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We’re best friends now.
Middle-Aged Lady Mom is your source for humorous, observational, and relatable takes on parenthood. If you can’t laugh you’ll… probably need to get that checked by a doctor.
Why Should I Subscribe?
This is a newsletter for parents, friends of parents, people considering parenthood and want the down and dirty, and especially new parents.
Subscribers Get:
weekly posts delivered right to your inbox
opportunities to interact with a community of equally awesome people
someone to mine the internet to find gems like this so you don’t to
Paid Subscribers Get:
The occasional paid-member only posts
Occasional paid-member only chats
My undying love and gratitude
Consider subscribing if you:
have a sense of humor, especially about other people’s kids
are a parent and need a very low baseline to judge your own parenting
are considering becoming a parent and want someone to talk you out of it
just want someone to tell you you’re doing a great job (you’re doing a great job!)
like pictures of old, nerdy dogs
It’s all the things the birthing classes don’t teach and the advice I wish someone told me in those early months of motherhood when I was too plagued with anxiety, insecurity, and regretting my life choices (or at least that one night in October when I discovered Pineapple White Claws— heeeeeeeeyyyyyy!) to comprehend motherhood could be funny, let alone fun. It would have been so much easier if someone told me it’s really flipping hard, hormones— wow, just wow, no one knows what they’re doing, formula won’t kill your baby, nipple confusion is a stupid, but funny concept to bring up if you’re giving a speech at your son’s wedding years later, and it will get better (and then worse and then sort of better and then bad again but in a much more manageable way and then pretty awesome and then they become teenagers so…)
But who is this Middle-Aged Lady Mom?
Good question.
Funny story: I paid the beautiful, wonderful, talented Dawndra Budd to take some headshots during the “growing out my bangs, for REAL THIS TIME” period. Two days later I gave up and cut them. So I only sort of look like this? Also who laughs like that? So stiff, but jovial? Anyway…
I am Shelly Mazzanoble, an award-winning author of essays, books, two unfinished novels, some short stories, and one-act plays that have actually been produced. Most surprising I am someone’s mother. I love writing about reality TV almost as much as parenting (I even wrote a column where I mined The Bachelor for parenting advice (easier than you think.) Then there’s all the Dungeons & Dragons stuff (I know!) I’ve written three books about D&D: Confessions of a Part-Time Sorceress: A Girl’s Guide to the Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game, Everything I Need to Know I Learned from Dungeons & Dragons: One Woman's Quest to Trade Self-Help for Elf Help, and Welcome to Dragon Talk: Inspiring Conversations About Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Love to Play It (co-authored by Greg Tito.) I also co-host the official Dungeons & Dragons podcast, Dragon Talk. That’s like, a lot of D&D, right?
When not writing books with really long subtitles, you’ll find me here, tarnishing the reputation of newborns and writing about what it’s like to parent my beautiful, precious child who thankfully hasn’t added the word “litigation” to his vocabulary yet. But he will. Because he really wants a PlayStation 5 and doesn’t want to do any chores.
Thank you for visiting and I do hope you’ll consider sticking around, maybe getting in on that sweet free subscription action and if you’re feeling really flush supporting my work with a paid sub (friends with benefits?).
We’re like a family here. A chosen family. You’ll like my friends and they’ll like you. And you’ll become part of a tribe of cool people who like to laugh and support each other.
It takes a village, but more importantly, it takes a sense of humor.
