Mommybloggers: Welcome, Mindy! Thanks for joining us here at Mommybloggers.com.

Mommybloggers: As a personal blogger, you've chronicled everything from parental pride, the end of your former career and marriage, to your successful re-entry to working and your new relationship. Why call it "The Mommy Blog?" Wouldn't "The Mindy Blog" be more appropriate?

Mindy: Anything named "Mindy" is eminently appropriate! Actually, I've gotten this question before, and response is always: what part of this is separate from being a mom? Isn't that the whole context? Wouldn't I make different decisions if I were childless? Wouldn't I have the FREEDOM to make different decisions if I were childless? Doy. See, the rest of that stuff is transient and context-driven: married/divorced, employed/system-sucking unemployment benefit recipient—it can all change without changing me all that much. Being a mother, however, is forever and affects everything you think and say and do. No matter what, you have a tether to another being that can never be broken, traded, or annulled. Everything else can be handle with cash.

Mommybloggers: Your frank descriptions of life as a single, working mother of three young kids have won you many fans. It has also attracted negative attention at times? How do you keep your head on straight?

Mindy: I beg your pardon? Me no speakee the English.

I have no idea, to tell you the truth. Back when it was just me writing in a word doc and not showing anyone, my husband and others said, "Oh, that's nice. Good idea." When I took it online because I got tired of being unable to access it remotely, it was still, "Aw, how cute." And then, and THEN, I realized that the link lists meant that people were finding me just as rapidly as I was finding them, and with comments as proof that people were following, all hell broke loose. Wisely or not, I kept going because to give up would be to admit that it was somehow inappropriate, clandestine, shameful. It wasn't. It was a labor of love, a chronicle of my family's early life. Hell, it doesn't even start until my youngest is practically walking. I think people got nervous because they were worried I would spill secrets, share inappropriately… but I have not written anything I haven't already said to the person in question, or WOULD say, because I know for dingdang sure that they will hear about it eventually.

Mommybloggers: Give us three words that describe your parenting style.

Mindy: Funny, consistent, and firmly attached.

Mommybloggers: You've said that your blog is a place to record your stories and memories for your children. Have you stayed true to that goal, or has your blog taken on additional purpose?

Mindy: I think it’s stayed true to that goal. In fact, it’s truer now than it was in the beginning. The early entries are stilted and bland and don’t get very interesting until some of my own voice and experiences and perspectives begin creeping in. The only additional goal, if you can even call it that, is to have a form of it published—both to offer it up to more moms who have found comfort and humor in my stories, and to make a little moola if it’s there to be made. I’ve already made a bit on advertising goods I’d link to anyway!

Mommybloggers: Have you always been a writer? How has blogging changed your writing?

Mindy: I don’t know that I’ve always been a writer per se, but I’ve always been good at it. I was always a cut-up (I know, I can’t picture it either) and my school papers always had an edge that made it entertaining for me to write them. Otherwise I’d have had to gouge my eyes out from the tedium.

Interestingly enough, I can’t write fiction. I have to write about things that actually happened to me, not that I have to make anything up. I only ever wrote one short story that was any good, and it wasn’t even good by literary standards. It was only good because my high school English teacher pulled me out of class to ask me if it was true.

Mommybloggers: What do you think of the term "mommyblogger?" Are the negative connotations deserved? Do you use it to describe your blog?

Mindy: Only because that’s where the hits are, baby. An astounding number of people find me by searching for “mommy blog” after reading about the whole mommy blogging phenomenon. The name was pure coincidence, btw. When I first set up the blog and had to give it a name, The Mommy Blog was just a place holder. I couldn’t think of anything at the moment and figured, hell, I’m a mommy and this is a blog, so The Mommy Blog it is. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the name had become part of the URL, and by then I was too lazy to change it.

Mommybloggers: Do you aspire to become an internet celebrity? How about a household name? What impact can online writers expect to have on the world?

Mindy: Not at all. I have no internetty aspirations. I have a lot of fun, I have an outlet, I have a way to let things out and process things and keep myself sane, but I wouldn’t call any of it ambitious.

Online writers are having a huge effect on the world one household at a time. Bloggers don’t reach crowds who hear what they have to say in a unified context or in the same environment and with equal impact. They reach one person relaxing with a glass of wine after a long day, another in the three minutes she can get away with not holding her baby, yet more on their lunch hours, interrupted whenever someone walks by the cubicle door. Each person absorbs things differently and to a different extent. But if they can come away with something in common with the writer, or with the other readers, that is extraordinary. It is making a big difference in tiny doses. That’s what it was like for me when I discovered blogs. And I think the most profound effects are the unintentional ones. I was never trying to reach anyone but my children, twenty years into the future. The rest was accidental.

Mommybloggers: Let's talk about the book for a minute. Tell us how it came about? How is it different from the material available on The Mommy Blog? Are there other projects in the works?

Mindy: The book. Man. I have NO idea how it came about. I think it was from listening to people say the same thing over and over, pounding me to write this stuff down, telling me it was classically hilarious and familiar at the same time. I’m a storyteller. I can’t shut up. And if people thought it sounded good in conversation, and then on the blog, then maybe a book was worth a shot. I figured that my traffic demonstrated a market for a book adapted from the thousands of posts, and that I could fill in some of the back-story and context so that those who have been reading all along will still have something new to discover. As much as I have written about my daily life, it is nothing compared to what I have edited out.

Mommybloggers: Tell us about Mr. X ? readers were delighted to learn you had a new man in your life. Was it a tough call to share details of your relationship?

Mindy: Oh you think you’ve had details. That’s good. (But isn’t he fun?)

Actually, it wasn’t so much a tough call whether to share the fact of it, My marriage had ended long before I met him, and I was more concerned about preventing any of his students from Googling him and finding ME. I may be overreacting, but I seriously don’t need his students reading my blog.

My family and my ex have all met him and like him very much, so there was minimal potential friction there. People have been very happy for me—I mean, come on, there is only so much you can take of a mopey, dejected Mindy. Best of all, the kids love him, so I think it will be fun when they’re older and read about him. He’s part of my life now, and it would be strange not to talk about him. However, WE ARE NOT ENGAGED.

Mommybloggers: You've had the opportunity to visit quite a few fellow bloggers at their homes, and have forged many connections through your writing. What is the most unexpected connection you've gained?

Mindy: On a serious note, it’s the women who write to say that something has changed in their lives as a result of reading some of my writing. I have no idea what’s up with that. One woman found the courage to leave her unhappy marriage, one found a new perspective as a divorced mother of three, one attempted suicide but—thank God—is okay now. I haven’t met any of those women, but they had the most profound, unexpected effect on me.

As for the people I have met in their homes, the unexpected connection has been with their children. Knowing the parents is one thing, but meeting and getting to know the children later has been amazing. Now when I see photos of them on friends’ blogs, my heart actually hurts. I miss them. If I ever meet any of y’alls kids, I’ll be doomed.

Mommybloggers: Many of the blogging get-togethers seem to dissolve into drunken love-fests. There are incriminating photos, Mindy. (In fact, we're in many of them.) Do you have a standard theme song for these events?

Mindy: HA! Never thought about it but two songs just popped into my head: Hollaback Girl and Lady Marmalade. Is that wrong?

Mommybloggers: And here are the questions we subject all of our featured bloggers to (With apologies to Bernard Pivot and Inside the Actors Studio):

1. What is your favorite parent related word? Snuggles. It’s not strictly parent-related, but it comes up every time my kids are asked what they like best about their mom. 2. What is your least favorite parent related word?

Parenting by proxy. (Pretend it’s one word.) The idea is offensive, even to someone like me who believes that kids should be in day care the very minimal amount of time a family can manage. There has never been a time in history when a mother hasn’t needed or wanted help managing and caring for the children. Humans in general are just too dang busy to be on the job twenty-four/seven. Someone has got to be there for the breathers.

3. What is your favorite creative censored curse word used around children?

Famangia. Been saying that my whole life. That’s if I’m not very upset. When I’m very upset, I can’t finish a word, and am not creative enough to make up a new one so it sounds like what-the-f…-you-little-stinker-get-your-…self-over-here-I-am-so-fr… eaking-mad-right-now-don’t-you-MOVE.

The one I shout in public is “MARSHMALLOWS!” That’s from back when we used to have marshmallow contests. You know, who can be the best marshmallow, they can’t talk, or move, or breathe, or… you get the picture. But now they just ignore it and I look like I have Turret’s.

4. What is your favorite hiding place within your home when you need to get away from it all?

You mean we get to use HIDING PLACES? There is nowhere to hide from my kids. I just sort of disappear into my monitor and pray for SpongeBob.

5. What hiding place have you been found in too often and can no longer use?

Honey, my place is so small you can’t scratch without someone hearing you. I just go for the bed and figure they have to climb up and drag me out if they want me.

6. If Oprah exists, what would you like to hear her say when you arrive at the Oprah Winfrey show when she features the Mommybloggers?

I want her to be motherfucking speechless. (Sorry, I had to make that sentence fancy because I can’t think of anything.) Um, it would be nice if she did that start, stop, start thing where she tries to do the introduction but has to pause to sigh, look heavenward, or otherwise acknowledge the chances of my having survived the mahoosive shitstorm that was my life for the past few years. I’d like to be introduced as the MacGuyver of Limbic Bodyswerves.

Want more Mindy? Find more at The Mommy Blog, and check back tomorrow as Mindy returns with a not-to-be-missed guest entry.