All Buttoned Up

On last Saturday morning, when I was the only human awake in the house, I plunked myself down in front of my computer with my coffee.  I was eating marshmallows for breakfast -- hey, they were leftovers from the "bomb fire" we threw last week.  Isn't it in the Mommy Contract that all mommies must eat leftovers?

I check facebook.  I check my parenting message boards.  I check my blog (no comments, rats!).  Then I think to check my blog's email -- you know, the one I created after I bought my domain name and gave an impossibly hard to remember password to?  Yeah that one.

What was waiting for me?  A notification that I was a finalist for a contest that I was pretty sure I hadn't entered.  Oh, sure, I have heard of Parent and Child Magazine.  And I order from Scholastic every book order.  But what was this?  A scam?  A practical joke?  I had no idea.  None.

My first instinct is to find out what "the girls" say (not my boobs, they usually remain silent), so I drop by the eerily quiet parenting forums I frequent.  But wait, it's 7:00 o'clock on a Saturday and the regular crowd isn't shuffling in.  No one can tell me if the Scholastic contest is a scam because they are either sleeping or out and about for weekend activities, clearly ignoring my all-consuming dilemma.

Maybe it's one of those awards that everyone wins?  Will I look like an absolute doof posting the button to my blog?  Will the seasoned mommy bloggers point and giggle behind their screens?  Well, OK, there aren't that many seasoned mommy bloggers that read my blog.  Maybe two?  I'd better not say numbers lest I alienate a follower.

I Google the author of the email and she comes up listed in seventy-bazillion places with the job she says she has in her email, so I decide that if someone were trying to scam me, they surely wouldn't have gone to the trouble of setting up THAT many secondary links.  Especially for an email which wasn't asking me for money, a blood donation, or my used socks.  That makes me far less paranoid -- I'm not gonna hole up in my cabin with a shotgun, wearing a tinfoil hat over this.

I ramble over to facebook where a friend cops to nominating me for this award, so thank you dear far-away friend for cheering me up -- you have no idea how much I needed this!

So I decide to post the button.  And see what comes of it.  Maybe someone will stop by and laugh at me for posting it, but there's a greater chance that someone will stop by and laugh with me because I posted it.  So as long as no one laughs milk through their nose and onto my keyboard, we'll be good to go!