Ch-ch-ch-ch-CHANGES!

Bear with me, ladies and gents. I am in the midst of making the move to a self-hosted website! I have so much to share, but haven’t had the time to share it.

While I’m composing all kinds of new posts, please check out a few recent posts I’ve written that have been on some of my favourite sites, if you missed them when I posted them on my Facebook page:

30 Thoughts During My First Post Partum Run – BLUNTmoms

13 Things That Make You Normal, Not a Bad Parent – Scary Mommy

I promise to be back next week with some fun camping stories. Because camping with the Threenager was fucking HILARIOUS.

Happy Summer!

~g

Sorry, but this mom doesn’t have all the answers.

As a blogger and freelance writer, I am constantly trying to find a balance between writing quality pieces, and writing pieces that get the clicks. Sometimes, I find the perfect combination of the two, and things go crazy for a while. And then I realize I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, after all.

For me, this is also motherhood.

The cat lay down in front of him…and you’ll never guess what happened next!

Did that work? Did my headline make you click?

Well, you’re reading this, so it must have worked a little bit.

I think I can speak for the majority of bloggers out there when I say that we have a love/hate relationship with headlines. Click-bait is a thing; everyone knows it. Some people fall for it — oh, who are we kidding? SHITLOADS of people fall for it — and that translates to more views, and more views translates to…world domination, hopefully.

The Truth.

I’ve always told myself, and sometimes those of you reading, that I wouldn’t sugar-coat things here. The whole reason I started this blog was to be honest in a place that is known for people pretending to be something they’re not. People who are addicted to Instagramming a beautiful looking dish of their freshly-cooked dinner on the only clean corner of their dining room table. I used to be that person. But now, I like showing the rest of the dining room table.

So here’s the truth: all I’m writing these days are half-funny, half-finished posts.

I have a bunch of shit going on in my life that I’m not at liberty to talk about, and it makes the funny stuff seem really pale and ludicrous. I have moments of wanting to write my normal stuff, but then I get distracted, and I lose my mojo.

And then I see that post of mine that went viral a few weeks back, “Today, Mommy is an Asshole,” and I think, there’s no way I can top that. That post had 50K shares in 3 days. It’s still getting passed around and shared 100+ times a day. I can’t possibly have anything else to say that speaks to so many people. Great. So 5 months in, I’m done? That can’t be right.

But right now, it feels that way.

Maybe tomorrow will be different. Maybe I need a few more days, or a week. Maybe I need a really good therapy session, which I haven’t had in months now.

But for the time being, I guess I’m writing this post to remind myself that I’m here to show that messy dining room table. To show the truths that make people laugh, and make people sad, and maybe make people cringe, too.

So the truth, right now, is that life is an insane combination of beauty and pain and sweetness and stress.

Tomorrow, I turn 39. In the past year, my life has changed in ways I couldn’t have begun to comprehend, 365 days ago. I have SO many things to be thankful for, and continue to have so many things to feel anxious about.

I keep wondering when the hell I’m going to be a grown up. A GROWN UP. I’m fucking 39, people! I have a bunch of kids, and a bunch of big plans, and then I wonder how the hell we’ll pay our bills next month, and if we’ll ever own a house.

But I love my family. And I love those tiny, beautiful moments that I’m better at glimpsing than I used to be. So I guess I’ll just hold on to those, and wait for the heaviness to pass.

And keep writing.

~g

Fairytales can come true, it could happen to you…

Just a quick note to all my followers.

Wait, that sounds weird and cult-ish, and that’s not what I meant. Let me start again.

If you don’t follow me on Facebook or Twitter, then this will be news: I have been invited to be a blogger on The Huffington Post! They really liked my Frozen letter from the other day, and have published it on their site. They’ve also invited me to be a regular blogger over there, so huzzah!

The funny thing is that I originally submitted that letter to McSweeney’s, who rejected it. Rightly so. I hadn’t done proper research, and it turns out they had published a similar letter, not too long ago.

Then I submitted it to Scary Mommy, who didn’t ever respond. Sad face.

Finally, I sent it to an editor at HuffPost that I had been in contact with regarding my story about PPD, and lo and behold, it was up on their site that very day, and I had backstage access to their blog. Expect to see more of me there, in the coming weeks and months!

So thank you, universe. Thank you for the awesome reminder that when one door closes, another, improbable as it may seem, opens.

~g

Things I didn’t think of when I chose the name for my blog

It’s funny. The majority of the people I tell about my blog, or who find it one their own, think the name is hilarious. I get compliments all the time, which is completely gratifying, because it was a fantastic moment of inspiration that has paid off.

However.