I felt right at home when I first viewed Cattiva’s site. The colors, the graphics and the whole layout is extremely warm and welcoming. I felt like I should be reviewing her blog while sitting at home in my cozy leather recliner sipping cognac by a nice warm fire, with a golden retriever at my feet and of course some classical music in the background. Now that’s my kind of blog!
First, it’s definitely a woman’s kind of blog. What draws you in first are the fine graphics, colors and layout which create the ambience. Cattiva’s says “I laugh to keep from crying†and isn’t that something many of us women can relate to? Especially those of us over 30. Her title “Does this mean I’m a grown up?†is right on the mark too. You see she’s a wife, mother of three (including a newborn), student, entrepreneur and everything in-between. She’s at a point in her life where she means so much to so many and has so much accomplished behind her, it’s too late to go back, even if she wanted to. It’s all or nothing now. We all hit that point sooner or later. The great thing is that Cattiva’s blog isn’t just about one aspect of her life, it’s about all aspects of her life. Her blog has a little of everything mixed together to create a fine read. Normally if I don’t relate to a blog, it just doesn’t interest me and while I have no children (children seem to be a main focus in this blog) I can somehow relate to her life. That is because when you get into your thirties and forties you begin to wonder if you can ever go back to the way things were. And once you realize you can’t well then you dig your heels in and continue forging ahead
Overall I would highly recommend Cattiva’s blog to the thirtysomething/fortysomething female crowd. Now that’s without knowing how old Cattiva is but I am guessing with three children, being in graduate school and her experiences in life she certainly fits into that age range. And I think that many women in that age range can relate to the experiences of her everyday life, I know I can. Women in the thirtysomething/fortysomething crowd are among the busiest women in this country. They have to be adept at multi-tasking and still maintain their sanity, which is so hard. Cattiva is doing it and seeing her do it, encourages the rest of us to keep forging ahead too.
It takes a lot to make a person laugh out loud. Not just an inward chuckle, but an actual audible titter. And, I’m happy to say, Does This Mean I’m A Grown Up? has points where you pause working or whatever it is you’re doing with your other browser windows, to giggle maniacally to yourself.
You can usually tell when a blog’s going to be good by the title. So if it says something like “Me’n’U Stay Forever True’ it’s safe to assume you can skip it without missing much. But “Does This Mean I’m A Grown-Up?” is a question I’m sure we’ve all asked ourselves at least once in our lives. That combined with Cattiva’s user profile [I’m a thirtysomething mom to two (the Prince and Princess of Wails)] is enough to keep you reading.
Cattiva blogs about her kids, #1 Son and the little one (her daughter), about her husband C and about her life in general. And it’s not all “Stay-At-Home-Mom-Who-Writes-About-The-Endearing-Things-Her-Kids-Do” either. In her archives I find her take on reality shows, her birthday present for her father, the Olympic Games and divorce. And with lovely little dialogues like:
“#1 Son (bounding home from school one day): Hey Mom, you’re going to die.
Me: We’re all going to die someday.
#1 Son: Yeah but you’re going to die soon, the President says so.
Me: He does? How would he know? I wasn’t involved in Whitewater.
#1 Son: Because you smoke. We saw the President’s Message on Smoking today.
Me: Oh yeah? Well, he inhaled! Humph.”
The design is one of Blogger’s standard templates and if I had to grouse about something in this blog it would be the fact that her links to previous posts that people have enjoyed don’t work and instead keep displaying a 404 error. You’ll just have to trawl through the archives to find them. But they’re worth it, I promise.
I could tell from the name of this blog that it was written by a parent. (I suppose it’s sort of a private joke among Gen X parents to say cliche things like this.) A thirty-something mom from Virginia writes this blog and has since June 2004. It is a standard blogger template (Dear Blogger, when are you adding more templates? Please add more soon because everyone’s blogs are all running together because you only offer 10 templates.)
She writes in her profile “Friends say I have a humorous take on life’s happenings. The sad part is that what I write about is true. I laugh to keep from crying.” Not really knowing her sense of humor upon coming to the blog, that last part seemed a bit sad. In her sidebar she has a list of her previous posts called “Stuff People Liked,” but none of these links work. (I’m fairly sure the extra back-slash at the end of the urls is the culprit.) She also has the standard blog rolls and other links she visits in her sidebar.
Her posts are very heartfelt and frequent. I found more of the posts to come from the heart than the funny bone. And I found many of the posts went on far longer than necessary to convey an idea or situation. She does interesting things like refer to her son as #1 Son, even though from what I can tell he is her only son (she also has a daughter). And she loves hockey.
To me her posts are pretty standard blogging fare. (Nothing too original about going to a friend’s wedding or a son’s birthday party or most of the other things she posts about.) But she does have a good following of readers to comment on her day to day life. Perhaps the BA in History she is pursuing will serve up more interesting posts for her readers.
Does This Mean I’m a Grown-Up?