Or maybe it's just my peabrain that's chewing on this. I'm easily amused. (Great. Now I'll hear "All Apologies" in my head all day. Fan-frickin'-tastic.)

I digress. As usual. I was sort of wandering around cre8buzz (I prefer saying that to "internet stalking the people I like", but really? po-tay-to, po-tah-to, in this case), and I noticed something.

The Moms' community has 274 members. The Women's community has 125 members. (I just checked both of them a few minutes ago. God knows it could've changed since my last check.) This got me to wondering about the disparity in numbers.

I mean, I've been female far longer than I've been a mom, although I don't know that I'd say I've been a *woman for much longer than I've been a mom. My oldest boy came along when I was a dewy-eyed 20 year old with more dreams than sense. (Or ambition, but that's aside from the point.) Yet it never even occurred to me to join the women's community.

For me, it was sort of eye-opening to realize that I *define myself as a mom now. My identity isn't "Steph" anymore. In my own head, I'm "mom to Matt, Lenna and Tricia".

My gut reaction to this idea that I'm not "Steph" anymore was to immediately list all the things I do that do not involve my children. That lasted for 3.7 seconds...or the time it took me to realize there is no longer one thing I do that doesn't involve them in *some way.

Photography? Newp -- they're generally my subjects. Blogging? See previous answer. Exercise? Negatory on that one, too, as a big motivator for me is my desire to live long enough to see my grandchildren. Okay, work? Work will be where I leave them behind. Uh uh, my friends, I work for money for a better life for my little rats.

A big part of me wants to know when and why this happened and then to correct it immediately. But a *bigger part of me is screaming about how selfish that is and how I'm a bad mom for even *thinking about having any kind of life outside of being "Momm-ay".

So, I'm sitting here now wondering how to find a happy medium. I firmly believe that parenting is my most important gig. Period. But at the same time, I know that I don't have to lose myself in motherhood to be a good mom.

What's a woman to do?

Hee. Homies. I love that word. I feel so very, very ghettofabulous when I use it. Also? I feel like I'm a tough chick.

Woo. Digressing. AGAIN. ANYway, to all my Blogspot-using homies, would you pretty please, just for me, make it so that people don't have to have a Blogspot blog to comments? PLEASE!?!

Oh, fine. You won't. That's okay. I have a Blogspot blog, but I don't use it anymore. And I'm one of those particular (read: anal-retentive) people that believes my links should be active and junk.

I'll shut up now.

In the past, I have joined social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook, etc) simply because my friends asked me to. In every instance, I've given up on said site because I haven't felt like I'm able to connect with people whom I don't already know.

cre8buzz has been completely different from the get-go. With very little effort on my part (I joined the community that seemed best suited to my own interests), I've found a community in which I feel like I can make friends.

However, I'm so NOT interested in starting yet another blog. I have a blog for the everyday stuff (http://quirkyblogger.com). I have a blog for weight loss stuff (http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage.asp?id=STEPHMSDIVA). I have a blog that's kept relatively private (http://quirkyblogger.livejournal.com).

So, until I figure out how to feed my actual blog into this, I'm posting this so that my blog section doesn't look so sad and empty.