"I hate that you don't have a blog," said a woman about to undergo heart surgery, as she gazed sincerely up at her boyfriend, "I hate that I don't know what you're thinking."

Mark and I burst into raucous laughter and had to pause the episode of House that we were watching to wipe away our tears of glee and catch our breath.  Seriously?  "I hate that you don't have a blog?" Really?  Yep.  That's what we personal (and dare I say it, female?) bloggers are all supposed to be like.  So divorced from real life connections, so caught up in deluding ourselves about these supposed "friendships" we have online, so obsessed with our hit count, so eager for an audience, so narcissistic, that we can't even talk to our partners or parent our children, at least not unless there's a screen between us.

The comments on the recent Motherlode post on "mommy blogging" back up this perception. There are lots of women there talking about the community and connections they've made and about the therapeutic release of writing.  And there are plenty of others saying those connections aren't real and that the children of these deluded, self-obsessed women are being sorely neglected.

And it makes me wonder, why do people think bloggers and other social networkers are so crazy and scary and dangerous and delusional?  Why is an online presence portrayed as something that precludes, rather than enhances or supplements, other relationships?  What makes friendships "real?"  Why do we believe that people don't know what "real" relationships look like?  Why does it matter so much how people (particularly women) spend their free time?  What makes us believe that online time is not, in fact, free time, but time that is being taken away from more important things?  For that matter, why do we always have to be doing something "important?"  What makes something "important" in the first place? (From what I read "important" is anything from things I'd count as truly important -- like spending time with loved ones -- to things I consider not at all important -- like making sure the house is tidy and/or we're making more money.)  What makes it ok for a published author of personal essays or a memoir to write in detail about herself, her life, her children, her friends, her family, but not ok for bloggers to do the same?

If there are any universal answers to those questions, I don't know them.  What I do know is that there are hundreds of people who have passed in and out of my life and have all seen a sliver of me, both online and offline: sitting next to me in a movie theater, driving me a few miles in a taxi, clicking on a link to my blog and clicking right back out again.  I know that there have been dozens to hundreds of lurkers in my life, both online and offline, who have seen bits and pieces of me (and not always the nice bits, nor for that matter, always the nasty ones): the neighbors who (assuredly) heard Mark and me arguing or laughing or having sex through the thin walls of our old apartment just the way we heard them, the folks at the next table in the restaurant listening to our conversations, the people silently reading my blog.

I know that I have hundreds of people I've talked to and spent time with each day over the years, who've shared a workplace or the classroom or the social space, both online and offline: coworkers, high school and college buddies, neighbors, moms at my kids' schools, folks in online discussion groups, blog readers, fellow bloggers.  Some I know well, have fun with and consider good friends.  Others are acquaintances whom I don't know, and still others I don't really like at all (and vice versa, I'm sure).

Then I know that there are people in my life, both online and offline, who are my soulmates: the ones who are family or like family, the ones who would know my voice (spoken or written) anywhere, the ones I call first when I have joys or sorrows to share, the ones who can come into my house and help themselves to a drink or a snack, the ones I laugh and cry and eat ice cream with, the ones who see me -- as me, all of me -- and get me, and are there for me, as I am for them.

Some of those soulmates are people like Jay (whom I've known for almost a decade now) and JW (who is my son Austen's absolute favorite person in the world to talk to long-distance (just don't tell his grandparents)); people I met online.  I didn't know what they looked like or what their voices sounded like or get to see or touch them in the flesh for years.  And some of those soulmates are people like my husband Mark or my friend Kelly; people I happened to meet "in real life."

I also know that I am fortunate enough to have six hours a day free when my kids are in school and my husband is at work.  I know that I spend the vast majority of that time on housework, household administration and errands that are unseen by the and unacknowledged by people both in and out of the blogosphere.  And I know that I take some of those six hours, as a gift to myself and a support to others, to write.  I know there are people who don't respect that or see it as useless and "a waste of time" because I either don't get paid (or don't get paid much) for that.  I also know that I love my life and the way I spend my days, and that although what I contribute to the world (whether in doing the dishes or feeding my kids or blogging) may seem small, it's important: just as, in my favorite movie, It's a Wonderful Life, George Bailey's life and work in his small town was as valuable as anything he ever could have done if he'd gone out and built those bridges and skyscrapers he dreamed of.

No doubt there are people out there who become so obsessed with some aspect of their life or group of friends that they ignore other relationships.  No doubt there are people who can't tell the difference between a genuine friendship and the high of a falsely instant connection (I'm married to someone in recovery for just that, remember?).  No doubt someone, somewhere in the world, has to conduct a poll of everyone she knows before making major life choices.  No doubt there is a mom out there somewhere who is ignoring her kids while she does something else.  But all of that is hardly new to the Internet, just as "real" friends in my life haven't been confined strictly to people happen to have met in person.

And that's why Mark and I laughed as we listened to that fictional blogger on House.  We laughed knowing that I blog (about intimate details of our lives) and he doesn't.  We laughed knowing that we were snuggling on the sofa watching House after talking for over two hours -- about everything from mundane topics, like scheduling the kids' doctors appointments, to quite serious matters about our marriage -- during which I never once wistfully opined that it would go better with a keyboard in hand.  We laughed because Mark knows me better than anyone, online or off.  And we laughed because we both knew exactly what bits and pieces of those few hours spent talking and watching TV would go on the blog and what never would.

When I first started blogging, I had this notion that blogging was the province of teenagers and that most blog posts were written in the nearly incomprehensible idiom of text messaging. (Which does lead one to wonder why I started a blog...) In any case, I was surprised when I began poking around in cyberspace and found vibrant communities of mama bloggers, autie mama bloggers, recovery bloggers, feminist bloggers, spiritual bloggers and more. And in my cyber travels, I found The Junky's Wife.

And I was blown. a. way.

A kick ass writer who was insanely in love with her junky husband, this woman was smart, funny as hell and all kinds of well read. She was the right kind of crazy, and that's everything I like in a friend. (Was it JW of one of our mutual friends who said that all we look for in a friend is someone smart who spent her childhood chained to a pole her her stepfather's basement?) It was blog love at first sight.

We first got to know each other (as we bloggers do) through comments, and while we've moved on long ago (in this huge, lump-in-the-throat, leap into the chasm of trust way) to being real life BFFs, I was still sad to see her saying goodbye today to the blog where I first found her.

I know her relationship with her blog has been nearly as tempestuous as her marriage itself, so I wouldn't be surprised if she came back one day or if she never came back at all. She's like one of my favorite literary figures. Um, no not Hamlet. I was thinking of something a little more, well, along the lines of the literature I actually get to read these days... She's like the Lorax, lifting herself by the seat of her pants to that patch of blue sky and leaving us wondering at the words left behind.

Namaste, Junky's Wife.  I'll miss your blog.

(Note on comments: I'm a control freak and moderate my comments. I will be offline until the end of the week, so please do leave comments, but be aware that they probably won't post until Friday.)

Image credit: Photo by mksegh on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

Hello MPJ blog readers. I am one of MPJ’s virtual friends. We have much in common – birthplace, university, sons with autism, being touched by addiction – but we have never met in person. I enjoy MPJ’s virtual company very much and follow her blog. In 2007, she inspired me to start blogging, but that was a very short-lived exercise.

I would love for people to get to know more about autism spectrum disorders and what it is like to live with and love someone on the spectrum.

I believe that greater awareness of and sensitivity to the challenges experienced by people born with an autism spectrum disorder will be of enormous benefit to them. ASD presents as a way of thinking, feeling, interacting with, and experiencing the world that is different from the norm. Folks on the spectrum are not likely to change, no matter how many times a day we tell them that they should stop doing x, y, or z, it really is weird. Nor should they be expected to, as I am coming to realize. Though it is probably not too much to ask those who have started puberty to please use deodorant, practice washing ALL the shampoo out of their hair, and apply zit cream each and every day. Really.

It can be difficult to get to know someone on the autism spectrum. In the case of my son Jack (his real name, because I can’t think of him as anyone other than Jack), he is not all that interested in having people know him. This might best be illustrated by a recent incident whereby some classmates stopped by the house after school to say, “hi” - and he threatened to call the police. Charming.

Here is something I wrote about Jack in the Fall of 2007. It was in response to my hearing – yet again – someone cheerfully inform me that “you know, they say that Bill Gates has Asperger’s.”

Thanks for that. Ahem.

“My son is a pioneer. One of the first in a wave of newly diagnosed high-functioning autism spectrum critters. Nobody knows what to do with him – including his parents. He would provide stiff competition in the Most Annoying 12 –Year Old Boy World Championship Finals. He would get a good run from his autistic friends, the Perseverator, the Echolalist, and The Boy Who Is Not Necessarily Finished Experiencing His Food Once It Enters His Mouth. But for the past six months my son has been training quite intensively. He is strict with his daily regimen of sticking his face into others’ and making loud groaning noises even when one is trying to converse with the nice car salesman, spitting on the floor, letting doors slam into people’s faces no matter how elderly or frail, interrupting conversations with howls or maniacal laughing, perseverating about hippopotami, rolling around on the floor in public places such as the lobby of the AMC movie theater, spilling, licking his shirt, chewing on his pen cap even though he’s been told 171 times in the last hour that he will pay for the replacement orthodonture with his own blood should another one of those metal things pop loose.

It is a generally accepted truth that a redeeming side effect of autism is those so affected also exhibit a special genius, the “savant” in idiot-savant. Hmm. The HFA, neuro-atypical boys that I know are no dopes and can get by with As and Bs in school. They have talents, for sure, as do the rest of us. However, they are not geniuses nor gifted in any way, except in being blood pressure de-stabilizingly annoying.

Do I need to qualify this by saying that I love this child deeply, passionately, painfully, with every frazzled nerve-ending and worried molecule and the whole of my sometimes broken heart? I hope not.”

1. It was a free book.
2. The title had both Momma and Zen in it, which sounded good.
3. I liked Shawn and Shawn liked the book.
4. Did I mention it was free? I could win it! Yay, free books!

So, I threw my name in and... I won!

I was immediately sorry I had. What was I going to do now? For the most part, I guard my anonymity jealously -- even more so then than now -- but the book had to be sent somewhere.  And I wasn't about to just throw my real name and address out there to a total stranger. Sure, she said she was a mother and Zen priest, which all sounds very peaceful and safe, but how did I know she wasn't a serial killer? See, you get burned by the person you trust most in life -- you find out one day your husband has been living a double life -- and you fear to trust anyone.  I was playing then the same "what if" game I still play today, but it hadn't yet become a useful tool for me; it kept me mired at the point where fear and suspicion turn to paranoia and paralysis, rather than gently guiding me to appropriate leaps of faith.

Yet I still did want a free book. (If a serial killer were going to lure me, it would be with free books.) So, I sent Shawn the name and address of a friend of mine who knows about my blog and had agreed to forward the book on to me. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped Karen wasn't the second coming of the Unibomber, and that I wouldn't spend the rest of my days kicking myself when my friend died because the explosive device meant for me was delivered to her home. As a result of my (ahem) "extreme caution," I have a very nice note from Karen and a lovely autographed copy of Momma Zen, both with my friend's name inscribed on them.

But the story doesn't end there.  After I received the book, it sat on my shelf for a year and a half, because I was afraid to read it. As a writer, I know that each book is a piece of someone's soul.  But as a reader, I've always been a harsh critic: viewing them with the detached eye of a connoisseur and focusing on what's lacking rather than what's there.  By the time I received Momma Zen I'd started reading Karen's blog and she was reading mine.  So, here I was, holding a piece of the soul of this person I was just getting to know, and knowing that I might hate it.  What was I going to say: "Thanks for graciously sending me the work of your heart. I regret to inform you that I find your heart sucky."?

But for a number of reasons, I finally decided to pick up the book this weekend.  I read just two chapters before I put it down and walked away.  Then I went straight to my computer and ordered a copy for a pregnant friend.  Sometimes leaps of faith pay off, and sometimes dragging yourself through a year and a half of dread just to find the edge of the cliff does.

My blogroll was long overdue for a makeover. As you all know, the rules are: comment regularly and ye shall be put on the blogroll. But oh, what a headache to keep track of all that myself! Enter a neat little piece of code that keeps track of that for me. You comment, and it automatically adds a nice little linky to you over on my sidebar. Yay!

The only problem is that I want to break my own rules. Ok, actually, I did break my own rules a little, because the Junky's Wife has been my blogging BFF since I started blogging almost two years ago, so she will always get a link even if she's too pretty to comment anymore. And also Bev, because I said way back that I'd link to her even if she didn't comment. See! I've broken the rule twice already. And I really want to break it some more times. Because some of the very wonderful relationships I've built -- and some of the blogs I stalk most relentlessly -- are not on there. And I know some people lost track of me when I moved to the new URL.

On the other hand, I don't at all want to break my own rules. I hate playing favorites. And I like having a way to reward the wonderful community of folks who write on my virtual bathroom wall, as well as a snappy response to those creepy spammers who beg me to link to them, like I'm some kind of cheap blogging one night stand. (Don't try to win my heart by commenting either, people with the virtual marketing-hair. You go straight to my spam folder.)

In the end, I've decided to let the rules stand for the time being -- no matter how hot or hilarious or real life friend (sh! don't tell) a blogger you are. Thank you all so much for being here. Enjoy the new (automated!) blogroll. I know I will!

And then Austen drew the names. I asked him to hold each one up in his hand so I could take a picture, but we had a little breakdown of communication and I couldn't get him to understand what I meant by holding them up for the camera. So he balanced them on his wrist for the pictures instead. Served the same purpose, right? So, without further ado... He picked...

Jenn from J-Online (probably fitting, since I stole the idea from her!)

Fiona from i0nafi0na

Ingrid from Boricua in Texas

Thanks for playing you all! I will be e-mailing the three of you who will get bookmarks to ask for your address and favorite color(s).  And don't forget to pass on the love by giving something handmade of your own to three blog readers (or total strangers).

I have to say, I'm glad this was a random pick, as I wanted to give one to all of you and wouldn't have been able to pick myself. This has been such fun, I think I will do it again in the future, so the rest of you can have another shot at it.

Wait. What's that holding us up? Could it be our very own All That Is Dazlious magnet from Marla Baltes? It is indeed! If you don't know Marla, she blogs at All That Is Dazlious, where she shares her photography and writes about autism and her beautiful and vibrant daughter Maizie.

I left some Happy Thanksgiving wishes way back on, um, Thanksgiving and Maizie herself picked my name from among the commenters out as one of the magnet winners. I felt a little queasy when I told her how to contact me to send the magnet, as I always do when I let someone a little closer to my real life self, but it was such fun to get the magnet and see Marla's real life handwriting.

I love my new magnet!  Thanks, Marla and Maizie!

Her hair was jet black
or so I imagined it
through pixels on screen.

My computer hums.
Together we laugh, cry, share.
She's there every day.

Monitor flickers:
Eerie light of a false dawn
waking me to day.

I see the words there,
detached, non-corporeal:
my friend passed away.

She has disappeared
fast as words through the ether.
And I will miss her.

I was a bit under the weather, since the kids gave me some crazy virus as a going away present the day before I left. But, thanks to better living through chemistry, the ability to sleep in a hotel bed uninterrupted by small children, and a little "letting go and letting God," I made it through the trip at close enough to full speed that Vowels was able to repeatedly accuse me of lying about being sick.

The wedding was lovely, and Vowels was as elegant and graceful as a classic film star. And I got to hug her real life beautiful self at her real life wedding! At one point, V's new husband came around, doing the polite groomly thing of thanking guests, and I was doing the shyly anonymous thing. He shook my hand and thanked me for coming (whoever I was), and JW punched him and said, "This is MPJ!" Then his face lit up in recognition, and I got a very excited welcome to the wedding.

One of the wedding guests vowed to track down my blog (which shouldn't be hard, since she reads JW's). However, I don't know, with all the drunken bacchanalia (among those without a troubled relationship with alcohol) that goes on at weddings , if she'll remember to do it. (But if she does: You found me!)

While Vowels was off being classy and bridely, JW and I got to spend the whole day chatting in my hotel room, where we spent so much time whirling in talk about blogging, writing and our addict husbands that we not only didn't blog together, we forgot to eat dinner. (JW will deny all that and swear we spent the time making out, but really, who are you going to believe?)

I was even lucky enough to get to spend a little extra time with V on her wedding night before I headed off to bed and my early flight back home. That's were I am now -- late getting my daughter to school! Yep, everything is back to normal already. Darn.

I am also bringing my camera, because my son, in particular has requested photographic proof that these people exist. And because, frankly, I think he may be a little in love with The Junky's Wife, who has quickly picked up on his unique quirks and (because she knows he sometimes reads over my shoulder) writes messages for him with the particular capitalization, spelling and liberal use of kiddie potty mouth words that he likes.

In keeping with the whole anonymity thing, I won't be posting full body pictures here, but I will take hand and foot photos, as I have with trips in the past.

Have a good weekend!