I have a new blog!

I'm so excited about this one. When Catherine asked me to contribute something to this new thing at Babble she was doing, my first inclination was to decline, because I'm sort of done writing about parenting. I mean, I'm still going to talk about being a parent, but the "look at this cute thing my kid said" material is no longer mine to share. My last gig, they wanted me to do that and pretty much nothing but that, and I just--I can't, anymore. My son is almost 9 and he (rightly) wants his privacy. So there it is. Besides, what little we decide that I can share with you, I'm going to save for Finslippy. Finding anything to share with another parenting site would be challenging, to say the least.

But then we talked, and it turned out she didn't need me to share cute relatable Henry stories, after all. I could write about anything. I knew that I wanted to talk about writing, and fear. The fear that keeps us from doing the writing that (many of us) need to do to stay sane. I think about this stuff all the time, I've covered it before on this blog, Eden and I did a panel on the topic for the Mom 2.0 conference, and I still have things to say. So why not make it the subject of my blog?

So here it is. Write Anyway, my new blog, part of Babble Voices.  I'll be writing once a week, and I already have these two posts up: Who do I think I am?  and Why "Write anyway"? I hope you'll take a look.

Update on August 21, 2011 by Alice

Hello again! To those of you who have asked for information on the RSS feed, the URL is this:

http://blogs.babble.com/babble-voices/alice-bradley-write-anyway/feed/

Thanks, and I'm so glad you're as excited as I am!

Here are some things I did in places that were not here.

HELLO, WORLD! I've had some coffee. Not a LOT. Okay, a lot.

"New bottle full of Pedialyte instead of milk, fuck you. I don't even KNOW you. Okay, screw it. I will drink this bullshit once. Yes, okay. This is all right. No, wait. No, on second thought, fuck you. Fuck you in the ear. I'm going to slap you all the way into Idaho if you keep coming at me like that. Pedialyte. Can I get some fucking Pedialyte up in here? Who do I have to blow to get a bottle of goddamn Pedialyte? Oh, you mean THAT STUFF? Oh, fuck you."

This is but one excerpt from three of my favorite posts from last week!

"Let's face it: newborns are weird-looking. They cry a lot. They're terrible at board games. And yet many mothers profess to have instantly fallen deep in love with their scrunchy-faced, pink, kind-of-boring babies. Who can say why this happens? It happened to me, and even I don't understand it. But it doesn't happen for lots of mothers."

7 tips for new parents. Oh, magazines, you sure do love the numbered lists.

BY THE WAY, did you know that you can now comment on my Redbook posts via your Facebook account? It's true! Come with me on this magical journey! This magical...commenting...journey.

"When Hailey was born, Victor's grandad said that cats eat babies and he said that he was going to come over and slit our cats' throats and throw them in the garbage. This is all true. We shut the cats up with the baby whenever he was in the neighborhood just to keep them all safe but none of the cats ever even tried to eat the baby. Is Victor's grampa crazy or is there something wrong with my baby?"

No one gives an interview like Jenny. But no one.

Finally: this has nothing to do with me, but these videos of "Chloe Sevigny" have made me terribly happy this week. I can't stop laughing at them. I can't stop! Call 911!

Seriously. "Ironic coin skort"? I can't even write that without laughing.

Elsewhere, there is laughter and tragedy, although not in that order.

"When I read about the physical and emotional toll parents with disabled children face, I want to delete this whole post, and write about something I’m actually qualified to address, like kitty cats."

Wonderland entry, above.

And now: Looky, Daddy! is a blog I have grown to love, and not just because its author guilted me into linking to him. How could you not love this?:

"Of all the questions we twin parents get, nothing drives me crazier than the "natural" question. The fact that people feel they can so casually inquire to a stranger's personal life and health issues just completely baffles me. Do these people go up to bald people and ask, "So, cancer?"

Here are a few of my favorite answers to "Are they natural?" Feel free to pick and choose, depending on the situation.

1. No, they're unnatural.

2. No, they're synthetic.

3. (In a low whisper:) Clones.

4. No, they're pretend.

5. No, they're made of cobbled together body parts I bought on eBay.

6. More than you.

7. No, sir! What you are looking at is the next level of human baby. I'm telling you, they are state of the art. Titanium skeleton. Pentium III processor. And the outside? 100% NuSkin. Grown in a lab in Weehawken, New Jersey. Looks real, doesn't it? Cost a pretty penny, I don't mind saying, but worth it. Sure, we could have gone with the vinyl skin, but I think those just look tacky, plus they heat up like the dickens in the summer. Do you want to feel it? No? Okay, but do this: Lean in close, you can hear them hum. It's low, but you can hear it. Go ahead. No? Alright. Well, next time, maybe. Anyway, if you want to know more, the manufacturer of these bad boys has a website. It's www.youarearudesonofabitch.com. Check it out when you get a chance."

See? You can't.

Because maybe we need more junk.

“The elements of blogging, as far as I'm concerned, are already junk. Our lives, our entire world, form a heap of trivia and disaster. To some degree we're stuck in the tragic position of Klee's "Angelus Novus", unable to reach back and mend the catastrophe of history. What we do have is memory and language, which, along with a high-speed connection, is all you need to reshape it, hold it up for your readers, plunge your hand in and rip out the joke.”

Just as I was questioning this ridiculous exercise, along comes the Palinode to clear things up. Why aren’t you reading him right now?

I have a small, manageable group of blogs I read every week. I don’t venture beyond my tiny corner of the Internet nearly enough. You probably need to branch out, too. (Yes, you do. Stop looking at me like that.) So if you’ve been reading any new and/or noteworthy blogs, post them here.