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17 Untruths Parents Believe About Non-Parents [updated]

2013-05-23T18:28:03Z

The Palinode with one of our friends' children in 2007 or 2008

1. Non-parents get to go to bed late and sleep in like parents used to before they had children.

I do wish this were true, but it's not. Age, stress, and ill health are sleep-stealers, too, and I am lucky if I get four or five uninterrupted hours of sleep on any given night. In fact, I can't remember when I last did that.

2. Non-parents have the better and more plentiful sex that parents might once have had before they had children.

Sometimes non-parents do have better and more sex, but that is only true for those of us who are not stressed out or experiencing physical or emotional difficulties related to health or past history or ageing. I find that I am naturally less of a hedonist as I get older. Or maybe that's my ongoing insomnia.

All I know is this: whether parents or not, pretty much everyone thinks they are being robbed of better or a different amount of sex, and we all have conditions to which we can point and squarely lay the blame. Mine is a combination of age, body dysmorphia, depression and anxiety, and possibly that hysterectomy I had as a result of cervical cancer.

3. Non-parents eat better and more interesting food.

This is true only if you, unlike me, like to cook, have money to eat out every day, or haven't lost your taste for chicken nuggets and fish sticks. Maybe having had regular high-brow gastronomic experiences is peculiar to would-be parents, though, because it's not been my experience, at least not on a regular enough basis to make it a fact of my lifestyle.

4. Non-parents get to do whatever they want.

Oh, yeah. All the time, baby, except that I can't afford that southern vacation, I have work and family responsibilities to take care of, this damn mortgage doesn't pay itself, and my husband might not be so crazy about my dream to drop out of society and hole up in a cabin in the woods for the next two years.

No one is an island, even if they haven't made babies. Imagine that?

Me with a copy of Let's Panic About Babies! by Eden Kennedy and Alice Bradley

5. Non-parents have much more disposable income than parents do.

If only this were true, except that it's not true based on being parents or not, because of something we call "logic".

This would only hold true if each household, regardless of children, made the exact same amount of money, because then the addition of children would mean that your household would have less money relative to my household. This is not how our society works, though.

I know many families who are wealthier than I am, even after they factor in children and holidays and a house three times larger than my condo. It's because they make more money than I do, and children do not magically suck all the power out of the dollar bills in your bank account.

6. Non-parents don't know the true depth of human love.

Bleep blorp. My baby-less heart only knows carnal and romantic love. Boop bip.

Believe it or not, I have heard throughout my life, and I know a lot of you have, too. Non-parents are not like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, and children aren't our journey to get real hearts [click to tweet]. This line of reasoning is an insult that undermines the value of our relationships and human experience.

If you actually believe this fallacy, do not argue your position out loud. You will sound like a racist explaining the heirarchy of genetic differences. Please stop talking now.

7. Non-parents are not very busy and have time for all kinds of frivolous activity.

This is true for some people, parents or not, but this is also not true for most of the people I know, parents or not.

Strangely, people who are not parents sometimes have demanding careers or take on serious community work or go back to school or take care of other family members or spend their non-job time working on a skill to launch them into a career that means they can both eat and have a place to live. Non-parents spend their non-work time doing things that are more vitally important than shoe-shopping, experimentation with Arzak eggs, and going out dancing, and they have to fight for space to do these things, too.

Passionate and engaged living happens. It's not just for parents!

8. Non-parents get to bathe, and parents never do.

I am sometimes so busy that I don't get to shower, either, and also? You are a liar. I've smelled you, and you do not have the stench of someone who hasn't seen running water since your firstborn was in utero.

I do get that you cannot take long showers like you used to, and that you maybe don't often get to take a shower or bathe alone, and for this I truly feel sympathy, but don't tell me that you miss bathing altogether. I will demand proof of grossness.

Bon Stewart being a giant baby

9. Non-parents get to drink alcohol whenever they want.

No, we don't. Some of us have jobs. Some of us have family obligations outside our own homes. Some of us, like me, are alcoholics who have to actively abstain and work at not doing that very thing every day. And some of us just aren't fond of the stuff.

10. Non-parents don't have to deal with gross bodily fluids.

This is planet earth, and we are human beings. The gross bodily functions of others affect a good number of us, whether we birthed the person experiencing them or not.

I grew up with an older brother with multiple special needs, and my mother also ran a daycare out of our home. I have dealt with the urine, poop, vomit, and semen (yes, even that) of more people both related to me and not than most parents I know. You can't hold this one over me.

11. Non-parents own nicer things than parents do.

This hearkens back to the old Non-Parents Have More Disposable Income argument, which is patently false.

All of my lovely chairs and sofas are draped in covers I bought through Amazon to hide coffee stains, cat puke, and previous ownership markings. My living room's a flea market waiting to happen.

12. Non-parents get to keep the friends that parents lose after they have children.

I hate to break it to you, but major life shifts change friendships whether they involve children or not. Try suddenly making a lot less or more money, moving to a new city or country, getting married, or, in my case, quitting drinking. All of these things can change the dynamics of your friendships and even lose you a whole social circle.

Friendship loss after a major life shift is not confined to those who procreate.

Those were the days.

13. Non-parents don't have wrecked bodies like parents do after kids.

Oh, seriously now. Have you walked around out in public lately and taken a good look at humanity? We are, in general, kind of a wreck.

Also, forgive me if I snort at your insistence that it was only having children that destroyed your once gorgeous form and that non-parents don't understand what it is to have your body suddenly change. 1) You probably weren't as hot pre-baby as you thought you were, and 2) there are a number of things that wreck your body for you as life goes on. Cancer, addictions, and other health issues strike parents and non-parents alike, and they can make us all a little less bikini-confident.

The reasons behind your stretch marks and other changed parts may be different, but the outcomes aren't necessarily so unlike each other.

14. Non-parents feel so much more attractive than parents do.

Dammit. This is just another way I must be doing it wrong as a non-parent, because I have not been feeling that attractive since I had that minor bout with cancer. It kind of further destabilized what sense of body integrity I had managed to cobble together out of found string and white glue.

15. Non-parents have clean homes.

Ha! That's rich!

Oh, you cleaned your house before kids? Dammit. There I go doing it wrong, again.

16. Non-parents don't have to worry about anyone but themselves.

Ha! Again, that's rich!

We have ageing parents, nieces and nephews, dear friends, partners and spouses, pets, and other attachments, because, again, we are not like the Tin Man looking for our real hearts. We belong to entrenched communities to which we contribute deeply and meaningfully, even if that community doesn't wear a diaper and call us Mom.

17. Non-parents stay out until all hours.

While non-parents do have the greater freedom to stay out late and do things I've heard referred to as "clubbing", most of the people I know don't. Why? Because we are busy, and we have stuff to do, and we are tired, and most of us aren't 21 anymore.

If you're a parent, you might think this staying-out-all-night thing sounds like a happy idea, but, in reality, it's less adventurous and fun and more waiting to crawl into a warm bed and being irritated by drunk people.

You could do it, but, like most of us, you probably wouldn't want to most of the time, if ever. Isn't that what mommy blogging conferences are for, anyway?

From what I can tell, most parents miss the more care-free and spontaneous life of their early 20s before all the added responsibilities of adult life stepped in — related to finances, family, and ageing — to reshape and sometimes minimize their freedoms. I do, too, although, I will fully admit to the fact that I can still just step out my door right now and grab a sandwich at the shop across the street, and I love that, but I will not stand for being told that my not having children means my life is still pretty much equivalent to the chaotic and frivolous mess of some early 20-somethings.

When a parent sighs and says to a non-parent It must be so nice to be able to sleep in or I wish I could afford that thing you just got or You have no idea what my body looks like under this, it is beyond insulting. There are so many assumptions and prejudices wrapped up in such statements that unravelling them to explain just how much they have diminished a non-parent's life experience would take at least a book or two.

My usual response is to smile and say with faked humour "Well, that's what you think", because it is their choice to cut off connection with me, and I am too tired after 15 years of this to have to initiate several of these conversations a week with everyone from grocery clerks to close friends. It is their choice to tell me that I cannot fathom who they are, that my life experience cannot connect with theirs, that those who have similar outcomes due to their own major life shifts are somehow intrinsically blocked from that connection due to not having offspring. The assumption that my life is so easy that it would deny me the ability to understand another's experience tells me that the parent in question does not value my history or my experience. I am not valued or valuable.

Believe me, I sometimes wish all these assumptions about non-parents were true, because then I would be a wealthy, physically gorgeous, globe-trotting, sexual dynamo who had a clean house, great clothes, and was surrounded by all my old friends. This isn't how life goes for most of us, though, once we graduate from that magically unburdened post-high school youth we all imagine we came from. Take me, for example. I have weathered cancer, my husband's broken back, the loss of loved ones, addiction, depression and anxiety, and a few other hurdles. We all grow up, we change, and we experience things that are hard.

We may not be parents, but we are also not unburdened youth anymore, the ones we imagine as frivolous and selfish and disconnected, and I wish that the parents who make these assumptions about us would stop behaving as though we still are [click to tweet].

PS. The title has been updated from "17 Lies Parents Spread About Non-Parents" to better reflect the subject matter. I seriously misjudged the original title's inflammatory nature, and I apologize for that.

PPS. Please do not misread this blog entry, in any way, as a criticism of parenting. This is a criticism of the prejudice some parents show, yes, but not of parenting itself. I sincerely value parents and the level of work they do in their homes, their extended families, and in their communities. I mean that. This is a serious deflation of unnecessary prejudice against non-parents, but it holds no judgement against the work people do as parents.

PPPS. Also, please know that the title actually reads, in spirit, "17 Untruths SOME Parents Believe About Non-Parents", because we all know that 100% of a group of people don't all think the same thing at the same time, unless that group of people is a group of people who are a group precisely because they do all think the same thing at the same time.

7 Basic Rules of Emotional Eating

2013-05-23T02:54:48Z

One:

Make sure that you have antacid handy. This whole thing is about avoiding discomfort, so don't mess up by getting heartburn.

Two:

There must be sugar.

Three:

There must be salt.

Four:

There must a balance between the sugar and the salt, as the brain secretly believes that one cancels out the other.

The brain also secretly believes that this secret belief likely points to an intuitive knowledge, the truth of which will be proved by science, so pass the salty, chocolate-covered pretzels, please.

Five:

There must be neither belts nor tight fitting clothing of any kind worn while eating.

(Hairy navels are completely acceptable. The hair growth burns belly fat. True story.)

Six:

Have someone who will pretend to call 911 and say Help! Help! It's an emergency! My wife's a big fatty!

The restraint you show in not punching that person in the kidneys buys you brownie points, a spot in heaven, good karma, and all the moral superiority you need.

Seven:

Repeat as necessary.

Sad Panda likes gifts of chocolate chiffon cake and Zesty Cheese Doritos.

A Beautiful Thing Will Grow Out of This Very Hard Thing

2013-05-15T17:40:04Z

Sometimes beautiful things live inside the very hardest of things.

Yesterday, for the first time in a very long while, I ventured outside alone to go to the corner store. I wanted to see if it was open so that I could buy something cheap and sweet, but the store was closed. It was only a short block I had to walk to get there, but I felt so exposed, so far from my nest of safety, that my collar bones ached with the tightness in my throat and chest.

I am sometimes afraid to leave my home.

This fear happens when I am shifting, when I am changing my patterns of thought or behaviour. I panic, and my panic turns inward, where I question all the good of which I am capable. I have spent a week sure that I cannot write or make or do valuable things, that my faultiness far outweighs my abilities.

This insecurity is usually followed by the hatred of my own appearance, and this week was no exception. I became convinced that my own appearance was so terrible, so below acceptable standards, that I did not want to be seen by strangers who did not already love me.

"I can't go out," I sometimes say. "Strangers will see my face, and I can't have that."

I came home from my harrowing trip to the corner store with that familiar burn of shame running up the back of my neck while I tried to catch my breath, and I immediately asked the Palinode to come for another, slightly longer walk with me. I knew that my well-being depended on killing this thing in the moment.

I know my mind. If I let leaving be so terrible that it scares me back, and then rest into my safe spot on the couch again, I will more deeply train a pathway in my brain that confirms the messages that Leaving Is Bad and Staying Is Good. I imagined myself in the future on a talk show saying "I don't know how it happened, but one day I just stopped leaving, and now it's been 17 years since I walked out my front door."

The Palinode and I walked to another drugstore further away, and as we chatted about things like whether grease is wet or dry¹ and what the actual elements of moisture are, my chest loosened. The stuck feeling in my throat eased up.

That pathway in my brain, one that could have so easily become a deeper groove, unkinked itself a little bit. I bought myself some more time with freedom.

I haven't said much about my depression, anxiety, or addiction issues over recent months. As much as I've written about them before and talked about them in front of audiences across two countries, I am afraid to write about them here.

I am afraid that no one will believe me anymore that shame can be used to see rather than punish yourself, that your courage is bigger than you know, and that fear is surmountable. I am afraid that I don't have what it takes to stay on this path I have fought so hard to find and bushwhack my way through. I am afraid that people will second-guess hiring me, thinking that I am not up to the job.

Part of my job on this earth, though, and I deeply hold this to be true, is to be very publicly human.

I do have the strength, though. We all do. This is a bones deep knowledge I can't shake.

I'm just experiencing retreat after battle, or, as Brené Brown calls it in I Thought It Was Just Me, a "vulnerability hangover". You shouldn't trust someone who hasn't lived their subject, and so I'm treating this phase of change as intensive study. I'm diving in.

In the end, Ghandi said it most succinctly²:

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.

This course I take repeatedly through anxiety, depression, and the hard work of sobriety is difficult and terrible at times, but the most beautiful parts of my whole life grow out of the soil it helps me to turn over.

Fear is gripping, but love and belief birth hope, growing capital-c Courage larger than the self.

And, so, a beautiful thing will grow out of this very hard thing, and you will not see me on a show in 17 years wondering why I never left my home again in all that time. This, I can promise you.

^{1. It turns out that grease is a non-Newtonian fluid that can be both wet and dry. Thanks goes to brainiac @jannymarie for the information. ↩} ^{2. This paragraph is often paraphrased as "be the change you want to see in the world", which is an unverified misquote that Ghandi never actually said, because he didn't speak Bumper Sticker. ↩}

101 Things We Love (aka Grace in Small Things: Sunday Edition #134)

2013-05-12T21:04:49Z

My kitty, Onion, is pretty darn lovely.

I asked the people on Twitter to tell me what they loved, and it turns out that they love a lot of things. They love more than a hundred of them, in fact, so I curated and edited the following compilation of our loves to spread it around a little:

the sound of snapping open a fresh can of something fizzy
coffee
the smell of freshly cut grass
reading
friends who get it
a fluffy cat curled up next to me and cooing like a happy pigeon while he sleeps
having written
a good toilet flange
my husband's hands
yoghurt, specifically spelled with the H in the middle
holding my hand out the window of a car while going down the highway in summer
a good latte
great writing
avocados
callouses on my fingertips from playing guitar
lavender
my kid snoring
darjeeling tea with coconut flavouring and milk
the ukulele
ice cold water
the feel of suede
new book smell
the way I get goosebumps when my husband looks at me
that moment in a movie you've seen a hundred times before that still takes your breath away and paralyzes you as you wait for it
Hendrick's gin
new jammies
performing
laughing
hot buttery popcorn with garlic powder and hot sauce
connecting again with a person you love but thought you'd lost
kitties
happy hour with friends
cooking a good meal
discovering new music
British miniseries
Sunday afternoon naps
watermelon
a clean house
chosen families
that kids wear costumes just because they can
kissing
almond biscotti drizzled with chocolate
rainy days
smoked swiss cheese
singing loudly
cheesy dance moves
my dog
green buds on trees
thunderstorms
fuzzy kitty bellies
popsicles
the power of music to connect people
surprising my stepson
pizza
rain drumming on the roof late at night
pedicures
feeling like I belong
love
crunching through ice cubes
cats purring
burritos
listening to a tone deaf person who loves to sing butcher their favourite song
finding a bra that fits just so
chocolate cake
the first night you notice the fireflies have come back for the summer
summery days with thunder clouds off in the distance
peppermint
street fairs
pesto
listening to wild birds outside
Mad Men
going out for brunch on the weekend
crafting
swimming
the colour of the light at golden hour
grapefruits
being read to
Scully and Mulder's dedication to bringing out the best in each other in The X-Files
sushi
photography
random acts of kindness from strangers
the cool side of the pillow
kisses from my son
drinking iced tea in the shade on a hot day
finishing a creative project I feel really good about
Sam Cooke
cracking through the shell on crème brûlée
poetry
learning
time travel
how excited my dog gets every time he sees me
dulce de leche ice cream
the sound of my kids laughing
clean sheets fresh from the line
roasted Brussels sprouts
old school rotary telephones
dancing until my body hurts
bowties
warm sunshine with a slight breeze
sleeping in
long lists of things people love

Thanks to all the good people who answered my call!

What do you love?

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace in Small Things.

I Spoke, I Saw, I Re-evaluated What I Love: Mom 2.0 Summit

2013-05-08T18:47:52Z

I was in Laguna Niguel, California at the Mom 2.0 Summit from May 2nd to May 5th.

Now, before you worry that this is one of those annoying conference posts that cheers RAH! RAH! while telling you nothing of import, I swear this is not one of those. Unless you don't give a fig for the state of women, social media, and the health of Us. I hope you do, because this is the future we're in, baby, and the water's fine.

Also, this might be long-ish. Get coffee.

The conference was held at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel, which was undeniably ritzy.

I am one of those people who opens her suitcase, pulls out every last item, and then proceeds to throw each article across different pieces of furniture. My brain calls this "organizing my outfits", which is hilarious, because I don't have outfits. I have black, black, and more black occasionally broken up by a pattern on black or a brown shirt. Aaanywaaay, I exploded my suitcase, left the room, and when I came back, everything was folded square and placed neatly back in my suitcase.

The staff at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel are incredible. They are beautiful and friendly and will hang your thong underwear delicately from the bathroom doorknob if you are the kind of blogger who might indelicately leave your thong underwear out in the middle of the bathroom for your roommate's enjoyment.

Which I am not. ~~Okay, I so am~~. I miss Suebob already. She was the best roommate.

You maybe don't know this, but I'm afraid of flying, so I distracted myself on the way to the conference by making fun of a giant children's toy at the Calgary airport. Who couldn't, though?

As you can see from its plaque above, the toy is in memory of Punch Dickins, a bush pilot who flew a Fokker through Regina. The jokes just write themselves, and I'm sure that that toy must defile the minds of thousands of children every year.

I apologize for my immaturity if Punch was your uncle or something. I'm sure he was a lovely man.

Anyway, I got on the plane, I made my peace with my place in the universe and the things I have done in it, and then I survived again, as usual.

My mind, it brings on the drama.

The conference was a string of gorgeous events from the opening party to the last,

with meals under palm fronds in sunny, oceanside courtyards,

and, well, the OCEAN was there, but all of that natural beauty and the posh environs were not what made Mom 2.0 Summit a success.

Whirlpool made me lusty after appliances and avocado pesto over pasta.

What made Mom 2.0 Summit such a success was the dedication of both its founders — Laura Mayes and Carrie Pacini — and the conference sponsors — Dove, Honda, and Lowe's, to name a few — not only to the social media and marketing end of things but also to truly meaningful engagement and social good.

This was what I found in my conversations with the attendees, as well. While we had honest discussions about our desire for professional growth in social media, most of those discussions also included ideas about how we can incorporate social good into the work we do. Sure, it was nice to get free gift bags of a company's product, but we also wanted to know how that product, that company, or our relationship with that company would work towards bettering the world we live in.

Jessica Ashley and Meagan Francis getting manicures

I've watched blogging and social media grow and change over the last ten years, and, at least in the parent blogging communities of which I am part, all childlessness aside, it is growing up into a fine, fine thing. The people I met were mindful and focused and inspired to contribute both to the communities they inhabit and the world at large.

Gone was the childish elbowing for swag for which bloggers have been criticized. At Mom 2.0, I saw attendees, sponsors, and film and television personalities, such as Kyra Phillips and Amanda Peet, engaging with one another on more equal footing, watching and listening and figuring out the next steps through this medium together. There was an equality and a shared purpose that I had not seen before.

I say all this as someone who does not focus on sponsored content in my own work but who believes that the blogging and social media community's health depends, at least in part, on its ability to handle its connections with marketing not only well but also meaningfully.

Women bloggers are smart, focused, and generous, contrary to The Wall Street Journal's take on us.

I did have a low point, though. I'm not going to lie. Conferences tend to overwhelm me, because, despite the fact that I get on stage to speak, and I travel the halls hugging people and trading business cards, I am a fairly extreme introvert.

I finally broke on Saturday afternoon — too much socializing coupled with a vulnerability hangover from the "Fear and Becoming Known" talk I delivered to a couple hundred people on Friday afternoon — and so I took some time to go for a walk on the beach alone and reconsider my entire life up until that point and going forward, because why not reassess your place in the universe and freak out about middle age and feel completely lost and more than a little hopeless in the middle of one of the most beautiful places on earth?

Again: my mind, it brings on the drama.

By the time I made it back to the hotel, though, I felt like I had been set aright again. Sometimes, all I need is a little bit of a realignment. Call it soul chiropracty, if you will.

I looked around at my community, and I was proud of what I saw. The entire community down to the last blogger is not always a stellar example representing the whole, but, by and large, this is the kind of community I have been trying to build up, hoping for, the kind of community that strives for quality, creativity, and meaningful action.

That's why getting together with my peers in the field is so important. I learn, change, go through the ridiculous process of freaking out about said change, because even good change can mean a difficult adjustment, and then I grow again, both personally and professionally.

It's a little like moulting, only less reptilian and more with the crying on the most beautiful beach in California.

This is Polly, me, and Jim. I win in a hair fight.

In short, if anyone tells you that women in blogging and social media are just a pile of over-sharing narcissists who need to get real lives, what they're really telling you is that they have no idea whatsoever about what is actually going on.

I admit it, I was doubting the health and future of our group of early adopters a couple of years ago, but no more. There is a sea change afoot, and we're just getting started.

Dear everyone I met at Mom 2.0 Summit in Laguna Niguel, you rocked it out. Love, me.

----------------------------

And, last but not least, if you would like to see the slides from my Mom 2.0 Summit talk, "Fear and Becoming Known: Connection and Growth Through Selfish Acts", you can see them in the slideshow below.

Fear & Becoming Known: Connection and Growth Through Selfish Acts
from Elan Morgan

Break Dancing + Yoga + Arthur Cadre = Remarkable Possibility

2013-05-06T17:07:28Z

While I process photos along with the intense amount of thinking I did while I was at the Mom 2.0 Summit in Laguna Niguel, California this last weekend, I urge you to watch this video, and not only because this guy does insane things with hips:

When I watched it, I was struck with the possibility it points out. I doubt that anyone looked at Arthur Cadre at birth and thought "At the 33-second mark in a video in 2013, he is going to demonstrate a remarkable dedication to yoga, dance, and art that is exceeded by few others, if any", but he does it anyway, because human beings have an incredible faculty for surprising themselves and each other.

Each of us has created or been a part of something remarkable that stretches the bounds of possiblity, even if it doesn't have the polish of good filmmaking and wasn't done quite on purpose. We can't help ourselves but be a part of remarkable things. It's just what happens with the incredible spark of existence with which this universe endows us.

What really makes me marvel at Arthur Cadre, though, is that he can do these things with his body on purpose without being involved in some kind of violent accident.

Check out Arthur Cadre's YouTube channel for more.

30 Reasons Why I Might Not Follow You Back On Twitter

2013-05-05T01:46:05Z

You have #TeamFollowBack in your bio.

You don't reply to anyone in your tweet stream.

Your tweet stream is little more than a list of giveaways and sponsored posts.

You are hyper-focused on one topic and never stray into human communication.

You constantly tweet links telling me to follow you on another social media platform.

You only retweet other people while rarely saying anything yourself.

You call yourself crazy, drunk, weird, or passionate.

You promise your followers things if you gain a certain number of them.

You only tweet links to your blog or content on other sites.

Your bio claims that you are a social media guru or maven.

You promise to commit to social good activities only if your followers promote your content.

You are a business who sells tractors or diaper supplies or whathaveyou three thousand miles away from where I live.

You are heavy on the leetspeak.

Your bio claims that you are an expert on three or more things.

Your tweet stream is cluttered with app spam from the other apps you use telling me where you are, how many calories your burned running, or what your twitter stats are.

You make sexist, pornographic, or otherwise hate-mongering comments.

You have no bio whatsoever.

Your company bio reads like a board room mission statement.

Your whole stream is inspirational quotations.

Your bio claims to be that of an appliance, as though I want to have a relationship with a food mixer.

You have only two tweets to your name, but you already follow 2000 people, only 12 of whom follow you back.

Your avatar is still the default egg picture.

Your account is private and you have little to no information in your bio to help me figure out if I know you or why I would want to follow you.

You have multiple people tweeting from your account but never specify whose tweet is whose.

The majority of your tweet stream is you tweeting at celebrities and big brands.

You use exclamation marks in every single tweet.

You don't tweet in English.

Your bio states that you want to spread your religion.

Your bio focuses on you as a salesperson.

Your content is devoted to bitching about how other people are doing it wrong :)

25 Things On My To Do List Before I Head to Laguna Niguel to Speak At Mom 2.0 Summit

2013-04-30T16:03:15Z

1. Look forward to getting out of Saskatchewan for a few days, because this is what our spring dumped on us last night. For serious:

2. Sand the devil callouses off my feet so that they look less hoof-like in sandals.

3. Shave my legs. I have what we Canucks refer to as "insulation" going on, but I don't think anyone's going to be complimenting me on my luxurious fur in Laguna.

4. Find the business cards with my actual name on them, because, believe it or not, I have a name other than Schmutzie!

5. Practice my talk over and over until my voice cracks.

6. Try to rework my talk, because it takes ten minutes to get through, not the seven it's supposed to.

7. Fuss over writing a sentence that ends in a preposition, because procrastination by grammar worry feels productive.

8. Laugh at the men's deodorant in Shoppers Drug Mart. BELIEVE IN YOUR SMELLF:

9. Work on my word enunciation, because maybe I can fit all ten minutes into seven minutes if I speak really fast.

10. Go clothes shopping, because I am still wearing the clothes I bought for BlogHer '10.

11. Launder all of the things.

12. Feel like I'm marching headlong into old age while organizing my vitamins and allergy medication into a days-of-the-week pill organizer.

13. Investigate my suitcase for signs of cat urine, because Onion is an evil bastard who likes to thwart my travel plans.

14. Listen to the whole of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" album at least three times, because repetition is my lorazepam.

15. Pick up American money at the bank.

16. Play dirty words in Scrabble to amuse myself enough to forget my travel anxiety.

17. Feel the old burn of the grudge I hold against my grandmother for that time she wouldn't let me play FUCK on a triple word score for many tens of points.

18. Place a panicked call to my hairdresser. Leave a panicked message when she doesn't pick up. Panic.

19. Practice gelling my unruly sideburns behind my ears.

20. Make both Onion and the Palinode wheeze with extra squeezes, because I'll miss them when I have to sleep without them in my hotel room. The other two cats are being pissants, so they can suck it.

21. Try to keep my cool about the fact that I get to room with the inimitable Suebob.

22. Make sure I have my itinerary handy, because I have to make my way through seven airports on this one trip, and I WILL NOT FAIL.

23. Write extra poetry in advance so that I can keep up with my #365poems project while I'm travelling.

24. Write a prayer tanka while waiting for the herbal anxiety tincture to kick in:

Remember your feet.
They move on assuredly.
They know the way there.
They've borne you since your first year,
and bear what you cannot see.

25. Pack my suitcase.

Grace in Small Things: Sunday Edition #133

2013-04-28T19:19:08Z

The ability to take short but decadent breaks in a hot bath with coffee and a kitty
The dinner party we hosted for the first time after 12 years of being married that was populated by artists and writers and speakers, and why haven't we done this sooner?!
Smelling a freshly opened, new tube of mascara
Mud, because it means that the temperature is above freezing, finally
The cake I am going to sneak for a late breakfast

Wage a battle against embitterment and take part in Grace in Small Things.

The World Has Stories to Tell Us About Ourselves If We Listen For Them

2013-04-25T17:56:17Z

I went to little organic grocery store near my home yesterday to pick up some spinach, avocado, and parsley, because I can't get enough of the green stuff in my smoothies these days.

The trip, which covered no more than two blocks there and back, felt momentous, because it had been a full week since I had left the apartment. A particularly disgusting and painful version of the common cold had anchored me to an armchair, and while I wasn't feeling well at all yet, I needed to acknowledge the land of the living.

While I waited to pay for my groceries, I watched a little boy play with one grandmother in a small children's area outfitted with toys and books while his other grandmother chatted with the cashier.

"We asked him where he wanted to go," she said, "and he told us he wanted to come here!"

"That's so cute," the cashier said.

"This is his favourite place," the grandmother said.

This little boy's favourite place was this grocery store, and I could see why. They made him feel welcome. They gave him a place in it that he was free to use as he pleased. The woman at the sandwich counter sneaked him a chunk of carob. This corner of the grocery store had become his place, too, and he wanted to share it with people he liked.

While watching him, I realized that this is what we all want, really. We want to feel, and actually be, included. We want to be given the freedom to stake our claim to communal spaces and be accepted. And, more than finding acceptance, we want to share our good communal finds with each other and deepen those connections.

This idea, this extended welcome, is behind how I write, design, consult, and speak, but I was unable to find the right words for it until I watched a four-year-old showing his extended family how all the parts of his favourite space worked and why he liked them.

It reminded me to watch the world more closely and the stories it has to tell. Our personal narratives — the very stuff that describes our goals, beliefs, and understanding of who we are — are informed and illuminated by these stories, and they can speak profoundly to us in the smallest, incidental moments.