Well, hello there! My name is Angella and I write from way up here in Canada at my little corner called Dutch Blitz. I am also a the lead editor for the Arts & Design channel over at Blog Nosh.

Last week the wonderful Miss Kelly asked if I would be willing to guest-post in her stead while she was off for a well-deserved break. My first thought was YES! Kelly is awesome! How could I say no?

Then I drew a blank.

I have guest posted before on other sites and have had no issue in deciding what to write about. I am a chatty girl, even on a bad day. Kelly had suggested that I post some pretty photos, or do whatever I wanted. I went to Mexico in February, and have beaten that topic to death on my own site. I thought I could whip up a post about my happy place so that I could post some photos from there.

While it was fantastic to peruse the photos again, no post idea came to me.

Then I thought I could whip up a new Foto Friday post, or find a way to tie in some photos of pretty flowers.

Still nothing. Still stuck.

I thought I would see what the other guest posters had to say to see if I could feel the vibe, as it were. First there was Angela, then Karen, then Heather B. (Who I will be sleeping with next week at BlogHer )(Platonically. I’m married, yo).

Those three are women who I admire…and might be a little afraid of, due to their awesomeness. They also know Kelly PERSONALLY. I do not. Yet. This will change next week when we all converge in San Francisco.

Since Kelly and the others going to the conference have not met me, I thought I should introduce myself a little. Heather B. and I did a list of seven things we should know about each other via email, but I got a little Deep and Meaningful. We’re sleeping in the same room! I owed her that.

But for Kelly, and for any of you who are coming, here are seven things that you need to know about me before we meet.

1. I drink an exorbitant amount of Diet Coke, aka The Nectar Of The Gods.

2. Clowns freak me out. I think they are of the devil.

3. I am kind of clueless about makeup. I wear it, but my knowledge is limited to the one session I had at MAC last fall. I will nod and smile when you talk about this “Sephora” and something called a “Philosophy”, but I am UNSCHOOLED. Help me?

4. I talk with my hands.I also apparently slap my leg when I get all excited while telling a story. I do not realize I am even doing it, but that is what my husband and friends like to tease me about. You may want to keep a good couple of feet between you and I to keep any injuries from happening.

5. I do not like Poutine.  Or beer.  This has caused people to suggest that I need to turn in my Canadian citizenship, but I cannot help it.  Poutine makes my stomach churn and beer tastes like urine.  Not that I have ever tasted urine, but I imagine the two tastes are similar.

6.  I do, however, like wine (White - I am slightly allergic to red) and cocktails.  I will gladly join you for one (or two) of those anytime.

7. I am clumsy. I tripped up the stairs while pregnant and gave myself a black eye.

While in Mexico my husband took a bunch of beautiful photos of me.

In the midst of the shoot, I tripped backwards over a rock.

Classy.

Between my hand talking and clumsiness, I suggest you hold your drink close so we don’t have any spillage.

So there you have it.  A little insight into me and my bad self. I hope we can still be friends.

*Edited: Cross posted at BlogHer. If you leave me some comments there I will tell Santa that you were good all this year even though you have a few months left to be naughty.

As I continue to digest the contents of the BlogHer 07 weekend I also continue to get a bit of indigestion gassiness on some issues that just irk me to no end. All that was to say that I don’t plan on playing nice for a moment.

I’ll play nice later.

The State of the Momosphere session is the one that I wanted to attend to simply ask some questions about Who Gets Contacted by marketing professionals (and I have, so please don’t think I’m complaining that I never have) and Why. In fact, when the moderator, Jory, was outlining the session she made the three points that would be discussed and asked if there were any other questions the audience would like addressed before they got started.

Only one hand went up in the air. Mine. I pointedly asked if we could please discuss the lack of racial diversity in the blogrolls and communities we find ourselves in as a general topic but if we could explore issues of moms of color.

Naturally, the conversation was engaging, but we kept getting to a point where the audience wanted to say things that had already been covered so that they could have their say. And they kept on saying it and saying it over and over until I was prodded by a certain someone to just SPEAK MY MIND ALREADY.

Again. The Hand. It went up. As the microphone was being passed to me some gentlemen marketers were commenting on the fact that they pursue mothers who blog about products and that one of them even apologized on behalf of corporate America (Corporate America? You’re not forgiven. You’re ON MY LIST.) and another one said that the best way to contact these mothers is to establish a relationship with them so that they know you care.

Great. A segue.

The Hand.

My question, then, was directed at those two marketing professionals and I asked when they would tap into the mothers of color and bring us into the fold because they are leaving us out of the loop. When will the diversity come into play?

And the question? With The Hand? It died a sad death right there. We got back to the monetization of blogs and I got a little excited when Stefania chimed in that diversity does indeed need to include moms of color because she has concerns about Asians being marginalized as well.

Then, that died, too, as we went directly onto a privacy issue.

And I shook my head. And I pursed my lips. And I was disappointed and let down that the one question that was given to the moderator was ignored.

Certainly, I am grateful to the dozens of people I spoke to after the session was over. There was a full 20 minutes of chatting with people who agreed with my comment and told me to press on and to keep fighting for women of color. I needed something else instead. I needed any of them to take the microphone and say, “Excuse me. Isn’t anyone going to answer Kelly’s question?”

Where were you, Mommybloggers? I needed you.

Here I am in 10 seconds or less (for those of you who don’t know who the heck I am because you’re here saying, “Who the heck is she?“)

I’ve written online for almost 3 years and quit a while back to get a different job in my school district and I’m proud to say that I’m now employed as a high school guidance dean.

My oldest child is 21. I’m 36. Do the math. I tell that story more than any other story.

My kids say funny, inappropriate stuff that I write down and share with the world. For example, while frosting a cake with my mother the other day Mallory could be heard saying, “Oh, yeah. That’s it! Spread it like herpes!”

When I went to Disneyland recently (by myself, no children, I’m not bitter) I cried when I saw my first princess. You can make a guess which one, but the point is that I cried. What am I, 12-years old again? I teared up.

*This is the kind of stuff I find hilariously freakish and necessary for a good life. A whole bunch of WTF went on in my brain and then as I continued to watch I was fascinated and clapping like I wanted Tinkerbell to show up. Shit is amazing.

If you want to join in the fun (going to the BlogHer conference or not), see this post for directions! Nice to meet ya!

*edited to add: More details can be found here as written by BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone. Thanks for the nice words, Lisa!

*I am having slow server issues so please be patient. Go make a quick snack and check back to read through this post.

We all know that blogging/writing has evolved much in the last few years and I’m no exception to this. When I started writing my Allen series I had no idea where it would go and then I took all that I learned about writing and have decided to get it published in my free time.

That is, for you “free time virgins”, the hours between midnight and 6 a.m. I realize that what I’ve done with that time is look at the back of my eyelids, so I’m not putting pressure on myself to get it done quickly. It will happen.

Beginning to write seriously meant that I had to discipline myself to take the craft to the next level. Honestly, though, I’ve taught reading and writing for over 13 years at various levels yet I never loved to write until I started Mocha Momma as a personal website. I’ve toyed with so many options: writing strictly about education, writing about my family and daily happenings, tackling politics and racism and plain old insights about humanity. Most days I can’t get that meta because let’s face it: meta takes work and I have a family, a full-time job, and school.

Then came the realization that there were other writers that I wanted to read and eventually meet. Most of them, I assumed, didn’t know me or my writing and when I got to BlogHer06 last year I found that I was wrong. People knew. They referenced things I had written, wanted to know if my family really was that funny (they’re funny? really?) or if the party that was going on in my head really was that fascinating. That’s just how this brain works and I can’t rewire it now unless I want to get some shock therapy but I don’t think that would even be necessary. My brain is WIRED weird.

My point is that it really helped in knowing some things about the women I was going to meet last year at the BlogHer conference, but I was overwhelmed in trying to read everything about them. This year the number of women attending has doubled which means that much more amazing writers will get to mingle and learn from one another. What if I wrote a post that took 10 seconds to read and then you could go on your merry way or click on another attendees blog to read about them in 10 seconds? Wouldn’t life be much happier?

That’s what I thought.

So steal this button right here, insert it in a post about yourself tomorrow, and write something you want us to know about you that we can read in 10 seconds. It can be a bullet post or a photo essay or a vlog or anything you want. Go crazy, kids.

See you in 10 seconds.

Here is the button you will need. NEED.

Thanks to this great lady at Rocks In My Dryer for designing this button. (And I hope you feel better today!) You can pull it from this link right here, save it to your hard drive, and then plug it into your post. Happy plugging and posting!

There are pictures of California, stories to be told, and people to publicly humiliate, but I need more time to organize some things.

This will be a short post. Perhaps you can read it in 10 seconds.

There is a lot of stuff going on (yes! again! Don’t you love the drama here?) and I have two things to share with anyone who can actually get to this website without waiting for 45 minutes, but I know that I am having some server issues and that’s it’s difficult. You will get a piece of candy if you can be patient and wait. Maybe even a sucker.

Crap. Are those 10 seconds up yet?

Then I’ll be quick. Tomorrow soon soonish there will be some information about my career that I may be able to share and also a little BlogHer thingie to do like we did last year and lots of people seemed to really like, but more inclusive. So get those pictures of yourself ready, start thinking about what you’d like everyone to know about you, and enjoy that candy now.

It’s peppermint. You have nice, fresh breath.