Nashville

I’m in a hotel in Nashville, ready to immerse myself in the Blissdom conference, and chatting away with my awesome and lovely roommate. Yesterday the schmoozing and meeting and greeting already began, the standing around in awkward circles offering up your elevator pitch to other folks, me telling people about the company I’m here representing while also telling them about my blog. The community at blogging conferences is rather unique; we think nothing of checking our phones while we’re talking, or typing on our laptops while we chat. People find us rather strange.

I won’t lie, I’m happy to be here. I needed a break from the chaos at home. I feel awful that I’ve left Charlie home alone to deal with the messes, both literal and figurative, that I’m blissfully (pun totally intended) free of right now. Yesterday my activity list was rather small and I was able to grab a few hours alone in my room, watching episodes of Downton Abbey while I lay on a bed alone in the dark.

I feel remarkably refreshed already.

The very first thing I want to do this summer once this heavy financial burden is off our shoulders (in large part, anyway) is find a way to go somewhere alone with Charlie. He’s been near miraculous in all this drama, accepting my mother living with us with incredible grace and kindness. He’s folded her into his list of people he takes care of, doing little things like filling her gas tank and making sure her mail doesn’t get lost. His kindness is incredible. I want him to get an opportunity to fill his personal gas tank the way I did mine yesterday.

He needs it too.

I’ll be spending all my new energy in the next couple of days. These conferences are a crazy mix of girl’s night out and non-stop work. I know many of the women here, of course, which is great fun, but we also are all talking very seriously about the issues that surround mom blogging (yes, there are serious things surrounding it, it is a business for lots of folks and business is, well, business). It’s exhausting to constantly code-switch between topics and behaviors (I know, WOE IS ME, heh).

But I will also get to have amazing dinners with tables full of amazing women that make me laugh and love and fill my heart with joy. It’s why I attend these things so willingly. Plus, it’s Nashville! It’s warm here, and lovely. And someone brought me breakfast while I was still in my nightgown (thanks, Leah, for treating me to room service!). What do I have to complain about?

Enjoy your day, lovelies. I hope the sun is shining on you.

The ad above is for my new employer. I’d be thrilled if you’d click over and check out the site (and sign up to be notified when the beta goes live!). AboutOne is about having all your info in one place – stored in the cloud. The company was started when our CEO Joanne Lang found herself with her son at the emergency room without access to his medication info. With AboutOne, you can access that information on your phone (our apps will be launching soon, starting with the Windows Phone app in March). Do you know where your kid’s vaccine records are? How about your most recent receipts from that time the plumber had to come? How about storing your kid’s artwork? You can easily use AboutOne to do all of that and more, like create family newsletters. AboutOne works with your existing contacts and other information, too, so it’s easy to integrate it into your current organizing systems. So there you go, end of commercial. Since AboutOne has sent me to this conference, it’s only fair that I tell you about them, yes?