Hi, I'm Caroline.

Oh hello! It’s been a while. I’ve kinda gently pulled away from social media, in the sense that I don’t get the dopamine hit from documenting my life and putting it in the public domain the way I used to. That said, I think I might look back someday and miss reading about my life as it was during this time, so here’s what’s new.

I’ve hesitated to write in depth for several reasons, first and foremost, the kids. They are their own people now, no longer helpless toddlers, and I don’t like to talk about them out of turn. I usually make a point of asking them if it’s alright if I post a photo or story online, and spilling more personal details about their lives, which are still so entwined with mine, feels like a breach of privacy. I will say I have the best kids a mom could ask for, and they continue to grow too fast for my liking. This fall I’ll be parent to a high schooler and a middle schooler, and I have a feeling the next six years will flyyyyyy.

Then there’s work, which takes up a good portion of my time, and writing about it here isn’t super interesting to me. I do enough writing about work while I’m at work. 😅 But on a personal level I enjoy the work itself, and my team is, as always, a fantastic group of people. It’s the first time since I joined Automattic that there are no other women on my team. I’ve been pretty insulated from the traditional gender-balance-in-tech issue until now, and there are times when I miss having others “like me” in the mix. But after a fun team meeting in Panama City early this spring, it’s mostly a non-issue. The guys I work with are great humans, and our team dynamic is helpful and kind, and that’s the most important thing.

After work and family comes…me? What do I do with my spare time? Well, I’m pretty boring right now. This latest season has been quiet, self reflective, that of a middle-aged white woman. I haven’t painted for a few months, and though I’ve been tempted to pick up a brush, I’m letting it sit for a while longer. I was feeling really uninspired and bored with my usual fare of flowers and abstracts, and I’m learning to be ok with not letting the things I make define my worth. I am allowed to not make. I am allowed to just be, as I am, and that is enough.

Last summer I read Tricia Hersey’s amazing book Rest is Resistance and the concepts have bounced around in my brain for the last several months. As I said, I’ve stepped back from social media to a degree. I try not to feel guilty for resting when I want to. I’m trying to see capitalism’s tenets hidden in my view of the world and seeing what things I want to keep and what I can let go of.

To turn that thought on its head, we’re spending a lot of $$$ on the house this year. Last year was a year of travel, this year is the year of home renovations. We dropped a buttload of cash to have exterminators do a full audit to see where the squirrels and mice were getting in, and to handle the cluster flies and lady beetles that have plagued the house (mostly my office) for years. As a born-and-raised country girl, I like to think my tolerance for critters is pretty high. We’ve had seasons where we’ve trapped upwards of 30 mice and it didn’t faze me. The cluster flies used to be manageable with daily vacuuming, so we bought robot vacuums for the worst areas. But the lady beetles have been awful, to the point where my office became unusable for 3-4 months out of the year. If I didn’t vacuum daily, I’d fill up the canister with smelly bugs. Then the squirrels escalated from basement-and-attic dwelling to shitting on our kitchen table with abandon. So we called in the pros, and now my office is bug free, with fresh insulation in the attic space above it, and there’s steel mesh surrounding the foundation with special foam in all the cracks. Hopefully that takes care of the pesky pest problem for a while.

While we were taking out a loan on my 401k for the pest remediation, we decided to take out extra to redo the flooring upstairs. Most of the linoleum was installed when I was five, and the carpet in our bedroom has been a lost cause since six months after it was installed, when a bad roof leak soaked and trashed a chunk of it. That was ten years ago, and we’ve been living with half subfloor, half carpet ever since. The cats have done an excellent job ensuring every part of what remains has been puked on at least once, and last year Pippen took special consideration with a spot near the closet and dubbed it his personal pee corner (gotta love a good enzyme cleaner, amirite?) So I will be more than happy to replace all the so-called flooring with vinyl plank “hardwood” that can be flooded and puked on til kingdom come without staining or warping.

Travel for work has also picked up. There was the aforementioned trip to Panama City, and now I have additional trips to Lima, Peru and Munich, Germany in the calendar, followed by a personal trip to Cancun for a family wedding next spring. I’m looking forward to exploring new parts of the world, less so the act of actually getting there. Travel always reminds me of how much I love my little house in the woods.

What else? It’s summer in theory, though it’s been mostly cold and rainy so far. We bought a camper this spring and haven’t taken it out once because here in Maine, it hasn’t stopped raining since April. Sorry everyone, our bad. But I have been slowly putting together camping gear so we can spend a bit of time on the coast or PEI. I have a virtual stack of audiobooks ready to go when we can finally pack up and take our little trailer on the road, hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I’ve been soaking up the local summer festivities with the kids. We spent a lovely long weekend with my brother and SIL, took a day trip to Bangor for Pride, watched the fireworks and did some shopping at our town’s Midnight Madness celebration, picked fresh strawberries at a local farm, and enjoyed a family dinner with Mom’s homemade strawberry shortcake on the fourth. Again, quiet things for quiet times.

But really, I’m spending a lot of time in my own head these days. I’m thinking…

I’m thinking about climate change and my kids’ future, about floods and fires and that I should learn to be ok with not having grandchildren because I don’t want them to grow up in a world that is burning. Or maybe I just finished reading a novel about that (The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton, very good!) and it hit too close to home.

I’m thinking about the division of household labor and emotional labor and how things have shifted since Tim went back to work and was promoted to manager and I started working a reduced schedule. We’re still trying to find the balance.

I’m thinking about privilege, and fatness, and whiteness, and wealth.

I’m thinking about the recent interest in AI and putting on my skeptical face and really feeling Sonya Renee Taylor’s take on the whole thing.

I’m thinking I should really move my 🍑 more but it’s either too hot or too rainy or too something else and yes I realize those are all excuses and I don’t care. 🫠 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m thinking I think too much! So I’ll leave you with this photo of me and my new favorite mug, gifted to me by my husband, the guy who knows me all too well, my own personal Pedro Pascal.

No Health, No Care: The Big Fat Loophole in the Hippocratic Oath

Back in February, my friend and former Automattic colleague, Michelle, approached me about writing a piece on fatphobia from a parent’s perspective for her magazine, Pipe Wrench.

As an aside: I first met Michelle during the 2012 Automattic Grand Meetup in San Diego. She started on the editorial team a few months after I was hired, and I have this vivid memory of seeing her across the conference room and thinking, “I want her to be my friend.” When we spoke, that thought immediately evolved into, “I definitely want her to be my friend, and I want to be like her when I grow up.” Michelle is a genius, a wit, a word wizard, and a fantastic human being.

Fast forward ten years (what even is time) and she’s created this online magazine that explores one core topic for each issue, with a feature story and multiple shorter essays responding to that feature story. This issue’s topic: Fatness.

Well, I’ve lived in a fat body since puberty, so I have some experience in that area. But fat liberation? I didn’t really know that was a thing until Michelle brought it up. My immediate response was to follow all the fat lib activists I could find on social media, particularly folks of color. I’d started following fat fashionistas and influencers a few years ago, trying to fill my Instagram feed with fat bodies as a means of normalizing fatness for myself. I took this a step further and spent the next few weeks reading about fat activism, listening to podcasts, and amping myself up.

When I received the feature essay, I read it in the parking lot on my phone while waiting to pick up the kids from school. I read it again when I got home. And again that night. Any fears I might have had about not knowing how to respond flew out the window.

I can’t think about medical fatphobia without thinking about my pregnancies, especially my first. Then I think about having daughters, daughters who share half of my genetic code, the same genetic code that says, “Here be fat!” And I think about how they will need to navigate the same unforgiving medical systems, the same societal expectations of body shape and size, and…I was off.

“I think about the time I used the f-word in front of your pediatrician and she looked at me, horrified as if I’d said ‘fuck‘ instead of ‘fat.‘”

I fought off impostor syndrome and put all those years of online journalling and that brief foray into fanfic writing to good use and wrote an actual, publishable essay. I tried to write from the heart to keep things authentic and real, and hooboy, have I mentioned vulnerability is not one of my strong suits? Coupled with a tendency to dial up the drama when I write, I did a lot of thinking and overthinking of every sentence. Thankfully Michelle is an amazing editor and it came together beautifully.

Issue Six: Caroline Moore, The Story of Your Body

I spent most of Pipe Wrench’s launch day reading and re-reading the other essays (and Marquisele’s piece for, like, the fifth time). I had to take regular breaks to just breathe because it was overwhelming, seeing myself in many of these pieces and knowing that all of us deserve so much better.

The response to the issue has been amazing, and the response to my essay has been humbling. I think I have what Brené Brown calls a “vulnerability hangover”. I am not used to being an active participant in social media beyond a small circle of friends, and it was a little scary to see the notifications roll in. Rewarding, but yeah, a little scary. I have zero regrets, but in the process of writing, I did find stuff I need to work on. It turns out I have more to say on the subject. I’ll save it for another blog.

For now, you should really read Pipe Wrench.

We spent a wonderful four days in the big city at the end of April, seeing the sights and shows and enjoying lots of tasty food. It was the kids’ first time in NYC, and they were wowed by the size of everything. The verdict: Ellie could do without “all the honking”, and Gwen wants to live there.

We stayed in Times Square, within walking distance to our big plans: Hamilton and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Ellie’s birthday presents). Occasionally we grabbed a ride to explore other parts of the city (Rockefeller Center and the Flatiron District) but did a fair amount of walking otherwise. We saw the Ed Sullivan theater (Tim and I are Stephen Colbert nerds), the Times building (Tim’s employer), and two LEGO stores.

Flying in the COVID era was a bit nerve-wracking, especially when the CDC lifted mask mandates on domestic flights mid-way through our trip. Given the rising case numbers in Manhattan, I was convinced we’d all bring home an extra unwelcome souvenir, but it appears we dodged the ‘rona*, at least for now.

And of course, pictures:

* ... or did we?