WAHHH HAHHH HAHHH HAHHH!!!!

It's me.

(and in this picture I am dressed up as Maleficent....I know, I know, it is a good look for me)

Are you surprised? Didn't you know that my husband and I are wildly wealthy and we only travel by limo and private plane--if we can't fly private we refuse to fly at all. We also have a full time nanny, even though I am a stay at home mom. My house cleaners come each week, but they would rather play with the baby than clean (it is so hard to find good help these days). I don't know what we would do without our gardener Raphael. He keeps the flowers looking so beautiful, but I really need to get after him about the sprinklers. Did I mention that there are only certain brands of clothes that I will wear and put my children in? There are certain stores I refuse to shop in.

What? You didn't know this about me? You didn't know that this is how I live? Do you like me less now? Would you want to read the blog of a woman like this? How ready were you to come back tomorrow and talk about this blogger? I was practically foaming at the mouth and I KNEW it was ME. You don't have to admit if you made a judgement or not, but I bet you did form some kind of an opinion, didn't you? -

To be honest, there is an element of truth in each of those things, so lets revisit the paragraph, should we?

Are you surprised? Didn't you know that my husband and I are wildly wealthy (compared to many people in the world) and we only travel by limo and private plane (We do fly in private planes, but this is a perk of traveling with my in laws. My FIL is an "important" man. He works really hard and sits on the board of many large companies, gives commencement addresses and speaks at the World Economic Forum. He likes to fly private, and we like to hitch hike)--if we can't fly private we refuse to fly at all (also true. I am a driver. I would rather drive in the minivan to Utah than fly commercial. I just can't handle the wait, the small seats, the security, the parking, the schlepping.... no way. If we fly there, it is on the jet--not commercial--not because I am snooty but because it is too expensive and too painful. At this point in my life, going farther than that is just not worth it). We also have a full time nanny, even though I am a stay at home mom (this is another post for another day, but I do. She is wonderful. I couldn't do it without her). My house cleaners come each week, but they would rather play with the baby than clean (it is so hard to find good help these days). (I have already written about my ladies. I love them. They love my kids. Their kids are all in Mexico and they ADORE holding Ace and playing with Cubby and Norah. One brings her niece to play with Lu--and I am so, so lucky I found someone that not only cleans my house, but loves my family). I don't know what we would do without our gardener Raphael. He keeps the flowers looking so beautiful, but I really need to get after him about the sprinklers. (Raphael is currently the reason my husband and I can have a cordial relationship. I hate yard work and I don't want to do it. D works ALL the time and his precious hours home he doesn't like to spend mowing the yard. Raphael is great and he can do a "mow and blow" for one year for less than it would cost us to buy a lawn mower--PLUS he does the edging, fixes the sprinklers that my kids break and is helping me design and implement an herb and flower garden. Maybe I will learn to like yard work. Don't hold your breath) Did I mention that there are only certain brands of clothes that I will wear (Gap long sleeved T shirts b/c they are cheap and my kids hair grease ruins them really quickly) and put my children in? (similarly cheap clothes that don't make me want to cry when the hair grease gets them, except Cubby--he gets the CUTEST hand-me-downs EVER from my friend Suzi) There are certain stores I refuse to shop in (Walmart and Mervyns. I just hate them).

I know, I know, cry me a river, right? I hope that my blog doesn't come off like this (or that I come off like that in real life...) but I could because it all depends on how I present it and how you interpret it. I think that all my explanations show me to be normal-ish, but who knows? This leads nicely into another post that has been bouncing around in my head. I have even been emailing with some other bloggers (who might not want to be named) to talk about it. I have spoken about this to my IRL friends (some bloggers, some not). Why do we blog? What is the point? Do we expect the bloggers we read about to be like their blogs? Are we disappointed when they aren't? As bloggers do we feel like we owe it to our "readers" to show all of our selves? Do you struggle with only showing part of yourself on your blog? Do you feel that people view you in a way that is not at all how you are? Do we sometimes forget that bloggers are REAL PEOPLE and not characters in a book or show, even though we get to follow their stories in a chapter by chapter format, just like a soap opera? Is blogging the new soap opera? The book version of reality TV?

Let me back up a bit. A few months ago the word got out that Bravo TV and the people that do Real Housewives were casting for a new show called Dads Club in our area. They were looking to cast dads that seem to have a balance in their lives and are middle to upper class. They wanted it to be "classy" not trashy. My husbands name was put forward and they were eager to talk to him/us. We are kind of the jackpot for this kind of reality TV show. Here are the things that the casting director identified as reasons we would be interesting to other people: we are young (both for having kids and for when we got married), we adopted, we are a trans racial family, we have a special needs child, we are Mormon (conservatives in a liberal area), D has an Ivy League education, D has a good job and has climbed the ladder in his company really quickly, we are financially secure, we have 4 kids (almost unheard of here...even amongst the LDS folks...).... you get the idea. A veritable reality TV show jackpot.

I was interested in seeing how far we could take this, but let me be clear, there was NEVER any question that we would even consider this show. We would not do this in one million, billion years. Mainly, we all have skeletons in our closets and ours are ones that I don't want everyone to read about in US Weekly (if the show did well, that is). Our current skeletons are just fine where they are with a very, very small audience that even cares about them. We also have our kids' families to consider. We don't want to put THEM in a position of being "found", especially Norah's mom. Nor do we want to give them (or anyone else) a forum to have any kind of say about our family beyond the relationships that we currently have. Some people have been vocal about certain aspects of our adoption arrangements and I don't want these opinions preserved for my kids to see someday. These are the kids of things that can happen when you put yourself out there for the public to view. Those are the big reasons, but there are little ones too. You don't get to choose how you are portrayed on reality TV. We could be cast as the sweet, religious family, or we could end up being the rich, spoiled family that adopted kids but then didn't bother to parent them and left them with the nanny while we jetted around the world on our private plane. Also, I am not at this point willing to be the spokesperson for Down Syndrome, Mormonism and/or adoption. I am not willing for my choices to be debated the way that I have seen others debate and cast judgement on people that are on TV (myself included..I often forget that they are real people and not just characters...). Not my thing. I started asking around if other people would do a show like this. Most said no. Then I asked if they felt that their blog was the same thing. Most said "no...maybe...sort of......wait.........". Then I wondered if my blog was the same thing. I had certainly put myself and my family "out there". What was the point? Do I sometimes wish that I had kept it all with code names and no pictures so that people didn't really know who I was? Would that change what I would right? (you bet it would....).

Remember before when I said that I was aware of bloggers that were popular in blogworld and came across one way, but that the people in real life were not nice. That is true. I was mostly thinking about myself, but there are others that I would say aren't much like what their blog persona is. Keep in mind that doesn't always mean that on the blog they are "nice" and IRL they are not--some come across much more outgoing or introspective on their blogs than they seem to me IRL. But I realize that I only see a few sides of people. Very few people ever really, really know all of our sides and see us at our very worst and most raw. On a blog we get to CHOOSE what we show. It is like the worlds longest (and biggest) internet dating relationship. We can pick the best pictures to show and tell our stories in a funny and witty way. That is very different from being late to church and still in maternity clothes, having your kids scream all through nursery and then have to deal with one child peeing through his clothes and another biting a classmate. I didn't exactly CHOOSE for that to be the introduction of our family to our new ward, but that is the way it was (what can we say? We are going for the whole "set the bar really low and shock them later when you show them that your children actually CAN act like human beings" thing in this ward...). On a blog we can be the person that has very clever and fun things to say about the latest episode of Top Chef (which is tonight...yay) but you don't see that we have absolutely NO patience with our kids right now and pretty much hid from them all day. It is like being on dating behaviour all the time but I never have to get out of my PJ's. I'd say what Facebook is for my little brothers, blogging is for me. I can interact with people on a level that I am comfortable with and share what I am comfortable with.

Today you all learned certain aspects about my life that most people didn't know, because I chose not to talk about them on the blog. Some of them are things that I don't really think are important or interesting. Some of us choose not to talk about things that aren't interesting or important to us or things that are embarrassing or things that aren't really something that we want the world to know. Some people use their blog as a forum to do EXACTLY those things. I am aware of a blog that one woman wrote during the separation (and eventual divorce) from her husband. It was brutal. It was full of so much powerful emotion. I was amazed, but that is how she chose to share herself with the world. I would imagine that it helped people-- but mostly it helped her. I have also seen blogs that mostly dwell on the mundane and seemingly uninteresting things in life and somehow turn it into something that is interesting for me to read.

I have had the pleasure of finding people that I used to know IRL (that is In Real Life) and seen how they have evolved and changed over the years via their blogs. I have been surprised at the opinions expressed by others that I thought I knew (things like nursing and politics). I have been shocked and amazed and appalled at how under the veil of commenting as "anonymous" we are able to say very hurtful and terrible things to and about each other and wonder if we would say those things face to face. I have also been tempted to BE that person and leave a comment under "anonymous". I have been surprised at some of the posts I have written and how much emotion they have stirred up. Mostly the ones about adoption and mostly from people that found me via a search. But it is still strange to have someone comment on YOUR life and YOUR choices. It's like being a celebrity without all the money. But, it is something that I CHOSE to put up there, so it is fair game. We all know that about blogging.

OK, this is part one and just some of what is bouncing around in my head. I would be interested in hearing about your view on some of the questions I have asked. Mostly because it is going to be interesting to see if YOU respond in the way that I think you will...from what I know about your blog persona.... I have always wanted to just write down what I think that the people who write the blogs I read are like and see how close I am....

Tomorrow in the second part of this I want to talk about how you figured out what the audience for your blog is and where you draw the line in "sharing".