Ta Naaaaa!!!!!

Hi!

Thanks for following my suggestion instructions and heading over here to my brand new shiny dot com! I’m so excited to have my own official corner of the internet, so thanks for coming.

Before we get started a couple of housekeeping items: One of the cool fancy things I haven’t figured out yet is the whole email subscription thing, so if that’s how you’re following along you’ll have to add me to your google reader or daily to do list or something. I promise I’m on it and as soon as I get it figured out I will let you all know!

Also, if you’re not following on Twitter or “liking” on Facebook yet, today’s your lucky day because LOOK over there on the right at my cute new buttons!!! Topher made them and aren’t they precious? I’m so lucky.

In celebration of my new dot-commieness I asked my BIFF Mandy from Harpers Happenings to be my first ever Guest Blogger, and she graciously obliged.

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first off let me say that guest blogging for Mae has put me into some sort of blogging tailspin. i racked my brain for ideas, none were good enough. Mae is funny, sassy and an excellent writer. taking up some of her space with my nonsense is purely terrifying (i can see her rolling her eyes right now but guess what lady, this is MY GUEST POST SO THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT). we talked about what i would write about and most of the topics were good, but i felt they were serious and that i would possibly make them boring. and seriously? me and Mae’s friendship is not serious nor boring.

we met on a message board that to this day is hard for me to even say out loud. but i’m typing right now (duh) so i can say it was the nest (eye twitch). which is now called the bump. which should be called THE PLACE WHERE DREAMS GO TO DIE. ok. maybe that is a little dramatic. but if you’ve ever stepped an internet toe in that place, you know that dramatic is the name of the game. we were both gearing up to get pregnant with our kiddos and hit it off immediately. i’d go into greater detail about our time there, but in all honesty i have PTND (post traumatic nest disorder) and it gives me hives. it’s like my own personal ‘Nam.

the only good thing i really got out of the 7 or so months i hung out there is about 6 really great friends whom i still talk to. Mae and i lost touch for a while but picked right back up where we had left off once we reconnected. the things i got from the nest that i could have done without? knowing what about 78 strangers cervical mucus looked like at any given time, a plethora of acronyms (TIA EWCM NFT TTC BFP and one i will never stop using, DIAF) and meeting some truly terrible people who have nothing better to do that sit behind their computers and be bat shit crazy (because procuring a fake email address so you can sign up for a second – or 3rd or 4th – account so you can come on and tell people what sucks about them anonymously? IS FULL OF THE CRAZY).

even with all that, i still think it’s really amazing to find a community online to connect with if you’re pregnant or a mom. whilst i personally would never go back to the bump/nest/place where dreams go to die even if you promised me a lifetime supply of sweet tea vodka (YES it was that bad), i owe it a bit of thanks because it gave me my BIFF.

best internet friend forever (runs to check google for necklaces – i’d have the ‘be inte fri for’ side and i’d give mae the ‘st rnet ends ever” side).

mae and i? have never met. yet we’ve known each other for over 2 years. we talk on the phone numerous times a week (sometimes numerous times a day). we skype. we email. we blackberry messenger until one of us gets tennis elbow and various other weird ailments that prevent us from doing so. we drunk dial each other on our birthdays after many drinks (ok, so that was just me) and then our husbands help us record said voicemails for all time and then email them to the other so they can hear it and wet their pants. we lean on each other when we are blue, frustrated, irate and share our joy when our daughters learn something new.  we are each other’s sounding board when we want to know if something is normal with our kids and our most typed sentence to each other is “please tell me if i’m being crazy here”. when i’m being a whiny bitch, she puts me right in my place (seriously, have you ever read this? HAMMER THROWER ). it’s safe to say mae is one of the first people i tell anything important to. but i have yet to see her face in front of mine (you know, not skypie-like) or hug her (which i get to do in about a month at BlogHer and i am DYING OF EXCITEMENT).

if not for the internet, mae and i would never have crossed paths. ever. we live on opposite sides of the country. we have no mutual (IRL) friends or family. i don’t attend star trek conventions in florida and she doesn’t go searching for narwhal loving weirdos in washington state.  nope, i owe it all to the internet. to the nest. to the place where dreams go to die.

or as i fondly secretly refer to it, the place where i found a best friend.

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While neither Mandy or I advocate for or recommend against any specific message board or internet forum, we both feel strongly that women in general and mothers especially can benefit greatly from the internet communities that such forums help create. We both maintain relationships with women we met in those forums, and continue to create new relationships through social media. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook to join in the fun.

I’d also like the record to show that I’ve never been to a Star Trek convention in Florida or anywhere else, and also that I sincerely thought narwhals were purely mythical creatures until about 2 months ago. Yes. I felt the need to point both of those things out to you all. You’re welcome.