7 women I can't wait to see at BlogHer

Last year, there was a big old Shine shabang at BlogHer and it was phenomenal to see the women lined up to share their own stories of transformation that became many, many inspirational videos for the You. Reinvented program. This year, I'll be there on my own -- no video crew, professional hosts, make-up artists and gorgeous white leather ottomans. As much as I will miss that spotlight shining down on dozens of women being filmed, I am so grateful to be fully present to meet up with women I know and only see a few times a year and to meet others for the very first time.

Here are the ladies who've made my checklist for BlogHer '11, just a few short hours away:

Mommyfriend's a sweetie-pie looking blond mama who really truly sang the words "punk ass trippin but it's alllllllllllriiiight" on a vlog post today. See now why we need to meet in person? Oh yeah, and when I texted her the first time, she sent me back a photo of a hot pair of red patent leather sandals and apologized profusely for her unpainted toes, which just means I will be running into her arms as soon as I spy her across the gigantor exhibit hall of squealing bloggy ladies.

Amy from Using Our Words is delightful, wise, and somehow wrangles two boys and baby girls with grace, laughter and enough time to actually leave comments on other bloggers' posts. Crazy, right? She is the mama with the good advice who isn't afraid to say screw it and host her own DIY daycamp in the backyard.

Lindsay from Suburban Turmoil and Clever Girl Cat from Wishbone Clover and I saw a lot of sites together in New Orleans a few months ago at Mom 2.0. But it was when Lindsay leaned her pretty-dress self over a pirate bar with lots of uh-uh-uh music and video poker machines blaring and politely ordered us "three Purple Voodoo drinks...with extra voodoo, please!" that the very corners of the love triangle were sealed. I am not sure how much voodoo exists in San Diego, but I am quite sure that if Cat, Lindsay and I are ever alone together on cobblestone streets, we shall find it and drink as much of it as we can possibly ingest (which in the case of the New Orleans grape booze slushy, totalled about an inch each).

Lia from Mama Starting Over. As it goes, some of us become single mamas in the time between blogging conferences. After heart-to-heart IMs, emailed check-ins, and advice poured back and forth on Facebook, I am really looking forward to giving my lady Lia a wink and a smile in person.

Karen from Chookooloonks is a woman on a mission and I am sure she will be incredibly busy at BlogHer. But I loved connecting with her when we sat on a panel together at Mom 2.0 so much that I will be very happy just to wave at her from my seat ten rows away at a session where she is undoubtedly speaking again. Some women just make you want to be better by being around and I do think Karen's one of those ladies.

Charlene from CrazedParent. OK, this is a cheat because Charlene's been one of my closest bloggy lady friends practically since the beginning of all blog time. Also, I had dinner with her a couple of months ago and we've been on a texting frenzy this whole week. But it has been two years since I was at a conference with Char, lots has happened for both of since then, and I know we will rile up something fabulous or hilarious or completely life-changing or all three while we're there together.

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Sassy Single Mom Style: Ban on shoes. And clothes (I KNOW)

If one can define an online shopping problem as regularly getting packages from deal sites and not having any real clue what's inside, then I may have needed a meeting. Or four. I could acknowledge it was time to slow down on buying cute little cocktail dresses and deliciously high heels, particularly since I walk into work every morning (in my dining room) and kick off my shoes and unzip my cocktail dress. Life online (and later, carpooling or at the playground or slaving over a half-empty coffee pot) just doesn't require more than twelve fancy dresses and 125 pairs of shoes fit for a whore. It was time to do something.

And then I booked a trip -- one I am thinking of as an amazing adventure for a single mama and her exctied boy that will possibly cost as much as Lil E's future student loans. The one-two hits of airfare and hotel made me wonder how many flights to tropical islands I have in as-yet unworn online purchases. The final punch came in a brown box delivered by the nice UPS guy in knee highs who always has a smile and sweaty upper lip.

What was in it? I had no idea.

Sadly, it wasn't a last little treasure. It was an orange eyelet sundress that makes my body look like my granny's davenport. I called a ban on buying, right then and there and for two months or more until our vacation has come and gone, any clothes or shoes for myself.

I stopped opening the deal emails. I stopped even entertaining the idea of friends and families sales. I just stopped.

Honestly, the withdrawal hasn't been that bad. I have a packed-full closet and shoes tucked into every corner of my room. While the idea of "shopping my closet" makes me shudder, I can deal with pulling out tops and wedge sandals and formal gowns I haven't worn in a while and enjoying them all over again. Or at least just seeing what they look like with a different belt or while I'm ordering a latte (pa-dow!).

I don't know exactly how much I've saved, haven't tallied the figures quite yet. I'm not completely cured or anything crazy like that. But I feel better and I'm not scrounging for hangers.

Just in case the message hadn't yet hit home, just in case I was beginning to slip, I decided to finally pack up the orange couch dress and send it back today. When I clicked on the shopping site that has been like the sketch guy always hanging out on the corner by the 7-11, I saw that my time for returning it was up. And so I am stuck with the dress.

If you see me at BlogHer or walking island beaches in the next few months, you might not realize my outfit's recycled. But you won't miss me at all. I'll be the one slipcovered in orange eyelet.

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His first attempt at fake shaving

He got his first shaving kit a couple of Christmases ago. It came from a neighbor, not an antiqued silver set with a badger brush all tucked in a velvet-lined box, but the plastic kind emblazoned with Lightning McQueen and including strawberry fluoride smelling shaving cream and all enveloped in and impossible-to-open molded plastic casing and wrapped in Mickey Mouse paper. I thought it seemed cute. He wasn't interested.

And then I cleaned out the cabinets under the bathroom sinks, found the box, and placed it on the edge of the tub for Lil E to see. That simple clearing of clutter coincided with an interest in shaving -- not of man faces or even his dad, but of lady stuffs and particularly arm pits.

He is fascinated by who chooses to have clean-shaven underarms and why that mostly seems to be women. Since it is just Lil E and me most of the time, the business of being a lady doesn't faze him. He's used to it. There's evidence of it in many corners, drawers and conversations in our home. It's strange then to catch him staring off, squinty-eyed and wheels clearly turning, only for him to confess he's cranking away on who decided women should shave under their arms and men shouldn't and why "the ladies don't want the tickly stuff that's kind of fun to feel under there" and if they didn't shave, if all that hair would get crazy out of control in some kind of zombie or closet-hiding monster.

Pit perseveration, it's the really good stuff of six-year olds, I guess.

Given that's where his head has been, it surprised me that when he finally chose to unwrap the bladeless razor and test it out on his baby-soft skin, that it went on his face. Of course, he's seen his dad shave on many occasions. But according to Lil E, he's still using the same electric razor method he did during all of the years I knew him. I'm not sure where he learned to lather up or if it was just some kind of mysterious testosterone instinct at work, but there was no question that if he was going to be fake shaving, it would be across his cheeks and shimmying over his lip and carefully rounding his tiny cleft chin.

I had to help him a bit, showing him how to turn the little mountain of pink goop from the Lightning McQueen spray can into a cloud of cream in his palm. He looked in the mirror I pulled out for him while I helped smooth it out where one day, sideburns will be. Then I placed my hand over his hand over the hollow razor and gently pulled down and swept up, showing him the rhythm I've seen the men in my life do a million times. The one I hadn't yet been able to imagine my own boy doing one day years from now. Certainly not one I expected to show him.

He shaved his perfect, sunkissed, sweet face clean. He beamed a big, proud smile at himself in the mirror and then at me, his dimples etched out under the last remaining lines of shaving cream.

He will forget this moment, I imagine. And when the time comes for real, he will scoff at his mother, giggling or maybe even weepy to see him skimming his face to shave away errant bits of fuzz. He may keep wondering about the things women do and the rituals ascribed to gender, and perhaps will choose to follow his father's way with the electric razor rather than using blades. Real blades.

Even as the images of those future shaves flashed through my mind, I let myself believe that it is all very far away even though I know, we all know, that of course it isn't.

Then, because he is six and his face and his confidence and feeling about himself were all smoother than ever from fake shaving, he did something else I didn't expect.

He swiftly poured out a palm full of shaving cream, lathered it up and smeared it all over his....chest.

"Do men or ladies ever shave all the crazy hair off of their chest?" He said it more as a statement of enthusiasm than a question. I answered anyway.

"Well, yes." I said. "Some men do shave their chests."

I was trying not to burst the bubble of his squeaky-clean confidence by laughing and it wasn't easy.

"GOOD! Because I am probably going to be super hairy like Daddy and when I am a man, I am really going to have to take care of that!"

And with that, he pulled and swept that little red plastic razor up and down his concave first-grader chest and arond his half-outty belly button and right up to his clavicle.

If I would have turned to grab a washcloth or wipe up a puddle of water outside the tub, I might have missed it -- the moment when he came to his armpits, the briefest blip in his fake shaving time, when he paused, processed, decided something I'm guessing has to do with being a real guy who shaves his chest but stops short at turning his underarms into something ladylike, who draws some kind of internal line between swiping the chest and face clean and getting all grunty about the gender division of stubbly bits, and then chooses to leave them as is, opts to let that super hairy, crazy, tickly  zombie stuff shine like an emblem of his someday, future, please-God-faraway manhood.

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