Remember me?

So admittedly, it's been a while since my last post.
But a lot has happened.
Frankly, as a writer, I think it is pretty pathetic to say that "life got in the way," but it did.
My dad died right after Thanksgiving (and on my mother's 49th birthday) and well...my entire family and I dressed ourselves in black and shook hands and hugged and kissed and thanked hundreds of people for their thoughts and generosity while mentally trying to tally the number of stamps we needed for thank you cards. (Current tally: over 250.)
I won't bog down all of the available space on the Internet trying to catch up, but I will mention a few quick notables:

(On the writing front)
*I have FINALLY made it to the Detroit Free Press for freelance assignments. It's honestly been my goal since college, so major Woohoo for me.
*The Five Fabulous Finds column at Metro Parent seems to be garnering some traffic, so that is pretty exciting, as well.

(On the baby front)
*Buttercup is now 7 months old, 18 pounds, and 27 inches long. (Note: photo is about two months old. I have yet to download about 200 photos from my digital.)The little Princess of All Things Diva is now scooting (so close to crawling!), and her smile melts my heart.
*Mom! I am now the mommy of a talker! Buttercup has been saying "Mumma, Mum" for a while now, but only while sleepy and seeking comfort from me. On New Year's Eve, she kicked it into high gear with "Mom" all over the place and now calls for me when she wakes up!
I swear, I have always secretly loved having a name that is not common and thought I'd hate to share a name with others. "Mom" is about as common as it gets (Just try calling it out in a grocery store or amusement park.) But I get a little rush every time she says it. I might be one of a million in mommy land, but I'm all hers.

Anyway, I'm alive. And I'll do my best to get back on track with posting. The show must go on...

A diaper beats out a deadline...

I sat down to blog about an assignment I am working on. Just after I logged in, Buttercup started to wake up.
She is still fussing and half-asleep, but I better got take care of baby and come back to this when she goes down for her next nap.
Tah-tah for now.

TraxTime Program helps manage time

So I remember thinking that life sucked at my old job: The 8-5 crap was so not my thing, I wasn't doing anything a trained moneky couldn't handle, and I never had any time to clean my house.
Fast forward to present-day: It is actually 12:05 a.m. and I am not concerned about making it to work 30 minutes late because I have slept in, my job now requires major creativity, (that trained money can finally kiss my ass!) and as for cleaning?
Well-let's just say I am very afraid.
I believe the dust bunnies are mobilizing forces.
The bottom line is that I am actually working more now then when I had to report to corporate hell on a daily basis. The majorly sad truth is that I could probably make more money at this point by hijacking a Girl Scout cookie sales wagon from the local Brownie troop and setting up camp at outside of a prenatal exercise class, but I digress...
The point is that I had no idea my regular schedule of cleaning every day would go out the window so quickly. Or that 'd be working so many hours in between bottles, diapers, naps, and playtime.
But at least I know where my time has gone.
I just downloaded a program that helps me actually keep track of the time put into my freelance projects by allowing me to punch in and out per project from TraxTime. According to my time reports, I have put in 44 hours since Monday and I still have 6 more hours to put in for one of my jobs. So come the end of tomorrow, I'll have 50 hours in and I will most likely work this weekend as well.
The TraxTime program is an incredibly easy way to manage billable and non-billable hours according to project. Just punch in each time you begin work on a particular project and then when your little ones decide that nap time is over, simply punch out.
So what if you only got 10 minutes of work done?? Your time is valuable and it adds up quickly!
It's a wonderful way to get out of the guessing game associated with billing for freelance projects, and at only $39, it's affordable for even the poorest of freelancers (like me.)
The dust bunnies may just have to wait until I can afford to hire a maid. Right now, I have to finish some work so I can afford to buy some more diapers.

Baby and freelancing reality check

When I said I wanted to stay home to freelance write around my baby's schedule, I must have been on something.
And it must have been something good.
Seriously. How else can I explain away the lack of thought and realistic planning that went into my decision to quit my full-time job and attempt to make a go of the "glamorous" freelance writer's life?
(No interviews with Brangelina here, folks. My glamour quotient for the day was met when Buttercup smiled as her poopy diaper leaked out from one side and onto my unsuspecting lap. Oh yeah...I know you're jealous...)
So here I am, a total fish out of water.
Instead of researching things like if I should incorporate myself and what I need to average per hour to make sure Buttercup doesn't host her first birthday party in a carboard box before I officially made the leap, I am now scrambling to learn all I can now while keeping up with my current assignments and, of course, using baby wipes to rub poopy smears off of my pants.
So far, my only resource has been "The ASJA Guide to Freelancing," edited by Timothy Harper. If you are a freelancing momma like me looking for some pointers on the business-end of this line of work, I'd recommend this book for you.
You can also get plenty of helpful tips by logging on to the American Society of Journalists and Authors website.

I wonder if there is a chapter on how to type one-handed while feeding Buttercup a bottle...

It's about time

I've been sitting here staring at this blank box for close to an hour now, waiting for some epiphany to come to me so that I could post and share my wisdom with those lucky enough to come across my blog. So far....nothing.
Damn.
So I'll just have to go with the simple truths I already know:
My name is Pauline Mercedes Lupercio (and NO---the middle name has nothing to do with the freakin' car! It actually means "Mercy" in Spanish, thank you very much!) and I am currently 29 and counting.
(Cue the "Jeopardy" theme as I begin to twiddle my thumbs again...)
Great. I'm already running out of material. No, seriously.
Anyway, my status as a first-time mom kinda booted me out of my safe little haven of misery and self-imposed despair and into the real-wide world of THOSE WHO ATTEMPT TO MAKE THEIR DREAMS COME TRUE. You see, I have wanted to be a stay-at-home-mom/freelance writer/best-selling author since, like, forever. I was just too scared to actually make the leap.
Then came baby.
So here I am...two weeks into quitting my job. My house is a mess, I have forgotten how to apply lipstick, my work clothes now consist of spit-up covered jammies and I am coming to the conclusion that I should be publicly flogged. Sure, I have some steady assignments starting to roll in here (and a pretty cool gig as Managing Editor for MI Dog Magazine) but a baby at home makes showering a major accomplishment...so this freelancing thing is going to have to take some serious thought on my part.
So adding more work (like creating and maintaining a blog) only made total sense, right?
Right.
We'll see how it goes. Will I survive my new world of deadlines and diapers? I'll keep you posted. I have a feeling it's gonna get interesting.