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Timeout

December 27, 2011December 27, 2011 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I’ve been off work since the Tuesday before Christmas. I’ve been grateful for the time off, but at times the change in our routines has made me less than pleasant to the family. At one point, my frustrations boiled over and I put myself in timeout. I had been yelling a little too much about stuff that wasn’t a big deal. I told Sean and Flora I needed to be by myself for a bit and I went up to my room to calm down so I could interact with the family like a normal person.

The following set of tweets explain what happened after that.

I am so lucky to have such a caring little girl. She was so gentle and really emphasized her need to check on me. My timeout, while needed, was shorter than I expected it to be, thanks to her. I told Flora how thankful I was that she checked on me to see that I was okay. Lots of hugs were exchanged and we enjoyed the rest of our evening together as a family.

Like all parents, I’m struggling to do the best I can to raise Flora right. I could tell you about a million mistakes I’ve made already. Watching her care about others at such a young age makes me think Sean and I are doing something right.

Fifteen years

March 29, 2011 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

As of today, Sean and I have been together for fifteen years.

Our wedding anniversary isn’t until June, so this is the anniversary of us becoming a couple.

I just made Sean make room for me on the couch so we could take a picture of the two of us together to commemorate the moment.

I used to tell people that we were staying together for the cat, but that joke doesn’t fly so well once kids are added to the family dynamic.

We still make each other laugh.

Here’s to several more 15-year increments together.

Valentine’s Day as a Family

February 21, 2011February 14, 2011 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Celebrating Valentine’s Day as a family is way more fun that celebrating as a couple.

Watching Flora colour a Valentine for Sean is so much nicer than agonizing in the card store over the right funny/loving card that is going to be looked at for five minutes at most.

Flora doesn’t really get that once she gives the Valentine away, it’s not hers anymore. She was quite annoyed when we suggested that Sean take it to work to put in his office. Then she held it over her head and called it an umbrella.

My girl has plenty of imagination.

Sunday morning, I cut the Valentine out, wrote inscriptions on the front and inside and had Flora colour it. Once she was done I asked her if she wanted to give it to Daddy “today, or tomorrow?”.

“Tomorrow”, she replied, as if I was crazy to even consider giving him his Valentine early.

We hid the Valentine in her toys and I told her we had to try not to forget to give it to Daddy tomorrow.

Five minutes later, she found it again and ran it over to Sean.

Then she took it back.

She’ll probably give it to him ten times by the time she goes to bed tonight.

Five minutes with the scissors, a piece of pink paper and some crayons provided way more entertainment value than any Valentine-themed gift could bring over the last two days.

They are both my Valentines, but I didn’t need a made-up holiday to remind me how much I love them.

(Click the picture for a larger version of it. Taken with my iPhone and processed with the Diptic app.)

Happy birthday to my mum!

January 4, 2011 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

Today is my mum’s birthday. I won’t tell you how old she is, but she’s older than me! 🙂

Flora wasn’t able to catch her to say happy birthday over the phone (working on her birthday – silly mummy), so I made a little video for my mum to watch later.

My experience at Blissdom Canada 2010

November 2, 2010 by Melissa Price-Mitchell

I attended my first blogging/social media conference last week. I’m finally starting to catch up with the cool kids on the interwebs!

I even lived to tweet about it.

I went to Blissdom Canada 2010 here in Toronto. Billed as “Canada’s first social media conference for women” it came with a lot of hype, and some high expectations. Tickets sold out very quickly so I was extra grateful to get my earlybird tickets. I would have been kicking myself if I had missed such an event taking place in my own city.

The conference ended on Friday so I’ve been processing it for a few days now. I’m struggling with how to put my feelings into words outside of “I had a fabulous time and learned a lot“.

It was great to be able to meet women who care about writing – and writing online – as much as I do. Matching faces to Twitter avatars is always fun – I joked that people would recognize me if I turned my head a certain way. I met and spoke to so many people I hoped to meet. I met and spoke to people I didn’t know of until we met, and now I have tons more blogs and tweets to follow.

Watching the smartphones and laptops going nonstop during the conference was a neat thing to watch. Some people are really great at live-tweeting or live-blogging an event or panel, which is really valuable for those following along at home. I tried to keep that to a minimum because I’m not great at it – I find I tweet one thought and miss the next one. I wanted to be sure I heard everything so I tried to keep my communications to a minimum during panels. It was neat to check my email and discover that my table mates had already started following my Twitter account. An extra bonus is that I’m already finding that I’m having more conversations on Twitter. I hope to keep that up. The fact that so many people are still using the #BlissdomCanada hashtag days after the conference ended says a lot about how much people got out of it.

What I wish that I had done differently

I wish that I had spoken up more! I have a tendency to speak less and listen more when I’m around people or situations I don’t know well. This is not a bad thing but listening to a conversation without contributing more than the bare minimum doesn’t show my best side. Once I warm up a bit, I can usually jump in and out as necessary, but I may end up saying something stupid or awkward. I know everyone does this, but I’d love a few less facepalm moments in my life.

I wish that I had asked more questions at the panels! This is related to my first point. I tend to not ask the questions I want to ask until close to the end or not at all. I want to listen to everyone else and see if they ask – or answer – my questions before I have to ask them. That doesn’t always happen so I need to learn to speak up for myself, whether it’s a question or a point I’d like to make.

I wish that I had a better “elevator pitch”! People would ask me about hellomelissa.net and I would say “I’m a personal blogger”. The next question would be “how long have you been doing this?” and my answer would be “over ten years”. I’m a dinosaur by blogging standards (and to a lesser degree, by Twitter standards, seeing that I started tweeting in 2007), and sometimes it shows. I was a little embarrassed that I depended on my longevity in the medium to try and legitimize myself. (I’ve struggled with this for awhile now as the link to a post from earlier this year mentions.) I struggle with the whole “elevator pitch” thing in real life too though so this is not a new thing for me.

I don’t want to be completely negative on myself so here’s some good stuff.

What I’m glad that I did right (for me)

I’m glad I mingled. I tried to sit with different people for each session. I came alone (and got a smiley face sticker to prove it) so it wasn’t like I had a group of friends I could hang with by default. Since I wasn’t staying in the hotel (hometown advantage! or disadvantage depending on how you look at it), I didn’t have roommates or travel mates. That left me free to sit with and talk to whomever I wanted. I spoke to lots of people – many of whom I may not have gotten to meet if I had sat with the same people all the time. When I went to the panels, I always sat at an empty or near-empty table and welcomed anyone who wanted to sit with me. That’s probably a passive form of networking, but it was networking nonetheless. If I wanted to go lone wolf and do things on my own, that didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings either.

I’m glad I dressed up for Halloween party. I was having a hard time trying to figure out a costume for the closing party. A frenzied trip to Value Village on the Wednesday before got me the stuff I needed. It wasn’t a fabulous costume, but I made an effort and that’s what really mattered. The fact that I ended up accidentally meshing with a couple of other costumes was a happy accident. Rockers unite!

I’m glad I sang karaoke at the party. I love karaoke, and I don’t get to do it often. I could have taken the easy way out and let everyone else do the singing. I’m fine once I get up there but I spend the time until they call my name super nervous and wishing I had never signed up. Once I’m done, I’m dying to go up again. I’m not the best singer by any means – I follow the “if you can’t sing it well, sing it loud” school of thought. But getting out of my sometimes shy, take a while to warm up, listening self to get up in front of people and potentially make an ass out of myself is a great way to get out of my comfort zone. That and I have a secret rockstar living inside of me.