Note From the Editor

Secrets, love them or hate them we all have them, but the question today is should they be used as blog fodder or not? We all know it is easier to tell things to people you don't know, people whose reactions don't affect your immediate life, but where does the moral line stand with blogs? Is it the same as telling a stranger in a bar?

Should you reveal your secrets, things that you wouldn't tell the real people in your life for fear of hurting them or embarrassing yourself, to your readers? And can they ever be truly anonymous secrets?

If I was to create a blog with no pictures, no real names or real places, wouldn't the people that knew me know it was really me anyway?

Should a friend or family member stumble across your blog and recognise you do they have the right to be upset about what you have written or should blogs come under the same rules as diaries - ie if you read it you have no right to be upset about what you find in it?

Let me know what you think and don't forget, if you have an idea for a blog post on this weeks theme, secrets, simply email me the url and I shall put a link to your blog in the joining in box below.

Feature Post

Confessions of a Multitasking Mom

Written by Mama Zen from The Zen of Motherhood

When I hear the phrase “multitasking mom,” I get an instant mental picture. I picture a smiling, put-together woman exercising on the treadmill, working her Blackberry, and effortlessly wrangling her children, all at the same time. If only I were that cool! Oh, don’t get me wrong; I can multitask like the most Alpha of moms if I have to. It’s just that my best multitasking takes place . . . on the toilet.

That’s right, on the toilet. Since I became a mom, I have learned how to fully utilize my time on the throne. Here are my secrets for making the most out of one’s potty breaks.

Read the full Feature Post...

Oops, I Did it Again.

Written by: BetteJo from A Bead a Day

My dad came into my darkened room and quietly sat on the edge of my bed. He spoke to me but I kept my back to him and refused to acknowledge him.

“I will still be your father. I will come and get you and we will go places and do things together.”

He may have said more but that is all I would remember. I would remember it always as a promise, as the promise. It may as well have floated in sparkly gold letters above my head – it was the promise my dad made me, it would be the promise he would break over and over again.

I loved climbing into my dad’s lap, asking him for bone jarring pony rides or trying to pull out the gray whiskers he would let grow on the weekends. I would sit on the toilet seat and watch him shave at the bathroom sink with something akin to adoration, thrilling in the chase when he would try to gently slap a little of his spicy aftershave onto my cheeks.

My daughter had games she played with her daddy, and many naps taken in his arms. He would take her shopping or on errands with him, or swing her up onto his shoulders so she could be so-o-o-o tall. Saturday morning cartoons were a shared treat for all of them, Daddy and his son and his daughter. They would pile together on the couch and laugh at Pee Wee’s playhouse and tickle and giggle.

I worked the night shift at the time so weekend mornings were Daddy time, as were weeknights. For a few years he was the one to bathe them and spend that snuggly, warm, sleepy time with them before tucking them into bed each night. It seemed ideal that my kids were having so much of their dad’s influence and hands on parenting instead of getting almost all of their nurturing from me. Mom is great after all, but Mom and Dad is better.

There were spaces of time after my parent’s divorce where my dad would call and come by and take me to a picnic, or back to his house for the day. Mostly though, I saw him on weekend mornings when he would come by and hand me the check for my Mom through the screen door. He wouldn’t stay, wouldn’t come in, just give me the check and leave. It didn’t take long for the checks to start coming in the mail and the calls to be fewer and farther between.

It also didn’t take long for the knowledge to settle deep in my heart that I didn’t really matter to my dad. I did not recognize the knowledge, certainly did not verbalize it, but lived with the certainty of it as if that was the logical result of my not being good enough. Because I must not have been good enough if even my daddy couldn’t love me, right?

I married a man who was nothing like my father. I wanted to spare my children the pain and anguish of an absentee dad who was not about to take responsibility for any emotional wounds he may inflict upon my kids. Our kids. Right?

I asked my 21 year old daughter yesterday, whether or not she had responded to her father’s invitation to his upcoming wedding. In her completely logical but heartbreakingly accurate assessment she said;

“I feel no pressure, socially or otherwise, to RSVP to my father’s wedding invitation.”

She continued in her matter of fact way.

“I can’t feel pressure to do something considered to be polite and proper etiquette when he couldn’t be bothered to do something as correct and basic as - to parent.”

I can only hope she will not continue the cycle and unknowingly marry a man just like her father, like I did, after all. And I hope she can forgive me for it.

~*~

BetteJo is a single mom of 2 grown kids who beads and blogs and tries to keep putting one foot in front of the other on a daily basis. She usually succeeds at this. Doing it well, not so much.

Confessions of a Multitasking Mom

Written by Mama Zen from The Zen of Motherhood

When I hear the phrase “multitasking mom,” I get an instant mental picture. I picture a smiling, put-together woman exercising on the treadmill, working her Blackberry, and effortlessly wrangling her children, all at the same time. If only I were that cool! Oh, don’t get me wrong; I can multitask like the most Alpha of moms if I have to. It’s just that my best multitasking takes place . . . on the toilet.

That’s right, on the toilet. Since I became a mom, I have learned how to fully utilize my time on the throne. Here are my secrets for making the most out of one’s potty breaks.

• Think deep thoughts. When else will you have the chance?
“Why can’t there be an end to conflict in the Middle East?”
“Why does the girl at the grocery store keep charging me for zucchini when I’ve clearly got cucumbers?”
“Why didn’t I realize that there was no toilet paper before I sat down?”

• Negotiate peace. This will require you to yell at top volume, so it is also fine exercise for the lungs.
“Baby Puppy, mind your Daddy.”
“Tell Daddy I said it’s OK.”
“I said it’s OK!”

• Direct all household activities. Take a moment to bask in the glow of being needed.
“The Shrek Baby is on top of your dresser. Next to the penguin!”
“There’s a new bag of Cheetos in the pantry.”
“Would one of you, please, let the dog out!”

• Tend to personal grooming.
Clip toenails.
Measure your leg hair (ok, that’s just for fun).
Examine that weird mole thingy on your calf.

• Talk on the phone.
Um, yeah. That “whoosh” sound you heard last time you called? Well, now you know.

These are just a few of the tricks that I use to maximize my “potty productivity.” Finding time to pee? Well, if anyone knows that secret, please clue me in!

When she’s not servicing her man or caring for her four-year-old daughter, Mama Zen can be found blogging at The Zen of Motherhood. That is, if she’s not hiding in the bathroom!

My Uncle Jim

By Omega Mom from 3KidsNoJob

Uncle Jim was a much-loved presence in my childhood. He had a double-honorary title. For a start, he wasn’t a blood relative nor an uncle, but a great-uncle by marriage.

There’d been one child, a little girl called Phoebe, who’d died when she was four. She had fits. She was a little odd. You could see it in the old family photographs where she’d be eyeing the camera doubtfully while her cousins beamed and showed off, big, cartwheeling blurs off to one side.

Uncle Jim and my great-aunt, Mary were devastated. The more so when they became close to a sick neighbour’s little girl and offered to adopt her. At the last moment, the mother recovered and decided to take her back.

But there was no sense of life lived under the shadow of grief. It must have been there, but perhaps they made a conscious effort to pack it away when we came to visit.

They loved us unconditionally, just as they’d loved my mother and her brother when they were growing up. We loved them back. For several years, I’d wake up, go to their room, climb into bed with them and share tea and biscuits with them. Then, one summer, my mother suggested that I was getting a little too big for ‘that sort of thing’.

She said it very gently, but I still felt a sudden pang of what felt very like shame, sensing that I’d been betrayed by my size. Too big and too innocent. I never got into bed with them again.

Uncle Jim had an orchard. I’d ride on the bonnet of his tractor, pick the apples, help load them onto the ancient, creaking conveyor belt that circled the big packing room and dropped them with a gentle flump into the padded compartments, big, medium and small, reading for crating up. It was safe, fun, idyllic, a job description of a child’s perfect holiday.

When I came back from the orchard, I’d often read. There was no shortage of choice. There were antique children’s stories in one bookshelf; my great aunt’s detective and ghost tales next to them and, upstairs, Uncle Jim’s small library.

It was here, one day, that I encountered a small volume I’d never seen before. It seemed to be about children, so I started to read it.

It didn’t take long before it dawned on me that it was not quite what I was expecting. It did feature children having exciting adventures but ones which required adult help of a rather peculiar variety.

I stopped reading and put it back. I felt just as I had done when my mother talked to me about getting into bed with Uncle Jim and Aunt Mary. Shamed. As though reading the book had in some way made me a bad person.

It was this sense of being somehow to blame that made me bury the whole event. I didn’t remember it again until years later, when Uncle Jim was dead and the orchard long since grubbed up to make way for a fine crop of executive houses.

It wasn’t a secret I kept deliberately. And I’ll never now know what lay behind it, if anything. All I do know, though, is that my beloved Uncle Jim remained just that, all the time I knew him – beloved. And I can’t help feeling glad.


Written by Omega Mum. Her blog, 3kidsnojob, takes a mainly wry and optimistic but occasionally bitter and twisted look at life without an income.

Catch Me If You Can

Written by Megan Jordan from Velveteen Mind

You don’t know me. You think you do, but you don’t. And, no, I’m not saying this as I throw a z-snap in an oh-so-Ricki Lake talk show guest kind of way. Rather, simply, you don’t know me.

Sometimes I think you do. But then I surprise you, and your surprise even takes me by surprise. And I realize that you don’t know me.

And I like it that way.

I am full of surprises. I am full of secrets. I am full of mystery.

Okay, maybe I’m not full of mystery, but it’s romantic to think of myself as mysterious. To picture you reading my words and saying to yourself, “I can’t figure her out. I think I have her pegged, but then she brings this to the table.” I adore imagining that I leave you wanting more.

It is my romantic version of myself. And we all need one of those. Just as you think you are about to get your hands on who I really am, just as you think you know all there is to know... I slip away into the mist that is my secrets. That which you don’t know.

Secrets are the spark of life. They are the fuel of the complex character. They are exhilarating and incendiary. They keep you moving, keep you on your toes, as you surreptitiously work to keep them under wraps or drive yourself to resolve them through revelation.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s book, Love in the Time of Cholera, is one of my favorites. A story of unrequited love, it is timeless and passionate and disturbing. The idea that someone could harbor an unreciprocated love for another, for a lifetime, is fascinating. It drove the story in an almost intoxicating manner. In the end, the only way that the love of these two characters could be realized was under secret. Flown under the flag of a feigned cholera epidemic.

Secrets can destroy lives. Secrets can give you reason to live.

My secrets are not as dramatic as that, despite my romantic notions. However, I like to think of them as just as provocative. I recently wrote my 100^th post at Velveteen Mind, acknowledging the milestone with the obligatory 100 Things. I wrote it in a flash, trying to beat the clock before I had to pick up my son from school, publishing it without proofreading and without a second thought. Perhaps I should have thought about it for a second more, because I had surprises of my own waiting for me in my inbox when I returned to my computer.

Comments and emails came trickling in, mostly to the effect of, “I had no idea...” and “I can’t believe you posted that.” My own husband remarked, “Um, you were awfully, well, revealing in that post.”

It was both a thrill to be able to elicit surprise from friends that have known me for years and also a little unsettling that perhaps I had revealed too much. My point, however, was not to write another hum-drum 100 Things detailing my favorite colors and movies, but rather to write something worth reading through 100 lines.

Ultimately, I did not find it particularly controversial, myself, but maybe that is because I was comparing it to what I could reveal to you, but have not. Yet.

I am full of surprises. I am full of secrets. I am full of mystery. If you want more of me, come and touch me, grab my hand, take hold of my heart, my mind, my self... if you can hold me. If you can keep me. If you can catch me.

Megan reveals her secrets, one post at a time, at Velveteen Mind. She’s always up for a game of truth or dare, so throw yourself in the game and see what you can get her to let slip. Given the option, she would always prefer revealing a truth rather than, say, mooning her old lady neighbor.

Music Review: Song of America

This week’s Voices to Hear is going to be a bit different than pervious ones. Instead of one voice to highlight in this week’s column we’re going to talk about an entire album’s worth of voices. The album is Song of America and it features 50 artists different artists. (What? You didn’t think an album would have a MySpace page? Everyone and everything has a MySpace page nowdays.)

If you’ve heard of this album at all it’s due to the identity of the executive producer of the record, Janet Reno. Yes, that Janet Reno, the former Attorney General of the United States. Most of the press has focused on that point, which at least gives it a chance to get out there and maybe be heard.

The genesis of the album started ten years ago when Ed Petterson, a singer-songwriter from Brooklyn New York wrote a song about the American cowboy. He brought the song to his Aunt to listen to. His Aunt just happened to be Janet Reno. She liked the song, but suggested that he should go farther than just one song about one point in America’s history. She suggested that he record a collection of songs that would reflect American’s history.

What they ended up envisioning was a collection of songs that would trace the events that shaped our nation’s history. The album became a collection that could be used as a tool to help teach the youth of our country about their history through song. The album was divided into five broad themes from America’s history:
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
War and Peace
Work
Families at Home and on the Move
Faith and Ideals

The performers interpreted these songs in their own style for the listeners of today. In some ways it was the same idea that was behind Wilco and Billy Bragg’s updating of Woody Guthrie song’s from Mermaid Avenue. They took the words but made the music their own.

The performers came from all sorts of musical genres. The album opens with a Lakota Indian song and ends with a Woody Guthrie song. To list all the performers on this album would stretch this column out too long, but such performers as The Blind Boys of Alabama, John Wesley Harding, Freedy Johnston, Marah, Janis Ian, Elizabeth Cook, John Mellencamp, Old Crow Medicine Show and a host of others. In keeping with the theme of this column almost all of the performers were not well known. John Mellencamp is probably the biggest name on the album.

The album is divided into three cds: red, white and blue. The red disc starts with songs from the American Revolution and each disc moves the songs through the history of our country. Some of the songs on these two discs you’ve probably heard a million times and may not have thought of since you were in school. Harper Simon (Paul Simon’s son) does a version of Yankee Doodle, The Mavericks do Dixie, Joni Harms does Home On The Range. The blue disc brings us up to the modern era and has songs that most listeners will be more familiar with, at least from radio. This disc has Kim Richey doing the Rascals “Get Together,” Anthony David doing Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” Martha Wainwright doing Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” Only one artist is represented by two songs on the album, Bruce Springsteen: Matthew Ryan does “Youngstown” and Bettye LaVette does “Streets of Philadelphia.”

This is one of those albums that I was absolutely fascinated with, after listening to it it will make you proud to be an American. And it does it without resorting to the sort of jingo posturing you usually find in these type of projects.

As one final note, with the kind permission of Miss Heather, I’m going to include two songs with this column. There was so much great stuff to chose from it was a really tough decision, but I went with both ends of the timeline. The first song is Harper Simon’s “Yankee Doodle” and the second song is a heart breaking rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bettye LaVette. But I could have easily picked any of the other forty eight songs to showcase, they’re all that good.

Harper Simon "Yankee Doodle"


Bettye LaVette "Streets of Philadelphia"