Mommybloggers: Catherine, we're all huge fans of yours! What was the inspiration to start your blog? Have you always been a writer?

Catherine: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a child. As an academic, I do a lot of writing – a LOT – but much of the joy had gone out of it for me. I still liked writing, but it had become more work than play. Blogging has restored the sense of play to writing for me – it’s brought me back to that space where writing is fun.

But I came upon blogging almost accidentally. I was struggling with post-partum depression, and my psychiatrist had recommended keeping a diary as an outlet for my emotions, but I really recoiled at the idea, I think because I had embarrassing memories of the angsty journals that I kept in my late teens/early twenties. Then, one night, while doing a search online for gas remedies for WonderBaby, I came upon my first blog and fell down the rabbit hole. The rest is history.

Mommybloggers: You're approaching your one-year anniversary of motherhood. How has life changed for you? Are you surprised?

Catherine: Surprised? Yes and no. I suppose that I’m surprised at how all-consuming it is, and at the many ways that it’s changed me. If you had asked me before WonderBaby arrived whether I would totally embrace stay-at-home motherhood, I would have responded skeptically – I expected to jump right back into my life, just with a baby on my hip. I discovered once WonderBaby came that I wanted my life to look somewhat different – that I wanted to slow it down, and really work on building the best and most fulfilling family life that I could. I wasn’t exactly surprised by that, but I was surprised by how strongly I felt about it, by the fact that home and family became a passionate focus for me.

Mommybloggers: Her Bad Mother - let's talk about the name.

Catherine: The name was actually coined by my eldest nephew, long before I became a mother, to describe my own mother (his grandmother). My mother has always loved play with children, and has always been especially fond of tall tales and surprises, and one afternoon when my nephew was about three years old she convinced him that there was a crocodile living in one of the bedroom closets. Then she went to the closet to bring the ‘crocodile’ out, and pretended that it had grabbed her arm and eaten it – she pulled her arm into her sweater and screamed – and reduced the poor child to a fit of terrified giggles. I said to him, at the time, ‘well, that’s your bad grandma for you,’ and he replied, ‘NO. That’s YOUR BAD MOTHER.’ Ever after, whenever my mom and I talked about those games, she would insist that one day I would become the exact same sort of bad mother she was - totally irreverent, with a tendency to regard children as sources of amusement and entertainment, and a tendency to disregard the ‘rules’ – whether I liked it or not. I don’t know that I am that mother yet, but I certainly aspire to it.

Mommybloggers: You've created The Basement as a safe space for fellow writers to archive those entries that need to go into the witness protection program. How did you uncover the need for this archive? What has the response been like?

Catherine: The response has been wonderful – there’s usually a steady stream of posts to go up, and everyone that has posted seems to have found the experience rewarding (that is to say, found the unburdening of their stories a tremendous relief and found the supportive comments from the blogging community encouraging and/or reassuring.) I uncovered the need more or less accidentally – I set it up for myself, as a place to post the things that I didn’t want certain people to read. But when I started the Basement, I left the link up on my profile page and soon discovered that everybody knew about it, so I stopped posting there. Then, one day, a friend who blogs e-mailed me to ask if she could borrow the space to tell a story – the story of her miscarriage – that she didn’t want her family to see, and I thought, well, maybe other bloggers might want to do the same thing. And, as it turns out, I was right – there are many of us out there who have stories to tell that we just can’t or don’t want to tell ‘publicly.’ So the Basement is open to anyone who needs a safe forum in which to get those stories out.

Mommybloggers: You're very active in your local blogging scene - has blogging been a blessing or a curse in your real-life friendships?

Catherine: Mostly a blessing – I’ve made some wonderful friends. But before I became locally active and formed those friendships, I actually lost a friend simply because of the blogging – she was hurt that I was making time as a new mother to blog but was not making time to go out and socialize. She didn’t understand how overwhelming new motherhood can be, and that blogging – which usually happens late at night or at dawn – was a way of coping. So the fact that I’ve made real-life friends out of some blogging friends – locally and not-so-locally! – has really been a blessing: these are friends who understand both the pressures of motherhood and the fulfillment of writing and know that friendship flourishes when our friends respect our love for and our struggles with those treasured things.

Mommybloggers: We're really impressed with the community resources and lively discussions on urbanmoms.ca. How did you get involved?

Catherine: Jen of urbanmoms.ca, who is an avid blog reader, became interested in the idea of sharing the momosphere with readers of urbanmoms.ca, as a way of exposing them to the wonderful writing and resources that mommybloggers have to offer. She was (is) a reader of Her Bad Mother and thought that I might be interested in working with her and so got in touch with me. It’s been great – it gives me a forum to really promote the momosphere to women who might not otherwise find it, and to promote other mom blogs at the same time.

Mommybloggers: What are you passionate about?

Catherine: My daughter and my husband and our life together. Providing my daughter with a rich and stimulating childhood. Making the world a better place. Supporting other mothers. Writing.

Mommybloggers: You've built an enthusiastic audience, and inspire other bloggers to dig a little deeper when posting, to express themselves, to write passionately. You sculpt beautifully crafted entries day after day after day... do you spend hours writing and revising?

Catherine: Not really. A post usually takes an hour or two to put together, but it’s the linking and photo-uploading that take the time. The actual writing is pretty quick. I actually find that if I really work at a post – do a draft and then revise it and fuss over it – it doesn’t turn out so well. Those posts usually end up in a folder on my virtual desktop, never to be seen again. Usually I just sit down with an idea of what I want to talk about and the fingers do the rest. And I’ve made it a sort of informal rule for myself that if I don’t feel inspired, if the words don’t come easily, then I just won’t post. Because it’s only fun if it feels good, and endless revising and fussing feels more like what I do with my academic writing, which is much less fun.

Mommybloggers: We have to ask... do you consider yourself to be a Mommyblogger? What do you think of the term "Mommyblogger?"

Catherine: I consider myself to be a mommy, and a blogger who blogs (mostly) about being a mommy, so yes. I feel strongly that we shouldn’t be afraid of the word mommy, that we should be proud of it and reclaim it from those who use it derogatorily. And I do think that terms like ‘parent blogger’ can sound a bit sterile and forced, even if they are more inclusive. But I am sensitive to the fact that many see the term as limiting – that there’s this unfounded idea that mommybloggers can only write about ‘mommy’ issues. As someone who would like to consider herself a writer, this chafes. But I don’t think that the answer is to reject my ‘mommy’ status – I think that the more productive solution is simply to be the best damn writer-mommy that I can be.

Mommybloggers: What do you see in the future of blogging? What direction would you like to see this media take?

Catherine: Somebody raised the question the other week of whether the ‘Golden Age’ of blogging is over. I don’t think that we’ve even seen it yet. The blogosphere may no longer be a small fringe community, but I think that it is still on the vanguard of the future of media, communication, writing and community (and the intersection of these things.) I hope that we can find a balance between all of the commercial and technological possibilities and the writerly, community-based core of blogging. I’d like bloggers to be seen as bona fide writers – not just third-class journalists or obsessive exhibitionist diarists – and for us to be respected (and more frequently credited and, where appropriate, reasonably remunerated) for our writing. Because it’s some of the best writing out there.

Mommybloggers: What other projects do you have in the works?

Catherine: Other than raising the Future Ruler of the Universe? I’m currently collaborating with Tania of BabyInTheCity (www.babyinthecity.blogspot.com) to develop a virtual Her Bad Mother headquarters, with links to the Basement and to the Toronto MamaBloggers blog (http://www.mamablogstoronto.blogspot.com) and to other projects that may develop. Because my sidebar was just getting too crowded and I couldn’t keep track of everything and I’m impaired in the life-skills department and needed some guidance with this whole ‘hey, let’s start another blog!’ habit that I seem to have. The Toronto Mamabloggers blog is a project in itself - it‘s becoming a community blog, wherein various Toronto mommybloggers will regularly post on topics of interest to moms and mommybloggers in Toronto and surrounding areas, and where there’ll be an up-to-date blogroll that keeps track of and links to the dozens of Toronto-area parent bloggers (which is turning out to be a huge community). The idea is to bring us all together and to give everyone more opportunities for flexing their writing muscles. And Joy of GingaJoy (www.gingajoy.blogspot.com) – who is, like me, an academic in ‘real life’ - and I have been plotting academic world domination – we’re working on some academic projects that explore the culture of mommyblogging, and its much-discussed radical potential.

Mommybloggers:
Finally, here are the questions that we ask all our guests:

1. What is your favorite parent related word? Mama, from the lips of WonderBaby
2. What is your least favorite parent related word? Diaper
3. What is your favorite creative censored curse word used around children? Censored curse words? I have to do that now?
4. What is your favorite hiding place within your home when you need to get away from it all? Bathtub.
5. What hiding place have you been found in too often and can no longer use? Bathtub
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 never knew that the word dude means dolphin penis.”