YogaMamaMe

So I've got this great story to tell about our trip last weekend to Charleston and losing our camera and one of Jack's shoes and eating seafood and barbeque and staying at the Homewood Suites in Mt. Pleasant. But in the two days since we've been back in Asheville, I haven't had a minute to write it.

I've been waylaid, you see, by another blog.

"Another blog?" you cry. "Why would you devote time to yet another set of ramblings that perhaps promote good writing discipline and at best amuse a reader or two but are otherwise pretty useless when you have a child to care for, responsibility to contribute to the household income, yoga classes to attend?"

I blame one of the ushers at our wedding.

Being an usher at our wedding is not the most significant thing about this person. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it has totally slipped his mind that he performed this honorary feat. But the fact that he was an usher at our wedding speaks to the importance of his friendship with Hubby, as well as his ill-defined obligation to be nice to me as the wife of his good friend.

This is frightening territory because he is, you see, a literary agent. Because he is both a literary agent and had the honor of ushering guests at our wedding he has graciously listened to many, many great book ideas float out of my mouth. The thriller that turns on a protagonist with a disability and some provision of the ADA. (I never worked out just which one, but I had this misguided notion that writing what you know includes your legal area of expertise.) The first-person mostly fictional narrative about a 39-year-old woman living in Long Beach and trying to get pregnant. (It is fiction, really, and made the semi-finals in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel contest to prove it. Emphasis on "Novel.") And now, YogaMamaMe.

YogaMamaMe: How to Be Mindful When Your Mind Is on Your Baby is my current brilliant this-will-get-me-published idea. It combines all the things I think I'm pretty good at (with the exception of law, which I am pretty good at but don't really care to emphasize any more than is financially necessary). Practicing yoga. Teaching yoga. Writing witty, self-deprecating anecdotes about my not-very-interesting life. And being the mother of a toddler.

The usher-agent wrote me a very kind email on Monday suggesting I start a blog on the subject so I have some sort of presence on which I can sell publishers. Hopefully a large audience is not a prerequisite to having an internet "presence."

Because I read this email when we arrived home from Charleston on Monday night, it was only natural that I spend all my free time on Tuesday writing a post. And all my free time today. And now it's 2:30 and I have just two hours to do the legal work that pays for all this useless blogging before I pick The Boy up from preschool and do the mothering thing that is supposed to sell my YogaMamaMe authority. (Sadly, the yoga part is taking a break today, as it does most Wednesdays when the huge stretch of time alone in the house to accomplish legions of work seems to slip away like my consulting checks in the Lucky Jeans store.)

I will write about our weekend in Charleston before it becomes a distant memory, I promise. In the meantime, if you really care enough for me to promise you more of my pithy stories, take a look at http://yogamamame.blogspot.com/ And if you know someone else who might appreciate it (say, more than stories about some woman she doesn't know living in a town she hasn't heard of), pass the information on.

I'll get me an internet presence yet.