Everybody else is doing it, and since I am a total poser, I will post my BlogHer ’10 Conference experience with all of you 3 loyal readers!  Sit back and unbutton your pants.  This may be a long one.

We took the train in to New York.  I was a little nervous about traveling with a toddler again (remember the flying from Seattle to Philly experience?  Yeah, I was afraid of that happening again!) but we bought a portable DVD player, got the kid some headphones, and the ride was totally quiet.  Success!

We get into Penn Station and lug all of our extremely heavy crap up two escalators before hitting the street.  I took a brief moment to look up and admire the city-scape before realizing that the taxi cue was almost a block long.

“Jessie,” I said.  “The hotel is only a mile away.  This line is crazy, let’s just walk.”

“We are not walking to the hotel.  We are waiting in this line for a taxi.”  He replied.

“But it’s not that far!  We can walk it, it will be quicker!”

“WE ARE NOT WALKING WE ARE WAITING.”

“Grouch ass,”  I said.

So we cued up and waited for our turn to get a cab and in all fairness I have to admit that it didn’t end up taking very long at all.  We got to the hotel, we unloaded and checked in.  The lobby was already full of squealing and hugging women and my excitement grew.  We were led to the correct bank of elevators (the elevator situation at this place was insane!) and standing in front of me was Denise!  I had just gotten there and was already hugging someone I adored!

We went up to the room and I started texting and calling people that I knew to see where they were.  Nobody was available yet.  So Jessie brought back a couple of dirty water hot dogs from a local street car and I inhaled mine while waiting when I realized that I needed to go register and get my badge before the booths closed for the night.  While standing in line, Jennifer called me and we ended up finding a quiet place to sit and meet face to face for the first time.  We chatted for a couple of hours before I decided to call Denise and see about getting all of us Chatter ladies together for a nice meet up.  We ended up at the BlogHer CE Dinner and met some of the famous contributing editors of the site as well as two of the co-founders of the site.  It was pretty cool.

We went back to Denise’s room and sat around chatting for a few hours.  I got to meet TW, who’s cooking site I love (and who fondled my belly quite a lot), as well as Sassymonkey and her husband.  Denise and TW’s daughter Rebecca was also there.  She gives me hope that the younger generations aren’t all going to grow up to be Paris Hilton.

Day one of the conference started with e Newbie Breakfast where all of us first-timers stuffed our faces with muffins and fruit while listening to the founders of BlogHer say hi to us.  I went with Jennifer, Jessica (BlackBeltMama) and I waved Linda over to our table after Jennifer recognized her from Chatter.  It was a really nice breakfast and I was surrounded by great and intelligent women.

After breakfast, Linda and I headed over to the morning keynote where we sat in the worst place ever to hear or see what was going on so I ended up having a conversation with a book publisher who came to the conference assuming all of the attendees would be “mommy bloggers”.  I politely corrected her and explained the truth that women bloggers cover all topics of interest from technology to politics.  She looked like she didn’t believe me so I turned my attention back to Linda so I wouldn’t be tempted to pull her hair.

I attended one session on Friday that bore me to tears so I went to lunch, hooked up with Sassymonkey and spent a couple of hours swag hunting with her and laughing as she volunteered to get her picture taken with everybody.  We then went to the Geek Lounge and chatted for a bit with Denise and Linda before I excused myself to go back to the room to spend time with Jessie and Lukas before the Voices of the Year Keynote that night.  (Jessie and Lukas, by the way had a great time in NYC.  They were out and about having a great time doing kid-friendly stuff together.  Great Daddy and Me time for my little boy.)  I went back to my room, played with Lukas and showed him all of the swag/toys that I had brought him.  We ordered a pizza from Ray’s Pizza (One of those iconic NY pizza places) and I ate in the room before putting on my pretty maternity dress (pretty, HA!) and headed to the keynote.

I sat alone and was enjoying the readers until a woman came in and sat right next to me (the row I was in had all empty chairs except for the two ends…why did she do that?) and kept getting up to go plug in her phone into an extension chord by a pillar in front of me.  Then she would sit and browse the internet on her phone and periodically ask me “Have they done the humor posts yet?”  She asked me this FOUR TIMES.  I wanted to yell at her to pay attention and leave me the hell alone, but I was a nice person and nodded quietly at her while biting my lips as hard as I could…you know…..the nice thing.

After the Keynote, I wandered around looking at the cool art.  I was getting pooped out.  I saw a room full of balloons and decided to swipe a yellow one for Lukas.  As they were still setting up for the Gala in the main ballroom, I decided I had enough time to run to my room really quick and deliver it.  I ended up laying down “just for a second” and fell asleep.  I’m so lame.  I got all dressed up in this ensemble that I had put so much thought into and I fell asleep in the damned thing.

I woke up the next morning and went to breakfast.  I sat alone at first but my table filled up with some super nice ladies.  Two of them were from Chicago and I asked them if it was an assault to their senses to be in NY and they said no.  I was surprised, but it was a great ice breaker and I ended up chatting with these two ladies the whole morning before my sessions started.  It’s proof that most of these people were totally friendly and totally cool.

I went to 3 sessions that day and enjoyed all of them.  I had lunch alone and was joined at the last minute by a woman wanting to talk about Apple products.  I stuffed what was left on m plate in my mouth and hurried away.  After my last session, I went up to my room to spend time with Jessie and Lukas.  We got dinner from the famous 53rd street Halal street car (it was really freaking good) and then I started texting and tweeting people about getting together.  Jennifer called me and told me to get my ass to the third floor for a little floor party the Chatter Ladies were having, so I rushed down and had a great time just chatting with women I adore on the internet and in real life.  And TW got some good belly-groping time in.

Jennifer and I then went to a party that we were both REALLY looking forward to only to find it a little too loud for us old-timers.  We stood in line to get drinks, but the woman in front of me was about to start a fist fight with the bartender over the color of her drink ticket and the fact that she wanted ALCOHOL and she wanted it NOW GODDAMMIT.  She finally got her cocktail consisting mostly of ice and cranberry juice and Jennifer and I got waters and got the hell out of there.  We decided to do a photography walk of Times Square (Jennifer is a super photographer).  It was dark outside, so we got the full experience of the obnoxious lights in the Square.  And all the obnoxious people.  If someone tried to harass us, Jennifer would threaten to beat them with her tripod.  I felt very safe with her.

And basically the next day we left.  I almost puked in the train terminal, but ended up holding it in until late last night.  Puking is fun!

At the end of it all, I have to say that I had a fantastic time.  It was so nice to meet people that I talk to almost on a daily basis face to face.  It was so nice to get out of the house and go to sessions based around my interests as a blogger (a pee-on blogger, but a blogger nonetheless).  The next conference will be held next year in San Diego.  Part of me winces at that.  I hate plane rides almost as much as I hate Apple, and I would have to go alone and leave my two babies behind for a long weekend.  I’m still mulling it over, but I would feel bad if I missed it.  I don’t know.  What I do know is that there are no regrets for this year.  I had a great time and I have an immense and new found affection for some of these women.  Thank you all so much for making my first BlogHer so great.

I’ve always been a little…..ehh….different.  Some people might call it creative.  Some people might call it…well….freaking weird.  I’ve heard weird more than creative, so we’ll go with that one.

I started early.  I’d come up with names for things that would send people into giggles.  I referred to all genitalia (from the age of 2 until about 14) as wingle-wangles.  To me, that is one of my word-inventions that actually makes sense.  Look at your stuff sometime, boys and girls.  Look at it and mouth the word wingle-wangle.  It’s a perfect fit.

When I was in first grade, there were two incidents that convinced me that I was a gem among clumps of dirt in my family.  I put together my very first rhyme.  I was so unbelievably proud of myself that I rushed into my house after school and announced to my parents excitedly that I had thought of a rhyme.  The fruit of my budding genius, the amazing depths of my talent was sure to astound my parents.

“What is the rhyme?”  My mother asked me.

I gave a brief pause for dramatic effect.

“Skippy dippy.”  I said.

Instead of looking at me in awe and adoration as I had expected, my parents burst into hysterical laughter.  I stood for a moment scowling at them and then went to my room muttering under my breath that they were poopy heads who didn’t respect my talents.

That same year in art class, I made my mother a refrigerator magnet for Mother’s Day.  It was in the shape of a heart and I inserted a short, lyrical phrase that to me was more of a beat poem.  It stated the love that I had for my mother and also showcased my immense talents.  It read, “Ri Ri I love you, Somer.”  (FYI, the “Ri” is pronounced like “rye”)

I brought that magnet home to my mother and proudly placed it in her hands.  She looked at it for a moment, looked at me, and then back at the magnet before asking, “What is reeree?”

Angered that she had taken the lyrical part of my poem and turned it into one ridiculous sounding word, I corrected her that it was “Rye rye” and that it was a poem.  She smiled at me and placed the magnet on the refrigerator and said, “Oh, ok.”

I stomped back to my room, making sure my denim Keds slammed into the floor smartly while muttering under my breath that nobody understood my immense talents.  I stopped sharing the works of my genius with my parents after that.  They were, after all, poopy heads.

When I hit about 5th grade, I was made familiar with Stephen King.  It was at that time that I convinced myself that I needed to grow up to become a successful female horror writer.  I mean, I could scare my little brother half to death, why couldn’t I scare and disturb my peers as well?  Sadly, I was never able to gather the inner strength needed to showcase my talents to my peers.  I secretly blamed my poopy head parents.

In the seventh grade, we were required to write weekly themes of fiction for English class.  The teacher liked to nurture creative writing and always made sure to pull me aside after class to let me know that my works were very “creative.”  All the while, my peers were telling me that I was weird and that I had bad hair.  My fevered brain laboring under my budding teenage angst secretly blamed my poopy head parents.

In high school, I took Honors English classes and really enjoyed the reading and writing encouraged there.  I was always in really good with my teachers and had a reborn sense of confidence in my abilities to spin a yarn.  I was nowhere near as confident as I was in those early years (thanks, again, to the poopy head parents), but I was starting to believe in myself again.

My Senior year of high school I entered a writing contest.  It was a voluntary writing contest given to all students in the county.  One winner would be chosen from all of the participants and the prize was little more than recognition and a certificate.  Really, I wanted to see if I could do it.  And I did.  Out of all of the kids in the county who participated, I won.  I gathered my certificate and handshake from the principal, took it home, and put it in the top left drawer of my desk.  I didn’t tell anybody about it.

When I applied for college, I took that certificate to the university councilor who was assigned to me, and it impressed her so much that she let me bypass two “pre” classes and gave me direct admission to the School of Journalism.  Well, that certificate and my G.P.A., but the councilor really was quite impressed with me.  I didn’t call her a poopy head.

In college I excelled in all my writing classes.  I hated writing Journalism, yet I was good at it.  What I still loved was the fiction writing that my English professors assigned.  I’d read them in front of my classes and my class mates would laugh at the funny scenario I’d written.  That made me feel so damned good.  I stopped calling my parents poopy heads.

Once the poopy head mentality towards my parents stopped, I began to understand myself a little better.  I’m smart, but no more so than anybody else.  I’m talented, but not on any sort of epic scale.  I’m funny, but nobody would pay money to hear me tell a joke.  I’m very “meh”, and the weird thing about that revelation is that I’m totally okay with it.  Had my immense talents as a child prodigy been nurtured more by my parents, I might have grown up thinking I was better than what I am.  I might have thought more of myself than I deserved.  In truth, those poopy heads laughing at my genius helped ground me, whether they realized it or not.  And every time one of them finds it necessary to remind me of the “skippy dippy” story, my resolve to not take myself too seriously is renewed.

And yes, I’m reminded of that fucking “skippy dippy” story at least once a month by one or the other.  Damn my genius!

I think that it’s a big thing that I can say that Jessie and I never fight about money.  When things are tight and we are stressed about how we are going to make our money stretch, we are able to sit and talk it out without fighting about it.  This is a part of my marriage that makes me very proud.

Oh, it wasn’t always like that.  We had to do a trial by fire to learn how to calm the hell down where money was concerned.  We learned young, and we learned hard.

I was 19 when we moved in together.  We moved into a small trailer in our college town.  It was our first love nest.  Things were cheap, which was good since we were both still in school.  We both worked as work studies and made next to nothing.  We lived lean, but that was okay with us.

We had two credit cards, one in his name and one in my name.  Both had insanely small limits so we were never in any horrible danger of getting in over our heads.  The credit cards were used mainly as a way to break the monotony of being broke by splurging on dinner and a movie every now and then.

Then about a year later my mom moved to PA to live with her boyfriend.  We took over her house and her mortgage payments.  The mortgage payments were actually a little bit cheaper than the monthly lot rental we paid on the trailer.  We thought we’d found a sweet deal.  But then we discovered termites.  And a completely rotten roof.  And a completely rotten exterior wall.  And a rotten floor.  And sub-par electrical wiring.  And burst water pipes.

By this time, Jessie had gotten his degree and was working for an upstart company (it’s only employee) and was making $20k a year.  With my still being in school and doing my work study program, we weren’t bringing in much more than $23k a year together.

I can blame the hardships on that house falling to shit.  In all honesty it was part of the problem.  But we had a lot of help, too.  I can blame the credit card debt on the fact that we were promised a lot more help with the paying of our wedding than we actually received.  A lot of shitty circumstances came our way all at once and we were bulldozed into a corner.

The simple truth is that we were young, inexperienced, and not as careful as we could have been.  I dropped out of school and got a job.  Jessie got a raise to $30k a year.  That helped a little, but we ended up in that vicious cycle of paying the minimum payment on our credit cards (one of which had a limit on it far too high for us to keep up with) and then not having enough money to pay bills and buy food, so we’d have to use the credit cards to take care of that stuff.  We fought a lot about money in those days.

Then the offer was made to move to Seattle.  The small company was wanting to expand and WV simply wasn’t the place in which to do that.  We seized an opportunity to leave WV (something so few residents of that state actually do) and left for the West coast.

WV is a poverty state.  When we left, the number one employer in our area was Walmart.  Food is cheaper there.  Utilities are cheaper.  Living was cheaper.  We suffered from a massive and constant case of sticker shock for about 6 months when we first got to Washington.  And yet another set of unfortunate circumstances gripped us.  We were 3,000 miles from anyone and anything we ever knew.  We were without a car, and although the one person we knew in the area had previously offered to be of help in the transportation department, we soon learned he was a bit of an unreliable flake.  Jessie had to get to work, so we had to buy a car.  Not knowing that you could get financing on used cars (again, we were young) we bought a new car.  We were able to get a good price on it, but it was still a NEW CAR.

Jessie was given a raise upon moving to Washington to $40k, but once we got there and started paying rent on our scary little apartment in the middle of gang-murder-town and buying groceries, we learned that $40k was going to cause us to sink.

That feeling of knowing that things are spiraling out of control was unbearable for the both of us.  That constant panic that we could possibly be homeless so far away from family and friends scared us to death.  We never confided in anybody our situation because we were dead set on doing this thing on our own, but it was starting to get out of our hands.

Then we decided to file for bankruptcy.  This was back in 2006, before the economy went all the hell.  This was before bankruptcy laws were changed.  At first we contacted a lawyer.  He was over-zealous about getting ALL of our debt cleared.  We weren’t ok with that.  We wanted to continue making payments on our car and to pay off one small credit card on our own.  He argued with us.  We went the online route and paid a small fee to an agency that helped us with the paperwork, gave us online financial classes, and got us through that whole humiliating process rather quickly and painlessly.

That period of constant freaking out, living off of beans and hotdogs only, and eating a big fat piece of humble pie taught Jessie and I that of all the things in life to fight about, money was the most useless.  Not even with the insurance reaming we got when I had Lukas did we fight over money.  We learned that lesson.

We didn’t tell anyone about our filing for bankruptcy.  It’s something that we both feel we need to be ashamed of.  But seeing how the economy is now, and how hard it is hitting some people, I thought it might be helpful to one or two people to write about my story.  I asked Jessie if it was ok, and explained to him why I wanted to write about it (we still haven’t told many people about this) and he agreed it would be helpful.

I’m writing this to let you know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  There is a pasture on the other side of the fence with green grass and cool water.  With a little organization, penny pinching and some good decisions, I am in that green pasture.  Here I am, 4 years after the bankruptcy a homeowner.  We bought a house.  That’s huge.  We had a credit score good enough in this shitty economy to even get a terrific interest rate on our mortgage.  We still drive that car that we bought new in Washington.  It’s our only car and is 18 months away from being paid off.  We can take small vacations.  We can afford to go out to dinner every now and then.  We have two credit cards that are in no way choking us.  We can afford to spoil our kids.

It’s not the end of the world.  It’s hard and it’s painful to go through, but you’ve just got to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and charge forward.  It also taught Jessie and I to be self-reliant.  We know that we can live far away from family and live just fine with no help.  That sense of independence has been precious to both of us.  We know that we don’t NEED anything from anybody else.  We’ve got each other and that’s all we NEED.  It’s a weird thing to take away from such an experience, but it’s something we are both so glad to have.

I hope someone can find this and find some sunshine in it.  I hope someone who is starting to lose their grip on their finances sees this and says, “Well if she can get through it, so can I!”  And if I can be of any help in that department by imparting the wisdom that I gained from the experience, please feel free to email me (contact info is under the ABOUT tab at the top).  I’m more than happy to be of assistance.