PAULA NEAL MOONEY

by Paula Neal Mooney We've all heard of writer's block. But what's a blogger to do when they get stumped for ideas? Okay, it's not like I'm short of ideas. Ideas follow me and swirl around in my head daily. Any number of topics have sailed thru my mind: Should I write about R. Kelly's appendix bursting, thus delaying his child molesting trial? What about Ludacris' subtle diss of Oprah and Bill O'Reilly at the Grammys last night? What about the methadone found in Anna Nicole Smith's refrigerator? How 'bout that mom in Austria who locked her kids away for seven years in darkness? None of that stuff is floating my boat right now. So I might as well write about what I just did for the past hour or so to cure blogger's block: 1 - Surf Digg.com and other news sites for interesting stories. Chuck them all. 2 - Update a different blog by scraping someone else's content. (Not all of it, just a teaser and gave full credit to the New York Times .) 3...

by Paula Neal Mooney A teacher at my child’s pre-school peeked into my minivan as I stopped in the driveway to let my daughter out and took advantage of my few seconds of stillness to put the finishing touches of crimson polish on the acrylic nail covering my thumb. "Mom is multi-tasking," she observed. "Always," I answered, before zipping back down West Market Street with my driver’s side window and sunroof ajar, drying my nails in the 30-degree weather. I had only a few minutes to devote to wet nails – for once home I’d hit it again: back on the computer, typing in my drafty sitting room as the sun beamed brightly beyond the bay window through the trees. I Know How I Do It… …‘cause I know I’m not really the one doing all the miraculous tasks that make up my days, flowing smooth as melted butter. Take one day last December, for instance, when I raced my son into his classroom with around 100 seconds to spare, then traipsed with my daughter over to WalMart to buy a ...

That's what my 85-year-old father asked me in an emailed titled "Go, go, Paula!" Ah...there's the rub, as Shakespeare would say. This is what happens when you break down and give your dad your blog address. I'm 37 , I figured, not 17. I shouldn't be afraid of him knowing me. (Though there are a couple of posts I hope he doesn't find.) Anyhoo, I don't expect some kind of big Dooce deal with this, whose father didn't speak to her for three months after her brother read her blog posts to her computer illiterate parents. Fortunately, my daddy knows his way around a PC, and is probably smarting to read this and see these pics of him as a little boy sitting on his mommy's lap. (Now you see where I get my "high yellowedness" from. Daddy says his mom was part black and Swedish. How I wish she'd looked up into the camera lens for this one, seeing as though this is the only pic I remember seeing of her.) And this is the man I think is hi...