Font ResizeIt sucked.
Then she cried.
After that, she drank a margarita.
This is the essence of Heather Armstrong's transition to motherhood, a journey she has shared with the world at Dooce.com, the most popular personal blog on the Internet. Although a lot has happened to Armstrong since then - she's expecting another baby; her husband quit his job to help her run the site; she travels the county to speak about blogging — Armstrong has expanded on her story in a memoir, "It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita," which is released today.
Although the A-list blogger is now known best for her raw, wry and hilarious musings on parenthood, she was initially famous for getting fired: (UrbanDictionary.com defines "dooce" as "to be fired from your job because of the contents of your weblog"). That content included this 2001 post, entitled, "Why I Should Not Be Allowed To Work From Home": "Too many cushiony horizontal surfaces prime for nappage. 13 bowls of cereal today, all within a two hour period. Oprah. Total Request Live. ..."
Dooce (which was a misspelling Armstrong often made of "dude" while texting co-workers) recently chatted with us by phone from her home in Utah.
Q: How much traffic does your site get?
A: Last month I had about 1.5 million unique visitors.
Q: Why is your site — which, in essence, is the story of one mother's point-of-view
A: I'm willing to say a lot of things that others aren't — it's unfiltered, raw and unedited.
Q: How do you approach blogging?
A: Up until I was pregnant, I used to go to a friend's house every Friday and have drinks with five other moms and I'd think, "What stories can I tell them about my week, how can I make them laugh?" And that's how I approach blogging, too: like I'm sitting down for cocktails with my girlfriends, accounting the absurdities of what I've been through with my children. Because I want to make it worth it for them.
Q: You write hilarious comebacks in your regular hate-mail roundup. But do the mean comments get to you?
A: It's like a horrible mold that gets into your brain and takes hold and rots things; it's horrible, what people say in the anonymity of the Internet. It's taken me many years to learn how to deal with it all. A lot of it is ignoring it and not reading it — and not letting it "take an apartment in my brain," as my mom would say. And realizing that it has very little to do with me and so much more about what that person is dealing with.
Q: Is there anything in the book that your fans haven't already read about?
A: The book is basically what I wrote about during my pregnancy and then my postpartum experience with my daughter (in which Armstrong suffered from postpartum depression and checked herself into a psychiatric unit), adding things here and there to make it a cohesive whole.
Q. Is it true your site brings in $40,000 a month in advertising?
A. Any number out there is not a number that has ever been validated; those numbers are speculation and made by people who have nothing to do with my business. We've never confirmed or denied any number because, first of all, it's nobody's business. And even if I did make as much as they say I do, I still shop at Target; I'm just a normal housewife, really, living in Salt Lake City. The reason I also don't like to talk about money is I don't want people reading my site with the filter of a number in their head.
Q: When did you realize your blog was going to change your life?
A: I thought I was going to give up my site when I had my daughter in 2004; I didn't think I'd have time to have a hobby. But when she was born, my traffic doubled; I had a whole new audience of mothers.
Q: Do you tire of people asking you if your 5-year-old daughter, Leta, will resent you someday for writing so publicly about her?
A: It's funny, they always ask bloggers about this, but how many times do they ask it of Bill Cosby or any comedian who uses their children as fodder for their standup routine? Or did they ask it of Erma Bombeck, who wrote about her children?
Q: Do you have a private life anymore?
A: I do, actually. I think that's a misconception - people think I don't have boundaries, that everything in my life is an open book. I have a very private life, although sometimes it doesn't seem that way; I'm constantly thinking about updating.
Q: What don't you write about?
A: As my daughter gets older, I find myself more guarded about writing about certain things happening in her life, but there's always something else interesting to write about; and there are aspects of my marriage that don't need to be public knowledge; and I take my relationship with my family very seriously. I'm very cautious in what I write about them.
Q: You get to blog for a living; we're jealous. Do you work in your jammies?
A: I try to get it done while Leta is at preschool, but that's also when I need to fit in my errands and other obligations. There really isn't a set schedule, especially since this pregnancy has knocked me on my (expletive); so I work whenever I have the strength, whether it's very early in the morning, very late at night or in between.
Q: Do you get to take a maternity leave?
A: I don't, I certainly don't, I absolutely do not get to take a maternity leave. And that's the one major complaint of many of the professional bloggers — it is a never-ending treadmill of work that you don't ever get off, it doesn't ever go away. You're only as good as your last post.
Q: You've been described as "Internet famous." What does that mean for your everyday life?
A: Last year I started to get recognized at the grocery store, which is weird and uncomfortable, because usually when I'm at the grocery store, I have not bathed. People tell me I'm a lot scarier in person.
Q: You get a lot of unsolicited advice on everything from dealing with depression to the raising of your daughter. Are you getting a lot of advice regarding your new daughter, who is due soon?
A: People tell me to name my child after their grandmothers. They'll say, "Please, please, please use it, I never got the chance to," and they're serious.
Q: Will you blog while you're in labor?
A: Um, probably not. I may Twitter about when my water breaks or if I'm going to the hospital to be induced; it'll be easier than having to call everyone.
Q: You're supporting your expanding family with your blog; does the pressure of that ever get to you?
A: Many times I'll crawl into bed and night and cry and turn to my husband and say, "I want my life back, I don't want to live under the burden of this anymore." But everybody has days like that at their job; other days I think this is fantastic and am energized by my work.
Q: Will you ever retire?
A: I don't know if there's an exit strategy, but we're being cautious; we're not investing in properties in St. Tropez.
What: "It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita"
Author: Heather B. Armstrong
Publisher: Simon Spotlight Entertainment
Cost: $24
For more information: Dooce.com
Molly Millett can be reached at 651-228-5505.
