It’s not that amazing, but I think I’m going to start a small business out of my house. In my small town, where we party it up ALL THE TIME, there is no specialty store that sells invitations, stationery or napkins. Mostly you have to drive to cities far away from our fair village, which could take hours and hours just to reach the outskirts of civilized culture. Okay, that’s not true. But it feels like it on days you just want to run somewhere and get a party invitation AND YOU CAN’T BECAUSE YOUR TOWN DOESN’T HAVE ONE.

Enter: me.

I’m going to start one out of my house, Internet. Do I know how? No. What am I going to sell? No clue. Does my business have a name? Nope. But I’m pretty sure I know people who could answer those questions and my point in telling you about this here is that I don’t think I could do this if I had a child or six at home.

When I was in elementary school, my mother and her two best friends opened up a book store that was lovely. They sold books, stationery, greeting cards, gifts, balloons, wine and all sorts of other goodies that were fun and cute. And I spent so many afternoons and Saturdays curled up on the floor behind a book shelf reading a Nancy Drew novel, or behind the cash register getting embarrassed because I couldn’t do the math to make change. When I was talking to my mother about my idea, she reminded me of all the reasons that starting a business would be really hard, but also the reasons why it’s possible I could more with mine than what she was able to do with hers. We moved after my 8th grade year, and the business closed. The demands of children, husbands, houses and other jobs became too much, and Fine Print was no more.

I don’t want to feel guilty about leaving my child in daycare every morning. But I also don’t want a screaming child in my house while I’m trying to fill an order for wedding invitations. So I figured I’d try this out now, see where it goes, and if it fails I know before I have children. If it doesn’t, I find a balance.

Understand though, as I have been desperately trying to explain to Brian for the last week, I will be keeping my full time job as long as they’ll have me. I can’t give up this bacon, y’all; it comes with insurance.

Oh y’all, if I had a nickel for every time someone has asked me a) when I’m having a baby, b) why I don’t have one already or c) what the hell my problem is because I don’t have one I’d be one rich bitch.

I had yet another conversation with a co-worker today who is already a grandmother to two spoiled, but relatively cute, children. She is the same age as my mother (!) but her children are older than I am, and her grandchildren are already school age. I’ve worked with her for years, and she has argued for years that I don’t know what I’m missing, or that I need to hurry up and give her a third grandchild.

So what am I missing? All the parents out there, give me a holla and let me know what I’m missing out on. My standard argument is that I’m selfish, cheap, like my sleep, am too lazy to run after/pick up after a snotty kid and that I possess not a shred of patience in the world. But then all my parent friends say that the love of a child is like nothing they’ve ever known, and that when it’s your flesh and blood doing the snotty, poopy existence that they do, you’re more than happy to run along after them because it’s what nature intended.

Pass the nickels along every time you ask me when I’m birthing a kid. And then all that money can go towards my future dog’s college education.

And yes, friends – this is a delicious new layer of intrigue indeed.

I’m speaking of mommyblogger conferences. I’m speaking in particular about the Mom 2.0 Summit, this past weekend in Houston, featuring big names like Dooce, Finslippy (Alice Bradley), Maggie Mason and others, along with plenty of regular folks, too. Twitter has been all abuzz with reports and pictures for those of us at home, and frankly with all the talk, it’s possible to feel like you’re there. Mom 2.0 is a conference for mommybloggers to get together, speak blog-speak, network and presumably get some good information to take back with them to their bloggy worlds. I do not begrudge them their conferences (and by them, I mean the mommybloggers), nor am I uninterested in what they have to say.

What I am interested in is the snark that goes along with these events. Hence the delicious new layer of intrigue: there was a little testiness going on over in Texas sparked by some Twitter conversation. Girls will be girls, and if you’re a girl and ever darkened the doors of junior high or summer camp or you know, LIFE, then you know how backstabby and catty and just downright mean girls can be. And remember how we all thought in high school and college that whew! we’ll be so glad when we graduate and get away from all this? Yeah, we were stupid. Because y’all, it doesn’t end there. In fact, I’m pretty sure my 91 year-old grandmother-in-law knows some bitches in her nursing home. I live in a small town, and there’s no shortage of bitches here, either.

My question to the mommybloggers is this: what is to be accomplished from knocking one another in the jaw because some other woman is bigger/smaller, better/worse, louder/quieter, skinnier/fatter, richer/more-on-TV than you are? Other bloggers are not exempt from these questions either, by the way. But the mommyblogging world is just such a tight-knit group of people; they know each other from social media, from conferences and from networking events in large cities. They “see” each other online and make friends (or enemies) with their posts – as we all do.

I’ve said before, on Half Baked, Twice as Good, that sometimes I am jealous of the mommyblogosphere because I am not in it. It’s like a sorority that requires vaginal mutilation (again, can’t speak from experience but what not-mama has ever heard a good birth story? not this one) as initiation. The title of this conference – Mom 2.0 – leads not-mamas like me to believe that if you’re not a parent, this place isn’t for you. And I know from other wonderful bloggers – moms included – that the mommybloggers welcome the not-mamas with open arms. Mostly.

If you’ve been on Twitter this past weekend, you have likely heard of the #creepythesis. If you haven’t, it’s the unfortunate moniker given to a 2008 master’s thesis that explores Canadian mommybloggers. There have been arguments both for and against this thesis because one of its main points is that mommybloggers bear a striking resemblance to “talk shows and girl groups.” Can’t say I agree with that assumption, nor do I think that description is even remotely flattering. The #creepythesis hashtag came from the discovery that the mommybloggers “researched” in the thesis were never contacted about being profiled, nor did they know about this thesis until one of the bloggers mentioned in the thesis self-Googled and found it. I confess that I did not read all 154 pages of it, but I read the first 75 or so, and skimmed the rest. The general consensus around the web is that the thesis committee that approved this topic is on crack, and that it is merely the rambling of a young college student (a not-mama) who is fascinated by this world.

She is not alone.

I am confounded by what I consider the over-analyzing of mommybloggers. Not only do they question one another face-to-face, they also do it on Oprah, on the Today Show, on Twitter and on their own sites. I’ve noticed by following many of them on Twitter that the majority are super supportive of each other and have made great, loyal friends (or their tweets imply that, at least). I think that’s important because in the general blogosphere as a whole, allies are key. But what I don’t get is why so many people feel the need to break it down, nitpick it, analyze it, read into it and draw assumptions about people based on what they reveal about themselves on their blogs.

If I have children and a blog at the same time one day, I will attend conferences and lectures and networking events for mommybloggers with pleasure. But what I hope I won’t do is make a mental note of who snubbed me, or whose children have fewer Kool-Aid stains on their shirts than mine, or whose blogging income is far larger than mine. It’s not supportive. It’s not conducive to building a strong community and it’s not a good example for others in the blogosphere.

That’s my two cents, my view from the way outside, and my personal take on what will surely be described as “none of my business.”

I’m okay with that.

So today is Valentine’s Day, which is all peachy keen, but Brian spent it at work and I spent it in the kitchen with my mother. We’ve been working on some new house projects lately, which has been not as much of a headache as I originally thought. I had a friend of mine from work build us a pantry, which has given us a tremendous amount of food storage space, and which also necessitated a reorganization project of vast proportions.

Enter my mother, Saint Valentine herself. My mom is one of those people who exudes organization by her very presence. Everything in her home, her car, on her person, is organized. Everything has a home, a spot where it belongs and lives and prospers. In my house there are piles of crap everywhere that we claim are on their way to somewhere to else – once we find that somewhere else to put it. Anyway, my kitchen is no different and so once the pantry and slide-out trash can and new dishwasher and all were in, I asked my mom to come over and help me put it all together.

It only took us like two trillion hours, but y’all…once it was done, my kitchen was a thing of beauty. And still is! Three hours later! We haven’t ruined it yet! Woot woot with me, people! BB and I pinky-promised that we’d always keep it this way, and we’ll try, we swear we will, at least for a week.

My point in telling you all of this is that a) I don’t live far from my parents and so my mother is conveniently available for these types of activities and b) I’m glad I have her and do realize how lucky I am.

As I said before, The (Not) Mama is about my indecision when it comes to childbearing. And you should know that my pro and con columns are getting dangerously long. So today, when we were up to our elbows in cake pans and plastic pitchers and flour canisters, I thought about what it would be like for me to be 58 years old and not have someone to call me on a Sunday afternoon to ask for help like this. Sure some friend or niece or nephew might call me every so often when they think about it, but will I regret not having a child down the street who needs me?

Conversely, Brian came home with an armful of Valentine tulips and took a look at the kitchen, which was apparently enough of a gift to him. We looked at it and laughed about how it probably won’t stay that way, and then we cooked dinner together and watched the Olympics. And we both were thinking the same thing the whole time: we sure couldn’t do this if we had a houseful of little ones.

Or could we?

I write a lot here about how I feel insecure in the sometimes-incestuous little world of blogging. There are small groups of people who are very famous, very popular, very profitable and very involved in their own cliques of fabulousness. There is nothing wrong with this group, except maybe that I’m not a part of it. Then there’s the larger, more open, welcoming group of everyday Janes like me, who have made a decision to write online and struggle each day to become better at it.

My own personal struggles, which I try hard to document honestly here, are with panic and anxiety. But they are also with insecurity. I am not a mother. I don’t have children, and therefore I can’t be categorized as a mommyblogger. I can’t agree or disagree with my blogoshere peers with any authority because I actually don’t know whether Dora is better than Elmo (or can they even be compared?). I am not an expert on car seats, potty training or the amount of work that goes into raising a child in this day and time. Nor am I an expert on the joy that comes with being a parent.

What I am an expert in though is what it’s like to be surrounded by friends with children and to not have any of your own. By choice, I should add. I might not fit into the world of parenting, but by golly I know what it’s like to co-chair a household, work full time and attempt to finish graduate school, all the while fighting like hell to pay the mortgage AND the tuition. Is this my niche? I’m not sure. I’m not sure that there’s a category I fit into, or a label that can be attached to me. I am who I am, and this blog is what it is. That’s why it’s hard to reconcile myself with the fact that – as has been the case so many times in my life – I’m the odd man out.

Mommybloggers have groups and communities and sites and forums and so many arenas in which they can share their experiences, but what is there for the rest of us? Is there even a “rest of us?” Are there large groups of not-moms out there, blogging furiously, trying to make a name for themselves in this giant sea of faceless writers? If so, someone please tell me. Someone please send me an email, direct me to this place where I can go and talk to and commiserate with other women who have chosen not to be parents (yet) but who have chosen to take to the Internet and document their everyday lives.

Because I’m telling you, Internet, it’s a lonely world out here when someone starts talking about Thomas and you think they’re referring to English muffins. (Thomas is a tank engine, FYI.) It’s a lonely world when your co-workers don’t know what you do when you’re not working and you don’t know what your friends do on the weekends because you weren’t invited to their children’s birthday parties. Lest this start to sound like whining or griping, I should point out here that I made a choice. I decided a few years ago to have The Children Discussion with my husband and I made it clear to him that, for now, my education comes first. If the uterus were on the other foot, we’d have half a dozen kids by now, but luckily my husband loves me enough to support my decision and know that we’ll be parents if and when the time is ever right.

I will be 31 years old in two weeks. According to my father, I’m an old, childless woman who has selfishly not given him grandchildren. In my circle of friends, I am that curious, odd girl down the street who, sadly, will have no one to rely on when she’s old and gray. As one of them said, “A master’s degree won’t visit you at Christmas.” This is true. (But I can wrap it and put it under the tree every year, because an education KEEPS ON GIVING.)

I can’t say if Brian and I will ever have children, nor can I say that we won’t. But until that day happens, I find myself out here, outside the groups and circles and forums, looking around desperately for a familiar face to say to me, Hey, I know how you feel. I’m not a mommy, but I am a blogger. Let’s go out there and kick some ass.

Welcome!