While I’m frittering away all my kid-free days, some of my favorite women are getting stuff done! Daring Young Mom’s Kathryn has a new home AND a new gig with Parenting Magazine. Go smooch her pretty floating head. The very funny Melissa has a thought-provoking and beautiful essay about childbirth at Mothers Movement Online this week. Finally, Jenn (of Mommy Needs Coffee and Mommybloggers and Club Mom AND BlogHer) is breaking new mommyblogging ground AGAIN with her gaming blog.

And what have I been doing? Well, this summer I read Catherine Lloyd Burns’ memoir It Hit Me Like A Ton of Bricks and today I finally got around to writing about it. Despite living a life that is the polar opposite of mine, Burns has managed to perfectly encapsulate my feelings about motherhood:

Olive loves life. Every morning I come to get her and she is standing in her crib, smiling, arms out, ready. “Wake up, do things,” she tells me as I pick her up and kiss her everywhere. It is a beautiful way to be. My attitude, on the other hand, has stunk for as long as I can remember. I want to be fascinated by a string bean and delighted with a paper towel. I also want to know what I am supposed to do about not having a viable escape plan and a survival kit in place for the next terrorist attack; global warming; the fact that many species of frogs are becoming extinct and some species of female fish are mutating into male fish, not to mention a million other environmental horror stories; being a citizen of a country where people can’t bear to make a sacrifice, driving Hummers as though oil is not a commodity they need to worry about, turning up the air-conditioning every summer, not understanding that something’s got to give or there will be yet another blackout, going on about their consumer business as though people’s children are not dying in a war we have no business fighting; being American, which in my lifetime has gone from something to be envied all over the world to something shameful. Not to mention preschool, which I am not signed up for, and couldn’t afford even if I was. Of course I am up nights. Of course I have a bad attitude. (134)

Amen, sister.