I don’t tell you my reall name because I think you will stalk me, ok maybe a few of you, not not all.

So I am one of those crazy people who blogs under a pseudonym, a made up name, a clever non de plum if you will.  The reason that I do not write under my real name is not because I am afraid that CPS will find me or that some crazy person will stalk me or something cause while I may occasionally be clever I am so not that interesting.  Actually it’s all Google’s fault, and yes I mean the search engine. First of all I made the immense mistake of teaching my mother, in a fit of lunacy, how to Google people, which is something she has become very proficient at, really she calls me all the time to tell what crimes her neighbors have committed- you know they drive drunk and pass bad checks and all that good stuff. So really it would only be a matter of time before she found this blog and then there would be phone calls. I love my mom and all and I enjoy speaking to her, but she is a good Irish mother in all respects –which means a few things, she rules all by guilt and the high moral ground. I do not think she would really enjoy all the swearing and the stories about poop. I can actually hear her now, “you would think someone with a PhD could write about something more interesting”. She is also a hippy, which means she would also think I could spend my time more productively; you know feeding the poor or something. Which you know I should do more of, but you know I do not, I am so not a good hippy.

Then there is the second entity that I am afraid has access to Google, my students. Also maybe some forward thinking colleagues and administration. Now I never really discuss my job here above mentioning that I am a college professor. Mostly because I like my job, which means my bitching would be limited and also because I want to keep my job. And in any given semester I teach 3-4 classes, if I teach an overload, and those classes have anywhere from 25-40 students in them, which means in a year I could have upwards of 250 people googling me just for kicks, and I would really prefer to keep my personal life mine, not fodder for campus gossip. I also do not think my musing here could help contribute to my whole credible literary scholar persona at school. So I blog here under a fake name, although if anyone who knew me found this the connection would not be difficult to make.  This may make my anonymous blogging sound very logical, but there is one last reason that I do not use my real name, and that is not so easy to explain. I wanted to blog about what I really felt about being a mom, what that means to me in all ways, good and bad. And I did not think I could, or more likely was brave enough, to do so with my real name. Even though logically I know that the whole fear of being judged as a mother because I sometimes wish I could take off for a weekend is crap, that every mother who is honest at some time or another has wished Calgon could really take us away. This does not mean we don’t love our kids, we’re always coming back, it just means sometimes it is exhausting to play this part, to keep this persona going even when all we want is a break. But to admit that is often seen as failure, and I guess I am just not ready to explore those feeling under my own name. So yes I guess I am a wus, and that’s ok, cause my kid thinks I’m pretty cool, at least until she turns 13, then I will probably be an idiot. Maybe then I will blog under my own name, just to embarrass her.