We made it to Virginia Beach after a 10 hour car drive yesterday. The drive was fairly unexciting, aside from a 30 mile stretch of road between Huntington and Charleston, WV that I have now christened as “Road Kill Alley”. The deer in that area are either not too bright or just have really bad luck. Along that stretch of road, I counted well over 35 dead deer, along with various smaller creatures. That’s greater than one dead animal a mile, folks. I’ve never heard of an area where the deer population control weapon of choice is a vehicle. Now, I’m not a gun advocate, but come on, people of West Virginia – it’s at least more humane.

Our room is pretty nice. We have a fridge and a microwave, and high-speed internet access, which of course was a must. The breakfast here is amazing – every type of breakfast food you could think of is available.

The one unpleasant aspect is the surprise we had waiting in our bathroom. I saw something hanging on a hook, and couldn’t figure out what it was. Was it a towel? A shower cap? Aaron took a closer look to tell me. Turns out, it’s a pair of underwear. Someone else’s underwear. Yuck.

Not sure what I’m going to do today. I will probably look in the guide book and find something to explore in the area. The weather is great, and thanks to the Hippo Diet, I can just barely fit into my capris, so life is good!

As of tomorrow I will be posting from Virginia Beach for the weekend. Aaron has to go to Regents College for a stage-combat workshop, and I’m tagging along. My mom has once again proven to be Super Grandma and offered to stay at our house with Cordelia for the weekend. It’ll be nice to have child-free nights!

Aaron won’t get to see the area much, but I intend to be out and about sightseeing each day. Anyone live near Virginia Beach?

As many steady readers know, I’m back in school for another degree. I ended up with an A in both Anatomy and Psychology last quarter, and this quarter I was going to take Statistics, but changed my mind at the last moment and switched to Developmental Psychology instead.

I never realized how insanely stupid a bookstore can be until today. As I walked into the store, I was greeted by a police officer. Not exactly what I expected to see.

He told me in a rather gruff voice that since I had a book to sell back (from last term), as well as books to exchange, I wouldn’t be allowed in the store until I sold the book from last quarter back first. Textbooks from last term were prohibited in the store.

Of course, buybacks aren’t being held there, but instead in a little dungeon on the other side of the large building. So I walk to the other side of the building, on another floor, to sell my book back. After accepting my pithy $30 for my $100 book (that’s an entire topic for another day!), I returned to the bookstore to try for entry again.

This time the keeper of the gate lets me pass, after examining my receipt as if it contained the location of WMDs or Bin Laden. But I was told I had to stand in the returns line, and could not move from that line. Could I get the book I needed to purchase? Nope, had to do the return, then get the book I need, then get in another line and wait more. Simply insane.

So while in line, I decided I wasn’t going to stand for this kind of poor planning, and grabbed the next sales associate who walked by. I asked him, as politely as possible, if he could fetch the book I needed for my class. He willingly obliged, and after a few minutes I was still standing in the returns line, but I also had the book I needed to purchase. Take that, line nazi!

Once I got to the counter, I had to face one more hurdle: convincing the returns girl to let me also purchase the book. Luckily, I sailed through this challenge as well, with a little politeness and gratitude. You’d think these poor folks had never had anyone be nice to them before!

Soon I was on my way out the door, with a sly smirk to the gatekeeper cop as I walked past.

I had the beginnings of an intelligent post today, but then I ate a couple of donuts with my lunch, and my brain has turned to mush due to carb overload.

Since coherent thoughts are difficult at the moment, I’ll leave you with this video for today. This is what happens when you flip the viewscreen so a toddler can watch herself on video (the audio seems to be about a second delayed for some reason).

Kristen at Motherhood Uncensored has been posting some awesome thoughts on the issue of mom and mommy bloggers. I’ve been following this topic with great interest, trying to understand it as best I can.

I’ve tried to wrap my mind around the debate going on in the blogging world, but I still have no definite answers, so I’m going to try to throw some thoughts out here. This is by no means a coherent post, and the best way for me to consider the issues is by interviewing myself. Yes, it’s weird. Bear with me.

What is the difference between mommy blogs and mom blogs?

To me, I see no difference. I know that others see a big difference, however. There are mommy blogs, which are self-absorbed blogs that do nothing but chronicle the lives of their children and their domestic activities. Mom blogs, on the other hand, are cool, hip women who happen to be mothers, posting often humorous takes on life and motherhood. These are not my definitions – they are just what I have gained from reading lots and lots of blogs. Could it be that the only differences between the two are that the moms don’t take themselves seriously, are funny and don’t focus on the minutiae of daily activities?

Then again, there are plenty of people out there who don’t care about the differences, and see any blog by a mom as a “mommy” blog, and therefore write them off as being trivial and a waste of space. As an example, I will point you to this post, where the author snarked me for being a mommy blogger, and therefore a waste of the internet. That author seems to say that posting pictures of your child is an exercise in vanity and is a topic that no one other than great-aunt Hilda would find of value. It may be of no value to that person, but that person can’t determine that no one else is interested in the subject.

Are you a mommy blogger or a mom blogger?

Truthfully? I’m a mommy blogger. It’s a mommy blog, dammit. Deal with it. Hey, I think I just found my new tagline!

As I said at Kristen’s blog, to me, mommy sounds more youthful than mom or mother, so anything that will make me appear younger is fine with me. Also, I started this blog as a result of my daughter. I had an old LiveJournal that was truly boring, and only of interest to my close friends (and not even them, sometimes). I’ve done lots of interesting things with my life, but motherhood was the one thing that flipped my world upside down.

I chose to create a blog for two reasons. First, I wanted to write again. Having quit my job as a technical writer to spend more time with Cordy, I found myself missing writing. Second,seeing how blindsided I was by motherhood, I wanted to get my thoughts and feelings out there and see if anyone else felt the same way.

You’ll probably hear very few stories of domesticity here, unless it begins with, “I tried to cook something today and burned down the kitchen,” or “In attempting to glue a picture into Cordy’s baby book I accidentally glued myself to the book.” (Which, in those cases, are things worth blogging about.)

What about the mommy “wars”?

I’m reminded of the saying “The Irish fight themselves because they haven’t found any worthy opponents.” Dismissing the stereotype of women, I say women are fierce creatures, but we waste too much of our venom on fighting each other. Who cares if one mom is a SAHM and the next is a WOHM? Obviously there are reasons for each of them, situations that we don’t know the details of, and personal feelings that need to be considered. We’re all moms, all trying to raise our kids to the best of our abilities, constantly trying to do what we think is best for them. (OK, maybe not the mom on last week’s Nanny 911.)

Why spend time fighting each other when we can work together to fight for common causes? We want our kids to have good education, good healthcare, and a safe neighborhood – fight for those causes! Too big for you? OK, fine, then help fight the stereotypes perpetuated out there about moms. Don’t assume that a SAHM is either rich or uneducated, and a WOHM clearly doesn’t love her kids enough to stay home with them. Wouldn’t a culture of understanding, where all moms are valued regardless of their work status, income level, etc. be a wonderful thing?

Do you think we’ll ever get to that level of understanding?

Probably not. I remember trying to join a MOMS club last year. I e-mailed the leader of the closest club, and asked when and where their meetings were. I received an e-mail back asking me where I lived. I explained that I lived south of their area, and she replied again asking what school district I lived in. When I told her, I received one final e-mail telling me that I didn’t live within their area, and I was not welcome. It was clear that because I didn’t live in the ritzy school district, so I wasn’t good enough for them.

Just like high-school, cliques are present in the mom world and are probably here to stay. Everyone wants to feel like they belong, and choosing some way to limit themselves, such as school district, gives them that comfortable “us vs. them” feeling. Personally I think it’s juvenile and limiting. Had I limited myself to factors like that, I wouldn’t have the diverse set of friends I’ve met over the years.

Getting back to blogging, my hope is that people can get past finding something to bitch about and stick to writing about what they know and like. If you don’t like “mommy” blogs, well then don’t read them. I can’t force you to read my blog, just as I can’t force you to look past any stereotypes you may have already formed about mommy blogs.

So there. It’s a mommy blog, dammit. Deal with it.

Whew. I feel better now. I have no idea what all I just wrote, because it kind of spilled out, so please excuse the stream of consciousness.