The 15th Commandment, July 2009.

Believe it or not, I’m the level-headed person in this [text] conversation.

The other chick is my sister.

She’s blond.

Obviously.

“I want that tattoo like hayden pantierre? has… to live without regrets in Italian. Vivere senza rimplanti. Look it up. Hers is spelled wrong but that’s the right spelling.”

“Never get words in a language you don’t understand tattooed on you”

“That is the right spelling, and I want it on my side like that.”

“Says who? Google? LOL”

“Just look it up and she just said it on the dave. l. show.”

“It probably actually says something like “girl like big penis”.”

“Shut up”

“You know you like big penis, so it’ll be a good tattoo for you.”

“LOL. It’s rimpianti, I thought it was an ‘l’.”

“No—that one just means “girl like tiny penis”. Duh.”

“You’re crazy, just look it up in the Italian Dictionary.”

“Oh yeah… totally got one of those hangin around. BTW, foreign words often mean different things depending on the context. There’s a word in French that means “full” but when used in a sentence, it means “pregnant”. So you’re probably getting “girl is full of big penis and is subsequently pregnant with sextuplets” tattooed on your side… And that’s just NASTY.”

She didn’t respond.

Hopefully she thinks I’m full of shit and will ignore the sage sisterly advice.

“She Who Likes Big Penis” will look plum AWESOME on the Christmas cards, don't you think?

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

transforme- french for make your kid cry, 2009.

The boys have been on my case for the last month about the new Transformers movie…

I was reminded on a daily basis that it was coming… And that I would need to put on my big girl panties and brave the theaters as soon as it did. (For those of you new to the land of Shakespeare, movie theaters are out to get Judith. And her little dog too, if you know what I'm sayin'– And I think you do. Or maybe not. Whatever. It totally made sense in my head.) So, like the good "let my kids watch movies with guns and alien warfare" mom that I am, I set aside an extra $50 in last week's budget, dropped the girl child off at my sister's, and headed to the seven o'clock feature Wednesday evening.

Which, of course, was totally sold out.

So I bought tickets for the 7:30…

And then spent the next twenty minutes slapping my kids' hands away from the six pounds of illegal candy stashed in my purse while they read over the free little Transformers comic books that the nice lady at the ticket counter handed us as we walked in…

Which, incidentally, gave away the majority of the plot of the movie we were just about to see.

Yay.

The hodgepodge bundle of confusion previews before the movie included the trailer for the new Harry Potter, Ice Age 3, and Public Enemies… the latter causing That Middle One to immediately stick his hands over his eyes due to either the "man shooting at man" violence (as opposed to man shooting at robot violence, which is obviously acceptable) or the fact that I've ogled Johnny Depp so much during my child's lifetime that the actor has simply become the equivalent of yucky grown-up kissing scenes and other random televised moments from which children run screaming.

Oh god…

Johnny Depp has totally become my child's Freddy Krueger/The Thorn Birds.

That is just so wrong on so many levels.

The movie itself was what I expected and along the lines of the first movie, with the exceptions of the addition of more cursing (to which my child would basically scream at the screen, "That's a baaad word!") , the fact that you saw more people actually killed as opposed to implied killed (I prefer the implied killed, truth be told.), and the extremely unnecessary 45 minutes of scenes that switched back and forth between dude running in circles and random indiscernible robots fighting.

My kid, however, was NOT impressed.

[Hi! This is your friendly neighborhood spoiler warning. If the plot of a silly action flick precedes your desire to continue reading this witty and anecdotal post, I suggest you turn back now... and perhaps take another long life-look into your priorities.]

Dude, they killed Optimus Prime.

They. Killed. Optimus. Prime.

We were hardly into the movie at all when it happened, and I looked over to see the most heartbreaking devastation on his sweet little face as he watched the screen… There were tears in his eyes, people. TEARS.

And then he turned to me with a look that can only be decribed as,

"What in the ever-living HELL is going on here? What did they DO? Which DUMBASS is responsible for THIS? Mama, DOOOOO something!"

Followed by an adamant,

"It's time to go home now, Mama."

I patted his knee and reassured him that things would get better…

He was doubtful.

I then spent the next thirty or forty minutes watching as his little face fell farther and farther as it seemed the good guys could never win, all the while thinking myself, "What in the ever-living HELL is going on here? What did they DO? Which DUMBASS is responsible for THIS?"

The good guys were losing so much, that even the smallest coup received an exuberant yell and two little five-year-old hands thrown in the air with joy.

It. was. depressing.

When we finally got up for the obligulatory "important scene" bathroom break, he again told me that it was time to go home. This time, though, he threw in a quivering lip for good measure.

The quivering lip.

Sigh.

Balancing myself, as no clumsy person should, while using my foot to flush the toilet, I explained to him that they were going to bring Optimus back. Sam had a plan. And if theycould bring Mega-whatever-his-name-is back from the dead, then I'm certain, CERTAIN, that they could bring Optimus back as well.

He looked hopeful.

All was right with the world…

Then they killed Sam.

Damnit.

In the end, though, everything turned out fine… Good guys won.  Bad guys lost (but got away for another movie,of course).  Kid was happy (although perhaps a bit more jaded). And I finally got around to drinking that bottle of shiraz that I bought last week.

Another movie experience well spent.

Big girl panties, indeed.

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

Particularly the kind you find in baskets in little shacks along the country highway…

I was born in a very small hospital  in a very small town in Arkansas in 1979. The same very small town in which both my mother and grandmother were also born. I have no recollection of living there as the maternal side of my family had all relocated to a not quite equally small town in southern Louisiana dozens of years before, my mother's marriage and my birth being part of but a brief sojourn to her father's.

As history tells it, the women in my family have a knack for leaving their spouses in the razorback state.

Keeping with tradition, we left that very small town just before my first birthday-  the fact that my father would follow and I would welcome a baby sister seven days before my second is part of an entirely different tale. That first year, however, provided easily exaggerated stories full of baby-raising etiquette in the country that continue to be told across a dinner plate to this day.

One of my favorites revolves around a toddler me (insert your ahhhhs here) monkeying my way up to the shelf high above the sink, found, naked as toddlers are wont to be, only after consuming half of the crate of freshly picked tomatoes stored there.

And although we no longer considered ourselves "Arkansans", we headed back to that very small town every Easter, Thanksgiving, and summer to visit with my grandfather and great-grandmother still living there. This, of course, being of the time that seat belts were more of a personal preference than a required by law accessory, my mother would simply toss a babycrib matress, a couple of pillows, and a blanket in the backseat of the car, and my sisters and I would would sleep the eight hours of country highway there.

We'd always return with a trunkload of tomatoes- this, of course, being of the time of really big trunks. They'd last two days. Tops.

When I was seventeen, I took the trip with my Granny for her fiftieth high school reunion. The tape player sang in the voices of Randy Travis and The Big Bopper for ten solid hours. (It seems that no matter how many times one travels the same path, there's always the chance of a wrong turn ahead. Especially in a town that smells like a paper mill.) We were still talking about the incongruity of taking that wrong turn two days later, when we realized that we forgot to pickup tomatoes. We stopped at the first roadside shack filled with baskets.

It had a sign that said, "There are some bags under the counter. Please put money in the jar. Thank you."

I was six weeks pregnant when I took my new husband to meet my family for the first time in that very small town. He drove a fast little sports car and took the liberty of printing out directions beforehand. It took us six and a half hours, and I recognized not a single landmark on the way. On the return trip, I forced him to watch in horror as I simply used my pant leg to wipe away the garden dust from tomato after tomato and devoured them like apples, all the while insisting that we take the familiar way home because I didn't know where to find the farm shacks along the new route.

When we moved to Arkansas in 2004, and I found myself in a small town with no friends, no Starbucks, and not even a Walmart within 30 miles, I consoled myself with the thought that a country highway was but a stone's throw away. And where there's a country highway in Arkansas, there are bound to be farm shacks with fresh tomatoes.

And I love tomatoes.

Particularly the kind you find in baskets in little shacks along the country highway…

Of course, as things go in my life, I'm terribly allergic to them.(Didn't see that one coming? First time here, eh?)

The crate of tomatoes high above the kitchen sink? They were stored there to keep me out- to avoid the burn marks the juice would cause on my little toddler mouth and chin- the same burn marks which make the childhood story interesting enough for the repeat dinner performance. My new husband's look of horror? Was nothing compared to the look on his face once I started to swell, I assure you.

Now, after a thirty year battle, I've managed to bully this allergy into an occasional reaction to something completely random… like every thirteenth pizza, such as the one I ate two days ago.

My lips currently look as if I have the plague and burn as if the fires have hell have taken up permanent residence on my face. I can't wear lipstick and found myself desperately wishing that my bangs were long enough to cover my entire face when I was out running errands today…

And still I crave tomatoes.

No doubt, I always will.

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

i iz in your dryer, eating your every other sock., 2009

Somebody must’ve tripped upon and then subsequently dislodged that surprisingly heavy rock under which I’ve been living here recently, as I finally got around to watching Lost in Austen this past weekend.

Although, to be completely honest, it wasn’t entirely the rock’s fault that I wasn’t aware of how wonderfully wonderful this mini-series is…

I think that the 98% of the blame lies with that one “inspired by the characters of…” book that devoted 200 plus pages to  Fitzwilliam and Elizabeth doing the deed in ways that required insane amounts of flexibility and a fairly high tolerance for pain that would slap a proud smile on even the jaded face of A.N. Roquelaure.

1%  with a really busy design schedule.

And 1%  with you people for not insisting that I watch it before now.

Which actually makes the rock completely blameless…

And my opening line pointless.

Shit.

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

When I was twenty-three, a specialist, who smelled of Hugo Boss and good leather, clarified the other diagnosis with one semi-insulting query:

“Were you raised on a farm?”

Turns out that the aforementioned blindness in my right eye was not caused by any sort of degenerative eye disease so much as by a nifty little thing called toxoplasmosis. (You know… that thing that gives you an excuse to pass over the kitty litter duty during pregnancy.)

This new diagnosis was great in the fact that I would not be going blind.

Gross in the fact that, somewhere along my hazard-filled, unsupervised, Lord of the Flies-esque childhood, I touched poop.

Ewwww.

Being blind in one eye, as sucky as it is, does have its advantages, however. For starters, I get to load my kids off on the nearest sucker with two working eyes whenever some super-duper-so-fabulous-oh-mom-I’m-so-flippin’-excited-I-could-pee-myself-and-can-I have-popcorn-please cartoon comes out in 3D. (Neener. Neener.)

And then there’s that no-doctor-worth-his-Hugo-Boss-prescribes-a-blind-chick-contacts need for the super-hot-slutty-librarian glasses.

Thirdly…

Well…

Ummmm…

Uhhhh…

Aren’t my new glasses just too cute?!@&@?

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

choosy moms, 2009.

Yesterday, while making what can only be described as the first among the hundreds of thousands of the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that will be created by my hands over the course of this summer, I found myself spending a significant amount of time contemplating the following conundrum:

If I were making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and only had one knife, no paper towel/rag/shirt, and a cold (thereby deterring any preemptive utensil-licking) , would I choose to put on the peanut butter or the jelly first? Either choice, as anyone who has ever made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich knows, results in leftover residue from the other in the jar.

Given the circumstances (and my adamant refusal to explore the reasons behind me being naked and in a bubble making sandwiches), my initial choice was to put the jelly on first… After all, I use the jelly in many more instances where peanut butter residue would not be a welcome nor expected guest than I do peanut butter.

Especially considering that I mainly use peanut butter for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

And one expects jelly on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Even if you are naked and in a bubble.

And then I remembered that jelly needs refrigeration whereas peanut butter does not, and quickly changed my choice. (A little cold peanut butter on my morning toast is better than fungi in the brain any day, I say.)

Satisfied with my answer and duly impressed with my ability to apply logic to even the most mundane and random topics, I began putting away the bread, the jar of peanut butter, and the squeezable bottle of jelly from the day’s lunch…

And reveled in my insanity.

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

"Humph. Loaded question," he says.

"Seriously… What is it?"

"I dunno," he shrugs his shoulders.

"The fundamental difference between our mothers is that my mother knows that the voices in her head are a byproduct of an overactive imagination and a misspent youth… Your mother just thinks Jesus is calling. "

Peter was in town this past weekend (For those of you not knee-deep in the quagmire that is my life right now, Peter accepted a job back in our hometown in Louisiana a couple of months ago and has been living and working there in the meantime while me and the brood are still here in Alabama awaiting the end of the school year.) accompanied by what can only be described as the verbal equivalent of a powerpoint presentation on the potential benefits and possible gains of living with Satan until such a time that a new house can be found.

When asked why in all that is holy I should live with his mother (even if she does give me leave to buy whatever I want), he pulled out what must be the trump card hidden away in the sleeve of all grownass men still tugging about on the umbilical cord:

Just think of all of the money that we can save.

[And now, ladies and gentlemen,please turn to page 125 in your hymnals and join the Shakespeare Choir in singing the age-old classic, What the Fuck You Talkin' About, Willis?]

The man actually wants "us" to live with his mother.

He wants me to live with his mother.

Live.With.His.Mother.

Yeah… that chill running up the back of your neck right now?

Comes hand-in-hand with Bible-Carrying-Mother-in-Law Satan.

The same Bible-Carrying-Mother-in-Law Satan who once explained to me that should her son ever cheat on me, I was to forgive and forget because "those little girls just throw themselves at him, and he can't be expected to be perfect."

[Can I get a *bullshit cough* from the congregation, please?]

He left yesterday to get back to Louisiana, work, and the bossom of his youth.

I googled divorce attorneys.

Who, by the way, are much cheaper in Alabama than Louisiana.

And just think of all the money that we can save.

Of course…

I could just ignore her and suck it up for a bit until something affordable comes along…

"What's the fundamental difference between you and me?"

"A vagina," he says.

"Besides that…"

"I dunno," he shrugs his shoulders.

"The fundamental difference between you and me is that when I finally snap and serve you up a big helping of  my special "fresh out of the car trunk" potato salad, I'm smart enough to get away with it. And you? Well… you'll just think that Jesus is calling."

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

“…ladies and gentlemen of the web, due to the large volume of sheer awesomeness put forth via this blog (as determined by search engine results, advanced algorithms in inane topicity, and the swimsuit round) we are very pleased to announce that Judith has been crowned Queen of the World. Thank you.

You may now return to your crownless sanity-clad blogs already in progress. ”

P.S. This totally counts as a Wordless Wednesday.

P.S.S. I look really good in a tiara.

P.S.S.S. Post scripts are really fun.

P.S.S.S.S. I'm stopping now. I promise.

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

But since I can’t speak for the rest of you breeders, I thought it best to warn you ahead of time. For more Weekly Winners, be sure to pay a friendly little visit to Sarcastic Mom!

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

The fact that you thought it appropriate to reach up and touch the tattoo on the back of my neck without warning (or invitation) really creeps me the fuck out.

Sincerely,
Never Has Taser When She Needs It

Dear Starbucks Employee Who Handed Me Stack of “We Screwed Up Your Order, Have a Drink on Us” Coupons for No Reason,

I love you.

Eternally,
Caffeine Makes Me a Happy Girl

Dear People Who Write Grey’s Anatomy,

WTF, dudes???

Regards,
Thinks That the Whole “Smashing All the Bones in Someone’s Face in Case Contract Negotiations Fall Through” Plan is so Daytime Emmy

Dear Lady Who is Making Left-Hand Turn at Busy Intersection,

“Creeping” is only acceptable under one circumstance—every other instance is just plain douchebaggery.

Your friend,
Hoping to Run into Clive Owen Someday


Dear Showtime,

I.Told.You.So.

Love,
Nobody Ever Listens to Me


Dear Woman in Restaurant Who Huffed in Annoyance,

Common sense would suggest that had you NOT wanted your pretty little ears to be subjected to noisy children, you would’ve chosen a venue that didn’t offer crayons with their menus.

Regards,
Pinches Her Children to Make Them Scream Even Louder in Hopes That Your Head Will Explode

Dear Cable TV Provider,

Thanks for offering such a  wide selection of adult programming… as well as no option to remove any of it from the guide.

Your loyal customer,
Can Think of Nothing Better Than Scrolling Through 95 Channels of Horny Housewives in order to find Noggin

Dear Lady at Workplace,

Why, yes! Asking me if my kids are “mixed” is entirely appropriate… If I bred dogs.

Yours truly,
Desperately Seeking Labradoodle

Dear Self,

You totally wrote this post just so you could use the word “douchebaggery”, didn’t you? Awesome.

xoxo,
Judith

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

Huntsville has a really great arts festival every year called "Panoply", and this year's was held the last week of April. Since the weather turned out nice and hot, we got a chance to attend. There were loads of free activities for the kids as well as the $7 ice creams to make up for it. Good times, good times.

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

But to be fair… I totally warned you in a “Caution: Coffee is Hot.” sorta way.

And coffee is totally hot, don’t ‘ya know? But before we get into a whole post about the necessity for stupid human warnings and the impact that they have on society, I thought that we should go over a few things…

Namely, my new shoes.

(If you’re reading me through a reader right now, you cannot see my new shoes and are therefore the outcast in this conversation. That makes you the stinky kid. And nobody wants to be the stinky kid, right?)

My new shoes make the whole place look different, don’t they? Magic shoes are awesome, let me tell you. (Although they would be much more awesomer if they could shrink asses as well…)

And while I loved my old template (and the one before that, and the one before that), I decided yesterday that I needed something new to hopefully encourage me to post more often.

And by the looks of it, it’s totally working.

Although I make no guarantees.

A few things to note:

• I’ve added AJAX commenting, so you can see the comments and add your own without leaving the homepage. (Lazy folk unite, yo.) Update: Totally ruined the loading time… and I'm too lazy to wait. So ixnay on the AJAX, okay?

• Sidebars have officially become “not-on-the-sidebars” (which are hipper, by the way, and I’m not just saying that because I have them. Really.).

• I need more questions for my faq page, so ask me something inane. (Yes, I realize that a lot of you emailed me questions ages ago that I never answered, but I lost them. Lazy folk unite, yo.)

• I’ve added a Social Whore section which has all of the updates from my twitter, last.fm, ALL of my blogs, goodreads, and et cetera on one page, thereby making stalking Judith an incredibly passive sport and easier on the joints. (Lazy folk unite, yo.)

• Ads, which I will be handling on my own since that woman with the leather corset and whip who complained that I wasn’t posting often enough threatened dire consequences (Under normal circumstances, threats from a lady with a whip would be the cherry-topped highlight of my day… But the fact that she was a chick from BlogHer and was totally serious about the not posting bit (Lazy folk unite, yo.) kind of ruined it for me. Damn bureaucrats.), are now included.

• And taking into account the super-duper-wide posting area, I’m pretty sure that I can get away with skipping on the words every once again and just posting a really big picture. (Lazy folk unite, yo.)

Comments, criticisms, suggestions, and faq submissions totally welcome…

Just as long as you don’t tell me to update my “about me”.

Because I’m getting to that.

Eventually. (Lazy folk…)

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

a little blue, April 2009

I'm in a bit of a slump, loves.

It happens every once and again, you know?

I find myself with lots to say and no desire to say it. A certain sort of impotence, and no little blue pill to kiss it and make it better.

So I think I'll read a bit.

And watch a bit.

Listen a bit.

And drink a bit.

Laugh a bit.

Cry a bit.

Work a bit.

And get back to you soon.

Pencil me in for May.

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

Things have been unbelievably insane around these here parts as of late, and I've barely had time to brush my hair,  much less figure out something clever about which to blog.

Unless one counts that draft about ingrown hairs in the most uncomfortable places (read: eyebrows, the outer labia) as clever.  Painful? Most definitely, yes. But I think that calling it "clever" might be pushing it a little…

Even if it is in iambic pentameter.

So in lieu of a rhyming entry on the perils of inappropriate hair removal, I thought I'd just give you all a (relatively) quick Top Five on what's been going down in Shakespeare-ville over the last few weeks:

1.  I cured my baby fever.

I'll admit it. That new baby smell makes my uterus ache something fierce. A couple of snuggles with my new little nephew, and I was all looking at my husband with that "you know you wanna knock me up" sparkle in my eye. (Of course, he was too busy looking at my breasts to give a patoot about what was happening with my eyes.)

But then I got stuck babysitting all of the kids.

"All of the kids" as in a three-year-old, two five-year-olds,  the smart ass ten-year-old, and the newborn.

Two hours in, I was desperately trolling emo websites to find the correct method of slitting one's wrists with a  razor blade.

Three hours in, I realized that I should probably start investing in sharper razors.

2.  I cured my baby fever.

We finally got to bring home Phineas a couple of weeks ago… even though we had to drive nearly to Kentucky to do so.  Everyone was so excited on the way home, giggling every time that cat so much as blinked. Once home, we all sprawled about the livingroom, spending hours tossing a little yarn ball and watching the little fluff of cat chase after it.

And then we went to bed.

And then the cat cried.

And then I turned the  light back on.

And the the cat cried louder.

And then I put it in the bed with us.

And the he sat on my head, and bit my nose, and scratched my eyelid, and attacked my feet, and ate my hair, and got stuck in Peter's chain..

And then I put it back on the floor.

And then the cat cried.

And then I turned the  light back on.

And the the cat cried louder.

And then I put it in the bed with us.

3.  I cured my baby fever.

I'm either really fertile during a certain part of the year, or I've  simply got mad  organizational skillz (yo) as I somehow managed to give birth to my children in subsequential order. Birthdays around here are celebrated in January, February, and March. It's what we like to refer to as the "Birthdays Season"- which closed this year on the 29th of March with That Middle One's 5th.

While picking up his custom-ordered cake that he'd been asking for for a month, he suddenly decided that he did not want the [already purchased] cake and would much prefer the stack of semi-frozen Superman cupcakes on display.

Matter of fact, he insisted on them.

Insisted as in pitched a holy hell "oh my god, my child is obviously the spawn of the devil, somebody find me a new priest and an old priest, post haste" fit.

Needless to say, we had Superman cupcakes for his birthday.

Those and a bag of "Birthday Hot Cheetos".

4. I've cured my baby fever.

Did you know that it's actually possible to flush an entire stuffed cat, two Bionicles, and a pair of  earrings down the toilet all at once?

Me neither.

Aren't I lucky to have a toddler who does?

5. I've cured my baby fever.

Peter was offered a really great job back in our hometown in Louisiana… This means that we'll be moving AGAIN.  Feel free to go back through my archives for a definite count; I lost it three houses and two states ago. I've got lots of misgivings about this move, all of which I'm sure I'll get into later, but it is home. And familiar. And filled with real-life friends whom I've known since grade school.

And the job pays really well.

So well, in fact, that he had to leave last week in order to get started.

Which means that I'm still here.

PLAYING THE ROLE OF SINGLE-MOTHER.

Until the summer.

BY MYSELF. … … … … …

Hey there! Long time, no blog, eh?

I'm so very sorry for not keeping in touch, but we had a recent death in the family. Namely, my uterus. And I was busy baking a batch of celebratory consolation Superman cupcakes.

But I'm back now.

Sorta.

Did you miss me?

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.

Which will then take a potential reader to a profile page/middle man rather than your personal homepage.

Which, of course, annoys the piss out of me.

So here's a quick fix for those of you using Wordpress or a likewise editable platform:

1. Sign up for an OpenID at  MyOpenID. Mine is http://judith-shakespeare.myopenid.com.

2. Add the following lines to the header area of your theme. (Somewhere before </head>) Be sure to change the judith-shakespeare bit to whoever/whatever you may be.

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://www.myopenid.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://judith-shakespeare.myopenid.com/" />	

3. And the next time you have to sign into a blog that requires id verification, simply choose the OpenID option and type in your blog url. (You'll be redirected to MyOpenID in order to login, of course, but, once done, your comment will then link directly to your blog rather than the middle man.)

Easy peasy, rice and cheesy.

(Got questions or wanna know how I did something else? Be sure to let me know in a comment below.)

Karma is real. Please don't steal. © Judith Shakespeare for The Only Thing I Know: A Mom Blog of Slacker Proportions, 2009.