She has maybe the cutest kids to ever breathe air, and a husband I adore, and now, she’s leveraged her sewing, delicious vegetarian food making, crafty self into a pretty damn good mommy blog. Watch out Dooce, she’s coming after your stats.

If you’re interested in what you should do with your closet full of fabric scraps, have a shitload of acorns just begging for a crafty project, or just want to see some damn cute kids, head over there.

And she’s not a big fan of Halloween (because, like me, she’s a scaredy-cat), so she gets extra props in my book.

Fee free to feel jealous. See you in a few days.

keg stand by allygirl520

There are a shit-ton of ways to make a first impression these days, and for a lot of people, real life is at the bottom of the list.

There’s Facebook and Twitter and online bios and MySpace (please tell me you don’t still have a MySpace) and blogging. There’s Flickr. There’s YouTube. And those are just some of the big boys in online persona building (and potentially destroying.)

A good friend of mine just recently got a Facebook profile. He’d been holding out. He’s like a 60 year old nana trapped in a 32 year old man’s  body.

What’s he afraid of?

He’s afraid someone is going to tag him doing something horrific. Or post something raunchy on his wall. (He’s not really clear on what a wall is, and thought maybe he didn’t want to let people post to it… I told him to delete his profile right now if he’s not going to let people touch his wall.)

I told him the same thing I tell my clients.

The delete button is your friend.

It’s your profile. If someone posts something inappropriate, delete it. If you don’t want that photo of you doing keg-stands in college, un-tag yourself. You have full control over your looking like a professional or a complete tool.

There are embarrassing photos of all of us out there. We all have that friend from high school who thinks writing “Are you fucking drunk again?” on your wall is funny.

And we all have the delete button.

Shattered glass by aubergene

I’m not really divorced. This isn’t really my second marriage.

But that’s how I explain it to people, because it’s faster than saying my-breakup-from-an-8-year-relationship-that-went-up-in-a-ball-of-flaming-shit.

And people understand the word divorce. And they really understand ugly divorce. They make a face when you say it.

Divorce, especially the ugly kind, is… ugly.

People do damage to each other. They say shitty things that they can’t take back. And there’s a shitload of collateral damage.

People take teams. It’s sort of like middle school phys ed class. Or just like middle school in general. My friend isn’t talking to you so I won’t either.

And then there are folks who don’t really mean to take a side, they just sort of end up doing it. And then so much time goes by that it’s just easier to stay on one side of the line.

Until out of the blue, someone reaches across that line.  One of my most wise, most trusted advisors tells me it’s human nature to want to resolve things.

And so we reach back.

And he’s friendly.

I found him on Twitter, and have been following him for several months now (I was a late Twitter bloomer.)

I didn’t start following him because he’s a guru, or because he knows what he’s talking about (he does), but because he’s friendly. I’ll say it one more time. He’s friendly.

The first thing I thought when I saw his Twitter photo was – he looks like a nice guy. (Consider your Facebook/Twitter/whateverplatform head-shot… do you look like a nice guy?)

He talks a bit about this here, in 27 ways to breath life into your blog’s “About” page

Have a photo. The quickest (and oldest) way of reading someone is through their face. And for God’s sake, smile!

And he practices what he preaches. His photo is friendly, he is friendly and perhaps my favorite thing about John – he says please when he asks for a re-Tweet. It really is the little things that matter.

So back to his blog. Why should you read it?

Do you care at all about Facebook? Are you a nonprofit? Do you think you might want to dip your toe into this thing you’ve heard about called social media but aren’t sure what the hell you’re doing?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you should be reading his blog.

What are you waiting for? Go now.

I started out in high school (with a local LGBTQ youth group) talking about coming out. About crouching under my desk while I whispered to my best friend over the phone that I thought I might like girls. About being afraid to tell my sister because I thought she wouldn’t love me anymore. All the heart-string pulling stuff.

We had two peer speakers’ groups – we’d go to local schools and community groups and tell our stories about being queer and teach HIV prevention. I quickly moved from the group of kids who talked about coming out to running the program, and my shtick changed from all-about-me to all about how to not get HIV or an STD.

When you can’t make it sexy, make it funny.

Even though those hour-long talks were all about sex, most kids (and grown-ups) don’t find safer sex even a little bit sexy. But compare a condom to football gear and you can pretty much get any teenager’s attention. (Both reduce the risk of getting injured – one from a blow to the head the other STDs and other icky stuff…)

Gear up.

Funny works. But so do demos. Most schools aren’t thrilled with a dildo in the classroom, and the banana thing is boring. But don’t try to tell me the condom doesn’t fit on your penis when I can blow one up over my head.

Nothing like a little lube in your hair to really make it shine.

Know your shit.

Eventually I leveraged all of this sex and drugs talk into a career as the condom lady. In the ten years that I worked in HIV prevention, I gave hundreds of presentations on everything from safer sex to clean needle use to teaching parents how to talk about sex (with their kids and each other…)

I knew my stuff. I was good at what I did. And still, when I’m in Rhode Island, I’ll occasionally have someone approach me with – Hey, aren’t you the condom lady? You came to my school!

It wasn’t about knowing something about everything. It was about knowing everything about one specific thing.

• How do I re-size a photo?
• What’s a feed reader?
• How do I use my webcam?
• What kind of laptop should I buy?
• How do I save my bookmarks?
• How do I make chocolate covered strawberries?

And recently,

• Which blogging platform should I use?
• Do I have to pay for it?

Instead of writing a how-to, I direct you to RedheadWriting… she says like it is, and you should listen to her, because she knows her shit:

Now, for those of you out there using free blogging platforms (i.e.: http://blog.freebloggingthingie.com), I’m going to do a little “scared straight” on your ass and tell you what’s what.

* If you blog for fun and don’t care about the SEO juice, go ahead and whore it up on a free blogging platform.

* If you’re attempting to establish a personal brand or a subscriber base – you need to stop being a dirty little blogging whore and get your own domain.

But Erika (you ask…) HOW do I stop being Wordpress’ dirty little blogging whore?

On the edge of your seat? Well then, head over to RedheadWriting and find out more…

Jenn and the Jesus Whistle

If you don’t know Jenn by now, you’re not paying attention. (Especially since she used to be on the TV as the face of Marriage Equality Rhode Island. For like a long time.)

She’s the better half of my BFF, and the one who is in charge of BFF full time now that I’m in CO and can’t tend to things like trying to get her to wear a belt or shoes that fit.

In addition to her contributions here, she has her own blog, Woolverine. It’s filled with a whole assortment of things, and has a similar theme to this here blog – whatever she things is funny, or smart, or witty.

And sometimes, there’s small animals and singing.

What more could you ask for?

You can follow The Redhead on Twitter, but if I were you I’d also read her blog, lest you miss things like  How to Give a Fuck – Gifting Ideas for the Glib. I mean really, isn’t your world a little better knowing that you can actually give a flying fuck for the coming holidays?

She hosts Geeks Who Drink, which (from the website, I’ve never been) seems like it’s is sort of like Pub Quiz back home at the Wild Colonial.

Side note: I do love those WC pint glasses I won at Pub Quiz so long ago, and fully acknowledge, that 1. you can actually bounce them on the ground without them breaking, and 2. I had nothing whatsoever to do with winning other than knowing all of the words to Bob Marley’s Is This Love.

Back to the point. She’s local (to me), she’s funny as shit, and says fuck more than I do. Go read her blog. Now.

P.S. – You can also find her at RedheadWriting.