Do my eyes look green to you?

The year I started this blog, my sister-in-law Maud gave me a great book for Christmas, called Best of the Blogosphere. This is where I discovered that not only were there a gazillion women out there blogging about their kids, but there was a name for us--mommyblogger--and some of us were famous.

This is where I first encountered Dooce, at the time listed as one of the top mommyblogs around.
Dooce is the brainchild of Heather Armstrong, who initially lost her job in LA when she was caught blogging about the boss (aka, she was "dooced") and gained popularit through her honest posts about the sever post-partum depression she experienced after her first daughter was born. Since then, she has completely exploded, and I have occasionally wondered what would have happened if I had gotten on the blog track sooner, yet I have never been jealous of Ms. Armstrong. Until today. And the thing that finally got me might be revealing.

I was never jealous of her hundred, even thousands of comments from the community on her blog, despite the fact that even begging and pleading does not procure comments her on mine. Or her regular presence in the video series Momversation. (So public!)

I was not jealous when she landed a book deal, wrote and published said book, or went on a successful book tour around the country. (Too personal a memoir!)

I was not jealous that she was able to quit her job to blog full time-- or even when her husband, too, quit his job to support the blog full time. (Could Dave and I ever work together? likely not! And those crazy endorsement deals!)

I was not jealous when Time Magazine put her on their list of the 30 most influential women in the media, a list that icluded Katie Couric and Oprah (OPRAH!), even though she was number 27, incidentally my very favorite number. (So....so....so....out of the realm of the possible!)

But today is another story.

Today I logged on while I innocently ate some chicken soup (recovering from the stomach flu) and discovered that the woman has LANDED A DEVELOPMENT DEAL WITH HGTV.

And now I am seething and green.

And I wonder, as I often have, if this means that i do not actually want to be a writer, but a designer. And not an actual, take clients and do-over their houses designer, but a TV personality designer. It hearkens back to one of my proudest moments, when my friend Sara F told me I should be the next Paige Davis. A tidbit I know I have shared on this blog once already.

Or maybe, as is so often the case, that is just one more version of my imagination getting the best of me, and my occasional forgetfulness about the vast gulf between the idea of something and its reality. Like: working on TV is boring. I know this from my days as a photo producer, where things on set move very, very, slowly. Like: being a TV personality is public, and I'd rather not have to wear makeup and smile and behave according to a set of expectations all the time. And so on and so forth.

Or maybe I just have a mean case of the sour grapes. I'm not even going to link to that other Heather's blog, even though I kind of love the way she made the announcement, and got all super excited about "H to the G to the T to the V," just like I would have.