A few years ago, I was reading a USA Today article about how anyone who was anyone online, had to be on Twitter.  My original thought was, thank goodness I’m a nobody!  I don’t have time for that nonsense!

The article mentioned that the best practice for web users was to, at the very least, secure a Twitter user name before someone else scooped it up.  I decided to join, but that was the only thing I was going to do…just obtain the name @MomoFali so it wouldn’t get taken.  I signed up the very same day I read that article.

That was 10,000 tweets ago.

I could go on and on about the benefits of Twitter.  Just ask my husband.  Most notably, Twitter got me a job.  Holla! It also got me a freezer full of meat, a mention in Ladies Home Journal, roommates at conferences, product recommendations from trusted professionals, blog traffic, great relationships with sponsors, invaluable friendships, help with 6th grade homework and, more than a few times, it has settled an argument in my house.

Do you want help brainstorming when you need a list of red-headed, literary characters for your daughter because the next day is dress-as-a-red-headed-literary-character-day at school?  Go ask Twitter.  She can help you.  Anne of Green Gables, anyone?

Any time of the day or night, I can log on to Twitter and find one of my friends there.  Friends from all over the world with whom I can have instant conversations.  With Twitter, I even helped to find a lost dog when someone in my neighborhood said he was missing.  Within minutes, word can spread just about anywhere you want it to.  Maybe even where you don’t.  Watch yourself, now.

Of course, there can also be a lot of nonsense on Twitter, as you can see from my Dilaudid tweets and some of these daily updates I sent:

Take THAT, all my friends at #mom2summit! We’re talking about NOUNS on Twitter tonight! Yeah, and sentence diagrams. Booyah!

I got a clove filling. Now I’m craving pumpkin pie.

These women on the #Oscars are beautiful, but I’m eating trail mix. With M&M’s. I win.

My husband just got my daughter to agree to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy by bribing her WITH A NACHO. As in, singular.

How old do I sound when I tell you I’m looking at a catalog of compression stockings?

Among the Christmas Ale, I found a Harvest Moon. This is the equivalent of time travel, no?

Conversation from the other room…Kid #1, “Did you fart?” Kid #2, “No, but my duck did.”

I am wearing the mommy and baby dolphin necklace my son bought me at Santa giftland. Because nothing says, “I love you” like Flipper.

I am not going to buy a book for which the TV ad says it is, “Un-put-down-able.” No offense, but I like real words.

Took the kale chips out of the oven, covered the baking sheet with parchment paper and now am baking cookies. I am an oxymoron.

The best thing about Twitter is that social people, like me, don’t have to stop being social.  Ever.  This is great for me and for my husband, because sometimes I want to talk about gladiator sandals and he just wants to watch SportsCenter.

My BFF once told me that the definition of an introvert or extrovert isn’t how outgoing you are, but whether you seek people or quiet time inside yourself when you want to recharge.  I’m definitely an extrovert.

Sure, downtime is great sometimes, but being able to talk about philosophy, dill pickles or the latest hairstyle, anytime you want, is pretty awesome too.

This post needs to start with a few disclaimers:

1.  I like parties.  My husband often says that I “don’t know when the party should end.”  This is a true statement and is why I usually have black circles under my eyes.

2.  I work for BlogHer as Social Media Manager.  The opinions I am about to share are opinions I have held since last summer, when I attended BlogHer’10 in NYC, before I worked for them.  This is also a true statement.  You can ask my friends, because they listen to me when I want to vent about said opinions and I shared these a long time ago.

3.  No one asked me to write this.  I should have written it in August, but didn’t want to insult anyone.  I am hoping, by writing it now, others will learn from my naiveté.

4.  If you’re not a blogger, you can stop reading now.  Unless, in your industry, you’re a frequent conference attendee.

(To my computerless mother, for whom I will have to print this blog post:  BlogHer is the largest community of women who blog with more than 40 million unique visitors a month. That means, BlogHer is a pretty big deal and they know their stuff.  Get it?  I didn’t think so.)

In less than five months, I will be attending my third BlogHer conference in San Diego.  A couple of days ago, I got the first of what will be many invitations for events and product giveaways from companies who are, in no way, affiliated with BlogHer.

When I went to my first BlogHer conference in Chicago, in 2009, there were suites throughout the hotel where I was sent to get free stuff.  I won’t lie, it was pretty nice.  I got a cute, buttery-soft t-shirt, a free pair of jeans (I loved them so much, I went to the store and bought more) and an awfully nice backpack.  At the time, I didn’t realize that the companies involved were not sponsoring the conference.

Conference sponsors at BlogHer are valuable to the attendees who buy a ticket at at the Blogger Rate of $298 (for the record, there was early-bird pricing of $198 through the end of February).  This Blogger Rate ticket is subsidized by the companies who are there to share their brand and products.  If it wasn’t for them, there would also be no Expo Hall where you can meet companies on your own time and there would be no food (and I, for one, really like food).

If you do not want your ticket to be subsidized (for instance, if you take issue with the policies or products of a sponsor), you are free to pay the Self-Sponsored Blogger Rate of $598.  I know, exactly, one person who has bought a ticket at that price.

Everyone I know bought early-bird tickets at $198, or $99 a day.  That price gets them fed, lets them choose from more tracks than any other blog conference, admits them to all cocktail parties and to the Expo Hall.  All of those things are part of the conference because of official sponsors.

This is why BlogHer made the decision to have non-sponsored events barred from the conference in NYC.  You can not question this move.  If it weren’t for legitimate sponsors, most people could not afford to attend and it isn’t fair to the companies who subsidize our tickets to have our attention focused elsewhere.  Mom, are you with me?

Non-sponsors curtailed this in NYC by inviting bloggers to off-site parties.  Attendees were sent all over Manhattan for everything from soap to manicures.  I chose not to attend these events, not because I’m high-and-mighty, but because I wanted to spend the time with fellow bloggers.  I take that back; I attended one, and that was only because someone else wrangled an invitation for me.  I spent over an hour being schmoozed, watching a presentation AND NOT TALKING TO MY FRIENDS.  All for a bottle of lotion.

Don’t get me wrong, I would not begrudge someone the life-experience of being taken via limousine to a private party held by a company they really believe in.  If a brand is giving away free vacuum cleaners, or those aforementioned jeans, then I say, “Go for it!” Also, get me some!  Just consider the time you’re investing before you do it.

If you had asked me in Chicago if I wanted to pay for a cab and spend a couple of hours away from invaluable socializing and conversations with intelligent and insightful women so that I could get a free backpack, I would have said no.  And, for real, it’s a super nice backpack.

If you know anything about blogging, you have heard of ROI (Return on Investment).  Personally, I get the best ROI by engaging with people who inspire me. For me, BlogHer is about igniting creativity, about sharing ideas, about connecting with friends and making new ones.

And, you can’t do any of that if you’re across town getting schmoozed with free lotion.

* This post was updated on June 17, 2012 to reflect my current position with BlogHer and the reach of the BlogHer Publishing Network

Since my son was born in 2002, I have had a lot of bad days.  Watching him get taken to surgery nine times, seeing catheters shoved into places that boys shouldn’t have catheters shoved, watching him get stuck for IV’s so many times that I’ve lost track and seeing him almost die twice will tend to make every day feel like a Monday.

There have been so many struggles that parents of a typical child can’t even imagine.  And before someone comes along and tells me how fortunate I am that my son can walk and talk, I will say that I know we are lucky.  I have spent enough time around children in the hospital to know that things could be horrifically worse.

But, there have been struggles.  It took 13 months before tube-feeding wasn’t an ever-looming threat and it was 18 months before he took his first step.  That was after weekly physical and occupational therapy appointments and more genetics tests than even the geneticists knew existed.

He is almost nine and he vomited while eating just yesterday.  He can’t button his own pants.  We found out last week that he needs hearing aides.

As a parent, you fight through these situations.  You modify his surroundings, you buy him velcro shoes, you cut his bites into little pieces.  You, quite simply, adapt.

But, there are certain challenges where there is no fix.

My son is not only medically different from his peers, but also physically, emotionally, behaviorally and socially.  He is tiny, quirky and the most unique individual I have ever known.  Most adults “get him”.  Most kids, don’t.

For the past six weeks, my son has been enrolled in a basketball clinic at his school.  This was more of a social exercise than an athletic one, as my almost nine year old weighs only 43 pounds.

Over the last month, my boy learned to dribble and bounce-pass and he learned to play one heck of a man-to-man defense.  He had fun. He tried his best.

He has no idea that I sat in the stands and cried this afternoon, because I watched every kid on the court look right through him when it came time to pass a teammate the ball.  My husband knew I was crying, as he sat detaching himself from the situation, but I told him that it was making me sad to watch and he replied, “I know.  It’s awful.”

I can’t fault the boys.  They’re young and they wanted to win.  They were smart enough to know that my son couldn’t make a basket.  If he was on the other side of the ball as a typical child, then he would have probably done the same thing.

But, he wasn’t on the other side of the ball and he is not a typical child.  I watched him holding his hands in the air, waiting for a pass, for over an hour.  He got a chance to dribble twice, when one of the parent volunteers TOLD the boys to pass it to him.  He loved those few, fleeting seconds.  I could see the pride in his face.

As a parent, you want your child to shine, not be ignored.  You want the world to see what you see; that inside the quirky kid is a funny, smart, gentle soul.  Okay, he’s obstinate too, but everyone does see that.

It is so hard to have a child like mine, but it is also very special.  It is a joy to see him succeed and to go places I never thought possible.  To me, he is a gigantic force in the universe.

But, to the boys on the basketball court, he is but a speck.

When I was growing up, my immediate neighborhood had a handful of kids my age.  Within one block there were three boys and a girl with whom I spent many a summer night climbing trees and playing baseball.

One of the boys was a good friend and I spent a lot of time at his house.  He introduced me to Monty Python and he had a one-eyed, guinea pig.  No, that’s not a euphemism.

I had so much fun at his house.  I played his keyboard (oh my goodness, NOT a euphemism!), we battled at bumper-pool and there was a time, or two hundred, when we played video games.  Geekdom rules!

Fast forward to high school where one of my best friends was a boy.  I hung out at his house so much that when he moved away for good after high school, I still hung out with his mom all the time.  She and I used to have playdates for my daughter and her granddaughter.

I had another really good male friend during college, a group of men with whom I used to work that I’m still close to and, of course, there’s my ultimate best friend…my husband.  He has been with me through highs, lows, trauma, drama, thick and thin.  Mostly thick, if we’re discussing my thighs anyway.  Oh, and blogging; he’s been with me through that too.  He also pays our mortgage.  He’s a friend with all kinds of benefits.

Every one of these guys are people that I could see for the first time in years and pick up right where we left off.  There is no judging each other about the way we look, or what kind of moms we are, or feeling guilt because our house isn’t clean and theirs is, and they’re the head of the PTO and just made a craft and cupcakes and let their daughter have a slumber party where Supermom blended up cauliflower and put it into the punch, but the kids don’t even know they’re drinking vegetables!  Men don’t care.  I’m pretty sure they’re lacking the superficiality gene.  Because, there totally is one.

I am lucky that I have a husband who trusts me and understands that I like beer and football as much as I like home decorating and flowers.  He has a girl-friend (that’s a friend, who’s a girl) who goes to hockey games with him, because she loves hockey.  I don’t.
 
I feel more comfortable that he’s hanging out with her than with a lot of guys I know.  No offense, fellas.

And, if you are offended and feel like you need to argue that men and women can’t be friends, then me and my male, blogging bestie will take you down.  That’s right.  Downtown, Buster Brown.

Photo courtesy of Angry Julie.  Word.

Either that, or I’ll squish you with my chin(s).