This is how you know you are a true Rockin' Blogger

First, a blogger who you bow down to her for her giftedness, poise, clever humor and kind ways, political rabble-rousing and poignant personal insights, hands you the Rockin' Blogger trophy.

Second, you smile, curtsy and thank God, the scads of people crowded around laptops and clamoring to read your next post your one lovely and occasionally-employed faithful reader (thanks, mom), and the people in the balcony (can people cheer from some kind of virtual balcony...outside Second Life, that is?) and your agent, pimp or fabulous friends across the country who send you emails that say, "I am bossy and I say you must blog this."

Next, you do a little happy dance, or as much as you can in clicky-clicky shoes after years of doing more dancing to the Fruit Salad Salsa than anything with an uh-uh-uhhhh groove that drives you and twelve grrrlfriends to the closest platform/counter top/keg stand. The happy and dancing are firmly rooted in annihilating the bullshit that you would have just been happy to be nominated. Oh, and that the Rockin' Blogger award perfectly matches the decor and so no rearranging or designer hiring will need to be done to accommodate it in your sidebar.

Fourth, you get home, change out of your red carpet finery and into the comfort of yoga pants still well-shaped by your body print, and prepare to share your award with the world. Or at least that one reader.

Then, you stare at your laptop for fifteen solid minutes, trying to figure out how the hell to get that award on your blog without the benefit of an X-acto knife and spray adhesive.  Following this torment, you fire off eight to ten pleading emails to anyone who might listen and respond with kindergarten-level instructions on how to make the pretty badge appear easily.

Next up, the waiting. The breaks to play Scrabulous with seven strangers and your pastor on Facebook, interrupted only by ten to twelve flips over to check any possible email response in between plays.

Finally, the instructions come from someone benevolent and blissfully techied-out. This is followed by a surge of excitement that indeed, you can and will get this mothah after all. Tiny pause to curtsy to reflection of self in laptop screen, then many more minutes trying to work out the "simple" instructions like some God-awful algebra-trig midterm problem (Merciful Isis, please send Lil E a math tutor and the small fortune it will cost to keep her employ as long as necessary for grades, confidence and mama-sanity).

Add to that a rallying cry of you-can-do-eet-ness and many, many irritating attempts to manage, configure, publish, check and republish the fucking award. Curse the instructions. Curse the award. Curse the giver of the award. Curse its adorable pinkness which demands its presence on the blog in the first place. Curse your own rockin'-ness.

And then, by the good graces of the sometimes-forgiving internets and the energies of all the other Rockin' Bloggers out there, something works and the bad grrrl makes it up on the sidebar. You have no idea what you actually did to make the difference and get it there, but baby, it is there. Like a bright and shining beacon. Like a wink and a smile. Like an Oscar above the crappy black and white TV with four channel reception.

You refresh once, twice, three times, just to make sure you aren't dreaming up your success. Just to make sure it stays. You aren't and it does.

And you know what? None of that work and frustration matters. Because that little pink sweetness is just one small reminder of the women you admire, the writers you connect to and the blog that you have that is, like you, right where it needs to be.

Up next, I share the love with my own nominations (and a nice little swag bag with the steps to put that badge up) or the Rockin' Blogger award.

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Not wireless, but at least walking

Yesterday, we said a sad goodbye to the milfivan. I had one last listen to the Coffee House station and celebrity shuffle show (who knew Nick Rhodes is so into Michael Jackson?) while I transferred the car seat back to my mom's car, gathered up the seeds from a dried and spikey pod Lil E found and delivered to me proudly, and checked under the seat for any precious parking meter quarters I may have dropped or lip gloss I'd be frantically searching for over the course of YEARS before I gave up completely.

While we never mastered the wireless headphones and only spent four soundless minutes with satellite TV on-screen, and while I am not sure I could negotiate who I am and where I am at this point in time with (the few) remaining visions of vandom I have parked in my mind, we had a very nice ride this last week.

Now we are back to sharing cars and arranging rides, which is fine, just a bit more logistical and a tad less technoboombalottie.  It also means that we will unfold the stroller and put those much smaller wheels to the streets as Lil E and I head ten blocks over to our own neighborhood for music class and playgroup and maybe even some time at the park we've been away from these past few weeks.

I have to say, I am looking forward to that walking. I'm not at all inconvenienced -- other than the out-the-door rush to fill up the snack packs and sippy cups and find coats and paci and the baby doll and just a few trucks in case we happen upon some good dirt to scoop and drive in -- by getting out in the open for a while, stretching my legs and not worrying one bit about the sound coming through the headphones.

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Mama votes. And talks. Radical, mais non?

Have I mentioned I'm slightly obsessed with the presidential election? I say slightly because I'm cruising Perez Hilton and then skimming the NYT, but trust a mama, the obsessed part has its own special place in conversation.

A few months ago, I gave a ride to a friend of mine -- a very gifted and brilliant woman who can whip any nonprofit or committee into shape in the timeframe of one well-agendaed meeting -- and during our trip from Lincoln Park to the West Loop, we talked politics. We talked at length about the candidates and what an exciting time in history (not to mention herstory it is...yep, that's for you, feministas). We were on a roll. That is, until I told her that I really just want to ask everyone I know who they are voting for and why.

Then, the sounds of the radio filled the car as a great, big awkward pause swelled up around the two of us.

"Well," she said with that fundraiser smile I know very well, "I am not sure most people are willing to admit that."

I got it. I'd hit my limit with my friend. She wasn't going to give up her endorsement, which is fine.  And on the slight chance it is someone other than the Dynamic Democratic Trio (I shudder to think), then I probably didn't want to hear the story of that vote anyway.

What strikes me, though, is what a vital vote this is, especially for women. Especially for women who care about reproductive justice and the war and little baby penguins floating away on the one ice cap left in the artic. For that reason, I think it is educational and exciting and important for us to understand why our grrrls are voting for the candidate they want to vote for, and even moreso, for us to continually define and voice that choice for ourselves.

For me, the truth is, my vote is not yet decided. I'm leaning, like many other women I know, toward Edwards, but I am still very open and attentive to Bar and Hill.

In the meantime, when my friends refuse to talk, at least I know I can turn to my grrrl Madeline, now stepping up as Political Nanny on Babble (go on, mama).  Join me there -- or in my car or at the 'bucks or at playgroup or wherever -- to talk about how we mamas are going to get our vote on.

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