If you’ve been following the BlogHer buzz on Twitter you may have noticed several people mentioning their Pokens. I had never heard of the things before a couple of weeks ago, and in spite of the suggestive name it seems Pokens are actually a cute little alternative to the traditional paper-based business card. And they look something like this:

No, the Poken is not a miniscule tribute to Michael Jackson. The white hand is actually a very small USB drive on which is stored information about you and your social networks. So say you’re at a big geek conference like BlogHer, SXSW or ComiCon and you spot someone with a Poken dangling from their lanyard. All you need to do is approach with your Poken, give a Vulcan salute and have your Polken high-five the other Poken. Okay, the Vulcan salute is optional, but the point is once the two little Poken hands touch, your contact information is transferred to the other person’s Poken and vice versa.

While the Pokens are adorable, they do have their limitations. They will only hold a maximum of 64 contacts, which means you will have to regularly offload those contacts to the Poken website if you find yourself in a venue with many other Poken-toters. The other drawback is the price. These things are selling for upwards of $20 a pop (though you can get discounts on multiples), and if you’ve ordered one and received it and opened it you may have thought, as I did, that the price seems a little steep for something that looks like it may have been purchased from the gumball machine at Denny’s

Nevertheless, I’m going to reserve my final judgment on the Poken until after BlogHer. Speaking of BlogHer, if you are going and would like to get your hands on a Poken, I actually have one Ninja Poken and one Geisha Poken to give away. But you HAVE to be going to BlogHer so I can meet you face-to-face and place the Poken in your hot little hand.

To enter your chance to win, simply leave a comment telling me when you’re arriving in Chicago, how you’re getting there (bus, train, car) and who you can’t wait to meet at the conference. Me? I can’t wait to meet my bestest blogging buddy Meg. I’ve known her for three years and have yet to actually give her a hug.

So there you have it. Feel free to submit your entry, but please only comment once. The winners will be picked by random number generator Tuesday evening the 21st around 9-ish EST. I’ll announce the winners here on Wednesday, after which we can make arrangements to hook up at the big event.

And if you have a Poken preference (Ninja vs. Geisha) you’ll just have to be the first one to get to me at BlogHer. I’ll be arriving Thursday afternoon via automobile.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile know I have a dog.  I have told many stories about Molly over the years because there have been many stories to tell.  Stories like how, within the first year of her life with us, she destroyed two fans (chewed through the cords), a mattress (dug right down to the springs) and a Tommy Hilfiger comforter.

She has dug holes in the carpet in Autumn’s room, chewed up the banister and destroyed several queen-size flat sheets.  She has stolen our dinner more than once.  She has stolen countless items from the kitchen counter and eaten them or chewed them beyond recognition.  A loaf of bread, a milk carton, a sleeve of bagels and a nearly full tub of Crisco are just a few of the many things she has targeted.  Most recently she destroyed one of our best Tupperware containers to get at some leftover Ragu and one evening we came home to find a package of uncooked egg noodles torn up on the floor.

She has eaten so much crap and has rarely gotten sick that we don’t even bother keeping her on the same food anymore.  We figure any dog that can stomach the aforementioned items and both human and animal feces is not going to suffer ill effects from eating Purina one day and Pedigree the next.

But to really appreciate the wonton gluttony of this dog you need to know that this morning a bowl of cantaloupe fell out of the fridge, spilled its juicy contents onto the kitchen floor and she didn’t even budge.  Not even a sniff.  So it appears she does have a discriminating palate after all.

The sad thing is that no one is going to pay me for this story.  There will be no book and subsequent movie in which I am portrayed by Courtney Cox.  People will not sit in a theater and cry when the dog is gone and we will not one day issue wistful sighs as we remember her crazy antics.

And when Molly is gone and Autumn starts begging for that puppy, I’m going to sit her down to read these very words as I carefully explain that while a pet’s unconditional love has the capacity to reach previously unknown regions of your heart, your tolerance for their shit can only go so far.

We love our bottle deposit refund here in Michigan, and in most garages you will find bins overflowing with sticky piles of aluminum and plastic.  No one ever takes back just a few cans or bottles at a time because it’s much more fun to fill your cart with the bounty and wait your turn at the sorting machine.  Autumn absolutely loves the sorting machine.

Back in 1992 we had no sorting machine.  We had a counter, behind which stood two guys named Randy and Jeff.  Randy and Jeff did not like to count and thus would place implicit trust in your ability to accurately report the numbers.  If you were on friendly terms with Randy and Jeff, as I was at the time, they would sometimes fudge the numbers and give you back several dollars more than what was owed.  I bought a few good paperback novels thanks to them.

So this one day back in 1992 I’m in my bedroom gathering up my cans to take back to the store and took notice of the contest advertisement.  Win a pair of airline tickets to anywhere in the U.S., the can said.  I turned my attention to the box in which the soda had been packaged and read further.  I was to look inside each can to see if a special code was printed on the bottom.

I decided not to waste my time and started shoving the cans into a plastic bag.  I was going to get more from taking these back to the store than I ever would from some stupid contest, I thought.

I don’t know what it was that made me go back and check the cans, but I wound up pulling them out of the bag to look inside.  And there, on the bottom of one can, was a very distinct printed code; TRP.

TRP?  I looked at the box again.  TRP was a winning code.

I won?

I let that sink in for a minute as I read through the contest rules again.

Holy crap, I won!

I rushed out to the backyard where my father was and shrieked out the news. IwonIwonIwonIwonIwonIwon!  He took the can from me, examined it in the sunlight and assessed that I was not off my rocker.  It looked like I had a winner.

It took several weeks for me to hear back from the soda company once I sent the can back to them, but they finally confirmed that I had indeed won.  They sent me a letter of congratulations and a voucher for two airline tickets which my mom and I used to book a January flight to Phoenix.

Now I’m telling you that rather long story to tell you this short one.

I won!  IwonIwonIwonIwonIwonIwon!

A couple of weeks ago I entered a Johnson & Johnson-sponsored contest to win one of twenty $1200 scholarships to help pay for BlogHer expenses.  Last week I received an e-mail letting me know I was one of the winners.  Holy crap, I won!

So, having reaped a lifetime’s worth of dumb luck karma, I now have no use for lottery tickets or slot machines.

Thank you, Johnson & Johnson and BlogHer!  I will be seeing you both next week.

Another one of the many pregnant ladies I work with gave birth yesterday, and as I was looking at the pictures of her new son on Facebook, I started thinking about the future.  She’s about ten years younger than me and her daughter just turned three and I’m sitting there thinking how, when she’s my age,  she’ll be the mother of a teenage daughter.

Hell, I wouldn’t want to be dealing with a teenager now, I thought.  Living through the trying threes is bad enough.  I just don’t have that kind of energy.  And then, even though I envied my coworker a little bit for the new life she had just brought into this world, I was feeling thankful that I wasn’t her.

But then I stopped being smug and realized something.

In ten years I will be the mother of a teenage daughter.

I’m thirty-seven now.

In ten years I will not be thirty-seven anymore.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a fat woman does not enjoy shopping for clothes.  If she does enjoy shopping for clothes, you can bet she’s buying the kind of clothes you really don’t want to see on a fat woman anyway.  Tube tops, spaghetti-strap camis, short skirts and halter dresses.  They all exist in plus sizes and it’s only the very brave or the very stupid who buy them.

My style is pretty casual and I’ll be the first to admit a few items in my closet are so worn out they’re downright dumpy.  I keep things.  I keep things forever.  Long after they’ve shrunk or I’ve grown, long after holes and rips and stains have forced me to designate a piece as part of a “home only” ensemble, I keep them.  I don’t get rid of things willy nilly because it’s so damn hard to find clothes that fit in the first place.

This year, however, I find myself at my highest weight ever and this also happens to be the year I decided to haul my butt to Chicago for BlogHer.  I’ve already written about my wardrobe freakout so we don’t need to go there again, but finding things that will flatter my shape without having the advantage of trying them on has been a challenge.  It has always been challenging because there are very few brick and mortar stores that cater to the big ladies.

If you are a large woman, you will never feel as marginalized as you will when shopping for a wedding dress or a maternity wardrobe.  Fat women get married and they go on to have babies and yet no one seems to realize this.  Just try to find an acceptable dress to try on at a chi chi bridal boutique or maternity wear in sizes above an XL at the mall.  They don’t exist.

I found wedding dress shopping to be a nightmarish experience.  Like every other bride-to-be, I invested in the magazines and paged through them until I found the dress I knew I wanted.  It had to be that dress or something like it because it was simple.  It had the right shape and the right neckline and I knew it would look great on me, but finding that dress or anything remotely similar in the local boutiques was impossible.  All they had for me to try on were horribly stiff creations made of yards and yards of lace.  I hated them all.

Then, about five months before the wedding, I found it.  I had stopped off at a local JC Penney on a whim and picked up their bridal catalog.  There, on one of the very first pages, was my dress.  It was an exact replica of the designer dress I had ripped out of the bridal magazine months ago and there it was in my size.  The best part of all was that JC Penney’s liberal return policy made it possible for me to feel safe buying the dress without trying it on.

Right now my BlogHer wardrobe shopping is feeling very similar to buying my maternity wardrobe four years ago.  I’m shopping online, looking at pictures and trying to imagine what will cling and what will pinch.  I’m buying things I’m not entirely sure will fit and will be opening boxes with some hesitation once they are delivered.  Thankfully I finally found Old Navy’s plus-size store online and was able to buy several things for a reasonable price.  If they fit, I think I’ll finally have the BlogHer wardrobe nailed down.

If they don’t’ fit, I will be meeting you all in Chicago sans pants.

Last week we happened across the trailer for Roland Emmerich’s new disaster flick 2012.  It looked pretty snazzy with its end-of-the-world special effects, but it also looked too familiar.  We’ve seen the world end before.  Deep Impact. Independence Day. The Day After Tomorrow. Knowing.  We’ve been subjected to so many of these films over the years that it’s becoming hard to tell them apart.  Look at it this way; if you have to distinguish one asteroid movie from another by describing it as “the one with Billy Bob Thornton” as opposed to “the one with Bruce Willis” you can bet the genre has been saturated with shots of Manhattan being obliterated by a massive tidal wave.

But 2012 is supposedly different because it’s based on an actual prophecy and at the end of the trailer an ominous line of copy asks you to “FIND OUT THE TRUTH-Search: 2012.”  So that’s what Nathan did and he found out that this whole 2012 hullabaloo is based on a theory that the world is going to come to an end when the Mayan calendar runs out at 11:11 am on December 21^st, 2012.

Nathan became very excited when he read this.

“Heather, didn’t I tell you I’ve been seeing 11:11 all over the place?  Every time I’ve looked at a clock lately it’s been 11:11.”

He did indeed tell me that, but I wasn’t about to start believing his coincidental glances at the clock were actually prophetic nudges about the disaster to come.

Nathan, however, was hooked and he started digging deeper.  Apparently there are all sorts of end-of-days prophecies that suggest we might be in for it within the next few years.  I’m refusing to bite because we went through this whole thing ten years ago when everyone thought the world was going to stop working at the onset of Y2K.

But Nathan wasn’t about to give up, and last night as I was getting into bed he pointed toward the TV.  “Look,” he said.

I looked.  And I shrugged.  “What am I looking at?” I asked.

“The clock on the DVD player.  It says 11:11.”

I glanced at the clock radio next to my side of the bed.  “Mine says 11:08.”

He shook his head.  “I’m telling you…”

“You’re telling me what?” I insisted, “That the world is going to end in three years?  I don’t want to talk about this.”  Seriously, it’s starting to feel like I’m married to Fox Mulder.

He sighed.  “It would suck to only have three years left.  We’d never get to see our new trees mature.”

Right.  Let’s worry about the trees missing out on a full life.

I do believe in some things.  I believe the human race is in jeopardy.  We are slowly killing our planet and I have no doubt that some day we will no longer have the resources to sustain life.  I do not, however, believe that the world is going to end because some lazy Mayans decided they didn’t need to plan that far into the future.

But if it is true?  I know exactly where I’ll be at 11:11 am on December 21^st, 2012.  I’m going to be sitting at my desk at work.

Now that’s the part of the prophecy that scares the hell out of me.

Nathan and I slept in until 10:30 Saturday morning.  I loved it and felt guilty about it at the same time.  It seemed just a little too self-indulgent.

The weekend was peaceful and I guess that was part of the problem.  Apart from the constant pop of neighborhood fireworks, the house was very quiet.  Scary quiet.  Many times I peeked into Autumn’s room (which was a good thing because the fish! he needs food!), looked at her empty bed and felt a little sad that she wasn’t with us.

The Saturday night sushi dinner at home wound up being hot dogs on the grill because we were just too lazy to julienne the veggies by hand.  We added some low-salt Lay’s chips to the mix and ended the evening with Moose Tracks ice cream and a few episodes of “Dr. Who.”

Yes, it was fun, but in the middle of it all I couldn’t help but feel empty.  I also couldn’t help but think how that weekend could very well have been every weekend had we never had a child.  And if we’d never had a child we’d be totally okay with spending so much time doing nothing at all.

We picked Autumn up yesterday afternoon.  She slept all the way home, no doubt exhausted from spending three whole days with her cousins.  It didn’t take long for the three of us to pick up where we left off and it took Autumn less than an hour to get into some big trouble.

But that was probably my fault since I was the one who left the nail polish out in the first place.

I’m coming down from a massive sugar high, one that was brought on by a king-size package of peanut butter Twix and a package of Oreo Cakesters.  No one needs that much sugar and I’m starting to pay for my choices with a case of the ick that I could have avoided had I eaten the grapes that have been in the fridge since Monday.

The truth is I’m trying to eat my anxiety away.  Autumn is going to be gone to Nathan’s brother’s house this weekend and I’m starting to feel apprehensive about the trip.  There’s really no reason for it, but it’s just one of those things I go through whenever I’m going to be away from my child for more than a day.

Nathan is euphoric.  He’s been dancing around the house since he found out we’d be alone together for 48 hours.  His plans whenever we have time away from the kid seem to always involve nudity, the bed or a combination of the two while I like to do things I don’t normally have time for when Autumn is around.  I have a stack of books yet to read, an afghan to finish and a severely neglected checkbook that needs balancing.  Most of all I’m looking forward to two days of not having a child wake me up before 8 am.

Tomorrow morning we’re meeting the family at McDonalds for breakfast and from there they will be taking Autumn to a water park.  Ok, that’s the part that is really making me anxious.  Autumn and water.  Autumn and a water park.  She loves to swim but has issues with water hitting her above the neck.  And by “issues” I mean she emits an ear-piercing shriek whenever water is poured over her head.  She hates showers and refuses to frolic in sprinklers or any variation of outdoor toy meant to douse one with water.

And as this photo very clearly illustrates, the girl is likely to lose her shit tomorrow.

But really, this is not going to be my problem since I won’t be there.  But that’s another thing.  Her first trip to a water park and I won’t be there to help bring her down from the inevitable freak-out.  I know she’ll be in capable hands since Nathan’s sister-in-law is a nurse not to mention a mother herself, but I’d like to be around because there’s really no acceptable substitute for MOM when you’re losing your shit.

I’m also sort of feeling bad that we’re shuffling Autumn out the door during a holiday weekend.  We normally don’t do a lot during the Fourth of July anyway, but I’d kind of like to have her around.  It is a holiday after all, and someone has to be there to offer the dog some hugs when the fireworks start.  This year we seem to be short on both canine tranquilizers and carpet shampoo.

We’ve been experiencing some cooler weather so yesterday I sent Autumn to school wearing long pants. It wasn’t terribly cold, but it was windy and I wanted to make sure she was comfortable.

I remember looking at the weekly forecast yesterday and seeing the mild and sunny weekend ahead of us, but I only vaguely remembered what was in store for today. This morning I consulted the weather app on my iPod Touch, which told me we were in for lots of sun with the temperature reaching 80 degrees. Bonus.

I went into Autumn’s room and pulled up the shade. Hmm. Dark skies with lots of clouds. But this being Michigan and all and we being so near the lakeshore as we are, I decided the clouds were only a temporary matter and pulled out a pair of denim shorts, a t-shirt and the Disney princess hoodie that would keep my daughter warm until the sun made its appearance.

It wasn’t until I dropped Autumn off at school and spotted every other child wearing long pants that I thought to question that forecast. I opened up Autumn’s backpack and searched its contents for the pair of pants I had stuffed in there weeks ago, but all I came up with was another pair of denim shorts and a tank top.

As soon as I got to my desk I consulted the weather app again. The forecast had not changed. It was going to be a sunny day with no precipitation and a high of 80 degrees.

In Seattle.

Folks, I am a nerd. I’m the kind of nerd who programs several cities into her iPod Touch weather app just for the hell of it. Fairbanks, Tokyo, Atlanta, Galway, London, Sydney, Seattle and Cairo. They’re all there along with my own city and it was the Seattle forecast I consulted this morning. I am a nerd and today my child is paying the price.

I guess I’ll be going home during lunch to pick up some pants.

Last week I picked Autumn up from school and was treated to a note on her daily report that said, “Autumn enjoyed teaching her friends the song ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot.’”  I smiled at the thought of a group of preschoolers singing Pat Benatar, though I can’t imagine how much fun that was for the teachers since Autumn only knows one part of the chorus and sings it over and over.  For days all I’ve heard of the song has been “Hit me with your best shot…fire away!”

The result of this repetitive serenade is that I’ve not been able to get that damn song out of my head.  I’ve tried and tried, but the more she sings it the more it bounces around in my noggin and even I don’t know all the lyrics.  I know some of them, but once I get to a certain point my mental Muzak kicks in until I get to the chorus again.  Really, I’m not much better than my kid in that respect.

I’m not exactly sure where Autumn learned the song. I imagine it could have been a Sunday morning I plugged the iPod into some speakers and listened to WBMX out of Boston.  I suspect, though, that she learned it at school because “Mama Mia” recently popped into her repertoire and I know I’ve never heard WBMX play ABBA.

That I’m not entirely sure where Autumn picked up these songs is yet another reminder that my kid is becoming her own person.  I used to know everything about her.  I was the Autumn expert and knew where she picked up what words and how she came to learn a particular tune.  When she started singing Katy Perry songs and using phrases like “my bad” I knew our daycare provider’s daughter had to be the culprit.  Now, along with her favorites from the ‘80s, Autumn is coming home with an arsenal of songs about ducks, monkeys and alligators and asking me to sing along.  But just as she doesn’t know all the words to “Paradise City,” I can only stumble along as she leads me through whatever songs she’s learning at school.

And while both Autumn and I absolutely love the school, I can’t help but feel a little sad about taking this first step towards letting her go.  From now on she’ll be surrounded by adults and children who will have a profound influence on her development.  She’s spending her day with all sorts of new and exciting people while Mom and Dad get the spare moments before the day begins and after it ends.

*Sigh*

I carried her for nine months.  I slept on my sides and kicked my husband out of the bed during my last trimester so that his snoring wouldn’t keep us up.  I tolerated her tardy entrance into this world and dutifully nursed her until she started biting.  Is it too much to ask that I get to keep her close a little while longer?