UDATE: Random number generator says:
Aw hell, I swear, I put in 1 to 5, I have no idea why it won't copy here, but you can see the important number of the winner and it is: ONE! Hilarious because she thought she couldn't win because she commented first. Ashley, the book is yours.
Half Baked by Alexa Stevenson
Here's a little bloggy story for you. In late 2007, I read an issue of Brain, Child and noticed that many of the authors, women and mothers whose writing I admired, had these "blogs" in their credits. Curious, I visited one written by Jennifer Mattern of Breed 'Em & Weep. What's this? thought I. Women? Writing? About Motherhood? On the internet! Cool. Then I clicked a link in Jen's sidebar and discovered Mir and clicked again and found Alexa Stevenson at Flotsam. I spent an embarrassing amount of time catching up on Alexa's blog (And Bon's crib chronicles, but she, unfortunately has yet to write a book. Get on that, Bon.).
A little less than two years later, three weeks post partum with Nate, I stood nervously in the Minneapolis airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Chicago. I had fallen for blogging and bloggers hook, line and sinker as they say, and I was about to attend my first BlogHer conference. I was terrified. I looked left and there stood ... Alexa. I gushed a bit, I'll admit. Hi! I read your blog! I'm nervous and chattering meaninglessly! She was lovely despite the fact that she had to sit UNDERNEATH my enormous suitcase the entire way to the hotel - she even mentioned me on Flotsam later. I don't like to brag, but I believe (in my rewriting of the situation in my head) that she got the call from her agent telling her that her book would be published as we stood on the tarmac waiting to load into her private car where she would sit beneath my gigantic suitcase. (More likely it was a more mundane follow up call, buy hey, she said agent and book and was excited at the time and so this is my story.)
That book - Half Baked - arrived on my doorstep a week ago and I read it in three days despite the fact that I read her blog religiously and have since 2007, so that was a bit of a spoiler if you know what I mean. It is the story of her infertility treatment and the birth of her daughter at 25 weeks. I won't tell you more, except to say that it's riveting even if you know the ending, which is pretty darn riveting. And if you don't know the ending, well, start it when you're not busy because I'm guessing you won't put it down until the end.
It's well written, humorous, poignant and matter of fact. You will root for Alexa and her tiny daughter - and occasionally want to throw a shoe at her - like when she states, unequivocally that fat, full-term babies are ugly. (I beg to differ having birthed three adorable, humongously-fat full-term-plus babies myself). I couldn't help but be pulled in by her honesty and the life skills in worrying - or not worrying - that she acquires on her journey to motherhood.
I devoured Half Baked and I'm not a huge parenting memoir fan. Two enthusiastic thumbs up, fine reading fun. Order it here. Or leave me a comment on this post and I'll send you my copy. Oh hell, that means I have to have rules or something. Leave me a comment by midnight PST tomorrow (4/15/11) and I'll draw a name extremely unscientifically and send that lucky person my copy. (Bonus points- but no extra entries - if you can name the movie. Don't bother tweeting it or skywriting it or broadcasting to 50,000,000 iphones via your space age facebook/twitter/instagram/newcoolthingofwhichIamwoefullyunawareapp. I won't know. I'm lazy and uninformed.)
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