Mommybloggers: Hello Alice. (shy awkward silence)... Hi. Hi Alice. Alice. AAAHL-ICE. The Mommybloggers just want to say that we really love your work. LOVE IT. Alice... The finslippiest of bloggers. Oh Alice. We just love you. Is that weird? Alice. Oh God. Are we making you feel weird? Oh GOD! ALICE! We swore we wouldn't DO THIS! Alice? Where are you going Alice? What about the interview, Alice? STOP! STOP Alice, STOP!

Where did you learn how to write like that?.

Alice: Aw, shucks. Everyone in my family is a writer. It just came all natural-like.

Mommybloggers: You have been blogging since January of 2004. What inspired you to start your blog, Finslippy?

Alice: It was a bet. I lost, and it was either start a blog or kill a man with my bare hands, so I picked the blog. (Later on I did kill a man, but apparently I was cheating because I used a tool, whatever Mom I GUESS I CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT.)

No, seriously, I was talking on the phone with my sister, and we were discussing blogs and she said, "Why don't you have one?" And I thought, crap, why don't I? And thus was Finslippy born.

Mommybloggers: We heard through the grapevine that you were working on a children's book. We also read about some short stories, and other writing projects you are working on. Tell us a little bit about your current projects.

Alice: Oh, the children's book. It's done, I'm fiddling with it, but I think it's too odd to be sold anywhere. And yep, there are some short stories. I have other projects as well, but oooh, I'm secretive. You're going to have to wait to find out. Oooh. You're intrigued. (I don't know why I keep writing "oooh" but I can't stop. Oooh. You see?)

Mommybloggers: What do you hope to accomplish via the written word in the future?

Alice: I should like to write a sentence that doesn't make me throw up.

Mommybloggers: Alice, you cover many details of you life in your writing, but please indulge us with a little information about who you are. What kind of a kid were you? Where did you grow up?

Alice: I grew up in Long Island, the child of circus folk. Actually to an Irish father and Italian mother (that's why I'm feisty!) who bore a daughter and son well before I ever showed up. I grew up awkward and anxious, the kind of kid who would stand under the tree all the other kids were climbing and shout GET DOWN FROM THERE YOU'RE GOING TO BREAK YOUR NECKS. I won all the spelling bees. I went to the school nurse every day. I was obsessed with Billy Joel. I was a delight.

In high school I discovered The Theatre and was in all the plays and sang in every chorus and wrote pomes and basically annoyed the shit out of everyone.

Mommybloggers: What inspires you to write?

Alice: It's the only thing I can do with any skill, so I'm more or less stuck with it.

Mommybloggers: Alice, many of your posts detail your experiences as a mother, and the life and times of your son, Henry. There are many priceless posts that left us gasping for air through our own laughter. One quote in particular illustrates your gift for detailing the asinine and wacky. You once wrote:

You know who else doesn't get irony? Toddlers. Do not appreciate the irony. Also, they give terrible pedicures. Also: have no self-control when it comes to the application of cologne. And: they often fail to respect the walk-on the-right-side rule and will weave back and forth like drunks, irritating pedestrians everywhere. And that's not all: they begin every friggin' argument with "Allow me to play devil's advocate for a minute, here.

We love the way you embrace the off-the-wall and ridiculous.

Another of our favorite quotes regarding your son:

Holy crap, how I love that asshole.

That comment seemed to be in response to an earlier post in which you referred to your son as an asshole. In the context in which you used the term, it was clearly meant to be tongue in cheek (we found it to be hilariously funny). Anyone who reads your material would see that you clearly adore your son. Did you suffer for taking the risk that people would "get it"?

Alice: I think "Holy crap, how I love that asshole" would sum up my feelings for everyone in my life, really, including me. I have to say I don't suffer much, if at all, for any of my risk-taking. People seem to sense that I am at heart a goofy clown and have responded to what I felt were risky statements with mild bemusement.

Then sometimes the comments I think are the least innocuous strike a nerve with people (like my post on supermarkets when I dared mock the elderly). I guess you never know who you're going to offend or why, so you might as well say whatever you're going to say.

Mommybloggers: What kind of experiences have you had with unwelcome comments?

Alice: So very few. Anyway, the people who are really crazy are easy to ignore. The ones who have a valid beef, well, they deserve to be heard, right?

Mommybloggers: Right. One time I made fun of Munchausen syndrome by Proxy and got into trouble because people actually HAVE that, and it's not just a made-up disease you see in movies like "The Sixth Sense". We live and learn.
Tell us a little about the flip side of that coin. How have your readers influenced you in a positive way?

Alice: In more ways than I can say. They're the reason we moved to our town. One of my readers referred me to a friend, who lives in the neighborhood we were considering, and really sold it to us. They've steered me in the right direction and given me advice and reassured me and showed me that I'm not alone and taught me things and baked me pies. I feel that I owe them more than I give, except that I don't owe them any pies because no one ever actually gave me a pie no matter how much I begged.

Mommybloggers: Alice, you write with characteristic candor and self-deprecating humor about all things related to motherhood. In one post, you describe a tough morning in which you pretty much came unglued with your son. You went on to reflect on your own experiences with parental anger as a child with excruciating emotional clarity. It was a powerful post about anger, guilt, and how difficult it can be to cope with the stresses of motherhood while facing, and perhaps reconciling, your own childhood fears. Is it scary to share details like that with your audience?

Alice: Definitely. I was sure I was going to get comments calling me a bad mother and a raging harpy and maybe a syphilitic she-devil. But if anyone thought it, they kept it to themselves.

Mommybloggers: Alice, you witnessed a frightening car crash a while back that left you withpost-traumatic stress disorder. It took a while for you to divulge the details of that experience with your readers. What prompted you to finally share that experience?

Alice: It's just me—I can't not share what's going on in my head. I've tried to hide things and then I get all achy and distracted and nothing I write comes out any good. So I didn't have a choice, really.

Mommybloggers:Are you glad you opened your kimono regarding that experience?

Alice: Well, it sort of let loose the floodgates on me and my wacky moods, so, hmm. I don't know. Sometimes I wish I had wrapped the kimono a little tighter and done a funny little jig instead of getting all intimate and stuff. But I don't think it would have worked. I think you would have been all, "What's with the weird dance? And what's that under the kimono?"

Mommybloggers:Alice, you recently moved from Brooklyn to New Jersey. How is that going for you?

Alice: Some days I love it, other days I want to run screaming back to my beloved borough.

Mommybloggers: What is the best thing about moving to Jersey?

Alice: Henry's preschool and the Montclair Y. Both of them are spacious, clean, diverting, and reasonably priced. Only one of them allows me to sweat to the oldies.

Mommybloggers: What will you miss the least about Brooklyn?

Alice: Living on the first floor. The soot drifting across my living room! The kids asking us for directions through our window as we watched TV! The utter absence of natural light!

Mommybloggers:Alice, you stood up for all the disenfranchised bloggers of the parental persuasion at last years BlogHer when you grabbed the microphone and characterized Mommyblogging as a "radical act". I get choked up just thinking about it. What was going through your mind at the time?

Alice: Make Melissa cry. Make Melissa cry.

Mommybloggers: What do you think about the term "mommyblogger"? Love it? Hate it?

Alice: I'm not a fan, to be honest. I'm all for owning the name, but it's just so belittling a term for the hardest job in the world—much less the hardest job in the world that happens to be unpaid and also causes stretchmarks. It's infantilizing. Parents should command respect, and for me being called a "mommy" just makes me feel like I spend my day eating Ritz crackers with E-Z Cheez and watching my stories on the teevee.

Mommybloggers: Bacon flavored E-Z Cheez is best for story-watching.

Thanks for talking with us, Alice. Have we told you lately that welove you? Because we do. We really do.

Alice: I'm so glad you said it first. Because I… I love you, too. Wow. That felt good to say. I love you. I love you. I don't know where this is going, but I know I can't live this lie any longer. I'm off to tell my husband right now.

Mommybloggers: And last but not least: 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?

Naptime.

2. What is your least favorite parent related word?

Backyardigans.

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

I never catch myself in time. I curse like a sailor and then clap myhand over my mouth, and then try to convince Henry that I was talking about The Funk again. (He knows I'm a huge George Clinton fan.)

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

I have no hiding place. No place is sacred. Help me.

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

The porch. The basement. The bed. Under the bed. In the shower. On the toilet.

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?

"Who are these people? Mommy-whaters? I can't work like this. Whose idea was this? What's a blog?" and then as she continued to shriek at her underlings we would set upon her like crazed hyenas.