Monday Blog Tour: I'm with the band

I've never participated in a blog roundup before, but it sounds fairly Texan so I guess maybe I should. Last week Jolie from The Gray Matters invited me to be a part of a Monday Blog Tour, and I accepted. As far as I know, this is Monday, although it is summer and all of the days are a blur of all the things that all the other days are a blur of. I would be more specific, but I don't know what I do all day.

What are you working on? 
Currently I'm working on a lukewarm cup of chai tea and a Seinfeld marathon. Also I am doing a few part time jobs online, and in my spare time I parent. In my dreams, I'm writing a book, although it's just a skeleton of ideas, desperate hopes, lame jokes and duct tape. 

How does my work differ from others in its genre?
Well, for one thing I would have a difficulty placing myself in a genre. I mean, I guess I'm a mommyblogger, a faith based mommyblogger, but when I hear genre I just think "Well, I'm definitely not Euro-pop-dance-metal."

One difference, I think, is my need to celebrate, not mediocrity, per se, but normalcy. I love telling the stories of the field trip fails, the cake fails, the stumbling drunken-monkey attempts at parenting. I wouldn't say I have an aversion to excellence, it's just I really want to avoid the glossy Instagram-filtered dreamscape that is prevalent. We're all doing slightly less than our best, and we need grace. There's joy in the imperfect, there's success in the failed attempts.


Why do I write what I do? 

I started blogging because I was on bedrest with a difficult pregnancy and I didn't want to talk on the phone. I mean, I never want to talk on the phone, ever. But specifically when the pastor or a great-aunt needed the deets about my cervix, the appeal of typing words to the world in general got super... appealing. 

Over the years, I have realized I write to make sense of life, or to make fun of life. When I write the story of the chaos and the crisis and I find a way to make you laugh at that, I end up laughing too. And then when it hits the fan over at your place, maybe you can think, "She lived through this, I can live through this." I want to make life relatable, the life and the world we all share. I rarely experience something that I don't think, "other people know how this feels, a lot of people". I have learned we are vastly different but so much the same. 

How does my writing process work? 

Somebody figure this out and get back to me. As far as I can tell, I just live my life, funny things happen, and I let my kids play video games and eat peanut butter off the floor so I can write it down. I have stronger than a sneaking suspicion that the process should involve effort and discipline, but that's maybe why there's no book yet. 

Who's next?

This is where this experiment starts feeling a little like a multi-level marketing deal where I hit up my pals for a great opportunity, but, shoot. I'd like to draw your attention to my online pal Katey over at Sweet Goings, who I have never met in real life but feel super bonded to through crisis pregnancies and genius children, and my new friend Sara at Every Bitter Thing is Sweet, because she is a poet-about-real-life and a visionary who I like so much, and also because she complimented me last night at a wedding, or at least I think she did, but the music was pretty loud.