She got pretty good at the easy levels of Cut the Rope so that was fun for us to play together. (We both think Om Nom is cute.)

She has also taken to taking pictures with my phone. I have to be careful or five minutes of picture-taking leaves me with far too many out-of-focus pictures of the floor and the random things on it, herself, and really awkward pics of Sean and/or I.

I’ve saved a few of those for posterity but I tend to prune them pretty quickly. I do come across the occasional hidden gem.

(Click picture for larger image)

This is Bunny, Flora’s number one lovey. She also goes by the names Princess Bunny and Bunbun. She’s been a part of the family since Flora was about eight months old. I bought her to give Flora something to snuggle at night. She is now a part of the family and very loved.

Flora snapped this picture of Bunny earlier tonight when she had commandeered my phone for games and picture-taking. She carefully propped Bunny up on the chair and took about ten different pictures that were all nearly identical. I picked the best one and fed it through the Pixlr-o-matic app to give it some depth. The composition is all Flora – no cropping.

Something tells me I need to get her a camera of her own pretty soon.

Shutterbug © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

The concert was promoted with the warning of no new music on the setlist. Not exactly a greatest hits tour, but more of a reminder that they’re still around. Judging by the fact that the show sold out with very little advertising, I’m not sure their fanbase needed reminding. Sean and I enjoyed the show, although he would have preferred some shakeups to the setlist. We’ve seen Tool several times over the last decade or so and this was very similar to previous shows.

Concerts are great places for people watching. It’s fun to see the different kind of fans out there:

• The superfan that pulls out his concert shirt from the first tour he ever saw to show everyone that he was with the band before they were cool. It’s rare that it fits properly if the band has been together for many years. (While I don’t wear my old shirts to shows, I do struggle with fitting into some of them, so I don’t consider myself immune to this phenomenon.)
• The teenagers that you think couldn’t possibly have been old enough to listen to the band with any great zeal when their last album was released. (Tool tends to go at least five years between albums so this is a legitimate issue for them.) Maynard James Keenan (Tool’s singer) commented that some songs hadn’t been played since a lot of the audience were sperm. That was an exaggerated statement, but maybe now that Sean and I are no longer the youngest fans in the room, everyone else seems younger to us. Get off my lawn you kids!
• The “fashion don’ts”. This comes up a lot at the shows Sean and I go to – the perils of liking hard rock and metal I suppose. Not the most fashionable demographic. Most people don’t look out of the ordinary, but I honestly wonder what rock some people crawl out from to come to the show. Wednesday’s highlight was a guy who was wearing a black goth-style full-length jacket. It looked more like a cheap bathrobe with S&M accessories. I don’t want to snark  on someone’s fashion choices, but sometimes going to these shows feel like I’ve stepped into a timewarp. Some people don’t look any different than they did in 1996 (or whatever year the band you’re seeing was huge), bad haircut and all. If someone was to observe the outfit I wore, they would have said “she must have just come from the office”. Which I totally did, and I’m okay with that.

Sean and I used to go to a lot of shows before Flora was born and we had more disposable income. Now that concerts are an occasional event for us, I definitely appreciate all the little nuances more. We make the same jokes every time and we still laugh. We still love going together and that’s the best part of all.

Concerts are about more than the music © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

I found out this morning that I made the shortlist for the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Canadian Weblog Awards! Lifetime Achievement means “for weblogs created before January 1, 2005″. (Clearly the weblog is still a relatively new medium for communication.) I submitted hellomelissa.net on a lark just before the nomination period closed. I wasn’t sure if submitting myself for nomination was proper etiquette. I figured the worst that could happen was a polite note from Schmutzie telling me that sites need to be nominated by other people and I should try again next year. No harm no foul.

I also wasn’t sure if hellomelissa.net was good enough for submission. I also submitted to Best-Written and Best Life Weblog. I knew that all of these categories would be full of lots of writers I read and admire. And they totally are.

See what happens when you take a little risk and put yourself out there? Remind me to do that more often.

Best of luck to everyone who has been shortlisted with me in the Lifetime Achievement category: Cheaty Monkey, Coin-Operated Boy, Urban Daddy and Weighty Matters. There are some great sites – and people – here. Good luck to all the other nominees too.

Make sure to check out the first-round nomination list too – there are so many great blogs to discover here.

Thanks again to Schmutzie and to everyone that has volunteered to jury these awards. That’s a huge pile of work.

I’ve been shortlisted at the Canadian Weblog Awards! © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

I’m a little behind. Forgive me, I’ve been busy.

Like so many other bloggers, I’ve chosen a word for 2012. I have a feeling 2012 is going to be a big year, and not just because there are theories that the world is going to end come December. (Personally I don’t buy it, but lots of people do so I have to acknowledge it.)

The word I’ve chosen for 2012 is:

create

• I want to create  great content for hellomelissa.net
• I want to create more in general
• I want to create a happy, settled, comfortable home for me and my family
• I want to create the life I want for myself, which will benefit my family

It’s a short list, but they’re pretty lofty ambitions. Wish me luck.

My word for 2012 © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

Via Flickr:

I snapped this picture this morning on my way to Warden subway station. In case you can’t read it, the graffiti says “All TTC Workers Suck Ass”.

(For folks who don’t live in Toronto, the TTC is the Toronto Transit Commission. They operate our public transit system.)

This makes me angry for lots of reasons but here are two:

1) All TTC workers *do not* suck ass. Most TTC workers I’ve dealt with are good folks. You get what you give so the Golden Rule is a good rule to live by.

2) It’s demoralizing for both TTC employees and riders. When people are demoralized, they don’t do their best work. This applies to TTC riders just as much as TTC employees.

I hope this gets cleaned up soon.

I snapped this picture this morning on my way to Warden subway station. In case you can’t read it, the graffiti says “All TTC Workers Suck Ass”.

(For folks who don’t live in Toronto, the TTC is the Toronto Transit Commission. They operate our public transit system.)

This makes me angry for lots of reasons but here are two:

1) All TTC workers *do not* suck ass. Most TTC workers I’ve dealt with are good folks. You get what you give so the Golden Rule is a good rule to live by.

2) It’s demoralizing for both TTC employees and riders. When people are demoralized, they don’t do their best work. This applies to TTC riders just as much as TTC employees.

I hope this gets cleaned up soon.

Update: On my way to work this morning (January 5th), I saw that this graffiti was gone. The window looked to be badly scratched up due to the cleaner, which is an unfortunate, but understandable side effect. I hope that doesn’t block people’s view of the buses too much, especially when the weather gets worse.

This is terrible: TTC Bus Shelter Graffiti, January 4, 2012 © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

The following set of tweets explain what happened after that.

I am so lucky to have such a caring little girl. She was so gentle and really emphasized her need to check on me. My timeout, while needed, was shorter than I expected it to be, thanks to her. I told Flora how thankful I was that she checked on me to see that I was okay. Lots of hugs were exchanged and we enjoyed the rest of our evening together as a family.

Like all parents, I’m struggling to do the best I can to raise Flora right. I could tell you about a million mistakes I’ve made already. Watching her care about others at such a young age makes me think Sean and I are doing something right.

Timeout © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

I feel like I’m barely holding on to my life. Most nights after Flora goes to bed, I just want to sit and relax. Those few hours after her bedtime and before mine are the only hours I have complete control over my time. The only time in my day where no one wants anything significant from me.

My house looks like a bomb went off most of the time. Since we’re considering selling it in the next few months, I feel worse about the state of my home than I usually do. Sean has started decluttering his stuff (something he’s needed to do for years) and has begun organizing some general repairs we’ve been putting off. I’ve packed my books for storage in my mum’s basement but I’m having a hard time keeping up momentum to work through my decluttering.

There’s just so much to do. Going through our life’s accumulations to decide what comes with us and what gets passed on. Getting rid of enough stuff to make a trip to my local second-time-around shop worth the effort of packing it. I joke sometimes that I should just set the house on fire (with everyone out of it and safe of course). I know that is a horrible, irresponsible, hateful idea, but sometimes disaster feels better than actually doing the work.

Sean is the catalyst of this project. I am grateful that he doesn’t go into overwhelm like I do, but his methods are making me crazy. He has several half-finished decluttering jobs in progress throughout the house. I can’t work like that. I need to make a list, prioritize it and check the tasks off as I complete them one by one. The problem is I feel too overwhelmed to even make that list. My mental list is somewhat formulated, but I need to commit it to paper (or screen) so I can get the satisfaction of checking those tasks off when they are done.

My mum (bless her) has offered to come up and help us. It embarrasses me that I need that help. I know if I did a little bit each night, I’d make progress. I’m just so depleted by 8pm that I need to just decompress for a bit. Then when I’m finally relaxed, I don’t want to get up and start working again. I want to keep relaxing.

I need to figure something out because stuff needs to get done. What do you do?

Overwhelmed © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

Keep in mind that at three years old, she doesn’t have the hang of writing the alphabet yet, never mind the concept of anarchy.

When asked what she drew, she told us a very involved story about a bear. So I guess it was supposed to be a bear.

Her drawing skills are still abstract, although they’re improving all the time.

I figure I’ll save this picture for when she’s an angry teen. Maybe it’ll make good album art.

This is what my tattooed punk rocker looked at when the tattoo pic was taken:

That’s one scary punk all right. Monkey jammies and stuffed bunnies – the outfit and accessories for your modern-day anarchist.

My daughter, the anarchist © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

No matter, I’m choosing to believe that I’ve taken time to consider my thoughts and formulate my opinions. It was not that my laptop was busted or that I have a life outside of the Internet – I mean really, who has *that* these days?

So I went to Blissdom Canada. I had a good time. It felt different from last year. I’ve been reading everyone else’s blogs all week and I’m not the only one who feels that way. I’m just glad I’m not crazy! The conference, and expo hall, were much larger. The round tables at the front of the session rooms filled up quickly so I usually ended up in the rows of seats at the back of the room. That took away from the community vibe a bit, but doing the whole room with tables would have fit fewer people in so I get why it was done that way.

A lot of people talked about feeling alone or disconnected from other people at the conference. I felt that way too sometimes, but honestly, I expected that. I go to these conferences alone. I’ve connected with lots of the attendees online and met several of them last year. Even with that ‘in’, I don’t like to interrupt other people’s conversations. I often spend a lot of time listening or observing in group situations. By the time I’m ready to comment on something, the moment has passed. I did my best to come out of my shell, but I know I didn’t interact nearly as much as I observed and listened. I did have a great dinner Friday night with Mel and Sherrie Mae, which made up for a lot of the shyness I was feeling earlier in the day.

Many (but not all) of the sessions talked about monetizing your blog, building your personal/professional brand, and working with corporate brands. I left the conference with my intent not to do any of those things intact. I’ve been comforted to learn this week that I am not the only person that feels that way.

When I introduced myself to people, my answer to their first question “how long have you been blogging?” was usually “I’ve been writing online for 11 years, but I’m not very good at it, because my stats aren’t great and my readership is small.” I inwardly cringed every time I said this, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was trying to build myself up by mentioning my longevity in the genre (even though longevity doesn’t really matter). Then I instantly knocked myself back down by saying that even though I have lots of experience, I’m still not “good at it”.

Way to go, self.

I don’t have as many readers and feedback as someone who hustles like crazy to promote themselves and their blog. While I have been blogging a long time, I haven’t always done it consistently. I also haven’t participated in the community aspect of blogging as much as I would like. I read, but rarely comment. (Hey, I remember when blogs didn’t even have comments!) So really, what am I doing to earn readers and feedback?

I want my voice, my writing, to matter. I realize this makes me sound incredibly narcissistic. I write about my life on the internet as a hobby – of course I’m (at least a little) narcissistic.

So ultimately, my takeaways are as follows:

• In order to publish more, I need to write more. I need to find the time to do this.
• I need to earn the feedback I want. Good writing is only the start.
• I need to get a better handle on tasteful promotion, so I can get what I want without feeling gross or dirty about it.
• I need to stop diminishing myself and develop confidence in my writing and my voice.

Now to actually get started on these things. Advice is welcome.

My #BlissdomCanada recap: better late than never © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.

I plan to meet and talk with as many people as I can. Like lots of people who spend a significant amount of time online, I can be shy, but once I get talking, I may not stop! (I’ll try to rein that in, so you can talk too!)

If we’ve never met before (online or off), here’s an introduction of sorts:

• hellomelissa.net is my personal blog. I’ve been blogging since 2000 and have done so under several domains and platforms (my About page tells this story in more detail). I write about my life and issues that are important to me. I don’t write as much as I’d like, and I’m hoping that this conference gives me some much-needed inspiration.
• My twitter account is @mpricemitchell.
• You can follow/friend me at various sites by either checking out the “follow me” widget in my sidebar, or by visiting my about.me page.
• I have a fulltime job outside of the social media sphere, so I’m not in the know about every little thing going on out there. That bums me out sometimes.
• I live in Toronto with my husband, daughter, cat and dog. I’m originally from a small town so I’m not completely city-fied yet.

That’s enough about me. I can’t wait to learn more about you! Hope to see you there and have a chat. If you see me at a table by myself, come join me! I’m not saving seats – I’m passively networking, hoping you’ll come sit with me!

Hello Fellow Blissdom Canada Attendees! © melissa price-mitchell, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada.