Things I did on my summer vacation this weekend that I rarely do either due to discomfort or lack of opportunity:

• Put on eye shadow. I’m not sure I can tell you the last time I wore eyeshadow.
• I broke out blazers because there was no one to puke on me.
• Dangling earrings!  No one to pull on them.
• I sat my ass down at a table full of strangers for the morning session and lunch on Saturday despite knowing I could seek the safe (and quite enjoyable) company of my Nashville peeps.
• I danced in public.  Sober.  Hell, I danced with White Trash Mom.  Okay, maybe not with her – but near her.  I didn’t know who she was until I saw the photos later and someone named the people in them.
• I asked Jen Lancaster to do me a little favor.  Yes, bloggess/author extraordinaire, Bitter is the New Black, Jen Lancaster.
• Handed out some of my silly blog “business” cards.
• I called Chris Mann a hawtie on Twitter.  I’m such a dork.  (I think that is the equivalent of calling and hanging up back in the day.)  But he really is.  And he is really charming and can sing like you woudn’t believe.  There were 250 married women crushing hard on him.  He almost lost me when he said he respected mom-prenuers because his mom is one too and I was all “Is he comparing us to his mom?” but he was funny enough I forgave him.
• I was briefly a “Woooo!” girl (if you don’t watch HIMYM you likely won’t get that reference) during Chris Mann’s performance.
• I talked to my girl crush from last Blissdom.  She knew who I was and didn’t seem creeped out so my blog/twitter stalking must have stayed below the restraining order level.
• I asked a question on a microphone during a session.  I tend to avoid such things since Mrs. Salapack told me I wasn’t allowed to ask more than 3 questions a day in the 3rd grade.  I stiffled my public curiousity from that day forward.
• Didn’t roll my eyes at the Wal-Mart mentions and even managed to give them mental props for having a social media guy.  (I don’t tend to be a big fan of them.  And don’t talk to me about them owning Sam’s Club because I love Sam’s Club.)
• Ate so many 100 calorie Little Debbie snacks that the 100 calorie part became moot.

Next up, I might actually talk about the conference.

Blissdom this weekend was a great time.  First thing in the door we were handed some lovely swag bags.  The bags themselves were swag!

We all know that Lands’ End makes the best canvas totes.  They supplied them in pink and a coupon for free shipping if we want to order something else.  Thanks Lands’ End!

Everytime I surf their site, I want to move to the beach, ride a bike everywhere and carry everything in a nifty canvas bag with a sweater tied around my shoulders.  Anyone else? No? Just me?

There were all sorts of other goodies in there too.

A reusable grocery bag from Walmart.  Did you know that Walmart has a person devoted entirely to managing their social media interactions?  I didn’t either!  Apparently, Walmart “gets it” that bloggers and Twitter users and Facebook users have the power to influence a large number of others.  I give them props for that.  Anywhoo, he was there and I have to say he seemed like a neat guy.

Crocs provided the lanyards for our name tags and a $50 gift certificate for each attendee. I’m loving these but probably more likely to go with this or that.

If you see the bright green lanyard…you might be able to see that I actually had blog cards made – they had my header and email/blog info.  I felt like a fraud ordering them and considering the minimum was 250, I have about 200+ left.  But Vista Print rocks and they cost less than $10.  All the cool kids had them so I was glad I could whip my own card out when someone asked.  No that has nothing to do with the swag bags but I had to tell you all about my silly little cards.

Chris Mann, who is a serious hottie with some serious pipes, provided a preview CD with a couple of his songs. He even has a blog and has been twittering with attendees for the past couple of weeks.

Sony Music provided us with the soundtrack from “He’s Just Not That Into You” (anyone see this yet? looks really like fun from the previews).  And to be honest, I assume the CD is from them – no one told me that for sure so if I am wrong, sorry!

Not pictured because I have no idea what might possibly have happened to it, is a box of Little Debbie 100 calorie snacks.  I want to talk more about these another in case anyone is curious but let me say that the chocolate cake ones rock!  Serious yum.

Other sponsors were Geek Squad (still not speaking to them after my laptop issues so I refuse to link – but I might dislike them a little less after this weekend), Care.com (which I need to check out…hooks you up with babysitters, pet sitters, housekeepers, and tutors based on zip code – they give you back ground check info, prescreening questions, reference checks…sounds worth looking at more closely), New Line Records (website is nothing but their name on my screen but maybe I’m missing something), RGM (ad network – an alternative to Blogher and Adsense), Blue House Blog, and Lijit (I’m a little unclear about this…need to read more…a search engine for your blog is my understanding).

So there is a little sponsor love because we all loved our swag and the less tangible good stuff sponsors provided to keep the cost of Blissdom down so that it would be affordable for all.

I have so much more to tell.  This week, I’ll tell you all about how Jen Lancaster and I are totally BFFs now, all of the things I did that were outside of my comfort zone, more about the guy 250 married women were crushing on, how I sat next to someone from the burgh who knows my hubby and SIL, oh and the actual conference and what I learned.

I’m at Blissdom ’09 this weekend struggling to start conversations without a small cute child to use as a social crutch.  It is much harder than I remember.  I used to even be kind of good at it.  Socially awkward would be the phrase of the day!

I’ll be back next week with all sorts of pithy comments about things I observed while lurking in dark corners or standing uncomfortably on the fringes of groups or spending a questionable amount of time in the ladies room to avoid standing alone during breaks between sessions.  Or I could take a flask and be the hit of the party!

First – go see MizFit and leave her a comment.  For every comment between now and Christmas Eve she is donating to her local Domestic Violence Shelter.  That’s good stuff people.

Okay now on with my rambling for the day.  I went to a cookie exchange last night.  It was a moms club event scheduled late enough so as to discourage the attendance of children.  I returned home with this:

There are some yummy things on that plate.  Chocolate cookies with Andes chips?  Better than Thin Mints! Something called dirty snow balls that involve oreos and cream cheese and taste much better than they sound.  Mandel bread which is apparently a Jewish Biscotti and quite yummy because it is softer than traditional biscotti.  And one of my favorites: snickerdoodles.

But last night did more than provide us with better cookies than I can bake myself.  I’ve been feeling a little out of sorts.  I guess it was because I haven’t been getting out enough.  I haven’t been able to get the kids schedules coordinated enough to make it to many of the moms club events.  For various reasons, I’ve missed my book club every month since June.  I was starting to feel like a big old mom blob.  Last night, I laughed and joked and talked with other grown ups about things other than poop.  It was lovely.  It felt like a little infusion of the old me.  And yet again I will say I need to do that more often.

Meredith was crazy enough kind enough to invite a couple of moms and small children over to decorate Christmas cookies.  I was lucky enough to be included in that invitation.  We basically turned the kiddos loose in Meredith’s family room with cookies, icing, and color sugar.  But the kids had fun and Sabrina managed to get almost as much sugar on the cookies as she consumed.

Tessa was draped in velvet and quite indignant about not getting to taste the cookies.

Sabrina’s sugar crash after 2 cookies, 2 lbs of colored sugar, and who knows how much icing licked off her fingers.

She perked up briefly for a snack at home and then crashed again.  It is a rare day that sees the car nap followed by a real one.

Tessa spent her time figuring out how to use both her hands and feet to play with the toy bar on her bouncy seat.

Thank you Meredith and I can’t believe I didn’t stick around to help clean up but perhaps saving you from witnessing the sugar peak and then crash was more helpful than wielding a dustpan.  And despite her behavior at your house, she talked non stop for the rest of the day.

When we moved to this suburb in May, I gleefully went to check out the brand spanking new Super Target.  It was the first store open in a new plaza being built.  The only entrance to this plaza is a traffic circle.  I told my husband that I anticipated the circle would be quite ugly once the plaza was full and traffic increased.  In this area, traffic circles are not often seen and I assumed it would cause some angst for nervous drivers.  Angst is the least of our concerns.  People can not figure out how to negotiate this simple circle.  They had to publish directions in the newspaper a couple of weeks ago and people still can’t figure it out. I’ll admit I think designing the entrance as a traffic circle was flat out stupid but I am amazed that it flummoxes everyone to the degree it does.

It is a pretty simple circle.  There are 4 off shoots – 1 to the right of the plaza, 1 in to the center, 1 to the left, and 1 to exit the plaza back onto Main Street.  Often when, someone stops dead in the middle of the circle staring like a deer in headlights.  They just don’t know what to do.  Others stop because they don’t understand that they have the right of way over those entering the circle from the spokes.  That is bad but worse are the people who don’t understand that all traffic circles work on the principle of 1 way traffic.  I’ve seen half a dozen people drive the wrong way trying to exit the circle.  I’m thinking of petitioning the TN institute an IQ requirement for drivers licenses – or at least one to enter our Target plaza.

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Tessa slept through the night for the first time in 6 weeks.  I’ve never been so happy to wake up and see the numbers 5:30 on my clock before.

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Proof my baby is growing up – this outfit used to be long sleeves and long pants:

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I made dinner for one of my mom’s club friends last night.  (When someone has a new baby, we sign up to provide some meals.)  I decided to try a new recipe from my Cooking Light magazine.  I realized afterward that perhaps I should have tried the recipe before inflicting it upon someone else.  Fortunately it was quite yummy (I also made it for us for dinner).  It was a quick and easy meal so I’ll share it.

Chicken and Basil Calzones

Cooking spray

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 lb ground chicken breast

3/4 cup prepared pizza sauce

1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper

1/4 cup chopped fresh basil

1 (13.8 oz) can refrigerated pizza crust dough

1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

(I reduced chicken to 3/4 lb and added 8 oz of mushrooms, 1/4 cup finely diced onion, and a few tablespoons of red wine)

Preheat oven to 425.

Saute chicken, onion, garlic and mushrooms until chicken is no longer pink.  Stir in pizza sauce (and wine) and red pepper.  Simmer for 5 min.  Remove from heat and stir in basil.  Let cool for 10 min.

Coat baking sheet with cooking spray.  Unroll pizza dough.  Cut into quarters.  Pat each quarter into 8×6 rectangle.  Divide chicken mixture evenly between the quarters.  Top with cheese.  Fold dough over and seal edges by pressing together.  Bake 12 minutes.

For me.  I need a responsible adult who will listen to my plans for the day and then smack me.  My moms club decided to have a zoo outing today.  I thought that sounded great despite my exhausted, frazzled state.  I thought that Tessa would sleep through it despite the fact that she is determined the prove the books wrong – she don’t need no stinking 16 hours of sleep per day.  And I thought Sabrina would have fun despite her spectacular need to be very 2 right now.

Want to guess who enjoyed this beautiful fall day at the zoo? (Fall – pffft – it is 76 degrees here today.)

Perhaps Tessa?

Nope.  She screamed from the moment we walked through the gates until we stepped foot into the parking lot to find the car at which time she promptly fell asleep.

Sabrina?

Wrong again.  She spent the entire 2 hours whining for fruit snacks and crackers because she equates the stroller with the snacks I used to keep her quiet during 9 months of doctors appointments while I was pregnant.

Perhaps I enjoyed walking through the lovely zoo in this wonderful weather?

Does this look like the face of a happy momma?  No.  This is a mom who is vowing to not leave the house with both children again until April.

I think perhaps the animals were enjoying the day.  The giraffe kept coming closer – I think he wanted to see what that screeching was coming from the stroller.

And the elephant seemed to be enjoying a nice drink of water.

Today was one of those days where they are lucky to be so cute.  I think we will not get more ambitious than the grocery store for the foreseeable future.

How lucky am I?  I live in the same area as so many cool bloggers!  Yesterday, I got to hang out with Malia, Lotus, and Alli – neener, neener, neener.  And!  We all took our cute kiddos to the zoo.

Sabrina was so much more fun at the zoo than she was last year.  She was making animal noises and she was quite enchanted with Alli’s older boys.  The trip to the zoo instilled some sense of urgency surrounding the purchase of a double stroller.  It was a little warm to have Tessa strapped to my chest for 3 hours.  But it was a nice morning.  I so rarely get to hang out with other moms that I like so much!

Lotus was crushing on the babies:

Sabrina is so serious until she feels comfortable with new people/situations:

Sabrina and Braden both had fun meowing at the Meerkats.

Sabrina wanted to do sit ups because Alli’s son was doing them. (Her boys are great with other kids!)

And a gratuitous photo of Tessa from the weekend (although Lotus does have a couple of her from yesterday on her blog)

The picnic in May was a lot of fun so we are on for October!

October 25, 2008
2pm – 6pm
River Park, Concord Rd, Brentwood, TN
Bring a covered dish, plates and utensils for your family

Feel free to bring balls or bubbles or other amusements for the kids.  Or not!

All adoptive families are welcome.  We had originally talked about the weekend before for the picnic but I couldn’t find a park shelter available for reservation that date and I ended up having another commitment that date.  I can’t wait to see everyone from the previous picnic and hope to meet some new families too!

If you live in the general vicinity of Nashville and were bummed that the Nashville BlogHer out reach day was canceled, you might be interested in Blissdom ’08. I don’t know the details but it is certain to be a fun and information packed venue to meet other women bloggers.  Check it out here.