I am writing this with a bit of a headache, so forgive me if this doesn’t sound as peppy as it deserves. A couple of days after I came home from the conference, the husband and twin #1 came down with a cold, and I’m not feeling so hot myself. This little vacation I had, for almost three whole days, was the first time I’ve been away from my kids for more than an hour or two in over a year. (And last time it was for a funeral. Not exactly fun). So needless to say I was looking forward to it just a little. Did I feel like scooting home the minute the conference ended? Um, not really…no, scratch that, make that a HELL NO…so the next day I spent the afternoon wandering the streets of San Francisco. Bruce is pretty good with the girls, so I wasn’t too worried. It’s an amazing guy that can handle two toddlers by himself, but I didn’t want to push my luck–or completely drain my bank account–so I came home Sunday night. But I think it was educational for him. During the brief couple of minutes I talked to Heather, we agreed that not only did we need the break, but “they need this,” (”they” being the husbands at home with the Girls That Can Break Glass with Their Screams). Bruce has always been pretty sympathetic but I think he began to understand the difference between dealing with them for a while, and dealing with them for several days straight with no help. You just have to experience it.

The Blogher Conference was great. I loved every minute of it, even though I was not quite as online (literally and figuratively) as I would have liked. I missed the first couple of morning sessions due to a variety of minor misadventures, including not falling asleep until 2am the night before (more on the little insomnia problem later) and some aimless wandering in the wrong conference center. But I made it, and after I had my Google schwag and caffeine I was ready to go.

There were more older women there than I expected, which was refreshing–though I would still say the dominant age group was mine, thirty-something. There were lot of Powerbooks around, too. (Is there some kind of rule that bloggers can only use Apple laptops? I’m surprised they let me in. Oh that’s right, the ipod. That’s why they let me in). A handful of guys came, too.

I remember it crossing my mind when I arrived that the media would probably be there, and thinking it would be bad thing if anyone tried to interview me, both because I was late and had no idea what was happening yet, and because I was so sleepy I probably sounded like a recovering lobotomy patient. But I figured with all the women there it would be unlikely they’d single me out. I would hide. No problem.

I can only pray now that the bloodshot eyes aren’t that noticeable on MSNBC’s network.

The woman asked me a lot of questions about my geek toys–which I had stupidly laid out on the table while I organized my backpack a bit–and asked if I planned on collecting more. My answer was not particularly interesting, but then neither was the question: I would if I could afford it. I spent the previous evening forlornly wandering the aisles of Palo Alto’s Fry’s Electronics, squeezing between all the gamer geeks to look at CPU fans that weigh almost as much as my kids and the glorious new Athlon X2 processor. (Or rather, its price–they will not even put that thing behind glass). I ended up buying a pretty blue case fan and another cassette adapter for the ipod (the latter was a complete piece of crap).

For a conference that depends on the internet, connectivity was disappointingly sketchy. By the afternoon, the organizers started giving the Live Bloggers (people who specifically came to write about the sessions in real time) priority with Ethernet cables, because the wireless around the conference was hopelessly intermittent. Some suggested this was due to the limited number of people a wireless network can take, though I wondered if it wasn’t because there were just too many networks in the area colliding with each other, since I saw as many as 10 or 12 networks showing up on my screen at any given time. But who knows. Windows networking sucks.

Sessions I initially attended included Advanced Blogging Tools and How to Be Naked, the latter one being the most interesting. The Naked session with Heather, Koan, and Ronni was standing room only. I was particularly interested in hearing how others have dealt with issues of flaming, stalking, setting boundaries, etc. The first two items haven’t really been a problem for me, at least not since I switched over from the old site a few years ago. But I still remember clearly what that was like. I can totally understand why Heather had to turn her comments off, and I probably only got about .05% of the vitriolic nastygrams she still gets on a daily basis. I’ll try to write about more of the things that were specifically discussed a little later, perhaps when I have gotten a little more sleep.

Sleep, yes. There is so much I’d like to say about the conference and the world in general, and lack of time is really only half the problem. I think it’s time I admit I am a full-fledged insomniac. It been bad enough in the last month I’ve even contemplated changing the name of the site to something insomniac-related, since that seems to be the one thing in my life controlling every other thing. No kidding. It got really bad a week or two ago, to the point where one night I only slept a single hour. This, friends, is why I haven’t posted much lately.

I suspect I am depressed also, but it’s the old chicken and egg question: is the insomnia causing the depression or is the depression causing the insomnia? Who knows? A friend got me a great book that helped a little, but like a dumbass, as soon as I thought everything was fine I stopped doing it. I probably need some drugs. Insomnia has been an on-again, off-again problem for me for almost a decade and the difference is back then I didn’t have the added complication of kids in the mix. Having kids definitely adds a tortuous new dimension to the problem for a person that was never a very good sleeper to begin with. Now I can’t call in sick or simply cut a class, and if I only sleep for a few hours I still have to get up at 7am–or earlier. Bruce gets mad if I try to beg for mercy after a night of no sleep (”No! You always do this!”). And I have one twin who sleeps crappy just like me. It’s hard for me to get to sleep knowing I’m going to be getting up three or four times a night to soothe a upset toddler. And even if by some miracle Saige has a good night, that doesn’t mean Darcy will, because yes–just like you’d think, they seem to switch off. I think this shit would make anybody a bit tense. So the next day I am predictably cranky, tired, and out of sorts, which again makes it hard to sleep. I get kind of angry too. Sometimes, after being awakened at 2am yet again, it has takes every ounce of restraint I have to keep from screaming at the top of my lungs “LET MOMMA SLEEP GODFUCKINGDAMMIT!” It seems to me that two and a half solid years of waking mommy up at all hours should be enough. I can handle once in a while, but why this? If you’re wondering why I don’t ask Bruce to handle a little of this night crap, it’s because he’s a) a very deep sleeper, and b) partially deaf. With the amount of trouble it takes to wake him and get him to do it, I’m totally awake and might as well have done it myself. He doesn’t hear a thing and has no idea how many times I was up at night. Even though I know it’s not really his fault, this kind of pisses me off too.

I’m also more shy with less sleep. This is why I turned into a mouse at the conference, so for those of you who didn’t get a hello, please forgive me. I kept quiet because I didn’t want my first impression to be that of a complete basket-case.

Apparently I’m not the only Blogher gal that had some sleep issues that weekend, though. Anybody want to form a Sleepless Mommy Society?