Where the magic happens

I'm participating in a neat one-day meme about how bloggers work:

Most of us are sitting for a large chunk of the day, whether at home or at an office somewhere. We are doing freelance, working on our blogs, tweeting, or doing whatever we do at the computer, but we all have our method. If you are blogging from your lanai on a private island, I don’t want to hear about it. Okay, I do. Kind of.

I’m always wondering what people are doing and where they are when they’re blogging or tweeting, in a non-perverted way, of course. I’m frequently in my bed with a laptop, but I’m mostly working at my desk with a steady steam of coffee and chewy Spree. The point is, we are all doing our thing somewhere in our own special way.

Write a post that sets the scene and shows how you do it. You might answer some of these questions:

• Where is your desk and what does your set-up look like? Inspiration board or dart board with someone’s face?
  
• What is your view? A view of the city, or a window to exotic happenings in suburbia?
  
• Is it quiet or are you listening to music, news or self-help audio books?
  
• What are you drinking, eating and wearing (details please)?
  
• Is your cat in your lap, your dog under the desk, or your baby on your boob?
  
• How do you keep from getting distracted? I don’t. It’s a problem.
  
• If you have kids, how do you get them to let you blog in peace? Oh, the controversy.
  
• With all that sitting, how do you keep from going numb from the waist down?
  
• And anything else that is part of the “process.”

We want pictures! Show us your view, your neighbor, the unfolded laundry piling up around you, or the back of your irritating co-worker’s head. And the pets! Pets photos are cute.

I suspect the meme applies more to people who blog for a living or at least get paid to blog, but I thought it would be fun to play along anyway. I work full time outside the home but I never, ever blog at work since my blog is anonymous. Sometimes I'll log in to fix a typo that's driving me nuts and I have signed on to post a photo maybe three times in three years. I do look at my blog at work more often than I should, usually to check for comments, ogle pictures of my kid, or listen to my sidebar playlist. I have to be quick on the draw, though, since I share an office with my boss and I don't want him catching sight of my site.

I blog at home, at night, almost always from my spot on the couch. By the time I sit down with the computer, I'm usually wearing shorts or comfy pants, or maybe even pajamas. Of course, I wear jeans to work every day, so sometimes I'm still wearing those. Usually I'm eating dinner or a snack while I do internetty things, and 9 times out of 10 I have a glass of milk on the table next to me. Here's my spot on our somewhat ugly (but mostly comfortable) hand-me-down couch:


The towel is covering the big spot where the upholstery has worn completely through to the stuffing. We should probably just buy a new couch, but with an almost-toddler in the house, it seems like a waste of money. I figure we'll wait until Nico (or his future sibling) is past couch-ruining age or the couch literally falls apart, whichever comes first.

My laptop lives on the end table beside my seat, since it only has about seven minutes of battery life when it's not plugged in:


I love my laptop, but I have a creeping suspicion it's not long for this world. Can you see the streak of discoloration going right down the middle of the screen? I usually sit on the couch with the recliner kicked out, laptop on my lap. If Nico is up, I have to be very vigilant since he likes to find and chew on cords. Often I watch TV while I putter around online:


If I look to the left of the TV, I've got a view of our very small foyer and the doorway into the kitchen:


Right now the view is reminding me that I keep forgetting to take Nico's pool float up to his closet before he goes to bed.

There's usually a steady stream of background noise, whether it's the TV or a conversation with my husband or music on my computer. While Nico is awake, the fence in the photo gets extended across the middle of the living room from the loveseat side to the couch side to create a play area for him where I can see and reach him while I'm working. He's usually pretty good about playing with his toys and cruising along the fence for an hour or so between cereal time and bedtime, but like I said, the child likes cords. He's only seven months old, so there isn't really any way to keep him from disturbing me if he's determined to do so. It usually takes several hours from the time I start a post until the point where I'm ready to hit publish, because of all the little interruptions. To be fair, though, Nico's probably only responsible for half of those. I'm a multitasker by nature, so I'm always up and down dozens of times, getting a drink or a snack, shuffling the laundry, tending to Nico, letting the dog in or out. The dog spends most of my blogging time curled up on the loveseat across the room, except when he decides to wedge himself between MB and me on the couch. Which was especially fun during his recent week of wearing a giant plastic cone on his neck.


It's definitely not a perfect process, and sometimes I'm thisclose to finishing a post when Nico wakes up for his late feeding and the whole thing ends up abandoned until the next night. All in all, though, I think it works for me.


Okay, your turn! I want to be nosy and see pics of everyone else's blogging spaces.