Edgy Mama

This Friday night is the geekiest party of the year–Spookypalooza–a costumed conclave of WNC’s bloggers, tweeters, and Facebookers. And I need a witch hat.

We have an awards ceremony too. If you want to vote (for me, maybe?), today’s your last chance. Vote here.

Then come to the party at the Phil Mechanic Building. And although this poster says Blog Awards at 10 p.m., I think they’ll happen earlier. For those of us who are old and need to go home early.

P.S. I’ll be selling ad space–on my heinie–$20 per cheek.

Trying to green Halloween, but I need help.

I also need a witch hat for next Friday night’s Spooky Blogapoolooza party. Clearly, after writing this column, I can’t go buy one. And I can’t sew. Anyone got one I can borrow?

I’m really excited about this week’s column about the new book in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. I scored a (short) interview with the author, Jeff Kinney.

Here’s an excerpt:

We’re so into Wimpy Kid that we’ve been talking about Oct. 12 like it was the day of the second coming. Both kids were home sick on the release day (strange how that happened), but not so sick that they couldn’t talk me into driving down to Accent on Books to buy a just-out-of-the-box copy of Dog Days. I agreed only after I told the kids we were buying only one copy, and they’d have to read it together and/or share it. Which totally didn’t work. They were fighting over the book before we left the store, and I had to confiscate it until we got home. They managed to read the first 40 or so pages side by side on the sofa (adorable) before the fighting broke out again (not adorable). Ultimately, I let them trade off the book every 15 minutes until bedtime. Then I gave in and bought another copy the next day—both finished the book that afternoon, then started re-reading it. My girl said, “It’s the best Wimpy Kid book ever!”

Read the rest of the column here.

The amazing computer dudes at Mountain Xpress have now added area parenting events from the newspaper’s calendar to my on-line page of recent columns (well, there are about 50 columns there–yowza!) Scroll down past the ads on the right for the latest in stuff to do around town with your kids. If you have events you want to get on the page, e-mail information to calendar@mountainx.com. I also hear that they’re considering addding links to parent blogs–both regional and from further afield. What do y’all think? Would you go to that page to check out what other folks are writing about kid wrangling?

Yes, I know I kind of suck at blogging these days because mostly all I do is link to my column. Because I’m lazy like that.

My young whipper-snapper smart blog consultant guy set me up with tweetmeme and something called sexy bookmarks, which because I love to read, totally turns me on.

But I may have too many sexy bookmarks at the bottom of my post, particularly since I don’t even know what most of them mean. Do you know? Do you care? And which sexy bookmarks are you likely to use? Thanks and good night.

This week’s column seems appropriate in rainy Asheville today.

I don’t want to diminish the losses to area apple growers or damage caused to homes and businesses by flooding. But I do need some help working the sillies out of my kids, who’ve been cooped up, both at home and school, for way too many stormy hours.

Read the rest here.

Breaking news: President Obama’s approval rating plummets in elementary schools around the country.

Why? He wants to steal summer vacation.

Because? Kids get too much vacation already. Luckily, third-graders can’t vote, so who cares if they’re pissed off.

In truth, the president says he wants to shorten summer vacation, implement longer school days, and offer open school on weekends so students have a “safe” place to be. The first two are proven strategies for improving test scores and skills in fields like math and science (fields where U.S. students lag behind most of the rest of the developed world). The latter offers security for kids who might otherwise be hanging out on street corners or unsupervised.

Read the rest here.