so, i live in a bubble.  an occasionally glamourous bubble, filled with plague and exciting hospital visits, true, but a bubble nonetheless.

i didn’t even know BlogHer existed until people started announcing they were going last March.

in my naivete, upon discovering this fascinating tidbit, i turned to my fellow bubble-dweller, and squeed, “there’s a conference!  a blog conference!  for hers who blog!”

and my beloved said, “yeh. BlogHer.  you going?”

i felt quite exposed for a few, brief seconds…horribly exposed and unwanted and hapless, like a flashback to that moment in junior high when you realize that not only is there a party you haven’t been informed of or invited to, but even your mom has been in on keeping it from you.  i shrank.  Dave knew about BlogHer.  was he going, for pete’s sake?  was i really the last person alive who didn’t know it existed?
turns out Mr. “I Livez on teh Internets” just has his finger on some weird pulses.  and in one of those odd glitches that occasionally occur in our house where two very close people have busy and extremely interconnected lives, he’d just assumed i knew.  (that or he was testing me to see if i track his online activity like a wife bloodhood…but…he knows how lazy i am, so i doubt it.)

so i got all squee-ish again (despite the usual self-doubt that comes with any consideration of actually stepping outside the safe confines of my bubble, but that’s a whole other narrative) and i leapt on the computer and googled BlogHer.  and gazed upon the conference date.

and my bubble burst.  or at least my delusion of venturing outside it did.  because the fine people at BlogHer - for some inscrutable reason which i cannot fathom - scheduled the damn conference for the last weekend in July.

clearly, no one consulted my social calendar.  which is reasonable, i suppose, given that it’s usually stark empty…and no one at BlogHer would know me if they tripped on me.  but people, i live in what is politely termed a “vacation destination.”  a tourist trap.  a mecca for summer holidayers.  barely anyone i know actually stays here year round…they’ve all fled for places with, like, work and stuff.   but they all come home to visit, every last one of them, these near and dear family and friends who connect me to places on the map i once went and now like to imagine from the pleasant vistas of bubble-hood.  they all come home, invariably, during the last week of freaking July.

so, while i  probably would have had serious trouble justifying the cost of the conference and the trip to myself, especially when i wasn’t earning any money, and i would be genuinely intimidated by meeting half the blogosphere face to face, however big i talk, the absolute, unavoidable reason i’m not in Chicago this weekend is that my great aunties arrived last night, and my childhood best friend the night before, and two of my dearest peeps from university are staying here tomorrow night, and then Sunday there’s a party for a friend who lives the rest of the year in Kuwait…and i’m not even sure when i’m going to hang with the lovely folks who’ve descended from London and Korea and Vancouver.

because by about the 9th of August, i shit you not, because that’s the official start of winter here in Canada, they’ll all have fled again for another year.  and i love them all (well, all the ones i’m actually trying to squeeze into my house and/or schedule) and it fills me up for all the dry months, this having company, this visiting with friends.

of course, that’s kinda what blogging does for me too.  so BlogHer, how about a November conference next year? nobody visits then, i can promise ya.

and you…you there reading, presumably NOT from a swank hotel in the Windy City.  you there, not sharing mojitos with fellow blogistas?  what’s your reason?   tell me your story.

i really want to know.  i got to have something to entertain Great Aunt Myrtle with. ;)