Jennifer Linney places the Slip 'n' Slide on fire ant piles. She crushes dreams and squashes desires like no one's business. She sets up her daughter for wardrobe malfunctions, makes questionable word choices, shops horrifically—she writes it all down.
Jennifer hasn't always been a blogger. Once upon a time, she had a completely different identity. Jennifer has, however, always been a writer.
She worked on the editorial staff of a monthly magazine, writing news stories and editing manuscripts, for over nine years. She left her career at the magazine when her commute grew from 40 minutes on a good day to 90 minutes, one-way, once she and her husband, Jim, moved further into the suburbs of Northern Virginia.
"When I caught myself catnapping at stoplights, I knew that something had to give," Jennifer said.
That first Monday without a commute into D.C., Jennifer learned that she was pregnant with her first child. That pregnancy ended too soon, with tears and heartache and no baby.
"Once I overcame the emotional blow, I hung out my shingle as a work-from-home freelance writer and editor," Jennifer explained.
It wasn't long until the Linneys learned that they were pregnant again. Their son Connor was born the following February.
"I tried my hand at blogging when I came to realize that jotting down notes about Connor in a cloth-bound journal just wasn't cutting it for me, because, one, I am a perfectionist and I tore out too many pages trying to get the words set just right, and, two, while my handwriting is neat, my cursive is a thready stream-of-consciousness mess, and when I write anything other than a grocery list, I use that thready stream-of-consciousness mess. I wanted to be able to read what I wrote when I was old(er) and grey(er), so, I turned to blogging."
The timing was right. Jennifer and Jim had just celebrated Connor's first birthday, and she had just weaned him and, in turn, tapered off rocking him to sleep.
"I needed something to take my mind off the <ahem> drama of Connor learning to fall asleep on his own, and, for me, writing was just that distraction."
Jennifer shared the blog with a small circle of family and friends.
"They live far and wide," she said, "and my sleep-deprived postpartum mind could never seem to keep track of whom I had shared photos with and whom I had not. A blog was the perfect medium for that."
The blog has had a few names over the years. It began as boogaboo jones, because that is the little nickname that Jennifer and Jim gave Connor back in the day. The first time he laughed was when Jennifer popped into a room and said, "Booga-booga-boo!"
When Natalie came along, the Linneys took to calling her "Winnie McPhee" because her newborn noises sounded like a horse whinneying. And so, the blog became boogaboo jones meets winnie mcphee.
But that didn't last.
"The nickname 'Boogaboo Jones' morphed into 'Bug,'" Jennifer explained, "and we took to calling Natalie 'Natalie Anna Sweet Banana,' so the blog became bug and the sweet banana, and that's how it'll stay," she said, tempting the fates.
Who is Jennifer really?
"I would rather write out a word or group of words than abbreviate or use an acronym," Jennifer confessed. "I have always felt sad for words like 'boulevard' and 'o'clock' that are abbreviated or turned into acronyms or symbols so often that they rarely get to live up to their full potential."
"When I was an editor working in Washington, D.C., I once decided to drink coffee as only a rainy day delight. I looked forward to tromping through puddles to buy a mocha from the coffee shop up the street and around the corner," Jennifer said. "But then, one June, it rained for two weeks. Every day. I treated myself to coffee each of those rainy days and became just a little bit hooked."
"The best pieces I have written, I have written first in my head and then put down on paper, word for word."
"I'm a fuddy-duddy in more ways than I care to count, but I am finally at an age where I don't really care."
