i know…more thinking. this is getting like school.

i, of course, was one of those Lisa Simpson-types who liked school…at least until junior high. i spent junior high exiled to the hallways, the result of a sassy little tongue that i hadn’t learned to hold, and a deep, abiding, hopeless longing to be more bad-ass than nerd. sigh. it sucks to be me twelve.

i suspect that an awful lot of the generation of women currently metamorphosing into moms who blog were rather Lisa-like too, in their adolescent incarnations, teetering on the bleeding edge between earnest, expressive geeks and wanna-be rebels. the traces of it are there in the URLS and logos and images that populate the mommyblogosphere: clever send-ups of June Cleaver-types, witty references to pop culture, edgy inversions of “acceptable” mothering archetypes. there’s satire and incredible honesty and support out here, all wrapped up in stylish templates.

well, except mine. but my rebellion is in having a lamely over-sincere title and an unrelated image to which i pay no attention. it’s, um, intentional. yeh. i figure if i hang around in this acid-washed jean jacket long enough, it’ll come back in style. truth is, i haven’t been willing to invest the time. i’d like my inner cool to be reflected in my blogosphere image…but mostly i’m here to write. and sometimes i wish i’d had such freeing invisibility back when i actually was in school.

the meta-mommy fest i’ve been wallowing in hosting this week was sparked, in part, by a collection of questions that HerBadMother and Mad and Joy opened up to the community over the weekend. they contend that this community of so-called mommybloggers is a knowledge-making community, and are exploring how blogs are impacting the experience of parenthood, and for whom. they don’t mean the kids. rather, their inquiry is about who’s taking part in this community, and who’s excluded, and in what ways the act of mommyblogging is transforming the experience of motherhood. cool shit, basically. stuff that makes me want to come back in from the hall and sit in class and discuss.

and because i have a blog, i can. :)

the question they asked that really sucked me in and made me want to line up all my pencils (in order of length and chewed-ness) and start a nice, long essay was as follows…”What does the medium of blogging mean to all of this?” (all of this being the experience of parenthood and the experience of community shared by parents who blog and link and comment and…well…check out their posts.)

it would be indulgent to spit out the entire essay my gerbil brain is trying to gestate on the subject. but there are three specific things that, for me, stand out.

the first is so obvious it probably goes without saying…blogging allows me to communicate. to an audience of people who understand complete sentences. when i started, almost a year ago now, that audience was made up of a very small contingent of faithful friends/family, but that small contingent were still three people more than i otherwise had around to talk to all day long. i just wanted to think out loud, and share, and boast about my wonder-child, and question, and confess, and…record that i was thinking, somehow. i needed to. the unexamined life is not for me. i want to discuss. i want to be heard.

which leads to the second reason blogging works for me. it’s asynchronous. it lets me be heard on my own terms, and on my own schedule. unlike face-to-face communication, which requires the tactical skills of a four-star general to organize, these days, the blog allows for expression and response among a massive community of parents and interested parties at everybody’s convenience. and it allows me time to actually formulate my communications, too…i get to think about what i want to say, and i can hang up on a post if the baby starts shrieking, and not feel guilty or rude. i can ditch my audience mid-sentence, and they’ll still be there, faithful and oblivious to the slight, when i return.

but the biggest draw to blogging, for me, is the mommy-crack of comments and the high of logging in and finding something new. i have a wild crush on the internet simply for the fact that it delivers mail more than once a day. since i got an email account, i’ve been an inveterate checker…a junkie for new words. for conversation. for the new. and while my days with O are rewarding and quite sweet, each dirty diaper is pretty much the same. it’s the computer that feeds my hunger for novelty. i am the lab rat who sneaks up to that little buzzer bar fifty times a day, just in case this is the time it pops out a pellet.

is it just me?

feed my habit. tell me. please. because when there are no comments, i turn to chocolate. :)