Hold up your hand at eye level, several inches away, palm towards your face.  Focus on your fingers.  Then slowly move your hand towards your face.  I dare you not to lose focus without your eyes crossing.

That’s how motherhood has been feeling for me lately.

Of the many things I feel I’ve maybe sorta botched in the motherhood department, sometimes I wonder if I have been TOO accessible as a mother.  In wanting my kids to come to me, trust me, confide in me, I’ve failed at drawing clear boundaries that help me to focus and stay clear-headed. 

When I’ve been asked one too many questions or told one too many long-winded stories about the minutea of their day, I end up snapping.  I tell them to scram.  Or I hide in my room.  By the looks on their faces, you’d think they had found the doors locked at the 24hr Walmart.  And I understand their confusion – I tell them they can always come to me, and yet I don’t always want them to come to me.

How do you draw boundaries?  How do you keep things in focus?  How do you let your kids know you are always there for them, but within reason?

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and spent some quality time with them:

I’m leaving things to him:

and hopping on one of these:

and staying here:

(hotel name blacked out - I love you, but not that much)

so I can meet with the folks from:

to learn more about and give my feedback on their online classified service, called:

The whole thing has left me feeling a little like this:

and also very:

I’m still not sure how {I} was chosen to participate in this amazing opportunity alongside 14 other fabulous bloggers and professionals, but I am very VERY excited about it.  I will keep you posted and tell you more as things unfold!

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Reporting 7 people means you use a lot of pages!

Got your Census form in the mail yet?  Fill it out!  Turn it in!  Make it count!

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Having now just finished it, though, I feel like shouting:  I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS BOOK!  Times like this make a booklover crazy there isn’t someone sitting just across the room with whom they can begin discussing the book right away.

Ok, disclaimer for all my fabulous church friends and others sensitive to certain content:  there are a few scenes I would qualify as sexually graphic.  That is typically enough for me to both close the book and then refrain from recommending it to anyone, but I have to say that while it was graphic, it was not what I consider gratuitous.  Meaning, the scenes were few and far between, and were actually relevant to the main character’s experiences.  I’m not sure we would have understood the complexity of what he was going through without them (although I do hope they work some cinematic magic when the movie is made and just imply what happened).  Yeah, yeah, I wouldn’t eat a bowl of soup if there was just one tiny fly in it, whatever.  I’m just trying to give fair warning here.

Here’s the synopsis from the author’s website:

As a young man, Jacob Jankowski was tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It was the early part of the great Depression, and for Jacob, now ninety, the circus world he remembers was both his salvation and a living hell. A veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie.

It was there that he met Marlena, the beautiful equestrian star married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. And he met Rosie, an untrainable elephant who was the great gray hope for this third-rate traveling show. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and, ultimately, it was their only hope for survival.

What no synopsis can tell you is just how magnificent Gruen’s writing is.  How vivid and real she makes Jacob’s world, both in the assisted living facility from where he is narrating this story, to the circus life on the train and under the big top.  Each and every character is finely drawn, complex, almost breathing in sync with the reader.  The story is intense and heartbreaking and hopeful.  Gruen crafts an unexpected ending to the circus tale, and a delightful surprise at the end of Jacob’s present-day.

I honestly felt like cheering when I finished this book.  I loved it!

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Tiffany and Heather, the women behind mega blog The Secret is in the Sauce and organizers of the referenced conference, posted their and others’ responses to the article.  As you can imagine, many bloggers are upset.  They’re upset at the implication that becoming a success in your chosen field necessarily requires ignoring your motherly duties.  They’re upset (and rightly so, I think) about the snarky tone of the article, the nose-in-the-air attitude that blogging in general requires more use of exclamation points and pithy taglines (yes, the author actually used the word “pithy”) than real thought and preparation.  And some are upset that a woman they considered one of “their own” instead unzipped the sheep’s disguise to reveal a much darker intention.

I get why everyone is upset, and I was certainly less than impressed with the article myself.  But you know what?  In the end, I just don’t care.  In fact, I almost feel like the uproar in the blogging community shows why others think we’re so self-absorbed.  We get into these circular, insular patterns of blogging about blogging, blogging about blogging conferences, blogging about what others are saying about blogging.  I’m doing it right now.  But only to say this:  ladies, we know what we’re doing and why.  We know we’re not always pithy, we know we add value, we know we matter.  AND we know we’re good mothers without someone from the New York Times vouching for us.

Take this as one more example of someone who just doesn’t “get it,” and let’s carry on.

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