I went to my first blog conference on Saturday. It was sponsored by an organization called SITS, which stands for the “Secret is in the Sauce.” It is blog community that encourages other bloggers to turn out and support other bloggers by leaving comments, providing links, and all around support for blog writers. The ladies who run it are enthusiastic and will often put on conferences to teach tips and tricks to bloggers, provide networking opportunities, and an all around good time. I chose this smallish conference as my first event as a blogger. It was in Baltimore and many of the bloggers going were ladies I was already interacting with on twitter or on our blogs.

The first sign of trouble came Friday night. Some of the ladies (about 20-25) had gotten together to have dinner, and I went off to join them. Let me say right off the bat, that every person I met was gracious and nice and truly welcoming. But I knew as we went around the table, that I may be the odd duck (ahhh, a feeling I know well). Every lady there stood up to tell the name of their blog and who they were, and as they went around each woman also said how many children they had. Except me. My kids aren’t the reason I blog, and I didn’t bring them up when I introduced myself. The conversation around the table was also centered on children, and I was bored to tears. I figured Saturday would be better, but not so much.

Nonetheless, it was a good time and I got to meet a few great bloggers (who just happen to be mommies). I spent the day as I do most days, on twitter- in this case live twittering the conference and it wasn’t long before we had a ‘hater’ on our feed. What happened next is best captured by the so-called hater himself: http://bit.ly/9Hhyco

I enjoyed tweeting with him, and will take up any chance to poke fun- EVEN IF I AM PART OF THE GROUP. We may have differnt points of view of what belongs on line and what doesn’t, and we also disagree on whether ’fat’ is an appropriate tweet at any time (c’mon that just mean). But you should NEVER EVER take yourself so seriously that you cannot make fun of who you are or what you are doing. This to  me is the biggest pitfall of being a mommyblogger. You are naturally sensative and protective of what you are writing about, so any nose-tweaking will set you off.

I can feel the disapproving looks from here. I shall do my best to get over it.

So lesson learned, some ladies can’t take a joke. And appartently my penchant for causing trouble has not waned in my later 30′s. Heh.