A few months ago, while having dinner with some friends, they informed us of the latest trend for Mormon mothers, “they’re called blogs and all the Mormon mom’s have them!” I responded, trying to sound both confused and interested; “oh, this is the first I’ve heard of this. I must get me one of those blogs.”

A few days later these same friends sent us an e-mail with a link to their very own blog. Their blog was full of pictures of their kids and funny antidotes and stories about play dates, meal planning, and funny things that happened at church.

A few weeks ago I got a call from my dad. He wanted to discuss the plans for his trip to visit in a few weeks. We talked about maybe taking Babboo to the zoo, we talked about my parents helping to get the new house ready to move into. And then he threw in; “and while we’re there I’d like you to help me set up my own blog. I want you to show me everything you know about blogging so that I can run my own.”

My dad wants a blog where he can showcase his 4-wheelin’ trips with my mom. Pretty much it will be full of pictures like this:

(Why does this pictures crack me up so much? Is it the fact that my mom’s helmet is so huge, or is it my brother lounging across the entire 4-wheeler that makes me lose my shiz?)

Last week, with the help of Heidikins, I figured out better methods of Facebook stalking. While perusing Facebook, with my new methods, I found the younger sister of an old boyfriend. Her married name was very unusual, and also very googleable. And so I googled. Lo and behold, she had a blog. With a link to her older sister’s, who was in my grade, blog. Looking over her link’s lead me to even more blogs of people I knew in high school.

Becky and I spent most of yesterday morning reading all of these awesomely horrible blogs and e-mailing back and forth with our own bitter and jaded comments about all of these ladies from high school. Becky pointed out that “reading these blogs is like running your tongue over a canker sore over and over; it’s painful, but you just have to keep doing it.”

This last Saturday I got a text message from one of my bestest friends from my hometown. She was very excited about the fact that she just started her very own blog(!) and wanted to share the URL with the entire universe.

Seeing how many new blogs out there made me think. I thought back to what my friend told me months ago about the latest Mormon mommy trend of blogging. I thought about how my dad wants to start his own blog. I thought about all the e-mails from friends I’m getting that say “hey, check out my new blog!”

And this is when I realized that maybe, just maybe, blogging had jumped the shark.

Crap.

Is blogging no longer for the few of us that get it? I mean, really get it? Can the blogging community support all of the new blogs out there? Does the world actually need more blogs documenting our kid’s pooping habits and our 4-wheeling excursions?

Do we, as blog writers and blog readers, embrace this ever growing trend?

Or do we just secretly lurk on the blogs of all the girls from high school, and thank our lucky stars that they have blogs for us to read and remind ourselves that we’re glad we’re not in high school anymore?

I’ve often patted myself on the virtual back for being able to maintain such a secret blog for the last two and a half years. Hey, look at me, I write a blog that nobody I know in real life reads. I’m a super-spy.

While discussing my anonymity with DaringYoungMom and EveGood on Tuesday night during intermission at “Mamma Mia!”, I came to the conclusion that the vultures are closing in on my super-secret blog. It really is just a matter of time before I get that dreaded phone call from my aunt telling me she found my blog. My fellow bloggers agreed that it is only a matter of time.

(This may be closer to the truth then I care to admit since DaringYoungMom actually knows my aunt in real life. And knows her well enough that my cousin babysits for DYM.)

Gulp!

Over these last two and half years of my virtual back pats, a few people have found the blog. There was the one couple from church that found it. I died a little and then traded favors in exchange for them never mentioning my blog and swearing them to guard my URL with the life of their unborn son. Then there was the two sisters from high school that found me. And then, another girl from high school found me. All of them have sworn to keep my blog a secret. I like these girls. I trust them. And I pretend they don’t read.

It makes things easier for me.

I wonder, that while I’m busy congratulating myself on my secret keeping skills, if my ex-husband’s new wife is reading my blog and laughing because, duh, she found it. Or that maybe my high school boyfriend found it and reads it on a daily basis. Heck, maybe my mom even reads. Or worse, my grandma.

How many of my lurking readers actually know my real name, went to high school or college with me, or attended my wedding(s)?!

I really have no good reason for wanting to keep this blog separate from my “real life”. I don’t write scathing things about people I love. I don’t post (too many) embarrassing pictures of myself, my husband, or my child. The stories I retell, from my past, are retold how I remember them. If these stories were to upset someone I know in real life, it’s only my memory of how things happened, and maybe not their memories. So really, I can’t imagine that it could/would upset them.

Last week I wrote a little post about The Seven Year Itch in a marriage. In this post I briefly talked about a couple I know in real life who are getting a divorce. I didn’t share anything too personal about this couple. Nothing about where they live, what they do for livings, what their names are, or what kind of a car they drive.

Yesterday I got an e-mail from one of my blog readers who lives nowhere near Seattle and nowhere near my hometown. In this e-mail she was all “were you talking about [insert most random last name you’ve ever heard] in your post about marriage and divorce?”

Holy shiz. I was talking about [insert most random last name you’ve ever heard] in that post. Totally.

And then double holy shiz, how did she figure this out?

“First off, how do you know the [insert most random last name you’ve ever heard] family? And how did you figure out I was talking about them?”

Come to find out this couple I know in real life are the ones that introduced this blog reader’s parents to each other many, many years ago while they were young college students. Apparently [insert most random last name you’ve ever heard] and this blog reader’s family are very close and personal family friends. We had a good laugh about the odds of us being connected in this way. The situation turned out to be quite funny and enjoyable to discuss.

This lovely reader figured all of this out by some silly little post I wrote in which I never mentioned (googable) names or (googable) locations. So while the world can seem to be small, it appears that the interweb really is small.

This just goes to prove that I’m not as hidden and secret as I like to think I am on the interweb. Having this happen tempts me to send out a broadcast e-mail with my URL to everyone in my “real life” contact book. Just to get it over with.

And yet, I won’t send it out. I’ll continue to think I’m hidden. To think nobody knows. I’ll continue to pat myself on the virtual back for pulling one over on those I know.

But if you do know me in real life, if you know my real name, if you attended my wedding(s), or are married to someone I was once married to, or if we share the same parents, or have the same last name, or went to the same schools, now is the time to delurk and admit that you read my blog.

Because today, and today only, I will forgive you for keeping it a secret from me.

I promise I won’t be mad. And I won’t freak out. And I won’t block your IP address.

(You can leave a comment, or e-mail me at holaisabel [at] gmail.com)

Today is March 19th. It’s a Wednesday.

When I look out my office window (or rather the window of someone who makes more money then I do and thus deserves an office while I have a cubicle) there is no sunshine. Today I slept in a few extra minutes since I was out late partying at the “Mamma Mia!” premier with DaringYoungMom and EveGood.

Tonight Babboo and I’ll be eating a pre-made dinner straight from my new crock pot. The King, as per usual, will be working over at the new house. Our schedule is in over-drive in order to make our end-of-April/Beginning-of-May move in date.

Today is also The King’s birthday.

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And since it’s Wednesday, you might want to check out my latest post over at SeattleMomBlogs, in which I talk about my friends behind their backs and maternity leave.

Oh, and here’s a suggestion; when asking a random passerby to take a picture of you and fellow bloggers right after you get done rocking out at “Mamma Mia”, make sure your flash is turned on or you will end up with a horrible picture that you will be forced to post for all of the interweb to view.

I’m just saying.

Seriously, go and see “Mamma Mia” at the Seattle Paramount theater. I mean it. The show is awesome. The music is toe tapping. And the guys are hott.

But your tickets today.

In honor of FluentBrittish, I present you with

Things That Are Ruining My Life Right Now

• The King and I made a commitment to the environment years ago when we began construction on our new house. In keeping with this commitment The King recently decided to try out some new awesome flushable diapers for our Sweet Babboo. I flushed the first diaper down the toilet last night, just like the directions directed me to do. And somehow, the thing that shouldn’t happen happened and I ended up in about 2″ of standing toilet water with a flushable diaper wedged so far up the pipe that The King had to race home from working over at the new house to dislodge said flushable diaper (and to talk me down from the balcony).
• I missed “Lost” last night in all the madness from the flushable diaper debacle. I won’t be home tonight to watch “Lost”. Which means I won’t see it until Saturday during Babboo’s nap. (That is, if I’m not too busy washing all the wet towels from the flushable diaper disaster.)
• The fact that I only want to eat foods that have the following ingredients: flour, sugar, and eggs.
• There is not enough time in the day to finish my first ever vampire themed novel.
• The Rain. Really, is there anything else I can say about this? I live in Seattle where we don’t see The Sun for the better part of the winter. I am desperate for The Sun. Desperate.
• I haven’t done my “Secret Sister” assignment for this week yet. I need to work on that tomorrow. You know, if I’m not too busy catching up on “Lost” and doing laundry.

And last, but not least in the list of Things That Are Ruining My Life Right now

• Clicking over from my blog reader to see more pictures of Mrs. Squirrel’s brand new baby and seeing this (see below) instead of her usual beautiful blog. Mrs. Squirrel, where are you? And are you okay?!

So tell me, what is ruining your life right now? (At least it’s Friday, right?)

In cast you missed it, the lovely Jenn over at OperationPinkHerring got engaged during her recent trip to Spain. I could not be happier for her and her Matt, er, I mean Joel. I continually refer to Joel as Matt. It’s easy considering he looks like this:

I seriously got tongue tied when I got to meet Jen and Joel last September. I wasn’t prepared for how pretty Jen was or hot Matt Damon-esque Joel was.

In honor of said engagement, a virtual engagement party is being held today for OPH and Matt Joel.

See, I did it again.

I never had an engagement party, which is odd since I’ve been engaged twice. So while I haven’t had an official engagement party, I have had two weddings.

Let’s talk about the second one, since it’s the only one that “stuck”.

Okay, so since I had had a previous wedding, that my parents so graciously paid for, they weren’t thrilled to pay for a second one. I don’t blame them really, but I was in no place to be able to afford a dream wedding in Mexico. (Boo-hoo!) That meant The King and I were paying for most of our wedding. (His parents footed the bill for the food which, lets be honest, was our biggest expense).

Which meant we made our own decorations. For reals. We bought flowers from the local flower wholesalers, a ton of tulle, glue guns, ribbons and wire and got to work in The King’s mom’s kitchen.

Believe it or not, I hadn’t put much thought into what the plan was for the wedding reception. Something about blue. And yellow. And watering cans and a shiz full of live daisies.

My mom and baby sister did their part to help with the preparations.

Hey, it was hard for them to fly all the way up to Seattle for the wedding. Very, very hard apparently.

Hey sis, thanks for the help. Why don’t you take a break and put your feet up on The King’s mom’s fancy furniture.

I know it’s been almost eight years, but I swear this is the help I got from them. Jerks.

In between the actual wedding ceremony, inside the Seattle LDS Temple, and the wedding reception, we decorated the little reception hall. And by “we”, I mean The King and I and all of our friends and family. Oh yes, we did. And we had a blast.

Again, we had no idea what the actual decorating plan was. We just started sticking flowers and tulle balls all over the place.

Hey Isabel, should we put more flowers above the window?

Oh yes, more flowers. And add some tulle. You can never have too much tulle.

(I love how my uncles are “helping” by holding the ladders for my two single, and hott friends. Thanks Uncles.)

The King even did some flower arranging. He just stuck his tie in his shirt and got to work like a good groom.

My friends and sister got extra creative with the table for the guest book. Again, more daisies (dude, we got a screaming deal on them) and watering cans. Yes it takes three people to place the daisies in just the right location.

It’s a good thing the caterers were focused on the food. It gave us more time to stick those damn flowers all over the reception hall.

We aren’t paying you guys to just stand there. Get that food in order!

(Oh my hell, look at all those tulle balls. They.are.everywhere!)

I don’t really remember anything much about the reception. I know here were lots of friends of The King’s parents and my close friends and family that flew up to be with us. And me, in a pretty white dress and The King is a new blue suit.

We all ate and talked and laughed. It was the perfect way to spend our wedding day.

And then we drove off, together, into the sunset.

Here’s to Jen and Joel and their engagement. May they have their own dream wedding, whatever it may be, and drive off into the sunset.

When I was in middle school I rode the bus with the two most beautiful girls I had ever seen (at that point in my life). They were in high school, had long gorgeous black hair, beautiful smiles, good teeth, and were identical twins. I was jealous that they were lucky enough to be able to look at their twin sister and know how drop dead beautiful they were.

In high school there was a set of twins in the grade below me. The boy was tall and had red hair. The girl was short, but also had red hair. While, of course, they weren’t identical, you could tell they belonged to each other. Another set of twins in high school seemed to have been swapped in the womb. The boy was very feminine and his sister was super masculine.

As mentioned before I was raised along side my uncles, who also happened to be twins. One was tall and ultra handsome. The other was short and stocky. Both were nice guys. They were just 100% different from the other one. One grew up and came out of the closet and the other is married with two kids. Oh yes, so different.

A few months ago I attended a baby shower for a friend that lives an hour outside of the city. I didn’t know anyone at the shower and felt very out of place. (Especially since it was in the ‘burbs. I don’t fit in there.) During the “mingling” section of the party I noticed a women that looked very familiar to me. Naturally I approached her and told her I thought I knew her. She began to list off a number of places where I might know her from. She told me where she volunteered. I told her that wasn’t where I’d seen her before. She told me where she lived. I told her I’d never been anywhere near there.

She kept listing off places where I might have seen her. All of which were not the least bit familiar to me. The it hit me; I had met her at a church function in the city a few months back. Then it hit her; I had met her identical twin sister.

Dude, in all of this her first thought wasn’t that I had maybe met her twin? I mean, this woman was probably sixty years old. This couldn’t have been the first time that someone had mistook her for her identical twin sister!

Dude. I’m still in shock that it took us that long to figure it all out.

Twins are much more common these days, what with fertility drugs and the like. I’m confident that Babboo will go to school with more twins then I ever did. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if he went to school with triplets at some point. There is one set of twins at his school currently.

The King’s sister has a set of twins. One boy. One girl. They are almost exactly one year older then Babboo, but he’s just as big as they are. The girl is clearly the Alpha Male of the three of them. While I love her to pieces, I’m patiently waiting the day when Babboo and the other twin gang up on her and take over. It will be a glorious day at our house.

Heidikins has an identical twin sister who she recently told me is nothing like her. Yes they do look the same, but inside they are very different. I think this is just so fascinating. How you can come from the exact same womb, from the exact same parents, look exactly the same and yet be so different? I can’t even imagine what it must be like to look at a person and know that you look exactly the same as they do. You truly know how you look. There is no blaming it on a “bad mirror” or “bad lighting”.

You truly know.

So tell me, what is your experiences with twins in your life?

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Hey, are any of you into reading good books? Do you love making commentary in your head while you read? Well then, you have got to sign up for FluentBrittish’s Super Duper Blogger Book Exchange right this second. I signed up for this on her first round and loved it. Really, click over and sign up. (But she’ll only take you if you’re dependable.)

(May, you really should do this. I know you just had a baby-but this is right up your alley.)

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I think I forgot to mention that tomorrow morning (at 5 am-but let’s not talk about that part), Babboo and I are flying out to visit my family. My parents bought me a plane ticket for my Christmas present and I’m just giddy about this trip. (Especially since The King was going to be away for a business trip anyway, and I hate being home alone.)

Anyway, you’d better miss me while I’m gone. (Because I know I’ll miss you.)