(Scene: A dark kitchen at 10:24 p.m. The forced air heater blows in the background. Searing orange on yellow-stripped Hannas drape the hunched frame of this mommy blogger. She rubs her eyes, pulls on her glasses, and sits in the glow of her cinema screen monitor.)

Hi everyone! I'm Mindy, and I'll be your guest poster for today! I don't have a post written yet, so everyone gets to come along for the ride! It's late, I just got my power back after three days of not being able to work (I have a home office! Whee!) or take care of my kids (my ex! Is now owed favors!) or do laundry (didja see those Hannas?) and so am monumentally unprepared for this.

Anyway. Side note. Safeway Steak Chili is mad scrummy, but watch out for that heartburn. I'm just sayin'.

To get an idea of what has already been done, I surfed the archives just enough to absorb the extent of my inability to follow some of these acts. I'm going Busy Mom, oh great, no pressure there, Chris AND Beth? There's no one reading past that entry. They'll either just read it over and over because they're so funny together or they'll rush over to one of their three fabulous sites until they keel over from a Mia-induced cuteness embolism. It's happened to me. I know from keeling over.

Oh, and there's Grace Davis, who didn't do much last year, aside from saving half of New Orleans. Pfft. And I don't idolize Lisa Stone much. *runs in circles, screaming and holding tufts of hair*

And then there' s Mamacita, whose writing is so fabulous and inspiring that Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred have completely thrown over their own writing in favor of posting links and excerpts from Scheiss Weekly instead. I had not had the pleasure of meeting Mary Tsao yet, but am now thoroughly intimidated by her ability to keep two children alive while kicking ass at NaNoWriMo, where God knows how many talented writers have written 714, 227, 314 collective words to date. Karen... Karen! Omg I have to go read Karen's entire blog now. I am peeing myself over the speaking in tongues. How do I not know her?? And NO, it does not help to make me feel less intimidated! Gaaaaaaaah! And if that didn't take the cake, Mir certainly does. I've been reading Mir since before she had a blog (at the Haiku Smackdown! Any oldtimers remember that?), and whenever I started feeling sorry for my bad self she was the one I thought of to slap myself out of a pity roll. Mir is made of steel. And is uproariously funny. And gorgeous. And totally lovable. Bitch.

So my idea was to go through the categories and write a bit on each: Bittersweet, Giving Thanks, Guilt, Humorous, If I Were A Better Mother, Infertility and Pregnancy Loss, It's A Good Thing They're Cute, Love And Marriage, Mama's All Fired Up, Mayhem, Milestones, Mommy Blogging, Sandwich Generation, Sweetness, This teen cannot possibly be mine, Time Flies, When I Was A Child.

I have seen each of those movies at least once, with the possible exception of "Sandwich Generation" and "This teen cannot possibly be mine," but I will see you and raise you "Three Children in Four Years," and "Divorced, Unemployed, Depressed, and Lumpectomied This Past Summer." And get me a beer while you're up.

Heh. I've read that list eleventy times now, and could easily do 500 words on each but don't want to put all you polite readers through that. Instead, I'll list each category and link to a relevant post on my site, If you're reading this on the morning of January 4, 2006, then I was able to do so without re-reading all three years of archives like the self-indulgent, vanity-riddled Mommy Blogger I am.

With that, I thank Jenn, Meghan, and Jenny for the mad props and scandalous flattery. I'm so honored to be asked to come play here at MommyBloggers.com, and to be able to say I have shared drunken kisses with each one of them, all on the same night.

Go on, deny it. I have pictures.

Bittersweet

Giving Thanks

Guilt

Humorous

If I Were A Better Mother

It's A Good Thing They're Cute

Love And Marriage

Mama's All Fired Up

Mayhem

Milestones

Mommy Blogging

Sandwich Generation Instead, I'll do Guilt again.

Sweetness

This teen child cannot possibly be mine

Time Flies

When I Was A Child