Breathe deeply, count to ten, and write a blog about it

So last night when I was hob-nobbing with the more influential (see post below this one), my kid was up too late waiting to pick me up at the train station with his father. As a result of his late bedtime, today that kid is a big fat tired crab.

To recap: My kid is off his sleeping schedule because I was out having fun. Oh, hello there, Mom Guilt, I hadn't seen you in about 15 minutes.

So today Nathan is playing such greatest hits as "Refusal to Put on Pants" and "Dumping Out Containers of Toys."

But recently some anonymous commenter kind of subtly-but-not-that-nicely pointed out that I should keep my bad parenting stories off the Internet because someday the only online legacy of my kid's childhood would be a journal of horror stories.

So, I'm going to talk about something else.

But speaking of big fat crabs, Bill and I are going to eat some of them tomorrow! That's right, we're actually going on a date night, and I'm so proud of myself for getting a babysitter and planning something that might allow us to reconnect after two weekends in a row of Bill being out of town. Well, I wouldn't say planning, exactly, because I haven't really figured out all the details of what we're doing. All I know is that I want to eat seafood, because it's a good Weight Watchers food. As my mom always says, "Fish is your friend." (Elmo has a fish friend too, but he probably wouldn't want to eat her.) But we haven't even decided which seafood restaurant we're going to. I'm lobbying for Joe's Crab Shack, largely because they do not serve bread or any other sort of forced, free appetizer that I would inevitably eat and blow my whole attempt at a Weight Watchers-friendly meal. Bill wants to try this new, local seafood place, which has everything going for it except an unknown bread basket status.

You might be asking, "Why can't she just go to a place that has bread but not eat any?" See: limited willpower. Also, Weight Watchers would tell me that I should just call the local seafood place and inquire as to their bread basket policy, or simply state up front to the server that I don't want bread. Yes, these are the same people who brought you a brochure where the following dialogue takes place:

Dieter: Can you tell me how that chicken is prepared?
Server: Yes, we cook it in olive oil.
Dieter: Do you know about how much?
Server: Yes, about a tablespoon.

And then you are supposed to calculate the WW points in the 3-ounce chicken breast, plus the 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Oh, and you might want to add in the points value of the server's saliva, because he surely will spit in your food after you asked a bunch of asinine questions that presumably took him several trips back and forth to the kitchen to find all the answers to.

Moving on ... After eating dinner somewhere, we're going to a movie. I'm going to let Bill pick the movie, because you know what the movie trailers always say: "If you only go to one movie this year, it should be one your husband picks." But also I don't feel all that strongly about any of the movies that are out right now, and Bill does, so I'm gonna be a good wife and just let him pick.

And actually, I did see one other movie this year, just this week, actually. I finally took Nathan to see Hop. And I had some serious LOL moments during that movie. Not to mention it was incredibly cute and had several stunningly colorful scenes of a candy factory. You might be wondering what my kid thought of it. Well, about 30 minutes into it, and every 15 minutes or so thereafter, he said, "I don't like this movie. I want to go." And then around 2/3 of the way through the movie and at least three "I hate this"s later, I said I had to go to the bathroom and Nathan said, "But nooooooooooo! We'll miss part of the movie!" Then when the movie was over, he said he really liked it.

???????????????

I also want to say that now that I don't get to movies as often (this week notwithstanding, apparently), I just really love the movie-going experience all the more. I like the comfortable seats and the dark theater and the big screen. I also like the popcorn and soda, although I'm proud to say that I did BYO for the popcorn at Hop, for Weight Watchers reasons. The sneaking in of food to the movies, BTW, is a little bit of a tricky parenting moment. I had to tell Nathan that I was hiding the popcorn because you weren't supposed to bring your own food to the movies, which was basically saying, "Yeah, your mom's a liar and a cheat." But I grew up with parents who brought their own food to the movies, and I still respect them and regard them as honest, decent human beings. The trick is to make your kid think that the food at the movies is so ridiculously unhealthful and overpriced that bringing your own would be the only decent thing to do.

Also, the movies are now offering a $7 healthy food snack-pack, which appeared to consist of a popcorn-chip hybrid and some kind of dried fruit. Now, here's the thing. The only reason to pay the exorbitant prices at the movie theater concession stand is it's freaking delicious. Why would I pay too much for dried apples? I could sneak those in my purse, thank you very much.

But I digress. Anyway, that's our date night. Crab and a movie.

And apparently I'm not the only one who is challenged by date night. I read lots of blog posts where people are trying harder to do date nights, the most recent being by a nice woman named Emily who I met last night at the bra event. Except Emily's date night was sponsored by Cottonelle toilet paper, whereas my date night will be sponsored by my Target Visa card.

Which brings me to the topic of more powerful and influential bloggers. Today I started reading some of the blogs written by people who I met last night, and they are all so very sophisticated and have sponsorships and giveaways and stuff. I feel so overwhelmed thinking about how much I don't know about that whole world of blog-based networking/PR/branding/social media strategy/insert-technical-term-I-don't-know. I seriously don't even know how I ended up on the guest list for the party last night.

But, just as all the more influential bloggers do, I will do my best to create an honest, interesting site. I aim to provide both entertainment and support. And even if I'm never influential, at least I am happy writing this blog.

In a segue that will become obvious later, I want to talk about a forwarded email that my friend Lenore sent me this week. This email basically used a difficult swimming workout as a metaphor for any difficult, overwhelming life task. The gist of it was that even when you feel tired and overwhelmed by the number of yards you are endeavoring to swim, you just put one arm in front of the other, one stroke at a time. You don't have to worry about the entire workout right now, you just have to worry about the next stroke. And, as I'm sure has become very obvious to you by now, the metaphor for life here would be that you will get overwhelmed and quit if you worry about doing everything, but you can always do one thing, the next thing.

The ironic thing about Lenore's email was that I received it at a time when I was frustrated with actual swimming, as well as with other things that swimming might be a metaphor for. I have wanted to write an entire post about how frustrated I have been lately with swimming, but it seemed like the topic of swimming troubles would be (1) not universally appealing, and (2) a Problem of the Problemless. But yes, I have been emotional about my swimming lately. Perhaps because swimming is my greatest strength, athletically-speaking, I get much more upset when I have a bad swimming workout than when I have, say, a bad treadmill workout. (And really, who's all that emotionally attached to the treadmill anyway?) And then on Wednesday things got so frustrating when I attempted to swim laps during an aquacize class, because I am not exaggerating when I say that 23 senior citizens walking in a circle creates a current in the pool that is quite formidable to swim against. With each successive lap, I got angrier and angrier. I thought the formidable current would end after the seniors finished their walking portion of the class, as is usually the case, except there was a new instructor who was partial to a lot of current-making exercises. They jogged in circles! Again and again! And then there was a point where they all did upright push-ups against the pool wall, and that sent a wave crashing into my lane that pushed me to the right. That was when I gave up, but an hour later I still had the sensation that I was being pushed to the right. (Insert Fox News joke here!)

And I don't want to spend too much time in what Leigh Ann once hilariously called Overreaching Analogy Land, but my frustration with swimming is kind of a metaphor for my frustrations about What to Do With My Life. You guys know that, more than anything, I would like to find a job where I could put my writing skills to use. I'm talking about something vaguely creatively fulfilling, not writing car repair manuals or something like that. (Because I'm pretty sure nobody wants to read a car repair manual that says something like, "Locate hood poppy-uppy button and pull. Find curvy tube thingy and remove it will all the physical force you can muster. Show tube to husband, who will then be so horrified that he will finally be motivated to take the car to the repair shop. Then sit on couch and bask in smugness.")

Anyway, yes, writing. I'd like to be a writer. But I'm overwhelmed by all the rejection I will get if I go the traditional route. And I would love to go the "blogs to riches" route, but I look at all these other influential people whose blogs are like high-tech flame torches to my blog's rubbing two sticks together (still in Overreaching Analogy Land), and I just feel so overwhelmed that I want to give up and go watch more TLC programming.

But I remind myself that I don't have to do everything, I just have to do something. So, this week I signed up to write for Blogcritics, where I can at least spew out my opinions on TV and books to a larger audience.

And, as you can see in my sidebar, I got tickets to go to BlogHer San Diego in August. I've never been to BlogHer before, not even when it was in Chicago. And I feel guilty about the cost, except I'm sure by August I'll be very influential and find somebody to sponsor me. Right? I mean seriously, I'm open to sponsorship by companies that make embarrassing personal products. I'm good at incorporating your product name into cute little slogans like, "Tucks pads: Because sometimes blogging is a pain in the ass," or, "Tampax: make your period into an exclamation point!"

Anybody?