Laura’s amazing web guy figured out how to get a photo onto her brant, so scroll down (way way down) to the end of the long gingerbread-house-making piece and see what it looked like when Laura was finished. The only problem is, the photo makes the gingerbread house look short and stocky and pudgy and kind of goofy — completely different from what it looked like in real life which was tall and elegant and truly impressive.

In fact, it was so impressive that when she brought it in to her son’s preschool for Halloween some of the other mothers were kind of, well, jealous, which surprised Laura since several of these women had master’s degrees and Ph.D.s and were quite impressive themselves. This bizarre occurrence — baking something that would incite such jealousy and admiration — jealousy and admiration that her three published novels didn’t seem to incite!!! — became kind of a thing and prompted Laura to write a fake blog to four of her preschool mom friends (in the form of an email a few times a week) about how “great” she was (it was kind of like this brant except it was way more braggy and written in the first person). This in turn lead to Laura and the four fake-blog recipients to refer to themselves as the Blog Moms and it was a very fun year because the Blog Moms were always begging Laura to blog, which she did as much as she could and which gave Laura a huge ego boost when she most needed it (it had been a tough year in the Rejected-Writer department).

Sometimes, when their demands became overwhelming, Laura would call them Blog Hogs but that would just make them want her to blog more, and so she would, but it seemed the more she blogged the more blog they wanted and the supply and demand issue became somewhat of a vicious circle. Needless to say, this was pretty heady stuff for Laura — her three published novels had never created such excitement and desire for more of her writing! — and in time Laura realized that making her fake-blog extra-exclusive would continue to keep demand for her blogging very high. For example, one Blog Mom husband, Billy W., became obsessed with Laura’s fake blog and wanted to be put on the recipient list. This request was overruled (naturally — he was of the wrong gender and Blog Dad just didn’t have the same ring to it). Billy begged so incessantly for blog that he quickly acquired the nickname Billy the Blog Hog which only made him want blog more. He was so desperate, in fact, to be part of the Blog Moms that he offered to blog himself! But Laura turned down that request, too, and only allowed him to be a one-time fake-blog contributor, or, as they’re called in actual journalism, a “stringer.” His assignment: to cover a princess-themed birthday party of the child of a preschool mom who was obsessed with and always talking about scrapbooking. Billy the Blog Hog’s fake-blog was so brilliantly observed and well-written that Laura was tempted to allow him to be an honorary Blog Mom but in the end a vote was taken and the Blog Moms decided against allowing Billy to officially be part of the group.

That was two years ago and even though Laura stopped the fake blog long ago and now has an actual blog and even though their kids are no longer in preschool but are in first grade they still call each other Blog Mom and they probably always will.

Anyway, Laura doesn’t want to obsess or anything, but she’s going to try to upload a better picture of the gingerbread haunted house later today so that the whole Blog Mom phenomenon will make more sense.