Or do Ctrl+F and search for Parsing Nonsense), and then click “I Like This Blogger”.  Easy peasy.  I’m flattered to be nominated, but still feel rather like a guppy who got lost and ended up at Sea World.

Heaven help me if I mess up and call him a nerd, because he is SO not a nerd.

I was reminded of this distinction when we watched the new Star Trek movie last night.  I enjoyed the movie, it was a lot of fun, but it was definitely a lot different than the Star Trek series I used to watch with my Dad.  This movie was a lot flashier, with more action and less of an emphasis on technical/scientific jargon.

It used to confuse the heck out me when I was younger, because I grew up a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek, and couldn’t understand why people chose one with such fervor.  If you ask Wes if he was a Trekkie he will look down his nose at you and scoff.

The reason?  Geeks like Star Wars and nerds like Star Trek, and never the twain shall meet.  I’m sure there are exceptions (like me), but this has turned out to be true among the people I know.  So now, I’m curious:

**Edited to add: I added a third option because, as I said above and Delisa reminded me in the comments, sometimes people like both!**

It’s really cool to see something you’ve worked on come to fruition.  Like, back in July it was just an idea, and now it’s a verifiable entity.  With posts.  And comments.  I think that’s the one-of-a-kind rush you get from launching a new website: You send it out into the world, and when you started getting responses it’s a very heady feeling.

That’s not to say I was feeling 100% awesome last night.  No no.  I had a headache that could have crushed a donkey and it stuck around all freaking day.  I tried eating some M&M’s for the caffeine factor (and because they’re yummy) but to no avail.  I’m avoiding drugs during pregnancy just because I enjoy playing it safe when it comes to my fetus, but even the self-gratifying rush that comes from doing the best I can to be an awesome pregnant chick did nothing to help me feel better last night.

What did make me feel better was watching Doc act like a complete goof.  The first thing he did was fart, loudly.  Then, because he always surprises himself when that happens, he craned his neck around so that he could smell his own butt.  When I asked him what in the blue heck he was doing, he smiled at me and wagged his tail.  Whatever makes him happy, I guess.

The second thing he did was whine and pace in front of the sliding glass door because, wait for it, there were leaves blowing by.  Menacing leaves, that obviously meant the two of us no good at all, and the only thing for it was to stand guard at the door to ensure those suckers didn’t come charging in, crumbling all over the place.  It’s a good thing he was there.

Truthfully, I’m finding myself in the very familiar situation of not knowing where to set boundaries for myself with work.  There’s always something I could be doing, but doesn’t mean it’s healthy for me, or for Squishy, to work constantly.  Sure, my kitchen is immaculate, the laundry is folded, dinner is set for tomorrow, and I’ve written five posts, but I’m also exhausted and can barely muster up the energy to shower and then succumb to the luscious pillows on my bed.

I determined last night that I had better get my act together and start parceling out time to relax, or I’ll be in very sorry shape once this baby’s done cooking.  If I refuse to give myself time and space to do something relaxing now, what will become of me when I have four times as much laundry to do and a child I have to feed with my boobs?

A big soggy mess, that’s what will become of me.  A big, soggy, miserable mess who will find it very hard to distill pleasure and enjoyment from my new little family, and will instead just be resentful and bitter.

That being said…Does anyone know of a way to get chores to do themselves?

I wish I had more to say at the moment, but unfortunately every time I open my mouth the only thing that comes out is either “Baby!” or “Offbeat Mama!” or “Windows!” because that’s pretty much the majority of what I’m thinking about at any given moment.  Baby because, well, duh.  Offbeat Mama, which is the name of the new site I’m helping to launch, because we’re launching next week and I’m juggling a whole heap of things to get that going.  Windows because we’re getting ours replaced.

I’m actually pretty darn tickled about getting our windows replaced.  Our house has two kinds of windows: vinyl and aluminum frame.  The vinyl windows are newer and work great.  The aluminum ones?  Not so much.

They’re as old as the house and you can certainly tell.  They leak heat like a sieve during the winter, and let it come pouring in during the summer.  The winter is the worst though, because they collect condensed water and then it pools on the window sills and I have to mop it up every morning to prevent it from dripping onto the carpet.  All that moisture eventually leads to mold growth, so every week during the winter I have to disinfect and clean out our window tracts.  Just so you know, winter in Washington?  Lasts a long frigging time.

Adding insult to injury, the seal on the windows in our bedroom broke and now there are little white spots on the insides of the panes of glass.  This means we can no longer see through the windows in our bedroom.  Super fancy nice, huh?

Wes’ brother is an excellent contractor, so he’s going to replace our windows when his schedule clears up.  Not only will this save us buckets of money on our heating bill this winter, it’ll update the heck out of our house and enable us to see clearly through our bedroom windows.

I’m excited about these things, but what I’m most excited about is the prospect of bringing Squishy home in February (the deep, dark depth of winter) and being able to keep the house warm enough.  Also, being able to put the baby to sleep in his/her bassinet next to a window that doesn’t grow mold?  That tickles me too.

Now, as for Offbeat Mama.  I’m really excited about that too.  Ariel and I have been working on it all summer and the official launch is on Monday.  But.  If you want to, you can come sneak a peek extra early-like.  You just need the login / password, which are: mamasays / timeforbed

The site is really fun already.  It’s basically an online community where offbeat parents don’t have to apologize for being who they are and where we can all collectively ooh and ahh over one another’s adorable progeny without wondering whether someone’s judging us for whatever decision they think is weird/wrong/whatever.

So yeah.  Come check it out, at the very least so you can see the adorable shoes I blogged about last week :)

PS: A new belly pic is coming up tomorrow!  I’ve decided I’d like to do those every two weeks, so we’ll see if I can keep it up!

The reason for all this self-loathe is simple: I have a meeting tonight to discuss a new project.  I’ve been going back and forth with someone else about the project for awhile now, and we’re meeting tonight to see if I’m a good fit for said project and whether it’s possible.

Obviously with my full time job, personal blog, novel-in-the-making, and really excellent relationship with my husband (the excellent state of which I’d rather like to maintain), I am awash in extra time.  I kinda have, like, five minutes every now and then that I’m not using for things like eating and sleeping.  Clearly, I am just aching for something with which to fill my extra hours.

This is, of course, a lie.  I’m already humming along quite nicely with the projects I have going right now.  Coming up with content for my personal blog (which you’re reading right now!), work blog, and novel is hard enough.  Adding another blog, with frequently updated content no less, is just asking for trouble.  Who in their right mind would do this to herself?

Well, I would.  It’s a really cool project, and really cool projects just don’t pop their noses around very often.  They’re elusive, like pixies, and you have to catch them with your wiles before they twinkle out of existence.  As a professional blogger/content queen, I have an almost freelance relationship with my job.  Not my full-time one, of course, but my other projects.  If an opportunity catches my eye and I can squeeze it in, it almost behooves me to do so.

Who knows who you’ll meet during the course of a project?  I learn so much from every site I help run, and meet so many neat people, that starting new projects feels like the start of the new school year.  I usually can’t wait to see who I end up eating glue with.

So that’s what’s going on today.  A meeting with a really cool chick to see if this is something the both of us can handle.  If I land the project, well,  I may just have to stop sleeping.  I’ll get through it the way I got through NaNoWriMo…Taking every day a little at a time and eating ice cream until it doesn’t hurt anymore.