In this segment (which you can find after the jump, below, because it's auto-playing for some reason and I don't want to get anyone watching this at work in trouble), three of my favorite new-mom tips:
1) How To Stretch Out Your Too-Tight Shoes (this really works, really fixes the whole pregnancy-made-my-feet-expand-half-a-size issue, and will blow your mind);
2) How To Take A Toddler To The Movies;
Earlier this week I got to hang out with Rebecca Budig and J.D. Roberto over at BetterTV and talk getting out with a baby and the Ramshackle Glam book. I wore the same thing I wore last time I appeared on the show (a draped, melon-colored Michael Kors), but that's okay; it looks slightly different on me nowadays. Segment coming up next week!
I want to be best friends with this awesome flight agent.
Lololol at this Brief Moment Of Lucidity Called Panic Attack (via TheOnion.com).
Illustration (and an early RG cover idea) by Katie Rodgers
Let me start by saying that I have been "writing a book" for most of my adult life. How many of these books have I finished, you ask? Up until a few months ago…none. Or…one, actually, but it was so terrible that I don't think it counts (it was an attempt at a girl-moves-to-LA-and-makes-poor-dating-choices rom-com thing that ended up being just sort of an accurate reflection of my actual poor dating choices at the time and was thus less "oh how cute and entertaining" and more "oh Jesus, that's sad").
When you want to write a book - and that's probably the one thing that I have wanted most in the world for as far back as I can remember - it's always there with you, that nagging sense of incompletion and guilt. "Today," you say to yourself, "is the day I start writing for real." You make promises to yourself that from now on, you'll write ten (or five, or two) pages every single day, and then…you don't. Life gets in the way. Years pass, and your book is still sitting there on your laptop, unfinished, and now transformed into a source of anxiety rather than something you're excited about.
One especially interesting aspect of this whole book-writing process has been how many tiny things there are to learn. There are big questions, of course - like how to write a book proposal at all, or how to get it into the right hands once it's written - but there have also been a million smaller ones that I never anticipated. (I was nervous about all of them, just so we're clear; Ye Olde Type A tendencies have been out in full force for the past several months.)
As an example, I didn't know whether I should be sending my editor chapters as I finished them, or whether that was annoying and I should just send her the whole thing when I was done (the latter was preferable, as it turned out - at least for my editor). I didn't know whether it would be helpful if I bounced ideas back and forth directly with the illustrator so that other people didn't have to act as a go-between (apparently that's a big "no": it's the art director's job to liaise between the author and the illustrator).
Basically, I didn't want to be a pain in the ass. At all.
Click over to Mommyish.com for an interview in which I talk Internet mommy-policing, finding time to write with a baby, and a few of my favorite instantly-make-your-life-easier things.
